Fire Hydrant of Freedom
Politics, Religion, Science, Culture and Humanities => Politics & Religion => Topic started by: captainccs on October 18, 2006, 11:41:59 AM
-
I'm starting a new thread instead of adding this post to the WWIII thread because I think the Middle East is complex enough to warrant it without including worries about North Korean nukes and South American devils.
As I was reading the news I was thinking that war in the Middle East was just a question of time. What I find troubling is that many European countries are aiding and abetting the Islamist: France threatened to fire on the IAF, Italy wants to sell anti aircraft batteries to Lebanon to shoot down IAF planes, Russia (Putin) continues to help Iran. It would seem that Israel can only count on the US and Britain as allies and I have my doubts about Britain at times.
Right On: The coming Middle East war
By MICHAEL FREUND
The Jerusalem Post
The warning signs are everywhere, yet no one wishes to see them. Israel's foes are gearing up for war, and it's time that we opened our eyes to the danger that confronts us.
The conflict may be just weeks or even months away, or perhaps a bit longer. How it will start is anyone's guess, but make no mistake, a major outbreak of hostilities is almost certainly around the corner.
If this sounds like scare-mongering or even an advanced case of paranoia to you, just take a glance at the newspapers from the past few weeks. If you read them with a discerning eye, you will see exactly what I mean.
For whichever direction one chooses to look, be it north, south or east of us, trouble - major trouble - is brewing.
In Lebanon, Hizbullah is busy rebuilding its expansive terrorist infrastructure after this summer's fighting with Israel. Under the protective shield of UN troops, the group has been welcoming large shipments of weapons from Iran and Syria, and fortifying its bunkers in advance of the next round of conflict.
In a speech delivered last month in Beirut, on September 22, Hizbullah leader Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah asserted that his organization still has "more than 20,000 rockets" and that it had "recovered all its organizational and military capabilities."
Even if we allow for an element of boasting and exaggeration, there are clear signs that Nasrallah is steadily engaged in rebuilding his forces.
Indeed, this past Sunday, Brig.-Gen. Yossi Baidatz, head of the IDF intelligence directorate's research department, told the weekly Cabinet meeting that, "There is conclusive and decisive evidence" that Syria is rearming Hizbullah.
"The weapons smuggling from Syria into Lebanon," Baidatz said, "is continuing with official Syrian involvement." He added that Damascus has kept its forces on a war footing, with their artillery and missiles deployed in forward battle positions.
Along these lines, Syrian President Bashar Assad has made a series of public statements in recent weeks, speaking openly about the possibility of military conflict with Israel and his desire to retake the Golan Heights by force.
In an interview with the Kuwaiti newspaper Al-Anba on October 6, Assad said that Damascus was ready for war with the Jewish state. Previously, he insisted that the Golan would be "liberated by Syrian arms," and warned Israel to "seek peace or face the threat of defeat."
TURNING SOUTH toward Gaza, the situation is likewise disturbing. Palestinian terrorists continue to fire Kassam rockets into the Negev on a daily basis, hitting Israeli towns and communities such as Sderot and Nir Am.
Since the start of the year, Hamas is said to have smuggled into Gaza over 20 tons of explosives, anti-aircraft and anti-tank missiles. According to media reports, Hamas has also assembled an armed military force consisting of 7,500 fighters, which is said to include specialized units such as snipers, missile batteries and anti-tank troops.
As Yediot Aharonot military correspondent Alex Fishman recently put it, "The Palestinians are arming themselves to the teeth, building a military force, defensive systems and preparing Hizbullah-style surprises."
Nor is Hamas hiding its intentions. In a statement issued on Monday, the group's Izzadin al-Kassam brigades declared that it has the "means and arms necessary to confront the Zionist enemy with all our force."
Saying they are "totally ready to resist," Hamas added somewhat ominously that, "We have finished preparations to teach the Zionist enemy a lesson it will not forget."
And then, of course, there is the threat from Teheran to our east, where the Iranian president speaks of wiping Israel off the map even as he continues to pursue his nuclear ambitions.
If anyone thinks that Mr. Ahmadinejad is open to compromise, they should take a look at his latest ramblings. Speaking at a mosque in Teheran on Monday, the Iranian leader insisted that he had received a Divine message indicating that his country would prevail. "One day," he said, "I will be asked whether I have been in touch with someone who told me we would win, and I will respond: 'Yes, I have been in touch with God'."
As if all this were not enough, there have been persistent reports in recent months about a growing al-Qaida presence in the territories, as the international terrorist group seeks to position itself for launching strikes against the Jewish state.
And so, Israel now finds itself surrounded by an arc of hate stretching from Beirut and Damascus in the north, to Teheran in the east, and back to Gaza in the south. Along each chord of this arc, our foes are diligently arming themselves and preparing for battle, both verbally and in practice. It seems safe to assume that these coordinated efforts are no coincidence, and that they are all linked to the seemingly inevitable confrontation that is looming over the region regarding Iran's nuclear program.
Just as Iran sought to send a message to Israel and the US this summer by provoking an outbreak of hostilities in Lebanon, so too Teheran now appears determined to lay the groundwork for a much greater, and far more ambitious, flare-up, one that would threaten to consume the entire region. The Iranians presumably view this as their trump card, thinking that it will give them the means of forestalling a possible US or Israeli attack on their nuclear facilities.
As a result, they have been working to strengthen the extremists throughout the region, who share their desire to hit America and Israel. In all probability, they are merely waiting for the opportune moment with which to set in motion the next provocative act, which will be aimed at igniting the entire Middle East.
HOW SHOULD Israel react to this growing threat? First, we must learn the lesson of this summer's Lebanon war, which was disastrous precisely because we sat back and allowed our enemies to build up their military infrastructure over time.
Instead of making this same mistake once again, Israel should take whatever steps are necessary to interdict weapons shipments to the terrorists, seal off their supply routes, and hit hard at those who are sending them the weapons in the first place.
Second, the government needs to begin seriously contemplating the possibility of launching preemptive and wide-ranging military strikes. Our foes are openly preparing for war, so why should we allow them the luxury to choose when it starts?
Passivity and indecisiveness cost us dearly in the past, and especially in Lebanon this summer. We can not allow ourselves to play by the enemy's rules, or even by his schedule, should this scenario once again come to pass.
I truly hope that I am wrong, and that diplomacy and common sense will somehow prevail. The last thing Israel needs right now is another painful conflict, and we should all pray to God for His mercy and intervention.
But as in the past, our enemies may leave us with no other choice but to fight. This time around, let's just make sure we are ready for the challenge.
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1159193465378&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull
-
BY JAMES TARANTO
Thursday, October 19, 2006 1:36 p.m. EDT
Today's video on WSJ.com: James Taranto talks with Ed Crane about European hypocrisy on Guantanamo, the Democrats' newest slogan, and an Israeli sex scandal.
Tet's Real Lesson
We have long argued that America's mainstream media--because of what they see as the "lessons of Vietnam"--are actively working to promote American defeat in Iraq. (We gave this theme a lengthy treatment in a talk last November at the Hudson Institute, which later became an essay in the February issue of The American Spectator.) From CNN comes one of the most striking bits of evidence yet that this is the case. This promo for a "CNN exclusive" appears today on the homepage of CNN.com (we've captured it here for posterity as well):
Almost 2,800 Americans have been killed so far in Iraq and one of the most dangerous insurgent opponents is the sniper. CNN has obtained graphic video from the Islamic Army of Iraq, one of the most active insurgent organizations in Iraq, showing its sniper teams targeting U.S. troops. The Islamist Army says it wants talks with the United States and some Islamist Internet postings call for a P.R. campaign aimed at influencing the American public. The video is disturbing to watch but CNN believes the story, shocking as it is, needs to be told.
By airing this video, CNN is participating in what it acknowledges is "a P.R. campaign aimed at influencing the American public" in ways favorable to America's enemies. And the network does not even seem to realize what a shocking admission this is.
With the midterm elections less than three weeks away, the media are filled with Tet talk. Here's Simon Hooper, in a commentary that also appears today on CNN.com:
For veteran statesmen such as [James] Baker, the parallels with another era-defining American war must also be striking. In the late 1960s the U.S. military found itself fighting an unwinnable conflict, enduring mounting casualties against a growing chorus of dissent at home--in Vietnam.
On Wednesday [President] Bush himself acknowledged parallels between the current situation in Iraq and the 1968 Tet Offensive--widely considered to be the point when American public opinion turned against the war.
As we noted yesterday, Thomas Friedman of the New York Times also drew the analogy in a column whose description of Tet is worth repeating:
Although the Vietcong and Hanoi were badly mauled during Tet, they delivered, through the media, such a psychological blow to U.S. hopes of "winning" in Vietnam that Tet is widely credited with eroding support for President Johnson and driving him to withdraw as a candidate for re-election.
Tet, that is, was a military victory for the U.S. that turned into a propaganda victory for the communists because American journalists presented a false picture of what had happened.
The media today are eager to repeat their "success" in Vietnam--and it was a success inasmuch as the media were hugely influential over the course of events. But from a journalistic standpoint it was a gross failure. The real lesson of Vietnam is that journalists got the story wrong. We are not at all convinced that the American people are about to get fooled again.
http://www.opinionjournal.com/best/?id=110009120
-
Sorry for lack of URL,? but this internet friend has a long and solid track record with me.
==============
This story from Haaretz, indirectly supports that contention...namely that the French would approve the sale of missiles to Lebanon...
French forces: Stop Lebanon overflights or we'll open fire
By Gideon Alon
The commanders of the French contingent in UNIFIL (United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon) have warned that if Israeli warplanes continue their overflights in Lebanon, they may have to open fire on them, Defense Minister Amir Peretz told the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee yesterday.
Peretz told members of the committee that despite the warnings, Israel would continue to patrol the skies of Lebanon as such operations were critical for the country's security. Over the past few days, Peretz said, Israel had gathered clear evidence that Syria was transfering arms and ammunition to Lebanon, meaning that the embargo imposed by UN Resolution 1701 was not being completely enforced.
Israel plans to inform the joint committee of representatives of UNIFIL, the Israel Defense Forces and the Lebanese Army that unless the arms transfers are stopped, Israel will be forced to take independent action, Peretz said.
Turning to the situation in the Gaza Strip, Peretz said that Israel could under no circumstances allow the Strip to be turned into a second South Lebanon. According to Peretz, the time when Israel used to check who was sending every missile is over, and the IDF is intent on striking at every terrorist no matter what organization he belongs to.
The defense minister said that the current ground operations underway in the Gaza Strip were much more extensive than before. But, he said, "No one is hankering for ground action deep inside the entire Gaza Strip."
===============
Another friend comments:
Looks like Israel was screwed once again by the "international community".
Disarming Hizballah was part of the peace deal - but now, no one even talks
about that. And now, the French are threatening to shoot at Israeli planes.
What about shooting at those who are delivering arms to Hizballah?
Unbelievable.
-
1209 GMT -- FRANCE -- French troops almost fired on Israeli air force jets in southern Lebanon when a squadron of F-15s dived at a French peacekeeper position, French Defense Minister Michele Alliot-Marie said in comments to parliament late Nov. 8.
www.stratfor.com
-
From Beirut to Baghdad
The ghastly predictability of nihilist violence.
By Christopher Hitchens
Posted Monday, Nov. 27, 2006, at 4:30 PM ET
The fate of those who criticize the Syrian presence in Lebanon is rather like the fate of those who oppose Vladimir Putin. The former are shot or blown up, and the latter are victims of exotic poisons. Nobody knows for sure if there is any direct connection between the positions they take and the outcome that befalls them, but it has to be said in both cases that neither the government of Syria nor the face of Vladimir Putin seems very downcast or contrite when these coincidences occur. And, as Gen. Strelnikov so rightly says in Doctor Zhivago, it hardly matters whether you burn the right village or the wrong one. The same deterrent point is made in either case.
In Iraq, the terrifying aspect of the violence is its randomness. You have a higher chance of being tortured to death with a drill if you are a secularist, a translator working with the coalition, an advocate of women's rights, or a Christian, but the atmosphere is one in which nobody?not even a preacher or practitioner of sectarianism?can feel safe. In Lebanon, the situation is also slightly volatile. Those targeted for murder have included a former prime minister backed by Saudi funds, the former chairman of the Communist Party, and most recently the leader of the Maronite Catholic right: a fairly broad spectrum of victims, if, essentially, a predictable one. But in Beirut two decades ago, the situation was more like it is in Baghdad today, with mayhem in almost every part of the city and splits within cracks within fissures of each militia, so that almost every block had its own warlord. So ghastly was this state of affairs that there were enough people to welcome Syrian troops at least grudgingly when they first arrived, on the basis that anything was preferable to anarchy. A similar chaos and misery gave the upper hand to Mullah Omar's forces in Afghanistan, who were able to present Talibanism in the 1990s as providing a measure of stability and who currently hope to repeat the same strategy with (as before) a little help from a Pakistan that needs an Afghan colony for "strategic depth" in its campaign for Kashmir.
This is the huge advantage that the forces of nihilism possess in the region. In the short term, it is true, a prudent Syrian or Iranian government would not wish for an implosion in either Lebanon or Iraq, and a sensible Pakistani regime ought to desire a peaceful Afghanistan. A next-door war of all against all can lead to interethnic and interconfessional rivalry within their own societies and in the meantime is a threat to the orderly exploitation of things?like the trade in narcotics?that benefit the regimes and their clientele. However, chaos is a tremendous way of waging asymmetrical warfare and canceling the vast military superiority of the United States. It also catches the attention of those locals who are caught in the middle and who know from long and bitter experience how to sniff the wind. Listen to us, say the Ahmadinejads and their proxies, we will always be here. Can you say the same for the Americans? Many considerations, including intense inter-Islamic Shiite-Sunni hatred, divide Ahmadinejad and Assad from the forces of al-Qaida, which would also prefer to see Iraq, Lebanon, and Afghanistan in ruins than have these countries get a chance of modernism and secularism. But on this essential point, they are in agreement, and their wrecking activities tend toward the same objective. In due course, they will certainly fight each other. But the ruins over which they will be disputing will, they believe, have at least been abandoned by the West, as Afghanistan was after 1989. And the interest of human-rights monitors and others will have slackened accordingly.
If this indeed proves to be the outcome, the victors will be able to rub their eyes at how easy it was. Barely five years after the eviction of the Taliban, three and a half years after the fall of Saddam Hussein, and a year and a half after the Syrian army was forced out of Beirut by a show of mass popular and democratic unity, the memory of those brave fingers marked with the purple ink of the franchise has almost vanished. Tribalism and gangsterism are back, in a big way, with heavy state support from across the frontiers. And the United States, it seems, cannot wait to confirm the impression that it would rather deal with the aggressors. If the latest assassination in Lebanon caused any embarrassment to the enthusiasm of the Baker-Hamilton team for direct talks with Damascus and Tehran, the embarrassment wasn't evident. The Lebanese Cabinet may have bravely voted last week, in spite of a campaign of blackmail by Syria's death squads and religious proxies, to establish a tribunal to investigate the murder of Rafik Hariri, but in Washington, the talk is of getting on better terms with the people who, on all the available evidence, blew up his car. You may have noticed the new habit in the media of referring to the government of Lebanon as "American-backed" or "Western-backed." This is as if to imply that it is not an expression of Lebanon's remaining autonomy. But it is also cruelly ironic: Where exactly is this "backing"? Once again, it is becoming more dangerous to be a friend of the United States than an enemy.
The objectionable thing about the proposed Baker-Hamilton "talks" is not that they are talks but that they give the impression of looking for someone to whom to surrender. And they have, apparently, no preconditions. It would be an excellent thing to have direct negotiations with Iran, for instance, with all matters on the table. But if the mullahs did not have to sacrifice their ongoing nuclear deception in order to get to that table, then all the efforts of the Europeans, the United Nations, and the International Atomic Energy Agency to get them to do so would have been shown to be risible. With Syria, there is an even more intelligible precondition to be announced. Most people are unaware of this fact, but Damascus has always refused to recognize Lebanon as an independent state. There is no Syrian Embassy in Beirut. Implicitly and explicitly, this suggests that the country is regarded as an actual or potential part of a "Greater Syria." Is it really too much to demand that Syria acknowledge the self-determination, or "right to exist," of a fellow member of the Arab League? Without this line of demarcation, for one thing, the "withdrawal" of Syrian soldiers and police is a merely tactical thing; a retreat over the horizon while the Assad dynasty waits for better days. These "better" days may well not be long in coming.
Those who blame the violence in Baghdad on the American presence must have a hard job persuading themselves that the mayhem in Beirut and Afghanistan?and the mayhem that is being planned and is still to come?is attributable to the same cause. But the instigators are the same in all cases: the parties of god and their foreign masters. If we cannot even stand up for Lebanon in this crisis, even rhetorically, then we are close to admitting that these parties have won.
-
Geopolitical Diary: Syria's Militant Islamist Traffic
An explosion occurred on the Syrian-Lebanese border on Tuesday. Lebanese security officials said the blast was caused by a Syrian assailant, driving toward Lebanon in southwestern Syria along the main international highway that links Beirut and Damascus. The driver was reportedly about seven minutes from the Lebanese border point of Masnaa when he was stopped at the border crossing of Jdeidet Yabous on the Syrian side. When Syrian police tried to search a suitcase in his car, the driver reportedly pulled out a pistol and fired at them. Officials say he then ran from the car, holding a grenade, which exploded and killed him on the spot. Two Syrian security officers were injured.
And then we have the Syrian version of the incident. The Syrian Interior Ministry issued a statement that identified the assailant as 28-year-old Omar Abdullah, the alleged leader of the Islamist militant group Tawhid and Jihad al-Takfiri. Abdullah, operating under the alias Omar Hamra, was allegedly trying to cross the border with nine forged documents. After firing at Syrian security forces, he tried to escape and ended up detonating an explosive belt.
Damascus is notorious for stretching the truth, particularly when it comes to reporting on Islamist militants operating in the country -- such as the alleged jihadist attack on the U.S. Embassy in Damascus in September, as well as a number of shady reports on shootouts between Islamist militants and Syrian security forces. In this latest incident, it does seem a bit odd that a leader of a shadowy jihadist group -- and not a foot soldier -- would be the one carrying out a suicide mission, and that he would behave so clumsily at a checkpoint.
Despite the glaring disparities between the Lebanese and Syrian accounts, one thing is clear: a Syrian assailant was stopped at a checkpoint and detonated an explosion of some kind while trying to escape. Though a clumsy affair, the incident reveals Syria's management of jihadists in the Levant region. Syria has long been in the business of funneling Islamist militants across the borders it shares with Iraq and Lebanon, while carefully managing to stay clear of Sunni militant attacks itself.
Syria manages these militants primarily through its intelligence assets in Lebanon who coordinate with Islamist groups operating in the Ain al-Hilweh Palestinian refugee camp near Sidon and in Sunni areas of Lebanon. An alleged al Qaeda-linked node has also set up shop in several refugee camps in Lebanon, including Burj al-Barajneh, Beddawi and Mar Elias.
Syria regularly likes to remind its neighbors and the United States through incidents such as the Tuesday border explosion that it, too, is battling jihadists within its borders, and that Washington's cooperation with Damascus is necessary to battle this common threat. The Syrian regime is also keen on driving home the point that Lebanon will return to chaos without Syrian forces in the country and that a price will be paid for driving Syrian forces out of the country following the February 2005 assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik al-Hariri. In order to squash any plans to topple the Syrian government, Damascus wants to play up the idea that the alternative to the secular Alawite-Baathist authoritarian regime in Syria would be a government led or heavily influenced by radical Islamists. The story on the border explosion clearly falls in line with Syria's intentions.
But Syrian President Bashar al Assad is playing with fire in facilitating the transport of Islamist militants into Lebanon and Iraq. Though the al Assad government isn't exactly known to be risk-averse, the Alawite regime in Damascus cannot be assured that it is completely safe from the jihadist threat, and must carefully manage the flow of insurgents to avoid falling victim to attacks on its own soil. The Syrians are also keeping a close eye on the raging insurgency in Iraq -- which has thus far served it well by keeping the United States occupied, but which runs the risk of becoming a bigger problem for Damascus should the Sunni militant movement get out of hand.
With the United States now well beyond its tolerance level in Iraq and searching for a shift in strategy to relieve U.S. forces in the region, recommendations by James Baker's Iraq Study Group to include Syria and Iran in negotiations have presented al Assad with a golden opportunity to emerge out of diplomatic isolation and bring Syria back into the regional spotlight. Al Assad has his Shiite allies in Iran to thank for this diplomatic opening, who have aggressively paved the way for Shiite influence to spread through the Arab world.
But Syria does not wish to present itself as a pawn of the Iranians in these negotiations. An ongoing meeting between Iraqi President Jalal Talabani and Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in Tehran was supposed to include al Assad, but he politely declined the invitation, lamely citing scheduling conflicts as the reason for his absence. The reality of the situation is that Syria wants to make a name for itself in these talks and will not simply be strung along by the Iranians. In fact, Syria is planning on holding a summit of its own in Damascus in the near future with Iraqi security officials, including Interior Minister Jawad al-Bulani and National Security Affairs Minister Shirwan al-Waili.
In addition to making a name for itself in Iraq, Syria is also heavily exhibiting its influence in other parts of the region. In Lebanon, the recent assassination of Pierre Gemayel was a clear reminder from Damascus that it still has the assets in place to manipulate the Lebanese political system. In the Palestinian territories, Syria was involved in the negotiations that led to the current cease-fire between Israel and the Palestinian militant faction. Though this cease-fire is tenuous at best, Syria's influence over Hamas' exiled leader Khaled Meshaal in Damascus played a part in halting rocket fire into Israel over the past three days.
Syria is clearly ready to catapult itself back into a more influential role in the region, but the regime is still twiddling its thumbs waiting on recognition from Washington -- something that will not come easily with Iran running the game in Iraq.
www.stratfor.com
-
Talking Turki
By SIMON HENDERSON
December 16, 2006
Prince Turki al-Faisal, the Saudi ambassador to the U.S., has resigned. The prince reportedly flew out of Washington after informing Condoleezza Rice, and his own staff, that he was leaving, just 15 months after arriving. The Saudi Embassy told the Associated Press that he was "going home to spend more time with his family." Such an excuse may satisfy the immediate requirements of news-agency reporting, but is almost certainly incomplete, and worryingly so. Prince Turki's resignation provides yet another reminder that one of America's most important relationships is laced with surprise and mystery.
At the end of August 2001, the prince resigned as chief of the General Intelligence Directorate, the Saudi CIA, supposedly for apparently similar personal reasons. At the time the CIA and State Department were clueless as to what it meant. The eventual wisdom was that Prince Turki's directorate had become, in the later words of Pulitzer-winner Steve Coll, "a financial black hole." But Prince Turki had also held Saudi Arabia's "Afghan file," making him the principal interlocutor with the Taliban and Osama bin Laden. And 10 days later, the 9/11 attacks on the U.S. took place. Bureaucratic Washington, then, will now be intensely interested in finding out exactly why Prince Turki has suddenly decided to leave this time.
Elements of what might be the relevant context are already out in the public domain. Two weeks ago, Nawaf Obaid, a young Saudi who has worked as adviser for Prince Turki both in Washington and in his previous assignment as ambassador in London, authored an op-ed in the Washington Post. While claiming his status as adviser but also saying the opinions were his own, Mr. Obaid wrote that the kingdom was considering "massive . . . intervention [in Iraq] to stop Iranian-backed Shiite militias from butchering Iraqi Sunnis." Options included "funding, arms and logistical support," which to some sounded awfully like the support the Saudis, under Prince Turki, clandestinely gave pre-9/11 to jihadist fighters in Afghanistan, Chechnya and Bosnia.
The article prompted a formal announcement carried by the official Saudi Press Agency calling Mr. Obaid's reportage "absolutely not true." It went on: "It also does not represent in any way the kingdom's policy and stand to support security, unity and stability of Iraq with all its sects and doctrines." Two days later, Prince Turki told Wolf Blitzer on CNN: "We [have] terminated our consultancy work with [Mr. Obaid]."
Less than a week before Mr. Obaid's article, Dick Cheney had made an extraordinary Thanksgiving weekend flight to Riyadh for a two-hour meeting with King Abdullah and Crown Prince Sultan. The spin was that Washington wanted more Saudi help in ensuring stability in Iraq -- although it would seem that ambassadors or foreign ministers are more suited for delivering messages than are vice presidents.
These pieces still don't quite fit, but they provide reason to believe that there's more to the story. Now, the spin on Prince Turki's return home is that he is about to replace his elder brother, Saud, who is afflicted by a bad back and Parkinson's disease, as foreign minister. Possible, but probably too simplistic. Prince Turki is bright and able, though some who know him say he never fully recovered from a bad case of carbon-monoxide poisoning he suffered when staying in a camper van on a desert trip in the mid-1980s.
There has been an almost mystical quality to much of the reporting about Prince Turki since he arrived in Washington. Much is made of his education at Princeton and Georgetown. Prince Turki's version, in a speech at Princeton on Dec. 7, was more candid: "[This was] where I briefly spent some of my misspent youth." Indeed, returning to the kingdom in some disgrace, he reportedly spent a year avoiding his father, the then-king, Faisal, before being sent to Georgetown. The Saudi ambassador at the time, instructed to make sure Prince Turki behaved, had little alternative but to take him in as a house guest.
Official U.S. analysis of the Saudi kingdom seems torn between viewing it as a kind of Camelot, with its (Islamic) chivalry, or as Disneyland -- military personnel sometimes refer to it as "the magic kingdom." In reality, the Saudi royal family needs to burnish its Islamic credentials to maintain legitimacy and quiet domestic discontent. Post-9/11, past compromises with Islamic radicals have come back to haunt the royalty, in addition to serving as an irritant in relations with the U.S.
An additional dimension derives from the 2003 invasion of Iraq: A huge Shia-dominated neighbor has emerged on its northern border. Saudis see Shias as threatening their security and leadership of Islam, and perceive them to be Iranian surrogates. In response, Saudi Arabia has been reaching out to Sunni states like Egypt and Jordan. Dramatically, even contacts with Israel have not been ruled out. One report suggests that it was not Saudi national security advisor Prince Bandar who had a clandestine autumn meeting in Amman with Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, but Prince Turki. The logic: As intelligence chief, he had established a back-channel relationship with the Mossad.
Despite the continuing high oil prices, for once U.S. difficulties with Saudi Arabia do not appear to be dominated by immediate energy concerns. The main challenge appears to be to steer Riyadh between a near holy confrontation with Shia Iran and an equally destabilizing alliance with radical Sunnis. As an experienced and well-liked envoy, Prince Turki will be hard to replace.
One early danger is that the kingdom is close to acquiring nuclear weapons rather than continuing to rely on the longstanding security guarantees and understanding of successive administrations in Washington. Last month a Saudi official privately warned the kingdom would not tolerate a nuclear-armed Iran. Pakistan (for bombs) and perhaps North Korea (for rockets) are potential allies. There are already credible reports of facilities in the desert that the Saudis claim are oil-related, although there are no pipelines in sight. Also, North Korean personnel have been spotted at military facilities.
Iraq, Iran, nuclear weapons, oil. Washington desperately needs a new, reliable Saudi interlocutor.
Mr. Henderson is the Baker Fellow and director of the Gulf and Energy Policy Program at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy.
-
Israeli plans for Iran attack
Al-Jazeera
Spy agency Mossad’s plans for a surprise attack on six sites in Iran have gripped the Islamic republic’s media, as have details of Israel’s nuclear capabilities.
Newspapers in Tehran jumped at revelations reported by both the German and American press on Sunday.
The Yediot Aharonot, Maariv and Haaretz dailies all splashed on a Los Angeles Times report that modified US-made cruise missiles are capable of carrying nuclear warheads on submarines.
This would allow Israel to launch atomic weapons from land, air or sea.
Strike plans prepared
The 3 newspapers also carried reports in Monday's edition of the Germany Der Spiegel magazine that a special Mossad unit received orders 2 months ago to prepare plans for strikes.
Around half a dozen targets in Iran are suspected of being used to prepare nuclear weapons by Tel Aviv.
US-built F-16 fighter bombers could completely destroy the sites, according to Israeli security officials quoted in the German magazine.
Maariv published a map of Iran complete with aerial shots of the suspected nuclear sites.
Yediot even ran a photograph of an Israeli Dauphin submarine, using a graphic to explain how it could sneak up on the enemy and fire its nuclear warheads.
Not the first time
In 1981, Israel bombed the Osirak nuclear power station near Baghdad, smashing former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein's nuclear programme, the 3 Israeli papers reminded their readers.
But a similar air attack against Iran would be far riskier.
Its nuclear sites are dotted across vast expanses and Iran's eastern border is 1300km from Israeli air bases, making bombing sorties vulnerable.
Official denial
However, Israeli political sources quoted by Yediot said there is no prospect of military action against Iran at this stage.
One senior official branded the weekend’s press reports “mere speculation. Israel will not be the first country to introduce nuclear arms to the Middle East, nor the first to use them."
Tel Aviv has neither confirmed nor denied having nuclear arms, but Washington has accepted it as a nuclear power since 1969 and analysts say it has up to 200 sophisticated nuclear weapons.
Honest peace broker
Arab countries have criticised the United States and the United Nations for pressuring Iran to accept even tougher inspections while ignoring the stockpile in Israel, which is not a signatory to the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and has never been inspected.
The International Atomic Energy Agency has imposed a 31 October deadline on Iran to prove it is not secretly developing nuclear weapons and also urged it to suspend enriching uranium, which the United States claims could be used to make nuclear bombs.
In a 1991 documentary on Israeli television, then foreign minister Shimon Peres revealed for the first time that France had agreed to equip Israel with a nuclear capability in 1956.
-
NY Times:
Deadliest Bomb in Iraq Is Made by Iran, U.S. Says
Michael R. GORDON
Published: February 10, 2007
WASHINGTON, Feb. 9 — The most lethal weapon directed against American troops in Iraq is an explosive-packed cylinder that United States intelligence asserts is being supplied by Iran.
A Deadly Weapon The assertion of an Iranian role in supplying the device to Shiite militias reflects broad agreement among American intelligence agencies, although officials acknowledge that the picture is not entirely complete.
In interviews, civilian and military officials from a broad range of government agencies provided specific details to support what until now has been a more generally worded claim, in a new National Intelligence Estimate, that Iran is providing “lethal support” to Shiite militants in Iraq.
The focus of American concern is known as an “explosively formed penetrator,” a particularly deadly type of roadside bomb being used by Shiite groups in attacks on American troops in Iraq. Attacks using the device have doubled in the past year, and have prompted increasing concern among military officers. In the last three months of 2006, attacks using the weapons accounted for a significant portion of Americans killed and wounded in Iraq, though less than a quarter of the total, military officials say.
Because the weapon can be fired from roadsides and is favored by Shiite militias, it has become a serious threat in Baghdad. Only a small fraction of the roadside bombs used in Iraq are explosively formed penetrators. But the device produces more casualties per attack than other types of roadside bombs.
Any assertion of an Iranian contribution to attacks on Americans in Iraq is both politically and diplomatically volatile. The officials said they were willing to discuss the issue to respond to what they described as an increasingly worrisome threat to American forces in Iraq, and were not trying to lay the basis for an American attack on Iran.
The assessment was described in interviews over the past several weeks with American officials, including some whose agencies have previously been skeptical about the significance of Iran’s role in Iraq. Administration officials said they recognized that intelligence failures related to prewar American claims about Iraq’s weapons arsenal could make critics skeptical about the American claims.
The link that American intelligence has drawn to Iran is based on a number of factors, including an analysis of captured devices, examination of debris after attacks, and intelligence on training of Shiite militants in Iran and in Iraq by the Iranian Revolutionary Guard and by Hezbollah militants believed to be working at the behest of Tehran.
The Bush administration is expected to make public this weekend some of what intelligence agencies regard as an increasing body of evidence pointing to an Iranian link, including information gleaned from Iranians and Iraqis captured in recent American raids on an Iranian office in Erbil and another site in Baghdad.
The information includes interrogation reports from the raids indicating that money and weapons components are being brought into Iraq from across the Iranian border in vehicles that travel at night. One of the detainees has identified an Iranian operative as having supplied two of the bombs. The border crossing at Mehran is identified as a major crossing point for the smuggling of money and weapons for Shiite militants, according to the intelligence.
According to American intelligence, Iran has excelled in developing this type of bomb, and has provided similar technology to Hezbollah militants in southern Lebanon. The manufacture of the key metal components required sophisticated machinery, raw material and expertise that American intelligence agencies do not believe can be found in Iraq. In addition, some components of the bombs have been found with Iranian factory markings from 2006.
Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates appeared to allude to this intelligence on Friday when he told reporters in Seville, Spain, that serial numbers and other markings on weapon fragments found in Iraq point to Iran as a source.
Some American intelligence experts believe that Hezbollah has provided some of the logistical support and training to Shiite militias in Iraq, but they assert that such steps would not be taken without Iran’s blessing.
“All source reporting since 2004 indicates that Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Corps-Quds Force is providing professionally-built EFPs and components to Iraqi Shia militants,” notes a still-classified American intelligence report that was prepared in 2006.
“Based on forensic analysis of materials recovered in Iraq,” the report continues, “Iran is assessed as the producer of these items.”
===========
Page 2 of 3)
The United States, using the Swiss Embassy in Tehran as an intermediary, has privately warned the Iranian government to stop providing the military technology to Iraqi militants, a senior administration official said. The British government has issued similar warnings to Iran, according to Western officials. Officials said that the Iranians had not responded.
A Deadly Weapon An American intelligence assessment described to The New York Times said that “as part of its strategy in Iraq, Iran is implementing a deliberate, calibrated policy — approved by Supreme Leader Khamenei and carried out by the Quds Force — to provide explosives support and training to select Iraqi Shia militant groups to conduct attacks against coalition targets.” The reference was to Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the Iranian leader, and to an elite branch of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Command that is assigned the task of carrying out paramilitary operations abroad.
“The likely aim is to make a military presence in Iraq more costly for the U.S.,” the assessment said.
Other officials believe Iran is using the attacks to send a warning to the United States that it can inflict casualties on American troops if the United States takes a more forceful posture toward it.
Iran has publicly denied the allegations that it is providing military support to Shiite militants in Iraq. Javad Zarif, Iran’s ambassador to the United Nations, wrote in an Op-Ed article published on Thursday in The Times that the Bush administration was “trying to make Iran its scapegoat and fabricating evidence of Iranian activities in Iraq.”
The explosively formed penetrator, detonated on the roadside as American vehicles pass by, is capable of blasting a metal projectile through the side of an armored Humvee with devastating consequences.
American military officers say that attacks using the weapon reached a high point in December, when it accounted for a significant portion of Americans killed and wounded in Iraq. For reasons that remain unclear, attacks using the device declined substantially in January, but the weapons remain one of the principal threats to American troops in and around Baghdad, where five additional brigades of American combat troops are to be deployed under the Bush administration’s new plan.
“It is the most effective I.E.D out there,” said Lt. Col. James Danna, who led the Second Battalion, Sixth Infantry Regiment in Baghdad last year, referring to improvised explosive devices, as the roadside bombs are known by the American military. “To me it is a political weapon. There are not a lot of them out there, but every time we crack down on the Shia militias that weapon comes out. They want to keep us on our bases, keep us out of their neighborhoods and prevent us from doing our main mission, which is protecting vulnerable portions of the population.”
Adm. William Fallon, President Bush’s choice to head the Central Command, alluded to the weapon’s ability to punch through the side of armored Humvees in his testimony to Congress last month.
“Equipment that was, we thought, pretty effective in protecting our troops just a matter of months ago is now being challenged by some of the techniques and devices over there,” Admiral Fallon said. “So I’m learning as we go in that this is a fast-moving ballgame.”
Mr. Gates told reporters last week that he had heard there had been cases in which the weapon “can take out an Abrams tank.”
The increasing use of the weapon is the latest twist in a lethal game of measure and countermeasure that has been carried out throughout the nearly four-year-old Iraq war. Using munitions from Iraq’s vast and poorly guarded arsenal, insurgents developed an array of bombs to strike the more heavily armed and technologically superior American military.
In response, the United States military deployed armored Humvees, which in turn spawned the development of even more potent roadside bombs. American officials say that the first suspected use of the penetrator occurred in late 2003 and that attacks have risen steadily since then.
To make the weapon, a metal cylinder is filled with powerful explosives. A metal concave disk manufactured on a special press is fixed to the firing end.
Several of the cylinders are often grouped together in an array. The weapon is generally triggered when American vehicles drive by an infrared sensor, which operates on the same principle as a garage door opener. The sensor is impervious to the electronic jamming the American military uses to try to block other remote-control attacks.
When an American vehicle crosses the beam, the explosives in the cylinders are detonated, hurling their metal lids at targets at a tremendous speed. The metal changes shape in flight, forming into a slug that penetrate many types of armor.
==============
(Page 3 of 3)
In planning their attacks, Shiite militias have taken advantage of the tactics employed by American forces in Baghdad. To reduce the threat from suicide car bombs and minimize the risk of inadvertently killing Iraqi civilians, American patrols and convoys have been instructed to keep their distance from civilian traffic. But that has made it easier for the Shiite militias to attack American vehicles. When they see American vehicles approaching, they activate the infrared sensors.
A Deadly Weapon According to American intelligence agencies, the Iranians are also believed to have provided Shiite militants with rocket-propelled grenades, shoulder-fired antiaircraft missiles, mortars, 122-millimeter rockets and TNT.
Among the intelligence that the United States is expected to make public this weekend is information indicating that some of these weapons said to have been made in Iran were carried into Iraq in recent years. Examples include a shoulder-fired antiaircraft missile that was fired at a plane flying near the Baghdad airport in 2004 but which failed to launch properly; an Iranian rocket-propelled grenade made in 2006; and an Iranian 81-millimeter mortar made in 2006.
Assessments by American intelligence agencies say there is no indication that there is any kind of black-market trade in the Iranian-linked roadside bombs, and that shipments of the components are being directed to Shiite militants who have close links to Iran. The American military has developed classified techniques to try to counter the sophisticated weapon.
Marine officials say that weapons have not been found in the Sunni-dominated Anbar Province, adding to the view that the device is an Iranian-supplied and Shiite-employed weapon.
To try to cut off the supply, the American military has sought to focus on the cells of Iranian Revolutionary Guard operatives it asserts are in Iraq. American intelligence agencies are concerned that the Iranians may respond by increasing the supply of the weapons.
“We are working day and night to disassemble these networks that do everything from bring the explosives to the point of construction, to how they’re put together, to who delivers them, to the mechanisms that are used to have them go off,” Gen. Peter Pace, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said last week. “It is instructive that at least twice in the last month, that in going after the networks, we have picked up Iranians.”
-
ISRAEL'S WORST NIGHTMARE. CONTRA IRAN BY YOSSI KLEIN HALEVI & MICHAEL B. OREN
Published in: The New Republic January 30, 2007
The first reports from military intelligence about an Iranian nuclear program reached the desk of Yitzhak Rabin shortly after he became prime minister in May 1992. Rabin's conclusion was unequivocal: Only a nuclear Iran, he told aides, could pose an existential threat to which Israel would have no credible response. But, when he tried to warn the Clinton administration, he met with incredulity. The CIA's assessment--which wouldn't change until 1998--was that Iran's nuclear program was civilian, not military. Israeli security officials felt that the CIA's judgment was influenced by internal U.S. politics and privately referred to the agency as the "cpia"--"P" for "politicized."
The indifference in Washington helped persuade Rabin that Israel needed to begin preparing for an eventual preemptive strike, so he ordered the purchase of long-range bombers capable of reaching Iran. And he made a fateful political decision: He reversed his ambivalence toward negotiating with the PLO and endorsed unofficial talks being conducted between Israeli left-wingers and PLO officials. Rabin's justification for this about-face was that Israel needed to neutralize what he defined as its "inner circle of threat"--the enemies along its borders--in order to focus on the coming confrontation with Iran, the far more dangerous "outer circle of threat." Rabin's strategy, then, was the exact opposite of the approach recently recommended by the Iraq Study Group: Where James Baker and Lee Hamilton want to engage Iran--even at the cost of downplaying its nuclear ambitions--in order to solve crises in the Arab world, Rabin wanted to make peace with the Arab world in order to prevent, at all costs, a nuclear Iran.
Now, more than a decade later, the worst-case scenario envisioned by Rabin is rapidly approaching. According to Israeli intelligence, Iran will be able to produce a nuclear bomb as soon as 2009. In Washington, fear is growing that either Israel or the Bush administration plans to order strikes against Iran. In Israel, however, there is fear of a different kind. Israelis worry not that the West will act rashly, but that it will fail to act at all. And, while strategists here differ over the relative efficacy of sanctions or a military strike, nearly everyone agrees on this point: Israel cannot live with a nuclear Iran.
For over two decades, since the era of former Prime Minister Menachem Begin, the Holocaust was rarely invoked, except on the extremes, in Israeli politics. In recent months, though, the Iranian threat has returned the Final Solution to the heart of Israeli discourse. Senior army commanders, who likely once regarded Holocaust analogies with the Middle East conflict as an affront to Zionist empowerment, now routinely speak of a "second Holocaust." Op-eds, written by left-wing as well as right-wing commentators, compare these times to the 1930s. Israelis recall how the international community reacted with indifference as a massively armed nation declared war against the Jewish people--and they sense a similar pattern today. Even though the United States and Europe have finally awakened to the Iranian nuclear threat, Iran's calls for the destruction of Israel tend to be dismissed as mere rhetoric by the Western news media. Yet, here in Israel, those pronouncements have reinforced Rabin's urgency in placing the Iran situation at the top of the strategic agenda.
One of the men most responsible for doing precisely that is Labor Party parliamentarian and current Deputy Defense Minister Ephraim Sneh, whom Rabin entrusted with his government's "Iran file." Like most in the defense establishment, Sneh doesn't believe Iran would immediately launch a nuclear attack against Israel. But, he adds, it won't have to actually use the bomb to cripple Israel. "They would be able to destroy the Zionist dream without pressing the button," he says.
In clipped tones that reveal his long military background, he outlines three repercussions of an Iranian bomb. To begin with, he notes, the era of peace negotiations will come to an end: "No Arab partner will be able to make concessions with a nuclear Iran standing over them." What's more, Israel will find its military options severely limited. An emboldened Iran could provide Hezbollah and Hamas with longer-range and deadlier rockets than their current stock of Katyushas and Qassams; yet, threatened with a nuclear response, Israel would have little defense against intensifying rocket fire on its northern and southern periphery, whose residents would have to be evacuated to the center. Israel already experienced a foretaste of mass uprooting in the Lebanon war last summer, when hundreds of thousands of Galilee residents were turned into temporary refugees. Finally, says Sneh, foreign investors will flee the country, and many Israelis will, too. In one recent poll, 27 percent of Israelis said they would consider leaving if Iran went nuclear. "Who will leave? Those with opportunities abroad--the elite," Sneh notes. The promise of Zionism to create a Jewish refuge will have failed, and, instead, Jews will see the diaspora as a more trustworthy option for both personal and collective survival. During the Lebanon war, Israeli television's preeminent satirical comedy, "O What a Wonderful Land," interviewed an Israeli claiming that "this" is the safest place for Jews--as the camera pulled back to reveal that "this" was London.
Even without the bomb, Iran's threat to Israel is growing. Working through Shia Hezbollah, Alawite Damascus, and Sunni Hamas, Tehran has extended its influence into Lebanon, Syria, and the Palestinian territories. As a result of Hezbollah's perceived victory in the Lebanon war and Hamas's ability to continue firing rockets at Israeli towns despite repeated army incursions into Gaza, Iran has proved it can attack Israel with near-impunity. Iranian newspapers are replete with stories gloating over the supposed erosion of Israel's will to fight and the imminent collapse of its "postmodern" army, as one recent article put it. Iran's self-confidence has been bolstered by Israel's failure to extract a price from Tehran for instigating the Lebanon war and for funding terrorist operations as far back as the early '90s, when Iran masterminded the bombing of the Israeli Embassy in Buenos Aires and, two years later, that city's Jewish community headquarters. Nor has Israel--to say nothing of the U.N. peacekeeping forces--managed to prevent Hezbollah from rearming. And, if Iran manages to overcome U.S. threats and U.N. sanctions and achieve nuclear capability, it will be seen throughout the Muslim world as unstoppable.
A nuclear Iran will have devastating consequences for Sunni Arab states, too. Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Algeria, and, most recently, Jordan have declared their interest in acquiring nuclear power; Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak has stated explicitly that Egypt may feel the need to protect itself against Iran's nuclear threat. Other Sunni nations could follow--including Libya, whose enmity toward the Saudis may draw it back into the nuclear race if Riyadh tries to acquire a bomb. A nuclear free-for-all, then, is likely to seize the Middle East. In this crisis-ridden region, any flashpoint will become a potential nuclear flashpoint.
The reverberations of a nuclear Iran will reach far beyond the Middle East. Tehran could dictate the price of oil and even control much of its supply through the Straits of Hermuz. And Iran will be able to conduct terrorist operations through its proxies with greater immunity. Even without the nuclear threat, Iran succeeded in intimidating the Saudis into releasing Iranian suspects in the 1997 Khobar Towers bombing. Moreover, if Tehran goes nuclear, the pretense of an international community capable of enforcing world order would quickly unravel: After all, if a regime that has perpetrated terrorist attacks from Argentina to the Persian Gulf can flout sanctions and acquire nuclear weapons, how can the United Nations credibly stop anyone else from doing the same?
And these terrifying scenarios exclude the most terrifying scenario of all: Iran uses its bomb. In a poll, 66 percent of Israelis said they believed Iran would drop a nuclear weapon on the Jewish state. Though defense experts are divided over the likelihood of an Iranian nuclear attack, every strategist we spoke with for this article considered the scenario plausible. "No one knows if Iran would use the bomb or not," says Sneh. "But I can't take the chance."
The threat of a theologically motivated nuclear assault against Israel tends to be downplayed in the West; not so here. The former head of Israel's National Security Council, Giora Eiland, has warned that an apocalyptically driven Mahmoud Ahmadinejad would be willing to sacrifice half his country's population to obliterate the Jewish state. Military men suddenly sound like theologians when explaining the Iranian threat. Ahmadinejad, they argue, represents a new "activist" strain of Shiism, which holds that the faithful can hasten the return of the Hidden Imam, the Shia messiah, by destroying evil. Hebrew University Iranian scholar Eldad Pardo goes further, arguing that the ideology founded by Ayatollah Khomeini represents nothing less than a "new religion," combining Shia, Sunni, and Marxist beliefs and resembling Western messianic cults that have advocated mass suicide. And so Ahmadinejad's pronouncements about the imminent return of the Hidden Imam and the imminent destruction of Israel aren't regarded as merely calculated for domestic consumption; they are seen as glimpses into an apocalyptic game plan. Ahmadinejad has reportedly told his Cabinet that the Hidden Imam will reappear in 2009--precisely the date when Israel estimates Iran will go nuclear. In a recent meeting with outgoing U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan, the Iranian president predicted that, while the United States and Great Britain won the last world war, Iran will win the next one. And, two weeks ago, an Iranian government website declared that the Hidden Imam would defeat his archenemy in a final battle in Jerusalem. Notes one former top-ranking Israeli defense official: "We may not yet have located a clear theological line connecting the dots, but there are a great many dots." At least one ayatollah, though, has made that theology explicit: In 2005, Hussein Nuri Hamdani declared that "the Jews should be fought against and forced to surrender to prepare the way for the coming of the Hidden Imam."
Defense experts readily acknowledge that Ahmadinejad is hardly all-powerful and must yield to the Council of Guardians. In recent elections, almost all the clerics allied with Ahmadinejad lost; and, in an unprecedented move, 150 Iranian parliamentarians signed a letter blaming the president for growing inflation and unemployment. But none of this reassures Israelis. That's because Ahmadinejad is hardly alone in conjuring doomsday scenarios. In February 2006, clerics in Qom issued a fatwa permitting nuclear war. And former Iranian President Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, speaking at a 2001 "Jerusalem Day" rally, declared: "If, one day, the Islamic world is also equipped with weapons like those that Israel possesses now, then the imperialists' strategy will reach a standstill, because the use of even one nuclear bomb inside Israel will destroy everything. However, it will only harm the Islamic world. It is not irrational to contemplate such an eventuality."
Given these nightmarish scenarios, one would expect to find a mood of near-despair within the Israeli defense establishment. Yet senior officials believe that events are actually working in Israel's favor and that, one way or another, Iran's nuclear program can still be stopped. Partly, that is because Israel's assessments of Iran's intention to acquire nuclear weapons have finally been accepted not only by Washington but even by the Europeans. After years of isolation on the Iranian issue, Israelis are basking in a rare moment of international credibility.
As a result, some in the defense establishment are convinced that the military option can still be forestalled, even at this late date, by aggressive economic sanctions, forcing the Iranian regime to choose between its nuclear program and domestic stability. To be sure, even the most optimistic Israelis believe that the recent U.N. decision to impose minimal sanctions on Iran will prove ineffective. Indeed, those sanctions--intended to prevent nuclear materials and know-how from reaching Iran and to stop its nuclear program from becoming self-sufficient--are uniformly dismissed as coming at least two years too late, since Iran is rapidly approaching nuclear self-sufficiency and, some here believe, may have already reached that point.
-
But sanctions advocates do believe that, by formally placing Iran in the category of "threat to international peace," the United Nations has tacitly empowered the United States and its allies to pursue more aggressive sanctions that could trigger Iranian instability--such as the Bush administration's quiet efforts over the last year to force foreign banks out of Tehran. Combined with Iran's preexisting social and economic problems--massive hidden unemployment, widespread corruption, and growing drug addiction and prostitution--and hatred for the regime among students and the middle class, aggressive sanctions could, some Israelis believe, hasten regime change in Tehran by forcing the Iranian people to pay the price for their leaders' provocations. And, with regime change, of course, the threat posed by an Iranian bomb would ease: After all, the problem isn't the nuclearization of Iran but the nuclearization of this Iran. The very threat of additional sanctions has already led to drastic increases in food and housing prices in Tehran--and may have emboldened those parliamentarians who signed the recent protest letter to Ahmadinejad. "The Iranians are a very proud people," says one Israeli official with years of experience inside Iran. "They won't be able to bear being turned into pariahs, and that will increase their resentment toward the regime."
Along with sanctions, some Israeli officials call for a robust but nonviolent U.S. intervention in internal Iranian politics--funding the Iranian opposition, transforming U.S. broadcasts in Farsi into "Radio Free Iran," reaching Farsi audiences through the Internet, and more aggressively challenging the Iranian government on its human rights abuses. Israeli advocates of regime change have been pressing Washington to adopt these policies for years and can't understand why even the Bush administration has demurred. "No one is saying not to plan for military action," says the official with experience in Iran. "But, given the devastating consequences of a military strike, why aren't we giving this a chance?"
Skeptics of sanctions note that the time frame is too narrow and the stakes too high for Israel to place its hopes on long-term regime change. They insist that the international community is incapable of mounting effective sanctions, which would almost certainly be violated by Russia and China. Yes, they acknowledge, the ayatollahs' regime is in trouble and will eventually fall--but not soon enough. Indeed, optimists have been predicting imminent regime change for over a decade; and, when failed reformer Mohammed Khatami became president in 1997, some in the West declared that regime change had already begun. But Iran's leaders know how to defend themselves against opponents: When bus drivers organized a wildcat strike last year, the leader was arrested and his tongue was cut off.
For those Israelis who are skeptical of sanctions, there is the option of last resort: a military strike. Experts readily acknowledge the complexity of an attack against Iran's nuclear facilities, since they are scattered over dozens of sites, many heavily fortified and deep underground. But an attack on three key sites--especially the uranium-enrichment facility at Natanz--would set back Iranian plans by several years. It would not be necessary, the former top-ranking defense official says, to destroy Iran's nuclear facilities: By repeatedly hitting their entrances, the sites could be rendered inaccessible. At the same time, Israel would probably bomb key government installations, like Revolutionary Guard bases, to weaken the regime's ability to recover. While the Iranian people are likely to initially rally around the government, the combined effect of a military attack and economic sanctions could trigger an eventual uprising, suggests the former defense official. Periodic air strikes, he adds, would impede attempts to rebuild the nuclear sites.
Defense experts downplay the possibility of secret facilities unknown to Western intelligence agencies. "If we can locate a suicide bomber as he moves from place to place, then we know how to locate static targets, even deep underground," says the former defense official. Nor are those facilities as impenetrable as some foreign news reports suggest. Noted Yuval Steinitz, former chairman of the Knesset's Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee: "The Iranians are signaling us that the nuclear project is vulnerable. Whoever spends several billion dollars just for anti-aircraft systems around nuclear sites is saying that those sites are vulnerable. There would be no need to invest those sums if their bunkers were deep enough [to avoid an air strike]."
The Israeli air force has been actively preparing for an attack since 1993, enhancing the range of its bombers and acquiring the requisite bunker-busting ordnance. "Technically, we have the ability" to strike key facilities, a former commander of the air force told us. While the army's reputation was battered during the Lebanon war, the air force, by contrast, performed well, routinely destroying Hezbollah's long-range missile sites within less than five minutes following a launch.
Despite a recent report in the London Sunday Times that Israel is planning a tactical nuclear attack on Iran's nuclear sites, Israel will almost certainly not introduce nuclear weapons into the Middle East battlefield. The story, likely planted and then promptly denied, was probably part of an ongoing Israeli attempt to accomplish two objectives: to warn the international community that, if it fails to stop Iran through sanctions, then "crazy Israel" will be unleashed; and to prevent the Iranian crisis from turning into an Israeli issue alone.
An Israeli assault could only delay Iran's nuclear program, not eliminate it. That's because Israel cannot sustain an air campaign against such remote targets for days on end. This can only be accomplished by the United States, perhaps together with nato allies, by mounting an ongoing series of air strikes similar to the "shock and awe" campaign conducted against Iraq at the beginning of the war. Israelis, though, are divided over the likelihood of U.S. military action. Some experts believe President Bush will attack, if only to prevent being recorded by history as a leader who fought the wrong war while failing to fight the right one. Others speculate that a politically devastated Bush will leave the resolution of the Iranian crisis to his successor.
If Israel is forced, by default, to strike, it is likely to happen within the next 18 months. An attack needs to take place before the nuclear facilities become radioactive; waiting too long could result in massive civilian casualties. Still, Israel will almost certainly wait until it becomes clear that sanctions have failed and that the United States or nato won't strike. The toughest decision, then, will be timing: determining that delicate moment when it becomes clear that the international community has failed but before the facilities turn lethal.
Israel will alert Washington before a strike: "We won't surprise the Americans, given the likelihood of Iranian reprisals against American troops in Iraq and elsewhere in the Middle East," says an analyst close to the intelligence community. U.S. permission will be needed if Israel chooses to send its planes over Iraqi air space--and the expectation here is that permission would be granted. (Israel has two other possible attack routes, both problematic: over Turkish air space and along the Saudi-Iraqi border to the Persian Gulf.) Still, according to the former air force commander, if Israel decides to act, "We will act alone, not as emissaries of anyone else."
Regardless of whether Israeli or other Western forces carry out the strike, Iran will almost certainly retaliate against the Jewish state. Experts disagree, though, about the extent of the Iranian onslaught and Israel's ability to withstand it. Some say that, though Iranian missiles will strike Israeli cities and Hezbollah Katyushas and Hamas Qassams will fall in massive numbers, Israel's anti-ballistic and civil defense systems, combined with its retaliatory capability, will suffice to contain the threat. Optimists also downplay Iran's ability to mount terrorist attacks in the West: September 11 has produced an unprecedented level of cooperation among Western intelligence services, and they are monitoring sleeper cells as well as Iranian diplomats, who are believed to have used their privileged access to smuggle explosives.
The pessimists' scenario, though, is daunting. Not only could Iranian missiles--perhaps carrying chemical warheads--devastate Israeli cities, but, if the Syrians join in, then thousands of additional long-range missiles will fall, too. And, if Israel retaliates by bombing Damascus, that could trigger public demands in other Arab countries to join the war against Israel. The result could be a conventional threat to Israel's existence.
That scenario leads some in the security establishment to call for renewed peace talks with Syria, aimed at removing it from the pro-Iranian front. The growing debate over Syria positions the Mossad--which says it's no longer possible to separate Damascus from Tehran--against military intelligence, which believes that President Bashar Assad wants negotiations with Israel, if only to divert the threat of sanctions against Damascus for its alleged role in murdering Lebanese leaders.
There is no debate among Israelis, however, about the wisdom of negotiations between the West and Iran. That, defense officials agree, would be the worst of all options. Negotiations that took place now would be happening at a time when Iran feels ascendant: The time to have negotiated with Iran, some say, was immediately after the initial U.S. triumph in Iraq, not now, when the United States is losing the war. Under these circumstances, negotiations would only buy the regime time to continue its nuclear program. Talks would create baseless hope, undermining the urgency of sanctions. And resuming negotiations with the Iranian regime--despite its repeated bad faith in previous talks over its nuclear program--would send the wrong message to the Iranian people: that the regime has international legitimacy and that resisting it is futile.
Hovering over Israeli discourse about a nuclear Iran is the recent Holocaust-denial conference in Tehran--and what Israelis regard as the scandalously inadequate international response. While the conference was condemned in the West, Israelis expected the international community to treat it as something more than a bizarre sideshow. Indeed, for Israelis, the conference offered the clearest warning yet on the true nature of the Iranian threat to the Jewish state.
In denying the Holocaust, Ahmadinejad aims to undermine what he believes to be the sole justification for Israel's existence. In the years before World War II, Nazi propagandists prepared Europe for the Final Solution by dehumanizing the Jews; now, Ahmadinejad is preparing the Muslim world for the destruction of the Jewish state by delegitimizing its history. And not just the Muslim world: Holocaust denial is also aimed at the West, which many Muslims believe supports Israel only because of Holocaust guilt. Strip away that guilt, and Israel is defenseless. "The resolution of the Holocaust issue will end in the destruction of Israel," commented Mohammad Ali Ramin, head of a new Iranian government institute devoted to Holocaust denial.
The French philosopher Andr Glucksmann has noted that, by threatening to destroy Israel and by attaining the means to do so, Iran violates the twin taboos on which the post-World War II order was built: never again Auschwitz; never again Hiroshima. The international community now has an opportunity to uphold that order. If it fails, then Israel will have no choice but to uphold its role as refuge of the Jewish people. A Jewish state that allows itself to be threatened with nuclear weapons--by a country that denies the genocide against Europe's six million Jews while threatening Israel's six million Jews--will forfeit its right to speak in the name of Jewish history. Fortunately, even the government of Ehud Olmert, widely criticized as incompetent and corrupt, seems to understand that, on this issue at least, it cannot fail.
To read what else TNR has published about Iran and its military weaponry, click here.
Yossi Klein Halevi is a contributing editor to The New Republic and a senior fellow of the Shalem Center in Jerusalem. Michael B. Oren is a contributing editor to The New Republic and a senior fellow of the Shalem Center in Jerusalem. He is the author most recently of Power, Faith, and Fantasy: America in the Middle East, 1776 to the Present.
===================
stratfor.com
ISRAEL: Knesset member Yuval Steinitz said Israel's successful Feb. 11 test of its Arrow anti-missile system proves Israel has the advantage over Iran and Syria. Steinitz also said the test proves that Israel "can bring down any kind of ballistic missile, a capability no power in the world possesses." During the test, which was conducted at 9:18 p.m. local time, the Arrow anti-missile system successfully intercepted a simulated warhead of an Iranian Shihab 3 missile.
-
In a nearby thread I posted yesterday Col. Ralph Peters' piece about Mookie Sadr's apparent flight to Iran to avoid our surge in Baghdad. The following piece from an investment letter (which I post in its entirety so as to maintain context) has a very different interpretation and one well worth considering IMHO.
=========================================
Gene Inger's Daily Briefing. . . . for Thursday, February 15, 2007:
Good weekend!
The market's 'Valentine' . . .
based on the Fed Chairman's testimony was no huge surprise, and simply allowed robust relief rallying based on the continued 'perception' of moderating growth amidst mild inflationary pressures, as now being Fed-verified. It was probably assisted by the inability of the 'Valentine's Day' massacre at Chrysler to ruffle feathers much; though there are concerns clearly other than sweetheart issues.
In this regard that combination of factors contributing to rally extensions (Oil inventory reports didn't hurt..more). Nobody reported Switzerland's proposals to Iran essentially resulting in 'nuclear control' that could foster optimism or a sense of relief. However, it was reported that the Shiite leader (Sadr) had departed for Teheran, presumably fear of a JDAM (big precision bomb) falling on his head being a part of that determination.
We suspect there's more to it. While we can't verify that the extreme Shiite zealots of his ilk are fleeing in fear of U.S. retribution (as warranted as that surely is), neither do we dismiss another possibility; that the Western media hasn't considered. What's that one asks? Well, how about extremists being in Iran to assist coordination with Tehran as to how they might expand their mischief in Iraq or alternatively (even concurrently) address any American efforts to interdict their attempts to broaden regional influence.
And does the recent enemy effectiveness against our helicopters mitigate air-cover to our Forces, in a similarity to what happened to Russia against the Taliban after they'd acquired the capability to either knock-down choppers or compel evasive maneuvers. Yes, we say we aren't planning to attack Iran. But what if Iran continues attacking us?
Let's at least explore what might occur should push-come-to-shove, instead of simply accepting the idea of a U.S. disengagement or conversely engagement to protect the region (which the Battle Groups and Patriot Missile battery dispositions suggest likely as this goes forward). Let's presuppose that the road to conflict is underway, though I am not suggesting it's unavoidable. If it goes thusly (and keep in mind though maybe the media highlights General Pace saying that the evidence of Iranian weapons may be mostly circumstantial, that's not to say they're not involved or this won't escalate), it might be of interest to speculate how such a conflict could actually ramp-into-action, and what the implications are for commodities; not least in Oil, and thus to financials.
Yesterday a story surfaced about 'Austrian' sniper rifles in the hands of 'insurgents' at the margin, or in the hands of Iranian agents at the maximum, taking-out Americans, and at considerable distance. If you saw 'Future Weapons' on the Discovery Channel a few days ago, you likely saw this weapon, which is more accurate than the Barrett semi-automatic weapon our forces use, and which was also displayed on that show's comparison. Because the accuracy is unbelievable up to a half-mile distant (think as to how far that is for a sniper's round), the U.S. and UK had protested Vienna's sale a couple years back to Iran for 'policing'. Clearly I see the evidence of where they are. I also find it unconscionable to imagine that the Pentagon will sit-back and sustain this.
Assume America is heading toward war with Iran, inadvertent or otherwise. A picture of how the conflict might emerge, is becoming clearer. In all-out war, basic American military tactics will be air attacks, naval blockades, offshore bombardments, and the destruction of oil and power infrastructure, plus Iran's Persian Gulf naval presence.
Iran presumably will respond with deployment of ground forces on its borders, attacks more likely by their proxy-armies in Iraq against American troops inside Iraq, and also the likely activation of hundreds of trained, well-armed, dormant terror cells peppered from one end of the Persian Gulf to the other; plus possibly proxies in Lebanon etc.
America's visible response would derive from the two Naval carrier groups deployed in the Persian Gulf, supplemented by USAF fighters and bombers from neighboring quasi allies (but infiltrated heavily by Shiites and Islamist sympathizers), like Kuwait, Oman, Qatar -where U.S. Central Command bases operations for that region- plus of course the United Arab Emirates, and possibly Saudi Arabia and Egypt, should all the stops be pulled-out, and the tentative efforts of Sunni terrorists to bring a harmonious theme to both Sunni and Shiite 'jihad' efforts against the West, actually not succeed.
Bases in Europe possibly wouldn't be utilized, excepting Great Britain probably, if it's determined that B2 bombers need to be utilized operating out of bases there (we're in a sense nearly at a point where concerns about 'domestic' Islamic terror must take at best a secondary concern in England, even if there's a likelihood of renewed enemy terror actions in England, which they might anyway; and which this would tend to sort of smoke 'em out, though it will be controversial or surely dangerous). There's no way (in our thinking) to at this point mollify or pacify Islamic threats in England (or France) particularly, short of just doing what's in the 'real' national interests of these societies, come what may; as well as dealing with whatever comes (I suspect if unassimilated groups such as the Moslems in Europe fail to put their adopted homes ahead of old-country views of the world that theoretically they wanted to get away from when they moved to new residence, Europeans will stop putting up with 'victimization' nonsense, and get on with their lives, even if it means upsetting 'political correctness' or certainly perpetrator's lives; something European tradition experienced before if challenged). It thus strikes us that there won't be a risk of 'Eurabia' because Europe will reverse this.
As to an American land invasion of Iran; nonsense. It's out of the question, given Iran has a 1 million-strong army, neighbors won't allow it, and the lack of American troops to carry it out is obvious to everyone. That's dangerous however, because 'perception of impotency' to engage the Iranians may compel things going beyond 'expectations'. To wit; the Iranians could get quite cocky about their ability, thus underestimating us.
Also generally unreported, there have been some increases in opposition to fanatical 'mullah governance' in Tehran. Just today a number of 'Revolutionary Guard' extreme shock troops were killed or injured in an attack on a bus carrying them inside Iran. It's a 'sign of the times', in that at least some younger (that's key) Iranians aren't steeped, to the extent their elders think, in the ways of 'revolution', and/or admire al Qaeda, or even the West, to which they'd like to see a great Persian people re-embrace in time.
We doubt that the CIA is behind these efforts inside Iran. But we see this as welcome and a reason to be very careful how we tread, lest we (in typical Washington fashion) disrupt that which may undermine the enemy without our having to do Herculean type tasks. We suspect that the radical Shiite Sadr is actually in Iran to help Iran figure-out how to suppress and discipline their own 'sects' and population, plus plot adventurism against the forces of stability in Iraq. They may in fact be coordinating an effort not so much to 'ensure his safety' as reported in the news here, but to deny safety to civilian groups and the U.S. military in Iraq. In essence Sadr is the Quisling of this era, so if it is presumed that he is not there simply 'fleeing' (U.S. media oversimplification) then it is conceivable that he's there to help the demagogues plot their takeover of Baghdad.
Should it be shown Iran is plotting a takeover of Iraq (reserved for ingerletter.com) we could find a point where U.S. Special Operations may be pushed into Iran to carry out attacks on the country's prized nuclear research facilities or designated 'hot' or Quds (shock troop) targets. The objective: dismantling mullah command and control of Iran.
We dispute the conventional notion that Teheran's most lethal weapon is manpower, alone. We dispute the simplicity of the argument that destruction of their Air Force or Navy, accomplished in a day or two, would negate the risk from their terrorist forces, very much as they do threaten, numerous parts of the world. But right there, in their neighborhood, we believe the evidentiary use of sophisticated sniper rifles and AEP's (that's my acronym; Advanced Explosive Devices, which are the infrared-triggered as well as totally devastating 'shape charges', so I'm not going to minimize these, calling them simply IED's, because they're not improvised, but advanced munitions) provide ample evidence of surreptitious involvement of the Iranians with the terrorists, and we again believe all these discussions minimizing their capabilities underestimate enemy capabilities, just as was done in the past, and just as was/is done in the Lebanon too.
These jihadist and Shiite guys are professional killers, and they are being supported by a terrorist state: Iran. No ifs ands or doubts here. This is not political correctness; it is simply realistic political assessment. We aren't championing war; but war is coming to us; we have a choice: retreat or respond. Simply: face the music, as it is facing us. While there's valid argument as to whether or not the United States should be or not be involved between roving marauding or dangerous groups of Arabs and Persians, there is no underestimating the dangers as inherent in this situation. We even think that the (wishful thinking whether he's in Iran or still in Iraq) basic idea of Sadr fleeing to Iran misses the point: we believe he's working with the Iranian fanatics, not simply seeking refuge. There's a great difference; asylum versus conspiracy for making war. Or worse, for planning overthrowing the Baghdad regime. Again it's all a reflection of 'desire' (or naiveté) that reports tend to oversimplify all of this. Ingerletter.com hence believes that facing the reality of this before it faces us in devastating ways is the key.
From its army alone, we should point out that Iran can marshal oh, a several hundred thousand troop force along its border with Iraq and Afghanistan to pressure American forces in those countries, and it can call on Syria to inflame its border region with Iraq as well. Or pretend that attacks on the IRG today was not from al Qaeda.. (reserved).
Iraqi Shiite militias (partial remarks reserved for ingerletter.com members). Together, these radicals command some 80,000 to 100,000 men; armed, funded, trained, and possibly planning coordination by Iran right now, via the personage of Sadr's 'visit' to Iran for the purpose of fomenting war, not fleeing. Iran's air defense is modernized; thanks to Russia. Should it prove adequate, it risks downing American pilots, sapping morale and raising more political questions here. Iranian dogma dictates that war will translate into regional upheaval; but it may not if it spooks Sunni's into realizing their perceived enemy (even al Qaeda's) isn't what they thought (the U.S.), but their closer neighbor; Iran. It may actually be demonstrated if Iran targets U.S. Central Command in Qatar and the U.S. Navy's 6th Fleet in Bahrain, which has a majority who are Shiite so possibly pro-Iranian. Or in Lebanon, pro-Iranian Hezbollah might fire-up the place, as conceivably would Hamas in Gaza. Only myopic views see these not intertwined.
One way or another, such a war will involve oil production and prices, and not drop oil into the 20's or 30's that so many bulls are expecting to embolden the stock market in the near-term (that's increasingly absurd, even without such a dangerous conflict; just because the 'war threat matrix' quotient keeps prices from dropping like that). A U.S. strategy will need to maximize Iranian pain without setting world oil prices ablaze with fear of supply disruptions. To do this, possibly as a 'blockade' or threat prior to attack, U.S. assaults must freeze Iran's offshore oil platforms while preventing Iran's shutting down everyone else by blocking the Straits of Hormuz to oil export shipping. Perilous.
If other oil producers, especially Saudi Arabia and Kuwait, maintain production and/or exports up, any rise in prices can be contained below a tolerable $85 a barrel in such a scenario. Now we're not advocating such a scenario; but with today's stock market, and the Goldilocks scenario, being bantered about as if there is no alternative to glee (in wartime?), it seems logical to contemplate the other side of the coin just in case.
Daily action . . .
is viewed by certain pundits as being the best of times to now make money; actually the move is the reward for those who already owned. One most risky approach might be the funds that invest in (reserved specifics) that have run-up most lately, while we do not dispute anything Chairman Bernanke said, absent disruptions.
For now, upside momentum continues, and generally sidestepped worrying about a couple other issues that surfaced during the day publicly, but weren't focused on (the Austrian arms showing up in the hands of those shooting at our boys is an example).
Increduously nobody is (yet) focusing on war or Trade Gap issues. Neither are they yet noticing how it's increasingly 'testy' in a military environment (maybe they notice, but they don't think it has meaning for stocks), or are they contemplating implications of what may be a frustration by (of all people) the terrorists and insurgents perceived leading the Jihad adventures, versus Tehran-backed Shiites, who have used certain weakness among the Sunnis to sow discord, and also to usurp leadership roles. This of course relates less to wanting expanded restored Islamic caliphates, we think, but more towards a quest to assert non-Arab-led Persian hegemony in the region. We'll offer the argument that risk is not low, but extremely high, and that this is not a lower risk investment environment because the market went up so much. Au contraire; it's higher and that increases the threat scenario; whether credit default concerns, war(s) or other areas. If the world doesn't fall apart, then the correction (nearly inevitable) is going to be constructive; if the world does fall apart; well then dangers are (reserved).
-
MarketCast
(intraday audio-email) remarks were inclined to anticipate revival efforts in-front and after Chairman Bernanke's testimony, but are concerned about this fling that's inclined to reverse virtually anytime. That the market hasn't been 'parabolic' like in 1999-2000 is definitely helpful; but since we're not looking for a secular peak, that's not the structure we're anticipating anyway. Hence; a milder sloping rally can still shift into (described mode). That certain foreign markets dipped -from parabolic- might be a concern transmitted across the sea. That's entirely ignored by panting optimists at current extended levels. Guideline short efforts weren't expected to work until a post-Fedhead time. Our view holds rallies occur, but unsustainable (per ingerletter.com).
Bits & Bytes . . .
provide investors ideas in a few stocks, often special-situations, but also covers an assortment of technology issues (needed for assessment of general factors in tech overall, or as compelling developments call for) that are key movers in the NDX, SOX or S&P, plus ideas ingerletter.com thinks might merit further reflection.
Apple (AAPL); Level 3 (LVLT); Intel (INTC); Texas Instruments (TXN), Microsoft (MSFT); Motorola (MOT); QPC Lasers (QPCI); Whole Foods (WFMI); LightPath (LPTH); Intel (INTC); PURE Bioscience (PURE); InkSure (INKS); Ionatron (IOTN); and Northrop (NOC); a small group commented upon via accompanying audio.
We can't answer detailed questions for you (how could we; companies release what they will when they do; ditto for the Departments of Defense or Homeland Security); but these are topics previously explored as part of our assessment of advanced tech stocks; notably for key reasons: we view Directed Energy Weapons and all related or sector products, of any 'pure play' or high-power solid-state laser-related companies, as new potentially important 'disruptive technologies' to benefit the U.S. defense; they're important as anything else able to shift the world into 21st Century technology.
If you do quote excerpts of our remarks anywhere on the internet, please respect our work; as we request mentioning it came from www.ingerletter.com . At the same time, please realize sending or posting our entire Daily to another investor isn't fair to us or members, unless done rarely only, so as to help enlighten an investor as to our work (that courtesy graciously appreciated). No web site is permitted to repost any Daily Briefing in it's entirety, in any routine way. A financial web site may request to receive a once-weekly partial excerpt of a Daily; frequently available on most Wednesdays.
Members please note:
we have no association with publicly traded firms (never have had; never will) other than as shareholders while trading from time-to-time if deemed necessary for personal reasons; especially once initial targets are reached. We may be right or wrong on a stock, but are not financial PR or IR, and have never, and will never, be compensated by a company, or their representatives, directly or indirectly, for coverage. Our opinions may be valid or invalid, but reflect solely our own views.
Comments are interpretative speculative postulations, provided 'as is with all faults', and all risks, with no assurance about future performance of anything (markets or for stocks) in any way whatsoever. Personal necessity, irrespective of opinion on stocks, may periodically require buys or sells deemed appropriate or required, without notice.
In summary . .
events continue reminding us of risks Allied fighting forces face, given continued attacks on free peoples, by elements including organized terrorist forces in various countries. A world addressing terror threats continues, as domestic issues absorb us less as we focus on the Middle East crisis and World War III avoidance.
Though few generally concurred for three years, our consistent view has been slow but persistent American growth isn't negative, allowing the protracted gradual growth without ancillary significantly high interest rate pressures. There's no truly-restrictive monetary policy; nor is there likely to be one, irrespective of (pressures as reviewed). That is a potential feature developing ahead, maybe late 2007-2009, barring disaster.
McClellan Oscillator
finds NYSE 'Mac' shuffling with intervening rebounds recently at +40 for the NYSE; and +7 on the NASDAQ, with complacency pervading ideas of sustainable extensions. It's also the case markets ignored 'negative divergences' in big-caps once again; preparatory to this key (and probably failing) upside flailing run.
It isn't fair to suggest we dispute bullish fundamentals; in fact we argued this thrust of a friendly monetary policy by the Fed when few others did during the crucial 2001-'02 timeframe. It hasn't changed; but an excess of those joining the chorus of celebrants 'now realizing' this five-year-plus old fiscal philosophy has developed, is what needs correcting. So that's the point here; we're not secular bearish; just desire a correction.
Issues continue including oil, terror; the whole Middle East, Korea, and economics. As assessed for a couple weeks, extended rebounds were showing just exhaustion syndromes , and now without interpretation or forecast, increasingly negative action.
Overall continue to think major Senior Indexes ideally reverse anytime; considerably so maybe; especially if we rebound only to reverse in the wake of Fed 'Hill' testimony. Wednesday bounced immediately because the Chairman's testimony allowed it to by validating the 'Goldilocks' prospects (in theory); but if the argument holds or not, this activity may merely set-the-stage for renewed downside (as ingerletter.com outlines). Again it is not that we disagree about the longer-term (we concur); it's the shorter-run that is so extended that historically not having correction is inherently dangerous. It's preferable that the adjustment occur sooner rather than later, for a bullish longer-term healthy condition to prevail. All the 'terrific' discussion about Fed policy or inflationary moderations are irrelevant if the international situation collapses, or the market does; for which there is precedent, irrespective of the prevalence of an optimistic unanimity. As a matter of historical note it's only when everyone's 'already in', because optimism reigns supreme, that matters can be 'rocked' by events other than a market valentine.
Enjoy the evening,
-
Geopolitical Diary: Examining Syria's Fears
In the Middle East, there was a series of events on Sunday that point toward growing pressure for Syria.
First, Syrian President Bashar al Assad paid a visit to Tehran, where Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei told him Damascus needs to support the government in Iraq, and al Assad spoke out against rumors of a rift between Syria and Iran. The state-owned al-Baath daily in Damascus seemed to support his statements, writing -- in the context of Iranian-Syrian relations -- that, "Though their visions are not identical on everything, they however agree on two basic issues: Iraqi unity and the departure of the occupation forces, and the support of the political process in Iraq."
Meanwhile, Stratfor received word of a deal that Saudi Arabia has offered to Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal, who (along with some other Hamas officials) is based in Damascus. Riyadh apparently has offered to provide protection and diplomatic status to Meshaal and other members of the movement's politburo, without preconditions, should they experience any pressure from Iran or Syria to renege on the agreement signed in Mecca with the rival Fatah party.
The implications of such an offer to Hamas are, for Syria, significant. The Syrians have been harboring Hamas and other rejectionist Palestinian groups in hopes of using them as a bargaining chip with Israel, from which Damascus would hope one day to regain the Golan Heights. The Saudis, however, recently were able to bring Hamas and Fatah leaders together to forge a power-sharing deal -- one which appears to be making progress. This raises concerns that Damascus might be losing its influence over Hamas. The concerns are underscored by the offer Riyadh reportedly made to Meshaal, since it means the Islamist Palestinian movement could find an alternative sanctuary.
An even more terrifying prospect for the Syrians, however, would be for Iran to pursue its own national interests in partnership with others, leaving Damascus completely out in the cold, regionally speaking. This is not necessarily an irrational fear -- and it would explain al Assad's decision to visit Tehran at this particular time, as well as a comment he made, in calling for closer cooperation between Iran and Syrian, that the United States and Israel are trying to sow discord among Muslim states.
It is clear that securing its influence in Iraq is one of Tehran's primary goals, and Syria recognizes that Iran might be willing to cooperate with the United States and the Arabs to achieve this end. Moreover, the Alawite-Baathist regime has not been blind to recent negotiations between Saudi Arabia and Iran, or the fact that Iran has called for cooperation between Hamas and Fatah. The perception is that Iran is willing to help ease the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, in exchange for U.S. concessions in Iraq.
The Syrians' worst nightmare, of course, would involve Iran and Saudi Arabia working out a deal to stabilize Lebanon. Saudi-Iranian dealings in recent weeks prompted Hezbollah to back away from demonstrations that had been designed to bring down the Lebanese government. And it would not be beyond the pale for Iran to acquiesce to a broader agreement between Hezbollah (its proxy) and Saudi Arabia's Sunni allies, if Tehran was able to secure its goals in Iraq in exchange.
Such a deal would be immensely detrimental for Syria, given its significant interests in Lebanon. The only way to ensure that something like this does not come to pass is for Damascus to work closely with Tehran. Iran, of course, wants Syria to cooperate on Iraq, as Khamenei clearly stated on Sunday.
At this point, it remains to be seen whether Iran and Syria can work out a mutually acceptable arrangement. But from all appearances, the rumors of a rift between Iran and Syria may indeed have some merit.
stratfor.com
-
NY Times 2/23/07
ABU DHABI, United Arab Emirates, Feb. 22 - As fears grow over the escalating
confrontation between Iran and the West, Arab states across the Persian Gulf
have begun a rare show of muscle flexing, publicly advertising a shopping
spree for new weapons and openly discussing their security concerns.
Iran Expanding Nuclear Effort, Agency Reports (February 23, 2007)
Typically secretive, the gulf nations have long planned upgrades to their
armed forces, but now are speaking openly about them. American military
officials say the countries, normally prone to squabbling, have also
increased their military cooperation and opened lines of communication to
the American military here.
Patriot missile batteries capable of striking down ballistic missiles have
been readied in several gulf countries, including Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and
Qatar, analysts say, and increasingly, the states have sought to emphasize
their unanimity against Iran's nuclear ambitions.
"There has always been an acknowledgment of the threat in the region, but
the volume of the debate has now risen," said one United Arab Emirates
official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized
to speak on the subject. "Now the message is there's a dialogue going on
with Iran, but that doesn't mean I don't intend to defend myself."
The Persian Gulf monarchies and sheikdoms, mostly small and vulnerable, have
long relied on the United States to protect them. The United States Fifth
Fleet is based in Bahrain; the United States Central Command is based in
nearby Qatar; and the Navy has long relied on docking facilities in the
United Arab Emirates, which has one of the region's deepest water ports at
Jebel Ali.
The United States, too, has begun a significant expansion of forces in the
gulf, with a second United States aircraft carrier battle group led by the
John C. Stennis now in the Persian Gulf and with minesweeping ships.
The expansion has helped calm fears among gulf governments that the United
States could pull out of the region in the future, even as it has raised
concerns about a potential American confrontation with Iran, accidental or
intentional.
As tensions with Iran rise, many gulf countries have come to see themselves
as the likely first targets of an Iranian attack. Some have grown more
concerned that the United States may be overstretched militarily, many
analysts say, while almost all the monarchies, flush with cash as a result
of high oil prices, have sought to build a military deterrent of their own.
"The message is first, 'U.S., stay involved here,' and second, 'Iran, we
will maintain a technological edge no matter what,' " said Emile el-Hokayem,
research fellow at the Henry L. Stimson Center, a research center based in
Washington. "They are trying to reinforce the credibility of the threat of
force."
Military officials from throughout the region descended this week on the
Idex military trade fair, a semiannual event that has become the region's
largest arms market, drawing nearly 900 weapons makers from around the
world. They came ready to update their military capacities and air and naval
defenses. They also came armed with a veiled message of resolve.
"We believe there is a need for power to protect peace, and strong people
with the capability to respond are the real protectors of peace," said Sheik
Khalifa bin Zayed al-Nahyan, the president of the United Arab Emirates and
ruler of the emirate of Abu Dhabi, at the exposition. "That is why we are
keen to maintain the efficiency of our armed forces."
The Persian Gulf has been a lucrative market for arms. Saudi Arabia, Kuwait
and Oman spend up to 10 percent of their gross domestic product on the
military, amounting to nearly $21 billion, $4 billion and $2.7 billion,
respectively, estimates John Kenkel, senior director of Jane's Strategic
Advisory Services.
If they follow through on the deals announced recently, it is estimated that
countries like the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, Oman and Saudi Arabia will
spend up to $60 billion this year. The biggest buyer in 2006, according to
the defense industry journal Defense News, was Saudi Arabia, which has
agreed to buy 72 Eurofighter Typhoon combat jets for $11 billion. It also
has a $400 million deal to upgrade 12 Apache AH-64A helicopters to the
Longbow standard. The kingdom also reportedly plans to acquire cruise
missiles, attack helicopters and tanks, all for a total of $50 billion.
=============
Arab States, Wary of Iran, Add to Their Arsenals but Still Lean on the U.S.
Published: February 23, 2007
(Page 2 of 2)
Kuwait reportedly bought 24 Apache Longbow helicopters, while the United
Arab Emirates has continued to take delivery of 80 F-16 Block 60 fighters,
with plans to buy air tankers, missile defense batteries and airborne early
warning systems. Bahrain ordered nine UH-60M Black Hawk helicopters in an
estimated $252 million deal, while Oman reportedly bought 30 antitank rocket
launchers in a $48 million purchase and is planning a naval overhaul.
"It is a message to enemies that 'We are taking defense seriously,' " Mr.
Kenkel said, emphasizing that the new arms were for deterrence.
"If the U.S. ever does pull back, these countries in the gulf have realized,
they may have to fend for themselves," Mr. Kenkel said. "As the Boy Scouts
say, always be prepared."
The most marked change is in the public nature of the acquisitions, which
previously would have been kept secret, many analysts here said, itself a
form of deterrence.
"They have been doing these kinds of purchases since the '90s," said Marwan
Lahoud, chief executive of the European missile maker MBDA. "What has
changed is they are stating it publicly. The other side is making
pronouncements so they have to as well," he said, speaking of Iran's recent
announcements about its weapons capacity.
Senior United States military officials say gulf countries have become more
nervous as Iran has conducted naval maneuvers, especially near the Straits
of Hormuz, the main artery through which two-fifths of the world's oil
reaches markets.
"A year ago you could have characterized the interaction with the Iranians
as professional," said Vice Adm. Patrick Walsh, departing commander of the
Fifth Fleet. "What's different today has been the number and amount of
exercises and the proximity of those exercises to the Straits of Hormuz
themselves."
The exercises were among the reasons for the expansion of Navy forces in the
region, he said, but have also raised alarm about the potential for
accidents to lead to an unintended war.
Admiral Walsh said that American warships remained in international waters,
and that Iranian and American ships kept close watch on one another. Some
critics of the Bush administration have alleged that the increased military
presence in the gulf risks igniting a conflict.
Admiral Walsh said the increased American presence was aimed at o reassuring
gulf states that the United States remained committed to their security, but
also welcomed their efforts to build deterrence.
"We have found that we need to be physically present to prevent such armed
behavior," he said of the Iranian maneuvers. "We're mindful we're not giving
up any water, but also being careful not to take a provocative stance."
-
The Gulf States and Containing the Shiite Revival
Summary
Iran's prospects in Iraq and the spread of Shiite Islam in the region have put the Sunni states of the Persian Gulf on edge. Though the Gulf powers cannot rely on their own military strength to counter Iran's expansion, they do have several tools at their disposal to help keep the Iranians at bay -- the most important of which is cold, hard cash.
Analysis
Former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein's fall and the subsequent rise of Iraq's Shiite majority represented the collapse of a strategic Sunni buffer state for the Sunni Arab world. This opening also provided Iran a golden opportunity to spread its influence into the heart of the Arab world by consolidating control over the Shiite-dominated government in Baghdad. Though the United States has served as the main blocker to Iranian ambitions in Iraq, it has become increasingly clear that Washington is in no position to enforce a political resolution in Baghdad through military force.
With the Iraq war having passed the four-year mark, the Sunni states of the Persian Gulf are growing more and more alarmed at the thought of a U.S. withdrawal from Iraq, which would leave Iran to pick up the pieces. These states cannot be assured that Iranian power in Iraq will not eventually seep through their own borders -- especially considering that the Shia in Saudi Arabia inhabit the oil-rich Eastern Province, which borders Iraq and Persian Gulf states like Kuwait and Bahrain that have sizable Shiite populations of their own. The Arab Gulf states have a variety of tools at their disposal to fend off the Iranians, though each has its limits and risks.
The Gulf States' Levers -- and Weaknesses
Militarily speaking, the Arab Gulf states rely completely on the United States for their defense. U.S. allies in the Gulf are receiving some of the best U.S. military hardware available, and U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates just got the OK from Israel to provide Saudi Arabia with advanced military technology to bolster the Saudi defense posture in the Gulf. (Details of the actual technology are still sketchy.) But for all their technological sophistication, Saudi forces lack the skills, war experience, mentality, training, manpower and leadership of a true military power. That said, the Saudis do have the means to contain Iran's militant proxies.
The Arab Gulf states have a critical need to maintain a robust Sunni presence in Iraq to counter the country's Shiite majority, which has gained control of the Iraqi government for the first time. While the Shiite political powers in Iraq are strengthened by well-trained Shiite militia groups trained and supplied by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, the Sunni insurgency in Iraq receives substantial funding and support from Iraq's Arab neighbors. This strategy helps prevent the Shiite militants from running over the Sunni population in Iraq -- at the cost of playing with fire. Saudi Arabia has a jihadist threat of its own to deal with, and sooner or later well-trained veterans from Iraq will be returning to the kingdom to fight.
The Saudis also hold the energy lever in their hands. By substantially expanding Saudi oil production from its current 8.6 million barrels per day (bpd), the Saudis could seriously strain the Iranian energy industry, which already sorely lacks the technology, experience and government backing needed to fund major refinery projects, and therefore heavily depends on high oil prices. As a result, the world's fourth-largest oil producer actually imports 40 percent of its gasoline, and parcels out heavy gasoline subsidies to Iranian citizens for fear of sparking domestic unrest, further draining Iran's economy. But for Saudi Arabia to make a big enough dent in the energy markets to hurt Iran, Saudi oil production would have to get up to 15 million bpd. This would take until at least 2015, relegating this to a long-term option for the Saudis.
Finally, the Gulf Arabs possess the risk-free option of putting their petrodollars to good use in containing the Iranian advance. Iraqi and Saudi officials announced April 18 that the Saudi government has agreed to forgive 80 percent of the more than $15 billion that Iraq owes the kingdom. Riyadh is not under any illusions that its war-torn neighbor would be able to repay the debt any time soon, if at all, but this goodwill gesture toward the Shiite-dominated government will help the Saudis buy some much-needed influence in Baghdad. The Saudi government is well-aware that the Iraqi Shiite bloc does not see eye to eye on a number of issues with its patrons in Tehran, and hopes to exploit this rift by weaning the Shiite Arabs in Iraq away from Iran.
Cash for Influence
The idea of using cash to pull Iran's Shiite allies closer to the Arab fold has taken hold throughout the Arab Gulf region. The Alawite-Baathist regime in Syria -- a close ally of Iran -- stands to benefit a great deal from this strategy as literally hundreds of millions of Gulf dollars are now flowing into Syria in the form of foreign investment. For example, Kharafi Group, a Kuwaiti conglomerate, now operates a taxi company, has opened four Costa Coffee outlets and has helped finance the opening of a new Sheraton hotel in Damascus. Syria's economy has long stagnated under the al Assad regime's Soviet-style economic policies, and its population is hungry for foreign goods.
Saudi Arabia has long used cash to buy influence in Lebanon as well, where Iran has made extensive inroads in the Shiite community. The Saudi royal family groomed slain Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik al-Hariri and helped finance his ambitious development projects in Beirut, which have now passed on to his son, Saad al-Hariri, who prefers to live his life as a business tycoon rather than a political leader. Though the al-Hariri family owes a great deal to Riyadh for the latter's success in developing Beirut into a cosmopolitan hub in the Middle East following Lebanon's devastating civil war, Iran's Shiite proxies in Lebanon have put up a stiff resistance to Saudi influence. By financing development projects in Lebanon's impoverished, Shiite-concentrated south, the Iranians have gained a strong foothold in the country to empower Hezbollah politically and militarily.
The Ethnic Card
In each of these projects, the Gulf Arab governments are realistic in terms of how much of a political return they expect to receive. Pumping cash into Iranian strongholds throughout the region will not sever local Shia's ties with the Iranians; Shiite identity is a structural factor the Iranians can always exploit. Instead, the Saudis and the other Sunni states hope to use the Arab ethnic factor to their advantage to counter Iranian influence.
But playing the ethnic card also comes with a price. To keep the Arab Shia in their camp, the Iranians have pulled ahead of the Saudis in this game by calling for pan-Islamist unity, in which Muslims are urged to rise above nationalistic and sectarian divisions. This pan-Islamist campaign threatens Saudi Arabia's role as the leader of the Islamic world, particularly in situations in which it seeks to play up the Arab ethnic factor to drive a wedge between Iran and the Arab Shia.
Arab powers in the region face a reality in which Iran is recasting the region's balance of power in favor of the Shia through its extended reach in Iraq and its nuclear ambitions. Though the Arab Gulf states face substantial limitations in their ability to suppress their historical Persian rival, the realization has sunk in that the United States will not be able to run the Iraq show on its own -- meaning the Gulf Arab governments are going to have to put their petrodollars to the test.
stratfor.com
-
Saudi Arabia: Al Qaeda's Widening Focus
April 27, 2007 21 42 GMT
Summary
Saudi security forces announced April 27 that they have rounded up 172 militants plotting to attack oil facilities and military bases in the kingdom. Al Qaeda's core leadership appears to be working to give a boost to the network's regional nodes, from North Africa to the Persian Gulf. Conditions in Iraq have led to this widening of al Qaeda's focus, though the capabilities of the regional nodes remain dubious.
Analysis
The Saudi Interior Ministry announced April 27 that it had arrested 172 militants, including non-Saudis, plotting attacks against Saudi Arabia's oil refineries, public figures and military bases. Saudi police also seized more than $32.4 million in cash from seven armed cells in the kingdom. The suspects, according to a Saudi Interior Ministry spokesman, had been "influenced by the deviant ideology" (a common Saudi reference for al Qaeda.) Prior to this roundup, Saudi Interior Minister Prince Naif bin Abdul-Aziz told reporters that the interior ministry will soon announce a new list of most-wanted militant suspects in the kingdom.
The possible revival of al Qaeda's Saudi node came to light in February with the reappearance of the group's online magazine, Sawt Al Jihad, which called for attacks against energy-related targets on the Arabian Peninsula. The regular publication of Sawt Al Jihad was, previously, closely linked with a higher degree of operational strength for the Saudi node. Since the February online edition, however, the Saudi node has not kept up with its historic biweekly publication schedule, calling the group's publishing capabilities -- and operational ability -- into question.
The February edition of Sawt Al Jihad claimed that several of the militants who participated in the February 2006 attack against the oil facility in Abqaiq are "still alive and still fighting," and even included an interview with one of the survivors of that attack. The attempt on Abqaiq marked al Qaeda's first notable attempt to target Saudi Arabia's energy infrastructure and revealed that the group's target selection was shifting beyond Western operations and personnel. The planners behind the Abqaiq operation have had more than a year to learn from their mistakes, and judging from the rhetoric in Sawt Al Jihad, they likely have been gearing up for a larger attack against key Saudi oil installations.
Saudi officials said some of the suspects rounded up in this latest raid had received aviation training in other countries, implying a 9/11-style plot to fly aircraft into a target, such as an oil facility. Al Qaeda's core leadership has a known penchant for using aircraft in large-scale operations, though Saudi Arabia has ample empty space to re-route flight paths and set up no-fly zones over major energy installations. Although the Royal Saudi Air Force possesses the most advanced air-defense system in the region outside of Israel, it is doubtful that Saudi operators could identify the emerging threat or that Saudi commanders could react to it in time to prevent an airborne suicide attack from being at least partially successful.
Even if the Saudi node attacked a major oil target in Saudi Arabia -- whether by plane, boat, car or foot -- it would only damage a portion of any facility, considering the sheer size of and security surrounding energy installations (the Abqaiq facility, for example, occupies more than a square mile of territory.) That said, even a failed attempt on a vital energy target, such as the Ras Tanura oil port, would send massive psychological shockwaves through the energy market -- a fact al Qaeda acknowledged in the Sawt Al Jihad publication, saying the price of oil would have spiked even more had the Saudi government not lied about the extent of the damage.
Riyadh's series of counterterrorism strikes since June 2004 have significantly degraded the Saudi al Qaeda node's operational capabilities. The damage from the recent roundup will end up taking even more wind out of the node's sails, forcing the militants to regroup, re-evaluate their pending operations and tighten operational security to avoid further run-ins with the police. Though the Saudi node is unlikely to return to its glory days of the summer of 2004, when al Qaeda activity was most intense in the kingdom, the group continues to come up with ambitious plots and shows no sign of getting wiped out in the near future.
In addition to the Saudi node, al Qaeda appears to be giving a boost to other regional branches, revealing a surge of activity by al Qaeda franchises across the board. Over the past month, North Africa has witnessed a significant uptick in jihadist activity by al Qaeda's node in the Maghreb. Suicide bombings are also on the rise in the Horn of Africa as Somalian Islamists appear to be enhancing their cooperation with jihadists. In Afghanistan, Taliban commander Mullah Dadullah has aligned himself more closely with al Qaeda by giving credit for the February Bagram Air Base attack to Osama Bin Laden, even though the Afghan Taliban command is more than capable of pulling off such an attack itself.
The most active al Qaeda node is in Iraq, where the country's continued downward spiral has created an ideally chaotic environment for the group to maintain a strong presence. Though al Qaeda's Iraq node is in a relatively comfortable position, it has been facing increasing flack from the Sunni nationalist insurgents who have been turning against their former jihadist allies in the Sunni-dominated Anbar province. As the environment in some of Iraq's Sunni areas has turned increasingly inhospitable to the jihadists, some of these militants could be driven to return home and wage attacks in their home countries using the tactics they have picked up in Iraq. This already appears to have taken effect, as illustrated by the Algerian node's adoption of suicide vehicle-borne improvised explosive devices.
A surge of al Qaeda activity does not necessarily imply improved capability. As the latest raid in Saudi Arabia illustrated, Saudi security forces are extremely active in rooting out al Qaeda cells, and the North African police states are quite capable of containing the jihadist presence in their countries. The best chance of success for al Qaeda remains in its usual hotspots of Iraq and Afghanistan. That said, the level of training these two theaters of operation provide allows al Qaeda to ensure its continuity, as lessons learned there regarding operational security and tradecraft spread to al Qaeda's local affiliates.
stratfor.com
-
WSJ
Syria's Useful Idiots
By MICHAEL YOUNG
June 1, 2007; Page A13
BEIRUT, Lebanon -- On Wednesday, the United Nations Security Council voted to set up a tribunal that will try suspects in the February 2005 murder of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri. Syria is the leading suspect in the case, so the establishment of the tribunal serves as a step toward creating a stable Lebanon. It also poses a clarifying question to the United States: What will engaging Syria mean for building a liberal future for Lebanon?
At the moment, it is clear that Syria hasn't stopped meddling in Lebanon's internal affairs. The Security Council only created its tribunal after efforts to establish a similar tribunal within Lebanon were stymied by Syrian allies. Indeed, to understand what is at stake in the Lebanese crisis today, flip through the report released last April by the U.N. commission investigating the Hariri assassination.
The commission, led by Belgian prosecutor Serge Brammertz, now assumes that Hariri's assassination was tied to his political activities, particularly his preparations for the summer 2005 legislative elections. This sets up a key passage in the report: "[A] working hypothesis is that the initial decision to kill Hariri was taken before the later attempts at rapprochement got underway and most likely before early January 2005. This leads to a possible situation in the last weeks before his murder in which two tracks, not necessarily linked, were running in parallel. On one track, Hariri was engaged in rapprochement initiatives and on the other, preparations for his assassination were underway."
Lebanese citizens celebrate Wednesday's establishment of a U.N. tribunal for the Rafiq Hariri murder.
For anyone who followed Lebanese politics at the time, this deceptively anodyne passage says a lot. Hariri was hoping to score a victory against Syria and its Lebanese allies during the elections, after Syria had extended the mandate of his bitter rival, President Emile Lahoud. The Syrians felt that such a victory would jeopardize their position in Lebanon and, although there was mediation to patch up Hariri's differences with the Syrians, the plot to eliminate him continued. It is plain from Mr. Brammertz's phrasing that those who were planning the former prime minister's elimination are the same ones with whom the intermediaries were trying to reconcile him.
Mr. Brammertz is building a case that, from the information provided to date, can only point the finger at Syria and its Lebanese supplicants. The Hariri tribunal, now that it has been formally established, poses an existential threat to the Syrian regime, and it is in Lebanon that the Syrians have and will continue to hit back to save themselves.
The outbreak of violence in northern Lebanon between the Lebanese army and a group calling itself Fatah al-Islam is the latest stage in such an endeavor. In a BBC interview last week, Prime Minister Fuad Siniora openly linked Fatah al-Islam to Syrian intelligence. The group has claimed to be an al Qaeda affiliate, but observers in Lebanon, including Palestinian sources usually critical of the Siniora government, qualify this, saying that Fatah al-Islam is acting on Syria's behalf. The daily Al-Hayat has reported that the group's weapons come from caches belonging to Palestinian organizations under Syrian control, including the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General Command and Fatah al-Intifada, from which Fatah al-Islam allegedly broke off.
Meanwhile, a more subtle battle is taking place over interpretation of what is happening in Lebanon. This is especially important because there are those in Washington who still insist that something can be gained from dealing with Syria. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi thought so in April when she visited Damascus, did the Gertrude Bell tour of the Hamadiyyeh souq, and capped it all with a visit to President Bashar Assad, all for precisely nothing in return.
The Iraq Study Group also thought Syria could be a useful partner in Iraq, even as all the signs suggest that Damascus has little real influence there and is sowing dissension to compensate. That's why understanding what is going on in Lebanon is vital for a sense of what can be gained from Syria elsewhere. Yet something is amiss when the most obvious truths are those the pundits won't consider.
For example, what did the former CIA agent Robert Baer mean in Time magazine, when he wrote that the Lebanese government should "know better" than to believe that Fatah al-Islam is a Syrian creation, because "at the end of the day Fatah Islam is the Syrian regime's mortal enemy"? Mr. Baer's point was that a Lebanese civil war might undermine Syrian stability, but also that Sunni Islamists oppose the minority Alawite Syrian regime. He reminded us that "the Syrian Muslim Brotherhood used northern Lebanon as a rear base to seize the Syrian city of Hama in 1982."
It is Mr. Baer who should know better. Syria has fueled a sectarian war in neighboring Iraq by funneling Sunni al Qaeda fighters into the country, without worrying about what this might mean for its own stability. Syria's vulnerabilities have not prevented it from hosting Khaled Meshaal, the leader of Hamas, the Palestinian branch of the Muslim Brotherhood. And Syria's anxieties notwithstanding, throughout its years in Lebanon it developed ties with many Sunni Islamist groups and recently welcomed to Damascus a prominent Lebanese Islamist it has co-opted, Fathi Yakan.
The point is that Syria will have no qualms about provoking sectarian discord in Lebanon to ward away the menace of the Hariri tribunal.
And what are we to make of the journalist Seymour Hersh, now considered an authority on Lebanese Sunni Islamist groups on the basis of a flawed article he wrote for the New Yorker last March? In that article, and in a recent CNN interview, he indirectly suggested that Fatah al-Islam had received weapons not from Syria but from the Siniora government.
The only source Mr. Hersh cited in his article for the Fatah al-Islam story was Alistair Crooke, a former MI6 agent who co-directs Conflicts Forum, an institution advocating dialogue with Islamist movements. Mr. Crooke did not have direct knowledge of what he was claiming, as he "was told" that weapons and money were offered to the group, "presumably to take on Hezbollah."
Mr. Hersh is wading into very muddy waters with very simple ideas. The relationship of the Lebanese government and the Hariri camp with Sunni Islamists is byzantine, but there is no evidence to date that the government or the Hariris had any strategy to use al Qaeda against Hezbollah. In fact most Lebanese Sunni Islamists are not linked to al Qaeda. And Mr. Hersh has provided no proof that Fatah al-Islam received government assistance. Still, the Syrian regime's media has repeatedly used Mr. Hersh's charges to discredit the Lebanese government.
Then there are those with little patience for Lebanese independence. Arguing that Syria is worth more to the U.S. than Lebanon, they advocate Washington's ceding Lebanon to Syria as a price for constructive dialogue. For example, Flynt Leverett, a former National Security Council staffer now at the New America Foundation, recently told National Public Radio, where he appears regularly, that the Bush administration had "romanticized" the 2005 "Cedar Revolution." This was his way of implying that the latter was worth discarding. For Mr. Leverett and others, a Lebanon free of Syria is inherently unstable, even as they disregard Syrian responsibility for that instability.
In a March 2005 op-ed in the New York Times, as Lebanese took to the streets demanding a Syrian pullout, Mr. Leverett urged the U.S. to abandon efforts to establish a "pro-Western government" in Beirut. Instead, he proposed that "the most promising (if gradual) course for promoting reform in Syria is to engage and empower [President] Assad, not to isolate and overthrow him."
This makes for restorative reading today, as Mr. Assad's regime pursues its destabilization of Lebanon, Iraq and Palestinian areas, ignores domestic reform and continues to detain thousands of political opponents in its prisons.
There is nothing wrong with keeping an open mind on Syria. However, an "open mind" can be shorthand for blindness or bad faith. Given the evidence, it makes no sense to dismiss Syrian involvement in the Lebanese crisis, or to blame the crisis on an al Qaeda affiliate allegedly financed by the Lebanese government. Nor does it make sense to assume that Lebanon is a burden that the U.S. should jettison in favor of a stabilizing Syria, considering the fact that al Qaeda materialized from across the Syrian border. We're asked to believe that a group, said to be financed by the Siniora government, picked a fight with that very government, and somehow innocently did so just as the U.N. prepared to establish a tribunal the Syrians fear.
When Syria is systematically exporting instability throughout the region, you have to wonder whether its regime can be a credible partner to the U.S.
Mr. Young is opinion editor of the Daily Star in Beirut and a contributing editor at Reason magazine.
RELATED ARTICLES AND BLOGS
=========================================
Justice for Lebanon
June 1, 2007; Page A12
Russia and China refused to endorse Wednesday's Security Council vote to establish an international tribunal for the February 2005 assassination of Rafik Hariri, Lebanon's former prime minister. The tribunal, they argued, was an illegitimate form of outside interference in the country's domestic affairs. As for Syria's role in Mr. Hariri's murder -- the very reason the tribunal was needed in the first place -- that's a form of meddling our friends in Moscow and Beijing apparently prefer not to notice.
The good news is that these two veto-wielding powers abstained from the vote, which means the tribunal will be established by international fiat by June 10 if the Lebanese parliament fails to do it before then. In Beirut, this brought dancing in the streets; Mr. Hariri's son Saad called the resolution a "victory the world has given to oppressed Lebanon and a victory for an oppressed Lebanon in the world."
By contrast, Syria denounced the U.N. vote as a "degradation of Lebanon's sovereignty," which -- considering the source -- is almost amusing. Iranian-proxy Hezbollah was equally dismayed: It has spent the last six months attempting to block the tribunal by calling mass demonstrations and trying to bring down the democratic government of Prime Minister Fuad Siniora. For Hezbollah especially, the resolution marks a major political defeat, and therefore a strategic victory for anyone who cares about Lebanon's future as a sovereign democracy.
Nobody should be under any illusions that the road forward for the tribunal will be easy. The Syrians have consistently tried to derail the U.N. investigation leading to the tribunal. Syrian Foreign Minister Walid al-Moallem, who recently met with Condoleezza Rice in Egypt, was secretly taped threatening Rafik Hariri just weeks before his death. He then lied about it to U.N. investigator Detlev Mehlis -- a useful reminder of the value of trying to negotiate anything with the regime of Bashar Assad.
Damascus almost certainly had a hand in the assassinations of anti-Syrian Lebanese politicians Gibran Tueni in 2005 and Pierre Gemayal in 2006. More recently, the pan-Arab newspaper Al-Hayat has reported that the leadership of Fatah al-Islam, an al-Qaeda affiliated group in Lebanon, consists entirely of Syrian officers. The Lebanese army has been fighting a pitched battle with the group for the past two weeks in the Palestinian refugee camp of Nahr al-Bared -- this despite the fact that the New Yorker's Seymour Hersh reported that the Lebanese government, with the connivance of Saudi Arabia and the Bush Administration, was actually behind the group. (See Michael Young's dispatch nearby.)
As in Iraq, the Syrian game in Lebanon is to foment chaos and then offer itself as the solution. The gambit has plainly impressed at least some people: Wang Guangya, the Chinese ambassador to the U.N., argued that the tribunal would "add to the uncertainties embodied in the already turbulent political and security situation in Lebanon." Comments like that will surely embolden the Syrians to sow more chaos in Lebanon to show that the price of justice in the service of a fallen leader will be prohibitively high.
But whatever happens next, passage of the resolution has shown the Syrians and their Lebanese friends that they cannot assassinate political enemies without paying a price of their own. As U.S. Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad put it Wednesday to the Security Council, "there can be no peace . . . without justice." We've heard that slogan before; in the case of Lebanon, at least, it happens to be true.
-
WSJ
Winds of War
Iran is making a mistake that may lead the Middle East into a broader conflict.
BY JOSHUA MURAVCHIK
Monday, June 25, 2007 12:01 a.m. EDT
Several conflicts of various intensities are raging in the Middle East. But a bigger war, involving more states--Israel, Lebanon, Syria, Iran, the Palestinian Authority and perhaps the United States and others--is growing more likely every day, beckoned by the sense that America and Israel are in retreat and that radical Islam is ascending.
Consider the pell-mell events of recent weeks. Iran imprisons four Americans on absurd charges only weeks after seizing 15 British sailors on the high seas. Iran's Revolutionary Guard is caught delivering weapons to the Taliban and explosives to Iraqi terrorists. A car bomb in Lebanon is used to assassinate parliament member Walid Eido, killing nine others and wounding 11 more.
At the same time, Fatah al-Islam, a shady group linked to Syria, launches an attack on the Lebanese army from within a Palestinian refugee area, beheading several soldiers. Tehran trumpets further progress on nuclear enrichment as President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad repeats his call for annihilating Israel, crowing that "the countdown to the destruction of this regime has begun." Hamas seizes control militarily in Gaza. Katyusha rockets are launched from Lebanon into northern Israel for the first time since the end of last summer's Israel-Hezbollah war.
Two important inferences can be distilled from this list. One is that the Tehran regime takes its slogan, "death to America," quite seriously, even if we do not. It is arming the Taliban, with which it was at sword's point when the Taliban were in power. It seems to be supplying explosives not only to Shiite, but also Sunni terrorists in Iraq. It reportedly is sheltering high-level al Qaeda figures despite the Sunni-Shiite divide. All of these surprising actions are for the sake of bleeding the U.S. However hateful this behavior may be to us, it has a certain strategic logic: "The enemy of my enemy is my friend."
What is even more worrisome about the events enumerated above is that most of them are devoid of any such strategic logic. For example, the Hamas "putsch" in Gaza--as Marwan Barghouti, the hero of the Palestinian intifada, labeled it from his prison cell--was an enormous blunder.
Hamas already mostly controlled Gaza. It is hard to imagine what gains it can reap from its "victory." But it is easy to see the losses. Fatah, and the government of its leader Mahmoud Abbas, will be able to restore their strength in the West Bank with the eager assistance of virtually the whole outside world, while Gaza will be shut off and denied outside aid far more strictly than during the past year. Israel will retaliate against shelling with a freer hand. Egypt will tighten its border. And Hamas has in one swoop negated its own supreme achievement, namely winning a majority in Palestine's 2006 parliamentary elections. Until now, Hamas had a powerful argument: how can the West demand democracy and then boycott the winners? But now it is Hamas itself that has destroyed Palestinian democracy by staging an armed coup. Its democratic credentials have gone up in the smoke of its own arson.
Syria's actions in Lebanon scarcely make more sense. The murder of parliamentarian Eido will solidify and energize the majority that opposes Syria. Some suppose that, having now bumped off two Lebanese MPs (Pierre Gemayel was the other one), Syria plans to shave away the anti-Syrian majority in Lebanon's parliament by committing another five murders. But if so, this is a crazy gambit. Such a campaign would invite international intervention. It might well fracture the pro-Syrian forces: More Shiites will abandon Hezbollah and more Maronites will turn against Hezbollah's cat's-paw, Michel Aoun. And the murders might be for naught anyway: By-elections are already being planned that are likely to replace the martyred legislators with others of the same mind. As for the attack on the Lebanese army, Fatah al-Islam is on the brink of being crushed, leaving behind only more hatred of Syria and a better-armed, more confident Lebanese army.
As for Iran's actions, while arming the Taliban and Iraqi terrorists may make sense, what is the point of seizing British sailors or locking up the four Iranian-Americans, including the beloved 67-year-old scholar, Haleh Esfandieri, none of whom are involved even in political activity, much less in the exercise of hard power?
The apparent meaning of all of this pointless provocation and bullying is that the axis of radicals--Iran, Syria, Hamas and Hezbollah--is feeling its oats. In part its aim is to intimidate the rest of us, in part it is merely enjoying flexing its muscles. It believes that its side has defeated America in Iraq, and Israel in Gaza and Lebanon. Mr. Ahmadinejad recently claimed that the West has already begun to "surrender," and he gloated that " final victory . . . is near." It is this bravado that bodes war.
A large portion of modern wars erupted because aggressive tyrannies believed that their democratic opponents were soft and weak. Often democracies have fed such beliefs by their own flaccid behavior. Hitler's contempt for America, stoked by the policy of appeasement, is a familiar story. But there are many others. North Korea invaded South Korea after Secretary of State Dean Acheson declared that Korea lay beyond our "defense perimeter." Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait after our ambassador assured him that America does not intervene in quarrels among Arabs. Imperial Germany launched World War I, encouraged by Great Britain's open reluctance to get involved. Nasser brought on the 1967 Six Day War, thinking that he could extort some concessions from Israel by rattling his sword.
Democracies, it is now well established, do not go to war with each other. But they often get into wars with non-democracies. Overwhelmingly the non-democracy starts the war; nonetheless, in the vast majority of cases, it is the democratic side that wins. In other words, dictators consistently underestimate the strength of democracies, and democracies provoke war through their love of peace, which the dictators mistake for weakness.
Today, this same dynamic is creating a moment of great danger. The radicals are becoming reckless, asserting themselves for little reason beyond the conviction that they can. They are very likely to overreach. It is not hard to imagine scenarios in which a single match--say a terrible terror attack from Gaza--could ignite a chain reaction. Israel could handle Hamas, Hezbollah and Syria, albeit with painful losses all around, but if Iran intervened rather than see its regional assets eliminated, could the U.S. stay out?
With the Bush administration's policies having failed to pacify Iraq, it is natural that the public has lost patience and that the opposition party is hurling brickbats. But the demands of congressional Democrats that we throw in the towel in Iraq, their attempts to constrain the president's freedom to destroy Iran's nuclear weapons program, the proposal of the Baker-Hamilton commission that we appeal to Iran to help extricate us from Iraq--all of these may be read by the radicals as signs of our imminent collapse. In the name of peace, they are hastening the advent of the next war.
Mr. Muravchik is a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute.
-
I have no idea as to the merits of the suggested solutions of this piece, but post it in amazement that Turkey's incipient invasion of Kurdistan, Iraq has garnered so little attention:
WSJ
Kurdistan Showdown
By ILAN BERMAN
July 10, 2007; Page A20
You have to feel sorry for David Petraeus. The commander of the multinational force in Iraq already has his hands full overseeing the "surge." Now he needs to deal with another, equally pressing problem. According to Iraqi officials, Turkey has mobilized some 140,000 soldiers along its common border with Iraq, in a maneuver that many see as a prelude to some sort of military confrontation between the two countries.
The reason has everything to do with Ankara's threat calculus. Today, Turkish officials and analysts alike are preoccupied with four interlocking strategic fronts. The first is the country's southeast, where Turkey's military continues its long-running struggle against the separatists of the radical Kurdish Workers Party (PKK). The second lies across the border in northern Iraq, where officials say Kurdish rebels are operating with the knowledge -- and possibly even the tacit backing -- of Massoud Barzani's Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG). The third and fourth are the sizeable Kurdish enclaves in Syria and Iran -- communities that officials in Ankara fear could similarly become outposts for anti-Turkish activity.
Washington has been slow to grasp the gravity of this threat, and even slower to address it. Until quite recently, the Bush administration brushed aside Turkish appeals for an expansion of the war on terror to include Kurdish terrorism, preferring to focus solely on the threat of al Qaeda and its affiliates. Worse, persistent talk in Washington of Iraqi "federalism" or "soft partition" sent shockwaves through officials in Ankara, who believe that the emergence of an independent "Kurdistan" could encourage neighboring Kurdish enclaves to seek self-determination, likely peeling away Turkish territory.
Only last year, in a belated response to Ankara's urgings, did the administration appoint a special envoy for combating the PKK. The post, as well as the credentials of the envoy -- Gen. Joseph Ralston, a former vice-chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff -- were viewed in Turkey as a long-overdue sign of seriousness. But, by all accounts, bilateral progress has been slow and Mr. Ralston's efforts stymied by bureaucracy. The Beltway debate over Iraq, meanwhile, has heightened Turkish fears that they soon could be forced to face an expanded insurgent threat on their own.
All of which has spurred Ankara to action. In recent days, observers say, the Turkish government has launched a "great mobilization" that has positioned more than a quarter of its half-million-strong army in southeastern Turkey, awaiting orders for a cross-border operation. Such an incursion could be catastrophic. The quasi-autonomous government of "Iraqi Kurdistan" has made clear that it is ready and able to repulse a Turkish invasion. The U.S., meanwhile, has hinted that it would be obliged to defend and assist Iraqi forces in the event of such a conflict. Thus a Turkish raid could spark a war between a NATO member state and the U.S.-led Coalition.
Up until now, Ankara has appeared to understand the danger. Over the past several weeks, its military created a number of "temporary security zones" on the Iraqi border to interdict cross-border terrorist activities. But Turkish officials have made perfectly clear that this step is not a permanent solution to their security problem.
Fortunately, an opportunity to avert a crisis exists. Back in the spring of 2002, in an effort to assist Georgia in its fight against terrorism, the Pentagon launched the Georgia Train and Equip Program (GTEP) -- a bilateral military training initiative intended to enhance the former Soviet republic's counterterrorism, border security and intelligence capabilities. Practically, GTEP served as a useful capacity-building exercise, helping Tbilisi consolidate control over inhospitable terrain and expand the effectiveness of its forces. Politically, however, GTEP was much more; by increasing Georgia's competence to combat terrorism within its own borders, it eliminated a potential pretext for Russian imperialism. By 2004, the 20-month program had attained tangible results, simultaneously bolstering Tbilisi's anti-terror abilities and reducing the reasons for Russian intrusion.
If implemented quickly, the same model could reap benefits in northern Iraq. Despite its virtual political autonomy, the KRG is not an independent entity. It is beholden to the Iraqi central government, and to the Coalition, which now has greater authority pursuant to a May 30 security agreement signed by Mr. Barzani and U.S. commanders. Both now need to seize the initiative to create an institutional mechanism capable of defending Turkey from cross-border attack.
Of late, Baghdad has begun to show welcome signs of responsibility on this score. In early June, after months of dialogue with Turkish officials, Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki officially signaled his intent to outlaw the activities of the PKK. Mr. Maliki and company will need to go beyond mere rhetoric, however, and immediately formulate a concrete plan for containing the activities of Kurdish insurgents in northern Iraq. For its part, the Coalition must throw its weight behind a serious plan for northern Iraq, one that addresses Turkey's security concerns in a real and tangible way.
Anything less, and the Iraqi insurgency could become the least of Gen. Petraeus's problems.
Mr. Berman is vice president for policy at the American Foreign Policy Council.
-
Second post of the morning:
WSJ
Another Iraq Front
By ROBERT P. FINN
July 10, 2007
Turkey is edging toward going after Kurdish PKK guerillas in northern Iraq. The Council of Ministers yesterday discussed calling Parliament into special session to approve a possible military incursion before general elections later this month, but in the end didn't take a decision. The Turkish military itself has been ready to move for weeks. The Turks have complained about the U.S. dropping the ball on fighting terrorism in the Kurdish areas of Iraq, and Foreign Minister Abdullah Gül recently made clear to Washington that Turkey needed no permission from anyone to move into northern Iraq.
All this has serious implications, none of them good, for Turkey domestically and for the region. Iran is forging an alliance of convenience with Ankara against the Kurds. Any Turkish military attack threatens to destabilize the only relatively calm region of Iraq.
Early last month, Turkish and Iranian forces located on their respective borders with Iraq fired numerous rockets into areas where the PKK has been active, apparently in coordination with each other. Turkey's Hurriyet newspaper identified the passes under attack by Turkish troops as those at Seranish, Destetag, Kesane, Banike, Geli and Batufa. (In a twist of history, these are the very areas where hundreds of thousands of Kurds climbed to safety while they fled Saddam Hussein's soldiers in 1988 and again in 1991, after the First Gulf War.) Iranian forces have allegedly fired on the PKK redoubts south of Kandil mountain, which straddles the point of the trilateral border.
Officials from the Peshmerga, the Iraqi Kurdish militia, were quoted as saying, "We've never seen the Turks coming like this." Turkish maneuvers on the Iraqi border are a familiar rite of springtime, and Turkish incursions into Iraq in pursuit of the PKK have taken place numerous times in the past, but not recently, at least officially. Some Turkish troops are even stationed at firebases in northern Iraq.
The rising tensions in northern Iraq stem, first off, from frequent terrorist bombings in Turkey in recent weeks blamed on the PKK. An attack in Ankara killed eight and wounded scores at the height of the evening rush hour. The bomber's code name was allegedly Adok, a Kurdish word that means a sacrificial offering. Forty-two people, most of them soldiers, were killed by terrorism in May, and attacks have continued. A road mine in southern Sirnak on Sunday killed a village guard. A number of suicide bombers and quantities of bomb material, most allegedly brought by the PKK from Syria, have been captured recently. Deaths from the struggle with the PKK have risen to over 650 since the beginning of last year, while the PKK claims the total is 900. So Turks are fed up. Police have had, for the first time, to erect barriers at military funerals to protect senior government officials from angry, shouting citizens.
The other cause of trouble is politics. The head of the Turkish General Staff, Gen. Yashar Buyukanit, announced this spring that a foray into Iraq was needed, but deferred to the government on the final decision. Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan has said the same, but has so far made no move. He recently complained that "retired generals are going around exciting the people" and that the political and military consequences of any incursion into northern Iraq have to be evaluated.
As Turkey moves toward a general election on July 22 that may well be the most important in its modern history, the pressure on Mr. Erdogan to do something in northern Iraq is strong. The military and the secular elite have taken up the issue, seeking to fuel popular discontent with the government. They see Mr. Erdogan's government and his party as soft on the Kurdish issue and not pushing the U.S. hard enough.
The U.S. is on the record as opposing a military intervention in Iraq by Turkey, but Turks are worn out by what they perceive as U.S. foot-dragging on doing anything about the PKK. European resistance to Turkish EU candidacy and media propaganda claiming that the U.S. wants to set up an independent Kurdistan help to inflame Turkish nationalism. A sensationalist 2005 Turkish best seller, "Metal Storm," even forecast the U.S. and Turkey going to war in 2007 after a Turkish incursion into northern Iraq.
Iran may be coordinating with the Turks against the PKK but is no doubt also pleased at the problems the situation is causing for U.S.-Turkish relations. Such maneuvering is common to this area, where a century ago imperial Russians were inciting Kurdish tribes to destabilize the region. The Kurds have long been the victims of such power manipulations in the region, divided by others and among themselves.
The military show of strength may come to no more than that, as the international community rushes to defuse yet another crisis in the area. A parliamentary resolution would allow, not demand, an incursion.
The question of the PKK as a threat to Turkish national sovereignty and the question of the Kurds and their role in Iraq, however, will remain linked. A Turkish general who visited northern Iraq pointed out that the Kurdish flag and anthem are played for visitors in the north, not the Iraqi ones. As long as that does not change and the PKK receive refuge in the mountains, many Turks will be ready to act and U.S.-Turkish relations will be clouded.
While the U.S. considers the PKK a terrorist organization, it has also basically turned over security in the northern areas of Iraq to the Kurds. Surely it still has the clout to make it clear to the Kurds that this does not give them carte blanche to accommodate terrorist camps. The number of PKK fighters in northern Iraq is not huge, perhaps three or four thousand, but certainly larger than the "hundreds" to which Prime Minister Erdogan has referred. The authorities in Iraq can shut the PKK down, as they have in the past, and the U.S., for its own good, should push them to do so.
Mr. Finn, a former U.S. ambassador to Afghanistan who also served several diplomatic tours in Turkey, teaches at Princeton.
-
What We Pre-Empted
Today's world would be far worse if Saddam were still in power.
WSJ
BY PETER J. WALLISON
Wednesday, July 11, 2007 12:01 a.m. EDT
Given the problems and U.S. casualties in Iraq, polls show a large majority of the American people believe the invasion of Iraq was a mistake. Yet if we imagine what the world would look like today if Saddam Hussein had not been deposed, it seems clear that almost no outcome in Iraq would be as adverse to the interests of the United States as today's world with Saddam still in power.
It is important to recall that Saddam had thrown the U.N. weapons inspectors out of Iraq in 1998, and allowed them to return in 2002 only because of the credible threat of a U.S. attack. In addition, the sanctions regime was collapsing--Saddam had learned how to extract billions of dollars for weapons out of the humanitarian exceptions to those sanctions--and our European friends, and perhaps U.N. officials themselves, were complicit in this. Under these circumstances, Saddam could not have been "contained" or rendered harmless, and Iraq could not have been indefinitely subject to U.N. inspections. At some point, Saddam would have been able to throw out the inspectors again, with no further action by the U.N. It was clear that the U.N. itself would do nothing to enforce its own resolutions.
We also know from the reports of the weapons inspectors that Saddam and his scientists were working to develop nuclear weapons, work that certainly would have continued if Saddam had remained in place. Saddam had already demonstrated that he would use chemical weapons, and there is no reason in logic that he wouldn't also restore his chemical weapons stocks once the inspectors had left. He had the largest army in the region, and had shown a determination to use it for expanding his control beyond Iraq. It's not far-fetched, therefore, to consider what economists call a counterfactual--what things would look like today if the U.S. had not invaded Iraq.
First, U.S. troops would still be in Saudi Arabia. Our troops were there because of the Saudis' fear of an Iraqi attack. We should recall that one of the principal reasons Osama bin Laden cited for attacking us--not only on 9/11, but for many years before--was that U.S. troops were supposedly defiling the Muslim holy places in Saudi Arabia. As absurd as this seems to us, it apparently resonated with the Mohamed Attas of this world. With Saddam still in power, American arms would be necessary to protect Saudi Arabia, and our presence there would still be a continuing irritant among militants and a source of al Qaeda-inspired terrorist attacks against the United States around the world.
Imagine, also, trying to persuade Iran to abandon the development of nuclear weapons when Iraq--which had attacked Iran--was actively engaged in doing exactly that. We hope now to change Iran's course through economic sanctions--a difficult prospect to be sure--but that would be a hopeless quest if its leaders and population believed they needed nuclear weapons to deter Iraq. Once it became clear that Iran would develop nuclear weapons, many Sunni Arab nations would want a nuclear deterrent, and Israel's position would be hideously complicated.
Then there are Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in the Palestinian territories. Before Saddam was deposed by the U.S. invasion, he was bidding for leadership of the Arab world in its opposition to Israel and U.S. policy in the Mideast. We can now see the resources he would have brought to bear in that effort. Saddam was a Sunni leader of a Shiite country. As he watched the Islamic world becoming more fundamentalist, he too became more overtly religious. Undoubtedly, he saw himself as the new Nasser, the one person who could unite the Arab and perhaps the Islamic world against the West and Israel. If he had remained in power, he would now be contesting with Iran for sponsorship of Hezbollah and Hamas. With these two regional powers competing in their militancy against Israel, there would be little chance of a Mideast peace any time soon. Gaza, now under Hamas control, would become a protectorate of Iraq, and the effectiveness of the West's financial boycott would have been nullified.
Saddam's interest in driving the U.S. out of the Middle East would be coincident with those of al Qaeda and he would have the weapons of mass destruction that al Qaeda has been seeking. We could never be sure that if we opposed Saddam--say, in another Iraqi invasion of Kuwait--he would not make weapons of mass destruction available to al Qaeda.
In short, it would be difficult to construct a scenario in which the ultimate outcome of events in Iraq today would be as negative for the United States as a world in which Saddam remained in control of Iraq. So, while we are justifiably dismayed about what is happening today in Iraq, we should not allow this to obscure the central point--that the world is a better and safer place because Saddam is out of power. Looked at this way, we have already achieved a lot; what remains now--as the president and John McCain have said--is to steady ourselves and see it through.
Mr. Wallison is a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute; he was White House counsel in the Reagan administration.
-
Turkey: Kurds, Iran and Prodding the United States
Summary
stratfor.com
Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan on July 17 defended a preliminary natural gas deal with Iran to carry natural gas to Europe following strong criticism of the agreement from the White House. With U.S.-Turkish relations taking a serious hit from the Iraq war and its aftermath, Turkey is clearly sending a political message to the United States that it still has a number of ways to pressure Washington into cracking down on Kurdistan Workers' Party rebels in northern Iraq.
Analysis
Iran and Turkey have signed a preliminary agreement to pump Iranian natural gas to Europe via Turkey, a senior Turkish energy official who requested anonymity said July 16. A U.S. State Department spokesman criticized the agreement the same day, saying now is not the right time to invest in Iran's energy sector, and that Iran has not necessarily proved itself to be the most reliable partner in this regard. Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan responded by defending the agreement, saying Iran had made an attractive offer. He added, "Should we not think of our country's interests at this point? Is the United States going to ask why we did not seek their permission? I believe [the United States] will understand."
Turkey signed a deal with Tehran in 2001 to ship 10 billion cubic meters (bcm) of Iranian natural gas from Tabriz to Europe via Turkey. Washington greatly disapproved of the deal at the time, not liking the idea of a NATO ally defying its sanction strategy against the Islamic republic. Iran and Turkey now apparently have decided to take their energy cooperation a step further by signing an agreement to pump 30 bcm of natural gas per year to Europe via Turkey, leaving no need for alternative supplies to feed the Nabucco pipeline project.
The European Union designed Nabucco to reduce its dependence on Russia for natural gas. Though clearly Europe will fund Nabucco, and Turkey makes the most sense as the primary transit point into Europe, there is still the question of which country actually will fill the pipeline with natural gas. In no particular order, the prospective suppliers for Nabucco are Turkmenistan, Azerbaijan, Iran, Iraq, Saudi Arabia and Egypt. Complications attend each of these suppliers.
Turkmenistan, for example, would have to violate existing energy agreements with Russia to become a dedicated supplier for this project. Iraq remains an incoherent mess. Egypt and Saudi Arabia would require infrastructure largely built from scratch to do the job. Finally, Iran has a wall of political sanctions that would have to be broken down through a U.S.-Iranian rapprochement. In spite of this, Iran is probably best positioned to supply Nabucco. The 2001 Iranian-Turkish deal already allows about 10 bcm to be shipped into Turkey, and unlike Saudi Arabia or Turkmenistan, Iran and Turkey share a border. Moreover, Iran also has larger natural gas reserves than all the other prospective suppliers combined.
Turkey previously has talked about getting Russia to supply natural gas for the pipeline, which defeats the Europeans' original purpose of building it. By now saying Iran will be a major partner in Nabucco, Turkey appears to be sending a clear political message to Washington that Ankara is unhappy with the U.S. handling of Iraq and the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), a Kurdish rebel group that focuses its attacks on Turkey -- using bases in northern Iraq as its refuge and a staging ground for operations.
Turkey harbors deep reservoirs of resentment toward the United States. Turks at practically every level of society argue that the United States has done nothing to contain the PKK, while Washington hypocritically expects full compliance from Ankara to help calm the situation in Iraq. Ankara also fears that any political settlement the United States attempts to push through in Baghdad will allow Iraq's Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) to make considerable progress toward greater political and economic autonomy -- something that could encourage Kurdish separatism inside Turkey. As a result, Turkey has spent the past few months engaged in heavy military posturing to convince the KRG and Washington that Ankara will not hesitate to send troops into northern Iraq to take care of the PKK, even if this ends up derailing Washington's political negotiations over Iraq.
Meanwhile, the Iranians are eager to take advantage of this deterioration in U.S.-Turkish relations by forming a strategic partnership with Ankara. Turkey also steadily has improved relations with Syria and has sought to assume the role of mediator between Israel and Syria, despite Washington's wish to keep Damascus isolated.
Iran, Turkey and Syria all find common cause in ensuring that Iraqi Kurdistan is boxed in by its neighbors. Iran also sees itself and Turkey as the rightful powerhouses of the Middle East -- as non-Arabs and as successors to the Ottoman and Safavid empires, respectively. Of course, plenty of divisive issues hamper such a partnership, including Turkey's secularist and Iran's Islamist ideology, as well as their opposing stances toward the West. But with the U.S.-Turkish relationship taking a beating, Iran sees a gap that it very much wants to fill. In fact, the Iranians already have begun to prove their worth to the Turks by launching cross-border operations against PKK rebels in northeastern Iraq.
This explains why Erdogan rather cheekily ridiculed Washington's expectation that Ankara ask for the U.S. position before signing this deal with Iran. Erdogan's comments also come just five days before the July 22 Turkish parliamentary polls. The ruling Justice and Development (AK) Party wants to extract maximum electoral mileage by tapping the growing anti-U.S. sentiment within the Turkish public. Though Erdogan is relatively confident that the AK Party will hold onto its parliamentary majority, he also knows his party will lose some seats, and he is trying to minimize this loss as much as possible.
This obvious political jab by the Turks intended to apply greater pressure on Washington to give into Turkish demands and crack down on PKK rebels in northern Iraq is sure to grab Washington's attention. The only way to break Turkey out of this growing strategic partnership with Iran and Syria will be through action against the PKK. In the interest of gluing Iraq back together, Washington does not appear prepared to take such action just yet -- meaning U.S.-Turkish relations are bound to suffer further as a result.
-
Geopolitical Diary: On Iraq, All Things Definitely are Not Equal
The United States accused Saudi Arabia on Sunday of undercutting security and stability in Iraq. U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Zalmay Khalilzad told CNN that the kingdom and other regional Arab states not only are not doing enough to help Washington with regards to Iraq, they actually are undermining U.S. efforts there. The remarks follow Khalilzad's July 27 op-ed in The New York Times in which he said several of Iraq's neighbors -- not just Iran and Syria -- are pursuing destabilizing policies.
U.S. problems with Saudi Arabia and Iraq's Sunnis have been widely expected, given the outcome of the second round of U.S.-Iranian talks. The agreement between Washington and Tehran on the formation of a security subcommittee to oversee efforts to contain Sunni and Shiite militants was bound to upset the Saudis. Riyadh is not an active participant in the formal process, which already has the Saudis miffed. More important, however, any U.S.-Iranian understanding is bound to empower the Iranians and their Arab Shiite allies in Iraq in unprecedented ways -- threatening the interests of the region's premier Sunni power: Riyadh.
Riyadh thus far has issued no official reaction to either the outcome of the second round of U.S.-Iranian talks or to Sunday's public tongue-lashing by the Bush administration. This is not surprising, though, as the Saudis prefer to act indirectly, if not outright covertly. Their primary means of influencing events in Iraq is to control the flow of men and resources to Iraq's jihadist movement. As longtime Stratfor readers remember, Saudi support for Islamist militancy was a critical feature in the operation of the Afghan mujahideen during the Soviet-Afghan war, and later in the creation of al Qaeda. Using such tactics to affect a war on its very doorstep is certainly not a lost art as far as the Saudis are concerned.
Yet, in the years since 9/11 these are not tactics that engender warm, fuzzy feelings in Washington. The Saudis, however, would not be risking tensions with the United States over Iraq unless they were convinced that U.S.-Iranian dealings on Iraq had reached the point of putting Saudi interests at stake. U.S.-Saudi tensions, then, are a sign that Washington and Tehran have made significant progress toward stabilizing Iraq. Stratfor has noted in the past that U.S. efforts to placate the Shia upset the Sunnis -- and vice versa. So, ironically, Washington's public criticism of the Saudis indicates that the proverbial snowball has moved into a slightly less fiery part of the nether world.
Now that there is forward movement with the Iranians, the question is whether Saudi efforts can torpedo the progress. That is unlikely in any meaningful way, given that the Saudis have few options at their disposal. Sure, they can try to support jihadists, but that is a double-edged sword for them. Consider for a moment that the Saudis actually succeed in derailing the Iran-U.S. effort. With a wrecked Iraq on the Saudi border, hyped-up jihadists would be looking to hurl themselves at something else.
Put differently, the Saudi attitude toward Iraq is a problem, but not one that threatens to destroy the negotiating process altogether -- unlike the critical position of Iran. Yet, although the Saudis lack the ability to spoil the Iraq process, the United States cannot afford to completely ignore them. So, when in doubt, bribe. This weekend, the United States announced plans to shovel some $20 billion in weapons to the Saudis and the other Persian Gulf states. After all, the primary concern of the Arab states with regards to Iraq is the security threat posed by an emergent Iran.
The Saudis want the weapons, of course, but more important they want an Iraqi Sunni community that is politically strong enough to block the geopolitical advances of Iran and the Shia so that the Iranians can be contained within Iraq. All things being equal, this is a goal the Arabs and the Americans share. But all things are not equal. The United States needs to stabilize Iraq and begin pulling out -- and for that it needs to deal with Iran. Thus, the concerns of the Arab states have become secondary.
stratfor.com
-
Second post of the day:
Stratfor.com
U.S./TURKEY: The United States and Turkey are preparing to conduct a covert military strike against Kurdish militants in northern Iraq, The Washington Post reported in a column by Robert Novak. The report says the operation is aimed at preventing a Turkish invasion of Iraq and has been presented to members of Congress.
---------------
One wonders about the patriotism of Novak here-- :x unless this is a deliberate plant :? but even that undercuts the ethos that one should not report these things , , , :-P
-
Iraq: The United States and Turkey Put Iraq's Kurds Under Pressure
July 30, 2007 21 44 GMT
Summary
U.S. syndicated columnist Robert Novak published an op-ed article July 30 saying the United States and Turkey are planning to launch a joint operation against Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) rebels in northern Iraq. This appears to be an intentional leak from the U.S. administration to appease Ankara and pressure Iraq's Kurdistan Regional Government to act against the PKK to fend off a Turkish incursion. But just the talk of a U.S.-Turkish military operation in Iraq will end up further complicating U.S. efforts to effect a political resolution in Baghdad and could even give Iran an opportunity to outshine the United States.
Analysis
The United States is planning a covert operation with the Turkish army to "help neutralize" Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) rebels in northern Iraq, according to a July 30 Washington Post op-ed article by syndicated columnist Robert Novak. In the article, Novak says that secret briefings were held on Capitol Hill during the previous week by Eric S. Edelman who, before taking his current job as undersecretary of defense policy, was the U.S. ambassador to Turkey and an aide to U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney. When Edelman proposed the plan to unspecified lawmakers on the Hill, he reportedly assured them the operation would succeed, "adding that the U.S. role could be concealed and always would be denied."
Evidently, this plan is not so secret anymore, and it would be nearly impossible for the United States to conceal its role in any operation in northern Iraq now that the plan has been made public. It comes as no surprise that this leak came through the Washington Post and through Novak, who is well-known for his 2003 expose that identified Valerie Plame as a CIA operative. Washington evidently wanted to leak this story -- but why?
First, it assures Turkey that the United States is not turning a blind eye to PKK activity in northern Iraq, where the group has set up at least seven camps consisting of some 3,000 fighters. Anti-U.S. sentiment is soaring in Turkey to the point where senior officials in the political and security apparatus are seriously questioning whether Washington is intentionally using the PKK to harm Turkish interests. Turkish newspapers now regularly carry headlines accusing the United States of directly providing weapons support to the PKK, which only further enflame the Turkish public, whose feelings toward the PKK mirror those the Americans have about their soldiers getting killed in Iraq every day. News of a planned joint operation in northern Iraq is music to many Turkish ears, though the Turks will remain skeptical of the U.S. relationship with the PKK until they see action on the ground.
Second, Novak's article sends a clear message to Iraq's Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) that Washington's patience has worn thin, and that the only way to stave off a major Turkish incursion is for the KRG to do the dirty work itself and take action against the PKK. Though the PKK has sympathizers in northern Iraq for its fight against Turkey, and PKK rebels have found a safe-haven in the mountains, Massoud Barzani's Kurdish Democratic Party (KDP) and Jalal Talabani's Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) do not exactly get along with their Kurdish PKK brothers. More than once, the KDP and PUK have fought against the PKK. In past internal struggles, the KDP has pitted the PKK against the PUK and vice versa. In fact, Barzani, who is largely in control of the areas bordering Turkey in northwestern Iraq, offered Turkey the KDP's assistance against the PKK in May 1997 in exchange for Turkish help in fighting the PUK. To make a long story short, the PKK is essentially a bargaining chip for the now-united Iraqi Kurdish leadership, which is fully expecting political concessions from Washington in exchange for a crackdown on PKK guerrillas.
But Washington is not exactly in a position to make significant political concessions to the Kurds -- namely anything involving the status of the oil-rich city of Kirkuk -- while it is desperately attempting to forge a political consensus in Baghdad among Iraq's warring factions. Any talk of the United States launching a joint operation with the Turks in northern Iraq is only going to harden the Kurds' stance on contentious issues holding up the political process (such as the pending oil legislation), making it all the more difficult for Washington to move the negotiations along.
With Novak's story making the headlines, the United States is betting that the Iraqi Kurdish leadership will succumb to pressure to act against the PKK itself, and thus preclude the need for a major Turkish incursion -- which would be an extremely messy situation considering the bloody result of having two NATO allies, PKK rebels and battle-hardened peshmerga forces fighting it out in mountainous terrain. U.S. forces in Iraq also are deeply engaged in the ongoing surge strategy to bring everything below Iraqi Kurdistan under some semblance of control, and they simply cannot afford to divert a significant number of forces up north to a new battlefront.
It is now up to the Iraqi Kurdish leadership to decide its next steps. Barzani is the more boisterous and nationalistic of the Iraqi Kurdish leaders in his statements, but has (not coincidentally) put a lid on his remarks to avoid riling the Turks further when the country is already itching to take action against the PKK. The PKK also has scaled back its attacks, and -- with some nudging by the KRG -- even called for a cease-fire July 17 to make it harder for Turkey to justify a major military operation. But insincere cease-fire calls will not suffice for Turkey, and the KRG is beginning to realize it will need to take a step further in pressuring the PKK if it wants to ensure that northern Iraq maintains its stable security and investment climate.
Moreover, Turkey has had a tumultuous election season and still has to hold what will likely be a very contentious presidential election some time in the next month. In order to maintain stability, the ruling Justice and Development (AK) Party is very unlikely to approve a military operation into northern Iraq until after the presidential election passes. That election will probably involve the AK Party, with the backing of the Nationalist Movement Party, choosing as its presidential candidate Abdullah Gul, whose earlier nomination sparked a countrywide legislative crisis. If Gul gets the job, then the AK Party will have an even stronger incentive to go after the PKK to neutralize any potential backlash to Gul.
Before deciding on a course of action, the KRG has another important thing to consider: weather. Turkey historically has invaded northern Iraq in the spring, when the weather is optimal for military operations and the foliage in the region is not fully grown. After the Turkish presidential election, it will be fall, and snow sometimes falls in northern Iraq as early as November. That leaves a very short time frame for Turkey to act, or it would likely have to wait until the following spring. The weather does not completely rule out a Turkish military operation in the fall or early winter, but it will play a major role in the Turkish military chief's decision based on past incursions. If U.S. and Iraqi diplomacy could buy the KRG some time during Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan's upcoming visits to Iraq in August and to Washington in the fall, Iraq's Kurdish leadership might be able to get by with taking limited action against the PKK. After all, the PKK traditionally calls for a cease-fire once the cold weather starts to kick in and heads for its hideout in the Qandil mountain range along the Iranian border to hibernate until the snow melts and the insurgency can start anew.
Iran, meanwhile, is watching Washington's diplomatic games closely and has been looking for opportunities to get closer to Ankara while anti-U.S. sentiment over the PKK is flaring in Turkey. The Iranians have strategically carried out cross-border military strikes against PKK hideouts in northern Iraq in recent months to win the hearts and minds of the Turkish public and highlight the common threat Turkey and Iran face from PKK activity in northern Iraq and the growing autonomy of Iraqi Kurdistan. As U.S.-Turkish tensions intensify in the coming weeks and months over military action against the PKK, Iran could see this as an opportunity to take action on its own against PKK guerrilla fighters and outshine the United States, thus bringing Tehran a step closer to its vision of a more robust, albeit flawed, anti-U.S. alliance in the region.
With so many variables in play in northern Iraq, Washington will have to move carefully to avoid getting caught in a bigger mess than it can handle while the bulk of its attention remains on finding a political resolution in Baghdad. The PKK might be a nuisance for the United States at this stage of the negotiations, but Turkey is set to convince Washington that this so-called nuisance is the crux of the U.S.-Turkish partnership
Stratfor.com
-
Ambitions
August 10, 2007 21 18 GMT
Summary
Talk of Russia making a grand return to the Mediterranean by developing a naval base off the Syrian coast has given Syria a unique opportunity to play off a resurrection of Cold War tensions between Washington and Moscow. Though a Russian naval presence on Syrian soil would give Damascus a stronger deterrence against external aggression, the Syrian regime is not willing to sell its national security to the Russians just yet. For now, Syria's focus will remain on using the Iraq negotiations to break out of its diplomatic isolation.
Analysis
Speculation is arising over the seriousness of Russia's plan to resurrect its naval presence on the Mediterranean. So far, Syria has gone out of its way to deny that any such plan exists, insisting that all talk of Russia using Syrian port facilities in Tartus and Latakia is a figment of Israel's propaganda machine.
But beyond the statements, Syria is facing a very interesting political decision. Russia sees a window of opportunity in which the United States' attention is absorbed in Iraq and in its intensely delicate negotiations with Iran. Though the thought of Russia sending warships to the Mediterranean could have provoked a strong U.S. response a decade ago, it is no secret that the U.S. military's bandwidth is greatly constrained and there is room for other major powers -- like Russia -- to start playing in the Middle Eastern sandbox again.
A Russian naval presence off the Syrian coast could allow Syrian President Bashar al Assad's regime to better inoculate itself against a potential attack by the United States or Israel. Damascus is nervously watching for any movement in the U.S.-Iran talks over Iraq. Like the Russians, the Syrians enjoy the fact that U.S. military forces have their hands too full to seriously think about engaging them in a round of forceful behavior modification. With or without a solid political resolution in Baghdad, the U.S. military position in Iraq is not going to last forever, and Syria will not be able to stay under the radar as easily as it has over the past six years. Without a strong defensive missile shield of its own, the Syrians could look to their Russian guests at Tartus and Latakia to get the Israelis, Americans or even the Turks to think twice about threatening Syria militarily.
At most, a Russian naval presence off the Syrian coast would complicate plans to strike Syria. The Russians have pledged to set up sophisticated air defenses around the Latakia and Tartus naval bases that will also provide an air umbrella for the entire Syrian coast and parts of the hinterland. Syria has formally depended on Russia for military supplies and training since the Cold War. While the supplies are nice, Damascus still does not view Russia as a reliable military ally should things come to a head. Al Assad likely remembers well his father's distrust of Kremlin support during the 1973 Yom Kippur War, in which both the United States and the Soviet Union worked to ensure the war ended in a stalemate. Syria has also watched how the Russians have strung along the Iranians over the construction of the Bushehr nuclear reactor (now running a decade behind schedule), and has not enjoyed having to grovel for arms sales, particularly during Russian President Vladimir Putin's reign.
Though trust is very much an issue, a Russian naval fleet would still serve a clear purpose in Syria's view. The United States would unlikely be prepared to risk engaging in a military confrontation with Russia (which could very well lead to a crisis with Washington's European allies) on any level for the sake of targeting the Syrian regime. Furthermore, Israel would be troubled by -- among other things -- the potential concurrent deployment of land-based air defense assets, like late-model S300 batteries, to a Russian facility. These are highly capable air defense assets that Syria has been trying to acquire for a decade. Though Damascus could not rely on them to actually defend Syrian interests, their mere presence would change the threat environment for Israel and make things like low-level flights over al Assad's summer home in Latakia a bit riskier. In short, the Russians would be offering an attractive insurance policy for the Syrians.
But Syria is also looking at another window of opportunity in Iraq, where it sees the United States desperate for a political resolution. Syria is in the process of demonstrating in any way possible that it can play a key role in suppressing the Iraq insurgency and getting Iraq's former Baathists on board with a political deal. The Iraq negotiations would then serve as an avenue for Syria to extract political concessions in Lebanon and break out of its diplomatic isolation by normalizing relations with the United States, moving al Assad a huge step ahead in his quest for national security. The Syrian regime is also well aware that Israel and the United States privately prefer keeping the al Assad regime intact for lack of a better, non-Islamist alternative. As long as al Assad faces no immediate threat of regime change, he has ample room to negotiate his way to Washington's good side while the Iraq talks are in play.
Moreover, the Syrians cannot expect the Russians to show up on their doorstep anytime soon. While Russia could park a handful of surface combatants from the Black Sea Fleet in Tartus or Latakia tomorrow, the construction of more meaningful naval facilities takes time and considerable investment. There is no clear indication that Russia has a genuine interest in making such an investment now, though Moscow has much to gain by talking about it and playing up the threat of Russia's expansionist desires.
The Syrians likely will keep the Russian naval option on the table, but for now al Assad's focus is on exploiting the Iraq talks to gain U.S. recognition. So far, this plan is progressing, with Syria just having wrapped up a two-day international security conference -- attended by the United States -- aimed at stabilizing Iraq. The United States is also looking into different ways to work with the Syrians while appearing to keep its guard up, including channeling messages through the Canadians to the Syrian regime.
Damascus will publicly downplay any talk of the Russian naval fleet to avoid rocking the boat with Washington while the Iraq negotiations are in progress. But should Syria feel the United States is not willing to play ball over Iraq, the Russian naval base option gives Damascus a most useful bargaining chip to play both sides of the U.S.-Russian divide
stratfor.com
-
Move and Countermove: Ahmadinejad and Bush Duel
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said Aug. 28 that U.S. power in Iraq is rapidly being destroyed. Then he said that Iran, with the help of regional friends and the Iraqi nation, is ready to fill the vacuum. Ahmadinejad specifically reached out to Saudi Arabia, saying the Saudis and Iranians could collaborate in managing Iraq. Later in the day, U.S. President George W. Bush responded, saying, "I want our fellow citizens to consider what would happen if these forces of radicalism and extremism are allowed to drive us out of the Middle East. The region would be dramatically transformed in a way that could imperil the civilized world." He specifically mentioned Iran and its threat of nuclear weapons.
On Aug. 27, we argued that, given the United States' limited ability to secure Iraq, the strategic goal must now shift from controlling Iraq to defending the Arabian Peninsula against any potential Iranian ambitions in that direction. "Whatever mistakes might have been made in the past, the current reality is that any withdrawal from Iraq would create a vacuum, which would rapidly be filled by Iran," we wrote.
Ahmadinejad's statements, made at a two-hour press conference, had nothing to do with what we wrote, nor did Bush's response. What these statements do show, though, is how rapidly the thinking in Tehran is evolving in response to Iranian perceptions of a pending U.S. withdrawal and a power vacuum in Iraq -- and how the Bush administration is shifting its focus from the Sunni threat to both the Sunni and Shiite threats.
The most important thing Ahmadinejad discussed at his press conference was not the power vacuum, but Saudi Arabia. He reached out to the Saudis, saying Iran and Saudi Arabia together could fill the vacuum in Iraq and stabilize the country. The subtext was that not only does Iran not pose a threat to Saudi Arabia, it would be prepared to enhance Saudi power by giving it a substantial role in a post-U.S. Iraq.
Iran is saying that Saudi Arabia does not need to defend itself against Iran, and it certainly does not need the United States to redeploy its forces along the Saudi-Iraqi border in order to defend itself. While dangling the carrot of participation in a post-war Iraq, Iran also is wielding a subtle stick. One of the reasons for al Qaeda's formation was the U.S. presence in Saudi Arabia during the first Gulf War. Radical Islamists in Saudi Arabia regarded the U.S. presence as sacrilege and the willingness of the Saudi regime to permit American troops to be there as blasphemous. After 9/11, the Saudis asked the United States to withdraw its forces, and following the Iraq invasion they fought a fairly intense battle against al Qaeda inside the kingdom. Having U.S. troops defend Saudi Arabia once again -- even if they were stationed outside its borders -- would inflame passions inside the kingdom, and potentially destabilize the regime.
The Saudis are in a difficult position. Since the Iranian Revolution, the Saudi relationship with Iran has ranged from extremely hostile to uneasy. It is not simply a Sunni and Shiite matter. Iran is more than just a theocracy. It arose from a very broad popular uprising against the shah. It linked the idea of a republic to Islam, combining a Western revolutionary tradition with Shiite political philosophy. Saudi Arabia, on the other hand, is a monarchy that draws its authority from traditional clan and tribal structures and Wahhabi Islam in the Arabian Peninsula. The Saudis felt trapped between the pro-Soviet radicalism of the Iraqis and Syrians, and of the various factions of the Palestinian movement on the one side -- and the Islamic Republic in Iran on the other. Isolated, it had only the United States to depend on, and that dependency blew up in its face during the 1990-91 war in Kuwait.
But there also is a fundamental geopolitical problem. Saudi Arabia suffers from a usually fatal disease. It is extraordinarily rich and militarily weak. It has managed to survive and prosper by having foreign states such as the United Kingdom and the United States have a stake in its independence -- and guarantee that independence with their power. If it isn't going to rely on an outside power to protect it, and it has limited military resources of its own, then how will it protect itself against the Iranians? Iran, a country with a large military -- whose senior officers and noncoms were blooded in the Iran-Iraq war -- does not have a great military, merely a much larger and experienced one than the Saudis.
The Saudis have Iran's offer. The problem is that the offer cannot be guaranteed by Saudi power, but depends on Iran's willingness to honor it. Absent the United States, any collaboration with Iran would depend on Iran's will. And the Iranians are profoundly different from the Saudis and, more important, much poorer. Whatever their intentions might be today -- and who can tell what the Iranians intend? -- those intentions might change. If they did, it would leave Saudi Arabia at risk to Iranian power.
Saudi Arabia is caught between a rock and a hard place and it knows it. But there might be the beginnings of a solution in Turkey. Ahmadinejad's offer of collaboration was directed toward regional powers other than Iran. That includes Turkey. Turkey stayed clear of the U.S. invasion of Iraq, refusing to let U.S. troops invade Iraq from there. However, Turkey has some important interests in how the war in Iraq ends. First, it does not want to see any sort of Kurdish state, fearing Kurdish secessionism in Turkey as well. Second, it has an interest in oil in northern Iraq. Both interests could be served by a Turkish occupation of northern Iraq, under the guise of stabilizing Iraq along with Iran and Saudi Arabia.
When we say that Iran is now the dominant regional power, we also should say that is true unless we add Turkey to the mix. Turkey is certainly a military match for Iran, and more than an economic one. Turkey's economy is the 18th largest in the world -- larger than Saudi Arabia's -- and it is growing rapidly. In many ways, Iran needs a good relationship with Turkey, given its power and economy. If Turkey were to take an interest in Iraq, that could curb Iran's appetite. While Turkey could not defend Saudi Arabia, it certainly could threaten Iran's rear if it chose to move south. And with the threat of Turkish intervention, Iran would have to be very careful indeed.
But Turkey has been cautious in its regional involvements. It is not clear whether it will involve itself in Iraq beyond making certain that Kurdish independence does not go too far. Even if it were to move deeper into Iraq, it is not clear whether it would be prepared to fight Iran over Saudi Arabia. On the other hand, Turkey does not want to deal with a powerful Iran -- and if the Iranians did take the Saudi oil fields, they would be more than a match for Turkey. Turkey's regime is very different from those in Saudi Arabia and Iran, but geopolitics make strange bedfellows. Iran could not resist a Turkish intervention in northern Iraq, nor could it be sure what Turkey would do if Iran turned south. That uncertainty might restrain Iran.
And that is the thin reed on which Saudi national security would rest if it rejected an American presence to its north. The United States could impose itself anyway, but being sandwiched between a hostile Iran and hostile Saudi Arabia would not be prudent, to say the least. Therefore, the Saudis could scuttle a U.S. blocking force if they wished. If the Saudis did this and joined the Iranian-led stabilization program in Iraq, they would then be forced to rely on a Turkish presence in northern Iraq to constrain any future Iranian designs on Arabia. That is not necessarily a safe bet as it assumes that the Turks would be interested in balancing Iran at a time when Russian power is returning to the Caucasus, Greek power is growing in the Balkans, and the Turkish economy is requiring ever more attention from Ankara. Put simply, Turkey has a lot of brands in the fire, and the Saudis betting on the Iranian brand having priority is a long shot.
The Iranian position is becoming more complex as Tehran tries to forge a post-war coalition to manage Iraq -- and to assure the coalition that Iran doesn't plan to swallow some of its members. The United States, in the meantime, appears to be trying to simplify its position, by once again focusing on the question of nuclear weapons.
Bush's speech followed this logic. First, according to Bush, the Iranians are now to be seen as a threat equal to the jihadists. In other words, the Iranian clerical regime and al Qaeda are equal threats. That is the reason the administration is signaling that the Iranian Republican Guards are to be named a terrorist group. A withdrawal from Iraq, therefore, would be turning Iraq over to Iran, and that, in turn, would transform the region. But rather than discussing the geopolitical questions we have been grappling with, Bush has focused on Iran's nuclear capability.
Iran is developing nuclear weapons, though we have consistently argued that Tehran does not expect to actually achieve a deliverable nuclear device. In the first place, that is because the process of building a device small enough and rugged enough to be useful is quite complex. There is quite a leap between testing a device and having a workable weapon. Also, and far more important, Iran fully expects the United States or Israel to destroy its nuclear facilities before a weapon is complete. The Iranians are using their nuclear program as a bargaining chip.
The problem is that the negotiations have ended. The prospect of Iran trading its nuclear program for U.S. concessions in Iraq has disappeared along with the negotiations. Bush, therefore, has emphasized that there is no reason for the United States to be restrained about the Iranian nuclear program. Iran might not be close to having a deliverable device, but the risk is too great to let it continue developing one. Therefore, the heart of Bush's speech was that withdrawing would vastly increase Iran's power, and an Iranian nuclear weapon would be catastrophic.
From this, one would think the United States is considering attacking Iran. Indeed, the French warning against such an attack indicates that Paris might have picked something up as well. Certainly, Washington is signaling that, given the situation in Iraq and Iran's assertion that it will be filling the vacuum, the United States is being forced to face the possibility of an attack against Iran's nuclear facilities.
There are two problems here. The first is the technical question of whether a conventional strike could take out all of Iran's nuclear facilities. We don't know the answer, but we do know that Iran has been aware of the probability of such an attack and is likely to have taken precautions, from creating uncertainty as to the location of sites to hardening them. The second problem is the more serious one.
Assume that the United States attacked and destroyed Iran's nuclear facilities. The essential geopolitical problem would not change. The U.S. position in Iraq would remain extremely difficult, the three options we discussed Aug. 27 would remain in place, and in due course Iran would fill the vacuum left by the United States. The destruction of Iran's nuclear facilities would not address any of those problems.
Therefore, implicit in Bush's speech is the possibility of broader measures against Iran. These could include a broad air campaign against Iranian infrastructure -- military and economic -- and a blockade of its ports. The measures could not include ground troops because there are no substantial forces available and redeploying all the troops in Iraq to surge into Iran, logistical issues aside, would put 150,000 troops in a very large country.
The United States can certainly conduct an air campaign against Iran, but we are reminded of the oldest lesson of air power -- one learned by the Israeli air force against Hezbollah in the summer of 2006: Air power is enormously successful in concert with a combined arms operation, but has severe limitations when applied on its own. The idea that nations will capitulate because of the pain of an air campaign has little historical basis. It doesn't usually happen. Unlike Hezbollah, however, Iran is a real state with real infrastructure, economic interests, military assets and critical port facilities -- all with known locations that can be pummeled with air power. The United States might not be able to impose its will on the ground, but it can certainly impose a great deal of pain. Of course, an all-out air war would cripple Iran in a way that would send global oil prices through the roof -- since Iran remains the world's fourth-largest oil exporter.
A blockade, however, also would be problematic. It is easy to prevent Iranian ships from moving in and out of port -- and, unlike Iraq, Iran has no simple options to divert its maritime energy trade to land routes -- but what would the United States do if a Russian, Chinese or French vessel sailed in? Would it seize it? Sink it? Obviously either is possible. But just how broad an array of enemies does the United States want to deal with at one time? And remember that, with ports sealed, Iran's land neighbors would have to participate in blocking the movement of goods. We doubt they would be that cooperative.
Finally, and most important, Iran has the ability to counter any U.S. moves. It has assets in Iraq that could surge U.S. casualties dramatically if ordered to do so. Iran also has terrorism capabilities that are not trivial. We would say that Iran's capabilities are substantially greater than al Qaeda's. Under a sustained air campaign, they would use them.
Bush's threat to strike nuclear weapons makes sense only in the context of a broader air and naval campaign against Iran. Leaving aside the domestic political ramifications and the international diplomatic blowback, the fundamental problem is that Iran is a very large country where a lot of targets would have to be hit. That would take many months to achieve, and during that time Iran would likely strike back in Iraq and perhaps in the United States as well. An air campaign would not bring Iran to its knees quickly, unless it was nuclear -- and we simply do not think the United States will break the nuclear taboo first.
The United States is also in a tough place. While it makes sense to make threats in response to Iranian threats -- to keep Tehran off balance -- the real task for the United States is to convince Saudi Arabia to stick to its belief that collaboration with Iran is too dangerous, and convince Turkey to follow its instincts in northern Iraq without collaborating with the Iranians. The Turks are not fools and will not simply play the American game, but the more active Turkey is, the more cautious Iran must be.
The latest statement from Ahmadinejad convinces us that Iran sees its opening. However, the United States, even if it is not bluffing about an attack against Iran, would find such an attack less effective than it might hope. In the end, even after an extended air campaign, it will come down to that. In the end, no matter how many moves are made, the United States is going to have to define a post-Iraq strategy and that strategy must focus on preventing Iran from threatening the Arabian Peninsula. Even after an extended air campaign, it will come down to that. In case of war, the only "safe" location for a U.S. land force to hedge against an Iranian move against the Arabian Peninsula would be Kuwait, a country lacking the strategic depth to serve as an effective counter.
Ahmadinejad has made his rhetorical move. Bush has responded. Now the regional diplomacy intensifies as the report from the top U.S. commander in Iraq, Gen. David Petraeus, is prepared for presentation to Congress on Sept. 15.
stratfor.com
-
Iraq: Al-Sadr's Six-Month Freeze
August 29, 2007 14 33 GMT
Radical Iraqi Shiite leader Muqtada al-Sadr ordered a six-month freeze on activities by his Mehdi Army militia to "rehabilitate" the organization, according to al-Sadr aide Sheikh Hazim al-Araji, who spoke on Iraqi state television Aug. 29. Al-Araji said that the suspension of Mehdi Army activities means the militia will not launch attacks against U.S. and coalition forces, and that the suspension will last for a maximum of six months.
Upon al-Sadr's return to Iraq in May after spending months in hiding in Iran, Stratfor discussed how the radical Shiite leader had put plans in motion to purge his militia of renegades. Al-Sadr had lost a great degree control over his commanders, who were largely operating on their own, threatening the Iranian government's ability to demonstrate it had enough sway to rein in Iraq's Shiite militias.
Al-Sadr is a highly unpredictable figure in Iraq's Shiite community, and is as much of a problem for the Iranians as he is for the Americans. His movement directly threatens Iran's closest Iraqi ally: the Supreme Islamic Iraqi Council (SIIC), led by Abdel Aziz al-Hakim. A spate of assassination attempts has targeted SIIC governors in southern Iraq, apparently as part of a larger struggle between al-Sadr's Mehdi Army and al-Hakim's Badr Brigades for control of the Shiite-dominated, and oil-rich, southern region of Iraq.
A Shiite pilgrimage in the southern shrine city of Karbala on Aug. 28 turned into a bloodbath between the Mehdi Army and the Badr Brigades, killing 52 people and prompting Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki to order a curfew in the city. The riots reportedly erupted near the sacred shrines of Imam Hussein and Imam Abbas, with al-Sadr's followers clashing with shrine guards and local policeman affiliated with al-Hakim's movement.
With or without a political agreement with the United States, the only way Iran can consolidate its gains in Iraq is through its dependence on the extremely fractious Iraqi Shiite community. With talk of a U.S. withdrawal gaining steam, Iran might have given al-Sadr an ultimatum to get his militia under control, or else face liquidation. Al-Sadr's movement already is facing attacks from U.S. and coalition troops in the south, and by announcing a cease-fire against U.S. and coalition troops, he could be trying to get himself out of a tight corner.
Sectarian tensions are running extremely high in Iraq, and Iran needs to make its own preparations for what looks to be an inevitable U.S. withdrawal -- beginning with getting the Mehdi Army's act together.
stratfor.com
-
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/asia/article2369001.ece
From The Sunday Times
September 2, 2007
Pentagon ‘three-day blitz’ plan for Iran
Sarah Baxter, Washington
THE Pentagon has drawn up plans for massive airstrikes against 1,200 targets in Iran, designed to annihilate the Iranians’ military capability in three days, according to a national security expert.
Alexis Debat, director of terrorism and national security at the Nixon Center, said last week that US military planners were not preparing for “pinprick strikes” against Iran’s nuclear facilities. “They’re about taking out the entire Iranian military,” he said.
Debat was speaking at a meeting organised by The National Interest, a conservative foreign policy journal. He told The Sunday Times that the US military had concluded: “Whether you go for pinprick strikes or all-out military action, the reaction from the Iranians will be the same.” It was, he added, a “very legitimate strategic calculus”.
President George Bush intensified the rhetoric against Iran last week, accusing Tehran of putting the Middle East “under the shadow of a nuclear holocaust”. He warned that the US and its allies would confront Iran “before it is too late”.
One Washington source said the “temperature was rising” inside the administration. Bush was “sending a message to a number of audiences”, he said – to the Iranians and to members of the United Nations security council who are trying to weaken a tough third resolution on sanctions against Iran for flouting a UN ban on uranium enrichment.
The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) last week reported “significant” cooperation with Iran over its nuclear programme and said that uranium enrichment had slowed. Tehran has promised to answer most questions from the agency by November, but Washington fears it is stalling to prevent further sanctions. Iran continues to maintain it is merely developing civilian nuclear power.
Bush is committed for now to the diplomatic route but thinks Iran is moving towards acquiring a nuclear weapon. According to one well placed source, Washington believes it would be prudent to use rapid, overwhelming force, should military action become necessary.
Israel, which has warned it will not allow Iran to acquire nuclear weapons, has made its own preparations for airstrikes and is said to be ready to attack if the Americans back down.
Alireza Jafarzadeh, a spokesman for the National Council of Resistance of Iran, which uncovered the existence of Iran’s uranium enrichment plant at Natanz, said the IAEA was being strung along. “A number of nuclear sites have not even been visited by the IAEA,” he said. “They’re giving a clean bill of health to a regime that is known to have practised deception.”
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the Iranian president, irritated the Bush administration last week by vowing to fill a “power vacuum” in Iraq. But Washington believes Iran is already fighting a proxy war with the Americans in Iraq.
The Institute for the Study of War last week released a report by Kimberly Kagan that explicitly uses the term “proxy war” and claims that with the Sunni insurgency and Al-Qaeda in Iraq “increasingly under control”, Iranian intervention is the “next major problem the coalition must tackle”.
Bush noted that the number of attacks on US bases and troops by Iranian-supplied munitions had increased in recent months – “despite pledges by Iran to help stabilise the security situation in Iraq”.
It explains, in part, his lack of faith in diplomacy with the Iranians. But Debat believes the Pentagon’s plans for military action involve the use of so much force that they are unlikely to be used and would seriously stretch resources in Afghanistan and Iraq.
-
US confirms Israeli air strike on Syria
By Tim Butcher in Tel Aviv
Last Updated: 2:26am BST 12/09/2007
A US official has confirmed that Israeli warplanes carried out an air strike "deep inside" Syria, escalating tensions between the two countries.
Israel considers retaliation in Gaza
The target of the strike last Thursday remained unclear but Israeli media reported that a shipment of Iranian arms crossing Syria for use by the Iranian-backed Hezbollah militia in Lebanon was attacked.
Israeli army Merkeva tanks on the Golan Heights
Syria first reported the incident on the day, saying its air defences had engaged five Israeli planes, but did not say what their target was. Israel remained uncharacteristically silent, pointedly refusing to deny that its warplanes were involved in an operation. The closest it came to acknowledging the affair happened was when it made an undertaking to Turkey to investigate how an Israeli long-range fuel tank was dropped on Turkish territory near the Syrian border.
Another theory gaining ground yesterday was that Israel was deliberately attacking the Russian-made Pantsyr air defence system recently bought by Damascus. The sale includes provision for the Pantsyr system to be shipped on to Iran and it is possible the Israeli attack was co-ordinated with America to probe the effectiveness of the system. It is believed that Iran would use the Pantsyr system to defend its nuclear facilities.
Syria has sought to keep the incident in the public arena, saying yesterday that it had complained formally to the United Nations, accusing Israel of unjustified aggression.
Syria and Israel have fought major wars on three occasions, in 1948, 1967 and 1973, as well as numerous other skirmishes. The two nations remain formally at war although an uneasy calm has largely held for the past three decades. Meanwhile, Israel was contemplating a retaliatory strike on Gaza last night after a Palestinian qassam rocket injured 69 of its soldiers, five seriously, at the Zikim army base. Many of the Israelis were hit by shrapnel as they slept under canvas.
advertisement
While the rocket was fired by members of the Islamic Jihad party, Israel said it would hold Hamas accountable because the group is the main authority in the Gaza strip since it drove out its Fatah rivals in June.
The Israeli prime minister, Ehud Olmert, convened an emergency meeting yesterday with military and security commanders to discuss a response to the attack.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2007/09/12/wisrael112.xml
-
Showdown in Lebanon
By MICHAEL YOUNG
September 21, 2007
BEIRUT -- On Wednesday Antoine Ghanem became the fourth anti-Syrian member of the Lebanese parliament to be assassinated in two years. He was the latest victim of a protracted political crisis in Lebanon that both preceded and was exacerbated by the assassination of former Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri in February 2005.
Soon after that murder, international pressure and a mass uprising dubbed "the Cedar Revolution" put an end to Syria's 29-year military presence in Lebanon. But Syrian President Bashar Assad never reconciled himself to the forced departure. Now Syria is trying to use the upcoming Lebanese presidential election to reimpose its hegemony over its smaller neighbor.
A Lebanese inspector investigates the damaged car of the anti-Syrian Lebanese lawmaker Antoine Ghanem, Thursday Sept. 20, 2007.
Next week Lebanon will enter the constitutional period, during which its parliament must choose a new president. The election might allow the Lebanese to finally be rid of Syria's peon, President Emile Lahoud, whose mandate was forcibly extended by Damascus three years ago. However, there is a real danger that it will be the final nail in the coffin of the Cedar Revolution.
The outcome will also help determine whether Syria can win an important round in a regional struggle pitting its alliance with Iran, Hezbollah and Hamas against a loose coalition of forces including the United States, the mainstream Sunni Arab regimes, and European states. Amid heightening polarization throughout the Middle East, a Syrian victory in Lebanon could also exacerbate simmering tensions elsewhere.
In fact, the election might conceivably not take place at all. Mr. Assad realizes that any successor to Mr. Lahoud who seeks to consolidate Lebanon's sovereignty would be a barrier to the revival of Syrian supremacy. Damascus's Lebanese allies, most significantly Hezbollah, agree.
Hezbollah, which presides over a semi-autonomous territory with a private army of its own, knows that only renewed Syrian sway over Lebanon would allow it to continue its struggle against Israel and the U.S. Iran backs Syria, both to keep alive Tehran's deterrence capability against Israel (thanks to the thousands of rockets it has supplied Hezbollah in south Lebanon), and because Syria is a vital partner in allowing Iran to expand its reach across the Middle East.
There are also opportunities in this election for Syria's adversaries. The anti-Syrian Lebanese parliamentary majority, as well as the Bush administration and its more reliable European allies, believe that any new president must secure the gains made in 2005, when Lebanon recovered its independence. Their priority is to prevent the election of someone who might turn back the clock. The problem is that this anti-Syrian majority sits with Syria's friends in the parliament, which elects the president. They must come to a mutually satisfactory agreement or Lebanon will find itself even more dangerously divided than it already is.
This election is not just about a president; it is also, for many of those involved, about existential issues. Hezbollah, a revolutionary, military party that feeds off conflict (or "resistance") to survive, has no place in a liberated, liberal, cosmopolitan country at peace with the world. Similarly, Syria's most prominent enemies -- the Sunni leader Saad Hariri, the Druze chieftain Walid Jumblatt and the Christian Lebanese Forces leader Samir Geagea -- all risk political and even physical elimination if Syria triumphs. Damascus, if it cannot impose its man or a cipher whose flimsiness would allow Syria to gain ground, will encourage its allies to create a political vacuum as leverage to subsequently push a favorite into office.
Syria is also waging an existential fight. The tribunal to convict those responsible for the assassination of Hariri has been approved under Chapter VII of the United Nations Charter, and several weeks ago the Dutch government agreed to locate the court in the Netherlands (the exact location as yet undecided). For Mr. Assad, whose regime is a prime suspect in the Hariri murder, the signs are ominous. By again bringing Lebanon under his authority, the Syrian president doubtless feels he can hamper the court's proceedings, perhaps until more favorable circumstances allow him to negotiate a deal similar to the one that got Libya's top leadership off the hook for the Lockerbie bombing in 1988, as well as that of a UTA French airliner in 1989.
In this context, diplomatic sources in Beirut note that the Arab League secretary general, Amr Moussa, and some European states, including the Vatican, had sought to delay formation of the tribunal. However, the progress on situating the tribunal suggests this effort failed.
That is why Mr. Assad might, after all, be more interested in holding a presidential election now, so Syrian allies in Beirut can gum up the tribunal's machinery before it's too late. In this scenario, Damascus would want a weak consensus candidate who stands somewhere in the middle. However, the nub of Syria's strategy could be to ensure that its comrades in Beirut, in collaboration with the Christian politician Michel Aoun, gain veto power in the government that will be formed after the election. That veto power -- plus a limp president and Syria's control over parliamentary procedure through the pro-Syrian parliament speaker -- would give Damascus substantial influence in Beirut, including over administrative decisions relating to the tribunal and to the implementation of the U.N. resolutions to disarm Hezbollah and maintain tranquility in the southern border area.
If Syria does prefer a president to a vacuum, this vulnerability must be exploited in coming weeks by those who want Lebanon fully freed of Syrian domination. Mr. Assad will play hardball, but he faces some heat. An Israeli air raid against Syria earlier this month, though reported to be directed against some sort of nuclear facility, may conceivably have been interpreted by Syria as an effort to intimidate it before Lebanon's election. In recent weeks, moreover, Saudi-Syrian hostility has escalated to unheard-of levels. Both King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia and President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt are fearful of Syria's close ties with Iran. For these two countries, a hegemonic, Islamist, Shiite Iran threatens their regional power and their Sunni-led regimes. This Sunni-Shiite rivalry happens to be playing itself out in Lebanon, where the results could have serious consequences for the Saudis and Egyptians.
The U.S. also knows the hazards of the Lebanese presidential election, and the Bush administration will not sign off on a president it regards as pro-Syrian. The difficult situation in Iraq, like Saudi-Syrian tensions, will probably make the administration tougher in opposing candidates it doesn't like. However, the European states -- France, Spain and Italy -- making up the bulk of the U.N. force in South Lebanon, worry that a void in Beirut might harm their soldiers. All have made it amply clear to Syria that it must change its ways in Lebanon, but they remain vulnerable on the ground, amid suspicion that Syria played a role, direct or indirect, in an attack last June that killed six troops of the Spanish U.N. contingent.
All sides, even Syria, would like to avoid a Lebanese vacuum at the end of November when Mr. Lahoud's time will be up -- if they can achieve their goals. The danger is that in the quest for compromise we might be heading toward a lowest common denominator on the presidency, thus giving Syria and its allies precisely what they want: a weak, ineffective president followed by a decisive advantage in any new government. That would only aggravate the current polarization in the country. Lebanon has the startling potential of becoming either the Middle East's salvation, or its nightmare. What happens here will have serious repercussions for what happens in the region as a whole.
Mr. Young is opinion editor at the Daily Star newspaper in Beirut and a contributing editor at Reason magazine.
RELATED ARTICLES AND BLOGS
-
Geopolitical Diary: Iran Fright Month
Newsweek reports in this week's edition that U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney recently was considering asking Israel to launch a missile strike against the Iranian nuclear facility at Natanz. Its purpose would be to provoke an Iranian counter-strike against Israel, which would give the United States an excuse to launch its own airstrikes against Iran. Newsweek cited two unidentified sources as saying that Cheney's former Middle East adviser, David Wurmser, had told this to others a few months ago. Wurmser's wife denied the story.
So we have two unidentified (of course) sources, citing a conversation months ago between an aide and an unnamed group of people, claiming that Cheney was considering asking the Israelis to attack Natanz. Cheney is nothing if not Machiavellian. Still, there are a few unanswered questions in this story. For example, why it would be easier for the United States to attack Iran after it retaliated against a pre-emptive attack from Israel? A lot of people would say that Israel got what it deserved for attacking Iran. Or, if the United States wanted to attack Iran, why not just attack it? In fact, the whole story is wacky, since the last thing that Washington wants to appear to be doing is attacking Iran on behalf of Israel. If the United States is going to attack Iran, it will sit much better with the Saudis, Jordanians and Egyptians if the attack is not done to avenge Israel.
Of course, the point of the story might be that Cheney came up with the idea so that the Israelis would start the war, creating an upswell of pro-Israeli feeling in the United States and forcing President George W. Bush into attacking Iran against his will. Or perhaps Bush and Cheney thought of this together as a way to force the Democrats to demand an attack on Iran, since Bush would never do something Congress disapproved of.
It's quite a story. The mere fact that it doesn't make a lot of sense should not detract from is elegance. Newsweek can't be wrong, because the story doesn't say that Cheney asked the Israelis to attack, only that he was thinking about it. It comes down to what "thinking" about something means. We're sure that Cheney has a lot of strange thoughts. But then so do we -- we just try not to tell them to people since they might tell their friends. Perhaps Cheney just isn't secretive enough.
Our constant amazement at the media aside -- we're much too small to be one of the media -- this piece might be part of Iran Fright Month. The Bush administration has tried very hard to convince Tehran that an air attack against Iran is a very real possibility. The administration has leaked a wide range of stories about a range of options against Iran. The goal of threatening Iran (as opposed to simply attacking Iran) is political -- to get Iran to shift its policies in Iraq. We've heard some indication of senior Iranian officials expressing concern that an attack could come, so it might be having an impact. But thus far, there is no sign of a shift in the Iranian position.
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who is in New York for the U.N. General Assembly meeting, said in an interview with CBS, "It's wrong to think that Iran and the U.S. are walking toward war. Who says so? Why should we go to war? There is no war in the offing." He also reiterated that Iran does not want a nuclear weapon, pointing out, "If it was useful, it would have prevented the downfall of the Soviet Union. If it was useful, it would have resolved the problem the Americans have in Iraq."
There is actually a kind of logic to that -- but then Iranian presidents visiting New York always appear controlled, reasonable and pleasant. We have consistently taken the view that the Iranians are using the threat of nuclear weapons as a bargaining tool rather than expecting to complete a device, so we tend to believe him. His problem is that we may be the only ones who do. The Bush administration is going out of its way to intimidate Iran, and the United States is not a trivial force. We doubt that this signals a shift in Iran's policy, but at least Ahmadinejad's response makes more sense than Newsweek's story.
stratfor.com
-
Geopolitical Diary: Setting the U.S. Stage for Iranian Talks
U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said on Monday that she sees no signs of talks with Iran on the issue of Iraq. Specifically, she said the Bush administration will "leave that channel open," though probably not "pursue it imminently."
Iranian-U.S. talks about Iraq's future are always touchy. Beyond the simple fact that Tehran and Washington do not exactly trust each other, the room for compromise between them is not exactly cavernous. The United States wants an Iraq that can hold its own against Iran and wield the threat of a renewed Sunni government fully armed and ready to repeat the 1980-1988 war. Iran wants an Iraq that is incapable of attacking and can threaten the United States with the unleashed fury of Iranian-aligned Shiite militias. Neither can make its dream come about without the other's acquiescence, but both have the ability to impose unilaterally the other's nightmare.
Negotiations are indeed what are on order. One effect -- indeed, the primary rationale -- of the Bush administration's decision to maintain as strong of a troop presence in Iraq as possible is to convince the Iranians that U.S. forces are not going anywhere -- not just now, but well into the term of the next U.S. president. Iran has a tendency to misjudge U.S. decision-makers, and now it is faced with a U.S. occupation in Iraq that will last, at bare minimum, another two years. Tehran might have been convinced a month ago that a U.S. departure was inevitable; now it cannot be so sure. The logic of talks to prevent Iran's worst-case scenario from occurring makes sense.
But not just yet. The United States first wants to set the stage. France is warning of war, Israel is (allegedly) bombing Syria, Germany is bullying sanctions, the Dutch are speaking of moral obligations to resist the Iranian nuclear program, and Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's attempt to turn a Sept. 24 speech at Columbia University into propaganda massively backfired. The international environment has deteriorated sharply in the past three years from Tehran's viewpoint -- with the worst developments reserved for the past few weeks. The U.S. State Department even confirmed Monday that it had invited none other than Iran's only ally, Syria, to an international conference on the future of the Palestinian territories. Syria has been on the U.S. no-talk list for years (ever since Damascus ordered the assassination of a former Lebanese prime minister).
The goal is simple: to make Iran feel isolated, make Iran fear that its foes are on the verge of using military force, make Iran feel like talks with the United States are the least-bad option. It is not an illogical strategy, albeit one laden with risks. It assumes that Iran will ultimately find it useful to not just speak with the Americans, but actively cooperate with them on security issues of extreme national importance. After all, Iraq is too far gone for either the United States or Iran to fashion it into some semblance of normality alone.
stratfor.com
-
Israel, Syria and the Glaring Secret
By George Friedman
What happened in the Middle East on Sept. 6?
The first reports came from the Syrians, who said their air defenses fired at an Israeli warplane that had penetrated Syrian airspace and dropped some ordnance on the country's North. The plane then fled toward the Mediterranean at supersonic speeds, the Syrians said, noting that sonic booms had been heard.
A Syrian delegation was meeting Turkish officials about the same time, and the Turks announced that two Israeli fuel tanks had been dropped inside of Turkish territory, one in Gaziantep province and the other in Hatay province. That would mean the aircraft did come under some sort of fire and dropped fuel tanks to increase speed and maneuverability. It also would mean the plane was flying close to Turkish territory or over Turkish territory, at the northwestern tip of Syria.
The Israelis said nothing. It appeared at first glance that an Israeli reconnaissance flight had attracted Syrian attention and got out of there fast, though even that was puzzling. The Israelis monitor Syria carefully, but they have close relations with the Turkish military, which also watches Syria carefully. We would assume they have intelligence-sharing programs and that reconnaissance in this area could have been done by the Turks or, more likely, by Israeli reconnaissance satellites. Yet, an Israeli reconnaissance flight seemed like the only coherent explanation.
What was most striking from the beginning was the relative silence on all sides. The Israelis remained mum, not even bothering to leak a misleading but plausible story. The Syrians, after threatening to take the issue to the U.N. Security Council, have been less vociferous than one would expect. The United States had nothing official to say, but U.S. sources leaked a series of incompatible explanations. The Turks, after requesting an explanation for the fuel tanks, dropped the matter.
The leaks, which seemed to be coming from the Americans, raised the scope of the operation from a reconnaissance to something more. It was U.S. sources who said up to eight aircraft were involved in the operation. Early on, a leak originating in the United States implied that there might have been Israeli commandos involved as well. U.S. leaks also mentioned that a shipment of cement had been delivered to Syria from North Korea a few days before the incident and implied that this shipment might have contained nuclear equipment of some sort that was the real target of the attack. All three countries were silent officially on the intent of the attack, but the Americans were filling in some blanks with unofficial hints.
The media also were filled with a range of contradictory speculation. One story said this was a dry run for an Israeli air attack against Iran. Another said the Israelis were demonstrating their ability -- and hence the U.S. ability -- to neutralize Syrian air defenses as a signal to Iran that it, too, is vulnerable. Some stories also claimed that new missiles, not nuclear materials, were being shipped to Syria. There were many other explanations, but these were either pure speculation or were deliberately being fed to the media in order to confuse the issue.
Officials finally started to go public last week. Israeli opposition leader and former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said he was consulted in advance and supported Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's action in Syria. U.S. President George W. Bush went out of his way -- commenting directly and through his press secretary -- to make it understood that he also knew a raid had been carried out, but had absolutely nothing to say about it. That drew attention to two things. First, the United States knew what was going on. Second, the United States was going to keep the secret -- and the secret was an important one. Between Netanyahu and Bush, the reconnaissance theory was dead. An important operation occurred Sept. 6. It remains absolutely unclear what it was about.
Another leak appeared via the Sunday Times, this time with enough granularity to consider it a genuine leak. According to that report, the operation was carried out by Israeli commandos supported by Israeli aircraft, under the direct management of Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak. It had been planned since June, just after Barak took office, and had been approved by the United States after some hesitation. The target was in fact nuclear "material" provided by North Korea, according to that leak.
All of this makes perfect sense, save one thing. Why the secrecy? If the Syrians have nuclear facilities, the Israelis should be delighted to make it public. Frankly, so should the United States, since the Bush administration has always argued that nuclear proliferation to rogue states, including Syria, is one of the key problems in the world. The Syrians should be spinning the story like crazy as well, denying the nuclear program but screaming about unprovoked Israeli-U.S. aggression. The silence from one or two parties makes sense. The silence from all parties makes little sense.
Looked at differently, Israel and the United States both have gone out of their way to draw attention to the fact that a highly significant military operation took place in Northern Syria, and compounded the attention by making no attempt to provide a plausible cover story. They have done everything possible to draw attention to the affair without revealing what the affair was about. Israel and the United States have a lot of ways to minimize the importance of the operation. By the way they have handled it, however, each has chosen to maximize its importance.
Whoever they are keeping the secret from, it is not the Syrians. They know precisely what was attacked and why. The secret is not being kept from the Iranians either. The Syrians talk to them all the time. It is hard to imagine any government of importance and involvement that has not been briefed by someone. And by now, the public perception has been shaped as well. So, why the dramatic secrecy designed to draw everyone's attention to the secret and the leaks that seem to explain it?
Let us assume that the Sunday Times report is correct. According to the Times, Barak focused on the material as soon as he became defense minister in June. That would mean the material had reached Syria prior to that date. Obviously, the material was not a bomb, or Israel would not have waited until September to act. So it was, at most, some precursor nuclear material or equipment.
However, an intervening event occurred this summer that should be factored in here. North Korea publicly shifted its position on its nuclear program, agreeing to abandon it and allow inspections of its facilities. It also was asked to provide information on the countries it sold any nuclear technology to, though North Korea has publicly denied any proliferation. This was, in the context of the six-party negotiations surrounding North Korea, a major breakthrough.
Any agreement with North Korea is, by definition, unstable. North Korea many times has backed off of agreements that seemed cast in stone. In particular, North Korea wants to be seen as a significant power and treated with all due respect. It does not intend to be treated as an outlaw nation subject to interrogation and accusations. Its self-image is an important part of its domestic strategy and, internally, it can position its shift in its nuclear stance as North Korea making a strategic deal with other major powers. If North Korea is pressed publicly, its willingness to implement its agreements can very quickly erode. That is not something the United States and other powers want to see happen.
Whether the Israelis found out about the material through their own intelligence sources or North Korea provided a list of recipients of nuclear technology to the United States is unclear. The Israelis have made every effort to make it appear that they knew about this independently. They also have tried to make it appear that they notified the United States, rather than the other way around. But whether the intelligence came from North Korea or was obtained independently, Washington wants to be very careful in its handling of Pyongyang right now.
The result is the glaring secrecy of the last few weeks. Certainly, Israel and the United States wanted it known that Syria had nuclear material, and that it was attacked. This served as a warning to other recipients of North Korean nuclear technology -- most especially Iran. At the same time, the United States did not want to publicly embarrass North Korea, out of fear that the North Koreans would simply chuck the disarmament talks. Moreover, Damascus had no interest in publicizing that it had thoughts of a nuclear program, so it quieted down.
We should note that if this theory is true, and the United States and Israel discovered the existence of a Syrian nuclear program only from North Korean information, this would represent one of the most massive intelligence failures imaginable by both Israel and the United States. Essentially, it would mean that, unless this was the first shipment of material to Syria, Israel and the United States failed to detect a Syrian nuclear program on their own. That is possible, but not likely.
It is a neat theory. It might even be a true theory. But it has problems. The biggest problem is why Syria would be trying to obtain nuclear technology. Sandwiched between Israel and Turkey -- a country that has not had great relations with Syria in the past -- and constantly watched by the United States, the probability of it developing a nuclear capability undetected is infinitesimal, and the probability of Israel not taking it out is nonexistent. Moreover, Syria is not Iran. It is poorer, has less scientific and other resources and lacks the capability to mount a decadelong development effort. Syria actually plays a fairly conservative game, taking its risks in Lebanese politics and allowing jihadists to transit through the country on their way to Iraq. Trying to take on Israel or the United States in a nuclear gambit is not the Syrians' style. But certainly they were caught doing something, or they would be screaming to high heaven.
There has been persistent discussion of nuclear material in Syria, which, if we took the words seriously, would tend to indicate that something radioactive, such as enriched uranium or plutonium, was present. If what was delivered was not equipment but radioactive material, the threat might not have been a Syrian nuclear program, but some sort of radioactive device -- a dirty bomb -- that might be handed off to Hezbollah. The head of Israel's military intelligence was quoted as saying something about the attack having re-established Israel's deterrence power after its failures in the 2006 conflict with Hezbollah. Perhaps the problem was that the material was being transferred from North Korea to Syria on its way to Lebanon, possibly to use against Israel.
That would explain Syria's relative silence. Concern that the deal with North Korea will fall apart might keep the United States quiet. But a Syrian transfer of such material to Hezbollah normally would set Israel to raging at the Syrians. The Americans might have kept quiet, but the Israelis would have leaked much earlier than this. Israel would want to use the threat as a tool in its public relations war.
Another reason for the silence could be psychological warfare against Iran. The speculation above might be true in some variant, but by remaining ominously silent, the Israelis and Americans might be trying to shake Iran's nerve, by demonstrating their intelligence capability, their special operations ability and the reach of their air power. With the Israelis having carried out this attack, this very visible secrecy might be designed to make Iran wonder whether it is next, and from what direction an attack might come.
Normally such international game-playing would not interest us. The propensity of governments to create secrets out of the obvious is one of the more tedious aspects of international relations. But this secret is not obvious, and it is not trivial. Though it is true that something is finally being leaked three weeks after the attack, what is being leaked is neither complete nor reliable. It seems to make sense, but you really have to work hard at it.
At a time when the United States is signaling hostile intentions toward Iran, the events in Syria need to be understood, and the fact that they remain opaque is revealing. The secrecy is designed to make a lot of people nervous. Interestingly, the Israelis threw a change-up pitch the week after the attack, signaling once again that they wanted to open talks with the Syrians -- a move the Syrians quickly rebuffed.
When events get so strange that interpretation is a challenge, it usually indicates it was intended that way, that the events are significant and that they could point to further instability. We do not know whether that is true, but Israel and the United States have certainly worked hard to create a riddle wrapped in a mystery.
stratfor
-
Not the war, but a bit of background context:
SAUDI ARABIA: The World Bank on Sept. 25 recognized Saudi Arabia as one of the top global reformers in its annual "Ease of Doing Business" report. Recent reforms in Saudi Arabia improved the kingdom's position from 38th to 23rd in the 178-country ranking. The report calls Saudi Arabia the best place to do business in the entire Middle East and Arab world, ahead of Kuwait (ranked 40th in the world) and the United Arab Emirates (ranked 68th). The Saudi kingdom has made huge strides since 2003 to attract investment, motivated largely by Riyadh's need to engage in damage control after the 9/11 attacks. But the law of unintended consequences is creating another dynamic in the country; reforms to the financial and economic sectors have spilled over into civil society, where Saudis are demanding more freedoms. The challenge for the Saudi government is to maintain power while pushing ahead with reforms, which will not be limited to the money markets.
stratfor.com
-
Iran, Iraq: Upping the Ante with SAMs
Summary
Signs indicate that Iran is planning to supply its militant proxies in Iraq with shoulder-launched surface-to-air missiles. The threat of SAM shipments into Iraq is a useful pressure tactic for Iran to use in its negotiations with the United States over Iraq, but should the threat materialize, Tehran will be crossing a huge redline with Washington.
Analysis
Stratfor has seen indications that Iran is planning to up the ante in Iraq by supplying its militant proxies with shoulder-launched surface-to-air missiles (SAMs). These man-portable air-defense systems (MANPADS) are short range and are only able to shoot down helicopters and other low-flying aircraft. The U.S. military also announced Sept. 30 that it had seized Iranian-made surface-to-air missiles called Misagh-1s being used by insurgents in Iraq.
Iranian military and logistical support to Iraqi Shiite militants is nothing new. But adding SAMs to the weapons mix opens up a whole new can of worms.
U.S.-supplied Stinger missiles were eagerly and quite successfully employed by the Afghan mujahideen during the Soviet war in Afghanistan. These point-and-shoot, easily transportable, heat-seeking SAMs are an excellent tool, allowing insurgents to wage asymmetrical warfare. Sunni insurgents in Iraq employed SAMs, likely old SA-7s and SA-14s, to cause a surge of chopper crashes in early 2007, though most helicopter losses to hostile fire in Iraq have been attributed to small-arms and rocket-propelled grenade fire. Iran's Misagh-1s are a knockoff the Chinese QW-1 Vanguard, but still would do an extremely effective job of creating a worst-case scenario for U.S. forces in Iraq.
The Iranians have had plenty to think about since U.S. President George W. Bush announced that the United States essentially would be staying the course in Iraq by keeping enough U.S. troops in the country to appease the Sunnis and make Iran sweat. But even though the United States is standing firm on keeping the Iranians at bay and resisting calls to withdraw, Iran might not be entirely convinced that its chances of filling the power vacuum in Iraq are completely shot.
The Iranians face two options now that Bush has announced the U.S. policy for Iraq moving forward, and they may not have decided which strategy to pursue:
1. Accept that policy as a reality, continue with the usual military posturing and negotiate seriously with the Bush administration for a security agreement that recognizes Iranian influence in Iraq, or
2. Entertain the idea of negotiations, but focus its efforts on reversing U.S. policy under a new administration by raising the stakes further for U.S. forces in Iraq.
Bush's Iraq strategy can be defended so long as U.S. casualties do not shoot up to unacceptable levels. Chopper crashes in Iraq are attention-grabbing events that can take a heavy toll on U.S. public morale, and could create pressure on the U.S. administration to shift its strategy. Moreover, helicopters are absolutely integral to the conduct of U.S. operations in Iraq, and will only become more so as troops become spread more thinly in the coming year.
At this point, the Iranians cannot bet that the tide will turn enough in Congress for Republican senators to side with the Democrats and pressure Bush into a withdrawal. Time and again, Bush has defied the odds and battled off pressure in Congress knowing that no senator in his or her right mind would dare cut funding to troops. But if Iran is looking beyond the Bush presidency, it could be working toward bleeding U.S. forces in Iraq to the point at which any incoming U.S. president would be pressured into carrying out a withdrawal.
This strategy, of course, carries its fair share of consequences. With war threats looming, Iran has no guarantee that the United States would continue to be hamstrung in Iraq and refrain from attacking Iran, especially when it becomes widely apparent that the SAMs used to shoot down U.S. choppers are made in Iran. Iranian SAMs would be much more traceable than explosively formed projectiles, the deadliest form of IED, and it would not take much to make the connection to Tehran should Washington decide to make a case for war.
The Iranians probably are well aware that they would be heading for trouble if the SAM threat materializes. For now, the prospect of Iranian-supplied SAMs to Iraqi insurgents is enough to get Washington's attention. As long as this threat is used as a pressure tactic, negotiations between Washington and Tehran have a chance of going somewhere. But if U.S. choppers start going down, a shift in Iranian thinking will immediately be made apparent -- and it will be Washington's turn to make a decision on grand strategy in Iraq.
stratfor
-
Iraq: The Sectarian Tables Turn
Summary
Iraq's Shiite-dominated government issued a public criticism Oct. 4 condemning the United States for creating Sunni militias that operate outside the law. The formation of U.S.-backed Sunni militias to counter Iranian-backed Shiite militias fits into a larger U.S. strategy to pressure the Iranians into serious negotiations over Iraq. Iran, however, still appears to be undecided on how to progress in its own Iraq strategy.
Analysis
The Shiite-dominated government of Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki sharply criticized what it called a U.S. policy to create Sunni militias that are operating outside the control of the central government. The United Iraqi Alliance (UIA) -- Iraq's largest Shiite bloc, which has close ties to Iran -- issued a statement Oct. 4 accusing these Sunni militias of kidnapping, killing and blackmailing Shiite militiamen belonging to Shiite leader Muqtada al-Sadr's Mehdi Army in Baghdad's western Saydiya neighborhood. These U.S.-backed groups, the UIA says, are setting up checkpoints without coordinating with the government.
The tables appear to be turning in Iraq. The complaints that the Shiite bloc is now issuing are exactly the same complaints that Iraq's Sunni bloc has voiced over Iranian-backed Shiite death squads. And this is precisely the dynamic that the United States is aiming to create in order to push the Iranians into serious negotiations.
Iran's biggest advantage in post-Saddam Hussein Iraq was that it had strong and disciplined Shiite militias lying in wait for the very moment that Hussein fell. These militias gave Iran a cohesive and well-trained militant proxy to carry out its objectives in Iraq. In addition, Iran's principal allies in Iraq's Shiite bloc, namely Abdel Aziz al-Hakim's Supreme Islamic Iraqi Council party, were unified enough to guarantee a Shiite majority in the Iraqi government.
The Sunnis, on the other hand, were in disarray. They lacked a unified political voice and insurgent leader to effectively counter the Shia on both the political and militant fronts. The Sunnis themselves were deeply divided among the jihadist factions, the Islamist-leaning Sunni nationalist factions and the secular former Baathists.
However, lately the United States has focused its efforts on re-creating Iran's worst nightmare: the rise of another hostile Sunni Baathist regime. By striking deals with key Sunni tribal leaders, the United States has lessened its own workload by getting Iraqi Sunni nationalists to turn on the jihadists, but this tactical strategy also fits into the broader U.S. strategy against Iran. Fashioning a potentially potent Sunni front made up of former Baathists to counter the Shia could ultimately force the Iranians into cutting a deal, or so Washington hopes. Factional differences still exist within the Sunni militant community, and uniting the bulk of Iraq's Sunni community into a single force against the Iranians will be no easy task. But most of Iraq's Sunni nationalist and Islamist insurgent groups have formed alliances in recent months that will allow them to pool their resources and build up a more formidable militant front in anticipation of a post-U.S. withdrawal bloodbath with the Shia. Many of Iran's key Shiite allies in the government also have been taken out in insurgent attacks that have exacerbated intra-Shiite tensions and complicated Iran's position in Iraq.
Now that these newly-fashioned, U.S.-backed Sunni militias are deliberately working outside the control of Iraq's Shiite-dominated government, a crisis of confidence is brewing in Iraq's already fractured Shiite bloc.
Iran and Iraq's Shia have a choice to make. They can dig their heels in, raise the stakes for U.S. forces in Iraq, push for a U.S. withdrawal and prepare for the coming bloodbath with the Sunnis. Or they can decide that it is not worth the risk of losing what they have gained thus far to a Sunni force receiving strong backing from Washington and Riyadh. Iran also might be unwilling to risk dealing with any surprises from the next U.S. president. This calculus is what would push the Iranians closer to talks and Iraq's Shia into working out a viable power-sharing arrangement with the Sunnis.
At this point the Iranians appear to be undecided. On one hand, there are strong forces within Iran advocating talks with the United States. On the other hand, Iran is signaling that it is willing to up the stakes by shipping surface-to-air missiles into Iraq. There are also rumors going around Baghdad that new Shiite mercenaries have shown up on the streets and are getting paid $5,000 for every U.S. soldier they kill.
The Iranians could very well risk a military confrontation with the United States should they decide to bleed U.S. forces and take on the newly-formed Sunni militias directly. Without any guarantee that the United States would withdraw from Iraq to allow the Iranians to reap their gains, this is a risky move. We expect the Iranians to err on the side of caution, but the coming months will reveal whether they are prepared to move toward an understanding with the United States over Iraq.
stratfor
-
Geopolitical Diary: Talk of More U.S.-Iranian Talks
U.S. President George W. Bush told a group of businesspeople Oct. 3 that he would be prepared to negotiate with Iran if it suspended its nuclear weapons program. He repeated the call for negotiations in an Oct. 5 interview on the Al Arabiya television network. Iran responded Sunday by saying that it welcomes Bush's call for negotiations, but that it will not suspend its nuclear program as a precondition for such talks.
A spokesman for the Iranian Foreign Ministry said, "Iran is ready for talks in a just, unconditional manner with mutual respect." He added, however, "Suspension of enrichment is an old debate. We have many times said that new issues should be discussed in negotiations." Most interestingly, the spokesman said that while Bush's remarks weren't new, they were "clearer than previous times."
That might well be true. Bush has not heretofore been this open about his willingness and desire to deal with the Iranians. However, the nuclear issue is still on the table. Bush wants to discuss Iraq with the Iranians, but only after their nuclear weapons program is shut down. The Iranians have no intention of abandoning their program prior to the negotiations. While we do think they would be prepared to shut it down in the long run, they will want to use it as a bargaining tool to extract maximum concessions from the United States before letting go of it. There is no way they would consider shutting down the program prior to talks.
The United States knows that. It does not expect the Iranians to concede this point. Therefore, one of two things is going on. The first possibility is that Washington wants to create a clear, public record that it has gone the extra mile in trying to work with Tehran, in order to convince allies and the general public that it has exhausted all of its reasonable nonmilitary options. It also is possible that the United States has in fact decided to upgrade its talks with the Iranians and will, in due course, negotiate over the negotiations, ultimately conceding that there will be talks prior to an end to the program.
Our prior view, after the surge began, was that the United States expected to engage Iran in serious negotiations over Iraq because neither side felt in control of the situation. Our view shifted as the Petraeus report came in -- we expected it to be modeled after the National Intelligence Estimate, increasing the likelihood of a U.S. withdrawal from Iraq. Instead, the opposite happened.
A general consensus, including most congressional Democrats, has emerged that recognizes that a unilateral and rapid withdrawal of U.S. forces is not going to happen. Moreover, Bush highlighted his improved relations with the Sunnis on his last visit to Iraq. A U.S.-Sunni alliance is a worst-case outcome for the Iranians, so it is possible that they might want to go back to the table. For the Americans, on the other hand, a relationship with the Sunnis is a thin reed on which to hang the U.S. strategy in Iraq. They do need to talk to the Iranians.
That makes the case that this offer of talks from the Americans could be real. And two such offers in the same week is more than just building the public record in preparation for an attack. Our gut tells us that Bush might be serious about talking right now.
The answer, if any, will come in backchannel discussions over the status of Iran's nuclear weapons program. The United States can't engage in talks if the program is going forward full-bore -- the politics would be impossible. On the other hand, Iran can't talk if doing so means abandoning the program. That would weaken Tehran's entire negotiating position. The only middle ground -- and this could be fantasy -- is the suspension of some aspect of the program without stopping it. If this is a serious opening, that is what is being discussed now. The formula should be clear to both sides and after a period of posturing, a compromise can emerge. Or, the offer is nothing more than atmospherics, and like other negotiating opportunities between the United States and Iran, it will go away.
We hate resorting to the ugly "we'll see" as an ending -- but that is exactly where we need to end this. Probably neither side really understands the position of the other. Indeed, each side might not have fully defined its own position yet. The public discussion is of enormous significance, but the unknowns are of equal importance.
So we'll see.
-----------------
stratfor
-
Geopolitical Diary: Emerging Turkish-Syrian Relations
The Turkish parliament on Wednesday overwhelmingly approved a government motion seeking a one-year authorization for multiple incursions into northern Iraq to root out Kurdish rebels. Earlier in the day, Syrian President Bashar al Assad, who is on a three-day trip to Turkey, backed Ankara's plan to conduct cross-border military operations in Iraq. At a press conference with Turkish President Abdullah Gul, al Assad said, "Without a doubt, we support the decisions taken by the Turkish government against terrorism and we accept them as a legitimate right of Turkey."
At a time when Turkey is faced with opposition to its plans to send forces into Iraq from almost every quarter of the international community, Syria is the one state actor that has openly come out in support of Turkish plans. The only similar statement came from Iraqi Vice President Tariq al-Hashimi -- the country's highest-ranking Sunni official -- who was in the Turkish capital the same day as al Assad. Al-Hashimi said it would be legal for Ankara to take whatever steps are necessary to preserve its national security should the Iraqi government fail to contain the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) militants.
Iraq, however, is not a polity in the traditional sense and al-Hashimi's comments reflect his partisan preferences rather than official Baghdad policy. Therefore the Syrian stance is unique and raises the question: Why is Damascus coming out so strongly in support of Ankara on this matter? A superficial explanation would be that the Syrians and the Turks share a common threat from Kurdish separatists in their respective countries. But that does not explain the larger context of the emerging Turkish-Syrian relationship, especially given that the two sides have had their share of bilateral problems (to put it mildly) over the PKK issue. In 1998, the Syrians expelled PKK chief Abdullah Ocalan, to whom they had been providing safe haven until the Turks threatened military action.
Bilateral relations between the two have come a long way since those days. In fact, in the last few years, there has been an unprecedented warming between the two countries. Al Assad's current visit to Turkey is his second in three years. In 2004, he became the first Syrian head of state to visit Turkey. In July 2007, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan's chief foreign policy adviser, Ahmet Davutoglu, traveled to Damascus to encourage the al Assad government to play a constructive role in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Al Assad's latest trip to Ankara comes on the heels of Turkish Foreign Minister Ali Babacan's visit to Damascus last week, during which the Syrians were assured that Ankara would not facilitate any Israeli military action against Syria.
The Syrians were pleased to hear this in light of the Sept. 6 Israeli airstrike against a weapons facility near Syria's border with Turkey. Syria clearly needs good relations with Turkey because of its increasingly tense dealings with Israel, as well as with the United States. Just days ago, the Syrian president acknowledged that Ankara is acting as a mediator between Syria and Israel. Syria's situation is such that it can meaningfully deal with the Israelis only through Turkey.
Because of their ties to the Iranians, the Syrians have cut themselves off from the Arab states, especially those that have relations with Israel. Relations with Iran have also brought Syria closer to conflict with Israel. The Syrians need to offset the perception that they are a regional spoiler, and getting closer to the Turks could allow them to do so. Syria is taking note of the shift in Turkish behavior toward the United States, which works to its advantage. With Turkey adopting an anti-American stance, Damascus hopes to be able to leverage its budding ties to Ankara as a means of ending its isolation.
But Turkey does not attach the same degree of importance to its relations with Syria. The Turkish calculus is in fact very different. The Middle East is Turkey's main sphere of influence, and Syria is its immediate southern neighbor. It is therefore in Ankara's interest to see stability in Damascus, and playing the role of mediator between the Syrians and the Israelis helps it achieve this objective.
But this is not of immediate importance to the Turks. The single-most important item on Turkey's regional foreign policy agenda is the situation in Iraq and the ability of the PKK to use Iraqi Kurdish-controlled areas to pose a security threat to Turkey. Ankara will soon initiate military operations in northern Iraq, for which it has secured Syria's support. But beyond diplomatic support and possibly some level of tactical assistance on the ground, Syria has little to offer Turkey on the issue of Iraq or any other matter.
In short, the Syrians need the Turks more than the Turks need the Syrians. Turkey is also not about to help Syria at the cost of its relations with Israel. Syrian-Iranian relations are a major cause of concern for the Arabs, and the Turks very much value the influence they enjoy in Arab capitals. The downturn in U.S.-Turkish relations is also a temporary phenomenon, whereas the strain in Washington's ties with Damascus is much more chronic. For all these reasons, the warming of relations between Turkey and Syria is not likely to lead to a real strategic partnership between the two neighbors.
Stratfor
-
Geopolitical Diary: Iran's Debate Over Risk
October 23, 2007 02 17 GMT
While intense diplomacy swirled around the possible intervention of Turkey into Iraq, the internal political situation in Iran became even murkier this weekend than it usually is. Iran's lead negotiator on nuclear issues, Ali Larijani, resigned his position as head of the Supreme National Security Council (SNSC) on Oct. 20. He was replaced by a fairly junior official, Saeed Jalili, who is deputy foreign minister for European and American affairs, but also is being described as President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's right-hand man.
Negotiators get replaced routinely, and in general this would be no more interesting than a similar replacement in the United States. But this case is different, given the critical importance of nuclear negotiations to Iran, the fact that a major summit just occurred between Ahmadinejad and Russian President Vladimir Putin, and the fact that the replacement has kicked off some interesting dissent in Iran. A key aide to Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei -- who ultimately holds decisive power in Iran -- criticized the resignation, saying it was the wrong time for a change. Later the government announced that Larijani (who was reappointed to the SNSC as Khamenei's special representative) would accompany his replacement to a meeting with the EU foreign policy chief, Javier Solana. Then reports surfaced to the effect that Khamenei himself had relieved Larijani.
All of this seems to pivot around Putin's visit to Iran. That visit produced two results. The first was that the Russians made it clear that they opposed any American attack on Iran, and implied that they might take some action in the event of such an attack. Russia cannot do anything militarily in Iran, but there are several vulnerable points that are of interest to the United States where the Russians could act. The second outcome of the summit was that Putin not only made no clear commitment on continuing to aid Iran's nuclear development, but in fact appears to have asked the Iranians to halt development on their own. In other words, in return for Russian strategic support, the Iranians would have to put their nuclear program on ice. The offer makes perfect sense from the Russian point of view: Iran remains a thorn in the side of the United States while the justification for an American attack is removed.
The offer might be attractive from the Iranian point of view as well. In the long run, a strategic partnership with Russia could be of more value to Iran than a few nuclear weapons (which probably would be destroyed by the Americans or Israelis anyway). Clearly the Iranians find this possibility attractive: The Iranian press is filled with stories praising Putin and his statesmanship.
But the offer appears to have kicked off an internal debate. The conventional view is that Ahmadinejad wants to build nuclear weapons under any circumstances, while others such as Larijani want to negotiate away the program -- and Khamenei is balancing between the two factions. Our view is a bit more complicated than this.
The issue in the Iranian leadership is not whether to negotiate away the nuclear program, but what the price should be. The offer of a Russian strategic relationship is attractive, but it hardly addresses all of Iran's needs and aspirations. Trading the nuclear program for that alone seems to put too low a value on it.
Larijani's personal views are unclear, but it is always assumed that the negotiator wants the negotiation to succeed, which would make him a moderate in the sense of being prepared to bargain away the program. That's possible, but it is not certain. In any case, the debate does not appear to us to be between hard-liners and moderates. That implies an ideological twist to it. Rather, the debate is between those who are prepared to incur some risk and those who want to minimize it.
Iran is a country of enormous bellicosity. Interestingly, when you look at its foreign policy, it tends to take few overt risks, preferring covert and deniable operations, and gestures like the nuclear program. Iran gets invaded more often than it invades. Accepting the Russian proposal might be attractive to much of the leadership because it reduces risk, including the risk of having a nuclear program. (This option is not entirely without risk, however -- the Soviets occupied northern Iran during World War II and were reluctant to leave.)
For Ahmadinejad, on the other hand, now is precisely the moment when risks should be taken. The Americans are weak, Iraq is fragmented, the Turks are up in arms. Ahmadinejad seems to be saying that alignment with the Russians is nice, but the Russians will have to bring more to the table to end the nuclear program. Specifically, they will have to bring the Americans to the table. The faction supporting Larijani seems to be saying that alignment with Russia is quite enough and it is time to reduce the risks. And given the confusion we are seeing, Khamenei seems to be waffling.
stratfor
-
AFGHANISTAN: Sources inform Stratfor that Taliban fighters in southwestern Afghanistan claim to have received AK-47 assault rifles from Iran and treatment for battlefield wounds in Iranian hospitals.
TURKEY: Turkish Foreign Minister Ali Babacan will visit Iran on Oct. 27, IRNA reported. An unnamed Turkish Foreign Ministry official reportedly said Babacan will discuss the regional situation, particularly in Iraq, and conflict with the Kurdistan Workers' Party. The visit comes before foreign ministers of Iraq's neighboring countries are set to meet in Istanbul, the official added.
IRAQ, TURKEY: Oil continues to flow from Iraq to Turkey through a pipeline near Iraq's Kurdish region despite threats and sabotage attacks from Kurdish rebels and insurgents, Reuters reported, citing an oil shipper. Iraq has pumped nearly 400,000 barrels per day of oil to Turkey for the seventh consecutive day, the shipper said.
RUSSIA, IRAN: During Russian President Vladimir Putin's Oct. 16 visit to Tehran, Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei asked him to order Russian experts to help Iran figure out how Israel jammed Syrian radars prior to the Sept. 6 air raid, a Stratfor source in Hezbollah said. Iran wants to rectify the problem associated with the failure of Syrian radars because Iran uses similar equipment , the source added.
stratfor
-
Geopolitical Diary: Washington's Kurdish Bind
Turkish forces have not yet moved into Iraq. Despite claims of continued clashes with Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) guerrillas inside of Turkey, the important news is what hasn't happened: There has been no major incursion of Turkish troops into Iraq's Kurdish region. We suspect that the pause is in response to U.S. requests for more time to address the PKK issue with the Iraqi government.
However, Ankara on Sunday sent Washington a deliberate signal about the consequences of not producing a solution acceptable to Turkey: Turkish Foreign Minister Ali Babacan visited Tehran for meetings with his Iranian counterpart, Manouchehr Mottaki. In addition, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad phoned Turkish President Abdullah Gul to discuss the crisis.
Iranian-Turkish relations can best be described as "proper" -- meaning they are not particularly warm, nor are they as venomous as U.S.-Iranian relations. However, the Kurdish question is one on which Turkey and Iran have historically agreed -- and while not quite as critical to Iran as it is to Turkey, it is a major national security issue for both. In talking to the Iranians on multiple levels this weekend, the Turks were hinting to the Americans just how bad the situation could become. Any alignment of Turkey and Iran, on any level, would strike at the heart of U.S. strategy in the region, which is focused on the containment of Iran.
The Americans are caught in a bind. Since 1991, the United States has defended Kurdish interests inside of Iraq, carefully walking a tightrope with Turkey on the issue. If the United States were to back off its defense of the Kurds now, it would throw its entire Iraq strategy into chaos. It is more than just a question of the Kurdish role in the Iraqi government. If the United States went so far as to abandon the Kurds in favor of maintaining good relations with Turkey, the signal to all groups in Iraq would be that American guarantees will last only until other U.S. interests take precedence. Many in Iraq have been making that argument anyway, but a shift in U.S. support for the Kurds would confirm it. The Sunnis and Shia who have been considering alignment with the United States would certainly have to reconsider their position.
On the other hand, if Washington simply backs up the Kurds, the Turks are apparently prepared to reconsider not only their relations with the United States, but also their relations with the Iranians. To say that this would be a regional earthquake understates the matter.
Thus, the United States has to figure out a way to finesse the issue, getting the Kurds in Iraq not only to clamp down on the PKK, but also to turn over some of their members. However, clamping down is one thing; turning over leaders and members of the PKK to the Turks is quite another, and would pose huge political problems for the Kurds in Iraq. While factionalized, the Kurds still comprise a single ethnic group, and turning over PKK members who have conducted attacks on behalf of Kurdish independence will go deeply against the grain of the community. In fact, their very fragmentation decreases their propensity to turn each other in: Whoever did it might be regarded as a traitor to the Kurdish cause.
Turkey is trying to give the United States time to sort this out, but the Turks themselves don't have a lot of time. Public feelings in Turkey about PKK attacks are running high. There is also a sense that the United States is indebted to Turkey for permitting about 70 percent of the supplies used by U.S. forces in Iraq to flow through Turkish ports and over Turkish roads -- in spite of Turkey's opposition to the U.S. invasion. If Washington won't deliver the PKK but instead sides with the Kurds, the popular pressure on the Turkish government to shift its position regarding the United States will be enormous.
If you've ever wondered what it looks like between a rock and a hard place, ask the Bush administration. That's where it is on this issue. The United States can't threaten the Kurds too much without losing credibility with other parties it is wooing in Iraq; the Kurds can't simply turn over other Kurds to the Turks; and the Turks can't settle for anything less.
At the moment, the Iranians are doing everything they can to look statesmanlike. A situation that makes Ahmadinejad look like a calm and deliberate statesman -- that is what the space between a rock and a hard place looks like.
stratfor
-
Its getting really tricky to figure out in which thread to post about the Kurds!
============
1223 GMT -- TURKEY, IRAQ, IRAN -- Turkish Kurdish rebels are leaving Iraqi Kurdistan for Iran to avoid attack from the Turkish army, The Independent newspaper reported Nov. 6, citing Osman Ocalan, a former leader of the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) and brother of imprisoned PKK leader Abdullah Ocalan. The move, he said, is a tactic among PKK members. "When they feel pressure in one country, they move to another." Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan is to meet U.S. President George W. Bush in Washington on Nov. 6 to discuss ways to deal with the PKK in Iraqi Kurdistan.
stratfor
-
Iraq, Iran: Prelude to a Pipeline
November 12, 2007 16 53 GMT
A spokesman for Iraq's South Oil Co. said Nov. 12 that the firm is working on a pipeline between the southern Iraqi region of Basra and the Iranian port city of Abadan. Such a pipeline would be very easy to build, logistically and financially, and would be a significant financial asset to both sides. But it requires a U.S.-Iranian understanding on Iraq.
A pipeline linking Basra to Abadan can be constructed quickly and inexpensively, given that 6.2 miles of flat terrain separates the two. It would help transport Iraqi crude from the Al Faw Peninsula through the Shatt al-Arab waterway to the refinery in Abadan, located in Iran's southwestern oil-rich Khuzestan region.
More important, though, the pipeline could increase Iraqi crude exports by roughly 400,000 barrels per day (the capacity of the Abadan refinery) -- which, at current prices, translates into a daily energy revenue increase of approximately $35 million. Iran's Abadan refinery could make use of cheaper Iraqi crude, allowing Tehran to export a similar amount of its own crude to the wider world. In addition to bringing together two major petroleum complexes on the northern side of the Persian Gulf, it also could help bolster pan-Shiite relations between Iran and Iraq.
Though the costs are few and the benefits many, this pipeline has a major prerequisite: a political settlement between the United States and Iran on Iraq. In recent days, there have been a few positive signs underscoring some progress in the U.S.-Iranian dealings, but a final deal remains elusive.
Another factor in a U.S.-Iranian deal -- one that would affect the pipeline's viability -- is finding a way to handle the oil mafia, anti-Iranian political forces and rival Shiite militias in the Basra region. The Iranians and their Iraqi Shiite allies would have to deal with these rogue elements to reap the benefits of such a pipeline. Since the intra-Iraqi Shiite situation is linked to a U.S.-Iranian deal, it would have to be sorted out more or less in the same time frame.
This pipeline is representative of the energy ties Iran and Iraq can enjoy if a political deal can be clinched.
stratfor
-
Iraq: Positive Signs
By George Friedman
The latest reports concerning the war in Iraq suggest the situation is looking up for the United States. First, U.S. military and Iraqi civilian casualties continue to fall. Second, there are confirmed reports that Sunni insurgents controlled by local leaders have turned on al Qaeda militants, particularly those from outside the country. Third, the head of U.S. Central Command, in an interview with the Financial Times, implied that an attack against Iran is a distant possibility.
It is tempting to say the United States has turned the corner on the war. The temptation might not be misplaced, but after many disappointments since 2003, it is prudent to be cautious in declaring turning points -- and it is equally prudent not to confuse a turning point with a victory. That said, given expectations that the United States would be unable to limit violence in Iraq, and that Sunni insurgents would remain implacable -- not to mention the broad expectation of a U.S. attack against Iran -- these three points indicate a reversal -- and must be taken seriously.
The most startling point is the decline in casualties, and particularly the apparent decline in sectarian violence. Explaining this is difficult. It could simply be the result of the more efficient use of U.S. troops in suppressing the insurgency and controlling the Shiite militias. If that were the only explanation, however, it would be troubling. Standard guerrilla warfare doctrine holds that during periods of intense enemy counterinsurgency operations, guerrillas should cease fighting, hide weapons and equipment and blend into the civilian population. Only after the enemy shifts its area of operations or reduces operational tempo should the guerrillas resume combat operations. Under no circumstances should insurgents attempt to fight a surge.
Therefore, if we were considering U.S. military operations alone, few conclusions could be drawn until after the operations shifted or slowed. In addition, in a country of 25 million, the expectation that some 167,000 troops -- many of them not directly involved in combat -- could break the back of an entrenched insurgency is optimistic. The numbers simply don't work, particularly when Shiite militias are added to the equation. Therefore, if viewed simply in terms of military operations, the decline in casualties would not validate a shift in the war until much later, and our expectation is that the insurgency would resume prior levels of activity over time.
What makes the situation more hopeful for the United States is the clear decline in civilian casualties. Most of those were caused not by U.S. combat operations but by sectarian conflict, particularly between Sunnis and Shia. Part of the decline can be explained by U.S. operations, but when we look at the scope and intensity of sectarian fighting, it is difficult to give U.S. operations full credit. A more likely explanation is political, a decision on the part of the various sectarian organizations to stop operations not only against the Americans but also against each other.
There were two wars going on in Iraq. One was against the United States. The more important war, from the Iraqi point of view, was the Sunni-Shiite struggle to determine who would control Iraq's future. Part of this struggle, particularly on the Shiite side, was intrasectarian violence. All of it was political and, in a real sense, it was life and death. It involved the control of neighborhoods, of ministries, of the police force and so on. It was a struggle over the shape of everyday life. If either side simply abandoned the struggle, it would leave a vacuum for the other. U.S. operations or not, that civil war could not be suspended. To a significant extent, however, it has been suspended.
That means that some political decisions were made, at least on the local level and likely at higher levels as well, as several U.S. authorities have implied recently. Civilian casualties from the civil war would not have dropped as much as they have without some sort of political decisions to restrain forces, and those decisions could not be made unilaterally or simply in response to U.S. military pressure. It required a set of at least temporary political arrangements. And that, in many ways, is more promising than simply a decline because of U.S. combat operations. The political arrangements open the door to the possibility that the decline in casualties is likely to be longer lasting.
This brings us to the second point, the attacks by the Sunnis against the jihadists. Immediately after the invasion in 2003, the United States essentially attempted to strip the Sunnis -- the foundation of Saddam Hussein's strength -- of their power. The U.S. de-Baathification laws had the effect of eliminating the Sunni community's participation in the future of Iraq. Viewing the Shia -- the victims of Hussein's rule -- as likely interested not only in dominating Iraq but also in retribution against the Sunnis, the Sunni leadership, particularly at the local level, supported and instigated an insurgency against U.S. forces. The political purpose of the insurgency was to force the United States to shift its pro-Shiite policy and include the Sunnis, from religious to Baathist, in the regime.
Given the insurgency's political purpose, the power of U.S. forces and the well-organized Shiite militias, the Iraqi Sunnis were prepared to form alliances wherever they could find them. A leading source of support for the Iraqi Sunnis came from outside Iraq, among the Sunni jihadist fighters who organized themselves under the banner of al Qaeda and, weapons in hand, infiltrated the country from outside, particular through Syria.
Nevertheless, there was underlying tension between the local Sunnis and the jihadists. The Iraqi Sunnis were part of the local power structure, many having been involved in the essentially secular Baath Party, and others, more religious, having remained outside the regime but ruled by traditional tribal systems. The foreign jihadists were revolutionaries not only in the sense that they were prepared to fight the Americans but also in that they wanted to revolutionize -- radically Islamize -- the local Sunni community. By extension, they wanted to supplant the local leadership with their own by supporting and elevating new local leaders dependent for their survival on al Qaeda power.
For an extended period of time, the United States saw the Sunni insurgency as consisting of a single fabric. The local insurgents and the jihadists were viewed as the same, and the adopted name of the jihadists, al Qaeda, caused the Americans to see them as the primary enemy. Over time, and particularly since the death of al Qaeda in Iraq leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the United States has adopted a more nuanced view of the Sunni insurgency, drawing a distinction between the largely native Iraqi insurgents and the largely foreign jihadists.
Once this occurred and the United States began to make overtures to the native Iraqi insurgents, the underlying tensions between the foreign jihadists and the Iraqi insurgents emerged. The Sunnis, over time, came to see the jihadists as a greater danger to them than the Americans, and by the time U.S. President George W. Bush last visited Iraq, several Sunni leaders were prepared to be seen publicly with him. The growing animosities eventually turned into active warfare between the two factions, with al Qaeda being outnumbered and outgunned and the natives enjoying all of the perks of having the home-court advantage.
From the U.S. point of view, splitting the Sunni insurgency politically and militarily was important not only for the obvious reasons but also for influencing the Shia. From a Shiite point of view -- and now let's introduce Iran, the primary external backer of Iraq's Shiites -- the worst-case scenario would be the re-establishment of a predominantly Sunni government in Baghdad backed by the U.S. military. The political accommodation between the United States and the Iraqi Sunnis represented a direct threat to the Shia.
It is important to recall that Hussein and his Baathist predecessors -- all Sunnis leading a predominantly Sunni government -- were able to dominate the more numerous Shia for decades. The reason was that the Shia were highly fragmented politically, more so than the Sunnis. This historic factionalization made the Shia much weaker than their numbers would have indicated. It was no accident that the Sunnis dominated the Shia.
And the Shia remained fragmented. While the Sunnis were fighting an external force, the Shia were fighting both the Sunnis and one another. Given those circumstances, it was not inconceivable that the United States would try, and perhaps succeed, to re-establish the status quo ante of a united Iraq under a Sunni government -- backed by U.S. power until Iraq could regenerate its own force. Of course, that represented a reversal of the original U.S. goal of establishing a Shiite regime.
For Iran, this was an intolerable outcome because it would again raise the possibility of an Iran-Iraq war -- in which Iran might take another million casualties. The Iranian response was to use its influence among the competing Shiite militias to attack the Sunnis and to inflict casualties on American troops, hoping to force a withdrawal. Paradoxically, while the jihadists are the Iranians' foe, they were useful to Tehran because the more they attacked the Shia -- and the more the Shia retaliated -- the more the Sunnis and al Qaeda aligned -- which kept the United States and the Sunnis apart. Iran, in other words, wanted a united Sunni-jihadist movement because it would wreck the emerging political arrangements. In addition, when the Iranians realized that the Democrats in the U.S. Congress were not going to force a U.S. withdrawal, their calculations about the future changed.
Caught between al Qaeda and the militias, the Sunnis were under intense pressure. The United States responded by conducting operations against the jihadists -- trying to limit engagements with Iraqi Sunni insurgents -- and most important, against Shiite militias. The goal was to hold the Sunnis in the emerging political matrix while damaging the militias that were engaging the Sunnis. The United States was trying increase the cost to the Shia of adhering to the Iranian strategy.
At the same time, the United States sought to intimidate the Iranians by raising, and trying to make very real, the possibility that the United States would attack them as well. As we have argued, the U.S. military options are limited, so an attack would make little military sense. The Iranians, however, could not be certain that the United States was being rational about the whole thing, which was pretty much what the United States wanted. The United States wanted the Shia in Iraq to see the various costs of following the Iranian line -- including creating a Sunni-dominated government -- while convincing the Iranians that they were in grave danger of American military action.
In this context, we find the third point particularly interesting. Adm. William Fallon's interview with the Financial Times -- in which he went out of its way to downplay the American military threat to Iran -- was not given by accident. Fallon does not agree to interviews without clearance. The United States was using the interview to telegraph to Iran that it should not have undue fear of an American attack.
The United States can easily turn up the heat again psychologically, though for the moment it has chosen to lower it. By doing so, we assume Washington is sending two messages to Iran. First, it is acknowledging that creating a predominantly Sunni government is not its first choice. Also, it is rewarding Iran for the decline in violence by the Shiite militias, which undoubtedly required Tehran to shift its orders to its covert operatives in Iraq.
The important question is whether we are seeing a turning point in Iraq. The answer is that it appears so, but not primarily because of the effectiveness of U.S. military operations. Rather, it is the result of U.S. military operations coupled with a much more complex and sophisticated approach to Iraq. To be more precise, a series of political initiatives that the United States had undertaken over the past two years in fits and starts has been united into a single orchestrated effort. The result of these efforts was a series of political decisions on the part of various Iraqi parties not only to reduce attacks against U.S. troops but also to bring the civil war under control.
A few months ago, we laid out four scenarios for Iraq, including the possibility that that United States would maintain troops there indefinitely. At the time, we argued against this idea on the assumption that what had not worked previously would not work in the future. Instead, we argued that resisting Iranian power required that efforts to create security be stopped and troops moved to blocking positions along the Saudi border. We had not calculated that the United States would now supplement combat operations with a highly sophisticated and nuanced political offensive. Therefore, we were wrong in underestimating the effectiveness of the scenario.
That said, a turning point is not the same as victory, and the turning point could turn into a failure. The key weaknesses are the fragmented Shia and the forces and decisions that might emerge there, underwritten by Iran. Everything could be wrecked should Iran choose to take the necessary risks. For the moment, however, the Iranians seem to be exercising caution, and the Shia are responding by reducing violence. If that trend continues, then this really could be a turning point. Of course, any outcome that depends on the Shia and Iranians doing what the United States hopes they will do is fragile. Iran in particular has little interest in giving the United States a graceful solution unless it is well compensated for it. On the other hand, for the moment, Tehran is cooperating. This could simply be another instance of Iran holding off before disappointing the United States, or it could mean it has reason to believe it will be well compensated. Revealing that compensation -- if it is coming -- is the next turn of the wheel.
-
Russia: A Wrench in U.S. Plans for the Middle East
stratfor
Summary
Not to be outshined by the United States, the Russian government has been busy forging Middle East peace negotiations of its own, particularly between Syria and Israel over the Golan Heights. Though Iran is already nervous at the thought of Syria coming to terms with Israel, the mullahs in Tehran can be somewhat assured that the Russians have not really set their sights on a comprehensive peace agreement. Instead, Moscow is playing its own crafty game of diplomacy to sabotage Washington's efforts at Annapolis.
Analysis
Russia has been spending a good deal of time in the Middle Eastern sandbox lately. From hosting Hamas leaders in Moscow to backing up Iran against the United States and playing the role of messenger between Israel and Syria, there is no conflict in the region that Moscow has not thrown itself into.
As part of this aggressive diplomatic campaign, former Prime Minister Yevgeny Primakov, the premier Russian troubleshooter on all issues Middle Eastern (going back to the Soviet days), paid a private visit to Damascus in early November to deliver a message from President Vladimir Putin. It is believed that Primakov played a role in convincing Syrian President Bashar al Assad to send a representative to Annapolis and abandon plans for a Hamas-led "countersummit" in Damascus. The Primakov visit was followed by a Nov. 15 trip by Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Alexander Sultanov and Russian Middle East envoy Sergei Yakovlev to Tel Aviv, where the two met with Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni and Israeli National Security Council Secretary Ilan Mizrahi.
The next step in the game was revealed Nov. 29, when the Israeli daily Maariv reported that Sultanov is working on an Israeli-Syrian peace plan that would give Syria sovereignty over the Golan Heights, but provide a long-term lease for Israel to hold onto the strategic 7,296-foot Mount Hermon that it captured in the 1967 war. Information circulating in Moscow suggests that these moves are part of the Kremlin's efforts to convince the Syrians and Israelis to participate in a bilateral summit in Russia that would center on the issues of the Golan Heights and Syria's role in Lebanon.
For all this diplomatic maneuvering, the Russians are not exactly sincere in their efforts to bring about peace in the Middle East. Rather, the Russians intend to shift the track set by Washington at the Annapolis conference toward much thornier issues -- involving players the United States wants to avoid. By bringing up sticky issues such as the Golan Heights (which Washington had attempted to sidestep at the Annapolis conference) and organizing negotiations with Hamas (which Washington is trying to pretend does not exist as it moves negotiations forward between Fatah and Israel), Russia is strategically bending U.S. efforts at Annapolis out of shape -- all under the aegis of progress, of course. The Russian calculus is simple: shift the track toward "negotiations" that are certain to lead nowhere.
Despite Russia's true intentions, Iran is not comfortable in the slightest with the idea of Syria inching toward talks with Israel and the United States. These fears likely have been compounded by the sudden turnaround in Lebanon, where the pro-West opposition and the United States have pretty much agreed to granting Syria's wish in having Lebanon's army chief, Michel Suleiman, take the presidency. Unless Syria's negotiations with Washington are held in concert with Iranian negotiations with the United States over Iraq, Tehran does not want Damascus in the negotiating picture. However, given that any progress on the Golan Heights issue with Israel must include the question of Syria's support for Hamas and Hezbollah -- Israel's two primary national security concerns and the two bargaining chips that Syria is unprepared to sacrifice at this point -- the Iranians can have reasonable assurance that these talks will not lead anywhere. The Russians are not interested in alliance management in the Middle East. This is about throwing a wrench into U.S. plans to create a new order in the region.
-
stratfor
Iran: Toward a Regional Realignment
December 13, 2007 17 40 GMT
Summary
Iran's president will soon perform the Hajj at Saudi Arabia's invitation. Meanwhile, Iran and Egypt have made reciprocal high-level diplomatic visits for the first time since 1979. The moves are part of a major geopolitical realignment in the region, one that serves both U.S. and Iranian interests.
Analysis
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is to perform the Hajj in Saudi Arabia on invitation from King Abdullah, Ahmadinejad's senior adviser Mojtaba Samareh Hashemi, said Dec. 13. Meanwhile, high-level Egyptian and Iranian diplomats have made visits to each other’s countries for the first time since the Iranian Revolution.
These moves are part of a wider geopolitical realignment. They also are occurring with U.S. approval as Washington and Tehran pursue their respective interests.
Ali Akbar Javanfekr, media adviser of the Iranian president, Dec. 12 described Ahmadinejad's trip to Saudi Arabia as an important event in the relations between the two countries because it marks the first time a Saudi monarch has invited an Iranian head of state to perform the Hajj. The Dec. 18 visit will be Ahmadinejad's third to the kingdom since taking office in 2005.
Given the ethnic, sectarian and geopolitical tensions between the two nations, a Saudi monarch inviting an Iranian head of state to make the Hajj is a major development. The current context of the Iraq conflict, in which moves toward an international settlement are being made, increases the invitation's significance. Since the Saudis are conferring an honor upon the Iranians that would not have happened unless the two sides had reached -- or are close to reaching -- a modus vivendi on Iraq and other issues, Ahmadinejad's trip represents a sort of political Hajj.
Elsewhere in the region, the Egyptians are warming up to the Iranians. Egyptian Deputy Foreign Minister for Asian Affairs Hussein Derar visited Iran in the first such trip since diplomatic ties between Egypt and Iran were severed in 1979. Iranian Majlis Speaker Gholam-Ali Haddad-Adel also will be going to Cairo, in late January 2008. In an unprecedented development earlier in December, Ahmadinejad attended the Gulf Cooperation Council summit meeting in the Qatari capital, Doha.
Neither the Saudis nor the Egyptians can engage in such diplomacy with the Iranians without taking the United States into confidence. The Arab states have wanted to reach a diplomatic arrangement with the Iranians, but have not wanted to do so without U.S. involvement, which they see as a security guarantee. For its part, the United States is engaged in gestures to Iran, the most obvious example of which is the release of the National Intelligence Estimate stating that the Iranians halted their pursuit of nuclear weapons in 2003. Progress on the U.S.-Iranian track has allowed the Arabs to conduct their own negotiations with the Iranians.
A major geopolitical realignment is in the works, under which Iran is being integrated into the regional security system. This is because leaving Iran out of any such arrangement in post-Baathist Iraq is dangerous for the security of the Arab states and damaging to U.S. interests. Realignment with Iran is the only way Washington can balance its need to deal with Iran on the Iraq question while preventing Tehran from threatening the Arabs. By working with the Arab states to have them seek closer relations with Iran, the United States has found a way to get around criticism from its Arab allies that Washington has not involved them in the Iraq talks.
The Iranians have two strategic aims in all this: First, they want to emerge from their status as a pariah state without having to follow the route of the Libyans. Second, Iran seeks to become a regional powerhouse.
The Saudi and Egyptian overtures facilitate Tehran's first goal, since Iran can be reintegrated into the international arena without appearing to have completely caved in to international pressure. As to the second objective, the Iranians know that without an acknowledgment from the Arabs and the United States, any Iranian attempt to behave as a regional player will be seen as a hostile act that could lead to war. By gaining space in the regional power configuration, Tehran has made progress toward international player status.
U.S.-Iranian dealings on Iraq have facilitated Arab-Iranian diplomatic engagement. Whether this process will lead toward normalization of U.S.-Iranian bilateral relations remains to be seen.
-
Assassination Central
January 26, 2008; Page A10
There's a fearsome consistency to the assassinations that have bedeviled Lebanon for the past three years. The victims are invariably killed by remotely controlled car bombs. Invariably, too, they are opponents, or obstacles, to Syria's designs in the colony it supposedly surrendered nearly three years ago.
Yesterday marked another such murder, this time of Captain Wissam Mahmoud Eid, a terrorism investigator who had already survived one assassination attempt in 2006. Eid had been involved in the forensic investigation following the February 2005 assassination of former premier Rafik Hariri, and later in the Lebanese government's battle with Fatah al-Islam, a Sunni terrorist group based in a refugee camp north of Beirut. Neither role could have endeared him to Damascus, which is generally believed to have played the main part both in Hariri's death and Fatah al-Islam's uprising.
Eid's murder ought to be a powerful reminder that Syria's purposes in the region remain intractable and malign. Yet as Detlev Mehlis, the German investigator who formerly led the U.N. inquiry into Hariri's murder, makes clear in the "Weekend Interview," the willingness to prosecute the case to a just conclusion seems to be petering out.
Much of the blame here lies with Washington. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi put to rest whatever lingering fears Damascus might have had about U.S. intentions with her visit in April. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice followed up by inviting Syria to November's Mideast conference in Annapolis, and Hillary Clinton promises to offer diplomatic carrots to Damascus if she is elected. The killings will continue in Beirut, as long as nobody save the Lebanese seem to care.
WSJ
-
Closely related to the preceding post:
WSJ
Detlev Mehlis
Justice for Lebanon
By MICHAEL YOUNG
January 26, 2008; Page A11
Berlin
Detlev Mehlis speaks slowly. So when he says, "I haven't seen a word in his reports during the past two years confirming that he has moved forward," there is time for the meaning to sink in.
The person Mr. Mehlis is referring to is Serge Brammertz, a Belgian prosecutor who, until a few weeks ago, headed the United Nations investigation looking into the February 2005 assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri. In December of that year, Mr. Brammertz succeeded Mr. Mehlis as commissioner of the investigating team, known as the International Independent Investigation Commission (UNIIIC). Now, Mr. Mehlis is making the rather serious charge that Mr. Brammertz may not have done much while working on the Hariri case.
On Feb. 14 it will be exactly three years since Hariri was killed in a massive bomb explosion, with 21 others, in Beirut. The event sparked weeks of protests directed against Syria -- which most Lebanese blamed for the killing -- demanding an end to its 29-year military presence in Lebanon.
The so-called "Cedar Revolution" led to a transformation of the political system when Syria withdrew its army, and its adversaries won a majority of seats in Parliament in subsequent elections. Since then, Damascus has tried to reassert its power in Lebanon -- but the Hariri investigation, if it points an accusatory finger at Syria, is its Achilles heel.
The Security Council has established a Lebanese-international tribunal under Chapter VII of the U.N. Charter to try the suspects. The tribunal, now being set up in The Hague, is an exceptional creation, much like UNIIIC was. This week a U.N. official revealed that judges had been selected. Never before has the Security Council overseen a political murder investigation.
With Mr. Brammertz having recently left Lebanon to take charge of a special tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, Mr. Mehlis has decided to speak up. It is a rare occasion that he has agreed to do so on the record -- and one of the last, he insists. As a senior prosecutor at the Superior Prosecutor's Office in Berlin, he is keen to close his own personal file on the UNIIIC years, but also to warn that the vitality of the Hariri inquiry may be disappearing. "A new commissioner has been installed. So it's a good time for a very last summing up on my part," Mr. Mehlis says.
Whether UNIIIC was exceptional or not, Mr. Mehlis made it a point of appearing an unexceptional man while commissioner -- but one with pit-bull persistence. He'd shown that persistence before. It took him nine years to bring convictions for the 1986 bombing of the LaBelle discotheque in Berlin. He accused Libyan officials of being behind the attack. That experience, he says, left him with the view "that justice prevails, but you have to have patience."
But Mr. Mehlis is plainly worried that justice might not prevail in the Hariri investigation. It "appears to have lost the momentum it had until January 2006," he says. "When I left we were ready to name suspects, but it seems not to have progressed from that stage."
Indeed, Mr. Brammertz never named new suspects in his investigation, though he did mention he'd identified "persons of interest." Mr. Mehlis is dismissive: "If you have suspects you don't allow them to roam free for years to tamper with evidence."
Particularly odd to Mr. Mehlis is that his successor reopened analysis of the crime scene upon arriving in Lebanon. That not only cast doubt on the German's methods, it wasted valuable time. Mr. Brammertz's conclusions ended up confirming those of Mr. Mehlis, namely that Hariri had been killed by an above-ground explosion.
But Mr. Mehlis sees such behavior as emblematic of a broader problem -- namely that UNIIIC has told us little we didn't already know before Mr. Brammertz became its commissioner: that Hariri was killed for political reasons and that there were several layers of participation in the conspiracy. "We needed two years of investigative endeavor to discover this?" he laughs.
When Mr. Mehlis first arrived in Beirut, he visited the families of three of the victims in the Hariri blast and frequently talked to the media. Mr. Brammertz, in contrast, gave no interviews and never once addressed the Lebanese on what the case personally meant to him.
But what if Mr. Brammertz did not reveal his cards for tactical reasons? After all, he asked to maintain the secrecy of his investigation. Mr. Mehlis responds that to him, as a German, the notion of a secret investigation sounds ominous. "The Lebanese public has to be informed, even if there are setbacks in the investigation. In a democracy people have the right to know, particularly when a prime minister was murdered and people don't trust the authorities. This was an opportunity to restore credibility to the justice system."
Mr. Mehlis also sees a practical rationale for more openness by an investigator: "To have the support of the public, to encourage witnesses to come forward with information, and for governments to send specialized investigators, you need to give them an idea of what you are doing."
The Hariri investigation was always seen by its defenders as a lever to render political assassination in the Middle East more difficult. In Lebanon particularly, where dozens of leading politicians and officials have been killed since the 1970s (the latest a police intelligence officer on Friday, among whose duties was reportedly following the Hariri affair), this was the one crime, people felt, that international attention would not allow to go unpunished.
Lebanese optimism aside, the point was a valid one: Respect for the rule of law, so lacking in Arab societies, could only benefit from a successful legal process to punish the guilty. That rationale remains persuasive today, as more and more people in the West doubt that Arab societies can be democratic. The Hariri investigation was there to say that democracy without law is a chimera.
His actions as UNIIIC commissioner left few doubts as to who Mr. Mehlis thought was behind the crime. He asked the Lebanese authorities to arrest four prominent pro-Syrian generals from Lebanon's security services and Presidential Guard. He took affidavits from Syrian officials, including intelligence officers. He even sought to question Syria's president, Bashar Assad.
Mr. Mehlis departed before this could go through, and he doesn't know what later happened. Media reports suggested that Mr. Brammertz held "a meeting" with the Syrian leader, but that is legally different, Mr. Mehlis explains, than a formal judicial interview, which even Lebanon's former president submitted to.
I remind him that two of his key Syrian witnesses did not seem particularly reliable. One told a press conference in Damascus that his testimony was fraudulent; another, a former intelligence officer, later became a suspect in Hariri's murder at Mr. Mehlis's request, and has made contradictory statements.
Mr. Mehlis responds that in such crimes you cannot be choosy about who to deal with. "What do you expect, white angels? Those two gave us a lot of information, which we could sometimes corroborate with information received elsewhere. In the end, the tribunal will determine their credibility, and ask why they agreed to sign their statements." Mr. Mehlis adds: "Maybe the witnesses were there to discredit the investigation, but that can help us determine who wants to discredit the investigation."
I put it to Mr. Mehlis that, whatever the UNIIIC discovers, there is palpable international reluctance to carry the Hariri case to its conclusion. Few at the U.N., for example, are eager to destabilize Syria's regime, assuming its involvement is proven.
His answer is ambiguous: "As a prosecutor you can't prosecute governments and countries; you prosecute individuals. When I headed UNIIIC, there was a will to get to the bottom of the crime -- shown in all the Security Council resolutions on the matter. Why not now? One of the most helpful [member nations] was Russia, which persuaded Syria to comply with the resolutions. Even with states having different interests, common understandings can be reached."
So what about today? "Traditionally, there is tension between politics and justice and I accepted that [former U.N. Secretary-General Kofi] Annan did not want more problems because of the Hariri case. Yet he was always very supportive of my work and well-being. The U.N. did not interfere in my efforts and had no leverage over me, as I was not after a position in the organization. Even had the U.N. tried, there were investigators from 17 countries who might have thought differently, making this impossible."
Mr. Mehlis doesn't so much fear a cover-up as that the Hariri case will stall. The tribunal, he predicts, will be set up this summer, but "people should not expect a trial within the next two to three years, unless the investigation regains momentum." Otherwise, what might happen? "I fear that suspects will end up in a judicial no-man's land, with Lebanon claiming they are under the U.N.'s jurisdiction, and the U.N. saying that they must remain under Lebanese jurisdiction."
What Mr. Mehlis is saying, in so many words, is that a tribunal does not a trial make. The tribunal will be formed and judges nominated, but unless the prosecutor has something solid to take to court, the process may lead nowhere. Still, he is mildly optimistic: "Definitely, no one can abolish this tribunal. I may not be happy about the time frame, but am deeply convinced the case can be solved and will be solved."
Mr. Mehlis also cautions that the U.N. would suffer from failure in the Hariri affair. "The U.N.'s image is at stake, particularly in Lebanon, where people put high hopes, perhaps too high, in the Hariri investigation."
So, what is his advice to Daniel Bellemare, Mr. Brammertz's Canadian successor? "Concentrate on the Hariri case itself; don't try to write a history book. Focus on the whos, hows and whys of the crime. Analysis can never replace solid investigative police work."
Most important, Mr. Mehlis says the Hariri case must remain in the public's consciousness. "For years the LaBelle case dragged on with small successes and failures, but it was always kept alive on the prosecution's side by my working to inform the media; and on the victims' side because their families created pressure groups. I feel that in the Lebanese case, the families of the deceased can certainly play a much more active role."
That may be true, but victims or their families rarely have a voice in the Arab world. The fate of the Hariri tribunal will help determine if that changes. Beyond the assassination of a high-profile politician, the question is whether the international community finally agrees that things need to be different in the Middle East, or just goes back to accepting the old ways.
Mr. Young is opinion editor at the Daily Star newspaper in Beirut and a contributing editor at Reason magazine.
-
stratfor
Geopolitical Diary: The Gulf States and the Shiite Conundrum
March 10, 2008
Kuwait has experienced an unusual series of Shiite protests. The protests in the usually controlled society were sparked by the arrests of Shiite mourners and government members who organized a rally after the killing of top Hezbollah commander Imad Mughniyah. The Kuwaiti Shia — who comprise roughly 30 percent of the emirate’s population — rarely organize, let alone rally or protest. The recent unrest has served to remind the government of previous Shiite incidents, such as when militants hijacked two airliners in the 1980s.
The incidents have put the Kuwaiti government in a difficult position. It can’t ignore pro-Hezbollah sentiments among some of its Shiite citizens. But it cannot adopt a tough stance against them either without risking inflaming Shia throughout Persian Gulf Arab states. The Kuwaiti Shia themselves probably will not let things spin out of control, but even so, unrest could spread to Saudi Arabia or Bahrain, where 20 percent and 70 percent of the population, respectively, is Shia.
Thus far, Shia in all three Gulf Arab states have not been openly pro-Iranian or Pan-Shia. But simmering Shiite unrest could boil over, given tensions arising over Iraq and Lebanon combined with perceptions of unfairness at home. The Sunni Arab states fervently don’t want this to come to pass, and so far they don’t have a serious problem on their hands. But their fears could prompt action that might produce the very outcome they are trying to avoid.
The present concerns of the Gulf states — which for the most part are all U.S. allies — are dredging up fears from decades past of a potential Shiite fifth column with an Iranian sponsor. Tehran already is causing regional tensions with its support of the Shia in Iraq and of Hezbollah in Lebanon. These tensions could become a conflagration if the Shiite populations in the Sunni states of the Gulf catch fire.
For its part, Iran is delighted at the timing of the pro-Hezbollah sympathies in the Gulf states. Tehran is coming off of an embarrassing week after Washington snubbed the Iranians when they turned up in Iraq for another set of negotiations. The Iranians have since been using excuses such as “scheduling issues” as reasons the Americans didn’t show up. In reality, the United States doesn’t feel it needs to be at the table with Iran at the moment. Instead, Washington is waiting things out with the Iranians, preferring for the moment to make Tehran sweat over a potential showdown between Israel and Hezbollah in Lebanon.
This means the Iranians need a lever in their negotiations with the United States. Selecting the Gulf Shia is a great option that scares many of Iran’s opponents in the game, from Sunni Arab states to the United States. But Iran may not proceed too far down this path, since if it does not score a knockout punch with its Sunni Arab neighbors, it will have created new implacable foes for itself. And Iran doesn’t need any more of those just now.
-
A Mystery in the Middle East
By George Friedman
Stratfor
The Arab-Israeli region of the Middle East is filled with rumors of war. That is about as unusual as the rising of the sun, so normally it would not be worth mentioning. But like the proverbial broken clock that is right twice a day, such rumors occasionally will be true. In this case, we don't know that they are true, and certainly it's not the rumors that are driving us. But other things — minor and readily explicable individually — have drawn our attention to the possibility that something is happening.
The first thing that drew our attention was a minor, routine matter. Back in February, the United States started purchasing oil for its Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR). The SPR is a reserve of crude oil stored in underground salt domes. Back in February, it stood at 96.2 percent of capacity, which is pretty full as far as we are concerned. But the U.S. Department of Energy decided to increase its capacity. This move came in spite of record-high oil prices and the fact that the purchase would not help matters. It also came despite potential political fallout, since during times like these there is generally pressure to release reserves. Part of the step could have been the bureaucracy cranking away, and part of it could have been the feeling that the step didn't make much difference. But part of it could have been based on real fears of a disruption in oil supplies. By itself, the move meant nothing. But it did cause us to become thoughtful.
Also in February, someone assassinated Imad Mughniyah, a leader of Hezbollah, in a car bomb explosion in Syria. It was assumed the Israelis had killed him, although there were some suspicions the Syrians might have had him killed for their own arcane reasons. In any case, Hezbollah publicly claimed the Israelis killed Mughniyah, and therefore it was expected the militant Shiite group would take revenge. In the past, Hezbollah responded not by attacking Israel but by attacking Jewish targets elsewhere, as in the Buenos Aires attacks of 1992 and 1994.
In March, the United States decided to dispatch the USS Cole, then under Sixth Fleet command, to Lebanese coastal waters. Washington later replaced it with two escorts from the Nassau (LHA-4) Expeditionary Strike Group (ESG), reportedly maintaining a minor naval presence in the area. (Most of the ESG, on a regularly scheduled deployment, is no more than a few days sail from the coast, as it remains in the Mediterranean Sea.) The reason given for the American naval presence was to serve as a warning to the Syrians not to involve themselves in Lebanese affairs. The exact mission of the naval presence off the Levantine coast — and the exact deterrent function it served — was not clear, but there they were. The Sixth Fleet has gone out of its way to park and maintain U.S. warships off the Lebanese coast.
Hezbollah leaders being killed by the Israelis and the presence of American ships off the shores of Mediterranean countries are not news in and of themselves. These things happen. The killing of Mughniyah is notable only to point out that as much as Israel might have wanted him dead, the Israelis knew this fight would escalate. But anyone would have known this. So all we know is that whoever killed Mughniyah wanted to trigger a conflict. The U.S. naval presence off the Levantine coast is notable in that Washington, rather busy with matters elsewhere, found the bandwidth to get involved here as well.
With the situation becoming tense, the Israelis announced in March that they would carry out an exercise in April called Turning Point 2. Once again, an Israeli military exercise is hardly interesting news. But the Syrians apparently got quite interested. After the announcement, the Syrians deployed three divisions — two armored, one mechanized — to the Lebanese-Syrian border in the Bekaa Valley, the western part of which is Hezbollah's stronghold. The Syrians didn't appear to be aggressive. Rather, they deployed these forces in a defensive posture, in a way walling off their part of the valley.
The Syrians are well aware that in the event of a conventional war with Israel, they would experience a short but exciting life, as they say. They thus are hardly going to attack Israel. The deployment therefore seemed intended to keep the Israelis on the Lebanese side of the border — on the apparent assumption the Israelis were going into the Bekaa Valley. Despite Israeli and Syrian denials of the Syrian troop buildup along the border, Stratfor sources maintain that the buildup in fact happened. Normally, Israel would be jumping at the chance to trumpet Syrian aggression in response to these troop movements, but, instead, the Israelis downplayed the buildup.
When the Israelis kicked off Turning Point 2, which we regard as a pretty interesting name, it turned out to be the largest exercise in Israeli history. It involved the entire country, and was designed to test civil defenses and the ability of the national command authority to continue to function in the event of an attack with unconventional weapons — chemical and nuclear, we would assume. This was a costly exercise. It also involved calling up reserves, some of them for the exercise, and, by some reports, others for deployment to the north against Syria. Israel does not call up reserves casually. Reserve call-ups are expensive and disrupt the civilian economy. These appear small, but in the environment of Turning Point 2, it would not be difficult to mobilize larger forces without being noticed.
The Syrians already were deeply concerned by the Israeli exercise. Eventually, the Lebanese government got worried, too, and started to evacuate some civilians from the South. Hezbollah, which still hadn't retaliated for the Mughniyah assassination, also claimed the Israelis were about to attack it, and reportedly went on alert and mobilized its forces. The Americans, who normally issue warnings and cautions to everyone, said nothing to try to calm the situation. They just sat offshore on their ships.
It is noteworthy that Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak canceled a scheduled visit to Germany this week. The cancellation came immediately after the reports of the Syrian military redeployment were released. Obviously, Barak needed to be in Israel for Turning Point 2, but then he had known about the exercise for at least a month. Why cancel at the last minute? While we are discussing diplomacy, we note that U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney visited Oman — a country with close relations with Iran — and then was followed by U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates. By itself not interesting, but why the high-level interest in Oman at this point?
Now let's swing back to September 2007, when the Israelis bombed something in Syria near the Turkish border. As we discussed at the time, for some reason the Israelis refused to say what they had attacked. It made no sense for them not to trumpet what they carefully leaked — namely, that they had attacked a nuclear facility. Proving that Syria had a secret nuclear program would have been a public relations coup for Israel. Nevertheless, no public charges were leveled. And the Syrians remained awfully calm about the bombing.
Rumors now are swirling that the Israelis are about to reveal publicly that they in fact bombed a nuclear reactor provided to Syria by North Korea. But this news isn't all that big. Also rumored is that the Israelis will claim Iranian complicity in building the reactor. And one Israeli TV station reported April 8 that Israel really had discovered Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction, which it said had been smuggled to Syria.
Now why the Bush administration wouldn't have trumpeted news of the Syrian reactor worldwide in September 2007 is beyond us, but there obviously were some reasons — assuming the TV report is true, which we have no way of establishing. In fact, we have no idea why the Israelis are choosing this moment to rehash the bombing of this site. But whatever their reason, it certainly raises a critical question. If the Syrians are developing a nuclear capability, what are the Israelis planning to do about it?
No one of these things, by itself, is of very great interest. And taken together they do not provide the means for a clear forecast. Nevertheless, a series of rather ordinary events, taken together, can constitute something significant. Tensions in the Middle East are moving well beyond the normal point, and given everything that is happening, events are moving to a point where someone is likely to take military action. Whether Hezbollah will carry out a retaliatory strike or Israel a pre-emptive strike in Lebanon, or whether the Israelis' real target is Iran, tensions systematically have been ratcheted up to the point where we, in our simple way, are beginning to wonder whether something has to give.
All together, these events are fairly extraordinary. Ignoring all rhetoric — and the Israelis have gone out of their way to say that they are not looking for a fight — it would seem that each side, but particularly the Americans and Israelis, have gone out of their way to signal that they are expecting conflict. The Syrians have also signaled that they expect conflict, and Hezbollah always claims there is about to be conflict.
What is missing is this: who will fight whom, and why, and why now. The simple explanation is that Israel wants a second round with Hezbollah. But while that might be true, it doesn't explain everything else that has happened. Most important, it doesn't explain the simultaneous revelations about the bombing of Syria. It also doesn't explain the U.S. naval deployment. Is the United States about to get involved in a war with Hezbollah, a war that the Israelis should handle themselves? Are the Israelis going to topple Syrian President Bashar al Assad — and then wind up with a Sunni government, or worse, an Israeli occupation of Syria? None of that makes a lot of sense.
In truth, all of this may dissolve into nothing much. In intelligence analysis, however, sometimes a set of not-fully-coherent facts must be reported, and that is what we are doing now. There is no clear pattern; there is no obvious direction this is taking. Nevertheless, when we string together events from February until now, we see a persistently escalating pattern of behavior. In fact, what we can say most clearly is that there is escalation, without being able to say what is the clear direction of the escalation or the purpose.
We would like to wrap this up with a crystal clear explanation and forecast. But we can't. The motives of the various actors are opaque; and taken separately, the individual events all have quite innocent explanations. We are not prepared to say war is imminent, nor even what sort of war there would be. We are simply prepared to say that the course of events since February — and really since the September 2007 attack on Syria — have been startling, and they appear to be reaching some sort of hard-to-understand crescendo.
The bombing of Syria symbolizes our confusion. Why would Syria want a nuclear reactor and why put it on the border of Turkey, a country the Syrians aren't particularly friendly with? If the Syrians had a nuclear reactor, why would the Israelis be coy about it? Why would the Americans? Having said nothing for months apart from careful leaks, why are the Israelis going to speak publicly now? And if what they are going to say is simply that the North Koreans provided the equipment, what's the big deal? That was leaked months ago.
The events of September 2007 make no sense and have never made any sense. The events we have seen since February make no sense either. That is noteworthy, and we bring it to your attention. We are not saying that the events are meaningless. We are saying that we do not know their meaning. But we can't help but regard them as ominous.
-
Geopolitical Diary: Iranian Escalation and the Saudi Connection
April 8, 2008
Syria decided on Tuesday to postpone releasing the findings of its investigation into the Feb. 12 assassination of Hezbollah operations chief Imad Mughniyah just as Iranian media outlet, Fars News Agency, reported through its Persian language service that Syrian authorities had detained a Saudi Arabian intelligence official for allegedly participating in the assassination. According to the Fars report, the Saudi official’s Syrian girlfriend bought the two vehicles used in the bombing that killed Mughniyah. We are also told that Prince Bandar bin Sultan, a top Saudi national security official, masterminded the operation.
While Damascus is refraining from officially implicating Riyadh in the assassination, the Iranians have decided to escalate matters with the Saudis, their chief rivals in the Arab/Muslim world.
In fact, the conflicts in both Iraq and Lebanon (and to a lesser degree in the Israeli-Palestinian theatre) represent a struggle between the Saudis and Iranians for influence over the predominantly Arab Middle East. However, this struggle did not begin with the rise of Iran and the Arab Shia when the Baathist regime was ousted in Iraq at the hands of the United States nearly five years ago.
Instead, the Saudi-Iranian rivalry truly began at the foundation of the Islamic republic in Tehran during the 1979 Islamic Revolution. Up until that point, Saudi Arabia saw itself as the virtually unchallenged leader of the Arab/Islamic world. Saudi Arabia claimed unrivaled status as the preeminent nation-state in the largely Sunni Islamic world, given that its founding principle was Islam (albeit Wahhabi) coupled with the fact that that the Kaaba was housed in Mecca while the Mosque of the Prophet was located in Medina.
Alongside its identity as an Islamic state, Saudi Arabia is also a pro-western country with the largest oil resources in the Middle East. More importantly it was a key U.S. ally in the region. But, the autocratic nature of the regime coupled with its western alignment made Saudi Arabia a target of resentment among emerging radical Islamists. The establishment of a radical Islamist (though Shiite) regime in Iran, which overthrew the pro-western Iranian monarchy of the Shah, led to the rise of the worst Saudi nightmare — a regional state with comparable energy resources and a much larger military force. This new power challenged Saudi Arabia for leadership of the Islamic world by employing a radical brand of Islam that appeared more attractive to the Arab/Muslim masses who were disillusioned with what they perceived as the moribund version of official Islam promoted by a corrupt Saudi regime.
For the longest time, the Saudis took comfort from the fact that the Persian and Shiite character of the clerical regime in Tehran would stifle an Iranian challenge.
Another key factor that kept the Saudis comfortable was the fact that Iraq was ruled by Saddam Hussein. This created a buffer separating the Iranians from the Arabian Peninsula. Furthermore, Iraq (a Shiite majority state dominated by the Sunni minority) kept Iran occupied with eight years of war and forced the newly formed Islamic republic to temper its regional ambitions. Tehran therefore reached an informal and uncomfortable accommodation of sorts with Riyadh.
The most that the Iranians were able to do was help create Hezbollah in Lebanon and align with Syria. It was not until the U.S. invasion of Iraq, which removed a major threat to the Iranians, that Tehran was presented with an opportunity to revisit its regional ambitions by empowering pro-Iranian Iraqi Shia in Baghdad. As a result, the return of the Iranian/Shiite threat has been the single largest security nightmare for the Saudis.
Realizing that there is not much that can be done to check Iranian gains in Iraq, the Saudis are trying to strike back in the Levant by creating a coalition against Hezbollah while forcing Syria out of the Iranian orbit. Here is where Saudi and Israeli interests converge. A behind the scenes cooperation has emerged between the two with Prince Bandar playing a key role. This collaboration would explain why the Iranians linked him to the Mugniyah assassination. Emboldened by their growing influence in Iraq, the Iranians now feel that they can afford to up the ante with the Saudis, and hence the leak via Fars.
It is unlikely that the Iranians or the Saudis will come to blows because of these rising tensions, but their rivalry has just intensified. To what degree the Saudis can play the Persian/Shiite card against Tehran and how far the Iranians can exploit Saudi alignment with the United States and Israel against Riyadh in this race for regional domination remains to be seen. From Washington’s point of view, so long as it exists, this conflict is perfect and one that it can use to advance its own regional interests.
stratfor
-
http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20080413...nrestirankurds
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Kurdish rebels in Iraq threaten to attack Iran by Shwan Mohammed
Sun Apr 13, 7:26 AM ET
MOUNT QANDIL, Iraq (AFP) - A Kurdish rebel group based in northern Iraq threatened on Sunday to launch bomb attacks inside Iran if Tehran fails to halt anti-Kurdish policies in the Islamic country.
ADVERTISEMENT
Pejak (Party of Free Life of Kurdistan) warned it has the ability to "carry out bombings against Iranian forces" inside Iran.
Ronahi Ahmed, a member of Pejak's political bureau, told AFP from the group's hideout in Qandil mountain in northern Iraq that the rebels were ready for a long fight with Tehran.
"We can't stand handcuffed when Iran is chasing us on daily basis. We have the ability to confront Iran inside Tehran. We are not accepting any threat from anybody," she said.
"We don't accept the religious suppression that is being carried out by the Iranians. We totally reject it."
Ahmed said the group had recently attacked Iranian forces across the border.
"Last month our people were able to infiltrate Mahkook town in northwest Iran. They killed dozens of Iranian soldiers. In another incident in Iran's Miryuwan town our guerrillas killed six soldiers," she said.
"Iran should be aware that we have a long arm that can strike at significant places inside Iran, especially in the northwest reaching Tehran."
The Iranian military often shells Iraqi border villages in an attempt to flush out Kurdish guerrillas, sending residents fleeing from their homes.
Pejak is an anti-Iranian offshoot of the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), a Kurdish rebel movement fighting to carve out an independent state in southeastern Turkey since 1984 in a conflict that has killed more than 37,000 people.
The PKK and Ankara's troops fought fierce battles in March inside Iraq after Turkey launched a ground offensive.
"If they (Iran) continue to follow the policy of (Mahmoud) Ahmadinejad, then the battle will be more severe and the region where we are staying will be hit by a war," Ahmed said.
Tehran alleges that Washington supports Pejak in its fight against Iran, but Ahmed denied the allegation.
"We have no relations with the Americans and Iran's claim that we have an alliance with America is not true. America does not back or fund us. We depend on supplies from our own people," she said.
Ahmed's statement comes as mystery still surrounds an explosion in a mosque in Iran's southern city of Shiraz on Saturday that killed 11 people and wounded at least 191.
Some officials insist the blast was accidental, but others said it could have been caused by a bomb.
-
Geopolitical Diary: Iran’s al-Sadrite Problem
April 16, 2008
Stratfor
The Associated Press reported Tuesday that differences have surfaced between the U.S. and Iraqi governments on how to deal with radical Shiite leader Muqtada al-Sadr.
While Shia-dominated Baghdad had assumed a far tougher attitude towards al-Sadr — wanting to eliminate him as a political force altogether — Washington is seeking to accommodate the Shiite leader in the political process.
Meanwhile, as the Americans and the Iraqis figure out what to do with al-Sadr, the Iranians have their own set of problems with his movement. Iran enjoys a significant amount of influence over al-Sadr, giving the country the ability to rein him in, especially on several recent occasions. But the relationship between Iran and the maverick cleric-to-be is both complex and problematic. While the Iranians are providing al-Sadr with the opportunity to establish his clerical credentials by allowing him to pursue his studies in their seminary city of Qom, they have also used punitive tools to keep him in line.
One tool includes a murder case filed in an Iranian court against al-Sadr by the family of Ayatollah Abdul-Majid al-Khoei, an assassinated Iraqi Shiite cleric, according to an April 10 report in the UK-based Saudi news website Elaph. Al-Khoei was gunned down by unidentified assailants in Najaf in April 2003 when he returned from exile in London following the toppling of the Baathist regime. The murder victim was the son of Grand Ayatollah Sayyid Abul-Qassim al-Khoei, an internationally renowned Iraqi Shiite cleric and the mentor of Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani.
Initially, the cleric’s family filed a case with Iraqi authorities blaming al-Sadr along with 27 other individuals for the murder. Although a judge issued an arrest warrant for al-Sadr, it was never executed. Overall, U.S. and Iraqi authorities did not pursue the matter. They decided to back off given the power of his Medhi Army militia and Iraq’s unstable political situation.
Frustrated with the situation, al-Khoei’s family decided to take the matter to the Iranians. The case was brought to the attention of a special court established by the Islamic Republic founder Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini that is designed to prosecute clerics who violate the law. It seems the case has stalled there. Although it has not been pursued, it also had not been dismissed.
Given certain jurisdictional issues, the Iranians cannot technically prosecute al-Sadr since he is neither an Iranian national nor a cleric. Furthermore, al-Khoei’s family members are ideological rivals to the Iranians. In fact, Tehran views them as U.S. lackeys and has reveled in seeing them suffer setbacks.
However, the lingering case still provides the Iranians with a handy method of keeping al-Sadr in check and managing his ability to upset its plans for Iraq. But the power of the Iranians to intimidate al-Sadr only extends so far, given his large following among the Iraqi Shia. Iranians have no interest in jeopardizing the relationships they have spent the last five years cultivating with the al-Sadrites. But that does not diminish the strong opposition many Iranians feel toward al-Sadr.
Tehran has long viewed al-Sadr as a political wildcard who can never be completely tamed. Recently, his willfulness was demonstrated in a March 29 interview with al-Jazeera in which he recalled a meeting with Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
“I told him that we share the same ideology, but that politically and militarily, I would not be an extension of Iran, and that there were negative things that Iran was doing in Iraq,” al-Sadr reportedly said in the interview. “I mentioned to him a few things that Iran needs to rectify with regard to Iraq. Iran committed mistakes that it should not have made.”
Whether or not al-Sadr actually said this to Khamenei matters little, but the claims — made on an international television station — have still caused a significant stir within Iran. In fact, many senior Iranian officials have publicly criticized al-Sadr. Those critics include Mohammed Baqer Ghalibaf, the mayor of Tehran, who is seen as the main challenger to Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in next year’s presidential election. Another power critic includes Mohsen Rezai, secretary of the Expediency Council and the former head of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.
This situation is being watched closely by Saudi Arabia, which is eager to counter an emerging Iran by exploiting intra-Shia rifts. This position could explain why news of the impending murder case was reported by a Saudi media group while it has received little publicity elsewhere. The Saudis realize problems between Iran and Iraqi Shia, hamper Iran’s ability to threaten their national security. Therein lies al-Sadr’s ability to serve as a potential arrestor to Iranian ambitions in Iraq and the region.
The Saudis are not the only ones happy to see the wrangling between al-Sadr and Iran. The United States, engaged in multiple complex dealings with Iraqi factions in order to block Iran’s path towards regional dominance, would also like to see as many obstacles in the path of Iran as possible. While it continues to create a bulwark among Iraq’s Sunnis, Washington can certainly benefit from a Shiite thorn in Iran’s side and recent comments from top U.S. officials have almost rallied behind al-Sadr.
Last week in fact, al-Sadr was described as “a significant political figure,” by U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates who added that the United States wanted the Shiite leader to work within the political process. Additionally Gen. David Petraeus, top U.S. commander in Iraq, called the al-Sadrite movement a major force that should be accommodated to varying degrees.
Politicking aside, it is unlikely that Washington can align with al-Sadr, given his radical Islamist ideology and anti-occupation nationalist stance although an understanding could develop. Whether or not that happens remains to be seen. However, what is clear is that al-Sadr is proving to be a problem for Iran and his influence could play a key role in preventing the Iranians from dominating Iraq in the long run.
Click Here to Send Stratfor Your Comments
-
Geopolitical Diary: Syria and Israel Consider a Deal
April 21, 2008
Rumors are circulating once again that Syria and Israel are engaged in serious peace talks. Syrian President Bashar al Assad announced April 19 that he had exchanged back-channel messages with Israel about possibility of resuming talks, adding that Israel knows well what Syria will and will not accept, Syria’s official news agency SANA reported on Sunday.
In a similar vein, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert told Israeli newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth on Thursday that the two countries have been engaged in talks, stating “They know what we want from them, and I know full well what they want from us.” Stratfor sources also say that an undercover meeting took place between April 17 between Syria and Israel.
The idea of the Syrians and Israelis conducting covert peace negotiations is nothing new. It is unusual, however, to see both sides actually acknowledging that meetings are taking place. Normally, each time a flurry of such talks makes its way into the press — usually propagated by the Israeli media — a flood of denials from both sides quickly follows. So perhaps talks are happening.
Each side will be asking for a high price. The framework for such peace talks would include Israel’s withdrawal from the Golan Heights to pre-1967 borders. Syria would also be expected to end its support for Hezbollah and Hamas, and distance itself from Iran.
These are not easy concessions for either side to make. The Israelis are loath to withdraw from the strategic 7,296-foot Mount Hermon, which is critical for Israel’s ability to defend its northeastern flank. In exchange for pulling back, Israel would want to retain control over the use of water from the Jordan River and Lake Kinneret — which provide roughly one-third the country’s water supply.
Syria, on the other hand, knows the risk of cutting ties with Iran and its militant proxies, who have the capacity to strike back at the al Assad regime. For all intents and purposes, Syria under the al Assad regime has made an ideal ally for the Iranians in the Arab world. Syria is ruled by Alawites, a minority sect of Shiite Islam, and the Alawite regime in Damascus has long been out of step with the regional Arab “consensus” on a host of issues. It sided with Iran during the Iran-Iraq war. It also helped establish and nurture Hezbollah in Lebanon in collaboration with the Arabs’ principal rival, Iran.
But the Syrians are in an uncomfortable spot right now. Syria’s relations with Hezbollah and Iran have been strained ever since the assassination of Hezbollah top commander Imad Mughniyah on Syrian soil in February. Meanwhile, thanks to the U.S.-backed Sunni regimes in Cairo and Riyadh, the Syrians are facing a wall of resistance preventing them from reconsolidating influence in neighboring Lebanon. And finally, Israel has made a number of moves in recent weeks to suggest that the next military confrontation it has with Hezbollah in Lebanon could very well drag the Syrians in, much to their peril.
Well aware of its inferior defenses, Damascus is in no mood for a war with Israel that could threaten the survival of the al Assad regime. Israel, too, is keen on preserving the stability of the Alawite regime, because from Israel’s perspective all the alternatives are worse. As a result, the war threats coming from Israel over the past couple of weeks have been carefully interlaced with offers of peace.
With these rumors of peace talks afloat, we will be watching closely to see what leaks come out of a meeting April 22 between the Bush administration and the U.S. Senate Intelligence Committee over nuclear ties between North Korea and Syria. If peace negotiations between Israel and Syria have indeed reached a serious phase, the discussion on Syria’s alleged nuclear activity will likely be subdued (at Israel’s insistence). If, however, the United States and Israel plan to push Syria further, the coming week will be blazing with reports of a supposed Syrian nuclear threat.
At the very least, the buzz about peace talks between Israel and Syria allows the Israelis and the Americans to inject distrust into the Syria-Iran-Hezbollah coalition. We now need to see how serious the Israelis are in taking these talks a step further
stratfor
-
Geopolitical Diary: Syria and Israel Hint at Peace Talks
April 24, 2008
The morning of April 21, we woke up to a report in the Syrian media saying that Israel had agreed to hand the Golan Heights back to Syria in exchange for a peace agreement. The Syrian story was reported in the Israeli media, with no comment from the Olmert government, although several Israeli politicians vigorously condemned the idea. Since Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert was reported to be on vacation, we figured there was a time delay and settled back waiting for the Israeli government to deny the Syrian report.
That’s when it became interesting. Rather than denying the report, Olmert’s spokesman Mark Regev said, “I have nothing to add beyond what the prime minister said on Friday in his interviews with the Israeli press about his desire for peace with Syria.” Olmert had said, “Very clearly we want peace with the Syrians and are taking all manner of action to this end. President Bashar al-Assad knows precisely what our expectations are and we know his. I won’t say more.”
Today, Syrian Foreign Minister Walid al-Moallem held a press conference in Tehran, of all places, along with Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki. Al-Moallem said there that “if Israel is serious and wants peace, nothing will stop the renewal of peace talks.” Another Syrian minister, speaking on Al Jazeera at about the same time, said that “Olmert is ready for peace with Syria on the grounds of international conditions; on the grounds of the return of the Golan Heights in full to Syria.”
So now we have the Syrian foreign minister offering peace talks with the Israelis while standing next to the Iranian foreign minister, who apparently did not go into cardiac arrest; another Syrian minister confirming this and implying that the quid pro quo for peace is the Golan Heights; and the Israeli prime minister’s office refusing to deny these reports while referring back to a statement made by the prime minister in which he said that Israel wants peace with the Syrians and both sides know what the terms are.
This is not quite the same thing as saying that a deal has been made. What it is saying is that the terms of such a deal are clearly understood by both sides and that neither side is walking away from the table, which means that the terms are at least in the ball park — so much so from the Syrian side that it was worth going to Tehran to talk about it with the Iranians, and apparently the Iranians did not back away from Syria. That means that the Syrians not only have their ally on board, but are signaling the Israelis that the ally — Iran — can live with the terms, which of course opens other vistas.
The talk today has focused on the Golan Heights, at least as far as the Syrians are concerned. From the Israeli point of view, the Heights are not nearly as militarily critical as they once might have appeared. While holding the Heights — which, unlike Gaza, are fairly lightly populated — the Syrians fired artillery at Israeli settlements. That was a problem, but not a strategic threat. Holding the Golan Heights did pose a challenge to the Israelis. In the 1973 War, the Israelis had to fight with their backs to the Golan escarpment in order to block the Syrians. Had the Syrians held the Heights, and the Israelis were in the hills on the other side of the Jordan River, the strategic situation would have been different. The Syrians could not have taken the Israelis by surprise, and the armor descending the Heights would have been in the killing ground for Israeli armor, artillery and missiles as they descended. Moreover, in today’s military environment, conventional artillery is vulnerable to everything from cruise missiles to helicopters firing Hellfire missiles and to computerized counter-battery fire. Whatever the argument was for taking the Heights in 1967, the military situation has evolved since then.
It is therefore not inconceivable that Olmert would trade the Golan Heights for a peace treaty. But the real issue between Israel and Syria isn’t the Golan Heights. The issue is Lebanon. Syria’s fundamental interest is to the west, where it has strategic and economic interests. It wants to be the dominant power in Lebanon. Israel also has deep interests in Lebanon, which are primarily defensive. It does not want Lebanon used — primarily by Hezbollah at this point — as a base from which to attack Israel. Israel and Syria had an informal understanding after the Israeli withdrawal from Lebanon that Syria would have a free hand there and would be expected to control Hezbollah. There is a basis for understanding here as well — one which would leave many Lebanese in a difficult position, but might satisfy Israeli and Syrian interests.
But before that comes the domestic battle in Israel. There are powerful forces that would argue that one, the Golan is much more significant militarily than we have portrayed it; two, allowing Syria to dominate Lebanon gives Damascus another axis from which to attack Israel later; and three, Israel would find a Syrian-Iranian force to their north over the next generation. These are not trivial arguments and can be reinforced by the Tehran press conference, which signaled that the Syrians are not acting independently of the Iranians.
At the same time, Olmert will argue that peace is worth the risk and point to Egypt as an example. The argument will go on, but now at least we are seeing where the various odd events of the past few weeks were leading — and it is not clear that it cannot end in war. If this falls apart, as it well might, the situation could rapidly spiral out of control as both countries start to maneuver in Lebanon.
All of this is fascinating, but what stands out is the fact that the Iranians have signaled that they can live with a deal with Israel. In the long run, the implications of that are the most interesting.
-
April 25, 2008
The Bush administration briefed the U.S. Congress on Thursday about the reasons behind the Sept. 6, 2007, Israeli raid on Syria. According to the secret briefing — the content of which, of course, not only was leaked immediately (as was intended) but was essentially confirmed by a White House spokeswoman — the target was a nuclear reactor, able to produce plutonium, that had been built with the assistance of North Korea. The administration showed a videotape, apparently produced by Israeli intelligence, showing faces that were said to be in the facility and to be clearly Korean.
What is important to note is this information is not new. It is a confirmation of the story leaked by the administration shortly after the attack and also leaked by the Israelis a bit later. The explanation for the attack was that it was designed to take out a reactor in Syria that had been built with North Korean help. There are therefore three questions. First, why did the United States go to such lengths to reveal what it has been saying privately for months? Second, why did the administration do it now? Third, why is the United States explaining an Israeli raid using, at least in part, material provided by Israel? Why isn’t Israel making the revelation?
It has never been clear to us why the Israelis and Americans didn’t immediately announce that the Syrians were building a nuclear reactor. Given American hostility toward Syria over support for jihadists in Iraq, we would have thought that they would have announced it instantly. The explanation we thought most plausible at the time was that the intelligence came from the North Koreans in the course of discussions of their nuclear technology, and since the North Koreans were cooperating, the United States didn’t want to publicly embarrass them. It was the best we could come up with.
The announcement on Thursday seems to debunk that theory, at least to the extent that the primary material displayed was U.S. satellite information and the Israeli video, which was said to have been used to convince the United States of the existence of the reactor and of North Korean involvement. So why didn’t the administration condemn Syria and North Korea on September 7? It still seems to us that part of the explanation is in the state of talks with North Korea over its own program. The North Koreans had said that they would provide technical information on their program — which they haven’t done. Either the United States lost its motivation to protect North Korean feelings because of this or the Bush administration felt that Thursday’s briefings would somehow bring pressure to bear on North Korea. Unless the United States is planning to use these revelations as justification for attacks on the North Koreans, we find it difficult to see how this increases pressure on them.
More interesting is the question of why the United States — and not Israel — is briefing on an Israeli raid. Israeli media reported April 23 that the Israelis had asked the Americans not to brief Congress. The reason given was that the Israelis did not want the United States to embarrass Syria at this point. As we noted on April 23, there appeared to have been some interesting diplomatic moves between Syria and Israel, and it made sense that revealing this information now might increase friction.
If this read is true, then it would appear that the United States briefed deliberately against Israeli wishes. Certainly, the Israelis didn’t participate in the process. One answer could be that the United States is unhappy about Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert’s moves on Syria and wants to derail them. The United States wanted Syria out of Lebanon. The Israelis have a more complex view of their presence. In some ways, they see the Syrians as a stabilizing force. And they certainly aren’t eager to see Bashar al Assad’s government fall, since whatever might replace the al Assad government would probably be worse from the Israeli point of view. That would mean that the Israelis would want to take out the reactor, but not necessarily rub the Syrians’ nose in it.
So there are two plausible answers to today’s show. One is to increase pressure on North Korea. The second is to derail any Israeli-Syrian peace process. The problem is that it’s hard to see why North Korea is going to be moved by the official declaration of what Washington has been saying from the beginning. The second is hard to believe because it would assume that U.S.-Israeli relations had deteriorated to the point that the United States had to use this as a lever. That’s tough to believe.
The senior Republican on the House Intelligence Committee, Peter Hoekstra, said after the briefing, “This administration has no credibility on North Korea. A lot of us are beginning to become concerned that the administration is moving away from getting a solid policy solution to ‘let’s make a deal.’”
So that seems to undermine the prep for strike theory. That leaves tension between the United States and Israel as the last standing theory. Not a good theory, but the last standing one.
-
GEOPOLITICAL DIARY: SYRIAN-ISRAELI PEACE DEAL IN PERSPECTIVE
Stratfor has received an unconfirmed report that the U.S. administration is
currently reviewing a peace agreement drafted by Syria and Israel. Some of the terms
of the alleged deal involve Syria regaining its military, political and economic
influence in Lebanon in exchange for suppressing its militant proxies -- Hezbollah,
Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ). Syria and Israel also reportedly came up
with a system to create a demilitarized zone along the Israeli-Syrian border in
which Syria would pull back four miles for every one mile that Israel pulls back its
forces. The Golan Heights would be returned to Syria, though Israel would likely
retain full rights to the key water source in the territory.
If this information is true, it would indicate the ongoing peace negotiations
between Israel have reached a critical phase. Our first clue that these were not
simply talks for the sake of talks came when the negotiations broke into the public
sphere a little more than a week ago. The lack of denials followed by a public
acknowledgment by both the Israeli and Syrian leaderships demonstrated that
something serious was going on. The deal could evaporate given the complexities
surrounding the issue, but if the two sides have actually crafted a peace agreement
that is now being debated among U.S. officials in Washington, then the political map
of the Middle East could undergo some major changes in the near future.
Over the years, Syria has carved out a place for itself as the regional pariah. It
is a minority Alawite regime in a majority Sunni country. It openly harbors
Palestinian militant leaders. It supports Hezbollah in Lebanon. It is the only Arab
state allied with Iran. And it has directly supported the jihadist insurgency in
Iraq since the 2003 U.S. invasion. Taken together, these charges make behavior
modification in Syria sound nearly impossible.
But it must be remembered that Syria's core geopolitical interest is in Lebanon --
its primary gateway to the Mediterranean basin. Without Lebanon, Syria is
politically, economically and militarily hamstrung. For Syria to regain its regional
footing, it must finagle its way into a peace agreement in which the Arab world and
the West will recognize a Syrian hegemonic role in its western neighbor. The
opportunity has come through Israel, and it makes sense for the Syrians to pursue
it.
Tactically speaking, however, this will be a messy peace agreement to implement.
Perhaps the messiest part of it all is that Syria will have to demonstrate that it
will incur the risk and trouble of containing Hezbollah. A few Hezbollah heads would
need to roll for Syria to pull this off, and the process may have even already
started. The February assassination of Hezbollah commander Imad Mughniyah on Syrian
soil, though still extremely murky, came at a critical point in these negotiations.
We also cannot help but notice Syria's unusual silence on its investigation of the
assassination. If Syria were not engaged in serious peace talks with Israel, it
would waste no time in playing the blame game to clear suspicion of its own
involvement in the hit.
Meanwhile, a rumor is circulating that Syria has instructed its Shiite ally Nabih
Berri, speaker of the Lebanese House of Parliament and leader of the Amal Movement,
to set a new date -- May 13 -- to elect a new president for Lebanon. If Syria has
indeed gotten the guarantees it wants on Lebanon, it would make sense to see some
moves in the coming weeks that would pull Lebanon out of political stagnation with
the election of a Syria-friendly president in Beirut.
These signs of progress are all hinting that a peace deal may indeed be just around
the corner, but there are enough spoilers on the table that this peace bubble could
burst. It is questionable whether the current Israeli government has the political
muscle to override domestic dissent in seeing through a peace treaty with Syria.
Though it appears Saudi Arabia and France are backing the deal, it is far less
assured that the United States is on the same page as Israel in pursuing peace with
Syria. The Iranians, already pursuing complex negotiations with the United States
over Iraq, are certainly not going to be happy if their Shiite extension in the
Levant is hived off. And the groups with the most to worry about -- Hezbollah, Hamas
and PIJ -- are highly unlikely to take their death sentence lying down.
In other words, though we are seeing some movement, we'll need to see more before we
believe that a solid deal can be cut.
Copyright 2008 Strategic Forecasting, Inc.
-
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
UK paper: Breakthrough reached in intel on Iran
Mossad chief Meir Dagan is expected to brief Britain's MI6 head Sir John Scarlett, who is slated to visit Israel later this month, on an intelligence breakthrough regarding the Iranian nuclear program, London's Sunday Times reported.
Concern has been mounting in Israel that Iran's nuclear capability may be far more advanced than was recognized by the US National Intelligence Estimate last December, which reported that Iran had halted its nuclear weapons development program in 2003 in response to international pressure.
A source quoted by the paper on Sunday claimed that the new information was on par with intelligence that led to the discovery and destruction of a partly constructed nuclear reactor in Syria last September.
Israeli officials believe the US will revise its analysis of Iran's program.
"We expect the Americans to amend their report soon," a high-ranking military officer said last week.
Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni briefed British Prime Minister Gordon Brown and Foreign Secretary David Miliband on Israel's findings during talks on the Middle East in London last week. Israeli intelligence officers, en route from Washington where they had been outlining their latest information to American officials, joined Livni for the briefing.
It is believed that if Israel were weighing military action against Iran, it would first seek diplomatic support in London and Washington because of the danger of triggering a wider Middle East conflict.
"We're doing a lot of things about Iran," Defense Minister Ehud Barak said last week. "We say we shouldn't rule out any option. Not ruling out options means action, but the worst thing to do at the moment is to talk [about it]."
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satelli...icle%2FPrinter
-
The New Cold War
E-Mail
Print
Save
Share
Digg
Facebook
Mixx
Yahoo! Buzz
Permalink
By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN
Published: May 14, 2008
The next American president will inherit many foreign policy challenges, but surely one of the biggest will be the cold war. Yes, the next president is going to be a cold-war president — but this cold war is with Iran.
Skip to next paragraph
Fred R. Conrad/The New York Times
Thomas L. Friedman
Go to Columnist Page » That is the real umbrella story in the Middle East today — the struggle for influence across the region, with America and its Sunni Arab allies (and Israel) versus Iran, Syria and their non-state allies, Hamas and Hezbollah. As the May 11 editorial in the Iranian daily Kayhan put it, “In the power struggle in the Middle East, there are only two sides: Iran and the U.S.”
For now, Team America is losing on just about every front. How come? The short answer is that Iran is smart and ruthless, America is dumb and weak, and the Sunni Arab world is feckless and divided. Any other questions?
The outrage of the week is the Iranian-Syrian-Hezbollah attempt to take over Lebanon. Hezbollah thugs pushed into Sunni neighborhoods in West Beirut, focusing particular attention on crushing progressive news outlets like Future TV, so Hezbollah’s propaganda machine could dominate the airwaves. The Shiite militia Hezbollah emerged supposedly to protect Lebanon from Israel. Having done that, it has now turned around and sold Lebanon to Syria and Iran.
All of this is part of what Ehud Yaari, one of Israel’s best Middle East watchers, calls “Pax Iranica.” In his April 28 column in The Jerusalem Report, Mr. Yaari pointed out the web of influence that Iran has built around the Middle East — from the sway it has over Iraq’s prime minister, Nuri al-Maliki, to its ability to manipulate virtually all the Shiite militias in Iraq, to its building up of Hezbollah into a force — with 40,000 rockets — that can control Lebanon and threaten Israel should it think of striking Tehran, to its ability to strengthen Hamas in Gaza and block any U.S.-sponsored Israeli-Palestinian peace.
“Simply put,” noted Mr. Yaari, “Tehran has created a situation in which anyone who wants to attack its atomic facilities will have to take into account that this will lead to bitter fighting” on the Lebanese, Palestinian, Iraqi and Persian Gulf fronts. That is a sophisticated strategy of deterrence.
The Bush team, by contrast, in eight years has managed to put America in the unique position in the Middle East where it is “not liked, not feared and not respected,” writes Aaron David Miller, a former Mideast negotiator under both Republican and Democratic administrations, in his provocative new book on the peace process, titled “The Much Too Promised Land.”
“We stumbled for eight years under Bill Clinton over how to make peace in the Middle East, and then we stumbled for eight years under George Bush over how to make war there,” said Mr. Miller, and the result is “an America that is trapped in a region which it cannot fix and it cannot abandon.”
Look at the last few months, he said: President Bush went to the Middle East in January, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice went in February, Vice President Dick Cheney went in March, the secretary of state went again in April, and the president is there again this week. After all that, oil prices are as high as ever and peace prospects as low as ever. As Mr. Miller puts it, America right now “cannot defeat, co-opt or contain” any of the key players in the region.
The big debate between Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton is over whether or not we should talk to Iran. Obama is in favor; Clinton has been against. Alas, the right question for the next president isn’t whether we talk or don’t talk. It’s whether we have leverage or don’t have leverage.
When you have leverage, talk. When you don’t have leverage, get some — by creating economic, diplomatic or military incentives and pressures that the other side finds too tempting or frightening to ignore. That is where the Bush team has been so incompetent vis-à-vis Iran.
The only weaker party is the Sunni Arab world, which is either so drunk on oil it thinks it can buy its way out of any Iranian challenge or is so divided it can’t make a fist to protect its own interests — or both.
We’re not going to war with Iran, nor should we. But it is sad to see America and its Arab friends so weak they can’t prevent one of the last corners of decency, pluralism and openness in the Arab world from being snuffed out by Iran and Syria. The only thing that gives me succor is the knowledge that anyone who has ever tried to dominate Lebanon alone — Maronites, Palestinians, Syrians, Israelis — has triggered a backlash and failed.
“Lebanon is not a place anyone can control without a consensus, without bringing everybody in,” said the Lebanese columnist Michael Young. “Lebanon has been a graveyard for people with grand projects.” In the Middle East, he added, your enemies always seem to “find a way of joining together and suddenly making things very difficult for you.”
-
The U.S.-Iranian Negotiations: Beyond the Rhetoric
February 12, 2008 | 1943 GMT
By George Friedman
Tehran has announced that Iran and the United States will hold a new round of talks on the future of Iraq at some point next week. The Iranians said that the “structure of the discussions have been finalized but the level of participation has not yet been agreed.” Meanwhile, Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki said that President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is expected to visit Iraq before March 20, the Iranian New Year. The United States has not denied either of these reports. There thus appears to be some public movement occurring in the U.S.-Iranian talks over Iraq.
These talks are not new. This would be the fourth in a series of meetings; the most recent meeting happened last August. These meetings have been scheduled and canceled before, and because who will attend this go-round remains unsettled, these talks may never get off the ground. More significant, no Iranian president has visited Iraq since the Khomeini revolution. If this visit took place, it would represent a substantial evolution. It also is not something that would happen unopposed if the United States did not want it to; by contrast, the Iraqi government lacks much of a say in the matter because it does not have that much room for maneuver. So we can say this much: Nothing has happened yet, but the Iranians have repositioned themselves as favoring some sort of diplomatic initiative from their side and the Americans so far have not done anything to discourage them.
U.S.-Iranian negotiations are always opaque because they are ideologically difficult to justify by both sides. For Iran, the United States is the Great Satan. For the United States, Iran is part of the Axis of Evil. It is difficult for Iran to talk to the devil or for the United States to negotiate with evil. Therefore, U.S.-Iranian discussions always take place in a strange way. The public rhetoric between the countries is always poisonous. If you simply looked at what each country says about the other, you would assume that no discussions are possible. But if you treat the public rhetoric as simply designed to manage domestic public opinion, and then note the shifts in policy outside of the rhetorical context, a more complex picture emerges. Public and private talks have taken place, and more are planned. If you go beyond the talks to actions, things become even more interesting.
We have discussed this before, but it is important to understand the strategic interests of the two countries at this point to understand what is going on. Ever since the birth of the Islamic Republic of Iran, Iraq has been the buffer between the Iranians and the Arabian Peninsula. The United States expected to create a viable pro-American government quickly after the 2003 invasion of Iraq, and therefore expected that Iraq would continue to serve as a buffer. That did not happen for a number of reasons, and therefore the strategic situation has evolved.
The primary American interest in Iraq at this point is a negative one — namely, that Iraq not become an Iranian satellite. If that were to happen and Iranian forces entered Iraq, the entire balance of power in the Arabian Peninsula would collapse. Whatever the future of Iraq, U.S. policy since the surge and before has been to prevent a vacuum into which Iran can move. The primary Iranian interest in Iraq also is negative. Tehran must make sure that no Iraqi government is formed that is dominated by Sunnis, as happened under the Baathists, and that the Iraqi military never becomes powerful enough to represent an offensive threat to Iran. In other words, above all else, Iran’s interest is to avoid a repeat of the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq war.
Obviously, each side has positive goals. The United States would love to see a powerful, pro-American Iraqi government that could threaten Iran on its own. The Iranians would love to see a pro-Iranian government in Baghdad and the withdrawal of U.S. forces from Iraq. Neither side is in a position to achieve these goals. The United States cannot create a pro-U.S. government because the Iranians, through their influence in the Shiite community, can create sufficient chaos to make that impossible. Through the surge, the United States has demonstrated to the Iranians that it is not withdrawing from Iraq, and the Iranians do not have the ability to force an American withdrawal. So long as the Americans are there and moving closer to the Sunnis, the Iranians cannot achieve their positive goals and also must harbor concerns about the long-term future of Iraq. Each side has blocked the other’s strategic positive goal. Each side now wants to nail down its respective negative goal: avoiding the thing it fears the most.
Ever since the 2006 U.S. congressional midterm elections, when President George W. Bush confounded Iranian expectations by actually increasing forces in Iraq rather than beginning a phased withdrawal, the two countries have been going through a complex process of talks and negotiations designed to achieve their negative ends: the creation of an Iraq that cannot threaten Iran but can be a buffer against Iranian expansion. Neither side trusts the other, and each would love to take advantage of the situation to achieve its own more ambitious goals. But the reality on the ground is that each side would be happy if it avoided the worst-case scenario.
Again, ignoring the rhetoric, there has been a fairly clear sequence of events. Casualties in Iraq have declined — not only U.S. military casualties but also civilian casualties. The civil war between Sunni and Shia has declined dramatically, although it did not disappear. Sunnis and Shia both were able to actively project force into more distant areas, so the decline did not simply take place because neighborhoods became more homogeneous, nor did it take place because of the addition of 30,000 troops. Though the United States created a psychological shift, even if it uses its troops more effectively, Washington cannot impose its will on the population. A change in tactics or an increase of troops to 150,000 cannot control a country of 25 million bent on civil war.
The decline in intracommunal violence is attributable to two facts. The first is the alliance between the United States and Sunni leaders against al Qaeda, which limited the jihadists’ ability to strike at the Shia. The second is the decision by the Iranians to control the actions of Iranian-dominated militias. The return of Muqtada al-Sadr — the most radical of the Shiite leaders — to ayatollah school and his decision to order his followers to cease fire dramatically reduced Shiite-on-Sunni violence. That would not, and could not, have happened without Iranian concurrence. If the Iranians had wanted the civil war to continue unabated, it would have. The Iranians cannot eliminate all violence, nor do they want to. They want the Americans to understand that they can resume the violence at will. Nevertheless, without the Iranian decision to limit the violence, the surge would not have worked.
If the prime Iranian threat against the United States was civil war in Iraq, the prime American threat against Iran was an air campaign against Iranian infrastructure. Such a campaign was publicly justified by the U.S. claim that Iran was developing nuclear weapons. With the Iranians having removed the threat of overwhelming civil war in Iraq, the United States responded by removing the threat of an air campaign. The publication of the National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) stating that Iran does not have a nuclear program at present effectively signaled the Iranians that there would be no campaign.
There was intense speculation that the NIE was a “coup” by the intelligence community against the president. Though an interesting theory, not a single author of the NIE has been fired, none of the intelligence community leaders has been removed, and the president has very comfortably lived with the report’s findings. He has lowered the threat of war against Iran while holding open the possibility — as the NIE suggests — that the Iranians might still be a threat, and that a new NIE might require airstrikes.
The Iranians reduced Shiite violence. The United States reduced the threat of airstrikes. At various points, each side has tested and signaled to the other. The Iranians have encouraged small-scale attacks by Shia in recent weeks, but nothing like what was going on a year or two ago. During Bush’s trip to the region, the United States triggered a crisis in the Strait of Hormuz to signal the Iranians that the United States retains its options. The rhetoric remains apocalyptic, but the reality is that, without admitting it, each side has moved to lower the temperature.
Clearly, secret negotiations are under way. The announcement that an agreement was reached on the structure and subject of a public meeting this week by definition means that unpublicized conversations have been taking place. Similarly, the announcement that Ahmadinejad will be visiting Iraq could not have come without extensive back-channel discussions. We would suspect that these discussions actually have been quite substantial.
The Iranians have made clear what they want in these negotiations. Mottaki was quoted in the Iranian media as saying, “We did express our readiness for entering into negotiations with the U.S. when the talks were held by the five Security Council permanent members plus Germany over Iran’s nuclear program.” He also said that, “Revising its policies toward Iran, the U.S. can pave the way for us to consider the circumstances needed for such talks to be held.” Since talks are being held, it must indicate some movement on the American part.
It all comes down to this: The United States, at the very least, wants a coalition government in Iraq not controlled by Iran, which can govern Iraq and allow the United States to draw down its forces. The Iranians want an Iraqi government not controlled by the United States or the Sunnis, which can control Iraq but not be strong enough to threaten Iran. Iran also wants the United States to end sanctions against Iran, while the United States wants Iran to end all aspects of its nuclear program.
Ending sanctions is politically difficult for the United States. Ending all aspects of the nuclear program is difficult for Iran. The United States can finesse the sanctions issue by turning a blind eye to third powers trading with Iran and allowing U.S. companies to set up foreign subsidiaries to conduct trade with Iran. The Iranians can finesse the nuclear issue, maintaining limited aspects of the program but not pursuing all the technologies needed to build a weapon.
Rhetoric aside, we are therefore in a phase where there are ways for each side to get what it wants. Obviously, the political process is under way in both countries, with Iranian parliamentary elections on March 14 and the U.S. presidential race in full swing. Much domestic opposition is building up against Ahmadinejad, and an intensifying power struggle in Iran could be a fairly large distraction for the country in the short term. The Iranians also could wait a bit more to see how the U.S. presidential campaign shapes up before making any major decisions.
But then, a political process is always under way. That means the rhetoric will remain torrid; the public meetings few and low-key; the private discussions ongoing; and actions by each side sometimes inexplicable, keyed as they are to private discussions.
But it is clear from this week’s announcements by the Iranians that there is movement under way. If the Iranian president does visit Iraq and the United States makes no effort to block him, that will be the signal that some sort of accommodation has been reached. The United States and Iran will not recognize each other and will continue to condemn and even threaten each other. But this is truly a case where their rhetoric does not begin to reflect the reality.
-
By George Friedman
The Saudis are hosting an interfaith conference June 4. Four hundred Islamic scholars from around the world will be there, with one day devoted to interfaith issues. Saudi King Abdullah will open the conference, over which Saudi Shura Council head Saleh bin Huma will preside. This is clearly intended to be a major event, not minimized by the fact that Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, Iran’s most influential leader — who heads Iran’s Assembly of Experts, the body that elects and can remove the Supreme Leader — will be attending as well. Rafsanjani was specifically invited by the Saudi ambassador to Iran last Wednesday with the following message: “King Abdullah believes you have a great stature in the Islamic world … and he has assigned me the duty of inviting you to the conference.” We would not have expected to see a meeting on interfaith dialogue even a year ago.
For its part, al Qaeda condemned the conference. Its spokesman, Abu Yahya al-Libi, said of Abdullah via videotape that “He who is called the defender of monotheism by sycophantic clerics is raising the flag of brotherhood between religions … and thinks he has found the wisdom to stop wars and prevent the causes of enmity between religions and peoples.” He went on to say “By God, if you don’t resist heroically against this wanton tyrant … the day will come when church bells will ring in the heart of the Arabian Peninsula.” In the past, the Saudis have been very careful not to push al Qaeda, or the kingdom’s own conservatives, too far.
One reason for the change might be the increasing focus by conservative Saudi clerics on the Shia, particularly Iran and Hezbollah. Twenty-two leading conservative clerics issued a statement condemning the Shia as destabilizing the Arab world and hostile to Sunnis. More important, they claimed that Iran and Hezbollah are only pretending to be hostile to the United States and Jews. In a translation by The Associated Press, the clerics said that “If they (Shiites) have a country, they humiliate and exert control in their rule over Sunnis. They sow strife, corruption and destruction among Muslims and destabilize security in Muslim countries … such as Yemen.” This view paralleled statements by al Qaeda No. 2 Ayman al-Zawahiri a few weeks back.
No Fear of the Conservatives
To begin understanding all this, we need to start with the obvious fact that the Saudi government is no longer afraid of antagonizing conservatives. It should be remembered that there was extensive al Qaeda activity in Saudi Arabia in 2003 and 2004 after the Saudis increased their cooperation with the United States. The Saudis eliminated this activity, and the royal family has done extensive work in decreasing its internal rifts as well as reaching out to tribal leaders. Nevertheless, the Saudi government has been careful not to push too far. Holding a meeting to study interfaith dialogue would appear to be crossing the line. But clearly the Saudis don’t think so.
There are three reasons for this. First, al Qaeda has been crippled inside Saudi Arabia and in the broader region. The U.S. boast that al Qaeda in Iraq is on the run is no exaggeration. Al Qaeda in Saudi Arabia and Iraq are on the run because of a split among Sunni conservatives. Conservative Sunnis have their roots in local communities. Al Qaeda is an international grouping that moves into communities from the outside. As such, they threaten the interests of local Sunni leaders who are more unlikely to share theological values with al Qaeda in the long-term, and don’t want to be displaced as communal leaders nor want to see their communities destroyed in al Qaeda’s adventures. Theology aside, al Qaeda pushed its position too far, and those Sunnis who might theoretically support them have come to see them as a threat.
Second, and far more important, there is Saudi money. At current oil prices, the Saudis are absolutely loaded with cash. In the Arabian Peninsula as elsewhere, money buys friends. In Arabia, the rulers have traditionally bound tribes and sects to them through money. At present, the Saudis can overwhelm theological doubts with very large grants and gifts. The Saudi government did not enjoy 2004 and does not want a repeat. It is therefore carefully strengthening its ties inside Saudi Arabia and throughout the Sunni world using money as a bonding agent. That means that conservative Sunnis who normally would oppose this kind of a conference are less apt to openly criticize it.
Third, there is the deepening Sunni-Shiite split. In Christian history, wars between co-religionists like Roman Catholics and Protestants were brutal, and the distrust still echoes today. The Sunni-Shiite split, like the Catholic-Protestant split, ranges across theological and national interests. Iran is the major Shiite nation. It is mistrusted and feared by the Sunni Saudis, whose enormous wealth and military weakness leaves them vulnerable to the Iranians and forces them into an alliance with the Americans.
At this particular point, where Tehran’s mismanagement of Iran’s economy and particularly its oil industry has caused it to be left out of the greatest benefits of the surge in oil prices, the Saudis are worried that internal Iranian tensions and ambitions will cause Tehran at least to increase its subversive activities among Shia in the Arabian Peninsula and in Lebanon. Hence conservative Saudi clerics have focused their attacks on Iran and Hezbollah — officially without government sanction, but clearly not shut down by the government.
Protecting the Oil Bonanza
Behind all of this, something much deeper and more important is going on. With crude prices in the range of $130 a barrel, the Saudis are now making more money on oil than they could have imagined five years ago when the price was below $40 a barrel. The Saudis don’t know how long these prices will last. Endless debates are raging over whether high oil prices are the result of speculation, the policy of the U.S. Federal Reserve, conspiracy by the oil companies and so on. The single fact the Saudis can be certain of is that the price of oil is high, they don’t know how long it will remain high, and they don’t want anything interfering with their amassing vast financial reserves that might have to sustain them in lean times should they come.
In short, the Saudis are trying to reduce the threat of war in the region. War is at this moment the single greatest threat to their interests. In particular, they are afraid of any war that would close the Strait of Hormuz, through which a large portion of the oil they sell flows. The only real threat to the strait is a war between the United States and Iran in which the Iranians countered an American attack or blockade by mining the strait. It is assumed that the United States could readily deal with any Iranian countermove, but the Saudis have watched the Americans in Iraq and they are not impressed. From the Saudi point of view, not having a war is the far better option.
At the same time, if the Iranians decide to press the issue, the Saudis would be in no position to defend themselves. It is assumed that the United States would protect the Saudi oil fields out of self-interest. But any American government — and here they are looking past the Bush administration — might find it politically difficult to come to the aid of a country perceived as radically Islamist. Should another contingency come to pass, and the Iranians — either through insurgency or attack — do the unexpected, it is in the Saudi interest to create an image that is more compatible with U.S. tastes. And of course nothing does that better than interfaith dialogue. At this point, the Saudis are only at the point of discussing interfaith dialogue, but this still sets the stage.
It also creates a forum in which to drive home to the Iranians, via Rafsanjani, the unease the Saudis feel about Iranian intentions, using Hezbollah as an example. In permitting public attacks on the Shia, the Saudis do two things. First, they placate a domestic conservative constituency by retargeting them against Shiites. Second, they are boosting the theological framework to allow them to support groups who oppose the Shia. In particular that means supporting groups in Lebanon who oppose Hezbollah and Sunni groups in Iraq seeking more power in the Shiite dominated government. In doing this, Riyadh signals the Iranians that the Saudis are in a position to challenge their fundamental interests in the region — while Iran is not going to be starting Shiite uprisings in Arabia while the price of oil is high and the Shia can be made content.
Pacifying the Region
The Saudis are engaged in a massive maneuver to try to pacify the region, if not forever, then for at least as long as oil prices are high. The Saudis are quietly encouraging the Syrian-Israeli peace talks along with the Turks, and one of the reasons for Syrian participation is undoubtedly assurances of Saudi investments in Syria and Lebanon from which Damascus can benefit. The Saudis also are encouraging Israeli-Palestinian talks, and there is, we suspect, Saudi pressure on Hamas to be more cooperative in those talks. The Saudis have no interest in an Israeli-Syrian or Israeli-Hezbollah conflict right now that might destabilize the region.
Finally, the Saudis have had enough of the war in Iraq. They do not want increased Iranian power in Iraq. They do not want to see the Sunnis marginalized. They do not want to see al Qaeda dominating the Iraqi Sunnis. They have influence with the Iraqi Sunnis, and money buys even more. Ever since 2003, with the exception of the Kurdish region, the development of Iraqi oil has been stalled. Iraqis of all factions are aware of how much money they’ve lost because of their civil war. This is a lever that the Saudis can use in encouraging some sort of peace in Iraq.
It is not that Saudi Arabia has become pacifist by any means. Nor are they expecting (or, frankly, interested in) lasting peace. They are interested in assuring sufficient stability over the coming months and years so they can concentrate on making money from oil. To do this they need to carry out a complex maneuver. They need to refocus their own religious conservatives against the Shia. They need to hem in Iran, the main Shiite power. They need to reposition themselves politically in the United States, the country that ultimately guarantees Saudi national security. And they need to at least lower the temperature in Middle Eastern conflicts or, better still, forge peace treaties.
The Saudis don’t care if these treaties are permanent, but neither would they object if they were. Like any state, Saudi Arabia has interests to pursue; these interests change over time, but right now is the time for stability. Later is later. It is therefore no surprise that Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak visited Riyadh for talks this weekend. The discussions weren’t theological in nature. Mubarak shares with the Saudis an interest in an Israeli-Palestinian peace. Mubarak fears the spread of Hamas’ ideas back into Egypt and he wants the radical Palestinian group kept in its Gaza box. A large cache of weapons uncovered in the Sinai last week, including surface to air missiles, is as much a threat to Egypt as to Israel. Mubarak has been in no position to conclude such an agreement, even though he has tried to broker it. The Saudis have the financial muscle to make it happen. Clearly the Egyptians and Saudis have much to discuss.
We are not at the dawn of a new age in the Middle East. We are in a period where one country has become politically powerful because of mushrooming wealth, and wants to use that power to make more wealth. A lasting peace is not likely in the Middle East. But increased stability is possible, and while interfaith dialogue does not strike us as a vehicle to this end, hundreds of millions in oil revenue does. Peace has been made on weaker foundations.
-
David Satterfield, the U.S. State Department’s top adviser on Iraq, said Tuesday that a U.S.-Iraq security pact would be finalized in July. This is likely wishful thinking on Washington’s part, though. If a Shiite-dominated parliament in Iraq is going to sign anything that deals with the terms and conditions of U.S. forces remaining in Iraq, the United States is first going to have to reach an understanding with its political adversaries in Tehran.
Since the U.N. mandate for coalition forces in Iraq expires in December, the United States has been trying to coax Iraq’s fractured government into signing onto a deal for “long-term” bases in the country. This is absolutely crucial for Washington to appease the concerns of Sunni Arabs, as well as its own, that Iran and its Shiite allies in Iraq should be kept at bay. But a political storm has erupted in Iraq over rumors of the United States using the pact to establish permanent bases in the country surreptitiously, with Iraq’s Shiite community leading the protest against what they see as a U.S. attempt to keep Iraq on ball and chain.
There is no question that Iran has played a role in stirring up opposition against the security pact. In fact, Iran’s supreme leader made a point of telling the Iraqi prime minister during his visit to Iran this week that the occupiers who interfere with Iraq’s affairs through their “military and security might” are the number one issue in Iraq. There is little doubt that this is a top priority for Iran as well.
A long-term U.S. military presence on Iran’s western frontier, after all, is one of the core sticking points in Iran’s ongoing negotiations with the United States. This is simply not an issue that is going to be decided between Americans and Iraqis alone, and Iran is doing its part to make sure the United States understands this. Already Iran has succeeded in getting the bulk of Iraqis to protest against the security pact. But Iran also has other, more powerful levers to get Washington’s attention.
Senior Iraqi Shiite cleric Grand Ayatollah Mohammad al-Modaressi, who has close relations with Iran, issued an implicit warning on June 8 that the U.S.-Iraq security pact might cause an uprising in Iraq. The prospect of a sectarian uprising in Iraq that could reverse the success of the troop surge, during a U.S. election year no less, is more than enough to give the U.S. administration some pause, and al-Modaressi did just that.
But this is still just posturing. Iran has threatened uprisings before, but at the end of the day it still wants stability in Iraq so it can consolidate influence there. And there is little doubt that Iran has played a significant role in reducing sectarian violence by curbing Shiite militia activity as part of its ongoing negotiations with the United States. However, the Iranians are showing little intent of giving up their Shiite militant card entirely — at least until they get the appropriate security guarantees from the United States.
A Stratfor source recently revealed that Iran and its Shiite allies in Iraq launched a new militant unit in late April under the direction of the Quds force in Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corp (IRGC) and Iran’s main militant extension into Iraq — the Badr Organization (previously known as Badr Brigade). The Badr Brigade is the armed wing of Iran’s main Shiite ally in Iraq, the Islamic Supreme Iraqi Council led by Abdel Aziz al-Hakim, and has been formally incorporated into Iraq’s army and police forces. The new unit is called al Tariqa al Safraa’, (the Yellow Way), and is responsible for executing clandestine operations including kidnappings, assassinations and spying on rival Shiite organizations (such as Muqtada al Sadr’s current movement). While the Badr Brigade has been integrated into Iraq’s security apparatus, this new unit has more freedom to maneuver and could be utilized by Tehran to instigate attacks — and help spur a potential uprising — to turn the screws on Iraq, and hence Washington.
The stakes will be high for Iran if it decides to risk throwing Iraq back into chaos as a pressure tactic against the United States. The Iranians have had a hard enough time already getting the Iraqi Shiite house in order, and it is highly uncertain that Iran would land on its feet again if it suffers a major setback in its negotiations with Washington, especially without knowing for certain what a new U.S. presidency might bring in January.
But the Iranians still want Washington to know that they have options. The mere threat of an Iranian-sponsored uprising in Iraq carries enough punch for now.
-
Summary
An Iraqi news agency has reported that Israeli fighter jets have overflown Jordanian airspace and landed in Iraq to practice for a raid on Iranian nuclear sites. The report, which represents a bid to create the impression that the United States is on board with an impending Israeli attack on Iran, is likely part of an ongoing psywar campaign against Iran.
Analysis
Israeli fighter jets have been flying over Jordanian airspace and landing in Iraq over the past month to practice for a raid on Iranian nuclear sites, Iraqi news agency Nahrainnet reported July 11, citing sources in the Iraqi Defense Ministry. The Iraqi news agency reported that the Israeli warplanes mostly flew at night and landed at U.S. air bases near Haditha, in western Anbar province, and in Nasiriyah in southern Iraq.
The Iraqi news report is intended to give the impression that the United States is already actively cooperating in an Israeli attack against Iran — and that such an attack could be imminent.
Iran’s Press TV picked up the Iraqi news report, as did major Israeli media outlets later. Israeli government spokesman Mark Regev denied the Iraqi report, saying it was “erroneous” and adding that Israel has no hostile intentions toward Iran. A statement from Iraq’s Defense Ministry followed, denying knowledge of any Israeli air force drills in its airspace.
The mysterious report in the Iraqi press appears to be yet another link in an ongoing and intensifying psywar campaign against Iran. While Israel does possess the weaponry to launch a debilitating strike against Iran, it would not be able to enter Iranian airspace on its own. Israeli fighter jets would need cooperation from Turkey, Saudi Arabia or U.S. forces in Iraq to access Iranian airspace. Out of the three, the third is the most viable option. But U.S. forces have shown little inclination to assist in an Israeli air attack against Iran given the fragile negotiations Washington is pursuing with Tehran.
Most significantly, if this were a real preparation for an attack, its operational security was just blown sky high. The attack could only be carried out now if the Israelis and Americans were incredibly confident the attack would take place without resistance and without Iranian material and personnel being relocated. Under normal circumstances, a breach of security like this would provide ample justification to abort such an attack (meaning that in the unlikely event that this was the real deal, a large bevy of Israeli fighter-bombers would soon be seen flying west).
Moreover, there appears to be only one U.S. carrier in Iran’s vicinity at the present time, the USS Abraham Lincoln Carrier Strike Group (CSG). The CSC was relocated from the Persian Gulf to the Gulf of Oman, and is now currently providing air support for security operations in Afghanistan, along with the USS Peleliu Expeditionary Strike Group in the Persian Gulf. An effective U.S. strike on Iran would likely involve a great deal more fighting power in the Persian Gulf were an attack imminent.
A psywar campaign targeting Iran has been steadily building up in recent weeks with Israeli war games in the Mediterranean, threats of Western energy firms pulling out of Iran, sanctions being tightened and war threats from all sides making their way into the press through anonymous leaks. At the same time, negotiations between Iran and the United States have shown progress, with Iran currently in talks with the West over its nuclear program. If Washington and Tehran are close to clinching a deal on Iraq, now is the time for the United States to convince the Iranians that imminent military action is still on the table if Iran does not follow through with its end of the bargain. And even though the Iraqi report on Israeli practice raids has more than enough punch to make oil prices jump, the probability of war in the Persian Gulf is still low
-
The War Between the Wars
Who says we can only face our enemies in one place at a time?
By Christopher Hitchens
Posted Monday, July 14, 2008, at 11:07 AM ET
If there is one element of moral and political certainty that cements the liberal consensus more than any other, it is the complacent view that while Iraq is "a war of choice," it is really and only Afghanistan that is a war of necessity. The ritualistic solidity of this view is impressive. It survives all arguments and all evidence. Just in the last month, as the Iraqi-based jihadists began to beat a retreat and even (according to some reports) to attempt to relocate to Afghanistan and Pakistan, it still seemed to many commentators that this proved that no U.S. forces should have been wasted on Iraq in the first place. This simplistic view ignores, at a minimum, the following points:
1. Many of the al-Qaida forces—most notably the horrific but now deceased Abu Musab al-Zarqawi—made their way to Iraq in the first place only after being forcibly evicted from Afghanistan. Thus, if one did not want to be confronting Bin Laden fans in Mesopotamia, it was surely a mistake to invade Afghanistan rather than Iraq.
2. The American presence in Afghanistan is not at all "unilateral"; it meets every liberal criterion of being formally underwritten and endorsed and armed and reinforced by our NATO and U.N. allies. Indeed, the commander of the anti-Taliban forces is usually not even an American. Yet it is in these circumstances that more American casualties—and not just American ones—are being experienced than are being suffered in Iraq. If this is so, the reason cannot simply be that our resources are being deployed elsewhere.
3. Many of the most successful drives against the Taliban have been conducted by American forces redeployed from Iraq, in particular from Anbar province. But these military victories are the result of counterinsurgent tactics and strategies that were learned in Iraq and that have been applied triumphantly in Afghanistan.
In other words, any attempt to play off the two wars against each other is little more than a small-minded and zero-sum exercise. And consider the implications. Most people appear now to believe that it is quite wrong to mention Saddam Hussein even in the same breath as either a) weapons of mass destruction or b) state-sponsored terrorism. I happen to disagree, but just for an experiment, let us imagine that some regime did exist or did arise that posed such a combination of threats. (Actually, so feverish is my imagination that I can even think of one whose name also begins with I.) Would we be bound to say, in public and in advance, that the Western alliance couldn't get around to confronting such a threat until it had Afghanistan well under control? This would be rather like the equivalent fallacy that nothing can be done in the region until there is a settlement of the Israel-Palestine dispute. Not only does this mean that every rogue in the region can reset his timeline until one of the world's oldest and most intractable quarrels is settled, it also means that every rogue has an incentive to make certain that no such settlement can ever occur. (Which is, of course, why Saddam threw, and now the Iranians throw, their support to the suicide-murderers.)
It would also be very nice to accept another soft-centered corollary of the Iraq vs. Afghanistan trade-off and to believe that the problem of Afghanistan is a problem only of the shortage of troops. Strangely, this is not the view of the Afghan government or of any of the NATO forces on the ground. The continued and, indeed, increasing insolence of the Taliban and its al-Qaida allies is the consequence of one thing and one thing only. These theocratic terrorists know that they have a reliable backer in the higher echelons of the Pakistani state and of its military-intelligence complex and that while this relationship persists, they are assured of a hinterland across the border and a regular supply of arms and recruits.
So, the question for Sen. Barack Obama and his glib supporters is this: Would they solve this problem by removing the American forces from Iraq and putting the thereby-enhanced contingent there to patrol a frontier where one of our main "allies" is continually engaged in stabbing them in the back? (At one point last year, Obama himself appeared to accept the illogic of his own position and spoke hotly of the possibility of following the Taliban onto Pakistani soil. We haven't heard much of that lately. Did he mean to say that, come to think of it, we had enough troops to occupy three countries instead of the stipulated and solitary one? Or would he just exchange Iraq for Pakistan? At least we do know for sure that Pakistan has nuclear weapons acquired mainly by piracy and is the host and patron of the Taliban and al-Qaida.)
Another consideration obtrudes itself. If it is true, as yesterday's three-decker front-page headline in the New York Times had it, that "U.S. Considering Stepping Up Pace of Iraq Pullout/ Fall in Violence Cited/ More Troops Could Be Freed for Operations in Afghanistan," then this can only be because al-Qaida in Iraq has been subjected to a battlefield defeat at our hands—a military defeat accompanied by a political humiliation in which its fanatics have been angrily repudiated by the very people they falsely claimed to be fighting for. If we had left Iraq according to the timetable of the anti-war movement, the situation would be the precise reverse: The Iraqi people would now be excruciatingly tyrannized by the gloating sadists of al-Qaida, who could further boast of having inflicted a battlefield defeat on the United States. I dare say the word of that would have spread to Afghanistan fast enough and, indeed, to other places where the enemy operates. Bear this in mind next time you hear any easy talk about "the hunt for the real enemy" or any loose babble that suggests that we can only confront our foes in one place at a time.
Christopher Hitchens is a columnist for Vanity Fair.
-
Good logic there SB.
Here's this from John Bolton in the WSJ:
Israel, Iran and the Bomb
By JOHN R. BOLTON
July 15, 2008
Iran's test salvo of ballistic missiles last week together with recent threatening rhetoric by commanders of the Islamic Republic's Revolutionary Guards emphasizes how close the Middle East is to a fundamental, in fact an irreversible, turning point.
Tehran's efforts to intimidate the United States and Israel from using military force against its nuclear program, combined with yet another diplomatic charm offensive with the Europeans, are two sides of the same policy coin. The regime is buying the short additional period of time it needs to produce deliverable nuclear weapons, the strategic objective it has been pursuing clandestinely for 20 years.
Between Iran and its long-sought objective, however, a shadow may fall: targeted military action, either Israeli or American. Yes, Iran cannot deliver a nuclear weapon on target today, and perhaps not for several years. Estimates vary widely, and no one knows for sure when it will have a deliverable weapon except the mullahs, and they're not telling. But that is not the key date. Rather, the crucial turning point is when Iran masters all the capabilities to weaponize without further external possibility of stopping it. Then the decision to weaponize, and its timing, is Tehran's alone. We do not know if Iran is at this point, or very near to it. All we do know is that, after five years of failed diplomacy by the EU-3 (Britain, France and Germany), Iran is simply five years closer to nuclear weapons.
And yet, true to form, State Department comments to Congress last week – even as Iran's missiles were ascending – downplayed Iran's nuclear progress, ignoring the cost of failed diplomacy. But the confident assumption that we have years to deal with the problem is high-stakes gambling on a policy that cannot be reversed if it fails. If Iran reaches weaponization before State's jaunty prediction, the Middle East, and indeed global, balance of power changes in potentially catastrophic ways.
And consider what comes next for the U.S.: the Bush administration's last six months pursuing its limp diplomatic efforts, plus six months of a new president getting his national security team and policies together. In other words, one more year for Tehran to proceed unhindered to "the point of no return."
We have almost certainly lost the race between giving "strong incentives" for Iran to abandon its pursuit of nuclear weapons, and its scientific and technological efforts to do just that. Swift, sweeping, effectively enforced sanctions might have made a difference five years ago. No longer. Existing sanctions have doubtless caused some pain, but Iran's real economic woes stem from nearly 30 years of mismanagement by the Islamic Revolution.
More sanctions today (even assuming, heroically, support from Russia and China) will simply be too little, too late. While regime change in Tehran would be the preferable solution, there is almost no possibility of dislodging the mullahs in time. Had we done more in the past five years to support the discontented – the young, the non-Persian minorities and the economically disaffected – things might be different. Regime change, however, cannot be turned on and off like a light switch, although the difficulty of effecting it is no excuse not to do more now.
That is why Israel is now at an urgent decision point: whether to use targeted military force to break Iran's indigenous control over the nuclear fuel cycle at one or more critical points. If successful, such highly risky and deeply unattractive air strikes or sabotage will not resolve the Iranian nuclear crisis. But they have the potential to buy considerable time, thereby putting that critical asset back on our side of the ledger rather than on Iran's.
With whatever time is bought, we may be able to effect regime change in Tehran, or at least get the process underway. The alternative is Iran with nuclear weapons, the most deeply unattractive alternative of all.
But the urgency of the situation has not impressed Barack Obama or the EU-3. Remarkably, on July 9, Sen. Obama, as if stumbling on a new idea, said Iran "must suffer threats of economic sanctions" and that we needed "direct diplomacy . . . so we avoid provocation" and "give strong incentives . . . to change their behavior." Javier Solana, chief EU negotiator, was at the time busy fixing a meeting with the Iranians to continue five years of doing exactly what Mr. Obama was proclaiming, without results.
John McCain responded to Iran's missile salvo by stressing again the need for a workable missile defense system to defend the U.S. against attacks by rogue states like Iran and North Korea. He is undoubtedly correct, highlighting yet another reason why November's election is so critical, given the unceasing complaints about missile defense from most Democrats.
Important as missile defense is, however, it is only a component of a postfailure policy on Iran's nuclear-weapons capacity. In whatever limited amount of time before then, we must face a very hard issue: What will the U.S. do if Israel decides to initiate military action? There was a time when the Bush administration might itself have seriously considered using force, but all public signs are that such a moment has passed.
Israel sees clearly what the next 12 months will bring, which is why ongoing U.S.-Israeli consultations could be dispositive. Israel told the Bush administration it would destroy North Korea's reactor in Syria in spring, 2007, and said it would not wait past summer's end to take action. And take action it did, seeing a Syrian nuclear capability, for all practical purposes Iran's agent on its northern border, as an existential threat. When the real source of the threat, not just a surrogate, nears the capacity for nuclear Holocaust, can anyone seriously doubt Israel's propensities, whatever the impact on gasoline prices?
Thus, instead of debating how much longer to continue five years of failed diplomacy, we should be intensively considering what cooperation the U.S. will extend to Israel before, during and after a strike on Iran. We will be blamed for the strike anyway, and certainly feel whatever negative consequences result, so there is compelling logic to make it as successful as possible. At a minimum, we should place no obstacles in Israel's path, and facilitate its efforts where we can.
These subjects are decidedly unpleasant. A nuclear Iran is more so.
Mr. Bolton, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, is the author of "Surrender Is Not an Option: Defending America at the United Nations" (Simon & Schuster, 2007).
-
GEOPOLITICAL DIARY: A RUMOR OF WITHDRAWAL
The New York Times and other media are reporting that the United States is
considering withdrawing troops from Iraq this year. The Bush administration is
thinking about withdrawing as few as one and as many as three of 15 combat brigades
now operating in Iraq by inauguration day in January 2009. That would not be a
stunning reduction, but it would be a substantial one. The leak to the Times is
obviously designed to prepare public opinion and see how various constituencies
respond. The administration leaks these things after it has decided to do something
but wants to retain options. So we take the report seriously.
There are three audiences for this report. The first, obviously, is the U.S. public.
This is an election year, and there is little doubt that George W. Bush would like
to see John McCain succeed him, as partial vindication of his presidency. This was
the week in which Barack Obama shifted his public posture on Iraq, indicating
greater flexibility than he had signaled during the primaries. In fact, as we have
said, Obama's position does not differ much from McCain's, save in rhetoric. Obama
knew that he had to run to the center during the general election and had prepared
for the shift in various position papers no one read during the primaries. When
Obama went to the center, backing away from his automatic withdrawal plan to a more
nuanced one, the administration responded by indicating that withdrawals were indeed
possible. They tried to catch Obama off-balance. It was a clever move, but it's not
clear that it will have any impact.
The second audience is Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki. There are negotiations
under way over the status of U.S. troops in Iraq. Al-Maliki is demanding a timetable
for withdrawal, shifting away from his prior position that U.S. troops will be
needed in Iraq to stabilize the regime to a new view that U.S. withdrawal is needed.
The United States has, in a way, been the victim of its own success. Having created
a much stronger Iraqi government than most thought possible, it now sees that
government becoming demanding. If the United States ignores al-Maliki, it will
undermine its own credibility. So, whatever is actually negotiated, the United
States has little choice but to follow al-Maliki's wishes.
The third audience is Iran. The weird combination of apocalyptic threat coupled with
diplomacy continues. While the obsession has been nuclear weapons, the real issue
has always been Iraq. The United States is trying to give Iran every reason to stop
enriching uranium. One recent offer was to begin talks without requiring a halt in
enrichment ("pre-negotiations," it was called, as opposed to negotiations). Leaving
diplomatic hair-splitting aside, the demonstration of a U.S. willingness to withdraw
from Iraq is a critical issue to the Iranians. They have more than 140,000 U.S.
troops on their border. Progress on nukes in Iran is much more likely with a
reduction of U.S. forces in Iraq.
Audiences aside, of course, there is another looming issue: Afghanistan. That war
continues to rage, with nine American soldiers killed over the weekend. Gen. David
Petraeus, confirmed by the U.S. Senate as CENTCOM commander July 11, now is
responsible for Afghanistan as well as Iraq. In looking at his board, he clearly
sees the need for more troops in Afghanistan and feels he can cut troop levels in
Iraq. Indeed, Iraq is the only place where he can find more troops. The Afghanistan
issue is coupled with a clear deterioration of the situation in Pakistan and a
looming crisis between Pakistan and India over the bombing of the Indian Embassy in
Kabul. Iraq is stable and happy compared to the Afghanistan-Pakistan theater.
But three U.S. brigades, added to the 52,000 NATO troops currently operating in
Afghanistan, are not going to make a difference in a country where nearly 120,000
Russians with much looser rules of engagement couldn't make a difference. So the
most important aspect of the troop reduction in Iraq will be the unfolding of
Petraeus' Afghanistan strategy. It is not clear to us what he has in mind, but it
would appear that the beginning of U.S. troop withdrawals from Iraq is something not
only Obama, al-Maliki and Tehran want to see. Petraeus might want to see it, too.
Copyright 2008 Strategic Forecasting, Inc.
-
Geopolitical Diary: Appearance vs. Reality and Israeli-Syrian Progress
Stratfor
July 14, 2008
On the surface, the July 14 Mediterranean Union summit appears to have been somewhat of a bust with respect to Israeli-Syrian peace talks. Despite sitting at the same round table, Syrian President Bashar al Assad and Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert did not give the cameras the pleasure of shaking hands, much less make eye contact with one another. Al Assad even made a big display of leaving the room 20 minutes prior to Olmert’s speech during the summit. In fact, the Syrian delegation was so particular about the details of the protocol measures that according to a CBS report citing Paris-based diplomats, the Syrians even made sure both leaders would enter the room from different doors to ensure the two didn’t have an “accidental encounter.”
Underneath al Assad’s hard exterior, however, a complex strategy is in motion for Israel and Syria to bury the hatchet diplomatically after 60 years of hostile relations.
It must be remembered that al Assad is in a unique position. He is an Alawite leader of an overwhelmingly Sunni country long viewed by its neighbors as a geopolitical runt that can be flattened by Israeli F-16s at a moment’s notice. It is now up to him to navigate Syria toward international esteem, relying primarily on his government’s links with militant proxies to get him there. To maintain control over the state while he pursues these peace talks, al Assad must show he is negotiating from a position of strength. He can do so by driving a hard bargain publicly with the Israelis and the Americans while delivering on key concessions behind the scenes.
This strategy has already made itself apparent. Al Assad has made a point of telling reporters he is no rush for a peace deal with the Israelis, saying that direct negotiations would simply have to wait for the inauguration of a new U.S. president in January. His actions at the Mediterranean Union summit underlined how Syria does not feel it is under pressure to negotiate or make any grand diplomatic gestures while Olmert remains on shaky political ground at home. At the same time, The Jerusalem Post published a report citing diplomatic sources as saying Olmert had delivered a message to al Assad through Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan. The message reportedly said it would be a mistake for al Assad to wait for a new U.S. president to engage in direct talks, and urged him to commit to direct talks in the near future.
Syria quite shrewdly has turned the tables on Israel, at least in the public arena. While in the past it was always the Syrians begging for talks with the Jewish state, al Assad has now created the perception of an Israel pushing Syria to negotiate — something that scores him major points at home.
More important, the Syrians appear to be making some big moves behind the scenes to push the talks forward. According to a Stratfor source in Lebanon, a Syrian security officer has recently provided U.S. intelligence officers in Istanbul with key information on Hezbollah activities and military capabilities. The Syrian officer also provided his U.S. counterpart with information on al Qaeda and al-Sadrite forces in Iraq. Washington has made clear to the Syrians that before the United States can publicly jump on board with the Syrian-Israeli peace process it will have to see some serious intelligence cooperation regarding Hezbollah and Iraq. If the source’s information is accurate, it appears the Syrians are providing that intelligence.
The Lebanese also formed a government July 14, something that would have been impossible without Syrian cooperation. Syria has a close relationship with Michel Suleiman, the former commander of the Lebanese army and the newly elected president of Lebanon. According to another Stratfor source in Lebanon, al Assad and Suleiman worked out a strategy to clamp down on some of the Islamist militant camps in Lebanon, which have always been an expendable resource for the Syrians. To this end, the Syrian state-run National News Agency reported July 8 that the group Fatah al-Intifada evacuated a military base in al Balayit village in Rashaya province along the Lebanese-Syrian border, allowing Lebanese troops to reoccupy the base. The source also claimed that Syria has agreed to help Lebanese troops close down two major bases operated by the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine -General Command, namely the Qusaya and Nama bases. Qusaya is the larger of the two bases, and enjoys a commanding position overlooking the Lebanese airbase in Riyaq and Ablah army base. Nama controls traffic along the Beirut-southern Lebanon highway, as well as the Beirut airport. It also controls Lebanese army movement to and from southern Lebanon, which is key to its defense against Hezbollah.
Stratfor is wary of falling in love with its forecast of a Syrian-Israeli peace deal, and we are making an honest effort to disprove our assumptions. But the trajectory of events — from the September 2007 Israeli airstrike in Syria to the February assassination of Hezbollah’s top commander in Damascus, from the public launch of peace talks to the developments on the ground Monday — all point toward a comprehensive deal in the making. National security interests are pushing both sides toward a political accommodation that neither side can deny will grant them overwhelming benefits as long as each delivers on its end of the agreement. We can’t help but notice that sources from across the spectrum are reporting information that all points in the same direction — namely, toward progress. As in all complex diplomatic negotiations, what you see in the headlines is not necessarily what you get.
-
Second piece tonight from Stratfor:
Now for the Hard Part: From Iraq to Afghanistan
July 15, 2008
Related Special Topic Page
U.S. Military Involvement in Iraq
By George Friedman
The Bush administration let it be known last week that it is prepared to start reducing the number of troops in Iraq, indicating that three brigades out of 15 might be withdrawn before Inauguration Day in 2009. There are many dimensions to the announcements, some political and some strategic. But perhaps the single most important aspect of the development was the fairly casual way the report was greeted. It was neither praised nor derided. Instead, it was noted and ignored as the public focused on more immediate issues.
In the public mind, Iraq is clearly no longer an immediate issue. The troops remain there, still fighting and taking casualties, and there is deep division over the wisdom of the invasion in the first place. But the urgency of the issue has passed. This doesn’t mean the issue isn’t urgent. It simply means the American public — and indeed most of the world — have moved on to other obsessions, as is their eccentric wont. The shift nevertheless warrants careful consideration.
Obviously, there is a significant political dimension to the announcement. It occurred shortly after Sen. Barack Obama began to shift his position on Iraq from what appeared to be a demand for a rapid withdrawal to a more cautious, nuanced position. As we have pointed out on several occasions, while Obama’s public posture was for withdrawal with all due haste, his actual position as represented in his position papers was always more complex and ambiguous. He was for a withdrawal by the summer of 2010 unless circumstances dictated otherwise. Rhetorically, Obama aligned himself with the left wing of the Democratic Party, but his position on the record was actually much closer to Sen. John McCain’s than he would admit prior to his nomination. Therefore, his recent statements were not inconsistent with items written on his behalf before the nomination — they merely appeared so.
The Bush administration was undoubtedly delighted to take advantage of Obama’s apparent shift by flanking him. Consideration of the troop withdrawal has been under way for some time, but the timing of the leak to The New York Times detailing it must have been driven by Obama’s shift. As Obama became more cautious, the administration became more optimistic and less intransigent. The intent was clearly to cause disruption in Obama’s base. If so, it failed precisely because the public took the administration’s announcement so casually. To the extent that the announcement was political, it failed because even the Democratic left is now less concerned about the war in Iraq. Politically speaking, the move was a maneuver into a vacuum.
But the announcement was still significant in other, more important ways. Politics aside, the administration is planning withdrawals because the time has come. First, the politico-military situation on the ground in Iraq has stabilized dramatically. The reason for this is the troop surge — although not in the way it is normally thought of. It was not the military consequences of an additional 30,000 troops that made the difference, although the addition and changes in tactics undoubtedly made an impact.
What was important about the surge is that it happened at all. In the fall of 2006, when the Democrats won both houses of Congress, it appeared a unilateral U.S. withdrawal from Iraq was inevitable. If Bush wouldn’t order it, Congress would force it. All of the factions in Iraq, as well as in neighboring states, calculated that the U.S. presence in Iraq would shortly start to decline and in due course disappear. Bush’s order to increase U.S. forces stunned all the regional players and forced a fundamental recalculation. The assumption had been that Bush’s hands were tied and that the United States was no longer a factor. What Bush did — and this was more important than numbers or tactics — was demonstrate that his hands were not tied and that the United States could not be discounted.
The realization that the Americans were not going anywhere caused the Sunnis, for example, to reconsider their position. Trapped between foreign jihadists and the Shia, the Americans suddenly appeared to be a stable and long-term ally. The Sunni leadership turned on the jihadists and aligned with the United States, breaking the jihadists’ backs. Suddenly facing a U.S.-Sunni-Kurdish alliance, the Shia lashed out, hoping to break the alliance. But they also split between their own factions, with some afraid of being trapped as Iranian satellites and others viewing the Iranians as the solution to their problem. The result was a civil war not between the Sunnis and Shia, but among the Shia themselves.
Tehran performed the most important recalculation. The Iranians’ expectation had been that the United States would withdraw from Iraq unilaterally, and that when it did, Iran would fill the vacuum it left. This would lead to the creation of an Iranian-dominated Iraqi Shiite government that would suppress the Sunnis and Kurds, allowing Iran to become the dominant power in the Persian Gulf region. It was a heady vision, and not an unreasonable one — if the United States had begun to withdraw in the winter of 2006-2007.
When the surge made it clear that the Americans weren’t leaving, the Iranians also recalculated. They understood that they were no longer going to be able to create a puppet government in Iraq, and the danger now was that the United States would somehow create a viable puppet government of its own. The Iranians understood that continued resistance, if it failed, might lead to this outcome. They lowered their sights from dominating Iraq to creating a neutral buffer state in which they had influence. As a result, Tehran acted to restrain the Shiite militias, focusing instead on maximizing its influence with the Shia participating in the Iraqi government, including Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki.
A space was created between the Americans and Iranians, and al-Maliki filled it. He is not simply a pawn of Iran — and he uses the Americans to prevent himself from being reduced to that — but neither is he a pawn of the Americans. Recent negotiations between the United States and the al-Maliki government on the status of U.S. forces have demonstrated this. In some sense, the United States has created what it said it wanted: a strong Iraqi government. But it has not achieved what it really wanted, which was a strong, pro-American Iraqi government. Like Iran, the United States has been forced to settle for less than it originally aimed for, but more than most expected it could achieve in 2006.
This still leaves the question of what exactly the invasion of Iraq achieved. When the Americans invaded, they occupied what was clearly the most strategic country in the Middle East, bordering Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Syria, Turkey and Iran. Without resistance, the occupation would have provided the United States with a geopolitical platform from which to pressure and influence the region. The fact that there was resistance absorbed the United States, therefore negating the advantage. The United States was so busy hanging on in Iraq that it had no opportunity to take advantage of the terrain.
That is why the critical question for the United States is how many troops it can retain in Iraq, for how long and in what locations. This is a complex issue. From the Sunni standpoint, a continued U.S. presence is essential to protect Sunnis from the Shia. From the Shiite standpoint, the U.S. presence is needed to prevent Iran from overwhelming the Shia. From the standpoint of the Kurds, a U.S. presence guarantees Kurdish safety from everyone else. It is an oddity of history that no major faction in Iraq now wants a precipitous U.S. withdrawal — and some don’t want a withdrawal at all.
For the United States, the historical moment for its geopolitical coup seems to have passed. Had there been no resistance after the fall of Baghdad in 2003, the U.S. occupation of Iraq would have made Washington a colossus astride the region. But after five years of fighting, the United States is exhausted and has little appetite for power projection in the region. For all its bravado against Iran, no one has ever suggested an invasion, only airstrikes. Therefore, the continued occupation of Iraq simply doesn’t have the same effect as it did in 2003.
But the United States can’t simply leave. The Iraqi government is not all that stable, and other regional powers, particularly the Saudis, don’t want to see a U.S. withdrawal. The reason is simple: If the United States withdraws before the Baghdad government is cohesive enough, strong enough and inclined enough to balance Iranian power, Iran could still fill the partial vacuum of Iraq, thereby posing a threat to Saudi Arabia. With oil at more than $140 a barrel, this is not something the Saudis want to see, nor something the United States wants to see.
Internal Iraqi factions want the Americans to stay, and regional powers want the Americans to stay. The Iranians and pro-Iranian Iraqis are resigned to an ongoing presence, but they ultimately want the Americans to leave, sooner rather than later. Thus, the Americans won’t leave. The question now under negotiation is simply how many U.S. troops will remain, how long they will stay, where they will be based and what their mission will be. Given where the United States was in 2006, this is a remarkable evolution. The Americans have pulled something from the jaws of defeat, but what that something is and what they plan to do with it is not altogether clear.
The United States obviously does not want to leave a massive force in Iraq. First, its more ambitious mission has evaporated; that moment is gone. Second, the U.S. Army and Marines are exhausted from five years of multidivisional warfare with a force not substantially increased from peacetime status. The Bush administration’s decision not to dramatically increase the Army was rooted in a fundamental error: namely, the administration did not think the insurgency would be so sustained and effective. They kept believing the United States would turn a corner. The result is that Washington simply can’t maintain the current force in Iraq under any circumstances, and to do so would be strategically dangerous. The United States has no strategic ground reserve at present, opening itself to dangers outside of Iraq. Therefore, if the United States is not going to get to play colossus of the Middle East, it needs to reduce its forces dramatically to recreate a strategic reserve. Its interests, the interests of the al-Maliki government — and interestingly, Iran’s interests — are not wildly out of sync. Washington wants to rapidly trim down to a residual force of a few brigades, and the other two players want that as well.
The United States has another pressing reason to do this: It has another major war under way in Afghanistan, and it is not winning there. It remains unclear if the United States can win that war, with the Taliban operating widely in Afghanistan and controlling a great deal of the countryside. The Taliban are increasingly aggressive against a NATO force substantially smaller than the conceivable minimum needed to pacify Afghanistan. We know the Soviets couldn’t do it with nearly 120,000 troops. And we know the United States and NATO don’t have as many troops to deploy in Afghanistan as the Soviets did. It is also clear that, at the moment, there is no exit strategy. Forces in Iraq must be transferred to Afghanistan to stabilize the U.S. position while the new head of U.S. Central Command, Gen. David Petraeus — the architect of the political and military strategy in Iraq — figures out what, if anything, is going to change.
Interestingly, the Iranians want the Americans in Afghanistan. They supported the invasion in 2001 for the simple reason that they do not want to see an Afghanistan united under the Taliban. The Iranians almost went to war with Afghanistan in 1998 and were delighted to see the United States force the Taliban from the cities. The specter of a Taliban victory in Afghanistan unnerves the Iranians. Rhetoric aside, a drawdown of U.S. forces in Iraq and a transfer to Afghanistan is what the Iranians would like to see.
To complicate matters, the Taliban situation is not simply an Afghan issue — it is also a Pakistani issue. The Taliban draw supplies, recruits and support from Pakistan, where Taliban support stretches into the army and the intelligence service, which helped create the group in the 1990s while working with the Americans. There is no conceivable solution to the Taliban problem without a willing and effective government in Pakistan participating in the war, and that sort of government simply is not there. Indeed, the economic and security situation in Pakistan continues to deteriorate.
Therefore, the Bush administration’s desire to withdraw troops from Iraq makes sense on every level. It is a necessary and logical step. But it does not address what should now become the burning issue: What exactly is the U.S. strategy in Afghanistan? As in Iraq before the surge, the current strategy appears to be to hang on and hope for the best. Petraeus’ job is to craft a new strategy. But in Iraq, for better or worse, the United States faced an apparently implacable enemy — Iran — which in fact pursued a shrewd, rational and manageable policy. In Afghanistan, the United States is facing a state that appears friendly — Pakistan — but is actually confused, divided and unmanageable by itself or others.
Petraeus’ success in Iraq had a great deal to do with Tehran’s calculations of its self-interest. In Pakistan, by contrast, it is unclear at the moment whether anyone is in a position to even define the national self-interest, let alone pursue it. And this means that every additional U.S. soldier sent to Afghanistan raises the stakes in Pakistan. It will be interesting to see how Afghanistan and Pakistan play out in the U.S. presidential election. This is not a theater of operations that lends itself to political soundbites.
-
Geopolitical Diary: The Possibility of a Hezbollah Attack on Israel
July 21, 2008
Israeli military intelligence chief Amos Yadlin warned Israel on Sunday of the increased potential for a Hezbollah attack along Israel’s northern frontier. Yadlin said that Hezbollah militants could use continuing disputes over border territories and Israeli Air Force flights over Lebanon as excuses to attack northern Israel. An attack on Israel certainly might be launched under one of the pretexts Yadlin mentioned, but Hezbollah strategy is far more complex than that.
Israel has been engaged in talks with Syria for some time now. Although Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Syrian President Bashar al Assad have not publicly sealed an agreement yet, we have seen a number of indications that the Syrians are taking steps to reduce Hezbollah’s influence in Lebanon. Cooperation between Syria and Israel spells serious trouble for Hezbollah, as any deal between the two countries will have to involve Syria cracking down on the militant group and weakening its position in Lebanon. Hezbollah needs to disrupt the talks between Syria and Israel in order to have a chance of survival. By blatantly attacking Israel, Hezbollah could exploit Israeli misgivings about Syria and a weak Israeli leadership to derail the peace talks.
But this strategy comes with big risks, as attacking Israel now would mean almost certain defeat for Hezbollah. The Israelis have been preparing for another war with Hezbollah since the summer 2006 conflict that ended more or less in a stalemate. If Hezbollah sparked another round of conflict, Israel would be much better prepared this time.
Israel, eager to make a better showing against Hezbollah than in the 2006 conflict, would this time not hesitate to unleash its full force on the militant group. Also, unlike in 2006, Israel would enjoy Syrian support against Hezbollah. Hezbollah would suffer hostility along one of its most important supply lines and opposition from a close state ally. Hezbollah’s communications network (its lifeline) would also be completely vulnerable, making victory nearly impossible for the group. A war with Israel would also result in massive damage within Lebanon’s Shiite community, undercutting Hezbollah’s chances of salvaging existing popular support — especially after a military defeat.
In short, the environment in the summer of 2008 is very different from that of summer of 2006.
The question of whether to attack or hold back is reflected in Hezbollah’s leadership structure. Hezbollah is deeply divided. It appears that the main split is between the old guard leadership and the younger cadres emboldened by the 2006 summer conflict. The old guard is willing to focus more on Hezbollah’s economic potential in Lebanon — mainly controlling the drug trade in the Bekaa Valley for a tidy profit. This faction of Hezbollah has something to lose by being clobbered in a war with Israel and Syria. But the younger members, encouraged by Hezbollah’s performance against Israel in 2006, won’t go down without a fight, regardless of the cost. To attack and get beaten back or to not attack and shrivel up — this is the question that Hezbollah’s leadership is grappling with right now.
Disputes over Hezbollah’s future and how it should proceed in light of an Israeli-Syrian agreement only weaken Hezbollah. Without a clear vision on how to proceed, Hezbollah’s chances of succeeding diminish and its chances of splintering rise. Hezbollah’s rivals can exploit and exacerbate this split and are doing so. Syria has recently thrown its support behind minority factions of Hezbollah, even making possible the return of former Hezbollah Secretary-General Sheikh Subhi al-Tufaili. The Amal movement, Hezbollah’s main rival within Lebanon’s Shiite community, is another tool for the Syrians to use in diminishing Hezbollah’s influence. Currently, Hezbollah is vulnerable to the age-old military strategy of divide and conquer.
It is unclear which path Hezbollah will take from here. It certainly still poses a threat to Israel and, even if there is not consensus among Hezbollah’s leaders, there still could be a rogue attack carried out by one of the factions inclined to attacking. Hezbollah’s response to such an act would be interesting to see. If the militants take credit for it, then they would face a two-front war; if they denounce it, they would reveal their vulnerability to splintering just as Israel would be mounting a response to the initial attack.
There are a number of regional powers leaning on Hezbollah to refrain from attacking Israel. They call on Hezbollah to accept its fate and transition from militancy to a more civil form of politics. So if Hezbollah were to attack, it would be doing so without much outside support — meaning that a unified Hezbollah attack would be very desperate, with very little chance of success. But there is too much internal opposition to support the movement’s transition from militancy. Hezbollah does not have any good options right now, and the probability of it suffering a major internal fracturing is higher than ever.
Click Here to Send Stratfor Your Comments
-
U.S. Gen. David Petraeus, the top coalition military commander in Iraq and future head of U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM), made a surprise visit to Beirut on Wednesday to discuss military cooperation with the Lebanese. The U.S. general reportedly met with Lebanese President Michel Suleiman (also a former army commander) and acting Lebanese army commander Maj. Gen. Shawki al-Masri.
Petraeus essentially has been Washington’s rainmaker for the Middle East. He is credited with bringing some semblance of stability to Iraq and has been chosen to try to do the same for Afghanistan. Though his hands are already quite full, the general — who takes over as CENTCOM chief in September — apparently felt the need to make time for some meetings in the Levant, which leaves us wondering what this trip is really about.
Contrary to expectations, the visit likely has little to do with military assistance to the Lebanese army. No amount of U.S. aid is going to be enough to build the Lebanese military into a force unified and formidable enough to competently confront an organization like Hezbollah. And a soon-to-be CENTCOM chief like Petraeus certainly does not have to be the one to make the time for a trip to Beirut to discuss giving a new batch of vehicles to Lebanese security forces. We suspect this meeting addressed more important matters.
The visit comes at a critical time; the regional dynamics are shifting in the Levant. Israel and Syria are negotiating in fancy hotel rooms in Turkey over a peace deal that would enhance Israel’s national security and reassert Syrian hegemony in Lebanon. These talks are progressing and are making Hezbollah more and more paranoid by the day, given that any final accommodation between the Israelis and the Syrians would include cutting Hezbollah down to size.
Though the Syrians already appear to have taken some (quiet) steps to curtail Hezbollah’s arms supplies, the Israelis are signaling that the ultimate litmus test for this peace deal will involve bigger and bolder action by the Syrians against the Shiite militant group. Israel is not about to allow Syria to play the middle ground in dealing with Hezbollah. With the Lebanese incapable of containing Hezbollah themselves, the Syrians are expected to play a major role in diluting Hezbollah’s military strength.
Exactly how Israel intends to deal with Hezbollah is still unclear, especially as the Israeli government is in a major political flux over its prime minister’s impending resignation. But Israeli preparations for a military confrontation with Hezbollah are now in full swing, and we can’t help but wonder whether these preparations are simply precautionary measures in case of a Hezbollah attack; or perhaps they are part of an Israeli strategy to goad Hezbollah into a war that would prove Syria’s commitment to the peace talks.
The same day Petraeus was in Lebanon, Stratfor picked up information from a source in the region claiming that Syria had dismantled an anti-aircraft system in the Anti-Lebanon mountain range to the east of the Bekaa Valley — a major Hezbollah stronghold and likely the main site of fighting between Hezbollah and Israel should full-scale hostilities resume. According to the source, Israel assured the Syrians (via Turkey) that it would not attack Syrian military positions in the event of such an outbreak, leaving Hezbollah particularly vulnerable and dependent on its own meager arsenal of man-portable surface-to-air missiles.
Stratfor has not been able to confirm this information, but if true, it signals a significant shift toward peace by the Syrians. Whether or not Israel intends to attack Hezbollah, whether or not Syria intends to attack Hezbollah, and whether or not the two decide to work together militarily or politically against Hezbollah, the bottom line is that that time is coming. Any of the above options are feasible, and there are many more ways to skin this particular cat. But the commonality among all of them is that Israel and Syria are sliding from a cold war into a cold peace, and that will redefine not just their bilateral relations, but the balance of power throughout the region. A Syria that can work with Israel is one in which Iran holds little influence. A Lebanon under the Syrian thumb is one in which groups like Hezbollah face the question of accommodation or oblivion. A more secure Israel is one that does not need to be overly concerned about anything the Palestinians demand. All this adds up to a very different region, and one which the United States — via Petraeus — fully intends to be involved in shaping.
Tell Stratfor What You Think
-
Here is an analysis that is almost totally opposite the previous one :|
Aug. 7, 2008
Jonathan Spyer , THE JERUSALEM POST
Lebanese President Michel Suleiman is to visit Syria next week, to discuss the opening of diplomatic relations between the countries, a Lebanese official told reporters this week.
French President Nicolas Sarkozy last month hailed President Bashar Assad's expression of willingness in principle to establish diplomatic relations with Lebanon as "historic progress."
The establishment of a first-ever Syrian Embassy in Beirut is probably not imminent, for various reasons. Nevertheless, the signs of normalization in relations between Syria and Lebanon are significant. They are the latest indication of Syria's growing confidence, and far from being a harbinger of more peaceful times in the neighborhood, they offer clues as to the shape of possible further strife.
The formation of the new Lebanese government after the Beirut clashes in May represented a very significant gain for the pro-Syria element in Lebanese politics. Hizbullah now controls a blocking 11 of the 30 cabinet seats. With a Lebanese government of this type, there is no reason for Syria to be in dispute there. The short period when Damascus felt the need to express its will in Lebanon solely in a clandestine way is drawing to a close.
Still, Western hopes for the rapid establishment of formal relations between the two countries are probably exaggerated. Damascus is in no hurry. Syria's return to Lebanon is a work in progress. Assad has listed the preconditions for the establishment of diplomatic relations to become a real possibility. These include the passing of an election law, and the holding of the scheduled May 2009 general election.
Behind Assad's honeyed words, one may glimpse the contours of Syrian strategy in the next stage. The election of May 2009 will be conducted under the shadow of Hizbullah's independent and now untouchable military capability.
Intimidation will go hand in hand with the real kudos gained by the movement and its allies because of recent events - including the prisoner swap with Israel, and the Doha agreement that followed the fighting in May. The result, the Syrians hope, will be the establishment of a government more fully dominated by Hizbullah and its allies, in which the pro-Western element will have been marginalized.
Such a government would mark the effective final reversal of the events of the spring of 2005, when the Cedar Revolution compelled the Syrian army to leave Lebanon. Damascus would then go on to conduct friendly and fraternal relations with the new order in Beirut. Mission accomplished.
If this strategy plays out, however, it will represent not the normalization of Syrian-Lebanese relations, but rather the enveloping of Lebanon into the regional alliance led by Iran, of which Syria is a senior member.
On the ground in Lebanon, this regional alliance is still engaged in consolidating its gains. The lines separating the official Lebanese state from the para-state established by Hizbullah continue to blur. The new government's draft policy statement, which is still to be discussed by the parliament, supports the "right of Lebanon's people, the army and the Resistance to liberate all its territories."
This statement thus nominally affords the Resistance. i.e. Hizbullah, equal status with the Lebanese Armed Forces, and appears to consider it an organ of official government policy.
The new organ of government policy, meanwhile, is building its strength. Ostensibly for the mission of "liberating" 20 square kilometers of border farmland, Hizbullah has built a capability of 40,000 missiles and rockets, is frenziedly recruiting and training new fighters, and is expanding and developing its command and logistics center in the Bekaa.
The latest talk is of Iranian-Syrian plans to supply Hizbullah with an advanced anti-aircraft capacity that would provide aerial defense to the investment in rockets and missiles. Such a move would represent a grave altering of the balance of power. Serious moves towards it could well prove the spark for the next confrontation.
In all its moves, the Iranian-Syrian-Hizbullah alliance has known how to combine brutal military tactics on the ground with subtle and determined diplomacy. Its willingness to throw away the rule book governing the normal relations between states has been perhaps its greatest advantage. While the West sees states as fixed entities possessing certain basic rights, Iran and Syria see only processes of rising and falling power. They see themselves as the force on the rise, and the niceties of internationally fixed borders as a trifle unworthy of consideration.
The region has known the rise of similar systems of power and ideology in the past. Experience shows that such states and alliances have become amenable to change and compromise - if at all - only after experiencing defeat, setback and frustration.
The Syrians and their allies, of course, are far weaker in measurable military and societal terms than their rhetoric would suggest. Western (including Israeli) actions over the last years have tended to blur this fact. The general acceptance of the transformation of Lebanon into a platform for this alliance - and the lauding of it as 'historical progress' - is the latest example of this. The reacquaintance of rhetoric with reality on all sides is long overdue.
Jonathan Spyer is a senior research fellow at the Global Research in International Affairs Center at the Interdisciplinary Center, Herzliya
-
RAchel:
I have high regard for Stratfor, but this time around I suspect they may be a bit too in love with their own IQ.
Marc
-
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?apage=1&cid=1218095193781&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull
The Region: Crusades long gone, but jihad lingers on
Aug. 7, 2008
Barry Rubin , THE JERUSALEM POST
A 19-year-old man is tortured and beheaded for a bad joke interpreted as blasphemy. A father is accused of killing his son because he converted to another religion. They are not Muslims but Christians, and the place is France in the mid-1700s.
There was a time when Europe often behaved in ways parallel to that of Muslim-majority countries today. Yet by the end of the 1700s, this was changing. In the first case cited above, the king and even Catholic bishops failed to save the unfortunate Chevalier de la Barre, but the outcry led to the end of such actions. In the second case, Voltaire led a campaign that saw Jean Calas's name legally cleared on the grounds that he was the victim of an unjust frame-up because he was a member of the Protestant minority.
It's true, then, that there are parallels between Western and Middle Eastern societies. But even leaving aside important doctrinal religious issues, the crucial difference between the two is that phenomena the West has left far back in the past continue to exist in Muslim-majority counterparts.
The Crusades ended eight centuries ago; jihad continues. And other critical differences differentiate between the two civilizations. One is that progressive opinion, intellectuals, governments, even many of the Christian churches themselves, fought for progress in the West. They didn't say "These are our sacred practices, our lifestyle and thus must remain forever unchanged." They didn't let fear of being labeled "Christianophobic" paralyze them.
Another is that four centuries of rethinking, struggle and debate were needed to create contemporary Western democratic society.
Such processes have, at best, barely begun in the contemporary Middle East.
IT'S EXTRAORDINARY that much analysis of the region - possibly the most important intellectual endeavor of our times - is conducted in an ad-lib fashion based on the latest newspaper interview, underpinned with wishful thinking. Yet if we're going to be serious about this task, serious historical perspective is needed. Most should be based on the region's own distinctive past and world view.
But since people insist on making transregional analogies, here's a way of doing one. Consider the following statement: "The world is not ruled by an intelligent being." Instead, religion has created a deity who is a "monster of unreason, injustice, malice and atrocity."
Who said this - someone last week in the West? No, it was the French writer Jean Meslier in 1723. That statement, too hot to publish at the time, was a few decades later part of mainstream French discourse.
Oh, and by the way, Meslier was a lifelong Catholic priest.
THE BASIS of democracy began in 1215 in England with its Magna Carta. The battle to have a legitimately accepted division between religion and state was waged and largely won there in the Middle Ages. A basis was laid for secular-dominated society.
True, in the 1500s underground Catholic priests in England were tortured and executed, while Protestants in France suffered even worse. Yet at the same time, English universities were teaching the classical tradition which, in Italy, formed the basis of representational art. The works of Shakespeare and his fellow creators depended on this freedom, background and example. A basis was laid for a pragmatic, empiricist, utilitarian culture that stood on the scientific method.
That was the Renaissance, or rebirth. For the West, the great civilization of classical times was being rebuilt.
But Greece and Rome are not part of the Arab-Islamic tradition, where representational art is viewed with suspicion. The time before the coming of Islam is rejected with horror. To this day, secularism is almost a hanging offense in the Middle East; and democracy, as it is understood in the West, is deemed inappropriate. Much of Europe's cultural production in the 16th through 18th centuries could not be produced and widely accepted in the Arabic-speaking world today.
Of course, these things do appear, but usually as imports from the West, which raises suspicion and gives ruling forces - clerical and state - a strong incentive to demonize the West in order to limit the appeal of subversive ideas.
THE GREAT historian of France, Alfred Cobban, wrote that the new secular ideology triumphed there between 1748 and 1770, after already flourishing in Britain and the Netherlands. Even in the Catholic Church "the persecuting spirit was dying down." The English, Dutch, American and French revolutions were not triumphs of traditionalism, as in Iran, but of greater democracy.
Many Westerners continued (as they do today) to be religious, but more open and tolerant.
This struggle between the old and new societies characterized much of the 19th and 20th centuries, yet the trend was steady. Perhaps fascism - and arguably communism - were the final reactionary movements, and World War II was the last struggle. Yet victory required 500 years of rethinking and education.
There's no such history in the Middle East, while several additional problems block movement toward moderation and democracy here. Whatever one thinks of specific Islamic doctrine as generally interpreted, the big problem is that it remains so powerful and hegemonic. Arab nationalism is anti-democratic, repressive and statist. Islamists seek a somewhat revised version of the eighth century, albeit with rockets and mass communication.
IT IS also worse because Middle East regimes and revolutionaries know Western history. They are aware of the fact that while pious Western philosophers and scientists sincerely believed open inquiry and democracy didn't threaten traditional religion and the status quo, they were wrong. Openness led to revolution and to modern secular-dominated society - a West with all the ills decried by those in religious, ideological and political power in the Middle East. They also know what happened to Soviet-bloc dictatorships that experimented with more freedom. And they know that accepting Western ideas makes people want to change their own societies.
On top of that knowledge, they have weapons, technology, new means of organization and communication to block any change that tries to make its way through persuasion or threat. This point applies as much to Iran's Islamist rulers as to Syria's pretend-pious ones or Saudi Arabia's Wahhabi monarchs.
FINALLY, it is worse because there's a powerful, growing movement - radical Islamism - posing an alternative to modernism. The question is not merely of tiny, marginalized al-Qaida but also the governments of Iran, Syria and Sudan; the Saudi regime; powerful mainstream societal influences, Hamas and Hizbullah; the Muslim Brotherhood, and many others.
In comparison, while there are courageous individual liberals, there's no real liberal party anywhere in the Middle East, no liberal-controlled media or liberal proselytizing university. In Egypt the only liberal organization has been taken over by the Muslim Brotherhood.
So while the great majority of people want a good life for themselves and their children - while they breathe air, drink water and bleed when they are pricked - as they did in Ice Age caves, ancient Rome, medieval France, imperial China, Inca Peru and the central deserts of Australia - that does not mean everyone thinks the same, or that all societies and governments are basically equivalent.
Anyone who doesn't understand history is doomed to be battered by it.
The writer is director of Global Research in International Affairs Center and editor of the Middle East Review of International Affairs Journal and Turkish Studies.
-
October 26, 2008
US Special Forces Launch Rare Attack Inside Syria
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 10:06 p.m. ET
DAMASCUS, Syria (AP) -- U.S. military helicopters launched an extremely rare attack Sunday on Syrian territory close to the border with Iraq, killing eight people in a strike the government in Damascus condemned as ''serious aggression.''
A U.S. military official said the raid by special forces targeted the network of al-Qaida-linked foreign fighters moving through Syria into Iraq. The Americans have been unable to shut the network down in the area struck because Syria was out of the military's reach.
''We are taking matters into our own hands,'' the official told The Associated Press in Washington, speaking on condition of anonymity because of the political sensitivity of cross-border raids.
The attack came just days after the commander of U.S. forces in western Iraq said American troops were redoubling efforts to secure the Syrian border, which he called an ''uncontrolled'' gateway for fighters entering Iraq.
A Syrian government statement said the helicopters attacked the Sukkariyeh Farm near the town of Abu Kamal, five miles inside the Syrian border. Four helicopters attacked a civilian building under construction shortly before sundown and fired on workers inside, the statement said.
The government said civilians were among the dead, including four children.
A resident of the nearby village of Hwijeh said some of the helicopters landed and troops exited the aircraft and fired on a building. He said the aircraft flew along the Euphrates River into the area of farms and several brick factories. The witness spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the information.
Another witness said four helicopters were used in the attack.
Since the invasion of Iraq in 2003, there have been some instances in which American troops crossed areas of the 370-mile Syria-Iraq border in pursuit of militants, or warplanes violated Syria's airspace. But Sunday's raid was the first conducted by aircraft and on such a large scale. In May 2005, Syria said American fire killed a border guard.
Syria's Foreign Ministry said it summoned the U.S. and Iraqi charges d'affaires to protest against the strike.
''Syria condemns this aggression and holds the American forces responsible for this aggression and all its repercussions. Syria also calls on the Iraqi government to shoulder its responsibilities and launch and immediate investigation into this serious violation and prevent the use of Iraqi territory for aggression against Syria,'' the government statement said.
Syrian state television late Sunday aired footage that showed blood stains on the floor of a site under construction, with wooden beams used to mold concrete strewn on the ground. Akram Hameed, one of the injured, told the television he was fishing in the Euphrates and saw four helicopters coming from the border area under a heavy blanket of fire.
''One of the helicopters landed in an agricultural area and eight members disembarked,'' the man in his 40s said. ''The firing lasted about 15 minutes and when I tried to leave the area on my motorcycle, I was hit by a bullet in the right arm about 20 meters (yards) away,'' he said.
The injured wife of the building's guard, in bed in hospital with a tube in her nose, told Syria TV that two helicopters landed and two remained in the air during the attack.
''I ran to bring my child who was going to his father and I was hit,'' she said. The TV did not identify her by name.
The area targeted is near the Iraqi border city of Qaim, which had been a major crossing point for fighters, weapons and money coming into Iraq to fuel the Sunni insurgency.
Iraqi travelers making their way home across the border reported hearing many explosions, said Qaim Mayor Farhan al-Mahalawi.
The foreign fighters network sends militants from North Africa and elsewhere in the Middle East to Syria, where elements of the Syrian military are in league with al-Qaida and loyalists of Saddam Hussein's Baath party, the U.S. military official said.
He said that while American forces have had considerable success, with Iraqi help, in shutting down the ''rat lines'' in Iraq, and with foreign government help in North Africa, the Syrian node has been out of reach.
''The one piece of the puzzle we have not been showing success on is the nexus in Syria,'' the official said.
On Thursday, U.S. Maj. Gen. John Kelly said Iraq's western borders with Saudi Arabia and Jordan were fairly tight as a result of good policing by security forces in those countries but that Syria was a ''different story.''
''The Syrian side is, I guess, uncontrolled by their side,'' Kelly said. ''We still have a certain level of foreign fighter movement.''
He added that the U.S. was helping construct a sand berm and ditches along the border.
''There hasn't been much, in the way of a physical barrier, along that border for years,'' Kelly said.
The White House in August approved similar special forces raids from Afghanistan across the border of Pakistan to target al-Qaida and Taliban operatives. At least one has been carried out.
The flow of foreign fighters into Iraq has been cut to an estimated 20 a month, a senior U.S. military intelligence official told the Associated Press in July. That's a 50 percent decline from six months ago, and just a fifth of the estimated 100 foreign fighters who were infiltrating Iraq a year ago, according to the official.
Ninety percent of the foreign fighters enter through Syria, according to U.S. intelligence. Foreigners are some of the most deadly fighters in Iraq, trained in bomb-making and with small-arms expertise and more likely to be willing suicide bombers than Iraqis.
Foreign fighters toting cash have been al-Qaida in Iraq's chief source of income. They contributed more than 70 percent of operating budgets in one sector in Iraq, according to documents captured in September 2007 on the Syrian border. Most of the fighters were conveyed through professional smuggling networks, according to the report.
Iraqi insurgents seized Qaim in April 2005, forcing U.S. Marines to recapture the town the following month in heavy fighting. The area became secure only after Sunni tribes in Anbar turned against al-Qaida in late 2006 and joined forces with the Americans.
Syrian Foreign Minister Walid al-Moallem accused the United States earlier this year of not giving his country the equipment needed to prevent foreign fighters from crossing into Iraq. He said Washington feared Syria could use such equipment against Israel.
Though Syria has long been viewed by the U.S. as a destabilizing country in the Middle East, in recent months, Damascus has been trying to change its image and end years of global seclusion.
Its president, Bashar Assad, has pursued indirect peace talks with Israel, mediated by Turkey, and says he wants direct talks next year. Syria also has agreed to establish diplomatic ties with Lebanon, a country it used to dominate both politically and militarily, and has worked harder at stemming the flow of militants into Iraq.
The U.S. military in Baghdad did not immediately respond to a request for comment after Sunday's raid.
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/worl...=1&oref=slogin
-
After five years and six months during which Syria has been an active accomplice to the insurgency in Iraq, the U.S. has finally struck back. Historians will be left to ponder how the course of the Iraq war might have changed if President Bush had acted sooner.
U.S. military sources are confirming that on Sunday U.S. special forces raided a location in eastern Syria that was being used by a network of Syrian military officials and al Qaeda-connected groups to smuggle foreign jihadists into Iraq. The Syrians, predictably, denounced the raid as "an outrageous crime" and an "unprovoked" attack on a "sovereign country."
The Syrians have an interesting definition of unprovoked and a curious notion of sovereignty. Even before U.S. troops took Baghdad, then-Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld explicitly warned that Syria was shipping military equipment to help Saddam Hussein, including night-vision goggles and antitank weapons. Only days after Baghdad fell, Mr. Bush warned Damascus against becoming a safe haven for top Iraqi Baathist officials. "We expect cooperation," he said, "and I'm hopeful we'll receive cooperation." Siding with Secretary of State Colin Powell over Mr. Rumsfeld, Mr. Bush dispatched Mr. Powell to Damascus in a show of postinvasion diplomatic goodwill.
President Bashar al Assad did not reciprocate, and Damascus soon became the capital in exile from which the Sunni insurgency was financed, organized and directed. In late 2003, Cofer Black, the State Department's Counterterrorism Coordinator, told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee that Syria "needs to do a lot more" to stop terrorist infiltration, but added that he "remained optimistic that continued engagement with Syria will one day lead to a change in Syrian behavior."
It didn't. The following May, Mr. Bush ordered the minimum possible sanctions on Damascus under the Syria Accountability Act of 2003. Though Damascus offered some token intelligence cooperation, it also turned Damascus International Airport into the central hub through which jihadists from Morocco to Saudi Arabia could reach Iraq. Insurgent leaders were brazen enough to hold meetings, in Damascus hotels, that were known both to Syrian and U.S. intelligence.
Administration hawks urged more forceful action, including Predator missile strikes against terrorist hideouts in Syria. But the CIA and others valued ties to Syrian intelligence, and in January 2005 Mr. Bush decided instead to send then Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage to Damascus to read Mr. Assad the riot act. Mr. Armitage succeeded in getting the Syrians to turn over Saddam's half-brother, Sabawi Ibrahim Hassan, a ringleader of the insurgency. This token cooperation, along with episodic Syrian efforts to police their border with Iraq, served mainly to disguise their ongoing support for the insurgency.
By the time the insurgency reached its height in 2006, more than 100 jihadists were coming into Iraq from Syria every month. According to U.S. military estimates, they accounted for between 80% and 90% of the suicide attacks, mainly against Iraqi civilians. Thanks to a combination of the surge, the Sunni Awakening and better internal monitoring by the Saudis and others of just who was boarding planes to Damascus, that flow has now slowed to about 20 a month.
Yet the Syrians continue to show little interest in aiding the U.S., despite recent efforts by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to court her Syrian counterpart, Walid Al-Moallem. Those efforts include inviting Syria to last year's Annapolis conference on Arab-Israeli peace and face-to-face meetings in Egypt and, just last month, New York.
Little wonder, then, that even the Iraqi government, which has sought good relations with its neighbor, has lost patience. "This area was a staging ground for activities by terrorist organizations hostile to Iraq," said Ali al-Dabbagh, the Iraqi government spokesman, in reference to the American raid. "The presence in Syria of groups that are hostile to Iraq and who contribute to terrorist activity against Iraqis hinders the progress of our relationship."
We wonder how differently the war in Iraq might have gone had the U.S. conducted this kind of raid as often as necessary in 2003 and 2004, or if it had put Mr. Assad on notice that his survival in power was at risk if he continued to support the insurgency. Our guess is that the war would have been shorter, far less bloody for American and Iraqi troops, and less politically costly to Mr. Bush.
There's a lesson in these Bush Administration mistakes for the next President, particularly if he is Barack Obama. The Syrians interpreted diplomatic accommodation in the face of their anti-American acts as a sign of weakness to exploit. Mr. Obama has promised he'll engage Syria diplomatically as part of an overall effort to end the conflict in Iraq. If he really wants to end the war faster, he'll pick up on Syria where the Bush Administration has now ended.
Please add your comments to the Opinion Journal forum.
-
Geopolitical Diary: The SOFA and Iranian Options
November 18, 2008 | 0257 GMT
Ayatollah Mahmoud Hashemi Shahroudi, the head of Iran’s judiciary and a figure close to Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, publicly praised the Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA) reached between the United States and the government of Iraq. He said the Iraqi government had acted “very well” in approving the SOFA — the first time a senior Iranian official had anything good to say about the agreement.
This is clearly a public shift in Iranian policy, which has thus far been critical of the SOFA, which would allow U.S. forces to remain in Iraq for another three years. Iran’s position has been that American troops should be withdrawn immediately. Therefore, in accepting the presence of U.S. forces for three more years, Tehran appears to have made a concession. Publicly, the Iranians had been opposing the pact, but behind the scenes they were part of the negotiation process. They have also cut the ground out from under those Iraqi Shia who oppose the SOFA, such as Muqtada al-Sadr’s movement. The al-Sadrites have said they would oppose the treaty through “legal avenues,” which means there is a possibility of some trouble in the legislature.
But we can be confident that Shahroudi did not make his statements casually. He is too well connected and too influential to have simply spoken out of turn. The Iranians have signaled their approval. But it should be remembered that this was not an official government endorsement. Iran can potentially back away from its approval. Nevertheless, it is as close as we can get to approval by Iran without a sea change in U.S.-Iranian relations.
That’s the real question here — whether Shahroudi’s statement represents a redefinition of U.S.-Iranian relations. There have been persistent reports of the Bush administration opening low-level diplomatic relations with Iran before it leaves office. There have been indications from Tehran that such an opening would be welcome. Undoubtedly, there have been quiet talks between U.S. and Iranian officials. Senior Iraqi Shiite leaders were cool on the SOFA until this weekend, when they shifted their position, opening the door for an agreement. It is speculative, but not unreasonable, to wonder what role the Iranian government played in changing the Shiite leaders’ minds and what other elements there may be to any U.S.-Iranian understanding that Shahroudi’s statement was a part of.
And then there is the important question of why Iran is so happy about this deal. One answer is that Tehran has moved closer to an agreement with the United States that guarantees its interests in Iraq. The other is that the SOFA, while extending the U.S. presence in Iraq, guarantees that U.S. forces will leave the country after three years and reduce their presence in Iraq’s cities in 2009. If we were cynical, we would wonder whether Iran’s good cheer — agreement with Washington or not — stems from the fact that the Americans will be gone and Iran will still be there after three years. The Iranians can wait, and they know that in three years or 10, the Baghdad government will be fragile and manipulable.
Indeed, the two explanations are fully compatible. The United States and Iran may well have reached quiet understandings that have made this SOFA achievable, and Iran is content with those agreements. At the same time, the Iranians may be thinking ahead and recognizing that the SOFA clears the way — should the situation permit and require — for much greater Iranian involvement in Iraq down the road. The SOFA gives the Iranians options, and it should not be a surprise that they are pleased.
As for the United States, this SOFA, if implemented, closes down options and limits influence. With the United States pulling out in three years — or perhaps less — Iraqi groups know that they will not be able to depend on American forces to protect their interests. They will be moving away from the United States to secure their positions on their own. As that happens, U.S. influence in Baghdad will begin to decrease dramatically.
This leaves open the question of what Washington — either George W. Bush’s or Barack Obama’s — thinks the status of U.S.-Iranian relations will be in three years. As it currently stands, the SOFA, without any other understandings, works only if the government in Baghdad is effective enough and motivated to block Iranian influence in three years. Without that, Iraq could well come into an Iranian orbit. The United States is clearly betting on Baghdad.
-
November 19, 2008 | 0258 GMT
Maj.-Gen. Amos Yadlin, head of military intelligence in Israel, said that he would not regard a dialogue between Washington and Iran as necessarily negative. In a public speech, Yadlin said, “Dialogue is not appeasement.” Even if the talks failed, Yadlin said, they could lead to a strengthening of sanctions and might lead to some success as well. He said, “Iran will do anything not to be cornered in the position of Iraq or North Korea,” adding that “Iran is also very susceptible to international pressure because of the (financial) crisis.”
This is a shift in Israeli thinking. While the future of Israel’s government is unclear, to say the least, Yadlin is certainly expressing more than his private views. He is certainly speaking for the leadership of the Israel Defense Forces and in all probability for the Israeli intelligence community. Over the past months, there has been a shift in the way Israelis have presented the imminence of the threat from Iran, indicating that the threat of an Iranian nuclear weapon is neither as immutable nor as near as previously thought. Yadlin’s statement brings Israel one step further in this direction.
The change in tone tracks with the change in Iranian-U.S. relations. While hardly warm, there are signs of some thawing, as we have discussed. U.S. President George W. Bush’s administration appears to be moving toward more extensive, open discussions with Iran, and President-elect Barack Obama has indicated a commitment to exploring dialogue with Iran. Under those circumstances, Israel is not going to simply oppose talks. Israel cannot stray too far from the American position, and given that the Bush and Obama positions are converging, Israel cannot attempt to play off political disagreements in Washington.
Yadlin’s statement was far from an enthusiastic endorsement of diplomatic dialogue, since he recognized that a failure in talks between Washington and Tehran would open the door to harsher sanctions against Iran. He did point out that Israel recognizes two weaknesses in the Iranian position. First, Iran does not want to be a pariah state like North Korea or Saddam Hussein’s Iraq. Second, Iran — whose economy was already fragile — is under heavy pressure because of the global financial crisis. Given Iran’s long-term fear of isolation and attack, and its immediate financial problems, Yadlin seemed to be saying that if there are going to be talks with Iran, now is the time to have them.
The Israelis have been shifting positions on a number of issues in the past few months. Israel shifted its position on Georgia even before the war with Russia began, and then reached out to the Russians in the hope of preventing arms sales to Syria. Now Israel is shifting its views on talks with Iran. A great deal of this redefinition undoubtedly has to do with Obama’s election, but some of it has to do with a recognition that the dynamics of the world are changing and Israel’s posture was not aligned with new realities. Russia is becoming a more important player that Israel cannot take for granted, and talks with Iran are inevitable.
There is one deeper level here. The Israelis always wanted a balance of power between Iraq and Iran. They saw Iran as a block to Arab aspirations. Whatever the internal ideology of Iran, the tension between Iran and the Arabs benefits Israel. Many Israelis were less than thrilled by the U.S. invasion of Iraq because it collapsed that balance. A permanent presence of American forces in Iraq would of course have compensated, but the new Status of Forces Agreement means that U.S. troops will be leaving Iraq — and perhaps leaving it stronger than when they arrived. If there is going to be a strong Iraq, Israel will want a strong Iran. Now we are far from a strong Iraq, but we are also far from a glowing endorsement of U.S.-Iranian dialogue. What Yadlin has done is open the door to the idea that talking to Iran would not mean catastrophe for Israel. For the moment, that is quite enough.
-
Iran, U.S.: Obama and the Potential for Cooperation in Afghanistan
Stratfor Today » January 23, 2009 | 1210 GMT
NICHOLAS KAMM/AFP/Getty Images
U.S. President Barack ObamaSummary
Several of the Obama administration’s top foreign policy agenda items significantly raise the potential for the United States and Iran to work together in Afghanistan. These priorities include reducing the U.S. military presence in Iraq, diplomatic engagement with Iran, and the search for alternatives to the increasingly insecure NATO supply routes to Afghanistan that traverse Pakistan.
Analysis
Related Special Topic Page
U.S.-Iran Negotiations
Engaging Iran diplomatically is high on new U.S. President Barack Obama’s foreign policy agenda. Tehran also hopes for change with Obama administration after some seven years of limited dealings with the Bush presidency. And Afghanistan could become a place where U.S.-Iranian cooperation flourishes.
One key issue that could facilitate improved bilateral relations is the two countries’ common interests in Afghanistan. U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) chief Gen. David Petraeus noted this during a Jan. 8 talk in Washington, saying that Iran “doesn’t want to see … extremists running Afghanistan again any more than other folks do.” Critically for the United States, Iran could help solve the supply chain problem the United States and its NATO allies have been facing amid the growing insecurity in Pakistan.
In his previous position as top U.S. commander in Iraq, Petraeus played a key role in U.S.-Iranian dealings, which led to the greatly improved security situation in Iraq. The potential for fruitful U.S.-Iranian dealings and the security gains made thus far in Iraq have reached the point where there are indications from within the U.S. military that a substantial drawdown in Iraq could occur more rapidly than expected. This will not be possible without continued improvement in U.S.-Iranian negotiations, however.
Though Iraq remains the focal point of Iranian foreign policy efforts, it is hardly Tehran’s only interest abroad. Any settlement between the United States and Iran will involve an understanding regarding Iranian interests in the Levant and elsewhere in the mostly Arab Middle East, regarding Tehran’s controversial nuclear program and regarding Afghanistan. Tehran essentially wants the United States to recognize the Islamic republic as the major player in the region.
Iran views its sphere of influence as including not only the Persian Gulf, the Arabian Peninsula, the Levant and the eastern rim of North Africa, but also Central Asia, the Caucasus and South Asia. Iran’s ability to project power in Central Asia and the Caucasus is quite limited, however, relative to regional rivals Turkey and — more significantly — Russia. South Asia, by contrast, is more fertile terrain for Iranian interests.
Although ethnicity and sect serve as roadblocks to Iranian regional ambitions in the Middle East (Iran is Persian and Shiite while most Muslim countries in the Middle East are largely Arab and Sunni), ethnicity and sect work in Tehran’s favor in Afghanistan, with which Iran shares a 582-mile border. Some 30 percent of Afghans are Tajiks, another branch of the Persian ethnicity. And even though ethnically Afghanistan is majority Pashtun, the lingua franca of Afghanistan is Dari (a variant of the Persian language). Finally, 16 percent of Afghans are Shia.
These factors allow Iran almost to rival Pakistani influence in Afghanistan. In fact, when Afghanistan was ruled by the pro-Pakistani Taliban regime from 1996 to 2001, the Iranians (in concert with Russians and the Indians) supported the Tajik-dominated Northern Alliance opposition. In 1999, Iran almost went to war with the Taliban after the killings of several Iranian diplomats in the northern Afghan city of Mazar-i-Sharif.
The Taliban and their transnational jihadist allies still constitute a threat to Iran, and remain an obstacle to Tehran’s ability to consolidate its influence in Afghanistan. This explains Tehran’s willingness to cooperate in the U.S.-led ouster of the Taliban from power after 9/11. Just as Iran’s allies in Iraq would later work with the United States to forge a post-Baathist Iraq, Iranian proxies in Afghanistan worked with Washington to shape a post-Taliban Afghanistan. Though the exact shape of its cooperation remains unclear, Iran also provided direct logistical support for U.S. military operations in Afghanistan.
To halt the Taliban’s effort to stage a comeback, Washington will soon embark on a military surge in Afghanistan while simultaneously mounting a political offensive much like the one it used to undercut the Iraqi insurgency. This will create an opening for another round of U.S.-Iranian cooperation, one that could prove much more substantial than the previous rounds.
As in 2001, the United States will once again need Iranian assistance in pulling together a coalition that can serve to block Taliban ambitions in Afghanistan. And the Iranians have something of critical importance to the United States that they can offer in the short term: the shortest overland route for shipping supplies to Western forces in Afghanistan.
With the principal Western supply routes to Afghanistan, which pass through Pakistan, becoming increasingly insecure because of a raging jihadist insurgency in Pakistan, Washington has intensified its efforts to lock down alternative and/or supplementary routes through Central Asia. The situation is so critical that Washington even appears willing to make concessions to a resurgent Russia to secure a supply chain to Afghanistan for Western forces passing through either Russian territory or the Russian sphere of influence. (Compared to the Iranian and Pakistani routes, these are long, complex and expensive supply lines.)
A much simpler alternative to traversing the former Soviet Union would be to ship material for U.S. and NATO forces to the Iranian port of Chahbahar. Supplies could be offloaded there and transferred to trucks running on a northbound highway connected to the southwestern Afghan town of Zaranj. Zaranj is connected by road to the Afghan town of Delaram by the Indian army’s engineering corps in a major highway project that was only recently completed. Like Zaranj, Delaram is in Nimroz province, and is connected to the ring road that links the major Afghan cities. If an arrangement can be worked out between the United States and Iran, Western forces could thus reduce their dependence on the main routes through Pakistan and perhaps avoid the logistical and geopolitical costs of having to go transport supplies through Central Asia.
The United States clearly could greatly benefit from Iranian cooperation in Afghanistan. The extent to which the two sides can work together, however, is contingent on the level of improvement in U.S.-Iranian bilateral relations — and on Washington’s ability to balance the interests of the multiple regional players who have a stake in Afghanistan.
-
By BRET STEPHENS
Jerusalem
It's Sunday morning, and I've been trying for days to get an interview with former -- and, if his poll numbers hold up through the Feb. 10 election, soon-to-be -- Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. But it's a political season, and there's a war on, and my calls aren't being returned. With nothing better to do, I go downstairs to the hotel gym for a jog.
Terry ShoffnerSo who should be on the treadmill next to mine? Benjamin Netanyahu. We chat for a few minutes, mostly about the cease-fire that the government of outgoing Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has just declared, and I ask if he'd be willing to sit for an interview later in the day. His answer is something between a "maybe" and a "yes." As a nod to the customs of the country, I take that as a definite yes, so much the better to press his aides to arrange the meeting.
When the interview finally happens, in the grand reception hall of the old King David Hotel, it's close to one o'clock in the morning on Monday. Mr. Netanyahu has come from a long dinner with visiting European leaders -- French President Nicolas Sarkozy, British Prime Minister Gordon Brown and German Chancellor Angela Merkel among them -- and he is plainly exhausted, joking that he can't be held responsible for anything he might say.
The crack is unnecessary. Rare for a leading Israeli political figure, the 59-year-old Mr. Netanyahu is a phenomenally articulate man -- Obama-esque, one might even say -- not just in his native Hebrew, but also in the unaccented English he acquired at a Philadelphia high school and later as an architecture and management student at MIT. True to form, near-lapidary sentences all but trip from his tongue. Such as:
"I don't think Israel can accept an Iranian terror base next to its major cities any more than the United States could accept an al Qaeda base next to New York City."
Or:
"If we accept the notion that terrorists will have immunity because as they fire on civilians they hide behind civilians, then this tactic will be legitimized and the terrorists will have their greatest victory."
Or:
"We grieve for every child, for every innocent civilian that's killed either on our side or on the Palestinian side. The terrorists celebrate such suffering, on our side because they openly say they want to kill us, all of us, and on the Palestinian side because it helps them foster this false symmetry, which is contrary to common decency and international law."
And so on. The immediate question, of course, is the Israeli government's unilateral cease-fire, followed hours later by Hamas's declaration of a conditional, one-week cease-fire. Was the war a win? A draw? Or did it accomplish nothing at all -- thereby handing Hamas the "victory" it loudly claims for itself?
When Mr. Olmert announced Israel's cease-fire late Saturday night, he could hardly keep a grin off his face. In his estimate, along with that of his senior military brass, Israel had scored a clear win: It had humiliated Hamas militarily; it had caused a political rift within the group; it had taken relatively few casualties of its own; it had focused international attention on the problem of the arms smuggling beneath Gaza's border with Egypt. Most important, in the eyes of the Olmert government, it had avoided the trap of reoccupying Gaza -- the only means, it believed, of finally getting rid of Hamas.
Ordinary Israelis, however, seem less confident in the result, and Mr. Netanyahu gives voice to their caution. He is quick to applaud the "brilliant" performance of the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) and the "perseverance and strength" of Israeli civilians under Hamas's years-long rocket barrages.
But, he adds, "we have to make sure that the radicals do not perceive this as a victory," and it remains far from clear that they would be wrong to see it as one. "Notwithstanding the blows to the Hamas, it's still in Gaza, it's still ruling Gaza, and the Philadelphi corridor [which runs along Gaza's border with Egypt] is still porous, and . . . Hamas can smuggle new rockets unless it's closed, to fire at Israel in the future."
So is Mr. Netanyahu's preference regime change in Gaza? "Well, that would have been the optimal outcome," he says, adding that "the minimal outcome would have been to seal Gaza" from the missiles and munitions being smuggled into it. So far it's unclear that Israel has achieved even that: A "Memorandum of Understanding" agreed to last week by Israel, the U.S. and Egypt could be effective in stopping the flow of arms, but that's assuming Cairo lives up to its responsibilities.
"One would hope they would actually do it," says Mr. Netanyahu, sounding less than optimistic. Within days, his doubts are confirmed when the Associated Press produces video footage of masked Palestinian smugglers moving through once-again operational tunnels.
Rather than looking for solutions from Egypt, however, Mr. Netanyahu's gaze is intently fixed on Iran, a subject that consumes at least half of the interview. Iran is the "mother regime" both of Hamas, against which Israel has just fought a war, as well as of Hezbollah, against which it fought its last war in 2006. Together, he says, they are more than simply fingers of Tehran's influence on the shores of the Mediterranean.
"The arming of Iran with nuclear weapons may portend an irreversible process, because these regimes assume a kind of immortality," he says, arguing that the threat of a nuclear Iran poses a much graver danger to the world than the current economic crisis. "[This] will pose an existential threat to Israel directly, but also could give a nuclear umbrella to these terrorist bases."
How to stop that from happening? Mr. Netanyahu mentions that he has met with Barack Obama both in Israel and Washington, and that the question of Iran "loomed large in both conversations." I ask: Did Mr. Obama seem to him appropriately sober-minded about the subject? "Very much so, very much so," Mr. Netanyahu stresses. "He [Mr. Obama] spoke of his plans to engage Iran in order to impress upon them that they have to stop the nuclear program. What I said to him was, what counts is not the method but the goal."
It's easy to believe that Mr. Netanyahu, of all people, must be wishing President Obama well: If diplomacy with Iran fails and the U.S. does not resort to military force, it would almost certainly fall to Mr. Netanyahu to decide whether Israel will go it alone in a strike. (In a separate interview earlier that day, a senior military official assured me that a successful strike on Iran's nuclear facilities is well within Israel's capabilities.)
On the other hand, a Prime Minister Netanyahu could easily tangle with the Obama administration, particularly if it makes a big push -- as it looks like it might with the appointment of former Senate Majority Leader George Mitchell as the new special envoy to the region -- for the resumption of comprehensive, "final status" peace negotiations. There's already a history here: During his first term as prime minister from 1996 to 1999, Mr. Netanyahu frequently clashed with the administration of the man whose wife is now the secretary of state.
Mr. Netanyahu's own prescriptions for a settlement with the Palestinians -- what he calls a "workable peace" -- differ markedly from the approaches of the 1990s. He talks about "the development of capable law enforcement and security capabilities" for the Palestinians, adding that the new National Security Adviser Jim Jones had worked on the problem for the Bush administration. He stresses the need for rapid economic development in the West Bank, promising to remove "all sorts of impediments to economic growth" faced by Palestinians.
As for the political front, Mr. Netanyahu promises a gradual, "bottom-up process that will facilitate political solutions, not replace them."
"Most of the approaches to peace between Israel and the Palestinians," he says, "have been directed at trying to resolve the most complex problems, like refugees and Jerusalem, which is akin to building the pyramid from the top down. It's much better to build it layer by layer, in a deliberate, purposeful pattern that changes the reality for both Palestinians and Israelis."
Whether this approach will work remains to be seen: Palestinian economic development was also a priority in the 1990s, until it became clear that billions in foreign aid were being siphoned off by corrupt Palestinian officials, and after various joint economic projects with Israel were violently sabotaged.
But however Mr. Netanyahu's economic and security plans play out, he makes it equally clear that he is prepared to go only so far to reach an accommodation that will meet some of the current demands being made of Israel -- not only by Palestinians, but by the Syrians, the Saudis, and much of the rest of the "international community" as well. "We're not going to redivide Jerusalem, or get off the Golan Heights, or go back to the 1967 boundaries," he says. "We won't repeat the mistake our [political opponents] made of unilateral retreats to merely vacate territory that is then taken up by Hamas or Iran."
This brings Mr. Netanyahu to the political pitch he's making -- so far successfully -- to Israelis ahead of next month's election. When elections were held three years ago, bringing Mr. Olmert to power, "we [his Likud Party] were mocked" for warning that Gaza would become Hamastan, and that Hamastan would become a staging ground for missiles fired at major Israeli cities such as Ashkelon and Ashdod.
"I think we've shown the ability to see the problems in advance," he says. "Peace is purchased from strength. It's not purchased from weakness or unilateral retreats. It just doesn't happen that way. That perhaps is the greatest lesson that has been impressed on the mind of the Israeli public in the last few years."
The polls seem to agree. As of Wednesday, an Israeli poll gives Likud a 30-seat plurality in the next Knesset, ahead by eight of Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni's Kadima party. Well behind both of them is the left-leaning Labor Party of Defense Minister Ehud Barak (at about 15 seats), which in turn is running roughly even with Avigdor Lieberman's right-wing Yisrael Beiteinu.
The dovish parties of yore, particularly Meretz, barely exist as political entities anymore. Whether they'll ever be back will be a testament, one way or another, to the kind of prime minister Mr. Netanyahu will be this time around.
-
Yemen strikes multifaceted deals with al Qaeda
By JANE NOVAK February 11, 2009 8:03 PM
Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh.
Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh recently struck a deal with Ayman Zawahiri, and Yemen is in the process of emptying its jails of known jihadists. The Yemeni government is recruiting these established jihadists to attack its domestic enemies as it refrains from serious counter-terror measures against the newly formed Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula. The tripartite relationship between the Yemeni regime and al Qaeda enables all participants to further their goals at the expense of national, regional, and global security.
Yemen releases 95 jihadists
News reports from Yemen detail a meeting in Sana'a between President Saleh and a number of so-called reformed jihadists late January. The militants demanded freedom for imprisoned associates. A presidential committee identified 170 jihadists eligible for release, and 95 were released Saturday. Other reports indicate that authorities have cleared for release a total of 300 of the 400 total suspected al Qaeda in prison.
In the latest round of negotiations, Saleh reportedly asked the militants to engage in violence against the southern mobility movement. The southern uprising is bent on achieving the independence of South Yemen and is a substantial threat to Saleh's grip on power. Tariq al Fahdli was present at the meeting, and at a later meeting in Abyan, militants brandished an official order directing the military to supply the mercenary group with arms and ammunition. Fahdli fought alongside bin Laden in Afghanistan and has been accused of complicity in the 1992 Aden hotel bombing, the first al Qaeda attack that targeted American troops. Fahdli's sister is married to Brigadier General Ali Mohsen al Ahmar, President Saleh's half brother and a recruiter for bin Laden in the 1980s.
President Saleh deployed Fahdli and other Afghan Arabs against southern Socialists in 1994's civil war. Some bin Laden loyalists were rewarded with high positions in the administration and military after the 1994 civil war. More recently, General al Ahmar incorporated Sunni extremists into military ranks during the 2004-2008 Saada War against Shiite "Houthi" rebels. Militants legitimize both the 1994 and Saada deployments by referencing the "apostate" nature of the enemy. This task is made easier by the official media's description of both Socialists and Shiites as satanic.
The deployment of al Qaeda extremists as a government paramilitary affords the jihadists training, experience, contacts, financial benefit, and the ability to dictate to the regime and indoctrinate followers. Many are awarded military salaries and official positions. After years of integrating militants into Yemen's security forces and bureaucracy, aspects of the state have been co-opted by extremists.
Direct negotiations between the Yemeni president and al Qaeda operatives grew out of Yemen's "Dialog Program" established in 2002. Through discussion of the Koran, the program sought to gain assurances that jihadists would not launch assaults within Yemen but said nothing about the Islamic legitimacy of attacks on US troops in Iraq. The program ran until 2005 and was described by some participants as an expedited release program.
In 2005, President Saleh began openly negotiating with the jihadists. One such negotiation in 2006 was conducted by Saleh and the head of Yemen's Political Security Organization. The jihadists' representative was Rashad Mohammed Saeed (Abu al Feida), formerly a major figure in al Qaeda and the Taliban who has been seen in videos near Osama Bin Laden.
Saeed later described the outcome of the meeting with Saleh. "It was also agreed to cancel measures imposed on those who are released, like house arrest, the monthly signing of official register and taking permission if you wish to go another province in Yemen," he said. In 2006, Saeed praised Yemen as "the best country" to deal with militants and noted "The Yemeni government will not enter open confrontations with Mujahideen."
President Saleh has also arranged state jobs, cars, cash payments and even weddings for militants who pledged to follow the regime's dictates. Officials spin these negotiations as fostering rehabilitation and integration into society.
In January 2008, a spokesman for an al Qaeda cell in Yemen said the government had recruited some of its members to fight in the Saada War. In exchange, the security forces agreed to "ease the persecution of (al Qaeda) members." Ahmed Mansour said the group is and has been in contact with the government through intermediaries, adding bin Laden ordered a ban on attacks directed against the regime and that the US remains enemy number one. Other al Qaeda insiders who reference bin Laden's prohibition on assaults against Saleh's government include Nasser al Bahri (Abu Jandal), bin Laden's longtime bodyguard, and Rashad Saeed.
Al Qaeda Central
Another prong of President Saleh's tripartite relation with al Qaeda is with the group's central leadership, thought to currently be in Afghanistan or Pakistan. Yemen supplied thousands of recruits to the Afghan jihad in the 1980s, and Yemenis were among the top ranks in the organization, as well as forming the core of personnel who were guarding, feeding, and transporting bin Laden. Saleh welcomed thousands of Yemeni and non-Yemeni jihadists from Afghanistan after the withdrawal of the Soviets. Ayman Zawahiri and Osama bin Laden frequently visited and preached in Yemen in the 1990s and have many loyalists among Yemeni government ranks.
A long-standing pattern of negotiation exists. After al Qaeda operative Khallad bin Attash was arrested in Yemen in 1999, bin Laden contacted a Yemeni official and bargained for Attash's release. The Yemeni regime released Attash and promised not to confront al Qaeda. In exchange, bin Laden pledged not to attack the government. Attash later went on the play a role in the USS Cole bombing. Another round of negotiation appears to have taken place 2003 in which regime concessions resulted in immunity from attack.
A current agreement between Yemen's President Saleh and the al Qaeda terror group was referenced in a report here at The Long War Journal detailing communication between Ayman Zawahiri and President Saleh after September's embassy attack. A US military official reported that "Saleh feared his government would be the next target, but Zawahiri wanted al Qaeda prisoners released from Yemeni jails and committed al Qaeda foot soldiers to fight the Houthi rebels."
Active Jihadists
Although Yemen formally joined the US-led War on Terror after the Sept. 11 attacks, the Yemeni regime has facilitated jihadists' efforts externally, sheltered fighters internally, and repeatedly misled the US about their whereabouts and status. In early 2007, a Yemeni newspaper tallied 1800 Yemenis who traveled to Iraq for jihad; their families said the young men were trained by top level Yemeni military commanders.
Yemeni courts fail to criminalize attacks on US troops or civilians abroad. In a 2006 trial of 13 jihadists who fought in Iraq, the court found that it is not against Yemeni law to murder foreign nationals in "occupied" Muslim nations. Although the defendants admitted to fighting US and Iraqi forces, they faced no judicial penalty and were convicted only of document fraud.
Yemen refuses to extradite or imprison the al Qaeda operatives convicted of the terror attack on the USS Cole. President Saleh has been equally lenient with those convicted of attacks on tourists and oil facilities. Several were granted "house arrest" after escaping from prison. Yemen's banking system lacks the legal framework to criminalize terrorist financing.
Some analysts assert that some of the terror attacks since 2006 were orchestrated by Yemen's security forces in a bid to manipulate international perceptions or overshadow domestic political crises. One of Yemen's most wanted terrorists, Hamza Ali Saleh al Dhayiuani, said "I am ready to prove the reality that some attacks were planned in co-ordination and agreement of the Political Security and its agents to gain foreign support."
In November 2008, Al Quds Al Arabi carried an interview with a former terrorist in Yemen who was described as "very close to al Qaeda". The senior jihadi reported that the terrorist organization has entered a "positive phase" in planning an attack against the US that will "outdo by far" Sept. 11. Al Quds Al Arabi previously published bin Laden's 1998 fatwa against the US. The Yemeni former operative reported that he is contact with the current leaders of the organization in Yemen who in turn receive messages from bin Laden.
Al Qaida groups in Yemen and Saudi Arabia formally merged operations in January, under the name al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP). The group announced the merger at a press conference attended by a single journalist, Abdulea Shaya, employed as a researcher by the state news agency, SABA. The group was acknowledged by Ayman Zawahiri in a statement. AQAP is based in Yemen. Its leader is a Yemeni, Nasser al Wahishi, who was a close associate of Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan. AQAP vowed to strike at Western interests and supply routes across the region. The new group and its broad goals appear to be a strategic development on the part of al Qaeda Central in furtherance of its global strategy.
The stated goals of AQAP mirror an April 2008 statement by Al Qaeda's central leadership which said establishing naval terror cells and control of the seas around Yemen is a "vital step" in achieving a global caliphate. The Bab al Mandeb waterway and Gulf of Aden were termed "of supreme strategic importance" in al Qaeda's long-term plan. The April statement highlighted the attacks on the USS Cole in 2001 and the French tanker Limburg in 2002 in Port Aden.
In response to the formation of AQAP, Saleh's regime made several announcements of its intent to find the group's hideout. Saleh called on tribal leaders and citizens to turn in the militants. Officials accused the opposition parties of supporting al Qaeda in an attempt to overthrow the state. Security forces set up checkpoints, engaged in hunting activities, and beat a man named al Zaheri because his name was similar to the al Qaeda chieftain's.
AQAP issued a communiqué explaining the unique configuration to its local members and legitimized fighting for the state by referencing the 1994 war. A copy of the letter was obtained by News Yemen. Echoing the earlier agreement by Saleh and Zawahiri late in 2008, Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula explained to its followers that President Saleh wants jihadists to fight on behalf of the state, especially those who did already in 1994, against the enemies of unity-- southern oppositionists. AQAP in return will gain prison releases and unimpeded travel to external theaters of jihad, the letter explained.
-
The occasionally insightful Thomas Friedman:
By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN
Published: June 13, 2009
Twenty years ago, I wrote a book about the Middle East, and recently I was thinking of updating it with a new introduction. It was going to be very simple — just one page, indeed just one line: “Nothing has changed.”
Skip to next paragraph
Fred R. Conrad/The New York Times
Thomas L. Friedman
Go to Columnist Page »
Related
Times Topics: Iran | LebanonIt took me two days covering the elections in Beirut to realize that I was dead wrong. No, something is going on in the Middle East today that is very new. Pull up a chair; this is going to be interesting.
What we saw in the Lebanese elections, where the pro-Western March 14 movement won a surprise victory over the pro-Iranian Hezbollah coalition, what we saw in the ferment for change exposed by the election campaign in Iran, and what we saw in the provincial elections in Iraq, where the big pro-Iranian party got trounced, is the product of four historical forces that have come together to crack open this ossified region.
First is the diffusion of technology. The Internet, blogs, YouTube and text messaging via cellphones, particularly among the young — 70 percent of Iranians are under 30 — is giving Middle Easterners cheap tools to communicate horizontally, to mobilize politically and to criticize their leaders acerbically, outside of state control. It is also enabling them to monitor vote-rigging by posting observers with cellphone cameras.
I knew something had changed when I sat down for coffee on Hamra Street in Beirut last week with my 80-year-old friend and mentor, Kemal Salibi, one of Lebanon’s greatest historians, and he told me about his Facebook group!
The evening of Lebanon’s election, I went to the Beirut home of Saad Hariri, the leader of the March 14 coalition, to interview him. In a big living room, he had a gigantic wall-size television broadcasting the results. And alongside the main TV were 16 smaller flat-screen TVs with electronic maps of Lebanon. Hariri’s own election experts were working on laptops and breaking down every vote from every religious community, village by village, and projecting them on the screens.
Second, for real politics to happen you need space. There are a million things to hate about President Bush’s costly and wrenching wars. But the fact is, in ousting Saddam in Iraq in 2003 and mobilizing the U.N. to push Syria out of Lebanon in 2005, he opened space for real democratic politics that had not existed in Iraq or Lebanon for decades. “Bush had a simple idea, that the Arabs could be democratic, and at that particular moment simple ideas were what was needed, even if he was disingenuous,” said Michael Young, the opinion editor of The Beirut Daily Star. “It was bolstered by the presence of a U.S. Army in the center of the Middle East. It created a sense that change was possible, that things did not always have to be as they were.”
When I reported from Beirut in the 1970s and 1980s, I covered coups and wars. I never once stayed up late waiting for an election result. Elections in the Arab world were a joke — literally. They used to tell this story about Syria’s president, Hafez al-Assad. After a Syrian election, an aide came in and told Assad: “Mr. President, you won 99.8 percent of the votes. It means that only two-tenths of one percent of Syrians didn’t vote for you. What more could ask for?”
Assad answered: “Their names!”
Lebanese, by contrast, just waited up all night for their election results — no one knew what they’d be.
Third, the Bush team opened a hole in the wall of Arab autocracy but did a poor job following through. In the vacuum, the parties most organized to seize power were the Islamists — Hezbollah in Lebanon; pro-Al Qaeda forces among Iraqi Sunnis, and the pro-Iranian Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq and Mahdi Army among Iraqi Shiites; the Taliban in Pakistan and Afghanistan; Hamas in Gaza.
Fortunately, each one of these Islamist groups overplayed their hand by imposing religious lifestyles or by dragging their societies into confrontations the people didn’t want. This alienated and frightened more secular, mainstream Arabs and Muslims and has triggered an “awakening” backlash among moderates from Lebanon to Pakistan to Iran. The Times’s Robert Mackey reported that in Tehran “chants of ‘Death to America’ ” at rallies for Mahmoud Ahmadinejad last week were answered by chants of “Death to the Taliban — in Kabul and Tehran” at a rally for his opponent, Mir Hussein Moussavi.
Finally, along came President Barack Hussein Obama. Arab and Muslim regimes found it very useful to run against George Bush. The Bush team demonized them, and they demonized the Bush team. Autocratic regimes, like Iran’s, drew energy and legitimacy from that confrontation, and it made it very easy for them to discredit anyone associated with America. Mr. Obama’s soft power has defused a lot of that. As result, “pro-American” is not such an insult anymore.
I don’t know how all this shakes out; the forces against change in this region are very powerful — see Iran — and ruthless. But for the first time in a long time, the forces for decency, democracy and pluralism have a little wind at their backs. Good for them.
The public editor’s column will return next week.
-
Wednesday, August 19, 2009 STRATFOR.COM Diary Archives
Israeli Arms and Russian Intentions
ISRAELI PRESIDENT SHIMON PERES met with his Russian counterpart, Dmitri Medvedev, at Medvedev’s summer resort in Sochi on Tuesday. During their four-hour visit, the Russian president reiterated that Moscow is against “nuclear weapons in Iranian hands.” He also said he wanted to upgrade the Russo-Israeli strategic relationship to the same level as Russia’s relations with Germany, France and Italy.
Medvedev evidently planned to flatter Peres for the cameras during this visit. By putting Israel level with three major European powers — all of which are closely intertwined with Russian political, military and economic interests — he publicly signaled intentions to bring Israel as close to Moscow and as far from Washington as possible. Before Peres’ visit, Russian leaders had had a series of high-profile meetings with the Germans, the Turks and the Poles. The Russian invitation to Israel — yet another critical U.S. ally — is a reminder to Washington that the U.S. alliance system, designed to counter Russia, could be on shaky ground.
“The last thing Moscow wants is for Israel, which has a strong defense relationship with Georgia and Ukraine, to arm U.S. allies in the former Soviet periphery.”
But Israel is an especially tricky country for Russia to deal with. The two countries usually maintain civil relations and would prefer to leave each other alone, but their geopolitical vulnerabilities bring them into conflict from time to time. Now is one of those times.
A tiny country surrounded by hostile powers, Israel requires an external security guarantor — a role the United States currently serves — for its survival. Russia, on the other hand, is a massive country that is constantly concerned with the threat of Western encroachment. By pushing for NATO membership for Georgia and Ukraine and ballistic missile defense in Poland and the Czech Republic, the United States poses a critical threat to Russian national security. The common link for Israel and Russia is the United States.
The Russians are already engaged in an intense standoff with Washington. The last thing Moscow wants is for Israel, which has a strong defense relationship with Georgia and Ukraine, to arm U.S. allies in the former Soviet periphery. But the Israelis are also watching Washington’s rebuffs of Moscow’s demands. Considering how poorly U.S.-Russian negotiations are going, Moscow could turn the screws on Washington by boosting critical defense support for Iran.
Such a prospect is obviously very unsettling for the Israelis, and Peres was likely on a mission during this visit to secure a guarantee from Medvedev that Russia will refrain from arming Iran — with Israel backing away from arms sales to Georgia and Ukraine in return. Whether Peres got that guarantee is unclear, but there was something else on Tuesday that had us questioning Russia’s plans for the Middle East.
While Peres was in Sochi, STRATFOR received a message from a high-level Russian source indicating that the Russo-Israeli relationship was wounded in 2008, when Israel allegedly was shipping weapons to Ukraine and Georgia. The Israelis abruptly halted those shipments after coming to a compromise with the Russians, in the lead-up to the Russo-Georgian war last August. However, the source said, Israel later resumed defense sales to Ukraine and Georgia and also has pending deals with Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan, where Russia dominates the arms market. Moreover, the source claimed there was an additional concern about Israeli weapons being found in Chechnya, Ingushetia and Dagestan — Russia’s restive republics in the Caucasus.
The abundance of Israeli weapons floating around the region makes it entirely possible that Israeli arms are turning up in the Caucasus. But the source made it clear that the Russians suspect Israel of directly interfering in Russian territory. The Israelis know they can push the Russians by selling weapons to former Soviet states, but arming rebels within Russia proper is a highly sensitive issue for Moscow. It is a risk the Israelis are not likely to take, given their concerns over Russia’s defense relationship with Iran. Still, we can’t shake the idea that this accusation against Israel could have been disseminated for a very specific purpose. While Medvedev charmed Peres in public, he might have had a very different message for the Israeli president in private.
Regardless of whether Israel is actually sending arms directly into Russia, we must be aware of the potential for Russia to simply use such an accusation as justification to follow through on threats concerning Iran. The Kremlin essentially would telling Washington, via the Israelis, that if U.S. allies interfere in its sphere of influence, Russia will respond in a critical arena like the Middle East, where the United States is already heavily entrenched. At the very least, this could be a message to Israel and the United States to back off — or else. At most, the “or else” could imply that operations are already under way to destabilize the Middle East. We simply do not know for sure either way, but it’s a possibility we need to consider.
-
Well gentlemen, what do we make of this?
http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2010/05/obama-gives-commanders-wide-berth-forsecret-
warfare/57202/
-
A white house desperate for some appearance of strength and competence leaks programs that are probably emasculated with policy and procedure designed by Holder's DOJ, so their disclosure is no real loss.
-
That certainly is plausible, but do you think Petraeus would participate in that?
===============================
Does the following shed any light?
Washington Strengthens Its Bargaining Position
IRAN SENT A LETTER TO THE INTERNATIONAL Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) on Monday saying that it accepted a nuclear fuel swap deal proposed by Turkey and Brazil that would involve transferring low-enriched uranium to Turkey for storage. The deal is a bid to reassure the international community that Iran is not using the fuel to make highly enriched uranium for a nuclear device. The United States responded that it would review the proposal, speak with France and Russia, and then respond to the IAEA in the coming days.
The U.S. response followed its initial rejection of the Turkey-Brazil proposal and claim that it would continue pressing for new sanctions against Iran in the United Nations. This is notable especially because the Iranian letter did not provide any new details that would change Washington’s calculus. It did not indicate any specifics about the timing or volume of uranium transfers, nor did it suggest in any way that Iran has changed its position on enriching uranium, which Washington wants to stop fully. It merely asserted Tehran’s acceptance of the Turkish proposal.
Nevertheless, the United States has not dismissed the proposal outright. This is because Iran’s nuclear program is not the only thing on Washington’s mind, but rather one component of a more complex set of negotiations as the United States prepares to withdraw from Iraq and, before too long, Afghanistan. If the United States is to withdraw major forces from the region, it wants to ensure that some semblance of balance has taken shape so that the threat of any one actor gaining too much of an advantage is minimized. It has become clear that such a strategy will require forging an arrangement with Tehran, since Iran has a special ability to affect both Iraq and Afghanistan. Having for the moment ruled out the option of striking Iran militarily, the United States must now look for ways to coordinate with Iran, while at the same time imposing limits to its power so that it will not overturn the regional balance when the United States leaves.
“Iran’s nuclear program is not the only thing on Washington’s mind, but rather one component of a more complex set of negotiations.”
Washington’s problem, however, is that it is attempting to find ways to negotiate while Iran sits in the best bargaining position. In recent months, Iran has seen a series of victories. It has watched as the United States vetoed Israel’s threats of military strikes; watered down proposals for sanctions at the United Nations so as to curry Russian and Chinese favor; and, crucially, it has turned the March election in Iraq to its favor by manipulating the various factions as they attempt to form a governing coalition. The latter is a tool Iran can use at length and to devastating effect if necessary, threatening to disrupt U.S. President Barack Obama administration’s withdrawal plans — and its other plans for that matter.
Washington needs to strengthen its bargaining position. And so it has, by attacking the problem from a different angle. Throughout the United States’ lengthy diplomatic quest to pressure Iran, a chief sticking point has been Russia. Moscow sees the U.S. imbroglios in the Middle East as an opportunity of a lifetime, and is pleased to use its relationship with Iran as a means of drawing out the opportunity, whether by offering to assist Iran with its nuclear energy program through the long-awaited completion of Iran’s Bushehr nuclear facility, provide it with S300 anti-air missile systems, or circumvent international sanctions on its fuel imports. The United States has tried before to work out a deal with Russia to abandon its support of Iran, which would leave Tehran isolated and considerably weaker in its negotiations with the United States. Previous attempts failed because the United States was not willing to give Russia the concessions it wanted — namely recognition of its superiority within the former Soviet Union’s sphere of influence.
But whenever the United States and Russia have begun negotiating more intensely with each other, Iran has become more conscious of its role as a mere bargaining chip for Russia, often signaling its displeasure with an outburst of rhetoric. Notably, just such a paroxysm occurred over the weekend, when Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad called on Russia to support the nuclear swap proposal, warning against making “excuses,” and saying that Russia should be more careful about remarks concerning its “great neighbor” Iran.
Why should Iran suddenly doubt Russia’s support? On the same day that Iran sent its letter to the IAEA, the United States transferred a battery of Patriot missiles to Poland. The Patriots are significant as a symbol of U.S. commitment to Poland’s security — and by extension that of its Central European allies — after the United States canceled plans for a fixed ballistic missile defense installation in the country. The Patriots come at a time in which the Obama administration is fashioning a new national security strategy that aims to spread the responsibility and costs of foreign interventions among U.S. allies. This will inevitably attract the most interest from European states that acutely feel the threat posed to them by a resurgent Russia. None of these developments have gone unnoticed in Moscow, and neither have positive U.S. moves, such as lifting sanctions on Russian arms dealers and not attempting to prevent Russia from selling the S300s to Iran. The United States has grabbed Russia’s undivided attention, and that alone is enough to unnerve Iran.
-
That certainly is plausible, but do you think Petraeus would participate in that?
**He is a soldier. He can follow the lawful orders from the CIC, or he can put in his retirement papers and then speak publicly when clad in civvies.**
===============================
Does the following shed any light?
**Obarry is trying for a "Peace with honor" surrender of both wars and playing his very weak hand in an attempt for it to not look like that, fooling no one.**
-
STRATFOR
---------------------------
August 17, 2010
THE U.S. WITHDRAWAL AND LIMITED OPTIONS IN IRAQ
By George Friedman
It is August 2010, which is the month when the last U.S. combat troops are scheduled
to leave Iraq. It is therefore time to take stock of the situation in Iraq, which
has changed places with Afghanistan as the forgotten war. This is all the more
important since 50,000 troops will remain in Iraq, and while they may not be
considered combat troops, a great deal of combat power remains embedded with them.
So we are far from the end of the war in Iraq. The question is whether the departure
of the last combat units is a significant milestone and, if it is, what it
signifies.
The United States invaded Iraq in 2003 with three goals: The first was the
destruction of the Iraqi army, the second was the destruction of the Baathist regime
and the third was the replacement of that regime with a stable, pro-American
government in Baghdad. The first two goals were achieved within weeks. Seven years
later, however, Iraq still does not yet have a stable government, let alone a
pro-American government. The lack of that government is what puts the current
strategy in jeopardy.
The fundamental flaw of the invasion of Iraq was not in its execution but in the
political expectations that were put in place. As the Americans knew, the Shiite
community was anti-Baathist but heavily influenced by Iranian intelligence. The
decision to destroy the Baathists put the Sunnis, who were the backbone of Saddam's
regime, in a desperate position. Facing a hostile American army and an equally
hostile Shiite community backed by Iran, the Sunnis faced disaster. Taking support
from where they could get it -- from the foreign jihadists that were entering Iraq
-- they launched an insurgency against both the Americans and the Shia.
The Sunnis simply had nothing to lose. In their view, they faced permanent
subjugation at best and annihilation at worst. The United States had the option of
creating a Shiite-based government but realized that this government would
ultimately be under Iranian control. The political miscalculation placed the United
States simultaneously into a war with the Sunnis and a near-war situation with many
of the Shia, while the Shia and Sunnis waged a civil war among themselves and the
Sunnis occasionally fought the Kurds as well. From late 2003 until 2007, the United
States was not so much in a state of war in Iraq as it was in a state of chaos.
The new strategy of Gen. David Petraeus emerged from the realization that the United
States could not pacify Iraq and be at war with everyone. After a 2006 defeat in the
midterm elections, it was expected that U.S. President George W. Bush would order
the withdrawal of forces from Iraq. Instead, he announced the surge. The surge was
really not much of a surge, but it created psychological surprise -- not only were
the Americans not leaving, but more were on the way. Anyone who was calculating a
position based on the assumption of a U.S. withdrawal had to recalculate.
The Americans understood that the key was reversing the position of the Sunni
insurgents. So long as they remained at war with the Americans and Shia, there was
no possibility of controlling the situation. Moreover, only the Sunnis could cut the
legs out from under the foreign jihadists operating in the Sunni community. These
jihadists were challenging the traditional leadership of the Sunni community, so
turning this community against the jihadists was not difficult. The Sunnis also were
terrified that the United States would withdraw, leaving them at the mercy of the
Shia. These considerations, along with substantial sums of money given to Sunni
tribal elders, caused the Sunnis to do an about-face. This put the Shia on the
defensive, since the Sunni alignment with the Americans enabled the Americans to
strike at the Shiite militias.
Petraeus stabilized the situation, but he did not win the war. The war could only be
considered won when there was a stable government in Baghdad that actually had the
ability to govern Iraq. A government could be formed with people sitting in meetings
and talking, but that did not mean that their decisions would have any significance.
For that there had to be an Iraqi army to enforce the will of the government and
protect the country from its neighbors -- particularly Iran (from the American point
of view). There also had to be a police force to enforce whatever laws might be
made. And from the American perspective, this government did not have to be
pro-American (that had long ago disappeared as a viable goal), but it could not be
dominated by Iran.
Iraq is not ready to deal with the enforcement of the will of the government because
it has no government. Once it has a government, it will be a long time before its
military and police forces will be able to enforce its will throughout the country.
And it will be much longer before it can block Iranian power by itself. As it stands
now, there is no government, so the rest doesn't much matter.
The geopolitical problem the Americans face is that, with the United States gone,
Iran would be the most powerful conventional power in the Persian Gulf. The
historical balance of power had been between Iraq and Iran. The American invasion
destroyed the Iraqi army and government, and the United States was unable to
re-create either. Part of this had to do with the fact that the Iranians did not
want the Americans to succeed.
For Iran, a strong Iraq is the geopolitical nightmare. Iran once fought a war with
Iraq that cost Iran a million casualties (imagine the United States having more than
4 million casualties), and the foundation of Iranian national strategy is to prevent
a repeat of that war by making certain that Iraq becomes a puppet to Iran or,
failing that, that it remains weak and divided. At this point, the Iranians do not
have the ability to impose a government on Iraq. However, they do have the ability
to prevent the formation of a government or to destabilize one that is formed.
Iranian intelligence has sufficient allies and resources in Iraq to guarantee the
failure of any stabilization attempt that doesn't please Tehran.
There are many who are baffled by Iranian confidence and defiance in the face of
American pressure on the nuclear issue. This is the reason for that confidence:
Should the United States attack Iran's nuclear facilities, or even if the United
States does not attack, Iran holds the key to the success of the American strategy
in Iraq. Everything done since 2006 fails if the United States must maintain tens of
thousands of troops in Iraq in perpetuity. Should the United States leave, Iran has
the capability of forcing a new order not only on Iraq but also on the rest of the
Persian Gulf. Should the United States stay, Iran has the ability to prevent the
stabilization of Iraq, or even to escalate violence to the point that the Americans
are drawn back into combat. The Iranians understand the weakness of America's
position in Iraq, and they are confident that they can use that to influence
American policy elsewhere.
American and Iraqi officials have publicly said that the reason an Iraqi government
has not been formed is Iranian interference. To put it more clearly, there are any
number of Shiite politicians who are close to Tehran and, for a range of reasons,
will take their orders from there. There are not enough of these politicians to
create a government, but there are enough to block a government from being formed.
Therefore, no government is being formed.
With 50,000 U.S. troops still in Iraq, the United States does not yet face a crisis.
The current withdrawal milestone is not the measure of the success of the strategy.
The threat of a crisis will arise if the United States continues its withdrawal to
the point where the Shia feel free to launch a sustained and escalating attack on
the Sunnis, possibly supported by Iranian forces, volunteers or covert advisers. At
that point, the Iraqi government must be in place, be united and command sufficient
forces to control the country and deter Iranian plans.
The problem is, as we have seen, that in order to achieve that government there must
be Iranian concurrence, and Iran has no reason to want to allow that to happen. Iran
has very little to lose by, and a great deal to gain from, continuing the stability
the Petraeus strategy provided. The American problem is that a genuine withdrawal
from Iraq requires a shift in Iranian policy, and the United States has little to
offer Iran to change the policy.
From the Iranian point of view, they have the Americans in a difficult position. On
the one hand, the Americans are trumpeting the success of the Petraeus plan in Iraq
and trying to repeat the success in Afghanistan. On the other hand, the secret is
that the Petraeus plan has not yet succeeded in Iraq. Certainly, it ended the major
fighting involving the Americans and settled down Sunni-Shiite tensions. But it has
not taken Iraq anywhere near the end state the original strategy envisioned. Iraq
has neither a government nor a functional army -- and what is blocking it is Tehran.
One impulse of the Americans is to settle with the Iranians militarily. However,
Iran is a mountainous country of 70 million, and an invasion is simply not in the
cards. Airstrikes are always possible, but as the United States learned over North
Vietnam -- or from the Battle of Britain or in the bombing of Germany and Japan
before the use of nuclear weapons -- air campaigns alone don't usually force nations
to capitulate or change their policies. Serbia did give up Kosovo after a
three-month air campaign, but we suspect Iran would be a tougher case. In any event,
the United States has no appetite for another war while the wars in Iraq and
Afghanistan are still under way, let alone a war against Iran in order to extricate
itself from Iraq. The impulse to use force against Iran was resisted by President
Bush and is now being resisted by President Barack Obama. And even if the Israelis
attacked Iran's nuclear facilities, Iran could still wreak havoc in Iraq.
Two strategies follow from this. The first is that the United States will reduce
U.S. forces in Iraq somewhat but will not complete the withdrawal until a more
distant date (the current Status of Forces Agreement requires all American troops to
be withdrawn by the end of 2011). The problems with this strategy are that Iran is
not going anywhere, destabilizing Iraq is not costing it much and protecting itself
from an Iraqi resurgence is Iran's highest foreign-policy priority. That means that
the decision really isn't whether the United States will delay its withdrawal but
whether the United States will permanently base forces in Iraq -- and how vulnerable
those forces might be to an upsurge in violence, which is an option that Iran
retains.
Another choice for the United States, as we have discussed previously, is to enter
into negotiations with Iran. This is a distasteful choice from the American point of
view, but surely not more distasteful than negotiating with Stalin or Mao. At the
same time, the Iranians' price would be high. At the very least, they would want the
"Finlandization" of Iraq, similar to the situation where the Soviets had a degree of
control over Finland's government. And it is far from clear that such a situation in
Iraq would be sufficient for the Iranians.
The United States cannot withdraw completely without some arrangement, because that
would leave Iran in an extremely powerful position in the region. The Iranian
strategy seems to be to make the United States sufficiently uncomfortable to see
withdrawal as attractive but not to be so threatening as to deter the withdrawal. As
clever as that strategy is, however, it does not hide the fact that Iran would
dominate the Persian Gulf region after the withdrawal. Thus, the United States has
nothing but unpleasant choices in Iraq. It can stay in perpetuity and remain
vulnerable to violence. It can withdraw and hand the region over to Iran. It can go
to war with yet another Islamic country. Or it can negotiate with a government that
it despises -- and which despises it right back.
Given all that has been said about the success of the Petraeus strategy, it must be
observed that while it broke the cycle of violence and carved out a fragile
stability in Iraq, it has not achieved, nor can it alone achieve, the political
solution that would end the war. Nor has it precluded a return of violence at some
point. The Petraeus strategy has not solved the fundamental reality that has always
been the shadow over Iraq: Iran. But that was beyond Petraeus' task and, for now,
beyond American capabilities. That is why the Iranians can afford to be so
confident.
-
Very interesting Strat, as always. Seems to me they exaggerate our goal number 3, ending with a pro-American government. Pro-American is a little hard to arrange. We would I think settle for anything that involves stability, self-determination and not actively planning (or harboring) attacks against American interests.
Iran is a key player and factor but I wonder if Stratfor overestimates how much the Iraqis, even Shia, want to be controlled by Iran.
Iran has some stability issues of its own with 70 million oppressed people. The USA by now should have some covert destabilization contingency plan of its own ready to deploy in Iran, short of an invasion. In Iraq it was the previous Dem administration in 1998, candidate Gore in 2000 as well as many inconsistent, antiwar Democrats of the 2000s who kept alleging that "regime change" policy did not mean all-out military invasion. Similarly could be covert destabilization efforts could be launched or threatened within Iran. Even if unsuccessful, they could keep the tyrannical regime busy with problems of its own. Here is Clinton '98 discussing efforts to destabilize Iraq toward regime change:
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xiIyy0hgg-M[/youtube]
For all the talk by Obama and his cronies about political rather than military solutions in conflicts, in Iraq it is the military effort succeeding and the political situation failing at the moment, yet he has his ace number one chief diplomat HRC assigned elsewhere. If I were President Barack "I have a Gift" Obama, friend of all Arabs and Muslims, I would send myself to the negotiating table (the photo-opp of the century) and sit down now with all the factions, here them all out and then settle the issues, letting each side believe that they won all they could win in the negotiations for power.
After we leave and destabilization comes back and spreads across the country, that opportunity to negotiate and settle power may never again be possible.
-
Nice find on that clip of President Clinton.
-
"Nice find on that clip of President Clinton."
I'm glad it was appreciated. Really just hollow words though without the followup video made possible by the policies of his successor and the American military; Saddam Hussein's hanging is at about the 1:37 mark of this clip12/30/2006:
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4M6Lgb2eCmw[/youtube]
In both cases you would think the availability of google, youtube and camcorders everywhere would begin to persuade world leaders to behave better.
-
Rethinking American Options on Iran
August 31, 2010
By George Friedman
Public discussion of potential attacks on Iran’s nuclear development sites is surging again. This has happened before. On several occasions, leaks about potential airstrikes have created an atmosphere of impending war. These leaks normally coincided with diplomatic initiatives and were designed to intimidate the Iranians and facilitate a settlement favorable to the United States and Israel. These initiatives have failed in the past. It is therefore reasonable to associate the current avalanche of reports with the imposition of sanctions and view it as an attempt to increase the pressure on Iran and either force a policy shift or take advantage of divisions within the regime.
My first instinct is to dismiss the war talk as simply another round of psychological warfare against Iran, this time originating with Israel. Most of the reports indicate that Israel is on the verge of attacking Iran. From a psychological-warfare standpoint, this sets up the good-cop/bad-cop routine. The Israelis play the mad dog barely restrained by the more sober Americans, who urge the Iranians through intermediaries to make concessions and head off a war. As I said, we have been here before several times, and this hasn’t worked.
The worst sin of intelligence is complacency, the belief that simply because something has happened (or has not happened) several times before it is not going to happen this time. But each episode must be considered carefully in its own light and preconceptions from previous episodes must be banished. Indeed, the previous episodes might well have been intended to lull the Iranians into complacency themselves. Paradoxically, the very existence of another round of war talk could be intended to convince the Iranians that war is distant while covert war preparations take place. An attack may be in the offing, but the public displays neither confirm nor deny that possibility.
The Evolving Iranian Assessment
STRATFOR has gone through three phases in its evaluation of the possibility of war. The first, which was in place until July 2009, held that while Iran was working toward a nuclear weapon, its progress could not be judged by its accumulation of enriched uranium. While that would give you an underground explosion, the creation of a weapon required sophisticated technologies for ruggedizing and miniaturizing the device, along with a very reliable delivery system. In our view, Iran might be nearing a testable device but it was far from a deliverable weapon. Therefore, we dismissed war talk and argued that there was no meaningful pressure for an attack on Iran.
We modified this view somewhat in July 2009, after the Iranian elections and the demonstrations. While we dismissed the significance of the demonstrations, we noted close collaboration developing between Russia and Iran. That meant there could be no effective sanctions against Iran, so stalling for time in order for sanctions to work had no value. Therefore, the possibility of a strike increased.
But then Russian support stalled as well, and we turned back to our analysis, adding to it an evaluation of potential Iranian responses to any air attack. We noted three potential counters: activating Shiite militant groups (most notably Hezbollah), creating chaos in Iraq and blocking the Strait of Hormuz, through which 45 percent of global oil exports travel. Of the three Iranian counters, the last was the real “nuclear option.” Interfering with the supply of oil from the Persian Gulf would raise oil prices stunningly and would certainly abort the tepid global economic recovery. Iran would have the option of plunging the world into a global recession or worse.
There has been debate over whether Iran would choose to do the latter or whether the U.S. Navy could rapidly clear mines. It is hard to imagine how an Iranian government could survive air attacks without countering them in some way. It is also a painful lesson of history that the confidence of any military force cannot be a guide to its performance. At the very least, there is a possibility that the Iranians could block the Strait of Hormuz, and that means the possibility of devastating global economic consequences. That is a massive risk for the United States to take, against an unknown probability of successful Iranian action. In our mind, it was not a risk that the United States could take, especially when added to the other Iranian counters. Therefore, we did not think the United States would strike.
Certainly, we did not believe that the Israelis would strike Iran alone. First, the Israelis are much less likely to succeed than the Americans would be, given the size of their force and their distance from Iran (not to mention the fact that they would have to traverse either Turkish, Iraqi or Saudi airspace). More important, Israel lacks the ability to mitigate any consequences. Any Israeli attack would have to be coordinated with the United States so that the United States could alert and deploy its counter-mine, anti-submarine and missile-suppression assets. For Israel to act without giving the United States time to mitigate the Hormuz option would put Israel in the position of triggering a global economic crisis. The political consequences of that would not be manageable by Israel. Therefore, we found an Israeli strike against Iran without U.S. involvement difficult to imagine.
The Current Evaluation
Our current view is that the accumulation of enough enriched uranium to build a weapon does not mean that the Iranians are anywhere close to having a weapon. Moreover, the risks inherent in an airstrike on its nuclear facilities outstrip the benefits (and even that assumes that the entire nuclear industry is destroyed in one fell swoop — an unsure outcome at best). It also assumes the absence of other necessary technologies. Assumptions of U.S. prowess against mines might be faulty, and so, too, could my assumption about weapon development. The calculus becomes murky, and one would expect all governments involved to be waffling.
There is, of course, a massive additional issue. Apart from the direct actions that Iran might make, there is the fact that the destruction of its nuclear capability would not solve the underlying strategic challenge that Iran poses. It has the largest military force in the Persian Gulf, absent the United States. The United States is in the process of withdrawing from Iraq, which would further diminish the ability of the United States to contain Iran. Therefore, a surgical strike on Iran’s nuclear capability combined with the continuing withdrawal of U.S. forces from Iraq would create a profound strategic crisis in the Persian Gulf.
The country most concerned about Iran is not Israel, but Saudi Arabia. The Saudis recall the result of the last strategic imbalance in the region, when Iraq, following its armistice with Iran, proceeded to invade Kuwait, opening the possibility that its next intention was to seize the northeastern oil fields of Saudi Arabia. In that case, the United States intervened. Given that the United States is now withdrawing from Iraq, intervention following withdrawal would be politically difficult unless the threat to the United States was clear. More important, the Iranians might not give the Saudis the present Saddam Hussein gave them by seizing Kuwait and then halting. They might continue. They certainly have the military capacity to try.
In a real sense, the Iranians would not have to execute such a military operation in order to gain the benefits. The simple imbalance of forces would compel the Saudis and others in the Persian Gulf to seek a political accommodation with the Iranians. Strategic domination of the Persian Gulf does not necessarily require military occupation — as the Americans have abundantly demonstrated over the past 40 years. It merely requires the ability to carry out those operations.
The Saudis, therefore, have been far quieter — and far more urgent — than the Israelis in asking the United States to do something about the Iranians. The Saudis certainly do not want the United States to leave Iraq. They want the Americans there as a blocking force protecting Saudi Arabia but not positioned on Saudi soil. They obviously are not happy about Iran’s nuclear efforts, but the Saudis see the conventional and nuclear threat as a single entity. The collapse of the Iran-Iraq balance of power has left the Arabian Peninsula in a precarious position.
King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia did an interesting thing a few weeks ago. He visited Lebanon personally and in the company of the president of Syria. The Syrian and Saudi regimes are not normally friendly, given different ideologies, Syria’s close relationship with Iran and their divergent interests in Lebanon. But there they were together, meeting with the Lebanese government and giving not very subtle warnings to Hezbollah. Saudi influence and money and the threat of Iran jeopardizing the Saudi regime by excessive adventurism seems to have created an anti-Hezbollah dynamic in Lebanon. Hezbollah is suddenly finding many of its supposed allies cooperating with some of its certain enemies. The threat of a Hezbollah response to an airstrike on Iran seems to be mitigated somewhat.
Eliminating Iranian Leverage In Hormuz
I said that there were three counters. One was Hezbollah, which is the least potent of the three from the American perspective. The other two are Iraq and Hormuz. If the Iraqis were able to form a government that boxed in pro-Iranian factions in a manner similar to how Hezbollah is being tentatively contained, then the second Iranian counter would be weakened. That would “just” leave the major issue — Hormuz.
The problem with Hormuz is that the United States cannot tolerate any risk there. The only way to control that risk is to destroy Iranian naval capability before airstrikes on nuclear targets take place. Since many of the Iranian mine layers would be small boats, this would mean an extensive air campaign and special operations forces raids against Iranian ports designed to destroy anything that could lay mines, along with any and all potential mine-storage facilities, anti-ship missile emplacements, submarines and aircraft. Put simply, any piece of infrastructure within a few miles of any port would need to be eliminated. The risk to Hormuz cannot be eliminated after the attack on nuclear sites. It must be eliminated before an attack on the nuclear sites. And the damage must be overwhelming.
There are two benefits to this strategy. First, the nuclear facilities aren’t going anywhere. It is the facilities that are producing the enriched uranium and other parts of the weapon that must be destroyed more than any uranium that has already been enriched. And the vast bulk of those facilities will remain where they are even if there is an attack on Iran’s maritime capabilities. Key personnel would undoubtedly escape, but considering that within minutes of the first American strike anywhere in Iran a mass evacuation of key scientists would be under way anyway, there is little appreciable difference between a first strike against nuclear sites and a first strike against maritime targets. (U.S. air assets are good, but even the United States cannot strike 100-plus targets simultaneously.)
Second, the counter-nuclear strategy wouldn’t deal with the more fundamental problem of Iran’s conventional military power. This opening gambit would necessarily attack Iran’s command-and-control, air-defense and offensive air capabilities as well as maritime capabilities. This would sequence with an attack on the nuclear capabilities and could be extended into a prolonged air campaign targeting Iran’s ground forces.
The United States is very good at gaining command of the air and attacking conventional military capabilities (see Yugoslavia in 1999). Its strategic air capability is massive and, unlike most of the U.S. military, underutilized. The United States also has substantial air forces deployed around Iran, along with special operations forces teams trained in penetration, evasion and targeting, and satellite surveillance. Far from the less-than-rewarding task of counterinsurgency in Afghanistan, going after Iran would be the kind of war the United States excels at fighting. No conventional land invasion, no boots-on-the-ground occupation, just a very thorough bombing campaign. If regime change happens as a consequence, great, but that is not the primary goal. Defanging the Iranian state is.
It is also the only type of operation that could destroy the nuclear capabilities (and then some) while preventing an Iranian response. It would devastate Iran’s conventional military forces, eliminating the near-term threat to the Arabian Peninsula. Such an attack, properly executed, would be the worst-case scenario for Iran and, in my view, the only way an extended air campaign against nuclear facilities could be safely executed.
Just as Iran’s domination of the Persian Gulf rests on its ability to conduct military operations, not on its actually conducting the operations, the reverse is also true. It is the capacity and apparent will to conduct broadened military operations against Iran that can shape Iranian calculations and decision-making. So long as the only threat is to Iran’s nuclear facilities, its conventional forces remain intact and its counter options remain viable, Iran will not shift its strategy. Once its counter options are shut down and its conventional forces are put at risk, Iran must draw up another calculus.
In this scenario, Israel is a marginal player. The United States is the only significant actor, and it might not strike Iran simply over the nuclear issue. That’s not a major U.S. problem. But the continuing withdrawal from Iraq and Iran’s conventional forces are very much an American problem. Destroying Iran’s nuclear capability is merely an added benefit.
Given the Saudi intervention in Lebanese politics, this scenario now requires a radical change in Iraq, one in which a government would be quickly formed and Iranian influence quickly curtailed. Interestingly, we have heard recent comments by administration officials asserting that Iranian influence has, in fact, been dramatically reduced. At present, such a reduction is not obvious to us, but the first step of shifting perceptions tends to be propaganda. If such a reduction became real, then the two lesser Iranian counter moves would be blocked and the U.S. offensive option would become more viable.
Internal Tension in Tehran
At this point, we would expect to see the Iranians recalculating their position, with some of the clerical leadership using the shifting sands of Lebanon against Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Indeed, there have been many indications of internal stress, not between the mythical democratic masses and the elite, but within the elite itself. This past weekend the Iranian speaker of the house attacked Ahmadinejad’s handling of special emissaries. For what purpose we don’t yet know, but the internal tension is growing.
The Iranians are not concerned about the sanctions. The destruction of their nuclear capacity would, from their point of view, be a pity. But the destruction of large amounts of their conventional forces would threaten not only their goals in the wider Islamic world but also their stability at home. That would be unacceptable and would require a shift in their general strategy.
From the Iranian point of view — and from ours — Washington’s intentions are opaque. But when we consider the Obama administration’s stated need to withdraw from Iraq, Saudi pressure on the United States not to withdraw while Iran remains a threat, Saudi moves against Hezbollah to split Syria from Iran and Israeli pressure on the United States to deal with nuclear weapons, the pieces for a new American strategy are emerging from the mist. Certainly the Iranians appear to be nervous. And the threat of a new strategy might just be enough to move the Iranians off dead center. If they don’t, logic would dictate the consideration of a broader treatment of the military problem posed by Iran.
-
Afghanistan and the War Legend
September 3, 2010
STRATFOR Readers,
As many of you know, Robert Merry joined STRATFOR as publisher in January. While primarily focused on our business (bless him) he is also a noted reporter (years with The Wall Street Journal as Washington correspondent and head of Congressional Quarterly). Bob knows Washington well, while STRATFOR has always been an outsider there. Since Bob brings a new perspective to STRATFOR, we’d be foolish not to take advantage of it. This analysis marks the first of what will be regular contributions to STRATFOR’s work. His commentary will be titled “Washington Looks at the World” and will focus on the international system through the eyes of official Washington and its unofficial outriders. In this first analysis, Bob focuses on the thinking that went into President Barack Obama’s Aug. 31 speech on the end of U.S. combat operations in Iraq. As with all of STRATFOR’s pieces, it treats political leaders as rational actors and avoids ideology and advocacy. Both are in ample supply in this country, and there is no need to add to it. Bob is not trying to persuade, praise or condemn. Nor is he simply providing facts. He is trying to understand and explain what is happening. I hope you find this of value. I learned something from it. By all means let us know what you think, especially if you like it. Criticisms will also be read but will not be enjoyed nearly as much.
— George Friedman, STRATFOR CEO
By Robert W. Merry
U.S. President Barack Obama’s Aug. 31 Oval Office speech on the end of U.S. combat operations in Iraq had many purposes: to claim a measure of credit for largely fulfilling one of his major campaign promises; to thank those who have served and sacrificed in the cause; to spread the balm of unity over any lingering domestic wounds; to assure Americans that it has all been worth it and that no dishonor was attached to this foreign adventure, which was opposed by many in Obama’s own party and by him from the beginning.
Of all those purposes, and any others that might have been conceived, the need to express assurance of the war’s validity — and honor in its outcome — is by far the most important. Any national leader must protect and nurture the legend of any war over which he presides, even those — actually, particularly those — he has brought to a close. The people need to feel that the sacrifice in blood and treasure was worth it, that the mission’s rationale still makes sense, that the nation’s standing and prestige remain intact.
In terms of America, nothing illustrates this more starkly than the Vietnam experience. This was a war that emerged quite naturally out of a foreign policy outlook, “containment,” that had shaped American behavior in the world for nearly two decades and would continue to shape it for another two decades. Hence, one could argue that the Vietnam War was a noble effort entirely consistent with a policy that eventually proved brilliantly successful. But the national pain of defeat in that war spawned an entirely different legend — that it was a huge mistake and a tragic loss of life for no defensible purpose. The impact of that legend upon the national consciousness could be seen for decades — in war-powers battles between the president and Congress, in a halting defense posture often attributed to what was called the “Vietnam Syndrome,” in the lingering civic hostility engendered when the subject emerged among fellow citizens, in the flow of tears shed daily at Washington’s Vietnam Memorial.
So the presidential responsibility for the legend of war is no trivial matter when young Americans begin returning home in body bags. A wise president will keep it well established in his mind in selling a war, in prosecuting it and eventually in explaining it at its conclusion.
This important presidential function posed two particular challenges for Obama during his Oval Office speech: First, his past opposition to the war in Iraq created a danger that he might appear insincere or artificial in his expressions, and second, it isn’t entirely clear that the legend can hold up, that the stated rationale for the war really withstands serious scrutiny. Yes, America did depose Saddam Hussein and his regime. But the broader aims of the war — to establish a stable, pro-Western regime in the country and thus maintain a geopolitical counterweight to the regional ambitions of Iran — remain unfulfilled. The president handled the first challenge with aplomb, hailing the war’s outcome (so far) while avoiding the political schisms that it bred and delivering expressions of appreciation and respect for his erstwhile adversaries on the issue. Whether he succeeds in the second challenge likely will depend upon events in Iraq, where 50,000 American troops remain to support Iraqi security forces and help maintain stability.
But Obama’s effort to preserve the war’s legend, which was ribboned throughout his speech, raises the specter of an even greater challenge of preserving the legend of a different war — the war in Afghanistan, which Obama says will begin to wind down for America in July of next year. It remains a very open question whether events will unfold in that nettlesome conflict in such a way as to allow for a reassuring legend when the troops come home. That open question is particularly stark given the fundamental reality that America is not going to bring about a victory in Afghanistan in any conventional sense. The Taliban insurgency that the United States is trying to subdue with its counterinsurgency effort is not going to go away and, indeed, the Taliban will likely have to be part of any accommodation that can precede America’s withdrawal.
Thus, the Obama administration has become increasingly focused on what some involved in war planning call “the endgame.” By that, they mean essentially a strategy for extricating the country from Afghanistan while preserving a reasonable level of stability in that troubled land; minimizing damage to American interests; and maintaining a credible legend of the war that is reassuring to the American people. That’s a tall order, and it isn’t clear whether the nearly 150,000 U.S. and allied troops in Afghanistan, under U.S. Army Gen. David Petraeus, can affect the magnitude of the challenge one way or another.
Very quietly, top officials of the Obama administration have initiated a number of reviews inspecting every aspect of this endgame challenge. Some involve influential outside experts with extensive governmental experience in past administrations, and they are working with officials at the highest levels of the government, including the Pentagon. One review group has sent members to Russia for extensive conversations with officials who were involved in the Soviet Union’s ill-fated invasion of Afghanistan in the 1980s. Others have traveled to Pakistan and other lands, including the United Kingdom, Germany and France, to master the diplomatic implications of any Afghan exit strategy.
It’s too early to determine just what impact these review groups will have on administration thinking, which appears to remain in a state of development. But it can be said that at least some of these outside experts are pressing hard for an endgame approach that moves beyond some earlier thinking about the war and its rationale. For example:
The need to involve Afghanistan’s neighbors in any accommodation that would allow for at least a reasonably graceful American exit. In addition to next-door Pakistan, these likely would include Russia, India and perhaps even Iran. All have a stake in Afghan stability, and all have their own particular interests there. Hence, the diplomatic game will be extremely difficult. But it is worth noting that during the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan, Russia served as a facilitator of U.S. cooperation with the northern ethnic tribes, and Russians even provided personnel and vehicles to America’s Northern Alliance allies. Iran also helped facilitate the invasion by suggesting security for American pilots faced with ditching over Iranian territory.
The necessity of working with local power centers and finding a way of developing a productive discussion with the different ethnic groups that need to be part of the Afghan endgame. How to do that reportedly was one question posed to Russian officials who were involved in the Soviet Union’s Afghan experience and who had to deal with insurgent leaders on the way out.
A probable requirement that the United States relinquish any hope that a strong central government in Kabul will form and bring about stability in the country. Afghanistan has never had a strong central government, and the various ethnic and religious groups, local warlords, tribes and khans aren’t going to submit to any broad national authority. Their mountainous homeland for centuries has afforded them plenty of protection from any invading force, and that isn’t going to change.
A probable need to explore a national system with a traditionally weak central government and strong provincial actors with considerable sway over their particular territories.
Underlying all this is a strong view that the U.S.-led International Security Assistance Force cannot impose an endgame. The Taliban are not going to submit to U.S. blandishments for negotiation as a result of any fear of what will happen to them if they don’t. That’s because they are winning and possess the arms, wiles, knowledge of terrain and people and insurgency skills to keep on winning, irrespective of what Petraeus does to thwart them. Besides, the tribes of Afghanistan have demonstrated through the centuries that they have the patience to outlast any invader.
If the Taliban won’t negotiate out of fear of what the U.S. military can do to them, the question becomes whether they will negotiate out of a sense of opportunity — as a means of bringing about the U.S. exit that American government officials increasingly seem to want as well. There are indications the Taliban might be interested in participating in such a negotiated American exit, perhaps in exchange for some kind of international recognition. At this point, however, there is no firm evidence that such an approach could prove fruitful, and hence this question remains one of the great imponderables hovering over America’s presence in Afghanistan.
But, if that does prove possible, the question of America’s war legend will loom very large indeed. Those involved in the review groups reportedly are well aware that the nature of the U.S. departure will inform the legend, and they are intent on crafting an outcome that will honor America’s Afghanistan war dead and U.S. war veterans. In other words, in this view, there must remain a narrative that explains why America was there, what was accomplished, and why the departure was undertaken when it was. It must resonate throughout the nation and must be credible.
This poses another fundamental question: Is there an inherent inconsistency between the outlook emerging from these governmental review groups and the recent pronouncements of Petraeus? Many of the review-group participants seem to be working toward what might be called a “graceful exit” from Afghanistan. Yet Petraeus told The New York Times on Aug. 15 that he does not see his mission in such small terms as a “graceful exit.” Rather, he said his marching orders were to do “all that is humanly possible to help us achieve our objectives.” By “our objectives,” he seemed to mean establishing, through military force, a sufficient degree of stability in the country to allow a negotiated exit on American terms, with his Iraq record serving as the model. Even if that is possible, it certainly will take considerable time. The general made clear in the Times interview and in others that he fully intended to press Obama hard to delay any serious troop withdrawal from Afghanistan until well beyond the July 2011 time frame put forth by the president.
Thus, the nature and pace of withdrawal becomes another big question hovering over the president’s war strategy. Many high-ranking administration officials, including the president, have said the pace of withdrawal will depend upon “conditions on the ground” when July 2011 arrives. Obama repeated that conditional expression in his Iraq speech the other night. But that leaves a lot of room for maneuver — and a lot of room for debate within the administration. The reason for delaying a full withdrawal would be to try to apply further military pressure to force the Taliban to become less resistant. That goal seems to be what’s animating Petraeus. But others, including some involved in the review groups, don’t see much prospect of that actually happening. Thus, they see no reason for much of a withdrawal delay beyond the president’s July deadline — particularly given the need to preserve the country’s war legend. The danger, as some see it, is that an effort to force an outcome through military action, given the unlikely prospect of that, could increase the chances of a traditional military defeat, much like the one suffered by the Soviets in the 1980s and by the British in two brutal military debacles during the 19th century.
Many of the experts involved in the Afghanistan review effort see a link between the departure of U.S. combat troops from Iraq, as described by Obama in his Oval Office speech, and the imperative to fashion an Afghanistan exit that offers a war legend at least as comforting to the American people. Certainly, the importance of the war legend was manifest in Obama’s Iraq speech. First, he repeatedly praised the valor and commitment of America’s men and women in uniform. Even in turning to the need to fix the country’s economic difficulties, he invoked these U.S. military personnel again by saying “we must tackle those challenges at home with as much energy, and grit, and sense of common purpose as our men and women in uniform who have served abroad.” He expressed a resolve to honor their commitment by serving “our veterans as well as they have served us” through the Department of Veterans Affairs, emphasizing medical care and the G.I. Bill. And he drew an evocative word picture of America’s final combat brigade in Iraq — the Army’s 4th Stryker Brigade — journeying toward Kuwait on their way home in the predawn darkness. Many Americans will recall some of these young men, extending themselves from the backs of convoy trucks and yelling into television cameras and lights, “We won! We’re going home! We won the war!”
But, as Obama noted in his speech, this is “an age without surrender ceremonies.” It’s also an age without victory parades. As he said, “we must earn victory through the success of our partners and the strength of our own nation.” That’s a bit vague, though, and that’s why Obama’s speech laid out the elements of the Iraq success in terms that seemed pretty much identical to what George W. Bush would have said. We succeeded in toppling Saddam Hussein. We nurtured an Iraqi effort to craft a democratic structure. After considerable bloodshed, we managed to foster a reasonable amount of civic stability in the country so the Iraqi people can continue their halting pursuit of their own destiny. Thus, said the president, “This completes a transition to Iraqi responsibility for their own security.” He added, “Through this remarkable chapter in the history of the United States and Iraq, we have met our responsibility. Now, it’s time to turn the page.”
That’s probably enough of a legend to fortify the good feelings of those young men yelling of victory from the backs of Stryker Brigade vehicles on the way out of Iraq. But getting to even that degree of a war legend in Afghanistan will be far more difficult. And, as the endgame looms in that distant land, the administration will have to grapple not only with how to prosecute the war and foster a safe exit but also with how to preserve a suitable legend for that war once the shooting stops.
-
THE U.S. APPROACH TO MANAGING THE PERSIAN GULF
The day after the U.S. government formally notified Congress of a massive, $60
billion arms sale to Saudi Arabia, Saudi King Abdullah called Iranian President
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on Thursday to “discuss bilateral relations.” Ahmadinejad had
earlier phoned the Saudi king, making this the second time in only nine days that
Iran has reached out to its Persian Gulf rival.
While the Saudis and Iranians have been nervously feeling each other out, the junior
players in the Persian Gulf are also keeping busy. The United Arab Emirates (UAE)
announced Thursday that it has opened a naval base on its eastern coast in the
emirate of Fujairah. The base, jutting out into the Arabian Sea, would also house a
giant oil-storage terminal that would connect to the oil-rich emirate of Abu Dhabi
through a multi-billion dollar oil pipeline now under construction. In following
these plans, the UAE appears to be creating an option to circumvent the Strait of
Hormuz so that they may continue exporting oil and importing goods should Iran
attempt to follow through on threats to blockade the strategic chokepoint.
Just off the Arabian Peninsula, the tiny island nation of Bahrain -- home to the
U.S. Navy’s Fifth Fleet -- is gearing up for parliamentary elections Saturday. To
prepare for the polls, the ruling Sunni al-Khalifa family is doing everything it can
to ensure the country’s Shiite majority doesn’t increase its political clout -- and
thus provide its Persian neighbor with another stick with which to probe the
peninsula.
"With the Persian Gulf in flux, the United States is trying to get back into a
position where the natural Arab-Persian divide in the region balances itself out."
Iran is clearly weighing heavily on the minds of the Persian Gulf states. These
states don’t exactly long for a repeat of Saddam Hussein and his extraterritorial
oil ambitions, but they did watch with trepidation as the Sunni pillar in Iraq
crumbled under the watch of the United States throughout the course of the Iraq war.
Though the United States made the first big attempt to correct this imbalance with
the surge and the co-optation of Sunni former Baathists, it is obvious to everyone
that Iran is the emerging power in the Persian Gulf, while the United States is more
than ready to make its exit from the region.
But the United States also doesn’t have the option of clearing out and leaving its
Sunni Arab allies in a lurch. Whether or not American Tea Partiers, isolationist
pundits or regular taxpayers like it, the U.S. military is spread far beyond its
borders, with American boots on the ground in more than 150 countries and the U.S.
Navy in the unique position of dominating the high seas. The United States also
holds a quarter of the world’s wealth in gross domestic product and is responsible
for roughly the same fraction of the world’s fossil fuel consumption, a large
percentage of which comes from the Persian Gulf. Along with this ubiquitous global
presence comes a heavy burden. That burden does not necessarily mean playing the
global policeman and putting out fires wherever there is a real or imagined nuclear
threat, claims of genocide or otherwise. Instead, it means selectively choosing its
military engagement and maintaining various balances of power that allow the United
States to sustain its hegemony without getting bogged down in conflicts around the
world for dangerous lengths of time.
With the Persian Gulf in flux, the United States is trying to get back into a
position where the natural Arab-Persian divide in the region balances itself out.
From the U.S. point of view, Iran and Iraq could go on fighting each other for years
-- as they did throughout the 1980s -- as long as neither one is capable of wiping
the other out. Right now, Iraq is in far too weak a position and is too wedded to
the Iranians to rebuild itself as a useful counter to Iran. So that responsibility
is increasingly falling to Iraq’s neighbors.
Though there is great power in petrodollars alone, the Persian Gulf states are far
from warriors. In spite of all the state-of-the-art equipment the United States
floods into countries like Saudi Arabia, the Saudi military severely lacks the
leadership, ethos, training and doctrine to proficiently and coherently employ these
systems. The Persian Gulf states’ dependence on Washington is what allows the United
States to militarily entrench itself in the region. The $60 billion arms sale to
Saudi Arabia, for example, loudly signals to Iran that a U.S. exit from Iraq is not
tantamount to the United States abandoning its interests in the region. But as the
United States continues to grow and spread itself across the globe, it will
increasingly need to rely on local forces to manage things on their own, with the
United States standing close behind. For the Persian Gulf, that means the United
States investing the years into shaping the Saudi military into an effective force
and encouraging the UAE to reduce its vulnerabilities to Iran, as it appears to be
doing with this new export route into the Arabian Sea. These are initiatives that
take a great deal of time, money and effort, but they also have the best chance of
materializing when a state is confronted by an external threat. For the Persian Gulf
states, the threat of Iran dominating the gulf is as good a threat as ever to drive
them into action.
Copyright 2010 STRATFOR.
-
Two weeks ago, Iran scored a massive victory. Jordan, the West's most stable and loyal ally in the Arab world began slouching towards the Iranian Gomorrah.
On December 12, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's Chief of Staff Esfandiar Rahim-Mashaei met with Jordanian King Abdullah II in Amman and extended a formal invitation from Ahmadinejad for him to pay a state visit to Iran. Abdullah accepted.
According to Iran's ISNA news agency, Mashei said that Abdullah's visit will begin a new page in bilateral relations and that, "the two countries hold massive potential to work together." Mashei added, "If Islamic states stand united, no country will be threatened."
For his part, Abdullah reportedly said that his country recognizes Iran's nuclear rights and supports its access to peaceful nuclear technology.
Abdullah was one of the first world leaders to sound the alarm on Iran. In 2004 Abdullah warned of a "Shiite crescent" extending from Iran to Iraq, through Syria to Lebanon. His words were well reported at the time. But his warning went unheeded.
In the intervening six years, reality has surpassed Abdullah's worst fears. Not only Lebanon and Syria have fallen under Iranian control. Iraq, Turkey, Qatar, Gaza and increasingly Oman, Yemen and Afghanistan are also either willing or unwilling members of the axis.
In the face of Iran's expanding web of influence and the mullahs' steady progress towards nuclear capability, Washington behaves as though there is no cause for concern. And the likes of Jordan are beside themselves.
In a WikiLeaks leaked cable from April 2009 written by US Ambassador to Jordan R. Stephen Beecroft, Jordan's frustration and concern over the Obama administration's incompetence in handling the Iranian threat was clear.
Beecroft wrote, "Jordan's leaders are careful not to be seen as dictating toward the US, but their comments betray a powerful undercurrent of doubt that the United States knows how to deal effectively with Iran."
On the one hand, Jordanian Senator Zaid Rifai beseeched US to bomb Iran's nuclear installations. Rifai said, "Bomb Iran, or live with an Iranian bomb. Sanctions, carrots, incentives won't matter."
But on the other hand, the Jordanians recognized that the Obama administration was committed to appeasing Iran and so tried to convince the Americans to ensure that their appeasement drive didn't come at the Arabs' expense.
Beecroft reported a clear warning from Abdullah. Abdullah cautioned that if the Arabs believe that the US was appeasing Iran at their expense, "that engagement will set off a stampede of Arab states looking to get ahead of the curve and reach their own separate peace with Teheran.
"King Abdullah counseled Special Envoy George Mitchell in February [2009] that direct US engagement with Iran at this time would just deepen intra-Arab schisms and that more 'countries without a backbone' would defect to the Iranian camp."
THAT WAS then. And since then, the Obama administration did nothing after Ahmadinejad and his henchmen stole the presidential election. It did nothing as they repressed the tens of millions of Iranians who demonstrated against the election fraud. The Obama administration did nothing as Iran conducted repeated war games along the Straits of Hormuz, progressed in its nuclear program, deepened its military alliances with Turkey and Venezuela and escalated its proxy war against the US and its allies in Afghanistan.
The Americans said nothing as Iran prevented the pro-US faction that won the Iraqi election from forming a government. They did nothing as Iran forced the reinstallation of Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri Maliki despite his electoral defeat.
As Washington stood idly by in the face of Iran's aggression, Jordan and the other US-allied Arab states watched as Obama harassed Israel, announced his plan to withdraw all US forces from Iraq next year, appointed a new ambassador to Syria and approved more military aid to the Iranian-controlled Lebanese army. And Abdullah and the other Arabs watch now as the US is poised to begin yet a new round of appeasement talks with Iran next month.
Unlike the previous failed rounds of talks, the next failed round of talks will take place in Turkey. Iranian officials are already exulting that Turkish Prime Minister Recip Erdogan will act as Iran's protector in those talks, and so officially end any semblance of Iranian diplomatic isolation on the nuclear issue.
And so, just as Abdullah warned would happen, today he is leading Jordan into the ranks of "countries without a backbone," and making a separate peace with Ahmadinejad.
Jordan is a weak country. Its minority Hashemite regime has failed to dominate its Palestinian majority. And since its inception by the British in 1946, Jordan has depended on Western powers and Israel for its survival.
In acting as he is, Abdullah is following in his father's footsteps. The late King Hussein survived by watching the prevailing winds closely and always siding with the side he believed was strongest at any given time.
When Hussein believed that the West and Israel were weakening, he went with their enemies. He only rejoined the Western alliance after it defeated its foes, and so convinced him that it was stronger. Notable examples of this are his 1967 alliance with Egypt and Syria against Israel and his decision in 1990 to stand with Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein in the aftermath of Saddam's conquest of Kuwait.
IT IS often erroneously claimed that siding with the metaphorical stronger horse is primarily an Arab practice. In truth, everyone does it.
Take France for instance.
In another diplomatic cable leaked by WikiLeaks, the US embassy in Paris reported that French President Nicolas Sarkozy thinks that the Palestinians are stronger than Israel. The report claimed that in Sarkozy's June 2009 meeting with Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, he told the Israeli leader that he must surrender to all the Palestinian demands because in his view the Palestinians are stronger than Israel is.
Before Sarkozy took office, he was considered a great supporter of Israel and a personal friend of Netanyahu's. But since taking office, he has sided with the Palestinians against Israel. He has been friendly to Syria. Most recently, he agreed to sell one hundred advanced anti-tank missiles to the Hizbullah-controlled Lebanese military.
In light of his comment to Netanyahu it is clear that what motivates Sarkozy to act as he does is his analysis of the power balance between Israel and its enemies. Happily for Israel, Sarkozy is wrong. Israel is stronger than the Palestinians and has the capacity to defend itself effectively against its enemies.
Unhappily for Israel, Sarkozy's analysis is probably based in large part on arguments he has heard from the Israeli Left under Kadima. Over the past several years, Kadima leaders have managed to convince the country's best friends that Israel has no option other than surrender.
This is due to Kadima's obsession with demography and its demented plan for extricating Israel from what it considers predetermined demographic doom.
According to the likes of Kadima leader Tzipi Livni, the fact that there are 6 million Jews and 4 million Arabs west of the Jordan River means that Israel has no option other than surrendering Judea, Samaria and Jerusalem to the Palestinians. As far as Livni and her leftist comrades are concerned, it makes no difference that such a move will not decrease the number of Arabs west of the Jordan.
It makes no difference to the Israeli Left that the Palestinian state they hope to build will - with their consent -- bring in millions more Arabs as immigrants into the landmass west of the Jordan River and so quickly render Jews a minority, making war a foregone conclusion.
In short, through their asinine demographic argument - with which they surrender all Israeli claims to the capital city, and to strategically vital land that Israel has valid legal and historical claims to -- Livni and her colleagues tell the likes of Sarkozy that not only is Israel weaker than the Palestinians. They tell these erstwhile friends that Israel is doomed to destruction and there is no reason for them to support it.
Based on these claims, Sarkozy's decision to make a separate peace with Iran through its Palestinian, Syrian and Hizbullah proxies makes sense.
It is important to bear this in mind when one considers the reason that the campaign to delegitimize Israel is gaining momentum. Given the Israeli-fuelled sense among key governments that Israel is a lost cause, as they see it, they have no reason to defend Israel from its detractors. From their perspective, their interests are better served by either standing on the sidelines or turning on Israel the weak horse.
ALL THIS is not to say that the Left is purposely sinking the ship of state. It is simply a victim of its own success. The Left has convinced Europe and the Arabs that it is dedicated to appeasement.
The Left believed that by convincing the Arabs and the Europeans that Israel is serious about appeasing its enemies that they would make an alliance with the Jewish state. And since Europe is stronger than Israel, and the Arabs are a threat to Israel, by winning their favor, the Left believed it would strengthen Israel.
What the Left failed to recognize is that Europe and the Arabs would rather cut a deal with Iran than defend themselves against it. A surrendering Israel is of no use to them. They only like Israel when it wins.
And now that weakness has pushed Jordan over the edge.
The lesson of all of this for Israel is clear. For the past 17 years, in the throes of the Left's strategic blindness, Israel has spent its time emphasizing its weaknesses and its enemies' strengths. This practice must be reversed. Israel must now concentrate on its strengths and its enemies' weaknesses.
For instance, Israel has a stronger claim to the disputed territories that the Palestinians. And Israel is stronger than the Palestinians by every possible measuring rod.
On their side, not only are the Palestinians militarily weak, they have nothing to offer anyone. Because the Palestinian national cause has far more to do with destroying Israel than building a Palestinian state, the Palestinian track record is one of destruction not creation. And this destructive tendency expresses itself on every front.
Iran too is far less powerful than it looks. From the Stuxnet worm, to a faltering economy, from increased domestic sabotage to the continuing opposition bid to overthrow the regime, Iran's soft underbelly is exposed. And it is getting softer all the time.
In contrast, Israel has a stable government. And its economic, technological and military power is constantly growing. Israel is a force to be reckoned with.
Jordan's move into the Iranian camp is not inexorable. Nor is Lebanon's or even Syria's. True, much to the Left's dismay, Israel lacks the option of joining the "countries without a backbone."
But we have a better option. We are strong and we can get stronger. And our enemies have weaknesses and we can weaken them still further.
-
The Turkish Role in Negotiations with Iran
January 11, 2011
By George Friedman
The P5+1 talks with Iran will resume Jan. 21-22. For those not tuned into the obscure jargon of the diplomatic world, these are the talks between the five permanent members of the U.N. Security Council (the United States, Britain, France, China and Russia), plus Germany — hence, P5+1. These six countries will be negotiating with one country, Iran. The meetings will take place in Istanbul under the aegis of yet another country, Turkey. Turkey has said it would only host this meeting, not mediate it. It will be difficult for Turkey to stay in this role.
The Iranians have clearly learned from the North Koreans, who have turned their nuclear program into a framework for entangling five major powers (the United States, China, Japan, Russia, South Korea) into treating North Korea as their diplomatic equal. For North Korea, whose goal since the collapse of the Soviet Union and the absorption of China with international trade has come down to regime survival, being treated as a serious power has been a major diplomatic coup. The mere threat of nuclear weapons development has succeeded in doing that. When you step back and consider that North Korea’s economy is among the most destitute of Third World countries and its nuclear capability is far from proven, getting to be the one being persuaded to talk with five major powers (and frequently refusing and then being coaxed) has been quite an achievement.
Iran Exploits an Opportunity
The Iranians have achieved a similar position. By far the weakest of the negotiators, they have created a dynamic whereby they are not only sitting across the table from the six most powerful countries in the world but are also, like the North Koreans, frequently being coaxed there. With the obvious blessings of the others, a seventh major power, Turkey, has positioned itself to facilitate and perhaps mediate between the two sides: the United States, Britain, France, Russia, China and Germany on one side, Iran on the other. This is such an extraordinary line-up that I can’t help repeating it.
No one does anything about North Korea militarily because it is more of a nuisance than a threat, even with its artillery in range of Seoul (fixed artillery positions are perfect targets for U.S. air power). Negotiations and occasional aid solve the problem. Iran’s position is much more significant and goes far beyond potential nuclear weapons. If the United States withdraws from the region, Iran becomes the most powerful conventional power in the Persian Gulf, regardless of whether it has nuclear weapons. Given that the United States is officially bound to leave Iraq by the end of this year, Iran is becoming substantially more powerful.
North Korea’s goal is regime survival. It has no goals beyond that. Iran’s ambitions include regime survival but go well beyond it. Indeed, if there are any threats to the regime, they do not come from outside Iran but from inside Iran, and none of them appears powerful enough to cause regime change. Iran, therefore, is less about preserving its power than it is about enhancing it. It faces a historic opportunity and wants to exploit it without embroiling itself in a ground war.
The drawdown of American forces in Iraq is the first step. As U.S. power declines in Iraq, Iranian power increases. Last week, Muqtada al-Sadr returned to Iraq from Iran. Al-Sadr was the leader of a powerful pro-Iranian, anti-American militia in Iraq, and he left Iraq four years ago under heavy pressure from American forces. His decision to return clearly was not his alone. It was an Iranian decision as well, and the timing was perfect. With a nominally independent government now in place in Iraq under the premiership of Nouri al-Maliki, who is by all accounts pro-Iranian, the reinsertion of al-Sadr while the U.S. withdrawal is under way puts pressure on the government from the Iranians at the same time that resistance from the United States, and the confidence of its allies in Iraq, is decreasing.
U.S. Options
The United States now faces a critical choice. If it continues its withdrawal of forces from Iraq, Iraq will be on its way to becoming an Iranian satellite. Certainly, there are anti-Iranian elements even among the Shiites, but the covert capability of Iran and its overt influence, coupled with its military presence on the border, will undermine Iraq’s ability to resist. If Iraq becomes an Iranian ally or satellite, the Iraqi-Saudi and Iraqi-Kuwaiti frontier becomes, effectively, the frontier with Iran. The psychological sense in the region will be that the United States has no appetite for resisting Iran. Having asked the Americans to deal with the Iranians — and having failed to get them to do so, the Saudis will have to reach some accommodation with Iran. In other words, with the most strategically located country in the Middle East — Iraq — Iran now has the ability to become the dominant power in the Middle East and simultaneously reshape the politics of the Arabian Peninsula.
The United States, of course, has the option of not drawing down forces in Iraq or stopping the withdrawal at some smaller number, but we are talking here about war and not symbols. Twenty thousand U.S. troops (as the drawdown continues) deployed in training and support roles and resisting an assertive pro-Iranian militia is a small number. Indeed, the various militias will have no compunction about attacking U.S. troops, diplomats and aid workers dispersed at times in small groups around the country. The United States couldn’t control Iraq with nearly 170,000 troops, and 50,000 troops or fewer is going to result in U.S. casualties should the Iranians choose to follow that path. And these causalities would not be accompanied by hope of a military or political success. Assuming that the United States is not prepared to increase forces in Iraq dramatically, the Iranians now face a historic opportunity.
The nuclear issue is not all that important. The Israelis are now saying that the Iranians are three to five years away from having a nuclear weapon. Whether this is because of computer worms implanted in Iranian centrifuges by the U.S. National Security Agency or some other technical intelligence agency, or because, as we have said before, building a nuclear weapon is really very hard and takes a long time, the Israelis have reduced the pressure publicly. The pressure is coming from the Saudis. As STRATFOR has said and WikiLeaks has confirmed, it is the Saudis who are currently pressing the United States to do something about Iran, not because of nuclear weapons but because of the conventional shift in the balance of power.
While Iran could easily withstand the destruction of weapons that it does not have, its real fear is that the United States will launch a conventional air war designed to cripple Iran’s conventional forces — its naval and armored capability, particularly. The destruction of Iranian naval power is critical, since Iran’s most powerful countermove in a war would be to block the Strait of Hormuz with mines, anti-ship missiles and swarming suicide craft, cutting off the substantial flow of oil that comes out of the strait. Such a cutoff would shatter the global economic recovery. This is Iran’s true “nuclear” option.
The Iranians are also aware that air warfare — unlike counterinsurgency — is America’s strong suit. It does not underestimate the ability of the United States, in an extended air war, to shatter Iran’s conventional capability, and without that conventional capability, Iran becomes quite insignificant. Therefore, Iran comes to the table with two goals. The first is to retain the powerful negotiating hand it has by playing the nuclear card. The second is to avoid an air campaign by the United States against Iran’s conventional capabilities.
At stake in this discussion is nothing less than the future of the Arabian Peninsula. The Iranians would not have to invade militarily to be able to reshape the region. It would be sufficient for there to be the potential for Iran to invade. It would shift the regime survival question away from Iran to Saudi Arabia. U.S. troops in Kuwait would help but would not change the basic equation. The Saudis would understand that having left Iraq, the United States would be quite capable of leaving Kuwait. The pressure on the Saudis to accommodate the Iranians would be terrific, since they would have to hedge their bets on the United States. As for basing troops in Saudi Arabia itself, the risks pyramid, since the U.S. presence in Saudi Arabia during Desert Shield and Desert Storm helped trigger the rise of al Qaeda.
Therefore, the choices appear to be accepting the shift in the regional balance in favor of Iran, reversing the withdrawal of U.S. forces from Iraq or attempting to destroy Iran’s conventional forces while preventing the disruption of oil from the Persian Gulf. From the American point of view, none of these choices is appetizing. Living with Iranian power opens the door to future threats. Moving heavily into Iraq may simply not be possible with current forces committed to Afghanistan. In any case, reversing the flow out of Iraq would create a blocking force at best, and one not large enough to impose its will on Iraq or Iran.
There is, of course, the option of maintaining or intensifying sanctions. The problem is that even the Americans have created major loopholes in these sanctions, and the Chinese and Russians — as well as the Europeans — are happy to undermine it at will. The United States could blockade Iran, but much of its imports come in through land routes in the north — including gasoline from Russia — and for the U.S. Navy to impose an effective naval blockade it would have to stop and board Chinese and Russian merchant ships as well as those from other countries. The United States could bomb Iranian refineries, but that would simply open the door for foreign sales of gasoline. I do not have confidence in sanctions in general, and while current sanctions may hurt, they will not force regime change or cause the Iranians to forego the kind of opportunities they currently have. They can solve many of the problems of sanctions by entrenching themselves in Iraq. The Saudis will pay the price they need for the peace they want.
The Europeans are hardly of one mind on any subject save one: They do not want to see a disruption of oil from the Persian Gulf. If the United States could guarantee a successful outcome for an air attack, the Germans and French would privately support it while publicly condemning American unilateralism. The Chinese would be appalled by the risks U.S. actions would impose on them. They need Middle Eastern oil, though China is happy to see the United States bogged down in the Middle East so it doesn’t have to worry too much about U.S. competition elsewhere. And, finally, the Russians would profit from surging energy prices and having the U.S. bogged down in another war. For the Russians, unlike the Europeans and Chinese, an attack would be acceptable.
Therefore, at the table next week will be the Americans, painfully aware that its campaigns look promising at the beginning but frequently fail; the Europeans and Chinese, wanting a low-risk solution to a long-term problem; and the Russians, wanting to appear helpful while hoping the United States steps in it again and ready to live with soaring energy prices. And there are the Iranians, wanting to avoid a conventional war but not wanting to forego the opportunity that it has looked for since before the Islamic Republic — domination of the Persian Gulf.
The Turkish Stake
Then there are the Turks. The Turks opposed the U.S. invasion of Iraq because they expected it to fail to establish a viable government in Baghdad and thereby to destroy the balance of power between Iraq and Iran. The Turks have also tried to avoid being drawn into the south beyond dealing with threats from Turkish Kurds operating out of Iraq. At the same time, Turkey has been repositioning itself as both a leading power in the Muslim world and the bridge between the Muslim world and the West, particularly the United States.
Given this, the Turks have assumed the role of managing the negotiations between the P5+1 and Iran. The United States in particular was upset at Turkey’s last effort, which coincided with the imposition of sanctions by the P5+1. The Turks, along with Brazil, negotiated a transfer of nuclear materials from Iran that was seen as insufficient by the West. The real fact was that the United States was unprepared for the unilateral role Turkey and Brazil played at the time they played it. Since then, the nuclear fears have subsided, the sanctions have had limited success at best, and the United States is a year away from leaving Iraq and already has withdrawn from a combat role. The United States now welcomes the Turkish role. So do the Iranians. The rest don’t matter right now.
Now the Turks must face their dilemma. It is all very good to want to negotiate as a neutral party, but the most important party isn’t at the table: Saudi Arabia. Turkey wants to play a dominant role in the Muslim world without risking too much in terms of military force. The problem for Turkey, therefore, is not so much bringing the United States and Iran closer but bringing the Saudis and Iranians closer, and that is a tremendous challenge not only because of religious issues but also because Iran wants to be what Saudi Arabia opposes most: the dominant power in the region. The Turkish problem is to reconcile the fundamental issue in the region, which is the relationship between Persians and Arabs.
The nuclear issue is easy simply because it is not time-sensitive right now. The future of Iraq is time-sensitive and uncertain. The United States wants to leave, and that creates an Iranian ally. A pro-Iranian Iraq, by merely existing, changes the reality of Saudi Arabia. If Turkey wants to play a constructive role, it must find a formula that satisfies three needs. The first is to facilitate the American withdrawal, since simply staying and taking casualties is not an option and will result in the conventional air war that few want. The second is to limit the degree of control Iran has in Iraq, guaranteeing Iranian interests in Iraq without allowing absolute control. The third is to persuade Saudi Arabia that the degree of control ceded to Iranians will not threaten Saudi interests.
If the United States leaves the region, the only way to provide these guarantees to all parties is for Turkish forces, covert and overt, to play an active role in Iraq counterbalancing Iranian influence. Turkey has been a rising power in the region, and it is now about to encounter the price of power. The Turks could choose simply to side with the Iranians or the Saudis, but neither strategy would enhance Turkish security in the long run.
The Turks do not want an air war in Iran. The do not want chaos in Iraq. They do not want to choose between Persians and Arabs. They do not want an Iranian regional hegemon. There are many things the Turks do not want. The question is: What they do want? And what risks are they prepared to take to get it? The prime risk they must take is in Iraq — to limit, not block, Iranian power and to provide a threat to Iran if it goes too far in the Arabian Peninsula. This can be done, but it is not how the Turks have behaved in the last century or so. Things have changed.
Having regional power is not a concept. It is a complex and unpleasant process of balancing contradictory interests in order to prevent greater threats to a country’s interests emerging in the long run. Having positioned itself as a host for negotiations between the United States, Britain, France, China, Russia and Germany on one hand and Iran on the other hand, Turkey has a basic decision to make: It can merely provide a table for the discussion, or it can shape and guarantee the outcome.
As the Americans have learned, no one will thank them for it, and no one will think better of them for doing it. The only reason for a deeper involvement as mediator in the P5+1 talks is that stabilizing the region and maintaining the Persian-Arab balance of power is in Turkey’s national interest. But it will be a wrenching shift to Turkey’s internal political culture. It is also an inevitable shift. If not now, then later.
-
Analyst Reva Bhalla takes a closer look at the unique factors afflicting each of the Middle Eastern countries currently experiencing unrest.
Editor’s Note: Transcripts are generated using speech-recognition technology. Therefore, STRATFOR cannot guarantee their complete accuracy.
With protests breaking out everywhere from Yemen to Bahrain to Algeria to Iran, everyone is asking themselves who’s next in the so-called wave of revolutions. Now while there are some common trends in each of these countries, this can’t be seen as some sort of domino effect where revolutions will spread everywhere in sight. Each of these countries are living in very unique circumstances, and understanding those factors are important in understanding which of these regimes are really at risk.
There are common threads to many of the countries experiencing unrest right now. First, most obviously, you have severe socio-economic conditions where you have high rates of youth unemployment in particular, inflationary pressures driving up the price of food and fuel, lack of basic services. Overall, you see a general reaction to decades of crony capitalism that really built up during the Nasserite era in this region.
Exacerbating matters in places like Algeria and Yemen are these illegitimate succession plans. So for example, in Yemen, the president has already announced that he is not going to run again for president in 2013, nor will his son, and that was designed to appease the political opposition. So far it seems to have worked, and the political opposition has dropped out of the demonstrations, leaving those on the streets more and more divided.
Now, in Algeria, the main concern is not so much the civil unrest in the streets, although that’s notable. The real concern is who is manipulating that unrest behind the scenes. So in Algeria, you have an intense power struggle that’s been playing out between an increasingly embattled president, who has wanted to hand the reins over to his brother, and a powerful intelligence minister, who is hotly opposed to those plans. So as these demonstrations play out, it’s extremely important to take a look at what quiet concessions are being offered behind the scenes as this power struggle plays out.
Another key theme is that many of these countries face the dilemma of how to integrate Islamists in the political system. Now, countries like Jordan have a better relationship with the Islamists in the opposition; there, they actually have the ability to participate in the political system, albeit not to the levels they want. In other countries — like Algeria, Syria and, of course, Egypt — these are the countries that continue to struggle with this Islamist dilemma.
One thing is clear to us: In Egypt, we did not see a popular revolution in the true sense of the word; what we saw was a carefully and thoughtfully managed succession by the military. In Algeria, you’re mostly seeing a power struggle play out. In places like Jordan, Yemen and Bahrain, you’re seeing opposition groups and tribes start to seize the opportunity to press for their demands, but they are still operating under great constraints, and, in many cases, they know their limits.
In other words, while this latest unrest is a wake-up call for many regimes in the region, we are not seeing a wave of revolutions spread throughout the region. And where you do see things flare up, like we might see in Algeria this coming Friday, you have to take a closer look at the political intrigue behind the demonstrations to really understand the true risk to the regime.
-
Iranian Moves in the Wake of Arab Unrest
A number of Iran-related developments made for a busy Wednesday in the Middle East.
The day began with Iran’s most important military commander, Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps chief Maj. Gen. Mohammad Ali Jaafari, saying that Iran’s elite military force would soon unveil a project that would “surprise the world.” Then, Lebanese Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah called on his movement’s military forces to be prepared to invade Israel in the event of an Israeli attack on Lebanon. Nasrallah was responding to a statement from Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak, who a day earlier warned about the eruption of conflict on Israel’s northern border.
Wednesday’s most significant statement came from Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman, who said two Iranian naval vessels would be passing through the Suez Canal en route to Syria. Lieberman described the move as “a provocation that proves Iran’s nerve and self-esteem are growing from day to day.” The Israeli foreign minister went on to say that the global community needed to realize that his country could not “ignore these provocations forever.”
“Even if the street agitation in Arab capitals had not erupted, Iranian military ships making their way through the heart of the Arab world would still create a major stir in the Arab countries, Israel and the United States.”
These statements come at a time when Egypt and other states in the wider Arab world are dealing with domestic unrest. The United States and Israel are concerned about future regional stability in the wake of the regional commotion, especially with Egypt in play. It is true that Iran was already a problem, but in the current uncertain circumstances, the behavior of Tehran’s clerical regime becomes an even bigger concern.
Iran, which already has the upper hand in its regional struggle with the United States, would like to be able to take advantage of the current situation by creating more problems for Washington at a time when the Obama administration is trying to manage the situation in the Arab countries without weakening its position regarding Iraq and Iran. There are already concerns about Iranian backing for the protesters from the Shiite majority community in the Persian Gulf kingdom of Bahrain.
Furthermore, Iranian warships ferrying through the Suez Canal on their way to Syria had been planned ahead of the recent unrest in Arab countries. Even if the street agitation in Arab capitals had not erupted, Iranian military ships reportedly making their way through the heart of the Arab world would still create a major stir in the Arab countries, Israel and the United States. And now that the region is in the middle of unprecedented instability, the event — and the Iranians appear to be proceeding — carries a much bigger significance.
The Islamic republic is attempting to telegraph to everyone in the region and beyond of its growing regional prowess. Iran knows that its moves will not go unnoticed. The United States, Israel and the Arabs cannot just dismiss Tehran’s moves as minor, especially not in the current Middle East climate.
Certainly Iran does not yet posses the kind of naval capability for power projection far away from its shores, nor does it want to pick an actual fight. But its neighbors and the United States cannot be sure of that and it is this perception that makes Tehran’s moves significant.
-
Concerns Over Bahrain, Saudi Arabia and Iran
The Persian Gulf island of Bahrain was Thursday’s geopolitical focal point. The day began with domestic security forces storming an encampment of protesters in a central square in the capital of Manama — an operation that left five people dead and another 100-200 reportedly injured. While the army is trying to ensure against further protests, more unrest in the coming days cannot be ruled out. Manama’s trepidation can be gauged from the fact that Bahraini King Hamad bin Isa al-Khalifa chaired an extraordinary session of the Gulf Cooperation Council’s (GCC) foreign ministers.
Bahrain is unique in that it is the only country among the mostly wealthy Arab states on the Arabian Peninsula that is experiencing public unrest. However, public agitation is by no means new, as it has a lengthy tradition of pro-democracy mass risings. But in the wake of the toppling of presidents who long ruled Tunisia and Egypt, this latest wave of unrest in Bahrain is seen with a greater sense of urgency.
“From Riyadh’s perspective, the empowerment of Shia in neighboring Bahrain could very likely embolden its own Shiite minority…”
In addition to being the only GCC member state to experience demonstrations, the country’s location and sectarian demographic sets it apart from every other Arab nation. An overwhelming Shiite majority seeks a greater say in the country ruled by a Sunni royal family and in close proximity to Iran. Thus, the demand for democracy, which in the case of other Arab countries is seen by many around the world as a positive development, is a cause of regional and international concern for Bahrain.
This would explain why U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates talked by phone with Bahraini Crown Prince Salman bin Hamad al-Khalifa (also deputy commander of the country’s armed forces) to discuss the security situation. Washington is not only concerned about security and stability because it is home to the U.S. Navy’s 5th Fleet, but also because of the fear that Iran could potentially exploit the situation to its advantage. As it stands, Iran already has the upper hand in its struggle with the United States over Iraq and Lebanon.
The potential for the al-Khalifas to make concessions to the Shia is a frightening prospect for the Saudis, who are already trying to deal with the Shiite empowerment in Baghdad and Beirut. From Riyadh’s perspective, the empowerment of Shia in neighboring Bahrain could very likely embolden its own Shiite minority (20 percent of the kingdom’s population, concentrated in the kingdom’s oil rich Eastern province, which is in close proximity to Bahrain).
Even before the outbreak of regional unrest, Saudi Arabia has had a difficult time in light of the pending transition of the geriatric king and the top three princes. But now with the contagion that began in North Africa engulfing Saudi Arabia’s immediate neighborhood, there is a sense of alarm in the Saudi capital. A senior member of the House of Saud, Prince Talal bin Abdel-Aziz, who is close to King Abdullah, told BBC Arabic that the regional unrest threatened the kingdom unless it engaged in political reforms and the only one who could initiate the process is the country’s 86-year old ailing monarch.
But now with Bahrain in play, the Saudis are not just concerned about calls for democracy, but also the rise of Shia on the Arabian Peninsula and with it, a more assertive Iran.
-
There’s an arc of uncertainty in the Muslim world from Casablanca to Cairo and from Aden on the Red Sea through Bahrain to Baghdad and Tehran. Some but not all the uncertainty is caused by uprisings. Where will this all end?
Welcome to Agenda with George Friedman.
Colin: George, what are the potential geopolitical implications of these events on the rest of the Middle East and beyond?
George: The situation in North Africa has for the moment clarified itself. You’ve got a military junta running Egypt. It’s promised elections and we’ll see if they happen. Tunisia has settled into an unsettled state and of course we have the chaos in Libya. But Libya is simply not that important a country to have broader geopolitical implications. The most important things are happening are happening in Bahrain. And they’re happening in Bahrain right now because Bahrain is both connected by a causeway to Saudi Arabia, has a large Shiite population, a Sunni ruling family, and is a port for the U.S. 5th Fleet. Everything comes together.
What we need to be looking at right now is Bahrain and beyond that Saudi Arabia to see if this wave of unrest enters Saudi Arabia, which would be an enormous event or if it bypasses it. It’s altogether possible, I don’t know, but it is possible that everything will settle down. But even if everything settled down internally, we would still be facing the Iranian question of the Iran’s status in the Persian Gulf once the United States completes the withdrawal from Iraq. And, along with that, we’d be facing the question — it’s a very difficult one — of what is the relationship between the Shiite communities of the Middle East, and particularly of the Persian Gulf, to the Iranian regime. And I think that’s really what we have to be focusing about. The most important geopolitical event is the rise of Iran, the role of the Shiites in that rise and what happens next.
Colin: You said people who start revolutions very seldom finish them. Should that happen will the region to descend into chaos?
George: Well, in the first place, let’s understand what I’m saying by that. I’m saying that just as in the Russian Revolution, the revolution was begun by liberals supporting Kerensky, what ended the revolution was the Bolsheviks. The people who finally take power are frequently those who are the most coherent and well-organized group whereas the initial demonstrators lose power because, while they are able to bring down the regime, they’re not able to create a replacement. One of the places that we saw that in was in Iran, where the demonstrators in 1979 came from a fairly wide group of people but at the same time it was Ayatollah Khomeini and his supporters that took control. So one of the reasons that I don’t think the region will descend into chaos is simply because there will emerge movements that are better organized, better controlled, that’ll stop the chaos, but they’ll probably implement regimes that are inimical to what the original demonstrators wanted. Certainly they won’t be what Western liberals were expecting to see happen. Revolution opens the door to the best organized and most ruthless.
Colin: Do you see Islamists, if not jihadists, gaining power and influence as a result of this instability?
George: You really, the only way to answer the question of “Are the Islamists or Jihadists taking power?” is to look at each country separately. I mean it’s a massive mistake to look at the region as a whole; it’s highly differentiated. For Egypt my expectation is that the jihadists will not be strengthened. The army is still very strong; it is quite hostile to the jihadists and has a tense relationship with Islamists; it is pro-American; it maintains its treaty with Israel. I see it as possible that the army is forced out of this position but they won’t go easily. So my expectation is that no, that won’t happen. In the Persian Gulf the question is not going to be whether jihadists of the Sunni variety take control, it’s the degree to which the Shiites of the Iranian persuasion, if you will, take control. And that’s a very different question. So the expectation of chaos in the region I think really misses the point. This also has to be remembered that this is a region that had tremendous political instability back in the 1960s and early 1970s. There were revolutions sponsored by Egypt’s Nasserite government, sponsored by the Soviets, in many countries and there’s been quite a bit of instability. But since 1970, these regimes have been extremely stable, so stable in fact that people have conducted revolutions and grown old in them as we can see with Gadhafi, as we saw with Mubarak, as we saw with others. So the region I think is not descending into chaos. It is not even necessarily descending into change yet. What it is doing at this point is rotating leaders and there is a big difference between that and revolutionary change.
Colin: Thanks George, George Friedman ending this week’s Agenda. Thanks for listening.
-
Too bad we didn't listen to MacArthur. :-(
Defense secretary warns against fighting more ground wars
By Larry Shaughnessy, CNN Pentagon Producer
February 26, 2011 6:37 a.m. EST
Defense Secretary Robert Gates waves to West Point graduates on Friday.
Washington (CNN) -- Defense Secretary Robert Gates, in what he said is his final address to the cadets at the U.S. Military Academy, warned Friday against the United States getting involved in another major land battle. He told the cadets that wars like Afghanistan are not likely, and in fact he would advise against it.
"In my opinion, any future defense secretary who advises the president to again send a big American land army into Asia or into the Middle East or Africa should 'have his head examined,' as Gen. MacArthur so delicately put it," Gates said.
Gates remarks contrasted with some in America who are pushing for the U.S. military to take a more active role in other places like Libya, where huge groups of protesters are trying to overthrow the government of Col. Moammar Gadhafi.
The defense secretary told cadets they'll be leading a force that has drastically changed how it fights.
Gates, who has previously announced he intends to retire this year, said it's impossible to know what the next war, that these cadets will be part of, will look like.
"When it comes to predicting the nature and location of our next military engagements, since Vietnam, our record has been perfect," he said. "We have never once gotten it right, from the Mayaguez to Grenada, Panama, Somalia, the Balkans, Haiti, Kuwait, Iraq and more -- we had no idea a year before any of these missions that we would be so engaged."
-
Why not just say that we'll never deploy a big army again and be done with it?
-
Two leading U.S. senators were both critical Sunday of President Barack Obama's delay in speaking out over the uprising in Libya.
Sen. John McCain of Arizona, the ranking Republican on the Senate Armed Services Committee, said Obama should "stand up for democracy"
Yet Obama was criticized for "standing up for democracy" in Egypt. If we follow this new Republican suggestion, maybe we should "stand up for democracy" and oust
the dictatorships in in Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Tunisia, Bahrain, Kuwait, et al and return their government to the "people".
I'm sure that will make Israel happy and bring peace and quiet to the area. :evil:
-
"Yet Obama was criticized for "standing up for democracy" in Egypt. If we follow this new Republican suggestion, maybe we should "stand up for democracy" and oust
the dictatorships in in Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Tunisia, Bahrain, Kuwait, et al and return their government to the "people". "
JDN, I agree with your point 100% :-D :-D :-D
Both parties Dems and Cans are schizophrenic with regards to which way to go - support "Democracy" or not depending on the political advantage at the time.
I hear some Republicans criticizing Bamster no matter what he does and I don't hear many if any Dems giving W high grades for promoting "freedom" around the Middle East. The make love not war anit American 60's libs who control the Democratic party today should be holding W up as some sort of Saint if you listen to them. But then, how could they blame him for everything, Iraq, Afghanistan, etc.
The whole political aspect to this thing is a big joke. And the joke is on the US.
-
You'll have to stretch the definition of freedom/democracy pretty far to describe what will happen with the MB/other jihadists in charge.
-
Mubarak and his military were not gunning down his people; Mubarak did not have a long list of terrorism (Lockerbie and more); Mubarak had not tried developing nukes; Mubark HAD kept a peace treaty with Israel, etc etc.
Libya appears to offer a clear cut opportunity for the US to stand for people fighting oppression, yet BO could not even name Kaddafy and has failed to prepare meaningful options.
-
We have abundant casus belli to reach out and put an end to Ka-daffy. We should have long ago.
-
But were those claims not put to rest with the deals under Bush 2 accepting the surrender of his nuke program?
-
http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/index.php?pid=84759
Not by my reading of the EO above. You're the one with the JD, you tell me.
-
GM:
Your google fu continues to amaze.
That said, a quick read says to me that claims were put to rest.
Anyway, changing subjects, some of us may recognize the name of the author of the following piece from today's WSJ:
=============
By AHMAD CHALABI
Baghdad
As we watch Libyan despot Moammar Gadhafi lash out at his subjects with all the murderous force at his disposal, those of us in Iraq are reminded of another uprising and another dictator who butchered thousands to preserve his reign of terror.
In 1991, at the end of the first Gulf War, the Iraqi people heeded President George H.W. Bush's call to rid themselves of the regime of Saddam Hussein. The regular Iraqi army had either disappeared or was in open mutiny, and Saddam's loyalist forces were in disarray. Within days, 14 of Iraq's 18 provinces were out of the regime's control, and more than half of Iraq's population had their first taste of freedom in a generation.
The noose was closing around Saddam's neck when a fateful decision was made in Washington. Prompted by foreign policy "realists" in his administration—such as Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Colin Powell, National Security Adviser Brent Scowcroft and National Security Council Senior Director for Near East and South Asian Affairs Richard Haass—Mr. Bush allowed Saddam to fly military aircraft to put down the uprising.
What followed was a massacre. Up to 330,000 Iraqi civilians were killed by Saddam's brutal tactics, which included using helicopter gunships to strafe neighborhoods and tanks to blast schools, hospitals and places of worship. While thousands of U.S. troops were still on Iraqi soil and in some cases were close enough to watch, the tyrant unleashed the power of modern weaponry against men, women and children.
The news from Libya is an all-too-chilling reminder of those dark days in Iraq. It is no coincidence that Gadhafi often mentions Iraq in his tirades. He knows how Saddam clung to power by sheer brute force while playing on the West's fear of instability.
View Full Image
Associated Press
.The Libyan regime has already used aircraft against unarmed protesters, among other atrocities. That's why it is imperative for the United Nations Security Council to impose a no-fly zone over the most populous areas of Libya. Its resolution this weekend imposing sanctions on the regime was necessary but not sufficient to help the Libyans who have voted with their lives against dictatorship.
The international community that sold Gadhafi his arsenal now has a responsibility to help the Libyans liberate themselves. Direct assistance to the forces of change and democracy is the best way to ensure a transition to democracy. The Security Council should open a dialogue with the Libyan opposition immediately with the aim of providing humanitarian, and possibly military, assistance.
It was only after Saddam's mass killings provoked a tidal wave of refugees from Iraq into neighboring countries in March and April 1991 that the international community sprung into action. The Security Council passed Resolution 688, which established a legal separation between the Iraqi people and the regime, and called on Saddam to cease the repression of the people. The coalition used Resolution 688 as the legal basis for imposing a no-fly zone first in northern and later in southern Iraq. These actions may have come too late for hundreds of thousands of Iraqis in 1991, but they serve as a good precedent for preventing a similar bloodbath in Libya.
In all the debate about the rights and wrongs of the Iraq war, it is hardly ever mentioned that after Saddam was removed we found 313 mass graves in Iraq. I will never forget the day in May 2003 when we visited a newly uncovered site south of Baghdad near the town of Hilla. Saddam's forces had dumped 12,000 bodies from the 1991 uprising there. The victims were civilians, killed for daring to stand up to a dictator and yearn for freedom.
A surviving Gadhafi regime, murderous and wounded, would be a nightmare for the Libyan people and a threat to international peace. The international community owes it to the Libyans to help them remove the tyrant and prevent history from repeating itself.
No foreign troops are necessary, just assistance. Twenty years ago in these pages I called on the West to drop its policy of supporting Arab dictatorship in order to maintain stability. The best way to consign that short-sighted and immoral policy to the ash heap of history is to help Arabs liberate themselves.
Mr. Chalabi is an Iraqi legislator.
-
The rebellion in Libya is moving quickly, with antiregime forces consolidating their hold over the east, setting up a provisional government and restarting oil exports. From his bunker in Tripoli, Moammar Gadhafi vows to fight to the end while his elite units and African mercenaries kill the Libyan people to protect him and his sons.
Not moving rapidly has been the world's sole superpower, which remains behind the curve, struggling to respond and reluctant to lead. President Obama waited until last Wednesday to make his first public statement. He didn't mention Gadhafi by name and deferred to the Europeans to push for U.N. sanctions. White House officials are now explaining his reticence by saying the U.S. couldn't act forcefully until all Americans were evacuated from Libya.
In a front page article in Sunday's Washington Post, Ben Rhodes, the deputy national security adviser for strategic communications, was in full self-justification mode: "When you're sitting in government and you're told that ignoring that advice"—to temper U.S. rhetoric and action in Libya—"could endanger American citizens, that's a line you don't feel very comfortable crossing."
A U.S. President must take care to protect Americans. But even if this was the White House calculation, you don't want to talk about it publicly. In trying to blunt criticism of his boss at home, Mr. Rhodes has told the next rogue regime in Gadhafi-like straits how easy it is to paralyze U.S. policy. You don't even need to hold Americans hostage. All you need to do is keep them around with an implicit threat that you might do so. This will not make it easier to get Americans out of harm's way in the next crisis.
Throughout the Libyan uprising, European leaders—especially Britain's Prime Minister David Cameron and French President Nicolas Sarkozy—haven't been tongue- or action-tied by the plight of their nationals. This weekend, German and British special forces rescued a couple hundred of their nationals in covert missions without Libyan assent. The U.S. sent a catamaran and ferry to Tripoli, after Libya denied permission for a plane to land. The ships were stuck in port for two days due to bad weather and finally brought the 167 Americans out by Friday night.
European leaders continue to show more energy than President Obama. Mr. Cameron said he is working with allies on a plan to enforce a no-fly zone over Libya to prevent Gadhafi from using his air force against rebel forces. General Andul Fatteh Younes, who resigned as interior minister and defected to the opposition, told al Jazeera yesterday that his forces want a no-fly zone as long as no foreign plane lands on Libyan soil. "We do not in any way rule out the use of military assets," Mr. Cameron said.
If only Secretary of State Hillary Clinton could be as direct. Speaking before the U.N. Human Rights Council in Geneva, which voted to "suspend" Libya's membership yesterday, she said that "we will continue to explore all possible options for actions. . . . Nothing is off the table." But she didn't put much on the table.
While the French sent two planes with humanitarian relief supplies to Libya, the U.S. set aside $10 million and pledged to study Libya's needs. The Pentagon yesterday announced plans to move armed forces into the region—a process that should have started more than a week ago. The U.S. made no promises to support a no-fly zone. Mrs. Clinton spent her time lobbying the Russians for their continued support in the U.N. Security Council, while the battles in Libya raged on.
The U.S. could begin to exceed a Belgian level of global leadership by reaching out to the opposition and extending formal recognition to their provisional government. Though this might make Mr. Obama uncomfortable, America remains a global power with exceptional standing to provide a new Libyan government with legitimacy. We should also be prepared to sell arms to the opposition if they request it. The U.N.'s new arms embargo isn't likely to deter anyone who is still willing to sell Gadhafi arms at this point, but it might cause some countries not to arm the opposition. The world made that blunder in Bosnia.
The moral and strategic case for U.S. leadership in Libya is obvious. A terrorist regime is slaughtering people who will appreciate America's support and protection. A bloody civil war could create chaos that turns Libya into a northern African failed state, an ideal home for terrorist groups. The U.S. should support a provisional government that can take over when the regime collapses to restore order with as little bloodshed as possible. What is Mr. Obama waiting for?
===========
By JULIAN E. BARNES
The Pentagon is repositioning warships and planes in the waters off Libya to be ready to enforce a no-fly zone or deliver humanitarian aid, military officials said Monday.
By shifting Naval and air forces in the Mediterranean, the U.S. is preparing the groundwork for possible intervention in the civil war that has engulfed Libya. In recent days, U.S. military leaders have been planning for a range of options, in the event the White House steps up the U.S. response.
"I think it's safe to say as part of that we're repositioning forces to be able to provide for that flexibility once decisions are made...to be able to provide options and flexibility," Col. David Lapan, a Pentagon spokesman, told reporters on Monday.
Pentagon officials have been loathe to spell out specific contingency plans they are considering for Libya, but officials have acknowledged that they are preparing for humanitarian missions as well as a campaign to forcibly ground Libyan military aircraft.
International support appears to be growing for a coordinated effort to prevent Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi from using helicopters or fighter planes to fire on protesters or the rebel army.
In Geneva Monday, foreign ministers from the U.S., Italy, France, the U.K. and Germany discussed the no-fly option, as well as the possibility of creating a humanitarian area in Libya under United Nations control.
The ministers, including U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, also demanded that Mr. Gadhafi step down.
Military officials said Navy ships and Air Force planes were being repositioned closer to Libya. But, for security reasons, the officials would not provide additional details.
Ms. Clinton said the U.S. was exploring "all possible options for action."
The U.S. does not currently have any aircraft carriers or big-deck amphibious ships in the Mediterranean.
The aircraft carrier USS Enterprise went through the Suez Canal and entered the Red Sea on Feb 15. Although there are no plans to send the ship back to the Mediterranean, the fighter jets based on the carrier could be used to assist in a Libyan no-fly zone, as long as Egypt granted permission for the planes to pass through its air space, a military official said.
-
Second post
President Obama has trumpeted Saturday's U.N. Security Council decision to refer Moammar Gadhafi to the International Criminal Court (ICC) for prosecution. Although Gadhafi deserves punishment, the ICC will not accomplish it. Invoking this marginal organization as an instrument of justice is simply an abdication of responsibility. It pretends to an address an international crisis while actually doing the opposite.
The ICC is one of the world's most illegitimate multilateral institutions. The court's vast prosecutorial authority is unaccountable to any democratic polity. Americans rejected this approach at our founding, separating the prosecutorial and judicial powers and placing the prosecutors under elected executive branch officials to ensure accountability and legitimacy. The Bush administration wisely reversed the Clinton administration's endorsement of the ICC by "unsigning" its foundational treaty in 2002. It then secured more than 100 bilateral agreements to prevent U.S. citizens from being transferred into ICC custody.
To date, the ICC has been weak and ineffective, essentially acting as a European court for African miscreants. Nonetheless, its prosecutor is an international version of our own post-Watergate "independent counsel" model. Based on the execrable record of these prosecutors, the U.S. Congress, with broad bipartisan support, allowed the law authorizing the appointment of these counsels to sunset in 1999, although there has been sporadic resort to such procedures since.
Under whatever guise, the independent-counsel approach has led to gross miscarriages of justice, such as Patrick Fitzgerald's 2003-07 investigation of how Valerie Plame's CIA employment became public. In that case, one target, Scooter Libby, was pursued into the ground while others more culpable were allowed to emerge unscathed.
Champions of the ICC theorize it will deter future crimes. Reality proves otherwise. The court has been operational since 2002, so the most persuasive evidence is that almost 10 years after the court's inception, Gadhafi was sufficiently unimpressed that he is doing what comes naturally for terrorists and dictators. History is full of cases where even military force or the threat of retaliation failed to deter aggression or gross criminality. If the West is not prepared to use cold steel against Gadhafi, why should he or any future barbarian worry about the ICC?
View Full Image
AFP/Getty Images
A general view of the International Criminal Court in The Hague.
.The plain if deeply unpleasant fact is that history's hard men are not deterrable by the flimsy threat of eventual prosecution. This underlines why the court itself is so otherworldly. It does not operate in a civil society of shared values and history, but in the chaotic, often brutal realm of international politics. Resorting to the ICC cannot change matters of international politics and power into matters of law.
A new Libyan government should be responsible for dealing with Gadhafi's atrocities. Every crime he is responsible for, from the terrorist bomb that destroyed Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, in 1988, to his current street massacres, has been done in the name of the Libyan people. They are the ones who should judge Gadhafi, as Iraqis did with Saddam Hussein.
Gadhafi's fate will raise hard questions for any successor Libyan government. But it is entirely appropriate that it be Libyans who confront and decide such issues and bear the consequences, good and bad, of determining how to dispense justice to him. Political maturation for Libya's citizens, as for those of any country, will not come from outsiders making judgments for them, but from them making their own decisions and living with the results.
Obviously, Libya is in no condition today to deal with Gadhafi and his cohorts. But if he and his key aides survive the current violence, they can be incarcerated and tried later, with international assistance to new Libyan authorities if appropriate. Immediate logistical difficulties do not justify shifting the moral and political responsibility of dealing with Gadhafi away from his countrymen to remote international bureaucrats.
Mr. Obama's ready embrace of the International Criminal Court exemplifies his infatuation with handling threats to international peace and security as though they were simply local street crimes. It also reflects his overall approach to international affairs: a passive, legalistic America, deferring to international bodies, content to be one of 15 Security Council members rather than leading from the front.
Mr. Bolton served as U.S. ambassador to the United Nations from 2005 to 2006 and is the author of "Surrender Is Not an Option: Defending America at the United Nations and Abroad" (Simon & Schuster, 2007).
-
Second post of day:
While the world’s attention is still on Libya because of the fighting over there, the slow-simmering situation in the Persian Gulf is far more important. We’ve already seen Bahrain and Yemen erupt, but now we have Oman in play, and this is forcing other states like Kuwait, the UAE, Qatar and, most significantly Saudi Arabia, to engage in pre-emptive measures.
The countries on the Arabian Peninsula are very complex entities. First of all, there are many of them, and each of them has its own unique dynamic internally that will then shape any potential unrest. If we look at what’s happened in the Persian Gulf area so far, what we have is Bahrain and Yemen already in motion. In Bahrain, there are protests that the government is tolerating, and the same situation is in Yemen, but there is an ongoing negotiation in both states as well, which will lead to some sort of a compromise. That compromise is going to be a slippery slope in terms of the state making concessions.
While that is happening, we now see the contagion spreading to Oman, where there has been violent unrest, and there we see the government trying to deal with the situation, both using security forces as well as other incentives to ensure that any unrest can be contained. Meanwhile, in other places like the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Kuwait, and more importantly, Saudi Arabia, we see governments trying to deal with the situation in a pre-emptive manner. Not only are they trying to sort things out internally within their own respective countries, but they’re also moving on a regional level, hoping that they can contain what is taking place in Oman, and in Bahrain, and in Yemen before it hits their countries.
Instability in this part of the world has huge implications. There is the obvious repercussion for the world’s energy supply — some 40 percent of total global energy output via sea comes through the Persian Gulf — but it’s not just about oil. Each one of those states, from Oman all the way up to Kuwait, houses major American military installations. They are very vital for U.S. military operations in this part of the world, particularly at a time when the United States is in the process of withdrawing its forces from Iraq, which is expected to be completed by the end of this year.
In addition to just the general nature of American military operations in the region, unrest in the Persian Gulf complicates the U.S.-Iranian dynamic. The United States is already withdrawing from Iraq, which allows Iran to flex its muscles, and if, in addition, we see unrest destabilizing the Persian Gulf states, that gives Iran further room to maneuver and project power, not just on its side of Persian Gulf but also across into the Arabian Peninsula. Thus, while the world is still focused on Libya, there is a need to shift focus to the Persian Gulf where the stakes are much higher and the situation much more complex.
-
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2011/03/03/AR2011030305531.html?hpid=topnews
Obama administration prepares for possibility of new post-revolt Islamist regimes
By Scott Wilson
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, March 4, 2011; 12:00 AM
The Obama administration is preparing for the prospect that Islamist governments will take hold in North Africa and the Middle East, acknowledging that the popular revolutions there will bring a more religious cast to the region's politics.
The administration is already taking steps to distinguish between various movements in the region that promote Islamic law in government. An internal assessment, ordered by the White House last month, identified large ideological differences between such movements as the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt and al-Qaeda that will guide the U.S. approach to the region.
"We shouldn't be afraid of Islam in the politics of these countries," said a senior administration official, speaking on the condition of anonymity to describe internal policy deliberations. "It's the behavior of political parties and governments that we will judge them on, not their relationship with Islam."
-
WASHINGTON, DC – With Hosni Mubarak’s ouster in Egypt – widely considered to have one of the region’s most stable regimes until only recently – and Colonel Muammar Qaddafi clinging to power in Libya, there is no clear end in sight to the turmoil sweeping across the Arab world. Protests have already toppled governments in Tunisia and Egypt, leaving other Arab countries faced with widespread discontent.
The unrest caught most people by surprise – both inside and outside the region – and has fundamentally upended at least five conventional beliefs about the Arab world.
Arabs don’t go into the street. Before the protests began in Egypt and Tunisia, many people argued that there was no real urgency to political reform, and that those who were calling for change did not understand the public mood – things weren’t as bad as the dissidents made them out to be. This line of thinking led governments to believe that Arabs would not demonstrate in large numbers and demand change. In each country, rapid reform was seen as detrimental to national interests.
This argument clearly is no longer tenable. No one predicted what happened in Egypt and Tunisia, which means that no Arab country is immune. Governments don’t have the luxury of waiting forever, and they can no longer use the myth of popular quiescence to avoid initiating the necessary reforms that will address the public’s underlying grievances.
Economic liberalization should precede political reform. Arab governments – and many Westerners – claimed that privatization and other economic reforms should be given priority over political change. But, while it is easy to argue that citizens want bread before freedom, economic liberalization came without a system of checks and balances, and thus largely resulted in neither bread nor freedom.
Instead, the benefits of privatization and other initiatives went largely to political and business elites. As a result, Arabs have come to view liberalization and globalization negatively. It is clear by now that economic reform must be coupled with political reform, so that institutional mechanisms of accountability are developed to monitor any excesses and ensure that benefits are made available to all. Governments have been quick to believe that the protests are fundamentally about high prices and unemployment, but the issue that unites Arab discontent is inadequate governance.
Closed systems are necessary to prevent Islamists from taking power. The West is often afraid that democracy will give Islamists the opening they need to gain control – a fear that Arab regimes exploit to justify maintaining closed political systems. But Islamists did not play a big role in Egypt or Tunisia, and they are not expected to lead any of the new governments that are formed – though they are an important part of Arab societies and should play a role in their emerging regimes.
So it is untrue that the only viable alternative to unrelenting absolutist rule must be Islamist. The protests are clearly the result of ordinary citizens becoming fed up with corruption, the lack of any semblance of rule of law, and arbitrary treatment. There is an opportunity here to start developing pluralistic systems where not only Islamists, but also other parties and discourses can play a role.
Elections equal democracy. No one is fooled by this claim anymore. In order to maintain their dominance, Arab governments have relied on flawed laws and elections that don’t produce strong parliaments or lead to real change. Indeed, in countries like Egypt and Tunisia, government and parliament alike were unpopular. Throughout the region, elections have been used to create a façade of democracy aimed at impressing citizens and the outside world while insulating the regimes from pressure for genuine reform.
The Arab public, however, will no longer accept the status quo. People will not be satisfied with economic handouts or cosmetic changes in governance; they are demanding real change that puts their country on a clear path toward democracy.
The international community has no role to play. While the reform process should certainly be homegrown, the United States and the rest of the international community can encourage democratic development without imposing it from afar. President Barack Obama rejected many of the policies of the George W. Bush administration that were seen as trying to force democracy on Arab countries. But the subsequent silence on democratization aggravated – though it certainly did not cause – the unraveling of the Arab reform process in the last few years.
The US and the West can discuss with Arab countries how political reform should be carried out in a way that would contribute to greater openness and opportunities for power-sharing. The West should not sacrifice these objectives for others; if allies ultimately lose power in popular revolts, such a tradeoff would not have furthered the West’s interests, to say the least.
The unfolding events grabbing headlines around the world have shattered key myths about the Arab world. These countries’ people need to start gradual, sustained, and serious political reform now. At the dawn of a new Arab era, it is up to them to build new, open political systems that can head off the looming threat of escalating crises.
Marwan Muasher, former foreign minister and deputy prime minister of Jordan, is Vice President for Studies at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and a senior fellow at Yale University. He is the author of The Arab Center.
Copyright: Project Syndicate, 2011.
www.project-syndicate.org
-
STRATFOR CEO George Friedman says the world’s focus should be on the Persian Gulf, not Libya. The latest signs of unrest in Saudi Arabia and Bahrain point to a potentially serious crisis.
Editor’s Note: Transcripts are generated using speech-recognition technology. Therefore, STRATFOR cannot guarantee their complete accuracy.
Colin: While Europe and NATO appear tremulous and uncertain, the chances of global intervention in Libya seem unlikely. But why is the media focused on Gadhafi when real trouble is brewing in the Persian Gulf?
Welcome to Agenda with George Friedman. George, NATO has met, the EU has met, Obama has spoken, but it seems that in Libya at least the chances of intervention are close to zero. Until at least there is a humanitarian crisis and that looks like being Europe’s problem.
George: Well, certainly Europe has a deeper interest in Libya than the United States does and I think the United States really does not want to lead the intervention into Libya and then find themselves criticized by the Europeans. I mean one thing you have to understand, when you intervene in a violent situation, your soldiers will make mistakes and innocent people will be killed. And an intervention that stops the violence is simply a fantasy. So if you go in on the ground, even if you go in in the air, you’re going to wind up in a situation where people will be killed, they will be killed by your troops and some of the people that will be killed will not be the enemy — will be people who are innocent bystanders and so on. And I think the American position is pretty much let the Europeans carry the burden on this, and the Europeans of course might not have the means really, nor the appetite for it, so everybody will stand by.
Colin: And, of course, the Europeans have got the refugee problem. The media is preoccupied with Libya and Gadhafi, but this is not the only trouble spot. In many ways, Bahrain and Saudi Arabia might be more significant.
George: Well, I mean, what’s really happened here is that Libya has the foreign correspondence and CNN covering it. And so this has become the spot, but far more significant is the Persian Gulf where Bahrain has been in a standstill crisis, if you will — a country with a majority Shiite population facing a Sunni government. And now we hear reports that gunfire has broken out in eastern Saudi Arabia with Saudi Arabian forces firing on Shiite demonstrators there too. So now we’re talking about problems all up and down the west bank of the Persian Gulf. It is turning into something that appears to be Shiite versus Sunni — very different from the issues that are being raised in North Africa. And clearly this involves the rivalry between the two main players in the region which is the Iranians, who will undoubtedly support the Shiites, and the Saudis, who are terrified of rising Shiite power backed by the Iranians.
Colin: Now, the Persian Gulf is an area America really does have to worry about.
George: The Iranians have rising influence in Iraq and what is going on in the Persian Gulf, if not directly tied to what’s happening in Iraq, certainly supports that. It’s interesting that countries like Oman, Qatar, Kuwait — all of which have American facilities — have had all of these instabilities, if you will, arise. Now Saudi Arabia as well. We are looking at a serious crisis and, compared to the stakes of the Persian Gulf — from the oil market to the strategic significance — Libya is really a side game. And one of the things that really I think the United States is concerned about is that, while publicly they are going to have to address the question of Moammar Gadhafi killing his own citizens, as if somehow anyone ever thought that Moammar Gadhafi was anything but a thug for the past many years and decades. We have a real problem which could change the balance of power in the Persian Gulf and in some ways globally. And the gunfire that we’ve seen in Saudi Arabia I think is extremely significant — we don’t know how it will play out — but right now it is certainly far more troublesome that anything happening in Libya.
Colin: What kind of contingency planning will now be going on in the Pentagon?
George: Well I mean the problem is what kind of forces are available to plan with. The United States obviously has its Air Force, it also has the Navy, but its ability to influence events on the western literal of the Persian Gulf is limited. Certainly the United States is not in a position to intervene on the ground and any intervention on the ground will probably be counterproductive. So I suspect most of the planning that’s going on is to make certain that the Straits of Hormuz remain opened and hope that nothing happens in those countries that are oil exporters to disrupt the oil markets because the effect that will have the world economy and the recovery from 2008.
Colin: But, should that happen, the United States has its troops tied down elsewhere, it’s got its Navy and Air Force of course, but the Europeans probably will not do anything, so it will be a real mess.
George: It is an enormous mess but I am certain that the Europeans will pass a strong resolution and hold a press conference. I mean it is really interesting to watch the Europeans deal with the Libyan crisis not because it’s a crucial crisis but because I mean here is a case where the Europeans, who always talk about soft power, are facing a situation where soft power really isn’t going to work, and now have to face the question of their collective responsibility for a country like Libya that is clearly within the area of responsibility of European powers, and where the United States will play a supporting role, if any.
So the countries like France, Germany and Italy bear the primary responsibility in this area. They are the major, particularly Italy is the major investor there and have maintained relations so it will be interesting to see how the Europeans come out in their self-conception after this crisis because here is a case where clearly the European responsibility is primary, clearly the Europeans cannot agree a common course. I think this is another blow from the NATO side to the blow that has been struck in 2008 by the financial crisis on the EU side. European institutions are under tremendous strain. But all of that is subsidiary ultimately to the question of whether oil gets out of the Straits of Hormuz, which certainly is not in danger yet at this point but is always dangerous when crises occur when major oil supplies are involved.
Colin: George, I’ll watch out for those Brussels press conferences. George Friedman there ending this week’s Agenda. Join us again next time.
Click for more videos
-
I'm actually kind of glad Obama is dithering. Let the europeans wear the big boy pants for once.
-
http://thedignifiedrant.blogspot.com/2011/03/life-without-america.html
Saturday, March 12, 2011
Life Without America
Libya is turning out to be an interesting test case about how the world can get by without we damned Americans taking the lead and mucking things up.
Our president may say we are "tightening the noose" around Khaddafi, but the facts on the ground say otherwise. So what if more and more people declare in somber and serious tones that they don't like Khaddafi? And even the boldest suggestions in the sainted international community conference rooms for action--a "UN" (read that, "tell the Americans to do it") no-fly zone--fall short on two facts: one, Russia or China will veto it in the Security Council to avoid a precedent; and two, a no-fly zone will have no appreciable impact on the course of the fighting.
So while we chat it up with others seeking a consensus, NATO won't act because of divisions within the alliance. The Arab League is unlikely to come down on the pro-rebel side as they talk amongst themselves (again, but for the grace of Allah, and all that). And the European Union won't act without the blessing of someone. And if they got it, I bet they'd still want to talk some more to avoid action. Heck they wouldn't even endorse the idea of a no-fly zone at some future time. The African Union is getting in to the talk game, too, hoping to get the rebels and loyalists to talk. The way things are going, they'll talk all right. But it will be bleeding and broken rebels in basements talking to loyalist interrogators.
So rebels who Westerners hoped three weeks ago would quickly topple Khaddafi with only our words of support to get us a spot in the victory parade rather than requiring action, are starting to get pounded by the superior firepower and organization of the loyalist side. What do the rebels want?
Not more talk and words, naturally:
Many rebels were angry at international inaction.
"Where is the West? How are they helping? What are they doing," shouted one angry fighter.
Poor chap. He lacks the nuance to appreciate the "tightening noose" and growing consensus in West conference rooms that Khaddafi is a bad guy. But what can you expect from such scruffy men holding rifles? That fighter probably went to a state college, or something! My God, his pronoun doesn't even match the noun he references!
Strangely, the rebels insist on wanting actual action from the West:
Libya's insurgent leader said any delay in imposing a no-fly zone could let Gaddafi regain control. "We ask the international community to shoulder their responsibilities," Mustafa Abdel-Jalil, head of the rebels' National Libyan Council, said.
"The Libyans are being cleansed by Gaddafi's air force. We asked for a no-fly zone to be imposed from day one, we also want a sea embargo," he said.
Like I've said repeatedly, a no-fly zone won't work. But rebels are too divided so far to ask for real help. This is all they can agree on. Get us moving into actual action and if the loyalists continue to win despite that, more rebels will be convinced that keeping the West out so the rebels will "own the revolt" will be meaningless when they find themselves sitting in a basement in Tripoli under a bare light bulb (non-twisty, of course) while a loyalist with a clipboard takes down the names of everyone they know.
Sadly, rebels in Benghazi don't understand our new foreign policy approach:
"Help us to become a democratic country," said one banner strung between lampposts and written in English and Arabic.
What are they thinking? It doesn't even matter if the demonstrators want or understand what "democracy" means other than the downfall of Khaddafi (a good short-term goal, to be sure). The point is that democracy promotion is no longer an American goal (most old European states couldn't care less and never did believe Arabs were "ready" for it). Don't they know that we can't impose democracy? Don't they appreciate the benefits of doing it all on their own?
Well, they'd better appreciate it. Because if the rebels are counting on effective action from the West (and no, a post-conflict European report issued in 2012 about how the rebels are at fault for their defeat won't count, no matter how brightly festooned with ribbons and wax seals the 2,000-page fully foot-noted document--in English and French language versions--is), they'll hang for that confidence. Ah, nuance! It burns like acid dribbled on exposed skin, huh?
Again, I'm not saying we should openly intervene with a couple divisions. I think we have effective covert alternatives to that, although the chances they will work are diminishing as time goes on (although we may be doing them even as we speak, I suppose). But my point is that without our leadership pressing for action, we are seeing how the sainted international community reacts to a madman at war with his people without the leadership of America. The world community already knows how to talk--how do we add to that?
Libya is the first test of how a post-America world can handle the threats to world peace. How's that working out so far? Are you really ready to say that DNI Clapper is dim-witted for telling a Senate committee that Khaddafi will probably win this civil war?
-
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703597804576194690095426116.html?mod=WSJ_hpp_sections_opinion
The Obama Doctrine
Libya is what a world without U.S. leadership looks like.
'This is the Obama conception of the U.S. role in the world—to work through multilateral organizations and bilateral relationships to make sure that the steps we are taking are amplified."
—White House National Security Council spokesman Ben Rhodes, March 10, 2011, as quoted in the Washington Post
"They bombed us with tanks, airplanes, missiles coming from every direction. . . . We need international support, at least a no-fly zone. Why is the world not supporting us?"
—Libyan rebel Mahmoud Abdel Hamid, March 10, 2011, as quoted in The Wall Street Journal
***
Whatever else one might say about President Obama's Libya policy, it has succeeded brilliantly in achieving its oft-stated goal of not leading the world. No one can any longer doubt the U.S. determination not to act before the Italians do, or until the Saudis approve, or without a U.N. resolution. This White House is forthright for followership.
That message also couldn't be clearer to Moammar Gadhafi and his sons, who are busy bombing and killing their way to victory against the Libyan opposition. As the U.S. defers to the world, the world can't decide what to do, and the vacuum is filled by a dictator and his hard men who have concluded that no one will stop them. "Hear it now. I have only two words for our brothers and sisters in the east: We're coming," said Gadhafi's son, Saif al-Islam, on Thursday.
Three weeks into the Libyan uprising, here are some of the live action highlights from what Mr. Obama likes to call "the international community":
• The United Nations Security Council has imposed an arms embargo, but with enough ambiguity that no one knows whether it applies only to Gadhafi or also to the opposition. Even the U.S. State Department and White House don't agree.
• The U.N. has referred events to the International Criminal Court for a war crimes investigation. Mr. Obama said yesterday this sent a message to Gadhafi that "the world is watching," as if Gadhafi didn't know. But it also sends a message that leaving Libya without bloodshed is not an option, because he and his sons will still be pursued for war crimes. Had Reagan pursued this strategy in the Philippines, Marcos might never have gone into exile.
• France has recognized the opposition National Council in Benghazi, though the U.S. is only now sending envoys to meet with the opposition for the first time. Dozens of Western reporters can get rebel leaders on the phone, an opposition delegation has visited French President Nicolas Sarkozy in Paris, but the U.S. is still trying to figure out who these people are. The American envoys better hurry because the rebels may soon be dead.
• The French want a no-fly zone, but the Italians and Germans object. NATO is having "a series of conversations about a wide range of options," as President Obama put it yesterday, but NATO Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen emerged from a meeting of defense ministers in Brussels on Thursday saying that "We considered . . . initial options regarding a possible no-fly zone in case NATO were to receive a clear U.N. mandate" (our emphasis). The latter isn't likely because both China and Russia object, but no doubt NATO will keep conversing about the "range of options" next week.
• Even as opposition leaders were asking for help, U.S. Director of National Intelligence James Clapper told the world on Thursday that Gadhafi is likely to win in the long-term. The Administration scrambled to say this was merely a factual judgment about the balance of military power, but the message couldn't be clearer to any of Gadhafi's generals who might consider defecting: Do so at your peril because you will join the losing side.
We could go on, but you get the idea. When the U.S. fails to lead, the world reverts to its default mode as a diplomatic Tower of Babel. Everyone discusses "options" and "contingencies" but no one has the will to act, while the predators march.
This was true in Bosnia and Kosovo in the 1990s until the U.S. shamed Europe and NATO into using force with or without a U.N. resolution. And it has been true in every case in which the world finally resisted tyrants or terrorists, from the Gulf War to Afghanistan to Iraq. When the U.S. chooses to act like everyone else, the result is Rwanda, Darfur and now Libya.
***
One difference in Libya is that the damage from a Gadhafi victory would not merely be humanitarian, though that would be awful enough. The only way Gadhafi can subdue Benghazi and the east now is with a door-to-door purge and systematic murder. The flow of refugees heading for Southern Europe would also not be small.
If Gadhafi survives after Mr. Obama has told him to go, the blow to U.S. prestige and world order would be enormous. Dictators will learn that the way to keep America from acting is to keep its diplomats and citizens around, while mowing down your opponents as the world debates contingencies. By the time the Babelers make a decision, it will be too late. This is a dangerous message to send at any time, but especially with a Middle East in the throes of revolution.
There is still time for Mr. Obama to salvage his Libya policy, though the costs of doing so are rising every day. Libya today is what a world without U.S. leadership looks like.
-
The Arab League's call this weekend for a no-fly zone over Libya is startling news and has sent diplomats scattering. We'll now see if the "international community" (to use the Obama Administration's favorite phrase) decides anything before Moammar Gadhafi's forces overrun the rebel stronghold in Benghazi. The odds favor Gadhafi.
But the 22-member league's decision also tells us a lot about Arab views of U.S. power. Throughout the Libyan crisis, we've heard from pundits and politicians that the Iraq war tarnished brand America beyond repair, and made U.S. leadership non grata in the Mideast. Both President Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton have insisted that the U.N., NATO, the Europeans, Arabs, anyone but Washington take the initiative on Libya.
The Arab League is begging them to reconsider this abdication. With the unsurprising exceptions of Iranian client Syria and Libya's neighbor Algeria, the group took the extraordinary step of calling publicly for American intervention in the affairs of an Arab state. Though the League formally asked the U.N. Security Council to approve a no-fly zone, there's little doubt that the U.S. would carry the military and political burden in imposing one. The Arabs know this well, and their message couldn't be clearer. Maybe they even thought Mr. Obama meant what he said in calling for Gadhafi to leave power.
The weekend decision confirmed what we've heard privately from Arab leaders for years about America's continued engagement in the Middle East. The only people who suffer from an "Iraq syndrome" are American liberals and the Western European chattering classes. The pro-Western Gulf or North African allied states have nothing to gain in seeing American influence or military power devalued in their region—either by others, or as is the current fad in Washington, through American self-abnegation.
Their immediate interest may be to reverse Gadhafi's recent gains against the lightly armed rebels in eastern Libya. Arab hostility to him goes back many years. As neighbors they have much to fear from a post-revolt Libya turned back into a terrorist haven and pariah state.
For the proverbial "Arab street," the defeat of the Libyan uprising would be a dispiriting coda to this springtime of democratic revolutions. If he survives, Gadhafi will have taught other dictators that the next time young people demand accountable leadership, turn your guns on them and exploit American diffidence.
Beyond those pressing worries lie bigger Arab concerns over the changing power dynamic in the Middle East. New and unpredictable regional players are a neo-Ottoman Turkey and especially an Iran determined to get nuclear weapons. However much the Arabs like to complain about America, they know the U.S. is a largely benign force and honest broker.
Propelled by a strong domestic economy, the Turks have built their recent regional standing through trade and a political shift from its longstanding alliance with the West. Tellingly, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan opposes a no-fly zone. "We see NATO military intervention in another country as extremely unbeneficial," he said. Turkey had no such qualms when NATO came to the rescue of Europe's besieged Muslims in Bosnia and Kosovo, but in the 1990s Ankara saw America as an ally, not a potential competitor.
The Sunni Arab states fear the nuclear ambitions of Shiite Iran as much as Israel does. It's not lost on them that while democratic uprisings toppled two Arab regimes friendly to the U.S. and threaten several others, Tehran has squelched the opposition Green Movement without inhibitions. The nuclear program, meanwhile, is Iran's secret weapon to become the dominant regional power.
The Administration chose to hear the Arab appeal for American leadership this weekend as if it were no big deal. White House spokesman Jay Carney used the word "international" three times in three sentences and didn't back a no-fly zone or any other military step. The G-8 foreign ministers yesterday failed to support it as well. A draft Libya resolution (sponsored by Lebanon!) is bouncing around at the Security Council, and likely headed nowhere.
Not by coincidence, Saudi Arabia and fellow Gulf states on Monday sent military forces into Bahrain to help put down an uprising by the majority Shiites against the Sunni monarchy, which yesterday declared a state of emergency. The Saudis fear that the Bahrain contagion, perhaps fueled by Iran, will spread to them.
But their intervention also reflects a lack of confidence that America will assert itself in the region. Remarkably, the Saudis ignored U.S. advice not to intervene in Bahrain. They don't believe they can count on the U.S. to stop an imperial Iran. When the U.S. fails to lead, every nation recalibrates its interests and begins to look out for itself first.
While the "international community" fiddles, Gadhafi's troops continue their march eastward, yesterday taking the strategic town of Ajdabiya, the last significant population center before Benghazi. His victory would be a tragedy for Libya's people. But it would diminish America's global standing as well, which is an outcome that makes Arabs as nervous as it ought to make Americans.
-
http://hotair.com/greenroom/archives/2011/03/16/foreign-policy-america-forefits-its-leadership-role/
Foreign policy: America forfeits its leadership role
posted at 12:13 pm on March 16, 2011 by Bruce McQuain
Anne-Marie Slaughter has a piece entitled “Fiddling While Libya Burns” in the NYT. She opens with this:
PRESIDENT Obama says the noose is tightening around Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi. In fact, it is tightening around the Libyan rebels, as Colonel Qaddafi makes the most of the world’s dithering and steadily retakes rebel-held towns. The United States and Europe are temporizing on a no-flight zone while the Organization of the Islamic Conference, the Gulf Cooperation Council and now the Arab League have all called on the United Nations Security Council to authorize one. Opponents of a no-flight zone have put forth five main arguments, none of which, on close examination, hold up.
The Libyan rebels aren’t particularly happy with the rest of the world at all. As Gadhafi’s forces close in on Benghazi, the rebel commander has said the world has failed them.
Speaking of the world:
Foreign Ministers from the Group of Eight nations failed to agree yesterday on imposing a no-fly zone. In Paris, Foreign Minister Alain Juppe of France, which along with the U.K. has pressed for aggressive action against Qaddafi, said he couldn’t persuade Russia to agree to a no-fly zone as other allies, including Germany, raised objections to military intervention.
So since Russia can’t be persuaded and Germany raised objections, no go on the NFZ. Notice who is not at all mentioned in that paragraph. Oh, too busy filling out the NCAA brackets? Got it.
“President Obama opened up with a plea for bracket participants to keep the people of Japan front of mind, saying, ‘One thing I wanted to make sure that viewers who are filling out their brackets — this is a great tradition, we have fun every year doing it — but while you’re doing it, if you’re on your laptop, et cetera, go to usaid.gov and that’s going to list a whole range of charities where you can potentially contribute to help the people who have been devastated in Japan. I think that would be a great gesture as you’re filling out your brackets.’
There that’s covered – anyone for golf?
Oh wait, Lybia Libya. Morning Defense (from POLITICO) says:
Here’s your readout from Tuesday evening: “At today’s meeting, the President and his national security team reviewed the situation in Libya and options to increase pressure on Qadhafi. In particular, the conversation focused on efforts at the United Nations and potential UN Security Council actions, as well as ongoing consultations with Arab and European partners. The President instructed his team to continue to fully engage in the discussions at the United Nations, NATO and with partners and organizations in the region.”
Well the great gab fest is underway, or at least planned to be under way. Oh, what was it President Obama said on March 3rd?
With respect to our willingness to engage militarily, … I’ve instructed the Department of Defense … to examine a full range of options. I don’t want us hamstrung. … Going forward, we will continue to send a clear message: The violence must stop. Muammar Gaddafi has lost legitimacy to lead, and he must leave.”
Uh huh. So there is a reason for the rebels in Libya to at least feel a little let down, isn’t there? There’s a reason they’re saying things like:
“These politicians are liars. They just talk and talk, but they do nothing.”
Yes sir, now there’s a group that obviously thinks much more highly of America since Obama took office. Or:
Iman Bugaighis, a professor who has become a spokeswoman for the rebels, lost her composure as she spoke about the recent death of a friend’s son, who died in battle last week. Her friend’s other son, a doctor, was still missing. Western nations, she said, had “lost any credibility.”
“I am not crying out of weakness,” she said. “I’ll stay here until the end. Libyans are brave. We will stand for what we believe in. But we will never forget the people who stood with us and the people who betrayed us.”
Fear not Ms. Bugaighis, the UN is on the job:
The United Nations Security Council was discussing a resolution that would authorize a no-flight zone to protect civilians, but its prospects were uncertain at best, diplomats said.
I think an episode that best typifies what is going on in the Obama administration (and is being mirrored around the world) is to be found in the British comedy “Yes, Prime Minister”. If this isn’t what we’re seeing, I don’t know what typifies it better (via Da Tech Guy). Pay particular attention (around the 8 minute mark) to the “4 stage strategy”. It is what is happening in spades:
In case you missed it, weren’t able to view the vid for whatever reason or just need a recap, here’s the 4 Stage Strategy:
Dick: “In stage 1 we say ‘Nothing is going to Happen’”
Sir Humphrey: “In stage 2 we say ‘Something may be going to happen but we should do nothing about it’”
Dick: “In stage 3 we say “maybe we should do something about it but there’s nothing we can do.’”
Sir Humphrey: “In stage 4 we say ‘Maybe there was something we could have done, but it’s too late now’”
Folks, there it is in a nutshell. The Obama variation, aka the “Obama Doctrine” as outlined by Conn Carroll is this:
It assumes that big problems can be solved with big words while the messy details take care of themselves. It places far too much confidence in international entities, disregards for the importance of American independence, and fails to emphasize American exceptionalism.
And gets absolutely nothing accomplished.
Oh, about that golf game …
[ASIDE] This is not a plea or a demand for a No Fly Zone in Libya. It is an assessment of the way this administration has approached almost every foreign policy crisis with which it has been faced. Back to my point about this president trying to defer everything that requires any sort of difficult decision to others (UN, NATO, etc). This is just another in a long line of examples of that along with his refusal to anything more than talk about it and give the impression of relevant action without any really being done.
—
Bruce McQuain blogs at Questions and Observations (QandO), Blackfive, the Washington Examiner and the Green Room. Follow him on Twitter: @McQandO
-
http://www.commentarymagazine.com/2011/03/16/lessons-from-libya-for-dictators-in-distress/
Lessons from Libya for Dictators in Distress
Rick Richman 03.16.2011 - 8:19 AM
1. If you want to remain in power, you need to do more than send a man on a camel into crowds. Declare war on your people; hire other people to help out.
2. Do not worry if the U.S. president says you must “step down” and “leave.” It is only his personal opinion.
3. To ensure that the president does not focus unduly on your war, schedule it while he is preoccupied with other matters: a Motown concert, a conference on bullying, his golf game, and finalizing his Final Four picks.
4. Declare that the opposition is not “organic.” The president will not assist a non-organic revolution. If the revolution is organic, do not worry: an organic revolution is by definition one he does not need to assist. Either way, you’re fine.
5. Recognize that your membership on the UN Human Rights Council will be suspended — the president will send his secretary of state there to ensure that. Do not start a war against your people if you are not prepared for this.
6. Do not worry about a “no-fly zone” or some other U.S. military response. The president will consider it only if the world speaks with one voice. The world includes Russia, China, and Turkey.
7. Remember when the president adopted his Afghanistan policy after an extensive “review;” selected his own general to implement it; got the general’s recommendations; and then held endless meetings before finally reluctantly approving them? That was about a war he was already in. He will need many more meetings than that before he considers any new action against you.
8. You may eventually be subject to sanctions, so check to see if they’ve worked yet with Cuba, North Korea, or Iran.
9. Consider restarting your nuclear program, since the conditions that caused you to suspend it are gone. At most, the president will form a committee of several nations to talk to you; he will consider more sanctions if the world speaks as one. You need not worry about his “deadlines.”
10. There is basically only one thing you do need to worry about: do not, under any circumstances, approve any future Jewish housing in Jerusalem. The president will go ballistic if you do.
-
Every Arab country is unhappy in its own way, and it turns out Syria is no different. A wave of protests the past four days, starting in the city of Deraa on Friday and spreading, makes Iran's chief Arab ally a latecomer to the spring of Muslim discontent.
The unrest has taken Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad and the U.S. foreign policy establishment by surprise. Syria was supposedly immune to Arab contagion. Earlier this month, Foreign Affairs magazine published "The Sturdy House That Assad Built," arguing that the Arab wave would not only "pass Syria by" but see Damascus "relatively strengthened" by the collapse of Egypt and other pro-American regimes. The West, urged German political scientist Michael Bröning, better think of new and better ways to "engage Assad."
The Obama Administration had already embraced this policy. The White House put an ambassador back in Damascus charged with pursuing a new detente. John Kerry and Nancy Pelosi have pushed the same line. The demonstrations and the Assad regime's bloody crackdown ought to give the champions of engagement pause. It turns out Syria's young and underemployed are no less frustrated with corruption and repression than are their peers from Tunis to Tehran.
Syria only looked "sturdy" until its people pushed on the doors of the house of Assad. Trouble started after hundreds of people in Deraa marched peacefully to protest the jailing of 15 schoolchildren who had written antiregime graffiti. Security forces opened fire, killing at least four. Protests continued through the funerals of the men killed. The offices of the ruling Baath Party in Deraa and vehicles were torched. Thousands yesterday marched in the nearby towns of Jasim and Inhkil. Demonstrations have also been reported in Damascus, Aleppo and other cities.
Like Libya's Moammar Gadhafi, Syria's regime isn't squeamish about using force against domestic opponents. Bashar Assad's kinder and gentler father, Hafez, ordered the massacre of 20,000 or so people during the 1982 uprising in the town of Hama. His son's allies in Iran certainly won't complain if Hama rules are applied in Deraa.
The U.S. national interest in this season of Arab uprisings is to have anti-American regimes fall while helping pro-American regimes to reform in a more liberal (in the 19th-century meaning of that word) direction. Rather than waste effort wooing Assad, the U.S. should support his domestic opponents at every opportunity. A weaker Syria might cause less trouble in Lebanon through its proxy, Hezbollah, and be less able to spread weapons and terror throughout the Mideast. Even bloody-minded authoritarians are less sturdy than they look to Westerners who mistake fear and order for consent.
-
Libya, the West and the Narrative of Democracy
March 21, 2011
By George Friedman
Forces from the United States and some European countries have intervened in Libya. Under U.N. authorization, they have imposed a no-fly zone in Libya, meaning they will shoot down any Libyan aircraft that attempts to fly within Libya. In addition, they have conducted attacks against aircraft on the ground, airfields, air defenses and the command, control and communication systems of the Libyan government, and French and U.S. aircraft have struck against Libyan armor and ground forces. There also are reports of European and Egyptian special operations forces deploying in eastern Libya, where the opposition to the government is centered, particularly around the city of Benghazi. In effect, the intervention of this alliance has been against the government of Moammar Gadhafi, and by extension, in favor of his opponents in the east.
The alliance’s full intention is not clear, nor is it clear that the allies are of one mind. The U.N. Security Council resolution clearly authorizes the imposition of a no-fly zone. By extension, this logically authorizes strikes against airfields and related targets. Very broadly, it also defines the mission of the intervention as protecting civilian lives. As such, it does not specifically prohibit the presence of ground forces, though it does clearly state that no “foreign occupation force” shall be permitted on Libyan soil. It can be assumed they intended that forces could intervene in Libya but could not remain in Libya after the intervention. What this means in practice is less than clear.
There is no question that the intervention is designed to protect Gadhafi’s enemies from his forces. Gadhafi had threatened to attack “without mercy” and had mounted a sustained eastward assault that the rebels proved incapable of slowing. Before the intervention, the vanguard of his forces was on the doorstep of Benghazi. The protection of the eastern rebels from Gadhafi’s vengeance coupled with attacks on facilities under Gadhafi’s control logically leads to the conclusion that the alliance wants regime change, that it wants to replace the Gadhafi government with one led by the rebels.
But that would be too much like the invasion of Iraq against Saddam Hussein, and the United Nations and the alliance haven’t gone that far in their rhetoric, regardless of the logic of their actions. Rather, the goal of the intervention is explicitly to stop Gadhafi’s threat to slaughter his enemies, support his enemies but leave the responsibility for the outcome in the hands of the eastern coalition. In other words — and this requires a lot of words to explain — they want to intervene to protect Gadhafi’s enemies, they are prepared to support those enemies (though it is not clear how far they are willing to go in providing that support), but they will not be responsible for the outcome of the civil war.
The Regional Context
To understand this logic, it is essential to begin by considering recent events in North Africa and the Arab world and the manner in which Western governments interpreted them. Beginning with Tunisia, spreading to Egypt and then to the Arabian Peninsula, the last two months have seen widespread unrest in the Arab world. Three assumptions have been made about this unrest. The first was that it represented broad-based popular opposition to existing governments, rather than representing the discontent of fragmented minorities — in other words, that they were popular revolutions. Second, it assumed that these revolutions had as a common goal the creation of a democratic society. Third, it assumed that the kind of democratic society they wanted was similar to European-American democracy, in other words, a constitutional system supporting Western democratic values.
Each of the countries experiencing unrest was very different. For example, in Egypt, while the cameras focused on demonstrators, they spent little time filming the vast majority of the country that did not rise up. Unlike 1979 in Iran, the shopkeepers and workers did not protest en masse. Whether they supported the demonstrators in Tahrir Square is a matter of conjecture. They might have, but the demonstrators were a tiny fraction of Egyptian society, and while they clearly wanted a democracy, it is less than clear that they wanted a liberal democracy. Recall that the Iranian Revolution created an Islamic Republic more democratic than its critics would like to admit, but radically illiberal and oppressive. In Egypt, it is clear that Mubarak was generally loathed but not clear that the regime in general was being rejected. It is not clear from the outcome what will happen now. Egypt may stay as it is, it may become an illiberal democracy or it may become a liberal democracy.
Consider also Bahrain. Clearly, the majority of the population is Shiite, and resentment toward the Sunni government is apparent. It should be assumed that the protesters want to dramatically increase Shiite power, and elections should do the trick. Whether they want to create a liberal democracy fully aligned with the U.N. doctrines on human rights is somewhat more problematic.
Egypt is a complicated country, and any simple statement about what is going on is going to be wrong. Bahrain is somewhat less complex, but the same holds there. The idea that opposition to the government means support for liberal democracy is a tremendous stretch in all cases — and the idea that what the demonstrators say they want on camera is what they actually want is problematic. Even more problematic in many cases is the idea that the demonstrators in the streets simply represent a universal popular will.
Nevertheless, a narrative on what has happened in the Arab world has emerged and has become the framework for thinking about the region. The narrative says that the region is being swept by democratic revolutions (in the Western sense) rising up against oppressive regimes. The West must support these uprisings gently. That means that they must not sponsor them but at the same time act to prevent the repressive regimes from crushing them.
This is a complex maneuver. The West supporting the rebels will turn it into another phase of Western imperialism, under this theory. But the failure to support the rising will be a betrayal of fundamental moral principles. Leaving aside whether the narrative is accurate, reconciling these two principles is not easy — but it particularly appeals to Europeans with their ideological preference for “soft power.”
The West has been walking a tightrope of these contradictory principles; Libya became the place where they fell off. According to the narrative, what happened in Libya was another in a series of democratic uprisings, but in this case suppressed with a brutality outside the bounds of what could be tolerated. Bahrain apparently was inside the bounds, and Egypt was a success, but Libya was a case in which the world could not stand aside while Gadhafi destroyed a democratic uprising. Now, the fact that the world had stood aside for more than 40 years while Gadhafi brutalized his own and other people was not the issue. In the narrative being told, Libya was no longer an isolated tyranny but part of a widespread rising — and the one in which the West’s moral integrity was being tested in the extreme. Now was different from before.
Of course, as with other countries, there was a massive divergence between the narrative and what actually happened. Certainly, that there was unrest in Tunisia and Egypt caused opponents of Gadhafi to think about opportunities, and the apparent ease of the Tunisian and Egyptian uprisings gave them some degree of confidence. But it would be an enormous mistake to see what has happened in Libya as a mass, liberal democratic uprising. The narrative has to be strained to work in most countries, but in Libya, it breaks down completely.
The Libyan Uprising
As we have pointed out, the Libyan uprising consisted of a cluster of tribes and personalities, some within the Libyan government, some within the army and many others longtime opponents of the regime, all of whom saw an opportunity at this particular moment. Though many in western portions of Libya, notably in the cities of Zawiya and Misurata, identify themselves with the opposition, they do not represent the heart of the historic opposition to Tripoli found in the east. It is this region, known in the pre-independence era as Cyrenaica, that is the core of the opposition movement. United perhaps only by their opposition to Gadhafi, these people hold no common ideology and certainly do not all advocate Western-style democracy. Rather, they saw an opportunity to take greater power, and they tried to seize it.
According to the narrative, Gadhafi should quickly have been overwhelmed — but he wasn’t. He actually had substantial support among some tribes and within the army. All of these supporters had a great deal to lose if he was overthrown. Therefore, they proved far stronger collectively than the opposition, even if they were taken aback by the initial opposition successes. To everyone’s surprise, Gadhafi not only didn’t flee, he counterattacked and repulsed his enemies.
This should not have surprised the world as much as it did. Gadhafi did not run Libya for the past 42 years because he was a fool, nor because he didn’t have support. He was very careful to reward his friends and hurt and weaken his enemies, and his supporters were substantial and motivated. One of the parts of the narrative is that the tyrant is surviving only by force and that the democratic rising readily routs him. The fact is that the tyrant had a lot of support in this case, the opposition wasn’t particularly democratic, much less organized or cohesive, and it was Gadhafi who routed them.
As Gadhafi closed in on Benghazi, the narrative shifted from the triumph of the democratic masses to the need to protect them from Gadhafi — hence the urgent calls for airstrikes. But this was tempered by reluctance to act decisively by landing troops, engaging the Libyan army and handing power to the rebels: Imperialism had to be avoided by doing the least possible to protect the rebels while arming them to defeat Gadhafi. Armed and trained by the West, provided with command of the air by the foreign air forces — this was the arbitrary line over which the new government keeps from being a Western puppet. It still seems a bit over the line, but that’s how the story goes.
In fact, the West is now supporting a very diverse and sometimes mutually hostile group of tribes and individuals, bound together by hostility to Gadhafi and not much else. It is possible that over time they could coalesce into a fighting force, but it is far more difficult imagining them defeating Gadhafi’s forces anytime soon, much less governing Libya together. There are simply too many issues between them. It is, in part, these divisions that allowed Gadhafi to stay in power as long as he did. The West’s ability to impose order on them without governing them, particularly in a short amount of time, is difficult to imagine. They remind me of Hamid Karzai in Afghanistan, anointed by the Americans, distrusted by much of the country and supported by a fractious coalition.
Other Factors
There are other factors involved, of course. Italy has an interest in Libyan oil, and the United Kingdom was looking for access to the same. But just as Gadhafi was happy to sell the oil, so would any successor regime be; this war was not necessary to guarantee access to oil. NATO politics also played a role. The Germans refused to go with this operation, and that drove the French closer to the Americans and British. There is the Arab League, which supported a no-fly zone (though it did an about-face when it found out that a no-fly zone included bombing things) and offered the opportunity to work with the Arab world.
But it would be a mistake to assume that these passing interests took precedence over the ideological narrative, the genuine belief that it was possible to thread the needle between humanitarianism and imperialism — that it was possible to intervene in Libya on humanitarian grounds without thereby interfering in the internal affairs of the country. The belief that one can take recourse to war to save the lives of the innocent without, in the course of that war, taking even more lives of innocents, also was in play.
The comparison to Iraq is obvious. Both countries had a monstrous dictator. Both were subjected to no-fly zones. The no-fly zones don’t deter the dictator. In due course, this evolves into a massive intervention in which the government is overthrown and the opposition goes into an internal civil war while simultaneously attacking the invaders. Of course, alternatively, this might play out like the Kosovo war, where a few months of bombing saw the government surrender the province. But in that case, only a province was in play. In this case, although focused ostensibly on the east, Gadhafi in effect is being asked to give up everything, and the same with his supporters — a harder business.
In my view, waging war to pursue the national interest is on rare occasion necessary. Waging war for ideological reasons requires a clear understanding of the ideology and an even clearer understanding of the reality on the ground. In this intervention, the ideology is not crystal clear, torn as it is between the concept of self-determination and the obligation to intervene to protect the favored faction. The reality on the ground is even less clear. The reality of democratic uprisings in the Arab world is much more complicated than the narrative makes it out to be, and the application of the narrative to Libya simply breaks down. There is unrest, but unrest comes in many sizes, democratic being only one.
Whenever you intervene in a country, whatever your intentions, you are intervening on someone’s side. In this case, the United States, France and Britain are intervening in favor of a poorly defined group of mutually hostile and suspicious tribes and factions that have failed to coalesce, at least so far, into a meaningful military force. The intervention may well succeed. The question is whether the outcome will create a morally superior nation. It is said that there can’t be anything worse than Gadhafi. But Gadhafi did not rule for 42 years because he was simply a dictator using force against innocents, but rather because he speaks to a real and powerful dimension of Libya.
-
"Like Libya's Moammar Gadhafi, Syria's regime isn't squeamish about using force against domestic opponents. Bashar Assad's kinder and gentler father, Hafez, ordered the massacre of 20,000 or so people during the 1982 uprising in the town of Hama. His son's allies in Iran certainly won't complain if Hama rules are applied in Deraa."
Next NFZ? I expect Syria to crush the protesters quite soon, with lots of bloodshed, as needed.
-
By AHED AL HENDI
A few days ago, my friend Hussam Melhim, a Syrian blogger jailed for writing a poem criticizing Bashar al-Assad, was released after five years in prison. I too was jailed by Assad's regime. After 40 days of isolation and torture—punishment for my political activism—I was released in 2007.
Despite the fact that the regime has killed more than 100 protesters in the past few days, those of us who have fought for a democratic Syria have reason for optimism. Each day there are new demonstrations breaking out all over the country, even in small towns like Hajar Aswad. In the southern city of Daraa, the whole city is rebelling against the regime.
On Wednesday, Assad's special forces stormed Daraa. They honed in on the mosque where protesters had gathered—but only after the regime had cut electricity, Internet and land-lines, and banned reporters from entering the city.
I called a couple of friends based in Daraa, and I was able to hear the shooting and the voices of protesters screaming.
The call for these protests began on Facebook. The main organizers have chosen to remain anonymous—but one thing is clear: They are not Islamists. On the Facebook group Syrian Revolution Against Bashar al-Assad, which has 60,000 members so far, Fadi Edlbi posted the slogan "National unity, all for freedom, Muslims and Christians!" Another member, Shadi Deeb, wrote: "Not Sunni, not Allawite, all chant for freedom!"
The movement that began on computer screens has spread to the most unexpected places. On March 18, a friend who had gone to the main mosque in Damascus for Friday prayers said that when the imam finished his sermon someone in the crowd started chanting "Freedom, freedom!" As he chanted, he held up a paper with the sign of the cross and crescent as a symbol of unity. Within seconds, the hundreds of people gathered in the Umayyad Mosque began to chant along with him. Minutes later, the security forces stormed the mosque and started to beat the worshippers. These plain-clothed security forces added insult to injury by entering the mosque with their shoes on.
Protests that Friday weren't limited to Damascus. Syrians demonstrated in Homs City, Dair Al Zour, the coastal city of Banias, and Daraa. While in the other cities the demonstrations didn't last longer than an hour, in Daraa the protesters persist and the crowds remain large.
Why are those in Daraa so determined? There, Syrians watched as 15 children were arrested earlier this month simply for drawing graffiti on the wall of their school that said, "The people want to take down the regime." The kids that did this were in the fourth grade. They had no idea that this tiny act of rebellion would lead to their arrest by the secret services—from their classrooms.
On Wednesday, they were released after more than two weeks of being detained. My friend who saw them told me, "It's horrible. There were scars all over their bodies. And their nails were pulled from their hands."
Yesterday, in response to the most widespread demonstrations so far, the regime killed at least 20 people in Daraa, three in Damascus, and four in the coastal town of Latakia. Protesters all over the country shouted: "We sacrifice our souls and blood for you, Daraa." Everyone I speak to says protests will continue. I don't expect them to let up.
Mr. Al Hendi is the Arabic program coordinator for the U.S.-based human rights organization Cyberdissidents.org
-
I expect that Iran will do whatever it takes to keep Syria.
We shall see.
-
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704050204576218842399053176.html?mod=WSJ_World_RIGHTTopCarousel_1
Yemen, Jordan, Iraq, Bahrain and the other Gulf states are all individually more important than Libya because they constitute Saudi Arabia's critical near-abroad. In this era of weakening central authority throughout the Middle East, the core question for the U.S. will be which regime lasts longer: Saudi Arabia's or Iran's. If the Saudi monarchy turns out to have more staying power, we will wrest a great strategic victory from this process of unrest; if Iran's theocracy prevails, it will signal a fundamental eclipse of American influence in the Middle East.
Criticize the Saudi royals all you want—their country requires dramatic economic reform, and fast—but who and what would replace them? There is no credible successor on the horizon. Even as Saudi Arabia's youthful population, 40% of which is unemployed, becomes more restive, harmony within the royal family is beginning to fray as the present generation of leaders gives way to a new one. And nothing spells more trouble for a closed political system than a divided elite. Yes, Iran experienced massive antiregime demonstrations in 2009 and smaller ones more recently. But the opposition there is divided, and the regime encompasses various well-institutionalized power centers, thus making a decapitation strategy particularly hard to achieve. The al Sauds may yet fall before the mullahs do, and our simplistic calls for Arab democracy only increase that possibility.
-
http://yargb.blogspot.com/2011/03/way-to-mans-heart.html
I wonder how our economic policies are contributing to this.....
-
http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/in-tunisia-act-of-one-fruit-vendor-sparks-wave-of-revolution-through-arab-world/2011/03/16/AFjfsueB_story.html
-
Lets make this the default thread for Syria folks.
========================================
VERY interesting commentary in this piece.
While protests in Syria are increasing in size and scope, the Syrian regime does not appear to be taking chances by parsing out political reforms that could further embolden the opposition. Instead, the Syrian regime is more likely to resort to more forceful crackdowns, which is likely to highlight the growing contradictions in U.S. public diplomacy in the region.
Syrian President Bashar al Assad delivered a speech to parliament on Wednesday in which he was expected to announce a number of political reforms including the lifting of the state of emergency, which has been in place since 1963. Instead, Bashar al Assad largely avoided talk of reforms. He said that security and stability needs to come first. He also built on a narrative that foreign elements were exploiting the grievances of the Syrian people and trying to break the country apart.
The minority Alawite regime in Syria faces immense socioeconomic challenges as well as demographic challenges but there are a number of reasons why the Syrian president appears to be so confident. Protesters in Daraa have come under heavy pressure by Syrian security forces and continue to come out in large numbers. Protests have also spread beyond Daraa to cities like Damascus, Latakia, Homs, Hama and Kamishli, but the Syrian Muslim Brotherhood, which is the main opposition group in the country, has not put its full weight behind the demonstrations and probably for good reason. The Muslim Brotherhood remembers well the 1982 massacre at Hama which devastated the movement and essentially razed that city to the ground. The Brotherhood is likely looking for assurances from the West that they’re going to receive protection as the crackdowns intensify.
But there’s really no guarantee that the Syrian opposition is going to get those assurances. The U.S. administration has been very careful to distinguish between the humanitarian military intervention in Libya and the situation in Syria, arguing that the level of repression in Syria hasn’t escalated to a point that would require military intervention. The U.S. really has no strategic interest in getting involved in Syria in the first place. Syria would be a much more complicated military affair. The prospects for success would be low and the downfall of the al Assad regime is also not a scenario that the Israelis want to see. The al Assad regime remains hostile to Israel but the virtue in that regime from the Israeli point of view lies in its predictability. The Israelis don’t want to see situation developed in which Syrian Islamists could create the political space in which to influence Syrian foreign policy.
To help ensure that it’s not going to get the Libya treatment, the Syrian regime is likely looking to Turkey for some assistance. Turkey, which has become much more assertive in the region and has stepped up its mediation efforts in Syria, does not want to see another crisis flare up on its border. While encouraging reforms in Syria, the Turks have also likely played a key role in getting the Syrians to clamp down on Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad activity in the Palestinian territories recently. While the Turks will be encouraging the al Assad regime to make reforms at the right time, they could play key role in quietly sustaining external support for the Syrian regime. Syria’s crisis is far from over and the protests could continue to escalate especially now that the al Assad regime has made clear it’s not willing to go down that slippery slope of offering concessions to the opposition. The Syrian security and intelligence apparatus remains a formidable force and remains fairly unified in its approach to dealing with the uprising. What we’ll see in the coming days is whether those crackdowns will actually have the regime’s desired effect.
-
Taking the conversation from the specifics of the moment of the Libyan thread and expanding them to the more general of the Arab world and the Muslim world, to begin the conversation I posit three options.
a) The GM option (and please correct/adjust my description as you see fit GM!): Support bastards where it suits our convenience because the alternative, even though at first it may seem groovy, ultimately is an Islamic Reign of Terror. Problem presented: We are continuously backing anuses and eventually the pressure will build. Furthermore, thanks to the goodness of the American people, a strategy based upon backing anuses will eventually be opposed.
b) The NeoCon option: We need to cast this not as a war between the West/Freedom/Christianity and Islam, but as a war between Civilization and Barbarism. Islamic Fascism becomes ascendant when people see no other choice to thugs like Saddam Hussein, Daffy, Mubarak, Assad of Syria, Saleh of Yemen, etc. Towards that end, we need to let the Arab/Muslim world see that the West can and does support and respect the desire for a freer and more prosperous way of life. Not only will this intuitively be supported by the American people, but it will get us out of the conundrum in which we currently find ourselves. Problem presented: We will enable the takeover by Islamo-fascism. It will be one man, one vote, one time. see e.g. http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-islamists-ambitions-20110403,0,1369436.story
c) Fortress America: Self-explanatory.
-
I don't think a) is unsustainable, if it offers an acceptible standard of living to the masses, or is willing to play the Hama card. Do I like this? NO!
However, I like a caliphate even less.
-
I'm not sure that I agree with that as a theoretical matter, but worth noting with the GM option in the current context is that our Fed is printing so much much that world-wide food prices are soaring. Given that food is a large 5 of family budgets in the Arab world, in a certain, real, and direct sense the upheavals we are seeing are the fault of Obamanomics.
This reality is not likely to change in timely fashion. Given that, I submit the proposition that the GM strategy will be a loser over time, even though we might debate if it were practical in the presence of food price stability.
-
Crafty,
You might consider that as much as ASSad is an enemy of Israel, Israel isn't real keen on seeing him toppled.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/israel_grateful_for_border_quiet_not_cheering_for_demise_of_syrian_president_assad/2011/03/29/AFCYPvtB_story.html?wprss=rss_world
JERUSALEM — Syria has fought three wars with Israel and maintains close ties to its fiercest enemies in the region, including Iran and the Hamas and Hezbollah militant groups. So it may come as a surprise that many in Israel view the current unrest convulsing Syria with a wary eye, fearful that a collapse of Bashar Assad’s regime might imperil decades of quiet along the shared border.
Israeli leaders, who voiced fears — unfounded so far — that the earlier uprising in Egypt might spell the end of the two countries’ peace agreement, are keeping quiet about the tumult that has spread to Syria.
Several officials said that while Israel is closely following the situation in Syria — where mass protests are posing the greatest threat to the Assad family’s four decades in power — there is no consensus on how to react or even what the best-case scenario is for Israel.
In Geneva on Monday, President Shimon Peres said only that the unrest “changes the status quo in Israel,” while hoping Palestinians and Syrians “will be peaceful and free.”
Privately, officials note that Syria has been careful for decades to avoid direct violence, while fighting proxy wars by backing anti-Israel groups like Hamas in Gaza and Hezbollah in Lebanon.
“That has been the working assumption in Israel for years: Better the devil you know than the devil you don’t,” said Eyal Zisser, director of the Middle East Studies department at Tel Aviv University. “(Syria) scrupulously maintained the quiet. And who knows what will happen now — Islamic terror, al-Qaida, chaos?”
-
In this vein, see my post #130 of March 30.
-
"Syria is a partner in nuclear proliferation with North Korea. It is Iran's agent and closest Arab ally, granting it an outlet on the Mediterranean. Those two Iranian warships that went through the Suez Canal in February docked at the Syrian port of Latakia, a long-sought Iranian penetration of the Mediterranean. Yet here was the secretary of state covering for the Syrian dictator against his own opposition. And it doesn't help that Clinton tried to walk it back two days later by saying she was simply quoting others. Rubbish. Of the myriad opinions of Assad, she chose to cite precisely one: reformer. That's an endorsement, no matter how much she later pretends otherwise." --columnist Charles Krauthammer
=============
Separately, the Israeli president made the point the other day that we may not be seeing a clash of civilizations/religions but rather more a clash of generations. A point worth considering , , ,
-
From: "Stratfor" <noreply@stratfor.com>
To: "Akita23" <craftydog@dogbrothers.com>
Subject: France Struggles in Libya as the U.S. Focuses Elsewhere
Date: Thursday, April 07, 2011 10:07 PM
STRATFOR
---------------------------
April 8, 2011
FRANCE STRUGGLES IN LIBYA AS THE U.S. FOCUSES ELSEWHERE
France responded to rising criticism Wednesday from eastern Libyan rebels stating that NATO is not doing enough to protect them from Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi’s forces, as the air campaign nears the three-week mark. The rebels posit that NATO is overly concerned with avoiding civilian casualties, and as a result, it is allowing the Libyan army to regain territory lost during its low point last week. Indeed, the army's most recent counteroffensive has taken it back through Brega, with Ajdabiya now within its sights once again, while the rebel enclave of Misrata in western Libya continues to get bombarded by loyalist forces on a daily basis. France, which was the biggest proponent of involvement in Libya from the start, would very much like to step up the intensity of the campaign against Gadhafi, but is handicapped by the rules of engagement that NATO is operating under and the inherent limitations of airpower. Thus, French officials took time Wednesday to explain (in couched terms) why it is not Paris' fault that NATO jets are not pursuing the enemy more aggressively and how France was trying to adjust the way the military operation is being conducted.
"The United States was conspicuously absent from Wednesday's debate over whether NATO is doing enough in Libya."
French Foreign Minister Alan Juppe and French Chief of Defense Staff Adm. Edouard Guillaud both said Wednesday that NATO’s aversion to killing civilians is the main problem facing the operation. While Juppe was slightly less direct in his criticism of NATO, Paris clearly sees the current situation as unlikely to lead to any real success on the battlefield. More than two weeks of daily airstrikes have taken out almost all of the easy targets, and Gadhafi has shifted his tactics to avoid drawing enemy fire, meaning that a stalemate is fast approaching. Indeed, Juppe expressed fears that at the current pace, NATO forces risk getting "bogged down" in a situation that has the ability to linger on for months without producing a clear-cut winner.
NATO officials tried to defend its record in response to the rebel criticism and the French complaints, with one spokesman saying Wednesday that its planes have flown more than 1,000 sorties -- with at least 400 of them strike sorties -- in the last six days, and on April 5 alone it flew 155 sorties, with almost 200 planned for Wednesday. This is unlikely to mollify concerns from those who want more intense action, however, about the potential for the Libyan intervention to accomplish nothing but create an uneasy, de facto partition. As no one -- not even Paris -- wants to put boots on the ground, though, the best solution Jupee could proffer was to broach the topic of NATO's timid approach with NATO Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen in a Wednesday meeting. There, he was expected to push the suggestion for NATO to create a safe sea lane connecting Misrata to Benghazi, so that supplies could be shipped in by unknown naval forces.
The United States was conspicuously absent from Wednesday's debate over whether NATO is doing enough in Libya. While French foreign policy is focused almost entirely on Africa (where France is involved in two conflicts, the other being the Ivory Coast), Washington’s attention span is divided between Libya and the Persian Gulf.
The Persian Gulf may appear a lot calmer than it did three weeks ago, but the challenge of containing Iran looms large. Washington is seeking now to mend damaged ties with Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries that felt they did not receive enough American support during February and March. In addition, Washington is likely having second thoughts about its scheduled withdrawal from Iraq this summer, and suspects that Iran may have been seeking to foment much of the instability that was seen in Bahrain, which had a slight ripple effect on the situation in Saudi Arabia's own Shiite-rich Eastern province.
?U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates visited both Riyadh and Baghdad Wednesday, while U.S. Central Command Gen. James Mattis was in Manama, three regional capitals that form a line of American Arab alliances that serve as strong counters to Iranian hegemony in the Persian Gulf. Maintaining the balance of power between the Saudis (and by extension, the other five Gulf Cooperation Council countries, as well as Iraq) and Iranians in the Persian Gulf is of the utmost importance for the United States, certainly more important than anything that might occur in Libya. ?
Gates visited Saudi Arabia at a time in which relations between the United States and the kingdom are at their lowest in nearly a decade, as a result of what Riyadh viewed as American indecisiveness during not just the uprising in Bahrain, but also in Egypt and elsewhere. Saudi King Abdullah canceled a meeting in March with Gates and U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, officially due to his health. However, it could have been seen as anger over how Washington was treating allied regimes during the midst of the popular unrest that has been spreading across the region since January. While he was there, he made the strongest comments to date by U.S. officials about the role of Iranian meddling in the region, saying for the first time that the United States has explicit evidence of a destabilization campaign hatched by Tehran. This was music to Saudi ears, as Riyadh and its GCC cohorts have been pushing this notion for the past several weeks in public, and the past several years in private, as seen by the WikiLeaks cables from Riyadh.
Meanwhile, Mattis' presence in Bahrain was a sign that while the United States may still be committed to the al-Khalifa family engaging in reforms, it is not about to abandon them in the face of the popular uprising that has largely been suppressed. Washington's support for Bahrain, where the U.S. Fifth Fleet is based, is by extension support for Saudi Arabia, as Shiite unrest in one directly affects the Shiite population in the other.
?It was most interesting that Gates ended his trip in Baghdad, where the United States is trying to withdraw forces by the end of the year. Washington is officially still committed to its withdrawal timetable, especially with U.S. President Barack Obama now officially back in campaign mode for the 2012 elections. Iraq was labeled by Obama during the 2008 campaign as the "wrong war" and has staked a large chunk of his political capital upon following through with a pledge to withdraw. But the events of 2011, and the strategic imperative of maintaining the balance of power in the Persian Gulf as a means of countering Iranian power, may be cause for a broken promise, or a slightly delayed one at least.
Copyright 2011 STRATFOR.
-
In our 2011 annual forecast, we highlighted three predominant issues for the year: complications with Iran surrounding the U.S. withdrawal from Iraq, the struggle of the Chinese leadership to maintain stability amid economic troubles, and a shift in Russian behavior to appear more conciliatory, or to match assertiveness with conciliation. While we see these trends remaining significant and in play, we did not anticipate the unrest that spread across North Africa to the Persian Gulf region.
In the first quarter of 2011, we saw what appeared to be a series of dominoes falling, triggered by social unrest in Tunisia. In some sense, there have been common threads to many of the uprisings: high youth unemployment, rising commodity prices, high levels of crony capitalism, illegitimate succession planning, overdrawn emergency laws, the lack of political and media freedoms and so on. But despite the surface similarities, each has also had its own unique and individual characteristics, and in the Persian Gulf region, a competition between regional powers is playing out.
When the Tunisian leadership began to fall, we were surprised at the speed with which similar unrest spread to Egypt. Once in Egypt, however, it quickly became apparent that what we were seeing was not simply a spontaneous uprising of democracy-minded youth (though there was certainly an element of that), but rather a move by the military to exploit the protests to remove Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, whose succession plans were causing rifts within the establishment and opening up opportunities for groups like the Muslim Brotherhood.
As we noted in our annual forecast; “While the various elements that make up the state will be busy trying to reach a consensus on how best to navigate the succession issue, several political and militant forces active in Egypt will be trying to take advantage of the historic opportunity the transition presents.” In this quarter, we see the military working to consolidate its control, balance the lingering elements of the pro-democracy movement, and keep the Muslim Brotherhood and other Islamist forces in check. Cairo is watching Israel very carefully in this respect, as Israeli military actions against the Palestinians or against southern Lebanon could force the Egyptian leadership to reassess the peace treaty with Israel, and give the Islamist forces in Egypt a political boost.
In Bahrain, we saw Iran seeking to take advantage of the general regional discontent to challenge Saudi interests. The Saudis intervened militarily, and for now appear to have things locked down in their smaller neighbor. Tehran is looking throughout the region to see which levers it is willing or capable of pulling to keep Saudi Arabia unbalanced while not going so far as to convince the United States it should keep a large force structure in Iraq. Countering Iran is Turkey, which has become more active in the region. The balancing between these two regional powers will be a major element shaping the second quarter and beyond.
We are entering a very dynamic quarter. The Persian Gulf region is the center of gravity, and the center of a rising regional power competition. A war in or with Israel is a major wild card that could destabilize the area further. Amid this, the United States continues to seek ways to disengage while not leaving the region significantly unbalanced. Off to the side is China, more intensely focused on domestic instability and facing rising economic pressures from high oil prices and inflation. Russia, perhaps, is in the best position this quarter, as Europe and Japan look for additional sources of energy, and Moscow can pack away some cash for later days.
Middle East
Table of Contents
Introduction
Middle East
South Asia
East Asia
Former Soviet Union
Europe
Sub-Saharan Africa
Latin America
Regional Trend: Iran’s Confrontation with the Arab World
The instability in the Middle East carrying the most strategic weight is centered on the Persian Gulf, where Bahrain has become a proxy battleground between Iran and its Sunni Arab rivals. Iran appears to have used its influence and networks to encourage or exploit rising unrest in Bahrain as part of a covert destabilization campaign in eastern Arabia, relying on a Shiite uprising in Bahrain to attempt to produce a cascade of unrest that would spill into the Shiite-heavy areas of Saudi Arabia’s oil-rich Eastern Province. Saudi Arabia responded by sending military forces into its island neighbor.
Continued crackdowns and delays in political reforms will quietly fuel tensions between the United States and many of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) states as Washington struggles between its need to complete the withdrawal from Iraq and to find a way to counterbalance Iran. The Iranians hope to exploit this dilemma by fomenting enough instability in the region to compel the United States and Saudi Arabia to come to Tehran for a settlement on Iranian terms or to fracture U.S.-Saudi ties, thereby drawing Washington into negotiations to end the unrest and thus obtain the opportunity to withdraw from Iraq. So far, that appears unlikely. Iran has successfully spread alarm throughout the GCC states, but it will face a much more difficult time in sustaining unrest in eastern Arabia in the face of intensifying GCC crackdowns.
Iran probably will have to resort to other arenas to exploit the Arab uprisings. In each of these arenas, Iran also will face considerable constraints. In Iraq, for example, Iran has a number of covert assets at its disposal to raise sectarian tensions, but in doing so, it risks upsetting the U.S. timetable for withdrawal and undermining the security of Iran’s western flank in the long term.
In the Levant, Iran could look to its militant proxy relationships with Hezbollah in Lebanon and Palestinian Islamic Jihad in the Palestinian territories to provoke Israel into a military confrontation on at least one front, and possibly on two. An Israeli military intervention in the Gaza Strip would put pressure on the military-led regime in Egypt as it attempts to constrain domestic Islamist political forces. Syria, which carries influence over the actions of the principal Palestinian militant factions, can be swayed by regional players like Turkey to keep this theater contained, but calm in the Levant is not assured for the second quarter given the broader regional dynamic.
In the Arabian Peninsula, Iran can look to the Yemeni-Saudi borderland, where it can fuel an already-active al-Houthi rebellion with the intent of inciting the Ismaili Muslim communities in Saudi Arabia’s southern provinces in hopes of sparking Shiite unrest in Saudi Arabia’s Eastern Province. This represents a much more roundabout method for trying to threaten the Saudi kingdom, but the current instability in Yemen affords Iran the opportunity to meddle amid the chaos.
Regional Trend: War in Libya, Fears in Egypt
Libya probably will remain in a protracted crisis through the next quarter. Though the Western leaders of the NATO-led military campaign have tied themselves to an unstated mission of regime change, an air campaign alone is unlikely to achieve that goal. Gadhafi’s support base, while under immense pressure, largely appears to be holding on in western Libya. The eastern rebels meanwhile remain an amateurish group that is not going to transform into a competent militant force within three months. The more the rebels attempt to advance westward across hundreds of miles of desert toward Tripoli, the easier Gadhafi’s forces can fall back to populated areas where NATO is increasingly unable to provide close air support for fear of inflicting civilian casualties. The geography and military realities in Libya promote a stalemate, and the historic split between western Tripolitania and eastern Cyrenaica will persist. The elimination of Gadhafi by hostile forces or by someone within his regime cannot be ruled out in this time frame, nor can a potential political accommodation involving one of Gadhafi’s sons or another tribal regime loyalist. Though neither scenario is likely to rapidly resolve the situation, a stalemate could allow some energy production and exports to resume in the east.
Coming out of its own political crisis, Egypt sees an opportunity in the Libya affair to project influence over the oil-rich eastern region and position itself as the Arab power broker for Western countries looking to earn a stake in a post-Gadhafi scenario. However, domestic constraints probably will inhibit Egyptian attempts to extend influence beyond its borders as Cairo continues its attempts to resuscitate the Egyptian economy and prepare for elections slated for September. Egypt also has a great deal to worry about in Gaza, where it fears that a flare-up between Palestinian militant factions and Israeli military forces could embolden the Egyptian opposition Muslim Brotherhood and place strains on the Egypt-Israel peace treaty.
Regional Trend: Syria Locking Down
The minority Alawite Syrian regime will resort to more forceful crackdowns in an attempt to quell spreading unrest. There is no guarantee that the regime’s traditional tactics will work, but Syrian President Bashar al Assad’s government appears more capable than many of its embattled neighbors in dealing with the current unrest. The crackdowns in Syria occurring against the backdrop of a stalemated Libyan military campaign will expose the growing contradictions in U.S. public diplomacy in the region, as the United States and Israel face an underlying imperative to maintain the al Assad regime in Syria which, while hostile, is weak and predictable enough to be preferable to an Islamist alternative. Both the GCC states and Iran will attempt to exploit Syria’s internal troubles in trying to sway the al Assad regime to their side in the broader Sunni-Shiite regional rivalry, but Syria will continue managing its foreign relations in a cautious manner, keeping itself open to offers but refusing commitment to any one side.
Regional Trend: Rising Turkey
The waves of unrest lapping at Turkey’s borders are accelerating Turkey’s regional rise. This quarter will be a busy one for Ankara, as the country prepares for June elections expected to see the ruling Justice and Development Party consolidate its political strength. Turkey will be forced to divide its attention between home and abroad as it tries to put out fires in its backyard. The crisis in Libya provides Turkey an opportunity to re-establish a foothold in North Africa, while in the Levant Turkey will be playing a major role in trying to manage the situation in Syria to avoid a spillover of Kurdish unrest into its own borders. Where Turkey is most needed, and where it actually holds significant influence, is in the heart of the Arab world: Iraq. Iran’s destabilization attempts in eastern Arabia and the United States’ overwhelming strategic need to end its military commitment to Iraq will put Turkey in high demand for both Washington and the GCC states as a counterbalance to a resurgent Iran.
Regional Trend: Yemen in Crisis
The gradual erosion of Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh’s regime over the next quarter will plant the seeds for civil conflict. Both sides of the political divide in Yemen agree that Saleh will be making an early political exit, but there are a number of complications surrounding the transition negotiations that will extend the crisis. As tribal loyalties continue to fluctuate among the various political actors and pressures pile on the government, the writ of the Saleh regime will increasingly narrow to the capital of Sanaa, allowing rebellions elsewhere in the country to intensify.
Al-Houthi rebels of the Zaydi sect in the north are expanding their autonomy in Saada province bordering the Saudi kingdom, creating the potential for Saudi military intervention. An ongoing rebellion in the south as well as a resurgence of the Islamist old guard within the security apparatus opposing Saleh will meanwhile provide an opportunity for al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula to expand its areas of operation. Saleh’s eventual removal — a goal that has unified Yemen’s disparate opposition groups so far — will exacerbate these conditions, as each party falls back to their respective agendas. Saudi Arabia will be the main authority in Yemen trying to manage this crisis, with its priority being suppressing al-Houthi rebels in the north.
South Asia
Table of Contents
Introduction
Middle East
South Asia
East Asia
Former Soviet Union
Europe
Sub-Saharan Africa
Latin America
Regional Trend: Intensifying Taliban Actions in Afghanistan and Pakistan
Our annual forecast remains on track for Afghanistan. With the spring thaw, operations by both sides will intensify, but decisive progress on either side is unlikely. The degree to which the Taliban is capable of mounting offensive operations and other intimidation and assassination efforts in this quarter and the next will offer an opportunity to assess the impact of International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) operations. It may also reveal the Taliban’s core strategy for the year ahead, namely, whether it intends to intensify the conflict or hunker down to encourage and wait out the ISAF withdrawal.
The Pakistani counterinsurgency effort has made some progress in the tribal areas, but the Pakistani Taliban have yet to really ramp-up operations. The tempo of operations that the Pakistani Taliban are able to mount and sustain this quarter and next will be telling in terms of the strength of the movement after Islamabad’s efforts to crack down.
The Raymond David case brought ongoing tensions between the United States and Pakistan over the U.S.-jihadist war to an all-time high in the past quarter. Though the issue of the CIA contractor killing two Pakistani nationals was resolved via a negotiated settlement, the several weeklong public drama has emboldened Islamabad, which the Pakistanis will build upon to try to shape American behavior. While a major falling out between the two countries is unlikely, the Raymond Davis incident as well as the increasing perception in the region that Washington’s position has been significantly weakened will allow Pakistan to assert itself in terms of the overall U.S. strategy for South Asia, and especially on Afghanistan.
Islamabad will be trying to leverage further gains by Afghan Taliban insurgents to move the United States toward a negotiated settlement and exit strategy that does not create problems for Pakistan. However, there is little sign of meaningful negotiation or political accommodation so far this year. While there have been efforts to reach out behind the scenes, neither side is likely ready to give enough ground for real discussions to begin.
-
The Arab Risings, Israel and Hamas
April 12, 2011
By George Friedman
There was one striking thing missing from the events in the Middle East in past months: Israel. While certainly mentioned and condemned, none of the demonstrations centered on the issue of Israel. Israel was a side issue for the demonstrators, with the focus being on replacing unpopular rulers.
This is odd. Since even before the creation of the state of Israel, anti-Zionism has been a driving force among the Arab public, perhaps more than it has been with Arab governments. While a few have been willing to develop open diplomatic relations with Israel, many more have maintained informal relations: Numerous Arab governments have been willing to maintain covert relations with Israel, with extensive cooperation on intelligence and related matters. They have been unwilling to incur the displeasure of the Arab masses through open cooperation, however.
That makes it all the more strange that the Arab opposition movements — from Libya to Bahrain — have not made overt and covert cooperation with Israel a central issue, if for no other reason than to mobilize the Arab masses. Let me emphasize that Israel was frequently an issue, but not the central one. If we go far back to the rise of Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser and his revolution for Pan-Arabism and socialism, his issues against King Farouk were tightly bound with anti-Zionism. Similarly, radical Islamists have always made Israel a central issue, yet it wasn’t there in this round of unrest. This was particularly surprising with regimes like Egypt’s, which had formal relations with Israel.
It is not clear why Israel was not a rallying point. One possible explanation is that the demonstrations in the Islamic world were focused on unpopular leaders and regimes, and the question of local governance was at their heart. That is possible, but particularly as the demonstrations faltered, invoking Israel would have seemed logical as a way to legitimize their cause. Another explanation might have rested in the reason that most of these risings failed, at least to this point, to achieve fundamental change. They were not mass movements involving all classes of society, but to a great extent the young and the better educated. This class was more sophisticated about the world and understood the need for American and European support in the long run; they understood that including Israel in their mix of grievances was likely to reduce Western pressure on the risings’ targets. We know of several leaders of the Egyptian rising, for example, who were close to Hamas yet deliberately chose to downplay their relations. They clearly were intensely anti-Israeli but didn’t want to make this a crucial issue. In the case of Egypt, they didn’t want to alienate the military or the West. They were sophisticated enough to take the matter step by step.
Hamas’ Opportunity
A second thing was missing from the unrest: There was no rising, no intifada, in the Palestinian territories. Given the general unrest sweeping the region, it would seem logical that the Palestinian public would have pressed both the Palestinian National Authority (PNA) and Hamas to organize massive demonstrations against Israel. This didn’t happen.
This clearly didn’t displease the PNA, which had no appetite for underwriting another intifada that would have led to massive Israeli responses and disruption of the West Bank’s economy. For Hamas in Gaza, however, it was a different case. Hamas was trapped by the Israeli-Egyptian blockade. This blockade limited its ability to access weapons, as well as basic supplies needed to build a minimally functioning economy. It also limited Hamas’ ability to build a strong movement in the West Bank that would challenge Fatah’s leadership of the PNA there.
Hamas has been isolated and trapped in Gaza. The uprising in Egypt represented a tremendous opportunity for Hamas, as it promised to create a new reality in Gaza. If the demonstrators had succeeded not only in overthrowing Hosni Mubarak but also in forcing true regime change — or at least forcing the military to change its policy toward Hamas — the door could have opened for Hamas to have increased dramatically its power and its room to maneuver. Hamas knew that it had supporters among a segment of the demonstrators and that the demonstrators wanted a reversal of Egyptian policy on Israel and Gaza. They were content to wait, however, particularly as the PNA was not prepared to launch an intifada in the West Bank and because one confined to Gaza would have had little effect. So they waited.
For Hamas, a shift in Egyptian policy was the opening that would allow them to become militarily and politically more effective. It didn’t happen. The events of the past few months have shown that while the military wanted Mubarak out, it was not prepared to break with Israel or shift its Gaza policy. Most important, the events thus far have shown that the demonstrators were in no position to force the Egyptian military to do anything it didn’t want to do. Beyond forcing Mubarak out and perhaps having him put on trial, the basic policies of his regime remained in place.
Over the last few weeks, it became apparent to many observers, including the Hamas leadership, that what they hoped for in Egypt was either not going to happen any time soon or perhaps not at all. At the same time, it was obvious that the movement in the Arab world had not yet died out. If Hamas could combine the historical animosity toward Israel in the Arab world with the current unrest, it might be able to effect changes in policy not only in Egypt but also in the rest of the Arab world, a region that, beyond rhetoric, had become increasingly indifferent to the Palestinian cause.
Gaza has become a symbol in the Arab world of Palestinian resistance and Israeli oppression. The last war in Gaza, Operation Cast Lead, has become used as a symbol in the Arab world and in Europe to generate anti-Israeli sentiment. Interestingly, Richard Goldstone, lead author of a report on the operation that severely criticized Israel, retracted many of his charges last week. One of the Palestinians’ major achievements was shaping public opinion in Europe over Cast Lead via the Goldstone Report. Its retraction was therefore a defeat for Hamas.
In the face of the decision by Arab demonstrators not to emphasize Israel, in the face of the apparent failure of the Egyptian rising to achieve definitive policy changes, and in the face of the reversal by Goldstone of many of his charges, Hamas clearly felt that it not only faced a lost opportunity, but it was likely to face a retreat in Western public opinion (albeit the latter was a secondary consideration).
The Advantage of Another Gaza Conflict for Hamas
Another Israeli assault on Gaza might generate forces that benefit Hamas. In Cast Lead, the Egyptian government was able to deflect calls to stop its blockade of Gaza and break relations with Israel. In 2011, it might not be as easy for them to resist in the event of another war. Moreover, with the uprising losing steam, a war in Gaza might re-energize Hamas, using what would be claimed as unilateral brutality by Israel to bring far larger crowds into the street and forcing a weakened Egyptian regime to make the kinds of concessions that would matter to Hamas.
Egypt is key for Hamas. Linked to an anti-Israel, pro-Hamas Cairo, the Gaza Strip returns to its old status as a bayonet pointed at Tel Aviv. Certainly, it would be a base for operations and a significant alternative to Fatah. But a war would benefit Hamas more broadly. For example, Turkey’s view of Gaza has changed significantly since the 2010 flotilla incident in which Israeli commandos killed nine Turkish civilians on a ship headed for Gaza. Turkey’s relationship with Israel could be further weakened, and with Egypt and Turkey both becoming hostile to Israel, Hamas’ position would improve. If Hamas could cause Hezbollah to join the war from the north then Israel would be placed in a challenging military position perhaps with the United States, afraid of a complete breakdown of its regional alliance system, forcing Israel to accept an unfavorable settlement.
Hamas had the same means for starting a war it had before Cast Lead and that Hezbollah had in 2006. It can still fire rockets at Israel. For the most part, these artillery rockets — homemade Qassams and mortars, do no harm. But some strike Israeli targets, and under any circumstances, the constant firing drives home the limits of Israeli intelligence to an uneasy Israeli public — Israel doesn’t know where the missiles are stored and can’t take them out. Add to this the rocket that landed 20 miles south of Tel Aviv and Israeli public perceptions of the murder of most of a Jewish family in the West Bank, including an infant, and it becomes clear that Hamas is creating the circumstances under which the Israelis have no choice but to attack Gaza.
Outside Intervention
After the first series of rocket attacks, two nations intervened. Turkey fairly publicly intervened via Syria, persuading Hamas to halt its attacks. Turkey understood the fragility of the Arab world and was not interested in the uprising receiving an additional boost from a war in Gaza. The Saudis also intervened. The Saudis provide the main funding for Hamas via Syria and were themselves trying to stabilize the situation from Yemen to Bahrain on its southern and eastern border; it did not want anything adding fuel to that fire. Hamas accordingly subsided.
Hamas then resumed its attack this weekend. We don’t know its reasoning, but we can infer it: Whatever Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Syria or anyone else wanted, this was Hamas’ historic opportunity. If Egypt returns to the status quo, Hamas returns to its trap. Whatever their friends or allies might say, missing this historic opportunity would be foolish for it. A war would hurt, but a defeat could be turned into a political victory.
It is not clear what the Israelis’ limit is. Clearly, they are trying to avoid an all-out assault on Gaza, limiting their response to a few airstrikes. The existence of Iron Dome, a new system to stop rockets, provides Israel some psychological comfort, but it is years from full deployment, and its effectiveness is still unknown. The rockets can be endured only so long before an attack. And the Goldstone reversal gives the Israelis a sense of vindication that gives them more room for maneuver.
Hamas appears to have plenty of rockets, and it will use them until Israel responds. Hamas will use the Israeli response to try to launch a broader Arab movement focused both on Israel and on regimes that openly or covertly collaborate with Israel. Hamas hopes above all to bring down the Egyptian regime with a newly energized movement. Israel above all does not want this to happen. It will resist responding to Hamas as long as it can, but given the political situation in Israel, its ability to do so is limited — and that is what Hamas is counting on.
For the United States and Europe, the merger of Islamists and democrats is an explosive combination. Apart, they do little. Together, they could genuinely destabilize the region and even further undermine the U.S. effort against jihadists. The United States and Europe want Israel to restrain itself but cannot restrain Hamas. Another war, therefore, is not out of the question — and in the end, the decision to launch one rests with Hamas.
-
Iraq, Iran and the Next Move
April 26, 2011
By George Friedman
The United States told the Iraqi government last week that if it wants U.S. troops to remain in Iraq beyond the deadline of Dec. 31, 2011, as stipulated by the current Status of Forces Agreement between Washington and Baghdad, it would have to inform the United States quickly. Unless a new agreement is reached soon, the United States will be unable to remain. The implication in the U.S. position is that a complex planning process must be initiated to leave troops there and delays will not allow that process to take place.
What is actually going on is that the United States is urging the Iraqi government to change its mind on U.S. withdrawal, and it would like Iraq to change its mind right now in order to influence some of the events taking place in the Persian Gulf. The Shiite uprising in Bahrain and the Saudi intervention, along with events in Yemen, have created an extremely unstable situation in the region, and the United States is afraid that completing the withdrawal would increase the instability.
The Iranian Rise
The American concern, of course, has to do with Iran. The United States has been unable to block Iranian influence in Iraq’s post-Baathist government. Indeed, the degree to which the Iraqi government is a coherent entity is questionable, and its military and security forces have limited logistical and planning ability and are not capable of territorial defense. The issue is not the intent of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, who himself is enigmatic. The problem is that the coalition that governs Iraq is fragmented and still not yet finalized, dominated by Iranian proxies such Muqtada al-Sadr — and it only intermittently controls the operations of the ministries under it, or the military and security forces.
As such, Iraq is vulnerable to the influence of any substantial power, and the most important substantial power following the withdrawal of the United States will be Iran. There has been much discussion of the historic tension between Iraqi Shia and Iranian Shia, all of which is true. But Iran has been systematically building its influence in Iraq among all factions using money, blackmail and ideology delivered by a sophisticated intelligence service. More important, as the United States withdraws, Iraqis, regardless of their feelings toward Iran (those Iraqis who haven’t always felt this way), are clearly sensing that resisting Iran is dangerous and accommodation with Iran is the only solution. They see Iran as the rising power in the region, and that perception is neither unreasonable nor something to which the United States or Saudi Arabia has an easy counter.
The Iraqi government’s response to the American offer has been predictable. While some quietly want the United States to remain, the general response has ranged from dismissal to threats if the United States did not leave. Given that the United States has reportedly offered to leave as many as 20,000 troops in a country that 170,000 American troops could not impose order on, the Iraqi perception is that this is merely a symbolic presence and that endorsing it would get Iraq into trouble with Iran, which has far more than 20,000 troops and ever-present intelligence services. It is not clear that the Iraqis were ever prepared to allow U.S. troops to remain, but 20,000 is enough to enrage Iran and not enough to deal with the consequences.
The American assumption in deciding to leave Iraq — and this goes back to George W. Bush as well as Barack Obama — was that over the course of four years, the United States would be able to leave because it would have created a coherent government and military. The United States underestimated the degree to which fragmentation in Iraq would prevent that outcome and the degree to which Iranian influence would undermine the effort. The United States made a pledge to the American public and a treaty with the Iraqi government to withdraw forces, but the conditions that were expected to develop simply did not.
Not coincidentally, the withdrawal of American forces has coincided with tremendous instability in the region, particularly on the Arabian Peninsula. All around the periphery of Saudi Arabia an arc of instability has emerged. It is not that the Iranians engineered it, but they have certainly taken advantage of it. As a result, Saudi Arabia is in a position where it has had to commit forces in Bahrain, is standing by in Yemen, and is even concerned about internal instability given the rise of both reform-minded and Shiite elements at a time of unprecedented transition given the geriatric state of the country’s top four leaders. Iran has certainly done whatever it could to exacerbate this instability, which fits neatly into the Iraqi situation.
As the United States leaves Iraq, Iran expects to increase its influence there. Iran normally acts cautiously even while engaged in extreme rhetoric. Therefore, it is unlikely to send conventional forces into Iraq. Indeed, it might not be necessary to do so in order to gain a dominant political position. Nor is it inconceivable that the Iranians could decide to act more aggressively. With the United States gone, the risks decline.
Saudi Arabia’s Problem
The country that could possibly counter Iran in Iraq is Saudi Arabia, which has been known to funnel money to Sunni groups there. Its military is no match for Iran’s in a battle for Iraq, and its influence there has been less than Iran’s among most groups. More important, as the Saudis face the crisis on their periphery they are diverted and preoccupied by events to the east and south. The unrest in the region, therefore, increases the sense of isolation of some Iraqis and increases their vulnerability to Iran. Thus, given that Iraq is Iran’s primary national security concern, the events in the Persian Gulf work to Iran’s advantage.
The United States previously had an Iraq question. That question is being answered, and not to the American advantage. Instead, what is emerging is a Saudi Arabian question. Saudi Arabia currently is clearly able to handle unrest within its borders. It has also been able to suppress the Shia in Bahrain — for now, at least. However, its ability to manage its southern periphery with Yemen is being tested, given that the regime in Sanaa was already weakened by multiple insurgencies and is now being forced from office after more than 30 years in power. If the combined pressure of internal unrest, turmoil throughout the region and Iranian manipulation continues, the stress on the Saudis could become substantial.
The basic problem the Saudis face is that they don’t know the limits of their ability (which is not much beyond their financial muscle) to manage the situation. If they miscalculate and overextend, they could find themselves in an untenable position. Therefore, the Saudis must be conservative. They cannot afford miscalculation. From the Saudi point of view, the critical element is a clear sign of long-term American commitment to the regime. American support for the Saudis in Bahrain has been limited, and the United States has not been aggressively trying to manage the situation in Yemen, given its limited ability to shape an outcome there. Coupled with the American position on Iraq, which is that it will remain only if asked — and then only with limited forces — the Saudis are clearly not getting the signals they want from the United States. In fact, what further worsens the Saudi position is that they cannot overtly align with the United States for their security needs. Nevertheless, they also have no other option. Exploiting this Saudi dilemma is a key part of the Iranian strategy.
The smaller countries of the Arabian Peninsula, grouped with Saudi Arabia in the Gulf Cooperation Council, have played the role of mediator in Yemen, but ultimately they lack the force needed by a credible mediator — a potential military option to concentrate the minds of the negotiating parties. For that, they need the United States.
It is in this context that the crown prince of the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed al-Nahyan, will be visiting Washington on April 26. The UAE is one of the few countries on the Arabian Peninsula that has not experienced significant unrest. As such, it has emerged as one of the politically powerful entities in the region. We obviously cannot know what the UAE is going to ask the United States for, but we would be surprised if it wasn’t for a definitive sign that the United States was prepared to challenge the Iranian rise in the region.
The Saudis will be watching the American response very carefully. Their national strategy has been to uncomfortably rely on the United States. If the United States is seen as unreliable, the Saudis have only two options. One is to hold their position and hope for the best. The other is to reach out and see if some accommodation can be made with Iran. The tensions between Iran and Saudi Arabia — religious, cultural, economic and political — are profound. But in the end, the Iranians want to be the dominant power in the Persian Gulf, defining economic, political and military patterns.
On April 18, Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s adviser for military affairs, Maj. Gen. Yahya Rahim Safavi, warned Saudi Arabia that it, too, could be invaded on the same pretext that the kingdom sent forces into Bahrain to suppress a largely Shiite rising there. Then, on April 23, the commander of Iran’s elite Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, Maj. Gen. Mohammad Ali Jaafari, remarked that Iran’s military might was stronger than that of Saudi Arabia and reminded the United States that its forces in the region were within range of Tehran’s weapons. Again, the Iranians are not about to make any aggressive moves, and such statements are intended to shape perception and force the Saudis to capitulate on the negotiating table.
The Saudis want regime survival above all else. Deciding between facing Iran alone or reaching an unpleasant accommodation, the Saudis have little choice. We would guess that one of the reasons the UAE is reaching out to Obama is to try to convince him of the dire consequences of inaction and to move the United States into a more active role.
A Strategy of Neglect
The Obama administration appears to have adopted an increasingly obvious foreign policy. Rather than simply attempt to control events around the world, the administration appears to have selected a policy of careful neglect. This is not, in itself, a bad strategy. Neglect means that allies and regional powers directly affected by the problem will take responsibility for the problem. Most problems resolve themselves without the need of American intervention. If they don’t, the United States can consider its posture later. Given that the world has become accustomed to the United States as first responder, other countries have simply waited for the American response. We have seen this in Libya, where the United States has tried to play a marginal role. Conceptually, this is not unsound.
The problem is that this will work only when regional powers have the weight to deal with the problem and where the outcome is not crucial to American interests. Again, Libya is an almost perfect example of this. However, the Persian Gulf is an area of enormous interest to the United States because of oil. Absent the United States, the regional forces will not be able to contain Iran. Therefore, applying this strategy to the Persian Gulf creates a situation of extreme risk for the United States.
Re-engagement in Iraq on a level that would deter Iran is not a likely option, not only because of the Iraqi position but also because the United States lacks the force needed to create a substantial deterrence that would not be attacked and worn down by guerrillas. Intruding in the Arabian Peninsula itself is dangerous for a number reasons, ranging from the military challenge to the hostility an American presence could generate. A pure naval and air solution lacks the ability to threaten Iran’s center of gravity, its large ground force.
Therefore, the United States is in a difficult position. It cannot simply decline engagement nor does it have the ability to engage at this moment — and it is this moment that matters. Nor does it have allies outside the region with the resources and appetite for involvement. That leaves the United States with the Saudi option — negotiate with Iran, a subject I’ve written on before. This is not an easy course, nor a recommended one, but when all other options are gone, you go with what you have.
The pressure from Iran is becoming palpable. All of the Arab countries feel it, and whatever their feelings about the Persians, the realities of power are what they are. The UAE has been sent to ask the United States for a solution. It is not clear the United States has one. When we ask why the price of oil is surging, the idea of geopolitical risk does come to mind. It is not a foolish speculation.
-
Careful neglect? :roll:
Howabout a part-time president more interested in partying and the perks of the office than actually doing the job, and can't make a decision when actually focused on it. What happened to a meeting without preconditions with Iran that was supposed to make everything better?
-
The cognitive dissonance embraced and the semantic convolutions articulated to further our ad hoc and inconsistent Mid-East "policy" truly do amaze. . . .
Obama considers new Syrian sanctions
By Sam Youngman and Ian Swanson - 04/25/11 05:35 PM ET
The White House is considering new sanctions against Syria amid a crackdown by that country’s government against pro-democracy demonstrators.
Syria is one of only four countries on the State Sponsors of Terrorism List and is already subject to heavy sanctions, limiting U.S. options.
As a result, new sanctions are expected to focus on the assets of Syrian officials close to President Bashar al-Assad. Such a strategy would mimic actions taken by the U.S. against Libyan dictator Col. Moammar Gadhafi.
Asked Monday about possible sanctions against individuals in the regime, White House press secretary Jay Carney said the administration was looking at targeted sanctions.
“Again, targeted – you can parse that – but targeted sanctions,” he said.
The administration imposed a similar strategy with Libya, said Richard Sawaya, director of USA Engage, which promotes alternatives to unilateral U.S. sanctions. He also noted that Iran sanctions legislation approved by Congress in 2010 targeted individuals in Iran.
The Wall Street Journal reported Monday that the White House is drafting an executive order empowering the president to freeze the assets of senior Syrian officials from doing any business in the United States. Such a move would have a limited effect in the U.S., but could be used to pressure other government to take the same action.
Pressure has built on the White House to respond more forcefully to Syria late last week after Assad’s regime ramped up its crackdown against those protesting for reforms.
According to reports from Syria, government forces killed more than 100 people over the weekend and arrested many more. Reports on Monday indicated an escalation; The New York Times reported that tanks had entered the city of Dara’a.
Republicans have criticized President Obama, calling his approach to turmoil in the Middle East inconsistent.
The U.S. took part in military strikes against Libya, but has engaged only in diplomacy so far with Syria, a country closer to the heart of the Middle East that shares a border with Israel. Under Obama, the U.S. has sought engagement with Assad, who some have seen as a potential supporter of reform.
“President Obama should immediately recall the ambassador that he sent to Syria and move to invoke additional economic sanctions,” likely GOP presidential contender Tim Pawlenty said Friday in a statement.
The former Minnesota governor said Obama should instruct the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations to call a special Security Council meeting to condemn the Syrian government.
Carney said having an ambassador in Syria has been useful “precisely because we can communicate directly what our positions and views are.”
He also defended the U.S. policies toward Syria and Libya, which he described as a “unique situation” that was different from what the U.S. faces with Syria.
“We had large portions of the country that were out of the control of Moammar Gadhafi,” Carney said. “We had a Gadhafi regime that was moving against its own people in a coordinated military fashion and was about to assault a very large city on the promise that it would show it, the regime, would show that city and its residents no mercy.
“We had an international consensus to act. We had the support of the Arab League to act in a multilateral fashion. And we supported that move to save the lives of the people of Misurata and elsewhere in Libya.
“So Libya was a unique situation,” Carney concluded. “However, we continue to look for ways and are pursuing a range of possible policy options, including targeted sanctions, to respond to the crackdown in Syria and to make clear that this behavior is unacceptable.”
Few if any U.S. companies are still doing business with Syria, which could put a limit on the effect of any U.S. sanctions, said Bill Reinsch, president of the National Foreign Trade Council.
“For the most part, companies doing business there pretty much unilaterally decided to get out,” he said.
Carney said sanctions “can put pressure on governments and regimes to change their behavior,” but also acknowledged that Syria already is under “some significant sanctions.”
Source:
http://thehill.com/homenews/administration/157645-obama-mulls-more-sanctions-for-much-sanctioned-syria
-
The Syrian regime is obviously having a lot of trouble putting down unrest as crackdowns are intensifying and as protests are spreading. A number of regional stakeholders are meanwhile trying to exploit the regime’s current vulnerabilities in trying to promote their own agendas in the region, particularly as tensions are escalating between Iran and the GCC states in the Persian Gulf region.
The Syrian regime has been employing this me-or-chaos theory. It’s one that’s had a pretty good effect so far. The current regime has been in power since the ‘63 coup and there’s no real viable political alternative to the al Assad regime. At the same time, there are a lot of patronage networks tied to this regime that do not want to see the government go. And the main drivers to these protests have come from the majority Sunni conservative camp. There are a number of players in the region who just don’t know how a majority Sunni regime would conduct their foreign policy. That’s of great concern to a number of players in the region who are concerned by sectarianism spreading not only in Lebanon, where Syria is a major player, but also in Iraq. There is major Kurdish unrest in Syria’s northeast that could spill over into Turkey and also fuel unrest in northern Iraq where protests have also been significant.
Given all these factors, the Saudis, the Turks, the Israelis and the Americans - pretty much anyone with a major stake in Syria - have not been openly advocating for regime change in Syria. They have a lot of reason to worry about the fallout of a regime collapse. At the same time, certain players see an opportunity. The Saudis in particular have been trying long and hard to coerce Syria into joining the Arab consensus and into cutting its ties with Iran and Hezbollah. The urgency of this demand has intensified, especially as tensions have been on the rise between Iran and the GCC states in the Persian Gulf region. Syria has accused a number of the surrounding Sunni Arab states of supporting the protests in its country. The Saudis have responded by saying that Syrian compliance with its demands in cutting relations with Iran and Hezbollah could lead to an easing of domestic pressure.
And therein lies the paradox. Syria could always reject foreign pressure to end its relationship with Iran and Hezbollah, but then it would be giving a reason to these regimes to search for alternatives to the al Assad regime. On the other hand, Syria could comply with these demands and try to sever ties with Iran and Hezbollah. But Iran has built up an insurance policy to such a scenario. Remember Iran has a core interest in maintaining a strong stake in the Levant region with which to threaten Israel, and Syria’s crucial to that agenda.
Syria also derives a lot of leverage from its relationship with Iran. That’s the main reason why the Saudis and others have been throwing cash at the Syrian regime in an attempt to coerce the Syrians out of that relationship. Plus there’s a huge indigenous factor to these protests. There’s no guarantee that Syrian compliance with foreign demands will actually ease the pressure at home. Syria is undoubtedly in a tough spot on a number of fronts. Regime collapse may not be imminent nor assured in the near term especially as the army seems to be holding together, but the regime’s room to maneuver is definitely narrowing by the day.
-
The Middle East in Long-Term Flux
There are days when disparate events in multiple countries offer key insights into the trajectory of the wider region. Tuesday was one of them. A number of significant developments took place in the Middle East – a region that in the past four months has become far more turbulent than it has been in the last decade. Let us start with Egypt, where the provisional military authority appears to be considering a radical foreign policy move in re-establishing ties with Iran. It is too early to say whether such a rapprochement will materialize, but the country’s interim premier, Essam Sharaf, who is on a tour of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), sought to reassure his Persian Gulf Arab hosts that revived Egyptian-Iranian ties would not undermine their security. Having successfully dealt with popular unrest at home, the military of Egypt appears to be on a path to reassert Cairo onto the regional scene, and revitalizing relations with an emergent Iran is likely a key aspect of this strategy.
Egypt, being far removed from the Persian Gulf region, does not have the same concerns about Iran that its fellow Sunni Arab states on the Arabian Peninsula do. It can therefore afford to have ties with the clerical regime. The Egyptians are also watching how the GCC states are unable to effectively deal with a rising Tehran and are thus seeing the need to become involved in the issue. However, unlike the Khaleeji Arabs, they do not think confrontation is the way forward. Establishing ties with Iran also allows Egypt to undercut Syria, which thus far is the only Arab state to have close relations with the Persian Islamist state.
“Iran wants to dispense with the unfinished business of Iraq, allowing it to focus on the other side of the Persian Gulf where turmoil in places like Bahrain offers potential opportunities of historic proportions.”
Meanwhile, Syria faces growing public agitation and its future looks uncertain. Damascus is caught in a dilemma — its use of force to quell the popular demonstrations has only aggravated matters. Placating the masses through reforms is also risky for the future well-being of the regime. Faced with bad options, it has largely focused on using force to try and neutralize the opposition — a move that has its northern neighbor, Turkey, concerned about turmoil on its southern borders (turmoil that could easily spread to Lebanon). This is why on Tuesday, Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan announced that he will send a delegation to the Syrian capital to try to help defuse the situation.
Growing instability in Syria, however, is beginning to be an issue for the Turks. In Iraq, the Turks have long been caught in the middle of an intensifying U.S.-Iranian struggle. And on Tuesday, that struggle took an interesting turn with reports that the Iraqi prime minister is considering ways in which his government could allow American troops to remain in his country while not upsetting his patrons in Iran. It will be difficult to strike such a compromise given that Iran is anxiously waiting for the withdrawal of American forces from its western neighbor so it can move to consolidate its influence there unencumbered.
Iran wants to dispense with the unfinished business of Iraq, allowing it to focus on the other side of the Persian Gulf, where turmoil in places like Bahrain offers potential opportunities of historic proportions. While its arch regional nemesis, Saudi Arabia, seems to have things under control in the Shiite-majority Arab island kingdom for now, the situation there is not tenable given that the demographics work in favor of Iran. A more immediate concern for the Saudis in relation to the Arabian Peninsula is the serious potential for a meltdown of the Yemeni state.
Riyadh and its GCC allies have been working overtime trying to broker a deal in Yemen whereby beleaguered President Ali Abdullah Saleh can step down and hand over power to a transitional coalition government. On Tuesday, it was announced that the deal is supposed to be signed next Monday in the Saudi capital. Given the complex fault lines separating the various players in the largely tribal country, the chances of Yemen undergoing an orderly transfer of power remain low. In fact, because of the complexity and number of actors involved in the process, the likelihood of civil war remains high.
Ultimately, the prospects of turmoil on the Arabian Peninsula and Levant remain high. Egypt, Turkey and Iran – to varying degrees – could benefit in the long term. In the short term, we are looking at a slow but steady spread of instability throughout the region, rendering it precarious for years to come.
-
http://news.sky.com/skynews/Home/Royal-Wedding/Video-Royal-Wedding-Syrian-Ambassadors-Royal-Wedding-Invitation-Withdrawn/Article/201104415980785?f=rss
Take that, evildoers!
-
By Reva Bhalla
Syria is clearly in a state of internal crisis. Protests organized on Facebook were quickly stamped out in early February, but by mid-March, a faceless opposition had emerged from the flashpoint city of Daraa in Syria’s largely conservative Sunni southwest. From Daraa, demonstrations spread to the Kurdish northeast, the coastal Latakia area, urban Sunni strongholds in Hama and Homs, and to Aleppo and the suburbs of Damascus. Feeling overwhelmed, the regime experimented with rhetoric on reforms while relying on much more familiar iron-fist methods in cracking down, arresting hundreds of men, cutting off water and electricity to the most rebellious areas, and making clear to the population that, with or without emergency rule in place, the price for dissent does not exclude death. (Activists claim more than 500 civilians have been killed in Syria since the demonstrations began, but that figure has not been independently verified.)
A survey of the headlines would lead many to believe that Syrian President Bashar al Assad will soon be joining Tunisia’s Zine El Abidine Ben Ali and Egypt’s Hosni Mubarak in a line of deposed Arab despots. The situation in Syria is serious, but in our view, the crisis has not yet risen to a level that would warrant a forecast that the al Assad regime will fall.
Four key pillars sustain Syria’s minority Alawite-Baathist regime:
Power in the hands of the al Assad clan
Alawite unity
Alawite control over the military-intelligence apparatus
The Baath party’s monopoly on the political system
Though the regime is coming under significant stress, all four of these pillars are still standing. If any one falls, the al Assad regime will have a real existential crisis on its hands. To understand why this is the case, we need to begin with the story of how the Alawites came to dominate modern Syria.
The Rise of the Alawites
Syria’s complex demographics make it a difficult country to rule. It is believed that three-fourths of the country’s roughly 22 million people are Sunnis, including most of the Kurdish minority in the northeast. Given the volatility that generally accompanies sectarianism, Syria deliberately avoids conducting censuses on religious demographics, making it difficult to determine, for example, exactly how big the country’s Alawite minority has grown. Most estimates put the number of Alawites in Syria at around 1.5 million, or close to 7 percent of the population. When combined with Shia and Ismailis, non-Sunni Muslims average around 13 percent. Christians of several variations, including Orthodox and Maronite, make up around 10 percent of the population. The mostly mountain-dwelling Druze make up around 3 percent.
(click here to enlarge image)
Alawite power in Syria is only about five decades old. The Alawites are frequently (and erroneously) categorized as Shia, have many things in common with Christians and are often shunned by Sunnis and Shia alike. Consequently, Alawites attract a great deal of controversy in the Islamic world. The Alawites diverged from the mainstream Twelver of the Imami branch of Shiite Islam in the ninth century under the leadership of Ibn Nusayr (this is why, prior to 1920, Alawites were known more commonly as Nusayris). Their main link to Shiite Islam and the origin of the Alawite name stems from their reverence for the Prophet Muhammad’s cousin and son-in-law, Ali. The sect is often described as highly secretive and heretical for its rejection of Shariah and of common Islamic practices, including call to prayer, going to mosque for worship, making pilgrimages to Mecca and intolerance for alcohol. At the same time, Alawites celebrate many Christian holidays and revere Christian saints.
Alawites are a fractious bunch, historically divided among rival tribes and clans and split geographically between mountain refuges and plains in rural Syria. The province of Latakia, which provides critical access to the Mediterranean coast, is also the Alawite homeland, ensuring that any Alawite bid for autonomy would be met with stiff Sunni resistance. Historically, for much of the territory that is modern-day Syria, the Alawites represented the impoverished lot in the countryside while the urban-dwelling Sunnis dominated the country’s businesses and political posts. Unable to claim a firm standing among Muslims, Alawites would often embrace the Shiite concept of taqqiya (concealing or assimilating one’s faith to avoid persecution) in dealing with their Sunni counterparts.
Between 1920 and 1946, the French mandate provided the first critical boost to Syria’s Alawite community. In 1920, the French, who had spent years trying to legitimize and support the Alawites against an Ottoman-backed Sunni majority, had the Nusayris change their name to Alawites to emphasize the sect’s connection to the Prophet’s cousin and son-in-law Ali and to Shiite Islam. Along with the Druze and Christians, the Alawites would enable Paris to build a more effective counterweight to the Sunnis in managing the French colonial asset. The lesson here is important. Syria is not simply a mirror reflection of a country like Bahrain, a Shiite majority country run by a minority Sunni government. Rather than exhibiting a clear Sunni-Shiite religious-ideological divide, Syria’s history can be more accurately described as a struggle between the Sunnis on one hand and a group of minorities on the other.
Under the French, the Alawites, along with other minorities, for the first time enjoyed subsidies, legal rights and lower taxes than their Sunni counterparts. Most critically, the French reversed Ottoman designs of the Syrian security apparatus to allow for the influx of Alawites into military, police and intelligence posts to suppress Sunni challenges to French rule. Consequently, the end of the French mandate in 1946 was a defining moment for the Alawites, who by then had gotten their first real taste of the privileged life and were also the prime targets of purges led by the urban Sunni elite presiding over a newly independent Syria.
A Crucial Military Opening
The Sunnis quickly reasserted their political prowess in post-colonial Syria and worked to sideline Alawites from the government, businesses and courts. However, the Sunnis also made a fateful error in overlooking the heavy Alawite presence in the armed forces. While the Sunnis occupied the top posts within the military, the lower ranks were filled by rural Alawites who either could not afford the military exemption fees paid by most of the Sunni elite or simply saw military service as a decent means of employment given limited options. The seed was thus planted for an Alawite-led military coup while the Sunni elite were preoccupied with their own internal struggles.
The second major pillar supporting the Alawite rise came with the birth of the Baath party in Syria in 1947. For economically disadvantaged religious outcasts like Alawites, the Baathist campaign of secularism, socialism and Arab nationalism provided the ideal platform and political vehicle to organize and unify around. At the same time, the Baathist ideology caused huge fissures within the Sunni camp, as many — particularly the Islamists — opposed its secular, social program. In 1963, Baathist power was cemented through a military coup led by President Amin al-Hafiz, a Sunni general, who discharged many ranking Sunni officers, thereby providing openings for hundreds of Alawites to fill top-tier military positions during the 1963-1965 period on the grounds of being opposed to Arab unity. This measure tipped the balance in favor of Alawite officers who staged a coup in 1966 and for the first time placed Damascus in the hands of the Alawites. The 1960s also saw the beginning of a reversal of Syria’s sectarian rural-urban divide, as the Baath party encouraged Alawite migration into the cities to displace the Sunnis.
The Alawites had made their claim to the Syrian state, but internal differences threatened to stop their rise. It was not until 1970 that Alawite rivalries and Syria’s string of coups and counter-coups were put to rest with a bloodless military coup led by then-air force commander and Defense Minister Gen. Hafez al Assad (now deceased) against his Alawite rival, Salah Jadid. Al Assad was the first Alawite leader capable of dominating the fractious Alawite sect. The al Assads, who hail from the Numailatiyyah faction of the al Matawirah tribe (one of four main Alawite tribes), stacked the security apparatus with loyal clansmen while taking care to build patronage networks with Druze and Christian minorities that facilitated the al Assad rise. Just as important, the al Assad leadership co-opted key Sunni military and business elites, relying on notables like former Syrian Defense Minister Mustafa Tlass to contain dissent within the military and Alawite big-business families like the Makhloufs to buy loyalty, or at least tolerance, among a Sunni merchant class that had seen most of its assets seized and redistributed by the state. Meanwhile, the al Assad regime showed little tolerance for religiously conservative Sunnis who refused to remain quiescent. The state took over the administration of religious funding, cracked down on groups deemed as extremist and empowered itself to dismiss the leaders of Friday prayers at will, fueling resentment among the Sunni Islamist class.
In a remarkably short period, the 40-year reign of the al Assad regime has since seen the complete consolidation of power by Syrian Alawites who, just a few decades earlier, were written off by the Sunni majority as powerless, heretical peasants.
A Resilient Regime
For the past four decades, the al Assad regime has carefully maintained these four pillars. The minority-ruled regime has proved remarkably resilient, despite several obstacles.
The regime witnessed its first meaningful backlash by Syria’s Sunni religious class in 1976, when the Syrian Muslim Brotherhood led an insurgency against the state with the aim of toppling the al Assad government. At that time, the Sunni Islamists had the support of many of the Sunni urban elite, but their turn toward jihadism also facilitated their downfall. The regime’s response was the leveling of the Sunni stronghold city of Hama in 1982. The Hama crackdown, which killed tens of thousands of Sunnis and drove the Syrian Muslim Brotherhood underground, remains fresh in the memories of Syrian Brotherhood members today, who have only recently built up the courage to publicly call on supporters to join in demonstrations against the regime. Still, the Syrian Muslim Brotherhood lacks the organizational capabilities to resist the regime.
The al Assad regime has also experienced serious threats from within the family. After Hafez al Assad suffered from heart problems in 1983, his younger brother Rifaat, who drew a significant amount of support from the military, attempted a coup against the Syrian leader. None other than the al Assad matriarch, Naissa, mediated between her rival sons and reached a solution by which Rifaat was sent abroad to Paris, where he remains in exile, and Hafez was able to re-secure the loyalty of his troops. The 1994 death of Basil al Assad, brother of current president Bashar and then-heir apparent to a dying Hafez, also posed a significant threat to the unity of the al Assad clan. However, the regime was able to rely on key Sunni stalwarts such as Tlass to rally support within the military for Bashar, who was studying to become an ophthalmologist and had little experience with, or desire to enter, politics.
Even when faced with threats from abroad, the regime has endured. The 1973 Yom Kippur War, the 1982 Israeli invasion of Lebanon and the 2005 forced Syrian withdrawal from Lebanon may have knocked the regime off balance, but it never sent it over the edge. Syria’s military intervention in the 1975-1990 Lebanese civil war allowed the regime to emerge stronger and more influential than ever through its management of Lebanon’s fractured political landscape, satisfying to a large extent Syria’s strategic need to dominate its western neighbor. Though the regime underwent serious internal strain when the Syrian military was forced out of Lebanon, it did not take long for Syria’s pervasive security-intelligence apparatus to rebuild its clout in the country.
The Current Crisis
The past seven weeks of protests in nearly all corners of Syria have led many to believe that the Syrian regime is on its last legs. However, such assumptions ignore the critical factors that have sustained this regime for decades, the most critical of which is the fact that the regime is still presiding over a military that remains largely unified and committed to putting down the protests with force. Syria cannot be compared to Tunisia, where the army was able quickly to depose an unpopular leader; Libya, where the military rapidly reverted to the country’s east-west historical divide; or Egypt, where the military used the protests to resolve a succession crisis, all while preserving the regime. The Syrian military, as it stands today, is a direct reflection of hard-fought Alawite hegemony over the state.
Syrian Alawites are stacked in the military from both the top and the bottom, keeping the army’s mostly Sunni 2nd Division commanders in check. Of the 200,000 career soldiers in the Syrian army, roughly 70 percent are Alawites. Some 80 percent of officers in the army are also believed to be Alawites. The military’s most elite division, the Republican Guard, led by the president’s younger brother Maher al Assad, is an all-Alawite force. Syria’s ground forces are organized in three corps (consisting of combined artillery, armor and mechanized infantry units). Two corps are led by Alawites (Damascus headquarters, which commands southeastern Syria, and Zabadani headquarters near the Lebanese border). The third is led by a Circassian Sunni from Aleppo headquarters.
Most of Syria’s 300,000 conscripts are Sunnis who complete their two- to three-year compulsory military service and leave the military, though the decline of Syrian agriculture has been forcing more rural Sunnis to remain beyond the compulsory period (a process the regime is tightly monitoring). Even though most of Syria’s air force pilots are Sunnis, most ground support crews are Alawites who control logistics, telecommunications and maintenance, thereby preventing potential Sunni air force dissenters from acting unilaterally. Syria’s air force intelligence, dominated by Alawites, is one of the strongest intelligence agencies within the security apparatus and has a core function of ensuring that Sunni pilots do not rebel against the regime.
The triumvirate managing the crackdowns on protesters consists of Bashar’s brother Maher; their brother-in-law, Asef Shawkat; and Ali Mamluk, the director of Syria’s Intelligence Directorate. Their strategy has been to use Christian and Druze troops and security personnel against Sunni protesters to create a wedge between the Sunnis and the country’s minority groups (Alawites, Druze, Christians), but this strategy also runs the risk of backfiring if sectarianism escalates to the point that the regime can no longer assimilate the broader Syrian community. President al Assad has also quietly called on retired Alawite generals to return to work with him as advisers to help ensure that they do not link up with the opposition.
Given Syria’s sectarian military dynamics, it is not surprising that significant military defections have not occurred during the current crisis. Smaller-scale defections of lower-ranking soldiers and some officers have been reported by activists in the southwest, where the unrest is most intense. These reports have not been verified, but even Syrian activist sources have admitted to STRATFOR that the defectors from the Syrian army’s 5th and 9th divisions are being put down.
A fledgling opposition movement calling itself the “National Initiative for Change” published a statement from Nicosia, Cyprus, appealing to Syrian Minister of Defense Ali Habib (an Alawite) and Army Chief of Staff Daoud Rajha (a Greek Orthodox Christian) to lead the process of political change in Syria, in an apparent attempt to spread the perception that the opposition is making headway in co-opting senior military members of the regime. Rajha replaced Habib as army chief of staff when the latter was relegated to the largely powerless political position of defense minister two years ago. In name, the president’s brother-in-law, Asef Shawkat, is deputy army chief of staff, but in practice, he is the true chief of army staff.
The defections of Rajha and Habib, which remain unlikely at this point, would not necessarily represent a real break within the regime, but if large-scale defections within the military occur, it will be an extremely significant sign that the Alawites are fracturing and thus losing their grip over the armed forces. Without that control, the regime cannot survive. So far, this has not happened.
In many ways, the Alawites are the biggest threat to themselves. Remember, it was not until Hafez al Assad’s 1970 coup that the Alawites were able to put aside their differences and consolidate under one regime. The current crisis could provide an opportunity for rivals within the regime to undermine the president and make a bid for power. All eyes would naturally turn to Bashar’s exiled uncle Rifaat, who attempted a coup against his brother nearly three decades ago. But even Rifaat has been calling on Alawite supporters in Tripoli, in northern Lebanon and in Latakia, Syria, to refrain from joining the demonstrations, stressing that the present period is one in which regimes are being overthrown and that if Bashar falls, the entire Alawite sect will suffer as a result.
While the military and the al Assad clan are holding together, the insulation to the regime provided by the Baath party is starting to come into question. The Baath party is the main political vehicle through which the regime manages its patronage networks, though over the years the al Assad clan and the Alawite community have grown far more in stature than the wider concentric circle of the ruling party. In late April, some 230 Baath party members reportedly resigned from the party in protest. However, the development must also be viewed in context: These were a couple of hundred Baath party members out of a total membership of some 2 million in the country. Moreover, the defectors were concentrated in southern Syria around Daraa, the site of the most severe crackdowns. Though the defections within the Baath party have not risen to a significant level, it is easy to understand the pressure the al Assad regime is under to follow through with a promised reform to expand the political system, since political competition would undermine the Baath party monopoly and thus weaken one of the four legs of the regime.
The Foreign Tolerance Factor
Internally, Alawite unity and control over the military and Baath party loyalty are crucial to the al Assad regime’s staying power. Externally, the Syrian regime is greatly aided by the fact that the regional stakeholders — including Turkey, Israel, Saudi Arabia, the United States and Iran — by and large prefer to see the al Assads remain in power than deal with the likely destabilizing consequences of regime change.
It is not a coincidence that Israel, with which Syria shares a strong and mutual antipathy, has been largely silent over the Syrian unrest. Already unnerved by what may be in store for Egypt’s political future, Israel has a deep fear of the unknown regarding the Syrians. How, for example, would a conservative Sunni government in Damascus conduct its foreign policy? The real virtue of the Syrian regime lies in its predictability: The al Assad government, highly conscious of its military inferiority to Israel, is far more interested in maintaining its hegemony in Lebanon than in picking fights with Israel. While the al Assad government is a significant patron to Hezbollah, Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad, among other groups it manages within its Islamist militant supply chain, its support for such groups is also to some extent negotiable, as illustrated most recently by the fruits of Turkey’s negotiations with Damascus in containing Palestinian militant activity and in Syria’s ongoing, albeit strained, negotiations with Saudi Arabia over keeping Hezbollah in check. Israel’s view of Syria is a classic example of the benefits of dealing with the devil you do know rather than the devil you don’t.
The biggest sticking point for each of these regional stakeholders is Syria’s alliance with Iran. The Iranian government has a core interest in maintaining a strong lever in the Levant with which to threaten Israel, and it needs a Syria that stands apart from the Sunni Arab consensus to do so. Though Syria derives a great deal of leverage from its relationship with Iran, Syrian-Iranian interests are not always aligned. In fact, the more confident Syria is at home and in Lebanon, the more likely its interests are to clash with Iran. Shiite politics aside, secular-Baathist Syria and Islamist Iran are not ideological allies nor are they true Shiite brethren — they came together and remain allied for mostly tactical purposes, to counter Sunni forces. In the near term at least, Syria will not be persuaded by Riyadh, Ankara or anyone else to sever ties with Iran in return for a boost in regional support, but it will keep itself open to negotiations. Meanwhile, holding the al Assads in place provides Syria’s neighbors with some assurance that ethno-sectarian tensions already on the rise in the wider region will not lead to the eruption of such fault lines in Turkey (concerned with Kurdish spillover) and Lebanon (a traditional proxy Sunni-Shiite battleground between Iran and Saudi Arabia).
Regional disinterest in pushing for regime change in Syria could be seen even in the April 29 U.N. Human Rights Council meeting to condemn Syria. Bahrain and Jordan did not show up to vote, and Saudi Arabia and Egypt insisted on a watered-down resolution. Saudi Arabia has even quietly instructed the Arab League to avoid discussion of the situation in Syria in the next Arab League meeting, scheduled for mid-May.
Turkey’s Islamist-rooted Justice and Development Party (AKP) has given indications that it is seeking out Sunni alternatives to the al Assad regime for the longer term and is quietly developing a relationship with the Syrian Muslim Brotherhood. AKP does not have the influence currently to effect meaningful change within Syria, nor does it particularly want to at this time. The Turks remain far more concerned about Kurdish unrest and refugees spilling over into Turkey with just a few weeks remaining before national elections.
Meanwhile, the United States and its NATO allies are struggling to reconcile the humanitarian argument that led to the military intervention with Libya with the situation in Syria. The United States especially does not want to paint itself into a corner with rhetoric that could commit forces to yet another military intervention in the Islamic world — and in a much more complex and volatile part of the region than Libya — and is relying instead on policy actions like sanctions that it hopes exhibit sufficient anger at the crackdowns.
In short, the Syrian regime may be an irritant to many but not a large enough one to compel the regional stakeholders to devote their efforts toward regime change in Damascus.
Hanging on by More Than a Thread
Troubles are no doubt rising in Syria, and the al Assad regime will face unprecedented difficulty in trying to manage affairs at home in the months ahead. That said, it so far has maintained the four pillars supporting its power. The al Assad clan remains unified, the broader Alawite community and its minority allies are largely sticking together, Alawite control over the military is holding and the Baath party’s monopoly remains intact. Alawites appear to be highly conscious of the fact that the first signs of Alawite fracturing in the military and the state overall could lead to the near-identical conditions that led to its own rise — only this time, power would tilt back in favor of the rural Sunni masses and away from the urbanized Alawite elite. So far, this deep-seated fear of a reversal of Alawite power is precisely what is keeping the regime standing. Considering that Alawites were second-class citizens of Syria less than century ago, that memory may be recent enough to remind Syrian Alawites of the consequences of internal dissent. The factors of regime stability outlined here are by no means static, and the stress on the regime is certainly rising. Until those legs show real signs of weakening, however, the al Assad regime has the tools it needs to fight the effects of the Arab Spring.
Read more: Making Sense of the Syrian Crisis | STRATFOR
-
The Broadening of the Gulf Cooperation Council
It is rare that events in small countries like Jordan and Morocco warrant a diary. This week, that happened. The leaders of both countries welcomed the decision by the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) — a bloc of Persian Gulf Arab states — to allow Rabat and Amman’s accession into the Saudi-led GCC.
Since 1981, the GCC has been a forum for six Arab states — Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates and Oman. Apart from the fact that they are all located on the Arabian Peninsula’s east coast hugging the Persian Gulf, these states share commonalities, such as being wealthy (mostly thanks to their petroleum reserves) and under the rule of hereditary monarchies.
Why would such an exclusive bloc of countries want to include others, such as Jordan and Morocco? After all, both are relatively poor countries and are not located in the Persian Gulf region. Jordan is on the crossroads of Mesopotamia and the Levant. Morocco is the farthest Arab outpost on the western end of North Africa where the Mediterranean meets the Atlantic.
“The GCC seeks to expand its footprint in the Arab world at a time when the region is in unprecedented turmoil.”
The answer is in the timing. The GCC seeks to expand its footprint in the Arab world at a time when the region is in unprecedented turmoil, as regimes are forced to adjust to the demand for democracy. A wave of popular unrest has swept across the Arab world, threatening decades-old autocratic structures. Not only is this turmoil forcing domestic political change, it is also leaving the Arab countries vulnerable to an increasingly assertive Iran.
As a result, the Saudi kingdom and its smaller GCC allies have been working hard to contain uprisings in their immediate vicinity — in Bahrain and Yemen — in the hopes that they themselves will remain largely immune. Meanwhile, the GCC states continue to have internal differences, especially regarding Iran. The most visible example of these differences is illustrated by Qatar, which has long tried to emerge as a player in Arab geopolitics and acts unilaterally on many issues.
That said, the GCC’s move to finally open up membership to other countries in the Arab world underscores that the bloc and its main driver, Riyadh, want to assume leadership of the region. With the GCC trying to emerge onto the regional scene, it raises the question of what will happen to the Arab League, which, despite its dysfunctional status thus far, remains the main pan-Arab forum.
The GCC has always been a subset of the 22-member Arab League, which includes all Arab states. Yet, the Arab League has long been dominated by Egypt. For the longest time, both the Arab League and the GCC have been able to coexist given that they had separate domains. But as the GCC expands its scope, the Arab League question presents itself.
One reason for the GCC’s attempts at expansion is the evolutionary process under way in Egypt. In the post-Mubarak era of multiparty politics, Cairo’s behavior could become less predictable. At the very least, the country’s military-controlled provisional authorities have demonstrated that they want to see their country revive itself as a regional player, illustrated in moves toward greater engagement with Hamas and efforts to re-establish relations with Iran.
Egypt is therefore unlikely to accept life under the growing influence of the GCC states. In other words, we may see another intra-Arab fault line emerge. While the Arabs struggle among themselves, Iran has been working on its regional security alliance, especially with Iraq in its orbit. Thus, the GCC effort to enhance its regional standing, in an effort to deal with a rising Iran, will run into a number of challenges, while also running the risk of self-dilution.
-
Second post of the morning
Hearty salutations and reassurances from Damascus. After killing more than 600 (and counting) and arresting and injuring thousands more in a seven week crackdown, the Syrian regime wants you to know that it thinks it has the upper hand over protestors. And Bashar Assad appreciates the support and understanding in these trying times from so many in the Arab world, Europe and the U.S.
That's the word this week from Syrian President Bashar Assad's adviser Bouthaina Shaaban, who called in the New York Times man in Beirut for a security update. It's all under control now, she said, and the world can relax. "I hope we are witnessing the end of the story. I think now we've passed the most dangerous moment."
The regime's confidence is playing out in towns like Homs, where reports filtering out via Facebook and smuggled phones tell of indiscriminate artillery shelling of entire civilian neighborhoods. Mass arrests are common and intensified this week. Human rights groups estimate that more than 10,000 people have been detained.
A correspondent for the Times of London, Martin Fletcher, who snuck into Syria on a tourist visa last week, reported that he found "scores of young men" held at secret detention centers in Homs. "It was quite obvious that . . . the regime had been arresting almost every young man of fighting age that they could find on the streets of Homs."
A French journalist spent 23 days inside Assad's jail and tells a harrowing story about his ordeal. He was beaten in the first few days, but "the psychological torture was hearing the screams of all the other detainees," said Khaled Sid Mohand, who reported for Le Monde daily and France Culture radio from Syria before his arrest. "Any time they would take a detainee from his cell you would hear him scream like hell. Sometimes for 15 minutes, sometimes as long as an hour."
And the world's reaction? The U.N. Security Council couldn't muster the courage to put out a press release. Iran, Russia, China, India and the Arab states all have President Assad's back. Six weeks into the crackdown, the U.S. did impose financial sanctions on three top Syrian officials, the intelligence agency and the Iranian Revolutionary Guard. The European Union followed by freezing the assets and putting a travel ban on 13 officials.
Statements have also been issued. "There may be some who think that this is a sign of strength but treating one's own people in this way is in fact a sign of remarkable weakness," said Secretary of State Hillary Clinton yesterday in Greenland.
But neither the U.S. nor the EU put President Assad on the sanctions list or travel ban. President Obama didn't call for him to step down or even pull the U.S. Ambassador from Damascus. In an interview with the Atlantic website published Wednesday, Mrs. Clinton elaborated on the U.S. approach to the Syrian dictator: "What we have tried to do with him is to give him an alternative vision of himself and Syria's future."
In other words, America thinks Bashar Assad may still reform, cut ties with Iran, seek peace with Israel and therefore deserves to be treated like a potential friend of the U.S.—notwithstanding the brutality of the last two months.
Damascus certainly appreciates the forbearance, and it looks forward to normal relations once all this unpleasantness passes. The comments by U.S. officials were "not too bad," Ms. Shaaban told the Times. "Once security is back, everything can be arranged. We're not going to live in this crisis forever."
-
What? The UN/NATO didn't ride to the rescue? What whappened to the "responsibility to protect"? :roll:
-
Obama, Democracy and the Middle East
U.S. President Barack Obama on Thursday delivered a much-hyped speech in which he tried to lay out a new strategic framework for dealing with the Middle East, one that takes into account recent unprecedented developments in the region. This was Obama’s second major speech on the issue, including his much-celebrated June 2009 address in Cairo. While the Cairo address concerned U.S. relations with the wider Muslim world, today’s speech was limited to the largely Arab Middle East — understandably so, given the wave of popular unrest that has destabilized the region’s decades-old autocracies.
Obama’s speech is significant in that it forwards the most comprehensive public-relations statement on how Washington is adjusting its policies in response to turmoil in the Arab world. The target audience was both the region’s masses, who have long been critical of U.S. policies supporting authoritarian regimes, and its states, which are concerned about how potential shifts in official American attitudes toward long-standing allies and partners threaten their survival. From the U.S. point of view, the evolution under way in the region needs to be managed so that unfriendly forces cannot take advantage of democratic openings and, more important, decaying incumbent states do not fall into anarchy.
Supporting democratic movements is thus not just an altruistic pursuit; rather, it is a tool to deal with a reality in which dictatorial systems in the Middle East are increasingly under threat of becoming obsolete. Supporting the demand for political reform allows Washington to engage with and contain non-state actors — even Islamists — that it has thus far avoided. Doing so, however, creates problems with the incumbent regimes, which cannot be completely discarded, since the goal is to oversee orderly transitions and avoid vacuums.
This would explain the president’s variance in attitude toward different countries. Obama spoke of financially supporting the transitions under way in Tunisia and Egypt, given that the situation in both countries is relatively stable, with their respective armed forces overseeing a gradual process toward multiparty elections. In contrast, the U.S. views the situation in Libya, Syria and Yemen, where regimes are using force to maintain power, as untenable. This explains Obama’s far more stern language toward the rulers in these three countries, though he recognized the significant variances between the three cases.
“Supporting democratic movements is thus not just an altruistic pursuit; rather, it’s a tool to deal with a reality in which dictatorial systems in the Middle East are increasingly under threat of becoming obsolete.”
But the real policy challenge comes in Bahrain, where the sectarian demographic reality and geopolitical proximity to Iran prevent the United States from seriously backing calls for change. Washington cannot afford to see a key ally in the Persian Gulf region turn into a potentially hostile entity. At the same time, though, the United States cannot sit around and watch Bahrain’s Sunni monarchy, backed by forces from Saudi Arabia and other Arab states, forcefully put down an uprising largely led by the country’s Shiite majority. That looks hypocritical, especially as Obama calls out Iran for supporting unrest in Arab countries while suppressing protesters at home.
Far more importantly, the United States fears that the Saudi-driven policy of forcefully putting down an uprising led by a majority of the population, while supporting the monarchy controlled by a Sunni minority, will eventually make matters worse and play right into the hands of the Iranians — hence Obama’s call on the Bahraini leadership (and by extension the Saudis) to negotiate with the opposition and engage in reforms that can help co-opt their opponents, rather than push them deeper into the arms of Tehran.
Clearly, there is a disconnect between Washington and Riyadh on how to deal with unrest in the region, especially as it pertains to Bahrain. The disagreement adds to the tensions between the two sides that resulted from the U.S. decision to effect regime change in Iraq, a move of which Iran has emerged as a major beneficiary. Given Saudi Arabia’s importance as a political, financial and energy powerhouse, the United States is prepared to largely overlook the lack of democracy in the religiously ultra-conservative kingdom. That would explain why, save the reference to women not being able to vote, Obama’s speech never addressed the Saudis directly.
For now, there is no serious movement calling for political reforms in the kingdom, which means the Americans can afford to be ambiguous about the Saudis. Eventually, there is bound to be some spillover effect in the kingdom, which is in the process of transitioning from a geriatric top leadership, and the United States will be forced to give up its ambivalent attitude. But even in the here and now, changes under way in the rest of the region — and especially on the Arabian Peninsula — and the need for the United States to reach an understanding with Iran as U.S. troops leave Iraq, will continue to complicate U.S.-Saudi dealings.
A speech stressing the need for reforms in the region could not avoid a discussion of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The developing regional shifts have a direct impact on the chronic dispute. Here again, Obama could not avoid criticizing another close ally, Israel. The U.S. president said the Israeli occupation of Palestinian lands threatens Israeli security.
Another notable shift in U.S. rhetoric was toward Hamas. Obama did not denounce the Palestinian Islamist movement outright as an irreconcilable force that could not be negotiated with. Instead, he pressed the Palestinians to respond to the question of how Israel could negotiate with a government that included Hamas, so long as the Islamist movement refuses to recognize Israel’s right to exist. This places the seemingly intractable problem in the hands of the Palestinians, not the Israelis.
Ultimately, the Obama speech was about navigating through an increasingly complex Middle East. It is unlikely to lead to any major changes in ground realities anytime soon. But the speech recognized that the status quo was unsustainable and that all parties concerned need to change their behavior to avoid further turmoil.
-
BEIRUT, Lebanon — The revolutions and revolts in the Arab world, playing out over just a few months across two continents, have proved so inspirational to so many because they offer a new sense of national identity built on the idea of citizenship.
But in the past weeks, the specter of divisions — religion in Egypt, fundamentalism in Tunisia, sect in Syria and Bahrain, clan in Libya — has threatened uprisings that once seemed to promise to resolve questions that have vexed the Arab world since the colonialism era.
From the fetid alleys of Imbaba, the Cairo neighborhood where Muslims and Christians have fought street battles, to the Syrian countryside, where a particularly deadly crackdown has raised fears of sectarian score-settling, the question of identity may help determine whether the Arab Spring flowers or withers. Can the revolts forge alternative ways to cope with the Arab world’s variety of clans, sects, ethnicities and religions?
The old examples have been largely of failure: the rule of strongmen in Egypt, Syria, Libya and Yemen; a fragile equilibrium of fractious communities in Lebanon and Iraq; the repressive paternalism of the Persian Gulf, where oil revenues are used to buy loyalty.
“I think the revolutions in a way, in a distant way, are hoping to retrieve” this sense of national identity, said Sadiq al-Azm, a prominent Syrian intellectual living in Beirut.
“The costs otherwise would be disintegration, strife and civil war,” Mr. Azm said. “And this was very clear in Iraq.”
In an arc of revolts and revolution, that idea of a broader citizenship is being tested as the enforced silence of repression gives way to the cacophony of diversity. Security and stability were the justification that strongmen in the Arab world offered for repression, often with the sanction of the United States; the essence of the protests in the Arab Spring is that people can imagine an alternative.
But even activists admit that the region so far has no model that enshrines diversity and tolerance without breaking down along more divisive identities.
In Tunisia, a relatively homogenous country with a well-educated population, fault lines have emerged between the secular-minded coasts and the more religious and traditional inland.
The tensions shook the nascent revolution there this month when a former interim interior minister, Farhat Rajhi, suggested in an online interview that the coastal elite, long dominant in the government, would never accept an electoral victory by Tunisia’s Islamist party, Ennahda, which draws most of its support inland.
“Politics was in the hands of the people of the coast since the start of Tunisia,” Mr. Rajhi said. “If the situation is reversed now, they are not ready to give up ruling.” He warned that Tunisian officials from the old government were preparing a military coup if the Islamists won elections in July. “If Ennahda rules, there will be a military regime.”
In response, protesters poured back out into the streets of Tunis for four days of demonstrations calling for a new revolution. The police beat them back with batons and tear gas, arrested more than 200 protesters and imposed a curfew on the city.
In Cairo, the sense of national identity that surged at the moment of revolution — when hundreds of thousands of people of all faiths celebrated in Tahrir Square with chants of “Hold your head high, you are an Egyptian”— has given way to a week of religious violence pitting the Coptic Christian minority against their Muslim neighbors, reflecting long-smoldering tensions that an authoritarian state may have muted, or let fester.
At a rally this month in Tahrir Square to call for unity, Coptic Christians were conspicuously absent, thousands of them gathering nearby for a rally of their own. And even among some Muslims at the unity rally, suspicions were pronounced.
================
Page 2 of 2)
“As Muslims, our sheiks are always telling us to be good to Christians, but we don’t think that is happening on the other side,” said Ibrahim Sakr, 56, a chemistry professor, who asserted that Copts, who make up about 10 percent of the population, still consider themselves “the original” Egyptians because their presence predates Islam.
In Libya, supporters of Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi acknowledge that his government banks on fears of clan rivalries and possible partition to stay in power in a country with deep regional differences.
Officials say that the large extended clans of the west that contribute most of the soldiers to Colonel Qaddafi’s forces will never accept any revolution arising from the east, no matter what promises the rebels make about universal citizenship in a democratic Libya with its capital still in the western city of Tripoli.
The rebels say the revolution can forge a new identity.
“Qaddafi looks at Libya as west and east and north and south,” said Jadella Shalwee, a Libyan from Tobruk who visited Tahrir Square last weekend in a pilgrimage of sorts. “But this revolt has canceled all that. This is about a new beginning,” he said, contending that Colonel Qaddafi’s only supporters were “his cousins and his family.”
“Fear” is what Gamal Abdel Gawad, the director of the Ahram Center for Political and Strategic Studies in Cairo, called it — the way that autocrats win support because people “are even more scared of their fellow citizens.”
Nowhere is that perhaps truer than in Syria, with a sweeping revolt against four decades of rule by one family and a worsening of tensions among a Sunni Muslim majority and minorities of Christians and heterodox Muslims, the Alawites.
Mohsen, a young Alawite in Syria, recounted a slogan that he believes, rightly or not, was chanted at some of the protests there: “Christians to Beirut and the Alawites to the coffin.”
“Every week that passes,” he lamented, speaking by telephone from Damascus, the Syrian capital, “the worse the sectarian feelings get.”
The example of Iraq comes up often in conversations in Damascus, as does the civil war in Lebanon. The departure of Jews, who once formed a vibrant community in Syria, remains part of the collective memory, illustrating the tenuousness of diversity. Syria’s ostensibly secular government, having always relied on Alawite strength, denounces the prospect of sectarian differences while, its critics say, fanning the flames. The oft-voiced formula is, by now, familiar: after us, the deluge.
“My Alawite friends want me to support the regime, and they feel if it’s gone, our community will be finished,” said Mohsen, the young Alawite in Damascus, who asked that only his first name be used because he feared reprisal. “My Sunni friends want me to be against the regime, but I feel conflicted. We want freedom, but freedom with stability and security.”
That he used the mantra of years of Arab authoritarianism suggested that people still, in the words of one human rights activist, remain “hostage to the lack of possibilities” in states that, with few exceptions, have failed to come up with a sense of self that transcends the many divides.
“This started becoming a self-fulfilling myth,” said Mr. Azm, the Syrian intellectual.
“It was either our martial law or the martial law of the Islamists,” he added. “The third option was to divide the country into ethnicities, sects and so on.”
Despite a wave of repression, crackdown and civil war, hope and optimism still pervade the region, even in places like Syria, the setting of one of the most withering waves of violence. There, residents often speak of a wall of fear crumbling. Across the Arab world, there is a renewed sense of a collective destiny that echoes the headiest days of Arab nationalism in the 1950s and ’60s and perhaps even transcends it.
President Obama, in his speech on Thursday about the changes in the Arab world, spoke directly to that feeling. “Divisions of tribe, ethnicity and religious sect were manipulated as a means of holding on to power, or taking it away from somebody else. But the events of the past six months show us that strategies of repression and strategies of diversion will not work anymore.”
But no less pronounced are the old fears of zero-sum power, where one side wins and the other inevitably loses. From a Coptic Christian in Cairo to an Alawite farmer in Syria, discussions about the future are posed in terms of survival. Differences in Lebanon, a country that celebrates and laments the diversity of its 18 religious communities, are so pronounced that even soccer teams have a sectarian affiliation.
In Beirut, wrecked by a war over the country’s identity and so far sheltered from the gusts of change, activists have staged a small sit-in for two months to call for something different, in a plea that resonates across the Arab world.
The Square of Change, the protesters there have nicknamed it, and their demand is blunt: Citizenship that unites, not divides.
“We are not ‘we’ yet,” complained Tony Daoud, one of the activists. “What do we mean when we say ‘we’? ‘We’ as what? As a religion, as a sect, as human beings?”
-
Moving GM's post here from the Israel thread:
http://www.americanthinker.com/2011/05/the_middle_east_operational_co.html
May 21, 2011
The Middle East Operational Codes: Five Keys to Understanding
By David Bukay
Understanding the ME, as tumultuous, anarchist, and violent as it is, does not require complicated pundit analyses and convoluted explanations. Rather, in light of last month's uprisings, simplicity is the key, with five variables serving as instrumental in understanding the ME operational code.
The first key to understanding is that the Middle Eastern state, with its political institutions being a Western import, is weak and ineffective compared to the indigenous Middle Eastern social institutions: the clan, the tribe, and the religious community. The Arab states have emerged under European imperialistic rule, and their borders have been delineated without political, territorial, or functional logic. All Arab states comprise violent, hostile tribes and rival religious communities that stick together only by coercion from an oppressive authoritarian regime. In the absence of institutional legitimacy and participatory systems, order and stability are overturned by political decay and antagonistic politics. This means that operationally, when there is a crisis and the authority of the patrimonial leader weakens, the tendency is to revert to the secure, well-established frameworks of the tribe, the clan, or the religious community, releasing ancient rivalries that lead to chaotic violence.
The second key to understanding is that Middle Eastern leaders are not secure in their offices. Threatened by rivals from the political military elite and by Islamist movements (which are the only organized opposition groups), the leaders of authoritarian regimes cannot rule unless they are strong, violent, and patrimonial. This also means that democracy, as a consensual system with developmental stages, cannot emerge or exist. Therefore, when the authority of a ME regime disintegrates, the outcome is not democracy, but rather anarchy as the most likely replacement.
The third key to understanding, and perhaps the most important one, is the central role of the army, being the regime's principal power and political supporter. One can safely adopt the rule: "You tell me what the attitude of the army is vis-à-vis the regime, and I will tell you the longevity and survivability of the regime in power." This is exactly what is happening in Egypt, Libya, Yemen and Syria. This is exactly what will determine the fate of other regimes. Indeed, the Arab military in politics holds the highest importance in the ME.
The fourth key to understanding is that the inhabitants -- the masses -- have never been a sovereign electing people; historically, they have been without influence in the political realm and the decision-making processes. In the Arab world, there is no social contract based on trust and cooperation, as the foundation of Arab life is suspicion of the other and hatred of the foreigner. The only thing that binds the population together is fear of and intimidation by the authoritarian ruler. That is why the role of the ruler is so crucially important; one can say that it is almost demanded of him to conduct a reign of terror and intimidation on the population. Otherwise, chaos and anarchy prevail. Thus, when the barrier of fear is broken, as is happening now, the authority of the regime disintegrates. The central state system is weakened, and the political process turns to the street.
The fifth key to understanding is that the alternative to the current regimes in power are other leaders coming from the same political elite or Islamic groups coming from the opposition. Both are patrimonial, oppressive, and undemocratic. It must be clearly stated that aside from anarchy, one of the most likely alternatives to the ME regimes is not democracy, but Islamism. The Islamic phenomenon is not defensive and passive; it is an aggressive onslaught against modernism and secularism led by urban, educated, secular middle-class groups. Western permissiveness and materialism are the forces leading to these groups' return to Islam and motivating them to bring the Islamic religion back to a hegemony (al-Islam Huwa al-Hall al-Waheed).
Examining these keys through a macro-level analysis enables us to understand the ME operational codes. Thomas Friedman has praised the Arab revolution and accused Israel of being detached from the new realities (NYT, February, 2, 8, and 14, 2011). In his delusions, Friedman has envisioned a revolution of the Facebook generation that leads to democracy and the denial of Islamism. Likewise, other sources in Western media and many experts have celebrated the "emergence of the New ME," while in fact the opposite situation is the reality. Now these same sources are lamenting that the democratic revolution went wrong and that all that remains is a violent power struggle.
We are witnessing the same old chaotic, anarchic ME, and the Arab people's uprisings will not lead to democracies and consensual regimes. In fact, there is a high probability that the outcome of the uprisings will be either more oppressive authoritarian regimes and patrimonial leadership from the military or the emergence of Islamist groups under the Shari'ah. The latter outcome would ultimately lead to the victory of either Iran and the Shiite version of Islam or al-Qaeda and the Salafi-Sunni version of Islam.
Regarding the ME, the next decade is more likely to witness the emergence of the Sunni Caliphate or the Shiite Imamate struggling for hegemony. Both outcomes signal an imminent threat to the security of the West. However, instead of concentrating on understanding the operational code of the ME, and instead of trying to maintain the status quo, Western leaders prefer to operate through delusional wishful-thinking policies. This pattern is evidenced by Westerners' unwavering focus on the well-used scapegoat, the perhaps unsolvable "Palestinian question." It is as if regional and international leaders are desperately trying to find comfort in this one easily characterized issue.
There are more than twenty-five current civil wars going on around the world; there are a billion poor, miserable and hungry people who earn a dollar a day; there are deep food crises and water shortages; there are huge unresolved political issues and hosts of nations without the opportunity to form an independent state (James Minahan, Nations without States, Westport, CT, 1996). But the international community prefers to concentrate on the Palestinian issue. Indeed, we can draw a direct line between the world's desperation to solve real problems and its eagerness to deliberately concentrate on the Palestine situation.
One can only marvel at how blessed the Palestinians are to have everybody dealing with their issue, as if they are the only orphans of the world. One can only wonder how much political and financial support they receive at the expense of all those really in need. One can only be amazed at the stupidity of the false belief that all other regional issues will disappear, will be gone with the wind, if only the Palestinian issue is solved.
The hard truth is that rather than heralding the dawn of democracy and prosperity, this misguided belief and the misunderstanding of the ME operational code are more likely the harbinger of the dark winter of Islam -- a catastrophic set of circumstances that may well lead to the demise of U.S. influence, the destruction of Israel, and general regional chaos besides.
-
One mystery of American foreign policy, in Administrations of either party, is the eternal hope that the Assad family dynasty in Syria will one day experience an epiphany and become a reforming, pro-Western government.
Secretary of State Warren Christopher visited Damascus more than 20 times in the 1990s in search of a concession to peace that never came from Hafez Assad. President George W. Bush refused to implement the stiffest sanctions on Syria legislated by Congress and sent Secretary of State Colin Powell to beseech current President Bashar Assad to stop being a highway for jihadists into Iraq. To no avail.
President Obama also bought into the illusion, sending emissaries to turn Mr. Assad away from Iran, stop serving as a conduit for heavy weapons into Lebanon, and other impossible dreams. Even after the regime's crackdown on political opponents and the murder of hundreds, Mr. Obama held out hope in his Mideast speech last week that Mr. Assad will come around: "The Syrian people have shown their courage in demanding a transition to democracy. President Assad now has a choice: he can lead that transition, or get out of the way."
Mr. Assad long ago made his choice, and America's choice should be full-throated support for his democratic opponents.
-
Except his opponent might even be worse, once in power.
-
By MICHAEL SINGH
Mohsen Chizari gets around.
A top commander of the Quds Force of Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, Chizari was hit with sanctions last week by the Obama administration. Given his nationality, one might assume that he was sanctioned in relation to the Iranian regime's nuclear pursuits or its crackdown on dissidents. In fact, Chizari, the Quds Force Chief Qasem Soleimani, and the organization itself were targeted for abetting oppression somewhere else: Syria.
According to the U.S. government, the Iranians are complicit in the Assad regime's "human rights abuses and repression of the Syrian people."
If Chizari's name sounds familiar, it may be because he was arrested by U.S. troops in Baghdad in December 2006. According to media reports, Chizari was detained while inside the compound of Iraqi Shiite leader Abdel Aziz al-Hakim with another Quds Force commander. The two men were reportedly in possession of detailed reports about weapons shipments into Iraq, including of so-called explosively formed projectiles, which were responsible for the deaths of scores of U.S. soldiers. Chizari was subsequently expelled into Iran by the Iraqi government.
It should come as little surprise that Chizari has shown up in both hot spots. Wherever there's trouble, he'll be there to aid the troublemakers or stir things up himself.
The Quds Force reports directly to Iran's leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and it serves as the linchpin in Iran's regional strategy. Iran funds and arms groups like Hezbollah to threaten Israel and thwart democracy-building in Lebanon. And it equips terrorists in Iraq and Afghanistan to stymie U.S. efforts to establish peace and security in those places. In all of these cases, the Quds Force is the regime's instrument of choice.
Iran's leaders crowed when popular uprisings unseated their old foes Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali in Tunisia and Hosni Mubarak in Egypt. But the travails of Syrian dictator Bashar Assad have clearly caused concern in Tehran. Assad is a longtime ally of Iran, and under his rule Syria has served as a conduit eastward for foreign fighters to enter Iraq to fight U.S. troops, and for Iranian weaponry to flow westward to arm Hezbollah and Hamas. Damascus is essentially the bar scene from "Star Wars" for terrorists in the Middle East, providing a locale where Iranian allies such as Hamas and Islamic Jihad can coordinate unperturbed.
View Full Image
Associated Press
Syrian President Bashar Assad
.Were Assad to fall, a key link in Iran's strategic chain across the region would be broken. While Iran could possibly find work-arounds to supply Hezbollah, such as by sea or air, it would lose both strategic depth and an eager ally. Furthermore, if protesters in Syria were to inspire Iran's own democracy activists to redouble their efforts, the Iranian regime would find itself in serious peril. Thus it is unsurprising that it has dispatched the Quds Force to help Assad stop the Arab Spring at his doorstep.
Iran's latest involvement in Syria should be a wake-up call. Iran's direct assistance in the Syrian regime's crackdown has attracted criticism from many quarters; it's even put Tehran at odds with erstwhile allies such as Turkey. Iran's actions have also contributed to a shift in the Obama administration's approach toward Tehran. In addition to imposing sanctions on Chizari and his ilk, on April 22 President Obama said that Assad was mimicking Iran's "brutal tactics."
Ultimately, tough words and sanctions will not be enough. Chizari and his exploits in Iraq and Syria represent one facet of the threat posed by Iran. If our hopes for freedom and stability in the region are to be realized, we must defeat Iran's efforts to expand its power and influence—above all by denying it the nuclear weapons that would further its destabilizing designs.
Mr. Singh is the managing director of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. He was senior director for Middle East affairs at the National Security Council during the George W. Bush administration.
-
ThE protesters who have toppled or endangered Arab dictators are demanding more freedoms, fair elections and a crackdown on corruption. But they have not promoted a distinct ideology, let alone a coherent one. This is because private organizations have played only a peripheral role and the demonstrations have lacked leaders of stature.
Both limitations are due to the longstanding dearth, across the Arab world, of autonomous nongovernmental associations serving as intermediaries between the individual and the state. This chronic weakness of civil society suggests that viable Arab democracies — or leaders who could govern them — will not emerge anytime soon. The more likely immediate outcome of the current turmoil is a new set of dictators or single-party regimes.
Democracy requires checks and balances, and it is largely through civil society that citizens protect their rights as individuals, force policy makers to accommodate their interests, and limit abuses of state authority. Civil society also promotes a culture of bargaining and gives future leaders the skills to articulate ideas, form coalitions and govern.
The preconditions for democracy are lacking in the Arab world partly because Hosni Mubarak and other Arab dictators spent the past half-century emasculating the news media, suppressing intellectual inquiry, restricting artistic expression, banning political parties, and co-opting regional, ethnic and religious organizations to silence dissenting voices.
But the handicaps of Arab civil society also have historical causes that transcend the policies of modern rulers. Until the establishment of colonial regimes in the late 19th century, Arab societies were ruled under Shariah law, which essentially precludes autonomous and self-governing private organizations. Thus, while Western Europe was making its tortuous transition from arbitrary rule by monarchs to democratic rule of law, the Middle East retained authoritarian political structures. Such a political environment prevented democratic institutions from taking root and ultimately facilitated the rise of modern Arab dictatorships.
Strikingly, Shariah lacks the concept of the corporation, a perpetual and self-governing organization that can be used either for profit-making purposes or to provide social services. Islam’s alternative to the nonprofit corporation was the waqf, a trust established in accordance with Shariah to deliver specified services forever, through trustees bound by essentially fixed instructions. Until modern times, schools, charities and places of worship, all organized as corporations in Western Europe, were set up as waqfs in the Middle East.
A corporation can adjust to changing conditions and participate in politics. A waqf can do neither. Thus, in premodern Europe, politically vocal churches, universities, professional associations and municipalities provided counterweights to monarchs. In the Middle East, apolitical waqfs did not foster social movements or ideologies.
Starting in the mid-19th century, the Middle East imported the concept of the corporation from Europe. In stages, self-governing Arab municipalities, professional associations, cultural groups and charities assumed the social functions of waqfs. Still, Arab civil society remains shallow by world standards.
A telling indication is that in their interactions with private or public organizations, citizens of Arab states are more likely than those in advanced democracies to rely on personal relationships with employees or representatives. This pattern is reflected in corruption statistics of Transparency International, which show that in Arab countries relationships with government agencies are much more likely to be viewed as personal business deals. A historically rooted preference for personal interactions limits the significance of organizations, which helps to explain why nongovernmental organizations have played only muted roles in the Arab uprisings.
=======
Page 2 of 2)
A less powerful business sector also hindered democracy. The Middle East reached the industrial era with an atomistic private sector unequipped to compete with giant enterprises that had come to dominate the global economy. Until then, Arab businesses consisted exclusively of small, short-lived enterprises established under Islamic partnership law. This was a byproduct of Islam’s egalitarian inheritance system, which aimed to spread wealth. Successful enterprises were typically dissolved when a partner died, and to avoid the consequent losses Arab businessmen kept their enterprises both small and transitory.
Arab businesses had less political clout than their counterparts in Western Europe, where huge, established companies contributed to civil society directly as a political force against arbitrary government. They also did so indirectly by supporting social causes. For example, during industrialization, major European businesses financed political campaigns, including the mass education and antislavery movements.
Since the late 19th century, commercial codes transplanted from abroad have enabled Arabs to form large, durable enterprises like major banks, telecommunications giants and retail chains. Still, Arab companies tend to be smaller relative to global norms, which limits their power vis-à-vis the state. Although large Western corporations have been known to suppress political competition and restrict individual rights, in Arab countries it is the paucity of large private companies that poses the greater obstacle to democracy.
Despite these handicaps, there is some cause for optimism when it comes to democratization in the Middle East. The Arab world does not have to start from scratch. A panoply of private organizations are already present, though mainly in embryonic form. And if the current turmoil produces regimes more tolerant of grassroots politics and diversity of opinion, more associations able to defend individual freedoms will surely arise.
Moreover, the cornerstones of a modern economy are in place and widely accepted. Economic features at odds with Shariah, like banks and corporations, were adopted sufficiently long ago to become part of local culture. Their usefulness makes them appealing even to Islamists who find fault with other features of modernity.
Over the last 150 years, the Arab world has achieved structural economic transformations that took Europe a millennium. Its economic progress, whatever the shortcomings, has been remarkable. If political progress has lagged, this is partly because forming strong nongovernmental organizations takes time. Within a generation or two, as the economic transformations of the past century-and-a-half continue to change the way citizens interact with organizations, insurmountable pressure for democracy may yet arise even in those corners of the Arab world where civil society is weakest.
A stronger civil society alone will not bring about democracy. After all, private organizations can promote illiberal and despotic agendas, as Islamist organizations that denounce political pluralism and personal freedoms demonstrate. But without a strong civil society, dictators will never yield power, except in the face of foreign intervention.
Independent and well-financed private organizations are thus essential to the success of democratic transitions. They are also critical to maintaining democracies, once they have emerged. Indeed, without strong private players willing and able to resist undemocratic forces, nascent Arab democracies could easily slip back into authoritarianism.
-
Iran has reportedly deployed submarines to the Red Sea in what appears to be another highly symbolic and low-cost power projection move. The timing of this deployment comes at a particularly tense time in the region, but if you take a hard look at Iranian capabilities beyond the symbolic actions and rhetoric, you’ll find that Iran is still facing a number of very large limitations.
Iran state-run Fars News Agency reported today that Iranian submarines have made their way to the Red Sea and are being accompanied by the Iranian navy’s 14th fleet. Now, we saw a similar move by the Iranians back in February when Iran deployed two warships through the Suez Canal on its way to Syria in the Mediterranean. That was the first such deployment since 1979.
The U.S. response to these Iranian military maneuvers has been pretty consistent and can be summed up in as many words as “no big deal.” The United States is making a concerted effort to deny Iran the attention it’s seeking through these military posturing moves.
Obviously, Iran and has a big opportunity on its hands and are lying in wait to fill a power vacuum in Iraq once the U.S. leaves. The site of Sadrite militiamen marching through the streets of Baghdad sends a very powerful message by the Iranians to the Arab states as well as to the United States that it has militant proxies that are ready to go to war if the United States even thinks about extending its stay in Iraq. This is all about Iran calling dibs on the Mesopotamian sphere of influence.
At the same time, you have uprisings across the region creating very real problems for long-standing Arab monarchies. Bahrain is a prime example. Today, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said, and I’m paraphrasing, that the real problem in Bahrain is not between the people and the rulers of Bahrain, it’s with the U.S. military presence in Bahrain. Ahmadinejad added that Iran has a formula for the settlement of the Bahraini crisis, but it would only introduce that formula when the conditions were ripe.
Ahmadinejad is issuing a very explicit ultimatum to the GCC states. Basically he’s saying, “Look, you guys have internal problems. You accuse us of meddling in your internal affairs and inflaming those internal problems. That may be the case but let’s talk and we can help make those problems go away. The price of that is going to be for you to kick the United States out.”
Now the real question is: does Iran have the leverage to be making these kinds of threats and ultimatums? Certainly, Iran has a robust set of nonconventional capabilities to bring to bear and we seen after Hezbollah in Lebanon, through its militant assets in Iraq and even through its links to the Shiite opposition in Bahrain. But the GCC states, much less the United States, are not entirely convinced that Iran has what it takes to reshape the politics of the region.
Therefore, even as Iran is trying to coerce its Arab neighbors and the United States to negotiate on its terms and reach a solution that would aim to recognize Iran’s sphere of influence while limiting U.S. influence in the region, the more likely effect is that the GCC states, along with the United States, will band together in search of ways to try to keep the Iranians contained.
-
Iran has reportedly deployed submarines to the Red Sea in what appears to be another highly symbolic and low-cost power projection move. The timing of this deployment comes at a particularly tense time in the region, but if you take a hard look at Iranian capabilities beyond the symbolic actions and rhetoric, you’ll find that Iran is still facing a number of very large limitations.
Iran state-run Fars News Agency reported today that Iranian submarines have made their way to the Red Sea and are being accompanied by the Iranian navy’s 14th fleet. Now, we saw a similar move by the Iranians back in February when Iran deployed two warships through the Suez Canal on its way to Syria in the Mediterranean. That was the first such deployment since 1979.
I don't think it would be much for a "limited kinetic military activity" to kill those subs. Might be a good lesson to teach.
-
Wouldn't it be nice if this works out?
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/right-turn/post/a-king-a-speech-and-a-new-constitution-for-morocco/2011/03/29/AGSximcH_blog.html
A king, a speech, and a new constitution for Morocco
By Jennifer Rubin
On Friday Bashar al-Assad was slaughtering his own people. Iran continued to hold two Americans in prison. Moammar Gaddafi remained in power while the House of Representatives and President Obama bickered about the War Powers Act. And in Morocco a new “landmark” constitution guaranteeing equality for women, empowering an elected parliament and chief executive, and mandating an independent judiciary was rolled out. It’s a measure of just how much the squeaky wheel dominates the media and the U.S. government that there was virtually no U.S. coverage of the historic event, and that as of Sunday night the State Department had not issued a statement.
As CNN reported: “[The king’s] actions followed a series of unprecedented protests in this North African modern Muslim country, where street protests are normally tolerated by the state, unlike in most other Arab countries.”The speech delivered by King Mohammed VI provided a detailed description of a new constitution that will be put to a national vote on July 1. One Moroccan observer said the new government structure was similar to Spain — a monarch remains, but power is devolved to a democratically elected parliament, protections for minorities and women are concretized, and powers are spread to the judiciary, the parliament and to local government.
The king noted in describing the preamble, “The first pillar is the commitment to the Moroccan nation’s immutable values, the preservation and sustainability of which is entrusted to me, within the framework an Islamic country in which the King and Commander of the Faithful ensures the protection of the faith and guarantees the freedom of religious practice.” Yes it is a Muslim country and the monarch derives legitimacy in part from his role as the highest religious authority, but he also guarantees, in a constitutional document, the freedom to practice other religions.
The king also spelled out a constitutional protection for diversity:
Given the cohesion characterizing the various components of our unified, rich and diverse national identity — including the Arabic Islamic, Berber, Saharan, African, Andalusian, Jewish [emphasis added] and Mediterranean components — the draft Constitution confirms the status of Arabic as an official language of the Kingdom, and provides that the State pledges to protect and promote it.
It also provides for constitutionalizing the Amazigh [Berber] language as an official language as well, within the framework of a pioneering initiative which is the culmination of a course of action to rehabilitate the Amazigh language as a heritage belonging to all Moroccans. The official character of the Amazigh language will be gradually implemented through an organic law, which will specify the ways and means of integrating it in teaching and in basic public sectors.
In parallel, the draft Constitution provides for the promotion of all linguistic and cultural expressions in Morocco, particularly the Hassani culture, which is a characteristic feature of our beloved Saharan provinces.
I dare say that Jews don’t find a positive reference like that in any other Muslim country’s legal framework.
-
:-o
Please keep us apprised of further developments :-)
-
This is what comes of Baraq, Hillary, the rest of the Pooh Bahs of the Demogogue Party, and their running dogs in the Pravdas, sabotaging our efforts in Iraq under Bush. :x :x :x
=======================
STRATFOR analyst Reva Bhalla discusses the emerging dynamics in the Middle East, where Iran waits to exploit the power vacuum left in Iraq by the U.S. withdrawal, while unrest simmers in Syria and Bahrain.
Editor’s Note: Transcripts are generated using speech-recognition technology. Therefore, STRATFOR cannot guarantee their complete accuracy.
Colin: As the Obama administration frets about the prospects for Afghanistan, its relations with Pakistan, the diminishing options for NATO in Libya, the negative Israeli response to peace proposals and, of course, the U.S. deficit, a power vacuum is emerging in the Middle East. Unrest is simmering in many countries, especially Syria and Bahrain, and as Iran prepares to take advantage, countries like Saudi Arabia and Turkey are uneasy.
Welcome to Agenda, and to look at the problematic power vacuum in more detail, I’m joined by Reva Bhalla, STRATFOR’s senior Middle East analyst. Reva, let’s start with Bahrain. More than three months ago, when the Shiite-led protests reached their peak, it looked as if there was a very serious confrontation building up between Iran and Saudi Arabia, with Bahrain as the main proxy battleground. Where does that situation stand today?
Reva: Well if you look at the situation in Bahrain today as compared to, say, in mid-March, things certainly look a lot calmer, but the Bahraini government is certainly walking a political tightrope. Coming up we have a national dialogue that the Bahraini government is initiating on July 2 where it’s trying to show that it’s reaching out the opposition, bringing them into the political fold, and at the very least, listening to their demands. But, we are also seeing protests continue. On Thursday, tear gas was used against protesters. There are plans for more protests, and these are led by the majority Shiite opposition. This is especially concerning not only to Bahrain, but also to the Saudis who lead the GCC force that has a military presence currently in the island country. Now, going back to the origin of these protests, there are legitimate Shiite grievances there, but the real fear of these Sunni royal families is that Iran could bring its covert assets to bear and initiate larger uprisings that could seriously undermine the authority of these Sunni royal governments. That’s something that would certainly work in favor of the Iranians as they’re trying to expand their sphere of influence in eastern Arabia. Now while Saudi Arabia and its GCC allies were very quick to clamp down in Bahrain in mid-March and arrest most of the unruly elements that were tied to Iran, there is some indication that Iran has exercised some constraint and that they still have some assets that they could bring to the table and further destabilize these Sunni royal regimes, and so the GCC states are very wary of the fact. They’re also looking ahead at Ramadan, which begins in August, and you know, at this time you have an opportunity for Shiite opposition groups to organize. You have religious tensions particularly high at this time and the Bahrainis do not want to see a situation escalate that Iran could exploit further down the line.
Colin: So, what happens now?
Reva: We’re looking at a situation now where the rumors are circulating that the GCC forces are drawing down their military forces in Bahrain, saying that the situation is calm enough for us to be able to do this. Now, what we’re really interested in at STRATFOR is whether this drawdown of forces is a limited concession by the Saudis to initiate a dialogue with the Iranians. We’ve seen over the past couple weeks in particular the Iranians putting out feelers for negotiations with the Saudis, and the reason for that is because the Iranians want to show its Arab adversaries that it can compel them into negotiations and those negotiations would be all about getting them to recognize the Iranian sphere of influence in exchange for Iran taking a step back and putting an end to, or at least a cessation to, its meddling in internal Arab affairs. Now, whether this dialogue actually produces some results remains to be seen — we’re watching this very closely. But the Iranians made a point today to announce that they are very happy to see the drawdown of Saudi forces in Bahrain, so this could be the beginning of a broader negotiation there.
Colin: Right. Let’s move west to the Levant region where Syria is continuing its crackdowns: how does this fit into the Persian-Arab struggle you’ve just been describing to me?
Reva: Well you can see why Iran would be so worried about Syria right now. We don’t believe that the Syrian regime is on the verge of collapse, and that’s because we don’t see serious splits within the army. As long as the Alawites remain together in Syria, as long as the army holds together, we don’t see the type of splits that would indicate that this regime is in very serious trouble, at least in the near future. Now, the regime has a lot of complications moving ahead as it tries to pull out of this crisis, as it tries to manage its opposition. Especially as you have outside forces — like Turkey, like Saudi Arabia, like the United States — thinking about the alternatives to the al Assad regime. And that alternative would most likely be a Sunni entity, and you can see Turkey wanting to restore Sunni influence in the Levant region and, over time, allowing for such a political transformation. That is something that would work directly against Iranian interests because, remember, Iran, to maintain its foothold in the Levant, needs a crucial ally in Syria so that it can support its main militant proxy, Hezbollah, in Lebanon. And the Alawite Baathist regime in Damascus today, which has been in power now for the last four decades, allows Iran to do so. But if that regime falls, with time, Iran loses that very crucial leverage, and that is a key pillar in its overall deterrent strategy.
Colin: Let’s talk about Turkey. Its government is now at the start of its third term. George Friedman and I discussed the challenges for the foreign minister in a broad sense. But more specifically, does Turkey now have the ability to effect any kind of change in Syria?
Reva: Well it’s an interesting question and I think that’s one that Turks are actually asking themselves right now. You know, for a long time as Turkey has been coming out of its geopolitical shell in many respects, it’s been out of the game for the past 90-odd years. It’s now starting to see again what kinds of influence it can project in the region, and it’s starting to see that its zero-problems-with-neighbors policy is grinding against reality. And Syria is probably the best case example of this. In Syria, again, you have a situation where Iran is very worried about the sustainability of the Syrian regime, even if that regime is not about to collapse right away. The Turks have an interest in restoring Sunni authority in Syria and projecting its influence in that country. Whether Turkey acknowledges this public or not, it has a problem with its neighbors — it has a problem with Syria — and Syria is, in effect, an indirect confrontation between the Turks and the Persians. And so this is a very interesting dynamic, one that we’ve been expecting to come to light for some time as Turkey is the natural counter-balance to Iranian power in this region. And Syria is really not the only point of contention there. Really, the crucial area that we want to look at is Mesopotamia, and that’s where we have the U.S. withdrawing from Iraq leaving open a power vacuum that the Iranians have been waiting a very long time to fill, and then the Turks have been working very quietly to bolster the Sunni forces to balance against the Iranians. That’s sort of the natural proxy battleground between these two powers. So while publicly Turkey’s still trying to show that it does not have these big problems with its neighbors, that it’s downplaying any sort of confrontation, at a certain point it becomes very hard to hide the fact that these problems are coming to the fore.
Colin: Now, you mention the power vacuum as the Americans leave Iraq. In Washington, President Obama has much in his mind: Afghanistan of course, NATO’s problems in Libya, the deficit. So how much focus is there on the triangular issue that we’ve just been talking about?
Reva: I really don’t think that the U.S. can devote that much attention to these issues, as important as they are. And really the crucial issue for the United States is the future of Iraq, and what to do about the impending withdrawal there. How do you create an efficient blocking force against Iran, and if you can’t, can the U.S. actually engage in a fruitful negotiation with the Iranians, however unsavory that may be, to form some sort of understanding on a balance of power in the Persian Gulf region. Now that is something that, of course, is going to alarm the Saudis greatly. And that’s why, again, we’re looking at these hints of concessions in Bahrain to see if the Saudis are going to try to preempt the U.S. When the Saudis can’t depend on the U.S. fully right now to play that blocking role against the Iranians, and if the Turks aren’t quite ready completely fulfill that role, then will the Saudis try to move ahead and try to work out at least some sort of limited understanding for the short term to secure its interests at least until the U.S. can turn its attention back to these very important issues.
Colin: Reva, thanks. Reva Bhalla there, STRATFOR’s senior Middle East analyst. And in next week’s agenda, I’ll be talking to George Friedman about Iran — the first in a series of Agenda specials on world pressure points. I’m Colin Chapman. Until next time, goodbye.
-
This is what comes of Baraq, Hillary, the rest of the Pooh Bahs of the Demogogue Party, and their running dogs in the Pravdas, sabotaging our efforts in Iraq under Bush. :x :x :x
=======================
STRATFOR analyst Reva Bhalla discusses the emerging dynamics in the Middle East, where Iran waits to exploit the power vacuum left in Iraq by the U.S. withdrawal, while unrest simmers in Syria and Bahrain.
Senator Reid On Iraq: "This War Is Lost"
(CBS/AP) The Senate debate on Iraq grew sharper Thursday when Majority Leader Harry Reid said the war had been lost and that President Bush's troop buildup is not stemming the rampant violence. That statement prompted Republicans to declare that Democrats do not support the troops in Iraq.
"I believe myself that the secretary of state, secretary of defense and — you have to make your own decisions as to what the president knows — (know) this war is lost and the surge is not accomplishing anything as indicated by the extreme violence in Iraq yesterday," said Reid.
-
Iran steps up the pressure on Baraq.
One wonders, will there be a last flight out of Baghdad from the roof of the American Embassy?
=============================
By JAY SOLOMON
TEHRAN—Iran's elite military unit, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, has transferred lethal new munitions to its allies in Iraq and Afghanistan in recent months, according to senior U.S. officials, in a bid to accelerate the U.S. withdrawals from these countries.
The Revolutionary Guard has smuggled rocket-assisted exploding projectiles to its militia allies in Iraq, weapons that have already resulted in the deaths of American troops, defense officials said. They said Iranians have also given long-range rockets to the Taliban in Afghanistan, increasing the insurgents' ability to hit U.S. and other coalition positions from a safer distance.
Such arms shipments would escalate the shadow competition for influence playing out between Tehran and Washington across the Middle East and North Africa, fueled by U.S. preparations to draw down forces from two wars and the political rebellions that are sweeping the region.
The U.S. is wrestling with the aftermath of uprisings against longtime Arab allies from Tunisia to Bahrain, and trying to leave behind stable, friendly governments in Afghanistan and Iraq. Iran appears to be trying to gain political ground amid the turmoil and to make the U.S. withdrawals as quick and painful as possible.
"I think we are likely to see these Iranian-backed groups continue to maintain high attack levels" as the exit date nears, Maj. Gen. James Buchanan, the U.S. military's top spokesman in Iraq, said in an interview. "But they are not going to deter us from doing everything we can to help the Iraqi security forces."
In June, 15 U.S. servicemen died in Iraq, the highest monthly casualty figure there in more than two years. The U.S. has attributed all the attacks to Shiite militias it says are are trained by the Revolutionary Guards, rather than al Qaeda or other Sunni groups that were the most lethal forces inside Iraq a few years ago.
In Afghanistan, the Pentagon has in recent months traced to Iran the Taliban's acquisition of rockets that give its fighters roughly double the range to attack North Atlantic Treaty Organization and U.S. targets. U.S. officials said the rockets' markings, and the location of their discovery, give them a "high degree" of confidence that they came from the Revolutionary Guard's overseas unit, the Qods Force.
U.S. defense officials are also increasingly concerned that Iran's stepped-up military activities in the Persian Gulf could inadvertently trigger a clash. A number of near misses involving Iranian and allied ships and planes in those waters in recent months have caused Navy officials to call for improved communication in the Gulf.
Iran's assertive foreign policy comes amid a growing power struggle between President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Many of the president's closest aides have been detained on alleged corruption charges in recent weeks, raising questions as to whether Mr. Ahmadinejad will serve out his term.U.S. and European officials also say Iran has grown increasingly aggressive in trying to influence the political rebellions across the Middle East and North Africa. Tehran is alleged to have dispatched military advisers to Syria to help President Bashar al-Assad put down a popular uprising.
In recent months, according to U.S. officials, Iran has also increased its intelligence and propaganda activities in Egypt, Bahrain and Yemen, countries where pro-U.S. leaders have either fallen or come under intense pressure.
Iranian officials denied in interviews and briefings this week that the Revolutionary Guard played any role in arming militants in Iraq and Afghanistan. They charged the U.S. with concocting these stories to justify maintaining an American military presence in the region.
"This is the propaganda of the Americans. They are worried because they have to leave Iraq very soon, according to the plan," said Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Ramin Mehmanparast. "They are better off going home and sorting out their own domestic problems."
Iranians officials have also accused the U.S. and Israel of interfering in Iranian affairs, including assassinating Iranian nuclear scientists and supporting opposition groups. The U.S. and Israel have denied this.
In recent weeks, Iran's leadership invited the presidents of Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iraq to Tehran to discuss regional affairs. Senior Iranian officials made it clear during those meetings that they wanted an accelerated exit of American forces from the region.
"Americans want to have permanent bases in Afghanistan, and this is dangerous because the real security will not be established as long as the American military forces are present," Ayatollah Khamenei told Afghan President Hamid Karzai last week, according to Iranian state media.
Iraq has in recent years been a proxy battlefield for the U.S. and Iran. U.S. officials in Iraq said the Qods Force is training and arming three primary militias that have in recent months attacked U.S. and Iraqi forces. Kata'ib Hezbollah, or Brigades of the Party of God, is viewed as the one most directly taking orders from Revolutionary Guard commanders in Iran. Two others, the Promise Day Brigade and Asa'ib Ahl al-Haq, are offshoots of the Mahdi Army headed by the anti-American cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, who currently lives in Iran.
Over the past six months, Kata'ib Hezbollah has escalated attacks on U.S. forces employing weapons called IRAMs, or improvised rocket-assisted munitions. The weapons are often propane tanks packed with hundreds of pounds of explosives and powered by rockets. Militiamen launch the weapons from the backs of flatbed trucks.
Kata'ib Hezbollah claimed credit for a June 6 IRAM attack that killed six American troops at Camp Victory, near Baghdad International Airport. This week, three more Americans were killed when an IRAM struck a desert base just a few miles from the Iranian border in Iraq's Wasit Province, according to U.S. officials.
"We believe the militias see themselves as in competition with each other," said Gen. Buchanan. "They want to claim credit for making us leave Iraq."
The U.S. believes Iranian involvement in Afghanistan is significantly lower than in Iraq. But U.S. officials said they have seen clear evidence that the Revolutionary Guard has transferred longer-range rockets to elements of the Taliban that significantly enhance their ability to target U.S. and other NATO forces.
In February, British forces intercepted a shipment of four dozen 122-millimeter rockets moving through Afghanistan's desolate Nimruz Province near the Iranian and Pakistan borders. The rockets have an estimated range of about 13 miles, more than double the distance of the majority of the Taliban's other rockets.
"It was the first time we've seen that weapon," said a senior U.S. defense official in Afghanistan. "We saw that as upping the ante a bit from the kind of support we've seen in the past."
U.S. officials stressed that most of Iran's influence in Afghanistan is channeled through "soft power"—business, aid and diplomacy. But these officials said the deployment of more U.S. and NATO forces along the Afghan-Iranian border as part of the Obama administration's Afghanistan "surge" appears to have raised Iran's sense of insecurity.
These officials said Iran's support for the Taliban appears to wax and wane in relation to how successful Washington and NATO appear to be in stabilizing Afghanistan. Shiite-majority Iran has traditionally viewed the Taliban, a Sunni group, with trepidation. The two sides nearly fought a war in 1998 after the Taliban executed Iranian diplomats based in the central Afghan city of Mazar-i-Sharif.
"They're supporting the Taliban because they want us out of here," said the U.S. official in Afghanistan. "If we're making gains, I can see them upping their support. If they're making gains, they'll probably stay quiet."
In large part because of the growing wariness over Iran's backing of Shiite militias in Iraq, the U.S. is considering altering its withdrawal plans from the country, say administration and defense officials.
All U.S. forces are due to depart at the end of the year, but senior American officials have hinted loudly that they would like Baghdad to ask the U.S. to keep a viable force in the country beyond that date. Some administration and military officials have talked about retaining 10,000 troops in Iraq.
Military officials and defense analysts cite Iran as a prime justification for extending the U.S. presence. They say Iran is trying to use its military, which is much more powerful than Iraq's, and Shiite proxy militias inside Iraq to pressure Baghdad to maintain close ties with Tehran.
Adm. William McRaven, the administration's nominee to lead Special Operations Command, told a Senate panel this week that he favors keeping a commando force in Iraq that would be available to counter threats.
—Julian E. Barnes contributed to this article.
Write to Jay Solomon at jay.solomon@wsj.com
-
July 8, 2011
VIDEO: AGENDA: WITH GEORGE FRIEDMAN ON IRAN
In the first of a special edition of Agenda on world pressure points, STRATFOR CEO
Dr. George Friedman examines the tricky relationship between the United States and
Iran. He argues the risk of Iranian hegemony in the Persian Gulf is a more pressing
issue than Iran's nuclear ambitions.
Editor’s Note: Transcripts are generated using speech-recognition technology.
Therefore, STRATFOR cannot guarantee their complete accuracy.
Colin: The great Satan and the axis of evil, several years ago the leaders of the
United States and Iran traded these insults about each other and its relations with
Tehran tend to be one of the most worrisome for the United States State Department,
made worse of course by Iran's nuclear ambitions and its territorial goals as
Americans leave Iraq.
Welcome to Agenda with George Friedman. George what is it about Iran that worries us
the most? Is it its steady move towards having nuclear weapons or the prospect of
Iranian hegemony in the Persian Gulf?
George: Clearly the issue is the changing balance of power in the Persian Gulf and
the possibility, if not of hegemony by Iran, then certainly increased power. The
withdrawal of the United States from Iraq has opened the possibility of Iranian
influence growing dramatically or even domination of Iraq. The events in Bahrain
where Iranian inspired demonstrators tried to topple the government and Saudi Arabia
intervened, the presence of Shiites throughout the Arabian Peninsula and the absence
of the United States, all taken together, have created a situation where Iran is
going to be the largest conventional military force in the Persian Gulf region. And
that would change the balance of power dramatically.
Colin: In other words, a serious problem.
George: The change in the balance of power is not necessarily a serious problem so
long as Iran and the United States and Europe, for example, reach some sort of
accommodation. Under the current circumstances, in which the West is hostile to
Iran, Europe differently than the United States, but still hostile. The growing
power of Iran over what constitutes a massive outflow of oil to the world opens the
possibility of the Iranians being able to interfere with that flow and profoundly
affecting Western economies. Right now the United States, in particular, is aligned
with Saudi Arabia, and it is through Saudi Arabia that it guarantees the flow of oil
to the west. Should Saudi Arabia become relatively weaker compared to Iran and Iran
plays a greater role in this, then the relationship between the United States,
between Europe and Iran becomes critical. Under the current configuration of
relationships, any growth of power in Iran threatens the interests of the United
States and Europe.
Colin: Turning to the nuclear issue how far is Iran from acquiring operable nuclear
weapons?
George: Here is what we know so far about the nuclear weapons. First, Iran has not
detonated a test. How far they are from detonating a test is unclear but the
distance between a testable nuclear device and deliverable nuclear weapon is
substantial. A nuclear weapon, it has to be small enough to sit on top of a rocket,
for example, rugged enough to withstand the incredible stresses of launch, entry
into a vacuum of space, high and low temperatures in space, re-entry and must be
able to work. That's a very complex thing; it's not easy to do. It is not easy but
relatively easier to simply detonate a test weapon but to go from there to a
deliverable nuclear device that is reliable, since it had better explode on contact
or there are consequences for the Iranians, that's even harder and it requires much
more than simply being able to enrich uranium. There are many other technologies
involved, most importantly quality assurance, making certain that each part works as
it does, testing and so on. And I suspect that is going to take the Iranians quite a
bit of time if they can do it all. I don't regard the Iranian nuclear program as
necessarily the extraordinary game-changer that others do. The real game-changer in
the Persian Gulf is the existing Iranian military force and its ability to operate
against any combination of forces native to the area if the United States leaves.
The nuclear program is a wonderful negotiating device which compels the West to sit
down and talk to them and they are in a position of strength it appears, but it is
far more than that than a military weapon. It is a psychological weapon, a political
weapon and in that sense it is almost irrelevant whether it ever exists.
Colin: Let's talk about the chasm between the United States and Iran. Does the
United States have any kind of strategy to bridge it?
George: Washington is of two minds on Iran. One is the ongoing belief that existed
since 1979 that Iran's government would face a popular uprising that will topple it
and there's always been this belief that it would happen. Washington and the media
got tremendously excited in 2009 during what was called the Green Revolution, which
STRATFOR's position was that it was a pretty isolated, relatively minor affair that
would be fairly easily put down by the government as it was. But there's still the
ongoing belief that there is tremendous dissatisfaction in Iran that would translate
itself to revolutionary action. The other idea is that there are political tensions
in the Iranian elite that will tear them apart. Well it will certainly be stressful
but there are stresses in the British government, within the American government. I
don't see the stresses in Iran even between institutions such as the presidency and
the supreme leader as leading to the same result. I think to a very great extent
that this fixation on internal evolutions in Iran has paralyzed American strategic
thinking.
Colin: So what you're really saying, George, is there is no strategy.
George: Well there is a strategy, I think it is a wrongheaded strategy but it's also
a strategy that allows the United States not to make any fundamental decisions. The
fundamental decision the United States has about Iran is the three. First, go to war
-- very dangerous. Second, negotiate with Iran -- politically very difficult.
Thirdly, hope for the best -- some sort of evolution in Iran. The American
predilection to hope for the best relieves any American administration of the need
to take unpleasant actions from negotiations to war and so it suits everybody's mind
to think that shortly you will have destabilization.
Colin: What could the Iranians do realistically; they are not going to give up their
nuclear weapons?
George: I don't really think the Iranians care about their nuclear weapon. To Iran,
the most important thing is the decision of the United States to withdrawal from
Iraq. Their historic fear has been another war with Iraq. That’s gone because of
what the United States did. Remember they lost a million casualties during the war
of the 1980s. They don't want that again, well that's gone. The Iranians are at an
extraordinary point in their history. For the first time in a very long time, it
appears that there will be a drawdown of a global presence in the region. This opens
the door for tremendous Iranian opportunities and I think one of the things that's
going on inside of Iran is a tussle, if you will, in the elite of just how much risk
to take. It's not clear who wants to take more or less risk but you're facing a
situation where Iran could emerge with its historical dream intact: the dominant
power in the Persian Gulf. And this is not simply an Islamic dream. This was the
Shah's dream; this was his father's dream. This has been the ongoing Persian dream
for a very long time. It's at hand, it's not a certainty but that is what they are
really focusing on: to be able to define the politics of the Persian Gulf, the oil
revenues of the Persian Gulf, the governments of the Persian Gulf, I mean this is
the real opportunity and I think the nuclear weapons is very much a side issue for
them.
Colin: Of course the United States was a participant in trying to help the Shah
achieve his dream. You would think there would be a greater upside in resolving the
conflict. Is there a chance, any chance, of that point being reached?
George: Remember that the United States in the 1960s and 70s had a dual strategy.
One was the support of Saudi Arabia; the other was the support of Iran. Although
there were tensions between the two countries many times, it fairly well worked.
The United States obviously didn't have support of the Iranians but the United
States actually, since 1979 and the release of the hostages at the embassy, did
fairly well with them. The Iranians blocked the Soviets as they hoped. Iranians were
hostile to the Taliban takeover in Iran, in Afghanistan I should say, there was a
lot of cooperation under the table between the two countries, not because they liked
each other because they had common interests. Out of that comes the fact that there
is a possibility of some sort of alignment, but the United States has to make a
historic decision. I don't think at this point it can be both aligned with Iran and
Saudi Arabia, and the decision the United States really has to make is whether or
not it is going to bet on the Saudis or the Iranians. The Saudis have been the
historic allies of the United States but frankly they are not particularly congenial
to either American culture or sometimes to American interests. The Iranians are
hostile to both but they have a great deal more power and potential are a more
reliable ally. So the United States faces a historic choice between Iran and Saudi
Arabia. Thus far, the administration has made it very clear that it stands with the
Saudis against the Iranians and that's understandable. But then it will really have
to decide what to do as Iran becomes relatively more powerful, the United States
weaker in the region, precisely what does it intend to do to contain Iranian power.
Colin: George Friedman, thank you. In next week's Agenda we will look at the United
States relations with Russia. Until then, goodbye.
-
STRATFOR
---------------------------
July 9, 2011
TRIANGLE OF INTRIGUE: IRANIAN-SAUDI NEGOTIATIONS AND THE U.S. POSITION
On Thursday, Iran's Foreign Ministry spokesman Ramin Mehmanparast repeated a demand
for Saudi Arabia to withdraw its forces from Bahrain and "prepare the ground for
regional cooperation." He added that negotiations between Tehran and Riyadh would
benefit the region, but "the conditions should be provided" for such negotiations.
The idea of Iranian-Saudi negotiations developing over the future balance of power
in the Persian Gulf region does not seem to have caught the attention of mainstream
media, but STRATFOR is exploring the theme thoroughly and for good reason. We
spotted the first indication of this cooperation June 29, when rumors began
circulating that the GCC Peninsula Shield Force, which intervened in Bahrain in
mid-March to help put down a Shia-led uprising, was drawing down its forces.
Commander in Chief of the Bahrain Defense Force Marshal Shaikh Khalifa bin Ahmed Al
Khalifa denied rumors of a withdrawal of GCC forces in a July 7 interview. Al
Khalifa said the forces were repositioning while looking at ways to increase their
military capacity and coordination. Meanwhile, STRATFOR sources claim that the
1,000-plus force that deployed in mid-March has been pared down to about 300. We are
then left with two questions: Why the sudden confusion over the status of GCC forces
in Bahrain? And why have Iranian officials suddenly begun issuing near-daily
statements about the conditions for a fruitful negotiation with Saudi Arabia?
"As one Saudi source phrased it, if the Americans do not include the Saudis in their
own talks with Iran, then why should the Saudis coordinate their negotiations with
the Americans?"
The answer to both questions is related to a developing dialogue between Riyadh and
Tehran, driven by the fact that the United States lacks both a clear strategy and
the capability to prevent Iran from filling a crucial power vacuum in Iraq once U.S.
forces withdraw. Against the odds, the United States is trying to negotiate with the
Iraqi government an extension that would allow at least one U.S. division of 10,000
troops to remain in Iraq past the end-of-year Status of Forces Agreement deadline.
Washington is struggling to negotiate this residual force against Iran for one
simple reason: leverage. From the politicians in Parliament to Shiite leader Muqtada
al-Sadr's militiamen on the street, Iran has more means than the United States to
influence decisions made in Baghdad.
Iran could theoretically consent to a small U.S. military presence (far less than a
division) in Iraq, but Tehran would only do so if it felt confident it could hold
those troops under the threat of attack while remaining immune to an invading force.
The United States won't agree to a small and ineffective force that would be
vulnerable to Iran, so the negotiations fail to move forward. The pressure felt by
the United States was expressed Thursday when U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman
Adm. Mike Mullen told Pentagon reporters that "Iran is very directly supporting
extremist Shia groups, which are killing our troops" in Iraq. Any extension of the
U.S. troop presence, Mullen said, "has to be done in conjunction with control of
Iran in that regard."
The weakness of the U.S. position vis-a-vis Iran worries the GCC states, especially
Saudi Arabia. A strong Iranian push into Iraq, combined with the long-term threat
that Iran can provoke Shiite dissent in not only Bahrain, but more importantly in
Saudi Arabia's oil-rich Eastern Province, creates a highly stressful situation for
the Saudis. Add to that the prospect of a weak and insufficient U.S. conventional
military deterrent against Iran, and it becomes easier to see why the Saudis might
feel compelled right now to open up a dialogue with the Iranians.
Saudi Arabia may not be able to accept the idea of recognizing an Iranian sphere of
influence in Iraq that extends dangerously close to the Saudi borderland. However,
the Kingdom could negotiate a temporary truce with Iran under the terms of which
Saudi Arabia would begin to draw down its military presence in Bahrain, while Iran
would cease meddling in the Shiite affairs of the GCC states. This
confidence-building conversation could then extend step-by-step to other strategic
matters, including the appointment of a Sunni (versus a Shia) to the defense
ministry in Iraq, the distribution of Iraqi oil revenues, the Sunni-Shia power
balance in Lebanon and so on.
While investigating this issue, STRATFOR learned that at least five bilateral
meetings between Saudi Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs Prince Turki bin Muhammad
bin Saud and Iranian Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs Muhammad Rida Shibani have
quietly taken place, suggesting that negotiations are proceeding, albeit slowly.
According to STRATFOR sources. Iran has tried to bring Kuwait into the talks as a
third party, a prospect Saudi Arabia has thus far rejected. Iran often confuses
negotiations by adding more participants, with the aim of sowing divisions in the
adversary's camp. They employ the tactic regularly when negotiating with the West
over Iran's nuclear program, trying to bring countries like Turkey and Brazil into
the conversation. However, Saudi Arabia seems to be making clear to Iran that it
intends to speak alone on behalf of the GCC -- excluding even its main patron, the
United States.
Given the current situation, the Saudis cannot be sure that the United States will
be able to buttress them against Iran. The Saudis also don't know whether the United
States and Iran will reach an understanding of their own that would leave Saudi
Arabia vulnerable. Such a rapprochement might see Washington effectively ceding Iraq
to Iran (which in many ways may be inevitable) while seeking guarantees that Iran
will desist from meddling in Saudi Arabia. Unable to trust U.S. intentions toward
Iran, the Saudis appear to be negotiating with Iran independent of the United
States. As one Saudi source phrased it, if the Americans do not include the Saudis
in their own talks with Iran, then why should the Saudis coordinate their
negotiations with the Americans?
This reaction could put the United States in a difficult position. Washington, in
trying to negotiate an extension in Iraq, needs to build up its leverage against
Iran. One-on-one talks between the Iranians and the Saudis would undermine the U.S.
negotiating position. Moreover, the United States cannot be sure how far a
Saudi-Iranian negotiation will go. Right now, preliminary steps like a truce in
Bahrain can be made between the Saudis and the Iranians, but what if the
negotiations move to discussing the eviction of the U.S. Fifth Fleet from Bahrain in
exchange for Iranian security guarantees to Saudi Arabia? The Saudi royals hope
these thoughts will compel the White House to commit to a more effective blocking
force against Iran, thereby precluding the need for Riyadh to strike an unsavory
deal with the Persians. The problem is that the United States already feels so
compelled but finds itself stymied. If the question now is one of capability, Iran
has already shown that it holds the upper hand in Iraq as Washington and Riyadh
contemplate their next -- independent -- moves.
-
Many penetrating comments in here, but in the big picture ultimately do they matter?
===========
Administration Changes Tune on Syria
Better late than never, we suppose. This week the Obama administration finally decided that Syrian president Bashar al-Assad, whom Secretary of State Hillary Clinton recently called "a reformer," has now "lost legitimacy." Was it the brutal repression of his own people, which in just the last two months has seen more than 1,600 Syrians murdered by regime goons? Nope. Was it inheriting his father's family business, and with it the guilt for as many as 100,000 Syrian and Lebanese lives lost to terrorism, torture and war? Nope. Was it Syria's covert pursuit of nuclear weapons, or its continued sponsorship of the terrorist mafia known as Hezbollah? Nope. None of these was worth calling Assad out for what he is -- an iron-fisted dictator with a regime propped up by brute force and fear, a leader hated by his own people, and an international pariah. But when you attack the U.S. embassy, even the Obama administration must take notice.
On Monday, Assad's security forces and their underlings orchestrated and carried out attack on the U.S. and French embassies in Damascus. The absence of Syrian police, which required the Marine security unit to eject the attackers forcibly, is an unmistakable indication the regime was behind the attack. It may seem easy to dismiss an action in which no Americans were harmed and which did no significant damage to U.S. property, but the fact that Assad felt he could safely attack the embassy of the United States without fear of serious repercussion speaks volumes.
Assad watched as the Obama administration did nothing during the 2009 Iranian protests. He watched as the Obama administration dithered for weeks before finally launching a half-hearted "kinetic military action" against Libya's lunatic dictator, Moammar Gadhafi. He then watched as Obama promptly stepped back and handed the Libyan tar baby to NATO, which appears no closer to finishing the job -- whatever it is -- than it was on March 23. What does Assad have to fear from an America that will not lead, or a NATO that cannot fight? Why not attack the U.S. embassy, and gain support from all those in the Middle East (and there are still many) who side with the dictators over democracy? So far, Assad's risk calculus has been proven correct.
-
Sharks circle and bump before they attack for real unless it's an ambush. Human predators often follow the same M.O.
-
Hugely important themes being discussed here. The years of cluelessness of the Progressive faction in the US (the vicious opposition to the war in Iraq) now reify. GM might add throwing Mubarak under the bus to the list too.
=============================
The U.S.-Saudi Dilemma: Iran's Reshaping of Persian Gulf Politics
July 19, 2011
By Reva Bhalla
Something extraordinary, albeit not unexpected, is happening in the Persian Gulf region. The United States, lacking a coherent strategy to deal with Iran and too distracted to develop one, is struggling to navigate Iraq’s fractious political landscape in search of a deal that would allow Washington to keep a meaningful military presence in the country beyond the end-of-2011 deadline stipulated by the current Status of Forces Agreement. At the same time, Saudi Arabia, dubious of U.S. capabilities and intentions toward Iran, appears to be inching reluctantly toward an accommodation with its Persian adversary.
Iran clearly stands to gain from this dynamic in the short term as it seeks to reshape the balance of power in the world’s most active energy arteries. But Iranian power is neither deep nor absolute. Instead, Tehran finds itself racing against a timetable that hinges not only on the U.S. ability to shift its attention from its ongoing wars in the Middle East but also on Turkey’s ability to grow into its historic regional role.
The Iranian Position
Iranian Defense Minister Ahmad Vahidi said something last week that caught our attention. Speaking at Iran’s first Strategic Naval Conference in Tehran on July 13, Vahidi said the United States is “making endeavors to drive a wedge between regional countries with the aim of preventing the establishment of an indigenized security arrangement in the region, but those attempts are rooted in misanalyses and will not succeed.” The effect Vahidi spoke of refers to the Iranian redefinition of Persian Gulf power dynamics, one that in Iran’s ideal world ultimately would transform the local political, business, military and religious affairs of the Gulf states to favor the Shia and their patrons in Iran.
From Iran’s point of view, this is a natural evolution, and one worth waiting centuries for. It would see power concentrated among the Shia in Mesopotamia, eastern Arabia and the Levant at the expense of the Sunnis who have dominated this land since the 16th century, when the Safavid Empire lost Iraq to the Ottomans. Ironically, Iran owes its thanks for this historic opportunity to its two main adversaries — the Wahhabi Sunnis of al Qaeda who carried out the 9/11 attacks and the “Great Satan” that brought down Saddam Hussein. Should Iran succeed in filling a major power void in Iraq, a country that touches six Middle Eastern powers and demographically favors the Shia, Iran would theoretically have its western flank secured as well as an oil-rich outlet with which to further project its influence.
So far, Iran’s plan is on track. Unless the United States permanently can station substantial military forces in the region, Iran replaces the United States as the most powerful military force in the Persian Gulf region. In particular, Iran has the military ability to threaten the Strait of Hormuz and has a clandestine network of operatives spread across the region. Through its deep penetration of the Iraqi government, Iran is also in the best position to influence Iraqi decision-making. Washington’s obvious struggle in trying to negotiate an extension of the U.S. deployment in Iraq is perhaps one of the clearest illustrations of Iranian resolve to secure its western flank. The Iranian nuclear issue, as we have long argued, is largely a sideshow; a nuclear deterrent, if actually achieved, would certainly enhance Iranian security, but the most immediate imperative for Iran is to consolidate its position in Iraq. And as this weekend’s Iranian incursion into northern Iraq — ostensibly to fight Kurdish militants — shows, Iran is willing to make measured, periodic shows of force to convey that message.
While Iran already is well on its way to accomplishing its goals in Iraq, it needs two other key pieces to complete Tehran’s picture of a regional “indigenized security arrangement” that Vahidi spoke of. The first is an understanding with its main military challenger in the region, the United States. Such an understanding would entail everything from ensuring Iraqi Sunni military impotence to expanding Iranian energy rights beyond its borders to placing limits on U.S. military activity in the region, all in return for the guaranteed flow of oil through the Strait of Hormuz and an Iranian pledge to stay clear of Saudi oil fields.
The second piece is an understanding with its main regional adversary, Saudi Arabia. Iran’s reshaping of Persian Gulf politics entails convincing its Sunni neighbors that resisting Iran is not worth the cost, especially when the United States does not seem to have the time or the resources to come to their aid at present. No matter how much money the Saudis throw at Western defense contractors, any military threat by the Saudi-led Gulf Cooperation Council states against Iran will be hollow without an active U.S. military commitment. Iran’s goal, therefore, is to coerce the major Sunni powers into recognizing an expanded Iranian sphere of influence at a time when U.S. security guarantees in the region are starting to erode.
Of course, there is always a gap between intent and capability, especially in the Iranian case. Both negotiating tracks are charged with distrust, and meaningful progress is by no means guaranteed. That said, a number of signals have surfaced in recent weeks leading us to examine the potential for a Saudi-Iranian accommodation, however brief that may be.
The Saudi Position
Not surprisingly, Saudi Arabia is greatly unnerved by the political evolution in Iraq. The Saudis increasingly will rely on regional powers such as Turkey in trying to maintain a Sunni bulwark against Iran in Iraq, but Riyadh has largely resigned itself to the idea that Iraq, for now, is in Tehran’s hands. This is an uncomfortable reality for the Saudi royals to cope with, but what is amplifying Saudi Arabia’s concerns in the region right now — and apparently nudging Riyadh toward the negotiating table with Tehran — is the current situation in Bahrain.
When Shiite-led protests erupted in Bahrain in the spring, we did not view the demonstrations simply as a natural outgrowth of the so-called Arab Spring. There were certainly overlapping factors, but there was little hiding the fact that Iran had seized an opportunity to pose a nightmare scenario for the Saudi royals: an Iranian-backed Shiite uprising spreading from the isles of Bahrain to the Shiite-concentrated, oil-rich Eastern Province of the Saudi kingdom.
This explains Saudi Arabia’s hasty response to the Bahraini unrest, during which it led a rare military intervention of GCC forces in Bahrain at the invitation of Manama to stymie a broader Iranian destabilization campaign. The demonstrations in Bahrain are far calmer now than they were in mid-March at the peak of the crisis, but the concerns of the GCC states have not subsided, and for good reason. Halfhearted attempts at national dialogues aside, Shiite dissent in this part of the region is likely to endure, and this is a reality that Iran can exploit in the long term through its developing covert capabilities.
When we saw in late June that Saudi Arabia was willingly drawing down its military presence in Bahrain at the same time the Iranians were putting out feelers in the local press on an almost daily basis regarding negotiations with Riyadh, we discovered through our sources that the pieces were beginning to fall into place for Saudi-Iranian negotiations. To understand why, we have to examine the Saudi perception of the current U.S. position in the region.
The Saudis cannot fully trust U.S. intentions at this point. The U.S. position in Iraq is tenuous at best, and Riyadh cannot rule out the possibility of Washington entering its own accommodation with Iran and thus leaving Saudi Arabia in the lurch. The United States has three basic interests: to maintain the flow of oil through the Strait of Hormuz, to reduce drastically the number of forces it has devoted to fighting wars with Sunni Islamist militants (who are also by definition at war with Iran), and to try to reconstruct a balance of power in the region that ultimately prevents any one state — whether Arab or Persian — from controlling all the oil in the Persian Gulf. The U.S. position in this regard is flexible, and while developing an understanding with Iran is a trying process, nothing fundamentally binds the United States to Saudi Arabia. If the United States comes to the conclusion that it does not have any good options in the near term for dealing with Iran, a U.S.-Iranian accommodation — however jarring on the surface — is not out of the question.
More immediately, the main point of negotiation between the United States and Iran is the status of U.S. forces in Iraq. Iran would prefer to see U.S. troops completely removed from its western flank, but it has already seen dramatic reductions. The question for both sides moving forward concerns not only the size but also the disposition and orientation of those remaining forces and the question of how rapidly they can be reoriented from a more vulnerable residual advisory and assistance role to a blocking force against Iran. It also must take into account how inherently vulnerable a U.S. military presence in Iraq (not to mention the remaining diplomatic presence) is to Iranian conventional and unconventional means.
The United States may be willing to recognize Iranian demands when it comes to Iran’s designs for the Iraqi government or oil concessions in the Shiite south, but it also wants to ensure that Iran does not try to overstep its bounds and threaten Saudi Arabia’s oil wealth. To reinforce a potential accommodation with Iran, the United States needs to maintain a blocking force against Iran, and this is where the U.S.-Iranian negotiation appears to be deadlocked.
The threat of a double-cross is a real one for all sides to this conflict. Iran cannot trust that the United States, once freed up, will not engage in military action against Iran down the line. The Americans cannot trust that the Iranians will not make a bid for Saudi Arabia’s oil wealth (though the military logistics required for such a move are likely beyond Iran’s capabilities at this point). Finally, the Saudis can’t trust that the United States will defend it in a time of need, especially if the United States is preoccupied with other matters and/or has developed a relationship with Iran that it feels the need to maintain.
When all this is taken together — the threat illustrated by Shiite unrest in Bahrain, the tenuous U.S. position in Iraq and the potential for Washington to strike its own deal with Tehran — Riyadh may be seeing little choice but to search out a truce with Iran, at least until it can get a clearer sense of U.S. intentions. This does not mean that the Saudis would place more trust in a relationship with their historical rivals, the Persians, than they would in a relationship with the United States. Saudi-Iranian animosity is embedded in a deep history of political, religious and economic competition between the two main powerhouses of the Persian Gulf, and it is not going to vanish with the scratch of a pen and a handshake. Instead, this would be a truce driven by short-term, tactical constraints. Such a truce would primarily aim to arrest Iranian covert activity linked to Shiite dissidents in the GCC states, giving the Sunni monarchist regimes a temporary sense of relief while they continue their efforts in trying to build up an Arab resistance to Iran.
But Iran would view such a preliminary understanding as the path toward a broader accommodation, one that would bestow recognition on Iran as the pre-eminent power of the Persian Gulf. Iran can thus be expected to make a variety of demands, all revolving around the idea of Sunni recognition of an expanded Iranian sphere of influence — a very difficult idea for Saudi Arabia to swallow.
This is where things get especially complicated. The United States theoretically might strike an accommodation with Iran, but it would do so only with the knowledge that it could rely on the traditional Sunni heavyweights in the region eventually to rebuild a relative balance of power. If the major Sunni powers reach their own accommodation with Iran, independent of the United States, the U.S. position in the region becomes all the more questionable. What would be the limits of a Saudi-Iranian negotiation? Could the United States ensure, for example, that Saudi Arabia would not bargain away U.S. military installations in a negotiation with Iran?
The Iranian defense minister broached this very idea during his speech last week when he said, “the United States has failed to establish a sustainable security system in the Persian Gulf region, and it is not possible that many vessels will maintain a permanent presence in the region.” Vahidi was seeking to convey to fellow Iranians and trying to convince the Sunni Arab powers that a U.S. security guarantee in the region does not hold as much weight as it used to, and that with Iran now filling the void, the United States may well face a much more difficult time trying to maintain its existing military installations.
The question that naturally arises from Vahidi’s statement is the future status of the U.S. Navy’s 5th Fleet in Bahrain, and whether Iran can instill just the right amount of fear in the minds of its Arab neighbors to shake the foundations of the U.S. military presence in the region. For now, Iran does not appear to have the military clout to threaten the GCC states to the point of forcing them to negotiate away their U.S. security guarantees in exchange for Iranian restraint. This is a threat, however, that Iran will continue to let slip and even one that Saudi Arabia quietly could use to capture Washington’s attention in the hopes of reinforcing U.S. support for the Sunni Arabs against Iran.
The Long-Term Scenario
The current dynamic places Iran in a prime position. Its political investment is paying off in Iraq, and it is positioning itself for negotiation with both the Saudis and the Americans that it hopes will fill out the contours of Iran’s regional sphere of influence. But Iranian power is not that durable in the long term.
Iran is well endowed with energy resources, but it is populous and mountainous. The cost of internal development means that while Iran can get by economically, it cannot prosper like many of its Arab competitors. Add to that a troubling demographic profile in which ethnic Persians constitute only a little more than half of the country’s population and developing challenges to the clerical establishment, and Iran clearly has a great deal going on internally distracting it from opportunities abroad.
The long-term regional picture also is not in Iran’s favor. Unlike Iran, Turkey is an ascendant country with the deep military, economic and political power to influence events in the Middle East — all under a Sunni banner that fits more naturally with the region’s religious landscape. Turkey also is the historical, indigenous check on Persian power. Though it will take time for Turkey to return to this role, strong hints of this dynamic already are coming to light.
In Iraq, Turkish influence can be felt across the political, business, security and cultural spheres as Ankara is working quietly and fastidiously to maintain a Sunni bulwark in the country and steep Turkish influence in the Arab world. And in Syria, though the Alawite regime led by the al Assads is not at a breakpoint, there is no doubt a confrontation building between Iran and Turkey over the future of the Syrian state. Turkey has an interest in building up a viable Sunni political force in Syria that can eventually displace the Alawites, while Iran has every interest in preserving the current regime so as to maintain a strategic foothold in the Levant.
For now, the Turks are not looking for a confrontation with Iran, nor are they necessarily ready for one. Regional forces are accelerating Turkey’s rise, but it will take experience and additional pressures for Turkey to translate rhetoric into action when it comes to meaningful power projection. This is yet another factor that is likely driving the Saudis to enter their own dialogue with Iran at this time.
The Iranians are thus in a race against time. It may be a matter of a few short years before the United States frees up its attention span and is able to re-examine the power dynamics in the Persian Gulf with fresh vigor. Within that time, we would also expect Turkey to come into its own and assume its role as the region’s natural counterbalance to Iran. By then, the Iranians hope to have the structures and agreements in place to hold their ground against the prevailing regional forces, but that level of long-term security depends on Tehran’s ability to cut its way through two very thorny sets of negotiations with the Saudis and the Americans while it still has the upper hand.
-
Analyst Reva Bhalla examines the shift in the U.S. stance toward Syria, Turkish concerns and implications of Syrian instability for Israel.
Editor’s Note: Transcripts are generated using speech-recognition technology. Therefore, STRATFOR cannot guarantee their complete accuracy.
Related Links
In Syria, Confusion Surrounds Former Defense Minister’s Alleged Death
Syria Becomes the New Arena for Turkey and Iran
Syria as a Battleground for Saudi Arabia and Iran
U.S. President Barack Obama is widely expected to make a statement calling for Syrian President Bashar al Assad to step down. The apparent shift in the U.S. position suggests that the United States has identified alternatives to the al Assads worth backing, thereby raising the potential for a military coup. However the number of unknowns in this crisis is deeply unsettling for Syria’s neighbors.
Obama calling for al Assad to go does not necessarily mean that the United States is about to engage in another military operation in the region and pull another Libya. That’s simply not likely at this moment. Instead, the United States is looking to regional heavyweights like Turkey to manage the situation in Syria. However managing the situation in Syria is not as easy as simply throwing support behind the opposition and bracing for the fall of the regime. It’s much more complicated than that.
There is still a key element sustaining the al Assad regime as the Alawite minority in Syria realizes what is at stake should they begin to fracture and create a vacuum in Damascus for the Sunni majority to fill. There are some indications that Alawite unity is under great stress and that the armed forces that are primarily commanded by Alawite officers are under extreme stress as this military campaign wears on. There have also been some serious signs of dissent among the senior military command and these are certainly all factors that need to be monitored closely in assessing the durability of this regime. At the same time, this is not going to be a quick and easy fall. This is going to be a bloody and arduous fight for the al Assad regime and it’s not one that Turkey is quite prepared for, even if in the long term it’s in Turkey’s interest to place Syria in the hands of the Sunni majority and eventually under Ankara’s influence.
Another country not quite prepared for this transition is Israel. The Israeli political leadership is under a great deal of pressure right now. Internally, large demonstrations have taken place in Israel over everything from high taxes, lack of access to public services and high levels of government corruption. Externally, Israel is bracing itself for a U.N. vote on Palestinian recognition that has the potential to unleash intifada-like violence on its borders. At the same time, Israel is watching very nervously as the military regime in Egypt tries to manage its political transition, and now most importantly and most urgently, Israel is watching the Syrian regime struggle and try to sustain itself. The Syrian regime may be hostile to Israel, but at least it was predictable. All of these pressures combined are leading the Israeli populace at large to question the legitimacy of the Israeli political leadership.
In Syria you can see very easily why a mostly Sunni conscript force does not really feel the need to risk their lives for the regime. There is a lack of unity and nationalism there that stems from the fractured demographics of the country, the nature of the regime itself among other things. In a state as tiny and as vulnerable as Israel, however, where military conscription is universal and where you have a traditionally strong military culture, the stakes are much, much higher if a serious chasm develops between the state and its people.
-
Iran Monitors Turkey's Rising Regional Power
A high ranking Iranian cleric used some tough language against Turkey on Wednesday. Ayatollah Mahmoud Hashemi Shahroudi — recently appointed to head the newly constituted Arbitration Council— accused Turkey of promoting a Westernized version of Islam to advance its interests in the region. Shahroudi, who is seen as a possible successor to Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, said Turkey’s claims to be the “guardian of the resistance movement” are tarnished by Ankara’s relations with Israel and alliance with the United States. He said that Iran, despite its support of the Palestinians and efforts against the West, has been pushed to the margins.
“The clerics’ remarks are the first time that Iran has used hostile language against the Turkish government since Erdogan’s Islamist-rooted Justice and Development Party (AKP) came to power.”
Shahroudi’s comments come a day after another high-ranking cleric, Naser Makarrem-Shirazi (a grand ayatollah who is very close to the Iranian political establishment) criticized the Turkish government for turning against Syria, accusing Ankara of being at the “complete disposal” of the West. Earlier on Monday, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad sought Ankara’s help in protecting the Syrian regime from Western pressure during a meeting with Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan that lasted more than thirty minutes.
The clerics’ remarks are the first time that Iran has used hostile language against the Turkish government since Erdogan’s Islamist-rooted Justice and Development Party (AKP) came to power . Ever since the AKP assumed leadership in 2002, relations between Tehran and Ankara have been fairly close. It wasn’t too long ago that Iran sought Turkish mediation on the nuclear issue and Turkey drew the disapproval of the United States on the matter.
Clearly, much has changed and fast. In many ways, this estrangement was bound to happen. STRATFOR has long said that despite the current warm relations, Iran and Turkey would ultimately clash as they both seek to emerge as regional players in the Middle East. The Syrian regime’s use of force to quell popular agitation has served as a trigger with Turkey leading the heavy international pressure against Damascus.
From the Iranian point of view, Syria is the only state actor in the largely Arab Middle East that is an ally of the Islamic republic. In fact, Tehran’s plans to assume the mantle of a major regional power are tied to the durability of President Bashar al Assad’s government. Thus, Turkey’s turn against the Alawite-Baathist regime in Syria represents a major threat to Iran.
STRATFOR recently highlighted how Turkey and Iran, given their respective interests in Syria, must engage with each other. The recent shift in the Iranian attitude towards Turkey suggests that those dealings may have taken a turn for the worse. Indeed, Syria is not the only factor that has generated Iran’s displeasure towards Turkey.
Tehran does not want to see Ankara emerge as the dominant power in the Middle East and the leader of the wider Islamic world. Iran’s efforts to be seen as the vanguard of Muslim causes are undermined if Turkey emerges as a model for other Arab and Muslim states.
Therefore, Shahroudi and Makarrem-Shirazi’s remarks are Iran’s way of sending a message to Turkey — that Tehran will not sit by and allow Ankara to take the lead and claim ownership of issues that are critical to Iranian national security interests. How Iran decides to confront Turkey remains unclear. What is certain is that Iranian-Turkish tensions will likely aggravate the situation in the region, which is already witnessing unprecedented instability.
-
Summary
Continuing unrest in Syria is driving Hezbollah to prepare for a worst-case scenario in which it loses a key patron in Damascus and is left to fend for itself against a host of Lebanese factions that share an interest in undermining Hezbollah’s — and by extension, Iran’s — influence in the Levant.
Analysis
Related Links
Making Sense of the Syrian Crisis
The inability of Syria’s al Assad regime to contain unrest across the country is naturally of great concern to Hezbollah and its patrons in Iran. The geopolitical reality of this region dictates that any consolidated regime in Syria will also be the preeminent power in Lebanon. Should Syria’s majority Sunni community succeed in splitting the Alawite-Baathist regime, it is highly unlikely that a re-emerging Sunni elite would be friendly to Iranian and Hezbollah interests. On the contrary, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Egypt and others would have an opportunity to severely undercut Iran’s foothold in the Levant and dial back Hezbollah’s political and military influence in Lebanon.
This is not to say that the al Assad regime has reached the brink of collapse, or even that Syria’s Sunnis have the tools, backing and unity they need to fill a power vacuum in Damascus without first undergoing a protracted struggle with Syria’s minority factions (including Alawites, mainstream Shia, Ismailis, Christians and Druze who would much rather see Damascus in the hands of a minority government than under Sunni control). But the more vulnerable the al Assad government appears, the more likely Lebanon is to bear the brunt of the sectarian spillover from this conflict.
The Basics of Levantine Conflict
Whereas Syria’s current conflict can be described broadly as a struggle between the country’s majority Sunni population and a group of minorities, the sectarian landscape in Lebanon is far more complex. On one side of the political divide, there is the Shiite group Hezbollah, which is backed by Syria and Iran and allied politically with select Shiite, Christian and Druze forces. Collectively, this group is known as the March 8 coalition. On the other side is the Sunni-majority March 14 coalition, which is backed by the West and the key Sunni states in the region (most notably Saudi Arabia) and is also allied with select Christian and Druze forces. Hezbollah forcibly collapsed the Lebanese government in January, and since June the Iran- and Syria-backed Hezbollah-led coalition has maintained a high degree of influence in the Lebanese Cabinet led by Prime Minister Nijab Miqati (a Sunni who is known to have deep business links with the al Assad regime).
(click here to enlarge image)
However, Lebanese politics is anything but static. The Saudi-backed Lebanese Sunni community sees an opportunity to tilt the power balance now that Hezbollah’s Syrian patrons are absorbed with a domestic crisis. In the middle of the broader Shiite-Sunni divide in Lebanon, the country’s Maronite Christian and minority Druze factions can be expected to shift between these two poles as they try to assess which direction the political winds are blowing.
Lebanon cannot escape either the volatility of sectarian politics or the shadow of its Syrian neighbor. So long as the government in Syria is secure enough to devote attention beyond its borders, Lebanon will be saturated with Syrian influence in everything from its banking sector to its militant factions to the highest echelons of the government. This also means that whenever Lebanon reverts to its arguably more natural state of factional infighting, Syria is the best positioned to intervene and restore order, relying on Lebanese fissures to consolidate its own authority in the country.
The picture changes dramatically, however, if Syria becomes embroiled in its own sectarian struggle and is thus unable to play a dominant role in Lebanon. In that case, Lebanon’s factions would be left to defend their interests on their own, and this is exactly the scenario that Hezbollah appears to be preparing for.
Hezbollah Prepares for the Worst
Because of what is at stake for Iran should the al Assad regime collapse, Hezbollah has been instructed by its patrons in Tehran to do what it can to assist the Syrian regime. STRATFOR has received indications that Hezbollah has deployed hundreds of fighters in the past several months to assist Syrian security forces — who are also being aided by Iran’s growing Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) presence in the country — in cracking down on anti-government protesters. As signs of Hezbollah’s assistance to an increasingly repressive Syrian regime grew more visible in the region, Hezbollah suffered considerable damage to its political image.
A STRATFOR source close to the organization claims that a split is emerging within Hezbollah over the group’s Syria dilemma. Older Hezbollah members apparently want Hezbollah to take a more prominent political role in Lebanon so the group can operate more autonomously and thus try to insulate itself from its external patrons, while the younger members are adamantly calling on the leadership to stand by Syrian President Bashar al Assad. The source added that many Hezbollah youth, who are heavily influenced by Iran’s IRGC, believe the Syrian president will survive because they also believe Iran will not abandon him. Many within the older Hezbollah generation, however, appear to be more skeptical of al Assad’s long-term chances for political survival.
While waiting for the situation in Syria to crystallize, the Hezbollah leadership has chosen to make a short-term tactical change in its operations. The group’s greatest concern at this point is that Lebanon’s Sunni, Maronite Christian and Druze communities, with Saudi and possibly Western and Turkish backing, could work together in trying to confront Hezbollah militarily should they feel confident that Syria and its proxies will be too distracted to intervene decisively. Weapons flows in Lebanon are already abundant, but as the situation in Syria has worsened, there have been increasing signs of Lebanese Sunnis, Maronite Christians and Druze bolstering their arsenals in preparation for a possible military confrontation. Hezbollah appears to be most closely watching the actions of Lebanese Forces leader Samir Geagea, as Hezbollah believes his Christian militia is most likely to lead an armed conflict in Lebanon against Hezbollah.
It is impossible to tell at this point which side would be more interested in provoking such a confrontation. Just as forces looking to weaken Hezbollah could attempt to trigger a conflict, Syria is also interested in instigating sectarian clashes in Lebanon to distract from its domestic crisis (the urgency for Syria to do so will increase the more Syria feels that NATO countries will have more resources to expend as the military campaign in Libya winds down). Toward this end, Syrian intelligence chief Ali Mamluk recently summoned Jamil al-Sayyid, former Lebanese director of public security (and a Shiite) to Damascus, and instructed him to revive his intelligence apparatus and prepare himself for action against Syria’s adversaries in Lebanon. According to a source, al-Sayyid has been given the task of targeting leaders in the anti-Syrian March 14 coalition and instigating Sunni-Shiite armed conflict. The source claims Mamluk issued similar instructions to Mustafa Hamdan (a Sunni), another former officer who was jailed with al-Sayyid. Hamdan currently commands the al Murabitun movement, which has a small presence in Beirut, Tripoli and Sidon, and allegedly has orders to challenge Saad al-Hariri’s Future Movement in Sunni areas.
The rising threat of armed civil conflict in Lebanon has led Hezbollah to turn its focus inward. According to a source close to Hezbollah, the group has shifted the bulk of its operations from the South Litani conflict area with Israel northward to the Shiite-concentrated Bekaa Valley, where Hezbollah is busy developing an extensive communications network in the northern and central parts of the area. Hezbollah appears to be setting up its defense line in the Upper Matn and Kisirwan mountain peaks to protect the central and northern Bekaa against a ground attack from the Christian heartland to the west. Hezbollah is hoping to complete much of this construction by the end of October.
Hezbollah and its Lebanese pro-Syrian allies are also attempting to build up their defense in the predominantly Sunni Akkar area in northern Lebanon, where Sunni-Shiite tensions are on the rise following a deadly shootout at a Ramadan iftar dinner Aug. 17. The dinner, organized by the pro-Syrian head of the Muslim Clerics Association in Akkar Sheikh Abduslam al Harrash, was interrupted when unknown assailants opened fire and killed an attending member of the Alawite Islamic Council. Lebanese army forces then killed Sunni lawmaker Khalid al Daher’s driver. Al Daher responded by condemning the Lebanese military and accusing soldiers of operating as armed gangsters under the influence of Syria and Hezbollah. It is highly possible that the episode in al Ayyat was part of a Syrian covert strategy to instigate sectarian conflict.
The growing stress on the Syrian regime is, for a number of reasons, raising the threat of civil war in Lebanon. The range of political, religious, ideological and business interests that intersect in Lebanon make for an explosive mix when an exogenous factor — like the weakening of the Syrian regime — is introduced. Outside stakeholders like Iran will be doing everything they can to sustain a foothold in the region while Saudi Arabia and Turkey will be looking for a strategic opportunity to bring the Levant back under Sunni authority. Caught in this broader struggle are the Lebanese themselves, whose preparations for a worst-case scenario are ironically driving the country closer to a crisis.
Read more: How a Syrian Crisis Will Affect Lebanon | STRATFOR
-
A Dramatic Day in the Middle East
Two major events took place Tuesday in the Middle East. First, Israel and Hamas reached a deal in which captured Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit, who has been held in the Gaza Strip since 2006, will be exchanged for more than 1,000 Palestinian prisoners being held by Israel. Then within the hour of the initial reports about the prisoner swap deal, U.S. authorities announced they had charged two individuals allegedly working on behalf of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps in a plot to assassinate the Saudi ambassador to the United States in Washington.
There is no evidence to suggest the two incidents are linked, but both illustrate the massive changes sweeping the region.
Indirect talks between Israel and Hamas to secure the release of Shalit have been taking place for years. In the past, all such parleys failed to result in an agreement largely because Israel was not prepared to accept Hamas’ demand that 1,000 or so Palestinians (many jailed for killing Israeli citizens) be released. But the political landscape in the region has changed immensely since 2009, the last time the two sides seriously deliberated over the matter.
“Like the prisoner swap deal, the revelation of an alleged Iranian plot to kill the Saudi envoy to Washington on U.S. soil is a sign of the dramatic changes in the Middle East.”
The unprecedented public unrest sweeping across the Arab world in 2011 undermined decades-old autocratic political systems. From Israel’s point of view, the fall of former Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak and the threats to the stability of the regime of Syrian President Bashar al Assad represent serious risks for Israel’s national security, and Israel’s decision to agree to a prisoner swap deal is informed by the new regional environment.
It will be some time before the entire calculus behind the move becomes apparent. What is clear even now is that the prisoner swap deal has implications for Israel, Hamas, intra-Palestinian affairs and Egypt. Securing the release of Gilad Shalit will boost Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s standing at home. The move also could help Egypt’s military leaders domestically, who can claim their intervention brokered the deal (though with all the other turmoil in Egypt and November elections approaching, the Palestinian issue is a secondary concern). For Hamas, obtaining the release of more than 1,000 prisoners could help it gain considerable political support among Palestinians and as a result could complicate its power struggle with its secular rival Fatah. This kind of concrete result compared to any potential symbolic victory from Fatah’s recent bid for U.N. recognition could reflect unfavorably on Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas. And in successfully completing a deal with Israel, Hamas can also portray itself as a rational actor, nudging the Islamist militant movement closer to legitimization.
Like the prisoner swap deal, the revelation of an alleged Iranian plot to kill the Saudi envoy to Washington on U.S. soil is a sign of the dramatic changes in the Middle East. The details of the alleged plot raise more questions than they answer, but already news of the plot has complicated the Islamic republic’s already-complex push for regional dominance.
In accusing the Iranian security establishment of plotting to murder the ambassador of Saudi Arabia, its biggest regional rival, on the soil of its nemesis the United States, the administration of U.S. President Barack Obama may be showing it intends to take a harder line with Iran. We have already seen tensions between Riyadh and Tehran rise to unprecedented heights. Depending on the Iranian regime’s actual involvement, some in U.S. government circles may even consider the plot an act of war on the part of Tehran.
At this early stage it is not clear how Iran will respond to the U.S. allegations beyond strongly denying it was involved in any such plot, but it has a number of places where it can choose to escalate matters — Iraq, Bahrain, Lebanon to name a few. Iraq is the most significant, and it is already a battleground for influence between Washington and Tehran. The United States has slightly less than 50,000 troops in the country and wants to leave behind a significant residual force after the end-of-2011 pullout deadline. Iran wants to see all U.S. forces leave by Dec. 31, and it can deploy both military proxies and significant political influence in its western neighbor to block American efforts.
Though it is too early to say what the long-term consequences (if indeed there are any) of the United States accusing Iranian government-linked elements of trying to kill Saudi Arabia’s ambassador on American territory and Israel reaching a prisoner exchange deal with Hamas will be, they demonstrate how rapidly the situation is changing in the Middle East at a time of enormous uncertainty.
-
I agree that nothing in the story indicates why they would trade one person for a thousand. There is more to that and we don't get to know what it is.
---------------
Earlier in the year during the Arab spring there was a near-war between Iran and Saudi over Bahrain, a decades old dispute that I assume is still smoldering. That Iran would want to kill off their enemy Saudi while he is negotiating assistance against them from their enemy America isn't is no surprise, nor is it new that our security is constantly thwarting off attacks like this. It is a huge story, but not something new or changing as I see it.
Didn't this happen over the summer? The surprise is that the Obamites went to press with it now instead of holding it a year for value in the general election.
-
That is a point I hadn't noticed. Exactly when was this plot foiled?
============
Stratfor
Iranian Assassination Plot on U.S. Soil
The U.S. revelation of an alleged Iranian plot to work with Mexican drug cartels to kill the Saudi ambassador in Washington, D.C., raises several issues. Such indictments are not always accurate or as significant as they first appear. If the allegations are true, would Iran even consider such a plan? How likely is this plot to hold up under scrutiny? What tools would the Iranians have should they want to carry out such an act on U.S. soil? Why did the U.S. government release this indictment now? How does this affect the U.S. plans to remove troops from Iraq, given that withdrawal would leave Iran the de facto power in the region? How does this shape or reflect the current status of U.S.-Iranian dialogue regarding Iraq? How do the Saudis react to this, and what options do they have at their disposal? How does this play out in Iran, both in its regional and international relations and in the internal dynamic of Iranian politics? Given the timing, how does this play into U.S. election dynamics?
The American accusation suggests Iran was looking to work with members or former members of Mexican cartels to carry out attacks in the United States. Why would any cartel agree to assist in such a plot, and why would the Iranians approach Mexican cartels in the first place? How does this affect U.S. policy toward Mexico, given the sensitivities of such a revelation, if proven accurate? The Mexican government reportedly assisted the United States in the operation to capture the accused. What is the status of U.S.-Mexican cooperation on counterterrorism and counternarcotics activities? Is there talk of increased U.S. activity with or even inside Mexico as a result of the alleged plot? How does this play into assessments of Mexico’s ability to handle its own internal problems, and the potential spillover to the U.S. side of the border?
-
Iraq’s parliament speaker has proposed that Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Iran and Iraq hold conferences on a regular basis aimed at forming an understanding on political stability and security in the region after the U.S. withdrawal from Iraq is complete. It is not clear yet whether the proposed summits will take place, but each party has its own interests it would like to secure in Iraq, and Iraq itself is hoping to avoid becoming the battlefield where regional rivalries play out. However, because of Iraq’s sectarian divisions, it will be difficult for the Iraqis themselves to agree on what an understanding should look like, and the country’s geographic location in the heart of the Middle East make it the natural battleground for influence for its more powerful neighbors. Iran is in the strongest position in Iraq, but the potential for regime change in Syria — Tehran’s closest ally — could put a damper on its aims.
Analysis
Iraqi Parliament Speaker Osama al-Nujaifi met Oct. 17 with Iranian Parliament Speaker Ali Larijani on the sidelines of the Inter-Parliamentary Union in Switzerland to discuss Iraq’s proposed initiative to host regular meetings with Saudi Arabia, Iran and Turkey on security and political stability following the U.S. withdrawal from Iraq. Thus far, only Iran has committed to join the summits, and conflicting reports have emerged on whether Saudi Arabia and Turkey have even been formally invited yet.
The meetings would be intended to provide a forum for the countries to reach an understanding on the future of the region — one that Iraq hopes will enable it to be left relatively unmolested and free to pursue its interests, especially the development of energy resources, amid its neighbors’ competition for influence. However, this is unlikely for a number of reasons. First, Iraq is extremely fragmented and while the Sunnis, Shia and Kurds may be in agreement that they do not want Iraq to become the site of a proxy battle, they are disunited on what they want in a post-U.S.-withdrawal understanding. In addition, because of its sectarian links and other leverage over Iraq, Iran will be in a stronger position than Turkey and Saudi Arabia at least in the near term, and the other players know this. However, while Tehran may have gained Iraq for now, should the regime of Syrian President Bashar al Assad fall and a Sunni regime replace it, Iran could lose the country that has long been its closest ally in the region, setting back its ambitions and threatening its position in Iraq. The longer it takes Iran to consolidate its gains, the more it risks losing them to some unforeseen development.
Iraq’s Proposed Meeting
Al-Nujaifi proposed in September a vague initiative on solving Iraq’s domestic political impasse. Following a trip to the Iraqi Kurdistan capital of Arbil in late September to meet with the Kurdish leadership, he announced the initiative would also include proposals to solve outstanding issues with Turkey, Iran and Kuwait. The latest manifestation of the initiative, which includes a rotating regional summit between Saudi Arabia, Iran and Turkey came after al-Nujaifi visited Tehran on Oct. 1-3 to discuss Iran’s shelling along its border with Iraq and visit an annual Iranian conference on the Palestinian issue.
Nujaifi is a member of the al-Iraqiya List, the main Sunni political party in Iraq, and is a key player in drafting long-awaited and politically contentious legislation for the oil sector — the development of which is one of the most important reasons for Iraq to secure its autonomy and stability after the U.S. withdrawal. The details of the law are a critical component for the Kurdistan Regional Government’s goal of autonomy and the regional and sectarian balance of power in Iraq. The fact that Iran has agreed to participate in an initiative proposed by a Sunni party is significant and may encourage the Saudis and Turks to join in as well if they feel it is not only supported by Iraq’s Shiites.
Each of the countries has its own reasons for possibly joining the proposed summits. Saudi Arabia wants to limit Iran’s expansion and knows that the United States’ position in the region is too weak to help it — as Riyadh’s deployment of its own military forces to crush Bahrain’s uprising in March demonstrated. Turkey, like Saudi Arabia, is a predominantly Sunni country and eyes Iran’s regional rise with suspicion, though not the outright hostility of Riyadh. While it, too, wants to prevent a Shiite crescent from forming uninterrupted all the way from Iran through Iraq to the Levant over the longer term, its immediate concern is Kurdish militancy emanating from northern Iraq, which has escalated in recent days. To address this, Ankara needs help from both Iraq and Iran, and would use the proposed meetings toward this end if it participates. Iran, which has significant sectarian links to Iraq’s Shiite majority, wants to use its commanding influence in Iraq as a springboard to expand its power elsewhere, and in any case, such a solution follows Iran’s general foreign policy strategy of pushing for security frameworks to be decided by countries in the region without the United States.
If the Saudis feel the proposed series of meetings is the best way to maintain some influence in Iraq, they may participate in them until a more promising option avails itself. Riyadh understands, however, that it does not have the kind of leverage in Iraq that Tehran does — even attending the meetings will on some level be viewed as a victory for Iran, as it has often pushed for these sorts of regional gatherings that do not include the participation of the United States. With tensions between the two countries at an all-time high — especially in light of the alleged Iranian plot to kill the Saudi ambassador on U.S. soil — even if the meetings do take place, trust between the two powers will be in very short supply.
Regional Dynamic
Until the fall of Saddam Hussein following the U.S. invasion in 2003, Iraq was known as the “Shield of the Arabs” because it prevented Iran from expanding its influence westward. With Saddam gone, Iran was easily able to re-emerge and take advantage of its links to Iraq’s Shiite majority. Now, with the United States readying to leave the country by 2012, Iran will have a chance to fully consolidate its gains — and begin contemplating its moves beyond Mesopotamia.
To a degree, Riyadh has already accepted Tehran’s domination of Iraq, but it desperately does not want Iranian influence to push beyond it, especially in countries along the Gulf such as Bahrain, where Iran has already , and feels it must contain Iran’s influence in Iraq to do so.
One possible area for the Saudis to pressure Iran is Syria. During the Iraq war, Saudi jihadists often entered Iraq via Syria in order to attack U.S. troops in the country. As the opposition movement to remove the al Assad regime from power continues, Saudi militants could theoretically travel to Syria via Iraq to fight the minority Alawite regime. Syria has been a close Iranian ally for decades, so Tehran does not want to see the country fall — a development that would be all the more painful coming so soon after its main obstacle, the Saddam regime, had been removed. Iran needs Iraq to prevent these militants from entering the country and making matters even more difficult for the al Assad regime.
Turkey, too, has aspirations of regional leadership but has taken a more measured approach on Iran than the antagonism that characterizes Tehran’s relations with Riyadh. Like Iran, Ankara also does not want to see the Syrian government collapse, albeit for a different reason — it fears chaos along its border, not losing a steadfast ally. Iran has often used the issue of Kurdish militancy to entice cooperation with Turkey on other matters. Though Turkey sees itself rising to a position of leadership over the course of the next decades, in the short term its main goal is to rein in Kurdish militants, which can be done easier with Iran’s support than its opposition. Thus, Saudi Arabia cannot really count on Turkey as a partner willing to do whatever necessary to constrain Iranian power, at least not at present.
Because Iraq’s factions have a difficult time agreeing among themselves on issues such as central government control versus regional autonomy, the distribution of oil revenues and political posts, expecting them to come together to broker a deal with these three other regional powers seems unlikely at best. It is difficult to envision an arrangement that would pacify regional players’ seemingly insurmountable differences and conflicting ambitions. Even if the meetings do take place, Iraq will be the epicenter of the Middle East’s internal power struggle for some time to come, and Iran will continue exploiting its leverage there.
Read more: Iraq's Attempt to Protect its Autonomy | STRATFOR
-
Second post of the afternoon:
STRATFOR CEO George Friedman assesses the uncertainties of the Middle East, including the rise of Iran, and explains why U.S. military options are very limited.
Editor’s Note: Transcripts are generated using speech-recognition technology. Therefore, STRATFOR cannot guarantee their complete accuracy.
Related Links
• From the Mediterranean to the Hindu Kush: Rethinking the Region
Colin: It’s a cliche, but the only certainty in the Middle East is uncertainty. There are many moving parts in the region and many of the unexpected events of recent weeks add to that uncertainty, along with planned developments such as the American troop withdrawals from oil-rich Iraq.
Welcome to Agenda with George Friedman, who joins me to give his latest assessment.
George: Well, the single most important thing to be concerned about and be watching is the withdrawal of the United States from Iraq, which we’ve talked about before, and the Iranian response to that. The Iranians have made it very clear that regard the American withdrawal as a vacuum and that they intend to fill the vacuum. We have seen some substantial tension emerge between Saudi Arabia and Iran — including of course the story that Iranian operatives were planning to assassinate the Saudi ambassador to the United States and destroy the Saudi Embassy.
We’ve also seen, of course, the Bahrain events in which the Saudi army has occupied Shiite Bahrain to protect its Sunni ruling family, where clearly the Iranians have had some degree of control. And we’ve also had a report, about two weeks ago, about a shooting in eastern Saudi Arabia, in which gunmen wounded nine soldiers.
None of these by themselves is particularly troubling, until you take them all together and see that we have growing pressure from the Iranians to take advantage of the opening that’s been left to them, and that obviously creates tension between Saudi Arabia and Iran, and that the Iranians are increasing their position.
When we turn to Syria, where Assad still has not fallen — and for all the expectations that he would be unable to hold out, he has held out quite well to this point — we also see the possibility that if Iran manages to take a dominant position in Iraq and Assad does not fall, you will see a situation where Iranian influence moves through Iraq, through Syria, for Assad’s their ally, and into Lebanon where Hezbollah’s operating, on a continuous line, creating an Iranian sphere of influence to the north of Saudi Arabia and along the southern border of Turkey. This would be dramatic change in the balance of power in the region and it would also be something that would reshape the global balance, as the world is dependent on oil from this region and is going to cooperate with whoever has it.
So we are in a position now where the promised American withdrawal from Iraq is nearing its conclusion, where it’s pretty clear the U.S. is not going to be leaving very many troops, if any, in Iraq after the end and we are seeing the new game develop — the game between Saudi Arabia and Iran.
Colin: I assume from what you’re saying, you don’t foresee much coming out of the backstage negotiations the U.S. has been having with Iran for some time.
George: Well, there have certainly been reports of that. I believe that there have been back channels to Iran. The problem is that, whereas it’s clear what the United States wants, which is that Iran should restrain itself in all its dealings, it’s not clear that Iran sees any reason to do that. This has nothing to do with Iran’s nuclear capability or lack of nuclear capability. The fact is that Iran is the leading conventional power in the region. With the United States gone it is able to assert itself, if not directly militarily then indirectly through covert forces and political influence, extensively. Why should the Iranians negotiate with the United States?
Well, one reason is that the Iranian perception of the United States is that the United States is utterly unpredictable, quite irrational and extremely powerful and that combination frightens the Iranians. The Iranians remember very well how they bet on Ronald Reagan and released hostages to Reagan that they wouldn’t release to Jimmy Carter and what a bad bet that was. So they’re aware of two things: that they don’t have that a clear of an understanding of American politics and secondly, that the United States being unpredictable could harm Iran in some way and that might cause them to want to reach some sort of understanding with the United States.
But at this point the American posture is simply one that is prepared to allow this evolution to take place. Last week we saw some very harsh words by President Obama concerning the attempted assassination in Washington. It’s not clear that that’s being followed up in any way, and the signal that’s being delivered to the Iranians is that the road is open to their influence.
Colin: This is a big worry for the Saudis.
George: The Saudis are deeply concerned about what would happen in a world where the United States was not there to protect them and the Iranians were quite assertive about it. But the Saudis are also ultimate pragmatists. The primary interest of the Saudi royal family is preserve the regime and the Saudi royal family. If what they have to do is reach some accommodation with the Iranians, they will do so.
And this is really one of the questions that confronts us in the region. The Iranians have staked their claim; we know what they’re doing. The Americans could attempt to reach some sort of accommodation with Iran. Or the Saudis might. If the Saudis do, the United States is completely frozen out and therefore it’s extremely important to figure out what the U.S. is doing. There’s also, of course, the military option. But the fact is the United States can’t possibly invade Iran and secondly the amount of air power it would take to truly suppress Iran’s military is enormous and probably greater than the United States has easily available.
Knocking out their nuclear sites would not in any way weaken their conventional power and wouldn’t really address the current issue. So the United States has only limited military options, assuming that the United States doesn’t want to go nuclear, which I don’t think it wants to and I don’t think it will. It has limited options against Iran militarily. It is not moving the Iranians to want to negotiate with the United States. The Saudis may be reaching out to the Iranians, whatever the hostility is, to see what sort of deal they may want.
So there’s a game being played that’s very complex, fairly subtle and the U.S., in some ways, is so subtle that it’s very hard to understand what it’s doing.
Colin: And given what you’ve said, the oil sector in Iraq is potentially exposed to Iranian ambitions. But you’ve seen western construction companies in the last few days signing contracts worth billions of dollars to develop that sector.
George: Well, the ability of the oil industry to make bad geopolitical moves is legendary. They are betting that in the end Kurdistan will be allowed a degree of autonomy from Baghdad, so that the contracts they’re signing in Baghdad - in Kurdistan - remain intact. They’re also making the assumption that in the end the Shiite community in southern Iraq will be resistant to the Iranians. All that’s possible, but it’s a serious bet.
It’d be interesting to look at those contracts and see, apart from the press release amount, how much is actually being committed now. I suspect that in these contracts, a great deal of the money will be committed later - six months or year down the road -and relatively little now. Everybody is holding their breath and waiting and all the announcements of increased activity, I suspect, are things that are going to be on hold for a bit.
Colin: And then we have the unexpected prisoner exchange between Israel and the Palestinians. What do you think is going to flow from this, given that significantly, the present Egyptian government was the broker?
George: Well I think what really has happened is first the military junta running Egypt has proved to be more resilient than was anticipated by some, although we never doubted for a moment that they were quite capable of holding onto power. The Egyptian negotiation of settlement has two sides to it: one, the Egyptians have always been cautious about Hamas and in negotiating the settlement it gives them a substantial political influence over Hamas, as their closest neighbor.
Hamas on the other hand faces a blockade from Egypt just as much as it does from Israel and really must listen to the Egyptians. It may be that Egyptian pressure on Hamas helped facilitate this exchange and it may be that Hamas will find itself under more political pressure from Egypt to make some other accommodations with the Israelis. After all, the Egyptian government does not want to see an uprising in Gaza that might initiate resistance in the streets to the Egyptian government and its treaty with Israel. And has, of course, no intention of abrogating that treaty with Israel and therefore it wants to diffuse the situation with Hamas. I think it was something like that that took place on this and I think the Egyptians may continue this process.
Colin: George will continue to watch this closely. George Friedman, there, ending Agenda for the week. Thanks for being with us. Goodbye.
-
In Tunisia, the First Real Test of Democratic Islamism
Initial unofficial results emerging Monday from Tunisia’s Oct. 23 parliamentary elections show the country’s Islamist party, Ennahda, set to emerge as the winner. Reacting to preliminary tallies, the Progressive Democratic Party, Tunisia’s leading secularist party, conceded defeat in a statement to Reuters. A senior Ennahda leader told reporters that his group is ready to form a coalition government with two secularist groups: Congress for the Republic and Ettakatol.
“Even now, it is far from clear that Ennahda will be empowered by electoral victory.”
Ennahda’s electoral victory is significant because it means an Islamist party will have won the first elections held in the aftermath of the Arab unrest that started in this small North African state a little less than a year ago. In fact, this marks the first time that an Islamist party has ever come this close to coming to power democratically. Islamists have swept the polls in a number of places within the region in the recent past, but through elections held in circumstances plainly different than what we see now — and their election fell well short of empowering Islamists in the aftermath of the polls.
Algeria’s Front Islamique du Salut won by a landslide in the first round of the 1990-91 parliamentary elections, which were annulled by the military establishment in order to block an Islamist victory. In late 2002, Turkey’s Justice & Development Party (AKP) won a more than two-thirds majority in parliamentary elections — but the AKP’s room for action remained highly circumscribed by the secularist military establishment, and the AKP is not really an Islamist movement. It is rather a conservative centrist party, a successor to several Islamist parties. In 2004, the pro-Iranian Shia Islamist coalition, Iraqi National Alliance, won the first elections of the post-Baathist era, but Iraq has yet to display the characteristics of a traditionally defined state.
Two years later, the Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas overwhelmingly won the 2006 polls to elect the Palestinian Legislative Council — a process that led to an intra-Palestinian civil war fought to control lands that do not constitute a country. That same year, in Bahrain’s parliamentary elections, the Shia Islamist Al Wefaq movement won 17 of the 40 seats, while two other Sunni Islamist groups collected another 15, but a Sunni monarchy continues to dominate the Shia-majority island nation. Each of these events preceded the recent unrest in Arab countries, and their impact was limited.
Even now, it is far from clear that Ennahda will be empowered by electoral victory, especially since the emerging legislature will only be a constituent assembly with a one-year mandate. Yet the electoral victory undeniably takes place in a context in which the grip of secular security states is loosening. For this reason, the rise of Islamist forces is seen as a core threat to the regional political order.
Ennahda, led by its founder Rachid al-Ghannouchi, is one of the few liberal Islamist forces in the Arab and Islamic world. Ennahda’s views are far more moderate than those held by Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood, and are close to Turkey’s AKP. From the point of view of the West and of secular Muslims, however, Ennahda and other like-minded Islamists have yet to demonstrate their commitment to democratic processes — something that can only happen over time and after successive elections.
For now, however, it is not clear that Tunisia’s elections will lead to the emergence of a democratic polity, given that they are not the outcome of a regime change. Rather, elections were held under the auspices of the same security state over which ousted Tunisian President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali presided.
From a wider strategic and geopolitical point of view, Tunisia is a small country. What happens in Tunisia does not impact the region nearly so much as what happens in, for example, Egypt, where the emergence in coming elections of the Muslim Brotherhood — or of an alliance of disparate Islamist forces — as the largest bloc in parliament would have serious regional implications. In other words, the electoral rise of an Islamist force in Tunisia could lead to a controlled experiment in Islam and in democracy. That said, it is appropriate to consider that Tunisia was the country where the Arab unrest began and spread to the rest of the Arab world.
-
A number of us have commented on the incongruity of going after Kadaffy but not Assad in Syria.
Now that Kadaffy is gone, I gather that Sen. McCain (you remember him, most of us voted for him over Baraq) has called for going after Syria's Assad.
What say we?
-
A number of us have commented on the incongruity of going after Kadaffy but not Assad in Syria.
Now that Kadaffy is gone, I gather that Sen. McCain (you remember him, most of us voted for him over Baraq) has called for going after Syria's Assad.
What say we?
So, instead of a Iran aligned Syria, we get a AQ aligned Syria?
-
"What say we? (on Syria)"
Tough, tough question. One would like to think we could make a difference or that we already are covertly helping to make a positive difference. It doesn't seem like we are although our new lead from behind signature is difficult to detect.
These regimes deserve to fall and it sure seems like we should help it fall if we stand for anything. As already expressed by GM, will a new regime in Syria, Egypt, Libya, Iraq or anywhere else be better (or worse) still remains to be seen.
-
Woof,
We seem to be focused on shaping geopolitical alliances out of this chaos when we should be countering the Islamic fascist who are shaping the future battlefield. Of course there are some that think letting Islam establish a caliphate, and bring all these Arab nations under one roof, would go a long way toward the United Nations goal of there being a one world government. The enemy, of my enemy, is my friend.
P.C.
-
The enemy, of my enemy, is my friend.
P.C.
That'll get you another OBL.
-
The enemy, of my enemy, is my friend.
P.C.
That'll get you another OBL.
Good point. We've tried that. I'm not a fan of how it all played out.
-
Woof,
I'm talking about the UN BEING FRIENDLY TO THE IDEA OF A ISLAMIC CALIPHATE just to gather up all these independent Arab states in a neat little package, much like the European Union. Good for UN's ambitions, not so good for the EU or us.
P.C.
-
Not good for the UN either, without the US to pick up the tab.
-
I would remind us that backing bastards because they are our bastards tends to get us out on a limb too-- just in different ways.
I would remind us that a goodly percentage of us backed going into Iraq for reasons which included the Neocon analysis-- draining the swamp and establishing some sort of free republic/democracy in Iraq as an example of a non Islamo-fascist model. Despite the determination of Baraq and the progressives to sabotage the mission, we sort of succeeded-- but now Baraq has succeeded in finally throwing it all away.
-
Woof,
I'm talking about the UN BEING FRIENDLY TO THE IDEA OF A ISLAMIC CALIPHATE just to gather up all these independent Arab states in a neat little package, much like the European Union. Good for UN's ambitions, not so good for the EU or us.
P.C.
I see that you are trying to distinguish. Could you you do me a favor and tell me what the UN's ambitions are, without the US or the EU? (This is a serious question. Since the US, UK and France are all permanent SC members with veto power, I am not sure what you mean.)
-
I'll take a stab at it. The UN's goals are to get all the money and perks possible while providing cover to dictators and thugocracies worldwide.
-
while establishing global governance, with its own tax revenue stream e.g. cap & trade as a permanent intravenous tap into the US economy-- you know the one that is "1%" to the "99%" of the world.
-
Woof bigdog,
What they said. :lol:
P.C.
-
I guess I don't understand, still, how this can be the case. I fail to see the opportunities that would allow the UN to act outside the will of the US and two key EU nations. Any chance there is a reference? A how to manual?
-
I guess I don't understand, still, how this can be the case. I fail to see the opportunities that would allow the UN to act outside the will of the US and two key EU nations. Any chance there is a reference? A how to manual?
You are expecting rationality from an entity that places Cuba on it's human rights council?
Really?
-
I have this feeling someone may come to regret encouraging GM to provide links and articles that show the UN to be a group running in a direction counter to US interests. :wink:
It was not just Cuba, but Libya and Syria were on the human rights commission. And the Obama administration was 'self-reporting' Arizona for checking IDs with cause.
What was the agenda of the UN Oil for Food scandal?
Our pathological science thread chronicles quite a duplicitous agenda coming out of the UN IPCC on manipulated climate data and studies. It wasn't 1 or 2 scientists. It was a movement with an agenda and money, within the UN bureaucracy. Yes the UN would like to have more power and bigger budgets. Yes, they want global taxes and global regulations. I know that sounds like I have a conspiracy problem, but I would only count what they say in their own words. I will put few links down but these are easy to find. I would be far more interested in seeing links that indicate otherwise.
http://www.aim.org/aim-column/obamas-global-tax-proposal-up-for-senate-vote/
http://www.cfif.org/htdocs/freedomline/un_monitor/in_our_opinion/global_taxes.htm
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=17102
July [2004], Inter Presse news service reported that a top U.N. official was preparing a new study that will outline numerous global tax proposals to be considered by the General Assembly at its September meeting. The proposals will likely include everything from global taxes on e-mails and Internet use to a global gas tax and levies on airline travel. If adopted, American taxpayers could wind up paying hundreds of billions of dollars each year to the United Nations.
U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan is among those leading the charge, having stated that he "strongly supports finding new sources of funding" for the U.N. through global taxes, according to Inter Presse. In fact, Annan made very clear his support for the imposition of global taxes in a 2001 Technical Note that he authored for a U.N. conference. "The need to finance the provision of global public goods in an increasingly globalized world also adds new urgency to the need for innovative new sources of financing," Annan wrote. The Note goes on to describe and evaluate the merits of several global tax proposals.
-----
Snopes took on the veracity of a pass around email that says a list of countries like Jordan and Saudi Arabia vote against us 70% of the time and found out the truth was they were voting against us closer to 90% of the time: http://www.snopes.com/inboxer/outrage/unvote.asp
Yet we host and we pay...
-
Ummm , , , Thread Nazi here. The UN has its very own thread and the posts here would fit there very nicely , , ,
-
By MATTHEW KAMINSKI
"Most important is that democracy wins," said Mondher Ben Ayed, an IT executive in the Tunisian capital of Tunis about this North African country's electoral experiment. "But we'll also get to know who we are."
Elections are a great mirror to society, and for too long Arabs were denied a look. Ten months ago, Tunisians launched the Arab Spring by deposing dictator Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali, and the elections on Sunday were the first to follow from this year of uprisings. The results, which were released last night, introduced Tunisians to themselves.
The Islamist Nahda Party won 41% of the votes, good enough for 90 seats in a 217-member constituent assembly, which will form a government and write a new constitution. Though the proof will be in its behavior in office, Nahda ran on a moderate platform, promising to keep religion (and shariah law) out of Tunisian politics. The outcome forces Tunisians to adjust their self-image. The country's old elites have for decades thought of Tunisia as overwhelmingly secular and Westernized. This isn't quite right. What also needs to be adjusted is an often condescending attitude among the better-educated toward poorer religious or more conservative citizens who got their say Sunday. Plaintive cries from those whose preferred parties lagged Nahda call to mind the reaction on the U.S. coasts when a Republican sweeps the red states to the White House.
The electorate was described in some quarters as too apathetic or culturally ill-suited to democracy. But Tunisians took to the vote with enthusiasm; turnout was around 90%. As well as Nahda did, the four leading so-called secular parties won 31% of the vote. These parties might alternatively be called left-of-center, particularly on economics, and the outcome suggests a typical left-right national split. Anyone associated with the old regime learned how deeply their countrymen hate Ben Ali: They got 5% of the vote.
The biggest surprise was the group led by Hechmi Hamdi, the London-based owner of satellite television network Al Mostakilla. His so-called Popular Petition promised free health care, generous unemployment benefits and a fantastic new bridge to southern Italy. Apparently 13% of Tunisians believe in such miracles, and made the party the fourth-largest in the assembly. The election commission ruled that Popular Petition broke campaign laws and took away six of their seats. The commission's decision, which seemed borderline legally and symbolically stupid, leaves a black mark on an otherwise well-run election. Violent protests broke out in several cities.
Many eyes now will be trained on the new ruling Islamist party. Yet the other message from Sunday is that Tunisia revealed itself to be a pluralistic society enthused, for the time being, about this opportunity to build a representative system of government.
-
MacDILL AIR FORCE BASE, Fla. — The Obama administration plans to bolster the American military presence in the Persian Gulf after it withdraws the remaining troops from Iraq this year, according to officials and diplomats. That repositioning could include new combat forces in Kuwait able to respond to a collapse of security in Iraq or a military confrontation with Iran.
The plans, under discussion for months, gained new urgency after President Obama’s announcement this month that the last American soldiers would be brought home from Iraq by the end of December. Ending the eight-year war was a central pledge of his presidential campaign, but American military officers and diplomats, as well as officials of several countries in the region, worry that the withdrawal could leave instability or worse in its wake.
After unsuccessfully pressing both the Obama administration and the Iraqi government to permit as many as 20,000 American troops to remain in Iraq beyond 2011, the Pentagon is now drawing up an alternative.
In addition to negotiations over maintaining a ground combat presence in Kuwait, the United States is considering sending more naval warships through international waters in the region.
With an eye on the threat of a belligerent Iran, the administration is also seeking to expand military ties with the six nations in the Gulf Cooperation Council — Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates and Oman. While the United States has close bilateral military relationships with each, the administration and the military are trying to foster a new “security architecture” for the Persian Gulf that would integrate air and naval patrols and missile defense.
The size of the standby American combat force to be based in Kuwait remains the subject of negotiations, with an answer expected in coming days. Officers at the Central Command headquarters here declined to discuss specifics of the proposals, but it was clear that successful deployment plans from past decades could be incorporated into plans for a post-Iraq footprint in the region.
For example, in the time between the Persian Gulf war in 1991 and the invasion of Iraq in 2003, the United States Army kept at least a combat battalion — and sometimes a full combat brigade — in Kuwait year-round, along with an enormous arsenal ready to be unpacked should even more troops have been called to the region.
“Back to the future” is how Maj. Gen. Karl R. Horst, Central Command’s chief of staff, described planning for a new posture in the Gulf. He said the command was focusing on smaller but highly capable deployments and training partnerships with regional militaries. “We are kind of thinking of going back to the way it was before we had a big ‘boots on the ground’ presence,” General Horst said. “I think it is healthy. I think it is efficient. I think it is practical.”
Mr. Obama and his senior national security advisers have sought to reassure allies and answer critics, including many Republicans, that the United States will not abandon its commitments in the Persian Gulf even as it winds down the war in Iraq and looks ahead to doing the same in Afghanistan by the end of 2014.
“We will have a robust continuing presence throughout the region, which is proof of our ongoing commitment to Iraq and to the future of that region, which holds such promise and should be freed from outside interference to continue on a pathway to democracy,” Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said in Tajikistan after the president’s announcement.
During town-hall-style meetings with military personnel in Asia last week, the secretary of defense, Leon E. Panetta, noted that the United States had 40,000 troops in the region, including 23,000 in Kuwait, though the bulk of those serve as logistical support for the forces in Iraq.
As they undertake this effort, the Pentagon and its Central Command, which oversees operations in the region, have begun a significant rearrangement of American forces, acutely aware of the political and budgetary constraints facing the United States, including at least $450 billion of cuts in military spending over the next decade as part of the agreement to reduce the budget deficit.
Officers at Central Command said that the post-Iraq era required them to seek more efficient ways to deploy forces and maximize cooperation with regional partners. One significant outcome of the coming cuts, officials said, could be a steep decrease in the number of intelligence analysts assigned to the region. At the same time, officers hope to expand security relationships in the region. General Horst said that training exercises were “a sign of commitment to presence, a sign of commitment of resources, and a sign of commitment in building partner capability and partner capacity.”
(Page 2 of 2)
Col. John G. Worman, Central Command’s chief for exercises, noted a Persian Gulf milestone: For the first time, he said, the military of Iraq had been invited to participate in a regional exercise in Jordan next year, called Eager Lion 12, built around the threat of guerrilla warfare and terrorism.
Another part of the administration’s post-Iraq planning involves the Gulf Cooperation Council, dominated by Saudi Arabia. It has increasingly sought to exert its diplomatic and military influence in the region and beyond. Qatar and the United Arab Emirates, for example, sent combat aircraft to the Mediterranean as part of the NATO-led intervention in Libya, while Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates each have forces in Afghanistan.
At the same time, however, the council sent a mostly Saudi ground force into Bahrain to support that government’s suppression of demonstrations this year, despite international criticism.
Despite such concerns, the administration has proposed establishing a stronger, multilateral security alliance with the six nations and the United States. Mr. Panetta and Mrs. Clinton outlined the proposal in an unusual joint meeting with the council on the sidelines of the United Nations in New York last month.
The proposal still requires the approval of the council, whose leaders will meet again in December in the Saudi capital, Riyadh, and the kind of multilateral collaboration that the administration envisions must overcome rivalries among the six nations.
“It’s not going to be a NATO tomorrow,” said a senior administration official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss diplomatic negotiations still under way, “but the idea is to move to a more integrated effort.”
Iran, as it has been for more than three decades, remains the most worrisome threat to many of those nations, as well as to Iraq itself, where it has re-established political, cultural and economic ties, even as it provided covert support for Shiite insurgents who have battled American forces.
“They’re worried that the American withdrawal will leave a vacuum, that their being close by will always make anyone think twice before taking any action,” Bahrain’s foreign minister, Sheik Khalid bin Ahmed al-Khalifa, said in an interview, referring to officials in the Persian Gulf region.
Sheik Khalid was in Washington last week for meetings with the administration and Congress. “There’s no doubt it will create a vacuum,” he said, “and it may invite regional powers to exert more overt action in Iraq.”
He added that the administration’s proposal to expand its security relationship with the Persian Gulf nations would not “replace what’s going on in Iraq” but was required in the wake of the withdrawal to demonstrate a unified defense in a dangerous region. “Now the game is different,” he said. “We’ll have to be partners in operations, in issues and in many ways that we should work together.”
At home, Iraq has long been a matter of intense dispute. Some foreign policy analysts and Democrats — and a few Republicans — say the United States has remained in Iraq for too long. Others, including many Republicans and military analysts, have criticized Mr. Obama’s announcement of a final withdrawal, expressing fear that Iraq remained too weak and unstable.
“The U.S. will have to come to terms with an Iraq that is unable to defend itself for at least a decade,” Adam Mausner and Anthony H. Cordesman of the Center for Strategic and International Studies wrote after the withdrawal announcement.
Twelve Republican Senators demanded hearings on the administration’s ending of negotiations with the Iraqis — for now at least — on the continuation of American training and on counterterrorism efforts in Iraq.
“As you know, the complete withdrawal of our forces from Iraq is likely to be viewed as a strategic victory by our enemies in the Middle East, especially the Iranian regime,” the senators wrote Wednesday in a letter to the chairman of the Senate’s Armed Services Committee.
-
Media Whitewash Ghannouchi's Radical Islamist Views
IPT News
October 31, 2011
http://www.investigativeproject.org/3262/media-whitewash-ghannouchi-radical-islamist-views
A recurring media theme in recent days is that Rachid al-Ghannouchi and his Ennahda Party, which won last week's Tunisian elections, are "moderate" Islamists despite considerable evidence to the contrary.
A few notable voices in the conservative blogosphere like Martin Kramer, Melanie Phillips and Raymond Ibrahim pointed out problems with this argument, including Ghannouchi's endorsement of jihad in Gaza, stating that "Gaza, like Hanoi in the '60s and Cuba and Algeria, is the model of freedom today." Ghannouchi has expressed support for suicide bombings and welcomes the destruction of Israel, which he predicts could "disappear" by 2027.
"There is no such thing as 'moderate Islamism,'" Phillips wrote. "It's as absurd as saying there were moderate and extreme Stalinists, or moderate and extreme Nazis, or moderate and extreme proponents of the Spanish Inquisition. You cannot have moderate fanatics."
That message apparently hasn't reached some U.S. media and political elites. Before and after Tunisia's election, news outlets provided a steady stream of stories portraying the group as moderate and committed to democracy.
Sen. Joseph Lieberman (I-CT) wrote a Wall Street Journal op-ed (which he republished on his Senate website) declaring that "Ennahda has been giving encouraging answers about its rejection of extremism and its respect for the democratic process, individual liberties, women's rights and the rule of law."
The headline of a front-page New York Times story referred to Ennahda as "moderate." The Times quoted Ghannouchi (the founder of the party) saying that Ennahda "is not a religious party" but one whose members "merely draw their values from Islam." The Times added that the group's win at the polls in Tunisia "was sure to embolden those who favor a more liberal approach, including some within Egypt's mainstream Muslim Brotherhood."
Another Times story began: "For more than three decades, Rachid al-Ghannouchi has preached that pluralism, democracy and secular Islam are harmonious."
These and other media accounts gloss over or neglect to mention Ghannouchi's many radical statements – particularly his calls for Israel's destruction.
The Arab Spring "will achieve positive results on the path to the Palestinian cause and threaten the extinction of Israel," he said in a May interview with the Al Arab Qatari website. "The liberation of Palestine from Israeli occupation represents the biggest challenge facing the Umma [Muslim people] and the Umma cannot have existence in light of the Israeli occupation."
In the same interview, Ghannouchi said: "I give you the good news that the Arab region will get rid of the bacillus of Israel. Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, the leader of Hamas, said that Israel will disappear by the year 2027. I say that this date may be too far away, and Israel may disappear before this."
This is consistent with Ennahda's platform, which declares that the group "struggles to achieve the following goals … To struggle for the liberation of Palestine and consider it as a central mission and a duty required by the need to challenge the Zionist colonial attack which planted in the heart of the homeland an alien entity which constitutes a (sic) obstacle to unity and reflects the image of the conflict between our civilization and its enemies."
In September, the organization stated that it "supports the struggle of peoples seeking liberation and justice and encourages world peace and aims to promote cooperation and collaboration and unity especially among Arab and Islamic countries and considers the Palestinian struggle for liberation to be a central cause and stands against normalization."
In June 2001, Ghannouchi appeared in an al-Jazeerah panel discussion in which he blessed the mothers of Palestinian suicide bombers:
"I would like to send my blessings to the mothers of those youth, those men who succeeded in creating a new balance of power…I bless the mothers who planted in the blessed land of Palestine the amazing seeds of these youths, who tought the international system and the Israel (sic) arrogance, supported by the US, an important lesson. The Palestinian woman, mother of the Shahids (martyrs), is a martyr herself, and she has created a new model of woman."
These inconvenient quotes have thus far been notably absent from media coverage of Ghannouchi and the Tunisian elections.
The Washington Post editorialized that Ennahda has forsworn violence and accepted "the rules of democracy and human rights." If "its success is accepted by secular Tunisians and Western democracies, its moderate model should get a boost in Egypt and Libya," the paper added.
The Post also ran an op-ed by John Esposito, a prominent apologist for radical Islam, who described Ennahda as advocating a national unity government based on "the desire to address common political, economic and social concerns." It "speaks of a government "that is inclusive of all parties, secular or Islamist, accepting equality of citizenship, civil society and women's rights," Esposito wrote.
The European media provided a similar picture. The British Daily Mail newspaper reported that Ennahda "believes that democracy is the best system to maintain people's rights."It quoted the party as "support[ing] Tunisia's liberal laws promoting women's equality – making it much more progressive than other Islamic movements in the Middle East."
The German newspaper Die Welt wrote that Ennahda's ascencion shouldn't trouble Westerners very much: "Success in founding a new state, even with a Sharia-oriented party in the lead, as long as it accepts the principles of plurality and human rights, will be an enormous step forward."
According to the German financial daily Handelsblatt: "We should get used to the fact that democracy in many Arab countries will create strong Islamist parties. There are worse things. For too long, fear of Islamists has led the U.S. and Europe to support terrible despots like Tunisia's…Ben Ali and Egypt's Hosni Mubarak."
People who toppled dictators through peaceful uprising deserve credit and a chance to show they can govern responsibly. But the United States and its allies should not see the changes through rose-colored glasses. Hardcore Islamists like Ghannouchi pose a host of new challenges and potential problems. It would help if the news media paid attention to those rather than invoking judgments about moderation in hopes they turn out to be true.
-
"These and other media accounts gloss over or neglect to mention Ghannouchi's many radical statements – particularly his calls for Israel's destruction."
The NYT and the rest of the left don't see that as immoderate, but they hide it from those darn "biiter clingers" in flyover country.
-
Obama, Sarkozy’s Contempt for Netanyahu Exposed
Posted By Joseph Klein On November 9, 2011
It has been evident for some time that President Obama intensely dislikes Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Then again, Obama does not have much use for Israel altogether.
The latest example occurred during an unscripted moment when microphones were accidentally left on after a G-20 press conference in Cannes last week had concluded. They picked up a private conversation between Obama and French President Nicholas Sarkozy exchanging bitter words about Netanyahu.
Sarkozy went first. He said, “I cannot stand him. He is a liar.”
Obama couldn’t help himself. He tried to outdo Sarkozy in expressing his displeasure with Netanyahu. “You’re fed up with him, but I have to deal with him every day,” Obama replied spontaneously without his usual teleprompter to guide him.
Reporters heard the two leaders’ childish insults because the microphones were inadvertently still operating. They were asked afterwards not to disclose what they heard, and many of the journalists went along with the gag request. Fortunately, there are at least a few honest journalists who don’t much like government censorship of a legitimate news story.
France had just voted in favor of the Palestinians’ full membership in UNESCO. It also has reportedly decided to abstain, rather than vote no, when the Security Council takes up consideration of the Palestinian bid for full UN membership.
The United States voted no in UNESCO. It will, if necessary, also veto any Security Council resolution recommending full state membership for the Palestinians in the entire UN system. Obama knows that to do otherwise would cost him dearly in next year’s presidential election amongst Jewish voters whom would normally be in his corner.
However, we all know what Obama really thinks. This is a president who has gone out of his way to visit Muslim countries in the same region as Israel, but has yet to visit Israel itself since taking office. Obama had no trouble bowing to the Saudi king, while insulting the Israeli prime minister at every turn.
Obama’s latest blast at Netanyahu recalls his snub of Netanyahu during the prime minister’s first visit to the Obama White House in March 2010. Obama presented Netanyahu with a list of demands, including a halt to all settlement construction in East Jerusalem. When Netanyahu resisted Obama’s charms, Obama picked up his marbles. He stormed out of the meeting and declared, “I’m going to the residential wing to have dinner with Michelle and the girls.” Obama also refused the normal protocol of a joint photograph with the Israeli leader.
“There is no humiliation exercise that the Americans did not try on the prime minister and his entourage,” Israel’s Maariv newspaper reported on the treatment of the leader of our closest ally and only genuine democracy in the Middle East. “Bibi received in the White House the treatment reserved for the president of Equatorial Guinea.”
A little more than a year later, on the eve of Netanyahu’s visit to Washington to address a joint session of Congress, Obama tried to upstage him by proposing that Israel, without receiving any meaningful concession in return, offer to start negotiations based on Israel’s shrinking back to the indefensible pre-1967 lines with some unspecified minor mutual land swaps. Once again, Netanyahu would not play along with Obama’s shenanigans. During a joint news conference, Netanyahu was the grown-up in the room and delivered a candid, strongly worded rebuke to Obama’s demand for Israeli concessions that left Obama squirming:
This is something that we want to have accomplished. Israel wants peace. I want peace. What we all want is a peace that will be genuine, that will hold, that will endure. And I think that the — we both agree that a peace based on illusions will crash eventually on the rocks of Middle Eastern reality, and that the only peace that will endure is one that is based on reality, on unshakeable facts.
I think for there to be peace, the Palestinians will have to accept some basic realities. The first is that while Israel is prepared to make generous compromises for peace, it cannot go back to the 1967 lines — because these lines are indefensible…Remember that, before 1967, Israel was all of nine miles wide. It was half the width of the Washington Beltway. And these were not the boundaries of peace; they were the boundaries of repeated wars, because the attack on Israel was so attractive.
After pointing out that Palestinian President Abbas was making negotiations more difficult by announcing his intention to form a unity government with Hamas, which he called the “Palestinian version of al Qaeda,” Netanyahu discussed the Palestinians’ insistence on the right of return of millions of Palestinian refugees to pre-1967 Israel. “Now, 63 years later, the Palestinians come to us and they say to Israel, accept the grandchildren, really, and the great grandchildren of these refugees, thereby wiping out Israel’s future as a Jewish state,” said Netanyahu. “I think it’s time to tell the Palestinians forthrightly it’s not going to happen.”
Obama and Sarkozy do not like dealing with uncomfortable truths when it comes to defining what it will really take to reach a genuine, secure peace between Israel and the Palestinians. Sarkozy calls Netanyahu a “liar” for telling the truth, and Obama complains that he has to listen to the unvarnished truth from Netanyahu “every day.”
But, as the saying goes, know the truth and the truth shall set you free. Here are four fundamental and undeniable truths for Obama and Sarkozy to consider:
The truth about the risks for peace Israel has already taken to no avail, as jihadist terrorists launch waves of rockets from Gaza aimed at killing innocent Israeli civilians including children.
The truth about Hamas, with whom the more “moderate” Abbas wants to form a unity government.
The truth about the Palestinians’ denial of Israel’s basic right to exist as the only Jewish state in the world – a policy of rejectionism that led directly to the Palestinians’ present stateless condition and which their leaders continue to propound today.
The truth about the Palestinians’ insistence on the “right of return,” which is intended to destroy the Jewish character of whatever remains of Israel after reaching agreement with the Palestinians on borders. On this point, Obama should face the truth that his demand that Israel essentially return to the pre-1967 lines, while not simultaneously insisting to the Palestinians that they take the “right of return” of millions of Palestinian refugees to pre-1967 Israel off the table for good, is self-contradictory at best.
As Prime Minister Netanyahu told the UN General Assembly in his September 23rd speech, “I hope that the light of truth will shine, if only for a few minutes.” Whether or not they “cannot stand” Netanyahu, it’s time for Obama, Sarkozy and other world leaders to stop whitewashing the truth.
-
But he wore a kippa at AIPAC..... :roll:
-
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204397704577070850124861954.html
These are the guys we are not helping?
---------------
Syria Would Cut Iran Military Tie, Opposition Head Says
By JAY SOLOMON and NOUR MALAS
PARIS—A Syrian government run by the country's main opposition group would cut Damascus's military relationship to Iran and end arms supplies to Middle East militant groups such as Hezbollah and Hamas, the group's leader said, raising the prospect of a dramatic realignment of powers at the region's core.
Burhan Ghalioun, the president of the Syrian National Council, said such moves would be part of a broader Syrian reorientation back into an alliance with the region's major Arab powers. Mr. Ghalioun's comments came Wednesday, in his first major media interview since he was made SNC leader in October.
Mr. Ghalioun also called on the international community to take aggressive new steps, including the possible establishment of a no-fly zone in Syria.
"Our main objective is finding mechanisms to protect civilians and stop the killing machine," Mr. Ghalioun, a 66-year-old university professor, said from his home in south Paris. "We say it is imperative to use forceful measures to force the regime to respect human rights."
Underscoring those concerns, the United Nations human-rights commission estimated Thursday that Syria's crackdown on its nine-month uprising has claimed "much more" than 4,000 lives, a toll that has grown by the hundreds in recent weeks.
“ Stop the killing machine ” -- Burhan Ghalioun
This year's political uprisings in the Middle East increasingly have devolved into a power struggle pitting the U.S. and its Arab allies, such as Saudi Arabia, against Iran and its allies. Syria is viewed as the central prize, due to its strategic position and role in the Arab-Israeli struggle.
Related Video
The U.S. Senate approved economic sanctions on Iran targeting the country's oil industry adding to pressure from European countries that oil exports should be targeted. Benoit Faucon discusses these developments and potential impact on oil prices.
Syria would also appear ripe for realignment. President Bashar al-Assad's government is Iran's closest military and strategic ally in the region. Damascus and Tehran coordinate closely in funneling arms and funds to the Hezbollah movement that controls Lebanon and the militant group Hamas, which is fighting Israeli forces.
Mr. Assad and many of his top officials are Alawite, an offshoot of Shiite Islam. The regime's alliance with Iran, which is Shiite-dominated and Persian, is seen as unnatural by Syria's Sunni Arab majority; Mr. Ghalioun called it "abnormal." The SNC, and Syria's broader opposition, generally support dissolving the ties.
Such a position is welcomed by U.S. and European officials, who believe Mr. Assad's overthrow could cripple Iran's ability to project its power into the Palestinian territories and Egypt.
"There will be no special relationship with Iran," Mr. Ghalioun said in the interview. "Breaking the exceptional relationship means breaking the strategic, military alliance," he said, adding that "after the fall of the Syrian regime, [Hezbollah] won't be the same."
Mr. Assad, or members of his Alawite sect, could remain in power, of course. But should Damascus break from Tehran, diplomats believe, Iran's own pro-democracy movement, snuffed out in 2009, could be reinvigorated. Efforts to contain the spread of sophisticated weapons systems could also be aided. Skepticism remains high, however, that such a development will help solve the Arab-Israel conflict, as new governments from Egypt to Tunisia appear just as committed to the Palestinian cause.
The Syrian National Council, formally established in October, serves as the face of Syria's opposition to the international community and has proposed to lead a one-year transition to democratic rule. It is the broadest-based opposition coalition since protests broke out in Syria in mid-March, unifying Sunni Muslims, Christians, Kurds, youth committees and others.
But several Damascus-based political dissidents, and newer movements for political change, say the council was formed largely outside Syria and doesn't adequately represent the spectrum of Syrian society. Factions within the SNC have differed over issues of regional autonomy, the question of foreign intervention in Syria's crisis and the role of religion and Arab nationalism in any new state. The organization has also been hobbled by the lack of operating territory inside Syria and the cohesion of Mr. Assad's military and government.
U.S. and European officials have voiced particular concern about the SNC's lack of representation for women and religious minorities. They have also said that Sunni religious groups, such as the Muslim Brotherhood, could end up dominating the council.
But in recent days, U.S. officials have said Mr. Ghalioun is effectively building bridges between Syria's political factions.
"He's doing an impressive job," said a U.S. official. The officials added that momentum seems to be building behind the SNC, particularly after the Arab League nations voted overwhelmingly on Sunday to impose financial sanctions on the Assad government.
Mr. Ghalioun acknowledged in the interview that the SNC has faced challenges in uniting Syria's opposition after more than 40 years of the Assad family's dictatorial rule.
He said Syria's Kurdish minority has 33 parties, making the choice of representation difficult. He said the SNC has also made a special outreach to Christians, including sending a mission to the Vatican, amid fears that Christians' religious, economic and political rights could be curtailed in a post-Assad Syria.
Indeed, he said Syria, though roughly 70% Sunni Muslim, has a history of religious and ethnic diversity that would never allow it to be dominated by Islamist parties or Islamist law.
"I don't think there's a real fear in Syria of a monopoly of Islamists, not even 10%," he said. "The Muslim Brotherhood has largely been in exile for 30 years and their internal coordination is non-existent."
Mr. Ghalioun, too, has lived abroad for decades following the seizure of power by the Baath Party and a coup by Hafez al-Assad—Mr. Assad's father—as president in 1970. Mr. Ghalioun has served as a political sociology professor at the Paris Sorbonne University, while intermittently returning to Syria to agitate for political reform. A self-declared secular Sunni, he has called for religion and state to be separate.
His role as opposition leader could end as early as this month under the committee's bylaws, but discussions are under way to potentially extend his term.
In the interview, Mr. Ghalioun stressed that Syria will remain committed to reclaiming the Golan Heights territory from Israel, which Damascus lost during the 1967 Six Day War. But he said Syria would focus its interests through negotiations rather than armed conflict or the support of proxies.
He added that a new Syrian government would normalize relations with neighboring Lebanon after decades of dominating the country through its militarily and intelligence channels. A U.N. investigation has charged members of Hezbollah with assassinating former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri in 2005, a charge the group has denied.
The SNC's president joined the U.S. and European Union with charging Iran of assisting Mr. Assad in cracking down on the political rebellion. Tehran has repeatedly denied this charge. But Iranian officials, as well as Hezbollah, have been vocal in their support for the continuation of the Assad regime.
Mr. Ghalioun and the SNC have been conducting stepped-up negotiations with the Arab League, Turkey, Russia and European powers in recent days to find ways to protect Syrians and guarantee the supply of humanitarian aid, according to participants in the talks. The SNC president has met with French Foreign Minister Alain Juppé and U.K. Foreign Secretary William Hague.
Turkey, which on Wednesday joined the Arab League, U.S. and European Union in imposing financial sanctions on Mr. Assad's government, has raised the possibility of establishing a buffer zone inside Syria to protect civilians from Mr. Assad's forces. Mr. Juppé and the U.S. are pressing a plan to protect international monitors inside Syria.
The SNC's chief visited the Turkish border this week to meet the commanders of the Free Syrian Army, which is made up of defectors from the mostly Sunni mid-ranks of the Syrian military. The FSA has claimed responsibility in recent weeks of at least one attack on a state security building. But Mr. Ghalioun said he had reached agreement with the FSA's commanders that their military operations would focus solely on protecting Syrian civilians and not on offensive operations.
"We don't want, after the fall of the regime in Syria, armed militias outside the control of the state," Mr. Ghalioun said. "They assured us they will implement our agreement and abide by requests not to launch any offensive operations."
Mr. Ghalioun echoed Western confidence that President Assad's leadership is untenable in the long-term due to Damascus's mounting financial woes and diplomatic isolation, saying Mr. Assad can survive only "months" more in office. U.S. and European officials believe it could take much longer.
The SNC believes Damascus's foreign-exchange reserves are now below $10 billion, its leader says; Damascus officially cites between $17 billion and $18 billion. He also said that Syria's economy will contract by at least 10% this year. Syrian economists say the government is projecting growth of around 4%.
"There isn't even 1% chance that Assad will survive," the SNC president said. "His only choice to carry on…is to continue the killing. They know that if they stop, they're over."
-
I gather that the loss of technology involved here is considerable; that the UAV in question had some of our best stuff; and that the reverse engineering possibilities, especially when handed off to the Russians and Chinese, are really bad.
===============
Washington's Explanation On Crashed UAV Unlikely
The Iranian press claimed Sunday that it had downed a U.S. RQ-170 “Sentinel” unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) that was operating in its airspace. On Monday, an unnamed American official acknowledged for the first time in the U.S. media that a UAV of that type had gone down in Iranian territory.
“After a sufficient number of flights, the prospect of a Sentinel crashing — through some combination of mechanical, technical and human error, or because Iran finds a way to bring one down — begins to approach certainty.”
The RQ-170 is a flying wing design with low-observability characteristics — a stealth UAV — designed and built by Lockheed Martin’s Skunk Works division. The craft was first photographed in 2007 at Kandahar Airfield and quickly dubbed “the beast of Kandahar.” From the few photographs available, it appears to consist of a fairly low-cost rendition of known stealth characteristics, applied to existing UAV technology to create an airframe designed to penetrate and operate in higher threat environments and in denied airspace. While this model was not necessarily meant to be expendable, operations in denied environments — and therefore the prospect of loss in enemy territory — were undoubtedly a core design consideration.
That sort of denied environment is nothing like what exists in Afghanistan, where medium- and high-altitude UAV operations face next to no threat. In other words, the only reason the Sentinel would be present in Afghanistan would be to use the country as a base of operations for flights elsewhere. Reports suggest that at least one Sentinel was involved in providing intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) in preparation for and during the raid that killed Osama bin Laden in May in Abbottabad, Pakistan. Logic suggests those reports are correct.
The story an unnamed source conveyed to NBC — that a UAV operating in western Afghanistan experienced difficulty and veered by chance into Iran before crashing — matches the overall reaction by the United States and the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force to the incident. But that narrative is at best highly suspect. The Sentinel clearly operates from Afghanistan and has been a component of ISR operations over Iran for years now. And after a sufficient number of flights, the prospect of a Sentinel crashing — through some combination of mechanical, technical and human error, or because Iran finds a way to bring one down — begins to approach certainty.
When the Soviet Union brought down Francis Gary Powers’ U-2 in 1960, the Soviets knew full well that the United States was running flights over its territory — it just lacked the technology to engage a target at that altitude. When Powers crossed into Soviet airspace, air defenses were on high alert. As the story goes, the U-2 stalled (it flew at the very edge of its flight envelope to stay at that altitude) and began to lose altitude as it attempted to restart its engines. Soviet air defenses engaged the target with everything they had, bringing down one of their own planes along with Powers’ U-2.
The U-2 was not stealthy, but stealth is not some intangible capability that renders the aircraft undetectable. It makes engagement harder by reducing signatures and observability. But as a savvy Yugoslav air defense battery commander demonstrated in 1999, by bringing down an American F-117 “Nighthawk” that was part of a predictable and observable pattern of behavior, the technology is hardly foolproof.
Iran has deftly maximized, through an ongoing denial and deception program, the intelligence challenges it presents its adversaries. For its own part, the United States has shown no serious interest, since the campaign in Iraq began to go downhill in the middle of the last decade, in accepting the risk that a serious air campaign against Iran entails.
But the world is not defined by black-and-white distinctions. The United States and Iran are not in a state of war, but neither are they at peace. There has been little doubt for years that the United States and Israel — in addition to using their space-based assets to intensively surveil Iran — have actively engaged in a comprehensive covert campaign meant to pinpoint and undermine Tehran’s nuclear weapons program through all available means — cyberattack, assassination, sabotage, technology and building the most accurate picture possible of the physical layout of Iran’s program.
At stake is an intense struggle over the balance of power in the Middle East. And just as during the Cold War, so-called “acts of war” are committed on a routine basis by both sides. The intelligence that more intrusive UAV flights can provide — even considering what space-based surveillance is now capable of providing — is too valuable. Because of how much is at stake for both Washington and Tehran, the idea that Washington would not actively engage in overflights is as improbable as the notion that an American stealth UAV was operating innocently on the Afghan side of the Afghan-Iranian border.
-
IIRC on the Iraq thread in the early days of the war, I raised the possibility of using our then little challenged dominance to go into Syria because it was giving sanctuary to the Saddamite remnants.
====================
By FOUAD AJAMI
Nearly a year into Syria's agony, the Arab League last week dispatched a small group of monitors headed by a man of the Sudanese security services with a brutal record in the killing fields of Darfur. Gen. Mohammed al-Dabi, a trusted aide of Sudan's notorious ruler, Omar al-Bashir, didn't see anything "frightening" in the embattled city of Homs, nor did he see the snipers on the rooftops in the southern town of Deraa.
A banner in Homs, held up by a group of women protesters, saw into the heart of the matter: "All doors are closed, except yours, Oh God." Indeed, the solitude of the Syrians, their noble defiance of the most entrenched dictatorship in the Arab world, has played out against the background of a sterile international diplomacy.
Libya had led us all astray. Rescue started for the Libyans weeks into their ordeal. Not so for the Syrians. Don't look for Bashar al-Assad forewarning the subjects of his kingdom—a veritable North Korea on the Mediterranean—that his forces are on the way to hunt them down and slaughter them like rats, as did Moammar Gadhafi.
There is ice in this ruler's veins. His people are struck down, thousands of them are kidnapped, killed and even tortured in state hospitals if they turn up for care. Children are brutalized for scribbling graffiti on the walls. And still the man sits down for an interview last month with celebrity journalist Barbara Walters to say these killer forces on the loose are not his.
In a revealing slip, the Syrian dictator told Ms. Walters that he didn't own the country, that he was merely its president. But the truth is that the House of Assad and the intelligence barons around them are owners of a tormented country. Hafez al-Assad, Bashar's father, was a wicked genius. He rose from poverty and destitution through the ranks of the Syrian army to absolute power. He took a tumultuous country apart, reduced it to submission, died a natural death in 2000, and bequeathed his son a kingdom in all but name.
Enlarge Image
CloseAssociated Press
Anti-Syrian regime protesters shout slogans during a demonstration in the Baba Amr area, in Homs province.
.Thirty years ago, Assad the father rode out a ferocious rebellion by the Muslim Brotherhood, devastated the city of Hama in Syrian's central plains, and came to rule a frightened population that accepted the bargain he offered—political servitude in return for a drab, cruel stability.
Now the son retraces the father's arc: Overwhelm the rebellion in Homs, recreate the kingdom of fear, and the world will forgive and make its way back to Damascus.
A legend has taken hold regarding the strategic importance of Syria—bordered by Lebanon, Israel, Jordan, Turkey and Iraq—and the Assad regime has made the best of it. Last October, the Syrian ruler, with a mix of cunning and bluster, played off this theme: "Syria is the hub now in this region. It is the fault line, and if you play with the ground you will cause an earthquake. Do you want to see another Afghanistan, or tens of Afghanistans? Any problem in Syria will burn the whole region."
There is no denying the effectiveness of this argument. The two big autocracies in the world—Russia and China—have given this regime cover and sustenance at the United Nations. A toothless resolution brought to the Security Council last October was turned back, courtesy of these two authoritarian states, and with the aid and acquiescence of Brazil, India and South Africa. (So much for the moral sway of the "emerging" powers.)
For its part, the Arab world treated the Syrian despotism rather gingerly. For months, the Arab League ducked for cover and averted its gaze from the barbarisms. Shamed by the spectacle of the shabiha (the vigilantes of the regime) desecrating mosques, beating and killing worshippers, the Arab League finally suspended Syria's membership.
An Arab League "Peace Plan" was signed on Dec. 19, but still the slaughter continued. The Damascus dictatorship offered the Arab League the concession of allowing a team of monitors into the country. Bravely, the Syrians came out in large numbers last week to greet them and demonstrate the depth of their opposition to the regime. Some 250,000 people reportedly greeted them in the northern city of Idlib; 70,000 defied the regime in Douma, on the outskirts of Damascus. Nevertheless, the killings went on.
The Western democracies have been hoping for deliverance. There is talk in Paris of "humanitarian corridors" to supply the embattled Syrian cities with food and water and fuel. There has been a muted discussion of the imposition of a no-fly zone that would embolden and protect the defectors who compose the Free Syrian Army.
Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan has been a true cynic throughout. An erstwhile ally and patron of Assad, he finally broke with the Syrian ruler last fall, saying "You can remain in power with tanks and cannons only up to a certain point." But the help Ankara can give is always a day away. The Syrian exiles and defectors need Turkey, and its sanctuary, but they have despaired of the false promises given by Mr. Erdogan.
The U.S. response has been similarly shameful. From the outset of the Syrian rebellion, the Obama administration has shown remarkable timidity. After all, the Assad dictatorship was a regime that President Obama had set out to "engage" (the theocracy in Tehran being the other). The American response to the struggle for Syria was glacial. To be sure, we had a remarkable and courageous envoy to Damascus, Ambassador Robert Ford. He had braved regime bullies, made his way to funerals and restive cities. In the bloodied streets, he found the not-so-surprising faith in American power and benevolence.
But at the highest levels of the administration—the president, the secretary of state—the animating drive toward Syria is one of paralyzing caution. Deep down, the Obama administration seems to subscribe to the belief that Assad's tyranny is preferable to the alternative held out by the opposition. With no faith in freedom's possibilities and power, U.S. diplomacy has operated on the unstated assumption that the regime is likely to ride out the storm.
The tenacity of this rebellion surprised Washington, and due deference had to be paid to it. Last month, Frederic Hof, the State Department's point man on Syria, described the Damascus regime as a "dead man walking." There was political analysis in that statement, but also a desire that the Syrian struggle would end well without Washington having to make any hard choices.
Syrian rulers and protesters alike ought to be able to read the wind: An American president ceding strategic ground in the Greater Middle East is no threat to the Damascus regime. With an eye on his bid for re-election, President Obama will boast that he brought the Iraq war to an end, as he promised he would. That applause line precludes taking on Syrian burdens. In Obamaland, foreign policy is full of false choices: either boots on the ground or utter abdication. Libya showed the defect of that choice, yet this remains the worldview of the current steward of American power.
Hafez al-Assad bequeathed power to his son, Bashar. Now Bashar, in turn, has a son named Hafez. From this bondage, the Syrian people are determined to release themselves. As of now, they are on their own.
Mr. Ajami is a senior fellow at Stanford University's Hoover Institution and co-chair of Hoover's Working Group on Islamism and the International Order.
-
The Arab Uprising, One Year Later
January 26, 2012
Wednesday marked the first anniversary of the first day of public unrest in Egypt, which led to former Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak's ouster 18 days later. A little before Mubarak was toppled, Tunisian autocrat Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, having lost support of the military, fled his country in the wake of mass unrest. The unrest that began in North Africa quickly spread eastward toward the Levant and the Arabian Peninsula; what has been termed the "Arab Spring" has manifested itself differently in different national contexts.
Stratfor's position from very early on was that the events sweeping the Middle East did not constitute a chain of revolutions. More importantly, the toppling of Ben Ali and Mubarak did not in either case amount to regime change -- and the changes that transpired have not led to democracy, nor will they for some time. A year after the Arab unrest broke out, it is important to step back and take stock of what has happened -- and of what has not.
The unrest began in Tunisia. An interim government replaced Ben Ali, and elections took place last October. The country’s Islamist Ennahda movement won the legislative polls, securing 90 out of 217 seats, and proceeded to form a coalition government with the secular parties that won the second and third-highest number of parliamentary seats. Parliament has a year to draft a new charter for the country.
In Egypt, Mubarak handed power over to a military junta. This event meant that the country’s armed forces had to move from ruling from behind the scenes to direct governance (albeit through an interim civilian Cabinet). One year after the unrest began, protests continue. The most important recent event, though, saw two different Islamist movements claim three-quarters of parliamentary seats in elections. Crucial next steps include the formation of a government led by Islamists and the crafting of a new constitution. We will also watch the extent to which military leaders will hand over power to a civilian government.
Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi became the third Arab leader to fall from power, and he lost his life in the process. Shortly after the fall of Mubarak, unrest broke out in Libya. This situation quickly turned into a civil war pitting the regime against armed rebels. In August, the Gadhafi regime fell after rebel forces -- aided by NATO air, intelligence and special forces support -- took over the capital of Tripoli. Two months later, rebel forces captured the Libyan dictator and killed him. Since then, the very forces that united to battle the old regime have increasingly begun fighting each other and challenging the caretaker government.
Events in Libya have been dramatic, but those in the Arab Persian Gulf island kingdom of Bahrain are far more geopolitically significant. Given the fact that a Sunni monarchy is faced with a public uprising led by the country’s Shia majority -- whose political principals are Islamist movements that Iran can exploit -- the outcome of Bahraini unrest is exceedingly critical internationally. This importance is why Saudi Arabia deployed its forces (along with those of other Gulf Cooperation Council countries) to Bahrain in March 2011, less than a month after the unrest began, and eventually contained the uprising. Shia unrest has picked up again in Bahrain in recent weeks, however, as well as in the nearby Qatif region of Saudi Arabia.
Bahrain is not the only place where the Saudis have had to deal with unrest. In Yemen, protests erupted against President Ali Abdullah Saleh. Shortly thereafter, key divisions within the Yemeni armed forces took up arms against the Saleh regime. The president survived an assassination attempt in which he was badly wounded, but he was also able to block moves by both political and armed opponents to oust his regime. He is expected to step down as part of a Saudi-brokered deal, but only after ensuring that the regime he presided over will largely remain intact -- with his faction maintaining its stake in the Yemeni state.
A completely unique scenario has played out in Syria, where the regime of President Bashar al Assad -- aided by Iran and employing a massive crackdown involving the alleged killing of some 5,000 protesters -- has weathered a nine-month-old uprising. That said, the regime has not been able to quell the agitation and has begun to face a slowly growing level of armed resistance. However, because of the weakness of the opposition and the unwillingness of outside powers to intervene (despite their desire to weaken Iran), the Syrian regime doesn’t appear likely to fall anytime soon.
What we have seen is unrest that has been limited to a number of countries within the Arab world – and the nature of the unrest has varied with each regime. In fact, the monarchies of the region (save Bahrain) have not seen the kind of uprisings experienced by authoritarian republics. Even in the case of the latter, only Tunisia and Egypt saw quick ousters of incumbent rulers -- but no regime change. Libya saw full-scale warfare and regime collapse, while Yemen is seeing its leader exit power through a negotiated deal. In Syria, the regime has survived despite nearly a year of unrest.
Clearly, in none of these cases has the expectation of democratic regime change been achieved. Where there have been elections, political Islamists have emerged as the winners, but they still have a long way to go to achieve some semblance of empowerment. The Arab unrest has indeed begun to unravel the old political orders in the Arab world -- but new ones are unlikely to be erected anytime soon, especially since another key dynamic – the rise of Iran and geosectarianism -- is complicating the Arab unrest.
-
Syrian Regime May Survive, But With Reduced Clout
January 31, 2012
A day after the Arab League announced that it is suspending its monitoring mission in Syria, Syrian activists continued their claims that Syrian forces had renewed an offensive in the Damascus suburbs against protesters defended by army defectors. The leadership of the rebel Free Syrian Army (FSA) hopes that the apparent end of the Arab-led diplomatic mission will bring the U.N. Security Council (UNSC) one step closer to authorizing foreign military intervention to topple the regime of Syrian President Bashar al Assad. However, the United States -- whose participation in a potential military intervention in Syria would be critical -- is in no rush to elevate this conflict to another military campaign in the Middle East.
The attention is now on the UNSC and what kind of action it will take against Syria following the self-admitted failure of the Arab League monitoring mission. Russia, looking to maintain a foothold in the Mediterranean basin and keep its military base at Tartus, has created another diplomatic outlet by proposing to mediate between the Syrian government and the opposition. Moscow claims that the Syrian government has agreed to the talks, but the Syrian opposition, wary of Moscow’s continued support for the regime, has predictably refused the offer. Nonetheless, the United States appears to be entertaining the Russian proposal. White House spokesman Jay Carney said Monday that the United States supports a political solution to the crisis in Syria and that Washington is discussing with the Russians ways to pressure the Syrian government into ending its deadly crackdowns.
The United States is reluctant to engage in yet another complex military campaign with major spillover effects, along sectarian lines, in the wider Islamic world. At the same time, the Syrian regime has calibrated its crackdowns to avoid building the kind of moral pretense that led to the military intervention in Libya. This dynamic has led the United States to engage in quieter and less risky efforts to train and supply FSA rebels in Turkey -- yet U.S. reticence toward military intervention has also enabled the al Assad regime's survival.
Syria's al Assad regime can likely hang on to power for quite some time if the United States continues to lack the bandwidth and political will to intervene in the country. This is especially true if European powers remain too wrapped up in their financial crisis to take military action, and as local parties opposed to al Assad -- including Turkey, Qatar and Saudi Arabia -- don't have the capability to intervene.
Even if it survives, the regime's clout in the region will emerge dramatically reduced. Syria is already losing its leverage with Hamas -- and thus a powerful tool against Israel -- now that Hamas’ exiled leadership is choosing to move its headquarters from Damascus. Hamas is warming relations with Jordan, Egypt and Qatar at the expense of the increasingly unpopular Iranian-backed Syrian Alawite regime.
Syrian influence in Lebanon remains significant. But rebels are increasingly making use of supply lines emanating from northern Lebanon, thus casting doubt on the strength of the usually pervasive Syrian intelligence and security apparatus in Lebanon. Without a strong presence there, the Syrian regime could see its influence over its web of militant proxies decline -- and actors such as the United States and Israel will see less reason to negotiate with Syria if Damascus can no longer provide a reliable check on Hezbollah’s actions.
The Syrian regime's diplomatic relationship with Ankara is also badly deteriorating. Even if a surviving Syrian regime were able to re-establish relations with its Turkish neighbor, Turkey's long-term priorities will continue to include the replacement of the Alawite regime with a Sunni government backed by Ankara.
Finally, a surviving Syrian regime would be greatly isolated from the Arab world and all the more dependent on Iran for support. But even Iranian support for the al Assad clan is not iron-clad: While Tehran wants to maintain an Alawite regime favorable to Iranian interests, Iran is not wedded to the al Assad clan. Russia, too, wants to maintain a minority regime on the Mediterranean coast -- a regime more likely to turn to Russia for foreign backing, rather than the United States or Turkey, and to allow Russia to maintain a base at Tartus. Rumors circulating in the region over the past couple of months suggest that Russia and Iran have consulted on a possible exit strategy for the al Assad clan that would leave Damascus with an Alawite regime friendly to both countries. It is still too early to tell whether the al Assad clan would acquiesce to such a plan while they might yet ride out the crisis. And even if Moscow and Tehran could help execute a largely superficial regime change, the move could backfire if new leaders are unable to consolidate control and civil conflict breaks out. What is becoming increasingly evident, however, is that survival for the Syrian regime will likely come at the cost of significantly reduced regional clout for an extended period of time
-
By FOUAD AJAMI
Afghanistan was once thought of as the last battle of the Cold War. But that designation must be accorded the ongoing struggle in Syria.
The late dictator Hafez Assad built his tyrannical regime in the image of the late Soviet Union. He usurped power in his own country four decades ago, when the power of the USSR was on the rise. His armies and factories were in the Soviet mold, as were his feared intelligence services. The Treaty of Brotherhood, Cooperation, and Coordination Hafez Assad forced on the hapless Lebanese in 1991 was vintage Warsaw Pact.
History hasn't altered much: Now Hafez's son, Bashar, in a big battle to defend his father's bequest, has Vladimir Putin's Russian autocracy by his side. The Soviet empire has fallen, but there, by the Mediterranean coast, a Syrian tyranny gives Russia the old sense that it still is a great power.
Time and again at the United Nations, Moscow has declared the sovereignty of the Assad regime a "red line"—and stated that it would veto any resolution in the Security Council that would put it in jeopardy. True, Beijing also has gone along for the ride, so fervent a believer is China in the unfettered claims of national sovereignty—the rulers there forever thinking of their hold on Tibet. But China has paltry interests in Damascus, and the Arab oil states have of late set out to win Beijing over to the cause of regime change in Syria with guarantees of oil supplies and inducements in the energy sector.
No such luck with the Russian Federation—Russia has huge reserves of oil and gas in its own right.
Mr. Putin is invested in Syria, as well as in other dictators in the region. There are philosophical and ideological stakes at work here. Mr. Putin has ridden the windfall of oil and gas revenues for a good decade, buying off the middle classes, tranquilizing his country, and justifying his authoritarianism at home as the price of restoration of grandeur and power abroad. But the middle classes have turned against him. And former supporters have grown weary of his Mafia state, with its rampant criminality and cronyism. And so when Russians took to the streets to protest the rigged elections to the Duma of Dec. 4, Mr. Putin's response to the fury was identical to that of the Arab rulers when faced with the protesters of the Arab Spring.
Enlarge Image
CloseAssociated Press
Syrian President Bashar Assad (left) and Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin
.There was something familiar and repetitive about Mr. Putin's paranoia—his dark view of the world, the insistence that the Russian protests had been instigated by foreign conspirators. The campaign of vilification waged against U.S. Ambassador Michael McFaul—the charge that he had been dispatched to Russia to subvert its political system—bore a striking resemblance to the Syrian charge that U.S. Ambassador Robert Ford had fed the flames of the Syrian rebellion.
The sun has set on the Soviet empire, but Mr. Putin stands guard, with a "philosophy" of his own—order secured by a strongman. Russia stood idly by as tyrants such as Tunisia's Zine El Abidine Ben Ali and Egypt's Hosni Mubarrak fell. But in the Libyan case it stepped out of the way at the U.N. Security Council, and its abstention gave the Western democracies the space and a warrant to unseat Moammar Gadhafi. Syria gives Russia a chance to correct for the error it made.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov has been emphatic that there can be no repeat of Libya. By his lights, the green light given to protect Libyan civilians had turned into a warrant for regime change.
Democracies are on a rampage, so the Russian custodians of power insist, and a line has to be drawn in defense of an autocratic cabal of nations. Russian history alternates long periods of quiescence with sudden rebellions. The Putin autocracy was taking no chances.
Syria feeds another Russian obsession: Islam. If the Chinese see Tibet everywhere, the Russians are fixated on Chechnya. In the Syrian inferno, the Russians see a secular tyranny at war with radical Islamists, and thus see in Syria a reflection of themselves.
The rulers in Damascus have insisted that their regime is battling religious terrorists destined to shatter the peace of the minorities—the Alawis, the Christians, the Druze, the Ismailis. The Obama administration had once subscribed to that view but has come to abandon it, as have the Europeans. Russia remains a holdout, secure in the belief that it has a special insight into that impasse between regimes in the saddle and radical Islamists.
Old military considerations also endure. Syria offers Russia a Mediterranean naval base at Tartus, a city in the territory of the ruling Alawis at that. The base is derelict, but it is better than nothing, an asset to bring into the standoff with the United States. It is a shabby play at empire, but the Russians drew solace as their lone aircraft carrier, Admiral Kuznetsov, steamed into the port from the Arctic last month.
The powers that be in NATO—neighboring Turkey included—have not been terribly coherent in dealing with this Syrian crisis. They show little taste for a military offensive that would topple the Syrian dictatorship.
An American president proud to have ended an engagement in Iraq is not itching for a war of his own in Araby. The United Nations offers no way out, and Russia is not the only obstacle.
Those "emerging" powers—India, Brazil, South Africa—have shown moral obtuseness of their own and have sided with the brutal regime in Damascus. The prayers in Homs for deliverance at the hands of outsiders—a Libya redux—may, in the manner of desperate prayers, be answered. More likely, the contest will be decided on the ground. Both the regime and the oppositionists who have paid so dearly in this cruel struggle are betting that time is on their side.
Mr. Ajami is a senior fellow at Stanford University's Hoover Institution and co-chair of Hoover's Working Group on Islamism and International Order.
-
Mort thinks OBama miscalculated. Perhaps. I am not so sure. Au contraire, I think Obama is quite content with democracies controlled by Fundamentalist Islamists in the Middle East. Indeed WHAT evidence do we have that he would be the least bit disturbed by this?
US News and World Report -
***Barack Obama's Middle East Miscalculation
In Egypt, we are witnessing the democratic election of a dictatorship
By Mortimer B. Zuckerman
January 20, 2012 RSS Feed Print A little-noticed event gives a grim insight into what is really happening in the Middle East. The euphoria of the "Arab Spring," the instant Twitter-style transition from dictatorship to democracy, is seen for what it is: an illusion. Yes, the dictatorship of one kind has gone, but democracy in the sense we understand it is, shall we say, somewhat delayed.
There have been any number of disappointments. The event that should give us pause about the underlying forces was obscured by the Christmas holiday. In mid-December, violent Islamic Salafist extremists burned down Cairo's famous scientific Institute d'Egypte, established by Napoleon in the late 18th century during a French invasion. The institute housed some 200,000 original and rare books, maps, archaeological objects, and rare nature studies from Egypt and the Middle East, the result of generations of work by researchers, mostly Western scholars. Zein Abdel-Hady, who runs Egypt's main library, remarked, "This is equal to the burning of Galileo's books."
The Salafists, who hate all things Western, no doubt saw their vandalism as an act of defiance against the West, destroying the precious documents of historical Egypt that were so intimately connected to the West. They are either too ignorant and/or too careless to realize that they were destroying their own heritage from Pharaonic Egypt.
[Read Mort Zuckerman and other columnists in U.S. News Weekly, now available on iPad.]
Last year in the Middle East was the most dramatic it has known for many. The series of uprisings in Egypt were marked by the emergence of Islamic forces from years of suppression. They scored dramatic political gains in Tunisia and Libya, too. Leaders who perceived themselves as invincible fell, one after the other, the most dramatic being the end of the rule of Egyptian leader Hosni Mubarak.
The United States could not decide whether to support a regime that was disagreeable, but yet a strategic ally, or abandon it because it ignored fundamental American values like freedom and democracy (which means not just fair elections and majority rule, but respect for the rule of law, equal rights for women, tolerance of minorities, and freedom of expression). Alas, with the collapse of the Mubarak regime, the cause of freedom in Egypt is set back since, in the battle between the army and the conservative Islamic extreme, the Islamic bloc won by an overwhelming majority, with first place taken by the Muslim Brotherhood and second place grabbed by the Salafi extremists. By the time the elections are finished, there is likely to be at least a two thirds majority for an Islamist constitution. What we are witnessing is a democratic election of a dictatorship.
[See a collection of political cartoons on the turmoil in the Middle East.]
The White House completely miscalculated in Egypt, as it did in Gaza. It seemed only to care for the mechanics of the electoral process rather than the meaning of the results. Washington vacillated on who its Egyptian allies really are. We had long shared with the Egyptian military understandings on national security, ours with an eye to maintaining peace in the region. That relationship is now pretty much lost.
Americans, in their perennial innocence, have demanded that the generals turn over power to the civilians whomever they may be, just as they did to the Persian shah, just as they did after Israel's pullout from Gaza when they hadn't a clue about the danger posed by Hamas. Our ingenuous attitude has been tantamount to handing over Egypt on a silver platter to the Muslim Brotherhood and the Salafists, who ironically are coming into power as democrats.
Their new foreign policy will include opening the blockaded border with Gaza, ending normal relations with Israel, and opening them with Hamas and Iran in such a way as to alter the balance of power in the region against U.S. interests. Indeed, one of the few things that unites the political parties in Egypt is an anti-Western foreign policy. Cairo has already allowed Iran's warships to transit the Suez Canal; failed to protect pipelines supplying energy to Israel and Jordan; endorsed the union of Hamas and Fatah; and hosted conferences in support of "the resistance," that is, terrorism.
The United States forgot the lessons of Iraq, namely, that it is easier to remove an Arab-state dictator by military means than it is to alter the internal balance of power and create a solid foundation for human rights. Had it kept the Iraq experience in mind, the Obama administration would have thought a lot harder and ensured that there was a foundation for genuine democracy in Egypt before demanding Mubarak's immediate resignation.
[See photos of protests in Egypt.]
The Islamic groups can credit their success to better resources and organization, but they also have deep ties with Egypt's religiously rooted public. Their work with social and economic welfare programs during the country's long history of economic hardship gave them wide popularity among the illiterate poor. But as Robert Satloff, the executive director of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, has put it, "The Brotherhood is not, as some suggest, simply an Egyptian version of the March of Dimes—that is, a social welfare organization whose goals are fundamentally humanitarian." It is a "profoundly political organization," he added, that seeks to reorder Egyptian society along Islamist lines and "transform Egypt into a very different place." As the leader of the Muslim Brotherhood put it in a sermon, "Arab and Muslim regimes are betraying their people by failing to confront the Muslims' real enemies, not only Israel but also the United States." The sermon was titled: "The U.S. is now experiencing the beginning of its end."
In six months a new president of Egypt will be elected. This is important because the presidency has long been the supreme locus of power. After the presidential election, which is supposed to occur before June, authority will pass to the newly elected leadership, and at that stage, the army is supposed to exit. The army's leaders seemingly intend to continue to play a central role, but this may lead to a clash between the army and the Islamic bloc.
[Read Jessica Rettig: Expected Win by Egypt's Islamists Poses Dilemma for U.S. Policy.]
The Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF) is doing everything in its power to avoid transferring full control to civilian hands in order to retain the dominant status of the army, whatever may emerge. But army leaders are now seen as trying to steal the achievements of the revolution—and for the worst reasons, namely, their corrupt control of economic assets and the perks they have accumulated over the decades.
This does not bode well for America and its policy of deposing dictators and replacing them with "democratic regimes." As collateral damage, Saudi Arabia, once America's closest ally in the Middle East, no longer sees the United States as reliable, and the Saudi king's willingness to listen to the Obama administration has evaporated.
The new regime in Egypt will face challenges. For one, it will have to stabilize the economy. For that, experts say, it will need tourism; maritime traffic through the Suez Canal; gas sales to neighbors; and Western investment, not to mention American economic and military aid. These probably are the main barriers to a renewed confrontation with Israel, for this vital aid would then be stopped.
[Read Mort Zuckerman: For Israel, a Two-State Proposal Starts With Security.]
Democracy in Egypt without the Muslim Brotherhood may be impossible, but so is democracy under its leadership. It is one thing for the Muslim Brotherhood to run in an election; it's another to imagine what they will do if they gain power, for the Islamists will replace secular dictatorship with Islamic dictatorship, leaving only the army to prevent the establishment of an Islamic state. The young men and women of Tahrir Square toppled the regime. Then along came a second wave, the Muslim Brotherhood, whose founder, Hassan al-Banna, once declared, "It is the nature of Islam to dominate, not to be dominated." Now we will see how the Egyptian military faces its dilemma. If it holds fire, it will seal its fate, and the Islamic forces will take over by default. If army leaders decide to open fire, they will be classified as murderous dictators.
Of course, images of Mubarak on a hospital gurney in a metal cage in a Cairo courthouse, with the Robespierran prosecutor now demanding the death sentence, could provoke the SCAF to reconsider its eagerness to return to the barracks and hand power to the new Islamic leadership.
The West faces a dilemma: If it confronts the Islamists, it will confirm the Brotherhood's claim that the West is conspiring to undermine the religious identity of the Muslim world. If it does not, it will ignore the forces within Arab society that yearn for genuine democracy and Western forms of government. At the very least, the United States should withhold economic or diplomatic support to Arab states that follow the path of political Islam. Cairo will now be painted in Islamic colors, but this is not a clash between the secular and the religious. It is a clash between freedom and tyranny.
•Read the U.S. News debate on foreign aid.
•See photos of unrest in Libya.
•See an opinion slide show of 5 ways Arab governments resist democracy.
Tags:Mideast peace, Obama administration, Egypt
Reader Comments Read all comments (41)
Add Your Thoughts
Comment 3000 characters left Name State Select One AL AK AZ AR CA CO CT DE DC FL GA HI ID IL IN IA KS KY LA ME MD MA MI MN MS MO MT NE NV NH NJ NM NY NC ND OH OK OR PA RI SC SD TN TX UT VT VA WA WV WI WY International Email
Please enter the two words below into the text field underneath the image.
Incorrect please try again
Enter the words above: Enter the numbers you hear: Your comment will be posted immediately, unless it is spam or contains profanity. For more information, please see our Comments FAQ.
I'm sorry but I don't understand how Mr. Zuckerman can write about freedom and tyranny just one week after he celebrated Fidel Castro, a dictator and tyrant (in Zuckerman's words, "Fidel is certainly at work and active and still an inspiration for Cubans").
Mr. Zuckerman, please go and have a hookah with Salafists, and tell us about the wonderful inspiration they provide to people of Egypt. As much as it is tragic, the Salafists, unlike Castro, were freely elected.
Pavel of AZ 1:32AM January 31, 2012
[report comment]
I'm sorry but I don't understand how Mr. Zuckerman can write about freedom and tyranny just one week after he celebrated Fidel Castro, a dictator and tyrant (in Zuckerman's words, "Fidel is certainly at work and active and still an inspiration for Cubans").
Mr. Zuckerman, please go and have a hookah with the chief Salafist, and then tell us about the wonderful inspiration they provide to people of Egypt. As much as it is tragic, the Salafists, unlike Castro, were freely elected.
Pavel of AZ 1:29AM January 31, 2012
[report comment]
Some might argue that it wasn't a miscalculation at all, but a desired effect....
His advocacy and passive assistance for his beloved"Arab spring" was at the least naive, knowing full well that the "Muslim brotherhood " was waiting in the wings cheering for the same thing.
Don L of CT 12:06PM January 24, 2012****
-
"Mort thinks OBama miscalculated. Perhaps. I am not so sure. Au contraire, I think Obama is quite content with democracies controlled by Fundamentalist Islamists in the Middle East. Indeed WHAT evidence do we have that he would be the least bit disturbed by this?"
CCP, you are thinking in terms of security risk to the US, Israel and rest of the world. He is thinking in terms of his own approval rate on the 'Arab street'. Completely different concerns.
-
Remember when the United Nations was going to be the new global venue for "collective security"? The place where the Obama Administration's faith in diplomacy and willingness to lead from behind would pay off in world solidarity against dictators and thugs?
So much for that. On Saturday, Russia and China vetoed a U.S.-backed Security Council resolution supporting an Arab League plan to ease Syria's Bashar Assad from power.
U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Susan Rice now says she's "disgusted." Secretary of State Hillary Clinton called the veto "a travesty" and struck a note of unilateralism that would make Dick Cheney proud: "Faced with a neutered Security Council, we have to redouble our efforts outside of the United Nations with those allies and partners who support the Syrian people's right to have a better future." She added that "Assad must go."
Coalition of the willing, anyone?
The surprise is that the U.S. should be so surprised. Moscow had been signaling for weeks that it would protect its client in Damascus even as Mr. Assad added to his death toll, now at more than 5,000. Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov has defended Russian arms sales to Syria and ruled out any new U.N. moves. This week he plans a solo "peace mission" to Damascus that looks like a transparent attempt to buy Mr. Assad more time for killing.
This is what happens when a U.S. Administration sees the world as it would like it to be, not the way it is. The White House apparently believed its own spin that last year's Libyan operation signaled a brave new multilateral era. But Russia abstained on that U.N. resolution, and strongman Vladimir Putin raged that he had been duped when NATO used the resolution to claim the authority to oust Moammar Gadhafi. The Libyan mission succeeded after much needless delay only because the U.S. military provided most of the firepower behind a NATO and Arab facade.
Russia doesn't count for much anymore in world affairs, but it does retain its U.N. veto. Mr. Putin has his own domestic upheavals to consider as he seeks to become president again, and he isn't about to set a precedent for U.N. intervention against a bloody-minded ally. Ditto for the Chinese. The American folly is in giving the U.N. any ability to stop an anti-Assad coalition that includes the Turks, all of non-Russian Europe, the U.S. and the Arab world.
Having been humiliated by the Russians, the U.S. could now try a Plan B. One precedent is Kosovo in the 1990s, another case where the Russians tried to block the world from acting. President Clinton ignored the Security Council and led a coalition to stop Slobodan Milosevic's genocide against the Kosovar Albanians.
In Syria today, the Turks, Arabs, Europeans and Americans can arm and fund the opposition on their own and unite to tighten sanctions around Mr. Assad and his cronies. A no-fly zone above Syria also shouldn't be ruled out, especially when the Assad government is doing in Homs and elsewhere what Gadhafi would have done in Benghazi if NATO hadn't intervened.
Americans are preoccupied by domestic issues, but Syria is a good test of President Obama's foreign policy. He has put the credibility of his office on the line by declaring that Syria's tyrant must leave. With each week of Mr. Assad's brutality, the cost in lives and the odds of civil war will continue to rise unless Mr. Obama does more than bow before the false moral authority of the U.N.
-
"CCP, you are thinking in terms of security risk to the US, Israel and rest of the world. He is thinking in terms of his own approval rate on the 'Arab street'. Completely different concerns."
Good point. They are different. However I am of the view Obama does indeed feel that if their brand of democracy is a fundamentalist Islamic democracy then that is their choice and perfectly ok with him.
I don't think his aplogizing around the world for the US was entirely just to impress the Arab street.
I liken his view to Ron Paul's in this regard - the US should balme itself for much of it's overseas problems.
I don't disagree with Paul on domdestic policy but do not accept this foreign policy view which I think is what Obama thinks - though he plays more middle of the road for his own polical purposes.
But then again I certainly am no scholar on these matters :lol:
-
One problem with Obama's view is that is only accomplishment, killing bin Laden, would not have happened without the execution of the policies he opposed before he became President.
One problem with Ron Paul's view is that it matches the bin Laden / al Qaida view exactly. Ron Paul's affinity to the founders never mentions Thomas Jefferson sending troops to re-open shipping lanes against the Barbary pirates. That isn't much different than wanting the Gulf and Straits of Hormuz open for shipping.
One problem with the bin Laden view (former view?) is his use of selective clips from history. I'm no scholar here either, but this is my understanding: The US helped Muslims resist and drive the Soviets out of Afghanistan, helped other Muslims in southern Asia out of Soviet domination, helped Arab Muslims in Kuwait get their nation back, helped defend Saudi in that same time frame - Desert Shield, helped Bosnians Muslims against the Serbs in 1990s and in Kosova. Other examples of American projection of defensive force helping Muslims include WWI and WWII IIRC.
The war against Saddam was started by Saddam and the American forces were there to turn power back from a bloody dictator to Arab-Muslim people, not to take or rule the land. The war against the Taliban was completely avoidable if they had chosen instead to hand over or enable the capture of the perpetrators of the attacks against us.
We were never in any of these places to kill or oppress Muslims or force them out of Islam or to take an inch of their land to call our own. The only part they remember is the creation of modern Israel which was done by the UN. Defending an ally against forces committed to destroy them is hardly an offensive position. The expansion of Israeli borders was a defensive result of resisting the attacks against them, to hold the positions from where the attacks were launched, as I understand it. Hardly imperialism by Israel either.
During all of bin Laden's adult lifetime the 'American Imperialists' could easily have toppled the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia at any moment and stolen the oil (or condo'd Mecca and built churches and synagogues) instead of being bullied and manipulated by OPEC, but we never did. At the cost of thousands of American lives and hundreds of billions of dollars to establish consent of the governed in Iraq and Afghanistan, we still have only 50 states and pay market price for oil.
For that we apologize? And blame ourselves??
-
"For that we apologize? And blame ourselves??"
According to Ronbama yes.
Amazing despite all our blood sweats and tears many Arabs still despise us.
Not all. I remember one Iraqi - American who escaped Saddam who after the US invasion to get rid of Saddam proclaimed to me, ''there is a God!"
OTOH he is an Iraqi Christain - this is the big difference I think.
It seems like th Christains in the middle east whom I have met over the years, whether they be from Egypt, Lebanon, Iraq....
are far more friendly to the US and even Israel/Jews.
I have many Muslim patients and being a doctor in NJ of course work alongside many Muslim doctors (many from Pakistan).
I generally don't discuss politics. Can't take the chance for obvious reasons. The same reason why celebrities who want to market themselves to everyone should keep their political views to themselves.
Once one of the doctors who is from Pakistan told me after his son was almost killed by fundamentalists in Pakistan that the radical Islmaist are "crazy". And in Pakistan they used to concentrate in the West but arehave moved all over Paakistan and one never knows who they are so it is nearly impossible to know the motives of anyone you are dealing with.
Kind of the same thing we seem to hear from US forces dealing the Pakistanis - some work with us and spy for us while others do just the opposite.
-
Jerusalem
(February 8, 2012)
THE public debate in America and Israel these days is focused obsessively on whether to attack Iran in order to halt its nuclear weapons ambitions; hardly any attention is being paid to how events in Syria could result in a strategic debacle for the Iranian government. Iran’s foothold in Syria enables the mullahs in Tehran to pursue their reckless and violent regional policies — and its presence there must be ended.
Ensuring that Iran is evicted from its regional hub in Damascus would cut off Iran’s access to its proxies (Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in Gaza) and visibly dent its domestic and international prestige, possibly forcing a hemorrhaging regime in Tehran to suspend its nuclear policies. This would be a safer and more rewarding option than the military one.
As President Bashar al-Assad’s government falters, Syria is becoming Iran’s Achilles’ heel. Iran has poured a vast array of resources into the country. There are Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps encampments and Iranian weapons and advisers throughout Syria. And Iranian-controlled Hezbollah forces from Lebanon have joined in butchering the Syrians who have risen up against Mr. Assad. Iran is intent on assuring its hold over the country regardless of what happens to Mr. Assad — and Israel and the West must prevent this at all costs.
Sadly, the opportunities presented by Syria’s meltdown seem to be eluding Israeli leaders. Last week, Israel’s military intelligence chief spoke of the 200,000 missiles and rockets in Gaza, Lebanon and Syria that could reach all of Israel’s population centers. And there is a growing risk that advanced Syrian weapons might fall into the hands of terrorist groups. Iran’s presence in Damascus is vital to maintaining these threats.
At this stage, there is no turning back; Mr. Assad must step down. For Israel, the crucial question is not whether he falls but whether the Iranian presence in Syria will outlive his government. Getting Iran booted out of Syria is essential for Israel’s security. And if Mr. Assad goes, Iranian hegemony over Syria must go with him. Anything less would rob Mr. Assad’s departure of any significance.
But Israel should not be the lone or even the principal actor in speeding his exit. Any workable outcome in Syria will have to involve the United States, Russia and Arab countries. America must offer Russia incentives to stop protecting the Assad regime, which will likely fall the moment Moscow withdraws its support. A force with a mandate from the Arab League should then ensure stability until a new Syrian government can take over.
The current standoff in Syria presents a rare chance to rid the world of the Iranian menace to international security and well-being. And ending Iran’s presence there poses less of a risk to international commerce and security than harsher sanctions or war.
Russia and China, both of which vetoed a United Nations resolution last week calling on Mr. Assad to step down, should realize that his downfall could serve their interests, too. After all, Iranian interventionism could wreak havoc in Muslim-majority areas to Russia’s south and China’s west. And a nuclear-armed Iran would pose a serious potential threat on Russia’s southern border.
Russia’s interests in Syria are not synonymous with Iran’s, and Moscow can now prove this by withdrawing its unwavering support for Mr. Assad. Russia simply wishes to maintain its access to Syria’s Mediterranean ports in Tartus and Latakia and to remain a major arms supplier to Damascus. If Washington is willing to allow that, and not to sideline Russia as it did before intervening in Libya, the convergence of American and Russian interests in Iran and Syria could pave the way for Mr. Assad’s downfall.
Once this is achieved, the entire balance of forces in the region would undergo a sea change. Iranian-sponsored terrorism would be visibly contained; Hezbollah would lose its vital Syrian conduit to Iran and Lebanon could revert to long-forgotten normalcy; Hamas fighters in Gaza would have to contemplate a future without Iranian weaponry and training; and the Iranian people might once again rise up against the regime that has brought them such pain and suffering.
Those who see this scenario as a daydream should consider the alternative: a post-Assad government still wedded to Iran with its fingers on the buttons controlling long-range Syrian missiles with chemical warheads that can strike anywhere in Israel. This is a certain prescription for war, and Israel would have no choice but to prevent it.
Fortunately, Mr. Assad and his allies have unwittingly created an opportunity to defuse the Iranian threat. If the international community does not seize it and Iranian influence in Syria emerges intact, the world will face a choice between a military strike and even more crippling sanctions, which could cause oil prices to skyrocket and throw the world economy off balance. The United States and Russia should wish for neither.
Syria has created a third option. We do not have the luxury of ignoring it.
Efraim Halevy, a former Israeli national security adviser and ambassador, was director of the Mossad from 1998 to 2002.
-
http://www.cnn.com/2012/02/14/world/meast/syria-unrest/index.html?hpt=hp_t1
-
Iran's role in that full blown war will be worth noting!
===================
Within thirty minutes of each other on Monday, a "sticky bomb" attached to the back of a van detonated in New Delhi, India, and, more than 3,200 kilometers (2,000 miles) away, an aware driver in Tbilisi, Georgia, discovered and reported what was essentially a grenade duct-taped to the undercarriage of his vehicle, enabling police to defuse the device. Both vehicles were connected to the Israeli Embassy in the respective capitals. The device that exploded seriously wounded an Israeli Embassy employee and wife of an Israeli defense attache and inflicted less severe injuries on the driver and two bystanders.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu almost immediately pointed the finger at Iran. Iran just as quickly characterized the entire affair as an Israeli fabrication intended to discredit Tehran. This sort of rhetorical exchange has been the normal state of affairs for years now.
There is a covert war raging with Israel and the United States on one side and Iran on the other. It is difficult to ignore the persistent and tactically consistent assassinations of Iranian scientists associated with the country's nuclear program -- assassinations in which sticky bombs have figured prominently -- as well as the Stuxnet computer worm that targeted Siemens industrial software important to Iran's uranium enrichment efforts. At this point, it is hard to find a more rational explanation for the assassinations and sabotage than that Israel or the United States -- or, more likely, both in collaboration -- are working to undermine Iran's nuclear program.
Similarly, it is difficult to separate the most recent attacks in New Delhi and Tbilisi from arrests in Azerbaijan and Thailand that purportedly disrupted terrorist plots aimed at Israeli diplomatic targets and an apparent threat to Israeli interests in Bulgaria. There was also an admittedly odd plot to conduct attacks on American soil against U.S., Saudi and Israeli targets.
Monday's events merely reinforce the existence of an already obvious campaign on both sides. But the remarkable aspect is the disparity between the two efforts. By and large, Stuxnet as well as the larger sabotage and assassination campaign against Iran have been consistently professional and effective. On the other hand, the Iranian counterattack has been repeatedly foiled or exposed as ineffective or even inept.
Tehran may not be employing its most capable assets. It is possible that these attacks have been conducted via ill-conceived contract work or poorly trained proxies simply for the sake of deniability. But while the trend of attempted attacks against Israeli and U.S. interests could be interpreted as a warning of worse to come, they stand in stark contrast to the consistently effective attacks against Iranian interests on Iranian territory.
Stratfor has argued that the principle Iranian deterrent to attack is its ability to attempt to disrupt maritime traffic through the Strait of Hormuz, through which 40 percent of the world's seaborne oil trade passes. No matter how good the military response is to such an attack, no military in the world can control the markets' reaction to even short-term disruptions, and that calculus has become only more compelling during the global economic crisis. Iran has thus gone out of its way to showcase this deterrent through recent and upcoming military maneuvers.
But its other deterrents may have begun to decline. It has yet to demonstrate a capability to covertly attack opposing interests abroad, a reputation for which it has long held credibly. This does not mean that Tehran does not wield such a capability, but the principal purpose of this capability is deterrence, not reprisal. Once the United States or Israel has initiated an attack on Iran as part of the covert war, Tehran's strategy of deterrence has, by definition, failed. As time passes, the United States continues to reinforce its own installations and those of Israel with more and newer ballistic missile defenses against Iran's ballistic missile arsenal. And while American diplomats and Western contractors remain vulnerable to direct attack in Iraq, now that the U.S. military withdrawal has been completed, it is far easier to remove the remaining presence than has been the case in close to a decade.
The deterrent Iran derives from its power over the Strait of Hormuz continues to hold sway. But while Stratfor is dismissive of the impact of sanctions (based on their scattered track record), they are not without their impact over time. Sanctions will not bring down the regime in Tehran, but Iranians have a far higher standard of living than, say, the average North Korean. In this context, the correlation of increasingly expensive food staples on the streets in Iran and the apparent ineffectual application of Iranian power abroad raises questions about the status of Iranian power in the region.
It is difficult to understate the significance of the continued survival of the regime of Syrian President Bashar al Assad, which is increasingly dependent on Iranian support. And the durability of Iranian power from the border of Afghanistan, through Iraq, where Iranian power currently peaks, all the way to the Mediterranean that the continued survival of the al Assad regime entails has potentially fundamental implications. But as the United States and its allies extract themselves from Afghanistan, American military power becomes more flexible in comparison to the fixed nature of Iranian power in the region. At some point, American power in the region will begin to converge with the limitations of Persian power in an Arab-dominated region. The question is at what point those powers converge.
-
Wasn't Obozo supposed to have talks without preconditions that was going to make all the badness go away?
-
http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/story/2012-02-13/israel-iran-attack/53083160/1
Some of the difficulties of an Israeli attack on the Iran nuke complexes.
-
http://www.cnn.com/2012/02/15/world/africa/libya-militias/index.html?hpt=wo_c2
Libyan militias 'out of control,' Amnesty International says
By the CNN Wire Staff
updated 6:14 AM EST, Thu February 16, 2012
(CNN) -- Armed militias in Libya are committing human rights abuses with impunity, threatening to destabilize the country and hindering its efforts to rebuild, Amnesty International said Thursday.
Militias have tortured detainees, targeted migrants and displaced entire communities in revenge attacks, according to a report the organization released a year after the start of popular uprisings that eventually ended Moammar Gadhafi's 42-year rule.
"Hundreds of armed militias, widely hailed in Libya as heroes for their role in toppling the former regime, are largely out of control," the report says.
Detainees at 10 facilities used by militia in central and western Libya told representatives from Amnesty International this year that they had been tortured or abused. Several detainees said they confessed to crimes they had not committed in order to stop the torture, Amnesty International said.
Libya: Gadhafi son under house arrest in Niger
At least 12 detainees held by militias have died after being tortured since September, the human rights organization said, adding that authorities have not effectively investigated the torture allegations.
Rights group: Libyan detainees tortured
"A year ago Libyans risked their lives to demand justice," Donatella Rovera, a senior crisis response adviser at Amnesty, said in a statement. "Today their hopes are being jeopardized by lawless armed militias who trample human rights with impunity. The only way to break with the entrenched practices of decades of abuse under (Gadhafi's) authoritarian rule is to ensure that nobody is above the law and that investigations are carried out into such abuses."
Libyan officials could not be immediately reached for comment.
A spokesman for the Tripoli Military Council told CNN on Wednesday that civilian leaders in Libya must do more to assert their authority, holding accountable militia members who perpetrate abuses.
"If the Libyan state is being built, these guys who committed this need to be brought to justice, whether they are revolutionary fighters or not, otherwise the whole world will ask, 'What changed in Libya?' The same systemic abuse and torture is continuing, and this is dangerous for the new Libya," council spokesman Anes Alsharif said. "The only solution is for the government to take over. You can not let these guys keep holding the prisoners."
Civilian authorities have been slow to step in, Alsharif said, even though some prisoners have been held for months without facing official charges.
"When you talk to the government they say, 'keep them, we don't have time yet.' and this is wrong," he said.
A process for government takeovers of prisons has begun, Libya's interim prime minister said in a televised address last month.
Libya's ambassador to the United Nations, Mohammed Shalgham, told the United Nations last month that Libya does not approve of any abuse of detainees and was working to stop any such practices.
Libyan Interior Minister Fawzy Abdilal told CNN this month that the country's interim government had not yet succeeded in integrating militias from different cities into a national security force.
Other organizations have also raised concerns about the militias.
The medical charity Doctors Without Borders said last month it was halting its work in detention centers in Misrata because detainees were tortured and were denied urgent medical care.
Human Rights Watch said earlier this month that the torture and killing of detainees is an ongoing practice among Libyan militias and will continue unless the militias are held to account.
-
Stratfor:
Azerbaijan’s Arms Deal with Israel
February 29, 2012
Azerbaijan's ambassador to Iran was called into the Iranian Foreign Ministry on Tuesday to explain reports of an Azerbaijani arms deal with Israel. According to Iran's Fars News Agency, Tehran warned Azerbaijan against allowing its "territories to be used by Israel for terrorist attacks." The arms sale was reportedly valued at about $1.6 billion and included anti-air systems and unmanned aerial vehicles. The news came as Israeli President Shimon Peres held talks on regional security issues with Georgian Foreign Minister Grigol Vashadze. That meeting is what makes the first story so interesting.
After the Russo-Georgian war in 2008, the United States realized it was not in a position to defend Georgia. Washington's preoccupation with the Islamic world prompted Russia to use Georgia to impart a lesson to the rest of the former Soviet states -- in effect announcing Russia's return as a regional power. The United States could have armed the Georgians after the war, but this would have heightened tensions with the Russians, something Washington at the time could not afford. Moreover, the Russians might have resumed war with Georgia before the weapons could be integrated.
At the time, the United States and Russia appeared to have reached an understanding: Russia would refrain from further conflict with Georgia if the Americans restricted weapons sales. The United States was not alone in this. Every major weapons seller to Georgia, particularly Israel, broke sales out of fear that the Russians might sell advanced systems to Syria and Iran.
The Azerbaijani issue is more complex. Domestic political pressure in the United States, particularly from Armenian-Americans supporting Armenia in its conflict with Azerbaijan over the disputed region of Nagorno-Karabakh, made sending an ambassador to Azerbaijan difficult. Substantial sales of weapons to the country were impossible. This added to the strategic problem the United States faced in the region. As with Georgia, Washington did not want to see Russian or, in this case, Iranian incursions into Azerbaijan, but it did not have available force to deter an incursion at the time. In an odd way, the security of Azerbaijan, like that of Georgia, was better served by avoiding large-scale weapons sales that might have increased Russia's or Iran's insecurity. The Israelis, while maintaining close ties with Azerbaijan, also did not make large-scale weapons sales.
That is what makes the Israeli arms sale to Azerbaijan and the related high-level meeting so interesting. It is difficult to believe that the United States and Israel are not coordinating their activities in the Caucasus. The sale to Azerbaijan affects Iran, and Israel is not likely to undercut Washington's position vis-a-vis Tehran. Nor is Israel likely to go against U.S. policy in Moscow's regard, and the Georgian talks and the arms sale to Azerbaijan also affect Russia. It can be assumed that the United States has approved the initiatives.
This would mark a change in U.S. regional policy since 2008. There would seem to be two triggers for this. The first is the Russian veto on Syria, which clearly infuriated the United States. The second involves the prior threat to Israel -- that maintaining close military relations with Georgia would result in weapons sales to Syria. The Syrian government is currently in no position to acquire and deploy advanced anti-aircraft systems from Russia, and what weapons it needs it gets from Iran. With that threat gone, the Israelis -- but not the Americans -- have a freer hand.
Recent attempts to assassinate the Israeli ambassador to Azerbaijan and the identification of Iranian terrorist cells operating in Azerbaijan are also factors. The presence of Israeli, American and Iranian intelligence in Azerbaijan is nothing new, but Tehran's increasingly aggressive posture toward Baku (motivated by increased Iranian fears of an attack facilitated by Azerbaijan) creates a sense of insecurity there, and neither the United States nor Israel wants to see Azerbaijan turn to Russia for weapons. The Israeli sale not only provides immediate weapons to Baku, but it also implies that further supplies will be provided as needed. That delivers a message to Iran and reassures Azerbaijan. Whatever private collaboration might exist, public arms sales represent a political commitment on the part of Israel, which Baku will interpret as an implied U.S. obligation.
Nothing has been sold to Georgia yet, but the Russians have been put on notice regarding the potential price of their veto on the Syria issue, and the fact that chaos in Syria frees Israel to deepen its relationship with Georgia. In the meantime, Georgians have allowed Russians to enter Georgia without visas, signaling that they are not seeking to increase tensions with Russia again.
This maneuvering is important because it shows Israel and the United States re-evaluating their policy toward Russia in the Caucasus. At the same time, it warns Iran that its northern frontier with Azerbaijan could turn from a place Tehran uses to place pressure on Baku, to a place from which the United States and Israel could pressure Iran. With talks of strikes against Iranian nuclear facilities, this capability is not trivial.
None of this is spoken, of course. But as we consider the calculations that have led to these moves, this is likely how they are viewed in Moscow and Tehran. For now, the Russians have lost their options in Syria, while the Iranians face an increasingly hostile Azerbaijan potentially backed by Israel -- and eventually, the United States. Washington has not yet joined the game, but the option is now there.
-
Summary
Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda recently visited the island of Okinawa, where the issue of relocating U.S. Marine Corps Air Station Futenma has created notable controversy. Noda's visit preceded a two-day meeting between Japanese and U.S. officials in Tokyo over the issue. Washington's relocation plan has prompted strong opposition, hindering its implementation. This matter has helped keep U.S.-Japanese relations cooled, but deeper geopolitical imperatives and shared interests guarantee that the alliance between Tokyo and Washington will remain strong.
Analysis
Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda made his first official visit to the island province of Okinawa the weekend of Feb. 25-27. The visit came ahead of a two-day meeting between Japanese and U.S. officials about the fate of U.S. Marine Corps Air Station Futenma, which is currently located in Okinawa and set for relocation within the province. The plans to relocate the base have fueled a powerful controversy -- Okinawans vocally oppose both the continued presence of Futenma in its current location and the 2006 U.S.-Japanese agreement calling for the base to be moved to a more rural location. This opposition is delaying the execution of the 2006 agreement, and officials from both countries are in negotiations to try to overcome this impasse.
The episode comes during a stalled period in U.S.-Japanese relations. At least six years of frequently changing Japanese Cabinets have made it difficult to move forward with the planned U.S. realignment of forces and with the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) agreement -- two strategic parts of Washington's re-engagement with the Asia-Pacific region. Though the Futenma issue has become problematic, the United States and Japan have too many shared interests and geopolitical imperatives for their alliance to crumble.
Okinawa's Importance
Okinawa, which saw the last major World War II battle in the Pacific theater, was a de facto U.S. protectorate for almost 30 years. Its strategic location near Taiwan, the Chinese mainland, the Korean Peninsula and Japan made Okinawa important in U.S. forward deployment of forces in the western rim of the Pacific Basin. The island was a regional hub for U.S. armed forces in both the Korean and Vietnam wars, giving the United States a logistical base from which to project air power over the East and South China seas.
However, since the adoption of Japan's pacifist Constitution, there has been local opposition to military use of the province, especially since the number of U.S. bases it hosts is disproportionate to its size (Okinawa is 1 percent of Japanese territory but hosts 70 percent of the bases in the country that are used exclusively by the United States). Since Okinawa returned to Japanese rule in 1972, opposition to U.S. bases on the island has increased.
Controversy and Current Developments
Partly as a response to local concerns, but also with the broader goal of updating the strategic alignment of U.S. forces in the region, the Japanese and U.S. governments reached an agreement in 2006 that would send approximately 8,000 Marines of the III Marine Expeditionary Force stationed in Okinawa to Guam. According to the agreement, the transfer would be finalized by 2014. But the agreement had an important condition: Japan would be responsible (logistically and financially) for transferring Futenma's equipment and facilities from Ginowan City to its new location in Henoko Point, a more rural part of northern Okinawa. Opposition to this agreement has delayed the relocation.
The main point of contention is that the original relocation plan called for the construction of an offshore runway that would sit atop a coral reef -- the home of the dugong, an endangered marine mammal. Opposition has come not only from locals concerned for their natural environment (and in some cases livelihood), but also from outside environmentalist, left-wing and pacifist groups calling for a total U.S. withdrawal from Okinawa. Local resistance became particularly strong after successive Democratic Party of Japan Cabinets were seen as mishandling the issue.
Okinawan Gov. Hirokazu Nakaima, who holds de facto veto power over the decision, is pressuring the central government to move the Futenma base out of the province, though there are not many other places where the base could feasibly go. Futenma is not a stand-alone facility -- it is linked to the network of U.S. facilities elsewhere in the region, particularly the other Marine bases in Okinawa (including Camps Courtney, Foster, Hansen, Lester, Kinser and Schwab) -- making relocation outside of the province tactically problematic for Washington. Moreover, very few governors of other provinces seem willing to host the base, which leaves Henoko as the only viable option.
The U.S.-Japanese Alliance
In February, U.S. and Japanese officials engaged in negotiations about revisions to the 2006 agreement. The first revision announced stated that the United States will move only approximately 4,700 Marines to Guam, with the remaining 3,300 being sent to different Asia-Pacific locations on a rotational basis. Moreover, the proposed move will be detached from the Futenma part of the agreement, meaning it will take place regardless of further delays in the base's relocation. Negotiations have continued in what Japanese Foreign Minister Koichiro Gemba called a "flexible manner," which indicates that more changes can be expected.
The outcome of this issue is uncertain, and although the Noda Cabinet has declared the U.S.-Japanese alliance the cornerstone of its foreign policy, so far the Cabinet has not been able to dispel the general sense of stagnation and frustration in the relationship. Despite the seeming intractability of this issue, it is not likely to lead to an unraveling of the U.S.-Japanese alliance, which is governed by many underlying regional strategic imperatives.
First, the United States wants to distribute its forces in a manner that is more sustainable politically and economically, which means spreading its forces more broadly across multiple countries. Moreover, the need to make the U.S. presence in the region resilient against both political and military threats dictates the need to distribute U.S. forces evenly throughout several countries. This likely will mean an eventual reduction in the area occupied by U.S. bases in Okinawa and the number of forces based there.
Second, although Japan is seeking to improve its relationships with its Asian neighbors (particularly China), tensions within the region tie Japanese interests to those of the United States. The divergent Japanese and Chinese geographic and economic imperatives in the region (such as control over disputed territories and resources) and historical rivalry give Tokyo reason to continue its close cooperation with Washington. More importantly, Japan's desire to increase its influence in the region both economically and militarily coincides with Washington's plans for Tokyo to play a greater role in the United States' Asia-Pacific re-engagement.
Third, Japan faces a continued threat from a seemingly erratic North Korean regime and, more important, from the ongoing growth of China's navy and repeated incursions of both civilian and military Chinese vessels into territory that Japan either claims or controls. China's strategic imperative to control its "first island chain," of which the southern archipelago of Okinawa and Taiwan are a part, emphasizes the value of the U.S.-Japanese alliance and the basing of forces in Okinawa. Japan benefits from the deterrent power of an armed U.S. presence, while the United States gains the capability to project its power into the Far East from bases in Japan. The U.S. presence is particularly important given Japan's traditional reluctance to engage in military ventures that could raise the ire of neighboring countries that harbor deep anti-Japanese sentiments.
Potential Developments
Though political inertia in Japan's central government and strong opposition in Okinawa are complicating the Futenma issue, the relocation controversy is not insurmountable. Most local citizens are opposed to the original relocation plan mainly because the new location would involve building offshore, which would damage the environment and the livelihoods of local fishermen. Changes in the plan could make relocation more palatable to the locals, especially since the base's presence could help reactivate the local economy. This would be an important step, since local politicians' opposition to the relocation plan stems more from political need than personal opinion. If the locals agree to it, then provincial and municipal officials could agree to it as well.
Although the Futenma controversy might seem like a hindrance to U.S. forces' capabilities in the Asia-Pacific region, other regional hubs in Japan -- such as the Kadena and Misawa military facilities -- will still give the United States robust power projection capabilities, even if Futenma ceases to provide basing for Marine air assets in Okinawa. Moreover, current political dynamics could lead this issue to evolve in such a way that the Japan Self-Defense Force (JSDF) assumes more responsibility for national and regional security. The JSDF is gradually moving toward greater involvement in security matters outside Japan's immediate vicinity. Furthermore, Chinese incursions into waters claimed by Japan have sparked a domestic debate on whether Japanese security services, such as the Coast Guard, should have broader authority. This trend would only grow if the United States seems to have less of a presence in the area because of a continued impasse over Futenma. (Similar trends have emerged in Taiwan, where a potential reduction of the U.S. presence in Okinawa is seen as necessitating stronger, independent Taiwanese defense capabilities.)
The Futenma controversy does not pose a long-term threat to the U.S.-Japanese alliance, nor does the current Japanese political landscape. Though there is a sense that the U.S.-Japanese relationship has stalled because of difficult issues like domestic resistance to the Okinawa bases and the TPP, regional dynamics and more than half a century of close relations will help ensure the endurance of the security alliance between Tokyo and Washington.
-
Summary
The United States is not eager to launch an air campaign against the Syrian regime that would be similar to the NATO campaign in Libya even though numerous U.S. lawmakers have called for such a campaign. Not only did Libya not have the formidable air defense systems that Russia has provided to Syria, but Syria's rebels have not been able to control large areas of territory. These factors would complicate any air campaign against the al Assad regime, but Washington's reluctance to get involved militarily is based on the fear that it could slip into a much messier conflict than it did in Libya.
Analysis
Amid increasing calls from some U.S. lawmakers for an air campaign against the Syrian regime, the U.S. administration appears to be making a concerted effort to explain to the public why this is not a preferred course of action. Beyond the significant regional implications of such an action, Washington does not want to get involved in a conflict with Syria that likely would pose credible threats to U.S. air forces and risk involving ground forces as well.
The Rationale in Washington
When U.S. Central Command chief Gen. James Mattis briefed the U.S. Senate Armed Services Committee on Syria on March 6, his overarching message was that any military action in the country would not be easy. Mattis noted that the lack of any safe zones in Syria would mean deploying a significant number of ground troops to create such zones and warned that the United States believes the Syrian government possesses chemical and biological weapons. When asked about the possibility of imposing a no-fly zone in Syria, as NATO forces did in Libya, Mattis warned of the potential dangers posed by the advanced air defense systems Syria has received from Russia.
Mattis' remarks were a subtle rebuttal to calls made in recent days by Sen. John McCain, one of the committee leaders, to launch airstrikes in Syria. On the same day as Mattis' briefing, Foreign Policy published an article citing two anonymous Obama administration officials discussing what the White House is planning for the next phase in the Syrian conflict. One official referred to the same danger posed by Russian-supplied air defense systems, adding that a recent Russian shipment to Syria contained large amounts of advanced anti-aircraft missile systems, presumably intended to defend Syria should the conflict become international.
Washington seeks to dampen the expectation that it intends to do in Syria what it did in Libya. An air campaign is not on the horizon, and the United States is also hesitant to publicize any of its attempts to arm the opposition, though remarks from the officials cited by Foreign Policy seem to indicate that Washington is giving other countries (likely Saudi Arabia and Qatar) approval to do so. Public discussions of arming the opposition forces are, however, more for public relations to show that something is being done to assist an opposition under siege. If the United States were actively engaged in such activities, it would manage the operation covertly.
Syria's Defenses Compared To Libya's
The United States has a strategic interest in seeing the fall of the al Assad regime because of the effect it would have on Iran's influence in the Levant. Aside from levying sanctions and a public acquiescence to other countries sending in weapons, Washington does not appear to be publicly doing much to hasten al Assad's downfall. The United States is wary of entering the fray due to its fears that it would get dragged into a much messier conflict than those calling for an air campaign are anticipating. Pointing to the potential dangers posed by Syria's air defense network is one way of discouraging calls for military intervention.
This is not to say that the Syrian Air Defense Command (ADC) is not formidable, especially in comparison to what NATO forces went up against in Libya. With an estimated 54,000 personnel, it is twice the size of former Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi's air force and air defense command combined at the start of the NATO campaign. Syria's ADC consists of the 24th and 26th anti-aircraft divisions comprising thousands of anti-aircraft guns and more than 130 surface-to-air missile (SAM) batteries. The bulk of Syria's ADC SAM weaponry is the SA-2, SA-3, SA-5, SA-6, and SA-8 SAM systems that were also operated by Gadhafi's forces. However, the Syrians operate these systems in far greater numbers, have devoted significant resources to the maintenance and upgrade of these missile batteries and have also successfully deployed their SAM systems in a dense and overlapping layout that would complicate potential Suppression of Enemy Air Defenses operations.
Though also a Russian ally, Gadhafi did not have the more advanced Russian air defense systems that the al Assad regime possesses. For instance, Iran reportedly financed Syria's acquisition of 50 SA-22 systems first delivered in 2007 -- 10 of which allegedly ended up in Iranian hands. The Syrians are also thought to operate several SA-11 systems, which the Libyans did not have. Furthermore, reports emerged in November 2011 that the Russians upgraded numerous Syrian radar sites and transferred a number of advanced S-300 systems to Syria and that a Russian naval mission to Syria that month also served to transport several Russian missile technicians who were to assist the Syrians in operating the S-300s.
Syria's defenses against an air campaign are not restricted to the ground. Its air force can contribute dozens of fighter aircraft and interceptors, the most advanced of which are the MiG-25 and MiG-29. But while the Syrian air force is both quantitatively and qualitatively superior to Gadhafi's air force, which was just starting to re-equip and modernize itself after years of sanctions, it has neither played a meaningful role in managing the unrest in the country nor would it play a meaningful role in defending the country from an air campaign.
Perhaps the biggest difference between Libya and Syria is that the Syrian rebels have not yet been able to hold significant territory. This matters not just for their ability to have safe areas from which to launch attacks, but also for the air defense network's ability to function properly. Air defense systems typically are designed to provide cover through overlapping areas of coverage. When eastern Libya fell into rebel hands early on during the revolution, that overlap was severely damaged, which in turn degraded the Gadhafi regime's overall air defense network. The Syrians are not facing this difficulty.
A Feb. 28 CNN report said that the Pentagon had drawn up detailed plans for military action against the Syrian regime. The U.S. military indeed has updated its order of battle (orbat) for Syria in preparation for any contingency operations, and this work allegedly produced the best orbat the United States has had on Syria since 2001. However, contingency plans exist for numerous countries with which war is unlikely. The situation in Syria -- whether through the loss of territory, massive defections from the regime or the loss of Russian support -- will have to change before Washington implements any of the plans it has prepared.
-
Syria's regime is expected to fall at any moment, yet doesn’t. It has been more than a year since the unrest in Syria began, and more than a year since outside observers have assumed that Syrian President Bashar al Assad’s regime would fall, presumably because it cannot resist the displeasure of the public. For more than a year, those expectations have been disappointed. Obviously it is not clear whether the Syrian regime will survive; it may quickly collapse.
But looking at Syria requires an understanding of the relationship between tyranny, popularity and power. There is no question that the Syrian regime is tyrannical and brutal. The regime suppressed basic liberties and slaughtered dissidents long before this uprising. Indeed, this has gone on for decades. Yet the regime has survived -- in fact, it has survived precisely because it acts as a tyranny. It is not clear that it could have survived any other way.
To think about the endurance of the Syrian regime we need to consider tyrannies in general. Tyrannies are assumed to be unpopular, but history has shown that this is not always true. The best example of this is Nazi Germany. Adolf Hitler's regime was certainly tyrannical, ruthlessly crushing dissent even among those it regarded as legitimate citizens. But by all measures and accounts, Hitler and the regime remained broadly popular until well into World War II. Being deprived of rights did not alienate the population because they saw the regime as providing them with greater benefits.
Hitler’s case is extreme both in its degree of deprivation of rights and the breadth of his popularity. Still, very few regimes are created or sustained without substantial support. The concept of a regime as simply a gangster state’s force resting upon general public opposition is very rare in practice, or certainly not long lived. Regimes in Eastern Europe did rest on top of a largely dispirited populace, but those regimes were imposed by foreign occupation and sustained by the threat of Soviet intervention.
Tyrannical regimes normally have the support of a portion of the public, and that support can be substantial. Reasons for that support can be ideological, tribal, religious, material or a combination of these. Supporters are frequently as committed to the survival of the regime as opponents are committed to its destruction, and they are often better armed and organized.
Power cannot rest on a base of universal hostility, and where it does, cannot be sustained for long. It can however rest on a part of the population who stand to lose a great deal if the regime falls, and are therefore as prepared to fight to save the regime as dissidents are prepared to fight to overthrow it. Consider that the broadly hated regime of Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi was on the verge of retaking the rebel stronghold of Benghazi when NATO intervened.
The point is that it is difficult to overthrow regimes. Military and security services must turn on the regime or split it into opposed factions. If they hold together and support the regime, the power of their organizations and weapons is difficult for the poorly armed public to overcome.
This is why the Syrian regime has survived as long as it has. It has substantial -- if minority -- support, and those supporters, having much to lose, are deeply committed to the regime's survival. The military and security services have not turned on the regime, nor have they split. With opponents of the regime unable to match their power, the regime has endured.
There is a lesson here that goes beyond Syria, but affects how we understand tyrannies in general. Tyrannies are not necessarily weak; they are not generally isolated; they do not always represent a minority; and they are not easy to take down. Whatever is the case in Syria, the assumption that a regime cannot be tyrannical and maintain popular support is not true. There would not be so many tyrannies if that were the case.
Most important, this means that expectations that unrest and uprisings will consistently produce regime change will frequently be disappointed. Indeed, without outside intervention -- overt or covert -- designed to match the organized force of the tyrannical regime, that regime has a decent chance of surviving.
-
I'm thinking we may have failed to note Baraq's leakage of Israel air strip agreement with Azerbiajian. :x :x :x :x :x :x :x :x :x
-
I'm thinking we may have failed to note Baraq's leakage of Israel air strip agreement with Azerbiajian. :x :x :x :x :x :x :x :x :x
Not possible. He wore a kippa at AIPAC!
-
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/africaandindianocean/mali/9191760/Triumphant-Tuareg-rebels-fall-out-over-al-Qaedas-jihad-in-Mali.html
Triumphant Tuareg rebels fall out over al-Qaeda's jihad in Mali
As one group of rebels proudly proclaimed the independent state of Azawad in the "liberated" north of Mali last week, their allies were preparing for jihad by cutting off the hand of a "criminal" and forcing women to wear the veil.
By Nick Meo
11:42AM BST 07 Apr 2012
The rebels, armed with weapons stolen from Muammar Gaddafi’s formidable arsenal, took over an area of the Sahara as big as France in an astonishing 72 hours, taking advantage of the chaotic aftermath of an army coup.
Few of the people they promised to free waited to find out what freedom would be like. Instead, an estimated 250,000 people left their homes, terrified families fleeing with their children and possessions. Many told tales of looting and rape by rebels who now control a vast area in the heart of Africa.
Foreign governments were left scrambling to find out exactly who the rebels were, amid fears that a base for al-Qaeda will now be set up in the Sahara similar to ones in lawless parts of Pakistan and Somalia.
“Our law is a legal war, a sacred war, in the name of Islam,” a bearded leader of the Ansar al Din militia called Omar Hamaha told his supporters in Timbuktu soon after they took control of the ancient caravan town. With its blue men, spectacular mudbrick mosques, and annual music festival under the desert stars, Timbuktu was a fashionable destination for the well-heeled tourist looking for an experience of the Sahara, until 2007 when kidnapping started.
Even more worrying than Ansar al Din were the supporters of al-Qaeda in the Maghreb (AQIM) who streamed into northern Mali with ambitions of setting up an Islamic state. They included men who have made millions of pounds of ransom money by kidnapping foreigners.
They put up their black flags over the three main cities of the north, Timbuktu, Gao, and Kidal, and strutted in the streets. Rare television pictures shot in the northern cities showed tough-looking men in turbans driving pick-up trucks, armed to the teeth with automatic weapons as crowds looked on nervously.
Some rebels grabbed the chance to loot, setting fire to buildings and abducting young women, according to refugees. Others — or perhaps the same ones - were determined to impose a Taliban-style Islamic rule, ordering men into the mosques to pray and closing bars and discos.
-
Lets have any further coverage of this matter here:
http://dogbrothers.com/phpBB2/index.php?topic=1210.0
-
A very interesting piece by Friedman. Thoughts?
Consequences of the Fall of the Syrian Regime
By George Friedman
We have entered the endgame in Syria. That doesn't mean that we have reached the end by any means, but it does mean that the precondition has been met for the fall of the regime of Syrian President Bashar al Assad. We have argued that so long as the military and security apparatus remain intact and effective, the regime could endure. Although they continue to function, neither appears intact any longer; their control of key areas such as Damascus and Aleppo is in doubt, and the reliability of their personnel, given defections, is no longer certain. We had thought that there was a reasonable chance of the al Assad regime surviving completely. That is no longer the case. At a certain point -- in our view, after the defection of a Syrian pilot June 21 and then the defection of the Tlass clan -- key members of the regime began to recalculate the probability of survival and their interests. The regime has not unraveled, but it is unraveling.
The speculation over al Assad's whereabouts and heavy fighting in Damascus is simply part of the regime's problems. Rumors, whether true or not, create uncertainty that the regime cannot afford right now. The outcome is unclear. On the one hand, a new regime might emerge that could exercise control. On the other hand, Syria could collapse into a Lebanon situation in which it disintegrates into regions held by various factions, with no effective central government.
The Russian and Chinese Strategy
The geopolitical picture is somewhat clearer than the internal political picture. Whatever else happens, it is unlikely that al Assad will be able to return to unchallenged rule. The United States, France and other European countries have opposed his regime. Russia, China and Iran have supported it, each for different reasons. The Russians opposed the West's calls to intervene, which were grounded on human rights concerns, fearing that the proposed intervention was simply a subterfuge to extend Western power and that it would be used against them. The Chinese also supported the Syrians, in part for these same reasons. Both Moscow and Beijing hoped to avoid legitimizing Western pressure based on human rights considerations -- something they had each faced at one time or another. In addition, Russia and China wanted the United States in particular focused on the Middle East rather than on them. They would not have minded a military intervention that would have bogged down the United States, but the United States declined to give that to them.
But the Russian and Chinese game was subtler than that. It focused on Iran. As we have argued, if the al Assad regime were to survive and were to be isolated from the West, it would be primarily dependent on Iran, its main patron. Iran had supplied trainers, special operations troops, supplies and money to sustain the regime. For Iran, the events in Syria represented a tremendous opportunity. Iran already held a powerful position in Iraq, not quite dominating it but heavily influencing it. If the al Assad regime survived and had Iranian support to thank for its survival, Syria would become even more dependent on Iran than was Iraq. This would shore up the Iranian position in Iraq, but more important, it would have created an Iranian sphere of influence stretching from western Afghanistan to Lebanon, where Hezbollah is an Iranian ally.
The Russians and Chinese clearly understood that if this had happened, the United States would have had an intense interest in undermining the Iranian sphere of influence -- and would have had to devote massive resources to doing so. Russia and China benefitted greatly in the post-9/11 world, when the United States was obsessed with the Islamic world and had little interest or resources to devote to China and Russia. With the end of the Afghanistan war looming, this respite seemed likely to end. Underwriting Iranian hegemony over a region that would inevitably draw the United States' attention was a low-cost, high-return strategy.
The Chinese primarily provided political cover, keeping the Russians from having to operate alone diplomatically. They devoted no resources to the Syrian conflict but did continue to oppose sanctions against Iran and provided trade opportunities for Iran. The Russians made a much larger commitment, providing material and political support to the al Assad regime.
It seems the Russians began calculating the end for the regime some time ago. Russia continued to deliver ammunition and other supplies to Syria but pulled back on a delivery of helicopters. Several attempts to deliver the helicopters "failed" when British insurers of the ship pulled coverage. That was the reason the Russians gave for not delivering the helicopters, but obviously the Russians could have insured the ship themselves. They were backing off from supporting al Assad, their intelligence indicating trouble in Damascus. In the last few days the Russians have moved to the point where they had their ambassador to France suggest that the time had come for al Assad to leave -- then, of course, he denied having made the statement.
A Strategic Blow to Iran
As the Russians withdraw support, Iran is now left extremely exposed. There had been a sense of inevitability in Iran's rise in the region, particularly in the Arabian Peninsula. The decline of al Assad's regime is a strategic blow to the Iranians in two ways. First, the wide-reaching sphere of influence they were creating clearly won't happen now. Second, Iran will rapidly move from being an ascendant power to a power on the defensive.
The place where this will become most apparent is in Iraq. For Iran, Iraq represents a fundamental national security interest. Having fought a bloody war with Iraq in the 1980s, the Iranians have an overriding interest in assuring that Iraq remains at least neutral and preferably pro-Iranian. While Iran was ascendant, Iraqi politicians felt that they had to be accommodating. However, in the same way that Syrian generals had to recalculate their positions, Iraqi politicians have to do the same. With sanctions -- whatever their effectiveness -- being imposed on Iran, and with Iran's position in Syria unraveling, the psychology in Iraq might change.
This is particularly the case because of intensifying Turkish interest in Iraq. In recent days the Turks have announced plans for pipelines in Iraq to oil fields in the south and in the north. Turkish economic activity is intensifying. Turkey is the only regional power that can challenge Iran militarily. It uses that power against the Kurds in Iraq. But more to the point, if a country builds a pipeline, it must ensure access to it, either politically or militarily. Turkey does not want to militarily involve itself in Iraq, but it does want political influence to guarantee its interests. Thus, just as the Iranians are in retreat, the Turks have an interest in, if not supplanting them, certainly supplementing them.
The pressure on Iran is now intense, and it will be interesting to see the political consequences. There was consensus on the Syrian strategy, but with failure of the strategy, that consensus dissolves. This will have an impact inside of Iran, possibly even more than the sanctions. Governments have trouble managing reversals.
Other Consequences
From the American point of view, al Assad's decline opens two opportunities. First, its policy of no direct military intervention but unremitting political and, to a lesser extent, economic pressure appears to be working in this instance. More precisely, even if it had no effect, it will appear that it did, which will enhance the ability of the United States to influence events in other countries without actually having to intervene.
Second, the current situation opens the door for a genuine balance of power in the region that does not require constant American intervention. One of the consequences of the events in Syria is that Turkey has had to reconsider its policy toward countries on its periphery. In the case of Iraq, Turkey has an interest in suppressing the Kurdistan Workers' Party militants who have taken refuge there and defending oil and other economic interests. Turkey's strategy is moving from avoiding all confrontations to avoiding major military commitments while pursuing its political interests. In the end, that means that Turkey will begin moving into a position of balancing Iran for its own interests in Iraq.
This relieves the United States of the burden of containing Iran. We continue to regard the Iranian sphere of influence as a greater threat to American and regional interests than Iran's nuclear program. The decline of al Assad solves the major problem. It also increases the sense of vulnerability in Iran. Depending on how close they are to creating a deliverable nuclear weapon -- and our view is that they are not close -- the Iranians may feel it necessary to moderate their position.
A major loser in this is Israel. Israel had maintained a clear understanding with the al Assad regime. If the al Assad regime restrained Hezbollah, Israel would have no objection to al Assad's dominating Lebanon. That agreement has frayed since the United States pushed al Assad's influence out of Lebanon in 2006. Nevertheless, the Israelis preferred al Assad to the Sunnis -- until it appeared that the Iranians would dominate Syria. But the possibility of either an Islamist regime in Damascus or, more likely, Lebanese-style instability cannot please the Israelis. They are already experiencing jihadist threats in Sinai. The idea of having similar problems in Syria, where the other side of the border is the Galilee rather than the Negev, must make them nervous.
But perhaps the most important losers will be Russia and China. Russia, like Iran, has suffered a significant setback in its foreign policy that will have psychological consequences. The situation in Syria has halted the foreign-policy momentum the Russians had built up. But more important, the Russian and Chinese hope has been that the United States would continue to treat them as secondary issues while it focused on the Middle East. The decline of al Assad and the resulting dynamic in the region increases the possibility that the United States can disengage from the region. This is not something the Russians or Chinese want, but in the end, they did not have the power to create the outcome in Syria that they had wanted.
The strategy of the dominant power is to encourage a balance of power that contains threats without requiring direct intervention. This was the British strategy, but it has not been one that the United States has managed well. After the jihadist wars, there is a maturation under way in U.S. strategy. That means allowing the intrinsic dynamic in the region to work, intervening only as the final recourse. The events in Syria appear to be simply about the survival of the al Assad regime. But they have far greater significance in terms of limiting Iranian power, creating a local balance of power and freeing the United States to focus on global issues, including Russia and China.
-
Extremely interesting, though it seems he is writing of all the consequences other than the elephant in the room, that Islamic extremists will be controlling another country in the region in addition to whatever problems are to come out of Egypt, Libya etc.
Our only hope can be for these countries now discovering self-rule to turn their attention inward to better their own lives instead of outward to export violence.
-
Perhaps a better theme for the "US foreign policy" thread but IMHO we need to think about the conceptual strategic shifts required as we return to a multi-polar world from the uni-polar moment.
-
Summary
JACK GUEZ/AFP/GettyImages
Israeli F-15 fighter jets being refueled by a Boeing 707 near Hatzerim air base June 28
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Aug. 17 said it could be worth attacking Iran's nuclear program, even if the attack only delays the program rather than completely destroying it, The Jerusalem Post reported. An Israeli airstrike on the Iranian nuclear program would be a complicated and operationally demanding task. If Israel were to pursue such an operation, a strike package of fighter-bombers and associated support aircraft would likely carry out the brunt of the assault. With the possibility that rebel operations could degrade the Syrian air defense network sometime in the future, the Israeli air force may soon have another viable route option open up for a strike on Iran. However, the numerous variables and difficulties inherent in such a complex and long-range mission would present serious challenges to executing a strike along any route.
Analysis
A unilateral strike on the Iranian nuclear program is not Israel's preferred option. As Netanyahu's comment illustrates, Israel is fully aware that it could not cause as much damage to the Iranian nuclear program as the United States could. A far more preferable option would be to persuade the United States to lead the strike. Not only does the United States have more military options available to it (including B-2 bombers equipped with the Massive Ordnance Penetrator), but it is also better positioned to respond to retaliation from Iran, including any attempt to close the Strait of Hormuz. However, if Israel does decide to proceed with the mission unilaterally, the different routes the strike package could take each pose unique challenges.
Visit our Iran page for all related analysis, videos, situation reports and maps.
If Israel decided to attack the Iranian nuclear program, the most important component of the attack would likely involve a strike package of fighter-bombers supported by aerial refueling tankers and other support assets. Israel has roughly 100 F-16I aircraft that have greater range than earlier F-16 models due to their conformal fuel tanks. These combat aircraft, in addition to some 25 long-range F-15I strike planes, would constitute the core of the strike force.
Estimates vary on the number of aerial refueling planes that the Israeli air force operates, ranging anywhere from eight to 13 planes. These aircraft would be critical in providing the strike package with enough fuel to reach its targets and return home. Therefore, the number of aerial refueling tankers available would dictate the size of the strike package. The tankers, due to their lower speed and greater vulnerability, would not be able to accompany the fighter-bombers all the way to their targets in Iran but instead would likely have to loiter and refuel the main strike package on its way home.
.
Currently, the Israeli air force has three principal routes to its targets in Iran. Each option varies in operational and political risk. Some of the countries that could be traversed have capable and effective air defenses that could pose a serious threat to Israel's aircraft, and all of these countries would face significant diplomatic problems with Iran -- and potentially the rest of the Islamic world -- if they allowed Israeli jets to cross unchallenged.
The first route involves flying northward over the eastern Mediterranean Sea between Cyprus and Syria, and then proceeding eastward along the Turkey-Syria border, flying through northern Iraq and into Iran. This route circumvents Syria's air defense network, which was built to cover its western flank against an Israeli air attack. This is very similar to the path Israel is believed to have taken during Operation Orchard, when it struck at a suspected Syrian nuclear reactor in the Deir el-Zour region in September 2007.
The second route is the shortest and involves flying directly over Jordan and Iraq to reach Iran. Due to the shorter distance, the likelihood that Jordan could be deterred from interfering with the strike package, and the absence of any viable Iraqi air defense, this route probably poses the least risk. However, Iraq has surveillance radars and could warn Iran of an incoming strike given the close relationship between the two countries' defense establishments. And even if Jordan were deterred from trying to counter the potentially overwhelming force of an Israeli strike, taking this route would likely lead to considerable diplomatic complications with Amman.
The third route takes the strike package through northern Saudi Arabia, over the Persian Gulf and into Iran. While most of Saudi Arabia's air defenses and air bases are oriented toward the Persian Gulf and the main cities to the south, an Israeli strike package would almost certainly be detected, especially since it would have to fly near Tabuk's air base. It is uncertain how Riyadh would respond to this scenario, but according to Israeli newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth, Saudi Arabia has warned that it will intercept any Israeli fighters that enter its airspace to attack Iran. While Saudi Arabia would be happy to see Iran weakened, it does not want to be the target of an Iranian retaliatory campaign, especially if Iran were to attempt to close the Strait of Hormuz or to hit Saudi oil installations with ballistic missiles. If Riyadh did choose to intercept the Israeli aircraft, the Israeli air force would face serious complications because Saudi Arabia has a large number of advanced interceptor aircraft.
The risks involved in the options outlined above have shifted and changed over time. For instance, the first route was far more viable in 2007, before the May 2010 Gaza flotilla incident seriously damaged Israeli-Turkish relations. On the other hand, an Israeli air force operation over Iraq was more politically complicated before 2012, when the United States assured the protection of Iraqi airspace.
As the war in Syria intensifies, another route may become viable. Rebel operations have already negatively affected the Syrian regime's air defenses somewhat. If this trend intensifies, the country's air defense network may be degraded to the extent that the Israeli air force would be able to fly directly over Syria without undue risk to its aircraft, particularly its slow and vulnerable aerial refueling tankers. This option would allow Israel to avoid the operational and political risks of flying over Saudi Arabia, Jordan or Turkey while maintaining a direct flight path to Iran.
Read more: Challenges of an Israeli Airstrike on Iran | Stratfor
-
War and Bluff: Iran, Israel and the United States
September 11, 2012 | 0900 GMT
Stratfor
By George Friedman
For the past several months, the Israelis have been threatening to attack Iranian nuclear sites as the United States has pursued a complex policy of avoiding complete opposition to such strikes while making clear it doesn't feel such strikes are necessary. At the same time, the United States has carried out maneuvers meant to demonstrate its ability to prevent the Iranian counter to an attack -- namely blocking the Strait of Hormuz. While these maneuvers were under way, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said no "redline" exists that once crossed by Iran would compel an attack on Iran's nuclear facilities. The Israeli government has long contended that Tehran eventually will reach the point where it will be too costly for outsiders to stop the Iranian nuclear program.
The Israeli and American positions are intimately connected, but the precise nature of the connection is less clear. Israel publicly casts itself as eager to strike Iran but restrained by the United States, though unable to guarantee it will respect American wishes if Israel sees an existential threat emanating from Iran. The United States publicly decries Iran as a threat to Israel and to other countries in the region, particularly Saudi Arabia, but expresses reservations about military action out of fears that Iran would respond to a strike by destabilizing the region and because it does not believe the Iranian nuclear program is as advanced as the Israelis say it is.
The Israelis and the Americans publicly hold the same view of Iran. But their public views on how to proceed diverge. The Israelis have less tolerance for risk than the Americans, who have less tolerance for the global consequences of an attack. Their disagreement on the issue pivots around the status of the Iranian nuclear program. All of this lies on the surface; let us now examine the deeper structure of the issue.
Behind the Rhetoric
From the Iranian point of view, a nuclear program has been extremely valuable. Having one has brought Iran prestige in the Islamic world and has given it a level of useful global political credibility. As with North Korea, having a nuclear program has allowed Iran to sit as an equal with the five permanent members of the U.N. Security Council plus Germany, creating a psychological atmosphere in which Iran's willingness merely to talk to the Americans, British, French, Russians, Chinese and Germans represented a concession. Though it has positioned the Iranians extremely well politically, the nuclear program also has triggered sanctions that have caused Iran substantial pain. But Iran has prepared for sanctions for years, building a range of corporate, banking and security mechanisms to evade their most devastating impact. Having countries like Russia and China unwilling to see Iran crushed has helped. Iran can survive sanctions.
Visit our Iran page for related analysis, videos, situation reports and maps.
While a nuclear program has given Iran political leverage, actually acquiring nuclear weapons would increase the risk of military action against Iran. A failed military action would benefit Iran, proving its power. By contrast, a successful attack that dramatically delayed or destroyed Iran's nuclear capability would be a serious reversal. The Stuxnet episode, assuming it was an Israeli or U.S. attempt to undermine Iran's program using cyberwarfare, is instructive in this regard. Although the United States hailed Stuxnet as a major success, it hardly stopped the Iranian program, if the Israelis are to be believed. In that sense, it was a failure.
Using nuclear weapons against Israel would be catastrophic to Iran. The principle of mutual assured destruction, which stabilized the U.S.-Soviet balance in the Cold War, would govern Iran's use of nuclear weapons. If Iran struck Israel, the damage would be massive, forcing the Iranians to assume that the Israelis and their allies (specifically, the United States) would launch a massive counterattack on Iran, annihilating large parts of Iran's population.
It is here that we get to the heart of the issue. While from a rational perspective the Iranians would be fools to launch such an attack, the Israeli position is that the Iranians are not rational actors and that their religious fanaticism makes any attempt to predict their actions pointless. Thus, the Iranians might well accept the annihilation of their country in order to destroy Israel in a sort of megasuicide bombing. The Israelis point to the Iranians' rhetoric as evidence of their fanaticism. Yet, as we know, political rhetoric is not always politically predictive. In addition, rhetoric aside, Iran has pursued a cautious foreign policy, pursuing its ends with covert rather than overt means. It has rarely taken reckless action, engaging instead in reckless rhetoric.
If the Israelis believe the Iranians are not deterred by the prospect of mutually assured destruction, then allowing them to develop nuclear weapons would be irrational. If they do see the Iranians as rational actors, then shaping the psychological environment in which Iran acquires nuclear weapons is a critical element of mutually assured destruction. Herein lies the root of the great Israeli debate that pits the Netanyahu government, which appears to regard Iran as irrational, against significant segments of the Israeli military and intelligence communities, which regard Iran as rational.
Avoiding Attaining a Weapon
Assuming the Iranians are rational actors, their optimal strategy lies not in acquiring nuclear weapons and certainly not in using them, but instead in having a credible weapons development program that permits them to be seen as significant international actors. Developing weapons without ever producing them gives Iran international political significance, albeit at the cost of sanctions of debatable impact. At the same time, it does not force anyone to act against them, thereby permitting outsiders to avoid incurring the uncertainties and risks of such action.
Up to this point, the Iranians have not even fielded a device for testing, let alone a deliverable weapon. For all their activity, either their technical limitations or a political decision has kept them from actually crossing the obvious redlines and left Israel trying to define some developmental redline.
Iran's approach has created a slowly unfolding crisis, reinforced by Israel's slowly rolling response. For its part, all of Israel's rhetoric -- and periodic threats of imminent attack -- has been going on for several years, but the Israelis have done little beyond some covert and cyberattacks to block the Iranian nuclear program. Just as the gap between Iranian rhetoric and action has been telling, so, too, has the gap between Israeli rhetoric and reality. Both want to appear more fearsome than either is actually willing to act.
The Iranian strategy has been to maintain ambiguity on the status of its program, while making it appear that the program is capable of sudden success -- without ever achieving that success. The Israeli strategy has been to appear constantly on the verge of attack without ever attacking and to use the United States as its reason for withholding attacks, along with the studied ambiguity of the Iranian program. The United States, for its part, has been content playing the role of holding Israel back from an attack that Israel doesn't seem to want to launch. The United States sees the crumbling of Iran's position in Syria as a major Iranian reversal and is content to see this play out alongside sanctions.
Underlying Israel's hesitancy about whether it will attack has been the question of whether it can pull off an attack. This is not a political question, but a military and technical one. Iran, after all, has been preparing for an attack on its nuclear facilities since their inception. Some scoff at Iranian preparations for attack. These are the same people who are most alarmed by supposed Iranian acumen in developing nuclear weapons. If a country can develop nuclear weapons, there is no reason it can't develop hardened and dispersed sites and create enough ambiguity to deprive Israeli and U.S. intelligence of confidence in their ability to determine what is where. I am reminded of the raid on Son Tay during the Vietnam War. The United States mounted an effort to rescue U.S. prisoners of war in North Vietnam only to discover that its intelligence on where the POWs were located was completely wrong. Any politician deciding whether to attack Iran would have Son Tay and a hundred other intelligence failures chasing around their brains, especially since a failed attack on Iran would be far worse than no attack.
Dispersed sites reduce Israel's ability to strike hard at a target and to acquire a battle damage assessment that would tell Israel three things: first, whether the target had been destroyed when it was buried under rock and concrete; second, whether the target contained what Israel thought it contained; and third, whether the strike had missed a backup site that replicated the one it destroyed. Assuming the Israelis figured out that another attack was needed, could their air force mount a second air campaign lasting days or weeks? They have a small air force and the distances involved are great.
Meanwhile, deploying special operations forces to so many targets so close to Tehran and so far from Iran's borders would be risky, to say the least. Some sort of exotic attack, for example one using nuclear weapons to generate electromagnetic pulses to paralyze the region, is conceivable -- but given the size of the Tel Aviv-Jerusalem-Haifa triangle, it is hard to imagine Israel wanting to set such a precedent. If the Israelis have managed to develop a new weapons technology unknown to anyone, all conventional analyses are off. But if the Israelis had an ultrasecret miracle weapon, postponing its use might compromise its secrecy. I suspect that if they had such a weapon, they would have used it by now.
The battlefield challenges posed by the Iranians are daunting, and a strike becomes even less appealing considering that the Iranians have not yet detonated a device and are far from a weapon. The Americans emphasize these points, but they are happy to use the Israeli threats to build pressure on the Iranians. The United States wants to undermine Iranian credibility in the region by making Iran seem vulnerable. The twin forces of Israeli rhetoric and sanctions help make Iran look embattled. The reversal in Syria enhances this sense. Naval maneuvers in the Strait of Hormuz add to the sense that the United States is prepared to neutralize Iranian counters to an Israeli airstrike, making the threat Israel poses and the weakness of Iran appear larger.
When we step back and view the picture as a whole, we see Iran using its nuclear program for political reasons but being meticulous not to make itself appear unambiguously close to success. We see the Israelis talking as if they were threatened but acting as if they were in no rush to address the supposed threat. And we see the Americans acting as if they are restraining Israel, paradoxically appearing to be Iran's protector even though they are using the Israeli threat to increase Iranian insecurity. For their part, the Russians initially supported Iran in a bid to bog down the United States in another Middle East crisis. But given Iran's reversal in Syria, the Russians are clearly reconsidering their Middle East strategy and even whether they actually have a strategy in the first place. Meanwhile, the Chinese want to continue buying Iranian oil unnoticed.
It is the U.S.-Israeli byplay that is most fascinating. On the surface, Israel is driving U.S. policy. On closer examination, the reverse is true. Israel has bluffed an attack for years and never acted. Perhaps now it will act, but the risks of failure are substantial. If Israel really wants to act, this is not obvious. Speeches by politicians do not constitute clear guidelines. If the Israelis want to get the United States to participate in the attack, rhetoric won't work. Washington wants to proceed by increasing pressure to isolate Iran. Simply getting rid of a nuclear program not clearly intended to produce a device is not U.S. policy. Containing Iran without being drawn into a war is. To this end, Israeli rhetoric is useful.
Rather than seeing Netanyahu as trying to force the United States into an attack, it is more useful to see Netanyahu's rhetoric as valuable to U.S. strategy. Israel and the United States remain geopolitically aligned. Israel's bellicosity is not meant to signal an imminent attack, but to support the U.S. agenda of isolating and maintaining pressure on Iran. That would indicate more speeches from Netanyahu and greater fear of war. But speeches and emotions aside, intensifying psychological pressure on Iran is more likely than war.
.
Read more: War and Bluff: Iran, Israel and the United States | Stratfor
-
Though completely unsourced, this comes from a friend who IMHO has a good, responsible track record:
I have been reading everything on line about the Egypt & Libya situation. I have some questions.
Egypt
1. The tweet sent out by the embassy regarding the film occurred before the riot. Why? Was there already something "in the wind" that the embassy staff had heard about?
2. Reports are that Zawahari's brother was involved in the planning.
Definite AQ presence, if so.
3. It occurred on 9-11. AQ actions are symbolic of using dates with relevance. Look at the UK and 7-11.
4. The Muslim Brotherhood controls the Egyptian government. How would they have not known. Did they support the action.
5. Was this action "rubbing 9-11" into the face of the US? Was it also "gloating" about having won in Egypt?
6. Where are all the other people who would work in the embassy? Are they still there?
Libya
1. Another instance of 9-11 "gloating"?
2. Was this planned with Egypt to occur at the same time?
3. The marines guarding Stevens had to be "called" to get him. WTF?
Where were they? What happened to his personal security force?
4. Reports are that the Libyan security force was in charge of
consulate security. If so, WTF? Why weren't the marines in charge of
security? That is typically their job.
5. If marines had to be called to the consulate to evacuate Stevens,
does this mean that there were no marines in the consulate when the
riots occurred? Were there any marines in the consulate at all?
6. Reports are that the Libyan security forces called for Stevens to be
evacuated. They had a secure place to take him. Reports are now
saying that someone on the force told the rioters and they attacked the
car.
7. When an ambassador leaves an embassy, he goes in a convoy. No word
whether there was a convoy or not? If not, why not?
8. First reports are that the vehicle was subject to RPG attack. Was
the car hit? If so, then the rest of the story is not consistent with
an RPG attack. An RPG attack on the car would have resulted in major
injuries at the very least.
9. The three other deaths were by gun shot. This would appear to
indicate that they were executed. Did they have other injuries from the
RPG?
10. Stevens was suffocated. Now it is being said by smoke inhalation.
This might be consistent with an RPG attack. When you look at the
photos of Stevens, he does appear to have clothing consistent with an
RPG. What other injuries did he have?
11. The main photo being showed has the White House claiming that
Stevens was being dragged to the hospital by "good guys" and that he was
unconscious. Perhaps the "good doctors" here can explain why Stevens'
eyes are open. Also, if he were unconscious, would his head not be
hanging down, unless someone pulled it up to take the photo.
12. Other reports are saying that he was dragged through the streets
like in Somalia. Would the White House pretend otherwise to avoid the
true ramifications of having another Somalia event right before an election?
13. What happened to all the other consulate employees? Where are
they? Are they hostages?
Obama Statement
1. Obama comes out today and essentially states that the perps "will be
brought to justice" while supporting the Libyan government. Nothing
else. Now, this afternoon, he is going to Las Vegas for more fund raising.
Is this going to be a Jimmy Carter moment for Obama? Will foreign
policy become a factor?
What are all others faults?
Pat
-
This from POTH (Pravda on the Hudson):
>
> Obama Administration Officials Say Attack in Libya May Have Been
> Planned
>
> The Obama administration suspects that the fiery attack in Libya that
> killed the American ambassador and three other diplomats may have been
> planned rather than a spontaneous mob getting out of control, American
> officials said Wednesday.
>
> Officials in Washington studying the events of the past 24 hours have
> focused on the differences between the protests on the American
> embassy in Cairo and the attack on the consulate in Benghazi, the
> Libyan city where Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens and the other Americans were killed.
>
> The protesters in Cairo appeared to be a genuinely spontaneous unarmed
> mob angered by an anti-Islam video produced in the United States. By
> contrast, it appeared the attackers in Benghazi were armed with
> mortars and rocket-propelled grenades. Intelligence reports are
> inconclusive at this point, officials said, but indications suggest
> the possibility that an organized group had either been waiting for an
> opportunity to exploit like the protests over the video or perhaps
> even generated the protests as a cover for their attack.
>
> Read More:
> http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/13/world/middleeast/us-envoy-to-libya-i
> s-repo
> rted-killed.html?emc=na
A friend comments:
"Ralph Peters on Fox News just now stated that the personnel in the Cairo Embassy were sent home early yesterday. He claims that the US Government knew that something was coming. If so, this is even more damning......."
Another friend comments:
"The movie was a diversion. It was likely retaliation for US drone strikes that have killed leaders of the current decentralized version of al Qaida. Don't forget that in 1998, the old version of AQ attacked US embassies in adjacent countries. Benghazi is in eastern Libya. It was the center of the rebel movement against Kaddafi. Remember when some raised questions about who was involved in the rebel movement. The lines of communication and supply from Egypt to Libya are relatively tight compared to Nairobi and Dar es Salaam in 1998."
-
http://worldnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2012/09/13/13840461-protesters-storm-us-embassy-in-yemeni-capital?lite
-
The weakness of Team Obama's response to Egypt and Libya leads to more of this , , ,
The New World Disorder
As the U.S. retreats, bad actors begin to fill the vacuum. .
Article Video Comments (119) more in Opinion | Find New $LINKTEXTFIND$ ».
smaller Larger facebooktwittergoogle pluslinked ininShare.2EmailPrintSave ↓ More .
.
smaller Larger
By their nature, foreign policy problems often have a long fuse. The successes of one Administration (Truman, Reagan) sometimes don't pay off for years (Bush 41), while dangers can simmer until they suddenly explode (al Qaeda). The Obama Presidency has been an era of slowly building tension and disorder that seems likely to flare into larger troubles and perhaps even military conflict no matter who wins in November.
This is the bigger picture behind this week's public fight between the U.S. and Israel, as well as the anti-American violence in Cairo and Benghazi. In the Persian Gulf, across the Arab Spring and into the Western Pacific, the U.S. is perceived as a declining power. As that perception spreads, the world's bad actors are asserting themselves to fill the vacuum, and American interests and assets will increasingly become targets unless the trend is reversed.
The Administration can't be blamed for the 9/11 anniversary attack in Benghazi, which was an act of terrorism by anti-American Islamists that wasn't stopped by a weak new government. Chris Stevens, the first U.S. Ambassador killed abroad in 33 years, was one of America's most capable diplomats who was deeply engaged in the post-Gadhafi transition. Libya's government has condemned the attack, and one test of its desire for close U.S. ties will be whether it punishes the perpetrators.
Related Video.
Columnist Bret Stephens on the attacks on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi and the White House's response. Photos: Associated Press
.Though less violent, the mob that was able to scale the U.S. Embassy wall in Cairo is in other ways more troubling. Egypt and the U.S. have worked closely since Anwar Sadat, and Cairo is one of the largest recipients of U.S. aid. Only last week the U.S. announced it will forgive about $1 billion in Egyptian debt. Yet the new Muslim Brotherhood government of Mohamed Morsi has failed to stop an assault on the Cairo Embassy, and it hadn't condemned the latest attack by late Wednesday.
Almost as disconcerting was President Obama's failure to mention the Cairo assault in his Rose Garden remarks on Wednesday morning. He condemned the Libyan attacks, praised the fallen U.S. diplomats, and pledged that "justice will be done." But he didn't offer any larger warning that such attacks will have consequences if they continue elsewhere around the world.
This is no idle worry. The 1979 seizure of U.S. diplomats in Tehran was followed that year by attacks on American Embassies in Tripoli and Islamabad. The U.S. Ambassador to Kabul was also killed. It isn't enough for a President to say, as Mr. Obama did Wednesday, that he will work with other countries to secure the safety of U.S. diplomats. These governments have to know they will be held accountable if they don't do so.
The larger concern is that these attacks fit a pattern of declining respect for U.S. power and influence. The Obama Administration has been saying for four years that the U.S. needs to defer to the U.N. and other nations, and the world has taken notice and is more willing to ignore U.S. desires and interests.
Across the Arab Spring, the U.S. has done little to shape events and is increasingly irrelevant. The U.S. angered Saudi Arabia by calling for the ouster of Egypt's Hosni Mubarak and now has little sway in Bahrain. Mr. Obama has washed his hands of Syria, allowing Russia and Iran to keep their proxy in power and stir up trouble for Turkey and Lebanon. The Chinese have brazenly occupied disputed territories in the South China Sea, hinting at war if the U.S. intercedes on behalf of its Asian allies.
The U.S. withdrew in toto from Iraq, and now its Prime Minister ignores Vice President Joe Biden's request to stop Iranian arms flights to Damascus. Even America's dependent in Kabul, Hamid Karzai, is refusing to honor his commitments on holding Taliban detainees. Perhaps he has heard Mr. Obama describe Afghanistan in his re-election campaign as if the U.S. is already halfway out the door.
Enlarge Image
Close
Zuma Press
U.S. President Barack Obama speaks to the media as Secretary of State Hillary Clinton stands by.
.
Most of all, Iran continues its march toward a nuclear weapon despite the President's vow that it is "unacceptable." The U.S. says it has isolated Iran, but only last month the U.N. Secretary-General defied a U.S. plea and attended a non-aligned summit in Tehran. The Administration has issued wholesale exemptions to Congressional sanctions, and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton declared on the weekend that the U.S. is "not setting deadlines" for Iran as it sprints to a bomb.
Meanwhile, the U.S. has engaged in repeated public arguments with Israel, supposedly its best ally in the region. The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Martin Dempsey, recently declared that he doesn't want to be "complicit" in any Israeli attack on Iran's nuclear sites. The White House failed to contradict him. A nation that appears so reluctant to stand by its friends won't be respected or feared by its enemies.
***
President Obama has had successes against terrorism, notably Osama bin Laden and a stepped-up pace of drone strikes. But both the hunt for al Qaeda and the drone program were part of the larger antiterror policy architecture established by his predecessor. He campaigned against much of that policy only to adopt it while in office.
Mr. Obama also came to office saying, and apparently believing, that a more deferential America would be better respected around the world. He will finish his term having disproved his own argument. The real lesson of the last four years—a lesson as much for Republican isolationists as for Democrats who want to lead from behind—is the ancient one that weakness is provocative
==================================
Obama Skipped Security Briefings; Caught Off Guard on Libya, Egypt
As more information comes to light regarding the violence in Egypt and Libya, including the deaths of four Americans, it becomes apparent that Barack Obama was caught completely off guard. Not only does it appear that the violence in Libya was coordinated and planned, but Barack Obama hadn't even attended a security briefing in a week.
Open Mic: Reporters Coordinated Their Questions Against Romney
Before GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney took to the podium on Wednesday for a press conference, members of the media were caught on an open mic coordinating their line of questioning. Their focus was not on policy, but rather to see if they could get Romney to step back from his earlier comments.
-
Two from a friend:
==============
This article has more information and really chafs my skin at the US initial response. I highlighted in bold key points.
• We sent one Blackhawk out of Tripoli to evacuate the 37 personnel. They were under the impression that there were only 10 people to evacuate when it was 37. Don't we even know how many personnel we had at the consulate?
• The Blackhawk carried a "squad" of Marines. In this case the squad was 8 marines. That is nowhere enough to stabilize a situation and evacuate people.
• 8 marines would likely mean 2 "fire teams". These would be organized with 4 team members. Each team would carry a SAW, squad automatic weapon, like a machine gun, an M-4 with an M-203 grenade launcher underneath it, and 2 M-4 riflemen carrying extra loads for the SAW and the M-203. (The M-4 is similar to the M-16.)
When I was in the AF, we had fire teams set up like this, except we carried an M-60 Machine Gun instead of the SAW. I can categorically say that 2 fire teams going into that situation would have not been sufficient to stabilize a situation so as to evacuate 10 people, needless to say, 37 people.
You don't send a couple of fire teams when you are up against unknown forces with RPG's, machine guns and mortars.
• One Blackhawk going into a non-friendly situation, even landing at an airport is just plain absurd. Where the hell is the backup, in the event the Blackhawk is disabled by either fire, or by mechanical problems?
Haven't we learned a damned since Desert 1 in Iran?
http://af.reuters.com/article/libyaNews/idAFL5E8KCMYB20120912?pageNumber=1&virtualBrandChannel=0
Libya rescue squad ran into fierce, accurate ambush
* U.S. rescue mission to Benghazi hit by 'professional' ambush
* Two diplomats killed at consulate, two at 'safe' house fight
* Rescue raid for diplomats dogged by miscommunication
By Hadeel Al Shalchi
BENGHAZI, Libya, Sept 12 (Reuters) - A squad of U.S. troops dispatched by helicopter across the Libyan desert to rescue besieged diplomats from Benghazi on Wednesday ran into a fierce overnight ambush that left a further two Americans dead, Libyan officials told Reuters.
Accounts of the mayhem at the U.S. consulate, where the ambassador and a fourth American died after a chaotic protest over a film insulting to Islam, remain patchy. But two Libyan officials, including the commander of a security force which escorted the U.S. rescuers, said a later assault on a supposedly safe refuge for the diplomats appeared professionally executed.
Miscommunication which understated the number of American survivors awaiting rescue - there were 37, nearly four times as many as the Libyan commander expected - also meant survivors and rescuers found themselves short of transport to escape this second battle, delaying an eventual dawn break for the airport.
Captain Fathi al-Obeidi, whose special operations unit was ordered by Libya's authorities to meet an eight-man force at Benghazi airport, said that after his men and the U.S. squad had found the American survivors who had evacuated the blazing consulate, the ostensibly secret location in an isolated villa came under an intense and highly accurate mortar barrage.
"I really believe that this attack was planned," he said, adding to suggestions by other Libyan officials that at least some of the hostility towards the Americans was the work of experienced combatants. "The accuracy with which the mortars hit us was too good for any regular revolutionaries."
Obeidi's Libya's Shield Brigade was formed by civilians during last year's U.S.-backed uprising against Muammar Gaddafi and is now part of the ad hoc government militia forces which the fledgling democratic administration uses to keep order.
Other Libyan officials cited the possible involvement of former soldiers still loyal to Gaddafi's family or Islamist fighters, some of whom have trained and fought in Afghanistan.
U.S. officials have noted it was "complex attack". Several Libyan officials and witnesses said an initial demonstration at the consulate appeared to be largely unarmed, though some elements of an Islamist militia were spotted.
At some point, the crowd became incensed, believing they were under attack from within the consulate, many fetched weapons and the consular villa ended up in flames, with most of the Americans fleeing to the safe house after two, including ambassador Christopher Stevens, had been fatally injured.
"RAINING DOWN FIRE"
Of the eight American troops who had come from Tripoli, one was killed and two were wounded, Obeidi said. A Libyan deputy interior minister said a second American was also killed in the attack on the safe house. It was not clear if this was a diplomat or one of the consulate's original security detail.
"It began to rain down on us," Obeidi told Reuters, describing the moment the attack began - just as the Libyan security force was starting up the 10 pickup trucks and sedans they had brought to ferry the Americans to the airport.
"About six mortars fell directly on the path to the villa," he said. "During this firing, one of the marines whom I had brought with me was wounded and fell to the ground.
"As I was dragging the wounded marine to safety, some marines who were located on the roof of the villa as snipers shouted and the rest of the marines all hit the ground.
"A mortar hit the side of the house. One of the marines from the roof went flying and fell on top of us."
A senior U.S. diplomat - not ambassador Stevens, who Libyan officials said died at a local hospital of the effects of smoke - urged Obeidi to push ahead with the evacuation, the Libyan commander Obeidi said. But he had a transport problem.
Having been told to expect 10 Americans and having found 37, Obeidi did not have enough vehicles to break out, despite having one heavy anti-aircraft gun mounted on a pickup truck.
"I was being bombarded by calls from all over the country by Libyan government officials who wanted me to hurry and get them out," he said. "But I told them that we were in such difficult circumstances and that I needed more men and more cars."
Eventually dozens more vehicles were dispatched from pro-government militia brigades and, with the sun rising, the convoy headed back to the airport where an aircraft flew a first group of U.S. personnel out to the Libyan capital.
Libyan Deputy Interior Minister Wanis al-Sharif said Stevens and another diplomat died in the first series of incidents around the consulate, while the other two Americans died during the attempt to evacuate from the safe house to the airport.
"(The ambassador) died as a result of suffocation by the fumes of the fire inside the embassy and one was also killed by gunfire before around 37 people were moved to a place we thought was safe," Sharif told Reuters in Benghazi.
Speaking of the rescue mission, he said: "A team of commandos arrived by air and went to a farm which we thought was a secret location. Once they got there, they came under heavy fire from heavy machine guns, rocket-propelled grenades and automatic rifles, which resulted in the death of two others."
He estimated that a dozen or more Americans were hurt.
================
http://freebeacon.com/reports-marines-not-permitted-live-ammo/
REPORTS: Marines not permitted live ammo
U.S. Marines defending the American embassy in Egypt were not permitted by the State Department to carry live ammunition, limiting their ability to respond to attacks like those this week on the U.S. consulate in Cairo.
Ambassador to Egypt Anne Patterson “did not permit US Marine guards to carry live ammunition,” according to multiple reports on U.S. Marine Corps blog spotted by Nightwatch. “She neutralized any US military capability that was dedicated to preserve her life and protect the US Embassy.”
If true, the reports indicate that Patterson shirked her obligation to protect U.S. interests, Nightwatch states.
“She did not defend US sovereign territory and betrayed her oath of office,” the report states. “She neutered the Marines posted to defend the embassy, trusting the Egyptians over the Marines.”
While Marines are typically relied on to defend U.S. territory abroad, such as embassies, these reports indicate that the Obama administration was relying on Egypt’s new Muslim Brotherhood-backed government to ensure American security, a move observers are questioning as violence in Cairo continues to rage.
==================
-
Moving Big Dog's post here.
https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B-AGD8AgY-94WVYtbGVhZW9mWmc/edit?pli=1
A look at the pros and cons of acting toward Iran. No recommendations; no conclusions. Endorsed by major players in national security.
-
Political Obstacles After U.S. Consulate Attack in Libya
September 12, 2012 | 2039 GMT
Summary
U.S. Ambassador to Libya Christopher Stevens was killed along with three other embassy staff Sept. 11 after protesters stormed the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi. The assault followed a protest earlier the same day in Cairo, where demonstrators scaled the outer wall of the U.S. Embassy building. The protests were in response to a two-hour program that aired Sept. 8 on Salafist TV profiling a U.S.-made film that Muslims found insulting and that had been dubbed in Arabic. Protesters also held demonstrations against the film Sept. 12 outside the U.S. Embassy in Tunisia and in the Gaza Strip.
The protests, which are expected to grow and spread after Friday prayers, expose a fundamental vulnerability in the political leadership of places such as Egypt and Tunisia in the wake of the 2011 Arab uprisings. They will create a set of obstacles for newly installed Islamist parties, which are trying to balance their Islamist credentials with their controversial relationships with the United States and other Western powers.
Analysis
The protests are already having an impact. The film appears to have at least created a hostile environment around the consulate in Benghazi, increasing the attack's chances of success -- even if the attackers had other motives for targeting the consulate. The ambassador's death will affect the relationship between Tripoli and Washington. In Egypt, the demonstration in front of the embassy was led by a group of Salafist activists. The pressure on the Muslim Brotherhood and Egyptian President Mohammed Morsi will be high as they consider their response. Already the Egyptian government is facing fuel shortages, rising food costs, a large unemployed youth population and high expectations for immediate improvements in the economy.
Visit our Libya page for related analysis, videos, situation reports and maps.
Massive protests on the scale of the Danish cartoon protests could disrupt this effort. First, they would force the new Islamist governments in Egypt and Tunisia to condemn the film, exposing those governments to charges that they are not truly democratic and leading critics to draw comparisons to their dictatorial predecessors.
.
Protests could also interfere with Cairo's and Tunis' attempts to rebuild their economies. For example, Morsi, who is scheduled to visit New York and Washington on Sept. 24, welcomed a delegation of U.S. business leaders last week as part of a U.S. commitment to help revive Egypt's economy through debt relief and investment. Washington is unlikely to backtrack on debt forgiveness, but it will push for more assurances of Morsi's commitment to democratic rule and possibly to crackdowns on the more radical Salafist leadership. Meanwhile, mass protests and any attacks on U.S. or Western businesses would give pause to potential investors and businesses looking to expand into Egypt.
Widespread protests can also create another problem for Morsi. Egyptian media have linked the controversial film to the country's Coptic community. Coptic community leaders have condemned the movie and denied any involvement, and Coptic groups have called for a vigil in front of the U.S. Embassy on Sept. 12 to protest the film. But that may not protect the Coptic community from fallout over the controversy. There have been sporadic clashes between Muslims and Christians in Egypt, especially since the January 2011 uprising that led to President Hosni Mubarak's ouster. The Copts in Egypt are fearful of the new Islamist government and of their own reduced ability to influence politics and business in Egypt.
For Morsi and the Muslim Brotherhood, this is the first real test of how they will govern. As with Ennahda in Tunisia, the Brotherhood has very few radical supporters and is increasingly facing a challenge from Salafist rivals. The Brotherhood cannot afford to be seen as cracking down in the same way that Mubarak did, especially not over protests where the issue is purported insults to Islam. But at the same time, Morsi does not want to appear radical and risk alienating potential investors or Western governments.
In both Egypt and Tunisia, Salafists who partnered with the new Islamist governments in 2011 are now fracturing, and more radical elements have started challenging their former allies. Protests that get out of control could also create problems for the Salafists. Some will prefer to work with the more moderate Islamists in power, while others will choose radicalism over the mainstream. In a bid to take charge of the protests before they get out of control, the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt has already issued a call for "peaceful" protests this Friday.
It will be important to see how peaceful those protests turn out to be. Rather than a mass demonstration like those seen in 2011 in Tahrir Square, the Brotherhood is calling for nationwide protests in front of main mosques, a tactic that may help disperse more unruly elements. The key will be the Salafists and especially the more radical elements. It is unclear how far they are willing to go in challenging the new political order, and there is always the question of the military, waiting in the background and likely to work with the president to maintain order and calm.
Across the Muslim world, there will also likely be protests this Friday after midday prayers. Attacks against U.S. government buildings, assets and businesses (as happened with the Danish cartoon protests, where U.S. fast food franchises were attacked) are possible. There may even be attacks against Americans. How far the protests go and how violent they get will depend on the situation in each country.
But expatriates and companies should avoid places associated with the United States or Western interests, such as embassies or hotels, and prepare for potential trouble. It is also a prudent time for Westerners in the Muslim world to review their contingency plans. Egypt and Libya both had protests in which demonstrators stormed the U.S. embassies. In Tunisia and in Gaza, demonstrations have so far remained largely peaceful. Protests are also planned or have been called for in Algeria, Morocco and Yemen. But the protests probably will not be confined to North Africa and could affect Westerners as far away as Indonesia.
.
Read more: Political Obstacles After U.S. Consulate Attack in Libya | Stratfor
-
second post
I saw a bit of Hillary's statement yesterday. At least there was mention of our right of free speech, but the dhimmi attitude continued unabated with blather about how vile and how offensive she found the clip to be blah blah.
How about a powerpoint presentation of all the offensive calumnies and libels common throughout the Muslim world, including Egypt, towards other religions such as Judaism and Christianity instead?
-
http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/news/breaking-news/al-qaida-says-us-consulate-attack-revenge/story-e6freuz9-1226474918266
-
http://www.haaretz.com/news/diplomacy-defense/israeli-foreign-ministry-u-s-ignored-arab-radicalization.premium-1.465210
-
It’s Not About the Video
By ROSS DOUTHAT
Published: September 15, 2012 288 Comments
THE greatest mistake to be made right now, with our embassies under assault and crowds chanting anti-American slogans across North Africa and the Middle East, is to believe that what’s happening is a completely genuine popular backlash against a blasphemous anti-Islamic video made right here in the U.S.A.
There is a cringing way to make this mistake, embodied by the apologetic press release that issued from the American embassy in Cairo on Tuesday as the protests outside gathered steam, by the Obama White House’s decision to lean on YouTube to take the offending video down, and by the various voices (including, heaven help us, a tenured Ivy League professor) suggesting that the video’s promoters be arrested for abusing their First Amendment liberties.
But there’s also a condescending way to make the same error, which is to stand up boldly for free speech while treating the mob violence as an expression of foaming-at-the-mouth unreason, with no more connection to practical politics than a buffalo stampede or a summer storm.
There is certainly unreason at work in the streets of Cairo and Benghazi, but something much more calculated is happening as well. The mobs don’t exist because of an offensive movie, and an American ambassador isn’t dead because what appears to be a group of Coptic Christians in California decided to use their meager talents to disparage the Prophet Muhammad.
What we are witnessing, instead, is mostly an exercise in old-fashioned power politics, with a stone-dumb video as a pretext for violence that would have been unleashed on some other excuse.
This has happened many times before, and Westerners should be used to it by now. Anyone in need of a refresher course should consult Salman Rushdie’s memoir, due out this week and excerpted in the latest New Yorker, which offers a harrowing account of what it felt like to live under an ayatollah’s death threat, and watch as other people suffered at the hands of mobs chanting for his head.
What Rushdie understands, and what we should understand as well, is that the crucial issue wasn’t actually how the novelist had treated Islam’s prophet in the pages of “The Satanic Verses.” The real issue, instead, was the desire of Iran’s leaders to keep the flame of their revolution burning after the debacle of the Iran-Iraq War, the desire of Pakistan’s Islamists to test the religious bona fides of their country’s prime minister, and the desire of religious extremists in Britain to cast themselves as spokesmen for the Muslim community as a whole. (In this, some of them succeeded: Rushdie dryly notes that an activist who declared of the novelist that “death, perhaps, is a bit too easy for him” would eventually be knighted “at the recommendation of the Blair government for his services to community relations.”)
Today’s wave of violence, likewise, owes much more to a bloody-minded realpolitik than to the madness of crowds. As The Washington Post’s David Ignatius was among the first to point out, both the Egyptian and Libyan assaults look like premeditated challenges to those countries’ ruling parties by more extreme Islamist factions: Salafist parties in Egypt and pro-Qaeda groups in Libya. (The fact that both attacks were timed to the anniversary of the 9/11 attacks should have been the first clue that this was something other than a spontaneous reaction to an offensive video.)
The choice of American targets wasn’t incidental, obviously. The embassy and consulate attacks were “about us” in the sense that anti-Americanism remains a potent rallying point for popular discontent in the Islamic world. But they weren’t about America’s tolerance for offensive, antireligious speech. Once again, that was the pretext, but not the actual cause.
Just as it was largely pointless, then, for the politicians of 1989 to behave as if an apology from Rushdie himself might make the protests subside (“It’s felt,” he recalls his handlers telling him, “that you should do something to lower the temperature”), it’s similarly pointless to behave as if a more restrictive YouTube policy or a more timely phone call from the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff to the anti-Islam film’s promoters might have saved us from an autumn of unrest.
What we’re watching unfold in the post-Arab Spring Mideast is the kind of struggle for power that frequently takes place in a revolution’s wake: between secular and fundamentalist forces in Benghazi, between the Muslim Brotherhood and its more-Islamist-than-thou rivals in Cairo, with similar forces contending for mastery from Tunisia to Yemen to the Muslim diaspora in Europe.
Navigating this landscape will require less naïveté than the Obama White House has displayed to date, and more finesse than a potential Romney administration seems to promise. But at the very least, it requires an accurate understanding of the crisis’s roots, and a recognition that policing speech won’t make our problems go away.
I invite you to follow me on Twitter at twitter.com/DouthatNYT.
-
http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-3460_162-57513809/ex-ambassador-to-israel-u.s-will-go-to-war-with-iran-in-2013/
-
:-o :-o :-o
1) Rubble makes no trouble
2) Perhaps, when the dust settles, things will have resolved themselves.
http://atimes.com/atimes/Front_Page/NI18Aa01.html
SPENGLER
All-out Middle East war as good as it gets
By Spengler
TEL AVIV - It is hard to remember a moment when the United States' foreign policy establishment showed as much unanimity as in its horror at the prospect of a unilateral Israeli strike on Iran.
In a September 10 report for Georgetown University's Center for Strategic and International Studies, Anthony Cordesman warns, "A strike by Israel on Iran will give rise to regional instability and conflict as well as terrorism. The regional security consequences will be catastrophic."
And a "bi-partisan" experts' group headed by former National Security Advisor Brent Scowcroft and co-signed by most of the usual suspects states, "Serious costs to US interests would also be felt over the longer term, we believe, with problematic consequences for global and regional stability, including economic stability. A dynamic of escalation, action, and counteraction could produce serious unintended consequences that would significantly increase all of these costs and lead, potentially, to all-out regional war."
If a contrarian thought might be permitted, consider the possibility that all-out regional war is the optimal outcome for American interests. An Israeli strike on Iran that achieved even limited success - a two-year delay in Iran's nuclear weapons development - would arrest America's precipitous decline as a superpower.
Absent an Israeli strike, America faces:
• A nuclear-armed Iran;
• Iraq's continued drift towards alliance with Iran;
• An overtly hostile regime in Egypt, where the Muslim Brotherhood government will lean on jihadist elements to divert attention from the country's economic collapse;
• An Egyptian war with Libya for oil and with Sudan for water;
• A radical Sunni regime controlling most of Syria, facing off an Iran-allied Alawistan ensconced in the coastal mountains;
• A de facto or de jure Muslim Brotherhood takeover of the Kingdom of Jordan;
• A campaign of subversion against the Saudi monarchy by Iran through Shi'ites in Eastern Province and by the Muslim Brotherhood internally;
• A weakened and perhaps imploding Turkey struggling with its Kurdish population and the emergence of Syrian Kurds as a wild card;
• A Taliban-dominated Afghanistan; and
• Radicalized Islamic regimes in Libya and Tunisia.
Saudi Arabia is the biggest loser in the emerging Middle East configuration, and Russia is the biggest winner. Europe and Japan have concluded that America has abandoned its long-standing commitment to the security of energy supplies in the Persian Gulf by throwing the Saudi monarchy under the bus, and have quietly shifted their energy planning towards Russia. Little of this line of thinking will appear in the news media, but the reorientation towards Moscow is underway nonetheless.
From Israel's vantage point, the way things are now headed is the worst-case scenario. The economic sanctions are a nuisance for Iran, but not a serious hindrance to its nuclear ambitions. When US Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman General Martin Dempsey intoned on August 30 that he "did not want to be complicit" in an Israeli strike on Iran, he was stating publicly what the Pentagon has signaled to Tehran for the past six months. The US wants no part of an Israeli strike.
This remonstrance from the Pentagon, along with the State Department's refusal to identify a "red line" past which Iran would provoke American military action, amounts to a green light for Iran to build an atomic bomb, Israeli analysts believe.
What if Israel were to strike Iran? From a technical standpoint, there is no question that Israel could severely damage the Iranian nuclear program. As the respected German military analyst Hans Ruhl wrote earlier this year: There are 25 to 30 installations in Iran that are exclusively or predominately dedicated to the nuclear program. Six of them are targets of the first rank: the uranium enrichment facility at Natanz, the conversion works in Isfahan, the heavy water reactor in Arak, the weapons and munitions production facility in Parchin, the uranium enrichment facility in Fordow, and the Bushehr light water reactor.
The information about Natanzare is solid. The project has been under satellite surveillance from the beginning and been watched by Israeli "tourists". At the moment there are a good 10,000 centrifuges installed, of which 6,500 are producing. Israel's strongest "bunker buster" is the GBU-28 (weight 2.3 tons), which demonstrably can break through seven meters of reinforced concrete and 30 meters of earth. It would suffice to break through the roof at Natanz. In case of doubt, two GBU-28s could be used in sequence; the second bomb would deepen the first bomb's crater and realize the required success.
The trick is to put a second bunker-buster directly into the crater left by a previous one. According to Cordesman, the probability of a direct hit with existing smart-bomb technology is 50%. Half a dozen bombs should do for each of the six key sites - assuming that the Israelis don't have something more creative in the works. Israel has had 10 years to plan the operation, and it is a fair assumption that the Israeli Air Force can accomplish the mission.
The deeper question is: what constitutes success?
"When Israel bombed [Iraq's] Osiris [nuclear reactor in 1981]," said an Israeli who took part in the planning, "we expected a three-year setback of Iraq's nuclear program. It was delayed by 10 years. But that wasn't the most important thing. What was most important to us is the ripple effect through the region."
The ripple effects are what America's foreign policy establishment fears the most. The vision shared by the George W Bush and Barack Obama administrations, albeit with some variation, of a Middle East dotted with democratic regimes friendly to the United States would pop like a soap-bubble. What ripples would ensue from a successful Israeli strike on Iran?
Iran probably would attempt to block the Straits of Hormuz, the gateway for a fifth of the world's oil supply, and America would respond by destroying Iranian conventional military capabilities and infrastructure from the air. This would add to Tehran's humiliation, and strengthen the domestic opposition.
Iran's influence in Iraq and Syria would diminish, although Iran's supporters in both countries probably would spill a great deal of blood in the short run.
Hizbollah almost certainly would unleash its missile arsenal at Israel, inflicting a few hundred casualties by Israeli estimates. Israel would invade southern Lebanon and - unlike the 2006 war - fight without fear of Syrian intervention. In 2006, the Olmert government restricted the movements of the IDF out of fear that the Syrian Army would intervene. Syria's army is in no position to intervene today.
There is a possibility, to be sure, that Syria would launch chemical and biological warheads against Israel, but if the Assad government employed weapons of mass destruction, Israel would respond with a nuclear bombardment. In this case deterrence is likely to be effective. Iran's influence in Lebanon would be drastically diminished.
Stripped of support from its Iranian sponsor, the Alawite regime would fall, and Syria would become a Saudi-Turkish condominium. Ethnic butchery would go on for some time.
Egypt would be cut off from financial support from the Gulf States as punishment for its opening to Iran. The domestic consequences for Egypt would be ugly. The country is almost out of money; some of its oil suppliers stopped deliveries last August, and Egypt's refineries lack funds to buy oil from the government.
Al-Ahram reported September 12 that Upper Egypt now suffers a 30% shortage of diesel fuel. The newspaper wrote,
Egyptians started feeling another diesel crisis at the end of last week, with amounts available shrinking and prompting lengthy queues at stations. A shortage of liquidity in the Ministry of Petroleum has delayed payments to refineries that provide the crude needed to produce diesel. "The Finance Ministry is late delivering the required funds to the Ministry of Petroleum," Hossam Arafat, head of the division of petroleum industries at Egypt's Chambers of Commerce, explained. The total daily supply of diesel on the Egyptian market has fallen to 33,000 tonnes from 40,000, press reports estimate.
Cairo well might become a radical Islamic state, a North Korea on the Nile, as I wrote in this space last month (see North Korea on the Nile Asia Times Online, August 29, 2012.) But the consequences of such a devolution would be limited. With Iran neutralized , Egypt would be less of a threat to Saudi Arabia. It might become a threat to Libya and Sudan. That is unfortunate, but what have Libya and Sudan done for us lately?
In the absence of an American leadership willing to assert American strategic interests in the region, Israel well might save the United States.
In the long view of things, there is not much cause for optimism about the Muslim world. It contains two kinds of countries: those that can't feed their children, like Egypt, and those that have stopped having children, like Iran, Turkey, Algeria and Tunisia. Muslim nations seem to pass directly from infancy to senescence without stopping at adulthood, from the pre-modern directly to the post-modern, as I wrote in my book Why Civilizations Die (and Why Islam is Dying, Too).
Turks have just 1.5 children per family, like the infecund Europeans, while Turkish Kurds have four or five children. That makes the redrawing of the map of Turkey inevitable sooner or later. In a generation, Iran will have an inverted population pyramid like the aging industrial countries, but without the wealth to support it.
There is no reason to expect most of the Muslim countries to go quietly into irreversible decline. All-out regional war is the likely outcome sooner or later. We might as well get on with it.
Spengler is channeled by David P Goldman. His book How Civilizations Die (and why Islam is Dying, Too) was published by Regnery Press in September 2011. A volume of his essays on culture, religion and economics, It's Not the End of the World - It's Just the End of You, also appeared last fall, from Van Praag Press.
(Copyright 2012 Asia Times Online (Holdings) Ltd. All rights reserved. Please contact us about sales, syndication and republishing.)
-
Fouad Ajami: Muslim Rage and the Obama Retreat
We can't declare a unilateral end to our troubles, or avert our gaze from the disorder that afflicts the societies of the Greater Middle East..
By FOUAD AJAMI
WSJ
This is not a Jimmy Carter moment—a U.S. Embassy and its staff seized and held hostage for 444 days, America's enemies taking stock of its weakness, its allies running for cover. But the anti-American protests that broke upon 20 nations this past week must be reckoned a grand personal failure for Barack Obama, and a case of hubris undone.
No American president before this one had proclaimed such intimacy with a world that stretches from Morocco to Indonesia. From the start of his administration, Mr. Obama put forth his own biography as a bridge to those aggrieved nations. He would be a "different president," he promised, and the years he lived among Muslims would acquit him—and thus America itself. He was the un-Bush.
And so, in June 2009, Mr. Obama descended on Cairo. He had opposed the Iraq war, he had Muslim relatives, and he would offer Egyptians, and by extension other Arabs, the promise of a "new beginning." They told their history as a tale of victimization at the hands of outsiders, and he empathized with that narrative.
He spoke of "colonialism that denied rights and opportunities to many Muslims, and a Cold War in which Muslim-majority countries were too often treated as proxies without regard to their own aspirations."
Without knowing it, he had broken a time-honored maxim of that world: Never speak ill of your own people when in the company of strangers. There was too little recognition of the malignant trilogy—anti-Americanism, anti-Semitism and anti-modernism—that had poisoned the life of Egypt and much of the region.
The crowd took in what this stranger had to say, and some were flattered by his embrace of their culture. But ever since its traumatic encounter with the guns and ideas of the West in the opening years of the 19th century, the region had seen conquerors come and go. Its people have an unfailing eye for the promises and predilections of outsiders.
It didn't take long for this new American leader to come down to earth. In the summer of 2009, Iran erupted in rebellion against its theocratic rulers. That upheaval exposed the contradictions at the heart of the Obama approach. At his core, he was a hyper-realist: The call of freedom did not tug at him. He was certain that the theocracy would respond to his outreach, resulting in a diplomatic breakthrough. But Iran's clerical rulers had no interest in a breakthrough. We are the Great Satan, and they need their foreign demons to maintain their grip on power.
The embattled "liberals" in the region were awakened to the truth of Mr. Obama. He was a man of the status quo, with a superficial knowledge of lands beyond. In Cairo, he had described himself as a "student of history." But in his first foreign television interview, he declared his intention to restore U.S. relations with the Islamic world to "the same respect and partnership that America had with the Muslim world as recently as 20 or 30 years ago."
This coincided, almost to the day, with the 30th anniversary of the Ayatollah Khomeini's rise to power in Iran. That "golden age" he sought to restore covered the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, the fall of Beirut to the forces of terror, deadly attacks on our embassies, the downing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, and more. A trail of terror had shadowed the American presence.
Yet here was a president who would end this history, who would withdraw from both the "good war" in Afghanistan and the bad one in Iraq. Here was a president who would target America's real enemy—al Qaeda. "Osama bin Laden is dead," we've been told time and again, and good riddance to him. But those attacking our embassies last week had a disturbing rebuttal: "Obama, we are Osama!" they chanted, some brandishing al Qaeda flags.
Until last Tuesday's deadly attack on our consulate in Benghazi, it was the fashion of Mr. Obama and his lieutenants to proclaim that the tide of war is receding. But we can't declare a unilateral end to our troubles, nor can we avert our gaze from the disorder that afflicts the societies of the Greater Middle East.
A Muslim world that can take to the streets, as far away as Jakarta, in protest against a vulgar film depiction of the Prophet Muhammad—yet barely call up a crowd on behalf of a Syrian population that has endured unspeakable hell at the hands of the dictator Bashar al-Assad—is in need of self-criticism and repair. We do these societies no favor if we leave them to the illusion that they can pass through the gates of the modern world carrying those ruinous ideas.
Yet the word in Washington is that we must pull back from those troubled Arab and Muslim lands. The grand expectations that Mr. Obama had for Afghanistan have largely been forgotten. The Taliban are content to wait us out, secure in the knowledge that, come 2014, we and our allies will have quit the place. And neighboring Pakistan, a nuclear-armed country with 170 million people, is written off as a hotbed of extremism.
Meanwhile, Syria burns and calls for help, but the call goes unanswered. The civil war there has become a great Sunni-Shiite schism. Lebanon teeters on the edge. More important, trouble has spilled into Turkey. The Turks have come to resent the American abdication and the heavy burden the Syrian struggle has imposed on them. In contrast, the mullahs in Iran have read the landscape well and are determined to sustain the Assad dictatorship.
Our foreign policy has been altered, as never before, to fit one man's electoral needs. We hear from the presidential handlers only what they want us to believe about the temper of distant lands. It was only yesterday that our leader, we are told, had solved the riddle of our position in the world.
Give him your warrant, the palace guard intone, at least until the next election. In tales of charismatic, chosen leaders, it is always, and only, about the man at the helm.
Mr. Ajami is a senior fellow at Stanford's Hoover Institution and the author most recently of "The Syrian Rebellion" (Hoover Press, 2012).
-
Second post
The Post-American Middle East
The only tide that is 'receding' is U.S. influence. .
Another day, another installment in what President Obama likes to call the "receding" tide of war. On Wednesday, John Kerry threatened to cut U.S. aid to Baghdad unless the Iraqi government blocks overflights of Iranian planes suspected of ferrying military supplies to Damascus. But Baghdad isn't budging. Welcome to the post-American Middle East, Senator.
"If so many people have entreated the [Iraqi] government to stop and that doesn't seem to be having an impact," said the Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee at a confirmation hearing for the new U.S. Ambassador to Iraq, then it "seems to send a signal to me maybe we should make some of our assistance or some of our support contingent on some kind of appropriate response."
The nominee, current Baghdad chargé d'affaires Robert Beecroft, agreed, saying he has "made it very clear that we find this unacceptable."
"Unacceptable" is a word the Administration often uses about behavior it doesn't like but isn't prepared to do much to stop: Think massacres in Syria, warfare in Sudan, mob violence against our embassies—or a nuclear Iran. Now add to the list the nonfeasance of an Iraqi government that calculates it has more to lose from confronting the mullahs than it does from rejecting entreaties from erstwhile friends in Washington.
That's not to say that Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki is right to let Iran use its airspace to help Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad remain in power—as Tehran now openly boasts it is doing. It's no secret that Mr. Maliki detests the regime in Tehran, which did so much to foment the insurgency in Iraq in his first years in office. Nor does Mr. Maliki love the Assad regime, which funneled so many jihadists to Iraq and gave safe haven to so many of Saddam's exiled lieutenants.
But Iraq will always have Iran and Syria as its neighbors, and it needs to choose its squabbles carefully. Nor could Iraq do much to stop the Iranian overflights even if it chose to. Iraqi airspace has been essentially undefended since the U.S. withdrew its remaining forces last year. In December the Iraqi government made initial payments for two squadrons of F-16s, but delivery isn't expected until 2014. What passes for an Iraqi air force today consists of a hodgepodge of Cessnas, Hueys, plus a few transport planes and helicopters.
The Iraqi Prime Minister must also wonder why Mr. Kerry—who until last year was Assad's best friend in Washington, or second best after Nancy Pelosi—should now strike such an indignant pose about the overflights. This is from an ally of an Administration that has consistently refused to intercede in Syria in any serious way beyond symbolic and fruitless diplomacy at the U.N. An America that prefers to lead from behind can't ask other countries to take risks we aren't prepared to run ourselves.
All the more so following America's complete pullout from Iraq, when the Administration could have negotiated to maintain a meaningful residual U.S. force. Gratitude is not a powerful operating force in the foreign policy of most states, including Iraq. Joe Biden, the President's point man for Iraq, now gets only the back of Mr. Maliki's hand without U.S. troops as his influence-multiplier.
The larger lesson is that withdrawal from Iraq was not the no-cost triumph the President keeps telling American voters it is. The Iranian overflights—of which there have been more than 100 so far—would not happen if the U.S. still had an airbase in Iraq to secure the country's airspace. And Mr. Maliki would likely be more confident in his dealing with Iran if he had a division's worth of American troops to serve as a deterrent to Iranian incursion. As for U.S. aid, the $1 billion is not all that meaningful for a government flush with oil revenues.
What goes in Iraq goes as well in the broader Middle East, from Tunisia to Afghanistan. The Administration has repeatedly made it clear that it wants to downsize its commitments to the region, as part of its "pivot" to Asia. But now it wonders why our entreaties in Baghdad (and Cairo) keep falling on deaf ears.
Or why jihadists would plan to murder a U.S. Ambassador on the anniversary of 9/11 in Libya, a country we helped to liberate but have since ignored. Having first blamed the attack on the "spontaneous" reaction to a YouTube film, even the Administration has now had to admit it was a terrorist attack. One question Congress should ask is why the White House didn't act to protect or rescue the Ambassador when news reports now say it was warned that an attack could happen.
President Obama keeps using his campaign catchphrase that the "tide of war is receding," but the real receding tide is in U.S. power and influence. Our growing irrelevance to the region comes with costs that are growing and that are likely to draw us back in later at a much higher price.
-
http://www.haaretz.com/news/features/is-the-arab-spring-knocking-on-jordan-s-door.premium-1.430737
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/sep/29/jordan-heading-chaos?newsfeed=true
-
Syria's Kurds Build Enclaves as War Rages
Oppressed Group Gains New Freedoms With Help of Political Alliance, Militia.
By JOE PARKINSON
DERIK, Syria—A teacher's request sends a dozen young arms skyward, with high-pitched pleas to showcase new skills. One by one, the excited pupils walk to the front of their dusty classroom to recite or write in Kurdish—a language outlawed from public life in Syria.
While civil war has shut many schools across the country, here in the Kurdish-dominated northeast, education is expanding into new territory—just one way in which the Assad regime's focus on fighting rebels in the biggest cities has allowed the emergence of autonomous Kurdish enclaves.
"Until now the regime closed Kurdish eyes and mouths. Now we are shouting to them that we will have our rights and they won't be taken away," said Ciwan Derik, a 50-year-old teacher.
As Syria's war rages on, Kurdish groups in a remote region near Turkey and Iraq have taken control. It could have huge consequences for Syria's neighbors, who have long suppressed Kurdish populations. WSJ's Turkey Bureau Chief Joe Parkinson reports.
.
A profound shift in political power is taking place in this remote corner of Syria, reshaping the country in ways that will be very difficult to reverse, and sending shock waves through the region.
Kurdish political parties backed by paramilitary groups have taken control of much of the 250-mile-wide swath of northern Syria, from Iraq in the east to Turkey in the West, that is the heartland of the country's oil industry. Syrian forces are still keeping watch in the area, and their military bases remain. But many troops have left as President Bashar al-Assad concentrates his military on battling opposition fighters in the largest cities, Aleppo and Damascus. The few troops remaining are keeping a low profile. Syria's long-oppressed Kurds have wasted no time filling the vacuum.
Before the uprising began, members of Syria's Kurdish population of about two million people were denied full citizenship rights, forcibly displaced and arbitrarily detained.
Now, red, green and yellow-banded Kurdish flags can be seen above municipal buildings. Kurds are policing their own towns and cities. Kurdish political parties control the distribution of food, water and fuel, and have set up their own makeshift courts. Kurdish paramilitary forces are training in camps in northeastern Syria and across the border in northern Iraq.
Teaching Kurdish, which was illegal for four decades under the Assad regime and could bring in imprisonment and torture, is now a growth industry. In the province around Derik, known in Arabic as al-Hassaka, Kurdish classes are now offered five times a week, while the number of students has swelled from a handful in November to more than 600 in the city and surrounding villages.
Syrian Kurds' aspirations for self-rule have potentially seismic consequences for Syria's neighbors, which have long suppressed nationalist sentiments among their own sizable Kurdish populations.
Kurdish women demonstrate in al-Qamishli, calling for the release of the jailed leader of the Kurdish Workers' Party, Abdullah Ocalan.
More than 30 million Kurds live across an area that includes parts of Turkey, Iraq and Iran as well as Syria. Kurds speak multiple dialects and are represented by a plethora of often opposing political parties and organizations. Yet they have also managed to maintain a separate identity, if partly due to the lines Arabs, Turks and Iranians have drawn to separate themselves from Kurdish communities.
The emergent political power in this Kurdish region of Syria is the Democratic Union Party, or PYD, founded in 2003 by Kurdish nationalists. The PYD is the senior partner in a delicate alliance with a longtime rival, the Kurdish National Council, following a deal brokered in July by Massoud Barzani, the president of Iraq's Kurdistan Regional Government.
The Syrian Kurdish alliance has since asked Iraqi Kurdish officials to let them use two paramilitary training camps in northern Iraq. Meanwhile, Turkish officials have repeatedly said they were alarmed by the PYD's close ties to the Kurdistan Workers' Party, or PKK, which has been fighting for Kurdish self-rule in southeast Turkey since 1984. Ankara has accused Mr. Assad of arming the PYD and has threatened military intervention to stem any threat to Turkey.
Kurdish leaders in Syria deny any nationalist intentions. But there is growing talk of independence, and Syrian state buildings now house signs of emerging Kurdish power.
At the village of Gerbala on the border with Iraq, a government military post is now guarded by scores of Kurdish militiamen loyal to the PYD, and armed with Kalashnikovs and a 47-calibre machine gun mounted on a pickup.
Beyond the checkpoints, the Kurdish villages that dot the yellowed-grass hills are using newfound freedom to raise crops on land their forefathers worked decades ago before President Assad's father and predecessor insisted their farmland could only be cultivated by the military. Previously restricted to building mud brick houses, villagers are also building concrete homes for friends and family who have fled fighting elsewhere in Syria.
Iman Hamadi, a 36-year-old Kurdish housewife from the besieged majority Sunni town of Zabadani near the Lebanese border, said she paid 100,000 Syrian pounds ($1,490) to be smuggled to the Kurdish region with her husband and nine children. "We came here because people were dying from the shelling and we have family here and it is safer," she said, as three builders laid blocks for two new houses in the searing sun.
Optimism may be in greater supply here than other parts of Syria, but the economic cost of war has still taken its toll. Spending and the value of the Syrian pound have collapsed, while employment has dried up. Thousands of young men have fled to refugee camps in Iraq to seek shelter and to look for jobs.
Abdullah Dumu, 38, said demand at his hardware store in Derik has fallen more than 70% while costs have surged.
But he sees a silver lining. "We used to be reliant on the rest of the country for everything and now we're learning something different; that is good practice for the future," he said.
In Derik, known as al-Malikiyah in Arabic, a town of around 80,000 some 20 miles from the Iraqi border, a former state courthouse and a military training school have been converted into a Kurdish center by the PYD. Party officials each morning offer arbitration on disputes over money, marriage and other matters.
The goal is to make Kurdish autonomy a permanent political reality. "We are trying to expand our influence very slowly, that is the strategy," said PYD leader Salih Muslim Mohammed, 64. "Now we have our influence in the Kurdish areas and we will try to keep them quiet, until the regime changes. If we need to fight to defend ourselves, we can."
At the entrance to town, Kurdish volunteers armed with Kalashnikovs manned a checkpoint. "After the state left, there was chaos and we set up this checkpoint. Everyone here is ready to defend ourselves if we need to," said Ekrem Kefi, a 48-year-old plasterer from Derik who works a 12-hour shift at the checkpoint every three days.
The power Kurdish groups have amassed here remains diffuse and precarious. In Kurdish-controlled towns, the apparatus of the Syrian state operates in tandem with the new administration. Damascus still collects taxes and pays the wages of most state employees. Christian mayors and bureaucrats loyal to President Assad still ply their trade, while the portraits of Syria's president remain on the walls of some state buildings.
Asked who was running government services in Derik, Jwan Tatar, a 25-year-old state-employed engineer, said simply: "It is 50-50."
On the Turkish border, in Qamishli, the regional capital, Kurds make up the majority of the 200,000 residents, but they control only portions of the city, a patchwork of Kurds, Christians and Arabs. Mr. Assad's forces are present in large numbers. Government checkpoints ring the city, and men from the feared state intelligence agency, the mukhabarat, walk the streets.
The visibility of the regime and the largely bloodless manner in which the PYD emerged to lead the Kurds' push for autonomy have sparked accusations. Turkish officials said Mr. Assad allowed Syrian Kurds greater sway in a plot to empower the PKK rebels in Turkey, as retaliation against Ankara for letting the rebel Free Syrian Army operate on its southern border.
The PYD rejects that claim, stressing that its members were persecuted by the regime for four decades, with many imprisoned or still missing. The party says it is closely affiliated with the PKK but denies that PKK fighters have been called to Syria to bolster its forces. Kurdish groups and residents said the PYD is strengthening its capacity by actively recruiting and collecting donations from residents.
Nevertheless, once-banned PKK propaganda has proliferated across the region. Images of PKK leader Abdullah Ocalan, jailed in Turkey jail since 1999, are plastered across municipal buildings controlled by Kurdish politicians. Locals wear pins with the face of the leader, who is referred to here by the more affectionate abbreviation, "Apo."
The expanding militarization of militia groups also marks a source of tension between Kurdish parties and could likely be viewed as a provocation by Syria's neighbors.
"Of course, our defense forces are getting stronger. They are now in the thousands. We are collecting money from the Kurds to fund them," said Sophi Ali Alias, a construction company owner and member of a PYD-affiliated group called Tevdem, now working as a public official in Derik.
—Ayla Albayrak
contributed to this article.
Write to Joe Parkinson at joe.parkinson@dowjones.com
-
Breaking News Alert
The New York Times
Saturday, October 6, 2012 -- 6:08 PM EDT
-----
Citing U.S. Fears, Arab Allies Limit Syrian Rebel Aid
In an exclusive report in Sunday’s New York Times, Robert F. Worth writes that Saudi Arabia and Qatar have been funneling money and small arms to Syrian rebels for months but that they have not provided heavier weapons, like shoulder-fired missiles, that could allow opposition fighters to bring down government aircraft, take out armored vehicles and turn the war’s tide.
The countries have held back, officials in both nations said, in part because they have been discouraged by the United States, which fears the heavier weapons could end up in the hands of terrorists. As a result, the rebels have just enough weapons to maintain a stalemate, and the war grinds on. Providing rebels with heavier weapons “has to happen,” Khalid al-Attiyah, a state minister for foreign affairs in Qatar, said. “But first we need the backing of the United States, and preferably the U.N.”
Read More:
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/07/world/middleeast/citing-us-fears-arab-allies-limit-aid-to-syrian-rebels.html?emc=na
-
U.S. Military Is Sent to Jordan to Help With Crisis in Syria
By MICHAEL R. GORDON and ELISABETH BUMILLER
Published: October 9, 2012
WASHINGTON — The United States military has secretly sent a task force of more than 150 planners and other specialists to Jordan to help the armed forces there handle a flood of Syrian refugees, prepare for the possibility that Syria will lose control of its chemical weapons and be positioned should the turmoil in Syria expand into a wider conflict.
The task force, which has been led by a senior American officer, is based at a Jordanian military training center built into an old rock quarry north of Amman. It is now largely focused on helping Jordanians handle the estimated 180,000 Syrian refugees who have crossed the border and are severely straining the country’s resources.
American officials familiar with the operation said the mission also includes drawing up plans to try to insulate Jordan, an important American ally in the region, from the upheaval in Syria and to avoid the kind of clashes now occurring along the border of Syria and Turkey.
The officials said the idea of establishing a buffer zone between Syria and Jordan — which would be enforced by Jordanian forces on the Syrian side of the border and supported politically and perhaps logistically by the United States — had been discussed. But at this point the buffer is only a contingency.
The Obama administration has declined to intervene in the Syrian conflict beyond providing communications equipment and other nonlethal assistance to the rebels opposing the government of President Bashar al-Assad. But the outpost near Amman could play a broader role should American policy change. It is less than 35 miles from the Syrian border and is the closest American military presence to the conflict.
Officials from the Pentagon and Central Command, which oversees American military operations in the Middle East, declined to comment on the task force or its mission. A spokesman for the Jordanian Embassy in Washington would also not comment on Tuesday.
As the crisis in Syria has deepened, there has been mounting concern in Washington that the violence could spread through the region. Over the past week, Syria and Turkey have exchanged artillery and mortar fire across Syria’s northern border, which has been a crossing point for rebel fighters. In western Syria, intense fighting recently broke out in villages near the border crossing that leads to the Bekaa Valley in Lebanon. To the east, the Syrian government has lost control of some border crossings, including the one near Al Qaim in Iraq.
Jordan has also been touched by the fighting. Recent skirmishes have broken out between the Syrian military and Jordanians guarding the country’s northern border, where many families have ties to Syria. In August, a 4-year-old girl in a Jordanian border town was injured when a Syrian shell struck her house, and there are concerns in Jordan that a sharp upsurge in the fighting in Syria might lead to an even greater influx of refugees.
Jordan, which was one of the first Arab countries to call for Mr. Assad’s resignation, has become increasingly concerned that Islamic militants coming to join the fight in Syria could cross the porous border between the two countries.
The American mission in Jordan quietly began this summer. In May, the United States organized a major training exercise, which was dubbed Eager Lion. About 12,000 troops from 19 countries, including Special Forces troops, participated in the exercise.
After it ended, the small American contingent stayed on and the task force was established at a Jordanian training center north of Amman. It includes communications specialists, logistics experts, planners, trainers and headquarters staff members, American officials said. An official from the State Department’s Bureau of Population, Refugee Affairs and Migration is also assigned to the task force.
“We have been working closely with our Jordanian partners on a variety of issues related to Syria for some time now,” said George Little, the Pentagon press secretary, who added that a specific concern was the security of Syria’s stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons. “As we’ve said before, we have been planning for various contingencies, both unilaterally and with our regional partners.”
Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta met in Amman in August with King Abdullah II of Jordan and at that time pledged continuing American help with the flow of Syrian refugees. Mr. Panetta was followed in September by Gen. James N. Mattis, the head of Central Command, who met with senior Jordanian officials in Amman.
Members of the American task force are spending the bulk of their time working with the Jordanian military on logistics — figuring out how to deploy tons of food, water and latrines to the border, for example, and training the Jordanian military to handle the refugees. A month ago, as many as 3,000 a day were coming over the border. But as the Syrian army has consolidated its position in southern Syria, the number of refugees has declined to several hundred a day.
According to the United Nations, Jordan is currently hosting around 100,000 Syrians who have either registered or are awaiting registration. American officials say the total number may be almost twice that.
The American military is also sending medical kits to the border and has provided gravel to help keep down the dust at the Zaatari refugee camp, which the task force helped set up and is now home to 35,000 Syrians. It has also provided four large prefabricated buildings to be used at Zaatari as schools. One official estimated the cost so far at less than $1 million.
Eric Schmitt contributed reporting from Washington, and Ranya Kadri from Amman, Jordan.
-
Obviously another protest that got out of hand.....
Gunmen kill Yemeni who worked at U.S. embassy in Yemen
U.S. embassy employee killed in Yemen
2:21pm EDTBy Mohammed Ghobari
SANAA | Thu Oct 11, 2012 3:27pm EDT
SANAA (Reuters) - Masked gunmen shot dead a Yemeni man who worked in the security office of the U.S. Embassy in Sanaa on Thursday, in an attack a Yemeni security source said appeared to be the work of al Qaeda.
The incident was the latest of a wave of attacks on officials in the impoverished Arab state, which is battling Islamist militants with Washington's help.
The attackers, on a motorcycle, opened fire on Qassem Aqlan - who headed an embassy security investigation team - near his house in the center of Yemen's capital, the source told Reuters.
"This operation has the fingerprints of al Qaeda which carried out similar operations before," said the source, who asked not to be named.
Yemen-based Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) and other militant groups strengthened their grip on parts of the country during an uprising that ousted veteran President Ali Abdullah Saleh in February.
Washington, wary of the growing power of al Qaeda, has stepped up drone strikes on suspected militants, with the backing of Saleh's successor, President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi.
A neighbor who identified himself only as Fahad said he had noticed strangers roaming the streets over the past three days, suggesting Aqlan was being watched before the attack.
"Once he (Aqlan) stepped out of his house the men shouted his name and when he replied, they shot him in the head and neck," he said.
Aqlan, who was in his 50s and had worked at the embassy for more than a decade, was responsible for coordinating security information between the U.S. Embassy and the Yemeni authorities, the source added.
In Washington, U.S. State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland said that his main duties included conducting personnel checks as head of the "foreign service national investigative unit" and serving as a liaison with Yemeni security services.
He worked within the office of the embassy's "regional security officer," who is responsible protecting the embassy, its personnel and information.
She also said initial reports that he was involved in the investigation into the attack last month on the U.S. Embassy by protesters angry over an anti-Islam film made in the United States were incorrect.
"We condemn this vicious act in the strongest terms," the spokeswoman said but declined to comment on who may have been behind the attack or why Aqlan may have been targeted, saying it may or may not have had anything to do with his work.
There have been a number of killings and assassination attempts on security officials and politicians since Yemen's army drove Islamist fighters out of several southern towns earlier this year.
Last month Abdulilah Al-Ashwal, a senior intelligence official, was killed in a drive-by shooting in Sanaa.
Restoring stability in Yemen has become an international priority due to fears that al Qaeda could become further entrenched in a country which flanks oil producer Saudi Arabia and lies along major international shipping lanes.
AQAP, regarded as al Qaeda's strongest regional wing, has mounted operations in Saudi Arabia and tried to launch attacks against the United States.
(Additional reporting by Matt Spetalnick, Andrew Quinn and Arshad Mohammed in Washington; Writing by Rania El Gamal; Editing by Andrew Roche and Cynthia Osterman)
-
Please note that there is a thread specifically for Yemen. TY.
-
Summary
The death of a senior Lebanese intelligence official in the Oct. 19 bombing in central Beirut appears now to have been a targeted assassination. The official, Lebanese Internal Security Forces chief Brig. Gen. Wissam al-Hassan, was directly involved in providing logistical and supply-line support in Lebanon for the rebel Free Syrian Army, which is attempting to overthrow the regime of Syrian President Bashar al Assad. The assassination was likely intended to disrupt the Syrian rebels' support networks -- as well as to trigger a series of retaliatory strikes against Syrian assets and allies and to spark a broader increase in sectarian conflict in Lebanon.
Analysis
A previous attempt on al-Hassan's life was made earlier this year, probably by Syrian intelligence operatives, and Syrian officials likely commissioned or committed the Oct. 19 attack as well. Al-Hassan, a Sunni, was known for his support for Sunni opposition groups in Lebanon, such as the March 14 alliance and former Lebanese Prime Minister Saad al-Hariri's Future Movement. The Internal Security Forces are the only Sunni-dominated arm of the Lebanese security apparatus and are backed by Saudi Arabia, which along with Turkey and Qatar has been the strongest supporter of the Syrian rebels.
Visit our Syria page for related analysis, videos, situation reports and maps.
Al-Hassan was directly involved in the Internal Security Forces' Aug. 9 arrest of former Lebanese Information Minister Michel Samaha, a close ally of al Assad, over alleged involvement in a bomb plot commissioned by Damascus. Al-Hassan was also reportedly close to former Prime Minister Rafik al-Hariri, Saad's father, and took part in the investigation into Rafik al-Hariri's 2005 assassination, which implicated Syria and Hezbollah.
.
Stratfor sources in Lebanon indicate that the Oct. 19 bombing was intended to look like a suicide attack in order to make the attack appear to be the work of jihadists. In recent months,jihadists have been moving into the Levant to support the rebels and fight the al Assad regime. Moreover, militant Salafists have increased their presence and activity in Lebanon, especially in Tripoli, where they have repeatedly clashed with the Lebanese Alawite community. However, even if the appearance of the bombing provides the Syrian regime a slight degree of plausible deniability, al-Hassan's supporters are unlikely to believe that jihadists were responsible.
The Syrian regime has a strategic interest in stirring up sectarian tensions and triggering retaliatory strikes in Lebanon. Facing fractures within its Alawite core and increasing pressure on its supply lines, the regime needs to change the strategic environment. It has also seen its close ally, Hezbollah, limit the support it has traditionally provided to Damascus and essentially take a self-preservation posture.
The Oct. 19 attack could intimidate anti-al Assad individuals in Lebanon from becoming more involved in the Syrian conflict. More important, instability and sectarian clashes in Lebanon -- especially ones that involve the Lebanese Alawites or Shiites -- could weaken support for the rebels in Syria while reviving support for al Assad.
Indeed, retaliatory attacks are highly likely. Supporters of al-Hassan and the Future Movement will likely target Syrian assets in Lebanon, including Syria-allied businessmen, intelligence operatives and even Syrian businesses. Actions against Syria's main allies in Lebanon -- Hezbollah and its March 8 coalition partners, the Free Patriotic Movement and the Shiite Amal Movement -- is also likely. Back-and-forth retaliations along sectarian lines would relieve some of the pressure on Damascus and push the Syrian conflict into Lebanon.
Read more: Implications of the Beirut Bombing | Stratfor
-
SEcond post
Summary
LOUAI BESHARA/AFP/Getty Images
A Syrian regime supporter holds a picture of President Bashar al Assad and Hezbollah chief Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah (R)
As Syrian President Bashar al Assad's regime continues to weaken and the conflict in Syria devolves into clan-based warfare, Shiite militant group Hezbollah is working on contingency plans to ensure its long-term survival. Hezbollah's goal is to maintain a strong military, political and economic presence in Lebanon, especially since proxy battles are almost certain to intensify in the Levant as emboldened Sunnis gain confidence to challenge Hezbollah's autonomous position in the region. Hezbollah wants to avoid triggering a premature conflagration with its sectarian rivals, and its increasingly cautious posture will make it a less reliable militant proxy for Iran in the near term. However, Iran shares Hezbollah's aim of ensuring that the militant group maintains a strong long-term presence in the Levant, and Tehran may try to use Hezbollah's potential shifts as leverage in the broader regional negotiations over a post-al Assad transition in Syria.
Analysis
Hezbollah's contingency planning appears to be preparing for two distinct scenarios. The first entails Syria and Lebanon retaining enough political, economic and military cohesion to allow the Shiite organization to integrate itself more formally into the Lebanese mainstream. The second, more pessimistic scenario assumes that the Levant devolves into a severe state of sectarian warfare, in which case Hezbollah could attempt to carve out a bloc of Shiite territory in Lebanon adjoining an Alawite-majority coastal enclave in Syria.
Scenario 1: Hezbollah Joins the Establishment
The first scenario assumes that a post-al Assad Syria is able to maintain its territorial integrity and that a new government is stable enough to wield significant authority over the state. In this situation, Hezbollah would look to integrate itself into the Lebanese mainstream. Hezbollah has already pursued this route in building up an official presence in the government, and it currently has a strong presence in the Lebanese Cabinet. Hezbollah also has an extensive economic presence in Lebanon, albeit through mostly illicit channels.
The most critical shift to the organization would be seen in the status of Hezbollah's armed wing. Lebanon's security and intelligence apparatus is deeply fractured along sectarian lines. With help from Iran and Syria, Hezbollah has steadily installed its own members and Shiite sympathizers in these institutions over the past few decades to help insulate the organization. The Lebanese army has routinely avoided confrontation with Hezbollah, knowing that it lacks the will and sectarian unity to take on the well-trained and ideologically committed Shiite militia.
With the Lebanese army too weak and fractured to defend Lebanese sovereignty during Israeli incursions, Hezbollah was able to present itself as the true defender of Lebanon as opposed to any state institution. In the shifting environment, the prospect of a Sunni-dominated Syria changes Hezbollah's calculus entirely. Hezbollah will no longer have secure supply lines emanating from Syria. Sunnis on both sides of the Syria-Lebanon border, backed by strong regional stakeholders like Turkey, Saudi Arabia, France and the United States, will also likely be encouraged to take advantage of the Shiite organization's growing vulnerabilities and pressure the militia to disarm. Hezbollah has faced pressure to disarm over the past decade, but it will have a much harder time resisting this pressure without a strong ally in Damascus protecting its interests in Lebanon.
A possible solution to this dilemma would be Hezbollah's formal integration into the official Lebanese security and intelligence apparatus. The already fractious and weak nature of these institutions would allow Hezbollah to continue operating autonomously, while providing Lebanese Shiite fighters with an extra layer of insulation. Rather than having a potential conflict between Hezbollah and Israel be limited to southern Lebanon as it was in 2006, Israel would be dealing with a much more nebulous entity absorbed into the Lebanese army. In other words, Hezbollah's fights become Lebanon's fights.
There is a precedent for this model of long-term militia survival. During the 1990s and early 2000s, the Badr Organization was the most sophisticated and well-managed proxy Iran possessed in Iraq. These Shiite fighters were primed for the 2003 U.S. invasion and were well prepared to help Iran consolidate its gains in battling the Sunnis and the Americans in the early years of the war. Iran quickly moved to formally integrate this militia into the military and security apparatus in 2004 while increasing its authority over other militias (like Shiite leader Muqtada al-Sadr's Mehdi Army) and forming new groups to increase competition among the Shiite militias. This effort allowed Iran to maintain its overall proxy strength in Iraq, and those militant assets will be useful for Iran if and when Tehran faces a challenge from Sunnis in Iraq motivated by the Sunni resurgence in Syria.
.
Additionally, Iran could use the possibility of "disbanding" Hezbollah's military wing as a powerful negotiating tool. Indeed, Iranian officials have reportedly raised the idea of disarming Hezbollah in making overtures for negotiations with the United States on the transition in Syria and broader issues. Hezbollah appears to be holding talks with Lebanese government officials on this integration process. Not coincidentally, Lebanese parliamentary speaker Nabih Berri said Oct. 15 that a decision has been made to "permanently deploy" the Lebanese army to the Bekaa Valley. The Bekaa Valley is Hezbollah's stronghold; its military assets and training camps are concentrated there and a large amount of cannabis grows in the valley, which Hezbollah uses for its alternative revenue source of smuggling drugs. On the surface, it would appear that the Lebanese army is intruding on Hezbollah's territory, but this was actually a decision that stemmed from consultations between Hezbollah and Lebanese President Michel Suleiman and Prime Minister Najib Mikati.
Not only is Hezbollah trying to build trust with other Lebanese authorities, it is also getting assistance in managing a proliferation of clan-based Shiite gang activity in the Bekaa Valley and southern suburbs. Recent flare-ups involving the Meqdad clan illustrated this growing threat. Hezbollah does not want to be responsible for law enforcement in these areas nor subjected to reprisal attacks as this clan warfare intensifies. Hezbollah would much rather this issue fall under the purview of the Lebanese army at large.
Hezbollah also appears to be using the opportunity to gain access to funds and weaponry from the Lebanese military. In the event of the Syrian regime's collapse, alternative supply sources will become increasingly important for Hezbollah. In mid-September the Lebanese government announced it would be spending $1.6 billion over the next five years on military hardware for the army. This is the first major allocation for defense spending since 1982-83 during Lebanon's civil war. The plans to increase defense spending were also part of the discussion between Hezbollah and the Lebanese political leadership.
Overall, the extent to which Hezbollah would be able to integrate itself in the formal government remains in question, since Saudi-backed Sunnis in Lebanon will resist any effort by the militia to entrench itself in the system.
Scenario 2: Building a Sectarian Fortress
The second scenario assumes that Syria fails to hold together under a post-al Assad regime and the country splinters into autonomous entities. In this situation, Lebanon's already shaky stability is likely to disintegrate as sectarian fighting in Syria encourages the expansion of Lebanese militia groups, with each faction left to defend its interests in civil war-like conditions.
.
In Syria, the Alawites will retreat to the mountainous coastal region for protection. The al Assad regime has already been preparing for this contingency by reinforcing military positions around the enclave stretching from Latakia to the port of Tartus. Stratfor has received indications in recent months that some Alawites have already begun fleeing from their urban homes in Damascus and Homs to relocate to the coast for protection in anticipation of a full-blown civil war.
A coastal Alawite enclave would be difficult to defend and sustain economically in isolation. However, if both Syria and Lebanon are consumed by civil war, Shiites and Alawites (who are an offshoot Shiite sect) would likely band together to defend themselves against their sectarian rivals. Hezbollah appears to have a contingency plan to carve out and defend a 20-kilometer (12-mile) border corridor with the Syrian Alawite enclave on the coast. This is a difficult endeavor, because Hezbollah does not exercise authority in Sunni-dominated northern Lebanon. Instead, Hezbollah would control strategic access to the Orontes River Basin in Syria and Lebanon to form a contiguous Alawite-Shiite mini-state.
The Orontes River originates in Lebanon near the city of Baalbek in the northern Bekaa Valley. It flows north between the Lebanese coast and the Lebanon and Anti-Lebanon Mountains before it enters Syria near the Shiite-majority town of Hermel and drains into the Qattaneh reservoir. From there, the river passes through the Sunni-concentrated cities of Homs and Hama before cutting the Turkish-Syrian border.
Hezbollah currently claims control of 18 villages along the widest part of the basin: Bab al-Hawa, Wadi Hanna, Rabla, Matraba, Al Jadaliyya, Balluza, Al Huwayik, Ghawgharan, Al Summaqiyyat, Al Hamam, Al Safiyyah, Zeita, Al Fadiliyya, Al Qarniyya, Al Misriyya, Dibbin, Al Suwayidyya and Al Hush. Most reported Hezbollah activity in Syria has occurred in this area, particularly around the border town of Al Qusayr. Controlling the bulge of the river basin would theoretically allow Hezbollah to pool resources with an Alawite enclave in the northern Bekaa while the organization attempts to hold its ground in the southern Beirut suburbs and southern Lebanon.
The purported plan to build this sectarian fortress is fraught with complications, especially since the Shiite belt would likely face a major challenge from Sunnis on both sides of the border. But in contingency planning, one must plan for the best and prepare the worst. Hezbollah is evidently doing just that.
Read more: Hezbollah's Contingency Planning | Stratfor
-
third post
http://www.radicalislam.org/analysis/uae-calls-anti-muslim-brotherhood-coalition/#fm
-
Jack Keane: Al Qaeda Is Making a Comeback
Across the Middle East and South Asia, the group isn't dead or dying but on the rise..
By JACK KEANE
With Afghanistan the forgotten war this election season, many Americans might be wondering why we have 68,000 U.S. troops there at all. Sure, the Obama administration says they'll be out "on schedule" in 2014, but can't the U.S. immediately pull back and protect its interests with drones and special-operations forces alone?
To better understand the battle in Afghanistan, look to Libya, Yemen, Somalia, Sinai, Syria or Iraq—all places where al Qaeda and associated groups are a growing presence. (Al Qaeda in Iraq has doubled in size in the year since U.S. troops left the country.) These terrorists have already killed Americans, and they have planned and executed several attacks on the U.S. homeland that have failed only thanks to technical problems or outstanding police work.
Enlarge Image
Close
AFP/Getty Images
US Marines of the 1st battalion 7th Marines Regiment walk towards a helicopter before leaving for camp Leatherneck.
.
While not the catalyst of the Arab Spring, al Qaeda and its friends are seeking to take advantage of the opportunities posed by revolutionary change throughout the Middle East. Despite the obvious intelligence and security failures that contributed to the attack against the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi, the reality is that in one night an al Qaeda-affiliated group destroyed a diplomatic post, killed a U.S. ambassador and three other Americans, and forced an end to clandestine U.S. activity in the area.
With al Qaeda not dead or on the run but on the rise across the Middle East and South Asia, there is only one place where the U.S. is on the ground and aggressively fighting back: in Afghanistan, al Qaeda's heartland.
But Americans receive limited news from the front. The latest headlines are dominated by so-called green-on-blue attacks in which Afghan soldiers or police have attacked their U.S. or allied trainers. These attacks are appalling, but it is important to understand that the attackers aren't our "Afghan partners." They are Taliban foot soldiers and sympathizers exploiting the very real partnership we have with the growing Afghan National Security Forces. The attackers represent perhaps 0.01% of the approximately 345,000 Afghan security forces. These terrorists are loud and bloody, but they are statistically rare.
Americans also hear little about the success of our troops in isolating al Qaeda and the Taliban, cutting them off from the local population, and helping Afghans stand against them. Or how U.S. troops are restoring security to areas such as Kandahar that have lived under the thumb of Islamists and warlords for years. Or how sustainable that security is: This year we dramatically reduced our military presence in Helmand and Kandahar, but residual allied forces, our Afghan partners and locals have prevented the Taliban from regaining its positions.
The fight is hard and the Afghans aren't easy partners, but we're not in this for the Afghans. We're in this for ourselves, and for our nation's security.
So why Afghanistan and not Libya, Yemen, Syria or Somalia? Simple. Because we are in Afghanistan, and in numbers substantial enough to secure and hold territory—denying Ayman al Zawahiri and his followers a foothold. Afghanistan remains an opportunity to deal al Qaeda a vital strategic blow, especially since we have abandoned all operations—including counterterrorism operations—in Iraq.
Afghanistan is where much of the al Qaeda journey began. It is the main site where Osama bin Laden, Mullah Omar and their cohort rose to prominence fighting the Soviets in the 1980s. Afghan territory holds special significance to the group, which is committed to retaking it and re-establishing it as the base of a global movement.
Considering all this still leaves a few reasonable questions, such as why U.S. forces can't leave and have counterterrorism troops take the lead. The answer is that special-operations forces are among the best and bravest of our troops, but they aren't magicians. They can't ensure that extremists don't find haven among 35 million Afghans, and they can't stop al Qaeda or the Taliban from preying on Afghan cities and towns.
Without the Afghans helping us in our mission, pretty soon we won't know of anyone to target with drones, and our special operators will roam through hostile territory unequal to the inflow of terrorists. We need the Afghans' help in this fight. They are giving a lot—and taking the casualties to prove it. But if we abandon them, they'll stop.
Anyone wondering what Afghanistan will look like if we abandon the war or draw down troops too rapidly should look to Iraq, where a residual force would almost certainly have halted the current re-emergence of al Qaeda. Or to Syria, where more moderate forces are being increasingly overrun by hard-line Islamists. Or to Yemen, where al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula has carved out territory and an operational headquarters to plan attacks against America. Or to Libya, where the facts about Benghazi are still trickling out, but where we know that an al Qaeda-affiliated group was behind the deadly attack.
The only talking point on Afghanistan that the American people have heard this election season is "2014"—as in withdrawal. But al Qaeda and its friends world-wide have heard that too. And it gives them hope that in two short years their heartland will be ripe for retaking. They know full well—based on U.S. actions from Afghanistan to Iraq, Iran, Libya and Syria—that U.S. policy is to disengage, and that momentum is on their side.
Gen. Keane, a former vice chief of staff of the U.S. Army, is chairman of the Institute for the Study of War.
-
http://www.wnd.com/2012/11/muslim-brotherhood-now-targeting-jordan/
-
For the past two years, Israel has been engaged in a systematic reduction of the capabilities of the Iranian proxies on its borders. Those are the logical steps to take in case an attack on Iran is necessary. Hamas played into this strategy with its rocket attacks on southern Israel. The IDF has responded with a pre-planned attack on very specific targets that have degraded the Hamas military capabilities. As a result Hamas has likely depleted its rocket supply by a significant number. That is why it was lobbying for a cease fire in public for the several days before Wednesday’s announcement.
BTW, this analysis and the Stratfor analysis recently sent by _____ are being rendered moot as Morsi takes over the Egyptian entire governmental apparatus for the Muslim Bro’s. The Arab Spring has become the Caliphate’s Winter thanks in largest part to the Obama administration policy towards Mubarak. The Muslim Bro’s are in charge of Tunisia. Libya lies in between these two nations of the Caliphate. Benghazi is in Libya. Muslim Bro empathizers are in the US Dept of State. And Muslim Bro’s are infiltrated throughout the “Syrian resistance.” Against this reality, the US DNI, Clapper, keeps insisting that the Muslim Bro’s are a secular movement. Of course, he is the same person who likely removed the CIA’s references to al Qaida links to 9/11/12 in Benghazi from Susan rice’s talking points and convinced rice to emphasize that it was a mob reacting to a 13 minutes trailer on YouTube that had only 505 hits as of 8 am EDT on 9/12/12.
Now, to understand the link between a faction of the Muslim Bro’s and al Qaida, you must read the biography and the writings of Sayyid Qutb. He didn’t think that the Muslim Bro’s were radical enough. Ayman al Zawahiri, now the #1 guy at al Qaida, came from Egyptian Islamic Jihad, an offshoot of the Muslim Bro’s that gravitated towards Qutb’s vision. And when Zawahiri’s brother was in the 9/11/12 mob that raised the al Qaida flag on the US embassy grounds in Cairo on 9/11/12; that was no coincidence.
So, we have a new dictator in Egypt who now rules by emergency decree. Egypt borders Gaza. Remember that Gaza was the original refugee camp that Egypt administered until the 1967 war. We have the Muslim Bro’s on the march in Syria, Tunisia, Libya and Algeria. We have a brutal dictator in the Sudan who cooperates with the Muslim Bro’s. I take no comfort in the fact that some Arabists claim that this is a counterpoint to the Persian/Shi’a powder keg called Iran. I am certain that the Hashemite King Abdullah of Jordan is the next target in the Muslim Bro sights. Such are the unintended consequences of the Obama reset.
-
Exactly!!
Smart power.
-
GM, Astute Friend:
Certainly I get the idea about Baraq's weakness and incoherence aiding and abetting the rise of the Muslim Bros, but I also find myself wondering whether once we abandoned Iraq (deliberate failure to achieve the Status of Forces agreement) and by so doing made the statement that so doing did, whether there was anything we could have done to lead to an outcome other than the rise of the MBros.
Where we going to stop what happened in Tunisia?
Were we going to stand with a dying Mubarak violently oppressing the mass movement against him?
What message would doing nothing in Libya have sent?
What do we do in Syria? Go against Assad and the Iranians and by so doing help MBros/AQ in Syria , , , or vice versa?
Bush sought to get in front of the coming wave; in my humble opinion this was a genuine insight. Unfortunately two things happened:
1) He did a really bad job of it. He left Afpakia unfinished and unattended to go into Iraq undermanned to accomplish the mission after the military overthrow of the Bathist regime. Gen. Shinseki called for , , , what was it? 3-400K troops? and he got fired for it. And how many troops did Rumbo, in love with the man in the mirror and his theories, give? A LOT less than that. Then as things went south, cranial-rectal interface was the response. Even Sen. Kerry was calling for expanding US troop levels (total overall, not in Iraq) by 50K-- and Bush, rather than admit that that was probably a damn good idea, instead pretended all was well as we circled the drain, and rode our troops hard.
2) This poor leadership enabled the Dems and Progressives to sabotage and undercut our mission there-- frequently to the point of poor American spirit and sometimes crossing the line into aiding and comforting the enemy, even on occasion with treasonous deeds.
Ultimately however, Baraq seeks a similar thing-- to get in front of and ride the wave of change instead of trying to damn it up. As a naive, clueless idiot with a goodly dose of poor Americanism thrown into the mix, naturally he has made many, many profound errors which will haunt us for a long time.
That said, the question remains: Do we ride the wave or fight it? If we ride it, what does that look like? Is it even possible?
Given 12 years of piss-poor and incoherent leadership of both wars from both parties and a seriously thrashed military, the American people are understandably (and given the incoherence correctly so) war weary. Immediate and completely pointless political suicide awaits any who advocate this course at this time!
Indeed, given 12 years of incoherent policies in the mid-east by both parties and Baraq' obvious decision to get out, what chance is there of our guiding or influencing events there? Not much, it seems to me as I sit at my desk this fine evening.
Under the current circumstances, is Ron Paul right? Time to come home and develop the hell out of our natural gas and make the middle east's oil, and its denizens, economically irrelevant? A nice secondary effect is that this knocks Russia's one big remaining play, energy, out from under it. The cheap energy should unleash the economy as well (and trigger growth that will solve a goodly chunk of our budgetary problems.)
What about Israel?
Sign a mutual defense treaty. The Iranians and Arabs see the two of us as Big and Little Satan. Alrighty then, lets team up for real!!! And anyone who messes with Israel knows that the US will come, working with the high level intel and military capabilities of Israel, and kick ass as only the US can.
The difference being that this time we just come home and tell them we'll be back if they misbehave again.
In the time of Kissinger he spoke of a militarily bi-polar and economically multi-polar world. Then, with the collapse of the Soviet empire, it became, for one brief shining moment, a uni-polar world, both militarily and economically.
Bush made a bold play to use this moment and reshape the mid-east. IMHO the idea was a good one, but the combination of Bush-Rumbo incompetence and seditious efforts by the progressives, the pravdas, the Euro weenies, and pultridinous (s?) Dem politicians led to Bush's efforts barely seizing a stalemate from defeat. The simple fact is that the coup de grace of the uni-polar moment was administered in the pivotal moment by Baraq sabotaging the Status of Forces agreement with Iraq with his obviously insincere offer of 3K troops.
Anyway, just some rambling ruminations , , ,
TAC!
Marc
-
http://security.blogs.cnn.com/2012/11/23/what-is-the-future-of-the-obama-netanyahu-relationship/?hpt=hp_t2
From the article:
"Netanyahu and Obama have in my view one of the most dysfunctional relationships of any Israeli prime minister and American president," Miller says. "In large part because there is an absence of trust and confidence between the two."
Despite getting off to a rocky start with Netanyahu by pushing for a comprehensive freeze of Israeli settlements, Obama's vocal support for Netanyahu through the recent crisis and U.S. financial support for the "Iron Dome" anti-missile program, could pave the road for greater trust in the relationship, and more flexibility from Netanyahu when it comes to the disputed Iranian nuclear program.
"I think what it does is position [Obama] in a much better place to begin if there are opportunities to move forward," Miller said. "It creates an opportunity for him to ask Netanyahu to do some things in a much more credible way than he ever could in the past."
-
"What about Israel?
Sign a mutual defense treaty. The Iranians and Arabs see the two of us as Big and Little Satan. Alrighty then, lets team up for real!!! And anyone who messes with Israel knows that the US will come, working with the high level intel and military capabilities of Israel, and kick ass as only the US can."
Yeah, Buraq will get right on that!
-
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/28/world/middleeast/sunni-leaders-gaining-clout-in-mideast.html?nl=todaysheadlines&emc=edit_th_20121128
-
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/02/world/middleeast/us-is-stumbling-in-effort-to-cut-syria-arms-flow.html?nl=todaysheadlines&emc=edit_th_20121202&_r=0
I have repeatedly commented on the importance of Baraq's failure (deliberate in my opinion) to achieve a status of forces agreement with Iraq. Yet again we see that Life is tough, and tougher when you are stupid or a pussy.
-
This being a piece by Thomas Friedman, it is not without some fatuous thinking, but I did like his three models
Iron Empires, Iron Fists, Iron Domes
By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN
Published: December 4, 2012 116ints
I went to synagogue on Saturday not far from the Syrian border in Antakya, Turkey. It’s been on my mind ever since.
Antakya is home to a tiny Jewish community, which still gathers for holidays at the little Sephardic synagogue. It is also famous for its mosaic of mosques and Orthodox, Catholic, Armenian and Protestant churches. How could it be that I could go to synagogue in Turkey on Saturday while on Friday, just across the Orontes River in Syria, I had visited with Sunni Free Syrian Army rebels embroiled in a civil war in which Syrian Alawites and Sunnis are killing each other on the basis of their ID cards, Kurds are creating their own enclave, Christians are hiding and the Jews are long gone?
What is this telling us? For me, it raises the question of whether there are just three governing options in the Middle East today: Iron Empires, Iron Fists or Iron Domes?
The reason that majorities and minorities co-existed relatively harmoniously for some 400 years when the Arab world was ruled by the Turkish Ottomans from Istanbul was because the Sunni Ottomans, with their Iron Empire, monopolized politics. While there were exceptions, generally speaking the Ottomans and their local representatives were in charge in cities like Damascus, Antakya and Baghdad. Minorities, like Alawites, Shiites, Christians and Jews, though second-class citizens, did not have to worry that they’d be harmed if they did not rule. The Ottomans had a live-and-let-live mentality toward their subjects.
When Britain and France carved up the Ottoman Empire in the Arab East, they forged the various Ottoman provinces into states — with names like Iraq, Jordan and Syria — that did not correspond to the ethnographic map. So Sunnis, Shiites, Alawites, Christians, Druze, Turkmen, Kurds and Jews found themselves trapped together inside national boundaries that were drawn to suit the interests of the British and French. Those colonial powers kept everyone in check. But once they withdrew, and these countries became independent, the contests for power began, and minorities were exposed. Finally, in the late 1960s and 1970s, we saw the emergence of a class of Arab dictators and monarchs who perfected Iron Fists (and multiple intelligence agencies) to decisively seize power for their sect or tribe — and they ruled over all the other communities by force.
In Syria, under the Assad family’s iron fist, the Alawite minority came to rule over a Sunni majority, and in Iraq, under Saddam’s iron fist, a Sunni minority came to rule over a Shiite majority. But these countries never tried to build real “citizens” who could share and peacefully rotate in power. So what you are seeing today in the Arab awakening countries — Syria, Iraq, Tunisia, Libya, Egypt and Yemen — is what happens when there is no Iron Empire and the people rise up against the iron-fisted dictators. You are seeing ongoing contests for power — until and unless someone can forge a social contract for how communities can share power.
Israelis have responded to the collapse of Arab iron fists around them — including the rise of militias with missiles in Lebanon and Gaza — with a third model. It is the wall Israel built around itself to seal off the West Bank coupled with its Iron Dome antimissile system. The two have been phenomenally successful — but at a price. The wall plus the dome are enabling Israel’s leaders to abdicate their responsibility for thinking creatively about a resolution of its own majority-minority problem with the Palestinians in the West Bank and East Jerusalem.
I am stunned at what I see here politically. On the right, in the Likud Party, the old leadership that was at least connected with the world, spoke English and respected Israel’s Supreme Court, is being swept aside in the latest primary by a rising group of far-right settler-activists who are convinced — thanks, in part, to the wall and dome — that Palestinians are no threat anymore and that no one can roll back the 350,000 Jews living in the West Bank. The far-right group running Israel today is so arrogant, and so indifferent to U.S. concerns, that it announced plans to build a huge block of settlements in the heart of the West Bank — in retaliation for the U.N. vote giving Palestinians observer status — even though the U.S. did everything possible to block that vote and the settlements would sever any possibility of a contiguous Palestinian state.
Meanwhile, with a few exceptions, the dome and wall have so insulated the Israeli left and center from the effects of the Israeli occupation that their main candidates for the Jan. 22 elections — including those from Yitzhak Rabin’s old Labor Party — are not even offering peace ideas but simply conceding the right’s dominance on that issue and focusing on bringing down housing prices and school class sizes. One settler leader told me the biggest problem in the West Bank today is “traffic jams.”
I am glad that the wall and the Iron Dome are sheltering Israelis from enemies who wish to do them ill, but I fear the wall and the Iron Dome are also blinding them from truths they still badly need to face.
-
From the piece, "One settler leader told me the biggest problem in the West Bank today is “traffic jams.” "
Tom Friedman can't resist putting things back on Israel, 'a rising group of far-right settler-activists'... 'plans to build a huge block of settlements in the heart of the West Bank' etc. Why not put it back on the enemies of Israel that the result of decades of pursuing destruction and refusing to negotiate peace in good faith is Jewish-Israeli traffic jams in the contested West Bank.
Israel is doing quite well while their enemies seem to have trouble recognizing failure.
Yes, Friedman's sense of history here and his construction of the three models is quite good.
-
Though this article utterly fails to come to grips with the fact that in point of fact Jordan's political structures are quite far from a level playing field, it does bring interesting questions to mind.
http://frontpagemag.com/2012/ryan-mauro/muslim-brotherhood-puts-jordan-in-the-crosshairs/
-
WSJ
Leading From Behind Qatar
Deferring to those who arm Islamists in Libya and Syria..
One problem with the Obama Administration's policy of leading from behind is that the countries it chooses to follow often don't share American interests. Take the case of Qatar, which the U.S. has let take the lead in Libya and Syria and has been busy arming Islamist radicals.
These columns pointed out the danger of deferring to Qatar in Libya a year ago ("MIA on the Shores of Tripoli," Dec. 24, 2011), and last week the New York Times reported that the U.S. is now "alarmed" that the Sunni fundamentalists who run Qatar have been favoring hard-core Islamists when it passes out weapons.
The Gulf-supplied arms have strengthened extremist groups who have hijacked efforts to stabilize Libya. Some of the weapons from Qatar and the United Arab Emirates have also found their way to northern Mali, now under the control of an al Qaeda offshoot. The Times found no evidence that arms from our friends the Qataris went to Ansar al-Shariah, the group behind the Benghazi attack that killed four Americans. But no one should be surprised if they did. When the U.S. chooses not to lead, others fill the vacuum.
A similar pattern is unfolding in Syria, where the Administration has once again refused to arm the rebels fighting Bashar Assad. President Obama on Tuesday at last recognized the rebels, following France and other countries. But the White House has refused to impose a humanitarian corridor or a no-fly zone, and it has deferred again to the Gulf states to provide money and weapons to the opposition.
And as in Libya, there are now worrying reports of the growing power of Islamist militias and the radicalization of the Syrian population. If the rebels do oust Mr. Assad, they will have little reason to thank or listen to American officials.
Order is unraveling across the Middle East, and a major reason is the growing belief that the U.S. is retreating from the region. Such are the fruits of leading from behind Qatar.
-
Some important and intriguing specifics in this piece on just how fuct and vulnerable to pressure Egypt is:
http://pjmedia.com/spengler/2012/12/13/jordans-king-abdullah-threatens-to-shut-down-egypts-economy/
Speaking at a private meeting this week, Jordan’s King Abdullah warned that he had “bargaining chips” to use against the Muslim Brotherhood, which he denounced as a “new extremist alliance” in the Arab world. The news site AI-Monitor today translates a report from al-Hayat, citing sources from the meeting. “Rhe Jordanian monarch was full of reproach for Egyptian President Mohammed Morsi, who hails from the Muslim Brotherhood,” al-Hayat wrote. “The king added that the Egyptian leadership had ‘marginalized the Jordanian role during the Israeli-Palestinian negotiations to stop the recent aggression on the Gaza Strip.’”
The Muslim Brotherhood has targeted Jordan’s monarchy as the next domino to fall after Egypt. At the Dec. 10 meeting, King Abdullah accused Egypt of economic sabotage.
The king said that “Jordan was severely damaged as a result of frequent interruptions of Egyptian natural gas, which cost the state treasury about 5 billion Jordanian dinars [$7.04 billion],” stressing that the interruption of gas ”is the real reason behind the economic crisis plaguing the country.”
Under previous agreements with the Egyptian authorities, Jordan used to import 80% of its gas needs for the production of electricity, which equates to a daily amount of about 6.8 million cubic meters of imported gas. However, the pipeline which supplies gas to Jordan and Israel was subsequently the target of frequent bombings.
The Jordanian monarch warned that his country would retaliate:
King Abdullah II said that “Amman has bargaining chips through which it can send messages to Cairo, including the fact that 500,000 Egyptians are working in Jordan. Moreover, the kingdom is the only passageway for Egyptian vegetables being exported to Iraq, and tens of thousands of Egyptians working in the Gulf states are using the Nuweiba-Aqaba waterway in their travels.”
…Other official sources talked about the arrest of thousands of Egyptian workers who have breached the conditions of their residency in the past two weeks, as well as the deportation of about 1,900 of them to Egypt, according to Jordanian Minister of Labor Nidal Qatamin. He said his country is not targeting Egyptian laborers, saying that the deportation decisions resulted from “violations of the usual procedures and applicable laws.” Remarkably, according to official sources, of the 500,000 Egyptians working in Jordan, approximately 320,000 have violated the conditions of their residency.
It is unlikely that Jordan would take on Egypt without strong backing from Saudi Arabia. A further 1.7 million Egyptians work in Saudi Arabia and an additional 500,000 in Kuwait. The Egyptian diaspora is the last thing holding up Egypt’s economy. Workers’ remittances stood at $18 billion in 2010, according to the World Bank, or about half of Egypt’s present $36 billion trade deficit. The expulsion of Egyptian workers from the Arab monarchies would have catastrophic impact on the disintegrating Egyptian economy. Two million Egyptians worked in Libya before the civil war, but many fled the country earlier this year.
As it is, President Morsi was forced to postpone negotiations on a proposed $4.8 billion loan from the International Monetary Fund, after scrapping a proposed tax increase that the IMF considered a condition for the package. With a government budget deficit at 11% of GDP and a trade deficit at 16% of GDP, Egypt must cut expenditures to survive financially. No Egyptian government, though, appears capable of persuading a population half of which lives on less than $2 a day to accept austerity.
-
The Changing Role of the Courts in Arab States
December 26, 2012 | 1100 GMT
Summary
The courts have become a key political battleground in the struggle for power between Arab rulers and their populations. Regimes in the region historically have relied on the courts and have used government control over judicial appointments and devices such as military courts to clamp down on opposition.
Executive branches are now turning to their judiciaries even more frequently to manage popular dissent. But political changes in the region have placed these regimes under intense pressure from a political opposition that in many cases includes judges and lawyers. Though still largely controlled by the regimes, courts in the region may seek out greater autonomy and begin to pose an unexpected challenge to governments.
Analysis
The competition between the Muslim Brotherhood-led government in Egypt and the country's judiciary shows how the Arab Spring has continued to develop and is now reshaping relationships between institutions throughout the region.
Egypt's judiciary was never completely submissive to the regime of ousted President Hosni Mubarak. In 2005, Egypt's prominent Judges Club threatened to boycott parliamentary polls unless several reforms affecting the judiciary were implemented. Several of the leading judges involved in the 2005 revolt are now members of the government.
In Tunisia, the new Islamist government has already met resistance from the judiciary. In May, judges went on strike after the Justice Ministry fired 82 magistrates in what it labeled a move against corruption. The ministry later reinstated nine of the judges. Tunisian courts have also ruled against the government or refused to hear cases largely motivated by the executive's political prerogatives. In August, judges ruled against an effort by the Ministry of Religious Affairs to take over Tunis' historic al Zitouna Mosque, which is run by controversial imam Sheikh Houcine Labidi. Tunisia's judges will also probably push for greater independence and oversight powers for the judiciary to be written into the country's new constitution.
The Courts as Government Enforcers
Arab monarchies have also turned to the courts to redirect challenges from opponents. Opposition members and protesters are facing charges or have been sentenced to prison terms in Bahrain, Oman and Kuwait. In Manama, courts have sentenced several opposition activists to jail terms, including four citizens for posting insults to the king on Twitter. In Oman, more than 35 activists have either been convicted or are facing trials for protest activities.
Kuwait's government has turned increasingly to the courts in its long-running power struggle against the country's well-organized opposition. In June, the Constitutional Court dissolved the parliament that had been elected in February and that was dominated by the opposition. In August, the government, in what was seen as a bid to gerrymander the parliamentary polls set for Dec. 1, asked the court to rule on the legality of a 2005 electoral law. But in a surprise move, the Constitutional Court threw out the government's petition and maintained the legality of the electoral law, forcing the ruler to issue a decree to revise the electoral system.
The United Arab Emirates and Qatar have also recently tried and convicted dissidents. Prominent 36-year-old Qatari poet Muhammad Ibn al Dheeb al Ajami was jailed for life for his poem "Tunisian Jasmine," in which he wrote, "Arab governments and those who rule them are, without exception, thieves. Thieves!" In the United Arab Emirates, the courts stripped seven citizens of their nationality for their political activism and involvement with the underground Al Islah movement, which is connected to Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood.
Jailing dissidents has been a common practice throughout the region. But more states now have governments that are popularly elected, and even the region's monarchies would rather co-opt than repress their citizens.
Jordan is turning to its courts even more explicitly than other countries. Jordanian King Abdullah established a Constitutional Court in October to replace the High Council for the Interpretation of the Constitution. The move is part of the monarchy's effort to reaffirm the constitutional nature of the monarchy and thereby demonstrate that it is sharing power. This approach has yet to be tested, however, since the court has not issued any rulings that run counter to the government's wishes. The new court is expected to be administratively and financially independent, though the fact that the king appoints its members means it will be only nominally independent. The monarchy offered another concession to reformist critics when it said that parliament will choose the prime minister for the first time after next January's parliamentary polls.
A New Culture in the Judiciary
The Arab Spring has encouraged a broad spectrum of opposition actors to boldly challenge their governments -- even in the region's monarchies, which are far more politically conservative. Chief among these opponents is a growing class of lawyers and judges. The Islamists arrested in the Emirates include a member of the Sharjah ruling family as well as judges, lawyers and professors. The Kuwaiti opposition includes Islamists but also Sunni hadhar (urbanites), youth and tribes. Lawyers and judges also are among the activists that have been arrested in Saudi Arabia, while in Yemen, protests that led to the ouster of former President Ali Abdullah Saleh involved strong participation by members of the legal profession.
By relying on them not only to enforce the rule of law but also to legitimize government decisions and authority, governments across the Middle East have given the courts a great deal of authority. That may work fine for governments in countries where the courts continue to reflect and represent the core ideology and position of the regimes. But in many countries, this is less and less the case, as the decision by the Kuwaiti Constitutional Court to block the government attempt to modify the electoral law makes clear.
Kuwaiti judges are appointed for life by the Emir, yet the court has shown itself willing to decide against the government's interests. While Kuwait has long been a political outlier in the region -- it was the first country to establish both a constitution and a parliament -- it nonetheless has relied on courts similarly to the rest of the monarchies.
Judges have confronted Arab regimes before. After Egypt's defeat in the 1967 Arab-Israeli War, the Egyptian judiciary began calling for reform and criticizing the regime. Their activism was part of the larger political changes taking place in Egypt and the region as a result of the military defeat. Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser eventually fired more than 100 judges in order to silence them.
But a mass firing of judges now would be problematic if not impossible for the region's democratically elected governments, and even the monarchies would find such a move hard to carry out. It would also reveal something the regimes of the region are trying to conceal: how much they have been weakened by the Arab revolts and how much of their legitimacy has been damaged. Such an action could also trigger boycotts or revolts by judges similar to those that have taken place in Egypt and in Tunisia. Even worse for the region's governments, a reaction by judiciaries could involve rulings unfavorable to regimes and detrimental to their efforts to maintain control.
.
Read more: The Changing Role of the Courts in Arab States | Stratfor
-
Many telling points here, but once Baraq deliberately fouled up a lasting deal with Iraq, ultimately the die was cast methinks. Was supporting Murbaraq or Kadaffy the way to go? Is supporting the Syrian rebels the way to go? Would their gratitude be any greater than that of Benghazi or the Mujahadeen of Afpakia for our help against the Russians?
Another Mideast War?
The result of U.S. detachment in Syria is more disorder. .
Israeli jets attacked a convoy of trucks early Wednesday morning somewhere along Syria's border with Lebanon. Jerusalem has repeatedly warned Damascus that it would act militarily to prevent the transfer of major weapons to Hezbollah. The message didn't penetrate so the bombs did.
Exactly what the trucks were carrying remains a matter of speculation. Last week Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu warned about the possibility that Syria's stockpile of chemical weapons—estimated at 1,000 tons—could fall into Hezbollah's hands.
Enlarge Image
Close
Reuters
An Israeli soldier stands guard next to an Iron Dome rocket interceptor battery deployed near the northern Israeli city of Haifa on Monday.
.
Reports on Wednesday suggested the convoy carried Russian-made SA-17 surface-to-air missiles, which are capable of shooting down planes to an altitude of 80,000 feet. If so, they could have provided Hezbollah with a formidable tactical advantage in the increasingly likely event of another war with Israel.
It is impossible to know what Syrian President Bashar Assad was thinking when he authorized this transfer—assuming he authorized it at all. One of the consequences of Syria's civil war, which will enter its third year in March, is that the country has gradually become a playground for dangerous interlopers on both sides, including Iran's Revolutionary Guards Corps.
Assad may not want a war with Israel, but Tehran could have other calculations. Over the weekend Iran warned that it would consider any attack on Syria to be an attack on Iran. Claims by Syrian TV that Israel hit a research facility near Damascus might be a pretext for an Iranian escalation with Israel.
Jerusalem is taking no chances. Mr. Netanyahu dispatched his National Security Adviser to Moscow—another Assad patron—presumably to discuss the fate of those SA-17s. The Israeli army also deployed some of its Iron Dome batteries to northern Israel for the first time. It would not have done so if the chances of a war on Israel's northern border weren't increasing.
As for the United States, well, haven't you heard the tide of war is receding? President Obama warned Syria last year against transferring chemical weapons, but there has been little follow-up. In an interview this month with one of his top campaign donors—er, the new publisher of the New Republic—the President stressed "our limitations" in intervening in Syria, along with the risk that U.S. intervention would only make things worse.
"How do I weigh tens of thousands who've been killed in Syria versus the tens of thousands who are currently being killed in the Congo?" mused the President, posing a question that would effectively have prevented every U.S. intervention in history.
Allow us to answer. Unlike in the Congo, the U.S. has vital national interests in the Syrian war. One interest is to inflict a strategic blow to Iran by deposing its principal Arab client. Another is to cut Iran's military-supply link to Hezbollah, a terrorist group that has killed hundreds of Americans. A third is to prevent Syria's unrest from spilling into its neighbors. A fourth is to avoid the outbreak of a wider regional war. A fifth is to make sure that the U.S. might have some leverage and standing with a post-Assad government in Syria.
A sixth is to prevent further thousands from being killed. Oh, sorry, that's an issue less of American interests than of our values, which aren't in vogue these days.
The fruit of two years of U.S. inaction in Syria is that the very nightmare scenarios the Administration fretted about are closer to occurring. The U.S. doesn't have to put boots on Syrian ground to help bring the Assad regime to an end, such as by imposing a no-fly-zone over Aleppo and the rest of western Syria. A similar no-fly-zone over Libya in 2011 helped spell Moammar Gadhafi's demise.
In his inaugural, Mr. Obama declared that the era of endless war is over. If he really believes that, the result will be more war
-
WASHINGTON—Defense Secretary Leon Panetta accused Iran's paramilitary force of an intensified campaign to destabilize the Middle East by smuggling antiaircraft weapons to its militant allies.
Iran's export of so-called manpads—antiaircraft missiles that can be carried by a single person—represent what Mr. Panetta called a dangerous escalation.
"There is no question when you start passing manpads around, that becomes a threat—not just to military aircraft but to civilian aircraft," Mr. Panetta told The Wall Street Journal in an interview describing shifting threats to the U.S. as he prepares to leave his post. "That is an escalation."
Western officials have long worried about the spread of such weapons and the risk they pose to airline passengers as well as to military helicopters and jets. Recent U.S. intelligence pointed to new efforts by Iran to smuggle manpads, but few shipments had been intercepted before Jan. 23, when Yemen, aided by the U.S., intercepted a boat carrying the weapons.
More
Democrats Pledge Vote of Support for Hagel
Biden: U.S. Open to Talks With Iran
Nations to Discuss Iran Nuclear Program
.
"It is one of the first times we have seen it," Mr. Panetta said.
U.S. investigators said evidence indicated the missiles were supplied by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, Tehran's paramilitary force.
Iranian officials didn't respond to requests for comment about distributing weapons to regional allies.
Mr. Panetta said the U.S. is stepping up efforts to counter the Iranian threat, and is leading a multination exercise in the United Arab Emirates though Feb. 7 to improve the interdiction of Iranian arms and other weapons. The defense secretary called the exercise critical to building up Arab capabilities to help halt Iranian arms transfers, including the smuggling of manpads.
The disclosures by Mr. Panetta came as he prepares to step down after 19 months as defense secretary, a period marked by an intensified focus on Iran as concerns mount about its nuclear ambitions, an expanded campaign of drone strikes against militants in several countries, and the emergence of a new al Qaeda haven in Africa.
Chuck Hagel, whom President Barack Obama has nominated to succeed Mr. Panetta as civilian leader of the U.S. military, is skeptical of military intervention but has said he agrees with the administration's policy of considering all options in dealing with Tehran's nuclear program.
Mr. Hagel's views on Iran have been subject to withering Republican criticism, in particular his vote while serving as a senator from Nebraska against labeling the Revolutionary Guard a terrorist group. However, at his confirmation hearing Thursday he endorsed the administration's strategy of isolating Tehran, including the Revolutionary Guard.
Senior U.S. officials said the antiaircraft weapons intercepted on Jan. 23 likely were headed to northern Yemen's Houthi separatists, who are fighting the U.S.-backed government in San'a and have also clashed with Saudi forces. Iranians also have stepped up aid to rebels in the south of Yemen in recent months, when previous shipments have involved mainly cash, small arms and explosives, U.S. officials said.
The weapons are a major concern for Israel, which borders territory controlled by Iran's allies. U.S. officials also believe Iranians are shipping similar weapons to Hamas militants in the Gaza Strip and have in the past shipped weapons to Syria and Hezbollah.
Extremists in Gaza long have used rockets in their conflict with Israel. Manpads could give them the capability to shoot down Israeli aircraft. The concern about Iranian arms proliferation has grown as an uprising has made Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's position more precarious.
Underscoring Israeli concerns, U.S. and Western officials said Israel this week struck a convoy in Syria carrying antiaircraft missiles that officials said were being transferred to the Iranian-backed militant group Hezbollah in Lebanon. Syria disputed that account, and said Israeli warplanes bombed a research facility near Damascus.
Mr. Panetta is preparing to leave the administration, after leading the Central Intelligence Agency and Pentagon, with a U.S. war in Afghanistan beginning to wind down and an extremist threat rising in Africa.
The administration initially sent mixed messages about its level of support for the French military campaign in Mali, launched on Jan. 11, against al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, or AQIM, and its militant allies.
Mr. Panetta, however, has been a vocal proponent of the operation, and said he believes a consensus is emerging on a way forward.
"They [France] acted because of what they saw AQIM doing. I've commended them because I think it was the right step to take. And I think now, there really is a recognition that this is an opportunity now to be able to make sure that not only do we confine AQIM but ultimately we defeat them," Mr. Panetta said.
Mr. Panetta, after taking over as CIA director in 2009, sought to build up counterterrorism efforts against al Qaeda's affiliates in northwest Africa.
Today, he said, the U.S. still lacks the full range of capabilities to deal with the terrorist threat there. "We're not even close," Mr. Panetta said. "There is a lot of work that needs to be done."
Mr. Panetta said the U.S. response to the threat from groups such as AQIM was complicated by the difficulty of coordinating regional partners, the vastness of the area where the group operates, and by Washington's focus on more immediate threats, particularly Yemen-based al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula.
"Part of the problem was everybody was concerned about it, but, operationally, it took a lot more work to try to kind of build the kind of infrastructure you needed to go after them," Mr. Panetta said. "In just the natural system of prioritizing, we were going after them where they represented the biggest threat. And then suddenly…AQIM started to expand and started to then gain control of these communities."
Mr. Panetta said a campaign in North and West Africa would require the U.S. to set up a robust network of informants on the ground. Likewise, the U.S. needs a constellation of bases, a process that got a boost on Monday when the U.S. signed a security agreement with Niger. The U.S. is considering putting surveillance drones there.
"All of that demands time," Mr. Panetta said.
More important, Mr. Panetta said, the White House has to make a series of policy decisions about whether AQIM and its allies in North and West Africa "represent an imminent threat to our country."
-
Hezbollah and Iran Blamed in Bombing .
By JAY SOLOMON And GORDON FAIRCLOUGH
WSJ
WASHINGTON—Bulgaria's government is expected to release an investigative report this week blaming the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah and its ally Iran for a terrorist bombing last summer that killed five Israeli tourists, said U.S. and Middle East officials briefed on the findings.
After the bombing, Israel charged that Hezbollah, on orders from Tehran, carried out the July 18 assault on Israeli vacationers as they boarded buses outside an airport in the Black Sea resort city of Burgas. A Bulgarian bus driver was also killed in the attack, the deadliest on Israelis abroad since 2004.
But the report by Bulgaria's government, which is seen as an independent actor on Mideast affairs, could lend weight to an Israeli push to get the European Union to designate Hezbollah as a terrorist organization, said European officials.
Enlarge Image
Close
Reuters
A truck carried a bus damaged in a July bombing near Burgas Airport.
.
The U.S. and European governments also are expected to cite the study in their efforts to tighten economic sanctions against Iran, both because of its nuclear program and Tehran's alleged support of international terrorist groups.
Bulgarian Interior Minister Tsvetan Tsvetanov is scheduled to brief senior members of the Bulgarian government on the investigation's findings on Tuesday, a spokeswoman for the ministry said. She declined to comment on the contents of the report.
A U.S. official said the White House will issue a statement following Bulgaria's release of the report.
The U.S. and Israel have accused Iran's elite military unit, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, of ordering a string of overseas terrorist attacks aimed at American and Israeli targets over the past two years, including in India, Thailand and Georgia.
Iran and Hezbollah have denied involvement in any of the international attacks. Tehran also has accused Israel of assassinating leading Iranian nuclear scientists, something the Jewish state has never confirmed nor denied.
Evidence of a Hezbollah-directed strike on EU territory could shift the perception of the Lebanese-Shiite group in Europe, which has resisted following Washington's decision to label it a terrorist organization.
If the Bulgarian report reaches a clear conclusion, a senior European diplomat said on Monday, "We will have to look very seriously at the options we have."
British and Dutch officials pressed last year for concerted EU action against Hezbollah, but other nations including France have resisted efforts to blacklist the group. At the time of last year's discussions, senior EU officials said they feared a move against Hezbollah could unsettle Lebanon's fragile peace, already under strain from the violence and civil war in Syria.
Members of Hezbollah are part of the Lebanese government that took power in 2011 after overthrowing the pro-Western prime minister, Saad al-Hariri. Hezbollah's designation as a terrorist group would result in increased EU sanctions on the organization.
In the months since the assault on the Israeli tourists, Bulgarian authorities have said little publicly about their investigation. The U.S., while saying it suspected Hezbollah's involvement, also adopted a wait-and-see approach.
Bulgaria's Prime Minister Boyko Borisov has described the plotters as "exceptionally experienced." Officials have declined to discuss the attackers' origins or suspected affiliations, but said they entered Bulgaria from another EU country.
At first, Bulgarian police thought the assault was the work of a suicide bomber whose body was recovered at the scene. Now it appears that man, whose image was captured by security cameras in the airport terminal, may have died accidentally when the attack plan went awry.
That bomber, whose face was obscured by long hair, sunglasses and a cap, was dressed as a tourist in plaid shorts and a T-shirt and mingled with the Israeli visitors who had just arrived on a flight from Tel Aviv before the explosion.
The attack came amid a spate of plots and botched assaults linked to Hezbollah and Iran.
A U.S. court indicted an Iranian-American in late 2011 for allegedly attempting to kill Saudi Arabia's ambassador to the U.S. at a Washington, D.C., cafe. The indictment alleged that senior IRGC officials oversaw the plot.
Last summer, police in Cyprus arrested a man in his 20s reported by state media to be of Lebanese descent and traveling on a Swedish passport. The man is currently on trial on terrorism-related charges. He has said he is not guilty.
In January 2012, Thai authorities arrested a man of Lebanese descent traveling on a Swedish passport who they allege had amassed a cache of bomb-making materials. Thai police said they suspect the man has ties to Hezbollah.
A month later, three Iranians were detained by Thai and Malaysian police after an apparently botched bomb plot in Bangkok. In that case, one of the alleged bombers blew off his legs. Thai police said the suspects were planning to assassinate Israeli officials.
-
Hagel says he "doesn't recall" his remark about Israel controlling the State Department
Posted by Robert Spencer at www.jihadwatch.org on Feb. 19, 2013
Maybe his Muslim Brotherhood handlers have taught him about that "war is deceit" thing.
"Hagel 'Doesn't Recall' Remark on Israel Controlling State Dept.," by Rachel Hirshfeld for Israel National News, February 18 (thanks to Voice of the Copts):
Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) said that he has accepted a new disclaimer from President Obama’s defense secretary nominee Chuck Hagel (R-Neb.) disavowing one of his many offensive statements about the state of Israel.
Graham told “Fox News Sunday” that he received a new letter from the beleaguered nominee in which Hagel claimed he “did not recall” the odious statement-- allegedly made during a speech at Rutgers University in 2007-- in which he argued that the State Department is controlled by the Israeli Foreign Minister’s office.
“Well, if in fact that’s true, that would end the matter,” Graham said, adding, “I just take him at his word unless something new comes along.”
“I'm glad he answered my question about a very disturbing comment he allegedly made,” he told Fox News.
Graham joined fellow Republicans in filibustering Hagel's nomination on Thursday, marking the first time a defense secretary has been filibustered in the Senate.
Graham is continuing to seek more information from the Obama administration this week on the Sept. 11 attacks on the U.S. embassy in Bengazi, Libya, which resulted in the death of four Americans, including U.S. Ambassador Christopher Stevens.
The senator warned last week that he would hold off approval of both Hagel and John Brennan, Obama's nominee for CIA director, until he receives more answers.
During the interview, however, Graham indicated that he would support ending debate on Hagel when the Senate returns from recess next week, despite considering him “one of the most radical and unqualified choices” to be defense secretary.
Hagel’s numerous other anti-Jewish and anti-Israel comments include the former senator claiming that “the Jewish lobby intimidates a lot of people" in Congress into “doing dumb things”; that the Jewish state is keeping the “Palestinians caged up like animals” and that Israel has kept the Palestinian people “chained down for many, many years.”
He has further come under fire for his feeble position on military action against Iran, his willingness to open direct talks with Hamas, his opposition to declaring Hizbullah a terrorist organization, as well as a long list of other highly provocative issues and associations.
-
SecState Kerry bleated the other day to the Iraqis in complaint about them allowing Iran to use Iraqi airspace to resupply Assad in Syria.
With President Obama having failed, deliberately so in my opinion, to establish a status of forces agreement with Iraq, and thus there not being the 30,000-50,000 US troops there orginally requested by our military, is it any surprise that Iraq feels it must placate Iran?
-
Iraq, Syria: A Jihadist Merger Announced
April 9, 2013 | 1503 GMT
Summary
A recent announcement confirms suspicions that the Syrian civil war would create opportunities for transnational jihadists to coalesce in the region. On April 9, the Islamic State of Iraq, an offshoot of the al Qaeda core, announced that it would merge with Syrian jihadist group Jabhat al-Nusra. The statement will further concern those already apprehensive of jihadist proliferation in a post-al Assad Syria.
Analysis
Islamic State of Iraq leader Abu Bakr al-Husseini al-Qurashi al-Baghdadi claimed that Jabhat al-Nusra was part of the his group's extended network. Now known as the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, the new jihadist coalition was announced just one day after al Qaeda central leader Ayman al-Zawahiri called for Islamist rebels fighting the regime of Syrian President Bashar al Assad to establish an Islamic state, which could help eventually re-establish an Islamic caliphate.
The importance of Jabhat al-Nusra is that its members are among the most effective fighters in the Syrian rebellion. The rebels and their sponsors cannot afford to isolate the group if they want to make real gains on the battlefield.
We consider al-Zawahiri's statement largely propagandistic: The al Qaeda leader, who is somewhere in northwestern Pakistan, far from the battlefield, is merely trying to appropriate the jihadist insurgency in Syria. But we believe al-Baghdadi's statement is much more revelatory. For the first time, the group has admitted that Syrian jihadists represent an extension of its operations -- even though we have long known the Iraq's jihadists aid and abet Syria's jihadists. Syria served as a support base for jihadists in Iraq in the past, and now Iraqi jihadists are helping to consolidate Syrian jihadists.
Al-Baghdadi's statement will further worry the international community. The danger posed by Syrian jihadists has long been apparent, and the West has been skeptical of an all-out rebel victory accordingly. In fact, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry called for both sides to seek a negotiated settlement as recently as March. However, the formation of this new group attests to growing suspicions that Syrian jihadists, who could very well outlast the al Assad regime, are not nationalistic. Rather, they are part of al Qaeda's efforts to exploit the Arab Spring uprisings.
Notably, the announcement represents a setback for mainstream Syrian rebels, who have willingly collaborated with Jabhat al-Nusra, and those who are not aligned with transnational jihadists but nonetheless have to live with them. Determining how many fit into each category -- nationalist jihadist, transnationalist jihadist, reluctant collaborators -- is difficult, and further complicates the problem of international perception.
Saudi Arabia competes with al Qaeda to embolden Sunni resistance against Iran in the northern Levant and in Iraq. Though Riyadh maintains relationships with many jihadist rebel factions -- and benefits from having jihadists focus on regional theaters outside Saudi Arabia -- al Qaeda's now-publicized campaign to use Syria as a springboard for anti-Shia resistance in Iraq could make it difficult for Saudi Arabia to pursue this policy, especially in coordination with the United States. In its efforts to curb al Qaeda's influence, the United States will be even more reluctant to support Syrian rebels.
Many questions remain as to whether the merger is real. But perceptions will drive behavior, especially when it comes to jihadism in the post-9/11 and post-Arab Spring era. The United States, which has long sought to balance Iranian-led radicalism and Sunni radicalism, will likely be further forced to revise its strategy to curb Iran's regional influence.
.
Read more: Iraq, Syria: A Jihadist Merger Announced | Stratfor
==================================================
By ADAM ENTOUS
WASHINGTON—President Barack Obama is expected to authorize additional limited steps to support the Syrian opposition, likely including body armor and night-vision goggles for certain rebel groups, U.S. officials said.
The additional moves could be announced as early as next week, although they likely would fall short of the support being sought from Washington by Syrian opposition leaders, U.S. allies including Britain and France, and by a growing number of U.S. lawmakers.
The added steps, however, suggest the White House is moving slowly in the direction of greater direct involvement in the fight against Syrian strongman Bashar al-Assad after months of agonizing debate about what the U.S. can and should do to aid the rebels.
Syria in the Spotlight
Track the latest events in a map, see the key players and a chronology of the unrest.
View Graphics
.
More photos and interactive graphics
.So far, Mr. Obama has limited U.S. support to providing nonlethal assistance to the opposition, including communications gear and limited training, and that position isn't expected to change, at least for now, officials said.
Last year, Mr. Obama rebuffed a proposal that was supported by the then-heads of the Central Intelligence Agency and the State Department to provide certain types of weapons to moderate rebel groups.
Mr. Obama opposed that proposal on the grounds that American-furnished arms could fall into the hands of al Qaeda-linked groups, which dominate rebel ranks, and, moreover, would do little to help turn the tide in the two-year-old fight against Mr. Assad.
A senior Obama administration official said that U.S. assistance to the Syrian opposition has been on an "upward trajectory" and that Mr. Obama has directed his national-security team to identify "additional measures" to support the groups.
"We have no decision to announce, but the president has asked his team to continue to provide him with options to accomplish our objective of strengthening the opposition and supporting the Syrian people," the senior administration official said.
The option of providing night-vision goggles and body armor "would be consistent with the president's directive" and is among the "additional steps that are under review," the official added.
Britain and France have already said they would supply such equipment.
In addition to considering night-vision goggles and body armor, the White House last week started reviewing a new set of potential military options, including proposals to bomb Syrian aircraft on the ground and to use Patriot antimissile batteries in Turkey to defend swaths of northern Syria from the regime's Scud missiles, officials said.
But defense officials said the new military options faced potentially insurmountable technological and legal hurdles—underscoring the difficulty of finding a plausible way to address increasing international pressure to weigh in more forcefully on the side of the Syrian rebels.
The White House has already considered—and rebuffed—other military options the Pentagon presented last year, including proposals to create a no-fly zone.
Write to Adam Entous at adam.entous@wsj.com
===================================
The conventional wisdom among U.S. security elites these days is that the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan prove that the cost of American intervention is too high. Also, that avoiding such interventions frees up the resources to go after our real enemies in al Qaeda. These supposed lessons have helped President Obama justify his decision not to do much of anything in Syria. But we are now learning that there are also major costs to nonintervention.
Take Tuesday's announcement that the Iraqi branch of al Qaeda has joined with the Nusra Front, its Syrian cousin, and will now be called "The Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant." Al Nusra has an estimated 12,000 foot soldiers in Syria and is widely considered the most effective rebel fighting force in the country's civil war. Together with the smaller Iraqi branch, the merged group is now probably the single largest faction in al Qaeda.
Al Qaeda in Iraq was a decimated force after the surge of U.S. troops in 2007; its resurgence coincides with America's withdrawal. The al-Nusra front didn't even exist until last year; now it's bidding to replace the Free Syrian Army as the leading insurgent group. It doesn't help the FSA that the U.S. still can't decide whether to provide it with anything other than non-lethal aid.
If the Administration wants a good outcome in Syria, it might want to help the good (or the better) guys win. The alternative is the return of al Qaeda in the heart of the Arab world.
WSJ
-
By Robert D. Kaplan
Chief Geopolitical Analyst
The most appropriate image of the present-day Middle East is the medieval map, which, in the words of the late historian Albert Hourani, depicts an age when "frontiers were not clearly and precisely delimited" and the influence of a regime was not uniform "within a fixed and generally recognized area," but, rather, grew weaker with distance as it radiated outward from an urban core. Legal borders, where the power of one state suddenly ended and that of another suddenly began, were rare. And thus, Hourani was not the only scholar to point this out.
We are back to a world of vague and overlapping shadows of influence. Shia and Sunnis in northern Lebanon cross the border into Syria and kill each other, then retreat back into Lebanon. Indeed, the military situations in Lebanon and Syria are quickly fusing. The al Assad regime in Damascus projects power not unto the legal borders of Syria but mainly along parts of the Sunni-dominated Homs-Hama corridor and also on the Mediterranean coast between Latakia and Tartus, where the regime's Alawite compatriots are concentrated. Beyond that there are literally hundreds of small rebel groupings and half-dozen major ones, divided by their own philosophical and Islamist orientations and those of their foreign patrons. Then there are the half-dozen or so Kurdish factions controlling parts of northern and northeastern Syria. As for the Kurdish region of northern Iraq, there are two main Kurdish groups that are basically sovereign in different sectors. Significant Sunni areas of Iraq, particularly in sprawling Anbar between the Euphrates River and the Syrian border, are in varying degrees independently governed or not governed at all. Even Shiite central and southern Iraq is not completely controlled by the Shia-dominated Baghdad regime, owing to a half-dozen parties that in some cases exercise a degree of sovereignty.
Rather than a temporary situation, this is one that can last for many years. For example, Bashar al Assad's regime need not necessarily crumble immediately but may survive indefinitely as a frail statelet, supported as it is by Russian arms arriving via the Mediterranean and from Iran across the weakly governed Iraqi desert.
Gone is the world of the Ottoman Empire, in which there were relatively few battles for territory among the various tribes and ethnic and sectarian groups, because the Sultan in Istanbul exercised overarching (albeit variable) sovereignty between the mountains of Lebanon and the plateau of Iran. Gone is the colonial era when the British and French exercised sovereignty from the capital cities unto the fixed legal borders of newly constituted mandated states and territories. Gone is the post-colonial era when tyrants like Hafez al Assad in Syria and Saddam Hussein in Iraq ran police states within the same fixed borders erected by the British and French. Further down the road, the only states left that wield real sovereignty between the eastern edge of the Mediterranean and Iranian plateau could be Israel and Iran.
In a cartographic sense then, we are back to medievalism, but without the storied cultural and intellectual benefits that the Middle Ages conferred upon the Arab world. A thousand years ago, what is now known as Iraq was for significant periods under the sway of Iran; but more to the point, Baghdad and Damascus constituted different dynastic poles of pulsating influence that did not always configure with specific frontiers and were contested by Abbasids, Seljuks, Safavids and Ottomans. Of course, the heartlands of Syria and Iraq did, in fact, constitute different agricultural and henceforth different political regions, even as the line between them could be extremely fluid -- as were the distinctions between Turkey and Iran. Places in what is today northern Iraq were linked by caravan routes to Syria, even as places in northern Syria were linked by caravan routes to Iraq. As it concerns the map, subtlety ruled in a positive sense, as it does in a negative sense today.
The key to the maintenance of political stability for much of the Middle East's history was the concept (associated with Ibn Khaldun) of the asabiyah, or solidarity group, often though not exclusively based on blood relations such as clans and tribes. The stability of regimes, whether relatively enlightened ones like in the golden age of Abbasid Baghdad under Harun al-Rashid or suffocating and tyrannical ones like Saddam's in the same city 1,200 years later, was based on an asabiyah -- local emirs and Persians in the former case and Sunni tribes in the north-central town of Tikrit in the latter. The asabiyah had its interests tied up with the ruler and therefore was willing to defend such rule against all comers. It was not strictly democratic, but it did often signify broad-based support, and even when it did not it nevertheless offered the benefit of stability. And one of the ways it did that was to limit the number of people in the state or empire concerned with politics: Outside of the asabiyah, people often lowered their heads and did not question the regime.
Ibn Khaldun, the 14th century Tunisian philosopher and historian, wrote about how one asabiyah was periodically replaced by another, leading to a new regime or dynasty. His point was that dynasties were founded by desert nomads who established settlements, which, as these settlements became secure, led to luxurious living, in turn leading to challenges from new groups of outsiders who would eventually topple the elite and establish a new dynasty. Thus, did Middle Eastern history progress.
Throughout the post-colonial age, periodic coups in Syria and Iraq signaled the replacement of one asabiyah with another, even if Ibn Khaldun's formulation of the infusion of nomads no longer applied. What kept regime's like Hafez al Assad's and Saddam Hussein's in power for so long was, in part, security technology -- methods of torture and electronic surveillance -- brought by the East Germans during the Cold War. Nowadays, a new evolution of technology -- the Internet, cellphones and social media -- has complicated the very concept of the asabiyah by creating mass public opinion. The asabiyah suggests exclusivity: a group more important than others, or more important than the society at large. But the mass society enabled and empowered by technology supersedes this.
Or does it? Democracy requires, after a fashion, its own asabiyahs or interest groups, which form the building blocks of political parties that, in turn, govern. But in an empowered mass society, with millions of sovereign voices, this requires a new and more sophisticated category of organization which traditional cultures have been largely unfamiliar with. Remember, it took Europeans hundreds of years to evolve the social, economic and cultural underpinnings necessary for stable democracy. To an extent, the Arab world, by doing away with asabiyahs that operated best inside the context of authoritarian societies, is starting history all over again.
Democracy only in a narrow sense means toppling dictators and holding elections. What it really means is a level of development that allows for asabiyahs to compete on the basis of non-lethal categories: this economic tendency versus that one, rather than this ethnic or sectarian group -- or this clan or tribe -- versus that one. For the moment, it is the latter, more lethal categories that determine politics across much of the Levant: so that the combination of blood, belief and technology have given us a neo-medieval map that, rather than one of flourishing civilizations, is -- in the cases of Syria and Iraq -- one of clans, gangs and chaos.
Freedom in the modern age, without "social knowledge and discipline," is a "dance of death," according to University of Toronto historian Modris Eksteins. The result tempts anarchy. As the 11th-12th century Muslim jurist and theologian Al-Ghazali said, "the tyranny of a sultan for a hundred years causes less damage than one year's tyranny exercised by the subjects against one another."
Read more: The Middle East's New Map | Stratfor
-
Qatar's Duplicitous Game
by Paul Alster
Special to IPT News
May 9, 2013
http://www.investigativeproject.org/4011/qatar-duplicitous-game
In the first of a two-part assessment of its growing role on the world stage and dubious influence on Middle East and Arab politics, Paul Alster looks at Qatar's carefully crafted image that masks the real direction of this autocratic nation. In part two he concentrates on Qatar's on-the-ground financing of Islamist militias and revolutions in the Arab world.
Haifa, Israel - Sometimes the most stunning deceptions occur in broad daylight. It's the classic ruse of the pathological manipulator; the hugely successful benefactors of a myriad of good causes such as disgraced financial moguls Bernie Madoff and Allen Stanford.
The State of Qatar falls into a similar category. The Arabian Gulf island nation has insinuated its way to the top table of world affairs through financial muscle established on rich natural gas and oil reserves. Qatar has befriended and works closely with some of the most powerful nations (including the United States), and has established a series of high-profile charitable foundations and outstanding world-leading brands, while at the same time, it has brazenly sponsored terrorist entities across the Arab world and beyond.
For a tiny country, it has ambitious aims to advance the global Muslim Brotherhood and promote Sunni Islam in its fight against Shia. But that agenda attracts little attention. Qatar has promoted and financed the cause of the Islamist opposition forces that overthrew Muammar Gaddafi in Libya, the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, has promoted the now-ruling Ettafdid Movement in Tunisia, the FSA in Syria, and most recently, has supported the rebel forces in Mali.
"I think the U.S. is less aware of this [than it should be]. I mean it's hard to miss! It really has been ignored or shunted aside," Professor Ze'ev Magen, Middle East Studies chairman at Bar Ilan University, told the Investigative Project on Terrorism.
"There is a constant attempt to attribute the breakdown [of the previous Arab status quo] to other factors," Magen said. "But in the end, what you see is the Iraqis, Syrians and the Lebanese Shiites, all lining up together with Iran, and then you've got the Sunni world that is most prominently represented by the Wahabbi Islam of the Gulf States [including Qatar] and the Muslim Brotherhood working together on the Sunni side."
Qatar's generosity in helping Egypt during its current critical financial difficulties will not be without payback, Abdel Rahman Youssef, an Egyptian journalist specializing in political and religious affairs, wrote last month for the Lebanon-based Al Akhbar website, adding that Qatar may have its sights set on acquiring the Suez Canal and the Suez industrial zone currently owned by the Dubai Ports.
"It should come as no surprise that today the canal looms large over many of the serious discussions concerning the future of Egypt and the entire region … The Gulf country's [Qatar's] economic reach inside Egypt was apparent in recent statements by Qatari Prime Minister Hamad Bin Jassim. 'Qatar will not let Egypt collapse economically,' he said. Qatar provided Egypt with aid and a deposit of around $5 billion. However, this all pales in comparison to rumors that the Qataris wish to acquire a large portion of UAE's investments in the Suez region."
Suez journalist Sayyed Noun added "The street will not easily accept the news since many believe that Qatar wants to 'strangle the Canal.'"
In February, Al Akhbar also reported that Qatar's alleged support of the Islamist rebels against the local troops in Mali and their French allies may have prompted France to block a major international telecom deal with Qatar.
"Indicating a rift between the two allies, France stood in the way of Qatar's purchase of the company Vivendi Africa, a telecom giant active in North and West Africa. The obstruction of the sale occurred after word emerged that Qatar is possibly supporting jihadi groups in Mali." Correspondent Al Mokhtar Mohammad wrote. "The sale could hinder France's ability to surveil jihadi communications, especially since there are parties within France that have accused Qatar of supporting Mali armed groups."
Qatar has been a refuge for terrorists – providing 9/11 mastermind Khaled Sheikh Muhammed a base in the 1990s – and now hosting recently re-elected Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal. On April 5, the Pakistan Daily Times reported that Qatari capital Doha is to host a new regional office for the Taliban with the blessing of Afghan leader, Hamid Karzai.
Qatar manages to maintain a very close relationship with the U.S. despite this situation. The massive Al Udeid airbase is on Qatari soil even though the U.S. has other good friends in the region such as Bahrain, Kuwait, and Saudi Arabia, on whom they could rely.
According to a Wikileaks cable reported back in 2010, one man who long ago saw through Qatar's carefully crafted public image is Meir Dagan, former head of Israel's Mossad security agency, who told American diplomats, "Qatar is trying to cozy up to everyone. I think that you should remove your bases from [Qatar]. [The Qataris] owe their security to the presence of the Americans]."
The seemingly limitless pretentions of its Wahabbist autocratic ruler, Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa al Thani are furthered under the guise of promoting 'democracy in the Arab world.' That's ironic, given that Qatar is ruled exclusively by members of one family who rigidly control all media and outlets to free speech.
When Sheikh Hamad overthrew his own father in a 1995 coup, he initiated a gradual transformation placing Qatar at the center of world affairs. One of his masterstrokes was the funding and creation of Al Jazeera, the hugely successful mouthpiece for his regime that has changed many people's perception of events in the Arab world to subliminally reflect the opinion held by the ruling Qatari family.
Al Jazeera attracted a roster of high profile, well paid and talented international journalists. As it grew, the independence of the original editorial line and the creeping replacement of secular staff with Islamists became ever-more apparent. By 2011, as the 'Arab Spring' gathered pace and Qatar's behind-the-scenes role in the revolutions needed to be even more carefully stage managed, Sheikh Hamad replaced Al Jazeera's long-time editor Wadah Khanfar, a conservative Islamist whose ties to the Muslim Brotherhood had prompted his arrest in Jordan, with an even more hard-line man at the helm, his own royal cousin, Sheikh Hamad bin Thamer al Thani.
Al Jazeera staffers started to despair during Khanfar's tenure. In June 2009 the Jerusalem Post Magazine reported, "The meteoric rise of the network and its increasing popularity have led many political and media commentators in the Arab world to wonder exactly who or what was behind what appears to be its main purpose:
encouraging opposition and promoting incitement against Arab regimes, exposing the corruption of their leaders and their entourage, while holding to an extreme Arab nationalist attitude against the US and Israel and extolling the values of conservative – and sometimes extremist – Islam. It did not take long for one name to emerge: the Muslim Brotherhood."
A series of cables from the U.S. embassy in Doha, published by Wikileaks, reflected the way Al Jazeera promotes Qatar's world vision, while the government stifles dissent in its own backyard.
"The Qatari government claims to champion press freedom elsewhere, but generally does not tolerate it at home," the U.S. embassy in Doha reported in June 2009.
Around this time, Robert Menard resigned as director of the Doha Centre for Media Freedom, together with a significant number of staff, after facing unprecedented interference in his work.
"But certain Qatari officials never wanted an independent Centre, one that was free to express its views without being limited by political or diplomatic considerations, one that was free to criticise Qatar itself," Menard said. "But how can you be credible if you say nothing about the problems in the country in which you are based?"
In January, Al Jazeera purchased former Vice President Al Gore's Current TV. This acquisition gives it a ready-made platform in the United States to promote Qatar's version of events in the Middle East, prompting expectations of it subtly (or unsubtly) guiding viewers towards its support of and praise for the International Muslim Brotherhood, as well as its persistent criticism of Israel.
As Sultan Sooud al Qassemi of the respected Al Monitor website noted in June 2012, "Al Jazeera Arabic's love affair with the Muslim Brotherhood was clear from the channel's beginning. And since the Brotherhood decided to run a candidate for the Egyptian presidency, the channel has blatantly promoted him. What viewers end up with is propaganda, and it's damaged more than one revolution."
As an example, al Qassemi wrote: "On June 22, 2012, Al Jazeera's correspondent Ayyash Darraji interviewed a woman for three minutes and allowed her to criticize former presidential contender Ahmed Shafiq without any interruption. As soon as the lady said one critical word about Morsi, he pulled the mike and cut her off."
The network's expansion also targets Europe. "[Al Jazeera is also] preparing to launch a news channel in Britain while studies are at an advanced stage for a French-language channel," Middle East Online reported in March.
"You're not going to find objective reporting there [Al Jazeera] almost ever," Magen told the IPT. "I don't know who exactly is watching Al Jazeera? I guess they think they're getting an inside picture of the Muslim world, but what they're actually getting is the inside picture that Qatar – a conservative, Sunni Muslim hierarchy – wants them to get."
Qatar's relationship with Israel changed dramatically after it supported Hamas in the Israel-Gaza war. Relations were relatively good before that, with Israeli leaders Shimon Peres and Tzipi Livni visiting Doha in 2007 and 2008.
"Qatar decided in 2009 to sever all ties with Israel and it has since been a very vociferous proponent for any anti-Israel group from Hamas to Syria," Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman Yigal Palmor told the IPT. "There are no relations to speak of."
"If there is anything that Qatar wants to do – rather than spread hatred and ignorance as it usually does – that would be to spend its money on peacemaking," Palmor added. "That would be a welcome change."
Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa al-Thani recently began refocusing his attention and inflaming passions in the Israel-Palestine conflict, while portraying himself to the international community as an honest broker in regional affairs.
During an Arab League meeting last month, he called for a $1 billion Jerusalem fund to support programs that would "maintain the Arab and Islamic character of the city and reinforce the steadfastness of its people," the Gulf Times reported.
Hamad pledged $250 million from Qatar and expects the balance to be contributed by other Arab states.
"(Jerusalem) is in serious danger, which requires of us serious action. Palestinian, Arab and Islamic rights in Jerusalem cannot be compromised. Israel must realize this," Hamad reportedly told Arab leaders.
In a typically chameleon-like maneuver however, Qatar recently hinted at its interest in investing in Israeli hi-tech companies, dangling a carrot under the noses of potential Israeli businessmen currently facing a reducing pool of international corporate investors. Israeli government officials suggested such news should be treated with plenty of caution.
Qatar's latest move designed to portray itself to the Arab world as the flag bearer in the fight to make Jerusalem Palestinian is its bid to oust Canada – a staunch supporter of Israel - from its long-standing role as home of the UN-body, the ICAO.
Since 1947 the International Civil Aviation Authority has been based in Montreal, but Qatar has seized upon Canadian Foreign Affairs Minister John Baird's recent visit to east Jerusalem to push to replace Canada as host of the ICAO. Baird met with Israeli Justice Minister Tzipi Livni on what the Arab world considers occupied land, a gesture that has angered many Arab nations and given Qatar a golden opportunity to rally regional support and to push for a vote to transfer the prestigious body from Montreal to Doha.
Canadian Foreign Affairs Minister Joseph Lavoie called Qatar's prime minister twice last week, promising to "'fight tooth and nail' to keep the ICAO in Montreal – and he won't change his tune on his visit to east Jerusalem," the Globe and Mail reported May 2.
Sheikh al-Thani irked the U.S. and many others in October when he became the first world leader to visit the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip officially and deliver a $400 million donation. Yet despite the clear evidence from the leaked diplomatic cables displaying private doubts as to the sincerity of the Qataris, the U.S. appears to have no plans of reviewing its relationship.
American business giants such as the Boeing Corporation, Lockheed Martin, Conoco Philips, and Exxon Mobil all have significant interests and partnerships with Qatar. And the U.S. government appears willing to overlook Qatar's failings. But Palmor has no qualms in spelling out the dangerous game being played on Israel's doorstep that Qatar and its Al Jazeera network cannot disguise.
"The Emir of Qatar has visited the Hamas-controlled Gaza, has embraced Hamas rulers, and has promised money which in this case he has sent into the hands of Hamas. At the same time he has never visited the Palestinian Authority (PA) or the government in Ramallah [even though] he has repeatedly promised to do so. Ignoring Israel is one thing, but taking sides in Palestinian politics and clearly taking the side of a terror organization, is another thing. That is clearly taking part in armed and violent conflict and that is what Qatar is doing. It has always been on the side of terrorists and on the side of violence."
Paul Alster is an Israel-based journalist who blogs at paulalster.com and can be followed on Twitter @paul_alster
-
The Middle East, Suddenly Armed to the Teeth with 'Game Changer' Missiles
Perhaps the Middle East will be quiet in the coming days, but if it isn't . . . well, maybe this is a factor:
The chief of Hezbollah has said the the Lebanese Shia armed group is ready to receive "game-changing" weapons from Syria, just days after Israeli air strikes on Damascus reportedly targeted shipments of advanced Iranian weapons bound for the group.
Hassan Nasrallah, in a speech on Thursday, said the shipments of new types of weapons would serve as the Syrian reaction to Israel's air strikes.
"The resistance [against Israel] is prepared to accept any sophisticated weaponry even if it was to break the equilibrium [in the region]," he said in a speech.
Okay, first, the phrase "game-changer" is long overdue for retirement. John Heilemann and Mark Halperin, I blame you.
Apparently this is the hot phrase all over the Middle East:
Israel launched air strikes on targets in Damascus early on Sunday morning that shook the city and lit up the horizon.
Western and Israeli sources said its aim was to take out "game-changing" Iranian missiles destined for Hezbollah, which fought a war with Israel in 2006 and is a staunch ally of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.
Meanwhile, as Secretary of State John Kerry attempts to keep the Syrian bloodbath from spreading any further, the Russians are tweaking him, letting slip that they're shipping new arms to Syria, right after he asked them to help calm things down:
Secretary of State John Kerry today stood by his renewed push with the Russian government for the Assad regime and Syria's opposition to negotiate a political solution to end the conflict, now going into it's third year. Speaking at a news conference in Rome, Kerry addressed a Wall Street Journal report on Thursday that Russia was preparing to sell missiles to the Syrian government, saying he expressed his general disapproval of Russian support to the Assad regime during his meetings with President Vladimir Putin and Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov earlier this week.
"We've made it crystal clear that we would prefer Russians not supply assistance. That is on record. That hasn't changed," said Kerry, who added that the United States believes the shipment of missiles would be "potentially destabilizing with the respect to the state of Israel."
But he also acknowledged that there are countries supplying weapons to the rebels, and stressed that he wants to focus on what the United States and Russia can accomplish towards helping both sides reach a political solution soon. He said he remained encouraged by the Russians' cooperation and by what he described as a public backing-away from their specific support for Assad.
I feel actually pretty good that John Kerry is our secretary of state. Oh, I don't think he'll thrive in the job; in fact, I think he'll fall flat on his face. But he's wanted to do this job for so long, and been so certain that he knew how to play this role perfectly, that it's fun to see him run headlong into reality.
Anyway, about those missiles:
"It would be a game-changer," a senior Western diplomat said of the reported decision to offer the missiles to Assad. The diplomat, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because details of the reported offer remain classified, speculated that Moscow could be seeking leverage ahead of talks on a possible political settlement to the Syrian crisis.
You would almost think the "Game Changer" was a particular type of missile, wouldn't you?
Russia was heavily criticized in 2007 when it signed a deal to sell S-300 batteries to Iran for $800 million. Russian officials eventually terminated the contract, citing new U.N. resolutions banning the export of advanced missile systems to Tehran.
"After discussions with us, they did decide not to provide the missiles to the Iranians," recalled Dennis Ross, who was a senior Middle East adviser to the Obama administration in 2010, when Russia halted the missile sale to Iran. "If they proceed now, it hardly signals that they are prepared to walk away from Assad."
I just envision Kerry in his office, hitting the "reset button" over and over again, like an impatient man at an elevator.
-
May 10, 2013
Israel's Man in Damascus
Why Jerusalem Doesn't Want the Assad Regime to Fall
Efraim Halevy
In October 1995, Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin telephoned Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak to inform him that peace was at hand between Israel and Syria. Two weeks later, Rabin was dead, killed by a reactionary Jewish Israeli fanatic; the peace agreement that Rabin referenced died not long thereafter. But Israeli hopes for an eventual agreement with the Assad regime managed to survive. There have been four subsequent attempts by Israeli prime ministers -- one by Ehud Barak, one by Ehud Olmert, and two by Benjamin Netanyahu -- to forge a peace with Syria.
This shared history with the Assad regime is relevant when considering Israel’s strategy toward the ongoing civil war in Syria. Israel’s most significant strategic goal with respect to Syria has always been a stable peace, and that is not something that the current civil war has changed. Israel will intervene in Syria when it deems it necessary; last week’s attacks testify to that resolve. But it is no accident that those strikes were focused solely on the destruction of weapons depots, and that Israel has given no indication of wanting to intervene any further. Jerusalem, ultimately, has little interest in actively hastening the fall of Bashar al-Assad.
Israel knows one important thing about the Assads: for the past 40 years, they have managed to preserve some form of calm along the border. Technically, the two countries have always been at war -- Syria has yet to officially recognize Israel -- but Israel has been able to count on the governments of Hafez and Bashar Assad to enforce the Separation of Forces Agreement from 1974, in which both sides agreed to a cease-fire in the Golan Heights, the disputed vantage point along their shared border. Indeed, even when Israeli and Syrian forces were briefly locked in fierce fighting in 1982 during Lebanon’s civil war, the border remained quiet.
Israel does not feel as confident, though, about the parties to the current conflict, and with good reason. On the one hand, there are the rebel forces, some of whom are increasingly under the sway of al Qaeda. On the other, there are the Syrian government’s military forces, which are still under Assad’s command, but are ever more dependent on the Iranian Revolutionary Guard and Hezbollah, which is also Iranian-sponsored. Iran is the only outside state with boots on the ground in Syria, and although it is supporting Assad, it is also pressuring his government to more closely serve Iran’s goals -- including by allowing the passage of advanced arms from Syria into southern Lebanon. The recent visit by Iranian Foreign Minister Ali Salehi to Damascus, during which he announced that Iran would not allow Assad to fall under any circumstances, further underscored the depth of Iran’s involvement in the fighting. It is entirely conceivable, in other words, that a post-Assad regime in Syria would be explicitly pro–al Qaeda or even more openly pro-Iran. Either result would be unacceptable to Israel.
Of course, an extended civil war in Syria does not serve Israel’s interests either. The ongoing chaos is attracting Islamists from elsewhere in the region, and threatening to destabilize Israel’s entire neighborhood, including Lebanon, Jordan, and Iraq. It could also cause Assad to lose control of -- or decide to rely more on -- his stockpile of chemical weapons.
Even though these problems have a direct impact on Israel, the Israeli government believes that it should deal with them in a way that does not force it to become a kingmaker over Assad’s fate. Instead, it would prefer to maintain neutrality in Syria's civil war. Israel does not want to tempt Assad to target Israel with his missile stockpile -- nor does it want to alienate the Alawite community that will remain on Israel’s border regardless of the outcome of Syria’s war.
Last week’s attacks were a case in point. Israel did not hesitate to order air strikes when it had intelligence that arms were going to be funneled from Syria to Hezbollah. Although Israel took care not to assume official responsibility for the specific attack, Minister of Defense Moshe Yaalon publicly stated that Israel’s policy was to prevent the passage of strategic weaponry from Syria to Lebanon. But parallel with that messaging, Israel also made overt and covert efforts to communicate to Assad that Jerusalem was determined to remain neutral in Syria’s civil war. The fact that those messages were received in Damascus was reflected in the relatively restrained response from the Assad regime: a mid-level Foreign Ministry official offered a public denouncement of Israel -- and even then the Syrian government offered only a vague promise of reprisal, vowing to respond at a time and in a manner of its choosing.
As brutal as the Syrian war has become, Israel believes that another international crisis is even more urgent: Iran’s continued pursuit of a nuclear program. Jerusalem has long believed that mid-2013 would be an hour of decision in its dealings with Iran. In the interim, Israel wants to focus its own finite resources on that crisis -- and it would prefer that the rest of the world does the same.
That is not to say that Israel will make efforts to actively support Assad; like most other countries, Israel believes that it is only a matter of time until the Syrian leader is forced from power. But a country of Israel’s size needs to prioritize its foreign policy goals, and Jerusalem does not feel like helping shape an adequate alternative to Assad is in its interest or within its capacity. It will leave that task to others. Indeed, Israel has welcomed the initiative by Russia and the United States to organize a peace conference aimed at resolving the conflict. In the run-up to the conference, Jerusalem will be sure to remind both Washington and Moscow that they share an interest in preventing a permanent Iranian or jihadist presence on Syrian soil.
In that sense, it is safe to say that Assad is not the only recipient of covert communications from Israel. That leaves two questions -- when the White House will decide what its own policy will be, and how it will implement it.
Efraim Halevy served as chief of the Mossad from 1998 to 2002.
-
Syria and Lebanon's 'Party of Satan'
Geopolitical Diary
THURSDAY, MAY 30, 2013 - 21:11 - Text Size + Print
Just how much has changed in the Middle East since the Arab Spring is reflected in the fact that Lebanese Shiite radical Islamist group Hezbollah, whose name means "Party of God," is being referred to in public discourse as Hezboshaytaan, the "Party of Satan." Until recently, the group transcended sectarian fault lines and was an extremely popular force throughout the largely Sunni Arab region and the wider Muslim world for its armed resistance against Israel. Such derogatory language was rare, used only by certain Salafists, jihadists, Saudis and the group's Lebanese opponents. Today, "Hezbshaytaan" is becoming part of the mainstream Arab Sunni lexicon.
What is a Geopolitical Diary? George Friedman explains.
The Syrian crisis has reduced Arab and Sunni Arab perception of Hezbollah to that of a detested sectarian outfit killing Sunnis engaged in what is seen as a noble struggle against the brutal and tyrannical Syrian regime, and, by extension, a Shiite group protecting the interests of Iranian Persians who are out to dominate the Arab world. On Thursday, for example, the leadership of the Syrian opposition said it will refuse to negotiate with the al Assad regime unless Tehran and Hezbollah end what the rebels have termed an "invasion of Syria."
Hezbollah's stock has been plummeting since the earliest days of the Syrian uprising for its support of the Syrian regime. In the beginning, Hezbollah's role was solely political. In 2012, however, the group began to get involved militarily in what was then a civil war. Still, until becoming visibly involved in the recent fighting in the Syrian city of Al-Qusayr, helping regime forces retake areas held by the rebels, Hezbollah's involvement in the war has been limited.
The reversal suffered in Al-Qusayr by the rebels and the deaths of a number of Hezbollah fighters brought matters to a point where the group could no longer remain silent. In a major speech May 25, Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah acknowledged that Hezbollah fighters are now engaged in what he described is a struggle against al Qaeda-led jihadists who are trying to destroy Syria. Clearly, that narrative is not helping Hezbollah salvage its erstwhile reputation as an Arab/Muslim resistance movement fighting Israeli occupation.
So the question is why then has the movement come out so strongly on the side of the al Assad regime? Hezbollah cannot change what it is: a movement representing Lebanon's minority Shia and ideologically aligned with the Shiite regime in Iran in a region dominated by Sunnis.
Contrary to the perception that Hezbollah is on the "wrong side" of the war as a proxy for Iran and Syria, the group is not fighting for Tehran or Damascus. Rather the group is fighting to preserve its own interests at a time when it is facing existential threats. It cannot simply turn a blind eye while Syria descends into chaos and hope to be able to maintain order in Lebanon. The collapse of Syria's Alawite regime would empower Sunnis -- especially the more radical ones -- who are out to decimate Shiite power in the region.
From Hezbollah's point of view, the group needs to go on the offensive in Syria to avoid going on the defensive in Lebanon, which could lead to its defeat. Losing its ally in Damascus would deprive Hezbollah of reliable supply lines and encourage Lebanese Sunnis to challenge the Shiite group. Hezbollah is by far the largest and most powerful militia in Lebanon, but it cannot afford its position to be threatened.
Thus, the decline of its popular image is a price Hezbollah is likely willing to pay to ensure that the al Assad regime holds onto power. Indeed, Hezbollah has little choice in the matter. Its reputation as an anti-Israeli resistance force is a luxury the group cannot afford right now considering its need to attend to more basic matters having to do with long-term survival.
Over the long run, Hezbollah is hoping that recent military gains made by the al Assad regime, along with divisions between mainstream Sunni rebels and jihadists, will help preserve the Lebanese group's interests. In the meantime, Hezbollah will focus on fighting the Syrian rebels and try to counter any negative criticism by emphasizing that it is not fighting Sunnis, but rather al Qaeda, a group that seeks to exterminate the Shia and is a threat to Sunni and international security. And in doing so, Hezbollah hopes -- even if perhaps futilely -- that the Hezboshaytaan label will not stick.
Read more: Syria and Lebanon's 'Party of Satan' | Stratfor
-
By Robert D. Kaplan
A startling fact has emerged from the Arab Spring that few have remarked upon: despite the pining for democracy by the Muslim masses, it's comparatively safe to be a king or sultan. Royal families have survived better in this age of upheaval than secular autocrats, despite the latter's pretension to revolutionary traditions. No Arab royal family has been toppled, and most have made deft adjustments in the face of public unrest. Compare that with military dictators and security service thugs who have either been killed, driven into exile or who are fighting quite bloodily for their survival.
King Mohammed VI of Morocco, King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia, King Abdullah II of Jordan, Sultan Qaboos bin Said of Oman and the various sheikhs of the Persian Gulf are, to be sure, more nervous on their thrones than a few years ago: in particular the monarchs of Jordan, Bahrain and Saudi Arabia. Moreover, they are not angels. Strong and regularly ruthless security services help keep these monarchs in power. Nevertheless, as comparison is the beginning of all serious scholarship, compared to other regimes in the region these monarchs have been both enlightened and Machiavellian in the best sense of the word.
Algeria's military-cum-revolutionary regime contended with a civil war in the 1990s; and, with the looming death of President Abdel Aziz Bouteflika, stability there is seriously questionable. Tunisia's secular strongman Zine El Abdine Ben Ali was toppled in a popular uprising in 2011; so was military dictator Hosni Mubarak in Egypt. Libyan tyrant Moammar Gadhafi was hunted down by a crowd and murdered, following another popular uprising. Mubarak was in a line of revolutionary military pharaohs and Gadhafi was an avowed radical: a self-declared enemy of the reactionary order of kings. Yet, the Egyptian and Libyan masses were not impressed.
Of course, the sturdiest revolutionary credentials were possessed by the Baathist socialist rulers of Iraq and Syria. Though the Americans toppled Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein, many in the country did not mourn his death. And had the Americans not invaded, the Arab Spring might have claimed Saddam, too, as a victim. Finally, there is Syrian dictator Bashar al Assad, who thus far has had to wage a civil war that has claimed 93,000 lives and created millions of refugees in order to stay in power.
Modernizing officer corps have bitten the desert dust; antiquated dynasties have held on, at least so far. Why?
It's legitimacy, stupid!
The fact is, monarchs are identified with their states to a degree that the officers and the dark-suited security heavies are not. Tunisia is an age-old cluster of civilization emanating from ancient Carthage, the incredibly corrupt, plain-clothed policeman (because that's what he was) Ben Ali was superfluous to Tunisia's identity. Egypt constitutes a river valley civilization going back thousands of years. Toppling Mubarak was not going to lead to the breakup of the country. Then there are the revolutionary leaders who governed no real states at all. Libya is but a vague geographical expression that was held together only by Gadhafi's tyranny -- a tyranny so suffocating that it sowed the seeds of its own destruction. Syria and Iraq are also artificial states, and their erstwhile rulers, al Assad and Hussein, have represented sectarian minority regimes with questionable legitimacy at best. In sum, either the rulers were not sufficiently identified with their states, or there weren't any states underneath them.
The contrast with Arab royalty could not be greater.
The monarchs and their states, in terms of identity, are inextricable. The Alaouite dynasty in Morocco has ruled longer than the United States has existed as a country: it was Alaouite Moulay al-Rashid who forged the country in the first place in the second half of the 17th century. Saudi Arabia is, well, Saudi Arabia, the kingdom of the al-Sauds: without them there is no country. Jordan's geographical artificialness, coupled with its uneasy mix of desert tribesmen and urban Palestinians, is held together by the unifying force of the monarch: whose Hashemite family -- claiming direct descent from the Prophet Mohammed -- was synonymous with the original founding of the state in the mid-20th century. In Oman, the sultan has united the disparate worlds of the desert interior and the cosmopolitan, Indian Ocean seaboard in order to forge a state. As for the Gulf sheikhdoms, they were created as such by the British, and have been further buttressed by combining small populations with significant hydrocarbon deposits. Only the royal family in Bahrain is in trouble, because of a Sunni-Shiite split that has also bedeviled Iraq.
Precisely because of this historical legitimacy, the royal families of the Arab world have not had to govern in an extremely brutal fashion -- relative to the likes of the Gadhafis, the al Assads and Husseins. Their very moderation, again, relative to their region, has made them at least tolerable to their populations -- if not downright popular, in some cases. Moreover, because of their inherited wealth, there is not the same impetus to be corrupt. The kings and sultans may live lavishly, but they lack to the same degree the money-grubbing aura of the Ben Alis and Mubaraks, with their vulgar, nouveau riche wives. The Arab royals represent "old money," after a fashion. This, too, has made them more acceptable to the masses.
There are other factors. Precisely because the monarchs are ceremonial -- encompassing all the pomp and circumstance of the state in their very persons -- they can often delegate the dirty work of actual daily governance to ministers, who, when things go wrong, can conveniently take the blame. Indeed, who says the Arab world does not have separation of powers? Some Arab monarchs utilize this feature all the time, to their benefit. Jordan's kings are famous for firing prime ministers during many an economic downturn. The problem with the Gadhafis and the Mubaraks was that, because they had no inherited legitimacy (nobody believed in their pomp and circumstance), they demanded absolute power as insurance against coups. And because they had absolute power, they got personally blamed when the economy produced uneven results.
Finally, there is something else, something harder to define. Yes, the Arab royals are legitimate in a way their non-royal counterparts are not. Nevertheless, preserving a family tradition of state power for generations and, in some cases, for centuries, is an enormous responsibility: much greater even than that of the scions of family-run corporations in the West. You don't want to be the last in a royal line! And so, in addition to being wily and occasionally ruthless, there is also the constant desire to do good works: to earn your throne, as it were. For that, ultimately, is what will keep you in power. So when we think of Arab leaders who are -- in a larger political sense -- humane, who comes to mind: Mohammed VI, Abdullah II, Sultan Qaboos. That is the key to being a real prince, as Machiavelli would say: combining ruthlessness with virtu (virtue).
The democratic West should count itself lucky to have such autocrats in power.
Read more: Why Mideast Monarchies Survive | Stratfor
Follow us: @stratfor on Twitter | Stratfor on Facebook
-
second post
By Scott Stewart
In a June 15 audio message, a man identified as Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, leader of the Islamic State of Iraq, did something no leader of an al Qaeda franchise had ever done: He publicly defied a directive from Ayman al-Zawahiri, the leader of the al Qaeda core organization.
As we have noted for many years, the al Qaeda core has struggled to remain relevant on the physical and ideological battlefields. We've also discussed since 2005 the internal frictions between the core and some of the more independent franchise commanders, such as Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the leader of al Qaeda in Iraq until his death in June 2006. If al-Baghdadi's revolt goes unchecked, it very well might spell the end of the concept of a global, centrally directed jihad, and it could be the next step in the devolution of the jihadist movement as it becomes even more regionally focused.
Origins of Conflict
The roots of the current tension between al-Baghdadi and al-Zawahiri extend back to 2004, when al-Zarqawi's Jamaat al-Tawhid and Jihad group became al Qaeda in Iraq, and the relationship between the organizations has been tenuous ever since. Unlike al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, which is headed by Nasir al-Wahayshi, who was close with Osama bin Laden and the al Qaeda core, the jihadist leadership in Iraq has never really toed the al Qaeda "corporate line." The jihadist leaders in Iraq, including al-Zarqawi, saw a need to adopt the al Qaeda brand name to help with recruitment and fundraising, but they never fully embraced al Qaeda's philosophy and vision and frequently ignored the core's guidance. One key reason for these differences is that al-Zarqawi's group had its own identity and philosophy, which was greatly influenced by Jordanian jihadist ideologue Abu Muhammad al-Maqdisi. They attempted to place a veneer of al Qaeda over that initial Tawhid and Jihad foundation, but it was never a solid fit.
External link:
English translation of al-Zawahiri's letter
Stratfor is not responsible for the content of other websites.
The current manifestation of the tensions between al-Baghdadi and al-Zawahiri erupted April 8, when al-Baghdadi released an audio message in which he announced that his organization had subsumed the Syrian jihadist rebel group Jabhat al-Nusra. Al-Baghdadi named the new, expanded organization the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant and reportedly moved to Syria's Aleppo governorate to take charge.
Two days after al-Baghdadi's announcement, it became apparent that he had not coordinated with Jabhat al-Nusra's leader, Abu Mohammad al-Golani, and that the union of the organizations was more akin to a hostile takeover than a friendly merger. In his own audio message, al-Golani acknowledged the assistance that Jabhat al-Nusra had received from the Islamic State of Iraq in the struggle against the Syrian regime, but he stated that he had not been consulted about the merger and learned about it only through the media. Al-Golani then repledged his allegiance to al-Zawahiri and noted that his organization would remain independent from the Islamic State of Iraq. This message was clearly an appeal for al-Zawahiri to mediate.
Following al-Baghdadi's announcement of the merger and al-Golani's rejection of it, many Jabhat al-Nusra fighters deserted al-Golani to join the ranks of the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant. This had a significant impact on Jabhat al-Nusra, and a spokesman for the group told Al Jazeera on June 8 that al-Baghdadi's takeover was "the most dangerous development in the history of global jihad."
Al-Zawahiri's ruling on the matter came in a letter released June 9 in which he urged the leaders to stop feuding. The letter noted that al-Baghdadi had erred in declaring the merger without consulting the al Qaeda leadership and that, like al-Golani, the core leaders had heard of the merger only through media reports. Al-Zawahiri also noted that al-Golani was wrong to publicly announce his rejection of the merger and to publicly reveal his group's affiliation with al Qaeda. He also declared that the Islamic State of Iraq was to be confined to the geography of Iraq and that Jabhat al-Nusra was to remain in charge of Syria. Al-Zawahiri instructed both groups to cease fighting and to support each other with fighters, arms, money, shelter and security as needed.
Al-Baghdadi's response to al-Zawahiri's admonition was sharp and quite clear. In the audio message released June 15, a man who appears to be al-Baghdadi rejected al-Zawahiri's order, stating that the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant would remain and that he and his followers would not compromise or back down as long as they live. Regarding the instructions in al-Zawahiri's letter, al-Baghdadi said he had been forced to choose between God's command and an order that contravened it. Al-Baghdadi said he chose the order of God over those of al-Zawahiri. This was clearly a shot at al-Zawahiri's legitimacy and authority -- and a very public one.
Consequences
The al Qaeda core leadership has been isolated and in hiding since 2001. The leaders' efforts to avoid blunders in communications security that could bring them to the attention of the massive U.S. signals intelligence operations meant that they needed to be largely unplugged from rapid means of communication. AP recently released internal al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb documents in which the group's leaders lamented the fact that they have received only a few communications from bin Laden and al-Zawahiri since pledging allegiance to al Qaeda in 2006, despite their many letters to the core group seeking guidance.
It is difficult to lead an organization remotely, and it is even more so when you do not have regular and sustained communications with your subordinates. Such an environment compels individuals on the battlefield to become autonomous and self-reliant, especially when the higher headquarters is not in a position to offer subordinate units much in the way of funding, training or assistance. This situation does not leave the headquarters with much leverage over battlefield commanders, and that lack of control was quite apparent even in the 2005 letter from al-Zawahiri to al-Zarqawi -- it was filled with far more pleas and persuasion than commands and consequences.
It is also important to remember that like Jamaat al-Tawhid and Jihad, all of the al Qaeda franchise groups were created from existing regional militant groups and have their own distinct leadership personalities, histories and philosophies. These groups have also been involved in combat for years and they all face unique conditions and concerns in the areas where they operate. These factors serve to separate them from the leaders of the core group in Pakistan, as does the normal disdain that soldiers who spend years on the front line tend to have for people assigned in the rear echelons and whom they consider to be out of touch with conditions in the trenches.
As to the authenticity of these recent communications, it is quite possible that they are elaborate fabrications by intelligence agencies attempting to cultivate divisions within the jihadist movement. However, the time that has elapsed without any sort of public denunciation of the messages suggests that they are likely authentic. Their tone and content also seems genuine, and the fact that they were released publicly underscores the difficulties al-Zawahiri and the al Qaeda core has had communicating directly with the various jihadist franchise groups.
Despite the long-standing weakness of the al Qaeda core group, to this point the franchise groups have been careful to publicly maintain a facade of paying homage to the core leadership. Al-Baghdadi's breaking from that policy may be attributed to the absence of bin Laden, who has been dead for more than two years. Bin Laden was highly regarded in the jihadist world and had maintained an almost mythical status. It had become difficult for jihadists to show disrespect for him, even when some jihadists felt he was no longer relevant or was cowardly for hiding. Though al-Zawahiri was in many ways the architect of al Qaeda's transnational jihadist vision and philosophy, he is prickly and irascible -- traits that tend to alienate colleagues and subordinates. He has no peers in the jihadist realm, but he nonetheless is not regarded as highly as bin Laden was.
Al-Baghdadi did not rise to his current position by being foolish. With Iraqi government forces hunting him (and U.S.-led coalition forces before that), he has been forced to shrewdly negotiate the maze of Iraqi sectarian politics to stay alive -- and to ensure the continuing viability of his organization. It was largely due to his savvy leadership that the Islamic State of Iraq had the resources and foresight to back Jabhat al-Nusra's efforts in Syria. Therefore, al-Baghdadi must have judged that he had the support of his Iraqi subordinates and a sizable number of the Jabhat al-Nusra fighters before making his move to absorb the Syrian group. His decision to openly defy al-Zawahiri was also likely made carefully. Since al-Zawahiri's letter was released publicly, al-Baghdadi appears to have decided that his response must be public -- and he apparently concluded that open rebellion would not undermine his position with his supporters.
With al-Baghdadi reasserting his intent to assume greater regional influence, he could be assuming an important position in the long-term sectarian struggle that seems to be underway across the region. At the same time, moving to Aleppo could expose him to some sort of operation from U.S. assets in the region -- especially if he is seen as an ascendant regional jihadist threat.
It will be important to watch how the global jihadist movement views al-Baghdadi's rebellion. Will they rally around al-Zawahiri and label al-Baghdadi as a rogue, or will they ignore the slight and write al-Zawahiri off as a marginalized old man with no power? It will also be interesting to see what effect this has on al-Baghdadi's followers in Iraq and Syria. Will they continue to follow him in his new organization, or will they abandon him for a different leadership appointed by the al Qaeda core?
Al-Baghdadi has the opportunity to become the most influential and dynamic battlefield commander in the jihadist realm. His areas of operation in Iraq and Syria provide opportunities for growth and expansion that a location such as Yemen simply would not. Al-Baghdadi's influence on the dynamics of the jihadist movement will need to be watched carefully.
For years, we have been saying that franchise groups such as al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula have assumed leadership of the global jihad on both the physical and ideological battlefields. But while the devolution of the jihadist movement, the growing irrelevance of the al Qaeda core and the tensions between the core and the franchises have been evident to observers for some time now, it is still quite significant to see these facts being acknowledged openly -- and defiantly -- by the leader of a major jihadist franchise organization.
Read more: A Revolt Within the al Qaeda Movement | Stratfor
Follow us: @stratfor on Twitter | Stratfor on Facebook
-
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2013/jun/22/900-us-troops-shielding-jordan-syrian-civil-war-th/
-
http://ricks.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2013/06/27/is_syrian_related_violence_the_beginning_of_the_muslim_worlds_thirty_years_war
-
This site seems like it might be worthy of regular perusal:
http://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/home.html
-
http://www.thedailysheeple.com/160000-russian-troops-mobilized-as-world-watches-trayvon-martin-case_072013
-
http://www.thedailysheeple.com/160000-russian-troops-mobilized-as-world-watches-trayvon-martin-case_072013
I'm sure the crack team at state has this well in hand.
-
And Sec Def Hagel too!
Forturnately the CiC is on vacation in Martha's Vineyard after the rigors of this $100M vacation in Africa , , ,
-
Iranian Nuclear Crisis Nearing a Critical Tipping Point
by Yaakov Lappin
Special to IPT News
July 16, 2013
http://www.investigativeproject.org/4084/iranian-nuclear-crisis-nearing-a-critical-tipping
Iran is edging closer toward its goal of nuclear weapons possession and is leading the already deeply unstable Middle East region down a path to a new crisis.
The warning signs are being drowned out somewhat by the horrors of the Syrian civil war and deteriorating unrest in Egypt, but they are present for any observer to see.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu recently voiced his concern that regional instability is causing the international community to take its eye off the swiftly-approaching Iranian nuclear crisis. "They're getting closer" to the nuclear red line, Netanyahu told CBS's Face the Nation. "They should understand that they're not going to be allowed to cross it."
Netanyahu stressed that the Israeli and U.S. clocks on this matter are "ticking at a different pace."
While Jerusalem's stated red line is an Iran in possession of 250 kilograms of enriched uranium, Washington's undeclared red line is significantly further behind that of Israel's. For the Obama administration, a trigger for action would be irrefutable evidence of an Iranian order to assemble a nuclear weapon.
There are multiple signals indicating that Iran is moving forward with the major components of its nuclear program, while keeping the level of its enriched uranium below a certain level to avoid triggering an Israeli military strike.
Iran's nuclear trajectory is unlikely to be affected by Hassan Rouhani's election as the new president, since he must defer all decisions on nuclear policy to the country's unelected supreme leader, Ayatollah Khamenei. Only Khamenei can order the regime to cease Iran's march towards nuclear weapons, and he has clearly refrained from doing so.
A growing chorus of international observers, including the United Nations' International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), noted that the twin policies being pursued by the United States and the international community – biting sanctions coupled with diplomacy – have failed to convince Khamenei to abandon the nuclear program.
Sanctions have taken a painful toll on the Iranian economy, contributing to inflation, the devaluation of the Iranian currency, and more than halving Iranian oil exports (from 2.6 million barrels a day in 2011 to 1.1 million barrels a day currently). And yet, none of these pressure points has caused Khamenei to budge.
Some defense experts in Israel have called into question President Barack Obama's assurances that he will not allow Iran to go nuclear, and suggest that Washington is on an unintended course toward a policy of containment, not prevention.
Iran's goal is to anaesthetize the international community until such time that it can present itself to the world as a nuclear-armed state, and transmit the message that its new status is a fait accompli. According to Israeli assessments, Iran aims to ultimately arm itself with some 200 atomic bombs.
Iran hasn't yet become a nuclear-armed state, but time is running out.
Iran's deviously skillful delay and deceptions, its constant nuclear progress, together with the failure of the sanctions and negotiations approach, may well force a reluctant Israeli decision to take military action sooner, rather than later. Israel views military action as the second least attractive scenario, as such a development would likely have a direct spillover effect on the entire region, which is already destabilized due to the Syrian civil war, and which is experiencing chronic sovereignty failures in several states, such as Egypt and Lebanon.
A military strike on Iran would almost certainly drag Israel into a confrontation with Hizballah (now deployed in both Lebanon and Syria), and end up forcing the Israeli military to engage hostile forces on multiple fronts simultaneously, such as Gaza, Lebanon, and Syria.
The Israel Defense Forces have been training intensively (as detailed below) for simultaneous, multiple-front warfare, marked by heavy rocket and missile attacks on the Israeli home front.
As unattractive as that scenario is, it is preferable to an even worse development for Israeli national security: A nuclear Iran.
Assembling the Iranian nuclear puzzle
As it engages the international community in a series of fruitless negotiations to buy itself time, the Iranian regime is carefully and consistently putting into place all of the components needed to acquire atomic bombs. Iran's steps, as confirmed by the IAEA, include: Installing faster centrifuges at its uranium enrichment facilities in Natanz and Fordow (the latter is borrowed deep into a mountain); working on a nuclear trigger mechanism at a facility in Parchin (where IAEA inspectors have been denied access for several years); and investing heavily in a delivery system, in the form of a medium and long-range ballistic missile program.
The Iranians are also working on a covert, parallel nuclear program, to create atomic bombs from plutonium. The heart of this program is based at the Arak heavy water facility.
And yet, when it comes to amassing enriched uranium, Iran is staying behind a red line, one Netanyahu drew at the United Nations last year. Netanyahu made clear that Israel would spring into action if Iran came to possess 250 kilograms or more of medium enriched uranium (MEU), enough material to create one atomic bomb after the MEU is converted to highly enriched uranium (HEU). The process of converting MEU to HEU is relatively straightforward and easy for a country that has mastered the production of low and medium enriched uranium.
In 2012, just as Iran began to approach Netanyahu's red line, it converted 113 kilograms of its uranium stockpile to nuclear fuel, thereby stepping back from the brink, and decreasing international tensions. As of May this year, Iran began approaching the red line again, stockpiling 182 kilograms of MEU, according to the latest IAEA report.
All the while, Iran's stockpile of low enriched uranium (LEU), the first and most difficult phase of a nuclear weapons program, continues to grow. Israel estimates that Iran has at least 6.5 tons of LEU.
Hence, Iran is carefully calibrating its uranium enrichment levels, while moving forward in all other nuclear program fields to a phase where it can breakout to the atomic bomb phase at short notice. Publicly, Israel has signaled that the trigger for potential strike lies with the quantity of MEU in Iran's possession. However, in light of the progress Iran is making in many other spheres of the nuclear program, one cannot rule out the existence of additional, unannounced red lines, such as Iran's plutonium-based nuclear efforts.
In the line of fire
Israel is far more threatened by a nuclear Iran than the United States, for the following reasons: Its small size; the concentration of millions of Israelis in cities on the country's coastal plain; its regional proximity to Iran; and the fact that Israel is the object of an obsessive ideological-religious covert war waged by the Iranian regime against it, which has included an ambitious Iranian armament program designed to turn southern Lebanon and the Gaza Strip into rocket launching bases.
Israel, the target of annihilationist Iranian rhetoric issued by top regime figures on a regular basis, has a smaller window of opportunity to strike Iran than the U.S., and would have to move earlier than Washington because of its more limited long-distance strike capabilities. The core of the Israeli defense doctrine holds that Israel cannot depend on any foreign power, even its most trusted ally, to deal with developing existential security threats.
This means that if Israel misses its window of opportunity to act, it would violate a central tenet of its own defense doctrine. The very fact that Israel hasn't launched a strike yet is evidence of the fact that the window of opportunity for Israeli military action remains open.
However, daring and successful covert operations, such as Stuxnet, the most advanced computer virus in history, and the mysterious blasts that have killed key members of the Iranian nuclear project in Tehran and elsewhere, have caused temporary delays at best.
Defense Minister Moshe Ya'alon warned that Israel must prepare for the possibility of striking Iran's nuclear program on its own, and called the Iranian nuclear threat "the most significant" to Israel, the Middle East and the "modern world."
Israel's Minister for Strategic Affairs, Yuval Steinitz, said recently that "time is running out. We have only a few months. The danger is a global one, which will change the face of history. Iran could have hundreds of atomic bombs and hundreds of long-range missiles."
The past two years have seen tighter Israeli-American coordination and cooperation on Iran. These have been led by the national security advisors of both countries, Tom Donilon and Yaakov Amidror, both of whom have recently resigned.
Additionally, the recently-retired US Army's Central Command Chief, General James Mattis, told the Senate Armed Services Committee that he had no doubt Israel would act if and when Iran crossed a nuclear red line, and that it is able to do so without US assistance.
Mattis also bluntly told the committee that economic and diplomatic efforts are failing.
Envisaging a strike
According to foreign reports, Jerusalem possesses a feasible attack plan that can cause major damage to Iranian nuclear sites, and which can set back the country's nuclear program by a number of years. The Iranian regime would be able, however, to reactivate the program and resume its efforts if an agreement with the international community to freeze future nuclear activity is not reached.
Although nothing is known of the strike plan, it is possible to envisage a few possibilities. Multiple aerial routes are available for Israeli aircraft to reach targets in Iran. In any attack route, the Israel Air Force would probably have to neutralize or evade the radar systems of transit countries.
According to foreign reports, the Israeli Air Force (IAF) has more than 100 F15i and F16i fighter jets that can fly to and Iran and return without needing to refuel, and which can carry large payloads. Foreign reports also say Israel possesses long-range Jericho ground-to-ground missiles, which can theoretically strike targets in Iran.
Israel also possesses the advanced midair refueling capabilities required for carrying out sorties over multiple Iranian targets situated between 1,500 and 2,000 km. away from home.
Possible targets include uranium- enrichment sites at Natanz and Qom, the uranium- conversion plant at Isfahan, and a heavy water reactor in Arak.
Once over Iran, the IAF would need to paralyze Iranian air defenses, possibly employing advanced electronic warfare capabilities, and deploy bunker-busting bombs against nuclear sites, which are reportedly in its possession. Israeli intelligence satellites could provide real time detailed images from the battle arena, while fleets of giant Heron 2 drones, which have the wingspans of Boing 737 commercial airliner, and could carry out intelligence in Iranian skies as they hover over the launching sites of Iranian Shihab-3 missiles.
Israel Arrow 2 anti-ballistic missile batteries can intercept Shihab-3 barrages from Iran (the Arrow 3 system, which intercepts incoming ballistic missiles space, is not yet operational).
On the ground, Iran would order Hizballah to respond to a strike with an onslaught of rockets on the Israeli home front. Israel's solution to this threat involves devastating air force strikes using new weapons systems and a lightning ground invasion of southern Lebanon to quickly extinguish the rocket threat and dismember Hizballah as a fighting organization.
Yet several unknowns remain, such as the impact a strike would have on the Syrian arena, home to Hizballah and Iranian military forces.
While Israel has no desire to activate its military option, it will never agree to living under Iran's atomic shadow.
Yaakov Lappin is the Jerusalem Post's military and national security affairs correspondent, and author of The Virtual Caliphate (Potomac Books), which proposes that jihadis on the internet have established a virtual Islamist state.
-
http://www.thenational.ae/news/world/middle-east/tanks-guard-us-yemen-embassy-in-terror-alert
and catch & release
http://www.nypost.com/p/news/opinion/opedcolumnists/thehate_escape_Kp8Mu76ieqKGvFxMuxM8nL
-
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2013/aug/4/al-qaeda-terror-threat-serious-congressmen-and-sen/?page=all#pagebreak
I do wonder if some of these Congressional comments help the enemy figure out how we found out , , ,
-
Given Baraq's decision to throw away what we finally achieved in Iraq, the point articulated here makes considerable sense to me. Indeed, it contrasts favorably with the McCain-Lindsay Graham school of interventionism.
Arab Chaos: How Much Does it Matter?
Global Affairs
Wednesday, August 7, 2013 - 04:01 Print Text Size
Global Affairs with Robert D. Kaplan
Stratfor
By Robert D. Kaplan
Chaos is sweeping the Arab world. Tunisia is in political disarray and can barely control its borders. Libya hardly exists: Tripoli is not the capital of a country but the weak point of arbitration for tribes and militias in far-flung desert reaches. Egypt wallows in a political stasis in which the government has trouble functioning, ideological divisions between the military and Islamists split the country and guns and vigilantism abound. The Sinai Peninsula has become a mini-Afghanistan. The government of Yemen may on a good day control half of its territory. Syria is in a full-fledged civil war with over 100,000 dead. Iraq, too, barely exists as a state and low-intensity violence there is a feature of life. Bahrain and Jordan are much weakened states compared to previous decades. Significantly, none of this anywhere will be solved anytime soon.
The conventional wisdom is that such chaos is bad for the United States: that anarchy anywhere presents a challenge and threat to the American people. That is certainly true in a values sense, particularly about what it says about our planet. I wrote about that in a 1994 Atlantic Monthly essay, "The Coming Anarchy," in which, among other things, I foresaw chaos in places like Sierra Leone and Ivory Coast, both of which collapsed a few years later. But what if that is not true in terms of the cold logic of power politics? What if Middle Eastern chaos, in terms of America's geopolitical interests, is not quite as bad as we think?
But don't transnational Islamist terrorists like al Qaeda thrive in weakly governed areas? To a degree, yes. And there is a significant "threat stream" emerging now from new and more autonomous al Qaeda cells throughout a Middle East crumbling into anarchy, as Washington experts and officials have correctly noted during the recent spate of embassy shutdowns. There is another side to the story, however. Transnational terrorists certainly exist in weakly governed areas -- witness post-Gadhafi Libya and the attack on the U. S. diplomatic compound in Benghazi last year. But really thriving is another matter. Thriving in an ungoverned area means to have a zone of control, where you don't have to worry about security threats, so that you can build training camps and develop plans for sophisticated attacks on third countries -- like al Qaeda did in Afghanistan in the late 1990s through 2001. Yet, that is hard to do when anarchy is all around. In fact, Afghanistan back in the late 1990s was not wholly in chaos. Rather, substantial areas were governed by the Taliban, which formally hosted al Qaeda. The areas under Taliban control constituted a hostile state more than a chaotic one. Thus, while smaller attacks emanating from al Qaeda are more likely now because of widespread anarchy -- again, witness Benghazi -- an attack on the level of 9/11 probably requires a more stable environment in parts of an otherwise unstable country. Think Yemen.
Transnational jihadists currently establishing themselves throughout the Middle East are primarily a threat to their host governments, such as they still exist. Yet, from the American perspective the greatest security threat to the regional balance of power is not so much a chaotic state as a stable and strongly governed one: Iran. Iran, precisely because it is not in chaos, is now able to develop a nuclear capacity through a sophisticated and dispersed network of facilities that the Americans and Israelis have found difficult to dismantle without going to war. Would only Iran have been in chaos for years now -- then its nuclear program would likely not be so far along!
Because Iran is both radical and strongly governed, Israel's security is fundamentally undermined, even as chaos elsewhere in the Middle East has been in some ways favorable to Israel, an American ally by the way. The Israeli military recently announced that because militaries in Egypt and Syria, as well as in other Arab states, no longer present a conventional threat to its territory, Israel now has the luxury to concentrate more on unconventional threats like guerrilla infiltrations and cyberattacks. Thus, thanks to chaos in the Arab world, Israel no longer faces a strategic threat on its borders: Rather, the threat has deteriorated to a tactical one. Hezbollah and Hamas cannot send tanks into Israel's population zones like Egypt and Syria -- back when they were strongly governed states -- were once theoretically able to do.
But doesn't chaos threaten the transition from illegitimate autocracies to liberal democracies? That is a moral argument; not a geopolitical one. And even as a moral argument it is flawed, because it misunderstands history. First of all, the United States did very well with so-called illegitimate autocracies. For decades during the Cold War, Arab autocracies from the Maghreb to the Levant allowed for strong American influence in the region, stable and predictable regimes, protection of the all-vital sea lines of communication between the West and the hydrocarbon-rich Persian Gulf and the ability of the United States to arrange truces, separation of forces agreements and even a peace treaty or two among regional combatants. Moreover, American embassies were safe back then! Who says that democratic regimes -- when and if they arise -- will be as convenient to America's geopolitical interests as were authoritarian ones? After all, just as there have been liberal autocracies in the Middle East, there could well emerge illiberal democracies. In terms of the security and economic well being of the American people, the former are clearly preferable.
As for chaos threatening the march toward democracy, well, what did the proponents of democratic change in the Middle East actually expect? It took Europe, by some measures, the better part of a millennium to make the transition from absolute autocracies to stable and liberal democracies. In between there was an interminable pageant of wars and insurrections. Russia in the 1990s tried to make an overnight transition from Communist dictatorship to Western-style democracy and the result was near-anarchy. Meanwhile, Asian countries carefully went through many years of authoritarianism combined with market-oriented reforms as part of a slow transition to democracy. In post-Communist Central and Eastern Europe the transition was quicker, but that was because those countries had a background of democratic practices and bourgeois culture prior to World War II, to a degree that many Arab states simply do not. Moreover, Central and Eastern Europe had the advantage -- for geographical and cultural reasons -- of being more easily absorbed into the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and the European Union. In short, chaos of some degree is what one should expect for years to come in the Middle East.
The notion, advanced by more than a few commentators, that U.S. President Barack Obama is somehow responsible for such chaos emerging under his watch cannot be taken seriously. For it assumes that Washington has far more influence than it actually has on the ground in disparate, populous and complex Islamic societies. Just as the Eastern Bloc collapsed largely from internal stresses, rather than from any decisions taken by U.S. President Ronald Reagan, the Arab world has evolved likewise largely on its own, not because of any decision taken by Obama. Of course, Libya was an exception: American humanitarian intervention there actually contributed to the chaos.
But couldn't Obama have prevented chaos in Syria had he intervened there early? Perhaps, though no one will ever know. Still, the idea that somehow an American-led military intervention in Syria in 2011 would, within a few short weeks, have set that country politically to rights may itself be naive. (And a few short weeks would have been all the American public had patience for.) Ironically, in years to come, Obama may be praised by historians for precisely what he is now under attack for: staying out of Syria.
Syrian chaos surely undermines Lebanon and Iraq. But those two states for years already have barely been states at all. Meanwhile, Syrian chaos presents the American ally Israel not only with dangers, but also with some opportunities. Syrian chaos may ensnare the American enemy Iran into a stalemate with more tenuous supply lines than it had in Iraq. In other words, provided the regime in Jordan does not crumble, it is not at all clear at this juncture that anarchy in Syria undermines a core American interest (new and autonomous al Qaeda cells excepted). And provided the Suez Canal remains open and Israel's southern border is reasonably secure, the same can be said for chaos in Egypt.
Meanwhile, Saudi Arabia and the rest of the hydrocarbon-rich Arabian Peninsula -- with the exception of Bahrain -- remain stable. Now there would be Middle Eastern chaos that unambiguously matters; there would be Middle Eastern chaos that world financial markets, for example, would finally take notice of! For the time being, however, the collapse of strong autocracies elsewhere in the region presents the United States with a security challenge that will continue for years.
-
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/worldviews/wp/2013/08/26/the-middle-east-explained-in-one-sort-of-terrifying-chart/
From the article:
Sir, Iran is backing Assad. Gulf states are against Assad!
Assad is against Muslim Brotherhood. Muslim Brotherhood and Obama are against General Sisi.
But Gulf states are pro-Sisi! Which means they are against Muslim Brotherhood!
Iran is pro-Hamas, but Hamas is backing Muslim Brotherhood!
Obama is backing Muslim Brotherhood, yet Hamas is against the U.S.!
Gulf states are pro-U.S. But Turkey is with Gulf states against Assad; yet Turkey is pro-Muslim Brotherhood against General Sisi. And General Sisi is being backed by the Gulf states!
Welcome to the Middle East and have a nice day.
-
"Iran is backing Assad. Gulf states are against Assad. Assad is against Muslim Brotherhood. Muslim Brotherhood and Obama are against General Sisi. But Gulf states are pro-Sisi. Which means they are against Muslim Brotherhood. Iran is pro-Hamas, but Hamas is backing Muslim Brotherhood. Obama is backing Muslim Brotherhood, yet Hamas is against the U.S. Gulf states are pro-U.S. But Turkey is with Gulf states against Assad; yet Turkey is pro-Muslim Brotherhood against General Sisi. And General Sisi is being backed by the Gulf states.
[/quote]
Not to mention Russia! It would be worth memorizing that passage in case someone asks what I think is going on in the Middle East. Here is is the chart mentioned:
(http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/worldviews/files/2013/08/BSm0bOBCYAAAph6.jpg)
Why are people saying this is confusing?
It might be a good time for the U.S. to pull back, build up our own economy and energy production capacity, and strike force, and do like NHL refs do during fights, let the players wear themselves out a little before stepping in.
-
"It might be a good time for the U.S. to pull back, build up our own economy and energy production capacity, and strike force, and do like NHL refs do during fights, let the players wear themselves out a little before stepping in."
This makes great sense but is incomplete I think in one important respect-- Iran, which every day grows closer to nukes. http://pjmedia.com/michaelledeen/2013/08/25/the-road-to-damascus-starts-in-tehran/?singlepage=true
Q: Why is Israel supporting the Syrian rebels? Isn't it worried about AQ taking over?
-
"It might be a good time for the U.S. to pull back, build up our own economy and energy production capacity, and strike force, and do like NHL refs do during fights, let the players wear themselves out a little before stepping in."
Sure. As long as "let the players wear themselves out a little before stepping in" means wait until they've pretty much killed themselves off.
With the exception of Israel, Let. It. Burn.
-
What to do about Iran?
In effect are we looking to keep it going as we did with Iraq and Iran?
-
What to do about Iran?
In effect are we looking to keep it going as we did with Iraq and Iran?
Buraq will do nothing about Iran. I hope Israel will and it will succeed, but I'm not optimistic.
We should have taken care of the mullahs a long time ago, and a serious price will be paid for failing to do so.
-
http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2013/09/01/obama-blinked-why-israelis-are-concerned-obamas-syria-strike-about-face-will-embolden-iran-and-other-foes/
Question presented: My fellow Americans (and our good friends) what should we do in this moment?
-
" My fellow Americans (and our good friends) what should we do in this moment? "
Best thing would be to impeach Obama. That would be best for America. (And keep out Hillary in 16).
-
So, your answer is , , , President Biden? :roll: :lol:
Seriously now, AMERICA is in a helluva a mess here. Yes, His Glibness brought us here through his hubris, cluelessness, and more, BUT THE QUESTION REMAINS: WHAT SHOULD AMERICA DO NOW?
1) Suck up the complete loss of face and do nothing?
2) Do something vapid and meaningless in order to pretend to save the face of our clueless CiC and our nation
3) Do something substantial that genuinely weakens and/or takes down Assad?
4) Or?
ALL OF THESE HAVE HIDEOUS POSSIBLE OUTCOMES , , , but the fight will be what the fight will be. WHAT SHOULD AMERICA DO NOW?
Rachel posted a very relevant article in the Israel thread today-- the real question here is Iran and its nuke program. Does this suggest that weakening/eliminating Assad in order to weaken Iran is the least bad course of action?
Are we ready for what follows?
-
"BUT THE QUESTION REMAINS: WHAT SHOULD AMERICA DO NOW?
1) Suck up the complete loss of face and do nothing?
2) Do something vapid and meaningless in order to pretend to save the face of our clueless CiC and our nation
3) Do something substantial that genuinely weakens and/or takes down Assad?
4) Or?
ALL OF THESE HAVE HIDEOUS POSSIBLE OUTCOMES , , , but the fight will be what the fight will be. WHAT SHOULD AMERICA DO NOW?
Rachel posted a very relevant article in the Israel thread today-- the real question here is Iran and its nuke program..."
My thoughts at the moment: Obama is taking it to Congress as his way of getting out of it. Some people I highly respect favor intervention in Syria, Bret Stephens, WSJ, is one: http://www.hughhewitt.com/wall-street-journals-bret-stephens-making-passionate-case-intervention-syria/
Two reasons to oppose that view. The outcome in Syria yes could become worse for us than the way things are, and we have 3 more years with no Commander in Chief. This no time to bite off what we can't chew.
I favor specific strikes on known WMD stockpiles of sworn enemies - anywhere. That is different than a provocative, 'shot across the bow'.
Bait and switch: Our response to Syria should be to take out nuclear facilities in Iran - right now - if a plan is in place to do that successfully. N.K. too. It would send a message to Assad (and others), plus Iran supports the Syrian regime.
Saving face: Rather than breaking our promises, we are just falling a behind on our work. So many tyrants - so little time.
-
I like Doug's bait and switch plan.
-
Apparent Options
a) we allow the chem use to stand, with all the consequences that flow from that; or
b) we support the President in pretending to do something about it-- a farce which will not defend credibility; or
c) do something meaningful, calling upon a military that is being dramatically contracted and led by a CiC who simply is not up to the job and will thoroughly foul it up.
(Ret 4 Star) Gen. Keane has been making some interesting points. He says that taking out Assad's air base runways would degrade his capabilities viz the rebels substantially by eliminating his air power. He says AQ is in the north and the Free Syrian Army (FSA) has been receiving Saudi Arms via Jordan for 7-8 months now without those arms falling into AQ hands. He says arming the rebels more is a good idea.
-
http://pjmedia.com/victordavishanson/obama-indicts-obama/?singlepage=true
-
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887323893004579057271019210230.html
-
second post
Syria and the Byzantine Strategy
By Robert Kaplan
In March 1984, I was reporting from the Hawizeh Marshes in southern Iraq near the Iranian border. The Iran-Iraq War was in its fourth year, and the Iranians had just launched a massive infantry attack, which the Iraqis repelled with poison gas. I beheld hundreds of young, dead Iranian soldiers, piled up and floating in the marshes, like dolls without a scar on any of them. An Iraqi officer poked one of the bodies with his walking stick and told me, "This is what happens to the enemies of Saddam [Hussein]." Of course, the Iranians were hostile troops invading Iraqi territory; not civilians. But Saddam got around to killing women and children, too, with chemical weapons. In March 1988, he gassed roughly 5,000 Kurds to death. As a British reporter with me in the Hawizeh Marshes had quipped, "You could fit the human rights of Iraq on the head of a pin, and still have room for the human rights of Iran."
The reaction of the Reagan administration to the gassing to death of thousands of Kurdish civilians by Saddam was to keep supporting him through the end of his war with Iran. The United States was then in the midst of a Cold War with the Soviet Union, and as late as mid-1989 it wouldn't be apparent that this twilight struggle would end so suddenly and so victoriously. Thus, with hundreds of thousands of American servicemen occupied in Europe and northeast Asia, using Saddam's Iraq as a proxy against Ayatollah Khomeini's Iran made perfect sense.
The United States has values, but as a great power it also has interests. Ronald Reagan may have spoken the rousing language of universal freedom, but his grand strategy was all of a piece. And that meant picking and choosing his burdens wisely. As a result, Saddam's genocide against the Kurds, featuring chemical weapons, was overlooked.
In fact, the 1980-1988 Iran-Iraq War, coterminous with the life of the Reagan administration, was a boon to it. By tying down two large and radical states in the heart of the Middle East, the war severely reduced the trouble that each on its own would certainly have caused the region for almost a decade. This gave Reagan an added measure of leeway in order to keep his focus on Europe and the Soviets -- and on hurting the Soviets in Afghanistan. To wit, only two years after the Iran-Iraq War ended, Saddam invaded Kuwait. Peace between Iran and Iraq was arguably no blessing to the United States and the West.
Likewise, it might be argued that the Syrian civil war, now well into its second year, has carried strategic benefits to the West. The analyst Edward N. Luttwak, writing recently in The New York Times, has pointed out that continued fighting in Syria is preferable to either of the two sides winning outright. If President Bashar al Assad's forces were to win, then the Iranians and the Russians would enjoy a much stronger position in the Levant than before the war. If the rebels were to win, it is entirely possible that Sunni jihadists, with ties to transnational terrorism, will have a staging post by the Mediterranean similar to what they had in Taliban-controlled Afghanistan until 2001, and also similar to what they currently have in Libya. So rather than entertain either of those two possibilities, it is better that the war continue.
Of course, all of this is quite cold-blooded. The Iran-Iraq War took the lives of over a million people. The Syrian civil war has so far claimed reportedly 110,000 lives. Even the celebrated realist of the mid-20th century, Hans Morgenthau of the University of Chicago, proclaimed the existence of a universal moral conscience, which sees war as a "natural catastrophe." And it is this very conscience that ultimately limits war's occurrence. That is what makes foreign policy so hard. If it were simply a matter of pursuing a state's naked interests, then there would be few contradictions between desires and actions. If it were simply a matter of defending human rights, there would similarly be fewer hard choices. But foreign policy is both. And because voters will only sustain losses to a nation's treasure when serious interests are threatened, interests often take precedence over values. Thus, awful compromises are countenanced.
Making this worse is the element of uncertainty. The more numerous the classified briefings a leader receives about a complex and dangerous foreign place, the more he may realize how little the intelligence community actually knows. This is not a criticism of the intelligence community, but an acknowledgment of complexity, especially when it concerns a profusion of armed and secretive groups, and an array of hard-to-quantify cultural factors. What option do I pursue? And even if I make the correct choice, how sure can I be of the consequences? And even if I can be sure of the consequences -- which is doubtful -- is it worth diverting me from other necessary matters, both foreign and domestic, for perhaps weeks or even months?
Luttwak himself offers partial relief to such enigmas through a meticulous and erudite study of one of the greatest survival strategies in history. In "The Grand Strategy of the Byzantine Empire" (2009), he demonstrates the properties by which Byzantium, despite a threatened geographic position, survived for a thousand years after the fall of Rome. This Byzantine strategy, in its own prodigiously varied and often unconscious way, mirrored Morgenthau's realism, laced as it is with humanism.
The Byzantines, Luttwak writes, relied continuously on every method of deterrence. "They routinely paid off their enemies....using all possible tools of persuasion to recruit allies, fragment hostile alliances, subvert unfriendly rulers..." He goes on: "For the Romans...as for most great powers until modern days, military force was the primary tool of statecraft, with persuasion a secondary complement. For the Byzantine Empire it was mostly the other way around. Indeed, the shift of emphasis from force to diplomacy is one way of differentiating Rome from Byzantium..." In other words, "Avoid war by every possible means in all possible circumstances, but always act as if it might start at any time [his italics]." The Byzantines bribed, connived, dissembled and so forth, and as a consequence survived for centuries on end and fought less wars than they would have otherwise.
The lesson: be devious rather than bloody. President Barack Obama's mistake is not his hesitancy about entering the Syrian mess; but announcing to the Syrians that his military strike, if it occurs, will be "narrow" and "limited." Never tell your adversary what you're not going to do! Let your adversary stay awake all night, worrying about the extent of a military strike! Unless Obama is being deliberately deceptive about his war aims, then some of the public statements from the administration have been naïve in the extreme.
A Byzantine strategy, refitted to the postmodern age, would maintain the requisite military force in the eastern Mediterranean, combined with only vague presidential statements about the degree to which such force might or might not be used. It would feature robust, secret and ongoing diplomacy with the Russians and the Iranians, aware always of their interests both regionally and globally, and always open to deals and horse-trades with them. The goal would be to engineer a stalemate-of-sorts in Syria rather than necessarily remove al Assad. Reducing the intensity of fighting would thus constitute a morality in and of itself, even as it would keep either side from winning outright. For if the regime suddenly crumbled, violence might only escalate, and al Qaeda might even find a sanctuary close to Israel and Jordan.
Such a strategy might satisfy relatively few of the cognoscenti. Though, the American public -- which has a more profound, albeit badly articulated sense of national survival -- will surely tolerate it. The Congressional debate that preceded the Iraq War did not save President George W. Bush from obloquy when that war went badly. The lack of such a debate would not hurt Obama were he to successfully execute the methods described in Luttwak's book.
-
What Saudi Arabia and Turkey Want in the Syria Conflict
Geopolitical Diary
Thursday, September 5, 2013 - 19:36 Text Size Print
As the debate continues over whether the United States will intervene in Syria, many observers have overlooked what Turkey and Saudi Arabia -- Washington's two main regional allies -- want from the Americans. Both countries want the United States to conduct a more comprehensive strike that weakens the regime, but their interests over the fate of Syria after the intervention differ greatly. Either way, Ankara's and Riyadh's behavior threatens to draw Washington into its third war in the Islamic world in 12 years.
On Thursday, Turkish media reported that the country deployed additional forces along its border with Syria ahead of expected U.S. military action. The previous day, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry said that Arab countries had offered to pay for the cost of any military action against Damascus. Kerry added that there was international consensus involving "Saudi Arabia, the Emirates, Qataris, the Turks and the French" on the need to take action against Syria for its use of chemical weapons against its own people.
Kerry is right to place the Saudis and the Turks in the same broad category of those that support Washington's use of force against Damascus. But he ignores the fact that both Ankara and Riyadh want the United States to topple the Syrian regime. That, however, is where their agreement ends. Not only does Washington disagree with its two main allies on the scope of the mission, but all three disagree on how they want the conflict to play out.
Neither Washington nor Ankara wants to the regime to fall completely because they do not want transnational jihadists to assume power. In Turkey, the political elites have divergent views on how far they should go in pursing regime change south of the border. Certainly the Syrian civil war presents risks; the threat of Kurdish separatism is far greater if the Syrian regime collapses. But the conflict also presents the opportunity to expand Ankara's regional influence. The United States, however, wants to oust al Assad but not dismantle his regime entirely -- Washington is not interested in weakening Iran to the benefit of Sunni radicals.
The Saudis have a much more hawkish position. After two years of disappointment, Riyadh is pleased to see that Washington may finally exercise the military option. Ultimately, it wants Washington to destroy the Alawite government. Regime change would enable the Saudis to defend against the influence of Iran, their biggest enemy, and to undermine Tehran and its two pre-eminent allies, Iraq and Hezbollah.
Riyadh knows that the collapse of the al Assad regime will create a vacuum that will be exploited by transnational jihadists, but that is a negligible concern. From the Saudi point of view, it is a price worth paying if Riyadh can undermine Iranian regional influence. In fact, Saudi Arabia believes that jihadists are the only effective tools that can be used against the Iranians and their Arab Shia allies.
The Saudi perspective is also informed by the assumption it will be spared any blowback from Syrian instability. Unlike Turkey, it does not share a border with Syria. Between its financial power and its being the only state to have actually defeated jihadists within its borders, Saudi Arabia is confident that it can manage whatever jihadist threat emerges in a post-al Assad Syria.
Ankara shares Riyadh's desire to weaken Iran -- Tehran stands between the Turks and their regional ascendance -- but it is not willing to go as far as the Saudis. Though both Saudi Arabia and Turkey will try to bolster their preferred rebel factions in pursuit of their respective goals, the decision on just how much damage to inflict on the regime still rests with the United States.
Read more: What Saudi Arabia and Turkey Want in the Syria Conflict | Stratfor
===========================
BO gets some bleats of support at G-20: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887323623304579059022988641910.html?mod=WSJ_hps_LEFTTopStories
-
4th post
http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/us-military-planners-dont-support-war-with-syria/2013/09/05/10a07114-15bb-11e3-be6e-dc6ae8a5b3a8_print.html
-
5th post
http://dailycaller.com/2013/09/05/iran-threatens-brutal-attacks-on-americans-obama-family-if-us-hits-syria/
What's the big deal about threatening Obama's daughter with rape? Didn't David Letterman joke about a baseball player raping Sarah Palin's daughter? , , , but I digress. Somehow the Iranians are not seeming very intimidated by our CiC's intended shot across the bow.
also see
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2013/sep/5/a-us-strike-on-syria-would-amount-to-a-first-slap-/?page=all#pagebreak
-
Strange how Capt. Momjeans and his world bowing tour haven't quite gotten the results we were promised.
5th post
http://dailycaller.com/2013/09/05/iran-threatens-brutal-attacks-on-americans-obama-family-if-us-hits-syria/
What's the big deal about threatening Obama's daughter with rape? Didn't David Letterman joke about a baseball player raping Sarah Palin's daughter? , , , but I digress. Somehow the Iranians are not seeming very intimidated by our CiC's intended shot across the bow.
also see
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2013/sep/5/a-us-strike-on-syria-would-amount-to-a-first-slap-/?page=all#pagebreak
-
http://m.weeklystandard.com/blogs/putin-didnt-save-obama-he-beat-him_753730.html
-
Doug,
In a way Putin did get Brock off the hook. And why would he not want to? Obama is the best President Russia has ever had. Even better than Jimmy Carter - by far. So yes. It is in Russia's interest to keep the Bamster "revalantly" irrevalant (to invent a new phrase).
-
Is "revalant" similar in meaning to "relevant"? :lol:
Anyway, agreed :-D
-
The spelling is irelevent! :-)
-
The Limits of Bluffing
Geopolitical Diary
Wednesday, September 11, 2013 - 02:38 Text Size Print
U.S. President Barack Obama's address to the nation Tuesday evening hit all the expected points.
The president tried to articulate how an unanswered chemical weapons attack would impact U.S. national security, and he shed a bit more light on the intelligence that the United States has collected to link the regime to the attack. He also tried to define a limited U.S. strike as strong enough to hurt the regime, but not so damaging that the United States would be left to clean up the aftermath. To tie it off, the president made a moral argument rooted in American exceptionalism to rally a skeptical Congress. In spite of these efforts, the U.S. administration remains trapped in the same growing web of bluffs it was in before Obama delivered this message.
These bluffs have marked the turning points of the Syria crisis thus far. Bluffing is an age-old tactic in diplomacy. When faced with limited options, it can be a very powerful tool, if employed properly. As Machiavelli advised five centuries ago, "It is very wise to simulate madness at the right time." Indeed, a bluff timed with precision at a high pressure point that achieves the desired result without firing a single shot can transform a mediocre name in political history into a legacy overnight. That said, it would be difficult to impress Machiavelli with the bluffs used so far in the context of the Syria crisis.
Obama made the first bluff last August during the final campaign stretch for his re-election. Speculation had re-emerged over a strike on Iranian nuclear facilities, and Israel was trying to pressure Obama to draw a red line on Syria's alleged small-scale use of chemical weapons in July 2012 and Iran's continued pursuit of nuclear weapons. At the time, Obama could have reasonably concluded that there was a low probability of an embattled Syrian regime risking foreign intervention by carrying out a large-scale chemical weapons attack when it could still rely on its conventional forces to battle the rebels. But just one year later, the regime appears to have called Obama’s bluff and deployed chemical weapons in sizable amounts.
With the credibility of U.S. ultimatums at stake, not just for Syria, but for any power willing to challenge Washington, Obama needed to cobble together a coalition in haste, but he found out that even his impassioned allies, in Europe as well as in Congress, were losing their enthusiasm for military intervention.
Then came Russia's grand bluff. Russian President Vladimir Putin saw an opportunity to assert Russia as a great power with the influence to make the United States bend and its allies quiver. Moscow's bluff came in the form of a well-timed proposal to secure, seize and destroy Syria’s chemical weapons stockpiles. To the relief of many, the move actually seemed to extinguish the military threat to Syria. In reality, Russia's proposal was a non-starter. Sending hundreds of U.N. inspectors and technicians to secure 1,000 metric tons of chemical weapons stockpiles spread across at least 50 sites in a country embroiled in a brutal civil war is a long, arduous and highly complicated process – a mission that would require ground troops at a time when no country, not even Russia, appears prepared to take that risk. Still, the proposal sounded good enough for the White House and its European allies to apply the brakes to the military option and shift to the diplomatic route.
Now it is time for the United States to call the Russian bluff on the proposal. When U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry goes to Geneva on Thursday to meet with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, he will press him on the details of the proposal in an attempt to poke holes in the plan with the world watching. Russia will try to show that an ambitious diplomatic endeavor of this nature cannot be rushed, and certainly cannot be sabotaged with American threats of military action or threats from France to send Bashar al Assad to the Hague. The United States can put off a U.N. Security Council meeting to avoid negotiating with Russia over a watered down resolution, but it cannot meet a Russian demand to take the military option off the table. If Obama wants to preserve any credibility in this crisis, he must maintain a credible military threat if and when the diplomatic proposal flops.
Russia can always distance itself from fault if U.N. members refuse to commit ground troops to the operation or if the United States tries to cast the Russian proposal as a delay tactic unworthy of further consideration. Obama, however, will be left with the inevitable choice of backing out of a military campaign or proceeding with a limited strike based on a stale premise and possibly without the full endorsement of Congress. At some point, the bluffing game will run its course. The final move in this game will go to Obama, and no matter what moves have been made in the meantime, he'll still probably be looking at a weak hand.
Read more: The Limits of Bluffing | Stratfor
-
If it weren't so fg tragic it would be funny :cry: :cry: :x
http://freebeacon.com/report-hezbollah-armed-with-syrias-chemical-weapons/
-
If it weren't so fg tragic it would be funny :cry: :cry: :x
http://freebeacon.com/report-hezbollah-armed-with-syrias-chemical-weapons/
Just wait until they get some of Iran's nukes...
-
I came across this tidbit today. It's nice to see the children being taught tolerance over there.
http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=118_1380116591
-
What is the difference between this and Nazi hate?
-
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/iran/10350285/Iranian-cyber-warfare-commander-shot-dead-in-suspected-assassination.html
-
BTW, a coincidence that the last person our murdered ambassador met with in Benghazi was the Turkish consul?
Turkey's Spymaster Plots Own Course on Syria
Hakan Fidan Takes Independent Tack in Wake of Arab Spring
By ADAM ENTOUS in Washington and JOE PARKINSON in Istanbul
President Obama and John Kerry met with Turkish Prime Minister Erdogan and Turkish intelligence chief Fidan, second and third from left, in May.
On a rainy May day, Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan led two of his closest advisers into the Oval Office for what both sides knew would be a difficult meeting.
It was the first face-to-face between Mr. Erdogan and President Barack Obama in almost a year. Mr. Obama delivered what U.S. officials describe as an unusually blunt message: The U.S. believed Turkey was letting arms and fighters flow into Syria indiscriminately and sometimes to the wrong rebels, including anti-Western jihadists.
Seated at Mr. Erdogan's side was the man at the center of what caused the U.S.'s unease, Hakan Fidan, Turkey's powerful spymaster and a driving force behind its efforts to supply the rebels and topple Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.
In the wake of the Arab Spring uprisings, Mr. Fidan, little known outside of the Middle East, has emerged as a key architect of a Turkish regional-security strategy that has tilted the interests of the longtime U.S. ally in ways sometimes counter to those of the U.S.
"Hakan Fidan is the face of the new Middle East," says James Jeffrey, who recently served as U.S. ambassador in Turkey and Iraq. "We need to work with him because he can get the job done," he says. "But we shouldn't assume he is a knee-jerk friend of the United States, because he is not."
Mr. Fidan is one of three spy chiefs jostling to help their countries fill a leadership vacuum created by the upheaval and by America's tentative approach to much of the region.
One of his counterparts is Prince Bandar bin Sultan al-Saud, Saudi Arabia's intelligence chief, who has joined forces with the Central Intelligence Agency in Syria but who has complicated U.S. policy in Egypt by supporting a military takeover there. The other is Iran's Maj. Gen. Qasem Soleimani, commander-in-chief of the Quds Forces, the branch of the elite Revolutionary Guard Corps that operates outside of Iran and whose direct military support for Mr. Assad has helped keep him in power.
Mr. Fidan's rise to prominence has accompanied a notable erosion in U.S. influence over Turkey. Washington long had cozy relations with Turkey's military, the second-largest army in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. But Turkey's generals are now subservient to Mr. Erdogan and his closest advisers, Mr. Fidan and Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu, who are using the Arab Spring to shift Turkey's focus toward expanding its regional leadership, say current and former U.S. officials.
Mr. Fidan, 45 years old, didn't respond to requests for an interview. Mr. Erdogan's office declined to elaborate on his relationship with Mr. Fidan.
At the White House meeting, the Turks pushed back at the suggestion that they were aiding radicals and sought to enlist the U.S. to aggressively arm the opposition, the U.S. officials briefed on the discussions say. Turkish officials this year have used meetings like this to tell the Obama administration that its insistence on a smaller-scale effort to arm the opposition hobbled the drive to unseat Mr. Assad, Turkish and U.S. officials say.
Mr. Fidan is the prime minister's chief implementer.
Since he took over Turkey's national-intelligence apparatus, the Milli Istihbarat Teskilati, or MIT, in 2010, Mr. Fidan has shifted the agency's focus to match Mr. Erdogan's.
His growing role has met a mixture of alarm, suspicion and grudging respect in Washington, where officials see him as a reliable surrogate for Mr. Erdogan in dealing with broader regional issues—the futures of Egypt, Libya and Syria, among them—that the Arab Spring has brought to the bilateral table.
Mr. Fidan raised concerns three years ago, senior U.S. officials say, when he rattled Turkey's allies by allegedly passing to Iran sensitive intelligence collected by the U.S. and Israel.
More recently, Turkey's Syria approach, carried out by Mr. Fidan, has put it at odds with the U.S. Both countries want Mr. Assad gone. But Turkish officials have told the Americans they see an aggressive international arming effort as the best way. The cautious U.S. approach reflects the priority it places on ensuring that arms don't go to the jihadi groups that many U.S. officials see as a bigger threat to American interests than Mr. Assad.
U.S. intelligence agencies believe Mr. Fidan doesn't aim to undercut the U.S. but to advance Mr. Erdogan's interests. In recent months, as radical Islamists expanded into northern Syria along the Turkish border, Turkish officials have begun to recalibrate their policy—concerned not about U.S. complaints but about the threat to Turkey's security, say U.S. and Turkish officials.
There is no doubt in Turkey where the spymaster stands. Mr. Fidan is "the No. 2 man in Turkey," says Emre Uslu, a Turkish intelligence analyst who writes for a conservative daily. "He's much more powerful than any minister and much more powerful than President Abdullah Gul."
Still, he cuts a modest figure. Current and former Turkish officials describe him as gentle and unpretentious. In U.S. meetings, he wears dark suits and is soft-spoken, say U.S. officials who have met him repeatedly and contrast him with Prince Bandar, the swashbuckling Saudi intelligence chief.
"He's not Bandar," one of the officials says. "No big cigars, no fancy suits, no dark glasses. He's not flamboyant."
Mr. Fidan's ascension is remarkable in part because he is a former non-commissioned officer in the Turkish military, a class that usually doesn't advance to prominent roles in the armed forces, business or government.
Mr. Fidan earned a bachelor of science degree in government and politics from the European division of the University of Maryland University College and a doctorate in political science from Ankara's elite Bilkent University. In 2003, he was appointed to head Turkey's international-development agency. He joined Mr. Erdogan's office as a foreign-policy adviser in 2007. Three years later, he was head of intelligence.
"He is my secret keeper. He is the state's secret keeper," Mr. Erdogan said of his intelligence chief in 2012 in comments to reporters.
Mr. Fidan's rise at Mr. Erdogan's side has been met with some concern in Washington and Israel because of his role in shaping Iran policy. One senior Israeli official says it became clear to Israel that Mr. Fidan was "not an enemy of Iran." And mistrust already marked relations between the U.S. and Turkish intelligence agencies. The CIA spies on Turkey and the MIT runs an aggressive counterintelligence campaign against the CIA, say current and former U.S. officials.
The tension was aggravated in 2010 when the CIA began to suspect the MIT under Mr. Fidan of passing intelligence to Iran.
At the time, Mr. Erdogan was trying to improve ties with Tehran, a central plank of Ankara's "zero problems with neighbors" policy. U.S. officials believe the MIT under Mr. Fidan passed several pieces of intelligence to Iran, including classified U.S. assessments about the Iranian government, say current and former senior U.S. and Middle Eastern officials. U.S. officials say they don't know why Mr. Fidan allegedly shared the intelligence, but suspect his goal was relationship-building. After the Arab Spring heightened tensions, Mr. Erdogan pulled back from his embrace of Tehran, at which point U.S. officials believe Mr. Fidan did so, too.
Officials at the MIT and Turkey's foreign ministry declined to comment on the allegations.
In 2012, Mr. Fidan began expanding the MIT's power by taking control of Turkey's once-dominant military-intelligence service. Many top generals with close ties to the U.S. were jailed as part of a mass trial and convicted this year of plotting to topple Mr. Erdogan's government. At the Pentagon, the jail sentences were seen as the coup de grace for the military's status within the Turkish system.
Mr. Fidan's anti-Assad campaign harks to August 2011, when Mr. Erdogan called for Mr. Assad to step down. Mr. Fidan later started directing a secret effort to bolster rebel capabilities by allowing arms, money and logistical support to funnel into northern Syria—including arms from Saudi Arabia, Qatar and other Gulf allies—current and former U.S. officials say.
Mr. Erdogan wanted to remove Mr. Assad not only to replace a hostile regime on Turkey's borders but also to scuttle the prospect of a Kurdish state emerging from Syria's oil-rich northeast, political analysts say. Providing aid through the MIT, a decision that came in early 2012, ensured Mr. Erdogan's office had control over the effort and that it would be relatively invisible, say current and former U.S. officials.
Syrian opposition leaders, American officials and Middle Eastern diplomats who worked with Mr. Fidan say the MIT acted like a "traffic cop" that arranged weapons drops and let convoys through checkpoints along Turkey's 565-mile border with Syria.
Some moderate Syrian opposition leaders say they immediately saw that arms shipments bypassed them and went to groups linked to the Muslim Brotherhood. Mr. Erdogan's Islamist-rooted Justice and Development Party has supported Muslim Brotherhood movements across the region.
Syrian Kurdish leaders, meanwhile, charge that Ankara allowed arms and support to reach radical groups that could check the expanding power of Kurdish militia aligned with Turkey's militant Kurdistan Workers' Party.
Turkish border guards repeatedly let groups of radical fighters cross into Syria to fight Kurdish brigades, says Salih Muslim, co-chairman of the Democratic Union of Syria, Turkey's most powerful Kurdish party. He says Turkish ambulances near the border picked up wounded fighters from Jabhat al Nusra, an anti-Assad group linked to al Qaeda. Turkish officials deny those claims.
Opposition lawmakers from the border province of Hatay say Turkish authorities transported Islamist fighters to frontier villages and let fighter-filled planes land at Hatay airport. Turkish officials deny both allegations.
Mehmet Ali Ediboglu, a lawmaker for Hatay's largest city, Antakya, and a member of the parliament's foreign-relations committee, says he followed a convoy of more than 50 buses carrying radical fighters and accompanied by 10 police vehicles to the border village of Guvecci. "This was just one incident of many," he says. Voters in his district strongly oppose Turkish support for the Syrian opposition. Turkish officials deny Mr. Ediboglu's account.
In meetings with American officials and Syrian opposition leaders, Turkish officials said the threat posed by Jabhat al Nusra, the anti-Assad group, could be dealt with later, say U.S. officials and Syrian opposition leaders.
The U.S. added Nusra to its terror list in December, in part to send a message to Ankara about the need to more tightly control the arms flow, say officials involved in the internal discussions.
The May 2013 White House encounter came at a time when Mr. Obama had grown increasingly uncomfortable with the Turkish leader's policies relating to Syria, Israel and press freedoms, say current and former U.S. officials. Mr. Obama told the Turkish leaders he wanted a close relationship, but he voiced concerns about Turkey's approach to arming the opposition. The goal was to convince the Turks that "not all fighters are good fighters" and that the Islamist threat could harm the wider region, says a senior U.S. official.
This year, Turkey has dialed back on its arming efforts as it begins to worry that the influence of extremist rebel groups in Syria might bleed back into Turkey. At Hatay airport, the alleged way station for foreign fighters headed to Syria, the flow has markedly decreased, says a representative of a service company working at the airport.
In September, Turkey temporarily shut part of its border after fighting erupted between moderate Syrian rebels and an Iraqi al Qaeda outfit, the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham. Turkish President Gul warned that "radical groups are a big worry when it comes to our security." In recent months, Turkish officials have told U.S. counterparts that they believe the lack of American support for the opposition has fueled extremism because front-line brigades believe the West has abandoned them, say U.S. and Turkish officials involved in the discussions.
In September, Mr. Davutoglu, the foreign minister, met Secretary of State John Kerry, telling him Turkey was concerned about extremists along the Syrian border, say U.S. and Turkish officials. The Turks wanted Mr. Kerry to affirm that the U.S. remained committed to the Syrian opposition, say U.S. officials. Mr. Kerry told Turkish officials the U.S. was committed but made clear, a senior administration official says of the Turkish leaders, that "they need to be supportive of the right people."
Also in September, Mr. Fidan met with CIA Director John Brennan and Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, say Turkish and U.S. officials, who decline to say what was discussed.
A former senior U.S. intelligence official says Mr. Fidan has built strong relationships with many of his international counterparts. At the same time, a current U.S. intelligence official says, it is clear "we look at the world through different lenses."
-
NATO Ally Reportedly Exposed Israeli Spies in Iran
by IPT News • Oct 17, 2013 at 12:22 pm
http://www.investigativeproject.org/4191/nato-ally-reportedly-exposed-israeli-spies-in-iran
Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Recep Erdoğan's hostility toward Israel and embrace of Hamas terrorists is well established. He has called Zionism, the belief in a Jewish state, "a crime against humanity."
But a report published Wednesday evening by Washington Post columnist David Ignatius raises the question of whether Erdoğan, head of a NATO state, deliberately sabotaged efforts to stop Iran's nuclear weapons program out of spite for Israel.
Erdoğan's government reportedly gave the Islamic Republic the names of up to 10 Iranians who were meeting Mossad officers inside Turkey last year.
"Knowledgeable sources describe the Turkish action as a 'significant' loss of intelligence and 'an effort to slap the Israelis,'" Ignatius reports. "The incident, disclosed here for the first time, illustrates the bitter, multi-dimensional spy wars that lie behind the current negotiations between Iran and Western nations over a deal to limit the Iranian nuclear program. A Turkish Embassy spokesman had no comment."
Other Turkish officials have expressed anger about the report, casting themselves as the aggrieved party in an effort to discredit the country.
Israeli officials have not commented.
But veteran Israeli intelligence reporter Yossi Melman writes that the report, if true, exposes "a very egregious – even unprecedented – act. In fact, this is the basest act of betrayal imaginable." Former Mossad chief Danny Yatom told Israel Radio that Iran likely executed those Turkey gave up.
"It's against all the rules which have existed for many years, the unwritten rules concerning cooperation between intelligence organizations that reveal sensitive information to one another and trust one another not to use that information to harm whoever gave it to them."
Ignatius, described by Melman as "a journalist who is known to maintain extensive contacts with both the American and Israeli intelligence communities," reports that Turkey's Milli Istihbarat Teskilati intelligence service "conducts aggressive surveillance inside its borders, so it had the resources to monitor Israeli-Iranian covert meetings."
Its director, Hakan Fidan, has close ties with Tehran, Ignatius reports.
Despite all this, U.S. officials seem alarmingly dispassionate about Turkey's betrayal and the possible damage done in the effort to stop Iran's march to nuclear weapons capability. They see the loss of the Iranian spies as unfortunate, Ignatius writes, but "they didn't protest directly to Turkish officials. Instead, Turkish-American relations continued warming last year to the point that Erdogan was among Obama's key confidants."
Read Ignatius's full report here.
-
Stratfor
Analysis
Despite significant differences that have emerged recently between the United States and its Gulf Cooperation Council allies over Middle East policy, significant military and overall defense cooperation continues. The U.S. Defense Security Cooperation Agency announced Oct. 15 that it had notified Congress of a possible military equipment deal with Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. Under the agreement, various munitions and associated equipment, parts, training and logistical support would be provided to Riyadh for an estimated $6.8 billion and to Abu Dhabi for $4 billion. The sale, consisting of state-of-the-art weaponry and equipment in the U.S. arsenal, further deepens the already strong military and industrial relationship between the United States and its allies in the Gulf Cooperation Council.
Gulf Cooperation Council Countries
Recent events in the Middle East have diminished the overall political relationship between the two sides. U.S. attempts at a negotiated solution with Iran as well as the U.S.-Russian deal on Syria have upset Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and other Gulf countries.
In light of these differences, the United States is increasingly relying on military and defense cooperation as the primary vehicle to maintain a close relationship with its Gulf allies. The recent string of large defense contracts has certainly given a major boost to the U.S. defense industry at a time of sequestration and tight budgets, but the deals also bind the United States closer to Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates. In addition, since the agreements require U.S. contractors to be deployed to the Gulf and maintenance personnel and aircrew to come to the United States for training, they help to maintain a constant flow of information and exchanges.
The Gulf Cooperation Council states also believe that they stand to benefit greatly from cooperation. Strategically, these Gulf countries, despite -- or perhaps because of -- their extensive energy resources, have historically needed a powerful benefactor to protect them from larger and more populous regional powers. This dynamic has previously been seen in Iraq and more recently in Iran.
Furthermore, the types of weapons contained in the contracts, while relatively expensive, continue a trend in which the United States has sold highly sophisticated and effective weaponry to the Gulf Cooperation Council despite occasionally strong Israeli concerns. For instance, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates have benefited from access to the F-15 Eagle strike fighter and the F-16 Desert Falcon, respectively. The recently announced deal will enable both countries to equip their aircraft with some of the latest air-launched cruise missiles, satellite-guided bombs, communications equipment and data link pods, among other things.
Military and defense cooperation is the one constant that Washington has used to maintain relations with -- and in the case of Egypt, occasionally pressure -- its Middle East allies. At a time of diverging interests, when the United States is increasingly seeking a resolution with Iran despite its allies' concerns, such cooperation will be ever more important.
Read more: U.S. Defense Deals Preserve Key Relationships in the Persian Gulf | Stratfor
Follow us: @stratfor on Twitter | Stratfor on Facebook
-
http://www.foxnews.com/world/2013/10/26/israel-issues-warning-to-iran-over-nuclear-bomb-report/
-
Syria
Lebanese Hezbollah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, addressing tens of thousands of Shiite Muslims commemorating Ashura in southern Beirut, said the group's forces will remain in Syria fighting alongside Assad's forces as long as necessary. He stated, "Our fighters are present on Syrian soil ... to confront all the dangers it faces from the international, regional, and takfiri attack(s) on this country and region." Syrian forces conducted air raids in a residential area on the outskirts of the northeast Lebanese town of Arsal. The air raids came after a series of rockets were fired from Syria into the Nabi Sheet valley in eastern Lebanon. Meanwhile, the al Qaeda-linked Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIS) has issued a call for mass mobilization in Aleppo, urging "all brigades and Muslims to face off against the enemy," joining six other Islamist rebel groups calling for people to stave off the "fierce offensive to reoccupy Aleppo." The statements came after a government advance, with the army overtaking a strategic base near Aleppo and securing territory around the city's airport. In Damascus Thursday, two bombs reportedly exploded near the old city's bazaar killing at least one person.
-
http://www.israelvideonetwork.com/israel-saudi-arabia-plan-iran-strike?utm_source=MadMimi&utm_medium=email&utm_content=Israel+Breaking+News+Video%3A+Israel%2C+Saudi+Arabia+Plan+Iran+Strike&utm_campaign=20131117_m117966641_11%2F17%3A+Israel+Breaking+News+Video%3A+Israel%2C+Saudi+Arabia+Plan+Iran+Strike&utm_term=130527_iranstrike_jpg
-
Two blasts hit near the Iranian Embassy in Beirut
________________________________________
Two explosions hit near the Iran Embassy in Beirut killing at least 23 and wounding 146 others on Tuesday. The blasts struck about 50 to 100 yards outside the embassy in the predominantly Shiite Bir Hassan neighborhood of the Lebanese capital. One explosion appeared to have been caused by a suicide bomber, while the other seemed to be a car bomb from a vehicle parked two buildings away from the complex. However, some report that one of the explosions could have come from rocket fire. According to the Iranian Ambassador to Lebanon, Ghazanfar Roknabadi, Iran's cultural attaché, Sheikh Ibrahim Ansari, was killed in the explosion. The Abdullah Azzam Brigades, a Lebanese militant group with ties to al Qaeda, claimed responsibility for the attack. Lebanon has seen sporadic violence since the start of the Syrian civil war, and southern Beirut was hit with a series of rocket attacks and car bombings this summer. The country has also experienced an influx of over 816,000 refugees, with a new wave of Syrians fleeing a recent government offensive.
Syria
Syrian state media has claimed that government forces have seized the strategic town of Qara near the Lebanese border. The statement has come days after the Syrian army launched an offensive in the mountainous Qalamoun region. Qara is located on a vital supply line between Lebanon and rebel fighters around Damascus and additionally ties government territory along the Mediterranean coast with the capital. If government troops succeed in overtaking the area, the regime would consolidate gains made with the support of Hezbollah fighters in May in Qusair. According to the United Nations, fighting in the area has driven over 12,000 new refugees into the Lebanese town of Arsal in the last four days, the greatest influx into the town at any period over the past two and half years of fighting.
-
http://nypost.com/2013/11/20/al-qaedas-new-top-foe/
Al Qaeda’s new top foe
By Ralph Peters
Know them by their deeds, not words. Although the old-school leaders of al Qaeda still rage against the US and jihadists welcome any chance to harm us, look at who the terrorists actually kill. We’re not the main target of Sunni extremists these days. Iran, along with its allies, tops the list.
Of course, we cannot let down our guard and should hunt down Islamist terrorists where we can, but the focus of the “field soldiers” serving al Qaeda’s most-active franchise in Syria and Iraq is on Iran’s ambitions and Shia Muslims, not on us.
To the horror of diplomats and theorists who’ve denied the role of faith in religious terrorism, we are witnesses to a regional conflict between Sunni and Shia Muslims stretching far beyond the Syrian cockpit.
Yesterday’s suicide-bombing of the Iranian embassy in Beirut, Lebanon, amplified the breadth of this distinctly uncivil war within Islam. The Abdullah Azzam Brigades, a Lebanese al Qaeda franchise, claimed responsibility, citing Iran’s use of Hezbollah Shia militiamen to support the Assad regime in neighboring Syria. Wounding at least 140 victims, the attack killed 23 outright and appears, to this analyst, to have targeted the Iranian “cultural attaché,” who was killed while walking with a Lebanese security chief. In Iranian diplomacy, “cultural attaché” translates as “spymaster.”
Beyond the borders of nervous Lebanon, the slaughter has been under way for years, since Islamist extremists of multiple stripes hijacked Syria’s anti-Assad insurgency. Even earlier, the Sunni-Shia divide flared in Iraq as Iran moved to exert Shia hegemony.
Every day, with every local massacre, sectarian lines harden. In this multi-sided conflict, atop the maelstrom of the “Arab Spring,” people are killed not only for worshiping the wrong god, but for worshiping the right god in the wrong way. The unleashed hatreds are so intense that we’ve been pushed to the sidelines, still a desirable target, but far away. History’s law is that, while humans may relish hating a distant enemy, they generally prefer to kill their neighbors.
If we have been, for now, demoted to second place in the Great Satan Sweepstakes, Israel, too, has slipped down on the target list. The hate-rhetoric continues, but Hamas is basically quarantined in Gaza; the Palestinian Authority excites little active support; and external actors who had been rocketing Israel are vigorously butchering fellow Muslims.
Of course, the age-old Persian-vs.-Arab rivalry, power politics, local issues and even personal grudges complicate the spreading strife, but only a career diplomat could be so naïve as to deny that this, at bottom, is a contest between Islam’s two major branches. And there is nothing we can do to resolve it. We can only play on the margins — and we do so at our peril.
But crises sometimes offer opportunities. When Western and Iranian diplomats meet again this week to discuss the existential (certainly, for Israel) issue of Iran’s nuclear ambitions, our delegation should do the strategic math — which adds up to a desperate Iran.
To date, we’ve got it backward with the domestically reeling Obama administration frantic to sign a treaty it can claim as a success (you want it bad, you get it bad).
Sanctions on Iran are biting deep. That’s why Iran is willing to talk at all. But we need to grasp that Iran’s also struggling to maintain its sphere of influence in Syria and Lebanon, and sanctions play into that, too. Iran’s stretched thin, its economy grievously wounded.
We, not the mullahs, hold the winning hand. We would be foolish, indeed, were we to give the Iranians sanctions relief for empty promises.
Our diplomats obsess on obsolete borders and fail to connect a bombing in Beirut, the carnage in Syria and Iran’s pursuit of nukes with an overarching and gruesome sectarian struggle. Doing so would make Washington uncomfortable.
But thanks to the carnage in the Middle East and the sanctions regime, we’re in the strongest position vis-à-vis Iran since the fall of the shah. And in this perverse world, al Qaeda helped. Strike while the car-bomb’s hot.
-
Next Steps for the U.S.-Iran Deal
Analysis
November 25, 2013 | 0534 Print Text Size
Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif in Tehran after talks in Geneva on Nov. 24. ARASH KHAMOOSHI/AFP/Getty Images
Summary
What was unthinkable for many people over many years happened in the early hours of Nov. 24 in Geneva: The United States and the Islamic Republic of Iran struck a deal. After a decadelong struggle, the two reached an accord that seeks to ensure that Iran's nuclear program remains a civilian one. It is a preliminary deal, as both sides face months of work to batten down domestic opposition, build convincing mechanisms to assure compliance and unthread complicated global sanctions.
That’s the easy part. More difficult will be the process to reshape bilateral relations while virtually every regional player in the Middle East seeks ways to cope with an Iran that's no longer geopolitically encumbered.
Analysis
The foreign ministers of Iran and the six Western powers that constitute so-called P-5+1 Group clinched a six-month deal that begins the curtailment of Iran's nuclear program while relaxing as much as $6 billion in sanctions -- basically those embargoes that do not require U.S. President Barack Obama to secure approval from Congress. Allowing Iran to enrich uranium to “civilian” levels while making sure the know-how is not diverted military purposes will be complex.
There will be disruptive events along the way, but the normalization process is unlikely to derail. Both sides need it. The real stakes are the balance of power in the Middle East.
Iran is far more concerned about enhancing its geopolitical prowess via conventional means. Meanwhile, the United States wants to leverage relations with Iran in order to better manage the region in an age of turmoil. Contrary to much public discourse, the Obama administration is not facilitating a nuclear Iran.
Washington and the Middle East
The United States is prepared to accept that Iran will consolidate much of the influence it has accumulated over the 12 years since the Sept. 11 attacks. From the point of view of the Iranians, they had reached the limits of how far they could go in enhancing their geopolitical footprint in the U.S. war against Sunni Islamist militancy. The tightening sanctions threatened to undermine the gains the Islamic republic had made. Thus the time had come for Iran to achieve via geopolitical moderation what was no longer possible via a radical foreign policy.
Though the United States is prepared to accept an internationally rehabilitated Iran as a major stakeholder in the greater Middle East region, it does not wish for Tehran to exploit the opportunity in order to gain disproportionate power. The strategic focus must now shift from nuclear politics to the imperative that the United States balance Iran with other regional powers, especially the Sunni Arab states.
The post-Arab spring turmoil in the region has plunged U.S.-Arab relations into a state of uncertainty for two reasons: First, the autocratic regimes have become unreliable partners; second, the region is seeing the rise of radical Sunni Islamist forces.
A rehabilitated Iran, along with its Shiite radical agenda, serves as a counter to the growing bandwidth of Sunni radicalism. All strategies have unintended consequences. A geopolitically unchained Iran, to varying degrees, undermines the position of decades-old American alliances in the region. These include Turkey, Israel and the Arab states (the ones that have survived the regional chaos defined by anti-autocratic popular agitation, such as Saudi Arabia, Egypt and others).
Washington is not the only actor anticipating a shift in its regional ambitions. France initially challenged earlier attempts at a U.S.-Iranian accord, placing greater pressure on the Iranians -- much to the enjoyment of regional states like Israel and Saudi Arabia. Though Paris has been eying the Middle East -- specifically the Sunni monarchies of the Persian Gulf -- as a larger potential market for its energy firms and defense exporters, France stands to gain little from unilaterally opposing a U.S.-Iranian deal. Rather, France sought to shape the talks and regional reactions to the benefit of its domestic industries. Germany and the United Kingdom, the other EU powers present at the talks, are hoping to gain greater exposure for their energy firms and exports to Iran's large domestic consumer base. Germany in particular enjoyed one of the largest non-energy trade relationships with Iran before the most recent sanctions program took effect.
Regional Reverberations
The United States and the rest of the P-5+1 group are not the only ones attempting to reset their relationship with Iran. Ankara, though initially opposed to Iranian ambitions in Syria and competing for influence in Iraq, has pursued a warming of ties with Tehran over the past several months. Turkey is a rising regional power in its own right, but domestic infighting within Turkey’s ruling Justice and Development Party is coinciding with a slump in the national economy. Meanwhile, Ankara is struggling to find a peaceful, political solution to its Kurdish issue. Turkey faces an uphill challenge in moving beyond the ring of Iranian influence on its borders, but a potential normalization in relations between Washington and Iran provides some opportunities for Ankara, even at the risk of empowering Iran’s regional ambitions. The two countries face similar challenges from Kurdish separatism in the region, and the Iranian market and potential energy exports could help mitigate Turkey’s rising dependence on Russian energy exports and potentially boost its slowing economy.
For all its rhetoric opposing the deal, Israel has very little to worry about in the immediate term. It will have to adjust to operating in an environment where Iran is no longer limited by pariah status, but Iran remains unable to threaten Israel for the foreseeable future. Iran, constrained by its need to be a mainstream actor, will seek to rebuild its economy and will steer clear of any hawkish moves against Israel. Furthermore, Iran is more interested in gaining ground against the Arab states, which Israel can use to its advantage. The report about the Israeli security establishment seeing the deal as a positive development (in contradiction to the position of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's government) speaks volumes about the true extent of Israeli apprehension.
That leaves the Arab states, in particular Saudi Arabia and its Gulf allies, for whom a U.S.-Iranian rapprochement is a nightmare scenario. Riyadh and its neighboring monarchies are caught in the middle of the Arab Spring, which challenges them from within, and were long concerned with the rise of Iran. But now that their biggest ally has turned to normalizing ties with their biggest adversary, these countries find themselves bereft of good options with which to manage an Iran that will gain more from normalizing relations with the United States than it did with the American response to the 9/11 attacks.
Iran has played a large and visible role in bolstering the beleaguered Assad regime during the Syrian civil war. Iran's potential reset in relations will bring no easy or quick resolution to Damascus. The Syrian regime will still face the daunting task of having to rout the rebels and secure large swathes of Syrian territory, a difficult task even in the unlikely scenario of a precipitous drop in Sunni Arab backing for the rebels following a more comprehensive agreement between Tehran and the West. Indeed, the Syrian conflict, Iran's support of Hezbollah and the future of Iranian influence in Iraq will form the more contentious, difficult stages of U.S.-Iranian negotiations ahead.
The Saudis, domestically at a historic crossroads, are trying to assert an independent foreign policy, given the shift in American-Iranian ties. But they know that such a move offers limited dividends. Riyadh will try to make most of the fact that it is not in Washington’s interest to allow Tehran too free of a hand in the region.
Likewise, the Saudi kingdom will try to work with Turkey to counterbalance Iran. But, again, this is not a reliable tool, given that Turkish interests converge with those of Iran more than they do with Saudi Arabia’s. Quietly working with Israel is an option, but there are limits to that given the Arab-Israeli conflict and the fact that Iran can exploit any such relationship. In the end, the Saudis and the Arab states will have to adjust most to the reality in which American-Iranian hostility begins to wither.
Read more: Next Steps for the U.S.-Iran Deal | Stratfor
-
Israelis, Saudis and the Iranian Agreement
Geopolitical Weekly
Tuesday, November 26, 2013 - 04:04 Print Text Size
Stratfor
By George Friedman
A deal between Iran and the P-5+1 (the five permanent members of the U.N. Security Council plus Germany) was reached Saturday night. The Iranians agreed to certain limitations on their nuclear program while the P-5+1 agreed to remove certain economic sanctions. The next negotiation, scheduled for six months from now depending on both sides' adherence to the current agreement, will seek a more permanent resolution. The key players in this were the United States and Iran. The mere fact that the U.S. secretary of state would meet openly with the Iranian foreign minister would have been difficult to imagine a few months ago, and unthinkable at the beginning of the Islamic republic.
The U.S. goal is to eliminate Iran's nuclear weapons before they are built, without the United States having to take military action to eliminate them. While it is commonly assumed that the United States could eliminate the Iranian nuclear program at will with airstrikes, as with most military actions, doing so would be more difficult and riskier than it might appear at first glance. The United States in effect has now traded a risky and unpredictable air campaign for some controls over the Iranian nuclear program.
The Iranians' primary goal is regime preservation. While Tehran managed the Green Revolution in 2009 because the protesters lacked broad public support, Western sanctions have dramatically increased the economic pressure on Iran and have affected a wide swath of the Iranian public. It isn't clear that public unhappiness has reached a breaking point, but were the public to be facing years of economic dysfunction, the future would be unpredictable. The election of President Hassan Rouhani to replace Mahmoud Ahmadinejad after the latter's two terms was a sign of unhappiness. Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei clearly noted this, displaying a willingness to trade a nuclear program that had not yet produced a weapon for the elimination of some sanctions.
The logic here suggests a process leading to the elimination of all sanctions in exchange for the supervision of Iran's nuclear activities to prevent it from developing a weapon. Unless this is an Iranian trick to somehow buy time to complete a weapon and test it, I would think that the deal could be done in six months. An Iranian ploy to create cover for building a weapon would also demand a reliable missile and a launch pad invisible to surveillance satellites and the CIA, National Security Agency, Mossad, MI6 and other intelligence agencies. The Iranians would likely fail at this, triggering airstrikes however risky they might be and putting Iran back where it started economically. While this is a possibility, the scenario is not likely when analyzed closely.
While the unfolding deal involves the United States, Britain, France, China, Russia and Germany, two countries intensely oppose it: Israel and Saudi Arabia. Though not powers on the order of the P-5+1, they are still significant. There is a bit of irony in Israel and Saudi Arabia being allied on this issue, but only on the surface. Both have been intense enemies of Iran, and close allies of the United States; each sees this act as a betrayal of its relationship with Washington.
The View from Saudi Arabia
In a way, this marks a deeper shift in relations with Saudi Arabia than with Israel. Saudi Arabia has been under British and later American protection since its creation after World War I. Under the leadership of the Sauds, it became a critical player in the global system for a single reason: It was a massive producer of oil. It was also the protector of Mecca and Medina, two Muslim holy cities, giving the Saudis an added influence in the Islamic world on top of their extraordinary wealth.
It was in British and American interests to protect Saudi Arabia from its enemies, most of which were part of the Muslim world. The United States protected the Saudis from radical Arab socialists who threatened to overthrow the monarchies of the Arabian Peninsula. It later protected Saudi Arabia from Saddam Hussein after he invaded Kuwait. But it also protected Saudi Arabia from Iran.
Absent the United States in the Persian Gulf, Iran would have been the most powerful regional military power. In addition, the Saudis have a substantial Shiite minority concentrated in the country's oil-rich east. The Iranians, also Shia, had a potential affinity with them, and thereby the power to cause unrest in Saudi Arabia.
Until this agreement with Iran, the United States had an unhedged commitment to protect Saudi Arabia from the Iranians. Given the recent deal, and potential follow-on deals, this commitment becomes increasingly hedged. The problem from the Saudi point of view is that while there was a wide ideological gulf between the United States and Iran, there was little in the way of substantial issues separating Washington from Tehran. The United States did not want Iran to develop nuclear weapons. The Iranians didn't want the United States hindering Iran's economic development. The fact was that getting a nuclear weapon was not a fundamental Iranian interest, and crippling Iran's economy was not a fundamental interest to the United States absent an Iranian nuclear program.
If the United States and Iran can agree on this quid pro quo, the basic issues are settled. And there is something drawing them together. The Iranians want investment in their oil sector and other parts of their economy. American oil companies would love to invest in Iran, as would other U.S. businesses. As the core issue separating the two countries dissolves, and economic relations open up -- a step that almost by definition will form part of a final agreement -- mutual interests will appear.
There are other significant political issues that can't be publicly addressed. The United States wants Iran to temper its support for Hezbollah's militancy, and guarantee it will not support terrorism. The Iranians want guarantees that Iraq will not develop an anti-Iranian government, and that the United States will work to prevent this. (Iran's memories of its war with Iraq run deep.) The Iranians will also want American guarantees that Washington will not support anti-Iranian forces based in Iraq.
From the Saudi point of view, Iranian demands regarding Iraq will be of greatest concern. Agreements or not, it does not want a pro-Iranian Shiite state on its northern border. Riyadh has been funding Sunni fighters throughout the region against Shiite fighters in a proxy war with Iran. Any agreement by the Americans to respect Iranian interests in Iraq would represent a threat to Saudi Arabia.
The View from Israel
From the Israeli point of view, there are two threats from Iran. One is the nuclear program. The other is Iranian support not only for Hezbollah but also for Hamas and other groups in the region. Iran is far from Israel and poses no conventional military threat. The Israelis would be delighted if Iran gave up its nuclear program in some verifiable way, simply because they themselves have no reliable means to destroy that program militarily. What the Israelis don't want to see is the United States and Iran making deals on their side issues, especially the political ones that really matter to Israel.
The Israelis have more room to maneuver than the Saudis do. Israel can live with a pro-Iranian Iraq. The Saudis can't; from their point of view, it is only a matter of time before Iranian power starts to encroach on their sphere of influence. The Saudis can't live with an Iranian-supported Hezbollah. The Israelis can and have, but don't want to; the issue is less fundamental to the Israelis than Iraq is to the Saudis.
But in the end, this is not the problem that the Saudis and Israelis have. Their problem is that both depend on the United States for their national security. Neither country can permanently exist in a region filled with dangers without the United States as a guarantor. Israel needs access to American military equipment that it can't build itself, like fighter aircraft. Saudi Arabia needs to have American troops available as the ultimate guarantor of their security, as they were in 1990. Israel and Saudi Arabia have been the two countries with the greatest influence in Washington. As this agreement shows, that is no longer the case. Both together weren't strong enough to block this agreement. What frightens them the most about this agreement is that fact. If the foundation of their national security is the American commitment to them, then the inability to influence Washington is a threat to their national security.
There are no other guarantors available. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu went to Moscow, clearly trying to get the Russians to block the agreement. He failed. But even if he had succeeded, he would have alienated the United States, and would have gotten instead a patron incapable of supplying the type of equipment Israel might need when Israel might need it. The fact is that neither the Saudis nor the Israelis have a potential patron other than the United States.
U.S. Regional Policy
The United States is not abandoning either Israel or Saudi Arabia. A regional policy based solely on the Iranians would be irrational. What the United States wants to do is retain its relationship with Israel and Saudi Arabia, but on modified terms. The modification is that U.S. support will come in the context of a balance of power, particularly between Iran and Saudi Arabia. While the United States is prepared to support the Saudis in that context, it will not simply support them absolutely. The Saudis and Israelis will have to live with things that they have not had to live with before -- namely, an American concern for a reasonably strong and stable Iran regardless of its ideology.
The American strategy is built on experience in Iraq and Afghanistan. Washington has learned that it has interests in the region, but that the direct use of American force cannot achieve those goals, partly because imposing solutions takes more force than the United States has and partly because the more force it uses, the more resistance it generates. Therefore, the United States needs a means of minimizing its interests, and pursuing those it has without direct force.
With its interests being limited, the United States' strategy is a balance of power. The most natural balance of power is Sunni versus Shia, the Arabs against the Iranians. The goal is not war, but sufficient force on each side to paralyze the other. In that sense, a stable Iran and a more self-reliant Saudi Arabia are needed. Saudi Arabia is not abandoned, but nor is it the sole interest of the United States.
In the same sense, the United States is committed to the survival of Israel. If Iranian nuclear weapons are prevented, the United States has fulfilled that commitment, since there are no current threats that could conceivably threaten Israeli survival. Israel's other interests, such as building settlements in the West Bank, do not require American support. If the United States determines that they do not serve American interests (for example, because they radicalize the region and threaten the survival of Jordan), then the United States will force Israel to abandon the settlements by threatening to change its relationship with Israel. If the settlements do not threaten American interests, then they are Israel's problem.
Israel has outgrown its dependence on the United States. It is not clear that Israel is comfortable with its own maturation, but the United States has entered a new period where what America wants is a mature Israel that can pursue its interests without recourse to the United States. And if Israel finds it cannot have what it wants without American support, Israel may not get that support, unless Israel's survival is at stake.
In the same sense, the perpetual Saudi inability to create an armed force capable of effectively defending itself has led the United States to send troops on occasion -- and contractors always -- to deal with the problem. Under the new strategy, the expectation is that Saudi soldiers will fight Saudi Arabia's wars -- with American assistance as needed, but not as an alternative force.
With this opening to Iran, the United States will no longer be bound by its Israeli and Saudi relationships. They will not be abandoned, but the United States has broader interests than those relationships, and at the same time few interests that rise to the level of prompting it to directly involve U.S. troops. The Saudis will have to exert themselves to balance the Iranians, and Israel will have to wend its way in a world where it has no strategic threats, but only strategic problems, like everyone else has. It is not a world in which Israeli or Saudi rigidity can sustain itself.
Read more: Israelis, Saudis and the Iranian Agreement | Stratfor
-
What do we make of this piece?
-
Pollyannaish bullsh*t.
-
http://nationalreview.com/corner/364735/peace-our-time-victor-davis-hanson
-
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/12/04/world/middleeast/jihadist-groups-gain-in-turmoil-across-middle-east.html?nl=todaysheadlines&emc=edit_th_20131204&_r=0
-
"We've seen several red lines put forward by the president, which went along and became pinkish as time grew, and eventually ended up completely white."
PRINCE TURKI AL-FAISAL, the former intelligence chief of Saudi Arabia, accusing President Obama of indecision on issues in the Middle East.
Quoted in Pravda on the Hudson
ONACO—A leading Saudi prince demanded a place for his country at talks with Iran, assailing the Obama administration for working behind Riyadh's back and panning other recent U.S. steps in the Middle East.
Prince Turki al-Faisal, an Arab royal and a brother of Foreign Minister Saud al-Faisal, said Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states were stunned by the secret American-Iranian diplomacy that led to the breakthrough deal between Iran and other world powers last month.
Enlarge Image
His comments in an interview with The Wall Street Journal, rare in their bluntness, came on the sidelines of a security conference here at which he publicly blistered the U.S. for its role in Syria and in the region. The Arab royal said the failure by Washington and the United Nations to take decisive steps to end the violence in Syria—which has claimed over 130,000 lives—bordered on "criminal negligence."
Last week, the State Department said it had suspended nonlethal aid to the Syrian rebels after warehouses they controlled in northern Syria were overrun by Islamic militants with ties to al Qaeda. Saudi Arabia has armed some of those same rebels.
"The U.S. gave us the impression that they were going to do things in Syria that they finally didn't," Prince Turki said on the sidelines of the World Policy Conference in Monaco. "The aid they're giving to the Free Syrian Army is irrelevant. Now they say they're going to stop the aid: OK, stop it. It's not doing anything anyway."
Prince Turki also echoed concerns raised by Israel and members of the U.S. Congress that the interim nuclear accord with Iran didn't go far enough to ensure Tehran won't develop atomic bombs.
The talks with Iran that have been taking place in Geneva involve the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council plus Germany, a diplomatic bloc called the P5+1.
"It's important for us to sit down at the same table" as the global powers, Prince Turki said. "We have been absent."
Speaking on Sunday to European and Arab business leaders, he accused the White House of blindsiding Riyadh with its overtures to Iran, Saudi Arabia's primary adversary.
Saudi Arabia and other Sunni Gulf nations are supporting the Sunni-dominated rebels in Syria, while Shiite Iran is supporting Hezbollah in Lebanon and the Syrian regime of President Bashar al-Assad, which is dominated by Alawites, an offshoot of Shiite Islam.
"What was surprising was that the talks that were going forward were kept from us," he told the World Policy Conference. "How can you build trust when you keep secrets from what are supposed to be your closest allies?"
A senior administration official on Sunday declined to comment on the state of the U.S.-Saudi relationship. But the official confirmed that the White House didn't notify Saudi Arabia about the secret talks with Iran—which were initiated at high levels last March in Oman—until this fall "when things became substantive."
The official said the U.S. has since been regularly conferring with Riyadh on the state of the nuclear talks with Iran, which resulted in an interim agreement to curb Tehran's nuclear program. U.S. and European officials said there were no plans to widen the negotiations with Iran to involve Saudi Arabia and the other leading Gulf states, the United Arab Emirates and Qatar.
In regards to Syria, Secretary of State John Kerry defended U.S. policy there, saying on Sunday the Obama administration continues to work toward a diplomatic solution and to unify the opposition.
"We are committed to try to bring people together…and all try to work in the same direction, which is to get a political settlement in Syria," Mr. Kerry said on ABC's "This Week."
Prince Turki currently holds no position in the Saudi government. But his previous roles as Saudi intelligence chief and ambassador to Washington often place him as an unofficial spokesman for the kingdom's royal family and King Abdullah, according to Arab and American officials.
The 68-year-old was a college classmates of Bill Clinton's at Georgetown University and coordinated closely with the Central Intelligence Agency in arming and training the Afghan rebels fighting the Soviet Union in the 1980s.
The Iranian nuclear accord rattled the Middle East and the Arab states who are in a competition with Tehran for influence in countries like Syria, Iraq and Yemen. The deal is also under attack from Israel and leading members of Congress, who fear it doesn't do enough to dismantle Iran's nuclear infrastructure. Tehran says its program is purely for civilian purposes.
The Geneva agreement calls for Tehran to freeze for six months the most dangerous parts of its nuclear program, including the production of near weapons-grade fuel, in exchange for the easing of some Western sanctions. During that period, Tehran and the P5+1 will seek to forge a more comprehensive deal to end the nuclear threat.
The interim agreement has appeared fragile in recent days.
On Friday, Iranian diplomats abruptly walked out of talks in Vienna focused on implementing the Geneva accord after the Obama administration barred from international trade roughly a dozen Iranian companies that the U.S. said were violating sanctions on Iran's nuclear program.
Iran's government said the American designations violated the terms of the agreement, even though the U.S. said the companies were blacklisted under previously established laws.
The discord over the agreement could also be felt in Monaco, where Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif was supposed to join Prince Turki as a keynote speaker at the forum.
At the last moment, however, Mr. Zarif pulled out, citing his mother's ill health. Conference organizers believed Iran's displeasure over the new U.S. penalties were the reason for the Iranian foreign minister's absence.
Still, Mr. Zarif told CBS News on Sunday that the talks with the P5+1 would continue, despite the American sanctions.
In his place, Iran's ambassador to France said in Monaco that the actions taken by the U.S. would undercut the ability of Mr. Zarif and President Hasan Rouhani to make good on their pledges to improve relations with Washington and the West.
"We hope Congress and other interests in the U.S. won't throw a spanner in the works," said Ambassador Ali Ahani. "President Rouhani has promised the Iranian people prior to his election that he'd seriously try to settle the matter. If he's able to settle it, this will be a very positive point."
Prince Turki this weekend also reasserted his government's frustration with Mr. Obama's unwillingness to aggressively take steps to arm the Syrian rebels seeking to topple Mr. Assad or to follow through on proposed military strikes this summer against his regime.
The Arab royal stressed that relations between Washington and Riyadh have waxed and waned since diplomatic ties were formally established in the 1930s. But he said that the stark differences over Iran and Syria, as well as the stalemate over American-led efforts to create an independent Palestinian state, have left the Saudi-American alliance in a "process of evolution."
"Obviously…there are differences between us and the U.S.," Prince Turki said. 'We have a huge defense and security agreement with the United States, forestalling terrorist attacks. That's ongoing without any problems."
—Carol E. Lee in Washington contributed to this article.
-
second post
By Reva Bhalla
At the edge of empires lies Kurdistan, the land of the Kurds. The jagged landscape has long been the scene of imperial aggression. For centuries, Turks, Persians, Arabs, Russians and Europeans looked to the mountains to buffer their territorial prizes farther afield, depriving the local mountain dwellers a say in whose throne they would ultimately bow to.
The hot temperament of this borderland was evident in an exchange of letters between Ottoman Sultan Selim I and Safavid Shah Ismail I shortly before the rival Turkic and Persian empires came to blows at the 1514 Battle of Chaldiran in northern Kurdistan. The Ottoman sultan, brimming with confidence that his artillery-equipped janissaries would hold the technological advantage on the battlefield, elegantly denigrated his Persian foes:
Ask of the sun about the dazzle of my reign;
Inquire of Mars about the brilliance of my arms.
Although you wear a Sufi crown, I bear a trenchant sword,
And he who holds the sword will soon possess the crown.
Safavid Shah I, also writing in Turkish, poetically retorted:
Should one embrace the bride of worldly rule too close,
His lips will kiss those of the radiant sword ...
Bitter experience has taught that in this world of trial
, He who falls upon the house of 'Ali always falls.
The armies fought to the limits of their empires and, after a series of wars culminating in the Treaty of Zuhab of 1639, the Zagros Mountains came to define the borderland between the Ottomans and Persians, with the Kurds stuck in the middle.
A Rivalry Reborn
The Turkic-Persian competition is again being fought in Kurdistan, only this time, energy pipelines have taken the place of gilded cavalry. At a recent energy conference in the northern Iraqi Kurdish city of Arbil, I listened as hundreds of energy executives murmured excitedly in the audience as Ashti Hawrami, the minister of natural resources for Iraq's autonomous Kurdish region, declared in perfect, British-taught English that an oil pipeline connecting Kurdish oil fields to Turkey is complete, operational and will be pumping oil by the end of the year with or without Baghdad's consent. This, effectively, was as much a Kurdish declaration of independence as it was a Turkish-backed Kurdish declaration of war against Baghdad and its Persian sponsors.
Roughly 25 million Kurds occupy a region that stretches from the eastern Taurus Mountains in Turkey through the Jazira Plateau of northeastern Syria across the mountains and plateaus of southeastern Anatolia before dead-ending into the northern spine of the Zagros Mountains, which divide Iran and Iraq. This is a territory spread across four nations with bitter histories and a shared commitment to prevent Kurdish aspirations for independence from eroding their territorial integrity. For Syria, Iraq, Turkey and Iran, this restive buffer had to be preserved and contained, though it could also be exploited. The fratricidal tendencies of the Kurds, bred by their divisive mountainous home, gave the surrounding states a useful tool to undermine one another whenever the need arose.
As power changed from indigenous empires to colonial hands, from monarchs to Baathist tyrants, from hardcore secularists to Islamists, the Kurds remained too divided and weak to become masters of their own fate able to establish a sovereign Kurdish homeland. The Kurds themselves are divided and sequestered along geographical, tribal, linguistic, political and ideological lines across the four states they inhabit. But unique circumstances over the past decade enabled a politically coherent Iraqi Kurdistan to temporarily defy its own history and inch toward quasi-independence.
A String of Good Fortune
The chain of events began with the 2003 toppling of Saddam Hussein. His attempts to eradicate Iraq's Kurdish population through chemical attacks in the Anfal campaign of the late 1980s and other aggressions in the region eventually led to the creation of a U.S.-imposed no-fly zone in northern Iraq after the 1991 Gulf War. With the threat in Baghdad effectively neutralized and U.S. troops covering Mesopotamia, Iraq's Kurdish leadership put aside their differences to form the Kurdistan Regional Government, further solidifying the boundaries of the northern autonomous zone.
Ultimately, the United States was a strong but unreliable protector for the Kurds. When U.S. troops withdrew from Iraq, a nervous Kurdistan looked to energy firms as their next-best insurance policy. So long as Western energy firms were committed to making money in northern Iraq, their presence would give Arbil the leverage it needed to balance against a government in Baghdad, slowly re-strengthening under Shiite dominance and committed to keeping Kurdish oil revenues under its control.
But as tensions with Baghdad grew over the distribution of energy revenues, the Iraqi Kurds unexpectedly found a sponsor in Ankara. The moderate Islamist-rooted Justice and Development Party had effectively neutered the military's political influence in Turkey and was ready to experiment with a new strategy toward its Kurdish population. Instead of suppressing Kurdish autonomy with an iron fist, Ankara went from regarding Kurds as confused "mountain Turks" to recognizing Kurdish language and cultural rights and launching its most ambitious peace negotiation to date with the Kurdistan Workers' Party. This policy of engagement extended to Iraqi Kurdistan, where the Turkish government was earnestly eyeing Kurdish oil and natural gas to fuel Turkey's expensive energy appetite and loosen Russia's energy grip over Ankara.
At this point, Iran was too preoccupied to effectively balance against Turkey's deepening involvement in Iraqi Kurdistan. The Iranian regime was busy defending its allies in Syria and Lebanon while trying to manage a highly antagonistic relationship with the United States. Meanwhile, Baghdad had its hands full in trying to manage intra-Shiite rivalries and fending against a reinvigorated jihadist threat spurred by the U.S. withdrawal from Iraq and the Syrian civil war -- all while trying to prevent the Kurds from breaking out on their own.
A cooperative Ankara, a weak Damascus, a preoccupied Tehran, an overwhelmed Baghdad and a host of anxious investors formed the ingredients for an audacious pipeline project. It began furtively in 2012 as a natural gas pipeline designed to feed the domestic Kurdish market. When the pipeline quietly skirted past the power plant it was supposed to feed, underwent a conversion to transport oil and began heading northward to Turkey, the secret was out: Turkey and the Kurdistan Regional Government were working to circumvent Baghdad and independently export Kurdish energy.
As the pipeline construction progressed, Kurdish peshmerga forces continued spreading beyond formal Kurdistan Regional Government boundaries in disputed areas and held their ground against demoralized Iraqi army forces. And in the name of guarding against a real and persistent jihadist threat, Kurdish forces built deep, wide ditches around the city of Arbil and are now building one around the disputed oil-rich city of Kirkuk, marking the outer bounds of a slowly expanding Kurdish sphere of influence.
A Complicated Future
We have now arrived at the question of when, and not if, Kurdish oil will flow to Turkey without Baghdad's consent. The completion of the tie-in of the pipeline at a newly constructed pumping and metering station at Fishkhabor near the Turkish border, bypassing the station controlled by Iraqi federal authorities, marks the boldest foreign policy move that Turkey has made in a very long time.
Kurdistan Energy Projects
Click to Enlarge
Turkey has put itself in a position where it can receive 250,000 to 300,000 barrels per day of crude from Iraqi Kurdistan (potentially including crude that could later be pumped from the disputed Kirkuk field through the Khurmala Dome complex in Kurdish territory) at the Turkish border. From Fishkhabor, the crude will reconnect to a 40-inch pipe that runs parallel to a 46-inch pipe traveling westward to the Ceyhan port terminal. While the 46-inch pipe of the Kirkuk-Ceyhan pipeline in federal Iraqi territory is operating at just one-fifth of its capacity due to disrepair and frequent militant attacks, Turkey and the Kurdistan Regional Government are essentially appropriating the section of the 40-inch pipe lying in Turkish territory to complete their independent energy project.
Plans are quietly being discussed to build another parallel line on the Turkish side to Ceyhan to completely divorce the pipeline infrastructure from any claims by Baghdad. Even now, by Ankara and Arbil's design, Baghdad has no physical means of interrupting the oil flow through the new pipeline route. And while Baghdad can quietly try to facilitate, or at least turn a blind eye to, jihadist attacks in Iraqi Kurdistan in a bid to undermine investor confidence, Kurdish security and intelligence can still put up a formidable defense against threats from both jihadists and Iraqi national forces -- that is, at least until Baghdad develops its air force and regains the military bandwidth to refocus on the north.
The speed and cunning with which the pipeline was completed demand respect, even -- however reluctantly -- from an outraged Baghdad. At the same time, the geopolitical tectonic plates are shifting once again in this volatile region, promising to complicate the energy strategy engineered by Arbil and Ankara down the line.
Iran may have been too distracted to balance Turkey in Kurdish lands over the past decade, but the coming years will look different. Iran and the United States are both serious about reaching a strategic rapprochement in their long-hostile relationship. Though there will be obstacles along the way, the foundation for a U.S.-Iranian detente has been laid. Turkey is already starting to adapt to the shifting balance of power, struggling to reach an accommodation with Baghdad, Tehran and Washington over the thorny issue of how payments from this new export pipeline will be handled. For now, the United States is trying to avoid becoming entangled in this political morass, prioritizing its negotiation with Iran while publicly maintaining a "one Baghdad, one Iraq" policy. But with time, the United States will regain its ability to manage a balance of power between Shiite Iran and Sunni competitors such as Turkey and Saudi Arabia. The more U.S.-Iranian relations progress, the more time and attention Iran can give to strong-arming regional allies, like Baghdad, in the face of a deepening Turkish footprint in northern Iraq.
The age-old Turkic-Persian rivalry will reawaken in Kurdistan as Iran reinforces its Shiite allies in Baghdad to pressure the Kurds, using military operations in its own Kurdish region to justify cross-border interventions. Iran is also already starting to discuss energy exploration in the border region with Iraqi Kurdistan, asserting that if Arbil has a problem with such activities, it can take it up with Baghdad. But the sharpest tools Iran and its allies in Baghdad have to undermine Turkey's alliance with the Kurdistan Regional Government are the Kurds themselves.
The past decade of Kurdish unity between Massoud Barzani's Kurdistan Democratic Party and Jalal Talabani's Patriotic Union of Kurdistan is highly anomalous and arguably temporary. Iraq's Kurdish region has effectively been split between the Barzani and Talabani fiefs politically, militarily and economically, with the Kurdistan Democratic Party ruling the northern provinces of Dohuk and Arbil and the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan ruling Suleimaniyah to the south. Though the two parties have demonstrated the ability to suppress their rivalry in times of extreme stress or opportunity, the fault lines that intersect this fractious Kurdish landscape are still present. On the surface, the Kurdistan Democratic Party and Patriotic Union of Kurdistan have united their peshmerga forces into a single, unified ministry. In reality, the political lines dividing Peshmerga forces remain sharper than ever. Further complicating matters is the political rise of the Gorran movement, a faction that broke away from the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan now that the latter is suffering from a leadership vacuum. Though the Gorran can only claim votes at this point, it is only a matter of time before it, too, develops its own peshmerga forces, creating an even wider imbalance of power among Iraq's main Kurdish parties.
The cracks in the Kurdish landscape will be exploited the more competition grows between Turkey and Iran. One does not even have to reach far back in history to get a sense of just how deep Kurdish rivalries can run. The Kurdistan Democratic Party and Patriotic Union of Kurdistan were engaged in an all-out civil war from 1994 to 1996 that arose from a property dispute. More willing to turn to their regional adversary than compromise with their ethnic kin, the Kurdistan Democratic Party reached out to Ankara and even Saddam Hussein for assistance, while the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan took help from Iran. Those fault lines have tempered since the fall of Hussein, but the influx of oil money into an already highly corrupt and competitive leadership, a growing imbalance of power among the main Kurdish parties and a developing rivalry between regional forces Turkey and Iran will apply enormous stress on the Kurds' brittle union.
Sober Reminders
For now, Kurdish and Turkish officials and energy executives alike will brush these inconvenient warnings aside; their eyes will remain set on the hundreds of thousands of barrels of crude and billions of cubic meters of natural gas lying beneath Kurdistan's rocky surface. From their point of view, how could Baghdad refuse the commercial benefits of another viable export line out of Iraq? It's only a matter of time, they say, until Baghdad comes to the negotiating table on Ankara's and Arbil's terms and a win-win solution is achieved.
But matters of territorial integrity, financial sovereignty and nationalism are not easily trifled with at the intersection of empires. This is easy to forget when watching heavy concrete blocks being lifted by cranes over Arbil, a bubble of a city where two five-star hotels are filled with expats and Versace-clad locals who look like they belong in a "coming soon" promotion on the oil riches about to be bestowed on Iraqi Kurdistan.
Just a few miles from that glitzy scene is a crowded, smoke-filled cafeteria filled with women in head scarves, screaming children and a mix of men wearing business suits and the traditional Shal-u-Shepik style of baggy trousers with thick bands around the waist. Carts filled with tea in tulip-shaped glasses, warm sheets of flatbread, Kurdish kabob, hummus, cucumbers and radishes rattle noisily through a maze of long tables. Across from me, a young Kurdish man with bright eyes and an American flag on his phone fidgets in his seat. After a long pause, he says, "you know … we have a saying here. Kurdistan is a tree. After a long time, we grow tall, we become full of green leaves and then the tree shrivels and becomes bare. Right now, our leaves are green. Give it enough time. This tree won't die, but our leaves will fall to the ground again."
Editor's Note: Writing in George Friedman's stead this week is Reva Bhalla, vice president of Global Analysis.
Read more: Letter from Kurdistan | Stratfor
-
I suspect this to be bluster but interesting nonetheless:
Don’t count out the Israeli military. It has a record of pulling off daring, surprise strikes.
Uri Sadot
December 30 - January 6, 2014, Vol. 19, No. 16
As world powers debate what a comprehensive nuclear deal with Iran should look like, Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu continues to maintain that Israel is not bound by the interim agreement that the P5+1 and Iran struck in Geneva on November 24. Israel, says Netanyahu, “has the right and the obligation to defend itself.” One question then is whether Netanyahu actually intends to strike Iranian nuclear facilities. The other question, no less important, is whether Israel could really pull it off.
American analysts are divided on Israel’s ability to take effective military action. However, history shows that Israel’s military capabilities are typically underestimated. The Israel Defense Forces keep finding creative ways to deceive and cripple their targets by leveraging their qualitative advantages in manners that confound not only skeptical observers but also, and more important, Israel’s enemies.
Military triumphs like the Six-Day War of June 1967 and the 1976 raid on Entebbe that freed 101 hostages are popular Israeli lore for good reason—these “miraculous” victories were the result of assiduously planned, rehearsed, and well-executed military operations based on the elements of surprise, deception, and innovation, core tenets of Israeli military thinking. Inscribed on one of the walls of the IDF’s officer training academy is the verse from Proverbs 24:6: “For by clever deception thou shalt wage war.” And this has been the principle driving almost all of Israel’s most successful campaigns, like the 1981 bombing of Iraq’s nuclear reactor, the 1982 Beka’a Valley air battle, and the 2007 raid on Syria’s plutonium reactor, all of which were thought improbable, if not impossible, until Israel made them reality.
And yet in spite of Israel’s record, some American experts remain skeptical about Israel’s ability to do anything about Iran’s nuclear weapons facilities. Even the most optimistic assessments argue that Israel can only delay the inevitable. As a September 2012 report from the Center for Strategic and International Studies contends: “Israel does not have the capability to carry out preventive strikes that could do more than delay Iran’s efforts for a year or two.” An attack, it continued, “would be complex and high risk in the operational level and would lack any assurances of a high mission success rate.” Equally cautious is the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Martin Dempsey, who argued that while “Israel has the capability to strike Iran and to delay the production or the capability of Iran to achieve a nuclear weapons status,” such a strike would only delay the program “for a couple of years.” The most pessimistic American assessments contend that Israel is all but neutered. Former director of the CIA Michael Hayden, for instance, said that airstrikes capable of seriously setting back Iran’s nuclear program are beyond Israel’s capacity.
Part of the reason that Israeli and American assessments diverge is the difference in the two countries’ recent military histories and political cultures. While the American debate often touches on the limits of military power and its ability to secure U.S. interests around the globe, the Israeli debate is narrower, befitting the role of a regional actor rather than a superpower, and focuses solely on Israel’s ability to provide for the security of its citizens at home. That is to say, even if Israel and the United States saw Iran and its nuclear arms program in exactly the same light, there would still be a cultural gap. Accordingly, an accurate understanding of how Israelis see their own recent military history provides an important insight into how Israel’s elected leaders and military officials view the IDF’s abilities regarding Iran.
Any account of surprise and deception as key elements in Israeli military history has to start with the aerial attack that earned Israel total air supremacy over its adversaries in the June 1967 war. Facing the combined Arab armies, most prominently those of Egypt, Syria, and Jordan, Israel’s Air Force was outnumbered by a ratio of 3 planes to 1. Nonetheless, at the very outset of the war, the IAF dispatched its jets at a time when Egyptian pilots were known to be having breakfast. Israeli pilots targeted the enemy’s warplanes on their runways, and in two subsequent waves of sorties, destroyed the remainder of the Egyptian Air Force, as well as Jordan’s and most of Syria’s. Within six hours, over 400 Arab planes, virtually all of the enemy’s aircraft, were in flames, with Israel losing only 19 planes.
Israel’s sweeping military victory over the next six days was due to its intimate familiarity with its enemy’s operational routines—and to deception. For instance, just before the actual attack was launched, a squad of four Israeli training jets took off, with their radio signature mimicking the activity of multiple squadrons on a training run. Because all of Israel’s 190 planes were committed to the operation, those four planes were used to make the Egyptians believe that the IAF was simply training as usual. The IAF’s stunning success was the result not only of intelligence and piloting but also of initiative and creativity, ingredients that are nearly impossible to factor into standard predictive models.
The 1981 raid on Iraq’s nuclear reactor at Osirak is another example of Israel’s ability to pull off operations that others think it can’t. The success caught experts by surprise because every assessment calculated that the target was out of the flight range of Israel’s newly arrived F-16s. The former deputy chief of mission at the U.S. embassy in Israel Bill Brown recounted that on the day after the attack, “I went in with our defense attaché, Air Force Colonel Pete Hoag, to get a briefing from the chief of Israeli military intelligence. He laid out how they had accomplished this mission. . . . Hoag kept zeroing in on whether they had refueled the strike aircraft en route, because headquarters of the U.S. Air Force in Washington wanted to know, among other things, how in the world the Israelis had refueled these F-16s. The chief of Israeli military intelligence kept saying: ‘We didn’t refuel.’ For several weeks headquarters USAF refused to believe that the Israelis could accomplish this mission without refueling.”
Washington later learned that Israel’s success came from simple and creative field improvisations. First, the pilots topped off their fuel tanks on the tarmac, with burners running, only moments before takeoff. Then, en route, they jettisoned their nondetachable fuel drop tanks to reduce air friction and optimize gas usage. Both these innovations involved some degree of risk, as they contravened safety protocols. However, they gave the Israeli jets the extra mileage needed to safely reach Baghdad and return, and also to gain the element of surprise by extending their reach beyond what the tables and charts that guided thinking in Washington and elsewhere had assumed possible.
Surprise won Israel a similar advantage one year later in the opening maneuvers of the 1982 invasion of Lebanon. For students of aerial warfare, the Beka’a Valley air battle is perhaps Israel’s greatest military maneuver, even surpassing the June 1967 campaign. On June 9, Israel destroyed the entire Soviet-built Syrian aerial array in a matter of hours. Ninety Syrian MiGs were downed and 17 of 19 surface-to-air missile batteries were put out of commission, while the Israeli Air Force suffered no losses. The brutal—and for Israel, still controversial—nature of the Lebanon war of which this operation was part dimmed its shine in popular history, but the operation is still studied around the world. At the time it left analysts dumbfounded.
The 1982 air battle was the culmination of several years’ worth of tension on Israel’s northern border. Israel was concerned that Syria’s deployment of advanced aerial defense systems in Lebanon’s Beka’a Valley would limit its freedom to operate against PLO attacks from Lebanon. When Syria refused to pull back its defenses and U.S. mediation efforts failed, Israel planned for action. Although Israel was widely understood to enjoy a qualitative advantage, no one could have imagined the knockout blow it was about to deliver. Israel launched its aerial campaign on the fourth day of the offensive, commencing with a wave of unmanned proto-drones that served as decoys to trigger the Syrian radars. Rising to the bait, the aerial defense units launched rockets and thus exposed their locations to Israel’s artillery batteries and air-to-ground missiles. In parallel, Israel used advanced electronic jammers to further incapacitate Syrian radars, which cleared the path for the IAF’s fighter-bombers to attack the remaining missile launchers. When Syrian pilots scrambled for their planes, their communications had already been severed and their radars blinded. Israeli pilots later noted the “admirable bravery” of their Syrian counterparts, whom they downed at a ratio of 90 to 0.
A RAND report later concluded that Israel’s success was due not to its technological advantage. “The Syrians were simply outflown and outfought by vastly superior Israeli opponents. . . . The outcome would most likely have been heavily weighted in Israel’s favor even had the equipment available to each side been reversed. At bottom, the Syrians were . . . [defeated] by the IDF’s constant retention of the operational initiative and its clear advantages in leadership, organization, tactical adroitness, and adaptability.” In other words, Israel won because of its creative and skillful orchestration of a well-organized fighting force.
And then there is Israel’s most recent high-profile conflict with Syria. When Israeli intelligence discovered that Bashar al-Assad’s regime was building a plutonium reactor in the northeast Syrian Desert, Israeli and American leaders disagreed on the best course of action. Israel’s then-prime minister Ehud Olmert argued for a military solution, while the Bush administration feared the risks, demurred, and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice pushed to take the matter to the U.N. The Israelis, however, confident in their cyberwarfare capabilities, knew they could disable Syria’s air defenses. Moreover, as careful students of Syrian decision-making, they believed they could destroy the reactor without triggering a costly reaction from Assad. And on September 6, 2007, Israel once again overturned the expert predictions and assessments of others and successfully destroyed the Syrian reactor at Al Kibar.
With Iran, American and Israeli leaders once again disagree on what might be gained by a military strike. While the American debate is riddled with doubts about the efficacy of force, Israeli experts harbor far fewer doubts. As former chief of military intelligence Amos Yadlin asserts unequivocally: “It can be done.” There are some Israeli strategists less optimistic, but the nature of their dissent is fundamentally different from that of American skeptics. U.S. policymakers and analysts question Israel’s ability to strike, or how far even the most successful strike might set back Iran’s nuclear program, but Israelis largely believe they can take effective military action. The question for Israeli strategists is at what cost? A 2012 IAF impact evaluation report predicted 300 civilian casualties in the event of an Iranian retaliatory missile attack. Former defense minister Ehud Barak offered a higher number, contending that open conflict with Iran would claim less than 500 Israeli casualties. Responding to Barak’s relatively optimistic assessment, onetime Mossad director Meir Dagan argued instead that an attack on Iran would take a heavy toll in terms of loss of life and would paralyze life in Israel.
Regardless of the number of potential casualties, the frank discussion of what an attack on Iran might cost Israel in human lives is an essential part of preparing the country, and steeling it, for the possibility of war. Israel has also devoted material resources to the eventuality of a military campaign against the regime in Tehran. According to Ehud Olmert, Israel has spent over $10 billion on preparations for a potential showdown with Iran. “We’ve worked long and hard to prepare ourselves,” former IDF chief of staff Gabi Ashkenazi said recently. Israel, he added, “will be able to deal with the consequences of a military attack on Iran.”
The question of how exactly Israel might act to stop the Iranian nuclear program is an open one. In part, that’s because it’s hard to know how Israeli strategists see the problem or might reconfigure the working paradigm. The basic operational assumption is that Israel would attack from the air, but who knows? If the goal is to slow down Iran’s nuclear program, there are other ways to do it, perhaps by targeting Iran’s economy, its powergrid, its oil fields, or the regime itself. Or military action might not take the form of an aerial attack at all, but rather a commando heist of Iran’s uranium. Recall the raid on Entebbe: With commandos operating 2,000 miles from Israel’s borders disguised as a convoy carrying the Ugandan leader Idi Amin, that 1976 operation, like many of Israel’s air triumphs, combined strategic surprise with tactical deception.
What is certain, however—what many historical precedents make clear—is that it would be an error of the first order to dismiss Israel’s ability to take meaningful military action against Iran. Israel has left its enemies, as well as American policymakers and military experts, surprised in the past, and it may very well do so again.
Uri Sadot is a research associate at the Council on Foreign Relations and holds a master’s degree in international affairs from Princeton University.
http://www.weeklystandard.com/print/articles/raid-iran_771518.html
-
As I have stated here previously various times, I do not read, let alone cite Debka. However, 12 Tribes is doing so in this case AND the hypothesis is consistent with what Stratfor has been predicting for years, often to much disapproval around here:
http://www.israelvideonetwork.com/us-forms-military-partnership-with-iran-for-first-time?utm_source=MadMimi&utm_medium=email&utm_content=Israel+Breaking+News+Video%3A+US+Forms+Military+Partnership+with+Iran+for+First+Time&utm_campaign=20140105_m118592078_1%2F5%3A+Israel+Breaking+News+Video%3A+US+Forms+Military+Partnership+with+Iran+for+First+Time&utm_term=US+Forms+Military+Partnership+with+Iran+for+First+Time
-
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/07/world/middleeast/iran-offers-military-aid-but-not-troops-to-iraq.html?nl=todaysheadlines&emc=edit_th_20140107&_r=0
-
Iran has sign
Iran has signed a deal to sell Iraq $195 million worth of arms and ammunition, according to a report by Reuters, in a move that would violate a U.N. weapons embargo on Iran. Reuters said documents showed that Iraq signed eight arms contracts with Iranian state-owned companies in November, just weeks after Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki met with U.S. President Barack Obama requesting additional weapons to fight al Qaeda-linked militants. Maliki would neither confirm nor deny the reports, and the Iranian government denied any knowledge of an arms deal with Iraq. The United States said it is "seeking clarification" over the report, and State Department spokesperson Jen Psaki said "If true, this would raise serious concerns." A U.S. official said such a deal could complicate ongoing nuclear talks with Iran.
ed a deal to sell Iraq $195 million worth of arms and ammunition, according to a report by Reuters, in a move that would violate a U.N. weapons embargo on Iran. Reuters said documents showed that Iraq signed eight arms contracts with Iranian state-owned companies in November, just weeks after Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki met with U.S. President Barack Obama requesting additional weapons to fight al Qaeda-linked militants. Maliki would neither confirm nor deny the reports, and the Iranian government denied any knowledge of an arms deal with Iraq. The United States said it is "seeking clarification" over the report, and State Department spokesperson Jen Psaki said "If true, this would raise serious concerns." A U.S. official said such a deal could complicate ongoing nuclear talks with Iran.
-
Turkish fighter jets shot down a Syrian warplane Sunday after it breached Turkish airspace, according to Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan. Speaking at a campaign rally ahead of March 30 local elections, Erdogan congratulated the air force on its actions, saying, "If you violate our border, our slap will be hard." Syria condemned the strike as an act of "blatant aggression" saying the jet had been over Syrian territory targeting rebel fighters. According to Turkish sources, a control center detected two Syrian jets and warned them four times as they approached the Turkish border. The British-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said initial reports indicated that the plane caught fire and crashed in Syrian territory. Rebel fighters, from mainly Islamist factions, seized the small predominantly Armenian Christian town of Kasab Sunday in northwestern Syrian, near the Turkish border, as well as a border crossing. The advances have come as part of an offensive along the coastal region of Latakia province traditionally a stronghold of support for Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. Syria's state news agency and opposition activists reported that President Assad's cousin, Hilal al-Assad, head of the National Defense paramilitary forces in Latakia, was killed in the fighting.
-
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/26/world/middleeast/qaeda-militants-seek-syria-base-us-officials-say.html?emc=edit_th_20140326&nl=todaysheadlines&nlid=49641193&_r=0
-
http://www.lrb.co.uk/v36/n08/seymour-m-hersh/the-red-line-and-the-rat-line
The Red Line and the Rat Line
Seymour M. Hersh on Obama, Erdoğan and the Syrian rebels
You are invited to read this free essay from the London Review of Books. Subscribe now to access every article from every fortnightly issue of the London Review of Books, including the entire LRB archive of over 12,500 essays and reviews.
In 2011 Barack Obama led an allied military intervention in Libya without consulting the US Congress. Last August, after the sarin attack on the Damascus suburb of Ghouta, he was ready to launch an allied air strike, this time to punish the Syrian government for allegedly crossing the ‘red line’ he had set in 2012 on the use of chemical weapons.＊ Then with less than two days to go before the planned strike, he announced that he would seek congressional approval for the intervention. The strike was postponed as Congress prepared for hearings, and subsequently cancelled when Obama accepted Assad’s offer to relinquish his chemical arsenal in a deal brokered by Russia. Why did Obama delay and then relent on Syria when he was not shy about rushing into Libya? The answer lies in a clash between those in the administration who were committed to enforcing the red line, and military leaders who thought that going to war was both unjustified and potentially disastrous.
Obama’s change of mind had its origins at Porton Down, the defence laboratory in Wiltshire. British intelligence had obtained a sample of the sarin used in the 21 August attack and analysis demonstrated that the gas used didn’t match the batches known to exist in the Syrian army’s chemical weapons arsenal. The message that the case against Syria wouldn’t hold up was quickly relayed to the US joint chiefs of staff. The British report heightened doubts inside the Pentagon; the joint chiefs were already preparing to warn Obama that his plans for a far-reaching bomb and missile attack on Syria’s infrastructure could lead to a wider war in the Middle East. As a consequence the American officers delivered a last-minute caution to the president, which, in their view, eventually led to his cancelling the attack.
For months there had been acute concern among senior military leaders and the intelligence community about the role in the war of Syria’s neighbours, especially Turkey. Prime Minister Recep Erdoğan was known to be supporting the al-Nusra Front, a jihadist faction among the rebel opposition, as well as other Islamist rebel groups. ‘We knew there were some in the Turkish government,’ a former senior US intelligence official, who has access to current intelligence, told me, ‘who believed they could get Assad’s nuts in a vice by dabbling with a sarin attack inside Syria – and forcing Obama to make good on his red line threat.’
The joint chiefs also knew that the Obama administration’s public claims that only the Syrian army had access to sarin were wrong. The American and British intelligence communities had been aware since the spring of 2013 that some rebel units in Syria were developing chemical weapons. On 20 June analysts for the US Defense Intelligence Agency issued a highly classified five-page ‘talking points’ briefing for the DIA’s deputy director, David Shedd, which stated that al-Nusra maintained a sarin production cell: its programme, the paper said, was ‘the most advanced sarin plot since al-Qaida’s pre-9/11 effort’. (According to a Defense Department consultant, US intelligence has long known that al-Qaida experimented with chemical weapons, and has a video of one of its gas experiments with dogs.) The DIA paper went on: ‘Previous IC [intelligence community] focus had been almost entirely on Syrian CW [chemical weapons] stockpiles; now we see ANF attempting to make its own CW … Al-Nusrah Front’s relative freedom of operation within Syria leads us to assess the group’s CW aspirations will be difficult to disrupt in the future.’ The paper drew on classified intelligence from numerous agencies: ‘Turkey and Saudi-based chemical facilitators,’ it said, ‘were attempting to obtain sarin precursors in bulk, tens of kilograms, likely for the anticipated large scale production effort in Syria.’ (Asked about the DIA paper, a spokesperson for the director of national intelligence said: ‘No such paper was ever requested or produced by intelligence community analysts.’)
Last May, more than ten members of the al-Nusra Front were arrested in southern Turkey with what local police told the press were two kilograms of sarin. In a 130-page indictment the group was accused of attempting to purchase fuses, piping for the construction of mortars, and chemical precursors for sarin. Five of those arrested were freed after a brief detention. The others, including the ringleader, Haytham Qassab, for whom the prosecutor requested a prison sentence of 25 years, were released pending trial. In the meantime the Turkish press has been rife with speculation that the Erdoğan administration has been covering up the extent of its involvement with the rebels. In a news conference last summer, Aydin Sezgin, Turkey’s ambassador to Moscow, dismissed the arrests and claimed to reporters that the recovered ‘sarin’ was merely ‘anti-freeze’.
The DIA paper took the arrests as evidence that al-Nusra was expanding its access to chemical weapons. It said Qassab had ‘self-identified’ as a member of al-Nusra, and that he was directly connected to Abd-al-Ghani, the ‘ANF emir for military manufacturing’. Qassab and his associate Khalid Ousta worked with Halit Unalkaya, an employee of a Turkish firm called Zirve Export, who provided ‘price quotes for bulk quantities of sarin precursors’. Abd-al-Ghani’s plan was for two associates to ‘perfect a process for making sarin, then go to Syria to train others to begin large scale production at an unidentified lab in Syria’. The DIA paper said that one of his operatives had purchased a precursor on the ‘Baghdad chemical market’, which ‘has supported at least seven CW efforts since 2004’.
A series of chemical weapon attacks in March and April 2013 was investigated over the next few months by a special UN mission to Syria. A person with close knowledge of the UN’s activity in Syria told me that there was evidence linking the Syrian opposition to the first gas attack, on 19 March in Khan Al-Assal, a village near Aleppo. In its final report in December, the mission said that at least 19 civilians and one Syrian soldier were among the fatalities, along with scores of injured. It had no mandate to assign responsibility for the attack, but the person with knowledge of the UN’s activities said: ‘Investigators interviewed the people who were there, including the doctors who treated the victims. It was clear that the rebels used the gas. It did not come out in public because no one wanted to know.’
BIRMINGHAM CITY - MA MEDIA AND CREATIVE ENTERPRISE
In the months before the attacks began, a former senior Defense Department official told me, the DIA was circulating a daily classified report known as SYRUP on all intelligence related to the Syrian conflict, including material on chemical weapons. But in the spring, distribution of the part of the report concerning chemical weapons was severely curtailed on the orders of Denis McDonough, the White House chief of staff. ‘Something was in there that triggered a shit fit by McDonough,’ the former Defense Department official said. ‘One day it was a huge deal, and then, after the March and April sarin attacks’ – he snapped his fingers – ‘it’s no longer there.’ The decision to restrict distribution was made as the joint chiefs ordered intensive contingency planning for a possible ground invasion of Syria whose primary objective would be the elimination of chemical weapons.
The former intelligence official said that many in the US national security establishment had long been troubled by the president’s red line: ‘The joint chiefs asked the White House, “What does red line mean? How does that translate into military orders? Troops on the ground? Massive strike? Limited strike?” They tasked military intelligence to study how we could carry out the threat. They learned nothing more about the president’s reasoning.’
In the aftermath of the 21 August attack Obama ordered the Pentagon to draw up targets for bombing. Early in the process, the former intelligence official said, ‘the White House rejected 35 target sets provided by the joint chiefs of staff as being insufficiently “painful” to the Assad regime.’ The original targets included only military sites and nothing by way of civilian infrastructure. Under White House pressure, the US attack plan evolved into ‘a monster strike’: two wings of B-52 bombers were shifted to airbases close to Syria, and navy submarines and ships equipped with Tomahawk missiles were deployed. ‘Every day the target list was getting longer,’ the former intelligence official told me. ‘The Pentagon planners said we can’t use only Tomahawks to strike at Syria’s missile sites because their warheads are buried too far below ground, so the two B-52 air wings with two-thousand pound bombs were assigned to the mission. Then we’ll need standby search-and-rescue teams to recover downed pilots and drones for target selection. It became huge.’ The new target list was meant to ‘completely eradicate any military capabilities Assad had’, the former intelligence official said. The core targets included electric power grids, oil and gas depots, all known logistic and weapons depots, all known command and control facilities, and all known military and intelligence buildings.
Britain and France were both to play a part. On 29 August, the day Parliament voted against Cameron’s bid to join the intervention, the Guardian reported that he had already ordered six RAF Typhoon fighter jets to be deployed to Cyprus, and had volunteered a submarine capable of launching Tomahawk missiles. The French air force – a crucial player in the 2011 strikes on Libya – was deeply committed, according to an account in Le Nouvel Observateur; François Hollande had ordered several Rafale fighter-bombers to join the American assault. Their targets were reported to be in western Syria.
By the last days of August the president had given the Joint Chiefs a fixed deadline for the launch. ‘H hour was to begin no later than Monday morning [2 September], a massive assault to neutralise Assad,’ the former intelligence official said. So it was a surprise to many when during a speech in the White House Rose Garden on 31 August Obama said that the attack would be put on hold, and he would turn to Congress and put it to a vote.
At this stage, Obama’s premise – that only the Syrian army was capable of deploying sarin – was unravelling. Within a few days of the 21 August attack, the former intelligence official told me, Russian military intelligence operatives had recovered samples of the chemical agent from Ghouta. They analysed it and passed it on to British military intelligence; this was the material sent to Porton Down. (A spokesperson for Porton Down said: ‘Many of the samples analysed in the UK tested positive for the nerve agent sarin.’ MI6 said that it doesn’t comment on intelligence matters.)
The former intelligence official said the Russian who delivered the sample to the UK was ‘a good source – someone with access, knowledge and a record of being trustworthy’. After the first reported uses of chemical weapons in Syria last year, American and allied intelligence agencies ‘made an effort to find the answer as to what if anything, was used – and its source’, the former intelligence official said. ‘We use data exchanged as part of the Chemical Weapons Convention. The DIA’s baseline consisted of knowing the composition of each batch of Soviet-manufactured chemical weapons. But we didn’t know which batches the Assad government currently had in its arsenal. Within days of the Damascus incident we asked a source in the Syrian government to give us a list of the batches the government currently had. This is why we could confirm the difference so quickly.’
The process hadn’t worked as smoothly in the spring, the former intelligence official said, because the studies done by Western intelligence ‘were inconclusive as to the type of gas it was. The word “sarin” didn’t come up. There was a great deal of discussion about this, but since no one could conclude what gas it was, you could not say that Assad had crossed the president’s red line.’ By 21 August, the former intelligence official went on, ‘the Syrian opposition clearly had learned from this and announced that “sarin” from the Syrian army had been used, before any analysis could be made, and the press and White House jumped at it. Since it now was sarin, “It had to be Assad.”’
The UK defence staff who relayed the Porton Down findings to the joint chiefs were sending the Americans a message, the former intelligence official said: ‘We’re being set up here.’ (This account made sense of a terse message a senior official in the CIA sent in late August: ‘It was not the result of the current regime. UK & US know this.’) By then the attack was a few days away and American, British and French planes, ships and submarines were at the ready.
The officer ultimately responsible for the planning and execution of the attack was General Martin Dempsey, chairman of the joint chiefs. From the beginning of the crisis, the former intelligence official said, the joint chiefs had been sceptical of the administration’s argument that it had the facts to back up its belief in Assad’s guilt. They pressed the DIA and other agencies for more substantial evidence. ‘There was no way they thought Syria would use nerve gas at that stage, because Assad was winning the war,’ the former intelligence official said. Dempsey had irritated many in the Obama administration by repeatedly warning Congress over the summer of the danger of American military involvement in Syria. Last April, after an optimistic assessment of rebel progress by the secretary of state, John Kerry, in front of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, Dempsey told the Senate Armed Services Committee that ‘there’s a risk that this conflict has become stalemated.’
World Literature Series Masterclasses
Dempsey’s initial view after 21 August was that a US strike on Syria – under the assumption that the Assad government was responsible for the sarin attack – would be a military blunder, the former intelligence official said. The Porton Down report caused the joint chiefs to go to the president with a more serious worry: that the attack sought by the White House would be an unjustified act of aggression. It was the joint chiefs who led Obama to change course. The official White House explanation for the turnabout – the story the press corps told – was that the president, during a walk in the Rose Garden with Denis McDonough, his chief of staff, suddenly decided to seek approval for the strike from a bitterly divided Congress with which he’d been in conflict for years. The former Defense Department official told me that the White House provided a different explanation to members of the civilian leadership of the Pentagon: the bombing had been called off because there was intelligence ‘that the Middle East would go up in smoke’ if it was carried out.
The president’s decision to go to Congress was initially seen by senior aides in the White House, the former intelligence official said, as a replay of George W. Bush’s gambit in the autumn of 2002 before the invasion of Iraq: ‘When it became clear that there were no WMD in Iraq, Congress, which had endorsed the Iraqi war, and the White House both shared the blame and repeatedly cited faulty intelligence. If the current Congress were to vote to endorse the strike, the White House could again have it both ways – wallop Syria with a massive attack and validate the president’s red line commitment, while also being able to share the blame with Congress if it came out that the Syrian military wasn’t behind the attack.’ The turnabout came as a surprise even to the Democratic leadership in Congress. In September the Wall Street Journal reported that three days before his Rose Garden speech Obama had telephoned Nancy Pelosi, leader of the House Democrats, ‘to talk through the options’. She later told colleagues, according to the Journal, that she hadn’t asked the president to put the bombing to a congressional vote.
Obama’s move for congressional approval quickly became a dead end. ‘Congress was not going to let this go by,’ the former intelligence official said. ‘Congress made it known that, unlike the authorisation for the Iraq war, there would be substantive hearings.’ At this point, there was a sense of desperation in the White House, the former intelligence official said. ‘And so out comes Plan B. Call off the bombing strike and Assad would agree to unilaterally sign the chemical warfare treaty and agree to the destruction of all of chemical weapons under UN supervision.’ At a press conference in London on 9 September, Kerry was still talking about intervention: ‘The risk of not acting is greater than the risk of acting.’ But when a reporter asked if there was anything Assad could do to stop the bombing, Kerry said: ‘Sure. He could turn over every single bit of his chemical weapons to the international community in the next week … But he isn’t about to do it, and it can’t be done, obviously.’ As the New York Times reported the next day, the Russian-brokered deal that emerged shortly afterwards had first been discussed by Obama and Putin in the summer of 2012. Although the strike plans were shelved, the administration didn’t change its public assessment of the justification for going to war. ‘There is zero tolerance at that level for the existence of error,’ the former intelligence official said of the senior officials in the White House. ‘They could not afford to say: “We were wrong.”’ (The DNI spokesperson said: ‘The Assad regime, and only the Assad regime, could have been responsible for the chemical weapons attack that took place on 21 August.’)
*
The full extent of US co-operation with Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Qatar in assisting the rebel opposition in Syria has yet to come to light. The Obama administration has never publicly admitted to its role in creating what the CIA calls a ‘rat line’, a back channel highway into Syria. The rat line, authorised in early 2012, was used to funnel weapons and ammunition from Libya via southern Turkey and across the Syrian border to the opposition. Many of those in Syria who ultimately received the weapons were jihadists, some of them affiliated with al-Qaida. (The DNI spokesperson said: ‘The idea that the United States was providing weapons from Libya to anyone is false.’)
In January, the Senate Intelligence Committee released a report on the assault by a local militia in September 2012 on the American consulate and a nearby undercover CIA facility in Benghazi, which resulted in the death of the US ambassador, Christopher Stevens, and three others. The report’s criticism of the State Department for not providing adequate security at the consulate, and of the intelligence community for not alerting the US military to the presence of a CIA outpost in the area, received front-page coverage and revived animosities in Washington, with Republicans accusing Obama and Hillary Clinton of a cover-up. A highly classified annex to the report, not made public, described a secret agreement reached in early 2012 between the Obama and Erdoğan administrations. It pertained to the rat line. By the terms of the agreement, funding came from Turkey, as well as Saudi Arabia and Qatar; the CIA, with the support of MI6, was responsible for getting arms from Gaddafi’s arsenals into Syria. A number of front companies were set up in Libya, some under the cover of Australian entities. Retired American soldiers, who didn’t always know who was really employing them, were hired to manage procurement and shipping. The operation was run by David Petraeus, the CIA director who would soon resign when it became known he was having an affair with his biographer. (A spokesperson for Petraeus denied the operation ever took place.)
The operation had not been disclosed at the time it was set up to the congressional intelligence committees and the congressional leadership, as required by law since the 1970s. The involvement of MI6 enabled the CIA to evade the law by classifying the mission as a liaison operation. The former intelligence official explained that for years there has been a recognised exception in the law that permits the CIA not to report liaison activity to Congress, which would otherwise be owed a finding. (All proposed CIA covert operations must be described in a written document, known as a ‘finding’, submitted to the senior leadership of Congress for approval.) Distribution of the annex was limited to the staff aides who wrote the report and to the eight ranking members of Congress – the Democratic and Republican leaders of the House and Senate, and the Democratic and Republicans leaders on the House and Senate intelligence committees. This hardly constituted a genuine attempt at oversight: the eight leaders are not known to gather together to raise questions or discuss the secret information they receive.
The annex didn’t tell the whole story of what happened in Benghazi before the attack, nor did it explain why the American consulate was attacked. ‘The consulate’s only mission was to provide cover for the moving of arms,’ the former intelligence official, who has read the annex, said. ‘It had no real political role.’
Washington abruptly ended the CIA’s role in the transfer of arms from Libya after the attack on the consulate, but the rat line kept going. ‘The United States was no longer in control of what the Turks were relaying to the jihadists,’ the former intelligence official said. Within weeks, as many as forty portable surface-to-air missile launchers, commonly known as manpads, were in the hands of Syrian rebels. On 28 November 2012, Joby Warrick of the Washington Post reported that the previous day rebels near Aleppo had used what was almost certainly a manpad to shoot down a Syrian transport helicopter. ‘The Obama administration,’ Warrick wrote, ‘has steadfastly opposed arming Syrian opposition forces with such missiles, warning that the weapons could fall into the hands of terrorists and be used to shoot down commercial aircraft.’ Two Middle Eastern intelligence officials fingered Qatar as the source, and a former US intelligence analyst speculated that the manpads could have been obtained from Syrian military outposts overrun by the rebels. There was no indication that the rebels’ possession of manpads was likely the unintended consequence of a covert US programme that was no longer under US control.
Contemporary Ceramics Centre
By the end of 2012, it was believed throughout the American intelligence community that the rebels were losing the war. ‘Erdoğan was pissed,’ the former intelligence official said, ‘and felt he was left hanging on the vine. It was his money and the cut-off was seen as a betrayal.’ In spring 2013 US intelligence learned that the Turkish government – through elements of the MIT, its national intelligence agency, and the Gendarmerie, a militarised law-enforcement organisation – was working directly with al-Nusra and its allies to develop a chemical warfare capability. ‘The MIT was running the political liaison with the rebels, and the Gendarmerie handled military logistics, on-the-scene advice and training – including training in chemical warfare,’ the former intelligence official said. ‘Stepping up Turkey’s role in spring 2013 was seen as the key to its problems there. Erdoğan knew that if he stopped his support of the jihadists it would be all over. The Saudis could not support the war because of logistics – the distances involved and the difficulty of moving weapons and supplies. Erdoğan’s hope was to instigate an event that would force the US to cross the red line. But Obama didn’t respond in March and April.’
There was no public sign of discord when Erdoğan and Obama met on 16 May 2013 at the White House. At a later press conference Obama said that they had agreed that Assad ‘needs to go’. Asked whether he thought Syria had crossed the red line, Obama acknowledged that there was evidence such weapons had been used, but added, ‘it is important for us to make sure that we’re able to get more specific information about what exactly is happening there.’ The red line was still intact.
An American foreign policy expert who speaks regularly with officials in Washington and Ankara told me about a working dinner Obama held for Erdoğan during his May visit. The meal was dominated by the Turks’ insistence that Syria had crossed the red line and their complaints that Obama was reluctant to do anything about it. Obama was accompanied by John Kerry and Tom Donilon, the national security adviser who would soon leave the job. Erdoğan was joined by Ahmet Davutoğlu, Turkey’s foreign minister, and Hakan Fidan, the head of the MIT. Fidan is known to be fiercely loyal to Erdoğan, and has been seen as a consistent backer of the radical rebel opposition in Syria.
The foreign policy expert told me that the account he heard originated with Donilon. (It was later corroborated by a former US official, who learned of it from a senior Turkish diplomat.) According to the expert, Erdoğan had sought the meeting to demonstrate to Obama that the red line had been crossed, and had brought Fidan along to state the case. When Erdoğan tried to draw Fidan into the conversation, and Fidan began speaking, Obama cut him off and said: ‘We know.’ Erdoğan tried to bring Fidan in a second time, and Obama again cut him off and said: ‘We know.’ At that point, an exasperated Erdoğan said, ‘But your red line has been crossed!’ and, the expert told me, ‘Donilon said Erdoğan “fucking waved his finger at the president inside the White House”.’ Obama then pointed at Fidan and said: ‘We know what you’re doing with the radicals in Syria.’ (Donilon, who joined the Council on Foreign Relations last July, didn’t respond to questions about this story. The Turkish Foreign Ministry didn’t respond to questions about the dinner. A spokesperson for the National Security Council confirmed that the dinner took place and provided a photograph showing Obama, Kerry, Donilon, Erdoğan, Fidan and Davutoğlu sitting at a table. ‘Beyond that,’ she said, ‘I’m not going to read out the details of their discussions.’)
But Erdoğan did not leave empty handed. Obama was still permitting Turkey to continue to exploit a loophole in a presidential executive order prohibiting the export of gold to Iran, part of the US sanctions regime against the country. In March 2012, responding to sanctions of Iranian banks by the EU, the SWIFT electronic payment system, which facilitates cross-border payments, expelled dozens of Iranian financial institutions, severely restricting the country’s ability to conduct international trade. The US followed with the executive order in July, but left what came to be known as a ‘golden loophole’: gold shipments to private Iranian entities could continue. Turkey is a major purchaser of Iranian oil and gas, and it took advantage of the loophole by depositing its energy payments in Turkish lira in an Iranian account in Turkey; these funds were then used to purchase Turkish gold for export to confederates in Iran. Gold to the value of $13 billion reportedly entered Iran in this way between March 2012 and July 2013.
The programme quickly became a cash cow for corrupt politicians and traders in Turkey, Iran and the United Arab Emirates. ‘The middlemen did what they always do,’ the former intelligence official said. ‘Take 15 per cent. The CIA had estimated that there was as much as two billion dollars in skim. Gold and Turkish lira were sticking to fingers.’ The illicit skimming flared into a public ‘gas for gold’ scandal in Turkey in December, and resulted in charges against two dozen people, including prominent businessmen and relatives of government officials, as well as the resignations of three ministers, one of whom called for Erdoğan to resign. The chief executive of a Turkish state-controlled bank that was in the middle of the scandal insisted that more than $4.5 million in cash found by police in shoeboxes during a search of his home was for charitable donations.
Late last year Jonathan Schanzer and Mark Dubowitz reported in Foreign Policy that the Obama administration closed the golden loophole in January 2013, but ‘lobbied to make sure the legislation … did not take effect for six months’. They speculated that the administration wanted to use the delay as an incentive to bring Iran to the bargaining table over its nuclear programme, or to placate its Turkish ally in the Syrian civil war. The delay permitted Iran to ‘accrue billions of dollars more in gold, further undermining the sanctions regime’.
*
The American decision to end CIA support of the weapons shipments into Syria left Erdoğan exposed politically and militarily. ‘One of the issues at that May summit was the fact that Turkey is the only avenue to supply the rebels in Syria,’ the former intelligence official said. ‘It can’t come through Jordan because the terrain in the south is wide open and the Syrians are all over it. And it can’t come through the valleys and hills of Lebanon – you can’t be sure who you’d meet on the other side.’ Without US military support for the rebels, the former intelligence official said, ‘Erdoğan’s dream of having a client state in Syria is evaporating and he thinks we’re the reason why. When Syria wins the war, he knows the rebels are just as likely to turn on him – where else can they go? So now he will have thousands of radicals in his backyard.’
Subscribe to the London Review of Books
A US intelligence consultant told me that a few weeks before 21 August he saw a highly classified briefing prepared for Dempsey and the defense secretary, Chuck Hagel, which described ‘the acute anxiety’ of the Erdoğan administration about the rebels’ dwindling prospects. The analysis warned that the Turkish leadership had expressed ‘the need to do something that would precipitate a US military response’. By late summer, the Syrian army still had the advantage over the rebels, the former intelligence official said, and only American air power could turn the tide. In the autumn, the former intelligence official went on, the US intelligence analysts who kept working on the events of 21 August ‘sensed that Syria had not done the gas attack. But the 500 pound gorilla was, how did it happen? The immediate suspect was the Turks, because they had all the pieces to make it happen.’
As intercepts and other data related to the 21 August attacks were gathered, the intelligence community saw evidence to support its suspicions. ‘We now know it was a covert action planned by Erdoğan’s people to push Obama over the red line,’ the former intelligence official said. ‘They had to escalate to a gas attack in or near Damascus when the UN inspectors’ – who arrived in Damascus on 18 August to investigate the earlier use of gas – ‘were there. The deal was to do something spectacular. Our senior military officers have been told by the DIA and other intelligence assets that the sarin was supplied through Turkey – that it could only have gotten there with Turkish support. The Turks also provided the training in producing the sarin and handling it.’ Much of the support for that assessment came from the Turks themselves, via intercepted conversations in the immediate aftermath of the attack. ‘Principal evidence came from the Turkish post-attack joy and back-slapping in numerous intercepts. Operations are always so super-secret in the planning but that all flies out the window when it comes to crowing afterwards. There is no greater vulnerability than in the perpetrators claiming credit for success.’ Erdoğan’s problems in Syria would soon be over: ‘Off goes the gas and Obama will say red line and America is going to attack Syria, or at least that was the idea. But it did not work out that way.’
The post-attack intelligence on Turkey did not make its way to the White House. ‘Nobody wants to talk about all this,’ the former intelligence official told me. ‘There is great reluctance to contradict the president, although no all-source intelligence community analysis supported his leap to convict. There has not been one single piece of additional evidence of Syrian involvement in the sarin attack produced by the White House since the bombing raid was called off. My government can’t say anything because we have acted so irresponsibly. And since we blamed Assad, we can’t go back and blame Erdoğan.’
Turkey’s willingness to manipulate events in Syria to its own purposes seemed to be demonstrated late last month, a few days before a round of local elections, when a recording, allegedly of a government national security meeting, was posted to YouTube. It included discussion of a false-flag operation that would justify an incursion by the Turkish military in Syria. The operation centred on the tomb of Suleyman Shah, the grandfather of the revered Osman I, founder of the Ottoman Empire, which is near Aleppo and was ceded to Turkey in 1921, when Syria was under French rule. One of the Islamist rebel factions was threatening to destroy the tomb as a site of idolatry, and the Erdoğan administration was publicly threatening retaliation if harm came to it. According to a Reuters report of the leaked conversation, a voice alleged to be Fidan’s spoke of creating a provocation: ‘Now look, my commander, if there is to be justification, the justification is I send four men to the other side. I get them to fire eight missiles into empty land [in the vicinity of the tomb]. That’s not a problem. Justification can be created.’ The Turkish government acknowledged that there had been a national security meeting about threats emanating from Syria, but said the recording had been manipulated. The government subsequently blocked public access to YouTube.
Barring a major change in policy by Obama, Turkey’s meddling in the Syrian civil war is likely to go on. ‘I asked my colleagues if there was any way to stop Erdoğan’s continued support for the rebels, especially now that it’s going so wrong,’ the former intelligence official told me. ‘The answer was: “We’re screwed.” We could go public if it was somebody other than Erdoğan, but Turkey is a special case. They’re a Nato ally. The Turks don’t trust the West. They can’t live with us if we take any active role against Turkish interests. If we went public with what we know about Erdoğan’s role with the gas, it’d be disastrous. The Turks would say: “We hate you for telling us what we can and can’t do.”’
4 April
-
Gulf States Consider Starting an 'Arab NATO'
Analysis
May 2, 2014 | 0405 Print Text Size
Gulf States Consider Starting An 'Arab NATO'
Tanks participate in a joint Gulf Cooperation Council military exercise north of Kuwait City. (YASSER AL-ZAYYAT/AFP/Getty Images)
Summary
In recent months, reports have circulated suggesting that the Gulf Cooperation Council, led by Saudi Arabia, wants to form an "Arab NATO" of sorts by establishing an expanded military alliance, principally between itself and the Arab kingdoms of Morocco and Jordan. With Iran and its allies ascendant and the United States pulling back its involvement in the region, there is no shortage of reasons for the Arab states to want to build out their military capabilities through an alliance. However, the widely varying interests of the individual states will make it difficult if not impossible for any potential defensive bloc to take collective action even if it is eventually formed.
Analysis
The Gulf monarchies have good cause to seek the added security of a defensive alliance. Since the Arab Spring began in 2011, the Arab world has become increasingly unstable, all at a time of perceived U.S. disengagement. The Syrian civil war, the ongoing violence in Iraq and the chaos of Yemen are making the GCC countries uneasy. And Iran, despite the limitations of its largely obsolete military equipment, remains a potent threat, especially given its asymmetrical capabilities and tools, including its ability to mine the Strait of Hormuz and its ballistic missile arsenal that could strike GCC energy infrastructure in the Gulf.
The GCC, and especially Saudi Arabia, is also alarmed by the ongoing negotiations between the United States and Iran over Tehran's nuclear program and the larger strategic situation in the region. Concerned that its ultimate security guarantor, the United States, may not be as dependable as before, Saudi Arabia is all the more keen to assemble its own strengthened military alliance.
Potential Middle East Security Alliance
Click to Enlarge
According to the reports, the proposal was presented to Morocco and Jordan in late March and is still under consideration. It would establish the alliance under a joint command initially headed by Saudi Prince Mutaib bin Abdullah, currently the head of the Saudi National Guard. A strengthened military alliance would assuage some of the concerns related to the aforementioned conflicts. An alliance under a joint command in theory would also greatly improve the flow and exchange of intelligence and information, allowing the GCC and other Arab countries joining the new alliance to better coordinate their response to an increased flow of jihadists in the region, particularly due to the draw of the Syrian civil war. Furthermore, as occurred with the 2011 deployment to Bahrain of the Peninsula Shield Force, the GCC's current military force, an expanded and strengthened alliance could be used to clamp down on outbreaks of internal dissent and safeguard the authoritarian rule of many of these royal families.
The GCC, under encouragement from the United States, is already seeking to improve interoperability and reduce procurement redundancy. This endeavor is matched by an attempt at overhauling the limited Peninsula Shield Force. The overhaul would first seek to expand the GCC's combined military force by more than doubling it to 100,000 troops. Arguably even more important, it would place the troops under a joint command and control system.
The expansion of the alliance to include Morocco and Jordan would serve as a major boost to the limited manpower available to the GCC. In return for their participation, Morocco and Jordan would likely be offered much-needed financial assistance from the richer Gulf countries. In 2012, the GCC presented Morocco and Jordan with a $5 billion financial aid package, and such aid can be expected to continue and perhaps even increase if Rabat and Amman join in a closer military alliance with the GCC.
Despite the considerable benefits of a strengthened and expanded Arab military alliance, significant systemic constraints exist that will seriously hamper such an effort. First, there are considerable political differences within the GCC itself, with Qatar especially at odds with Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates over Doha's support for the Muslim Brotherhood movement, which the Saudis and the Emirates perceive as a serious potential domestic threat.
Additionally, not all of these countries believe Iran to be as much of a threat as Saudis Arabia does. For instance, Oman maintains rather cordial ties with Tehran. The internal squabbling and differences in outlook can also be readily seen in the disagreement about whether Egypt should be invited to join the alliance; the GCC member countries disagree over which factions in Egypt they support. Especially worrisome is the inability of these countries to even agree on a joint effort in a country where they largely agree on the desired outcome, namely Syria. All of the GCC countries involved in Syria continue to support their own favored factions, who have a tendency to turn their guns on rival factions supported by different GCC members, undermining what could be a combined effort at ousting Syrian President Bashar al Assad's regime.
Bringing in Jordan and Morocco would not do much to enhance a common position. Jordan, for example, remains extremely wary of the effort to oust al Assad. Amman has sought to play a much more balanced role in supporting the rebels, fearing the spillover effects from a power vacuum in its northern neighbor. And despite Morocco's keen desire to maintain close ties with the GCC, which it has often demonstrated through its political and diplomatic support for Saudi Arabia, it would be much more reluctant to contribute militarily to Riyadh's regional ambitions. Even Morocco's military contribution in the Gulf War, in direct defense of Saudi territory, was controversial among the Moroccan public. Finally, bringing in Morocco and Jordan, with their disparate force compositions and equipment, would further complicate the effort underway to develop a joint fighting doctrine that includes interoperable equipment and communications.
There is certainly momentum toward increased military cooperation within the GCC, which could extend to including Jordan and Morocco in the bloc's activities. The significant existing tensions and differences in outlook, however, will prevent these countries from forming a truly effective Arab version of NATO.
Read more: Gulf States Consider Starting an 'Arab NATO' | Stratfor
Follow us: @stratfor on Twitter | Stratfor on Facebook
-
Lebanon's Hizbollah Turns Eastward to Syria' (International Crisis Group)
"In the longer term however, Hizbollah's involvement in Syria threatens the movement and is problematic for Lebanon and the Arab world more broadly. It has deepened the regional sectarian divide, fuelled the very extremism it purports to combat and eroded the movement's legitimacy among constituencies that previously were supportive. By framing its fight as a preemptive attack on takfiris - those who declare other Muslims to be apostates - Hizbollah has tarred all shades of the opposition, and indeed sometimes all Sunnis, with the same radicalising brush. It has exaggerated, and thereby exacerbated, the sectarianism of the Syrian opposition as well as its own domestic opponents. Once widely respected across the political and confessional spectrum, Hizbollah (literally 'The Party of God') now often is referred to as 'The Party of Satan'. The warm popular embrace that for the movement was tantamount to strategic depth has diminished, along with its reputation for moral probity. Ironically, shoring up its eastern front has made Hizbollah more vulnerable."
'Middle East: Three nations, one conflict' (Borzou Daragahi, Financial Times)
"Lebanese and Iraqi Shia militiamen take up arms in Syrian towns and cities. Syrian insurgents set off bombs in southern Beirut. Sunni fighters flow from Syria to Iraq, where they battle government troops on the outskirts of Baghdad, while Lebanese and Palestinian Sunnis in Lebanon fight in the Syrian city of Homs. Governments in Baghdad and Beirut, backed by their patron in Tehran, look the other way - or sometimes help - as arms and fighters make their way into Syria for battles from Aleppo to Damascus to Deraa.
This is more than just the 'spillover' from the Syria conflict analysts warned about when the uprising against Bashar al-Assad began in 2011. The various conflicts in Syria, Iraq and Lebanon are increasingly merging into one war stretching from the Zagros Mountains to the Mediterranean Sea in what the writer Rami Khoury calls 'a single operational arena in terms of the ease of movement of fighters and weapons.'"
-
OK, what do we do now?
Some variables and questions at play here (and by no means a complete or coherent list)
a) A radical caliphate is forming before our eyes. If/when the Caliphate establishes, does it not become the base of operations that we went to Afpakia to deny AQ? Will not many jihadis with Euro passports, seasoned in Syria (and now Iraq) turn to action in Europe? And, are there not some jihadis in Syria/Iraq with American passports?
What are the implications of it being a serious base of operations against the US and Europe? Does Europe have the spine? Or will it trade "Jews for Oil" and become complicit in the effort to destroy Israel as it surrenders its will to defend its values? And in a similar vein, what of America's relation with Israel? Will those in defense of Euro values turn fascist? and to Putin?
b) If we do nothing, Shia Iraq will turn to Shia Iran and Shia Iran will help. Is this a bad thing? Maybe we just let them get back to killing each other as they did in the Iraq-Iran War between Saddam and the Mad Mullahs of Iran? Indeed, do we, as Stratfor has suggested from time to time, actually strike some sort of a deal with Iran? Did not Iran offer a deal in the aftermath of 911 as we took on the Sunni Taliban in Afpakia? Can restraining Iran's nuke program be part of this deal? Can restraining Hezbollah in Lebanon in its relations with Israel be part of the deal?
c) If we help Maliki, then are we simply doing Iran's work for it in the great Shia-Sunni struggle?
d) What of the Kurds? Seems plausible they will want to go for nationhood , , , My understanding is that the US has relatively good reputation with the Kurds-- is there something to build upon this? What will Turkey make of Kurdish independence efforts? US support for the Kurds? http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2014/06/12/revenge_of_the_kurds?utm_source=Sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_term=Flashpoints&utm_campaign=Flashpoints%20June%2012 Can Iraq survive as such at all? Or are we looking at a Kurdistan, a Sunni caliphate, and a Shia protectorate of Iran?
e) Speaking of Turkey, what are its interests and likely behaviors here?
f) What implications for our relations with Egypt? Perhaps we need to get on board with the military government?
g) If we side with the Shias, what is left of our relation with the Saudis? Do they buy nukes from Pakistan? Will they be going down that road anyway?
h) Are the whackos of ISIS really capable of running a country? If they achieve power and then have to actually do the work of governing will they simply not be up to the task? Will their extremism turn people off and against them?
i) With our military being dramatically downsized, if we apply our declining bandwidth to the mid-east, what implications for China and the South China Sea?
So, what do we do now?
1) The American people correctly have no trust in the competence of our government in general and Baraq in particular. There is no support for action.
2) Are the American people willing to consider/support undoing cuts in military spending already in the pipeline or even consider/support increases?
3) Bombing now to break ISIS's momentum?
4) Gen. Keane (retired four star, frequent commentator on FOX, he has my respect) thinks RIGHT NOW we should send Petraeus to Baghdad to size things up and to help Maliki develop a coherent plan of action.
3) Or?
-
Let it burn.
-
What do you think will follow if we take that course of action?
Jim Geraghty
June 13, 2014
Happy Friday the 13th!
Some Big Questions to Consider on Iraq
First, the obvious: Is ISIS bad for our interests? Does anyone want to dispute this?
The Islamic State in Iraq and Syria has thrived and mutated during the ongoing civil war in Syria and in the security vacuum that followed the departure of the last American forces from Iraq.
The aim of ISIS is to create an Islamic state across Sunni areas of Iraq and in Syria . . .
It wants to establish an Islamic caliphate, or state, stretching across the region.
ISIS has begun imposing Sharia law in the towns it controls. Boys and girls must be separated at school; women must wear the niqab or full veil in public. Sharia courts often dispense brutal justice, music is banned and the fast is enforced during Ramadan.
Sharia law covers both religious and non-religious aspects of life.
Some may point to their dispute with al-Qaeda . . .
The stories, the videos, the acts of unfathomable brutality have become a defining aspect of ISIS, which controls a nation-size tract of land and has now pushed Iraq to the precipice of dissolution. Its adherents kill with such abandon that even the leader of al-Qaeda has disavowed them. "Clearly, [leader Ayman] al-Zawahiri believes that ISIS is a liability to the al-Qaeda brand," Aaron Zelin, who analyzes jihadist movements for the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, told The Washington Post's Liz Sly earlier this year . . .
But a dispute with al-Qaeda does not indicate they're any less dangerous or ruthless:
But in terms of impact, the acts of terror have been wildly successful. From beheadings to summary executions to amputations to crucifixions, the terrorist group has become the most feared organization in the Middle East. That fear, evidenced in fleeing Iraqi soldiers and 500,000 Mosul residents, has played a vital role in the group's march toward Baghdad. In many cases, police and soldiers literally ran, shedding their uniforms as they went, abandoning large caches of weapons.
Two: Is the preservation of the existing government in Iraq in the U.S. interest?
It's understandable if Americans feel no particular affection for Nouri al-Maliki . . .
The stunning gains this week by Iraq's Sunni insurgents carry a crucial political message: Nouri al-Maliki, the Shiite prime minister of Iraq, is a polarizing sectarian politician who has lost the confidence of his army and nation. He cannot put a splintered Iraq together again, no matter how many weapons the Obama administration sends him.
Maliki's failure has been increasingly obvious since the elections of 2010, when the Iraqi people in their wisdom elected a broader, less-sectarian coalition. But the Obama administration, bizarrely working in tandem with Iran, brokered a deal that allowed Maliki to continue and has worked with him as an ally against al-Qaeda. Maliki's coalition triumphed in April's elections, but the balloting was boycotted by Sunnis.
. . . and it's understandable if Americans see this as similar to Syria — an Iranian-backed leader stuck in a bloody fight with Islamist extremists:
In the worst case, if Mr. Maliki were driven from power, the shrines were threatened and radical Sunni insurgents were killing Shiite civilians, Iran would more than likely be compelled to intervene, say experts close to Iran's leadership.
"They are our ally and we will help them," said Hamid Taraghi, a political analyst who is close to the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. But exactly how Iran would do so is unclear.
But we do have interests in keeping the country stable:
Iraq is a major oil-producing country that shares borders with Iran and Syria. The United States has a large embassy in Iraq, and the country has attracted sizable foreign investment. "We're committed to this country," [James Jeffrey, a former U.S. ambassador to Iraq], said. "Its stability is important." Growing chaos in Iraq would lead to a spike in oil prices and would likely spread instability throughout the region.
Three: Can we make a difference? Obviously Maliki thinks we can, otherwise he wouldn't be asking for the airstrikes, and Obama wouldn't be considering them.
While initial reports indicated that the Iraqi army turned and ran, there are some men in Iraq willing to stand and fight against ISIS:
Volunteers flocked to protect the Iraqi capital on Friday as militants inspired by al-Qaeda seized more territory overnight, continuing a rampage that is threatening to tear the country apart.
Iraqi officials said tens of thousands of volunteers had answered a call to join the ranks of the crumbling security forces and repel advances by heavily armed fighters from the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) as the group seized the towns of Saadiyah and Jalawla north of the capital.
Iraqi state television showed the new unpaid volunteers scrambling to get on packed army trucks at recruitment centers after a call from the Shiite-led government. The mobilization of the irregular forces, as well as Iraq's notorious Shiite militias, to battle the radical Sunni Muslim insurgents threatened to plunge Iraq into large-scale sectarian bloodletting. The volunteers also appeared to be mostly Shiites.
For what it's worth, some like Leslie Gelb argue we need to ensure our help is minimal:
And before the U.S. government starts to do the next dumb thing again, namely provide fighter aircraft and drone attacks and heaven knows what else, it should stop and think for a change. If America comes to the rescue of this Iraqi government, then this Iraqi government, like so many of the others we've fought and died for, will do nothing. It will simply assume that we'll take over, that we'll do the job. And when things go wrong, and they certainly will, this cherished government that we're helping will blame only America. Don't think for a moment it will be otherwise. Don't think for a moment that the generals and hawks who want to dispatch American fighters and drones to the rescue know any better today than they've known for 50 years.
Sure, I'm in favor of helping governments against these militant, crazy and dangerous jihadis. But first and foremost and lastly, it's got to be their fight, not ours. As soon as the burden falls on the United States, our "best friends" do little or nothing and we lose. If they start fighting hard, and we'll know it when we see it, there will be no mistaking it. Then the military and other aid we provide will mean something.
That's persuasive in the abstract, but what if the Iraqi government is just short of being capable of pushing back ISIS? Is it worth withholding our assistance to make the point that they need to be independent? How much can fear of future scapegoating limit our options in the here and now? If we really are going to adopt a philosophy of "we could help you, but we suspect you'll grow dependent upon us and blame us for problems down the road", could we please apply that to domestic spending programs as well?
Four: What is the risk to our forces? We already have drones over Iraq.
The U.S. since last year has been secretly flying unmanned surveillance aircraft in small numbers over Iraq to collect intelligence on insurgents, according to U.S. officials.
The program was limited in size and proved little use to U.S. and Iraqi officials when Islamist fighters moved swiftly this week to seize two major Iraqi cities, the officials said.
Before the Islamist offensive, the program was expanded based on growing U.S. and Iraqi concerns about the expanded military activities of al-Qaeda-linked fighters.
Officials wouldn't say what types of drones were being used but said the flights were conducted only for surveillance purposes. The program was launched with the consent of the Iraqi government.
A senior U.S. official said the intelligence collected under the small program was shared with Iraqi forces, but added: "It's not like it did any good."
Obviously, manned flights would include more risk to pilots than unmanned drones. Downed helicopters are more common that fixed-wing aircraft getting shot down, but sometimes the enemy is lucky, and sometimes accidents happen.
We already have Americans in harm's way:
U.S. contractors began evacuating the air base in Balad, 50 miles north of Baghdad, that is being prepared for the arrival this year of F-16 aircraft purchased by Iraq. The international engineering and electronics company Siemens was trying to move 51 people out of Baiji, about 30 miles farther north, where they are upgrading Iraqi power plants . . .
About 10,000 American officials and contractors are in Iraq.
Looking for a 'Weh' Ahead in a Bad Situation in Iraq
As the GOP candidate for Senate in New Mexico, Allen Weh has a tough road ahead.
But he might be a good guy to have in Washington right now. He's one of the guys who spent some time training the Iraqi forces:
"Regrettably, the current administration's failure to consummate an agreement to leave a residual force for training and counter insurgency operations has directly contributed to the deterioration in security conditions in Iraq and a deterioration in military capability."
Weh, a retired Marine colonel, was the Chief of Staff of the original Coalition Training Team sent to Iraq in 2003 to begin organizing and building the new Iraqi Army and Air Force. Among other initiatives he was personally responsible for obtaining approval to establish an Iraqi Special Forces capability that could employed in the growing fight against Al Qaeda.
Weh was the only American officer assigned to a joint selection board that selected the first group of Iraqi general officers appointed in the Army and Air Force. Weh was also directly involved in getting a cadre of Iraqi officers assigned to coalition country military service schools such as The Australian War College, the Jordanian Army Command & Staff College, and the U.S. Army War College.
The nucleus and planning for an effective Iraqi Defense establishment was accomplished beginning in 2003 and continued for several years thereafter.
Weh returned in 2008 as a guest of the Deputy Commander of the Iraqi armed forces and given three days of briefings on the progress made after he left in April 2004.
"In 2008 our progress was impressive," said Weh. "There was no question then that this Army was on track to become the stabilizing force it was intended to be for both the country and the region."
-
If we have the ability to turn things around now in Iraq, we should negotiate now for our help what we should have negotiated before leaving, a lasting security presence, a well-located, permanent, American military base, and protections in the Iraqi constitution to guarantee individual freedom in Iraq worth protecting. If that is not what we want, or is not attainable, or if there are no good guys left to help, then... we let them slug it out and step in again later with air power next time they pose a direct threat to our interests.
This President has lost all credibility and is incapable of leading or visualizing an end game. He already did his Mission Accomplished dance on Iraq, while these players were waiting us out. The question is more hypothetical to me. If we had a great president who has credibility and capability, what could and should he or she do now and what should have done throughout the Obama years in Iraq?
From the article:
"Iraq is a major oil-producing country that shares borders with Iran and Syria. The United States has a large embassy in Iraq, and the country has attracted sizable foreign investment. "We're committed to this country," [James Jeffrey, a former U.S. ambassador to Iraq], said. "Its stability is important." Growing chaos in Iraq would lead to a spike in oil prices and would likely spread instability throughout the region."
This President wants high energy prices and is NOT committed to the stability of Iraq. He is committed only in the sense of focus group polling problems at home and the obvious black eye these developments put on his record in history.
Optimistically, reforming the problems in the Middle East is a 300 year project that hasn't started yet. The immediate world peace plan is not top down, but is coming out of the ground in places like North Dakota, Texas and Canada. Produce enough affordable energy for the needs of the developed world without relying on terrorists in war zones. Get our own act together and rebuild our own capabilities because trouble around the world is most certainly still brewing.
-
third post of morning-- from my FB page:
My long term prediction-- based only on what I've read-- would indicate an almost inevitable eventual partitioning of the country... Maliki has failed to successfully build a coalition government. I believe you are correct that no one wants to put the troops back in (the ones which we should never have taken out in the first place). Nor do we have any remaining credibility with the Iraqi people or our own allies even.
I think your long term questions are intriguing... i.e. if ISIS takes over part of the country, can they actually run it, and can they do so without the simple compunction of force? I doubt it, but fear worked just fine for the Taliban.
So, given their insistence on radical Sharia I can see a Taliban-like state emerging in whatever territory is eventually held by ISIS, and I can see THAT terrirtory fighting with an Iran backed Shia province/ State. And, with the close relations they already have with whatever elements of the 'Syrian resistance' they are affilliated with, I can also see that terrirtory being leveraged to destablize Jordan, Lebanon, and even Israel. The most existential threat to regional security being obviously an increasingly boxed in Israel.
Then, with support from Iran (at least for whatever Shia unitary province emerges), I think you will see a "Little Iran" backed by the Mullah's there--- a puppet province of Iran in everything but political borders... (My understanding is that ISIS is Sunni but I haven't confirmed that, specifically?)
Then the Kurds, who (from what I read this morning) have been simply waiting for the oppportunity to reestablish thier historic territorial homeland which they lost under Saddam. It seems like the Kurds have moved to 'establish their border' and ISIS has mostly driven by them in a greater push for Bahgdad. And their historical beef has always been more with Turkey. Which is now a NATO member.
Worst case outcome, I think, would be some sort of physical territorial connection between Iran and Syria. Although they are supposedly arming Hamas already so maybe that would just be a 'formalization' and 'making convenient' of what is already going on. China is already offering to step up and "help" the Iraqi government, and I would expect Russia to do the same. Iran has physically introduced troops from what I read. So a worst case scenario would be the entire loss of a substantial portion of the region to Russian or Chinese allied hegemony, or some sort of Russian-Chinese-Iranian coalition.
So, I think the answer to your good questions is 'all of the above' to some extent or another: long term instability and higher oil prices which are only going to prolong the worldwide recession.
As far as our options, they are few, in my opinion. We've already taken 'troops' off the table. That leaves (long overdue) air strikes merely in a limp attempt to slow ISIS down somewhat and try to give the Iraqi army time to regroup. For whatever reason, I have read that they were "surprised" in Mosul; so hopefully they will put up a better fight for Bahgdad but I'm not holding my breath at this point-- they vastly outnumber ISIS and they are still running?
An obvious 'failure' of Iraq will leave Obama with serious political egg on his face, but at this point, who is watching? Anybody with a shred of critical thinking skills already knows he is incompetent if not deliberately acting to thwart the best interest of the country. As to the rest, you simply can't save the stupid from themselves. He has a loyal following STILL that has already started to do damage control on this... (It couldn't have been forseen, it's not that bad, It's Maliqi's fault for not putting together a better government, etc. Fancy Nancy even says we have "no responsibility" to Iraq. Ummm... "OK".
Most importantly, we are fairly well boxed in primarily *because* the entire world knows that even if Obama initiates some sort of *symbollic* short term military action, they know full well that that is all it will be-- symbollic. A vague, disinterested (reactive) 'response' to what anybody with a lick of intelligence can see has been developing since the pullout. It has always been a matter of time and Afghan will be worse. And before anyone flames me, no I am not saying we should have 'stayed forever'. But we should have stayed until these regions were stable and that has always been a twenty year committment-- that's about how long it really took with Japan and Germany, basically, a generation.
Long term, I confess to being somewhat afraid that we are already entering into the beginning of a much larger conflict... The Middle East is on fire from Nigeria to Afghanistan, and those regimes that are 'stable' (Iran, Saudi) have their own competing interests and none of them are too too happy with us. And, bottom line, I think the entire world knows that America presently has a president who is simply 'not up to the challenge', if he is not simply working purposefully to encourage a smaller, weaker America. We can't even secure our own border, evidently. I have little confidence the Obama national security team has either the talent or the discipline to be able to do anything seriously meaningful about Iraq.
-
Very sharp analysis above.
-
http://www.foxnews.com/world/2014/06/13/as-jihadists-take-aim-at-baghdad-iran-steps-in-to-help-historical-foe/
-
http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2014/06/what-is-Isis-Iraq-explainer.html?mid=facebook_dailyintelligencer
-
Not that our Commander in Chief gives a fk , , , :x :x :x :x :x :x :x :x :x
http://www.special-ops.org/200-u-s-contractors-surrounded-jihadists-iraq/
-
A DBMA Group Leader who was stationed at Balad writes:
I was at Anaconda 2007 - 2008, yes. Gus was also stationed there as well.
I saw this on CNN's iReport, it's not been vetted, but whoever sent this says that there are 500 US contractors on Balad:
http://ireport.cnn.com/docs/DOC-1143661?ref=feeds%2Flatest
The company this unknown informant works for says on their website that they've been "relocated to safe sites":
http://www.mbakerintl.com/
Anaconda is a HUGE place. Lots of places to hide, but the most crazy thing is, the perimeter is a chain link fence. There were guard towers all around the perimeter, which made it unapproachable for the most part, but I can imagine over the years it has degraded severely.
What a fucked up situation Sad.
-
Well, since they aren't diplomats they might not be left to die.
-
I get a little tired of hearing about how this was Bush's fault... we are six years down the road. It is a fact that PRESIDENT Obama (I contrast to 'candidate Obama'') 'inherited' a mostly stable Iraq. Obama campaigned on "ending the war" that had almost already ended when he got there. For him, "pulling the troops out" was the simplest and most symbollic thing he could do, and I honestly beleive he doesn't give a damn about the consequences. I think current events were *certainly* anticipated within military planning circles but they just didn't think they would happen as fast as they have. And Obama (via Jarret) had hoped (I believe, and rather overestimated) his ability to reach a diplomatic fdeal with Iran over the nuke program... WItness the preelection negotiations during the summer of 2012).
Look, Bush certainly made serious mistakes in his prosecution of the war (in some sense, based on faulty intelligence, you could say getting involved in Iraq in the first place was the 'cardinal mistake' if a person wants). And yet, I'd challenge anyone advocating that position to 1) name a war where mistakes *haven't* been made, even by the victors, and 2) (and more importantly) tell me how you fight a protracted war with a land-locked country and no ability to securely manage your supply lines?
The Afghani government harbored and allowed the training of Team 9-11. That put them in the cross hairs. Saddam was destabilizing the region and his own people for 30 years prior, (and yes, frequently with our help). AQ and Osama was, in effect, partly a CIA creation. That's because this 'problem' effectively predates Bush, it predates Reagan, it predates Carter, and it goes to the heart of centuires old religious hostilities in the region, and the (rather arbitrary) carving up of the old Ottoman Empire by the Britsh and French, as later adapated and modifed by the Allied victors of WWII.
Everybody forgets that in 2003, 75% plus of the American people (including the Congress, and including, I believe Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi and Hillary) were clamoring for Bush to "do something" (how soon we forget!). What were we going to 'do' about Afghan? Nuke them? Chastize them in Obama fashion? Crusie missile an empty camp, like Clinton? Fly in tanks from Europe across Georgia, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, and Tajikistan? Or from the Gulf over Pakistan, and Iran? And then fight a protracted war with a country fronted on two sides by our 'Frenemy' Pakistan and a country that was openly hostile to us (Iran)? Iraq was *always* intended as a FOB for projecting a larger US footprint in the Middle East--- precisely the opposite of doctrinal Obama foreign policy. Saddam and his WMD just provided the best excuse.
Now, a person can argue that was a mistake. The Bush doctrine at heart was always ambitious and possibly, a little naieve. But how else do you fight a war against a borderless ideology, except with an *alternative* ideology? At it's heart, the 'war on terror' has always been a religiious war, which no one wants to say: it is a war between a Western, individualized world view, against the feudal elements of radicalized elements of Islam, who are not afraid to use violence (e.g. "terro") to achieve a religious agenda, and the battlefield is an increasingly smaller planet.
So fine, I'll buy that the entire War on Terror was a mistake, if somebody can tell me rationally what we should have done instead? We didn't have a lot of options then, either.
Fast forward ten years, Billions of dollars, and countless limbs and lives mangled. We are now soundly *OUT* of the Bush years. We are now solidly *IN* the Obama years, and it is THIS president who is driving the bus now, today. The real 'mistake' is to take a country where we had essentially just WON a war, and hand it back over to our enemies for purely political gains here at home; and for a 'difference of opinion' regarding what has essentially been Amercan doctrine for the last forty years. It is WAY bigger than Iraq, under Obama we have seen the undermining of virtually every single strategic gain we have made in the middle east since Reagan.}. If Obama was Truman, and Bush Roosevelt, Obama would simply have pulled out of Europe and let the Soviet Army have it; and likewise left Japan open to the influence of the rising Chinese. Strategically, the situations are about the same.
Seriously, we might as well blame TH Lawrence for the probelms in present day Iraq. Bush, whatever his warts and misjudgements, was working *for* the interests of the country, not against them. I'm not sure you can say that about Obama unless you are a total isolationist who believes we ought sinmply to withdraw behind our own fence and wait to fight AQ in the streets of American cities. In which case our country will start to look a lot more like fortified Israel, IMO.
I originally connected to Mr. Denny via an interest in DBMA and I expect a lot of you might be here for simliar connections... What is the first thing we tell students about not 'projecting' a victim attitude (in terms of body language and physical carriage), if they hope to avoid becoming a victim?! What do we tell them about the peaceful CAPACITY for restrained violence and the underlying WILLLINGNESS to resort to it when necessary as being their 'best last defense' in a pinch? Imagine facing an assault, or rather the threat of one, when you have already taken the option of force off the table.
The US was a stabilizing influence in the world for eighty years. Our withdrawal has only left our allies unsure, and our enemies slavering over the opportunity to expand where we contract. We are seeing the effects of a *MANAGED* US withdrawal the world over and I don't see how anyone can say it is not a complete and total disaster. Look around.
Imagine instead of today's probably collapse of Iraq, if we had stayed. The first outcome we might project is that MORE US soldiers might have been killed or wounded. We would also have, based on those sacrifices, an increasingly stable country, working *toward* democracy, and a platform from which to show the world that Democracy CAN work in the Middle East, and that people are both happier and freer under that method of governance, and *therefore* more likely to renounce violence againstr their neighbors the way Jordan and Lebanon-- both of whom we helped stabilize-- have, as just two examples. That was the 'plan' under Bush. And yes-- it was ambitious and frought with problems.
What is the 'plan' under Obama? 'Hope for change?' We can only look at his supposed 'successes'. 1) Put "daylight" between ourselves and our longest standing and most faithful ally after GB, Israel. 2) Support the MB in Egypt, despite more than ample evidence that this group has directly and indirectly supported the violent establishment of an Islamic Caliphate for as long as we have been in the ME. 3) Give Iraq back to our enemies on the basis that the fledgling President we helped establish there isn't simply an Obama yes-man. 4) Repeat this policy for Afghanistan. 5) Bomb Libya back into the stone ages, making it ripe for jihadists and then leave it in anarchy. 6) 'Tweet' to stop groups like Boko Haram and al-Shabab, largely armedout of the Qaddaffi stockpiles we left unsecured. 7) Arm 'questionable' AQ affilliated elements in Syria while we claim to no longer be involved in 'nation building' and ongoing attempts to reshape the global map. 8) Allow China and Russia to reestablish historic and new influences in the ME 9) Impede and prohibit domestic policies which would lead to US energy independence. 10) Essentially, as regards 'core' AQ,continue the Bush policies covertly while pretending not to in the press. 11) reduce our military force preparedness to pre-WWII levels. 12) Crow 'hey hey war is over'.at every opportunity while we are still AT war. 13) Release our enemies, again for politically expedient and ideological reasons.
Bush made a lot of mistakes, granted. But at least there was no apparent evidence that he was actively working to dress the US down several points in terms of our ability to project power internationally. Beyond any domestic politcial party affilliations or predilections, I simply do not see how anyone can at this point think this president is not *directly* working to undermine US international interests. He is *consistently* on the wrong side of 'best' outcome for our country, so much so that I hardly think you can call the consistency of this occurrence a "mistake". Nobody is THAT bad. This president is treasonously working against the best interests of the country and should be impeached if he doesn't simply resign first.
I read a tweet from Marcus Lutrell yesterday that summed up: Paraphrasing: "Do I think we should go back to Iraq? No... Do I think We'll have to? Yes."
They say politics is the ultimate spectator sport... I feel sometimes n these debates like we are discussing the merits of this UFC fighter or that. So take the presdient out of it. The current US FP **doctrine** is to all appearances on a trajectory that is *highly* likely to lead to increased loss of American lives, both domestically and abroad, and both civillian and military. That is enough for me to advocate as passionately as I do for a different direction.
-
"Bush, whatever his warts and misjudgements, was working *for* the interests of the country, not against them. I'm not sure you can say that about Obama unless you are a total isolationist who believes we ought sinmply to withdraw behind our own fence and wait to fight AQ in the streets of American cities."
Isn't it obvious Obama is about one world government with fantasies as himself in charge. He is about the full blown progressive agenda. It is hard to say he is an isolationist. In fact he is just the opposite. He lets the hoards come into the US almost at will. He refused to enforce the laws. As long as they are mostly Democrat party voters.
To me it is all payback time for him. FU to the GOP. FU to whites. And probably FU to Christians and Jews.
FU to "exceptionalist" American thought or traditional values. Everything he does is to FU the values this nation was founded on.
If one listens carefully at what he says he gives this away. LIke when he was speaking to some Democrats party hacks recently. He plainly said the illegals are the future of this country. Why? Because they will by large majorities vote for a party that gives them the payouts and thus keep Democrats in power for a long time until there is a major upheaval and enough people wake up.
Although by then we really may be all made into government drones.
If I hear one more person say he is either incompetent or stupid I will explode.
This guy knows exactly what he is doing. And he will finish his Presidency in a blaze of fire.
All will be pardoned. After he lets many millions more get here first exactly as we are seeing. Later after being pardoned they will bring their relatives so that in 10 yrs we could realistically have another 50 million in the country 80% who will vote for the Democrats.
That is if there is any money left to buy their votes with.
-
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/06/15/world/middleeast/rebels-fast-strike-in-iraq-was-years-in-the-making.html?emc=edit_th_20140615&nl=todaysheadlines&nlid=49641193&_r=0
-
Isn't this the guy who disbanded the Iraqi army out of the clear blue? Anyway, I post it not because it is particularly insightful-- it is not IMHO-- but because of who he was.
Only America Can Prevent a Disaster in Iraq
Without U.S. help, the civil war may spiral into a regional conflict as other countries, including Iran, intervene.
By L. Paul Bremer
June 15, 2014 6:04 p.m. ET
The crisis unfolding in Iraq is heartbreaking especially for those families who lost loved ones there. They gave so much; it is all at risk. It did not need to be this way.
As I wrote in these pages in December 2011 after the last of our military left Iraq, "President Obama made a serious mistake." The withdrawal of all American forces has now had its predictable results.
First, our departure meant that the Iraqis lost a lot of immediate on-the-ground intelligence, a vital need for any effective military force. Second, though Iraqi military leaders publicly and privately stated that their national forces were not yet ready to defend the country, American training of those forces was cut back.
Finally, America lost considerable influence over political events in Iraq. Our military presence always had an important political dimension. It was symbolic of our intent to help Iraqis stay the course in rebuilding their country. Removing Saddam Hussein upended a thousand years of Sunni domination in the lands of Mesopotamia. It takes hard work and a long time after such a political revolution for stability to return. No amount of clever diplomacy could substitute for our continued military presence.
After we left, Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, a Shiite, began a sectarian campaign against the Sunnis. Within 24 hours of our troops' departure, he issued an arrest warrant for his Sunni vice president. He launched a campaign to intimidate the Kurds. He began to purge the Iraqi army of well-trained officers, sometimes down to the battalion level, often replacing them with his partisans.
Opinion Video
Editorial Page Editor Paul Gigot on why the White House may partner with Iran to beat back an Islamist insurgency in Iraq. Photos: AP
What is to be done? President Obama said on Friday that "we have an interest that ISIL [Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant] does not get a broader foothold" in the region. This is correct but understates the risks to American interests.
America's core interest remains a stable, united and democratic Iraq. But American regional interests are broader. At stake now is the century-old political structure of the entire region, with huge consequences for our friends and allies there.
If the terrorists continue south and take the capital, Baghdad, or threaten the Shiite holy cities of Karbala and Najaf, a full-scale civil war is likely. Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani Friday issued the first call for "jihad" by the Shiite religious leadership in almost 100 years. Radical Shiite leader Muqtada al-Sadr has reactivated his " Mahdi " army and other Shiite leaders have recalled two battalions from Syria to fight in Iraq. A serious threat to the holy cities would almost certainly provoke intervention by Iranian Revolutionary Guards on the side of the Shiites. Kurdish leaders, who have the best-organized military force in Iraq, have taken advantage of the current chaos to wrest control of the long-coveted city of Kirkuk from the central government, and would be tempted to declare Kurdistan's independence.
Those Americans who have pressed in the past for dividing Iraq should be careful: They might get what they wished for. The price would be very high: a regional war on top of an Iraqi civil war. American action now would be considerably less difficult than later.
After a feckless and hesitant American policy against any intervention to stop Bashar Assad's slaughter in Syria, the region needs to see that we understand the risks by demonstrating a clear commitment to help restabilize Iraq. That means first stopping the southward march of the ISIL; then helping the Iraqis retake important cities like Mosul, Tikrit and Fallujah.
Manned airstrikes may be useful against the ISIL lines of communication. But they are of limited use in urban environments. Whatever mix of manned or drone strikes is employed, we and the Iraqis will need good current intelligence. As during the U.S. troop surge in Iraq in 2007, Iraqis will need Americans to help plan and execute those operations. So there may be a need for American intelligence and fire control personnel on the ground. If so, President Obama would be correct to insist that Mr. Maliki quickly sign a Status of Forces agreement to give our military standard immunities that all our overseas forces have.
It would be appropriate, as Mr. Obama suggested on Friday, to condition American military assistance on concrete steps to establish an all-parties Iraqi government. Prime Minister Maliki should relinquish the positions of minister of defense and interior. He should be pressed to establish the multisectarian national security commission he agreed to after the 2010 elections.
It is time for both American political parties to cease their ritualistic incantations of "no boots on the ground," which is not the same as "no combat forces." Of course Americans are reluctant to re-engage in Iraq. Yet it is President Obama's unhappy duty to educate them about the risks to our interests posed by the unfolding drama in Iraq.
The crisis in Iraq is a flashing warning light about the dangers of a reductionist national security policy that sends a signal of weakness to friends and enemies abroad. The most immediate crisis is in Mesopotamia. But we can be sure that the Taliban in Afghanistan are watching closely to see if the withdrawal of American forces comes to mean American indifference. Beyond the Hindu Kush, east across the Zagros Mountains and to the north of Iraq, hard-eyed men in Beijing. Tehran and Moscow are also calculating the implications of our handling of this crisis. The stakes could not be higher.
Mr. Bremer was U.S. presidential envoy to Iraq in 2003-04.
-
http://www.glennbeck.com/2014/06/16/the-caliphate-is-here-glenn-reacts-to-the-state-of-the-ever-crumbling-middle-east/
OTOH Allen West has the interesting idea of allying with the Kurds and dividing the ISIS in half.
-
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zKELtjoNrPU
===========================
Most reporting on the offensive the transnational jihadist group the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant launched in Iraq has focused on tactical aspects. Few if any have discussed the strategic thinking behind the group's decision to proceed with such a massive undertaking requiring significant amounts of its resources. The discrepancy in reporting is due to the tendency to view jihadists through the lens of ideology rather than viewing them as rational actors. Like all other geopolitical actors, the militant group's leadership decided to strike only after assessing threats and opportunities.
In the past two and a half years, the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant made significant territorial gains in neighboring Syria. These advances came despite its having to fight on multiple fronts against the al Assad regime and its Shiite backers (Iran, Hezbollah and fighters from across the Muslim world), Syrian Kurdish separatists and a constellation of rival rebel groups, many of which subscribe to milder versions of Salafist-jihadist ideology and enjoy backing from countries such as Saudi Arabia and Qatar. The group is also fighting various other jihadist groups, such its former brothers in arms from the al Qaeda franchise group Jabhat al-Nusra.
While expending most of its efforts in Syria, the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant also maintained a steady tempo of operations in Iraq. It capitalized on the growing disenchantment among Iraqi Sunnis with the Shiite regime of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki. The group's sudden focus on Iraq came from a desire to pursue an available opportunity to achieve its ultimate goal of re-establishing the caliphate.
What is a Geopolitical Diary? George Friedman Explains.
The U.S. move to effect regime change in Iraq in 2003 and the outbreak of the Arab Spring in Syria in 2011 have resulted in the meltdown of once powerful Arab autocracies. The transnational jihadist movement has since sought to exploit the ensuing anarchy in the region. The rise of the Iranian-led Shiite camp over the last decade or so has created an additional opportunity for jihadists to mobilize Sunni fighters from Muslim-majority countries and among Western expatriates.
Despite its audacious offensive, the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant remains mindful that it has two still formidable Iranian-backed Shiite regimes blocking its path. To the west, the al Assad regime in Damascus has turned the tide against the rebels, giving rise to a stalemate. To the east, it faces the al-Maliki regime, though political and security conditions in Iraq have sharply deteriorated since the withdrawal of U.S. forces at the end of 2011. Power struggles among the country's three principal groups (Shia, Kurd and Sunni) have weakened Baghdad's writ, creating the opening that enabled the recent jihadist offensive. Refocusing on Iraq offers a way to force Iran and its Shiite allies to reallocate resources in Syria to defending their position in Iraq, which contains sites of greater significance to Shiite Islam. It could even help them break the stalemate in Syria. The shift toward Iraq enables the militant group to deflect criticism that it has been fighting with fellow Sunnis and even Salafist-jihadists in Syria.
The Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant knows that its opportunity in Iraq will not stay open for long given that demographic trends in Iraq favor the Shia. It also recognizes its limits among Iraq's Sunnis. Most important, it understands the convergence of U.S., Iranian and Turkish interests that is underway; for different reasons, none of these three countries can tolerate its expansion in Iraq.
This means the group knows it is not in a position to seize Baghdad just yet. For now, it must try quickly to consolidate itself in the Sunni-dominated provinces of Anbar, Ninawa and Salah ad Din, as well as the mixed provinces of Kirkuk and Diyala. It knows that the outside countries will not send ground forces into Iraq's Sunni areas and instead will rely on air power and special operations forces against its fighters.
Therefore, the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant will limit itself to establishing a presence in western Iraq similar to what it has in eastern Syria, where outsiders will fear to tread and where neither the Shiite-dominated central government nor the Kurdistan Regional Government can impose its writ. If the jihadist group can survive, any amount of space where it can enjoy freedom of activity will suffice for its purposes of establishing an emirate in the roughly contiguous cross-border area, affording it strategic depth and a launchpad for later offensives against Baghdad and Damascus
Read more: The Logic Underpinning the Militant Offensive in Iraq | Stratfor
Follow us: @stratfor on Twitter | Stratfor on Facebook
-
As far as refocusing my own remarks on what to do now... '?'. Syria's government is Alawite; most closely related to Shia; and from what I have read the 'rebels' inclduing ISIS are Sunni. Theoretically, AQ is Sunni, as is most of the disavowed Bathists in Iraq. The Maliki givernment is reportedly Shia, which is why they are getting Iran's support against ISIS, as is Syria. 'Power for power' Sunni Saudi Arabia is the best positioned to physically oppose Iran and from what I have read over the years it is our close relations with Saudi and *their* tug of war with Iran over who will be the 'great power' in the Middle East which is largely behind our own troubled relations with the latter. I read this morning that attacks on ISIS are being coordinated between Iraq and Syria. So, I would maintain that we are looking right now at what is basically a 'cross-border regional war', whether our news wants to call it that or not.
It appears that the consensus here is for non-intervention, and I think I mostly agree with that; although if we had clean targets I think I would be behind strikes on ISIS within Iraq... The Iraqi's have asked for it, and other than lacking targets, (and ignoring the question of political will) I'm not sure what we're waiting on... I really think we're waiting because such a move would be a tacit acknowledgement by Team Obama that something really DOES need to be done, i.e. it would represent an open acknowledgement of failure regarding his policy, and that, ore than anything is what I believe is behind our present restraint. I can also agree with certainty that I am against the reintroduction of US ground troops, especially under this president.
And, what about the rest of the world? Read today that ISIS has ordered the destruction of all churches in Mosul. They are crucifying and behading their way across Iraq. To me, that seems enough justification for a united worldwide response against such barbarsim. Does the UN have a role in what is an increasingly humanitarian crisis?
And, accepting that we are in fact UNLIKELY to do anything about Iraq (except chalk it up as a zero), the larger question to me is what we then do with Afghanistan...? I read an article at FP a couple of months ago that said (essentially) if he's smart, Karzai already has a nice flat picked out somewhere along the Seine... we are almost certainly looking at the resurgence of the Taliban there as soon as we pull out. But with the restrictions placed on them, is our government even really trying to 'win' there (when we're giving them back their field commanders?!?)? So, here too, do we just pull our troops back? In whcih case, WTF have we been doing for ten years? Is this then ultimately a 'defeat' for us in the war vs. radical ISlam, and is that conflict just 'over', or just in an armistice phase until the next 9-11?
And, if we withdraw completely, the second largest question (for me) was raised by Marc is 'what happens then?'... i.e. three to five to ten years down the road, after somebody establishes dominance? Yes, I know we can cross that bridge when we come to it, but I would maintain that it is preferable to us to fight AQ 'over there' someplace than 'over here' someplace. I read three articles today stating that the real danger is going to be Syria/ Iraq conflict trained jihadis coming back to Europe and the States with both 'native' passports and the ideology, training and motivation to wreak havoc. Let alone the supposed 'refugees' and questionable status immigrants that the current adminsitration is letting into the US... which for me is just another example of what I was describing earlier.
The third biggest question is energy independence. I think we should pursue that, but THAT is going to require settling our own 'sunni-shia divide' domestically (fuguratively speaking, of course), between the enviro's and anybody who sees fracking as a viable thing. Certainly Keystone should be authorized-- it should have been authorized in 2009-- the oil is coming out of Canada, it is just a question of who profits from its refinement. So that is a total 'no-brainer'... and yet? But beyond that, there are larger questions about fracking and the safety of water supplies, but I think these could be both balanced and managed. But they never will be as long as 50% of the population is opposed to the use of fossil fuels of any kind, regardless. imagine, for a moment, however, if we had dumped $865B into clean fossil energy, instead of how many failed attempts to force solar tech that is simply not viable in large portions of the country and electric cars with a battery life of two years.
And, if we pull out of the ME entirely, aren't we just setting the table for something worse? I agree that we can't settle their problems for them, nor should we try. I support a strong and evident committment to Israel, but not at the exopense of the more fragile Alliances we have built with other Gulf State countries (e.g those who were previously united AGAINST Israel, but who now choose to put COEXIST bumper stickers on their BM'rs.). And I worry that a total withdrawal will not only leave the ME open to the Chinese and Russian influence, but also will be-- in effect-- virtually equivalent to our ignoring the rise of the Nazi's in Germany in the 20's ad 30's. There are numerous historical examples where Isolationism is a dead end for us, and yet, we cannot stay on a perpetual war footing forever, either: I have a kid in highschool, he wasn't even IN school when 9-11 happened. So I suppose you could also say there are numerous historic examples of country's where perpetual war led to their downfall.
This is why I think the Obama doctrine is truly such an utter failure-- if we simply let Iraq and Afghanistan go, it has really made the sacrifices of the last ten yeas for nothing. I supported the Iraq war. If I had it to do over again, however, I don't think I would. Not because our troops failed, but because the country simply does not have the attention span to actually sustain the necessary committment. We're at war RIGHT NOW, but would you know it looking around the US?
And, especially in the immediate case of Iraq, I don't see how we can justify a continued committment of money and materiale when you have two divisions being quite literally routed by a few thousand...? At some point, Iraqis (and Afghanis) have to stand and fight for the country THEY want. I think we should support that, but not do it for them.
Regardless, given the present instability across all of the ME, I think we are looking at a significant reshaping of the globe in the making, it is just a question of which current coalition of ME countries is going to come out on top.
I think my greatest fear for a regional nuclear war in the ME is a Shia state-coalition dominated by a nucelar Iranian power, which is committed to the destruction of a nuclear Israel. But maybe that will just produce a detente similar to that which we have with the Russians. Especially to the degree that the Israeli's feel like they can no longer rely on the backing of Western powers to support their continued existence.
http://www.pbs.org/.../map-sunni-and-shia-the.../2539/
Red Lines and Deadlines ~ Map: Sunni and Shi’a ~ The Worlds of Islam | Wide Angle | PBS
www.pbs.org
Islam, as described by Muhammad, was a straightforward faith, demanding of its adherents only that they acknowledge a set of basic beliefs: that there is only
-
second post
http://www.theblaze.com/contributions/iraq-is-a-catastrophe-but-not-yet-a-caliphate-four-big-predictions-of-what-will-happen-next/#
-
http://online.wsj.com/articles/a-plan-to-save-iraq-from-isis-and-iran-1402960909
By
Jack Keane And
Danielle Pletka
Updated June 16, 2014 7:44 p.m. ET
The Middle East is in a downward spiral. More than 160,000 have died in Syria's civil war, the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, aka ISIS, has captured key Iraqi cities and is marching on Baghdad, and the security investments made by the U.S. over the past decade—like them or not—are being frittered away.
It is still possible to reverse the recent gains of ISIS, an outgrowth of what was once al Qaeda in Iraq. The group's fighters number only in the thousands, and while well-armed, they lack the accoutrements of a serious military. But only the United States can provide the necessary military assistance for Baghdad to beat back our shared enemy.
Setting aside for the moment the question of whether this administration has the will to intervene again in Iraq, here are the components of a reasonable military package that can make a difference:
• Intelligence architecture. Iraq's intel screens went blank after the U.S. military pulled out in 2011. Washington needs to restore Baghdad's ability to access national, regional and local intelligence sources, enabling the Iraqi military to gain vital situational awareness.
• Planners and advisers. The Iraqi military needs planners to assist with the defense of Baghdad and the eventual counter-offensive to regain lost territory, as well as advisers down to division level where units are still viable.
• Counterterrorism. Special operations forces should be employed clandestinely to attack high value ISIS targets and leaders in Iraq and Syria.
• Air power. Air power alone cannot win a war, but it can significantly diminish enemy forces and, when used in coordination with ground forces, can exponentially increase the odds of success.
Enlarge Image
Demonstrators wave Islamist flags in Mosul, Iraq, June 16. The country's second-largest city fell to the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria on June 10. Associated Press
ISIS has made extraordinary progress in recent weeks in Iraq and controls large swaths of territory in northern Syria. But its forces are not impregnable and their tactics are not terribly complicated. ISIS has progressed via two main routes in Iraq, traveling during the day in columns. Its forces and staging areas are exposed targets—but the Iraqis have very limited air power.
Intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance, and some of the necessary target development have already begun on the Iraq side; the U.S. needs to expand them to the Syria side of the Iraqi-Syrian border. We need to know more about who is moving, how they're moving, who is helping, and how to stop them. This target information will assist air interdiction and non-American ground forces to counter ISIS.
The next necessary step is air interdiction of ISIS staging areas, supplies, sanctuaries and lines of communication. To be effective, this must address targets in both Iraq and Syria. Air interdiction alone will not achieve a victory, but it is a necessary component for follow-on ground operations. And hitting ISIS in Iraq without hitting it in Syria will allow the enemy to reserve its strength for another effort.
President Obama is reportedly considering providing elements of the Free Syrian Army with weaponry and other tools to begin to push back on both Iranian-backed Syrian forces and al Qaeda and Gulf-backed Islamist extremists. Remember, the Free Syrian Army (FSA) is the only force in Syria that has attacked ISIS. The Assad regime and ISIS enjoy a cordial entente and do not attack each other. Should President Obama choose to do so, air interdiction against targets inside Syria will be a boost that allows FSA moderates to gain ground they have lost over the past year.
Opinion Video
American Enterprise Institute Vice President for Foreign and Defense Policy Studies Danielle Pletka presents an option for the United States to keep Iraq free. Photo credit: Associated Press.
After interdiction, the next step will be providing air cover. As the terrorists and Iraqi Security Forces face each other, the Iraqis are going to need close U.S. air support. That means coordination with ground forces, a task that was simpler with U.S. troops on the ground in Iraq, but is now substantially more complex. Iraqis cannot facilitate our targeting.
Without air-ground controllers, this requires U.S. special forces to assist the locals. Far from the "boots on the ground" meme that has been so vilified in Washington, this is a job for which special forces have been trained. It is not combat, but it is the kind of partnership and facilitation that should have been left in place once the bulk of our troops left Iraq in 2011.
These are all arms-length measures, and they will likely stop the advance of ISIS on the ground in Iraq. Air power will also help to defend Baghdad and interdict ISIS, but at some point there will need to be a counteroffensive to take back land now held by the enemy.
The largely Shiite forces that make up the Iraqi army cannot win alone, especially as Sunni extremists join forces with ISIS. They must turn to Kurdish Peshmerga troops for assistance. This will not be an easy choice for the Kurdish leadership. But the Kurdistan Regional Government is playing with fire if it believes that ISIS and its ilk are the road to a more stable Middle East. A fragmented Iraq based on terrorist rule will not enable continuity of oil supplies or security for Kurdish population centers.
The Syrians and the Iraqis have made their own beds—so why stick our noses in now? The answer is that al Qaeda, ISIS and others will not stop at Iraq and Syria. Lebanon, Jordan, Israel, Turkey, Egypt, Yemen, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and others will be next.
Think subcontracting the job to Iran is the right call? Surely, no one wishes a Middle East managed by the ayatollahs in Tehran. Don't care? Remember the admonition of the 9/11 Commission: "The most important failure was one of imagination." Imagine what controlling vast areas of the Middle East will do for extremists of all stripes.
Yes, Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki has failed dismally to include Sunnis in Iraq's government, military and economy—with disastrous effects. Nonetheless, President Obama's formulation—that the U.S. will provide assistance only if Mr. Maliki makes necessary reforms—assumes that we have some leverage over Baghdad. To the contrary, Washington will earn far more leverage if it is willing to step in and provide the kind of support that should have been there in the years after victory. Only then will Mr. Obama have the influence and the trust to bring together Iraqis to reconstitute a foundation that can withstand the predations of ISIS, Iran and others.
Are these prescriptions a guarantee of victory? No. Are Iraqis and Syrians and all their neighbors worthy of another American investment? That's not the right question. This is not just about them. This is about the security of the U.S., our allies and our vital interests. If we do nothing—if our imagination fails us once again—it is the American people who again will pay a terrible price. Weighed against the limited requirements to help Iraqis and Syrians fight for themselves, that is well worth the effort.
Gen. Keane, a retired four-star general and former vice chief of staff of the U.S. Army, is the chairman of the Institute for the Study of War. Ms. Pletka is the vice president for foreign and defense policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute.
-
Comments?
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/06/19/world/middleeast/as-moderate-islamists-retreat-extremists-surge-unchecked.html?emc=edit_th_20140619&nl=todaysheadlines&nlid=49641193
-
Comments?
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/06/19/world/middleeast/as-moderate-islamists-retreat-extremists-surge-unchecked.html?emc=edit_th_20140619&nl=todaysheadlines&nlid=49641193
Know the difference between moderate muslims and bigfoot?
There are people who claim to have seen bigfoot.
-
Very witty but what implications for US strategy? IMHO this piece is full of them.
-
Very witty but what implications for US strategy? IMHO this piece is full of them.
From near the ending of the article:
"Many say hopefully that Tunisia is building the new model. “The Tunisians proved you can make compromises without losing your existence,” said Emad Shahin, an Egyptian political scientist close to many Islamists, who spoke by telephone from Washington because he, too, had been forced to flee Egypt.
No, Tunisia is quite different than Egypt, Iraq, Syria, etc. Note that the Egyptian political scientist close to many Islamists, "spoke from Washington because he had been forced to flee Egypt".
If there is any truth to the idea that the US projection of strength or weakness influences events around the world, then the implication for the US for the long run is clear. Short version, be the opposite of an Obama-led America. Even when he orders an aircraft carrier moved "in case it is needed in Iraq", it has no meaning without resolved leadership. http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2014/06/14/us-aircraft-carrier-repositioned-in-case-needed-in-iraq/
Instead of help, he says, "We can't do it for them".
The Cheney article had it right. Also Thomas Sowell today, comparing our post-war presence in Germany and Japan to our abandonment of Iraq and Afghanistan.
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2014/06/17/a_bitter_after-taste_123010.html
We can't instantly undo the damage of our recent and current policies, especially with him still in office.
My view forward, US Strategy should:
Rebuild our economy.
Rebuild our military.
Rebuild our leadership.
And hope there is a world left to influence and protect by the time we get our act back together.
What should the US do, right now, with the President we have, to truly make a difference in what appears to be out of anyone's control? I don't think anyone knows. He can't draw a red line, he can't commit troops or anything else, He can't gather trust and support from even his own country or congress, his words have lost meaning, even President Obama's actions, like ordering an aircraft carrier to the region "in case it is needed", have lost all meaning.
Lost in the historical archives is the 1991 Saddam Hussein surrender speech where he declared victory for waiting out the American invasion. "We won because we persevered." Even hanged, Saddam has more influence in Iraq today than does our current, can't wait to leave, President.
-
http://america.aljazeera.com/articles/2014/6/17/saudi-iraq-isil.html
ISIL’s advance puts Saudi Arabia between Iraq and a hard place
Analysis: The kingdom is trapped between Sunni fighters it dislikes and expanding Iranian clout in Baghdad
June 17, 2014 11:59PM ET
by Tom Kutsch @tomkutsch
The battle between Iraq’s government and the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), which threatens to plunge Iraq back into the chaos of sectarian civil war, puts Saudi Arabia in an increasingly awkward position
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
So what is "The Levant"? The eastern Mediterranean. We think they are fighting for Iraq and Syria(?) and they think they are fighting for control of the region which also includes, Jordan, Lebanon and Israel.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Levant
-
Good point Doug. From here forward I will be using ISIL.
===============================================================
The Intrigue Lying Behind Iraq's Jihadist Uprising
Geopolitical Weekly
Tuesday, June 17, 2014 - 03:05 Print Text Size
Stratfor
By Reva Bhalla
Events in Iraq over the past week were perhaps best crystallized in a series of photos produced by the jihadist group the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant. Sensationally called The Destruction of Sykes-Picot, the pictures confirmed the group's intent to upend nearly a century of history in the Middle East.
In a series of pictures set to a purring jihadist chant, the mouth of a bulldozer is shown bursting through an earthen berm forming Iraq's northern border with Syria. Keffiyeh-wrapped rebels, drained by the hot sun, peer around the edges of the barrier to observe the results of their work. The breach they carved was just wide enough for the U.S.-made, Iraqi army-owned and now jihadist-purloined Humvees to pass through in single file. While a charter outlining an antiquated interpretation of Sharia was being disseminated in Mosul, #SykesPicotOver trended on jihadist Twitter feeds. From the point of view of Iraq's jihadist celebrities, the 1916 borders drawn in secret by British and French imperialists represented by Sir Mark Sykes and Francois Georges-Picot to divide up Mesopotamia are not only irrelevant, they are destructible.
Today, the most ardent defenders of those colonial borders sit in Baghdad, Damascus, Ankara, Tehran and Riyadh while the Europeans and Americans, already fatigued by a decade of war in this part of the world, are desperately trying to sit this crisis out. The burden is on the regional players to prevent a jihadist mini-emirate from forming, and beneath that common purpose lies ample room for intrigue.
Turkey Searches for a Strategy
With the jihadist threat fanning out from Syria to Iraq, Turkey is struggling to insulate itself from the violence and to follow a strategic agenda in Iraqi Kurdistan. Turkey has forged an alliance with the Iraqi Kurdish leadership in a direct challenge to Baghdad's authority. With the consent of Turkey's energy minister and to the outrage of Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, two tankers carrying a few million barrels of Kurdish crude left the Turkish port of Ceyhan in search of a buyer just as the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant was ratcheting up its offensive. Upping the ante, Turkish Energy Minister Taner Yildiz announced June 16 that a third tanker would be loaded within the week. With al-Maliki now relying on Kurdish peshmerga support to fend off jihadists in the north, Ankara and Arbil have gained some leverage in their ongoing dispute with Baghdad over the distribution of energy revenue. But Turkey's support for Iraqi Kurds also has limits.
Ankara had planned to use a tighter relationship with the Kurdistan Regional Government to exploit northern Iraq's energy reserves and to manage Kurdish unrest within its own boundaries. However, Turkey never intended to underwrite Kurdish independence. And with Kirkuk now in Kurdish hands as a result of the jihadist surge, the largest oil field in northern Iraq stands ready to fuel Kurdish secessionist tendencies. Much to Turkey's dismay, Kurdish militants from the Kurdistan Workers' Party and the People's Protection Units are already reinforcing peshmerga positions in northern Iraq. At the same time, the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant and its jihadist affiliates are holding 80 Turkish citizens hostage.
Turkey will thus enlarge its footprint in Mesopotamia, but not necessarily on its own terms. Some 1,500 to 2,000 Turkish forces have maintained a quiet presence in Iraqi Kurdistan. That force will likely expand now that Turkey has an array of threats to justify such a presence and a growing need to temper Kurdish ambitions. Iraq's Kurdish leadership will be reminded of their deep distrust for Turkey but will also be overwhelmed by its own challenges, not least of which is Turkey's main regional competitor, Iran.
Iran on the Defensive
Unnerved by Turkey's increasingly assertive Kurdish policy and possibly in anticipation of the expanding jihadist threat sweeping Iraq's Sunni belt, Iran over the past several months has been expanding its military presence along its northern border with Iraq. Tehran now finds itself in the uncomfortable position of having to reinforce its Shiite allies in Iraq militarily. Though Iran has perhaps the most sophisticated and extensive militant proxy network in the region to do the job, this strategy carries enormous risks.
Iran has spent recent years painstakingly trying to consolidate Shiite influence in Iraq under a central authority in Baghdad. Tehran was never wedded to al-Maliki in particular, but it did need to maintain a strong enough foothold in Baghdad to manage Iraq's naturally fractious Shiite landscape. Employing Shiite militias enables Iran to reinforce the Iraqi army in a time of urgent need but risks undermining Iran's long-term strategy to manage Iraq through a firm hand in Baghdad. The more empowered the militias and the weaker Baghdad becomes, the harder Iran will have to work to keep a lid on separatist moves in Iraq's Shiite south.
The militants rampaging through Iraq's core Sunni territories will embrace deeper Iranian involvement in the conflict. There is no better motivation for Arab Sunni fighters of various ideological stripes than a call to arms against their historical Persian foes and their Arab Shiite allies. An outpouring of sectarian blood feuds will also make it all the more difficult for Iraq's Shiite government to recruit enough allies among Iraq's Sunni population to fight against the jihadists. Indeed, the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant would not have been able to mount its lightning surge across Iraq had it not been for the substantial support it has received from local Sunni tribes who in turn receive substantial support and guidance from sponsors in the Persian Gulf. Our attention thus turns to the Saudi royals sitting quietly in Riyadh.
Saudi Arabia Stirs the Pot
This has not been a good year for the Saudis. A Persian-American rapprochement is a living nightmare for the Sunni kingdom, as is the prospect of the United States becoming more self-sufficient in energy production. Saudi Arabia has little means to directly sabotage U.S.-Iranian negotiations. In fact, as we anticipated, the Saudis have had to swallow a bitter pill and open up their own dialogue with Iran. But the Saudis are also not without options to make life more difficult for Iran, and if Riyadh is going to be forced into a negotiation with Tehran, it will try to enter talks on its own terms.
Syria and Lebanon always make for useful proxy battlegrounds, though a Sunni rebellion has little chance of actually toppling the Iranian-backed regime in Damascus, and Lebanon is too fragmented for any one regional player to claim a decisive advantage. The contest has thus shifted back to Mesopotamia, where Iran cannot afford to see its Shiite gains slip and where Saudi Arabia -- both the government and private citizens -- has maintained strong ties with many of the Sunni tribes in Anbar and Mosul provinces that have facilitated the Sunni uprising. There is no love lost between the Saudis and the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant. In fact, the Saudis have branded it a terrorist organization and have even uncovered cells of the group on Saudi soil plotting against the kingdom.
But the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant is also not the only group participating in the current offensive. Former Baathist fighters from the Naqshabandiyya Way along with Jaish al-Mujahideen and Jaish Ansar al-Sunnah are also playing a substantial role in the fighting. Most of the Sunni militias and the growing number of Awakening Council (Sunni fighters recruited by the United States to battle al Qaeda in Iraq) defectors joining these militias coordinate directly with the Majlis Thuwar al Anbar (Anbar insurgents' council), which in turn coordinates with the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant on a selective basis. Saudi Arabia's acting intelligence chief, Yousef bin Ali al Idrisis, is believed to be in direct communication with the Majlis Thuwar al Anbar, affording Riyadh the opportunity to influence the shape of the battlefield -- and thereby to aggravate Iran in a highly sensitive spot.
As a bonus for Saudi Arabia, even as the Sunni uprising is largely confined to Iraq's Sunni belt and thus unlikely to seriously upset Iraq's production and exports from the Shiite south, the price of Brent crude has climbed to $113 a barrel for the first time this year. Saudi Arabia is not the only one that welcomes this bump in the price of oil; Russia is quite pleased with the outcome in Iraq as well.
Revisiting a Mysterious Meeting in Sochi
Just days before the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant-led offensive in Iraq, a quiet meeting took place at Russian President Vladimir Putin's vacation spot in Sochi on June 3. Putin invited Saudi Foreign Minister Saud al-Faisal to see him and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, who cut short an engagement in Moscow to get there on time. Details on the meeting are scarce. Our attempt to obtain information about the gathering from Russian and Saudi contacts resulted in scripted and strangely identical responses that claimed that Saudi Arabia and Russia were discussing a power-sharing resolution for Syria. The state-owned Saudi Press Agency then reported June 10 that Lavrov and al-Faisal had a follow-up phone conversation to discuss a Syrian settlement. Syria may well have been on the agenda, and Russia has an interest in protecting its influence in Damascus through a deal that keeps Syrian President Bashar al Assad in power, but we suspect there was more to these engagements.
Both Saudi Arabia and Russia share two key interests: undermining the U.S.-Iranian negotiating track and ensuring oil prices remain at a comfortable level, i.e., above $100 a barrel. There is little either can do to keep Iran and the United States from negotiating a settlement. In fact, the jihadist threat in Iraq creates another layer of cooperation between Iran and the United States. That said, Washington is now facing another major Middle Eastern maelstrom at the same time it has been anxiously trying to prove to itself and everyone else that the United States has bigger issues to deal with in other parts of the world, namely, in Russia's backyard. Moreover, the United States and Turkey are not of one mind on how to manage Iraq at a time when Washington needs Ankara's cooperation against Russia. If an Iraq-sized distraction buys Moscow time to manage its own periphery with limited U.S. interference, all the better for Putin. Meanwhile, if Saudi Arabia can weaken Iran and test U.S.-Iranian cooperation, it might well be worth the risk for Riyadh to try -- at least for the time being.
A Lesson from History
Whether by mere coincidence, strategic design or a blend of the two, there are as many winners as there are losers in the Iraq game. Russia knows this game well. The United States, the heir to the Sykes-Picot map, will be forced to learn it fast.
When the French and British were colluding over the post-Ottoman map in 1916, czarist Russia quietly acquiesced as Paris and London divided up the territories. Just a year later, in 1917, the Soviets threw a strategic spanner into the Western agenda by publishing the Sykes-Picot agreement, planting the seeds for Arab insurrection and thus ensuring that Europe's imperialist rule over the Middle East would be anything but easy. The U.S. administration recognizes the trap that has been laid. But more mindful of the region's history this time around, Washington will likely leave it to the regional players to absorb most of the risk.
Editor's Note: Writing in George Friedman's stead this week is Reva Bhalla, vice president of Global Analysis.
Read more: The Intrigue Lying Behind Iraq's Jihadist Uprising | Stratfor
-
Summary
The conflicts in Syria and Iraq are connected. The border between the two countries has become meaningless, and the emerging crisis in Iraq has direct consequences on the fighting in Syria. Neither the Syrian regime nor the rebels that oppose it stand to gain a decisive advantage from the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant's recent actions in Iraq. As things stand now, the primary beneficiary will be the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant itself.
Analysis
Because of the way its military advance in Iraq has played out, the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant has earned prestige and a propaganda boost -- it is viewed as a competent organization capable of decisive results. This growing perception will be crucial in the group's ability to attract a growing share of the foreign fighters heading toward the region, and possibly draw additional Syrian rebel fighters to its ranks. The group's seizure of weapons and vehicles -- much of this equipment taken from retreating Iraqi soldiers -- and reportedly more than $1 billion in funds during the recent Iraq offensive will only increase its attractiveness to jihadist fighters.
Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant Activity
Click to Enlarge
The equipment taken includes armored vehicles, small arms, ammunition, artillery, communication devices, uniforms and logistical vehicles. The Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant may have also seized night vision equipment and air defense weaponry. This gear would provide a substantial boost on the battlefield in Syria, and the group has indeed already begun to transfer some of this equipment across the border.
The growth in the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant's prestige could in theory have detrimental effects on the rebels and on the Syrian regime. Since the transnational jihadists serve the cause of neither, their efforts in Iraq will create a mixed set of variables for the combatants in Syria.
Effects on the Syrian Regime
Perhaps the greatest negative consequence for the regime of Syrian President Bashar al Assad is the shift of Iraqi Shiite militants back to their homeland to confront a resurgent Sunni opposition. The Syrian regime has come to rely heavily on foreign fighters -- be they Hezbollah combatants, Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps advisers or Shiite volunteers from across the region -- to bolster its ranks and negate its demographic disadvantage. These foreign fighters, most notably the Hezbollah members, played a critical role in halting the string of defeats that beset the regime in late 2012, and they continue to spearhead regime offensives across Syria. Furthermore, and unlike what has happened with the Syrian rebels, the regime has not suffered from divisive infighting due to the influx of foreign fighters.
Click to Enlarge
With the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant and its allies advancing south toward Baghdad from Mosul, and with sectarian emotions flaring across the region, Iraqi Shiite fighters are keen to return to their homeland -- they have made this desire abundantly clear in statements and videos. Even Hezbollah has threatened to dispatch fighters to Iraq. Though Hezbollah is unlikely to shift much of its efforts from Syria to Iraq -- partly for logistical reasons, but mostly due to the regime's critical dependence on the group -- it will probably move additional fighters to Syria to help offset losses of Iraqi militia. There is already substantial evidence that thousands of Iraqi Shiite fighters are on their way home. Iraqi fighters have reportedly withdrawn from Syrian fronts in the coastal province of Latakia and in al-Meliha, in the suburbs of Damascus, while witnesses have reported seeing convoys of trucks leaving the football stadium that served as the Iraqi militia base in the northern city of Aleppo.
The Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant's current focus on Iraq has also wrought a notable decline in the intensity of rebel infighting. In the months prior to the fall of Mosul, rebel infighting in Deir el-Zour province in particular resulted in hundreds of rebel casualties as Jabhat al-Nusra and its rebel allies battled against Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant fighters. Though these clashes continue, particularly in Aleppo and Deir el-Zour provinces, the intensity of the fighting has markedly decreased, a clear sign that the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant has turned its attention, and likely a large number of its fighters, to Iraq. It could always move its forces back across the unrecognized border, but for now, the group appears to be prioritizing Iraq and will likely keep reinforcing its fight there against Iraqi government counteroffensives.
Effects on Syrian Rebels
The Evolution of the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant
The Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant's shift in focus to Iraq will probably help Syrian rebels more than the regime. For one thing, the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant over the last year has maintained positions mostly in northeastern and eastern Syria, where the loyalist presence was rather scant and certainly not as critical as areas farther to the west. This geographic distribution in part reflected the militant group's opportunistic behavior, seizing lightly held territory, and its desire to secure energy resources, and it meant that the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant was primarily a threat to Syrian rebels and to Kurdish militias in Hasakah.
However, Washington and its allies will be increasingly nervous about supplying advanced weaponry to the rebels in Syria. Having shown it can seize weaponry from the Iraqi army, the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant's potential ability to seize weapons delivered by the United States to often ragtag rebel groups worries the Americans. This re-evaluation comes at a particularly bad time for the rebels, who seemed on the verge of finally convincing the United States and other allies to deliver substantially more weapons to their fighters.
Interestingly, while the regime preferred not to interrupt its enemies' infighting, it undertook a notable aerial bombing campaign against the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant, both within Syria and across the border in Iraq, after the fall of Mosul. Two things can explain this turn of events. First and less important, the regime may sense an opportunity to strike at the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant and relieve pressure on regime forces that come into contact with the militant rebels -- particularly the 17th division in Raqqa province -- while the group is busy in Iraq. The primary reason, however, is the regime's need to demonstrate that it is invested in the well-being of its allies, and in particular that it is attuned to the concerns of its patron, Iran. With the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant becoming a major threat to Baghdad, Hezbollah and Tehran's interests in Iraq, the Syrian regime will try to show that it is doing its part in the wider struggle. The al Assad regime can leverage an opportunity to share intelligence with others, since the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant is now the prevalent regional threat.
It is clear that the fall of Mosul and the spike in the fighting in Iraq have further complicated an already elaborate regional conflict where borders are fast losing their importance. For the Syrian battle space, the developments in Iraq bring a mixed array of advantages and disadvantages to the varying combatants. Even if it does not decisively tilt the battle, the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant's Iraq pivot will play an important role in the conflict in Syria.
Read more: Iraq's Crisis Changes the Battle Space in Syria | Stratfor
-
Hat tip to our GM:
http://hotair.com/archives/2014/06/24/report-kurds-offered-to-help-stop-isis-months-ago-but-didnt-hear-back-from-the-white-house/
-
Now Is the Moment for Kurdish Independence
Middle East borders are vanishing, and the U.S. should adjust its diplomacy accordingly.
By
William A. Galston
Email
Print
16 Comments
Facebook
Twitter
Google+
LinkedIn
smaller
Larger
June 24, 2014 6:55 p.m. ET
Jerusalem
'The Kurds of Iraq can decide for themselves the name and type of entity they are living in." With those lapidary words, a spokesman for Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan formalized a historic shift in Turkish policy. For the past five years, Turkey has been investing in Iraq's increasingly autonomous Kurdish region and even opened a consulate in its capital, Erbil. The Turkish writer Mustafa Akyol recently noted that Ankara, long fearful of Kurdish political ambitions at home and abroad, now regards Iraqi Kurdistan—and perhaps its Syrian counterpart—as a force for regional stability and security.
If Turkey can abandon outmoded doctrines, surely the U.S. can do so as well. Whatever Secretary of State John Kerry may say, Iraq is not about to "heal its divisions." Whatever the outcome of the military confrontation between Sunni extremists and the Shiites, the dynamic that the U.S. invasion set in motion has broken the unitary state of Iraq beyond repair.
But contrary to Colin Powell's famous "Pottery Barn" analogy, the fact that we broke it does not mean that we own it. Taken together, the failed U.S. occupation, the formation of a Shiite government that marginalized the Sunnis, and the total withdrawal of American forces mean that our influence is limited at best.
It is time for stubborn facts to guide our diplomacy, not threadbare ideas and tactical maneuvers. Nearly a century after the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, we have yet to deal with its consequences. The lines British and French diplomats drew on a map in 1916 never corresponded with ethnic and sectarian realities on the ground, and now the lines of the Sykes-Picot agreement are unsustainable. "Iraq" and "Syria" are names, not nations.
By contrast, the Kurds are a distinct people. They have their own language, culture and history. They have been oppressed by every country in which they have languished as a minority. They were promised independence in 1920, only to have that promise rescinded three years later. They have made wise and patient use of the autonomy they have gained in Iraq. It is hard to think of a people who more deserve their own state.
The case for Kurdish independence is more than moral. Despite persistent corruption in Iraq, the Kurds there have governed themselves effectively and have attracted significant foreign investment. Their army has proved to be disciplined and effective. With the Kurds' recent takeover of Kirkuk, they have what they have long regarded as their true capital, their Jerusalem. And the Iraqi Kurds' entente with Turkey allows them to export oil without Baghdad's cooperation, securing their economic independence.
As Ofra Bengio, head of the Kurdish Study Program at the Moshe Dayan Center in Tel Aviv, recently noted in the Jerusalem Post, this appears to be the Kurdish moment in the Middle East. Syria is "neutralized by its own struggle for survival" and "will not . . . raise a finger against the Kurds." It is hard to imagine that Jordan, Saudi Arabia or Kuwait would do so either. Turkey is willing to accept an independent Iraqi Kurdistan, and its control of the oil pipeline would give the new Kurdish state incentives not to meddle with Turkey's Kurds. As for Iran, says Mr. Bengio, Tehran is "up to its neck with business and relations with the Kurds."
Kurdish leaders, though cautious, believe that recent events augur fundamental changes. Nechirvan Barzani, the prime minister of Iraq's autonomous Kurdish region, recently stated that it would be "almost impossible" for things to return to the way they were before the extremist forces of the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham, or ISIS, captured Mosul. Responding to U.S. pressure to support a new multi-sectarian government in Baghdad, Kurdish President Masoud Barzani told Mr. Kerry on Tuesday that "We are facing a new reality and a new Iraq."
Israel, America's staunchest ally in the Middle East, would welcome an independent Kurdistan, which it regards as a likely ally. Reuters reported on Friday that a tanker carrying Kurdish oil had docked that day in the Israeli port of Ashkelon. Indifferent to the Iraqi threats that deterred other nations from purchasing this oil, Israel would provide a steady market for future Kurdish production.
Washington has long opposed the export of Kurdish oil without Baghdad's consent as a threat to Iraqi unity. It is time to reverse that policy—to acknowledge that Iraq's current borders cannot be maintained and that the Sykes-Picot agreement is a dead letter. The highest and best use of America's remaining influence in the Middle East would be to work toward a new security order with national boundaries that all the major regional players can endorse.
-
Emboldened ISIS Threatens Americans
by John Rossomando and Ravi Kumar
IPT News
June 26, 2014
http://www.investigativeproject.org/4440/emboldened-isis-threatens-americans
Supporters of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) have launched a viral propaganda campaign on Twitter threatening to attack the United States and its interests if America acts militarily against the group in Iraq.
These threats have been delivered through messages on ISIS's #CalamityWillBefallUS hashtag and feature images of the 9/11 attacks; dead American soldiers; the body of slain U.S. Ambassador to Libya Christopher Stevens; a threatening message from Anwar al-Awlaki, the late leader of Al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP); and the Nick Berg beheading video among others.
"We will kill your people and transform America to a river of blood :)!" a poster tweeting under the name "Miqdad remain #" said in a post on the #CalamityWillBefallUS hashtag.
The threats are posted in English as well as in Arabic. For example, the ISIS-linked Al-Battar Media Foundation sent out a tweet Wednesday night telling supporters that "Tweeting in English is preferred" in a Twitter campaign that it plans for Friday that it is calling a "Warning to American People."
The United States has sent military advisers to Iraq. There is talk of possible airstrikes, but Secretary of State John Kerry seemed to rule them out in the near term. Bombing now "would be a complete and total act of irresponsibility," Kerry said, because of Iraq's political environment, which offers "nothing there that provides the capacity for success."
In a separate interview, Kerry dismissed ISIS's threats, saying the group did not yet have the capability to carry them out.
ISIS's Twitter intimidation campaign, therefore, may be a combination of recruiting propaganda and an attempt to drive public support down for any future American strikes.
ISIS says it will target every American embassy around the world with car bombs should the U.S. attack Iraq, according to an image posted by a user @BZEAA.
"... EACH and EVERY #American is targeted, whether he lives in or outside the #US! …," the Al-Battar Media Foundation warned Wednesday. The foundation also warned of a pending 9/11-style attack, saying it would happen in an "UNEXPECTED PLACE."
Mohamed al-Jizrawi, an ISIS supporter with 2,000 Twitter followers, similarly warned that U.S. embassies, interests and citizens around the world would be targeted should the Obama administration increase American military involvement in Iraq.
Additionally, threats have been leveled against companies in the Arab world, stating they will be a "legitimate target for every Muslim" if they employ Americans.
Likewise, American doctors have also been threatened with a message bearing ISIS's logo stating, "Every American doctor working in any country will be slaughtered if America attack (sic) Iraq."
Social media tools have become essential for ISIS to obtain new recruits and funding, Western and Arab sources told the Wall Street Journal.
Besides threatening the United States, ISIS uses social media to find recruits and provide instant reports about its battlefield maneuvers. A slickly produced recruitment video tweeted by ISIS members last week telling Western Muslims to join their jihad exemplifies the terror group's social-media strategy. Thousands of Western Muslims already have answered the call – many of whom are fighting for ISIS.
Combating ISIS's use of social media is a bit like playing whack-a-mole because the terrorists replace closed social-media portals with new ones as soon as the old ones are closed.
One thing is for sure, ISIS's use of social-media means jihadist propaganda has come out of the shadows and into the public eye.
-
Chronology: Key Dynamics Leading to Renewed Sunni Militancy in the Levant
Analysis
June 29, 2014 | 0613 Print Text Size
A Chronology of Recent Militancy in Syria and Iraq Read more: A Chronology of Recent Militancy in Syria and Iraq
A Kurdish soldier stands guard near the front line with Sunni militants on the outskirts of Kirkuk, Iraq, on June 25. (Spencer Platt/Getty Images)
Analysis
Ever since Sunni rebels pushed Iraqi government forces out of Mosul, the mainstream media and most analysts have rushed to point out the threat posed by the militants' goal of creating a transnational polity in eastern Syria and western Iraq. Stratfor has long forecast that the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant's efforts to exploit the conflict in Syria would have major repercussions on Iraqi security. Below is a chronology of analyses on the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant's aims to create a singular battle space in Syria and Iraq, where the militant group seeks to form a medieval-style emirate, and the major obstacles in its path.
Jihadist Opportunities in Syria
Feb. 14, 2012: In an eight-minute video clip titled "Onward, Lions of Syria" disseminated on the Internet Feb. 12, al Qaeda chief Ayman al-Zawahiri expressed al Qaeda's support for the popular unrest in Syria. In it, al-Zawahiri urged Muslims in Turkey, Iraq, Lebanon and Jordan to aid the Syrian rebels battling Damascus. The statement comes just days after a McClatchy report quoted unnamed American intelligence officials as saying that the Iraqi node of the global jihadist network carried out two attacks against Syrian intelligence facilities in Damascus, while Iraqi Deputy Interior Minister Adnan al-Assadi said in a recent interview with AFP that Iraqi jihadists were moving fighters and weapons into neighboring Syria.
Jordan's Reluctance To Confront Syria
April 13, 2012: Amman is facing pressure from the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) states to take a stronger stance against the Syrian regime, specifically by backing Syrian rebels against the Iranian-backed Alawite government in Damascus. Jordan is the most logical conduit for Arab support, supplies and fighters to enter Syria. The GCC, led by Saudi Arabia, will try to entice Jordan into serving as the staging ground for Arab intervention in Syria and, by extension, countering Iranian and Shia influence in the region. While it aligns with the Gulf Arab monarchies on most issues, Jordan has a unique historical relationship with Syria and its own set of concerns that will significantly restrain its actions to undermine the regime of Syrian President Bashar al Assad.
Considering a Sunni Regime in Syria
July 10, 2012: Last week's publicized defection of the Tlass family marked a potential turning point for Syria's al Assad regime. The Tlass family formed the main pillar of Sunni support for the minority Alawite regime. The patriarch of the family, former Defense Minister Mustafa Tlass, had a strategic, brotherly bond with late Syrian President Hafez al Assad. The two military men served as members of the ruling Baath Party in Cairo from 1958 to 1961 when Syria and Egypt existed under the Nasserite vision of the United Arab Republic. The failure of that project brought them back home, where together they helped bring the Baath Party to power in 1963 and sustained a violent period of coups, purges and countercoups through the 1960s.
The Consequences of Intervening in Syria
Jan. 31, 2013: The French military's current campaign to dislodge jihadist militants from northern Mali and the recent high-profile attack against a natural gas facility in Algeria are both directly linked to the foreign intervention in Libya that overthrew the Gadhafi regime. There is also a strong connection between these events and foreign powers' decision not to intervene in Mali when the military conducted a coup in March 2012. The coup occurred as thousands of heavily armed Tuareg tribesmen were returning home to northern Mali after serving in Moammar Gadhafi's military, and the confluence of these events resulted in an implosion of the Malian military and a power vacuum in the north. Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb and other jihadists were able to take advantage of this situation to seize power in the northern part of the African nation.
Jihadists Seek a New Base in Syria and Iraq
May 28, 2013: Al Qaeda in Iraq is trying to use the Syrian conflict to reignite sectarian warfare in Iraq and thereby create an uninterrupted operating space stretching from Iraq to Lebanon. Since mid-May alone, more than 300 people have been killed and hundreds more wounded in bombings by suspected jihadists across Iraq that have largely targeted the country's Shiite population. The jihadists sense a historic opportunity to acquire their largest and most significant area of operation since the movement was based in Afghanistan before the 2001 U.S. invasion. However, they still face several constraints that will enable the Iraqi government and its Iranian backers to contain the spillover into Iraq, at least for the near term.
A Revolt Within the al Qaeda Movement
June 20, 2013: In a June 15 audio message, a man identified as Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, leader of the Islamic State of Iraq, did something no leader of an al Qaeda franchise had ever done: He publicly defied a directive from Ayman al-Zawahiri, the leader of the al Qaeda core organization. As we have noted for many years, the al Qaeda core has struggled to remain relevant on the physical and ideological battlefields. We've also discussed since 2005 the internal frictions between the core and some of the more independent franchise commanders, such as Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the leader of al Qaeda in Iraq until his death in June 2006. If al-Baghdadi's revolt goes unchecked, it very well might spell the end of the concept of a global, centrally directed jihad, and it could be the next step in the devolution of the jihadist movement as it becomes even more regionally focused.
Turkey's Options to Manage Syrian Kurds and Jihadists
July 31, 2013: A concern shared by most countries is the prospect that Syria, in light of its ongoing civil war, could become an arena for transnational jihadism. But for Syria's northern neighbor Turkey, an even graver concern is the prospect of Kurdish separatism. In fact, Syrian Kurds already are trying to create an autonomous zone akin to the one located in northern Iraq. Ankara has no choice but to pit jihadists and Kurdish separatists against one another in hopes of obstructing the zone's creation. But in doing so Turkey risks impeding its own geopolitical ascendance.
Are There Moderate Salafists and Jihadists?
Dec. 5, 2013: The United States is trying to recruit moderate Salafist-jihadist rebels in Syria for its fight against al Qaeda, but Washington may not be able to find many willing partners among such ideologues. How well the Obama administration fares in its efforts will ultimately determine the extent to which it can counter al Qaeda-inspired transnational jihadism -- and how well it can minimize Iran's benefits now that the two have reached an accord.
Read more: Chronology: Key Dynamics Leading to Renewed Sunni Militancy in the Levant | Stratfor
-
Bibi Endorses Kurdish independence in definace of Kerry... more "daylight"?
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/jun/29/israel-prime-minister-kurdish-independence
The Israeli prime minister, Binyamin Netanyahu, has voiced support for Kurdish statehood, taking a position that appears to clash with the US preference to keep sectarian war-torn Iraq united.
Pointing to the mayhem in Iraq, Netanyahu on Sunday called for the establishment of an independent Kurdistan as part of a broader alliance with moderate forces across the region, adding that Israel would have to maintain a long-term military presence in the West Bank even after any future peace agreement with the Palestinians.
Netanyahu laid out his positions in a policy speech that marked his most detailed response to the gains made by Sunni extremists fighting in Iraq. His endorsement of Kurdish independence, as well as his tough position on the West Bank, put him at odds with prevailing international opinion.
In a speech to a Tel Aviv thinktank, Netanyahu said that the rise of both al-Qaida-backed Sunni extremists, as well as Iranian-backed Shia forces, had created the opportunity for "enhanced regional cooperation". He said Jordan, which is facing a growing threat of spillover from conflict in neighboring Iraq and Syria, and the Kurds, who control an oil-rich autonomous region of northern Iraq, should be bolstered. "We should ... support the Kurdish aspiration for independence," Netanyahu told the thinktank, going on to call the Kurds "a nation of fighters [who] have proved political commitment and are worthy of independence".
Israel has maintained discreet military, intelligence and business ties with the Kurds since the 1960s, seeing in the minority ethnic group a buffer against shared Arab adversaries. The Kurds have seized on recent sectarian chaos in Iraq to expand their autonomous northern territory to include Kirkuk, which sits on vast oil deposits that could make the independent state many dream of economically viable. The Kurds have long held aspirations for independence, but have said seeking nationhood is not realistic at the current time. The international community, including neighboring Turkey as well as the US and other western countries, are opposed to the breakup of Iraq.
Since the outbreak of hostilities in Iraq, Washington has been insistent that it the crumbling unity in the country restored. Last Tuesday, the US secretary of state, John Kerry, visited Iraqi Kurdish leaders and urged them to seek political integration with Baghdad.
Netanyahu's call for a long-term military presence in the West Bank also risked triggering international criticism. The Palestinians seek all of the West Bank, captured by Israel in the 1967 Six-Day war, as the heartland of a future independent state, a position that is largely endorsed by the international community. The territory is flanked by Israel on the west and Jordan on the east.
Netanyahu said that given the threats in the region, Israel would have to maintain a military presence throughout the West Bank for the foreseeable future. "We must be able to stop the terrorism and fundamentalism that can reach us from the east at the Jordan line and not in the suburbs of Tel Aviv. He went on to say that whoever does not accept Israel's need for a security presence "isn't facing reality".
While conceding that there might someday be a peace agreement creating an independent Palestinian state, he argued that Israel could not turn over its security needs to either the Palestinians or international forces. He said Palestinian forces are "not capable" of ensuring security, and foreign forces would eventually withdraw. "Therefore we must understand that in any future agreement with the Palestinians, Israel will have to continue controlling security in the territory up to Jordan for a very long time," he said.
-
“With this declaration of khilāfah, it is incumbent upon all Muslims to pledge allegiance to the khalīfah Ibrāhīm and support him”
Robert Spencer Jun 29, 2014 at 4:49pm
Will Muslim spokesmen in the West who have derided warnings about the Islamic supremacist aspiration to reestablish the caliphate now explain on Islamic grounds why Muslims worldwide do not need to pledge allegiance to the new caliph? Will they explain why this declaration, which is full of Qur’an citations, is a misunderstanding of Islam? Or will it just yet again be assumed by all quarters that they have already done so, without their having to do any actual work?
Here is part of the declaration of a new caliphate that I posted about here. From The Islamic State’s “This Is the Promise of Allah” — full text here (thanks to Axel):
The time has come for those generations that were drowning in oceans of disgrace, being nursed on the milk of humiliation, and being ruled by the vilest of all people, after their long slumber in the darkness of neglect – the time has come for them to rise. The time has come for the ummah of Muhammad (peace be upon him) to wake up from its sleep, remove the garments of dishonor, and shake off the dust of humiliation and disgrace, for the era of lamenting and moaning has gone, and the dawn of honor has emerged anew. The sun of jihad has risen. The glad tidings of good are shining. Triumph looms on the horizon. The signs of victory have appeared.
Here the flag of the Islamic State, the flag of tawhīd (monotheism), rises and flutters. Its shade covers land from Aleppo to Diyala. Beneath it, the walls of the tawāghīt (rulers claiming the rights of Allah) have been demolished, their flags have fallen, and their borders have been destroyed. Their soldiers are either killed, imprisoned, or defeated. The Muslims are honored. The kuffār (infidels) are disgraced. Ahlus- Sunnah (the Sunnis) are masters and are esteemed. The people of bid’ah (heresy) are humiliated. The hudūd (Sharia penalties) are implemented – the hudūd of Allah – all of them. The frontlines are defended. Crosses and graves are demolished. Prisoners are released by the edge of the sword. The people in the lands of the State move about for their livelihood and journeys, feeling safe regarding their lives and wealth. Wulāt (plural of wālī or “governors”) and judges have been appointed. Jizyah (a tax imposed on kuffār) has been enforced. Fay’ (money taken from the kuffār without battle) and zakat (obligatory alms) have been collected. Courts have been established to resolve disputes and complaints. Evil has been removed. Lessons and classes have been held in the masājid (plural of masjid) and, by the grace of Allah, the religion has become completely for Allah. There only remained one matter, a wājib kifā’ī (collective obligation) that the ummah sins by abandoning. It is a forgotten obligation. The ummah has not tasted honor since they lost it. It is a dream that lives in the depths of every Muslim believer. It is a hope that flutters in the heart of every mujāhid muwahhid (monotheist). It is the khilāfah (caliphate). It is the khilāfah – the abandoned obligation of the era.
Allah (the Exalted) said, {And mention when your Lord said to the angels, “Indeed, I will make upon the earth a khalīfah”} [Al-Baqarah: 30 Qur'an 2:30 - RS].
Imam al-Qurtubī said in his tafsīr (Quranic exegesis), “This verse is a fundamental basis for the appointment of a leader and khalīfah (caliph) who is listened to and obeyed so that the ummah is united by him and his orders are carried out. There is no dispute over this matter between the ummah nor between the scholars, except for what has been reported from al-Asamm [the meaning of his name is “the deaf man”], for his deafness prevented him from hearing the Sharia.” That ends his words, may Allah have mercy upon him.
Therefore, the shūrā (consultation) council of the Islamic State studied this matter after the Islamic State – by Allah’s grace – gained the essentials necessary for khilāfah, which the Muslims are sinful for if they do not try to establish. In light of the fact that the Islamic State has no shar’ī (legal) constraint or excuse that can justify delaying or neglecting the establishment of the khilāfah such that it would not be sinful, the Islamic State – represented by ahlul-halli-wal-‘aqd (its people of authority), consisting of its senior figures, leaders, and the shūrā council – resolved to announce the establishment of the Islamic khilāfah, the appointment of a khalīfah for the Muslims, and the pledge of allegiance to the shaykh (sheikh), the mujāhid, the scholar who practices what he preaches, the worshipper, the leader, the warrior, the reviver, descendent from the family of the Prophet, the slave of Allah, Ibrāhīm Ibn ‘Awwād Ibn Ibrāhīm Ibn ‘Alī Ibn Muhammad al-Badrī al-Hāshimī al-Husaynī al-Qurashī by lineage, as-Sāmurrā’ī by birth and upbringing, al-Baghdādī by residence and scholarship. And he has accepted the bay’ah (pledge of allegiance). Thus, he is the imam and khalīfah for the Muslims everywhere. Accordingly, the “Iraq and Shām” in the name of the Islamic State is henceforth removed from all official deliberations and communications, and the official name is the Islamic State from the date of this declaration.
We clarify to the Muslims that with this declaration of khilāfah, it is incumbent upon all Muslims to pledge allegiance to the khalīfah Ibrāhīm and support him (may Allah preserve him). The legality of all emirates, groups, states, and organizations, becomes null by the expansion of the khilāfah’s authority and arrival of its troops to their areas. Imam Ahmad (may Allah have mercy upon him) said, as reported by ‘Abdūs Ibn Mālik al-‘Attār, “It is not permissible for anyone who believes in Allah to sleep without considering as his leader whoever conquers them by the sword until he becomes khalīfah and is called Amīrul-Mu’minīn (the leader of the believers), whether this leader is righteous or sinful.”
The khalīfah Ibrāhīm (may Allah preserve him) has fulfilled all the conditions for khilāfah mentioned by the scholars. He was given bay’ah in Iraq by the people of authority in the Islamic State as the successor to Abū ‘Umar al-Baghdādī (may Allah have mercy upon him). His authority has expanded over wide areas in Iraq and Shām. The land now submits to his order and authority from Aleppo to Diyala. So fear Allah, O slaves of Allah. Listen to your khalīfah and obey him. Support your state, which grows everyday – by Allah’s grace – with honor and loftiness, while its enemy increases in retreat and defeat.
So rush O Muslims and gather around your khalīfah, so that you may return as you once were for ages, kings of the earth and knights of war. Come so that you may be honored and esteemed, living as masters with dignity. Know that we fight over a religion that Allah promised to support. We fight for an ummah to which Allah has given honor, esteem, and leadership, promising it with empowerment and strength on the earth. Come O Muslims to your honor, to your victory. By Allah, if you disbelieve in democracy, secularism, nationalism, as well as all the other garbage and ideas from the west, and rush to your religion and creed, then by Allah, you will own the earth, and the east and west will submit to you. This is the promise of Allah to you. This is the promise of Allah to you.
-
Summary
The Iraqi army continues to press its offensive north of Baghdad with the primary focal point centered on the city of Tikrit, where significant numbers of Sunni militants continue to hold out. The government forces' attack on Tikrit began with a June 26 helicopter assault that landed troops close to the city's university. The landing forces suffered heavy casualties, and militants brought down one or two aircraft. Armored columns reached the city June 28 but were forced back due to stiff resistance and a number of improvised explosive devices strategically placed in the approaches to the city.
Analysis
Anticipated fissures between other Iraqi Sunni factions and the Islamic State, formerly known as Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant, are already becoming apparent. A number of Sunni tribal factions have reportedly assisted the Iraqi army in Tikrit after initially remaining neutral. This change of stance is due to Islamic State's draconian interference in their affairs. This has been one of the main weaknesses of the militant group, whose policies provoke local discontent and erode their support base. Over time, this could lead to the main Sunni support base in Iraq completely turning on Islamic State.
Iraq: The Prospects of the New 'Caliphate'
The Iraqi air force, meanwhile, is rushing to bring new aircraft into service. To do so it is turning to countries that can facilitate quick deliveries. The delivery of the first few Su-25 airplanes from Russia has been confirmed, and Iraq is reportedly also in talks with Belarus, the Czech Republic and Iran for more aircraft. Baghdad is reportedly asking Tehran for the return of Iraqi air force aircraft brought there by fleeing pilots during the First Gulf War.
Russian An-124 strategic airlift aircraft delivered the quickly refurbished Su-25s to Taji air base near Baghdad on June 28. Russian technicians arrived along with the delivery and will help maintain the aircraft until Iraqi ground support personnel can be trained in Russia. Baghdad says that it has also called up pilots that flew Su-25s under the Saddam Hussein regime. Iraqi forces could alternatively rely on Russian or even Iranian pilots, which also fly Su-25s in the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.
Iraq's air force continues to rely on U.S. equipment to combat Sunni rebels and recently received another batch of 75 Hellfire missiles to replenish depleted stocks. The Iraqi government has, however, expressed frustration with the United States. Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki said that the United States deluded the Iraqi government when it signed arms contracts. This stems from the amount of time it will take to deliver F-16 aircraft to Iraq, which the United States says is standard for newly built aircraft. The timeline will be further extended because U.S. contractors preparing infrastructure for the F-16s had to withdraw from Balad air base during the current turmoil.
The Su-25 is a specialized close air support aircraft. If the Iraqis were able to bring them quickly into service, they could use them to interdict massed Islamic State and Sunni rebel convoys if flown well and directed at targets properly. Footage of a large Islamic State convoy over the weekend of June 28-29 near Mosul showed hundreds of vehicles, armored cars and trucks towing captured U.S.-made M198 howitzers. Such a compact concentration of militant forces in a single location would have been virtually impossible when U.S. airpower ruled the skies over Iraq. New Su-25s could once again complicate militant moves.
The lack of a serious aerial threat has allowed Sunni militants to use lightning raids in quickly assembled convoys of pickup trucks equipped with medium- or heavy-weapons systems, known as technicals. This is a widely used tactic in the region, deployed, for example, by Polisario Front rebels against the Moroccan army during the Western Sahara War and later by militants in Mali. On the rare occasions when Iraqi aircraft have been able to intervene against these convoys, they have inflicted significant casualties. The air force, however, has only a small number of combat aircraft and helicopters, and lacks the necessary surveillance, reconnaissance and intelligence assets to replicate this on a larger scale. The current unmanned aerial vehicles and fixed-wing sorties performed daily by U.S. assets in conjunction with the joint headquarters in Baghdad staffed by U.S. military advisers will bolster this capability.
The Iraqi forces continue to work to press their advantage by bringing in fresh recruits, purchasing aircraft and enlisting foreign support from a range of nations. The initial fissures between Islamic State and some of the base Sunni support could also seriously boost Baghdad's potential success on the battlefield if they continue to expand. Even as the Iraqi central government gradually takes back the strategic momentum in the conflict, it will have a very difficult time taking back lost territory against an emboldened and experienced force flush with newly captured weaponr
Read more: New Aircraft in Iraq Will Bolster the Push Against the Islamic State | Stratfor
-
second post
Summary
The Islamic State, previously known as the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant, has changed its name, but otherwise the militant group remains the same. Over the past weekend, a spokesman for the group announced that it had established a caliphate stretching from Diyala province, Iraq, to Aleppo, Syria. The caliphate is a political institution that the Islamic State claims will govern the global Muslim community. "Iraq" and "Levant" have been dropped from the organization's name to reflect its new status.
The trouble with the announcement is that the Islamic State does not have a caliphate and probably never will. No amount of new monikers will change the fact that geography, political ideology and religious, cultural and ethnic differences will prevent the emergence of a singular polity capable of ruling the greater Middle East. Transnational jihadist groups can exploit weakened autocratic states, but they cannot institutionalize their power enough to govern such a large expanse of land. If anything, the Islamic State's drive to unify the Middle East will actually create more conflicts than it will end as competing emirates vie for power in the new political environment.
Analysis
In recent years, the term "caliphate" has become somewhat warped; it has become more of a slogan for radical Islamist groups than an actual political objective. Even the Islamic State, which has made impressive territorial gains quickly, has only an emirate, which encompasses a far smaller geographic area than a caliphate. Establishing an emirate is not terribly remarkable. Similar groups have established emirates before: The Taliban ruled more than 90 percent of Afghanistan prior to 9/11, and al Qaeda franchise groups oversaw short-lived emirates in Yemen and Mali.
Still, the Islamic State's announcement is the first serious attempt at re-establishing the caliphate since the institution was abolished in 1924 by the Turkish republic, which replaced the Ottoman Empire after World War I. Over the past 90 years, there have been a few attempts to revive the caliphate, but none were particularly successful. Notable examples include Hizb al-Tahrir, which rejects democracy and nationalism, and more recently, al Qaeda.
Iraq: The Prospects of the New 'Caliphate'
Click to Enlarge
The Caliphate: Origin and Evolution
Caliphate is derived from the Arabic word for "successor," a designation for those who would govern the Muslim community after the Prophet Mohammed died. However, Mohammed did not appoint his political successor; such a person was supposed to be elected by the community. Differences quickly emerged as to who should lead the Muslims subsequently. One camp preferred Mohammed's closest associate, Abu Bakr, while another camp favored Mohammed's cousin and son-in-law, Ali. The group loyal to Abu Bakr would later be known as Sunni, and the group loyal to Ali would later be known as Shia.
But neither group knew exactly how it wanted a caliphate to function. Centuries later, the Shia developed a theory whereby the leadership of the community is not political, but rather divinely ordained. Even among the Sunnis, the caliphate was not a neatly outlined system of government. Their texts include only general principles for politics and governance; most practices were developed as the situation arose.
Abu Bakr eventually became the first successor, or "caliph," in 644. After roughly two years in office, he died of natural causes and another top lieutenant of Mohammed, Omar, took over. He was assassinated a decade later, but not before he appointed a council of six men to elect his replacement. They chose a man named Uthman, during whose tenure Islam saw its first significant, and violent, political disagreements, which ultimately led to Uthman's assassination.
The Iraq-Syria Caliphate
Click to Enlarge
Ali succeeded Uthman, but by that time the divisions within the caliphate had worsened beyond repair, leaving Ali to manage three separate civil wars. He, too, was later assassinated, bringing an end to what was known as the Rashidun caliphate and giving rise to the Umayyad caliphate.
As an institution, the caliphate would continue to be central to Islam for some time. But it declined well before the modern era. In Egypt, the Mamluks (1250-1517) kept the term caliphate more for religious symbolism than political necessity; their authority came from military power rather than from pledges of the faithful. Even the Ottoman Empire was more akin to a sultanate. It was not until 1517, when Sultan Selim I defeated the Mamluks, that the Ottoman sultans assumed the title of caliph. But even then, the caliphate lay dormant until Sultan Abdul-Hamid II unsuccessfully tried to revive it in 1876. When the caliphate was abolished in 1924, it had not really existed for centuries.
Truthfully, the caliphate was nearly always in flux. Even during the Abbasid era (749-1258), which is considered the golden age of the caliphate, autonomous and sometimes independent emirates and sultanates threatened the central government. The Abbasids overthrew the Ummayads, but the Ummayads maintained a rival caliphate on the Iberian Peninsula from 929 to 1031. At roughly the same time, another rival caliphate led by the Fatimid dynasty based itself in Cairo (909-1171).
In actuality, a single entity able to rule the entire Muslim world did not exist but for a brief period of early Islamic history. Geography constrained every regime. For a while, the caliphs in Medina, Kufa, Damascus, and Baghdad ruled large expanses through a sort of provincial system, but over time provincial rulers accrued power and in some cases independence. These rulers would sometimes ally with the caliph, but their loyalties would change as other power centers emerged.
Resurrecting the Caliphate
As a concept, the caliphate has evolved throughout history. The basis for Sunni jurisprudence was formed during Mohammed's rule and the Rashidun era. But interestingly, no caliphate ever referred to itself as the "Islamic State," though the Ottomans adorned honorific names like "The Exalted State." The notion of an Islamic state is actually a modern development, a response to the rise of the secular nation-state.
Of course, not all Muslims advocate the creation of an Islamic state any more than they reject the nation-state. And even those that do agree in principle may disagree on the methods used to create it. Radical groups like Hizb al-Tahrir and the Islamic State want to replace the nation-state with a caliphate. Moderates may take a more measured approach.
But all this points to a larger issue: The role of Islam in politics remains unsettled. Most Muslims have embraced such ideals as nationalism, republicanism and democracy. But radical groups are as relevant as ever, due in no small part to the rise of secular authoritarianism, Islamism, the failure of Arab/Muslim states to build viable political economies, the Arab-Israeli conflict and the U.S. wars in the Muslim world. These issues have helped militant Islamists drum up support, vying for a return to the past by restoring the caliphate.
The Evolution of the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant
Until now, calls for its restoration were disregarded as propaganda. In light of the Syrian civil war and the Sunni insurgency in Iraq, such calls are arguably much more significant. The Islamic State knows it probably cannot create a caliphate, but simply saying as much benefits the group tactically: It stokes fear in the West and, considering it was announced during the first weekend of Ramadan, it appeals to Muslim sensibilities.
Plenty of Muslims, Islamists and jihadists reject the Islamic State. But for now, the group wants to use the caliphate to consolidate control over newly acquired territory. In the long run, the declaration of the caliphate also helps the group to resurrect the concept in political discourse, especially as the region is in such disarray. The Islamic State knows the declaration of a caliphate and a caliph is an issue that the Muslim world will have to address as it reconciles the role of Islam in politics.
Read more: Iraq: Examining the Professed Caliphate | Stratfor
Follow us: @stratfor on Twitter | Stratfor on Facebook
-
The Caliphate Restored
Posted By Robert Spencer On July 2, 2014 - frontpagemag.com
The Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) has declared itself a caliphate, renamed The Islamic State, and named its leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the caliph, and demanded that all Muslims worldwide pledge allegiance to him. Al-Baghdadi has called upon all Muslims to relocate to his caliphate to wage war against non-Muslims. Many have ridiculed and denigrated this declaration; few have realized its implications.
The restoration of the caliphate has for decades been the central goal of jihad groups worldwide. The caliphate (khilafa) was from the beginnings of Islam until the early twentieth century, at least among Sunnis (who constitute eighty-five to ninety percent of Muslims worldwide), the center of the supranational unity of the global Muslim community (umma). The caliph, who was theoretically chosen from among the most pious and capable men of the community, was considered to be the political, military and religious successor of Muhammad as the leader of the Muslim community. He ruled according to the dictates of the Sharia (Islamic law), implementing Allah’s decrees of justice on earth.
The caliphate was abolished by the secular Turkish government in 1924. The Muslim Brotherhood was founded in Egypt in 1928 partly as a reaction to the end of the caliphate, and from the beginning a central part of its program has been the need to work toward restoring it and then recovering lands that had been lost to Islam. Brotherhood founder Hasan al-Banna explained:
We want the Islamic flag to be hoisted once again on high, fluttering in the wind, in all those lands that have had the good fortune to harbor Islam for a certain period of time and where the muzzein’s call sounded in the takbirs and the tahlis. Then fate decreed that the light of Islam be extinguished in these lands that returned to unbelief. Thus Andalusia, Sicily, the Balkans, the Italian coast, as well as the islands of the Mediterranean, are all of them Muslim Mediterranean colonies and they must return to the Islamic fold. The Mediterranean Sea and the Red Sea must once again become Muslim seas, as they once were.
The kind of government that would then be established would not be a pluralistic democracy by any stretch of the imagination. Hamza Tzortzis of the Britain-based Islamic Education and Research Academy has stated this plainly:
We as Muslims reject the idea of freedom of speech, and even the idea of freedom. We see under the Khilafa [caliphate], when people used to engage in a positive way, this idea of freedom was redundant, it was unnecessary, because the society understood under the education system of the Khilafa state, and under the political framework of Islam, that people must engage with each other in a positive and productive way to produce results.
The desired results, obviously, have nothing to do with freedom as it is understood in Western societies. Abu Mohammad al-Julani, leader of the Syrian jihad group Jabhat Al-Nusra (Al-Nusra Front), has expressed a desire to establish a caliphate in Syria, explaining: “Being Muslims, we do not believe in political parties or parliamentary elections, but rather in an Islamic regime based on the Shura (advisory council) and which implements justice … Our heading towards the establishment of Islamic law is jihad in Allah’s way.”
Ahmad ‘Issa, commander of another Syrian jihad group, the Suqur Al-Sham Brigades, interviewed on Al Jazeera network on June 12, 2013, joined Barack Obama in praising Islam’s imperative for justice, which he said the caliphate had always manifested: “We have been providing the minorities with their rights ever since the establishment of the state of Islam, since the beginning of the Caliphate in the days of the Prophet Muhammad, and in the days of the Righteous Caliphs, and to this day. Throughout history, nobody has suffered injustice under the state of Islam – the state of truth and justice.” Nobody!
However, his idea of justice did not involve non-Muslims having the right to equal participation in the nation’s political life. “Islam,” he said, “must be the single source of authority of the state…We demand that the president and parliament speaker be Sunni Muslims, and that the state’s sole source of authority be Islam.” He said that his group would “not accept” a Christian as the head of the Syrian state. And this would not be a democracy, but a state ruled by Islamic law: “We are talking about a state of justice and truth. We want the people to be ruled by an infallible law – the law of Allah. We do not want people to be ruled by man-made laws….”
On June 21, 2013, Al Jazeera aired a speech of Professor Mohammed Malkawi, the founder of the Chicago-based organization Hizb ut-Tahrir (Party of Liberation) America, which is dedicated to non-violent implementation of Sharia in the U.S. and around the world. The speech illuminated the Islamic supremacist perspective on the abolition of the caliphate and the necessity for its restoration. Malkawi blamed non-Muslims for Islam’s decline and the fall of the caliphate: “After Islam had reached the peak of glory and the Muslims were masters of the world, there came a time when the infidels conspired against the Muslims, who were in a deep slumber. Britain conspired against them, along with Arab and Turkish collaborators and traitors, and ended the Islamic Caliphate and its glory.”
This was, he said, a great tragedy, for also like Barack Obama, Malkawi believed that a state based on Islamic law embodied justice: “Ever since the Caliphate was destroyed, the world has lost an exemplar of justice, a model for humanity in its entirety. Since then, the world has been held hostage by wolves, who do not respect the honor of a man or a believer. Two world wars cost the lives of over 70 million people, yet they accuse us of terrorism. They killed over 70 million people, and dropped atomic bombs on Japan, yet they level accusations against us.”
In contrast, Malkawi said, “We demand a state ruled by the Koran,” and led the crowd in chanting that phrase. Another speaker added: “We reject secularist rule. We reject the rule of Satan.”
Malkawi asserted that the U.S., and Barack Obama in particular, had made people “terrified of the word ‘caliphate.’” He continued:
They say to you: “You can say anything except that you want Islamic law.” For them, Islamic law is something unimaginably harsh. For them, Islamic law prevents usury. It prevents them from exploiting the peoples. Islamic law and the caliphate bring about the rule of justice, which will make all those rulers face piles of garbage— for garbage is all that they are worth.
This is not really why people think Islamic law is harsh. People think Islamic law is harsh because of the stonings, the amputations, the institutionalized oppression of women and non-Muslims, the denial of the freedom of speech, the death penalty for apostasy, and so much more. But as far as Malkawi is concerned, those things and the other elements of Sharia are what constitute justice.
All these other rulers are dwarfs— from Obama, the master of the White House, to the rulers of those palaces in the lands of the Muslims. They are all dwarfed by the Islamic caliphate and law, and that is why they try to make us scared of it. They scare the Muslims. They say to the rebels in Syria: “Do not demand a caliphate out loud, because the US will deny you equipment and aid.” They say to the Egyptian people: “Do not demand to instate Islamic law, because America will not be happy about that.”
They say that the caliphate makes the infidels angry. Don’t we want to make the infidels angry? Isn’t this Islam?
Let America and Britain hate the caliphate. Let Britain, America, and the entire West go to hell, because the caliphate is coming, Allah willing.
And now it is here, although it is by no means clear, of course, that The Islamic State will be viable or long-lasting. If it is, however, the world could soon be engulfed in a much larger conflict with Islamic jihadists even than it has been since 9/11. For in Islamic law, only the caliph is authorized – and indeed, has the responsibility – to declare offensive jihad against non-Muslim states. In his absence, all jihad must be defensive only, which is why Islamic jihadists retail laundry lists of grievances when explaining and justifying their actions: without these grievances and a caliph, they have to cast all their actions as responses to Infidel atrocities. With a caliph, however, that obligation will be gone. And the bloodshed in that event could make the world situation since 9/11, with its 20,000 jihad attacks worldwide, seem like a harmless bit of “interfaith dialogue.”
-
http://shoebat.com/2014/07/02/islamic-caliphate-iraq-major-problem-u-s/
-
Too bad this made the newspapers, maybe now the President will find out about it :evil:
http://www.miamiherald.com/2014/07/11/4231510/expansion-of-secret-facility-in.html
-
Too bad this made the newspapers, maybe now the President will find out about it :evil:
http://www.miamiherald.com/2014/07/11/4231510/expansion-of-secret-facility-in.html
Aside from the Israelis, I trust the Kurds the most in the middle east.
-
Agreed. Many of my friends have worked with them and speak well of them. They have proven themselves over many decades.
-
http://www.israelvideonetwork.com/obama-signs-11-billion-arms-deal-with-hamass-greatest-ally?omhide=true&utm_source=MadMimi&utm_medium=email&utm_content=Israel+Breaking+News+Video%3A+Obama+Signs+%2411+Billion+Arms+Deal+with+Hamas%E2%80%99s+Greatest+Ally&utm_campaign=20140720_m121404817_7%2F20+Israel+Breaking+News+Video%3A+Obama+Signs+%2411+Billion+Arms+Deal+with+Hamas%E2%80%99s+Greatest+Ally&utm_term=Obama+Signs+_2411+Billion+Arms+Deal+with+Hamas_E2_80_99s+Greatest+Ally
-
http://www.israelvideonetwork.com/obama-signs-11-billion-arms-deal-with-hamass-greatest-ally?omhide=true&utm_source=MadMimi&utm_medium=email&utm_content=Israel+Breaking+News+Video%3A+Obama+Signs+%2411+Billion+Arms+Deal+with+Hamas%E2%80%99s+Greatest+Ally&utm_campaign=20140720_m121404817_7%2F20+Israel+Breaking+News+Video%3A+Obama+Signs+%2411+Billion+Arms+Deal+with+Hamas%E2%80%99s+Greatest+Ally&utm_term=Obama+Signs+_2411+Billion+Arms+Deal+with+Hamas_E2_80_99s+Greatest+Ally
Who could have seen this coming?
-
I confess to being surprised that this report is the only report I have seen of this so far , , ,
-
Summary
The Kurdistan Regional Government's recent stream of announcements make it appear that Iraqi Kurdistan, now endowed with the prize of Kirkuk oil, is on the verge of political and economic independence. But behind the Kurdish hubris is a government in an increasingly desperate financial situation, with only its old adversary Turkey to rely on for its survival. This situation will create deeper divisions among Iraq's Kurdish factions, providing neighboring Iran with an opportunity to counter Turkey's moves in Iraqi Kurdistan.
Analysis
Now that the Kurds have established control over the Kirkuk oil fields, the Kurdistan Regional Government is working rapidly to connect the fields to its own energy infrastructure. Multiple sources have confirmed that the Avana Dome has been connected to the Kurdish-controlled Khurmala Dome. The next step will be to connect the Baba Dome and nearby Bai Hassan field to the Avana Dome, which altogether would add (in theory) some 415,000 barrels to Kurdish production capacity, though these fields currently produce around 160,000 barrels per day of sour light crude. Kirkuk crude can be blended with light Taq Taq crude to channel more oil for export, but that would irritate potential buyers, who are looking for consistency in output and would be reluctant to buy crude from a disputed territory. More likely, Kirkuk crude will be diverted to local refineries for domestic Kurdish consumption.
Still, the Kurdish acquisition of Kirkuk does little at the moment to alleviate the Kurdistan Regional Government's deepening financial crisis. For the past six months, it has gone without a roughly $1.2 billion monthly budget allocation from Baghdad, since the Iraqi government sought to punish Kurdish attempts to attain energy and political independence. That is about the same amount the Kurdistan Regional Government spends monthly for public sector employee salaries, operational expenses and investment projects. Critically, 60 percent of the Kurdistan Regional Government's monthly expenditures go toward the salaries of a bloated 700,000-strong bureaucracy, including 200,000 peshmerga soldiers.
The government has had to delay paying some public sector employees, especially teachers. With security threats rising, paying peshmerga forces seems to be a priority, even if those salaries are not paid in time. After its financial obligations to its employees, the Kurdistan Regional Government also has to answer to more than 50 international oil companies and contractors operating in Iraqi Kurdistan that also face repeated delays in payments. The government tried to extract fees from these firms to alleviate its current financial problems, demanding immediate payments for the services of its oil protection units. But the patience of international oil companies wears thin with such demands the longer they go without pay. The Kurdistan Regional Government's total debts to international oil companies and contractors is estimated to be roughly $5 billion and counting.
Without reserves to draw from, the Kurdistan Regional Government in Arbil has had to borrow from a limited menu of lenders. Several of Iraqi Kurdistan's business tycoons, including the heads of KAR Group and Asiacell, have been called on to issue loans and maintain liquidity in public banks. Most foreign banks are reluctant to lend to the Kurdistan Regional Government, but Arbil appears to have secured around $1 billion total in regional loans from Turkey's Asya Bank and VakifBank, in addition to funds from Lebanese banks IBL, Byblos and BBAC. After securing a $2 billion to $3 billion loan from Turkey in March, the Kurdistan Regional Government has requested additional loans from Ankara, but the terms and exact amount remain unclear.
Overcoming Obstacles
With a growing deficit of more than $6 billion and no resolution with Baghdad in sight, the Kurdistan Regional Government is desperate to generate enough revenue on its own from oil sales to cover basic expenses. But that is easier said than done. The Kurdish government has already been trying to convince the market that any oil exported out of Iraqi Kurdistan constitutes a legal sale, even as Baghdad has threatened to fine and sue any company that bypasses the central government in such commercial transactions. The legality of Kurdish crude exports has only been compounded by the Kurds' seizure of fields in disputed territory.
Arbil has assumed that all it has to do is establish precedence in selling its oil to drown out Baghdad's threat. Unfortunately, only one of four tankers -- carrying roughly 100,000 barrels of Kurdish crude -- has been sold so far to a buyer out of Israel, while traders such as Glencore, Vitol and Trafigura have kept their distance. Turkey meanwhile announced July 18 that it is halting the flow of Kurdish oil through its pipeline to the port of Ceyhan because its storage tanks are already full with unsold Kurdish crude.
Click to Enlarge
Kurdish officials have lobbied firms throughout Europe in the hope of selling the remaining oil, but the Kurdistan Regional Government would then face the challenge of securing the funds from those sales. Fearing that firms would buy the oil but deposit the funds with Baghdad to avoid a legal morass, the Kurdistan Regional Government has put out messages threatening legal action against its own potential buyers since Baghdad will withhold those funds and deny the Kurdistan Regional Government its revenue. The key to Arbil's funds lies in Turkey's hands. Some $93 million from the first Kurdistan Regional Government crude sale by tanker is sitting in a Turkish Halkbank account. Arbil recently sent a delegation to try and secure those funds, but Ankara can be expected to proceed cautiously in releasing these funds as it tries to avoid incurring further wrath from Baghdad and Washington.
Turkey understands the enormous financial leverage it holds over the Kurdistan Regional Government as Arbil struggles to make its monthly payments. Turkey will selectively -- and stringently -- provide enough aid to allow Arbil to scrape by, but will also demand that Kurdistan Regional Government President Massoud Barzani and his Kurdistan Democratic Party lay off their calls for independence. A nearly bankrupt Kurdistan Regional Government will have no choice but to heed these demands, but it is also not comfortable with its deep dependency on Turkey.
This sentiment appears to be growing within Jalal Talabani's Patriotic Union of Kurdistan. Factions of the party have already vocalized their unease with the policies of Barzani's party that have led Iraqi Kurdistan into a tight dependency with Turkey and an increasingly hostile relationship with Baghdad, Washington and Tehran. This intra-Kurdish tension grew deeper following the Kurdish Democratic Party's ousting of National Oil Co. officials from the Kirkuk fields. The Kurdish Democratic Party made it a point to use its own peshmerga forces and oil protection units to take control of Kirkuk's oil fields, largely edging the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan out. Also, local Arab and Turkomen resistance to Kurdish control over Kirkuk province is rising and will further complicate the regional government's hold over Kirkuk in the long term.
Informal networks and Turkish aid will enable the Kurdistan Regional Government to avoid financial collapse, but growing economic tensions will only exacerbate frictions among Iraq's Kurdish factions as the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan sees its own interests compromised by Kurdish Democratic Party policy. The longer Arbil holds out on a deal with Baghdad, the more financially dependent the Kurdistan Regional Party will be on Turkey and the more difficulty Kurdish parties will have in maintaining their patronage networks while under financial duress.
This provides Iran with an opportunity to further its already strong ties with the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan and Gorran to counterbalance Turkey's sponsorship of Barzani's Kurdistan Democratic Party. Iran has already threatened to close its border with Iraqi Kurdistan to trade should Barzani proceed with his calls for independence, a move that would have significant economic repercussions for the regional government as a whole, but the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan in particular. Through a carrot-and-stick approach, Iran will try to sow divisions among Kurdish parties, potentially offering financial and military assistance to the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan while using its influence among the Iraqi Shia to grant political concessions and positions to cooperative Kurds in forming a new government. This may well be the subject of conversation when a Patriotic Union of Kurdistan delegation visits Iran in the coming days.
Read more: Iraqi Kurdistan's Financial Trap | Stratfor
-
'Hamas's struggle has receded as a priority in the new Arab world' (Roula Khalaf, Financial Times)
"It is not that the Palestinian cause is no longer an emotive issue for Arabs. But the turmoil spreading across the region has lessened the shock of a soaring Palestinian death toll while stripping Islamist groups, including Hamas - which controls the Gaza Strip - of an automatic claim on public sympathy. Few in the region are rushing to Hamas's rescue. State-backed media in both Egypt and Saudi Arabia are blaming not only Israel but the Islamist group, too, for the violence.
The shift in Arab attitude has not gone unnoticed in Israel, which has expanded its campaign by launching a ground offensive. While it plays to Israel's advantage in the short term, though, it also complicates the search for a way out of the crisis that Israel will eventually need.
'The circumstances of the region are different this time. There are problems no less important than Gaza - whether in Syria, Iraq or Libya,' says Ghassan Khatib, a former Palestinian official who now teaches at Birzeit University near the West Bank town of Ramallah."
-
http://dailycaller.com/2014/07/23/iran-supreme-leader-the-only-solution-for-crisis-is-israels-destruction/?utm_referrer=https%3A%2F%2Fm.facebook.com
-
http://dailycaller.com/2014/07/23/iran-supreme-leader-the-only-solution-for-crisis-is-israels-destruction/?utm_referrer=https%3A%2F%2Fm.facebook.com
Comment Rachel?
-
Fighting between Islamic State forces and Syrian Kurds in the northern Aleppo province has killed at least 49 people. Fighters from the Kurdish People's Protection Units (YPG) reportedly seized several Islamic State positions in Ain al-Arab, near the border with Turkey. Meanwhile, Moner Mohammad Abusalha, a U.S. citizen who carried out a suicide truck bombing at a restaurant in northern Syria in May, returned to the United States for several months before the attack.
• Hezbollah commander Ibrahim al-Haq has been killed during a mission in Iraq, suggesting the group, which is involved in fighting in Syria, is also participating in Iraq's conflict.
-
LOL, I JUST posted that to a different thread, then popped over here. I'll delete.
-
Great minds think alike :-D
-
Memo: No more trophy beheading, cultural landmark destruction, mass execution, or crucifixion videos issued without the express permission of the ISIS corporate office... They're learning. :-(
http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/08/01/us-syria-crisis-media-idUSKBN0G13SV20140801
-
http://www.cnn.com/2014/07/31/world/meast/israel-gaza-region/
From the article:
"This is unprecedented in the history of the Arab-Israeli conflict," says CNN's Ali Younes, an analyst who has covered the region for decades. "Most Arab states are actively supporting Israel against the Palestinians -- and not even shy about it or doing it discreetly."
-
Many interesting implications in BD's post, and in the one that follows too:
================================
ISIS Opens The World's Biggest Bazaar of Violence
Posted: 01 Aug 2014 03:32 PM PDT
ISIS isn't a state and it's not your typicaly insurgency. It's much more interesting than that. ISIS is a marketplace -- a freewheeling bazaar of violence -- and it is rapidly expanding.
So far, it's been very successful:
it operates freely in an area bigger than most countries (and it has lots of oil),
it's been attracting the participation of a growing number of organizations and individuals, and
it's financially successful and self-funding (it's already made billions of $$ from oil, crime, bank robberies, and more).
This success is due to the fact that ISIS isn't trying to build a "state." It's not a government.
It's a bazaar in an autonomous zone. It operates outside of the global system. It doesn't want to be a state (which would make it vulnerable).
This bazaar was built for one purpose: perpetual expansion and continuous warfare.
To keep things running, ISIS offers a minimalist, decentralized governance. Day-to-day life is governed by a simple, decentralized rule set: Sharia Law.
Participation is open to everyone willing to live under Sharia and able to expand the bazaar to new areas.
The strategies and tactics ISIS uses are open sourced. Any group or individual can advance them, as long as they can demonstrate they work.
Weapons and other technologies needed for war are developed, shared and sold between participants and the pace of development (based on previous expamples is very quick).
Making money through criminal activity is highly encouraged. Mercenary work is encouraged.
All of these attributes (and more) make ISIS hard to fight (something similar to this fought US forces to a standstill for four years in a much less advanced state until Petraeus started using a strategy similar to this).
It's also a good demonstration that global guerrillas are the cockroaches of warfare. Once they become established, they are nearly impossible to get rid of.
-
http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Peace/2014/08/01/Islamic-State-to-Join-Palestine-to-Fight-the-Barbaric-Jews
Fortunately I also read this morning that we're all about to be killed in a long overdue solar flare. So we don't have to worry about this. :-)
-
Zakaria - > Gaza is now a proxy war.
[No mention of his Harvard pal the anti-Semite Bamster being on the wrong side - AGAIN. For that matter so is his network CNN]
"This time, Gaza fighting is 'proxy war' for entire Mideast
By Josh Levs, CNN
updated 1:48 PM EDT, Fri August 1, 2014
The Gaza conflict is a proxy war for the Middle East, analysts say
Egypt, Jordan, and Saudi Arabia are seen as supporting Israel's crackdown on Hamas
Turkey and Qatar support Hamas
Hamas is an extension of the Muslim Brotherhood, which threatens some governments
(CNN) -- The conflict raging in Gaza is different this time.
While Hamas' rocket attacks and Israel's military actions may look familiar, they're taking place against a whole new backdrop.
"This is unprecedented in the history of the Arab-Israeli conflict," says CNN's Ali Younes, an analyst who has covered the region for decades. "Most Arab states are actively supporting Israel against the Palestinians -- and not even shy about it or doing it discreetly."
It's a "joint Arab-Israeli war consisting of Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia against other Arabs -- the Palestinians as represented by Hamas."
As the New York Times put it, "Arab leaders, viewing Hamas as worse than Israel, stay silent."
Most Arab states are actively supporting Israel.
CNN's Ali Younes, Mideast analyst
One of the outcomes of the fighting will likely be "the end of the old Arab alliance system that has, even nominally, supported the Palestinians and their goal of establishing a Palestinian state," Younes says.
"The Israel-Hamas conflict has laid bare the new divides of the Middle East," says Danielle Pletka, vice president of foreign and defense policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute. "It's no longer the Muslims against the Jews. Now it's the extremists -- the Muslim Brotherhood, Hamas, Hezbollah, and their backers Iran, Qatar and Turkey -- against Israel and the more moderate Muslims including Jordan, Egypt, and Saudi Arabia."
"It's a proxy war for control or dominance in the Middle East," says CNN's Fareed Zakaria.
To understand why and what all this means, we need to begin with understanding of Hamas.
Zakaria: Gaza is 'proxy war' for Mideast
Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood
Hamas, which has controlled the Palestinian government in Gaza for years, is an extension of the Muslim Brotherhood. To many Americans, the brotherhood is familiar for its central role in the power struggle for Egypt. But it's much larger than that.
"The Muslim Brotherhood is international, with affiliated groups in more than 70 countries, including Saudi Arabia and the UAE," says Eric Trager of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy.
The Arab Spring showed the region that uprisings can lead to the Brotherhood gaining power. So it's a threat to the governments it opposes.
"Israel's ongoing battle against Hamas is part of a wider regional war on the Muslim Brotherhood," says the Soufan Group, which tracks global security. "Most Arab states share Israel's determination to finish the movement off once and for all, but they are unlikely to be successful."
"From the perspective of Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, the UAE and some other Arab states, what the Israeli Prime Minister is doing is fighting this war against Hamas on their behalf so they can finish the last stronghold of the Muslim Brotherhood," Younes says.
"Arab governments and official Arab media have all but adopted the Israeli view of who is a terrorist and who is not. Egyptian and Saudi-owned media are liberal in labeling the Muslim Brotherhood as 'terrorists' and describing Hamas as a 'terrorist organization.' It's a complete turnabout from the past, when Arab states fought Israel and the U.S. in the international organizations on the definition of terrorism, and who is a terrorist or a 'freedom fighter.'"
Egypt's new President vowed during his campaign that he would finish off the Muslim Brotherhood. Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, the former military chief, deposed Egypt's first freely elected leader, President Mohamed Morsy of the Muslim Brotherhood, last year following mass protests against Morsy's rule.
El-Sisi was elected officially in June.
"In Egypt you have a regime that came to power by toppling a Muslim Brotherhood government," says Trager. "It's therefore in an existential conflict with the Brotherhood. So it doesn't want to see Hamas, the Palestinian Muslim Brotherhood, emerge stronger in a neighboring territory."
Egypt also has another reason to stand against Hamas: rising violence and instability in Sinai, the northern part of Egypt that borders Israel and Gaza. Hamas' network of tunnels includes some in and out of Egypt used to smuggle goods include weapons for attackson Israeli civilians.
It's part of a regional war on the Muslim Brotherhood.
The Soufan Group, which tracks global security
The new Egyptian government has been "cracking down aggressively since it removed the brotherhood from power," Trager says.
El-Sisi closed the border crossings between Egypt and Gaza, which has helped block Hamas militants from escaping or smuggling in more weapons during Israel's onslaught. But it also has contributed to the humanitarian crisis of people trapped in Gaza.
Egypt proposed a cease-fire, and Israel quickly accepted it -- indicating that it contained the terms Israel was looking for, analysts say. Hamas rejected it. While Egypt has worked furiously to try to broker a truce in the past, Cairo this time shows little rush to change its proposal to one much more favorable to Hamas, analysts say.
Saudi Arabia, UAE, Jordan
The monarchies of Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Jordan have called on Hamas to accept the cease-fire proposal as is.
"We condemn the Israeli aggression and we support the Egyptian cease-fire proposal," Jordan's King Abdullah said last week.
Countries such as Saudi Arabia and the UAE are "challenged by Islamists who come to power via the ballot box rather than through royal succession," says Trager.
The Saudis and Egyptians are more scared of Islamic fundamentalism than they are of Israel.
CNN's Fareed Zakaria
"So these countries have been directly supportive of the coup in Egypt because it removed elected Islamists and therefore discredited that model."
Saudi Arabia is "leading the charge," partly through backing the coup and financing state media reports that attacked the brotherhood, says Younes.
"Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia and the UAE all see the destruction of Hamas as of benefit to their internal security as well as to regional stability."
"The Saudis and the Egyptians are now more scared of Islamic fundamentalism than they are of Israel," says Zakaria.
"The Saudi monarchy is more worried about the prospects of Hamas winning, which would embolden Islamists in other parts of the Middle East, and therefore potentially an Islamist opposition in Saudi Arabia."
But Hamas is not alone.
Turkey and Qatar remain supportive of Hamas.
Qatar supported Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood government, and built "an Egypt-centric Al Jazeera network that became known for its strongly pro-Muslim Brotherhood line," says Trager.
Qatar also funds many Muslim Brotherhood figures in exile, including Hamas political leader Khaled Mashaal, who is believed to have orchestrated numerous Hamas terrorist attacks.
"I think this is a case of a country with a lot of money to burn making a certain calculation in 2011 that made a lot of sense at the time: that the Brotherhood was the next big thing that was going to dominate many of the countries of the region," says Trager. "Realistically, it made sense to bet on it."
Turkey has "more of an ideological sympathy with the Brotherhood," he says.
Erdogan has tried to use the cause of the Brotherhood to bolster his own Islamist credentials.
Eric Trager, Washington Institute
Last week, Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan spoke with CNN, accusing Israel of "genocide."
"Erdogan has tried to use the cause of the Brotherhood to bolster his own Islamist credentials at home," says Trager. Last year, Erdogan cracked down on mass demonstrations in his country.
Iran has long supported Hamas, supplying it with weapons. And Meshaal used to be based in Syria.
But that changed. In 2012, Meshaal left Syria as the country's civil war deepened -- a decision believed to have caused a breakdown in his relationship with Iran as well, says Firas Abi Ali, head of Middle East and North Africa Country Risk and Forecasting at the global information company IHS. Tehran is aligned with Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's regime.
Now, Syria -- Israel's neighbor to the north -- is locked in a brutal, multiparty civil war, with Islamist extremists hoisting severed heads onto poles. The war, believed to have killed more than 115,000 people, is just one of the many developments emphasizing how many "fault lines" there are in the region, Richard Haass, president of Council on Foreign Relations, told "CNN Tonight."
"There's fault lines within the Palestinians between Hamas and the other part of the Palestinian Authority. You have Sunnis vs. Shia. You have Iran vs. Saudi Arabia and the Arabs. You have secularists vs. people who embrace religion in the political space."
The Palestinian Authority
Paying a price for all this is another key player: Fatah, the Palestinian faction that controls the West Bank. Fatah and Hamas have long fought each other, but earlier this year made another effort at a unity government.
Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas, who is in charge of the government in the West Bank, "seems politically exhausted by all the twists and turns he has made in search of a durable solution," the Soufan Gruop says. "And the one chance of reasserting his authority through a unity government that would have forced Hamas into a subordinate and less militant role has now disappeared. He must now watch helplessly as protests in the West Bank undo whatever progress he had made towards a two-state solution."
Gaza conflict by the numbers
CNN's Jethro Mullen, Brian Todd
-
Supporting/working with the Kurds makes sense to me:
http://allenbwest.com/2014/08/4-things-id-stop-advance-islamic-state-charge/
-
Supporting/working with the Kurds makes sense to me:
http://allenbwest.com/2014/08/4-things-id-stop-advance-islamic-state-charge/
Agree. To not help them is to throw away the last remnant of everything we fought for.
The original theory on not helping Kurds directly I believe was that it would undermine our relationships with Turkey and Iran. Now Turkey seems to be a full fledged enemy and Iran has been that for 35 years. It seems to me we could use an ally (and a base) in the region, if invited and the terms were right. Maybe there are other considerations. I wish we had a Commander in Chief looking our for our interests.
-
http://www.worldaffairsjournal.org/blog/michael-j-totten/isis-exterminating-minorities-iraq
-
U.S. Weighs Iraq Airstrikes, Citing Crisis
President Obama is considering airstrikes or airdrops of food and medicine to address a humanitarian crisis among some 40,000 religious minorities in Iraq who have been dying of heat and thirst on a mountaintop after death threats from the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, administration officials said on Thursday.
The president, in meetings with his national security team at the White House on Thursday morning, has been weighing a series of options ranging from dropping humanitarian supplies on Mount Sinjar to military strikes on the fighters from ISIS now at the base of the mountain, a senior administration official said.
“There could be a humanitarian catastrophe there,” a second administration official said, adding that a decision from Mr. Obama was expected “imminently — this could be a fast-moving train.”
READ MORE »
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/08/08/world/middleeast/obama-weighs-military-strikes-to-aid-trapped-iraqis-officials-say.html?emc=edit_na_20140807
-
Amazing how quickly the "responsibility to protect" disappeared and yet this administration still makes choices that empower jihadists globally.
-
World Ignores Christian Exodus from Islamic World
Posted By Raymond Ibrahim On August 8, 2014
Originally published by the Gatestone Institute.
While the world fixates on the conflict between Israel and Hamas—and while most mainstream media demonize Israel for trying to survive amid a sea of Arab-Islamic hostility—similar or worse tragedies continue to go virtually ignored.
One of the most ancient Christian communities in the world, that of Iraq—which already had been decimated over the last decade, by Islamic forces unleashed after the ousting of Saddam Hussein—has now been wiped out entirely by the new “caliphate,” the so-called Islamic State, formerly known by the acronym “ISIS.”
As Reuters reported:
Islamist insurgents have issued an ultimatum to northern Iraq’s dwindling Christian population to either convert to Islam, pay a religious levy or face death, according to a statement distributed in the militant-controlled city of Mosul….
It said Christians who wanted to remain in the “caliphate” that the Islamic State declared this month in parts of Iraq and Syria must agree to abide by terms of a “dhimma” contract—a historic practice under which non-Muslims were protected in Muslim lands in return for a special levy known as “jizya.”
“We offer them three choices: Islam; the dhimma contract—involving payment of jizya; if they refuse this they will have nothing but the sword,” the announcement said.
The amount of jizya-money demanded was $450 a month, an exorbitant sum for Iraq.
Hours after the demand for jizya was made, Islamists began painting the letter “n” on Christian homes in Mosul—in Arabic, Christians are known as “Nasara,” or “Nazarenes”—signaling them out for the slaughter to come.
Most Christians have since fled. A one-minute video in Arabic of their exodus appears here—women and children weeping as they flee their homes—a video that will not be shown by any Western mainstream media outlet, busy as they are depicting instead nonstop images of Palestinian women and children.
The Syrian Orthodox bishop of Mosul said that what is happening to the Christians of Mosul is nothing less than “genocide… not to mention the slaughters and rapes not being reported… Forcing more than a thousand Christian families out of Mosul, and turning Christian churches into Muslim mosques, is equivalent to genocide.” Of course, the word genocide means to kill or make extinct a people.
Others were not as lucky to flee. According to Iraqi human rights activist Hena Edward, a great many older and disabled Iraqis, unable to pay the jizya or join the exodus, have opted to convert to Islam.
Meanwhile, the jihadis continue destroying churches and other ancient Christian holy sites in the name of their religion, and murdering any Christians they can find. Among other acts, they torched an 1800 year old church in Mosul, stormed a fourth century monastery—formerly one of Iraq’s best known Christian landmarks—and expelling its resident monks.
Most recently, in Syrian regions under the Islamic State’s control, eight Christians were reportedly crucified.
The Islamic State’s call for Christians to pay jizya is not simply about money. It is about subjugation. Most Western media reporting on this recent call for jizya have failed to explain the accompanying dhimma contract Christians must also abide by. According to the Islamic State, “We offer them [Christians] three choices: Islam; the dhimma contract—involving payment of jizya; if they refuse this they will have nothing but the sword.”
The “dhimma contract” is a reference to the Conditions of Omar, an Islamic text attributed to the caliph of the same name that forces Christians to live according to third class citizen status.
In fact, several months back, when the Islamic State was still called “ISIS,” it applied the Conditions of Omar on the Christian minorities of Raqqa, Syria. The Islamic group had issued a directive
citing the Islamic concept of “dhimma”, [which] requires Christians in the city to pay tax of around half an ounce (14g) of pure gold in exchange for their safety. It says Christians must not make renovations to churches, display crosses or other religious symbols outside churches, ring church bells or pray in public. Christians must not carry arms, and must follow other rules imposed by ISIS… “If they reject, they are subject to being legitimate targets, and nothing will remain between them and ISIS other than the sword,” the statement said [emphasis added].
The persecution and exodus of Christians is hardly limited to Iraq. In 2011, the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom noted: “The flight of Christians out of the region is unprecedented and it’s increasing year by year.” In our lifetime alone “Christians might disappear altogether from Iraq, Afghanistan, and Egypt,” all Muslim majority nations.
Under Saddam Hussein, and before the 2003 U.S. “liberation” of Iraq, more than a million Christians lived in Iraq; Mosul had some 60,000 Christians. Today there are reportedly none thanks to the new Muslim “caliphate.”
In Egypt, some 100,000 Christian Copts fled their homeland soon after the “Arab Spring.” But even before that, the Coptic Orthodox Church lamented the “repeated incidents of displacement of Copts from their homes, whether by force or threat. Displacements began in Ameriya [62 Christian families evicted], then they stretched to Dahshur [120 Christian families evicted], and today terror and threats have reached the hearts and souls of our Coptic children in Sinai.”
In late 2012, it was reported that the last Christian in the city of Homs, Syria—which had a Christian population of some 80,000 before jihadis came—was murdered. An escaped teenage Syrian girl said: “We left because they were trying to kill us… because we were Christians…. Those who were our neighbors turned against us. At the end, when we ran away, we went through balconies. We did not even dare go out on the street in front of our house.”
In the African nation of Mali, after a 2012 Islamic coup, as many as 200,000 Christians fled. According to reports, “the church in Mali faces being eradicated,” especially in the north “where rebels want to establish an independent Islamist state and drive Christians out… there have been house to house searches for Christians who might be in hiding, church and Christian property has been looted or destroyed, and people tortured into revealing any Christian relatives.” At least one pastor was beheaded.
One can go on and on:
•In Ethiopia, after a Christian was accused of desecrating a Koran, thousands of Christians were forced to flee their homes when “Muslim extremists set fire to roughly 50 churches and dozens of Christian homes.”
•In the Ivory Coast—where Christians have been crucified—Islamic rebels “massacred hundreds and displaced tens of thousands” of Christians.
•In Libya, Islamic rebels forced several Christian nun orders serving the sick and needy since 1921 to flee and killed several Coptic Christians, causing that community also to flee.
•In Muslim-majority northern Nigeria, where hardly a Sunday passes without a church bombing, Christians are fleeing by the thousands; one region has been emptied of 95% of its Christian population.
•In Pakistan, after a Christian child was falsely accused of desecrating a Koran and Muslims went on an anti-Christian rampage, an entire Christian village—men, women, and children—was forced to flee into the nearby woods, where they built a church, to permanently reside there.
Despite all these atrocities, exoduses, and even genocides, the mainstream media seems to spend every available moment airing images of displaced Palestinians and demonizing Israel for trying to defend itself. Yet Israel does not kill Palestinians because of their religion or any other personal aspects. It does so in the context of being rocketed and trying to defend itself from terrorism.
On the other hand, all the crimes being committed by Muslims against Christians are simply motivated by religious hate, because the Christians are Christian.
It is to the mainstream media’s great shame that those who slaughter, behead, crucify, and displace people for no other reason than because they are Christian, rarely if ever get media coverage, while a nation such as Israel, which kills only in the context of self-defense, and not out of religious bigotry, is constantly demonized.
Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: Click here.
-
http://www.catholic.org/news/international/middle_east/story.php?id=56481
-
Summary
The United States, Turkey and Iran are re-evaluating military support for Iraq's federal Kurdish region as Islamist State militants continue their attacks on Kurdish targets. Discussions of aid and direct military support for the Kurds are more complicated than similar decisions about arming and supporting the Iraqi army. The Kurdistan Regional Government's status as a federal region, along with regional concerns relating to Kurdish independence and militancy in neighboring Turkey and Iran, will limit the degree to which Washington and regional capitals are willing to arm Iraq's Kurds to engage Islamic State militants beyond limited airstrikes.
Analysis
Iraq's Kurdish region faces serious geographic challenges when it comes to defense. The territory is roughly crescent-shaped. The interior of the crescent, which faces Iraq's disputed territories, starts as flat, open desert and steadily elevates into hills, ultimately transitioning to mountains that anchor the borders with Turkey and Iran. Much of the region's critical energy infrastructure, both within the Kurdistan Regional Government proper and in the disputed regions surrounding Kirkuk, lies near areas of Iraqi territory now claimed by Islamic State militants and in open desert. Critical cities such as Dohuk, Arbil and Kirkuk are also nestled either within or close to the disputed territories on the crescent's interior border.
Any advance by the Islamic State into peshmerga-controlled territory immediately puts the militants dangerously close to these strategic areas because of the lack of geographic depth in this highly contested borderland. Major urban centers, including the regional capital, Arbil, and Sulaimaniyah, and the region's energy infrastructure already have a more robust Kurdish peshmerga defensive presence. But Islamic State militants will continue to launch opportunistic strikes along the Kurdistan Regional Government's long southern border, leveraging their mobility to launch surprise attacks where possible against Kurdish forces along the border.
Iraq's Population Density By Ethnic and Sectarian Divisions
Click to Enlarge
This puts the defending peshmerga at a disadvantage. They have to protect an arcing border that stretches for more than 1,000 kilometers (about 620 miles), forcing the peshmerga to travel farther to defend their positions while the Islamic State enjoys interior lines of movement. Additionally, the open land of the desert plays to the Islamic State's strength: mobility. The militants can use their fast-traveling technicals -- pickup trucks outfitted with heavy weaponry -- and mass quickly on any weak points along the defensive perimeter. This problem is exacerbated for the peshmerga because they are defending recently gained territory and are thus readjusting their entire security presence to consolidate places in Kirkuk and Diyala provinces, which were under an immediate threat from the Islamic State earlier in the conflict. With the peshmerga overstretched, the Islamic State took advantage of these security gaps and pushed in unexpected directions from the Mosul area and areas farther west.
Turkey, Iran and the United States each have a fundamental interest in preventing a large-scale assault by Islamic State militants on Iraq's federal Kurdish region. International support for the Kurds, somewhat in conjunction with Baghdad, is likely to continue focusing on preventing a wholesale collapse of the Kurdish region or the loss of large swaths of Kurdish territory to Islamic State militants. Short of this threat, which Stratfor still considers to be unlikely at this time, additional outside assistance to Kurdish forces is likely to be limited to airdrops of humanitarian aid and targeted airstrikes against Islamic State targets.
The Americans and Turks are also likely to consider hitting Islamic State artillery positions. It will be far harder for the Islamic State to attack well-entrenched troops if it loses its artillery. There is also ongoing intelligence sharing and coordination, but support will consist of the minimum necessary to enable the Kurds to protect their core territory, and the United States and Turkey are unlikely to commit forces for combat. However, this support could expand into the realm of financial support, ammunition and logistics and combat-enabling hardware, such as night vision equipment and body armor.
Both Turkey and Iran are reluctant to give Kurdish forces heavy arms and supplies given their respective concerns regarding domestic Kurdish separatist groups. The United States is also keen to avoid alienating Iraq's Sunni and Shiite Arab groups, which are currently locked in difficult political negotiations in Baghdad. Ankara, Tehran and Washington will provide minor assistance geared toward preventing the establishment of an Islamic State launching ground in the Kurdish region for strikes against Turkish, Iranian or energy targets, but there is a clear consensus against providing enough material help to support future Kurdish independence claims or embolden the Kurds to engage Arab Iraqi competitors with more robust conventional military capabilities.
Peshmerga forces are scrambling again to reorient and establish blocking positions in critical areas. When able to concentrate forces, and with foreign support and assurances, the peshmerga will have the advantage. Moreover, deeper into Kurdish territory the terrain becomes more rugged and favors defensive positions. However, the Islamic State still has its mobility, shorter lines and a long border to take advantage of, and many oil blocks are close enough to be threatened by potential raids.
Read more: Concerns About Emboldening Iraqi Kurds Will Limit Military Aid | Stratfor
Follow us: @stratfor on Twitter | Stratfor on Facebook
-
second post
Monitoring the Islamic State's 'Flood'
Security Weekly
Thursday, August 7, 2014 - 03:03 Print Text Size
Stratfor
By Scott Stewart
The Islamic State recently released the second edition of its English-language Dabiq magazine to coincide with the Eid al-Fitr holiday, which marks the end of Ramadan's month of fasting. The first edition of Dabiq, released near the beginning of Ramadan, was titled "The Return of Khilafah" to celebrate the Islamic State's declaration of a caliphate by its leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.
The second edition of the magazine was titled "The Flood" and had a twofold purpose. The first was to document the successes that the Islamic State had enjoyed on the battlefield during the month of Ramadan in both Iraq and Syria. The second was to use those successes to bolster the group's claim to be the true leader not only of the jihadist world but of all Muslims. Using the example of the prophet Noah to support its strictly dualistic ideology, the group argues that Muslims have the choice of either supporting the Islamic State or perishing as the group overwhelms the earth like Noah's flood.
A significant portion of the magazine is devoted to tying these two concepts together through a process known as mubahalah, a traditional Islamic process for resolving an intractable religious dispute in which the two parties ask Allah to bless the side telling the truth and curse the errant party. In a seven-part article titled "The Flood of the Mubahalah," the magazine outlines how the Islamic State's spokesman, Abu Muhammad al-Adnani, invoked mubahalah in the dispute between his organization and its detractors, which include Jabhat al-Nusra and al Qaeda's current leadership under Ayman al-Zawahiri. The article claims mubahalah was invoked on two occasions: on Islamic dates corresponding to dates in March and April 2014. The article further claimed that Osama bin Laden and the rest of the former al Qaeda leadership had praised the Islamic state it established before the new leadership criticized it.
The editors of Dabiq argue that the Islamic State's gains on the battlefield since mubahalah was declared -- and specifically the "flood" it had unleashed on parts of Iraq and Syria during the month of Ramadan -- serve as proof that Allah blessed the Islamic State. The successes therefore prove that the Islamic State was on the right side of its conflict with al Qaeda and the other groups. Because of this, all Muslims are supposed to support the group. Obviously, such claims are sure to offend Muslims who do not support the Islamic State, but the group has shown repeatedly that it is not afraid to offend other Muslims.
Differences with al Qaeda
Even in the midst of claiming that events have proved that Allah has blessed the Islamic State, this edition of Dabiq also served to underscore some of the fundamental tactical differences between the group and al Qaeda.
In the foreword section to the second edition, the leadership of the Islamic State urged Muslims to perform hijra, or immigrate to the Islamic state from wherever they are currently living, whether in Muslim lands or lands controlled by infidels. The editors urged readers to "Rush to the shade of the Islamic State with your parents, siblings, spouses, and children. There are homes here for you and your families. You can be a major contributor towards the liberation of Makkah, Madinah, and al-Quds. Would you not like to reach Judgment Day with these grand deeds in your scales. (sic)"
This highlights that the Islamic State in all its iterations leading up to its current form has always been a mass movement with ties to a specific section of geography. While al Qaeda was founded by a wealthy Saudi and designed to be a global, elite vanguard organization, Jamaat al-Tawhid and Jihad (the Islamic State's original name) was founded by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, a Jordanian street thug, and the organization reflected its founder's more regional focus along with his brutality and vicious hatred of Shia. The differences between the two organizations were clearly reflected in al-Zawahiri's letter to al-Zarqawi, a document the U.S. government released in October 2005.
In that letter, al-Zawahiri urged al-Zarqawi to refrain from high-profile hostage execution videos. "Among the things which the feelings of the Muslim populace who love and support you will never find palatable... are the scenes of slaughtering the hostages," al-Zawahiri wrote. "You shouldn't be deceived by the praise of some of the zealous young men and their description of you as the sheikh of the slaughterers, etc. They do not express the general view of the admirer and the supporter of the resistance in Iraq, and of you in particular."
Al-Zawahiri also emphasized taking a pragmatic approach, rather than stubborn adherence to ideology, to achieve al Qaeda's goals. According to al-Zawahiri, if al Qaeda in Iraq was going to become a sustained force in the region that was capable of eventually creating an Islamic polity, it needed to gain popular support, tolerate the Shia, use the ideology card judiciously and understand that the bulk of Muslims (especially the ulema) do not share the jihadist ideology.
Over the past month, the Islamic State has published numerous videos of its fighters executing captured Iraqi soldiers and destroying Shiite mosques and shrines. The organization clearly has not changed its approach over the past decade despite the entreaties of figures such as al-Zawahiri. This intransigence has also been a significant contributor to the group's many disputes with other rebel groups in Syria.
By urging Muslims to immigrate to the territories it controls in Iraq and Syria, the Islamic State demonstrated another difference from al Qaeda. For several years now, the al Qaeda core and its most effective regional franchise, al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, have been telling jihadists in the West to stay home and conduct attacks where they live rather than risk traveling to places such as Pakistan or Yemen to receive training at militant camps. These calls for grassroots operatives to conduct attacks in the West reflect not only the pressure these groups have been under in Pakistan and Yemen but also al Qaeda's fixation on attempting to strike Western countries that support the rulers of Muslim countries.
While the Islamic State conducted a multitude of terrorist and insurgent attacks on U.S. forces in Iraq, it has not attempted to strike outside of its home region. Even its terrorist attacks outside of Iraq and Syria have been in places such as Jordan, al-Zarqawi's home country, or Lebanon. When U.S. forces pulled out of Iraq, the Islamic State continued attacking the Iraqi government and eventually became involved in the civil war in Syria. It has remained focused on fighting its enemies inside the region -- including the Syrian and Iraqi regimes and other rebel groups -- but has not attempted attacks in the United States or Europe.
Terrorism, Insurgency and Beyond
In the Gauging the Jihadist Movement series published in December 2013, Stratfor noted that jihadists are militants and that they use various types of military operations, including terrorism and insurgent tactics. The al Qaeda core was always heavily focused on terrorism, but as a small vanguard organization, it was never large enough to become a meaningful insurgent force or to establish an Islamic polity itself.
Many of the regional jihadist groups that joined al Qaeda's global constellation, such as al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb and al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, have progressed beyond terrorism into insurgency. But most of these attempts have not fared well and have been put down by the host country with outside assistance. Even al Qaeda in Iraq, a predecessor of the Islamic State that was aligned with al Qaeda until February, was heavily damaged and nearly destroyed after it moved from terrorism to insurgency in Iraq and declared an Islamic state in Iraq in 2006. It was only after the U.S. drawdown and withdrawal from Iraq and the outbreak of the civil war in Syria in 2011 that the group managed to regain its strength and again assert its claim to rule an Islamic state. It has become a formidable military force, capable not only of conducting terrorist operations and hit-and-run insurgent attacks but also of taking and holding territory, something the al Qaeda core group has never been able to do.
So far, the Islamic State has been able to claim its battlefield successes as proof of Allah's blessing. However, it has not yet received the global recognition and acceptance it hoped its declaration of a caliphate would produce. The number of jihadist groups swearing allegiance to the Islamic State has remained quite limited to date, and the publishing of the second edition of Dabiq does not seem to have changed that reality.
Political changes appear to be happening in Iraq that could very well result in increasing cooperation between the Iraqi government, the Sunni tribal sheikhs and the Iraqi Kurds. Once this happens, it will be important to watch and see if the Islamic State is able to defend the territorial gains it has made in Iraq over the past few months -- much less continue its efforts to overwhelm the world like a flood.
Read more: Monitoring the Islamic State's 'Flood' | Stratfor
Follow us: @stratfor on Twitter | Stratfor on Facebook
-
Third post
http://www.armytimes.com/article/20140807/NEWS08/308070078/Top-U-S-officer-Iraq-We-must-neutralize-enemy-
-
http://www.militarytimes.com/article/20140808/NEWS08/308080084/Why-Obama-s-campaign-Iraq-could-require-15-000-troops?sf29602611=1
-
U.S. Actions in Iraq Fueled Rise of a Rebel
Baghdadi of ISIS Pushes an Islamist Crusade
By TIM ARANGO and ERIC SCHMITTAUG. 10, 2014
BAGHDAD — When American forces raided a home near Falluja during the turbulent 2004 offensive against the Iraqi Sunni insurgency, they got the hard-core militants they had been looking for. They also picked up an apparent hanger-on, an Iraqi man in his early 30s whom they knew nothing about.
The Americans duly registered his name as they processed him and the others at the Camp Bucca detention center: Ibrahim Awad Ibrahim al-Badry.
That once-peripheral figure has become known to the world now as Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the self-appointed caliph of the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria and the architect of its violent campaign to redraw the map of the Middle East.
“He was a street thug when we picked him up in 2004,” said a Pentagon official who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss intelligence matters. “It’s hard to imagine we could have had a crystal ball then that would tell us he’d become head of ISIS.”
At every turn, Mr. Baghdadi’s rise has been shaped by the United States’ involvement in Iraq — most of the political changes that fueled his fight, or led to his promotion, were born directly from some American action. And now he has forced a new chapter of that intervention, after ISIS’ military successes and brutal massacres of minorities in its advance prompted President Obama to order airstrikes in Iraq.
Mr. Baghdadi has seemed to revel in the fight, promising that ISIS would soon be in “direct confrontation” with the United States.
Still, when he first latched on to Al Qaeda, in the early years of the American occupation, it was not as a fighter, but rather as a religious figure. He has since declared himself caliph of the Islamic world, and pressed a violent campaign to root out religious minorities, like Shiites and Yazidis, that has brought condemnation even from Qaeda leaders.
Despite his reach for global stature, Mr. Baghdadi, in his early 40s, in many ways has remained more mysterious than any of the major jihadi figures who preceded him.
American and Iraqi officials have teams of intelligence analysts and operatives dedicated to stalking him, but have had little success in piecing together the arc of his life. And his recent appearance at a mosque in Mosul to deliver a sermon, a video of which was distributed online, was the first time many of his followers had ever seen him.
Mr. Baghdadi is said to have a doctorate in Islamic studies from a university in Baghdad, and was a mosque preacher in his hometown, Samarra. He also has an attractive pedigree, claiming to trace his ancestry to the Quraysh Tribe of the Prophet Muhammad.
Beyond that, almost every biographical point about Mr. Baghdadi is occluded by some confusion or another.
The Pentagon says that Mr. Baghdadi, after being arrested in Falluja in early 2004, was released that December with a large group of other prisoners deemed low level. But Hisham al-Hashimi, an Iraqi scholar who has researched Mr. Baghdadi’s life, sometimes on behalf of Iraqi intelligence, said that Mr. Baghdadi had spent five years in an American detention facility where, like many ISIS fighters now on the battlefield, he became more radicalized.
Mr. Hashimi said that Mr. Baghdadi had grown up in a poor family in a farming village near Samarra, and that his family was Sufi — a strain of Islam known for its tolerance. He said Mr. Baghdadi had come to Baghdad in the early 1990s, and over time became more radical.
Early in the insurgency, he gravitated toward a new jihadi group led by the flamboyant Jordanian militant operative Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. Though Mr. Zarqawi’s group, Al Qaeda in Iraq, began as a mostly Iraqi insurgent organization, it claimed allegiance to the global Qaeda leadership, and over the years brought in more and more foreign leadership figures.
It is unclear how much prominence Mr. Baghdadi enjoyed under Mr. Zarqawi. Bruce Riedel, a former Central Intelligence Agency officer now at the Brookings Institution, recently wrote that Mr. Baghdadi had spent several years in Afghanistan, working alongside Mr. Zarqawi. But some officials say the American intelligence community does not believe Mr. Baghdadi has ever set foot outside the conflict zones of Iraq and Syria, and that he was never particularly close to Mr. Zarqawi.
The American operation that killed Mr. Zarqawi in 2006 was a huge blow to the organization’s leadership. But it was years later that Mr. Baghdadi got his chance to take the reins.
As the Americans were winding down their war in Iraq, they focused on trying to wipe out Al Qaeda in Iraq’s remaining leadership. In April 2010, a joint operation by Iraqi and American forces made the biggest strike against the group in years, killing its top two figures near Tikrit.
A month later, the group issued a statement announcing new leadership, and Mr. Baghdadi was at the top of the list. The Western intelligence community scrambled for information.
“Any idea who these guys are?” an analyst at Stratfor, a private intelligence company that then worked for the American government in Iraq, wrote in an email that has since been released by WikiLeaks. “These are likely nom de guerres, but are they associated with anyone we know?”
In June 2010, Stratfor published a report on the group that considered its prospects in the wake of the killings of the top leadership. The report stated, “the militant organization’s future for success looks bleak.”
Still, the report said, referring to the Islamic State of Iraq, then an alternative name for Al Qaeda in Iraq, “I.S.I.’s intent to establish an Islamic caliphate in Iraq has not diminished.”
The Sunni tribes of eastern Syria and Iraq’s Anbar and Nineveh Provinces have long had ties that run deeper than national boundaries, and ISIS was built on those relationships. Accordingly, as the group’s fortunes waned in Iraq, it found a new opportunity in the fight against Bashar al-Assad’s government in Syria.
As more moderate Syrian rebel groups were beaten down by the Syrian security forces and their allies, ISIS increasingly took control of the fight, in part on the strength of weapons and funding from its operations in Iraq and from jihadist supporters in the Arab world. That fact has led American lawmakers and political figures, including former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, to accuse President Obama of aiding ISIS’ rise in two ways: first by completely withdrawing American troops from Iraq in 2011, then by hesitating to arm more moderate Syrian opposition groups early in that conflict.
“I cannot help but wonder what would have happened if we had committed to empowering the moderate Syrian opposition last year,” Representative Eliot L. Engel, the senior Democrat on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, said during a recent hearing on the crisis in Iraq. “Would ISIS have grown as it did?”
But well before then, American actions were critical to Mr. Baghdadi’s rise in more direct ways. He is Iraqi to the core, and his extremist ideology was sharpened and refined in the crucible of the American occupation.
The American invasion presented Mr. Baghdadi and his allies with a ready-made enemy and recruiting draw. And the American ouster of Saddam Hussein, whose brutal dictatorship had kept a lid on extremist Islamist movements, gave Mr. Baghdadi the freedom for his radical views to flourish.
In contrast to Mr. Zarqawi, who increasingly looked outside Iraq for leadership help, Mr. Baghdadi has surrounded himself by a tight clique of former Baath Party military and intelligence officers from the Hussein regime who know how to fight.
Analysts and Iraqi intelligence officers believe that after Mr. Baghdadi took over the organization he appointed a Hussein-era officer, a man known as Hajji Bakr, as his military commander, overseeing operations and a military council that included three other officers of the former regime’s security forces.
Hajji Bakr was believed to have been killed last year in Syria. Analysts believe that he and at least two of the three other men on the military council were held at various times by the Americans at Camp Bucca.
Mr. Baghdadi has been criticized by some in the wider jihadi community for his reliance on former Baathists. But for many others, Mr. Baghdadi’s successes have trumped these critiques.
The victories gained by the militant group calling itself the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria were built on months of maneuvering along the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers, which define a region known as the cradle of civilization.
“He has credibility because he runs half of Iraq and half of Syria,” said Brian Fishman, a counterterrorism researcher at the New American Foundation.
Syria may have been a temporary refuge and proving ground, but Iraq has always been his stronghold and his most important source of financing. Now, it has become the main venue for Mr. Baghdadi’s state-building exercise, as well.
Although the group’s capture of Mosul, Iraq’s second-largest city, appeared to catch the American intelligence community and the Iraqi government by surprise, Mr. Baghdadi’s mafia-like operations in the city had long been crucial to his strategy of establishing the Islamic caliphate.
His group earned an estimated $12 million a month, according to American officials, from extortion schemes in Mosul, which it used to finance operations in Syria. Before June, ISIS controlled neighborhoods of the city by night, collecting money and slipping in to the countryside by day.
The United Nations Security Council is considering new measures aimed at crippling the group’s finances, according to Reuters, by threatening sanctions on supporters. Such action is likely to have little effect because, by now, the group is almost entirely self-financing, through its seizing oil fields, extortion and tax collection in the territories it controls. As it gains territory in Iraq, it has found new ways to generate revenue. For instance, recently in Hawija, a village near Kirkuk, the group demanded that all former soldiers or police officers pay an $850 “repentance fine.”
Though he has captured territory through brutal means, Mr. Baghdadi has also taken practical steps at state-building, and even shown a lighter side. In Mosul, ISIS has held a “fun day” for kids, distributed gifts and food during Eid al-Fitr, held Quran recitation competitions, started bus services and opened schools.
Mr. Baghdadi appears to be drawing on a famous jihadi text that has long inspired Al Qaeda: “The Management of Savagery,” written by a Saudi named Abu Bakr Naji.
Mr. Fishman called the text, “Che Guevara warmed over for jihadis.” William McCants, an analyst at the Brookings Institution who in 2005, as a fellow at West Point’s Combating Terrorism Center, translated the book in to English, once described it as “the seven highly effective habits of jihadi leaders.”
American officials say Mr. Baghdadi runs a more efficient organization than Mr. Zarqawi did, and has unchallenged control over the organization, with authority delegated to his lieutenants. “He doesn’t have to sign off on every detail,” said one senior United States counterterrorism official. “He gives them more discretion and flexibility.”
A senior Pentagon official said of Mr. Baghdadi, with grudging admiration: “He’s done a good job of rallying and organizing a beaten-down organization. But he may now be overreaching.”
But even before the civil war in Syria presented him with a growth opportunity, Mr. Baghdadi had been taking steps in Iraq — something akin to a corporate restructuring — that laid the foundation for the group’s resurgence, just as the Americans were leaving. He picked off rivals through assassinations, orchestrated prison breaks to replenish his ranks of fighters and diversified his sources of funding through extortion, to wean the group off outside funding from Al Qaeda’s central authorities.
“He was preparing to split from Al Qaeda,” Mr. Hashimi said.
Now Mr. Baghdadi commands not just a terrorist organization, but, according to Brett McGurk, the top State Department official on Iraq policy, “a full blown army.”
Speaking at a recent congressional hearing, Mr. McGurk said, “it is worse than Al Qaeda.”
-
Isis consolidates
Patrick Cockburn
As the attention of the world focused on Ukraine and Gaza, the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (Isis) captured a third of Syria in addition to the quarter of Iraq it had seized in June. The frontiers of the new Caliphate declared by Isis on 29 June are expanding by the day and now cover an area larger than Great Britain and inhabited by at least six million people, a population larger than that of Denmark, Finland or Ireland. In a few weeks of fighting in Syria Isis has established itself as the dominant force in the Syrian opposition, routing the official al-Qaida affiliate, Jabhat al-Nusra, in the oil-rich province of Deir Ezzor and executing its local commander as he tried to flee. In northern Syria some five thousand Isis fighters are using tanks and artillery captured from the Iraqi army in Mosul to besiege half a million Kurds in their enclave at Kobani on the Turkish border. In central Syria, near Palmyra, Isis fought the Syrian army as it overran the al-Shaer gasfield, one of the largest in the country, in a surprise assault that left an estimated three hundred soldiers and civilians dead. Repeated government counter-attacks finally retook the gasfield but Isis still controls most of Syria’s oil and gas production. The Caliphate may be poor and isolated but its oil wells and control of crucial roads provide a steady income in addition to the plunder of war.
The birth of the new state is the most radical change to the political geography of the Middle East since the Sykes-Picot Agreement was implemented in the aftermath of the First World War. Yet this explosive transformation has created surprisingly little alarm internationally or even among those in Iraq and Syria not yet under the rule of Isis. Politicians and diplomats tend to treat Isis as if it is a Bedouin raiding party that appears dramatically from the desert, wins spectacular victories and then retreats to its strongholds leaving the status quo little changed. Such a scenario is conceivable but is getting less and less likely as Isis consolidates its hold on its new conquests in an area that may soon stretch from Iran to the Mediterranean.
The very speed and unexpectedness of its rise make it easy for Western and regional leaders to hope that the fall of Isis and the implosion of the Caliphate might be equally sudden and swift. But all the evidence is that this is wishful thinking and the trend is in the other direction, with the opponents of Isis becoming weaker and less capable of resistance: in Iraq the army shows no signs of recovering from its earlier defeats and has failed to launch a single successful counter-attack; in Syria the other opposition groups, including the battle-hardened fighters of al-Nusra and Ahrar al-Sham, are demoralised and disintegrating as they are squeezed between Isis and the Assad government. Karen Koning Abuzayd, a member of the UN’s Commission of Inquiry in Syria, says that more and more Syrian rebels are defecting to Isis: ‘They see it’s better, these guys are strong, these guys are winning battles, they were taking territory, they have money, they can train us.’ This is bad news for the government, which barely held off an assault in 2012 and 2013 by rebels less well trained, organised and armed than Isis; it will have real difficulties stopping the forces of the Caliphate advancing west.
In Baghdad there was shock and terror on 10 June at the fall of Mosul and as people realised that trucks packed with Isis gunmen were only an hour’s drive away. But instead of assaulting Baghdad, Isis took most of Anbar, the vast Sunni province that sprawls across western Iraq on either side of the Euphrates. In Baghdad, with its mostly Shia population of seven million, people know what to expect if the murderously anti-Shia Isis forces capture the city, but they take heart from the fact that the calamity has not happened yet. ‘We were frightened by the military disaster at first but we Baghdadis have got used to crises over the last 35 years,’ one woman said. Even with Isis at the gates, Iraqi politicians have gone on playing political games as they move ponderously towards replacing the discredited prime minister, Nouri al-Maliki.
‘It is truly surreal,’ a former Iraqi minister said. ‘When you speak to any political leader in Baghdad they talk as if they had not just lost half the country.’ Volunteers had gone to the front after a fatwa from the grand ayatollah, Ali al-Sistani, Iraq’s most influential Shia cleric. But these militiamen are now streaming back to their homes, complaining that they were half-starved and forced to use their own weapons and buy their own ammunition. The only large-scale counter-attack launched by the regular army and the newly raised Shia militia was a disastrous foray into Tikrit on 15 July that was ambushed and defeated with heavy losses. There is no sign that the dysfunctional nature of the Iraqi army has changed. ‘They were using just one helicopter in support of the troops in Tikrit,’ the former minister said, ‘so I wonder what on earth happened to the 140 helicopters the Iraqi state has bought in recent years?’
Probably the money for the missing 139 helicopters was simply stolen. There are other wholly corrupt states in the world but few of them have oil revenues of $100 billion a year to steal from. The sole aim of many officials has long been to get the largest kickback possible and they did not much care if jihadi groups did the same. I met a Turkish businessman in Baghdad who said he had had a large construction contract in Mosul over the last few years. The local emir or leader of Isis, then known as al-Qaida in Iraq, demanded $500,000 a month in protection money from the company. ‘I complained again and again about this to the government in Baghdad,’ the businessman said, ‘but they would do nothing about it except to say that I could add the money I paid al-Qaida to the contract price.’ The emir was soon killed and his successor demanded that the protection money be increased to $1 million a month. The businessman refused to pay and one of his Iraqi employees was killed; he withdrew his Turkish staff and his equipment to Turkey. ‘Later I got a message from al-Qaida saying that the price was back down to $500,000 and I could come back,’ he said. This was some time before Isis captured the city.
In the face of these failures Iraq’s Shia majority is taking comfort from two beliefs that, if true, would mean the present situation is not as dangerous as it looks. They argue that Iraq’s Sunnis have risen in revolt and Isis fighters are only the shock troops or vanguard of an uprising provoked by the anti-Sunni policies and actions of Maliki. Once he is replaced, as is almost certain, Baghdad will offer the Sunnis a new power-sharing agreement with regional autonomy similar to that enjoyed by the Kurds. Then the Sunni tribes, former military officers and Baathists who have allowed Isis to take the lead in the Sunni revolt will turn on their ferocious allies. Despite all signs to the contrary, Shia at all levels are putting faith in this myth, that Isis is weak and can be easily discarded by Sunni moderates once they’ve achieved their goals. One Shia said to me: ‘I wonder if Isis really exists.’
Unfortunately, Isis not only exists but is an efficient and ruthless organisation that has no intention of waiting for its Sunni allies to betray it. In Mosul it demanded that all opposition fighters swear allegiance to the Caliphate or give up their weapons. In late June and early July they detained between 15 to 20 former officers from Saddam Hussein’s time, including two generals. Groups that had put up pictures of Saddam were told to take them down or face the consequences. ‘It doesn’t seem likely,’ Aymenn al-Tamimi, an expert on jihadists, said, ‘that the rest of the Sunni military opposition will be able to turn against Isis successfully. If they do, they will have to act as quickly as possible before Isis gets too strong.’ He points out that the supposedly more moderate wing of the Sunni opposition had done nothing to stop the remnants of the ancient Christian community in Mosul from being forced to flee after Isis told them they had to convert to Islam, pay a special tax or be killed. Members of other sects and ethnic groups denounced as Shia or polytheists are being persecuted, imprisoned and murdered. The moment is passing when the non-Isis opposition could successfully mount a challenge.
The Iraqi Shia offer another explanation for the way their army disintegrated: it was stabbed in the back by the Kurds. Seeking to shift the blame from himself, Maliki claims that Erbil, the Kurdish capital, ‘is a headquarters for Isis, Baathists, al-Qaida and terrorists’. Many Shia believe this: it makes them feel that their security forces (nominally 350,000 soldiers and 650,000 police) failed because they were betrayed and not because they wouldn’t fight. One Iraqi told me he was at an iftar meal during Ramadan ‘with a hundred Shia professional people, mostly doctors and engineers and they all took the stab-in-the-back theory for granted as an explanation for what went wrong’. The confrontation with the Kurds is important because it makes it impossible to create a united front against Isis. The Kurdish leader, Massoud Barzani, took advantage of the Iraqi army’s flight to seize all the territories, including the city of Kirkuk, which have been in dispute between Kurds and Arabs since 2003. He now has a 600-mile common frontier with the Caliphate and is an obvious ally for Baghdad, where Kurds make up part of the government. By trying to scapegoat the Kurds, Maliki is ensuring that the Shia will have no allies in their confrontation with Isis if it resumes its attack in the direction of Baghdad. Isis and their Sunni allies have been surprised by the military weakness of the Baghdad government. They are unlikely to be satisfied with regional autonomy for Sunni provinces and a larger share of jobs and oil revenues. Their uprising has turned into a full counter-revolution that aims to take back power over all of Iraq.
At the moment Baghdad has a phoney war atmosphere like London or Paris in late 1939 or early 1940, and for similar reasons. People had feared an imminent battle for the capital after the fall of Mosul, but it hasn’t happened yet and optimists hope it won’t happen at all. Life is more uncomfortable than it used to be, with only four hours of electricity on some days, but at least war hasn’t yet come to the heart of the city. Nevertheless, some form of military attack, direct or indirect, will probably happen once Isis has consolidated its hold on the territory it has just conquered: it sees its victories as divinely inspired. It believes in killing or expelling Shia rather than negotiating with them, as it has shown in Mosul. Some Shia leaders may calculate that the US or Iran will always intervene to save Baghdad, but both powers are showing reluctance to plunge into the Iraqi quagmire in support of a dysfunctional government.
Iraq’s Shia leaders haven’t grappled with the fact that their domination over the Iraqi state, brought about by the US overthrow of Saddam Hussein, is finished, and only a Shia rump is left. It ended because of their own incompetence and corruption and because the Sunni uprising in Syria in 2011 destabilised the sectarian balance of power in Iraq. Three years on, the Isis-led Sunni victory in Iraq threatens to break the military stalemate in Syria. Assad has been slowly pushing back against a weakening opposition: in Damascus and its outskirts, the Qalamoun mountains along the Lebanese border and Homs, government forces have been advancing slowly and are close to encircling the large rebel enclave in Aleppo. But Assad’s combat troops are noticeably thin on the ground, need to avoid heavy casualties and only have the strength to fight on one front at a time. The government’s tactic is to devastate a rebel-held district with artillery fire and barrel bombs dropped from helicopters, force most of the population to flee, seal off what may now be a sea of ruins and ultimately force the rebels to surrender. But the arrival of large numbers of well-armed Isis fighters fresh from recent successes will be a new and dangerous challenge for Assad. They overran two important Syrian army garrisons in the east in late July. A conspiracy theory, much favoured by the rest of the Syrian opposition and by Western diplomats, that Isis and Assad are in league, has been shown to be false.
Isis may well advance on Aleppo in preference to Baghdad: it’s a softer target and one less likely to provoke international intervention. This will leave the West and its regional allies – Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Turkey – with a quandary: their official policy is to get rid of Assad, but Isis is now the second strongest military force in Syria; if he falls, it’s in a good position to fill the vacuum. Like the Shia leaders in Baghdad, the US and its allies have responded to the rise of Isis by descending into fantasy. They pretend they are fostering a ‘third force’ of moderate Syrian rebels to fight both Assad and Isis, though in private Western diplomats admit this group doesn’t really exist outside a few beleaguered pockets. Aymenn al-Tamimi confirms that this Western-backed opposition ‘is getting weaker and weaker’; he believes supplying them with more weapons won’t make much difference. Jordan, under pressure from the US and Saudi Arabia, is supposed to be a launching pad for this risky venture but it’s getting cold feet. ‘Jordan is frightened of Isis,’ one Jordanian official in Amman said. ‘Most Jordanians want Assad to win the war.’ He said Jordan is buckling under the strain of coping with vast numbers of Syrian refugees, ‘the equivalent of the entire population of Mexico moving into the US in one year’.
*
The foster parents of Isis and the other Sunni jihadi movements in Iraq and Syria are Saudi Arabia, the Gulf monarchies and Turkey. This doesn’t mean the jihadis didn’t have strong indigenous roots, but their rise was crucially supported by outside Sunni powers. The Saudi and Qatari aid was primarily financial, usually through private donations, which Richard Dearlove, the former head of MI6, says were central to the Isis takeover of Sunni provinces in northern Iraq: ‘Such things do not happen spontaneously.’ In a speech in London in July, he said the Saudi policy towards jihadis has two contradictory motives: fear of jihadis operating within Saudi Arabia, and a desire to use them against Shia powers abroad. He said the Saudis are ‘deeply attracted towards any militancy which can effectively challenge Shiadom’. It’s unlikely the Sunni community as a whole in Iraq would have lined up behind Isis without the support Saudi Arabia gave directly or indirectly to many Sunni movements. The same is true of Syria, where Prince Bandar bin Sultan, the former Saudi ambassador to Washington and head of Saudi intelligence from 2012 to February 2014, was doing everything he could to back the jihadi opposition until his dismissal. Fearful of what they’ve helped create, the Saudis are now veering in the other direction, arresting jihadi volunteers rather than turning a blind eye as they go to Syria and Iraq, but it may be too late. Saudi jihadis have little love for the House of Saud. On 23 July, Isis launched an attack on one of the last Syrian army strongholds in the northern province of Raqqa. It began with a suicide car-bomb attack; the vehicle was driven by a Saudi called Khatab al-Najdi who had put pictures on the car windows of three women held in Saudi prisons, one of whom was Hila al-Kasir, his niece.
Turkey’s role has been different but no less significant than Saudi Arabia’s in aiding Isis and other jihadi groups. Its most important action has been to keep open its 510-mile border with Syria. This gave Isis, al-Nusra and other opposition groups a safe rear base from which to bring in men and weapons. The border crossing points have been the most contested places during the rebels’ ‘civil war within the civil war’. Most foreign jihadis have crossed Turkey on their way to Syria and Iraq. Precise figures are difficult to come by, but Morocco’s Interior Ministry said recently that 1122 Moroccan jihadists have entered Syria, including nine hundred who went in 2013, two hundred of whom were killed. Iraqi security suspects that Turkish military intelligence may have been heavily involved in aiding Isis when it was reconstituting itself in 2011. Reports from the Turkish border say Isis is no longer welcome, but with weapons taken from the Iraqi army and the seizure of Syrian oil and gasfields, it no longer needs so much outside help.
For America, Britain and the Western powers, the rise of Isis and the Caliphate is the ultimate disaster. Whatever they intended by their invasion of Iraq in 2003 and their efforts to get rid of Assad in Syria since 2011, it was not to see the creation of a jihadi state spanning northern Iraq and Syria run by a movement a hundred times bigger and much better organised than the al-Qaida of Osama bin Laden. The war on terror for which civil liberties have been curtailed and hundreds of billions of dollars spent has failed miserably. The belief that Isis is interested only in ‘Muslim against Muslim’ struggles is another instance of wishful thinking: Isis has shown it will fight anybody who doesn’t adhere to its bigoted, puritanical and violent variant of Islam. Where Isis differs from al-Qaida is that it’s a well-run military organisation that is very careful in choosing its targets and the optimum moment to attack them.
Many in Baghdad hope the excesses of Isis – for example, blowing up mosques it deems shrines, like that of Younis (Jonah) in Mosul – will alienate the Sunnis. In the long term they may do just that, but opposing Isis is very dangerous and, for all its brutality, it has brought victory to a defeated and persecuted Sunni community. Even those Sunnis in Mosul who don’t like it are fearful of the return of a vengeful Shia-dominated Iraqi government. So far Baghdad’s response to its defeat has been to bomb Mosul and Tikrit randomly, leaving local people in no doubt about its indifference to their welfare or survival. The fear will not change even if Maliki is replaced by a more conciliatory prime minister. A Sunni in Mosul, writing just after a missile fired by government forces had exploded in the city, told me: ‘Maliki’s forces have already demolished the University of Tikrit. It has become havoc and rubble like all the city. If Maliki reaches us in Mosul he will kill its people or turn them into refugees. Pray for us.’ Such views are common, and make it less likely that Sunnis will rise up in opposition to Isis and its Caliphate. A new and terrifying state has been born.
-
Second post:
And now, a different POV:
http://atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/MID-01-120814.html
Asia Times Online :: Middle East News, Iraq, Iran current affairs
Caliphate puts men to the meat-grinder
By Spengler
General William Tecumseh Sherman burned the city of Atlanta in 1864. He warned: "I fear the world will jump to the wrong conclusion that because I am in Atlanta the work is done. Far from it. We must kill three hundred thousand I have told you of so often, and the further they run the harder for us to get them." Add a zero to calibrate the problem in the Levant today. War in the Middle East is less a strategic than a demographic phenomenon, whose resolution will come with the exhaustion of the pool of potential fighters.
The Middle East has plunged into a new Thirty Years War, allows Richard Haass, the president of the Council of Foreign Relations. "It is a region wracked by religious struggle between competing
traditions of the faith. But the conflict is also between militants and moderates, fueled by neighboring rulers seeking to defend their interests and increase their influence. Conflicts take place within and between states; civil wars and proxy wars become impossible to distinguish. Governments often forfeit control to smaller groups - militias and the like - operating within and across borders. The loss of life is devastating, and millions are rendered homeless," he wrote on July 21.
Well and good: I predicted in 2006 that the George W Bush administration's blunder would provoke another Thirty Years War in the region, and repeated the diagnosis many times since. But I doubt that Mr Haass (or Walter Russell Mead, who cited the Haass article) has given sufficient thought to the implications.
How does one handle wars of this sort? In 2008 I argued for a "Richelovian" foreign policy, that is, emulation of the evil genius who guided France to victory at the conclusion of the Thirty Years War in 1648. Wars of this sort end when two generations of fighters are killed. They last for decades (as did the Peloponnesian War, the Napoleonic Wars and the two World Wars of the 20th century) because one kills off the fathers die in the first half of the war, and the sons in the second.
This new Thirty Years War has its origins in a demographic peak and an economic trough. There are nearly 30 million young men aged 15 to 24 in Syria, Lebanon, Iraq and Iran, a bulge generation produced by pre-modern fertility rates that prevailed a generation ago. But the region's economies cannot support them. Syria does not have enough water to support an agricultural population, and the displacement of hundreds of thousands of farmers into tent cities preceded its civil war. The West mistook the death spasms of a civilization for an "Arab Spring," and its blunders channeled the youth bulge into a regional war.
The way to win such a war is by attrition, that is, by feeding into the meat-grinder a quarter to a third of the enemy's available manpower. Once a sufficient number of who wish to fight to the death have had the opportunity to do so, the war stops because there are insufficient recruits to fill the ranks. That is how Generals Grant and Sherman fought the American Civil War, and that is the indicated strategy in the Middle East today.
It is a horrible business. It was not inevitable. It came about because of the ideological rigidity of the Bush Administration compounded by the strategic withdrawal of the Obama administration. It could have been avoided by the cheap and simple expedient of bombing Iran's nuclear program and Revolutionary Guards bases, followed by an intensive subversion effort aimed at regime change in Teheran. Former Vice President Dick Cheney advocated this course of action, but then Secretary of State Condileeza Rice persuaded Bush that the Muslim world would never forgive America for an attack on another Muslim state.
The Pentagon, meanwhile, warned Bush that America's occupation army in Iraq had become hostage to Iranian retaliation: if America bombed Iran, Iran could exact vengeance in American blood in the cities of Iraq. Then Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Mike Mullen told Charlie Rose on March 16, 2009: "What I worry about in terms of an attack on Iran is, in addition to the immediate effect, the effect of the attack, it's the unintended consequences. It's the further destabilization in the region. It's how they would respond. We have lots of Americans who live in that region who are under the threat envelope right now [because of the] capability that Iran has across the Gulf. So, I worry about their responses and I worry about it escalating in ways that we couldn't predict."
The Bush Administration was too timid to take on Iraq; the Obama administration views Iran as a prospective ally. Even Neville Chamberlain did not regard Hitler as prospective partner in European security. But that is what Barack Obama said in March to journalist Jeffrey Goldberg: "What I'll say is that if you look at Iranian behavior, they are strategic, and they're not impulsive. They have a worldview, and they see their interests, and they respond to costs and benefits. And that isn't to say that they aren't a theocracy that embraces all kinds of ideas that I find abhorrent, but they're not North Korea. They are a large, powerful country that sees itself as an important player on the world stage, and I do not think has a suicide wish, and can respond to incentives." Bush may have been feckless, but Obama is mad.
With Iran neutralized, Syrian President Basher Assad would have had no choice but to come to terms with Syria's Sunni majority; as it happens, he had the firepower to expel millions of them. Without the protection of Tehran, Iraq's Shia would have had to compromise with Sunnis and Kurds. Iraqi Sunnis would not have allied with ISIS against the Iranian-backed regime in Baghdad. A million or more Iraqis would not have been displaced by the metastasizing Caliphate.
The occupation of Iraq in the pursuit of nation-building was colossally stupid. It wasted thousands of lives and disrupted millions, cost the better part of a trillion dollars, and demoralized the American public like no failure since Vietnam-most of all America's young people. Not only did it fail to accomplish its objective, but it kept America stuck in a tar-baby trap, unable to take action against the region's main malefactor. Worst of all: the methods America employed in order to give the Iraq war the temporary appearance of success set in motion the disaster we have today. I warned of this in a May 4, 2010 essay entitled, General Petraeus' Thirty Years War (Asia Times Online, May 4, 2010).
The great field marshal of the Thirty Years War of 1618-1648, Albrecht von Wallenstein, taught armies to live off the land, and succeeded so well that nearly half the people of Central Europe starved to death during the conflict. General David Petraeus, who heads America's Central Command (CENTCOM), taught the land to live off him. Petraeus' putative success in the Iraq "surge" of 2007-2008 is one of the weirder cases of Karl Marx's quip of history repeating itself first as tragedy second as farce. The consequences will be similar, that is, hideous.
Wallenstein put 100,000 men into the field, an army of terrifying size for the times, by turning the imperial army into a parasite that consumed the livelihood of the empire's home provinces. The Austrian Empire fired him in 1629 after five years of depredation, but pressed him back into service in 1631. Those who were left alive joined the army, in a self-feeding spiral of destruction on a scale not seen in Europe since the 8th century. Wallenstein's power grew with the implosion of civil society, and the Austrian emperor had him murdered in 1634.
Petraeus accomplished the same thing with (literally) bags of money. Starting with Iraq, the American military has militarized large parts of the Middle East and Central Asia in the name of pacification. And now America is engaged in a grand strategic withdrawal from responsibility in the region, leaving behind men with weapons and excellent reason to use them.
There is no way to rewind the tape after the fragile ties of traditional society have been ripped to shreds by war. All of this was foreseeable; most of it might have been averted. But the sordid players in this tragicomedy had too much reputation at stake to reverse course when it still was possible. Now they will spend the declining years of their careers blaming each other.
Three million men will have to die before the butchery comes to an end. That is roughly the number of men who have nothing to go back to, and will fight to the death rather than surrender.
ISIS by itself is overrated. It is a hoard enhanced by captured heavy weapons, but cannot fly warplanes in a region where close air support is the decisive factor in battle. The fighters of the Caliphate cannot hide under the jungle canopy like the North Vietnamese. They occupy terrain where aerial reconnaissance can identify every stray cat. The Saudi and Jordanian air forces are quite capable of defending their borders. Saudi Arabia has over 300 F-15's and 72 Typhoons, and more than 80 Apache attack helicopters. Jordan has 60 F16's as well as 25 Cobra attack helicopters. The putative Caliphate can be contained; it cannot break out into Saudi Arabia and Jordan, and it cannot advance far into the core Shia territory of Iraq. It can operate freely in Syria, in a war of attrition with the Iranian backed government army. The grim task of regional security policy is to channel the butchery into areas that do not threaten oil production or transport.
Ultimately, ISIS is a distraction. The problem is Iran. Without Iran, Hamas would have no capacity to strike Israel beyond a few dozen kilometers past the Gaza border. Iran now has GPS-guided missiles which are much harder to shoot down than ordinary ballistic missiles (an unguided missile has a trajectory that is easy to calculate after launch; guided missiles squirrel about seeking their targets). If Hamas acquires such rockets-and it will eventually if left to its own devices-Israel will have to strike further, harder and deeper to eliminate the threat. That confrontation will not come within a year, and possibly not within five years, but it looms over the present hostilities. The region's security will hinge on the ultimate reckoning with Iran.
Spengler is channeled by David P Goldman. He is Senior Fellow at the London Center for Policy Research and the Was Family Fellow at the Middle East Forum. His book How Civilizations Die (and why Islam is Dying, Too) was published by Regnery Press in September 2011. A volume of his essays on culture, religion and economics, It's Not the End of the World - It's Just the End of You, also appeared that fall, from Van Praag Press.
(Copyright 2014 Asia Times Online (Holdings) Ltd. All rights reserved. Please contact us about sales, syndication and republishing.)
-
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/11/world/middleeast/suicide-bomb-instructor-accidentally-kills-iraqi-pupils.html?referrer=&_r=1
-
re: a different POV, that was interesting, tx.
-
Spengler is invariably a very, very interesting writer.
-
http://www.mercatornet.com/articles/view/stretching_the_truth_past_the_breaking_point
-
http://www.breakingisraelnews.com/20150/qatar-surrendered/#Xid1YPKJc1YlMig7.97
Has Qatar Surrendered?
Much has been written in the past year about the part Qatar plays in the conflict over the status and role of the Muslim Brotherhood, the movement that presents a non-tribal Islamist alternative to tribal loyalties and ideological parties in the Arab world.
For the past two years, the controversy has centered on the role of the “Brothers” in Egypt, on former president Mohamed Morsi’s legitimacy and the legality of General Sisi’s new government as of July 2013. Qatar has been the main source of support for the “Brothers” and their Palestinian offshoot, Hamas, for the last two decades.
Leading the opposition to Qatar’s policies was Saudi Arabia, and Sisi joined that opposition when he deposed Morsi. The relations between Qatar and its opponents reached a new low in March 2014, when the Saudis, Egypt and the United Emirates recalled their ambassadors from Qatar. Later, there were reports of a Saudi armed force concentrated on Qatar’s border that would have invaded the recalcitrant emirate, had Qatar not been under the protective shade of the United States, which has its main Persian Gulf airbase in Qatar as well as strong economic and institutional ties with it.
Qatar has been the main supporter of Hamas for years, providing funds and a venue for Hamas leadership after it left Damascus, while granting political backing to the movement and its rule in Gaza. Several years ago, Turkey joined the Hamas supporters axis, sometimes joined by Iran – the latter motivated by its hatred of Israel and/or its hostility to the Saudi regime.
When the current round of hostilities between Hamas and Israel broke out, the Qatar-Turkey Axis immediately placed itself on the side of Hamas, while on the opposing side stood the anti-Muslim-Brotherhood-and-Hamas Axis, consisting of Egypt Saudi Arabia, the United Emirates and Jordan. America attempted to help the Qatar Axis, but retreated when faced with strong criticism, both from Israel and Congress. The Palestinian Authority is torn between its desire to see Israel destroy Hamas and its pity for the Gazans who are paying with their blood for the Hamas takeover of their lives – and deaths.
When the possibility of ceasefire negotiations was broached, rivalry broke out between the two sides over who would head them and who would be able to sway the agreement in the direction he preferred. As the days went by, it became clear that the solution would depend on the result of the duel between the Saudi King and the Qatar Emir, with the winner designing the future of any agreement between Israel and Hamas.
On August 9, 2014, It became obvious that the winner was the Saudi King and the Egypt-Emirates Axis, the group opposed to Hamas, although not openly supporting Israel. Saudi victory over Qatar and its supporters was certain when last weekend, the Emir could be seen rushing to Riyadh, the capital of the country that opposes his nation’s activities.
Qatar’s surrender reached world consciousness mainly by way of Al Mayadeen, the media channel that has placed itself in opposition to Qatar’s Al-Jazeera.
For example, Al-Jazeera, Qatar’s media channel, calls the president of Egypt “El Sisi”, avoiding the title “President”, because Qatar still sees Mohammed Morsi, the Muslim Brotherhood champion, as the lawful president of Egypt. As opposed to Al-Jazeera, Al Mayadeen uses the title “President Sisi”.
Al Mayadeen was founded two years ago in Lebanon by a former Al-Jazeera reporter , Ghassan Ben Jeddou, who handed in his angry resignation from Al-Jazeera because of the network’s political stand on Saudi Arabia and the takeover of Bahrain during the “Arab Spring.”. Al Mayadeen is suspected of being prejudiced against Qatar and its policies. However, now that there is a proliferation of Arab media channels that are free of government censorship, the only way a network can succeed is if its reports are seen as trustworthy. The above means that the information that follows reporting on the Qatari Emir’s visit to Riyadh, his meeting with the Saudi King and the words exchanged during the meeting, is not totally reliable.
Note: My interpretations are in the parentheses.
On August 9th, Al Mayadeen reported in Arabic: “The Emir of Qatar told the Saudi King that his country is not in favor of forming alliances (i.e. Qatar is giving up the leadership of the Axis it led up to now). Gaza has become everyone’s focus (i.e. we know that Saudi Arabia does not care about Gaza’s fate)…”.
“The Emir of Qatar, Sheikh Tamim Ben Hamad Ben Khalifa El Thani, said that he has arrived (i.e. was forced to crawl) to Riyadh in order to meet the Saudi King Abdallah ben Abed Elaziz, because he (the Qatari Emir) knows well the loyalty of the Saudi King to the Arab Nation (i.e. to Saudi Arabia, its friends and their interests alone) and the trust he places in him and he will tell him (the king) what is going on in Gaza (i.e. the catastrophe Israel is wreaking on Hamas and Qatar) out of fear that we will lose our way (i.e.Israel will win).
“Qatar does not have a policy of forming alliances (Qatar is sorry it led an alliance against the Saudis) even though there was once someone in Qatar who acted like a megalomaniac on the subject of Qatar and its size (severe criticism of Sheikh Hamad, the present Emir’s father and of Sheikh Hamad’s Foreign Minister, who took a politically arrogant line towards the Arab world and Saudi Arabia in particular, despite the fact that Qatar is a tiny Emirate. The Qatari Emir understands that without this criticism, or true repentance, the Saudi King will give him short shrift.).
Al Mayadeen continues: “The Qatari Emir made it clear to the Saudi King that Qatar is worthless if it does not belong to the Gulf Emirates (here he is begging the Gulf nations to allow their ambassadors return to Qatar) or its Arab partners (i.e. we are sorry for the anti- Egypt, Jordan and PA policies we espoused). Both sides (i.e. Axes) complement one another (i.e. our Axis surrenders to yours).
“The Qatari Emir told the Saudi King in plain language: Qatar is willing to follow in your footsteps and heed your instructions (i.e. totally abrogates its independent policies of the last few years) in order to ease the suffering of the Palestinian people (i.e. to salvage Hamas’ rule over the Palestinians who serve it as human shields).
“The Qatari Emir added: ‘In the face of the immense magnitude of the crimes and war of destruction going on in Gaza (and the danger that the Gazans will rebel against Hamas rule), there is no reason for Egypt (and its backer, Saudi Arabia) to insist on an initiative (i.e. conditions for surrender) that doesn’t meet the minimum expectations and demands of the Palestinians (read Hamas), especially now that Israel needs a ceasefire (i.e. Israel can continue fighting on and on because of the Israeli public’s support for their government).
“‘I don’t see how the Egyptians can bring themselves to shut out the Hamas movement. Let us put aside, my lord (!!!), our reckoning with Hamas (and the crimes it committed against Egypt and the Palestinians) for a future date (and then we will forget about them) and stand with the Palestinian people who stand behind Hamas (bearing knives) and support Hamas’ demands (to end the siege).’”
“‘I have come to you, my lord (!!!) in order to hear good tidings (now that we have surrendered and ended our policy of supporting Hamas) that will save us from the situation we are in now (i.e. the isolation we brought on ourselves by supporting the Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas, which is on the verge of collapse).’”
Al Mayadeen reports that the meeting between the Saudi King and the Qatari Emir was just ten minutes long, and does not bring the response of the Saudi King – who may have remained silent throughout.
The significance of the detailed report is in the total subjugation of Qatar to Saudi Arabia, of a young and inexperienced Emir to an older and wiser king. What brought about this abject surrender is the combination of Israeli determination and the geography of Gaza, an area under siege even if the present siege is removed, with Israel on one side, Egypt on the other and only the sea – blockaded as well – as a way to find refuge. Qatar’s peninsula is in a similar position: one can reach the rest of the continent from Qatar only by way of hostile Saudi Arabia or by way of the sea. If not for the American presence there, Saudi Arabia could crush the Qatar regime within a few hours as it did to Bahrain in 2011.
If it is true that the Emir visited Riyadh and if the text of his monologue, as reported by Al Mayadeen, is accurate, we are about to face a new constellation of forces in the Middle East: Saudi Arabia, a tribal monarchy with an Islamic cast – has become the leading force, Israel is closer to the winning axis and the US is on the losing side. The Iran-Syria-Iraq Axis is under pressure because of the IS Jihadists and the US is attempting to bolster up its status by using air power against IS.
There are voices calling on Israel to take advantage of this new situation, go ahead with the Arab peace initiative whose origin is in Saudi Arabia, leave Judea and Samaria and establish a Palestinian state with Mahmoud Abbas that will be part of the new array of forces, united against a weakened Hamas and Qatar.
The idea is a good one, except that carrying it out is problematic: coalitions and alliances in the Middle East are exactly like the sand dunes that mark this region of deserts; today they are here and by tomorrow the wind has blown them somewhere else. In the past, there were those who advised Israel to hurry to make peace with Assad while he was still powerful, even if that meant giving up the Golan Heights. And where is Assad today, pray tell? And what would have happened had Jabhat El Nusra or the Islamic State taken over the Golan, able to look down at Tiberias and aim weapons at its residents?
The Middle East seesaw is weighted on the Saudi-Egyptian side now, but it is not at all clear whether that coalition will continue directing the Middle East in another year or two. Israel must not be tempted to place its future and security in the hands of a temporary coalition, no matter how good it is.
Israel must act on the basis of long term planning that centers on Israel and its territorial possessions, not on the changing alliances of the sand dunes of the Middle East.
Reprinted with permission from Arutz Sheva
-
U.S. Hostage Rescue Failed, White House Says
A United States Special Operations team tried and failed to rescue James Foley and other Americans held hostage in Syria during a secret mission this summer authorized by President Obama, senior administration officials said Wednesday.
A day after Sunni militants posted a video showing Mr. Foley being beheaded, officials described what they called a “complicated operation” in which several dozen commandos were dropped into a remote area of Syria where American intelligence agencies believed several hostages were being held.
But when the Special Operations team arrived on the scene, the hostages were not there. Officials said the commandos exchanged fire with militants, and one American was slightly wounded when one of the United States aircraft came under fire.
All of the team members were evacuated successfully. “It was not ultimately successful because the hostages were not present at the location of the operation,” a senior administration official said, speaking on background about the mission. “We obviously wish this had been successful.”
Officials declined to say exactly when the mission took place, saying only that it happened earlier this summer. They also would not provide the location of the mission, but noted that if it had taken place in or near a heavily populated area, it would likely to have been noticed before now.
READ MORE »
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/08/21/world/middleeast/us-commandos-tried-to-rescue-foley-and-other-hostages.html?emc=edit_na_20140820
-
When President Barack Obama called the Islamic State a "cancer" on Wednesday, the description may have been more apt than he intended. The Sunni jihadist group is indeed a malignant tumor metastasizing in the body of the Middle East. But like cancer, it will be stubbornly difficult to defeat—and some of the cures could end up killing the patient.
The spread has been shockingly quick. In June, the Islamic State surged deeper into Iraq, taking Mosul, Iraq's second-largest city, advancing close to Baghdad and threatening Kurdish territory. The group even declared a "caliphate." Only Mr. Obama's Aug. 7 decision to launch U.S. airstrikes halted its advance.
The Islamic State is stalled militarily but far from beaten. But there is a way to turn the tide.
The Islamic State's evil could almost seem cartoonish if it weren't so horrible. The beheading of journalist James Foley was only the latest in a long line of atrocities. In Iraq, the group called for exterminating male members of the minority Yazidi group and selling Yazidi women into slavery. In Syria, the Islamic State crucified those who opposed it. The group bears the blame for much of the savagery against civilians in Syria—in a conflict that the U.N. estimates has claimed more than 190,000 lives.
This humanitarian disaster is bad enough, but the Islamic State also poses a strategic threat to U.S. interests in the Middle East that even the most hardhearted realist cannot easily dismiss. Iraq's stability, precarious even before the latest Islamic State campaign, is now in serious jeopardy. Iraq could join Syria as another failed state, and a far more important one given its oil reserves. A broader conflagration could risk more intervention by Iran, Turkey, Saudi Arabia and other neighbors. West European governments fear terrorism at home from Islamic State converts. And ironically, the terrorist threat to the U.S. is now more direct: By striking the Islamic State, the U.S. has risen higher on its (long) list of enemies.
The Obama administration, which has—with some justification—tried to avoid entanglement in Iraq and Syria, has an array of "treatments" at its disposal to attack this growing cancer. They all have one thing in common: They won't work well.
The overwhelming problem is the lack of suitable allies. Forget assembling a "coalition of the willing" against the Islamic State—the best you're likely to get is a coalition of the inept, the corrupt, the fanatical and the balky.
In Iraq, former Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki systematically alienated the country's Sunnis and Kurds. As the Islamic State advanced, many Sunnis rose up against his government, and U.S.-trained military forces disintegrated. Mr. Maliki is out now, but the new government in Baghdad is shaky, the Kurds are openly discussing a push for independence, and sectarian divisions plague the country.
In Syria, the problem is even worse. U.S. policy is now aimed at both overthrowing Bashar al-Assad, the country's dictator, and defeating the Islamic State—one of the toughest groups fighting to overthrow Mr. Assad. Only a year ago, the U.S. was on the verge of bombing the Assad regime; now it is bombing the Assad regime's enemy, the Islamic State. The Syrian opposition is no more unified, and the radical element in its ranks is much stronger.
Some approaches are clearly disastrous. Paying ransom money to rescue brave journalists in the Islamic State's clutches will only lead to more hostage taking. Terrorist groups prefer to kidnap Westerners from countries like France, which has given terrorists more than $50 million since 2008 in ransom payments. The more the U.S. pays, the more likely terrorist groups are to kidnap Americans. We must brace for more stomach-churning, Internet-distributed beheadings.
Another problem: Americans have no appetite for a large-scale deployment of military forces. A June poll found that most Americans didn't favor airstrikes on the Islamic State, let alone ground troops.
But there is a path ahead. A combination of middle-range options—political reform in Baghdad, a limited use of U.S. military force, and efforts to build up local capacity and prevent new infections—offers the most hope, even if this cocktail will take months if not years to take hold.
Political reform in Iraq is the foundation on which all else rests. The replacement of Mr. Maliki by Haider al-Abadi earlier this month offers some hope that Iraq's Shiite-dominated government might become more inclusive and convince some of the country's minority Sunnis to turn against the Islamic State. Iran, a Shiite neighbor that backs Mr. Abadi's government, also opposes the Sunni jihadists, which could encourage Mr. Abadi to be more conciliatory than his predecessor. But at best, we're likely to go from abysmal to simply bad: Mr. Abadi is cut from the same cloth as Mr. Maliki and shares the same Shiite-chauvinist power base.
Still, splitting the Islamic State's zealots off from the rest of Iraq's Sunnis is quite doable. The Islamic State surged in June, in part, because Sunni tribes, ex-Baathists and other Sunnis had joined the fray against the Maliki government. At the height of the troop surge that began in 2007, the U.S. had turned these fighters against the jihadists. Doing so again without a significant U.S. presence on the ground will be far harder—but if Mr. Abadi's government extends a real olive branch to its Sunni citizens, the Islamic State could rapidly lose much of its support.
The best long-term hope is to help grow local military forces and build up their capacity. Iraq's forces collapsed in the face of the Islamic State's summer offensive, and their morale and cohesion must be restored. Part of this problem is technical, and the sustained deployment of U.S. advisers can improve their performance.
But the bigger problem is political. Iraqi forces had more training and far better equipment than the Islamic State (though when they ran away, the radicals found themselves with a cornucopia of advanced U.S. military hardware), but many of them have no faith in their officers and no loyalty to their political leaders. So without political reform, military reform will fail.
Pushing the Islamic State back in Iraq does little good if it remains strong across Iraq's blurry border with Syria. Syria's beleaguered moderate opposition forces must be trained far more extensively, enabling them to oppose both the killers in the Assad regime and the fanatics of the Islamic State.
U.S. air power and special operations forces can prevent the Islamic State from growing further. But airstrikes can't evict it once and for all. Lasting successes will come only when ground forces can occupy the territory after the jihadists flee. And that means Iraq's government needs to step up—and moderate Syrian rebels need urgent help.
While working on all these fronts, Washington must try to contain the contagion. The U.S. should work with Turkey, Jordan and other neighbors to meet desperate cries for aid in the tent cities of Syrian refugees and discourage self-defeating behavior.
We're in for a long slog. Syria is a failed state, and Iraq is becoming one. In the near term, the best the U.S. can do is to put the Islamic State on its back foot. It is tempting to turn around and go home, but that would risk an even worse disaster.
—Dr. Byman is a professor in the Security Studies Program at the Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University and a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution.
-
second post
The U.S. Explores Options Against the Islamic State
Analysis
August 23, 2014 | 0601 Print Text Size
IS Options
U.S. Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Martin Dempsey hold a press briefing at the Pentagon in Washington on Aug. 21, 2014. (SAUL LOEB/AFP/Getty Images)
Summary
Chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Martin Dempsey said Aug. 21 that Islamic State militants cannot be defeated without a comprehensive approach that takes into account the group's presence in both Iraq and Syria. While neither Dempsey nor Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel directly stated that the United States intended to carry out operations in Syria, their comments indicate that there is a potential for increased U.S. involvement in the Syrian conflict in pursuit of the Islamic State. Were Washington to decide to strike directly in Syria, it could align itself with any number of groups. Each scenario presents different levels of risk, and with more risk comes a greater chance of success.
Analysis
The most limited U.S. option in Syria would be to carry out a set number of targeted airstrikes focused on high-value Islamic State leaders, possibly including top leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. The detailed intelligence needed for such an approach would require the United States to cooperate with several regional actors. And while such strikes could degrade the Islamic State's leadership, Dempsey noted Aug. 21 that air power alone would not significantly hinder the group's capabilities. It would, however, offer a means of combating the militant group without the United States necessarily becoming entangled in the Syrian civil war, something Washington has avoided so far.
Washington could also opt for a more comprehensive approach. This could include targeting significant concentrations of Islamic State forces, their energy infrastructure or their supply depots and logistics networks across Syria and Iraq. Were the United States to pursue this course, it would need to factor in the impact of these strikes on the balance of the civil war. More directly, the U.S. Air Force would have to take into account the air power, air defenses and command and control capabilities of the al Assad regime.
In the more comprehensive scenarios, the United States would then have to choose between coordinating with the Syrian regime to determine targeting and flight parameters -- preferably covertly with the help of Iraq or even Iran -- or actively deterring regime interference. Both options are very risky politically. Cooperation with al Assad would open the U.S. administration to serious domestic and foreign political blowback, while the second option could derail critical nuclear negotiations with Iran, a key ally of the Syrian regime.
Ultimately, even a broader air campaign would serve only to weaken rather than cripple the Islamic State. In order to severely degrade the group's capabilities, the United States would need to get involved in the Syrian conflict in a manner similar to its involvement in Iraq. In Syria this would entail active partnership with one or more of the key belligerents in the civil war -- involvement that carries its own risks.
In one version of this scenario, the United States could choose to partner with the forces fighting the al Assad regime by bolstering them with air power. Washington is already working with rebels to a large degree through a CIA program that provides arms and training. The Obama administration has also sought congressional funds to transition this into a more comprehensive U.S. Special Operations Command effort. Were the United States to partner with rebels through enhanced weapons transfers, embedded special operations forces or air power, it would upgrade the relationship significantly and risk severe blowback. The Syrian rebels are not a homogenous or unified force and their affiliations are murky and in flux. Both domestic U.S. and international critics would fault the administration for potentially directly or indirectly supporting extremist forces, especially if U.S. weapons were found in jihadists' hands. The United States would also face difficulty pushing the rebels toward fighting the Islamic State because rebel combat power is currently directed against regime forces. And any U.S. alignment with rebels would embroil it in conflict with the Syrian regime, especially while Syrian air defenses and air power are still a viable force. This, by extension, could affect nuclear talks with Iran.
Conversely, the United States could elect a gradual rapprochement with the Syrian regime in mutual support against the Islamic State. This relationship would likely have to be open; a more covert working relationship would stand in the way of comprehensive operations. The United States could do this by removing sanctions against the Syrian regime, transferring select equipment or by providing air support. This has the advantage of bolstering the U.S. position in nuclear negotiations with Iran. It would also provide a more viable means of defeating the Islamic State over the long term. This option is not viable, however, because it would necessarily involve a reversal of the current U.S. position. Abandoning rebel allies would also severely degrade U.S. alliances with Turkey, Israel and the Gulf Cooperation Council and would open the Obama administration to domestic political attacks.
Finally, there is an interim option: Washington could bolster the Kurdish People's Protection Units, known as the YPG, in a manner similar to its partnership with the Iraqi Kurdish peshmerga. One of the advantages of the People's Protection Units is that they have already proved capable in previous combat with the Islamic State. This alliance would also be of less concern to the Syrian rebels and the al Assad regime, but it would also have a smaller impact because the People's Protection Units operate only in Kurdish-populated areas. U.S. ally Turkey is also suspicious of the group because of its ties to the Kurdistan Workers' Party, or PKK, which operates inside Turkey.
The least risky scenarios the United States can pursue -- limited airstrikes or alignment with the People's Defense Forces -- are also the least likely to damage the Islamic State in the long run. In Iraq, the United States is pursuing cooperation through longstanding relationships with the Iraqi government and the peshmerga. The Syrian situation, however, is much more complex. In upping its chances of success, Washington also opens itself to a host of secondary risks and negative side effects. Given the administration's risk-averse nature, the United States may very well elect to pursue the independent, more limited approach in Syria. Overall, however, the fact remains that the United States has no easy options in Syria.
Read more: The U.S. Explores Options Against the Islamic State | Stratfor
Follow us: @stratfor on Twitter | Stratfor on Facebook
-
Third post
The Hard Hand of the Middle East
Global Affairs
Wednesday, August 20, 2014 - 03:37 Print Text Size
Global Affairs with Robert D. Kaplan
Stratfor
By Robert D. Kaplan
Reality can be harsh. In order for the United States to weaken and eventually defeat the Islamic State in Syria and Iraq, it could use help from both the Iranian regime and that of President Bashar al Assad in Syria. In the Middle East, it takes illiberal forces to defeat an even more illiberal force. The mullahs' Iran and al Assad's Syria sadly represent the material at hand, with which the United States must somehow work or tolerate, however surreptitiously, however much it will deny it at the same time. Ah, you might say, What about the moderate, liberal opposition in Syria? Answer: Such forces are more viable on paper than on the battlefield.
The truth is understood but cannot always be admitted, either by officials or by journalists -- the truth being that order is preferable to disorder, meaning dictatorship is preferable to chaos, even if dictatorship itself has often been the root cause of such chaos.
The Islamic State is the fruit of chaos. It arose in a vacuum of authority. That vacuum was created by both the weakening of an absolutist (albeit secular-trending) regime in Syria and the inability of a stable, power-sharing system to take hold in Iraq following America's dismantling of Saddam Hussein's own repressive rule. And the worse the chaos, the more extreme will be the reaction. Thus, from the conflicts in Syria and Iraq that together have killed many hundreds of thousands of people and have featured a plethora of armed groups, the Islamic State has emerged in all its horrifying barbarity.
This harsh moral and political reality extends beyond Syria and Iraq to the larger Levant and the Middle East. Egypt is now, once again, governed by an illiberal, Pharaonic regime, worse arguably than that of the deposed military dictator Hosni Mubarak. It has killed many demonstrators in the streets. It features a budding personality cult around its president, Abdel Fattah al-Sisi. Yet it is a friend of Western and Israeli interests, whereas the democratically-elected government it illegally deposed, that of the Muslim Brotherhood, was demonstrably not a friend of the West or Israel. That's right, Western interests can sometimes -- often, actually -- be better served by autocracies than by democracies: that's if the autocracy in question happens to be more liberal and secular in its values than the democracy in question. It is the regime's philosophical values that are crucial -- more so than the manner of how it came to power.
As the situation now stands, if there is going to be a less violent relationship between Israel and Gaza it is more likely to occur through the auspices of the al-Sisi regime in Cairo than through the Obama administration in Washington. It might not even be an exaggeration to say that the Israeli government, for the moment at least, trusts al-Sisi more than it trusts U.S. President Barack Obama. Though Obama might like to think of himself as a realist, the fact is that a President Richard Nixon or a President George H. W. Bush -- and their secretaries of state, Henry Kissinger and James Baker III -- would have openly acknowledged their friendship with the current Egyptian regime, while Obama and his secretary of state, John Kerry, cannot quite bring themselves to do it.
To repeat, America's friends in the region for decades have been -- and will continue to be -- autocrats. George Kennan, arguably America's greatest foreign service officer of the 20th century, pointed out that the internal nature of a regime was less important to the United States than its international posture. To wit, autocratic Egypt has been more helpful in the Gaza crisis than democratic Turkey.
Other examples:
Oman is a great friend of the United States. Sultan Qaboos bin Said al Said has quietly provided temporary basing support and logistics for American wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and has been among the United States' most avid diplomatic allies in the region. He rules in a liberal fashion. But he is an absolute dictator.
Morocco, like Oman, has always been among America's most dependable friends in the Middle East. King Mohamed VI has been moving in the direction of a constitutional monarchy. But Morocco remains stable and dependable precisely because power ultimately rests with the monarch; thorough democracy could undo the country.
America's worst strategic nightmares in the Arab world would be the toppling of the regimes in Jordan and Saudi Arabia -- two royal dictatorships, and in Saudi Arabia's case, an illiberal one at that. The Saudi royal family is probably the worst group of people a liberal American could imagine running that country, except for any other group in Riyadh that might replace it. In other words, there is no choice here. Again, we have to work with the material at hand. And again, let's be honest, the Islamic State is ultimately dangerous not only because it threatens a very unstable, illiberal democracy in Iraq, but also because it threatens more useful nearby autocracies whose policies are often convenient to the West.
In all of this, those who promote democracy in the Middle East with the intensity of an ideology will say over and over again, But what about Tunisia? Tunisia is a democracy, and it is pro-Western. True. But the very phrase, "But what about…," in the singular, indicates that Tunisia is the exception that proves the rule. Tunisia's democracy, moreover, is unstable. Tunisia's borders have been insecure and its hinterlands in places have been close to ungovernable since the toppling of its dictatorship in early 2011. Tunisia's democracy is a close-run affair, in other words. And Tunisia has the advantage of being a real place, an age-old cluster of civilization, without sectarian or ethnic differences and not divided internally by mountains. Because it is not geographically and historically artificial, Tunisia is not plagued by the challenges that have made Syria, Iraq, Yemen and Libya chaotic and largely ungovernable.
But isn't it autocracy, too, that has led to such chaos? Yes, but that does not necessarily mean that democracy is viable in the current circumstances. To say that there is no other choice but democracy is to assume there is an immediate solution to every problem, whereas there may not be.
The Israelis know all of this. Therefore, nothing of what I say is shocking or even surprising to them. Indeed, over the decades they have embraced Arab autocrats through back channels. The Israelis have actually feared popular upheavals in the Arab world, aware that Arab autocrats are more likely to be less anti-Western and less anti-Israel than the man in the street. The fight for sheer physical survival is clarifying and dissipates illusions.
American illusions are illusions in the short term, though, not necessarily in the long term. Over the span of the decades, Arab societies may yet make the tumultuous transition from autocracy to some form of truly representative government. The very fact that Iraq's outgoing prime minister, Nouri al-Maliki, has been removed from power in a legal process without bloodshed in Baghdad is a sign of some hope. But foreign policy, while it requires an eye on long-term historical transitions, has to be practical about the here and now. And that requires candor among officials themselves and candor in how they explain things to the American people.
Read more: The Hard Hand of the Middle East | Stratfor
Follow us: @stratfor on Twitter | Stratfor on Facebook
-
Fourth post:
For the record, at the moment my sense of things is:
A) support the Kurds-- both their independence and with arms-- with strong consideration being given to establishing the option of a military base or two there.
B) Then, play balance of power games-- let the bad guys kill each other;
C) Support the incipient Israel-Egypt-Saudi-Jordan alliance
D) CONTROL OUR FG BORDER!!! Firmly address issues related to Jihadi holders of US and Euro passports.
This are many fast moving variables in play here and as always, I reserve the right to adjust my opinion.
-
Talk now of propping up Assad? Our leaders have no clue. With this logic they must be wishing they could bring Saddam back from the dead.
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/west-poised-to-join-forces-with-president-assad-in-face-of-islamic-state-9686666.html
"For the record, at the moment my sense of things is:
A) support the Kurds-- both their independence and with arms-- with strong consideration being given to establishing the option of a military base or two there.
B) Then, play balance of power games-- let the bad guys kill each other;
C) Support the incipient Israel-Egypt-Saudi-Jordan alliance
D) CONTROL OUR FG BORDER!!! Firmly address issues related to Jihadi holders of US and Euro passports."
E would be to get Democrats out of the White House ASAP though that is not this moment.
-
U.S. Journalist Held by Qaeda Affiliate in Syria Is Freed After Nearly 2 Years
An American journalist held captive for nearly two years by Al Qaeda’s official branch in Syria has been freed, according to a representative of the journalist’s family and a report on Sunday by the Al Jazeera network.
The journalist, Peter Theo Curtis, was abducted near the Syria-Turkey border in October 2012. He was held by the Nusra Front, the Qaeda affiliate in Syria, which has broken with the more radical Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, or ISIS. Another American journalist, James W. Foley, who was kidnapped in Syria the following month, was beheaded last week by ISIS, which posted images of his execution on YouTube.
A family friend confirmed on Sunday that Mr. Curtis, originally from Boston, had been handed over to a United Nations representative.
READ MORE »
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/08/25/world/middleeast/peter-theo-curtis-held-by-qaeda-affiliate-in-syria-is-freed-after-2-years.html?emc=edit_na_20140824
-
https://search.yahoo.com/search;_ylt=AwrBT0ejf_pTwJ4A4otXNyoA;_ylc=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-?gprid=1IlVXj6TTByQbuVLpXxujA&pvid=.QwtgTk4LjGu2lSBU_p7EQNGNjcuOAAAAAAOFgjH&p=abdel-majed+abdel+bary&fr2=sa-gp-search&fr=yfp-t-901
-
http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/us-strikes-in-syria-against-islamic-state-would-be-hindered-by-intelligence-gaps/2014/08/23/70f6595e-2a30-11e4-958c-268a320a60ce_story.html
-
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faisal_I_of_Iraq
Faisal I of Iraq
-
Share
Iraq and Syria Follow Lebanon's Precedent
Geopolitical Weekly
Tuesday, August 26, 2014 - 03:10 Print Text Size
Stratfor
By George Friedman
Lebanon was created out of the Sykes-Picot Agreement. This agreement between Britain and France reshaped the collapsed Ottoman Empire south of Turkey into the states we know today -- Lebanon, Syria and Iraq, and to some extent the Arabian Peninsula as well. For nearly 100 years, Sykes-Picot defined the region. A strong case can be made that the nation-states Sykes-Picot created are now defunct, and that what is occurring in Syria and Iraq represents the emergence of post-British/French maps that will replace those the United States has been trying to maintain since the collapse of Franco-British power.
The Invention of Middle East Nation-States
Sykes-Picot, named for French diplomat Francois Georges-Picot and his British counterpart, Sir Mark Sykes, did two things. First, it created a British-dominated Iraq. Second, it divided the Ottoman province of Syria on a line from the Mediterranean Sea east through Mount Hermon. Everything north of this line was French. Everything south of this line was British. The French, who had been involved in the Levant since the 19th century, had allies among the region's Christians. They carved out part of Syria and created a country for them. Lacking a better name, they called it Lebanon, after the nearby mountain of the same name.
The British named the area to the west of the Jordan River after the Ottoman administrative district of Filistina, which turned into Palestine on the English tongue. However, the British had a problem. During World War I, while the British were fighting the Ottoman Turks, they had allied with a number of Arabian tribes seeking to expel the Turks. Two major tribes, hostile to each other, were the major British allies. The British had promised postwar power to both. It gave the victorious Sauds the right to rule Arabia -- hence Saudi Arabia. The other tribe, the Hashemites, had already been given the newly invented Iraqi monarchy and, outside of Arabia, a narrow strip of arable ground to the east of the Jordan River. For lack of a better name, it was called Trans-Jordan, or the other side of the Jordan. In due course the "trans" was dropped and it became Jordan.
And thus, along with Syria, five entities were created between the Mediterranean and Tigris, and between Turkey and the new nation of Saudi Arabia. This five became six after the United Nations voted to create Israel in 1947. The Sykes-Picot agreement suited European models and gave the Europeans a framework for managing the region that conformed to European administrative principles. The most important interest, the oil in Iraq and the Arabian Peninsula, was protected from the upheaval in their periphery as Turkey and Persia were undergoing upheaval. This gave the Europeans what they wanted.
What it did not do was create a framework that made a great deal of sense to the Arabs living in this region. The European model of individual rights expressed to the nation-states did not fit their cultural model. For the Arabs, the family -- not the individual -- was the fundamental unit of society. Families belonged to clans and clans to tribes, not nations. The Europeans used the concept of the nation-state to express divisions between "us" and "them." To the Arabs, this was an alien framework, which to this day still competes with religious and tribal identities.
The states the Europeans created were arbitrary, the inhabitants did not give their primary loyalty to them, and the tensions within states always went over the border to neighboring states. The British and French imposed ruling structures before the war, and then a wave of coups overthrew them after World War II. Syria and Iraq became pro-Soviet states while Israel, Jordan and the Arabians became pro-American, and monarchies and dictatorships ruled over most of the Arab countries. These authoritarian regimes held the countries together.
Reality Overcomes Cartography
It was Lebanon that came apart first. Lebanon was a pure invention carved out of Syria. As long as the Christians for whom Paris created Lebanon remained the dominant group, it worked, although the Christians themselves were divided into warring clans. But after World War II, the demographics changed, and the Shiite population increased. Compounding this was the movement of Palestinians into Lebanon in 1948. Lebanon thus became a container for competing clans. Although the clans were of different religions, this did not define the situation. Multiple clans in many of these religious groupings fought each other and allied with other religions.
Moreover, Lebanon's issues were not confined to Lebanon. The line dividing Lebanon from Syria was an arbitrary boundary drawn by the French. Syria and Lebanon were not one country, but the newly created Lebanon was not one country, either. In 1976 Syria -- or more precisely, the Alawite dictatorship in Damascus -- invaded Lebanon. Its intent was to destroy the Palestinians, and their main ally was a Christian clan. The Syrian invasion set off a civil war that was already flaring up and that lasted until 1990.
Lebanon was divided into various areas controlled by various clans. The clans evolved. The dominant Shiite clan was built around Nabi Berri. Later, Iran sponsored another faction, Hezbollah. Each religious faction had multiple clans, and within the clans there were multiple competitors for power. From the outside it appeared to be strictly a religious war, but that was an incomplete view. It was a competition among clans for money, security, revenge and power. And religion played a role, but alliances crossed religious lines frequently.
The state became far less powerful than the clans. Beirut, the capital, became a battleground for the clans. The Israelis invaded in order to crush the Palestinian Liberation Organization, with Syria's blessing, and at one point the United States intervened, partly to block the Israelis. When Hezbollah blew up the Marine barracks in Beirut in 1983, killing hundreds of Marines, U.S. President Ronald Reagan, realizing the amount of power it would take to even try to stabilize Lebanon, withdrew all troops. He determined that the fate of Lebanon was not a fundamental U.S. interest, even if there was a Cold War underway.
The complexity of Lebanon goes far beyond this description, and the external meddling from Israel, Syria, Iran and the United States is even more complicated. The point is that the clans became the reality of Lebanon, and the Lebanese government became irrelevant. An agreement was reached between the factions and their patrons in 1989 that ended the internal fighting -- for the most part -- and strengthened the state. But in the end, the state existed at the forbearance of the clans. The map may show a nation, but it is really a country of microscopic clans engaged in a microscopic geopolitical struggle for security and power. Lebanon remains a country in which the warlords have become national politicians, but there is little doubt that their power comes from being warlords and that, under pressure, the clans will reassert themselves.
Syria's Geographic Challenge
Repeats in Syria and Iraq
A similar process has taken place in Syria. The arbitrary nation-state has become a region of competing clans. The Alawite clan, led by Bashar al Assad (who has played the roles of warlord and president), had ruled the country. An uprising supported by various countries threw the Alawites into retreat. The insurgents were also divided along multiple lines. Now, Syria resembles Lebanon. There is one large clan, but it cannot destroy the smaller ones, and the smaller ones cannot destroy the large clan. There is a permanent stalemate, and even if the Alawites are destroyed, their enemies are so divided that it is difficult to see how Syria can go back to being a country, except as a historical curiosity. Countries like Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Israel and the United States might support various clans, but in the end, the clans survive.
Something very similar happened in Iraq. As the Americans departed, the government that was created was dominated by Shia, who were fragmented. To a great degree, the government excluded the Sunnis, who saw themselves in danger of marginalization. The Sunnis consisted of various tribes and clans (some containing Shiites) and politico-religious movements like the Islamic State. They rose up in alliance and have now left Baghdad floundering, the Iraqi army seeking balance and the Kurds scrambling to secure their territory.
It is a three-way war, but in some ways it is a three-way war with more than 20 clans involved in temporary alliances. No one group is strong enough to destroy the others on the broader level. Sunni, Shiite and Kurd have their own territories. On the level of the tribes and clans, some could be destroyed, but the most likely outcome is what happened in Lebanon: the permanent power of the sub-national groups, with perhaps some agreement later on that creates a state in which power stays with the smaller groups, because that is where loyalty lies.
The boundary between Lebanon and Syria was always uncertain. The border between Syria and Iraq is now equally uncertain. But then these borders were never native to the region. The Europeans imposed them for European reasons. Therefore, the idea of maintaining a united Iraq misses the point. There was never a united Iraq -- only the illusion of one created by invented kings and self-appointed dictators. The war does not have to continue, but as in Lebanon, it will take the exhaustion of the clans and factions to negotiate an end.
The idea that Shia, Sunnis and Kurds can live together is not a fantasy. The fantasy is that the United States has the power or interest to re-create a Franco-British invention crafted out of the debris of the Ottoman Empire. Moreover, even if it had an interest, it is doubtful that the United States has the power to pacify Iraq and Syria. It could not impose calm in Lebanon. The triumph of the Islamic State would represent a serious problem for the United States, but no more than it would for the Shia, Kurds and other Sunnis. As in Lebanon, the multiplicity of factions creates a countervailing force that cripples those who reach too far.
There are two issues here. The first is how far the disintegration of nation-states will go in the Arab world. It seems to be underway in Libya, but it has not yet taken root elsewhere. It may be a political formation in the Sykes-Picot areas. Watching the Saudi peninsula will be most interesting. But the second issue is what regional powers will do about this process. Turkey, Iran, Israel and the Saudis cannot be comfortable with either this degree of fragmentation or the spread of more exotic groups. The rise of a Kurdish clan in Iraq would send tremors to the Turks and Iranians.
The historical precedent, of course, would be the rise of a new Ottoman attitude in Turkey that would inspire the Turks to move south and impose an acceptable order on the region. It is hard to see how Turkey would have the power to do this, plus if it created unity among the Arabs it would likely be because the memories of Turkish occupation still sting the Arab mind.
All of this aside, the point is that it is time to stop thinking about stabilizing Syria and Iraq and start thinking of a new dynamic outside of the artificial states that no longer function. To do this, we need to go back to Lebanon, the first state that disintegrated and the first place where clans took control of their own destiny because they had to. We are seeing the Lebanese model spread eastward. It will be interesting to see where else its spreads.
-
My armchair general call for support the Kurds and let the rest kill each other would seem to be supported by this from Stratfor:
The U.S. Could Get Mired in Syria and Iraq
Geopolitical Diary
Tuesday, August 26, 2014 - 19:16 Text Size Print
Already having made considerable gains against a range of rebel forces, the Syrians are thrilled at the recent turn of events in the world. In a year's time, Washington has gone from nearly taking military action against the Syrian regime to targeting its most lethal opponent, the Islamic State. The al Assad regime is not only interested in seeing U.S. military action against the Islamic State. It wants to use this opportunity to try to regain its credibility abroad by being part of an international coalition against the biggest jihadist threat since 9/11.
Though the United States will likely carry out airstrikes against Islamic State assets in Syria, the Obama administration's focus will be on ousting the transnational jihadist group from Iraq. This is because there is consensus among Iraq's domestic and international stakeholders that the country's political system needs to be protected from the al Qaeda offshoot. In sharp contrast, the international community is deeply divided over the fate of the al Assad regime, a cross-border contradiction that will undermine the overall U.S. effort to defeat the Islamic State.
On Tuesday, White House and State Department officials ruled out any coordination between Washington and Damascus in the fight against the Islamic State. They were reacting to an AFP report that said the U.S. government was sharing intelligence on the group with the Syrian regime through Iraqi and Russian channels. A day earlier, The Wall Street Journal reported that the United States had begun reconnaissance flights over Syria, news that triggered a warning against unilateral action from Syrian Foreign Minister Walid al-Moallem. He called instead for U.S.-Syrian coordination.
Despite official statements to the contrary, the United States is willing to work with Syria on tactical matters against the Islamic State, but it does not want the arrangement to turn into support for the Syrian government. In many ways the struggle against the Islamic State has distracted from the original conflict -- a civil war in Syria. For the Americans, supporting Syria's rebels gives Washington considerable leverage in its talks with Iran.
What is a Geopolitical Diary? George Friedman Explains.
U.S. support for the rebels has been minimal, however, because a host of Salafist-jihadist militias have dominated the rebel landscape -- militias that Washington does not want controlling the country. It should be remembered that a year ago, Washington walked away from military action against the al Assad regime for its use of chemical weapons precisely because Washington did not want to undermine Iranian influence in the region at the cost of empowering jihadists -- and that was before the Islamic State had demonstrated its full capabilities. Therefore, the United States is not interested in getting too involved in Syria and would instead prefer to limit itself to countering the Islamic State in Iraq.
But as Gen. Martin Dempsey, the chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, acknowledged last week, dislodging the Islamic State from Iraq will require action against the group in Syria, which offers the jihadist movement great strategic depth and access to material resources thanks to the group's control of Syria's energy production sites. The challenge for Washington is how to weaken the Islamic State in Syria without upsetting the balance between the al Assad regime and the rest of the rebels, who seemingly do not have any ambitions beyond Syria.
The fact is that the Islamic State's weakening in Syria as a result of U.S. military action would create a power vacuum that both Damascus and the other rebels would want to fill. It would be difficult for the United States to manage all the moving pieces. It can be argued that while the United States will be striking the Islamic State, it can also work with Turkey, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and Jordan to mobilize the rest of the rebel constellation so as not to give the Syrian regime the upper hand.
This course of action would be very risky given the internal differences between these four Sunni states. Even when the Islamic State has been weakened, nationalist jihadist forces will still dominate the rebel movement in Syria. At the same time, the United States is engaged in talks with Iran over its nuclear program and has begun cooperating with Tehran against the Islamic State in Iraq. It is not possible for the two to achieve their common goal in Iraq while they are conflicting in Syria.
Considering all these factors, the likelihood that the United States will get mired in a complex cross-border conflict is very high, and that is precisely what the Islamic State is hoping for.
Read more: The U.S. Could Get Mired in Syria and Iraq | Stratfor
Follow us: @stratfor on Twitter | Stratfor on Facebook
-
http://hotair.com/archives/2014/06/16/9-quotes-from-obamas-2011-remarks-on-the-end-of-the-war-in-iraq-that-show-his-total-lack-of-foresight/
-
My armchair general call for support the Kurds and let the rest kill each other would seem to be supported by this
http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2014/08/25/the_islamic_state_home_field_advantage_syria_iraq_obama_airstrikes?utm_source=Sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_term=Flashpoints&utm_campaign=Siobh%C3%A1n%208%2F26
-
An effort to think things through:
http://nationalinterest.org/feature/five-step-plan-destroy-the-islamic-state-11121
Mobilize a Major Humanitarian-Relief Effort:
Catalyze Settlements to Unify Anti-IS Groups in Iraq and Syria:
Field Robust Supporting Military Operations:
Internationalize the Anti-IS Effort:
Prepare the American People for a Costly, Long-Term Mission:
Questions from me: Is the era of Sykes-Picot over? Can any strategy that does not address the flaws of Sykes Picot succeed? What would moving beyond Sykes-Picot look like? My proffered strategy of supporting an independent Kurdistan (and establishing alliance with and a base or two there) moves us in this direction. My proffered strategy leaves Iran to pick up more of the burden of fighting ISIL and the bases in Kurdistan would add weight to our words in nuke negotiations with Iran.
-
An effort to think things through:
http://nationalinterest.org/feature/five-step-plan-destroy-the-islamic-state-11121
Mobilize a Major Humanitarian-Relief Effort:
Catalyze Settlements to Unify Anti-IS Groups in Iraq and Syria:
Field Robust Supporting Military Operations:
Internationalize the Anti-IS Effort:
Prepare the American People for a Costly, Long-Term Mission:
Questions from me: Is the era of Sykes-Picot over? Can any strategy that does not address the flaws of Sykes Picot succeed? What would moving beyond Sykes-Picot look like? My proffered strategy of supporting an independent Kurdistan (and establishing alliance with and a base or two there) moves us in this direction. My proffered strategy leaves Iran to pick up more of the burden of fighting ISIL and the bases in Kurdistan would add weight to our words in nuke negotiations with Iran.
The American people have no interest in the above. Some token strikes are about the best we are going to get.
-
I agree.
IMHO the American people correctly assess that we are led by fools; a coherent strategy led by a capable leader might well be a different thing though-- I do think ISIL's recent efforts have clarified a lot of people's thinking.
-
I agree.
IMHO the American people correctly assess that we are led by fools; a coherent strategy led by a capable leader might well be a different thing though-- I do think ISIL's recent efforts have clarified a lot of people's thinking.
I doubt we'll have a capable leader anytime soon. Even then, we won't have a shift until IS racks up a serious domestic body count.
-
Probably right.
I continue to hone/simplify my offering of a strategy:
a) Independence, alliance, and bases with the Kurds;
b) Use the bases to pressure Iran on nukes, re-establish the sanctions;
c) let the Sunnis, Shias, Assad, et al kill each other and let God sort it out;
d) Back Israel, Egypt, Jordan against the various permutations of AQ-ISIL (e.g. Hamas)
e) Fracking-- the less the planet has to count on this crazy region the better.
f) Control ingress into the US and monitor egress i.e. track and stop jihadis with US and Euro passports
g) control the borders
-
http://weaponsman.com/?p=17440
-
The Islamic State's Growth Has Limits
Security Weekly
Thursday, August 28, 2014 - 03:00 Print Text Size
Stratfor
By Scott Stewart
Since the Islamic State declared the establishment of the caliphate June 29, I have been asked frequently about the group's appeal outside of its immediate area of operations and its ability to attract other jihadists. When we see crises flare up such as the current one in Yemen, people ask: Is there an Islamic State affiliate that can take advantage of this?
Because of such concerns, it seemed appropriate to take some time to examine the Islamic State's ability to spread.
Factors in the Rise of the Islamic State
When considering the Islamic State's ability to metastasize beyond its core area, we must first look at its ideology, its methodology and the environment that produced it. The Islamic State (like its predecessor organizations) is rooted in the Iraq conflict and is a product of that conflict. Although Abu Musab al-Zarqawi founded the organization Jamaat al-Tawhid and Jihad in Afghanistan, the group never amounted to much there. It was only when he relocated to Iraq following the 2001 U.S. invasion of Afghanistan that the group really found success in recruiting and on the battlefield.
Unlike the educated men from wealthy families who formed al Qaeda, al-Zarqawi is a former Jordanian street thug who was radicalized while in prison. His group's hubris, brutality and embrace of sectarianism all trace their roots back to his influence and guidance.
This brutal sectarianism was well suited for Iraq (and later for Syria) and took root in the de-Baathification programs following the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq. It was also fostered by the atrocities that Shiite militias committed against innocent Sunnis. De-Baathification helped Jamaat al-Tawhid and Jihad, and later al Qaeda in Iraq, attract many Sunni fighters who were former Iraqi officers and gain support from Iraq's powerful Sunni tribes.
The Evolution of the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant
While the tribal support was diminished during the Anbar Awakening, the Sunni sheikhs always maintained a healthy fear and skepticism of Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri Al-Maliki's sectarian bent. Because of this, the Sunni tribal sheikhs permitted a weakened Islamic State in Iraq to survive in case it was ever needed again as a tool with which to confront the al-Maliki government.
Even during the U.S. occupation of Iraq, Shiite militias committed numerous atrocities against Sunnis, who were often abducted, tortured and murdered. But following the U.S. withdrawal from Iraq, the Shiite militias' violence was joined by the sectarian policies of the al-Maliki government intended to marginalize Sunnis and undercut their power in Iraq. For example, Iraqi Vice President Tariq al-Hashimi, a very influential Sunni politician, was charged with murder and forced to flee Baghdad for Iraqi Kurdistan and eventually Turkey. The al-Maliki government also stopped its payments to the Sunni Awakening Forces and reneged on agreements to integrate thousands of its members into the Iraqi armed forces, leaving many of these men unemployed with no means of supporting their families. Such measures helped what was then the Islamic State in Iraq in its efforts to regain power and momentum.
The highly sectarian Syrian civil war also proved fortunate for the resurgent Islamic State in Iraq. A good number of Syrian Sunnis had been involved with the Islamic State in Iraq since the beginning, and the many years of experience they gained fighting coalition forces in Iraq permitted the group's Syrian surrogate, Jabhat al-Nusra, to emerge as an effective fighting force. Jabhat al-Nusra's professionalism, sectarian rhetoric and brutality allowed it to quickly attract not only Syrian rebels but also a substantial portion of the foreign fighters flocking to Syria. The Syrian-led Jabhat al-Nusra later split with the Islamic State of Iraq when the Iraqi leaders of the latter group attempted to directly integrate the Syrian fighters in their renamed group the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant. When al Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri sided with Jabhat al Nusra in the dispute, the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant ignored his admonishment and split with al Qaeda.
Frictions and Limited Cooperation
The spectacle of al-Zawahiri's criticism of the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant was nothing new. The group's ideology was never all that closely aligned with al Qaeda's, and there is documentation from as far back as 2005 that al-Zawahiri criticized al-Zarqawi because his group was highly sectarian and exceedingly brutal. Al-Zawahiri noted that al-Zarqawi's policies were alienating many Muslims against the group. The degree of this alienation became readily apparent in the 2007 Anbar Awakening.
The group has gained some traction among Lebanese Sunnis, with many Sunnis in Tripoli openly supporting the Islamic State. However, outside of the highly sectarian environment in the Levant, the group's attempts to assume leadership of the global jihad since its declaration of the caliphate in June have failed. Not only have al Qaeda-linked jihadist groups such as al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb and al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula refused to swear an oath of loyalty to the Islamic State's leadership, but prominent jihadist ideologues like Yusuf al-Qaradawi and Abu Mohammed al-Maqdisi have publicly criticized the group.
One reason for this lack of support is that the leaders of jihadist groups in places like Yemen, Pakistan and Algeria view the Islamic State as a threat -- to their leadership of the global jihad and in the competition for limited resources such as men, funding and weapons. Many jihadist leaders are jealous of the way that geography has permitted their counterparts in Iraq and Syria to monopolize the financial largesse of wealthy Muslim donors in the Gulf and elsewhere. Iraq and Syria were the seats of previous Islamic caliphates and are seen as being at the heart of the Muslim world -- places like Pakistan and Yemen are not.
Even current al Qaeda leader al-Zawahiri, who is sheltering in the area along the Afghan-Pakistani border, recognized this when he laid out his vision for the global progression of the jihadist movement. In a 2005 letter to al-Zarqawi, he wrote: "It has always been my belief that the victory of Islam will never take place until a Muslim state is established in the manner of the Prophet in the heart of the Islamic world." He wrote that the first step in such a plan was to expel the Americans from Iraq. The second stage was to establish an emirate and expand it into a larger caliphate. The third stage was to attack the countries surrounding Iraq, mainly Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Syria and Jordan, bringing them into the caliphate. The fourth step was to use the combined power of the caliphate to attack Israel. Although the Islamic State has split with al-Zawahiri's al Qaeda core leadership, they are progressing along the trajectory he laid out.
A second factor keeping the leaders of other jihadist groups from joining the Islamic State is the group's sectarian focus and its propensity to attack other jihadist groups, such as Jabhat al-Nusra, the Islamic Front and other rebel groups in Syria. Multiple jihadist groups operate in places like Pakistan and the Sahel region of Africa, but they have been far less combative than the Islamic State.
Third, most other jihadist leaders are repulsed by the Islamic State's brutal imposition of Sharia and believe that they have a more sophisticated view of Islamic governance than the Islamic State. This difference was clear in al-Zawahiri's letter to al-Zarqawi and in more recent letters from al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula leader Nasir al-Wahayshi to Abdelmalek Droukdel, the leader of al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb. Other letters from Droukdel to his subordinates in Mali after they had taken control of a large portion of northern Mali also urged tolerance and warned against the type of strict and sudden enforcement of Sharia the Islamic State is known for.
The Islamic State's Appeal
Grassroots jihadists have been the Islamic State's main source of public support since before the declaration of the caliphate. Individual grassroots jihadists from around the world have flocked to Iraq and Syria to fight, and grassroots networks have been set up in the United States, Europe, Asia and the Middle East to send men, funds and weapons to support the Islamic State. Jihadists in Libya and Tunisia have been especially active in these support networks in terms of sending men (and weapons from Libya), but they have not yet overtly declared loyalty to the Islamic State.
In Indonesia, Abu Bakar Bashir, the former leader of the now-defunct Jemaah Islamiyah, declared allegiance to the Islamic State, but Bashir is in prison and marginalized. Even his own sons have repudiated him (and by extension the Islamic State) and have broken off to form a new radical Islamist group in Indonesia. There have also been reports of a grassroots group in Malaysia that allegedly was discussing the launch of terrorist activity there, but this group appears to have been more aspirational than operational at the time of its members' arrests.
Given the well-publicized battlefield successes that the Islamic State achieved in July, it is quite remarkable that the group did not garner more support from other jihadist groups. We believe that with the United States and other outside countries taking action against the Islamic State in Iraq (perhaps to be followed by attacks against their infrastructure in Syria), the group is due to suffer setbacks on the battlefield. This will diminish the Islamic State's appeal to other jihadist groups whose interest might have been piqued by its successes.
Read more: The Islamic State's Growth Has Limits | Stratfor
-
http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2014/08/28/found_the_islamic_state_terror_laptop_of_doom_bubonic_plague_weapons_of_mass_destruction_exclusive
-
http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2014/08/28/found_the_islamic_state_terror_laptop_of_doom_bubonic_plague_weapons_of_mass_destruction_exclusive
I thought this was the junior varsity. Hopefully Obama will read about this in the newspapers before it's too late.
-
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/01/world/middleeast/iraq.html?emc=edit_th_20140901&nl=todaysheadlines&nlid=49641193
-
http://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/steven-sotloff-video-appears-show-isis-execution-american/story?id=25216725
-
http://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/steven-sotloff-video-appears-show-isis-execution-american/story?id=25216725
Why, did it delay a tee time?
-
Pravda on the Hudson forgets to mention that ISIS had the heavy armament that it captured from the fleeing army of the central government and that the Pesh Merga had not been supplied much at all for a long time. That said, there are a number of points of interest in the article.
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/02/world/middleeast/tarnishing-a-reputation-as-storied-warriors.html?emc=edit_th_20140902&nl=todaysheadlines&nlid=49641193
-
http://freebeacon.com/national-security/missing-libyan-jetliners-raise-fears-of-suicide-airliner-attacks-on-911/
-
http://www.businessweek.com/news/2014-08-27/islamic-state-entrenches-in-syrian-city-as-obama-mulls-next-step
-
Posted June 30, 2014
http://guardianlv.com/2014/06/isis-trained-by-us-government/
-
Brutal Efficiency: The Secret to Islamic State's Success
Group Blends Military Tactics With Conventional Terrorism, Tribal Ties, Coercion and a Highly Organized Structure
by Siobhan Gorman, Nour Malas and Matt Bradley
WSJ
Updated Sept. 3, 2014 9:35 a.m. ET
A militant Islamist fighter waves a flag as he takes part in a military parade along the streets of Syria's northern Raqqa province in June. Reuters
Islamic State's stunning success this summer as it swept across northern Iraq and Syria flows from a highly organized structure controlled by a tightknit cadre led by an Islamist zealot who learned from the mistakes of his al Qaeda predecessors.
Blending familiar terrorist acts such as car bombings with conventional military tactics, the group bolsters its strength with local tribal connections and the skills of former generals in Saddam Hussein's army, said Western and Middle Eastern officials tracking the extremist movement.
Thrown into the mix is an effective recruitment strategy—join us or die, some young men in captured areas are told—along with wealth from the extortion of local businessmen and the appeal to religious fundamentalists of having a new Islamic "caliphate" on occupied land. To its supporters, Islamic State has effectively portrayed the quest for territory as an existential fight for Sunni Muslims world-wide.
A video recently uploaded to YouTube purports to show al Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri announcing the militant group's expansion into the Indian subcontinent. It is not known when then the video was filmed, but the announcement could be seen as an attempt to counter recent propaganda efforts by the Islamic State. The Wall Street Journal has not independently verified the video.
The result is a new breed of terror organization. "They have just improved on what al Qaeda has done, and they have done it on a much larger scale," said Bruce Hoffman, a terrorism specialist at Georgetown University.
The organization is led by a core group of leaders who have known each other for years, with anyone of dubious loyalty long since eliminated.
Like top Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, many of those in the inner circle spent time in American custody at Camp Bucca in southern Iraq. From detention, "they emerged even more radical," said Hasan Abu Hanieh, a Jordanian expert on al Qaeda.
Islamic State has a tight command and control structure with about a dozen leaders at the top, said Western and Arab officials and Syrian rebels who have watched the group evolve. Emulating an army operation, the group sometimes pauses its military operations to consolidate gains and shore up logistical infrastructure.
"They adopted a structure of governance that the others did not," said Rep. Mike Rogers (R., Mich.), chairman of the House intelligence committee. He noted that Islamic State recently appointed an oil minister to coordinate the captured energy facilities.
By contrast, al Qaeda—of which Islamic State once was a part but no longer is—generally doesn't occupy territory. In a video in July, a man jihadist watchers said was Mr. Baghdadi demanded that Muslims swear allegiance to his caliphate.
Mr. Baghdadi in 2010 took over a group once known as al Qaeda in Iraq, which had been founded after the U.S. Iraq invasion and led by the militant Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. AQI grew to as many as 10,000 guerrillas in 2006-07, by which time a U.S. airstrike had killed Mr. Zarqawi.
During part of that time, in 2004, Mr. Baghdadi was confined in Camp Bucca, a facility that held more than 20,000 detainees at times.
In 2007, Mr. Baghdadi joined al Qaeda's Iraq branch, at the time known to its members as the Islamic State in Iraq, which was the seed for today's organization. That year, the branch began shrinking, and it was only 5% or 10% of its peak size by the time American forces left Iraq, U.S. intelligence officials said.
In taking over al Qaeda in Iraq, Mr. Baghdadi inherited an organization with a pyramidlike structure, according to Charles Lister, a visiting fellow at the Brookings Doha Center. While analysts are still trying to clarify chains of command and operational details of the group—in flux as it both grows and develops—some details are emerging.
Now playing a role approximating that of a second-in-command is a former Iraqi Army officer with the nom de guerre Abu Ali al-Anbari. He largely manages the group's Syria operations, some analysts said. That includes directing battle against other Syrian rebels who oppose both President Bashar al-Assad's regime and Islamic State.
Mr. Anbari rose through al Qaeda in Iraq after being ejected from another Iraqi radical Sunni group, Ansar al-Islam, amid financial corruption allegations, according to Syrian and Iraqi militants. His knowledge of Shariah Islamic rules isn't considered as extensive as that of other senior leaders, according to these militants, who said he now acts as a kind of political envoy.
Another important Baghdadi lieutenant is Fadel Ahmed Abdullah al-Hiyali, according to Hisham al-Hashimi, a Baghdad-based expert on militants.
Mr. Hiyali—nom de guerre Abu Muslim Al Turkmani—is, like Mr. Anbari, a former general under Saddam Hussein. He once practiced a moderate form of Islam. Decommissioned from the Iraqi army after U.S. forces arrived, he joined Sunni Muslim insurgents to fight the Americans, Mr. Hashimi said. Some analysts describe Mr. Hiyali as equal in stature to Mr. Anbari.
Mr. Baghdadi has a war cabinet and a Shura council, or collection of religious scholars to legislate, said Mr. Lister of Brookings.
In addition, the Islamic State leader has a cabinet of ministers and a council of provincial governors.
The leader of the Islamic State group, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, delivers a sermon at a mosque in Iraq in July. Associated Press
Mr. Baghdadi acts as a commanding general and doesn't micromanage, U.S. officials said. He has a courier service to deliver messages such as religious decrees and military commands.
His leadership is infused with "a real sense of paranoia and a focus on outright loyalty," according to Mr. Lister. He said that when Mr. Baghdadi took the reins four years ago, he presided over an assassination campaign against any of his commanders suspected of potential disloyalty. The military command now is in the hands of men Mr. Baghdadi knows and trusts intimately.
Among foreign fighters, only the best are permitted to take on a high public profile. These include the red-bearded Abu Omar al Shishani, an ethnic Chechen who once served in an intelligence unit of the Georgian army and now is based in Syria. That strategy, experts say, is finely curated to sustain the group's global jihad appeal.
As it takes territory, Islamic State has left much of the work of governing to local officials, helping it avoid unduly alienating the population. Its capture of territory, including oil fields and bank branches, also has left it financially flush.
In taking land, said Mr. Hashimi, the strategy is to exploit alliances with local tribal leaders—who either are like-minded allies or have been intimidated, bribed or coerced to provide sanctuary and support.
The group capitalized on Sunni groups' disaffection with now-departing Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, whose approach favoring Shiite Muslims drove sectarian divisions.
Islamic State also has developed a pattern of operating within striking distance of those it regards as its enemies, particularly Shiites, to provide fighters with an ideological animus.
"Their strategy is always that they will fight within a Sunni environment near a Shiite enemy that gives them motivation," Mr. Hashimi said.
Islamic State's ability to hold territory has furthered the perception it has momentum and is winning, U.S. intelligence officials say. Among other effects, that fuels recruitment.
The group's comeback, after its decline, began around 2012. By June of this year, before Islamic State blazed across Iraq and took control of Mosul and Tikrit, its numbers were again up to 10,000 fighters, U.S. intelligence officials said,
It employs a range of recruitment tactics, often coercing new recruits. Just since July, more than 6,000 fighters have joined Islamic State, nearly 5,000 of them Syrians, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a Syrian opposition watchdog.
Islamic State trains recruits in two camps, in Aleppo and Raqqa, said the Observatory. It called this summer's recruitment the heaviest since April 2013, when the group once called al Qaeda in Iraq adopted the names Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS) and Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL). In late June 2014, it shortened its name to simply Islamic State, though it is sometimes still referred to as ISIS or ISIL.
Of this summer's recruits, the Observatory estimated 1,300 were from outside Syria and Iraq.
U.S. officials say roughly a dozen Americans have gone to fight with Islamic State militants, with at least two killed recently while fighting with the group. The Federal Bureau of Investigation is tracking more than 100 Americans who have gone to Syria to fight with different jihadist militant groups, though the FBI has said it doesn't know how many Americans it has missed.
Many more fighters have come from other Western countries. British security officials estimate 500 Britons have joined militant groups in Syria, and officials believe the more recent recruits have largely been drawn to Islamic State.
-
http://www.nbcnews.com/storyline/isis-terror/arab-league-vows-confront-isis-n197811
-
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/08/world/middleeast/qatars-support-of-extremists-alienates-allies-near-and-far.html?emc=edit_th_20140908&nl=todaysheadlines&nlid=49641193&_r=0
-
Glad to see us working with the Kurds, bummed we are imposing upon them support of Baghdad. IMHO it will likely prove to be an error to pretend that Iraq still exists.
======================================================
Before U.S. airstrikes in Iraq, Kurdistan Regional Government President Masoud Barzani warned U.S. officials of jihadists approaching Erbil. Reuters
ERBIL, Iraq—The anti-Islamic State strategy the U.S. is developing first began to take shape a month ago after a series of increasingly urgent phone calls from this Kurdish city.
In one, Kurdish leader Masoud Barzani told Vice President Joe Biden the jihadists were within 25 miles of Erbil, which is both the capital of the Kurdish region and home to U.S. military, intelligence, diplomatic and corporate offices. The message: Unless the U.S. stepped in, Erbil could fall in days.
"Something in Barzani's voice made [Mr. Biden] think, 'We need to do something here,' " said a U.S. official describing the call, which Kurdish officials also confirmed.
Later that day, President Barack Obama, who had long resisted pressure from the government in Baghdad to help fight the Islamic State menace, authorized airstrikes on the militants approaching Erbil. He also approved both overt and covert programs to resupply the Kurdish fighters known as the Peshmerga against the jihadist threat spanning the Syria-Iraq border.
The airstrike campaign spread this past weekend as the U.S. sought to stop jihadists threatening a dam on the Euphrates upriver from Baghdad. The administration also is seeking to form an international coalition to fight Islamic State, which Mr. Obama is expected to elaborate on in a speech Wednesday. As the intense telephone contacts with Erbil a month ago show, the Kurds, a people with whom the U.S. has had a decadeslong but sometimes wary partnership, play a central role in U.S. plans to combat the jihadist threat.
Experts say the terrorist organization calling itself the Islamic State is operating like a government, with a bureaucratic hierarchy. Here's how it is structured. Reported by WSJ's Jason Bellini and Reem Makhoul.
In Iraq, administration officials envision Kurdish fighters as a leading edge in a potential ground campaign against Islamic State, also known as ISIS or ISIL. Officials also think that Kurdish fighters in Syria may be critical in battling the jihadists in that country, where the Defense Department is drawing up options that include airstrikes.
In return for the American military help last month, Kurdish and U.S. officials said, the Kurds postponed plans for an independence referendum and agreed to work more closely with the Iraqi government in Baghdad. Kurdish parties on Monday said they had agreed to join the new government of Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi despite retaining serious concerns over power sharing with Baghdad. The shift was an illustration of how the Islamic State threat, while tearing at the fabric of the Iraqi state, is also in some ways repairing it.
Complicating the U.S. strategy, one Kurdish fighting force is classified as a terrorist organization by Washington, based on its violent campaign for greater autonomy in Turkey. The U.S. won't work with that group, the PKK, and has long shunned a Syrian Kurdish group that is close to it. Yet recently, the administration has quietly reached out to the group in Syria.
The administration came to the defense of Erbil for a range of reasons, said U.S. and Kurdish officials. It already saw the Peshmerga as trusted allies in a volatile region. The Peshmerga—literally, "those who face death"—aren't a standing army but a collection of militias loyal to political factions in the Kurdish-dominated part of northern Iraq.
The president's most immediate concern, U.S. officials said, was to protect U.S. personnel in the oil-rich area, which is home to billions of dollars of U.S. investment. He also authorized strikes to protect the region's Yazidi religious minority from potential slaughter by Islamic State fighters.
"The U.S. is betting big on the Kurds," said Aaron Stein, a fellow at the Royal United Services Institute, a London think tank. "Their fates in this theater have become intertwined."
American ties to the Kurds, who live in parts of Iran, Turkey and Syria as well as Iraq, weren't always close. In the 1970s, the U.S. stood by while Iraqi and Iranian forces teamed up to crush Kurdish forces.
But over succeeding decades, enduring bonds between U.S. and Peshmerga commanders formed, when the U.S. intervened to protect the Kurds against Saddam Hussein in the 1990s and again after its 2003 invasion to topple the dictator. Youthful U.S. military officers who later rose to high posts in the White House, Pentagon and Central Intelligence Agency came away from encounters impressed with "how brave the Peshmerga were," recalled a veteran U.S. diplomat, James Jeffrey.
In 2003, then-Maj. Gen. David Petraeus's 101st Airborne Division took responsibility for security in Iraq's three Kurdish provinces and formed a strong bond with Mr. Barzani, said a former senior U.S. officer. Every month or so, the two met for lunch in a field tent on a Kurdish mountain to discuss military strategy and battles Mr. Barzani had fought against Mr. Hussein's forces. The Army division began building the region's two largest landing strips—now used in part for arms deliveries and U.S.-Kurdish joint collection of intelligence on the jihadists.
Mr. Barzani also forged ties to a generation of U.S. diplomats. Among other things, he went hiking with Mr. Jeffrey, a former ambassador both to Iraq and Turkey.
U.S.-Kurdish tensions flared early in Mr. Obama's tenure. Kurdish leaders weren't pleased by the administration's embrace of Nouri al-Maliki, the Shiite Muslim prime minister who led Iraq for years until the U.S. and others soured on him this summer and he left under pressure. Obama administration officials, for their part, were alarmed by what they saw as efforts by Kurdish leaders to put northern Iraq on a path to independence.
In deciding which Kurdish groups the U.S. would work with, the U.S. has long taken cues from Turkey. The North Atlantic Treaty Organization ally has spent decades fighting the PKK, formally the Kurdistan Workers' Party. The U.S. wouldn't work with it.
The U.S. had also kept at arm's length a Kurdish force inside Syria called the Democratic Union Party. It is close to the PKK but says it is independent. Although the group has fought jihadist groups inside Syria for years, last year it was unable to get a U.S. visa for its leader, Saleh Muslim, to visit Washington to discuss cooperation.
The U.S. strategy began to shift in June, when jihadist fighters from what was then known only as ISIS or ISIL marched across northern Iraq and took the cities of Samarra, Mosul and Tikrit. Iraqi government forces largely melted away.
The U.S. military's Central Command prepared options to build up the Peshmerga defenders of Kurdistan, an island of stability in northern Iraq.
Mr. Barzani's chief of staff, Fuad Hussein, and Falah Bakir, the top diplomat for the semiautonomous Kurdistan Regional Government, met at the White House in early July with officials including Mr. Biden, a leading U.S. voice on Iraq policy. The Kurds said Mr. Barzani would support a push the U.S. was making for an Iraqi government more inclusive than Mr. Maliki's. But if that effort failed, said a longtime adviser to the Kurdistan Regional Government, Mr. Barzani would hold a referendum on independence, a threat to break Iraq apart.
A week into August, the equation changed. Islamic State fighters stormed into Iraqi towns directly abutting Iraqi Kurdistan. The Peshmerga, heavily outgunned, retreated. Kurdistan suddenly had a 600-mile front line with the jihadist group.
Kurdish officials continually updated their American counterparts, including State Department official Brett McGurk and Gen. Lloyd Austin, head of Central Command. "We were talking to the Americans every hour," said Mr. Hussein.
Mr. Barzani mobilized the Peshmerga in preparation to take the fight to the jihadists. Islamic State didn't wait. On Aug. 7, hundreds of its fighters smashed through Kurdish defenses at the towns of Makhmour and Gwair, opening a direct route into Erbil.
"We didn't sleep," Mr. Hussein said. "They were 30 minutes from Erbil."
Most Western oil and other companies in Erbil had by this time evacuated foreign workers. Many expatriates still present followed residents fleeing north.
Kurdish officials redeployed elite Peshmerga units from nearby cities. They also called in a controversial force: guerrillas from the PKK—the group on U.S. and Turkish terrorist-organization lists—and from the Democratic Union Party in Syria, who are commonly known by the initials PYD.
"They took up position in what we call 'the suicide area,' which is the first line of defense. They made a real difference," said Koshan Gaff, a Peshmerga fighter. They also punched through Islamic State lines to form a corridor that helped save members of the Yazidi minority trapped on a mountainside.
Away from the chaotic front lines, U.S. intelligence officers in Erbil echoed Mr. Barzani's calls for an emergency ammunition resupply, U.S. officials said, and the White House tapped the CIA to launch a covert resupply mission. The administration was having trouble getting the Iraqi government to let the Pentagon directly rearm the Kurds, U.S. officials added, because Iraqi leaders in Baghdad wanted supplies to go through them to avoid fueling Kurdish efforts to gain greater autonomy.
While Mr. Barzani and his aides worked the phones, lobbyists for the Kurds and for U.S. companies roamed Capitol Hill urging lawmakers to press the administration to step up support. Some did so, concerned about the Kurds and U.S. investments.
Mr. Biden had kept in touch with Mr. Barzani since meeting him in 2002 while still a senator. "It's a very friendly relationship," said Mr. Hussein. "They don't just talk about politics, they talk about their grandchildren." In recent years, Mr. Biden frequently made requests of the Kurdish leader and was used to hearing him ask for help on various matters.
This time was different, U.S. officials said. With darkness falling in Erbil on Aug. 7, Mr. Barzani's tone grew more urgent as Islamic State moved an artillery piece close enough to reach the city's suburbs. Mr. Biden sought details about where Peshmerga forces were fighting or fleeing, to help the U.S. determine the urgency and how to respond, said U.S. and Kurdish officials.
Mr. Obama had just decided to use airstrikes to protect the Yazidis. Shortly after the Biden-Barzani call he also directed action to protect Erbil, citing, in particular, concerns about American personnel in the city, according to U.S. officials.
Aides said Mr. Obama had been worried about launching strikes in heavily populated areas. Pentagon planners said Islamic State positions were in relatively open areas near Erbil, minimizing the risk.
At 4:30 a.m. in Erbil on Aug. 8, Mr. Barzani and his advisers watched live TV coverage of Mr. Obama's announcement that the U.S. would strike jihadists approaching the Kurdish capital.
Later that day, U.S. F/A-18 fighter jets began pounding jihadist positions with 500-pound laser-guided bombs, the first hitting the artillery piece in range of Erbil suburbs. The combination of bombing runs, replenished ammunition and help for Peshmerga from guerrillas of the PKK and the group in Syria changed fortunes on the ground. The jihadists were pushed out of the towns on the road to Erbil and then from the Mosul Dam, which they had seized earlier.
The Kurds have since received some light weapons, such as rifles, mostly through European countries, in deliveries coordinated with the U.S. The Kurdistan Regional Government has sent the U.S. a list of gear it wants, including heavier weapons such as anti-artillery systems, in a request that is pending.
The airstrikes and other aid have given the Kurds time to regroup. But the scrambled political situation poses tricky new questions about the road ahead.
One is to what extent the U.S. might work with the Democratic Union Party, or PYD, the Kurdish fighting group in Syria that has long confronted jihadists is Syria but is close to the terrorist-designated PKK.
A representative of the PYD in France, Khaled Issa, met in recent months with American officials to discuss possible military cooperation. The U.S., which notes that it doesn't have formal relations with the PYD, has informed Turkey of the informal discussions.
Mr. Barzani, who likewise previously kept his distance from the Syrian Kurdish fighters, also has started cooperating more closely with them, according to the Kurdistan Regional Government adviser. It is an example of how the Islamic State threat has drawn disparate Kurdish groups closer.
Some U.S. lawmakers are pressing the administration to arm the Kurds in Syria. A U.S. official said Turkey may be close to cutting a deal with the PKK guerrillas, which could increase the U.S.'s room to maneuver. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan recently said reaching a peace deal was a top priority.
Erbil's main airport has become a center of the battle against Islamic State. During the Iraq war, the U.S. established its own facility there, including private taxiways and hangars with communications gear. Now, Kurdish officials say the facility is rapidly being expanded, reflecting Washington's commitment to what has become a joint U.S.-Kurdish campaign against the jihadists.
"Everything changed in 48 hours" in early August, Qubad Talabani, deputy prime minister of the Kurdistan Regional Government, said of the role of the Kurds. "Now we're fighting ISIS on behalf of the world."
—David Gauthier-Villars contributed to this article.
Write to Joe Parkinson at joe.parkinson@wsj.com and Adam Entous at adam.entous@wsj.com
-
This one was worth the time, I thought...
Europe blind to Islamic State's true threat
The progression of Islamic terror brings us to Jorge Luis Borges' writing. In his elegy “The Modesty of History,” the Argentine author wrote about the elusive nature of significant historic events. “I have long suspected that history, true history, is far more modest,” wrote the blind genius, “and that its essential dates may well be, for a long time, secret as well. A Chinese writer of prose has observed that the unicorn, for the very reason that it is so anomalous, will pass unnoticed. One’s eyes see what they are accustomed to see.” Borges went on to recall that the famous Roman historian Tacitus did not understand the Crucifixion, failing to grasp its significance at or around the actual time of the event.
The opening salvo of World War II was fired at Hitler’s failed 1923 beer hall putsch in Munich. At the time, the world reacted much like Tacitus did to the Crucifixion. It failed to notice it. World War III began with a boom on Sept. 11, 2001, when the world felt the first shot of global jihad. Nevertheless, over time, it preferred to ignore it or suppress thoughts of it. The Western world had forgotten the power of an unrestrained mass movement drunk on the successes of its brutality.
According to some estimates, Islamic State (IS) members now number as many as 20,000. The rate of people joining the movement is alarming. The percentage of people supporting it in the Muslim world and in Europe is horrifying. Its power, influence and draw are increasing with the speed of an untamed brushfire.
IS is jihad adapted to the age of the technological revolution. It is an amalgam of medieval ideas and 21st-century gadgetry. In effect, it is a closed circuit: IS makes clever, sophisticated use of technology as a magnet to attract young recruits, but it is also a product of the technological revolution. That is why it is so attractive, not only to Muslim youths, but to youths in general throughout the West.
IS is a dangerous, sadistic version of Che Guevara's appeal. It glorifies the anarchic warrior, whose pure ideals threaten the existing order in the West, an order that lacks spirit and meaning, an order that consists of credit cards and individual rights. That world is trapped in a spiritual vacuum and suffers from perpetual attention deficit disorder. It is a world that lives online, a world of computer games in which the heroes are gangsters. It is a world of hard-core porn for all and of TV series like "Game of Thrones," which sometimes almost appears to be the cinematic inspiration for IS videos. In such a world, a perverted, sadistic movement like IS is the real thing. It offers young Muslims, including some Westerners, a nihilistic, anarchistic adventure with pretentions of holiness in an amusement park of decapitations and rape. After all, young males have always been driven by testosterone and adrenaline.
In the 19th century, the West buried God somewhere, and since then all traces of him have been lost. God is alive and well, however, in the East, offering absolute answers to his devotees. Since the 1950s, the dominant ideology of the West has been a liberal one, especially among cultural and intellectual elites. This is an ideology that sanctifies individual freedoms and human rights to sometimes absurd levels. A malformed postmodernist discourse has inundated Western thought, blaming all the faults and failings of the developing world on Western colonialism and imperialism. While this approach is in the private sphere, it is equally valid in the international realm. From its perspective, there can be no crime that lacks justification in the perpetrator's eyes. The thief is a byproduct of a capitalist system, the rapist is a victim of sexual assault in childhood, and so on.
The same is true in the realm of international affairs. Jihadist terror is seen as a byproduct of the struggle by developing nations in general, and the Arab world in particular, against its historic oppressors. What is truly remarkable, however, is that of all places, multicultural Europe — a Europe that celebrates the saccharinity of multiculturalism, a Europe that opened its gates to tens of millions of immigrants — now lives in dread of IS emissaries and rightfully so. This year, maybe next year, we are likely to see a mass terrorist attack conducted by an IS alumnus in one of Europe’s capitals. That attack is certain to be filmed from every possible angle and edited into a lively, rhythmic video fit for any major network. As is so common in international relations, the actual schedule and the game pieces can be confusing.
How do young people from Europe arrive in the Syria of IS' proclaimed caliphate? By land, via Turkey. Yes, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s Turkey, the American ally and NATO member, is the crossing point, back and forth, between Syria and Europe. It's not up to US President Barack Obama alone to complete the job against IS. All of Europe must wake up. It must shake off its pacifist naphthalene and collect itself. The cancer must be amputated. Europe must find the strength to live.
As far as values go, the sanctity of individual rights does not supersede the most basic right to live. Only integrated action from within and without will remove the danger. A relentless war should be launched against IS in Syria and Iraq, and Europe must adopt a zero tolerance policy toward the group and its supporters. Otherwise, Europe will face unspeakable tragedy. The pendulum will swing from progressive inclusionism, which sanctifies human rights, to classical European nationalism. We all remember how that ended last time.
Read more: http://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/originals/2014/09/jorje-luis-borges-islamic-terror-world-jihad-europe-turkey.html#ixzz3Cpu2yJrt
-
Good one Mike. BTW, please use the Subject line (I have filled it in for you in this case).
Here's a major one from a major player:
Islamic State Is Getting Stronger, and It's Targeting America
U.S. air strikes in Syria are essential to defeating IS, but we should not cooperate with Iran or its militias.
By Ryan Crocker
Sept. 8, 2014 7:21 p.m. ET
Secretary of State John Kerry and Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel said Friday that an international coalition is forming to confront the terrorists of the Islamic State. President Obama plans to address the nation Wednesday night, as he said over the weekend, to get "the American people to understand the nature of the threat and how we're going to deal with it." His strategy is expected to involve an emphasis on a U.S.-led coalition and a reliance on airstrikes in a campaign that could take years, not months. Less clear is whether the president will commit to strikes inside Syria and substantially expanded special-forces deployments to Iraq and as soon as possible to Syria. We will not win unless he does.
There is no time left to argue, dither and wonder what should be done about those who are butchering Americans— and anyone else they care to—across a growing portion of the Middle East.
The enemy has no such doubts. They are not going away. They are getting stronger. The war, ladies and gentlemen, is truly on. We're just not a meaningful part of it yet.
A name can say a great deal about the intentions of our enemy today. The group on the march in the Middle East began calling itself the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria. Then it chose the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, the latter term including Lebanon, Jordan, Israel and the Palestinian territories as well as Syria. Now it's simply the Islamic State, geography unspecified. They already are a state, in that they carry out government functions in occupied territory. You can bet that their aspirations include Saudi Arabia and its holy cities of Mecca and Medina. With their gains in Iraq, nothing but sand separates them from the Saudi border.
It is hard to overstate the threat that this organization poses. I call it al Qaeda Version 6.0. The Islamic State is far better organized, equipped and funded than the original. They are more experienced and more numerous. Several thousand carry Western passports, including American ones. All the terrorists have to do is get on a plane and head west. But perhaps the most important asset they possess is territory. For the first time since 9/11, a determined and capable enemy has the space and security to plan complex, longer-range operations. If we don't think we are on that list, we are deluding ourselves.
So how do we deal with a looming regional and international disaster? First, we must understand that we are facing an army that will have to be confronted militarily. The pace of airstrikes in Iraq needs to be increased dramatically. Our actions thus far are not extensive enough to change the balance.
Second, we need to move immediately to strike Islamic State targets in Syria. These terrorists cannot be allowed a haven anywhere. Third, we need to increase special-forces advisers with loyal Iraqi units, with the Kurds and with Iraqi Sunni tribes who have been fighting the Islamic State for months. As we proceed with an air campaign in Syria, we need to look at possibilities for similar deployments with moderate opposition forces there.
Finally, we have to understand that military force is necessary but not sufficient. We will need to continue an intensive, high-level political effort to help the Iraqis form an inclusive government that will bring Sunnis, Shiites and Kurds into a unified front to confront a common enemy. We will have to ensure that they have the weapons to prosecute a successful campaign.
(MARC: AS I have already written, I have considerable doubts about the feasibility of this.)
There are several things that we should not do. We should avoid any appearance of cooperation with Iran and the extremist militias they support. Otherwise, we would further alienate Iraq's Sunnis, already disaffected by the sectarian policies of the government of former Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki. It also would estrange key regional allies such as Saudi Arabia. Similarly, we must also avoid giving the impression that military action in Syria is intended to support the regime of Bashar Assad.
The Islamic State has arguably done more damage to other elements of the Sunni opposition in Syria than to Assad. And there are many Syrians who stand with him not out of loyalty but fear of the alternative: an ascendant Islamic State. Degrading the forces of radical Islam may change the political dynamics among the different factions in a way that may make it possible to begin a political process: Moderate Sunni forces should be strengthened—and with a lessened threat from the Islamic State, those around Assad may be persuaded that it is time for him to go.
Neither in Iraq nor in Syria can stability come through military force alone. But military force may create conditions that enable political deals.
Just as the Islamic State is a threat to the region and the world, it must be met by the region and the world. The decision at the NATO Summit in Wales last week to form a Western coalition against the Islamic State is encouraging. The planned visit of Mr. Kerry and Mr. Hagel to the region is equally important. Our partners there face the most immediate threat from the Islamic State, and they must be in this fight too. Among other reasons, it is crucial to show that this is not a Muslim-Christian confrontation. Instead, show that it is a fight with a truly evil entity against which the forces of moderation and order, both Muslim and Christian, will stand.
But all of this—military action, political engagement, effective coalition-building—will require something that has been in short supply in this growing crisis: American leadership. This country, and the president personally, must step forward and show the world that we can and will move decisively, collectively and immediately.
Mr. Crocker is dean of the Bush School of Government and Public Service at Texas A&M University. He is a former ambassador to Iraq and Syria.
-
Click here to watch: ISIS Flaunts Captured Jets, Drones and Artillery
Israel has provided the US with intelligence and satellite images on Islamic State positions, as well as information on Westerners joining its ranks, to assist Washington in its ongoing operation against the Islamic State, Reuters reported Monday, citing an unnamed Western official. Israeli spy satellites were said to have greater access to the region, allowing the US to “fill out its information and get a better battle damage assessment” in the aftermath of its airstrikes, the diplomat said, according to the report. The news came as a State Department spokeswoman said that more than 40 countries have already indicated a willingness to help out in some way against the militants, who have seized a swath of Syria and northern Iraq. “What the goal of the coalition is is to coordinate on the threat that ISIL poses,” Jen Psaki said, adding that the allies would have differing roles and that not all would offer Iraq direct military support. “There are obviously a range of capabilities or capacities that different countries have,” she said, adding that the coalition would seek to cut off IS from funding, foreign reinforcements and ideological support.
Watch Here
The US has already begun to form alliances in battling IS, though officials have had to walk a tightrope between long-held regional alliances and sensitivities in the Middle East. Reuters reported Washington handed over the Israeli satellite evidence to Turkey and other Arab countries, but only once it was cleared of any information that could link it to Israel. The intelligence arrived “with the Hebrew and other markings scrubbed out” to avoid conflict with the other IS-opposed countries that may be bothered by Israel’s role in combating the jihadists, according to the diplomat cited by Reuters. The diplomat indicated Israel had also helped identify potential Western collaborators with the terror group. “The Israelis are very good with passenger data and with analyzing social media in Arabic to get a better idea of who these people are,” the source said. The Defense Ministry refused to comment on the report to Reuters. Secretary of State John Kerry is to set off Tuesday on a trip to Jordan and Saudi Arabia as part of efforts to build an international coalition to counter the jihadists of the Islamic State. “Secretary Kerry will also consult with key partners and allies on how to further support the security and stability of the Iraqi government, combat the threat posed by ISIL, and confront Middle East security challenges,” according to a State Department statement.
-
Third post of the day
The Moderate Middle East Must Act
How the U.A.E. and others in the region can aid the international fight against the Islamic state.
By Yousef al Otaiba
Sept. 9, 2014 7:15 p.m. ET
Over the past few weeks the international community has been stirred to action against the rising threat of extremism—the most destabilizing and dangerous global force since fascism. From Libya to the Levant and from Iraq to Yemen, violent Islamic extremists are overwhelming the broader popular will and menacing those committed to moderation and tolerance. It may not yet be a new world war, but it is already a raging war of competing world views.
In Iraq, Yazidi girls become war prizes to be sold as wives to fighters of the Islamic State, sometimes known as ISIS. In Syria, "infidels" are beheaded in the streets. In Egypt, rampaging jihadists massacre police recruits. In Libya, extremist groups launch the country toward anarchy. In Nigeria, Boko Haram kidnaps 200 schoolgirls. In the United Kingdom, college students are recruited online to take up jihad.
Islamic extremism has long been a Middle East problem but it is now the world's problem too. It is a transnational cancer that has already metastasized into sub-Saharan Africa. Radicalized fighters returning home present a security threat to every country from the Americas to Asia.
At the NATO summit and again this week, President Obama and other Western leaders have described their interests in this struggle. But no one has more at stake than the United Arab Emirates and other moderate countries in the region that have rejected the regressive Islamist creed and embraced a different, forward-looking path.
Now is the time to act. The international community needs an urgent, coordinated and sustained international effort to confront a threat that will, if unchecked, have global ramifications for decades to come.
Any action must first begin with a clear assessment of the enemy. The Islamic State may be the most obvious and dominant threat at present, but it is far from the only one. An international response must confront dangerous Islamist extremists of all stripes across the region. This includes many groups already designated as terrorist organizations by the U.S. government: Al Nusra Front in Syria, Ansar al Shariah in Libya and Tunisia, Ansar Bayt al Maqdis in Egypt, AQAP in Yemen and AQIM in North Africa.
Second, there must be a clear plan for direct intervention. It must include strengthening local forces on the ground that already are directly engaging the extremists. This means training, weapons, logistics and communications. It also means supplementing local forces with assets like air support, surveillance and special forces. It is a role the U.A.E. has consistently taken on before in international counterterrorism and peacekeeping missions in Afghanistan, Kosovo and Somalia.
Third, the coalition must confront not just the fighters but the support networks too. A successful campaign to defeat Islamist extremism in the long term must confront the transnational networks and organizations that breed and support hatred and violence in the name of religion.
Backing these support networks and organizations is a sophisticated ideological, financial and communications complex that includes countries, charities, companies and individuals. It uses social media, religious centers, banks and false fronts. It must be choked off through an organized program of better intelligence, more-aggressive law enforcement and tougher sanctions.
Fourth, if we have learned anything from the recent transitions in the region, it is that proselytizing ideology is no substitute for creating opportunity. Young people need hope and jobs, but stagnant economies, high unemployment and poverty fuel radicalization. Extremist groups prey on these vulnerabilities.
Finally, and perhaps most important, radical Islam is an existential threat to those of us who believe in the true nature of Islam as a religion of peace. We must do more to promote the voices of compassion and respect over the shouts of hatred and fanaticism.
In this spirit, the U.A.E. has built a model of tolerance and moderation in a region of extremes. Over the last generation the U.A.E. has undergone massive change without violence or radicalism, establishing itself as a haven in a very tough neighborhood. It is a way of life and a set of values we will fight to protect.
Noting the rapid rise of ISIS, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry said that "extremists are defeated only when responsible nations and their peoples unite to oppose them." We agree and are ready to join a coordinated international response. But to be effective, the fight must be against more than ISIS. And it must be waged not only on the battlefield but also against the entire militant ideological and financial complex that is the lifeblood of extremism.
Mr. Otaiba is the ambassador of the United Arab Emirates to the United States.
-
Considerable overlap with my proffered strategy :wink:
================================
The virtue of subtlety: a U.S. strategy against the Islamic State
The American strategy in the Middle East is fixed: allow powers in the region to balance against each other. When that fails, intervene.
George Friedman | 10 September 2014
comment | print |
balance of power
U.S. President Barack Obama said recently that he had no strategy as yet toward the Islamic State but that he would present a plan on Wednesday. It is important for a president to know when he has no strategy. It is not necessarily wise to announce it, as friends will be frightened and enemies delighted. A president must know what it is he does not know, and he should remain calm in pursuit of it, but there is no obligation to be honest about it.
This is particularly true because, in a certain sense, Obama has a strategy, though it is not necessarily one he likes. Strategy is something that emerges from reality, while tactics might be chosen. Given the situation, the United States has an unavoidable strategy. There are options and uncertainties for employing it. Let us consider some of the things that Obama does know.
The Formation of National Strategy
There are serious crises on the northern and southern edges of the Black Sea Basin. There is no crisis in the Black Sea itself, but it is surrounded by crises. The United States has been concerned about the status of Russia ever since U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt negotiated the end of the Russo-Japanese war in 1905. The United States has been concerned about the Middle East since U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower forced the British to retreat from Suez in 1956. As a result, the United States inherited -- or seized -- the British position.
A national strategy emerges over the decades and centuries. It becomes a set of national interests into which a great deal has been invested, upon which a great deal depends and upon which many are counting. Presidents inherit national strategies, and they can modify them to some extent. But the idea that a president has the power to craft a new national strategy both overstates his power and understates the power of realities crafted by all those who came before him. We are all trapped in circumstances into which we were born and choices that were made for us. The United States has an inherent interest in Ukraine and in Syria-Iraq. Whether we should have that interest is an interesting philosophical question for a late-night discussion, followed by a sunrise when we return to reality. These places reflexively matter to the United States.
The American strategy is fixed: Allow powers in the region to compete and balance against each other. When that fails, intervene with as little force and risk as possible. For example, the conflict between Iran and Iraq canceled out two rising powers until the war ended. Then Iraq invaded Kuwait and threatened to overturn the balance of power in the region. The result was Desert Storm.
This strategy provides a model. In the Syria-Iraq region, the initial strategy is to allow the regional powers to balance each other, while providing as little support as possible to maintain the balance of power. It is crucial to understand the balance of power in detail, and to understand what might undermine it, so that any force can be applied effectively. This is the tactical part, and it is the tactical part that can go wrong. The strategy has a logic of its own. Understanding what that strategy demands is the hard part. Some nations have lost their sovereignty by not understanding what strategy demands. France in 1940 comes to mind. For the United States, there is no threat to sovereignty, but that makes the process harder: Great powers can tend to be casual because the situation is not existential. This increases the cost of doing what is necessary.
The ground where we are talking about applying this model is Syria and Iraq. Both of these central governments have lost control of the country as a whole, but each remains a force. Both countries are divided by religion, and the religions are divided internally as well. In a sense the nations have ceased to exist, and the fragments they consisted of are now smaller but more complex entities.
The issue is whether the United States can live with this situation or whether it must reshape it. The immediate question is whether the United States has the power to reshape it and to what extent. The American interest turns on its ability to balance local forces. If that exists, the question is whether there is any other shape that can be achieved through American power that would be superior. From my point of view, there are many different shapes that can be imagined, but few that can be achieved. The American experience in Iraq highlighted the problems with counterinsurgency or being caught in a local civil war. The idea of major intervention assumes that this time it will be different. This fits one famous definition of insanity.
The Islamic State's Role
There is then the special case of the Islamic State. It is special because its emergence triggered the current crisis. It is special because the brutal murder of two prisoners on video showed a particular cruelty. And it is different because its ideology is similar to that of al Qaeda, which attacked the United States. It has excited particular American passions.
To counter this, I would argue that the uprising by Iraq's Sunni community was inevitable, with its marginalization by Nouri al-Maliki's Shiite regime in Baghdad. That it took this particularly virulent form is because the more conservative elements of the Sunni community were unable or unwilling to challenge al-Maliki. But the fragmentation of Iraq into Shiite, Sunni and Kurdish regions was well underway before the Islamic State, and jihadism was deeply embedded in the Sunni community a long time ago.
Moreover, although the Islamic State is brutal, its cruelty is not unique in the region. Syrian President Bashar al Assad and others may not have killed Americans or uploaded killings to YouTube, but their history of ghastly acts is comparable. Finally, the Islamic State -- engaged in war with everyone around it -- is much less dangerous to the United States than a small group with time on its hands, planning an attack. In any event, if the Islamic State did not exist, the threat to the United States from jihadist groups in Yemen or Libya or somewhere inside the United States would remain.
Because the Islamic State operates to some extent as a conventional military force, it is vulnerable to U.S. air power. The use of air power against conventional forces that lack anti-aircraft missiles is a useful gambit. It shows that the United States is doing something, while taking little risk, assuming that the Islamic State really does not have anti-aircraft missiles. But it accomplishes little. The Islamic State will disperse its forces, denying conventional aircraft a target. Attempting to defeat the Islamic State by distinguishing its supporters from other Sunni groups and killing them will founder at the first step. The problem of counterinsurgency is identifying the insurgent.
There is no reason not to bomb the Islamic State's forces and leaders. They certainly deserve it. But there should be no illusion that bombing them will force them to capitulate or mend their ways. They are now part of the fabric of the Sunni community, and only the Sunni community can root them out. Identifying Sunnis who are anti-Islamic State and supplying them with weapons is a much better idea. It is the balance-of-power strategy that the United States follows, but this approach doesn't have the dramatic satisfaction of blowing up the enemy. That satisfaction is not trivial, and the United States can certainly blow something up and call it the enemy, but it does not address the strategic problem.
In the first place, is it really a problem for the United States? The American interest is not stability but the existence of a dynamic balance of power in which all players are effectively paralyzed so that no one who would threaten the United States emerges. The Islamic State had real successes at first, but the balance of power with the Kurds and Shia has limited its expansion, and tensions within the Sunni community diverted its attention. Certainly there is the danger of intercontinental terrorism, and U.S. intelligence should be active in identifying and destroying these threats. But the re-occupation of Iraq, or Iraq plus Syria, makes no sense. The United States does not have the force needed to occupy Iraq and Syria at the same time. The demographic imbalance between available forces and the local population makes that impossible.
The danger is that other Islamic State franchises might emerge in other countries. But the United States would not be able to block these threats as well as the other countries in the region. Saudi Arabia must cope with any internal threat it faces not because the United States is indifferent, but because the Saudis are much better at dealing with such threats. In the end, the same can be said for the Iranians.
Most important, it can also be said for the Turks. The Turks are emerging as a regional power. Their economy has grown dramatically in the past decade, their military is the largest in the region, and they are part of the Islamic world. Their government is Islamist but in no way similar to the Islamic State, which concerns Ankara. This is partly because of Ankara's fear that the jihadist group might spread to Turkey, but more so because its impact on Iraqi Kurdistan could affect Turkey's long-term energy plans.
Forming a New Balance in the Region
The United States cannot win the game of small mosaic tiles that is emerging in Syria and Iraq. An American intervention at this microscopic level can only fail. But the principle of balance of power does not mean that balance must be maintained directly. Turkey, Iran and Saudi Arabia have far more at stake in this than the United States. So long as they believe that the United States will attempt to control the situation, it is perfectly rational for them to back off and watch, or act in the margins, or even hinder the Americans.
The United States must turn this from a balance of power between Syria and Iraq to a balance of power among this trio of regional powers. They have far more at stake and, absent the United States, they have no choice but to involve themselves. They cannot stand by and watch a chaos that could spread to them.
It is impossible to forecast how the game is played out. What is important is that the game begins. The Turks do not trust the Iranians, and neither is comfortable with the Saudis. They will cooperate, compete, manipulate and betray, just as the United States or any country might do in such a circumstance. The point is that there is a tactic that will fail: American re-involvement. There is a tactic that will succeed: the United States making it clear that while it might aid the pacification in some way, the responsibility is on regional powers. The inevitable outcome will be a regional competition that the United States can manage far better than the current chaos.
Obama has sought volunteers from NATO for a coalition to fight the Islamic State. It is not clear why he thinks those NATO countries -- with the exception of Turkey -- will spend their national treasures and lives to contain the Islamic State, or why the Islamic State alone is the issue. The coalition that must form is not a coalition of the symbolic, but a coalition of the urgently involved. That coalition does not have to be recruited. In a real coalition, its members have no choice but to join. And whether they act together or in competition, they will have to act. And not acting will simply increase the risk to them.
U.S. strategy is sound. It is to allow the balance of power to play out, to come in only when it absolutely must -- with overwhelming force, as in Kuwait -- and to avoid intervention where it cannot succeed. The tactical application of strategy is the problem. In this case the tactic is not direct intervention by the United States, save as a satisfying gesture to avenge murdered Americans. But the solution rests in doing as little as possible and forcing regional powers into the fray, then in maintaining the balance of power in this coalition.
Such an American strategy is not an avoidance of responsibility. It is the use of U.S. power to force a regional solution. Sometimes the best use of American power is to go to war. Far more often, the best use of U.S. power is to withhold it. The United States cannot evade responsibility in the region. But it is enormously unimaginative to assume that carrying out that responsibility is best achieved by direct intervention. Indirect intervention is frequently more efficient and more effective.
The Virtue of Subtlety: A U.S. Strategy Against the Islamic State is republished with permission of Stratfor.
- See more at: http://www.mercatornet.com/articles/view/the_virtue_of_subtlety_a_u.s._strategy_against_the_islamic_state#sthash.uJtIKJ0z.dpuf
-
http://www.dailystar.com.lb/News/Middle-East/2014/Sep-11/270333-turkey-refuses-us-permission-for-combat-missions-against-isis-official.ashx#ixzz3D163uu2K
Sep. 11, 2014
Turkey refuses US permission for combat missions against ISIS
-
Maybe the WSJ has been reading my posts here?
Our Non-Ally in Ankara
Turkey bugs out of the anti-ISIS coalition. Why not a base in Kurdistan?
Sept. 12, 2014 6:37 p.m. ET
Was it only a week ago that Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel listed a "core coalition" of 10 countries willing to join the U.S. effort to destroy the Islamic State? Since then Britain has categorically ruled out military strikes in Syria, while Germany has ruled out any use of force. Now Turkey is bugging out.
The Turkish abdication goes a step further than the Brits or Germans. Not only will Ankara take no military action, it will also forbid the U.S. from using the U.S. air base in Incirlik—located fewer than 100 miles from the Syrian border—to conduct air strikes against the terrorists. That will complicate the Pentagon's logistical and reconnaissance challenges, especially for a campaign that's supposed to take years.
The U.S. military will no doubt find work-arounds for its air campaign, just as it did in 2003 when Turkey also refused requests to let the U.S. launch attacks on Iraq from its soil in order to depose Saddam Hussein. Turkey shares a 750-mile border with Syria and Iraq, meaning it could have made a more-than-symbolic contribution to a campaign against ISIS. So much for that.
Harder to get around is the reality of a Turkish government that is a member of NATO but long ago stopped acting like an ally of the U.S. or a friend of the West. Former U.S. Ambassador to Turkey Francis Ricciardone declared this week that the Turkish government "frankly worked" with the al-Nusrah Front—the al Qaeda affiliate in Syria—along with other terrorist groups. Ankara also looked the other way as foreign jihadis used Turkey as a transit point on their way to Syria and Iraq. Mr. Ricciardone came close to being declared persona non grata by Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan's government last December.
This history—along with the Erdogan government's long record of support for Hamas in Gaza and the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt—explains why the excuses now being made for Turkey's nonfeasance ring hollow. ISIS has taken Turkish diplomats and their family members hostage in Mosul inside Iraq, but Turkey is not the only country whose citizens have been taken hostage. Ankara also fears that arms sent to ISIS opponents may wind up in the hands of the PKK, the Kurdish terrorist group. But that doesn't justify shutting down Incirlik for a U.S. operation.
The unavoidable conclusion is that the U.S. needs to find a better regional ally to fight ISIS. True to type, Arab states such as Saudi Arabia are proving to be reluctant partners, at least in public, and it's unclear how much the new government in Baghdad can contribute before its army regroups.
The better bet is with the Kurds, who have the most on the line and are willing to provide the boots on the ground that others can't or won't. Incirlik has been a home for U.S. forces for nearly 60 years, but perhaps it's time to consider replacing it with a new U.S. air base in Kurdish territory in northern Iraq. America may no longer have friends in Ankara, but that doesn't mean we don't have options in the Middle East.
-
Second post
Kurdish Peshmerga Forces Have Room to Grow
Analysis
September 12, 2014 | 0456 Print Text Size
Though a limited force, the Kurdish peshmerga could prove critical against Islamic State
Summary
As the United States prepares for more aggressive action against the Islamic State, one of the key pillars of its strategy is to work with indigenous armed groups that can roll back the militant group's gains. The Kurdish Peshmerga forces, despite their fabled reputation, have diminished as a fighting force over the last decade of relative peace in Iraq's Kurdistan region. With serious training and significant foreign support, however, the Peshmerga fighters can still play a critical role in the overall strategy against the Islamic State.
Analysis
Considerable divisions exist within the organizational framework of the Peshmerga forces. Indeed, to a large extent, the Peshmerga concept remains an idea based around a shared goal, rather than a single monolith. The term is essentially a catchall for the armed forces of the various Kurdish factions, rather than the name of a single army.
At the highest level, the Peshmerga forces can be primarily divided into two main factional fighting groups, one reporting to the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan and the other to the Kurdistan Democratic Party. These factions operate in largely distinct territorial areas, and their command and control and logistics structures differ. Within the two broader groupings there are also many families, clans and individuals that invite their own loyalties. Estimates generally indicate that some 60,000 fighters fight under each party, with the Ministry of the Peshmerga Affairs claiming an additional 50,000 fighters. These estimates include a large number of veterans and untrained civilians who have rushed to the lines to repel the Islamic State.
The rivalries within the Peshmerga groups have led to poor coordination on the battlefield between Patriotic Union of Kurdistan and Kurdistan Democratic Party units. This has even been the case in the Regional Guard Brigades, a force that combines fighters from both factions into single units. In locations where Regional Guard Brigades have failed, less professional but more highly trusted Peshmerga units that remain under party control have performed better. No effective command structure exists across the entire Peshmerga force due to the split of prevailing loyalties among the two factions. There is also a marked divide in sharing logistics and supplies, which diminishes the effectiveness of both factions. The involvement of People’s Protection Unit forces from Syria as well as Kurdistan Workers' Party forces from Turkey, particularly in the north and northwest, has further complicated the situation on the ground, even though these fighters add considerable force and much-needed combat experience.
While most of the Peshmerga fighters (particularly those in the Regional Guard Brigades) have received some amount of training, the units as a whole are inexperienced. Many of the older commanders gained experience fighting former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein’s army. However, that fight involved using guerilla tactics against a mechanized conventional army. Those skills do not necessarily translate into an ability to operate against a fluid opponent that is proficient in light infantry maneuver warfare, or an ability to effectively carry out counterinsurgency and counterterrorism operations. In addition, the bulk of the ranks have very little combat experience and have mostly been involved in garrison duty over the last decade. U.S. Special Forces operating alongside Peshmerga forces in a more conventional way in 2003 also described them as "wild" and said they were forced to organize the Peshmerga fighters into assault units to prevent friendly fire incidents. Finally, none of the senior Peshmerga officers have experience with modern combined arms offensives.
As mentioned, the much younger rank-and-file fighters lack combat experience as a whole. They also lack Arabic language skills, adding to their alienation from Sunni tribes. These younger recruits have cultural backgrounds that differ from those of the once-fabled Peshmerga fighters, who were viewed as tough boys from the mountains born with rifles in their hands. Instead, the average Peshmerga fighter is now an urban youth with little to no experience in handling weapons or living in rough mountain terrain. In fact, notable portions of current Peshmerga fighters are volunteers from the Kurdish diaspora.
Logistical Shortfalls
Peshmerga equipment consists of significant amounts of heavy weaponry including tanks, rocket artillery and howitzers, but the force lacks the ammunition and the logistical and maintenance support required to sustain offensive operations. This is not the only shortfall; the level of sophistication of the weapons systems available to the Peshmerga fighters also poses a setback. The vast bulk of Peshmerga heavy weaponry derives from old Warsaw Pact supplies captured long ago from Hussein's forces. The deployed equipment's age and lack of maintenance have already resulted in a number of reported breakdowns and malfunctions.
Peshmerga forces also lack the appropriate communication tools to allow them to convey information within and among units. This limits fighters' ability to respond to Islamic State activities in a timely manner or to convey orders or intelligence in a secure manner.
On the whole, the Peshmerga forces remain particularly effective in core Kurdish areas, especially in defensive operations in the mountainous regions dominated by Kurdish populations with terrain that is well known to the Peshmerga fighters. The Peshmerga forces have not fared as well in the open plains, where the Islamic State's superior mobility has proved a key advantage against the slower-moving Kurds.
Indeed, considering all the challenges faced by the Peshmerga fighters, they have shown themselves to be an effective defensive force and have held back the Islamic State after initial tactical retreats in Arbil province. These tactical withdrawals have allowed Peshmerga forces to regroup and correct their dispositions, although in doing so they still have faced significant planning and management shortfalls.
Preparedness
The Peshmerga forces are far better prepared to carry out defensive operations than to take the fight to Islamic State militants. However, with adequate support -- air power, supplies, equipment and perhaps even advising -- they might be able to carry out effective offensive operations. The more time the Peshmerga fighters have to train, especially if they get foreign advisers, intelligence, and air support, the better they eventually will be able to operate. Training and foreign support are crucial to bolstering the force's offensive capabilities; even now, the Peshmerga forces can perform some offensive operations with proper support. This was evident during the Mosul Dam operation in which the Peshmerga fighters, led by the Iraqi Golden Brigades and supported by American air power, smashed through Islamic State defenses. Though the Peshmerga forces currently have some serious limitations in offensive operations beyond their core territory, their capabilities can grow with enough international support.
Read more: Kurdish Peshmerga Forces Have Room to Grow | Stratfor
Follow us: @stratfor on Twitter | Stratfor on Facebook
-
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2754934/ISIS-release-video-claiming-beheading-British-hostage-David-Haines.html
-
If this report is to be believed, ISIS is a billion dollar +/year enterprise. Potential for a lot of mischief.
http://www.dawn.com/news/1131922/islamic-states-war-chest-grows-by-3m-daily (http://www.dawn.com/news/1131922/islamic-states-war-chest-grows-by-3m-daily)
Islamic State's war chest grows by $3m daily
WASHINGTON: Islamic State militants, who once relied on wealthy Persian Gulf donors for money, have become a self-sustaining financial juggernaut, earning more than $3 million a day from oil smuggling, human trafficking, theft and extortion, according to US intelligence officials and private experts.
The extremist group's resources exceed that “of any other terrorist group in history,” said a US intelligence official who, like others interviewed, spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss classified assessments.
Such riches are one reason that American officials are so concerned about the group even while acknowledging they have no evidence it is plotting attacks against the United States.
The Islamic State group has taken over large sections of Syria and Iraq, and controls as many as 11 oil fields in both countries, analysts say.
It is selling oil and other goods through generations-old smuggling networks under the noses of some of the same governments it is fighting: Kurdish-controlled northern Iraq, Turkey and Jordan.
While US intelligence does not assess that those governments are complicit in the smuggling, the Obama administration is pressing them do to more to crack down.
The illicit oil is generally transported on tanker trucks, analysts said. “There's a lot of money to be made,” said Denise Natali, who worked in Kurdistan as an American aid official and is now a senior research fellow at National Defense University.
“The Kurds say they have made an attempt to close it down, but you pay off a border guard you pay off somebody else and you get stuff through."
The price the Islamic State group fetches for its smuggled oil is discounted $25 to $60 for a barrel of oil that normally sells for more than $100 but its total profits from oil are exceeding $3 million a day, said Luay al-Khatteeb, a visiting fellow at the Brookings Institution's Doha Center in Qatar.
The group also has earned hundreds of millions of dollars from smuggling antiquities out of Iraq to be sold in Turkey, al-Khatteeb said, and millions more from human trafficking by selling women and children as sex slaves. Other revenue comes from extortion payments, ransom from kidnapped hostages, and outright theft of all manner of materials from the towns the Islamic State group has seized, analysts say.
“It's cash-raising activities resemble those of a mafia-like organization,” a second US intelligence official said, reflecting the assessment of his agency. “They are well-organized, systematic and enforced through intimidation and violence."
Even prior to seizing Mosul in June, for example, the group began to impose “taxes” on nearly every facet of economic activity, threatening death for those unwilling to pay, US intelligence officials say.
An analysis by the Council on Foreign Relations estimated the group was reaping $8 million a month from extortion in Mosul alone. Once the group took over Mosul, in northern Iraq, and other areas, it grabbed millions of dollars in cash from banks, though not the hundreds of millions initially reported, US intelligence officials say.
This spring, four French and two Spanish journalists held hostage by Islamic State extremists were freed after their governments paid multimillion-dollar ransoms through intermediaries. The Islamic State group “has managed to successfully translate territorial control in northern Syria and portions of Iraq into a means of revenue generation,” said a third US intelligence official.
Analysts say the group is relying on the fact that the area along the border between Iraq and Turkey has long been a smugglers haven, and was made more so by the fall of Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein in 2003. Generations of families have illicitly moved goods through the region.
The Islamic State is the successor to al-Qaida in Iraq, which was founded by Jordanian Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. For a time, the group was allied with the Nusra Front, the al-Qaida affiliate that is a key player among the rebels battling Syrian President Bashar Assad. The Islamic State group has since broken with the Nusra Front and al-Qaida.
In the early days of the Syrian civil war, the Islamic State group was funded in large part by donations from wealthy residents of Gulf States, including Kuwait and Qatar, American officials have said.
“A number of fundraisers operating in more permissive jurisdictions, particularly in Kuwait and Qatar, are soliciting donations to fund al-Qaida's Syrian affiliate, the Nusra Front, and the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL),” David Cohen, the Treasury department's top counterterrorism official, said in a speech in March. ISIL is an alternative acronym for the Islamic State group.
That stream of funding has diminished in recent months as the group's violent tactics have drawn worldwide attention, US intelligence officials say.
The group's reliance on oil as its main source of revenue could easily be disrupted by American airstrikes, officials say. But so far, no decision has been made to target Iraqi or Syrian oil infrastructure, which is serviced by civilian workers who may have been conscripted.
-
Share
Middle Eastern Powers Consider Their Roles Against the Islamic State
Analysis
September 14, 2014 | 0808 Print Text Size
Middle Eastern Powers Consider Their Roles Against the Islamic State
A video still shows Islamic State fighters with a tank. (Reuters)
Summary
U.S. President Barack Obama has committed the United States to the task of heading a multiyear international campaign to defeat the transnational jihadist movement the Islamic State. However, the U.S. contribution to this effort will be limited in that there will not be any major ground operations. More important will be the actions of regional players after the United States weakens the Islamic State. Countries such as Iran, Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Qatar will have to take responsibility for any long-term management of the area given their geographical and historical connections to Iraq and Syria. Their conflicting interests probably will aggravate the regional situation.
Analysis
Thirteen years after the start of the war against radical Islamism, the United States has embarked upon the mission to "degrade and ultimately destroy" the Islamic State -- a transnational jihadist movement that has accomplished al Qaeda's goals of undermining Muslim regimes and re-establishing the caliphate. Fighting the Islamic State, which controls large swaths of territory in Syria and Iraq, will be much more difficult than combating al Qaeda's terrorism-based tactics, and this time around, Washington has said it will restrict itself to air operations. This means that the bulk of the struggle will fall to the actors within Syria and Iraq and, more important, to their patrons among the regional powers who will likely face a multidecade struggle in combating the Islamic State.
Air Base Locations of Core Coalition Countries
Click to Enlarge
Put differently, the U.S. role will be minor and limited in scope and time frame compared to that of the four main Middle Eastern countries -- Iran, Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Qatar. Any long-term balance in the region, whether peaceful or violent, is going to draw in these regional powers because of their ability to employ direct capabilities and the direct threat the Islamic State poses to their security and interests. Still, each country has different goals in reshaping the region with regard to the fight with the Islamic State and in the event of the group's defeat. Given that all main players, even the three Sunni states, disagree and compete significantly with one another, the Islamic State and other like-minded non-state actors will likely be able to endure into the foreseeable future.
Iran's Goals
For the Islamic republic, it is critical that its Shiite allies (working with the Kurds) continue to dominate Iraq and that the Alawite-led government in Syria not collapse. Toward this end, the Islamic State must be dislodged from Iraq. Iran faces a dilemma in Syria; the Islamic State must be weakened so that it cannot project power into Iraq, but it should not be eliminated because it keeps the main Sunni rebel groups from posing a threat to Bashar al Assad's regime in Damascus. Keeping the Islamic State in the mix serves Iran's objectives of keeping the rebels divided and portraying the rebellion as a jihadist enterprise which, in turn, would limit U.S. support for the rebels and deny its main regional rival, Saudi Arabia, the ability to use Syria as a launch pad for undermining Tehran's influence in Iraq and Lebanon. For this reason, while Iran is happy to see the United States strike at the Islamic State in Iraq, it is deeply concerned about any U.S. moves in Syria.
Saudi Arabia's Interests
The Saudis are in the worst position in the region. Between the Iranian/Shiite threat, the Arab Spring, the rise of republican Islamism in the form of the Muslim Brotherhood and the Islamic State-led jihadist surge, Riyadh is in a geopolitical maelstrom. Ideally, the kingdom would like to harness the power of a virulently anti-Shiite group such as the Islamic State to topple the Syrian regime and weaken the Shia in both Iraq and Lebanon, thus forcing the Iranians back into their Persian core. The problem is that the Saudis do not control the Islamic State. Moreover, Riyadh is competing with groups like the Islamic State and al-Qaeda for a monopoly over the concepts of Salafism and jihad. This is why the Saudis have been putting together a coalition of Syrian rebels, many of whom are Salafist-jihadists who do not share the Islamic State's ambition to establish a caliphate and are willing to go only as far as the Saudis command them to. Saudi Arabia is thus hoping that U.S. military power will help neutralize the Islamic State and allow its proxies to take over the territories currently under the jihadist group's control. This way the transnational jihadist threat will be removed and the kingdom can make progress toward ousting al Assad.
Concentration of Activity by the Islamic State
Click to Enlarge
Turkey's Stakes
Turkey is the largest Muslim military power in the region and wants to see the al Assad regime replaced by a Sunni regime that can facilitate Ankara's ambition of regaining influence in the Arab world. However, the Turks do not share the sectarian zeal of the Saudis, nor are they as vulnerable to the Iranian threat as the kingdom is. In addition, Turkey has a unique geopolitical position: Iran holds the upper hand in the two Arab states it borders -- Iraq and Syria -- and on both borders there are Kurdish populations that embolden Kurdish separatism within Turkish territory. Moreover, since the eruption of the sectarian war in Syria that allowed for the emergence of the Islamic State, Turkey has been coping with jihadists on both borders. Knowing that Iraq's ethno-sectarian makeup gives Iran more influence there, the Turks are more interested in U.S. military action in Syria than in Iraq. Turkey would like to see Muslim Brotherhood-type Islamists and Syrian Sunni nationalists fill the vacuum created by the U.S. military campaign against the Islamic State. However, it knows its interests will collide with those of Saudi Arabia, for whom the toppling of the al Assad regime would be a victory in its proxy war with Iran -- something the Turks have no interest in. Therefore, the Turks can be expected to work with the Qataris, given their shared outlook for the region.
Qatar's Position
Doha's strategic outlook is based on two principles: It does not want to accept Saudi hegemony of the Sunni Arab world, and Qatar wants to be a regional player. Doha's main instrument to achieve these ends has been its support for the Muslim Brotherhood groups throughout the region. Qatar and Turkey are in agreement on this issue, and they more or less would support the same types of actors in Syria. That said, Qatar also has influence over Salafist-jihadist groups including al Qaeda's Syrian node, Jabhat al-Nusrah. While Qatar is not as opposed to the Iranians as the Saudis are, it wishes to see the United States destroy the Islamic State so that nationalist Islamist forces can rise in Syria and eventually enter a power-sharing arrangement with the al Assad camp.
These competing visions for a post-Islamic State Syria show the complexity of the eventual tug-of-war among these four actors. The United States might be able to help loosen the Islamic State's grip in Syria and Iraq, but it is unlikely the regional players will simply move forward and seamlessly establish a new regional order to contain the sectarian conflict.
Read more: Middle Eastern Powers Consider Their Roles Against the Islamic State | Stratfor
Follow us: @stratfor on Twitter | Stratfor on Facebook
-
http://www.nationalreview.com/article/387619/middle-easts-maze-alliances-victor-davis-hanson
Try figuring out the maze of enemies, allies, and neutrals in the Middle East.
In 2012, the Obama administration was on the verge of bombing the forces of Syrian president Bashar Assad. For a few weeks, he was public enemy No. 1 because he had used chemical weapons on his own people and because he was responsible for many of the deaths in the Syrian civil war, with a casualty count that is now close to 200,000.
After Obama’s red lines turned pink, we forgot about Syria. Then the Islamic State showed up with beheadings, crucifixions, rapes, and mass murders through a huge swath of Iraq and Syria. Now the United States is bombing the Islamic State. Sometimes Obama says that he is still seeking a strategy against the jihadist group. Sometimes he wants to reduce it to a manageable problem. And sometimes he says that he wants to degrade or even destroy it.
The Islamic State is still trying to overthrow Assad. If the Obama administration is now bombing the Islamic State, is it then helping Assad? Or when America did not bomb Assad, did it help the Islamic State? Which of the two should Obama bomb — or both, or neither?
Iran is steadily on the way to acquiring a nuclear bomb. Yet for now it is arming the Kurds, dependable U.S. allies in the region who are fighting for their lives against the Islamic State and need American help. As Iran aids the Kurds, Syrians, and Iraqis in the battle against the evil Islamic State, is Teheran becoming a friend, enemy, or neither? Will Iran’s temporary help mean that it will delay or hasten its efforts to get a bomb? Just as Iran sent help to the Kurds, it missed yet another U.N. deadline to come clean on nuclear enrichment.
Hamas just lost a war in Gaza against Israel. Then it began executing and maiming a number of its own people, some of them affiliated with Fatah, the ruling clique of the Palestinian Authority. During the war, Mahmoud Abbas, president of the Palestinian state, stayed neutral and called for calm. Did he wish Israel to destroy his rival, Hamas? Or did he wish Hamas to hurt his archenemy, Israel? Both? Neither?
What about the Gulf sheikdoms? In the old days, America was enraged that some of the Saudis slyly funneled cash to al-Qaeda and yet relieved that the Saudi government was deemed moderate and pro-Western. But as Iran gets closer to its nuclear holy grail, the Gulf kingdoms now seem to be in a de facto alliance with their hated adversary, Israel. Both Sunni monarchies and the Jewish state in near lockstep oppose the radical Iran/Syria/Hezbollah/Muslim Brotherhood/Hamas axis.
But don’t look for understandable Shiite–Sunni Muslim fault lines. In this anti-Saudi alliance, the Iranians and Hezbollah are Shiites. Yet their allies, the Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas, are Sunnis. The Syrian government is neither, being Alawite.
They all say they are against the Sunni-extremist Islamic State. So if they are enemies of the Sunni monarchies and enemies of the Islamic State, is the Islamic State then a friend to these Gulf shiekdoms?
Then there is Qatar, a Sunni Gulf monarchy at odds with all the other neighboring Sunni monarchies. It is sort of friendly with the Iranians, Muslim Brotherhood, Hezbollah and Hamas — all adversaries of the U.S. Why, then, is Qatar the host of CENTCOM, the biggest American military base in the entire Middle East?
Is Egypt any simpler? During the Arab Spring, the Obama administration helped to ease former president and kleptocrat Hosni Mubarak out of power. Then it supported both the democratic elections and the radical Muslim Brotherhood that won them. Later, the administration said little when a military junta displaced the radical Muslim Brotherhood, which was subverting the new constitution. America was against military strongmen before it was for them, and for Islamists before it was against them.
President Obama and Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Recep Erdogan were said to have a special friendship. But based on what? Erdogan is strangling democracy in Turkey. He is a big supporter of Hamas and at times a fan of Iran. A NATO ally, Turkey recently refused to let U.S. rescue teams use its territory to stage a rescue mission of American hostages — two of them eventually beheaded — in Syria.
Ostensibly, America supports moderate pro-Western consensual governments that protect human rights and hold elections, or at least do not oppress their own. But there are almost no such nations in the Middle East except Israel. Yet the Obama administration has grown ever more distant from the Jewish state over the last six years.
What is the U.S. to do? Leave the Middle East alone, allowing terrorists to build a petrol-fueled staging base for another 9/11?
About the best choice is to support without qualification the only two pro-American and constitutional groups in the Middle East, the Israelis and Kurds.
Otherwise, in such a tribal quagmire, apparently there are only transitory interests that come and go.
-
Yeah, let's spill our blood, sweat, tears, and treasures to put these fukkers back in charge , , ,
http://theuglytruth.wordpress.com/2014/09/14/watch-jewish-woman-and-satan-give-birth-to-isis-on-iraqi-tv/
-
Given the fustercluck Baraq has created I surely don't envy him the choices he faces now. That said, I continue to think the strategy I offered is better than this.
=======================================================================
U.S. Efforts to Build Coalition Against Islamic State in Iraq, Syria Are Hampered by Sectarian Divide
Russia Warns Against Strikes on Syria Without Regime's Consent
By Stacy Meichtry, Jay Solomon and Maria Abi-Habib
WSJ
Updated Sept. 15, 2014 10:19 p.m. ET
A conference to discuss how to combat the Islamic State is under way in Paris. Made up of 26 countries, including the U.S., Saudi Arabia and Russia, it aims to show a united front on fighting the militant group. WSJ's Mark Kelly reports
U.S. efforts to build a broad coalition to combat Islamic State on Monday ran straight into the sectarian chasm that has divided the Middle East for centuries, with Arab allies disagreeing over whether Iraq's neighbors—particularly Iran and Syria—should have a role in any military campaign.
A group of 26 countries gathering in Paris—including the U.S., Saudi Arabia and Russia—vowed to back the fight against the Sunni extremist organization "by any means necessary, including appropriate military assistance."
But a day after the U.S. said Arab states were willing to participate in airstrikes, Arab countries attending the Paris meeting gave no sign they were ready to join the military campaign. The U.S. also faced criticism from Russia, Syria's top international ally, which insisted airstrikes on Syria must be coordinated with Damascus and Tehran.
After the international meeting concluded, the U.S. military said Monday night it made its first airstrike in Iraq targeting Islamic militants as part of the expanded mission announced last week. The airstrike hit a single fighting position set up by Islamic State militants that was firing on Iraqi security forces southwest of Baghdad, officials said.
Previously, the military was limited to strikes designed to assist with humanitarian missions, such as driving militants from Sinjar, to defend Iraqi infrastructure, or to protect U.S. personnel and facilities.
The hesitancy of many of the Middle East's major Sunni leaders, including in Saudi Arabia, Jordan and the United Arab Emirates, to back military operations is driven, in part, by a belief American airstrikes against the Islamic State will benefit the region's three main Shiite-dominated governments in Iran, Iraq and Syria, according to U.S. and Arab officials involved in the deliberations.
That debate highlighted how the Obama administration's plans to lead the international coalition against Islamic State have plunged it more deeply into a regional feud between Sunni and Shiite states.
Sensitive to Sunni Arab states' concerns, Secretary of State John Kerry and other U.S. officials have publicly ruled out in recent days cooperating militarily with Tehran and Damascus in rooting out Islamic State, though Washington acknowledged private discussions have been held with Iran's rulers. Such a stance raises the possibility that Iran's Islamist rulers and Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's regime could attempt to sabotage U.S. military operations, as they did in Iraq in the years following the George W. Bush administration's overthrow of Saddam Hussein in 2003.
In recent days, leaders of Iraqi Shiite militias close to Tehran, including Kata'b Hezbollah and the Mahdi Army, have publicly warned Washington that U.S. soldiers could be targeted if the White House pushes ahead with its military offensive against Islamic State, also known as ISIS or ISIL.
"If you come back, we will be back too," radical Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, who commands the Mahdi Army, said in a televised statement Monday.
Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei put the Obama administration on the defensive ahead of the talks by publicly claiming his government has rejected numerous overtures from Washington to jointly cooperate against Islamic State. Iraq's new leaders reprimanded the U.S. and its European and Arab allies for not inviting Iran to attend the Paris conference.
"We had insisted for Iran to be there and we regret their absence," Iraqi Foreign Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari said in Paris, adding that Tehran had provided his government with "significant support" in fighting Islamic State.
Mr. Kerry acknowledged private discussions with Iran about Iraq and said the U.S. remained open to future discussions, including next week at the annual United Nations General Assembly in New York. But the American diplomat ruled out any military cooperation with Iran in Iraq and Syria and intelligence sharing. He also acknowledged that his opposition to Tehran attending the Paris conference was driven, in part, by threats made by Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates to boycott the meetings if Iranian officials attended.
"We're not coordinating with Iran, but as I said, we're open to have a conversation at some point in time if there's a way to find something constructive," Mr. Kerry said Monday.
The role of the Assad regime in combating Islamic State is also presenting a dilemma for the Obama administration. U.S. officials have rejected Syrian overtures to coordinate military strikes against Islamic State. But Mr. Assad's allies, particularly Russia, warned on Monday that excluding the Syrian government risks fueling more conflict in the region.
"One cannot but feel concerned by publicly stated intentions to attack the [Islamic State] positions in Syria's territory without interaction with the Syrian government," Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said in Paris. "Syria, as well as Iran, are our natural allies in the fight."
Mr. Kerry, as in the case with Iran, offered somewhat contradictory statements on the U.S. positions toward Syria. He ruled out cooperation, but also said the U.S. would "communicate' with Mr. Assad's government to avoid any potential clashes with Syrian forces as the campaign against Islamic State gathered momentum.
"There are all kinds of ways of communicating to avoid mistakes or disasters," Mr. Kerry said.
Administration officials said at a briefing in Washington later Monday that American forces would respond if Mr. Assad used antiaircraft weapons against U.S. planes.
Current and former U.S. officials and Arab diplomats worry the buildup of the military campaign against Islamic State risks mirroring Washington's interactions with Tehran and Damascus in the months both before and after the 2003 invasion of Iraq. At the time, the Bush administration held extensive talks with Iranian officials to discuss the creation of a stable Iraq in the wake of Hussein's fall. U.S. officials also discussed Iraq with Mr. Assad's government, particularly concerning the flow of foreign fighters.
As the U.S. occupation of Iraq dragged on, however, Iran and Syria actively worked to undermine the U.S.'s goals of creating a stable and democratic government in Iraq, according to current and former U.S. officials. Iran and Syria have denied supporting extremist groups in Iraq.
U.S. officials said so far, Iran's government hasn't attempted to interrupt American military operations against the militants. One U.S. official said intelligence showed that the commander of the Revolutionary Guard's overseas operations, Gen. Qasem Soleimani, has explicitly ordered Iraqi Shiite militias not to target American personnel, arguing the weakening of Sunni militant groups was in Tehran's interest.
Still, U.S. officials have voiced concerns that Iran could change its stance if they view American military operations in Iraq and Syria as posing a threat to Iran's core objectives and the rule of Mr. Assad. Mr. Khamenei on Monday indicated that this could eventually be the case.
"I said we will not accompany America in this matter because they have got dirty intentions and hands," Iran's most powerful figure said in a televised address. "They see pretexts to interfere in Iraq and Syria, just as they did in Pakistan, where [the U.S.] can commit any crime it wants."
At Monday's session, key U.S. allies, particularly those in the Middle East, gave no sign they were ready to commit to a military campaign in Iraq or Syria.
Even the U.K., one of Washington's most reliable allies, is hesitant. U.K. Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond said his country would play a "leading role" in the fight against Islamic state but conceded: "We haven't made a decision yet about how we will best contribute to the coalition."
French President François Hollande, who hosted Monday's conference, said Syria's "democratic" rebel forces "must be supported by all means."
So far, France has answered Washington's call for military intervention. The French began to mobilize their Air Force on Monday, deploying reconnaissance jets over Iraq, French Defense Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian said.
"Get ready to intervene," Mr. Le Drian told French forces gathered at the Al Dhafra air base in the United Arab Emirates.
—Carol E. Lee and Julian E. Barnes contributed to this article.
-
http://www.glennbeck.com/2014/09/16/glenn-we-are-a-nation-at-war-with-assad-period/
Interesting analysis of the meaning of Baraq's "advice" to ISIL too.
-
http://www.glennbeck.com/2014/09/16/glenn-we-are-a-nation-at-war-with-assad-period/
Interesting analysis of the meaning of Baraq's "advice" to ISIL too.
I agree with Beck's analysis.
-
Allow me to throw out an idea for our collective arm chair “generaling”:
What if we really embrace the idea of abandoning the Sykes Picot lines? What possibilities are opened up by our so doing? For example:
a) Kurds get their own country, including the parts of Kurdistan that are now in Syria, Turkey (!) and Iran (!!!) Perhaps the non-Sunni parts of Syria would like to join them?
b) Turkey gets suitable pieces of Syria in return.
c) Iraq is done for. In the south the Shias—hell, maybe even a grand bargain with Iran that includes no nukes?-- and the sunnis left landlocked in the middle
d) Egypt is given green light to straighten out Libya
e) Israel and Egypt given green light to crush Hamas
f) I lack sufficient knowledge to begin to opine how this would play out with Lebanon and Hezbollah, but as best as I can tell Assad would be diminished essentially to local warlord fighting to keeping his head.
g) What play for Jordan?
-
Allow me to throw out an idea for our collective arm chair “generaling”:
What if we really embrace the idea of abandoning the Sykes Picot lines? What possibilities are opened up by our so doing? For example:
a) Kurds get their own country, including the parts of Kurdistan that are now in Syria, Turkey (!) and Iran (!!!) Perhaps the non-Sunni parts of Syria would like to join them?
b) Turkey gets suitable pieces of Syria in return.
c) Iraq is done for. In the south the Shias—hell, maybe even a grand bargain with Iran that includes no nukes?-- and the sunnis left landlocked in the middle
d) Egypt is given green light to straighten out Libya
e) Israel and Egypt given green light to crush Hamas
f) I lack sufficient knowledge to begin to opine how this would play out with Lebanon and Hezbollah, but as best as I can tell Assad would be diminished essentially to local warlord fighting to keeping his head.
g) What play for Jordan?
Bold post. Great, out of the box thinking! Could it all happen and we see a peace in the Middle East in our lifetime? I doubt it, but still it is great to explore new ideas.
Caroline Glick wrote yesterday:
"The Kurds will not fight for anything but Kurdistan."
http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/caroline-glick/obamas-self-defeating-fight/
a) Kurds: I agree with Crafty's point, Kurds get their own country. But that doesn't gain us anything else and I don't think
(b) Turkey gets reimbursement for that in Syria. Our support for an independent Kurdistan follows from Turkey's choice to leave our alliance and move its support to the Islamic extremist side. Crafty: "maybe even a grand bargain with Iran that includes no nukes?" Yes if true, but their word is no good. Expanding Iran population and territory to add 25 million Iraqi Shia (and move Iran closer to Israel, Syria etc.) looks like surrender and a grave mistake to me. It may become fact, but should not be our choice. Likewise with expanding an unfriendly Turkey with parts of Syria. It may happen, but not by our choice.
Iran: We missed an opportunity to support an uprising from within Iran in 2009. Someday maybe that opportunity will come again and be met with a more support from the outside. A freer Iran that is working to better themselves instead of to take down others would seem to be an essential part of the larger, regional solution, including a safe and stable Iraq. Iraq either at war with foreign fighters or under rule by Islamic extremists is the center for unending trouble in the region (IMHO).
c) Iraq: Glick wrote, "The Iraqi Army is a fiction. The Iraqi Sunnis support IS far more than they trust the Americans."
Iraq blew their chance at peace just as we blew our chance to support the peace. If we split away the Kurd region as a result of driving out ISIS, Iraq is left with a Sunni-Shia struggle to settle both on the battlefield and at the negotiating table. The US role, with world allies, IMO is to contain that conflict to Iraqi Sunnis and Iraqi Shia and not foreign fighters and munitions, through the base we never secured in Iraq, built in new Kurdistan.
Syria: The Syrian mess between the bloody dictator and beheading extremists is not a solvable puzzle. We had better be careful who we support. Again, all I see is possible rescue operations, containment and patience. If there is anything we can do from over the horizon to limit the recruitment and flow of foreign fighters to any of these conflicts, then that ought to be our focus, (along with air strikes on terror camps anywhere).
d) Libya: I don't know what our role is in Libya with its competing militias. We could try to influence events behind the scenes, with things like Crafty suggested, giving the green light to Egypt to intervene. But this administration tends to choose opposite sides of what people here favor. Regime change at home is a prerequisite to solving almost any of the above.
e) Hamas: Give Israel and Egypt given green light to crush Hamas.? Yes. That is our view but at odds with the UN and "world opinion". Again, you need regime change at home, where the US would support Israel over Hamas, to move forward.
f) Hezbullah gets de-funded when the regime of Iran goes down. And vice versa, these conflicts won't shrink while international funding and support for terror groups is rampant.
g) Jordan: If Jordan can survive and remain stable and neutral, like a new Kurdistan, that is the best we can do there. They will not be a major part of war outside their borders without inviting war in.
Overall, abandoning the lines drawn after WWI is what our enemy, the emerging caliphate, favors. We better be ready to fight and defeat them when the nearly century old lines are erased. At this time, under this administration and this free world leadership void, we most certainly aren't. (My two cents or less worth.)
-
I am not sure I am glad I did it but I looked up beheadings and there is a graphic link to many beheadings including one that is live.
I agree with the link that one cannot separate Islam from this form of terror. The concept of beheadings is right in the Koran. This attracts the power hungry the sadists, the criminals just like Hitler's and Stalin's regimes.
The cruelty of this world just knows no ends.
-
Thank you Doug for the analysis. I hope others will respond too!
In the meantime, here is the case for doing nothing: http://www.forbes.com/sites/dougbandow/2014/09/13/fighting-isil-is-not-americas-war-other-countries-should-lead-coalition-against-islamic-state/
================================
A friend writes:
Regarding Turkey: I had the pleasure to spend about an hour talking with a young couple from Turkey who had recently arrived in the US to do Post Doc. research and teaching in sociology and political science/history at UC Berkeley. Their primary perspective on Turkey's position in all of this had to do with Turkey being a Sunni dominated country with the Sunnis making up somewhere between 72 and 85% of the population. As such, fighting against the Sunni led ISIS would be unacceptable and require that they support Iraq's and Iran's Shias.
-
http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2014/09/18/all_the_ayatollahs_men_shiite_militias_iran_iraq_islamic_state
-
Krauthammer says (paraphrasing) that either the Jihadis are stupid, which is not likely, or they are luring us into this Mideast war with the beheading videos intentionally, to raise their profile among competing jihad organizations, knowing that we don't have the leadership or resolve to beat them. Unknown a year ago, now they are the talk of the town.
http://www.nationalreview.com/article/388384/jihadi-logic-charles-krauthammer
-
I fear we are headed into a disaster.
Obama's alleged strategy is based upon a number of fictions:
a) that Iraq can be put together again
b) that the Shia militias -- apparently as brutal as ISIS, see my post above-- support the government of Baghdad and not Iran
c) that the government of Baghad will forward arms to the Kurds
d) the the army of the government of Baghdad will fight for our purposes, not Iran's.
e) that the FSA will become a viable fighting force that will take on ISIL first, and then take on and defeat Assad, Al Nusra, and AQ and establish a moderate regime. Along the way, even it currently fights as a junior member alongside Al Nusra and AQ against its primary enemy, Assad, the weapons we give it will not end up in the hands of Al-Nusra, Al Qaeda, or ISIL.
There's lots more, but I trust that these suffice to make my point.
The US Congress, most certainly including the Republicans, is failing in the exercise of its Constitutional duty to determine whether we go to war. The enemy is world-wide Islamic Fascism, not just ISIL. Our strategy is the epitome of the whack-a-mole that Obama says he derides.
-
All true. On the other hand, the Islamic militants are enemies of not only the US and Israel, but of Russia and China too, who normally backstab us on matters like this. If the threat to them becomes greater than the fun they have thwarting the US everywhere, that would be quite a coalition. India, population 1.25 billion, fully understands this threat. France, under socialist rule, started air strikes. Britain opted out, but will return at some point. Japan is a good ally. Spain is threatened. Saudi and Egypt are threatened and cooperating. Places like Lebanon, Jordan and the gulf states see the threat at their door and have resources in the region. The turning point probably happens when peaceful Muslims everywhere get the confidence to stand up and fight back. Right now they just see that as certain death.
Recent history says that when the US doesn't lead, there is no leadership. But heading into Year 7 of Obama, the world has seen that we are not a free and reliable security blanket. A more hawkish successor of Obama would take this fight more seriously, and take a harder line with allies too. You want our help, our protection, then you have some responsibilities of your own to fulfill.
Also the enemy is fractured, has its own leadership void, has no above-ground safe haven.
We are headed into regional disaster and Obama's plan can only slow and partially contain it. But we still have it within our power to survive this disaster and defeat this enemy globally. (IMHO)
-
VDH gets it right:
http://townhall.com/columnists/victordavishanson/2014/09/18/draft-n1893202/page/full
-
second post
I found this very interesting.
http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2014/09/18/the-100-year-old-agreement-you-need-to-know-about-if-you-want-to-understand-whats-driving-the-islamic-state/
-
Third post:
Not inconsistent with my notion of support for Kurdistan and Israel and let everyone else slug it out.
http://nationalinterest.org/feature/isis%E2%80%99-desire-erase-sykes-picot-rooted-fiction-not-history-11293
-
Obama's Islamic State Strategy: Intel, Advisers and No Boots on the Ground
Geopolitical Diary
Wednesday, September 10, 2014 - 20:56 Text Size Print
U.S. President Barack Obama confirmed a week's worth of speculation Wednesday night on his administration's strategy to combat the Islamic State. As expected, the basic idea is for the United States to lead an expansion of the air campaign in Iraq and extend it to Syria, treating the militant-trodden river valleys as a single battle space. Without nuancing the necessary role of intelligence assets and special operations forces, Obama tried to reassure the American public that he would not commit boots on the ground to another Middle Eastern maelstrom but that he had a plan nonetheless to contain an army of particularly brutal jihadists.
The United States has sought the support and assistance of its international partners in an attempt to lessen the military and political burden of the operation. During the Sept. 4-5 NATO summit, Washington failed to organize an official NATO intervention against the Islamic State, but it did shore up the support of a core coalition of nine countries (the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Canada, Australia, Turkey, Italy, Poland and Denmark). On Tuesday, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry also mentioned that there was a broader coalition of more than 40 countries that would be supporting the operations. It is not clear yet how substantial the commitment of any of these countries will be, but additional air assets, logistical support and basing will be some of the main elements in expanding operations in volume and in geographic reach.
Obama's speech was essentially a political public relations effort, timed only after Iraqi leaders managed to pull together a government and ahead of November U.S. midterm elections. With most U.S. congressmen reluctant to vote on anything with a hint of controversy this close to the election, yet many all too prone to condemn the U.S. president for not consulting them enough, Obama was obviously trying to kill several birds with one stone in this speech. Domestic politics aside, this is a strategy that faces unavoidable imperfections as the United States tries to meld contradictory political and military objectives for the region.
The first and most glaring contradiction lies in the combination of attacking Islamic State targets by air while selectively arming and training Syrian rebels on the ground, not to mention that the United States will be working with Iranian proxies in Iraq and pro-Saudi actors in Syria. On the surface, and as Obama laid out, this makes perfect sense: The United States is not about to commit its own combat troops to engage with the Islamic State, so it must partner with local Sunni forces to degrade Islamic State fighters on the ground while it strikes from the air. Just as the United States is making gradual progress in standing up a coherent fighting force in Iraq through the Kurdish peshmerga, Sunni tribal forces and Iraqi army soldiers, it will be looking to do the same in Syria.
But if only Syria offered such a neat solution. On the contrary, no matter how carefully the United States tries to pick and choose whom it trains and arms in Syria, the Salafist-jihadist fighters are the ones who dominate the battlefield and are thus the most capable of beating back their Islamic State rivals. There is also no guarantee that the pockets of nominally moderate rebels concentrated around Aleppo are going to apply their weaponry and training toward combatting the Islamic State primarily when their priority is to break out of stalemate on the battlefield and get closer to the goal of toppling the regime of Bashar al Assad.
This brings the U.S. strategy to the next big contradiction: How does it back the Syrian rebels enough to degrade the Islamic State but not so much that it risks proliferating power vacuums for radicals to fill and destroying a working relationship with Iran? The U.S. administration will predictably expend a great deal of energy justifying an expansion of airstrikes into Syria and refuting claims that it is aiding a dictator. The announcement to arm Syrian rebel factions is a piece of that effort. But a meaningful effort to arm and train Sunni rebels in Syria could well develop into an existential threat for the Iran-backed Syrian regime. This would of course not be welcomed by Iran, with which the United States is engaged in a critical negotiation designed to put their long-hostile relationship on a stable tracking.
What is a Geopolitical Diary? George Friedman Explains.
How much of the strategy is public relations versus reality will be seen in the coming days and weeks on the battlefield. The target set in Syria will offer a major clue as to whether quiet U.S.-Iranian coordination is proceeding via backchannels. If major energy infrastructure and surface-to-air missile sites are destroyed, thus seriously degrading both the Syrian regime's capabilities and economic assets of the Islamic State, the evident lack of an understanding between Damascus and Washington will be sure to have negative consequences for U.S. negotiations with Iran. On the other hand, if the United States focuses its targeting on Islamic State concentrations along the river valleys to cut the group's eastern supply lines while expanding the offensive in Iraq, the kabuki theater will continue.
Read more: Obama's Islamic State Strategy: Intel, Advisers and No Boots on the Ground | Stratfor
-
While the United States considers Hezbollah a terrorist group, the two may be indirectly working together to keep ISIS fighters in Syria out of Lebanon, Israel’s NRG News reported Monday. A week after Hezbollah fighters repulsed ISIS forces in Arsal, in northern Lebanon, near the Syrian border, the US is reportedly sending weapons to the Lebanese army, in order to strengthen its abilities against ISIS. The American aid intended for Syria’s western neighbor, is based on the assumption that Hezbollah and the Lebanese army are collaborating, so it’s not unlikely that the US weapons are reaching the Shiite group, according to the report. Additionally, CIA intelligence reportedly recently helped Hezbollah stop an ISIS-backed car-bombing plot in the southern part of the capital, Beirut, which is largely under Hezbollah control. “The international community has an interest in isolating the Syrian crisis,” according to Mohammed Afif, a recently-appointed spokesman for Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah. Afif’s remarks illustrate the Lebanese Shiite terrorist organization’s role in the new balance of power in the region: “Everyone has an interest in keeping the peace in Lebanon,” according to Afif. “Everyone has his own way.”
Hezbollah officials are closely watching the latest regional moves by the United States in the struggle against ISIS, to see how and where they can make profit politically or militarily by the developing US presence. In a video clip released Sunday night, Hezbollah said it had fired a rocket from a drone, hitting an ISIS target in Syria. On the same day, Lebanese state media said three people were killed in a suicide car bombing at a checkpoint manned by Hezbollah militiamen, about 3 miles (4.8 kilometers) from the Syria border. Last Monday, Hezbollah officials said that the growing takeover by ISIS-affiliated fighters of areas in nearby Syria justified the necessity of their continued deployment to fight them, according the Daily Star. “There could never be a war of words between ISIS and us, but there is the field where we will defeat them. We will not engage in a war of statements or political disputes,” declared Nabil Qaouk, deputy head of the party’s executive council, at a ceremony in the southern Lebanese village of Aita Shaab, near Israel.
-
Source unknown to me but sounds plausible
http://pamelageller.com/2014/09/the-islamic-state-captures-army-base-near-baghdad-executes-300-soldiers.html/
-
http://www.clarionproject.org/news/isis-fighters-within-one-mile-baghdad
http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2014/10/02/women_and_children_for_sale?utm_source=Sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_term=*Editors%20Picks&utm_campaign=2014_EditorsPicks10%2F02RS
-
second post
Gulf Cooperation Council Members Continue to Build Air Force Capabilities
Analysis
September 30, 2014 | 0400 Print Text Size
GCC air force
A Saudi air force demonstration squad flies in formation at a 2010 air show in Manama, Bahrain. (ADAM JAN/AFP/Getty Images)
Summary
The Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) member countries have long been saddled with particular military weaknesses stemming from geographical and demographic constraints. As a result, these countries have generally sought close alliances with the United States as the ultimate guarantor of their security. At the same time, council members such as Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates have increasingly sought to build up their individual capabilities over the past two decades. This heavy investment -- particularly in their air forces -- has begun to pay dividends as the council members seek to protect themselves from the fallout of a U.S. rapprochement with Iran and endeavor to project their own power abroad.
Analysis
During the first Gulf War, the Saudi air force by all accounts underperformed in combat, while other GCC member air forces, including those of Qatar, the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain, maintained very mediocre capabilities. Since then, essentially all the member countries have prioritized the development of their air forces. This made sense for a number of reasons: It provided these countries with the flexibility to rapidly engage targets across vast distances. Air power is less personnel-intensive for the manpower-challenged Gulf countries, making air forces easier to staff with loyal personnel. This development also carried a significant element of prestige.
Developing capable air power has not been easy, and all the council member air forces continue to struggle with significant weaknesses. But each country has leveraged time, funds and alliances to gradually enhance its air capabilities. Today, the Saudi, Qatari and Emirati air forces are far more capable than they were during the first Gulf War. As can be seen with UAE strikes in Libya, Saudi operations over Yemen and coalition strikes in Syria, the council members are also increasingly willing to use their air power.
Gulf Cooperation Council Countries
Click to Enlarge
Over the past two decades, perhaps the strongest advantage in air power development has been close alliances with major air powers such as the United States, France and the United Kingdom. Gulf countries have leveraged these partnerships to acquire equipment, design training programs and develop doctrines for their air forces. Though largely lacking in combat experience, council member air forces have benefited from sustained participation in premier joint air force drills such as the U.S.-run Red Flag and Green Flag exercises, as well as training with European air forces through deployments to countries like the United Kingdom and Spain. Emirati pilots have been particularly impressive at these exercises. The United Arab Emirates is even referred to as "Little Sparta" in certain U.S. defense circles due to its outsized capabilities.
Meanwhile, after investing hundreds of billions of dollars in their air forces over the past two decades, GCC states now operate some of the most sophisticated aircraft exported by the United States and Europe. These include Saudi Arabia's Eurofighter Typhoon and the Emirati F-16E/F Desert Falcon, which are even more capable than U.S.-operated F-16s. Indeed, most of the council members' combat aircraft are generations ahead of the aircraft operated by regional rivals such as Iran and Syria.
The council members have also sought to develop other key capabilities. For example, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates and Kuwait have acquired significant strategic airlift capacity, and the Saudis and Emiratis have continued to develop airborne early-warning systems. Efforts are ongoing to improve air defense suppression capabilities through training, while Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Kuwait have acquired anti-radar missiles from the United States.
Persistent Weaknesses
Despite considerable progress, key problems continue to weaken GCC member air forces and intensify their dependence on the United States when carrying out elaborate air campaigns. Some of the biggest obstacles involve logistics and aircraft maintenance. Saudi Arabia is particularly dependent on foreign contractor support and depot maintenance to run its large arsenal of highly sophisticated aircraft. While the Saudis have demonstrated a basic capability in ground crew operations, they cannot maintain a high readiness level for long durations. To a lesser degree, this issue continues to affect the other Gulf air forces as well.
Another key weakness is the council's lack of strategic intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance capabilities. This is crucial in providing early warning and in target selection, as well as assessing battlefield damage after strikes have been carried out. Persistent intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance capabilities are also critical when targets shift from large stationary marks to fleeting battlefield ones, such as when searching for vehicles, enemy fighting positions or even single fighters escaping on foot. While the United States can call on a plethora of assets ranging from manned and unmanned systems to satellites, the monitoring capabilities of council members remain largely limited to a few manned and unmanned systems operated by Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, none of which can match sophisticated systems like the U-2, Global Hawk and RQ-170 aircraft operated by the United States.
Finally, though council members, especially the Saudis and the Emiratis, have invested in aerial refueling capabilities, their capacity for supporting strike aircraft at long ranges is very limited. Recent satellite pictures of Al Udeid air base in Qatar, for instance, aptly highlight the issue. The United States deploys more than two dozen KC-135 aerial refueling tankers there, more than twice the number of strategic tankers available to all GCC member air forces combined. Given that tactical aircraft are highly dependent on aerial refueling tankers for long-range deep strike missions, council members will remain dependent on U.S. tankers for sustained operations -- in Syria for instance -- unless they stage from closer airfields in Jordan or Turkey.
Despite these limitations, Gulf air forces have clearly come a long way over the past two decades. Intensified and persistent collaboration with the United States and Europe, massive investments in and acquisitions of highly advanced aircraft and technologies, and an increasing determination by regional governments to develop indigenous capabilities as Washington moves closer to Tehran have fueled this progress. And as GCC confidence in its air capabilities rises, it will become increasingly willing to use its offensive firepower in missions like those seen recently in Yemen, Libya and Syria.
Read more: Gulf Cooperation Council Members Continue to Build Air Force Capabilities | Stratfor
Follow us: @stratfor on Twitter | Stratfor on Facebook
-
Third post
Summary
Over the past week, the U.S.-led coalition carrying out airstrikes against Islamic State positions in Iraq and Syria has expanded to include several new members. This has enhanced its overall combat power and spread the burden more equitably. The British parliament voted Sept. 26 to join the group and has already commenced airstrikes over Iraq. Denmark and Belgium also decided to participate in direct combat operations. These new partners join two European peers, France and the Netherlands, as well as Australia. Notably, these six countries have chosen to restrict their combat roles to Iraq. This contrasts with the role of the United States' five Arab partners -- Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates -- which have been carrying out airstrikes with the United States in Syria since operations expanded there Sept. 23.
This odd division of labor does not operate in the interest of efficiency but is instead an artifact of the complicated and juxtaposed reality on the ground and in the political arena. The battleground against the Islamic State is ostensibly divided between the sovereign states of Iraq and Syria. In reality, however, it is a single space spread over what has become an imaginary border. The divided coalition reflects the members' divergent political views on how to manage the respective situations of Iraq and Syria. Ultimately, the arrangement artificially separates what should be treated as a single battlefield and a single enemy. This weakens the coalition, confuses desired outcomes and often limits operations to what will appease all members.
Analysis
The coalition's division of the battle space into two parts has already led to differences in target selection. Since earlier limited U.S. operations in Iraq expanded into Syria, the United States and Arab coalition members have focused on critical infrastructure in Syria that supports Islamic State operations in Syria and Iraq. This has included command centers, finance operations, supply depots and, most recently, oil refineries. The coalition's strategy in Syria has been to degrade the Islamic State's military capabilities through destruction or disruption of the critical assets that support it.
Military Assets and Airstrikes Against the Islamic State as of Sept. 29
Click to Enlarge
The strategy in Iraq, however, has been quite different. There, the focus of air campaigns has been to buttress ground operations. This has translated into close air support for Kurdish peshmerga and national government forces, as well as strikes aimed at destroying Islamic State military supplies, vehicles and heavy weapons used in operations against those forces. This divergence stems in part from the different tactical situations in each country: In Iraq the coalition is operating in direct coordination with local forces, whereas in Syria efforts to facilitate anti-Islamic State ground attacks are in the early stages, with only the first steps having been taken to train Syrian anti-regime rebels in Saudi Arabia.
But these disparate tactical realities are only part of the picture. The primary differences between these operations are explained by the imperatives of the partners operating in Iraq and in Syria. The United States' Sunni Arab partners have an interest in participating in the operations against the Islamic State in Syria. Degrading the Islamic State's capabilities there takes pressure off of anti-regime rebels currently fighting Damascus and Islamic State forces simultaneously. The United States' reliance on support from these Sunni Arab countries, however, presents the risk that the core mission in Syria will be stretched in two different directions. The United States aims to cripple the Islamic State without directly targeting Syrian President Bashar al Assad. The Sunni Arab states, though, want to dislodge al Assad's Iran-friendly regime and weaken the position of Lebanese-based Shiite militant group Hezbollah, which is assisting the Syrian government.
Risks to Cohesion
Conversation: U.S.-Led Bombing Raid Commences in Syria
For their part, Australia and the coalition's European members have a different set of interests from their Arab partners. Because a large number of Islamic State foreign fighters originated in Europe, these governments fear that the militants could at some point return home and threaten national security. The Islamic State has also taken European hostages and continues to be a source for radicalization inside Europe. This means that these states have compelling reasons for carrying out strikes against the Islamic State regardless of its area of operation. All six of these powers, however, have chosen not to operate over Syria without a clear mandate from the United Nations. In European countries especially, military intervention is a touchy political subject; approval for any type of direct involvement typically requires the support of parliament, putting tight electoral constraints on such operations. These limits are less severe in the case of Iraq, where the coalition is delivering assistance to a host nation requesting help rather than conducting a military intervention in a country without coordinating with its government.
The division of the coalition into two separate areas does not necessarily limit its military capabilities, but it does pose serious risks to its cohesion and, by extension, its ability to sustain effective operations over Syria in particular. Because of the Arab states' direct interest in the outcome of the Syrian civil war, they may try to push the United States toward extending air operations to targets of the al Assad regime. This is something the United States is unwilling to do, in part because it would carry a much higher logistical cost. But if such a disagreement were to threaten operations over Syria, the Europeans' reluctance to extend their own activities into Syria would seriously limit the coalition. The United States would also risk being perceived as the sole actor on the Syrian side of the battle, rather than part of an international coalition, and this could result in significant blowback on the ground. At the same time, disagreements on the scope of operations in Syria could also constrain the effectiveness of strikes by limiting the target set to the bare minimum to which all parties can agree.
As it stands, the U.S.-led coalition is fragile. When something is this delicate and complicated, it is hard to take the decisive action required to degrade and contain a dynamic opponent such as the Islamic State.
Read more: Divisions Could Weaken U.S.-Led Coalition in Iraq and Syria | Stratfor
Follow us: @stratfor on Twitter | Stratfor on Facebook
-
"Jihadi John" will be captured just before the election.
-
Many inconvenient truths herein.
http://www.nationalreview.com/article/389094/iraq-was-then-syria-now-victor-davis-hanson
http://www.nationalreview.com/article/388990/khorosan-group-does-not-exist-andrew-c-mccarthy
http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/389270/so-called-khorasan-group-actually-wolf-unit-al-qaedas-syrian-franchise-report-andrew-c
-
second post
A manifesto purportedly written by one of the Islamic State’s senior military commanders details an unlikely plan that would see the brutal Sunni Islamist group gain Iran’s nuclear secrets with Russia’s help, London’s Sunday Times reported. The document, which has been attributed to Abdullah Ahmed al-Meshedani, said to be a member of IS’s “war cabinet,” was captured by Iraqi commandos during a raid in March, Sunday’s report (paywall) said. The report said that the manifesto, which Western security officials have deemed authentic, proposed offering Moscow access to an IS-held gas field in Iraq in exchange for “Iran and its nuclear program.” Russia, a close ally of the Islamic Republic, built and helps operate the nuclear power plant at Bushehr in Iran. It is also already in possession of the largest proven gas reserves in the world. The proposal also reportedly stated that in order to gain access to the gas field, located in Anbar province, the Kremlin would have to start backing the Sunni Gulf states against Shiite Iran and another Kremlin ally: the embattled Syrian President Bashar Assad. The Islamic State document was also said to discuss a series of additional steps, including “Nazi-style eugenics,” and an intelligence gathering operation that monitors the organization’s political leaders as well as outside targets. IS’s ultimate goal was to strip Iran of “all its power,” the document said, killing Iranian teachers, diplomats and businessmen and even destroying the Iranian caviar industry and “exterminating” its famed carpet industry by flooding the market with Afghan rugs. Al-Meshedani, the author of the manifesto, also called on Islamic State warriors to kill Shiite Iraqi officials — Shiite Muslims are a majority in Iraq — military leaders and members of Iranian-backed militias.
Watch Here
In all, the Islamic State document listed 70 proposals, many of them outlandish and seemingly unrealistic, in its plan to consolidate IS’s power base in the Middle East, the report said. Iran has warned that it will attack Islamic State jihadists inside Iraq if they advance near its border. “If the terrorist group (IS) comes near our borders, we will attack deep into Iraqi territory and we will not allow it to approach our border,” Iranian ground forces commander General Ahmad Reza Pourdestana said on September 27. The Sunni extremists of IS control a large territory north of Baghdad, including in Diyala province, which borders Iran. The US, which has been leading an international airstrike campaign against the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, has held discussions with Iran about counteracting the Sunni extremists, although the two countries, long at odds, deny direct cooperation. In a sign of the overlap of Iranian and US interests, Iran said in late September that one of the Islamic Republic’s most senior generals and 70 Iranian soldiers helped Kurdish fighters defend Erbil, the capital of the autonomous Kurdish region in northern Iraq that has been a focus of the American military. The city is home to a US consulate and offices of numerous Western companies, and the approach of Islamic State militants to its outskirts prompted American airstrikes in August. On Saturday, the Islamic State released a video showing the beheading of British aid worker Alan Henning, the fourth such video showing the killing of American and British hostages in two months.
Source: Times of Israel
-
http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2014/10/07/washington_secret_back_channel_talks_with_kurdish_terrorists_turkey_syria_robert_ford_exclusive?utm
-
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/08/world/middleeast/isis-syria-coalition-strikes.html?emc=edit_th_20141008&nl=todaysheadlines&nlid=49641193&_r=0
-
Even as the world's attention focuses on the Islamic State's advance in the northern Syrian town of Kobani, the jihadist group is threatening to overrun Iraq's western Anbar Province. The group has made major gains in the province recently, including capturing two Iraqi army bases and seizing the towns of Hit and Kubaisa. It is also advancing on the provincial capital of Ramadi. The U.S.-led coalition against the Islamic State has struck more than 40 targets in the province, which is Iraq's largest, in what has been so far an unsuccessful effort to stem the group's advance.
The Islamic State is also making gains in the Iraqi capital of Baghdad. The group's fighters recently entered one of the city's suburbs, Abu Ghraib, which lies only eight miles from the international airport - posing a potential threat for airliners. The jihadist group has partially encircled the capital, controlling the territory from due north of the city, extending to the west, and then down to the south.
-
This is interesting. Hat tip to Jeff!
===========================
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2014-10-10/why-oil-plunging-other-part-secret-deal-between-us-and-saudi-arabia
-
http://pamelageller.com/2014/10/the-islamic-state-closes-in-on-baghdad-airport-armed-with-american-manpads.html/
I have flagged the significance of the MPADs for two years now, beginning with all of Kadaffy's MPADs that were left to "disappear" in the wake of his overthrow, and the significance of their getting loose. American close air support is about to become quite dangerous.
Perhaps my imagination is running away with me, but I can picture Baghdad getting to the point where we want to get non-essential personnel out of our embassy but not being able to use the airport because of the MPADs.
-
http://www.israelvideonetwork.com/syrian-rebels-overrun-intelligence-base-on-golan-heights-used-to-spy-on-israel?omhide=true&utm_source=MadMimi&utm_medium=email&utm_content=Israel+Breaking+News+Video%3A+Syrian+Rebels+Overrun+Intelligence+base+on+Golan+Heights+used+to+spy+on+Israel&utm_campaign=20141011_m122545722_10%2F11+Israel+Breaking+News+Video%3A+Syrian+Rebels+Overrun+Intelligence+base+on+Golan+Heights+used+to+spy+on+Israel&utm_term=Syrian+Rebels+Overrun+Intelligence+base+on+Golan+Heights+used+to+spy+on+Israel
Click here to watch: Syrian Rebels Overrun Intelligence base on Golan Heights used to spy on Israel
Syrian rebel forces fighting the government of President Bashar Assad overran a military intelligence base on the Golan Heights that served as a joint Russian-Syrian forward post for information-gathering on Israel. In a four-minute video clip which was posted on the Internet by the rebels, Free Syrian Army fighters are seen in a building in Quneitra, just near the boundary between Syria and the Israeli-controlled Golan Heights. The footage shows pictures of Russian officers visiting the base as well as Russian-language maps of Israel. There are also photographs of the Russian defense minister’s top intelligence advisor as well as various other senior Russian defense and military officials having once visited the base. The base, which goes by the name “C,” is situated on the “Tel al-Hara” hill in Quneitra.
Watch Here
The footage and evidence found suggests that Russian and Syrian spies used the premises to analyze raw espionage data which was gathered by troops from both countries. One of the documents seized by FSA rebels and dated May 31, 2014 gives an order to intelligence officers at the base to “record all of the wireless conversations between the terrorist groups,” a reference to the coalition of organizations seeking to topple the Damascus government. The FSA officer seen in the footage appealed to “all the honorable people of Russia” to urge their government to cease all cooperation with forces loyal to Assad, “who are murdering children and women and using chemical weapons against civilians.”
Source: Jpost
-
Leaving a U.S. Ally Outgunned by ISIS
A Kurdish official has written to Defense Secretary Hagel pleading for the U.S. to honor its promises of military aid.
By David Tafuri
Oct. 12, 2014 5:54 p.m. ET
154 COMMENTS
In President Obama ’s Sept. 11 speech about combating Islamic State jihadists, he said that America “will not get dragged into another ground war in Iraq.” But the president said that U.S. military advisers “are needed to support Iraqi and Kurdish forces with training, intelligence and equipment.”
If this is the plan, little in terms of weaponry or training has reached Kurdish Peshmerga forces in Iraq—and they are begging Washington to make good on its promises.
In the meantime, in the front-line town Khazar, between Islamic State-held Mosul and the Kurdish capital, Erbil, Peshmerga forces drive unarmored pickup trucks and carry AK-47s as they face off against Islamic State, aka ISIS, fighters armed with U.S.-made tanks, armored Humvees and heavy artillery. The imbalance is replicated across the entire border of almost 650 miles that Kurds share with ISIS in Iraq.
In three trips to the Kurdistan Region since ISIS invaded Iraq in early June, I have seen the situation improve as a result of U.S.-led airstrikes, but little has changed in terms of the supply of equipment and training for our Kurdish allies.
The coalition that supports the airstrikes should take immediate action to provide the Peshmerga with the offensive and defensive equipment they need to match the firepower of ISIS. Failing to do so increases the likelihood—despite President Obama’s vows not to involve U.S. forces—that America and other coalition countries, which include France, Australia and the U.K., will have to send in troops to defeat ISIS.
In a letter sent on Oct. 2 to U.S. Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel that until now has not been made public, the Kurdistan Regional Government’s Minister of Peshmerga Affairs Mustafa Sayid Qadir pleaded for help, saying that his forces still carry “outdated AK-47s, Soviet Dragunov rifles and other light arms.”
The letter, which I was given access to by the Ministry of Peshmerga Affairs, tabulated the surprisingly small amount of equipment received from international allies. In addition to AK-47s, the U.S. has provided fewer than 100 mortars and just a few hundred rocket-propelled grenades, or RPGs. The Peshmerga haven’t received a single tank or armored vehicle from coalition countries. The problem is compounded by the fact that Iraqi security forces denied the Peshmerga access to the thousands of tanks and armored vehicles the U.S. left behind for Iraq when the military pulled out in 2011. Meanwhile, ISIS fighters have commandeered U.S.-provided tanks and Humvees abandoned by Iraqi forces fleeing from battle.
The U.S. effort to arm and train Peshmerga forces is hindered by at least three factors. First, U.S. diplomats continue to follow the so-called One Iraq Policy, which considers giving direct assistance to the Kurdistan Regional Government—whether military or nonmilitary—a potential blow to Iraqi national unity. Whatever U.S. interest this policy may have served in the years before ISIS emerged, it now endangers our closest ally in Iraq and puts Peshmerga forces at a significant disadvantage in their fight against ISIS.
Second, the U.S. continues to abide by the Iraqi government’s insistence that all shipments to the Kurds stop first in Baghdad, where Iraqi officials can delay or even block the shipments from ever reaching the Kurdisstan Region.
Third, State Department regulations prevent the Kurdistan Regional Government from purchasing American-made weapons and equipment without “end-user certificates” issued by Baghdad—certificates that the Iraqi government makes extremely difficult to obtain.
The Kurdistan Regional Government estimates it has more than 150,000 soldiers in the Peshmerga forces—about five times more than the highest estimates of ISIS fighters. The Peshmerga are committed to fighting ISIS and can be the “boots on the ground” that the U.S.-led coalition wants to avoid having to deploy. Yet they are struggling against ISIS because they lack even basic tactical equipment used by modern armies. Peshmerga Brig. Gen. Hazhar Ismail recently told me that less than 5% of the Peshmerga fighters even have helmets.
The U.S. can change this situation by: (1) supplying the Kurds with heavier weapons and needed defensive equipment, in particular armored Humvees, tanks and anti-armor rockets; (2) refusing to let Baghdad delay or block such shipments; (3) changing State Department regulations to permit issuance of end-user certificates by the Kurdistan Regional Government; and, (4) transferring to the Kurds some excess U.S. military equipment (including armored vehicles) stored on U.S. bases in the region.
In his Sept. 16 testimony to Congress, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and U.S. Army Gen. Martin Dempsey suggested that American ground troops may eventually be needed to fight ISIS. His message was met with criticism by those who oppose sending U.S. troops into combat in Iraq again. To reduce the chances of Washington having to confront that choice, the U.S. should make good on its promises and ensure that the Peshmerga are no longer outgunned by ISIS.
Mr. Tafuri, the U.S. State Department’s rule of law coordinator in Iraq from 2006 to 2007, is a partner at the Washington, D.C.-based law firm Squire Patton Boggs. He serves as legal counsel to the Kurdistan Regional Government.
-
Syria-Iraq
U.S.-led airstrikes and Kurdish forces are continuing to push back Islamic State militants from the predominantly Kurdish Syrian town of Kobani (Ayn al-Arab), near the border with Turkey. As of Wednesday, coalition forces had conducted over 100 strikes around Kobani, which the Pentagon reported had killed several hundred Islamic State fighters. A Kurdish official reported militants are retreating from parts of the town, though U.S. military officials cautioned Kobani could still fall to the Islamic State group. Additionally, the retired general leading the coalition, General John Allen, noted Islamic State militants have made "substantial gains" in Iraq's western Anbar province, despite U.S.-led airstrikes. He mentioned, however, that coalition forces had pushed militants back in other areas of Iraq.
• Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi is expected to nominate a candidate from the Iranian-backed Shiite militia the Badr Corps as interior minister. (Well, that will sure help persuade Sunnis to work with the Govt. of Baghdad)
-
Arm the moderate Syrian rebels, they said. Then we'll be able to counter ISIL effectively, they said. Well, say goodbye to the Free Syrian Army as an American ally. "John Allen, the retired Marine general in charge of coordinating the U.S.-led coalition's response to the Islamic State, confirmed Wednesday what Syrian rebel commanders have complained about for months: that the United States is ditching the old Free Syrian Army and building its own local ground force to use primarily in the fight against the Islamist extremists," reports Stars and Stripes. The reasons are simple and entirely predictable. The FSA suffered from "a lack of cohesion, uneven fighting skills and frequent battlefield coordination with the al-Qaida loyalists of the Nusra Front." The Obama administration is going to have a tough time explaining how, without American boots on the ground, we're going to select, form and train an army to oppose ISIL in Syria
http://www.stripes.com/news/middle-east/us-confirms-it-s-ditching-syria-rebel-group-building-own-ground-force-1.308439
-
Summary
Kurdish People's Protection Units and Free Syrian Army forces continue to battle Islamic State fighters in the Syrian border town of Kobani. The United States announced Oct. 19 that U.S. Air Force C-130 transport aircraft dropped containers of weapons, ammunition and medical aid to the town’s defenders. Washington reportedly informed Turkey of the move in advance. Now, Ankara has said it will allow Iraqi Kurdish peshmerga fighters to cross Turkish borders and move into Kobani to bolster the town's defenses.
Given Turkey’s previous reluctance to support Kurdish fighters, Ankara appears to be altering its approach following considerable pressure from Washington and other allies. Turkey is keen to maintain strong ties with the United States and is willing to make compromises, which will also help preserve the integrity of its alliances in Europe and the Middle East. Despite this shift, however, Ankara remains wary of directly aiding the People's Protection Units, commonly viewed by the government as terrorists and an extension of the Kurdistan Workers' Party, known by its Kurdish acronym PKK. Regardless, allowing Kurdish fighters to cross the border will only make it harder and costlier for the Islamic State to take Kobani.
Analysis
The Islamic State arguably accomplished its objectives in Kobani weeks ago when it seized virtually all of the area except for the town itself. This allowed Islamic State fighters to shorten the route between the captured border crossing towns of Jarabulus and Tal Abyad by not having to circumvent Kobani. Stratfor previously noted that Kobani is of very little strategic or even operational value to the Islamic State, and the taking of the town will have extremely little effect on the direction of the conflict in Syria. Numerous Islamic State fighters apparently recognized this fact early on and reportedly sought to prioritize other battlefronts, but were overruled by top Islamic State commander Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. Nevertheless, it is clear by now that the Islamic State -- perhaps for symbolic reasons or because of operational momentum -- has greatly prioritized the seizure of Kobani and has devoted significant resources and manpower to the effort.
Kobani's Fatal Lure
Click to Enlarge
Echoing Germany's disastrous obsession with Stalingrad in 1942, despite having already isolated and reduced the city, the Islamic State's leaders have elected to continue pouring hundreds of fighters into Kobani. They now face a difficult urban battle against determined fighters who are entrenched in prepared positions and supported by coalition air power. By assembling large numbers of fighters and equipment, the Islamic State has created a target-rich environment for the U.S.-led coalition. From the start of the battle, weeks ago, surveillance and reconnaissance overflights have progressively improved the coalition's situational awareness, leading to airstrikes of more damaging accuracy and intensity. Over the last four days alone the United States and its Arab allies executed more than 60 airstrikes in Kobani.
The strikes have been disastrous for the Islamic State, which has lost hundreds of experienced fighters. Reports indicate that the group is doubling down on its flawed strategy by sending further reinforcements from its bastions of Raqaa and Tabqa to continue the assault. Ankara's decision to open a route for Kurdish reinforcements into Kobani further hinders the Islamic State's mission, but it is not as damning for the extremists as a Turkish committal of ground forces. Such a move appears unlikely for the time being. Although Turkey has significant amounts of men and materiel amassed on the border, there is no political will to become embroiled in the Syrian conflict. Ankara will make limited concessions, stopping short of full engagement against the Islamic State. With a coalition willing to maintain air operations and facilitate training for select rebels, Turkey can afford to bide its time for now while dealing with more pressing domestic issues.
A Risky Strategy
The Islamic State has mired itself in a foolhardy frontal assault against a marginal objective, and in doing so it has failed to address ominous developments in more vital Islamic State-controlled areas of Syria. In particular, Syrian forces have capitalized on a weak extremist presence in the critical and far larger city of Deir el-Zour, launching attacks against a reduced enemy. These attacks have enjoyed considerable success, driving Islamic State fighters from several neighborhoods in the city and destroying a number of bridges critical to the jihadists' logistical operations.
The Islamic State continues to make gains in Iraq's Anbar province, mainly because of its superior tactical skill and operational acumen against Iraq's security forces. Had the Islamic State elected to send hundreds or thousands of fighters to Anbar instead of exposing them to the concentrated attacks in Kobani, it is highly likely that the jihadist organization would have been able to achieve considerably more success in a far more vital region.
The battle for Kobani is not yet over, and there remains the possibility that the Islamic State could prevail and seize the town. Were that to happen, however, the damaging truth is that the Islamic State’s obsession with Kobani has already set the group back considerably. With world media focused on the defensive Kurdish and Free Syrian Army fighters holding out against repeated Islamic State attacks, the extremists are handing a propaganda victory to their enemies. Even when the Islamic State does take ground, any success turns into a rallying cry for its opponents. Most important, replacing the severe losses it has already suffered will be difficult for the Islamic State. By devoting disproportionate resources and personnel to seize a town of marginal importance, the Islamic State has distracted itself from more pressing issues in Syria, thereby missing opportunities to achieve further success in Iraq.
Read more: Kobani Ensnares the Islamic State | Stratfor
Follow us: @stratfor on Twitter | Stratfor on Facebook
-
U.S. Cooperated Secretly with Syrian Kurds in Battle Against Islamic State
Kobani Became too Symbolically Important to Lose
Kurds at a cemetery Tuesday mourn three fighters who died in clashes with Islamic State in Suruc, Turkey, near the Syrian border. ENLARGE
Kurds at a cemetery Tuesday mourn three fighters who died in clashes with Islamic State in Suruc, Turkey, near the Syrian border. Bulent Kilic/Agence France-Presse/Getty Images
By
Adam Entous,
Joe Parkinson and
Julian E. Barnes
Updated Oct. 21, 2014 9:35 p.m. ET
10 COMMENTS
In public, the Obama administration argued for weeks that Kobani wasn’t strategically vital to the air campaign against Islamic State extremists. Behind the scenes, however, top officials concluded the Syrian city had become too symbolically important to lose and they raced to save it.
As the U.S. role rapidly evolved, U.S. and Syrian Kurdish commanders began to coordinate air and ground operations far more closely than previously disclosed. A Syrian Kurdish general in a joint operations center in northern Iraq delivered daily battlefield intelligence reports to U.S. military planners, and helped spot targets for airstrikes on Islamic State positions.
In contrast to the lengthy legal debate over U.S. aid to rebels fighting the Syrian regime, U.S. airdrops of weapons to Kobani got a swift nod from administration lawyers—a sign of its importance to the administration.
Related
Syrian Kurdish Forces Assess Air-Dropped Supplies
Cost of War Against ISIS So Far: $424 Million
The change in thinking over the fate of one city, described by U.S., Kurdish, Turkish and Syrian opposition officials, shows how dramatically U.S. war aims are shifting. After Islamic State made Kobani a test of its ability to defy U.S. air power, Washington intervened more forcefully than it had initially intended to try to stem the group’s momentum.
In doing so, the U.S. crossed a Rubicon that could herald a more hands-on role in other towns and cities under siege by Islamic State at a time when some U.S. lawmakers question the direction of American strategy and warn of mission creep.
“This is a war of flags. And Kobani was the next place Islamic State wanted to plant its flag,” a senior U.S. official said. “Kobani became strategic.”
The U.S. now is relying on two separate, stateless Kurdish groups in Iraq and Syria as ground forces to back up its air campaign against the extremists.
This has strained U.S. relations with another strategically important ally, Turkey. The U.S. has conferred newfound legitimacy on the Syrian Kurdish militia fighting in Kobani, which is linked to the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or PKK, in neighboring Turkey. The U.S. and Turkey both list the PKK as a terrorist group.
Washington’s decision to send in supplies by air to fighters loyal to the Democratic Union Party, known by its Kurdish acronym PYD, followed a U.S. assessment that the Syrian Kurdish defenders would run out of ammunition in as little as three days.
Iraqi Kurdish leaders told American officials they were considering sending reinforcements from their region to Kobani. To reach the town, they would have to pass through other parts of Syria. U.S. defense officials looked at the route and told the Kurds it would be a suicide mission.
The U.S. asked the Turkish government to let Iraqi Kurdish fighters cross through Turkish territory to reinforce Kobani. U.S. officials said Turkey agreed in principal and that Massoud Barzani, the head of the Kurdistan Regional Government in northern Iraq, proposed sending a specially trained force of Syrian Kurdish refugees.
But events on the ground forced Washington’s hand. U.S. contacts in Kobani sent out an urgent SOS.
“We needed weaponry and fast,” said Idris Nassan, the deputy foreign minister of the Kobani regional government.
To tide the Kurds over until Turkey opens a land corridor, U.S. Gen. Lloyd Austin, who runs the air campaign against Islamic State, decided on a delicate plan: dropping supplies using C-130 cargo planes.
The U.S. didn’t think Islamic State fighters had sophisticated antiaircraft weapons, but the Pentagon decided out of caution to fly under cover of darkness.
Gen. Austin presented the proposal to the White House on Friday. President Barack Obama approved it immediately, U.S. officials said.
ENLARGE
Until recently, the White House wouldn’t even acknowledge U.S. contacts with the PYD because of its close ties to the PKK and the diplomatic sensitivities over that in Turkey.
At the White House, Gen. Austin argued last week for resupplying Kobani without Turkey’s consent, U.S. officials said. He warned that the city’s fall would be a recruitment bonanza for Islamic State, leading to an infusion of fresh fighters and newfound momentum while reinforcing its narrative of inevitable expansion.
Resupplying fighters in Kobani wouldn’t normally be a quick decision, both for logistical and political reasons. But administration officials said they saw few alternatives. The U.S. had long kept the Syrian Kurds at arm’s length out of deference to Turkey.
But officials were desperate for partners on the ground on the Syrian side of the border. In recent days, the Kurdish fighters had made gains.
U.S. contacts with the Syrian Kurdish leadership began as indirect and secret.
Then-U.S. ambassador to Syria, Robert Ford, during stops in Paris, started meeting in early 2013 with an intermediary there of the PYD. After each contact, U.S. officials briefed Turkish counterparts. Daniel Rubinstein, Mr. Ford’s successor, and other officials expanded the dialogue.
ENLARGE
Embattled Kobani DigitalGlobe/UNITAR/UNOSAT
The Syrian Kurdish group’s objective during the talks was to persuade the Americans to provide them with military support to fight Islamic State.
“If there is one moderate force in Syria, that’s us,” said Khaled Saleh, the group’s representative in France who took part in many of the preliminary discussions.
For the Syrian Kurdish leaders, progress at first was frustratingly slow.
The U.S. became more responsive over the summer, after Islamic State seized Mosul, Iraq’s second largest city.
U.S. intelligence officers were impressed with the Syrian Kurdish fighters’ track record in combating Islamic State. When the fighters crossed the border into Iraq to help save members of the Yazidi religious minority, policy makers in Washington took note, U.S. officials said. Some Syrian Kurdish commanders are Yazidis by religion.
The Syrian Kurds had other appeal to U.S. policy makers. The fighting force is avowedly secular and pro-Western. It fields female fighters and is committed to combating Islamic State. Kurdish officials say several Americans, including two ex-marines, and dozens of European volunteers, have enlisted to fight alongside the Kurds in Kobani.
Impressed by its military performance, the U.S. decided to invite a representative of the group to sit in the coalition’s joint operations center in Erbil, the capital of Iraqi Kurdistan, to liaise with special military units in Kobani collecting battlefield intelligence and coordinates for airstrikes.
Kurdish officials said Islamic State turned its sights on Kobani to make an example of the Syrian Kurdish fighters, whose battlefield successes in Iraq had embarrassed the group.
When the U.S. first started bombing Islamic State targets near Kobani, the goal was to kill as many Islamic State fighters as possible.
“When we see them in great numbers, we take them out,” a senior U.S. official said, adding that extremists “kept coming, so we kept hitting them.”
As Islamic State poured resources into the battle, views in Washington of Kobani’s importance began to change.
Mr. Obama’s special envoys in the campaign against Islamic State, Gen. John Allen and Brett McGurk, arrived in Ankara Oct. 9 for talks. By then, the U.S. already had planned to step up the pace of airstrikes in Kobani, but also knew that wouldn’t be enough.
Turkish officials made clear to the U.S. delegation that they didn’t want Kobani to fall—but they didn’t want to inadvertently empower Kurdish fighters close to the PKK. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan described the PKK and the Syrian Kurdish fighters as one in the same.
The Turkish and American officials agreed broadly that the Iraqi Kurdish forces known as Peshmerga should play a significant role in Kobani’s defense, but the details about how to bring Kurdish reinforcement to Kobani still needed to be worked out.
After the talks in Ankara, Secretary of State John Kerry called Mr. Barzani, who proposed sending the special security force made up of Syrian Kurdish refugees who had been trained in northern Iraq.
The U.S. and Turkey disagreed about how long Kurdish forces in Kobani could hold out, with the U.S. assessing it would be only a few days while the Turks thought it could be longer.
When Kurdish commanders sent out their urgent appeal, Gen. Austin decided the U.S. couldn’t afford to wait, officials said.
He saw an opportunity, defense officials said.
“By stopping them, and by doing tremendous damage to them, you begin to blunt the sense of momentum, particularly in Syria,” a senior administration official said.
The proposal drew legal scrutiny from lawyers at the White House, State Department and Pentagon. Technically, the Syrian Kurdish leadership wasn’t on the terror list, as was the PKK, they said.
The lawyers also found that the legal bar was lower in this case because the U.S. would be sending Mr. Barzani’s arms, rather than delivering U.S. weapons. There was little debate, meeting participants said.
In the final White House meeting, National Security Adviser Susan Rice laid out the potential diplomatic and legal implications of the airdrop. She didn’t say ‘no’ but she wanted concerns to be raised, a senior U.S. official said. Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel told Mr. Obama the operation was urgently needed.
The equipment that was to be delivered beginning on Sunday was shipped from Erbil to Kuwait, the major U.S. logistics hub in the Middle East. There, soldiers prepared packages for the airdrop, defense officials said.
Medical supplies were rigged to drop with high velocity parachutes that are accurate, but that hit the ground with force. Ammunition, however, would be at risk of exploding if dropped with a high velocity chute. So soldiers in Kuwait rigged the ammunition packages with equipment known as the Joint Precision Airdrop System, or JPAD. The JPADs are guided by GPS, making them highly accurate despite the fact they drop slowly from over 10,000 feet.
As planes crossed over Kobani, nearly all of the high velocity parachutes hit their mark.
At least one of the JPADs sustained a malfunction in its parachute, drifting away from its target zone and into an area controlled by Islamic State.
Turkey on Monday confirmed it would allow the Peshmerga to cross its territory but as of Tuesday, no forces had reached Kobani and talks on the parameters of their mission were ongoing, Turkey’s foreign minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said.
U.S. officials said the outcome in Kobani remains far from certain but the operation could have implications for fighters in other towns facing Islamic State.
“Given where we are now, we’re there to help the people who are able to resist,” a senior U.S. official said.
-
One of the most influential Army officers of the Iraq theater on why the United States seems destined to repeat the mistakes of the past.
• BY John A. Nagl
• OCTOBER 21, 2014
•
•
The United States is now at war in Iraq for the third time in my lifetime, and after being in the middle of the first two I'm planning to sit this one out.
The first Iraq war was necessary and conducted well, as wars go; the second was unnecessary and conducted poorly at first, but ended up in a reasonable place given what a fiasco it had been at the start. This third war was entirely preventable, caused by a premature departure of U.S. troops after the second. Although it's too soon to say how it will turn out, it is not too early to say that unless we get the endgame right, the United States will fight yet another war in Iraq before too long.
My first Iraq war was Operation Desert Storm, when half a million U.S. troops joined an international coalition to expel Saddam Hussein's army from Kuwait in 1991.
Although that war appeared to settle some things at the time, within months of the cease-fire it became clear that Saddam had survived the thrashing we had given his army and was not going to fall to indigenous rebel forces as we had hoped. Instead, we began a decade of containment called Operation Southern Watch, with American war planes flying combat missions around the clock to deter Saddam from further adventurism.
Southern Watch continued until March 2003, when the tempo of combat operations increased sharply during the second Iraq war. Operation Iraqi Freedom began in an air of national panic after al Qaeda's attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, and the unrelated but frightening anthrax attacks on the U.S. capital. Saddam was working to develop weapons of mass destruction, we were told, and the United States did not want to discover that he had completed them only after seeing a mushroom cloud over Washington or New York. Throwing aside generations of deterrence theory -- which predicts correctly that states will not deploy weapons of mass destruction against another state that possesses them for fear of reprisal -- we invaded Iraq again, this time unnecessarily.
(MARC: He is correct that “States will will not deploy weapons of mass destruction against another state that possesses them for fear of reprisal” but this misses the point with regard to NON-state actors to whom chem, radioactive, and bio weapons could be handed off—as we were seeing for example with the anthrax attacks. The author apparently has fallen here into the mistaken meme that Iraq War-2 was purely about WMD. This is not right, the list of reasons was quite wrong; WMD was simply the one of them used to seek legal cover/approval from the UN)
Not just unnecessarily, but also poorly. Iraq was three nations inside a single state, held together by a brutal dictatorship. Although there were prewar warnings that hundreds of thousands of troops would be required to police Iraq after the government collapsed, we invaded with a fraction of that number. We had no plan to create a new order in postwar Iraq or even to secure the weapons-storage depots that were the supposed reason we were invading. Decisions made in the immediate aftermath of the invasion to disband the Iraqi Army and forbid any former members of the ruling Baath Party from again holding positions of influence poured fuel on the embers of a Sunni insurgency that burst into flames.
(MARC: True enough, but completely fails to address the concerns of the Shia—whom along with the Kurds Bush-1 had left to be brutalized by Saddam after encouraging them to rise up. Understandably the Shia wondered as to our intentions this time around—seeing that the Sunnis would not continue to oppress them in a new form was a logical concern on their part and one which we had to address.)
Rather than coming home by Christmas, the invasion force called for reinforcements, including my tank battalion.
We arrived in Anbar province in September 2003, right in the heart of the insurgency, and immediately discovered that our prewar training to fight other armies would be of little help. We were fighting insurgents who, in Mao's clever phrase, were fish swimming among the sea of the people -- Sunnis who hated us and their new Shiite overlords in Baghdad, whom they saw as collaborators with the occupiers.
It got worse. We had been told that Saddam was collaborating with al Qaeda, which was not true, but in the power vacuum that followed his demise, radical Islamists found a toehold. They named themselves al Qaeda in Iraq (AQI) and increased the sophistication of the weapons they deployed against U.S. troops. Simple improvised explosive devices made of the artillery rounds that literally littered the desert were replaced by sophisticated AQI car bombs like the one that destroyed the Khalidiya police station one Sunday morning, killing 34 Iraqi police officers we had trained and equipped. When my tank battalion left Anbar after a year of fighting, we made coffee cups that said "Iraq 2003-2004: We Were Winning When I Left."
We weren't, and we knew it. I went to work in the Pentagon and became reacquainted with my former West Point professor David Petraeus, who was then a lieutenant general returning from his own second combat tour in Iraq. In 2006, I helped him write an Army/Marine Corps Counterinsurgency Field Manual that suggested fighting a very different kind of war from the one we were then waging. Appointed to command the whole Iraq war effort shortly thereafter, General Petraeus put the new counterinsurgency doctrine into practice, building an Iraqi Army and eventually persuading the Sunnis who had been our enemies to switch sides and fight with us against the increasingly brutal AQI. Within 18 months, violence dropped by two-thirds, and we put Iraq on a path to stability (if not perfect democracy).
We seized defeat from the jaws of not-quite victory by not leaving behind a force of some 20,000 American advisors to stiffen the spine of the Iraqi Army and, perhaps more importantly, moderate the anti-Sunni tendencies of the Shiite politicians. But once he came into office, U.S. President Barack Obama overruled the advice of Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, and Petraeus, who had since become director of the CIA. Obama's advisors urged him to keep troops in Iraq. Instead, the president chose to fulfill a campaign promise that he would end the war in Iraq during his first term. He abandoned a country in which Americans had been working and fighting continuously for more than 20 years in an effort to build a stable state.
In our absence, Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki gave in to his worst sectarian tendencies, firing Sunni leaders of the Iraqi Army and replacing them with incompetent Shiite cronies. Al Qaeda in Iraq staged a comeback across the border in Syria, where another civil war raged without American involvement to moderate it. And this year, the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham came roaring to life, seizing most of the Sunni territory in Iraq. Maliki's stooges abandoned their units under fire, and the Iraqi Army, built with billions of U.S. dollars and at the cost of many American soldiers' lives and limbs, crumbled in the absence of American air power and advisory support. Two years without Americans engaged in combat in Iraq ended in tragedy, and last month the president announced that U.S. combat troops were returning to Iraq to fight yet another war there, this time against the Islamic State.
With luck, we have learned a few things from these decades of war in Iraq: that the enemy has a say about when wars end, that in the absence of American leadership such evil forces will rise to power that we get dragged back in to fix things again, that wars are messy and slow and last a long, long time. Unless we finally get it right, I expect a fourth war in Iraq. I'm not optimistic.
-
Second post
Before we get to today's news, KP's Kate Brannen has an interesting tidbit on how the air campaign against the Islamic State is being fought. When the Obama administration announced the start of a U.S.-led air campaign against Islamic State targets in Syria last month, much was made of the five Arab states recruited to confront the group. According to Kate, the role these nations are playing in the coalition is now less transparent.
"In fact, the Pentagon won't be talking about allied contributions anymore at all: On Tuesday, in a quiet change, the Defense Department said it would no longer provide daily information on what its coalition partners were doing in the fight against the Islamic State.
"U.S. Central Command announced the shift Tuesday in its daily update about airstrikes in Iraq and Syria. 'Beginning with this news release, out of respect for participating nations, U.S. Central Command will defer to partner nations to publicly comment on their airstrikes against ISIL in Syria and Iraq,' the release said.
"The policy change comes after a week's gone by without any mention of participation by Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Jordan or Bahrain in airstrikes in Syria. The last day it noted help from coalition partners was Oct. 14."
Now, on to the news.
A report in the Washington Post indicates that the United States and Iraq are planning an offensive to take back territory won by the Islamic State. From WaPo's Karen DeYoung: "The plan, described as methodical and time-consuming, will not begin in earnest for several months and is designed to ensure that Iraqi forces¬ do not overextend themselves before they are capable of taking and holding territory controlled by the militants." More here.
The devil is in the details. According to the Post, this new campaign might require "U.S. advisers in the field with the Iraqis, should that be recommended by American military commanders." This could represent an escalation of the American role in the conflict, as well as a potentially explosive political issue for the White House; President Obama has consistently maintained that no American boots would be on the ground in Iraq. But there is growing doubt that this promise will be kept: a new survey of Militarytimes.com readers show that 54 percent believe American troops will return to Iraq.
Iraq's new defense minister has strong words for the Islamic State. Al Awsat's story: "In his first televised speech following his appointment on Saturday, Iraq's new Defense Minister Khalid Al-Obeidi pledged that Iraqi forces would retake all areas of the country that have been taken over by the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS). 'We are committed to the liberation of the provinces that have fallen under ISIS control and securing the return of refugees to their homes, securing peace and stability for our country,' the new defense minister pledged on Tuesday." More here.
Meanwhile, the fallout from the Arab spring continues. Four year ago, the Arab Spring was celebrated in the west as the potential birth of new democracies across the Middle East. Now, it's clear that the protests-and the issues that drove them-are much more complex that Western media made them out to be at the time. Tunisia is the latest example.
Tunisia is among the Arab world's most educated countries, but militants are recruiting heavily there. The NYT's David Kirkpatrick: "Nearly four years after the Arab Spring revolt, Tunisia remains its lone success as chaos engulfs much of the region. But that is not its only distinction: Tunisia has sent more foreign fighters than any other country to Iraq and Syria to join the extremist group that calls itself the Islamic State.
"nstead of sapping the appeal of militant extremism, the new freedom that came with the Arab Spring revolt has allowed militants to preach and recruit more openly than ever before. At the same time, many young Tunisians say that the new freedoms and elections have done little to improve their daily lives, create jobs or rein in a brutal police force that many here still refer to as 'the ruler,' or, among ultraconservative Islamists, 'the tyrant.'" More here.
Not only is it wrong to blame the Islamic State's rise on the U.S. failure to secure a two-state solution-it's also flat-out dangerous. Aaron David Miller for FP: "In any conversation about the Israeli-Palestinian problem, I'd be the first to concede that failure to resolve it damages U.S. interests in the Middle East and undermines American credibility. But what has become even more stunningly clear in recent years is that even if the United States could fix the Palestinian issue and produce a two-state solution, that accomplishment alone would not stabilize the angry, broken and dysfunctional Middle East. The region is already in the process of melting down for a tsunami of reasons that have nothing to do with the Palestinians. But talking about the consequences of not fixing the Palestinian issue, particularly in Chicken Little the 'sky is falling' terms, as U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry has been wont to do, doesn't help matters-it makes them worse." More here.
One of the most influential Army officers of the Iraq theater on why the United States seems destined to repeat the mistakes of the past. For FP, John Nagl reflects on his experiences during the 2003 Iraq War: "The United States is now at war in Iraq for the third time in my lifetime, and after being in the middle of the first two I'm planning to sit this one out...Although it's too soon to say how it will turn out, it is not too early to say that unless we get the endgame right, the United States will fight yet another war in Iraq before too long.
"...With luck, we have learned a few things from these decades of war in Iraq: that the enemy has a say about when wars end, that in the absence of American leadership such evil forces will rise to power that we get dragged back in to fix things again, that wars are messy and slow and last a long, long time. Unless we finally get it right, I expect a fourth war in Iraq. I'm not optimistic." More here.
Kobani has become the focal point of the fight against the Islamic State. This Syrian border town has emerged as the most important battle of the American campaign. Whether or not it's strategically important-and DOD officials insist it isn't-the optics of the fight have elevated it in the eyes of the international press.
If Kobani wasn't strategically important to begin with, it is now. FP's Brannen and Gopal Ratnam: "The Obama administration's rapidly intensifying efforts to prevent Kobani from falling into the hands of the Islamic State have backed the United States into a corner. While Pentagon officials maintain that the town isn't strategically significant, the United States has invested so much in saving Kobani that its fall would hand the Islamic State a publicity win and deal a symbolic blow to the U.S.-led war effort.
Shashank Joshi, a senior fellow at the Royal United Services Institute in London to FP: "I think the U.S. was caught between trying to discount the significance of Kobani and then realizing that it had no choice but to be drawn in, because Kobani has become a token for the campaign's ability to succeed with airpower alone... I think against their better judgment the U.S. found itself compelled to provide greater and greater airpower, even when that came at the expense of more consequential areas like Anbar province." More here.
From WSJ, U.S. Cooperated Secretly with Syrian Kurds in Battle For Kobani. More here.
Turkey has been a reluctant participant in the fight against the Islamic State. But with Kobani on the brink, there are new signs that Ankara might be forced to do more. Here's the latest evidence: A kidnapping in Turkey shows the Islamic State's broad reach. More from WaPo here.
-
https://www.facebook.com/video.php?v=10152454298622689
-
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/26/world/middleeast/horror-before-the-beheadings-what-isis-hostages-endured-in-syria.html?emc=edit_na_20141025&_r=0
-
In the aftermath of the fall of Kaddaffy in Libya I noted several times with vigor the importance of the many, mnay MANPAD anti-aircraft missiles from Kaddaffy's armory that were falling into AQ hands and the dangerous implications thereof.
Note too how the Russians may be adding to the problem.
Missiles of ISIS May Pose Peril for Aircrews
By KIRK SEMPLE and ERIC SCHMITTOCT. 26, 2014
BAGHDAD — From the battlefield near Baiji, an Islamic State jihadist fired a heat-seeking missile and blew an Iraqi Army Mi-35M attack helicopter out of the sky this month, killing its two crew members.
Days later, the Islamic State released a chilling series of images from a video purporting to capture the attack in northern Iraq: a jihadist hiding behind a wall with a Chinese-made missile launcher balanced on his shoulder; the missile blasting from the tube, its contrail swooping upward as it tracked its target; the fiery impact and the wreckage on a rural road.
The helicopter was one of several Iraqi military helicopters that the militants claim to have shot down this year, and the strongest evidence yet that Islamic State fighters in Iraq are using advanced surface-to-air missile systems that pose a serious threat to aircraft flown by Iraq and the American-led coalition.
As the counteroffensive against the Islamic State enters a more aggressive phase in Iraq, allied airstrikes will also intensify. American officials say they fully expect that the push will bring out more proof of the jihadists’ antiaircraft abilities, with potentially serious consequences for how the Iraqis and their coalition partners wage their war.
“Based on past conflicts,” said one senior American military official who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss delicate intelligence assessments, the missiles “are game changers out there.”
The proliferation of antiaircraft weaponry has also heightened concerns about the vulnerability of Iraq’s airports, particularly Baghdad International Airport, the country’s most important transportation hub and a lifeline for military supplies and reinforcements to Iraq.
Signaling its intent to challenge American supremacy in the skies, the Islamic State, also known as ISIS or ISIL, recently published an online guide describing how to use shoulder-fired missiles to shoot down an Apache attack helicopter, one of the most fearsome weapons in the United States Army’s conventional arsenal.
“Choosing the launching spot: Preferably somewhere high,” the guide says in Arabic. “The roof of a building or a hill with a solid surface to prevent the appearance of dust following launching.”
The authors urged “strong confidence in God and composure,” and certainty “that this operation will cause a disaster to the foes and destroy their arrogance.”
The United States has stationed about a half-dozen Apaches at Baghdad International Airport, but they have been used only rarely in the two-and-a-half-month-old aerial campaign against the Islamic State, in part because of worries about their vulnerability to ground fire and because of a lack of American search-and-rescue teams in Iraq that could respond to downed aircrews. The concerns also reflect the White House’s insistence on limiting the number of American troops in Iraq and their exposure to hostile fire.
This month, Apaches entered the battle for the first time, in coordination with United States Air Force jets, to carry out four airstrikes on a large Islamic State force northeast of Falluja, in the sprawling desert and agricultural province of Anbar. The militants have established several strongholds there, and have continued to gain ground there against Iraq’s security forces in recent weeks.
Now, though, the Iraqi military is beginning to mount larger and more complex efforts around the country to retake territory from the Islamic State, including a counteroffensive that began a week and a half ago to break the militants’ stranglehold on a key refinery in Baiji, north of Baghdad. The new phase will mean an increase in the frequency of combat missions by coalition aircraft, and will likely demand a greater use of lower-flying American attack helicopters and gunships, which have important advantages in urban warfare.
Since much of the most difficult fighting in the coming months is expected to unfold in the towns and cities of Anbar, American generals may be inclined to order more Apaches to support Iraqi ground troops. They may also make greater use of AC-130 gunships, a lumbering, propeller-driven plane bristling with cannons that circles at altitudes at the outer limits of some shoulder-fired missiles.
As Iraqi and American officials weigh the added risk to their aircrews and, potentially, to civilian aircraft, they are particularly concerned about the threat of shoulder-fired heat-seeking missiles, commonly known as Manpads, short for Man-Portable Air Defense Systems.
Syrian rebels have amassed multiple Manpad models since 2012, and the Islamic State has generally had little trouble acquiring any weapon used by Syrian rebels either through purchase or capture, military analysts say. Though the Pentagon’s Central Command acknowledges this concern, it said it had no conclusive evidence yet that the Islamic State had such weapons.
The maximum ranges and altitudes of Manpads vary from system to system, but they are generally used against low-flying aircraft, such as fixed-wing aircraft soon after takeoff or shortly before landing, or helicopters.
Sunni militants in Iraq have long maintained a limited, aging stock of SA-7 Manpads, a ubiquitous Soviet-designed system that they periodically used during the American occupation from 2003 to 2011, said Charles Lister, a visiting fellow at the Brookings Doha Center in Qatar.
Since at least late 2013, however, the Islamic State’s forces in Iraq appear to have acquired more sophisticated antiaircraft missile systems, including the Chinese-made FN-6, originally provided by Qatar and possibly also Saudi Arabia to Syrian rebels.
In the images purporting to show the shooting down of the Iraqi attack helicopter, on Oct. 3 in Baiji, the militant, a scarf wrapped around his face, is wielding a Chinese-made FN-6 missile system — apparently the first documented use of the weapon by Islamic State jihadists in Iraq, analysts said.
The militants claimed to have shot down several other Iraqi military helicopters this year, most recently a Bell 407 on a surveillance mission near Baiji on Oct. 8.
“Judging by reports from Iraq, and in particular Anbar Province, over the last three to four months, it would seem ISIL have been using Manpads far more frequently and more successfully than Syrian rebels have ever done,” Mr. Lister added.
Continue reading the main story Continue reading the main story
Continue reading the main story
An even greater potential concern is that militants might get their hands on SA-24’s, a more sophisticated system that Russia recently sold to Iraq, and first showed up in militant videos in September, said Matthew Schroeder, a missile proliferation analyst at Small Arms Survey, an independent research project based in Geneva.
The SA-24’s have a longer range than older models and use faster and more maneuverable missiles, Mr. Schroeder said.
Newer systems also have a greater ability to hit targets from a wider range of angles, such as a perpendicular shot at a moving target like a plane on its approach to a runway.
As Iraqi and United States officials have weighed the threats to their military aircraft, they have also taken steps to safeguard the nation’s airports. The protection of Baghdad International Airport, on the western edge of the capital, has been of special concern, especially since the early summer when the Islamic State’s advances in Anbar and on the western fringes of greater Baghdad brought it to within 15 miles of the airport.
Officials acknowledge that any disruption to the airport’s services by an insurgent attack of any type would have an outsize psychological and logistical impact.
In July, the Pentagon rushed the Apaches, plus Shadow surveillance drones and 200 American soldiers, to the airport based on a classified intelligence assessment that the sprawling complex was vulnerable to attack, American officials say.
But although the Islamic State has continued to score victories in nearby Anbar, the militants have not advanced closer to the city since the summer, easing fears that the airport was going to be overrun. Iraqi and American military officials have insisted in interviews that they have taken the necessary precautions to protect the airport and aircraft there, and that there is not an imminent danger of attack.
Vehicle access to the passenger terminal area is tightly controlled with special permission granted on a case-by-case basis. The airport is bordered on the east and northeast by a large military complex. In the farmlands that abut the rest of the complex, the government has militarized the roads with a heavy police and military presence and checkpoints, and, officials said, infiltrated the neighborhoods with intelligence officers.
“We’re very sure that Baghdad International Airport is safe for departure and for arrival,” said Capt. Saad M. Saeed, the general director of Iraqi Airways, Iraq’s national carrier. “I’m a pilot. If I know there’s one-in-a-million chance, I won’t take the risk.”
Yet in August, an Iraqi Airways captain told colleagues that his plane had been hit by gunfire as it approached the airport from the north, a route that would have passed over the restive Sunni district of Abu Ghraib. The plane, which landed safely, was hit by at least two bullets, according to two Iraqi Airways pilots who said they had been told about the shooting.
Ali al-Bayati, deputy director of Iraqi Airways, denied that such an event had occurred. Rumors, he said, were part of the Islamic State’s arsenal. “Considering that the airport is a very high-value target for them,” he said, “they’re spreading a lot of rumors.”
Kirk Semple reported from Baghdad, and Eric Schmitt from Washington and MacDill Air Force Base, Fla. Reporting was contributed by C.J. Chivers from the United States, Kareem Fahim from Baghdad, Karam Shoumali from Istanbul, and Rena Netjes from Amsterdam.
-
http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2014/10/24/children_of_the_caliphate_iraq_syria_child_soldiers
Report
Children of the Caliphate
The Islamic State is raising an army of child soldiers, and the West could be fighting them for generations to come.
BY Kate Brannen
OCTOBER 27, 2014
They stand in the front row at public beheadings and crucifixions held in Raqqa, the Islamic State's stronghold in Syria. They're used for blood transfusions when Islamic State fighters are injured. They are paid to inform on people who are disloyal or speak out against the Islamic State. They are trained to become suicide bombers. They are children as young as 6 years old, and they are being transformed into the Islamic State's soldiers of the future.
The Islamic State has put in place a far-reaching and well-organized system for recruiting children, indoctrinating them with the group's extremist beliefs, and then teaching them rudimentary fighting skills. The militants are preparing for a long war against the West, and hope the young warriors being trained today will still be fighting years from now.
While there are no hard figures for how many children are involved, refugee stories and evidence collected by the United Nations, human rights groups, and journalists suggest that the indoctrination and military training of children is widespread.
Child soldiers aren't new to war. Dozens of African armies and militias use young boys as fighters, in part because research has shown that children lack fully formed moral compasses and can easily be persuaded to commit acts of cruelty and violence.
The young fighters of the Islamic State could pose a particularly dangerous long-term threat because they're being kept away from their normal schools and instead inculcated with a steady diet of Islamist propaganda designed to dehumanize others and persuade them of the nobility of fighting and dying for their faith.
"[The Islamic State] deliberately deny education to the people who are in the territory under their control, and not only that, they brainwash them," said Army Lt. Gen. H.R. McMaster, who's tasked with thinking about future threats and planning for the Army's future. "They engage in child abuse on an industrial scale. They brutalize and systematically dehumanize the young populations. This is going to make this a multigenerational problem."
Ivan Simonovic, the U.N. assistant secretary-general for human rights, recently returned from a visit to Iraq, where he interviewed displaced Iraqis in Baghdad, Dohuk, and Erbil. He said there is a "large and dangerously successful recruitment" program.
Speaking to a small group of reporters at the U.N., he said the fighters "appeal" to some of the youngsters and that they have approved adept at "manipulating young men and children." He explained that "they project an image of being victorious" and offer the promise that those who fall in battle will "go straight to heaven."
"What is striking for me is to meet mothers who [tell us], 'We don't know what to do,'" he said. "Our sons are volunteering and we can't prevent it."
On the front lines of Iraq and Syria, the boys who join or are abducted by the Islamic State are sent to various religious and military training camps, depending on their age. At the camps, they are taught everything from the Islamic State's interpretation of sharia law to how to handle a gun. They are even trained in how to behead another human and given dolls on which to practice, Syria Deeply, a website devoted to covering the Syrian civil war, reported in September.
Children are also sent into battle, where they are used as human shields on the front lines and to provide blood transfusions for Islamic State soldiers, according to Shelly Whitman, the executive director of the Roméo Dallaire Child Soldiers Initiative, an organization devoted to the eradication of the use of child soldiers.
Eyewitnesses from the Iraqi towns of Mosul and Tal Afar told United Nations investigators they have seen young children, armed with weapons they could barely carry and dressed in Islamic State uniforms, conducting street patrols and arresting locals.
U.N. human rights experts have "received confirmed reports of children as young as 12 or 13 undergoing military training organized by ISIL in Mosul," according to a report written jointly by the Office of the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights and the human rights office of the U.N. Assistance Mission in Iraq.
In al-Sharqat district in Salah al-Din, the number of youngsters manning checkpoints "drastically increased" during the last week of August, the report said. And in the Nineveh Plains and Makhmour, male teenagers were swept up in August in a recruiting drive by advancing fighters from the Islamic State, also known as ISIS or ISIL. Some of these boys reported that they "were forced to form the front line to shield ISIL fighters during fighting, and that they had been forced to donate blood for treating injured ISIL fighters," according to the report.
Abu Ibrahim Raqqawi, the pseudonym of a 22-year-old man who lived in Syria until about a month ago, is the founder of Raqqa is Being Slaughtered Silently, a Twitter account and Facebook page that documents the brutality of life in Raqqa, the city where he grew up. In addition to him and three others now living outside of Syria, there are 12 people inside of Raqqa, who contribute photos and information about what's going on inside the city.
Reached via Skype, he told Foreign Policy that the Islamic State has stepped up its youth recruitment program, including a boot camp for young boys where they're taught combat skills.
He said teenagers from Raqqa were being trained and then quickly sent to fight in Kobani, the Syrian-Turkish border town where the Islamic State has been in a brutal fight with Kurdish fighters for several weeks. U.S. and coalition aircraft have conducted more than 135 airstrikes against Islamic State targets in and around the town, killing hundreds of the militants.
In Raqqa, where poverty is widespread after more than three years of war, the group often persuades parents to send their children to the camps in exchange for money, Raqqawi said. Sometimes, the Islamic State appeals directly to the children themselves, holding public recruiting events or parties and then offering the children money to attend training. With all of the schools closed in Raqqa, there is little else for children to do, Raqqawi said.
There are several well-known youth training camps across Raqqa province, he said, including al-Zarqawi Camp, Osama Bin Laden Camp, al-Sherkrak Camp, al-Talaea Camp, and al-Sharea Camp.
Raqqawi estimated that there are between 250 and 300 children at al-Sharea Camp, which is for kids under the age of 16.
He provided photos of children at this camp, including one of young boys sitting down to a meal together, and another of a young boy smiling as he completed an obstacle course.
When there is a big battle, like the one in Kobani, the training is accelerated, Raqqawi said.
In Iraq, there is also substantial evidence that children are being forced into military training.
Fred Abrahams, special advisor at Human Rights Watch, interviewed Yazidis in Iraq who had escaped Islamic State detention. They said they had witnessed Islamic State fighters taking boys from their families for religious or military training.
One Yazidi man who escaped said he watched his captors separate 14 boys ages 8 to 12 at a military base the Islamic State had seized in Sinjar and take them off to learn how to be jihadists.
One Yazidi man who escaped said he watched his captors separate 14 boys ages 8 to 12 at a military base the Islamic State had seized in Sinjar and take them off to learn how to be jihadists.
This summer, Vice News gained extraordinary access to the Islamic State, producing a five-part video documentary about life under the group's control. The second installment focused on how the Islamic State is specifically grooming children for the future.
"For us, we believe that this generation of children is the generation of the caliphate. God willing, this generation will fight infidels and apostates, the Americans and their allies," one man tells Vice.
The video shows a 9-year-old boy saying that he's headed to a training camp after Ramadan to learn how to use a Kalashnikov rifle.
An Islamic State spokesman told the Vice journalists that those under 15 go to sharia camp to learn about religion, but those older than 16 can go to military training camp.
The Islamic State's command of social media also helps it convince people from all over the world to travel to Iraq or Syria to join the group.
Part of this effort involves using children as propaganda tools, posting photographs on social media sites of them dressed in Islamic State uniforms marching alongside grown-up fighters. "In mid-August, ISIL entered a cancer hospital in Mosul, forced at least two sick children to hold the ISIL flag and posted the pictures on the internet," the U.N. report said.
The Islamic State's online recruitment has proved successful, drawing more than 3,000 Europeans. The FBI says it knows of roughly a dozen Americans fighting with the group, but acknowledges there could be more.
Three American high school girls from Colorado were caught last week in Frankfurt, Germany, apparently on their way to join the Islamic State in Syria. Reports say they were radicalized online.
The Vice News video shows a Belgian man who traveled to Raqqa with his young son, who appears to be 6 or 7 years old.
The father coaches his son to tell the cameraman that he's from the Islamic State and not Belgium, and then asks him whether he wants to be a jihadist or a suicide bomber. The young boy says, "Jihadist."
Raqqawi told FP that when he was still living in Raqqa he saw an American woman, her Algerian husband, and their daughter, who looked to be about 4 years old.
He says he also saw a French fighter with two kids: a blond boy who looked to be 6 years old and a daughter who was about a year old.
"We see a lot of foreign fighters inside the city. It is shocking," he said.
In Syria and Iraq, children are not just being radicalized, but are also being exposed to extreme levels of violence every day.
Raqqawi provided FP photos he took while still living in the city, of children watching crucifixions.
He said the children have become so accustomed to these executions that the sight of a head separated from a human body no longer seems to faze them.
"The Islamic State destroys their childhood, destroys their hearts," he said.
Misty Buswell, who's based in Jordan as the Middle East regional advocacy officer for Save the Children, said, "It's not an exaggeration to say we could lose a whole generation of children to trauma."
Buswell said the child refugees she's interviewed are having nightmares, avoiding interactions with their peers, and showing signs of aggression toward other children.
"I have met children who have stopped speaking, and who haven't spoken for months, because of the terrible things that they witnessed," Buswell said. "And those are the lucky ones who actually made it across the border to safety."
With time and the right kind of intervention those children can be helped and can be able to have somewhat more of a normal life, Buswell said. "But for the kids who are still inside and who are witnessing this on a daily basis, the long-term effects are going to be quite significant."
Buswell said that refugees almost always want to return home once the situation there stabilizes and peace returns.
When she asked refugees from Sinjar that question a few weeks ago, however, she was surprised by their answer. "It's one of the first times I've actually heard people telling me that the things that they saw and experienced were so horrific and traumatic -- and the things that their children saw -- that they didn't want to go back, because there are too many bad memories."
Colum Lynch contributed reporting to this article.
-
Iraqis Prepare ISIS Offensive, With U.S. Help
By MICHAEL R. GORDON and ERIC SCHMITTNOV. 2, 2014
WASHINGTON — Iraqi security forces, backed by American-led air power and hundreds of advisers, are planning to mount a major spring offensive against Islamic State fighters who have poured into the country from Syria, a campaign that is likely to face an array of logistical and political challenges.
The goal is to break the Islamic State’s occupation in northern and western Iraq, and establish the Iraqi government’s control over Mosul and other population centers, as well as the country’s major roads and its border with Syria by the end of 2015, according to American officials.
Iraqi and Kurdish forces have made inroads in recent weeks in securing territory threatened or captured by the Islamic State, including the Rabia border crossing with Syria, the oil refinery in Baiji north of Baghdad, the northern town of Zumar, and Jurf al-Sakhar southwest of Baghdad.
But the major push, which is being devised with the help of American military planners, will require training three new Iraqi Army divisions — more than 20,000 troops — over the coming months.
"It is a balance between letting them develop their own plan and take ownership for it, and ensuring that they don’t stretch themselves too far and outpace their capability,” said one United States military official, who asked not to be identified because he was discussing war planning.
Though the United States began to carry out airstrikes to protect Erbil in August, the longer-term campaign plan has remained under wraps. Now that the planning has advanced, more than a dozen Iraqi and American officials provided details about a strategy that is certain to become increasingly visible.
The basic strategy calls for attacking fighters from the Islamic State, also known as ISIS or ISIL, with a goal of isolating them in major strongholds like Mosul.
That could enable Iraqi troops, Kurdish pesh merga units and fighters that have been recruited from Sunni tribes to take on a weakened foe that has been cut off from its supply lines and reinforcements in Syria, which are subject to American airstrikes.
To oversee the American military effort, a new task force is being established under Lt. Gen. James L. Terry, who oversees Army forces in the Middle East and who will operate from a base in Kuwait. Maj. Gen. Paul E. Funk II will run a subordinate headquarters in Baghdad that will supervise the hundreds of American advisers and trainers working with Iraqi forces
As the push to train Iraq’s military gathers momentum, the American footprint is likely to expand from Baghdad and Erbil to additional outposts, including Al Asad Air Base in Iraq’s embattled Anbar Province in the west, and possibly Taji, 20 miles north of Baghdad.
The effort to rebuild Iraq’s fighting capability faces hurdles, including the risk that the Islamic State will use the intervening months to entrench in western and northern Iraq and carry out more killings.
The United States currently does not plan to advise Iraqi forces below the level of a brigade, which in the Iraqi Army usually has some 2,000 troops. Nor is it clear under what circumstances the White House might allow American advisers to accompany Iraqi units on the battlefield or to call in airstrikes, as Gen. Martin E. Dempsey, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, has indicated might be necessary.
Iraq’s recent history suggests that such a battlefield advisory role is likely to be needed. Iraqi forces faltered during their 2008 offensive against Shiite militias in Basra until American commanders sent their troops to advise Iraqi forces below the brigade level and facilitate airstrikes.
As the plan stands now, no American agency has been assigned to train Iraq’s police, although they will be responsible for protecting areas that have been cleared by the army.
Iraq’s Shiite militias, some of which have been supported by Iran, pose another obstacle. Antony J. Blinken, President Obama’s deputy national security adviser, said last week that it was important that the Shiite militias be withdrawn, disband or have their members integrated into Iraq’s security forces.
But Fuad Masum, the Iraqi president, has suggested that the militias could be needed until the Islamic State was thoroughly defeated.
A major challenge will be synchronizing the Iraqi campaign with the American effort to train the beleaguered moderate Syrian opposition. The Pentagon’s program to train 5,000 Syrian rebel fighters a year in Saudi Arabia and Turkey has yet to get underway, which raises the possibility that Islamic State fighters could be pushed back into Syria well before there is a trained and equipped Syrian rebel force to oppose them.
Another constraint is self-imposed. Military officials say the White House has limited the number of United States advisers, analysts and security personnel in Iraq to 1,600. There were 1,414 troops in Iraq as of Friday, about 600 of whom were acting in advisory roles from joint operations centers in Baghdad and Erbil, and at division and higher headquarters.
A White House spokesman, Alistair Baskey, said the figure was not a limit, just the number of troops required for the current missions. One senior United States official, who asked not be identified because he was discussing internal planning, said it was likely that the number would need to be raised. Army planners have drafted options that could deploy up to an additional brigade of troops, or about 3,500 personnel, to expand the advisory effort and speed the push to rebuild the Iraqi military.
The Iraqi military has been active in recent weeks, but these operations have taken a toll on its forces. United States officials say that the initial force they are planning to advise consists of only nine Iraqi brigades and three similar Kurdish pesh merga units — roughly 24,000 troops.
The counterattack plan calls for at least doubling that force by adding three divisions, each of which could range from 8,000 to 12,000 troops.
The United States is relying on allies to augment American trainers. Australia, Canada and Norway have committed several hundred special forces to one or more of the training or advisory missions, a senior United States military official said.
The national guard initiative has been promoted by American officials as a way for Sunnis in western and northern Iraq to play a major role in defending their territory, which would ease sectarian frictions.
But the Iraqi Parliament has yet to enact legislation to establish the brigades, which would still need to be trained and equipped.
As a result, a “bridge” policy would be needed so that the Iraqi government, with American help, could work directly with Sunni tribes in the meantime, Mr. Blinken said at a conference hosted by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace last week.
General Dempsey said Friday that ISIS’ recent gains in Anbar show “why we need to expand the train, advise and assist mission into” Anbar Province.
A senior United States official said that much of this bridging initiative has yet to be defined. But an early test is expected to unfold soon in Anbar, where about 5,000 Sunni tribesmen could join the fight against the Islamic State in a replay of the pivotal American effort in 2007 to enlist Sunni tribal leaders to turn against Al Qaeda’s affiliate in Iraq, the forerunner of the Islamic State.
Overcoming Sunni wariness of the Shiite-led government in Baghdad will be challenging, American officials said.
James M. Dubik, a retired three-star Army general who oversaw training of the Iraqi military during the surge in 2007 and 2008, said the most critical part of the campaign would be the effort to win the allegiance of Iraqis after the Islamic State is routed.
“Behind it has to come some reasonably legitimate, evenhanded and nonsectarian governance over those areas that are taken back from ISIS,” he said.
Even if the overall Iraqi plan succeeds by the end of 2015, American officials say, pockets of resistance could remain. American commanders acknowledge that the effort to defeat ISIS will be lengthy.
“This is not going to happen in three weeks, a month, two months,” Gen. Ray Odierno, the Army chief of staff and a former top commander in Iraq, told CNN on Wednesday. “It’s a three- to four-year effort.”
-
The Govt of Baghdad is one half of Obama's strategy.
Here is how it is going with the other half:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/us-backed-syria-rebels-routed-by-fighters-linked-to-al-qaeda/2014/11/02/7a8b1351-8fb7-4f7e-a477-66ec0a0aaf34_story.html?utm_source=Sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_term=*Situation%20Report&utm_campaign=SitRep%20November%203%2C%202014
-
The Govt of Baghdad is one half of Obama's strategy.
Here is how it is going with the other half:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/us-backed-syria-rebels-routed-by-fighters-linked-to-al-qaeda/2014/11/02/7a8b1351-8fb7-4f7e-a477-66ec0a0aaf34_story.html?utm_source=Sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_term=*Situation%20Report&utm_campaign=SitRep%20November%203%2C%202014
Remember when the left laughed off concerns about Obama's lack of experience....
-
They called it "smart diplomacy" , , ,
-
http://ricks.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2014/11/13/the_guys_saying_iraq_and_syria_don_t_exist_are_writing_a_recipe_for_a_general_war_1?utm_source=Sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_term=Flashpoints&utm_campaign=2014_FlashPoints11%2F13RS
Daniel Serwer, a professor at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies and author of Righting the Balance, who blogs at www.peacefare.net and tweets at @DanielSerwer:
"Conceding on this point would be a major concession to the Islamic State that would be unwise and completely counterproductive if we want to defeat it. If eastern Syria and western Iraq break off from their respective states, there will be precious little to prevent IS from dominating the resulting "caliphate," which would have few resources but big ambitions. Most of Iraq's oil is in its southern "Shiastan." The Kurds would control most of the remainder. Syria's eastern oil fields are declining rapidly. The caliphate would be a mostly desolate, non-viable rump Sunnistan with ambitions to capture Baghdad and Damascus, which are the historical capitals of past caliphates. It would also be a haven for international terrorists.
The result would be a war of all against all to determine the borders of the caliphate and other states emerging from Syria and Iraq. The Kurds would likely want part of northern Syria and possibly part of Turkey as well. Kurds in Iran would want to join any sovereign Kurdistan. Turkey would oppose such a "greater Kurdistan," as would Iran. Saudi Arabia would be unhappy to see the formal emergence of Shiastan on its border (it already regards the Iraqi government as such). The Alawites in western Syria would seek to collapse the Lebanese state and incorporate much of its Shia-controlled territory. The Alawite state would be a firm ally of Iran and Russia.
The notion that this process can be managed to American advantage is nonsense. We saw what a comparable effort to redraw boundaries to accommodate ethnic differences did in the Balkans in the 1990s. The chaos emerging in the Levant would be many times worse, and far worse than anything we have seen happen so far."
-
Share
Iraq's Kurds, Baghdad Take a Shaky Step Toward Compromise
Analysis
November 14, 2014 | 1536 Print Text Size
Iraq's Kurds and Baghdad Take a Step Toward Compromise
Kurdistan Regional Government Prime Minister Nechirvan Barzani speaks during a press conference in the northern Iraqi city of Arbil on Sept. 18, 2013. (SAFIN HAMED/AFP/Getty Images)
Summary
Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) leadership and Iraqi Oil Minister Adel Abdel Mahdi announced Nov. 13 that they have reached an agreement for the KRG to send 150,000 barrels per day of oil to the central government and for the central government to send $500 million to the KRG to pay salaries for civil servants for the month of October. Financial stress has pushed the Kurds to negotiate with Baghdad, but the core points of contention between Baghdad and Arbil that hamper a more comprehensive and enduring compromise remain.
Analysis
Despite the KRG's repeated claims that it can develop enough energy revenue to exist independently of Baghdad, financial and political factors keep Arbil from having that option. Without a deal with Baghdad, the KRG is losing out on roughly $1.2 billion per month, the bulk of which goes toward paying the salaries of civil servants -- a critical component of the patronage networks underpinning the KRG's two main parties, the Kurdistan Democratic Party and the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan. The lack of budget allocations has put the KRG in more than $9 billion of debt. The KRG claimed in September that it has made only $1.3 billion from the legally questionable export of 14 million barrels of oil over the course of eight months. As of October, the KRG has shipped a total of 17 million barrels of crude from Ceyhan, in Turkey, and is pumping about 300,000 barrels per day through the KRG-Turkey pipeline.
The KRG had to sell its oil at a sizable discount -- at least 15 percent below market value, on average -- due to the legal risk of defying Baghdad's authority and the insurance premium on crude cargoes sitting for months in tankers in search of willing buyers. With the price of Brent crude now below $80, the profits are becoming even slimmer. This financial strain is intolerable for the KRG: It has to pay the monthly salaries of peshmerga fighters on the front line with the Islamic State, pay off debt to international oil companies and contractors operating in the region and manage the growing financial burden of a large influx of refugees.
Baghdad has also lost out on revenue from Kirkuk crude sales while its conflict with the KRG has persisted, but southern Iraqi oil production continues to grow at a steady pace, with southern terminals averaging 2.55 million barrels per day for October. Baghdad could certainly use extra revenue from northern oil exports to help manage growing costs from the war against the Islamic State, but the central government is under far less financial stress than the KRG. Thus, the burden of the compromise lies on Arbil.
The New Agreement's Limitations
The central government and the KRG have kept the details of the preliminary agreement vague, but it is unlikely that Baghdad would agree to release funds without the KRG conceding that at least a portion of the oil exported from the KRG be marketed through the Baghdad-controlled State Oil Marketing Organization and that Baghdad distribute the revenue from those exports. Knowing that the KRG will be loathe to give up physical control of the export and marketing of this oil, Baghdad will have the right to restrict budget allocations at any time. And knowing that Baghdad will be able to withhold payments at any time, the KRG will resist sacrificing full authority to the State Oil Marketing Organization and will seek additional funding sources to scrape by and maintain some leverage in its ongoing negotiations with Baghdad. (The KRG has been rumored to have negotiated a $5 billion loan with Goldman Sachs and Deutsche Bank to help create a financial buffer.) This is the state of limbo in which the preliminary deal has been set.
But the complications do not end there. The status of Kirkuk will continue to be a major impediment to a lasting deal. During the Islamic State siege, Kurdish peshmerga occupied the Baba and Avana domes of the Kirkuk field and the nearby Bai Hassan field. These fields are still legally under Baghdad's control through the North Oil Company but are now under the Kurds' physical control. Without Baghdad's permission, the KRG reportedly has been producing roughly 120,000 barrels per day from the Avana dome and Bai Hassan field collectively and has been blending that crude for both domestic use and export. The KRG was already facing legal challenges in exporting crude from the Tawke, Taq Taq and Shaikan fields that lie indisputably in KRG territory, but exporting crude from clearly disputed fields will only add to the legal ambiguity surrounding KRG exports, even as the KRG will try to use the preliminary deal with Baghdad to convince investors of a new level of Kurdish energy autonomy.
The Outside Players
Turkey will also be a key factor in determining just how far KRG energy autonomy will expand. Ankara sees the need to keep the KRG dependent on Turkey for export routes and ultimately its economic survival. Though Turkey is eager to exploit Kurdish energy and is building out infrastructure to this end, its strategy toward the KRG is still driven by containment as Ankara struggles to limit a kaleidoscope of Kurdish factions seeking autonomy through political, financial and militant means within and beyond Turkish borders. It is no coincidence that the KRG-Baghdad preliminary agreement came after Turkey hosted Iraqi Foreign Minister Ibrahim Jaafari on Nov. 7 in Ankara, where Turkey made a point to reiterate its respect for Iraq's territorial integrity.
What remains to be seen is whether Baghdad and Ankara come to an agreement on how revenue from KRG oil export sales will be handled. To date, Turkey has deposited revenue in a Halkbank account, parsing it out in small amounts to the KRG but keeping the Kurdish region financially strapped. Ankara and Baghdad will want to maintain that financial leverage over the KRG, but Baghdad will not allow Arbil to export its own oil while Turkey determines revenue distribution. The KRG naturally would prefer to control its own revenue, but deprived of that option, it will demand that Turkey or another outside arbiter manage the account to avoid being held hostage to Baghdad.
Meanwhile, the evolution of the battle against the Islamic State will have a degree of influence over the level of cooperation between Baghdad and Arbil. The Islamic State threat has placed the United States at the center of Iraq once again, and Washington's interest is to maintain Iraq's cohesion and instill enough cooperation among factions to develop a ground fighting force capable of containing jihadist forces. Indeed, the KRG has tried to leverage any peshmerga support it would offer in an offensive to retake Mosul in its energy negotiations with Baghdad. The Islamic State threatens both the KRG and Baghdad sufficiently to compel the two sides to cooperate for now. But as the jihadist movement weakens over time, so will this aspect of their cooperation.
The thorniest details have yet to be sorted out, and those details strike at the fundamental issue of sovereignty and territorial integrity for Arbil, Baghdad and Ankara alike. Though constraints have pushed the KRG to the negotiating table with Baghdad, this highly tenuous agreement still faces many hurdles.
Read more: Iraq's Kurds, Baghdad Take a Shaky Step Toward Compromise | Stratfor
Follow us: @stratfor on Twitter | Stratfor on Facebook
-
By David Francis and Sabine Muscat
Iran asserts its power with airstrikes against the Islamic State. U.S. officials insisted there was no coordination between Washington and Tehran. Iran's actions against the Islamic State show a willingness to openly engage in military operations. They also force Washington to acknowledge the United States and Iran are fighting a common enemy.
The New York Times' Tim Arango and Thomas Erdbrink: "Iranian fighter jets struck extremist targets in Iraq recently, Iranian and American officials have confirmed, in the latest display of Tehran's new willingness to conduct military operations openly on foreign battlefields rather than covertly and through proxies. The shift stems in part from Iran's deepening military role in Iraq in the war against the Sunni extremists of the Islamic State. But it also reflects a profound shift in Iran's strategy, a new effort to exert Shiite influence around the region and counter Sunni powers such as Saudi Arabia. Analysts also say it follows a calculation that what Iran's rulers see as a less-engaged United States will tolerate or even encourage their overt military activities."
-
'Israeli Jets' Pound sites near Damascus
Click here to watch: 'Israeli Jets' Pound sites near Damascus
Israeli fighter jets launched airstrikes on two military sites outside Damascus, Syrian state media and local activists reported Sunday. Israel made no official comment on the reports. Israeli media speculated that missiles intended by Syria for delivery to Hezbollah were targeted. The Israeli jets hit military sites at Damascus’s main airport and at the town of Dimas on a key road near the Syrian-Lebanese border, the reports stated. The alleged attack was reported by Syria’s official SANA news agency and by Shiite terror group Hezbollah’s official television station al-Manar, as well as the the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which monitors the conflict in Syria. “The Israeli enemy attacked Syria by targeting two security areas in Damascus province, namely the Dimas area and the area of Damascus International Airport,” said SANA, adding that no casualties were reported. SANA called the attack “an aggression against Syria.” Syrian TV and Hezbollah media outlets said the attack was intended by Israel to “help the terrorists” against whom the Assad regime is engaged in a bitter war. The Syrian armed forces’ general command said Sunday’s “flagrant attack” caused material damage, but did not provide any details.
Watch Here
“This aggression demonstrates Israel’s direct involvement in supporting terrorism in Syria along with well-known regional and Western countries to raise the morale of terrorist groups, mainly the Nusra Front,” the military said in a statement carried by SANA. There is no evidence Israel has provided any support to the Nusra Front, which is al-Qaida’s affiliate in Syria. Israeli officials did not respond to the reports or make any comment on the alleged attack. Israel’s policy has been to prevent the transfer from Syria of long-range missiles to Hezbollah. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said Dimas was a military position. The Observatory also said the strike near the Damascus airport hit a warehouse, although it was unclear what was in the building. Operations at the Damascus international airport are both civilian and military. According to the Observatory, around 10 explosions could be heard outside a military area near Dimas. It had no word on casualties in either strike. Israel has carried out several airstrikes in Syria since the revolt against President Bashar Assad began in March 2011. Most of the strikes have targeted sophisticated weapons systems, including Russian-made anti-aircraft missiles and Iranian-made missiles, believed to be destined for Lebanon’s Hezbollah terrorist group. Other strikes have been attributed to the IDF, though officials in Jerusalem have not confirmed them. Several videos uploaded to YouTube Sunday purported to show the alleged Israeli strikes. During a cabinet meeting earlier Sunday, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu stressed that Israel was prepared to “deal” with ongoing “threats and challenges,” though he did not specify which threats he was referring to. “We are closely monitoring the Middle East and what is happening with open eyes and ears, and a lot is happening,” Netanyahu said. “We will stay informed and we will deal with these unremitting threats and challenges. We will deal with them with the same responsibility that we have up until now.” Netanyahu’s comment was interpreted in some quarters as a hint at the imminent alleged Israeli action.
Source: Times of Israel
-
In response to this article https://medium.com/@blake_hall/how-to-defeat-the-islamic-state-de18b0a18354 (previously posted around Oct. 12th), an Special Forces friend with personal experience writes:
========================
As I reviewed the recommended article, many of Mr. Hall’s comments relate directly to what many U.S. soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines have experienced in some form or factions. Since September 11, 2001, military and governmental organizations have shifted operations in effort of addressing the unique circumstances in regions such as Afghanistan and Iraqi. What are these unique circumstances that exist? Well, first the U.S. had to address the fundamental issue of sharing of information among it’s military and civilian organizations. Military branches such as Army, Navy, Air Force and Marines now acknowledged the extreme importance of sharing of information and operations. In military terms, this means nothing more than “deconfliction” among ALL military branches with the intent of successfully initiating joint operations. In addition, joint operations among military units does not necessarily solve the information sharing issues. Therefore, joint environments now included more civilian governmental organizations, as well as non-governmental organizations (NGO) within the battle space.
As Mr. Hall explains, ground truth always paints the picture of reality. Although much of my time was spent detailing “ground truth”, I learned early on that things are much different within specific regions and cultures. From ideology, beliefs and discontent to the outside world, people have their own specific reasons for their actions. In many ways, it is as simple as “people have their own map of reality”. In regards to Iraqi and Afghanistan, people function based on tribes, culture and their own reality or view of the world. Hall discusses ethnic cleansing within his writings, however, many of rural tribal leaders in select areas solely function from enforcing their beliefs or customs amongst its members. Furthermore, in the case of Afghanistan, many of the extremely rural areas are still influenced by Taliban leaders or lower ranking members. Why is this an important issue to analysis? Well, it’s fairly simple. If U.S. forces conduct combat operations in select areas without a follow-on Civil Affairs campaign, the creditability and efforts of the U.S. may be damaged by virtue of combat operations, and not winning the hearts and minds of the local populace. Moreover, the Taliban influence increases due to US or coalition combat efforts.
War or military campaigns will never be considered a pretty or well-balanced operation that meets the approval of all political parties, nor will it ever meet the 100% approval rating for the civilian or military members. However, any campaign that has been waged, whether with United Nations (UN) or North AtlanticTreaty Organization (NATO) approval requires in-depth political, economic and financial risk analysis at the least. These styles of risk analysis are important by virtue of organizations such as the Islamic State of Syria’s (ISIS) ability to successfully fund it’s organization and continue it’s growth through political, economic and financial gain. Under the UN Charter, Article 51, members are authorized self-defense against any threat against a region. With regards to Iraqi, the sole purpose of the war was allegedly justified to remove Saddam Hussein and the alleged weapons of mass destruction (WMD). In this case of the UN Charter, Article 51, President Bush framed the invasion as an act of self-defense. Hall mentions the arming of so called “moderate” rebels. Although this strategy may have been successful in past campaigns, today’s conflicts do not necessary arrange agreements with U.S. allies, nor does it guarantee allegiance by any coalition that is not part of the UN or European Union (EU). Additionally, Hall discusses strategies that outline borders for Syria and Iraqi. Although this strategy may produce a border that allows a State to operate as a solidified belligerent State, it does not address the long-term allegiance by any given State. As the U.S. and the international community moves forward, at what point may ISIS contend for belligerency status. Although ISIS is considered a terrorist organizations, belligerent status means rights or duties, therefore, this action would alter all interactions with this organization and cause a major shift in the Middle East. In contrast, ISIS’s ability for belligerency is really not a question; however, if the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) can claim belligerency status, what would prevent ISIS from claiming the same status?
Moving forward, the U.S. strategy for the war on terror has to shift to a “must win” campaign. ISIS has made critical threats against the U.S. and it’s allies; therefore, the U.S. must adapt it’s strategy to an advanced Unconventional Warfare (UW) campaign that incorporates unique non-traditional tactics against an unpredictable adversary. Traditional operations or reactive campaigns against an enemy that is well-advanced in their own technology, tactics and overall strategy, its not the way to eliminate an impeding threat to U.S. national security.
-
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/19/world/middleeast/backed-by-us-airstrikes-kurds-regain-ground-from-isis.html?emc=edit_th_20141219&nl=todaysheadlines&nlid=49641193&_r=0
-
second post
http://www.wsj.com/articles/haider-al-abadi-a-united-iraq-is-pushing-back-the-islamic-state-1418946399?mod=hp_opinion
By
Haider al-Abadi
Dec. 18, 2014 6:46 p.m. ET
13 COMMENTS
Baghdad
Iraqis are fighting back against the transnational terrorists on the battlefront and on the home front. As we move forward to free every inch of our territory and every segment of our citizenry from ISIS—known in Iraq by its Arabic acronym Daesh—we are also addressing the discontents that give rise to terrorism.
While military action is essential to expel ISIS from the land that we love, there can be no lasting victory without governmental reform, national reconciliation, and economic and social reconstruction. Exclusion breeds extremism, so our new government includes Sunnis, Shiites and Kurds, as well as representatives of the major political parties. In order to root out terrorism and its causes, we are determined to ensure that every ethnic group, every region and every religious confession feels that it has a stake in Iraq’s survival and success.
Our government just approved a long-sought, long-term agreement with the Kurdistan Regional Government. This historic understanding states that Iraqi oil belongs to all Iraqis. It provides for fair sharing of oil revenues, as well as sharing the resources and responsibilities to defend and serve all our people. As we confront our common enemy, we want to fight alongside our Kurdish brothers. This agreement provides them with the weapons and support they need.
We are restoring relationships with the Sunni tribes that are based in areas now under ISIS domination. These tribes are being armed and are currently fighting alongside Iraqi security forces.
Because Iraqis need to put the past behind us, we are amending the Accountability and Justice Law, which will provide relief from de-Baathification that took place after the fall of Saddam and his Baathist Party. Our goal is to ease the reintegration into society of a large number of former government employees who haven’t committed crimes against the Iraqi people.
Because every citizen must have confidence in our system of justice, I have signed a decree requiring our security forces and the Ministry of Justice to safeguard the constitutional and human rights of the detainees in Iraqi jails. There will be a central record for all detainees, including the reason for their arrests and the timeline for their trials.
As we rebuild our security forces, we are combating corruption, incompetence and fragmentation. We have removed about two-dozen generals, as well as 24 officers of the Ministry of Interior. There will be no more “ghost soldiers” on the payroll, no more corrupt commanding officers and no more battalions who flee from the battlefields.
We are establishing a national guard that will fight alongside the Iraqi army. And we fully support efforts to train and equip the Kurdish forces to ensure that they can work seamlessly with the Iraqi Security Forces.
We are working with the U.S. and our international partners to train and equip tribal fighters who are currently fighting alongside Iraqi security forces. Where possible, some individuals from these groups will be integrated into the Iraqi Security Forces or the national guard.
In order to guarantee respect for the rule of law, we are bringing all armed groups under state control. No armed groups or militias will work outside or parallel to the Iraqi Security Forces, and no arms will be permitted outside the control of the government.
With support from the international coalition and closer coordination with the Kurdish Peshmerga fighters, the Iraqi Security Forces and their partners are pushing forward, recapturing strategic roads and other locations and liberating entire towns.
Iraqis are doing our part to defeat the best-funded, best-equipped, and best-organized terrorists on Earth. But the challenge is greater than any country can answer alone.
We need air support, training and armaments for Iraq’s security forces. We need our neighbors and allies to stop the flow of foreign fighters into Iraq. And we need the international community, through its financial institutions, to freeze the funding of ISIS.
We also need the international community to help us assist the two million refugees within our borders who have been displaced by the terrorism of ISIS and the civil war in Syria. With winter approaching, they need humanitarian aid, as will the residents of the areas that we are liberating from Daesh.
Only by rebuilding a secure and stable Iraq can we defeat the terrorists who draw upon discontent and feed on failure. Just as ISIS is the international community’s common enemy, defeating violent extremism, on the battlefield and the home front, must be our common endeavor.
Mr. Abadi is the prime minister of Iraq.
-
http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2014/12/21/islamic-state-is-reportedly-executing-its-own-foreign-volunteers-who-just-want-to-go-home/
-
I have posted several rather apocalyptic posts in this thread with the rise of Isis. I am quite glad to report that I am sensing a change for the better. This interesting article captures a goodly portion of why.
================================
Inside the War Against Islamic State
A retired four-star Marine Corps general, now the U.S. ‘special envoy’ in the war against the terrorist army, on reasons for optimism even as a long fight looms.
By Joseph Rago
Dec. 26, 2014 6:33 p.m. ET
Washington
Some six months ago, the Islamic State terrorist army poured south from Syria through Iraq’s Tigris and Euphrates valleys, conquering multiple cities including Mosul and the border city of al Qaim. Iraqi army regulars disintegrated, the offensive carved out a rump state controlling somewhere between a quarter and one-third of Iraq’s sovereign territory, and mass executions, repression and videotaped beheadings followed.
Anticipating a strike on Baghdad and the potential fall of the capital, the U.S. Embassy evacuated 1,500 civilians. At the time, one measure of strategic neglect is that the U.S. was flying only a single surveillance sortie a month over Iraq, following the withdrawal of the last American troops in 2011. Saudi Arabia or Jordan were feared to be the next Islamic State targets.
Those calamities were interrupted, and now the first beginnings of a comeback may be emerging against the disorder. Among the architects of the progress so far is John Allen, a four-star Marine Corps general who came out of retirement to lead the global campaign against what he calls “one of the darkest forces that any country has ever had to deal with.”
Gen. Allen is President Obama ’s “special envoy” to the more than 60 nations and groups that have joined a coalition to defeat Islamic State, and there is now reason for optimism, even if not “wild-eyed optimism,” he said in an interview this month in his austere offices somewhere in the corridors of the State Department. He was spending a rare few days stateside by way of Brussels, among the 16 capitals he has visited (many multiple times) as he has helped to coordinate the alliance since accepting the mission in September.
At the Brussels conference, the 60 international partners dedicated themselves to the defeat of Islamic State—also known as ISIS or ISIL, though Gen. Allen prefers the loose Arabic vernacular, Daesh. They formalized a strategy around five common purposes—the military campaign, disrupting the flow of foreign fighters, counterfinance, humanitarian relief and ideological delegitimization.
Gen. Allen cautions that there is hard fighting ahead and victory is difficult to define, but he points to gradual yet tangible progress: For the first time, Islamic State has been confronted on the field and defeated, losing the initiative in battle. The Iraqi security forces are being rebuilt with a counteroffensive being planned to retake and hold terrain such as Mosul, Haditha and Beiji. This week the hundreds of members of the Yazidi sect were rescued from a long mountaintop siege.
The roughly 1,400 airstrikes in Iraq and Syria that have been conducted so far continue to pound Islamic State positions and restrict advances. The U.S. now flies 60 reconnaissance missions daily.
Gen. Allen’s assignment is diplomatic; “I just happen to be a general,” he says. He acts as strategist, broker, mediator, fixer and deal-maker across the large and often fractious coalition, managing relationships and organizing the multi-front campaign. “As you can imagine,” he says, “it’s like three-dimensional chess sometimes.”
***
Gen. Allen seems governed by an abiding duty to the region and, perhaps, a job left unfinished. In 2006-08, as the deputy commander of Multinational Division West, he served in Anbar, in the deserts spreading west of Baghdad to the Syrian and Jordanian borders. Anbar was then among Iraq’s most violent and dangerous regions, the core of the terror insurgency, and Gen. Allen played an important role in the success of Gen. David Petraeus ’s “surge.”
A scholar-soldier, Gen. Allen cultivated relationships with the Sunni tribes, immersed himself in local culture and history, and helped nurture the Anbar Awakening and U.S. reconciliation initiatives as tribal leaders allied with the U.S. to defeat al Qaeda in Iraq. “I cleaved to John Allen,” says Ryan Crocker, then the U.S. ambassador. “When I needed to know what was going on out in al-Anbar, west Iraq, the tribes—who would do what, who would not do what, what we needed to do—he was the go-to guy.”
Gen. Petraeus adds in an email that Gen. Allen “pursued this effort brilliantly” and “contributed importantly to the achievement of what we termed ‘critical mass’ in the Anbar Awakening that helped set off a chain reaction with reconciliation rippling up and down the Euphrates River Valley in Anbar.” By the time the surge ended in summer 2008, enemy attacks had fallen by more than 80%.
Gen. Allen went on to lead NATO forces in Afghanistan from 2011 to 2013 and was poised to become Supreme Allied Commander Europe, among the military’s most prestigious overseas posts. Instead, after nearly 38 years in uniform, he retired, citing the strain of his deployment on his wife and two daughters.
Now Gen. Allen has returned to Iraq, where Anbar especially is once again the site of “humanitarian calamity and crisis.” There are some 20 million refugees fleeing Islamic State or the Syrian civil war. “You have Syrians who have fled to Iraq, sort of implausibly, but in fact, that’s the case,” he says.
Unlike its antecedent al Qaeda in Iraq, Islamic State is something new, “a truly unparalleled threat to the region that we have not seen before.” Al Qaeda in Iraq “did not have the organizational depth, they didn’t have the cohesion that Daesh has exhibited in so many places.” The group has seized territory, dominated population centers and become self-financing—“they’re even talking about generating their own currency.”
But the major difference is that “we’re not just fighting a force, you know, we’re fighting an idea,” Gen. Allen says. Islamic State has created an “image that it is not just an extremist organization, not just a violent terrorist organization, but an image that it is an Islamic proto-state, in essence, the Islamic caliphate.” It is an “image of invincibility and image of an advocate on behalf of the faith of Islam.”
This ideology has proved to be a powerful recruiting engine, especially internationally. About 18,000 foreign nationals have traveled to fight in Iraq or the Syria war, some of them Uighurs or Chechens but many from Western countries like the U.K., Belgium, Australia and the U.S. About 10,000 have joined Islamic State, Gen. Allen says.
“Often these guys have got no military qualifications whatsoever,” he continues. “They just came to the battlefield to be part of something that they found attractive or interesting. So they’re most often the suicide bombers. They are the ones who have undertaken the most horrendous depredations against the local populations. They don’t come out of the Arab world. . . . They don’t have an association with a local population. So doing what people have done to those populations is easier for a foreign fighter.”
Among the coalition’s major goals is to prevent these vicarious jihadists from arriving in the region—or from returning to their home countries. The coalition is locking down passports and creating more stringent screening at airports and border crossings world-wide.
A similar effort is under way to interdict Islamic State’s funding, though the challenge is that the group generally doesn’t rely on outside sponsors or traditional financial institutions that can be sanctioned. Black-market oil revenues and stolen money from Iraqi and Syrian banks mean Islamic State can pay for weapons, ammunition, vehicles and salaries for mercenaries.
“We have been bombing the dickens out of the modular refineries and tanker trucks” to disrupt the illicit oil business, Gen. Allen says, but Islamic State is turning to more pernicious methods: “Massive widespread criminal activity, largely extortion, in other words, shaking down the several million people that live under their domination. Sadly, kidnap for ransom is generating a lot of money. . . . A sheik’s son will be taken and the tribe will have to raise the money ultimately to gain his freedom.”
Gen. Allen adds that “Daesh has been very clear in the last several weeks, last couple of months, in undertaking a modern slave trade, if you can imagine that.”
A more hopeful sign is that the new Iraqi government is more stable and multiconfessional after the autocratic sectarian rule of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki. His replacement, Haider al-Abadi, has been “very clear that the future of Iraq is for all Iraqis,” Sunni, Shiite and Kurd. He has restored relations with Middle Eastern neighbors and believes in the “devolution of power” across Iraq’s regions, Gen. Allen says. “Maliki believed in the centralization of power.”
Critics of the Obama administration’s Islamic State response argue that the campaign has been too slow and improvisational. In particular, they argue that there is one Iraqi-Syrian theater and thus that Islamic State cannot be contained or defeated in Iraq alone. Without a coherent answer to the Bashar Assad regime, the contagion from this terror haven will continue to spill over.
Gen. Allen argues that the rebels cannot remove Assad from power, and coalition members are “broadly in agreement that Syria cannot be solved by military means. . . . The only rational way to do this is a political outcome, the process of which should be developed through a political-diplomatic track. And at the end of that process, as far as the U.S. is concerned, there is no Bashar al-Assad, he is gone.”
Defeating Islamic State inside Iraq, Gen. Allen says, is “the main effort.” A companion “supporting effort” to degrade Islamic State in Syria is under way, including bombing runs, as well as a “shaping effort” to encourage the moderate Syrian opposition to develop “a more coherent and cohesive political voice” and encourage “a political transition in Damascus.”
Gen. Petraeus says that among the “hugely impressive mix of talent, capabilities and experience” Gen. Allen brings to the mission is “a truly selfless approach to whatever task he is assigned.” Historians will debate how much the U.S. failure to obtain a status of forces agreement in Iraq after 2011 contributed to the rise of Islamic State. A residual combat force may have been an anchor and stabilizing influence, though Mr. Obama preferred to leave, and Mr. Maliki didn’t want the U.S. to stay. (I'll quibble here. Obama insisted on leaving and upon seeing this Maliki simply sought to get ahead of the curve IMHO) Gen. Allen, for his part, has articulated regret about what we left behind.
Last year, in a conversation at the Foreign Policy Initiative about the importance of American global leadership, Gen. Allen said: “We weren’t there long enough to provide the top cover for the solution of many of the political difficulties that might have resolved itself if we had been there for a longer period of time. So consequently, as we departed we have seen those tectonic plates begin to grind against each other again, and that has created instability, and the body count is going up.”
Gen. Allen speaks movingly about the tribes that allied with the U.S. amid the Awakening: The Americans and Iraqis fought alongside one another, he says, and “we, in turn, took care of tribes. We turned their electricity back on, we repaired the enormous damage that al Qaeda had done to the electrical grid. We restored the water purification systems that gave fresh water to the children. We rebuilt the schools.”
The war against Islamic State will go on long after he returns to private life, Gen. Allen predicts. “We can attack Daesh kinetically, we can constrain it financially, we can solve the human suffering associated with the refugees, but as long as the idea of Daesh remains intact, they have yet to be defeated,” he says. The “conflict-termination aspect of the strategy,” as he puts it, is to “delegitimize Daesh, expose it for what it really is.”
This specific campaign, against this specific enemy, he continues, belongs to a larger intellectual, religious and political movement, what he describes as “the rescue of Islam.” He explains that “I understand the challenges that the Arabs face now in trying to deal with Daesh as an entity, as a clear threat to their states and to their people, but also the threat that Daesh is to their faith.”
Gen. Allen says he regularly meets people who say “ ‘we want to take all measures necessary to reclaim our faith.’ . . . I recognize how central this faith is to so many people in the region, how important it is to so many people in the region, how difficult the struggle has become between those who would like to use it to justify horrendous acts and those who would like to reclaim it.”
Or as Gen. Allen put it in an essay earlier this year, “I can say with certainty that what we’re facing in northern Iraq is only partly about Iraq. It is about the region and potentially the world as we know it.”
Mr. Rago is a member of the Journal editorial board.
-
December 30, 2014
Bureaucracy Keeps Doing Its Thing
http://20committee.com/
On the weekend, The New York Times ran an interesting story about how U.S. Army Major General Michael Nagata, the commander of our Special Operations Forces (SOF) in the Middle East, has been reaching out to experts far beyond the Pentagon, the Intelligence Community (IC), and the U.S. Government altogether, to better understand what drives the Islamic State. Since that war is clearly not going very well, and MG Nagata’s elite forces form the point of the spear there, listening to alternative voices is always commendable. As NYT noted:
Business professors, for example, are examining the Islamic State’s marketing and branding strategies. “We do not understand the movement, and until we do, we are not going to defeat it,” [Nagata] said, according to the confidential minutes of a conference call he held with the experts. “We have not defeated the idea. We do not even understand the idea.”
Who is we, General? This is not to pick on Nagata, whom I’ve never met but who possesses a fine reputation in the snake-eater community, but in the more than thirteen years since the 9/11 attacks on New York and Washington, DC, the Pentagon and the IC have spent shocking sums of money trying to understand the enemy, what is properly termed Salafi jihadism. They have consulted experts, inside and outside the Beltway, constantly, for years, hiring them for every imaginable sort of briefing, roundtable, seminar, and professorial BS-session.
I know, because I’ve had a front-row seat. Before I left the IC in 2005, I was an inside expert on what used to be termed “Al-Qa’ida and Associated Movements,” and since then I’ve been an outside expert, and I’ve been called upon to offer counsel on numerous aspects of the Salafi jihad. Many and diverse are the voices that have proffered their advice to the U.S. Government since 9/11. Over the years, I’ve offered my views to various IC agencies and the Pentagon, plus Special Operations Command (SOCOM), which is charged with waging whatever we’re calling the Global War on Terrorism this week. Expert advice is one thing SOCOM cannot claim there has been any shortage of.
Frankly, if MG Nagata thinks “we” don’t understand Salafi jihadism, he’s the one who’s not been paying attention. To be fair, he’s spent the last dozen years kicking in doors rather than reading books and listening to lectures on Salafi jihadism, but this begs the question why he’s been given such an important task, heading up SOF in Central Command, when the defeat of the Islamic State is urgently required, if he’s not clear who the enemy is and what makes him tick.
Salafi jihadism is not an especially complex ideology — see my book on Al-Qa’ida’s strategic and operational thinking, and throw in my book on its development in the 1990’s for a chaser — and the Islamic State variant, which is simply a particularly virulent strain of the Salafi jihadist bacillus, is so dumbed-down for the Internet age that its barbaric essentials can be clearly enunciated in a half-hour. There are dozens of fine books, covering every aspect of the enemy’s worldview, that I can recommend to anybody who would like to read them.
You don’t get to be general in today’s U.S. Army by being a scholar or bookworm, not even in the SOF world, which is a bit more tolerant of oddballs than the regular combat arms. Acting like a scholar-warrior is sometimes beneficial — see David Petraeus, who knew how to act like one, despite because of his shake-n-bake Ph.D. and lack of scholarly output; Dan Bolger, who recently retired as a three-star, did less well as an actual scholar-warrior who wrote books and had real ideas.
The Army — the same is true, to varying degrees, of all our armed services — promotes officers on their ability to command, not their ability to know things. Whether this is wise, in the 21st century, is an open question. It seems to have gotten us nothing but strategic defeat in Iraq and Afghanistan, as LTG (ret) Bolger has recently explained, painfully and accurately.
Why the U.S. military cannot process and “weaponize” the often excellent outside advice it pays large sums of money for is also an important question. Gigantism is a serious problem: DoD and the IC are so huge and sprawling that getting the right message out in a coherent fashion seems impossible. Neither do personnel policies help. The military’s professional development and assignments process makes developing serious expertise in anything challenging in the extreme, unless an officer is willing to commit career suicide. Short tours “in country” likewise prevent the development of necessary knowledge on the ground. Simply put, the Pentagon and the spooks have assembled a “kill chain” without precedent in military history, between drones, related technology, and SOF that are the envy of the world, but such tactical prowess does not strategic success make.
None of these problems can be said to be new. We have repeated many of the identical shortcomings that plagued the Pentagon in Vietnam, where knowledge of how to do counterinsurgency was never the problem: actually doing it successfully was. A key role was played by the CIA officer Robert Komer, known universally as “Blowtorch Bob” for his intellectual tactlessness; it says something that Komer relished the nickname. Komer was a very smart man whose unstated role in Saigon was that of professional gadfly/asshole.
A Harvard man with the vanity to match, after Army service in World War II Komer joined the newly established CIA and made a successful career untangling knotty problems. In Vietnam, he became the dog who caught the car, being appointed the counterinsurgency “czar” in 1967, charged with heading the multi-agency effort to defeat the insurgent Viet Cong. This he was unable to do, despite enormous energy and self-confidence, plus having the ear of President Lyndon Johnson. In the end, bureaucratic dysfunction, civilian and military, proved too great a challenge for Komer’s indefatigable energy. The Pentagon system was as much an adversary as the Viet Cong, despite — or perhaps because of — the huge sums spent on counterinsurgency in Vietnam.
As payback in the guise of analysis, he authored an epic study for RAND of what went wrong, memorably titled Bureaucracy Does Its Thing. It is required reading for anybody who wants to understand what befell American-led pacification in Vietnam, while for veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan it will be an uncomfortably “living document.” To be fair to Komer, the bureaucratic mess he could not untangle in Vietnam may appear a paragon of efficiency compared to the literally incomprehensible disaster the Pentagon has made of reconstruction in Afghanistan.
American politics are often a hindrance to success too. Admiral Bill McRaven, who headed SOCOM from 2011 to 2014, representing the rare four-star man of action with a vision to match, proved unable to overcome Congress, despite having the huge cachet of being the SEAL who oversaw the killing of Osama bin Laden. McRaven’s vision was to develop SOCOM into a Combatant Command actually capable of waging the war on terrorism strategically, templating what worked in the Greater Middle East globally. That admirable vision, however, broke up on the rocks of Congress.
The problem is that, thanks to an accident of history, SOCOM is headquartered in Tampa, far from the Beltway and therefore is “out of the loop” on a lot of important discussions: nothing beats face-time, as any spook will tell you. To make matters worse, SOCOM has long been a dumping ground for DoD civilians who prefer the easy life of Florida’s Suncoast to Beltway games, with the result that most of its permanent staff, its institutional memory, can be charitably termed second-rate, with a more than minor element comprised of what the Pentagon terms ROJ: Retired on the Job. It does not help matters that no snake-eater worth his salt wants to be in Tampa, thousands of miles from the action that makes careers.
To remedy this, McRaven established a Washington, DC, beachhead for SOCOM, to work seamlessly with the alphabet soup of agencies that enables its top secret mission, plus Congress too. If the Command could not be moved from Tampa, a little bit of it could move inside the Beltway. This Congress would not allow. Despite the fact that no jobs would be transferred from Tampa — the DC office would be new positions, and only a few dozen of them — Congress balked and killed the idea over the usual petty concerns. Thus does SOCOM remain out of the game on many important issues, which may partially explain why General Nagata does not know things he really should.
The problem of not knowing things they need to extends far below the general officer ranks, however. Nobody knowing anything is a broader problem, as I’ve explained before, that plagues the entire U.S. Government. The military’s version, however, is caused in large part by personnel policies that rotate officers out before they can learn much about the job and its particular problems. The old wag that America did not fight a ten-year war in Vietnam, it fought ten one-year wars, has been more or less repeated in Iraq and Afghanistan.
To provide a concrete example, a few years ago I paid a visit to a four-star “in theater” who was having problems getting a handle on the local Islamic radical network which, in customary fashion, was entangled with tribalism, organized crime, and opaque personal politics. This was a country and network I knew well so I became the small-scale Komeresque dog who caught the car, being tasked with untangling a bona fide mess.
Unlike many four-stars, this was one who, frustrated with a lack of answers to his questions from his own staff, was eager to listen to what a mere civilian/reservist had to say. He wanted to be an intelligence analyst, deep down — this is less uncommon in the top ranks than one might imagine — so we spread out a vast chart, bigger than the biggest table his command had, poring over the line-and-block diagrams elaborating various radical networks (this is the sort of thing the IC loves, an impressive-looking layout to compensate for lack of vital information). The command’s intel shop (the Two or Deuce in local parlance), a couple dozen people with reachback to all the IC agencies back home, with their vast databases, had pulled together an “order of battle” of the local radical network based on all the Top Secret SIGINT and HUMINT they could find.
While they knew who the top half-dozen radicals in-country were, there was simply nothing to link them; based on reams of most classified U.S. and Allied intelligence, obtained at vast sums of money, there was no connection: their sub-networks, of myriad thug-groups and fronts, did not touch. What was going on here, our four-star wanted to know. So I told him.
These half-dozen Islamist baddies had served together in military intelligence under the previous regime; half of them had served in the very same unit. They were old comrades.
The four-star’s face went ashen. Then a stream of expletives burst forth, beginning with “Why the f*** did you not tell me this?” aimed at his intelligence chief, and going downhill from there.
“Um, we didn’t know, sir,” was the unsatisfactory reply. The four-star pointed at me, asking: “How the hell did you know this?”
“Everybody knows this, sir,” I answered, truthfully. I explained that these connections were well known to locals, they were anything but secret. They had even been discussed in the local media. But nobody in the command bothered to read the local media in detail, or even could, so they missed what the average fruit vendor on the streets of the city was aware of.
As usual, we had a whole command full of generalists, people skilled at writing intelligence assessments but incapable of grasping how the country there were in actually functioned. In a few months, every single officer who got yelled at in that SCIF would move on, to be replaced by equally smart yet uninformed staffers who can send countless RFIs (Requests For Information) back to DIA, NSA, and CIA, but don’t actually know much about the country they’re standing in.
This is the American system. This is how we wage war. This is why we keep losing.
The U.S. military is superbly equipped and magnificently trained, at great expense. Its special operators represent a secret killing machine without equal. Our troops are intelligent and well educated. They are, however, not always informed.
Eschewing genuine expertise and knowledge is a choice. One the Pentagon keeps making. We will keep losing wars until we make different choices. In the meantime, there are platoons of outside experts willing to share their expertise, at princely sums, to generals and their staffs…over and over again. Bureaucracy will keep doing its thing.
P.S. I am aware that this piece will result in me being pronounced persona non grata at the Pentagon, but if this plea saves one American life, much less prevents a winnable war from being lost, I am happy.
-
Kurdish forces, supported by coalition airstrikes, have seized a key district in the northern Syrian town of Kobani (Ayn al-Arab), near the Turkish border, according to Kurdish officials and the British-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights. Syrian and Iraqi Kurdish forces overtook the security district, including the police headquarters, following clashes with Islamic State fighters that broke out on Sunday night. Kurdish forces say they control about 80 percent of the town, with Islamic State fighters still holding the eastern districts of Maqtala and Kani Kordan. Meanwhile, the Observatory reported a top official in the Islamic State’s self-declared police force was found beheaded in eastern Syria.
Iraq
A suicide bombing and clashes with Islamic State fighters killed at least 23 Iraqi soldiers and pro-government Sunni militiamen in the town of al-Baghdadi in Iraq’s western Anbar province on Tuesday. The Pentagon reported Monday that U.S. troops have begun training Iraqi military forces at two bases in Iraq, in Anbar and Taji, though training was not expected to begin at bases in Irbil or Besmaya for several more weeks. On Tuesday, Iraqi Defense Minister Khaled al-Obeidi said the Iraqi military has started rebuilding, though he noted, “We are still in the very early steps.”
-
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/01/09/nasrallah-cartoons_n_6443530.html?ncid=fcbklnkushpmg00000014
-
http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2015/01/charlie-hebdo-the-time-of-the-assassins-114115.html#.VLK5AHtUWAg
-
http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2015/01/charlie-hebdo-the-time-of-the-assassins-114115.html#.VLK5AHtUWAg
The core problem is the jihadists aren't radicals, they are orthodox Muslims.
-
Jihadism in 2014: Assessing the Islamic State
Security Weekly
January 8, 2015 | 09:00 GMT Print Text Size
By Scott Stewart
Editor's Note: The following is the third installment of a series examining how the global jihadist movement evolved in 2014.
As noted in part one of this series, the largest change in the jihadist movement in 2014 was the split between al Qaeda and the Islamic State. In part 4 of the 2013 Gauging the Jihadist Movement series, we discussed the tensions between al Qaeda and the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant, as the organization was referred to then. We also noted that the group was the most powerful of the regional jihadist franchises, that it was growing in power and that it had the potential to be the next jihadist group to establish an emirate. Finally, we noted our belief that this growing power was going to draw the attention of the Unites States and its allies, who do not want to permit the emergence of a jihadist emirate in the heart of the Middle East.
However, while we correctly outlined the general trends that were going to transpire, the actual scope of how those trends played out caught us by surprise. We simply did not foresee the organization being able to conquer as much land in Iraq as it did, with the speed that it did. Also, while Stratfor has long been concerned about the capabilities of the Iraqi security services after the U.S. withdrawal, we were surprised by how quickly the U.S.-trained and -equipped Iraqi army broke and fled in the face of attacks by a far smaller and lesser-equipped force. We were also caught off guard at the way the generally well-regarded Kurdish peshmerga was initially driven back during the Islamic State's offensive into Iraq.
In that context, we will examine the Islamic State in terms of its goals and by comparing its stated aims to insurgent and terrorist theory.
Goals
Despite its current ideological squabbling with al Qaeda, and the pointed criticism of al Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri that was discussed in part two of this series, the Islamic State nevertheless continues to pursue the broad strategy al-Zawahiri outlined in a 2005 letter he sent to Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the founder of the group that has become the Islamic State.
In that letter, al-Zawahiri wrote: "It has always been my belief that the victory of Islam will never take place until a Muslim state is established in the manner of the Prophet in the heart of the Islamic world." He also noted that the first step in such a plan was to expel the Americans from Iraq. The second stage was to establish an emirate and expand it into a larger caliphate. The third stage was then to attack the secular countries surrounding Iraq (Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Syria and Jordan) and bring them into the caliphate. The fourth step was to use the power of the combined caliphate to attack Israel.
Inspired by al-Zawahiri's letter, and emboldened by successes on the battlefield despite the death of al-Zarqawi in a U.S. airstrike, al-Zarqawi's group renamed itself the Islamic State in Iraq in 2006, thereby declaring the establishment of a jihadist polity in Iraq. While the group was severely weakened as a result of the U.S. surge of forces into Iraq and the corresponding Anbar Awakening in the Sunni areas of the country that began in 2007, the organization never let go of its goals. It rebuilt after the 2011 U.S. withdrawal from Iraq and took advantage of the civil war in Syria. Following a successful military campaign to seize large portions of the Sunni areas in Iraq, on June 29, 2014, the Islamic State organization announced not only the re-establishment of an emirate but also of a caliphate and demanded that all Muslims pay homage to Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, who is now known as Caliph Ibrahim.
The Islamic State currently controls large sections of Syria and Iraq, including significant portions of Syria's energy production apparatus. It also controls Iraq's second-largest city, Mosul, having assembled the largest and best-equipped jihadist armed force ever. It has therefore accomplished a great deal over the past year. However, jihadist emirates have been relatively short-lived, including the previously declared Islamic State in Iraq and the emirate declared by al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb in northern Mali in 2012. They have also been destroyed by foreign intervention, and it is very likely that the Islamic State will find it extremely difficult to hold onto its gains in the face of the concerted international campaign against it.
Insurgency and Terrorism
The militants of the Islamic State have been fighting an insurgent war in Iraq for more than a decade now. They have also been heavily involved in the Syrian civil war since 2011. Through numerous battles in Iraq and Syria, the military leadership of the Islamic State learned hard lessons from attempting to stand toe-to-toe with the U.S. military in Fallujah (twice) and Ramadi. There have also been brutal conflicts with Syrian and Iraqi armed forces and an assortment of militant groups such as Hezbollah and Jabhat al-Nusra — the al Qaeda franchise group in Syria that split from the Islamic State. As seen from its dramatic gains on the battlefield in 2014, the Islamic State has grown quite competent at guerrilla and mobile, light infantry warfare.
Much of the Islamic State's battlefield success came from the fact that it has accepted many former Sunni Iraqi military officers into its ranks, leaders who lost their positions after Saddam Hussein fell. These former soldiers have shown the ability to plan operations, handle logistics, and even operate and maintain heavy weapons systems captured from the Syrian and Iraqi militaries. Experienced militants from Libya, Chechnya and elsewhere have also bolstered the Iraqi contingent. The Islamic State's ability to employ heavy weapons like tanks and artillery greatly assisted its offensive operations in 2014.
While the Iraqi soldiers brought a good deal of military experience to the group, they have not been able to provide much in the way of terrorist tradecraft. Indeed, the Iraqi government was fairly successful in its military campaigns against its own minorities and other regional powers, such as the Kuwaitis and Iranians. However, Iraq struggled to project power transnationally through terrorism.
Hussein's government supported numerous terrorist groups with logistics and training facilities, but others carried out much of the terrorist tradecraft training conducted in those camps. Saddam's military and intelligence personnel were masters at instilling terror in their native population, but they never really mastered transnational terrorism tradecraft themselves.
The Iraqi government's lack of transnational terrorist tradecraft was plainly evident in January 1991 when it launched a string of botched and thwarted attacks across Asia, to include Manila, Jakarta, Bangkok and Beijing. Despite having the luxury of being able to send terrorist materials to intelligence officers assigned to its embassies, for passage to their terrorist teams via the diplomatic pouch, these would-be terrorists committed egregious technical and operational security mistakes. First, because of faulty timers, their bombs either failed to go off or killed their own operatives. Second, their operatives were traveling on sequentially numbered Iraqi tourist passports, and once that sequence was discovered, their terrorist teams were quickly rounded up in a number of countries.
The Hussein government's transnational terrorism incompetence was again displayed in April 1993 when the Iraqi intelligence service attempted to assassinate former U.S. President George HW Bush in Kuwait City. The Iraqis used the same type of explosives used in the 1991 Asia attacks, PE-4A, and the explosives were even from the same manufacturer's lot number the Iraqi intelligence service had sent to Asia and elsewhere via the diplomatic pouch in 1991.
As we have previously discussed, the Islamic State and its predecessor organizations have never conducted terrorist attacks outside their region of operations, and even their efforts to launch attacks in neighboring Jordan have not been successful compared with their terrorist operations in Iraq and Syria. This lack of success stems from the challenges associated with operating remotely in hostile territory, a far more difficult task than operating locally and using internal communication lines. Indeed, projection of terrorist capabilities at the transnational level requires different elements of terrorist tradecraft than attacking locally. For example, in bombmaking it is far more challenging to construct a viable explosive device from improvised components than it is to assemble one using military-grade explosives and other ordnance.
This lack of capability to project terrorist power was evidenced by the Islamic State's call to grassroots jihadists in the West to embrace the leaderless resistance model of terrorism and conduct attacks where they live.
If the Islamic State begins working to develop the tradecraft capabilities required for transnational terrorist operations, we would expect to first see it display a greater ability to project force within its region before we would see it attempt to project force half a world away. We have recently seen reports of the Islamic State attempting to infiltrate personnel into Iran, Jordan and Saudi Arabia, but those efforts have been amateurish, as have the group's terrorist attacks to date in Lebanon.
Outlook
The Islamic State has surpassed al Qaeda's accomplishments on the battlefield, declaring a caliphate in an attempt to assume leadership of the global jihadist movement. However, as noted two weeks ago, we have yet to witness major defections of jihadists from al Qaeda to the Islamic state, outside of the Syria/Iraq theater of operations. The group's pointed criticism of al Qaeda for being too moderate and religiously flawed will likely serve to alienate those who venerated Osama bin Laden. The group's attacks on the Taliban, Mullah Omar and other Deobandi Muslims will also likely hurt the Islamic State's appeal to militants in South Asia.
It must be remembered that specific regional factors aided the Islamic State's growth — the brutal sectarianism in Iraq and Syria, for example — and the lack of those factors in other areas will continue to limit the group's ability to spread beyond its core locality.
The Islamic State has quite publicly tied its legitimacy to its success on the battlefield, essentially stating in Dabiq magazine and other outlets that its battlefield successes were a way to prove its claim to the caliphate and to show that it was being divinely favored. Yet, as the international campaign against the Islamic State progressed, the organization's offensive stalled and the Islamic State weathered dramatic losses on the battlefield in Kobani, Baji and Sinjar, to name a few. Indeed, it would seem that the reason the Islamic State continues to attack Kobani and suffer mounting casualties there is because of its propaganda claims. The city really has little strategic importance to it otherwise.
The U.S.-led coalition has also repeatedly struck at Islamic State-controlled oil infrastructure in an effort to limit the group's ability to finance itself through the black market sale of oil. Despite the Islamic State's recent public announcement of a $2 billion budget for 2015, its expected $250 million surplus for the year and John Cantlie's video assurances that the Islamic State's economy is fine, there are signs that the organization is struggling financially. Certainly, the group gained a great deal of money and goods when it seized banks, government buildings and military bases, but it is spending a lot of money to provide salaries for its fighters and services for the citizens of the cities and towns it controls. Anecdotal reports suggest that food, medicine and other essential goods are in scarce supply and that the residents of cities such as Raqaa in Syria and Mosul in Iraq are becoming unhappy with the many taxes the Islamic State has levied to support its economy. With very little other economic activity, shaking down the local population for "taxes" can work only for so long until people are bled dry.
The Islamic State also lost several key leaders, including its emir (governor) for Kirkuk, the head of military operations in Iraq, and al-Baghdadi's deputy, Abu Muslim al-Turkmani, a former lieutenant colonel in Iraqi special operations. While the group had some success in recruiting foreign fighters, replacing al-Turkmani, a savvy and seasoned military man with on-the-ground fighting experience, will prove difficult.
While the Islamic State will attempt to celebrate such deaths as martyrdoms, these losses, when combined with the loss of territory on the battlefield and financial hardship, will nonetheless work to undermine the carefully crafted claim that the Islamic State is a divinely favored and inexorable force.
There will be no huge surge of U.S. combat troops into Iraq to combat the Islamic State as there was the last time it established a jihadist polity in Iraq. Instead, the fighting will be done by Iraqi troops, from the national army, the Shiite militias and the Kurdish peshmerga. Because of this, it will take longer to push the Islamic State out of cities such as Mosul, especially if Islamic State fighters choose to dig in and fight to the end rather than flee. However, once its lines of communication are cut and coalition airstrikes have hampered its ability to mass forces, the Islamic State will find it very difficult to retain the caliphate it has conquered.
Read more: Jihadism in 2014: Assessing the Islamic State | Stratfor
Follow us: @stratfor on Twitter | Stratfor on Facebook
-
https://foreignpolicy.com/2015/01/15/this-is-not-your-fathers-hezbollah/?utm_source=Sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_term=*Editors%20Picks&utm_campaign=2014_EditorsPicks1%2F15RS
-
Saudi Arabia Plunges into an Abyss
Posted: 15 Jan 2015 04:59 PM PST
Last week, just before the Charlie Hebdo attack, ISIS sent a suicide team across the border into Saudi Arabia. Here's what happened.
The attack was successful. The team found and killed the Saudi general (Oudah al-Belawi) in charge of the country's nothern border zone at the outpost he was visiting (here's a pic of the state funeral for some of the men killed in the attack).
The target was significant. General Oudah al-Belawi was in charge of the multi-billion dollar Saudi effort to secure the northern border against ISIS. Not only has Saudi Arabia sent 30,000 additional troops to guard the northern border, it's building a highly automated 600-mi security wall to protect itself (lots of robots and sensors). Here's a great graphic of the monstrosity from the Telegraph. My take: What a waste of time and effort. Better to spend a couple of million on military strategists who have a clue (I have a couple in mind).
It demoralized the Saudi military. This attack deeply undermines the morale of Saudi troops on the border. If ISIS can kill a top general...
Saudi Arabia on the edge
Here why this attack is signficant.
It tells us that ISIS is starting to focus on Saudi Arabia --> with good reason. The reason is that there's simply no other way to unite the various groups under the ISIS banner. ISIS, like all open source movements, needs to keep moving in order to stay alive (like a shark). Right now, ISIS has stalled. A jihad to retake the holy sites from the corrupt regime in Riyadh can serve as a simple plausible promise that can reignite the open source war ISIS started, on a global scale.
The Saudis are vulnerable. The attackers knew exactly when the general was going to be at the outpost. This tells us that the Saudi military is rife with ISIS sympathisers and/or active members. If so, the Saudi military may melt away when facing jihadis (or switch sides) in the same way 30,000 Iraqi troops did early last year a couple of hundred miles to the north.
It explains the timing of Charlie Hebdo. Not only was it an attack that has gained ISIS favor with millions of Saudis (given how racist and anti-islamic the magazine's cartoons were), it was also (and more importantly) a distraction. It has successfully distracted the collective west, by pulling them into another "war on terrorism." This attack is something I call a Red Queen's trap, since it results in damage to both the contestants in the struggle.
What does this mean for Saudi Arabia?
Saudi Arabia knows it is in trouble, that's why the Saudis are trying to buy influence in the west through a cheap oil policy (at the same time, a low price puts the hurt on US frackers and ISIS oil smugglers alike). However, ISIS trumped this effort with Charlie Hebdo. It will be difficult for the Saudis to convince the west they are the real target after the attack in Paris. Here's what this means:
We're likely to see ISIS make a big push into Saudi Arabia this spring. This push may result in some very, very rapid gains by ISIS as Saudi troops melt away and/or join ISIS. The big question? If ISIS does gain a foothold: do the Saudi's accept foreign troops/airpower at the cost of their legitimacy, or do they go down fighting solo?
The oil price dip we're currently experiencing will rapidly reverse as soon as it's clear that ISIS is gearing up a real jihad to retake Mecca and Medina. $150 a barrel or more by the end of the year, once this gets going (or much more as it puts all of the gulf aristos in full panic mode simultaneously).
The rapid swing in oil price will plunge the perpetually stagnant western economies into a simultaneous rout. However, as bad as that will be, it will of little consequence compared to the damage the global financial system will do to us as hundreds of trillions of dollars in explosive financial derivatives topple the ziggurat of western debt we've so foolishly built.
-
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JFNVU2TyJF0#t=545
-
If ISIS could topple the house of Saud, we will really be living in interesting times.
-
Exactly so!
-
By David Francis with Sabine Muscat
Plans to expand air strikes against the Islamic State are stalled. The United States and Turkey still are unable to agree on priorities in the bombing campaign in Syria and, as a result, the expected expansion of American-led bombings is going nowhere.
The Washington Post’s Karen DeYoung: Syrian President Bashar “[al-]Assad’s military surrounds, and regularly bombards from the air, Western-backed moderate opposition fighters and civilians in Aleppo, Syria’s second-largest city, in the northwest corner of the country. Turkey fears that Aleppo’s fall would not only add to the 1.6 million refugees who have already crossed its border from Syria and Iraq, but also would undermine its main priority of pushing Assad from power.” More here.
Efforts to fight the Islamic State on the ground are failing. The United States has made significant gains with some 1,700 bombs dropped on the Islamic State, turning back the terror group in some places while slowing its charge across Iraq and Syria. However, Iraqi officials and tribal leaders said the lack of a political process to accompany these strikes is driving Sunnis to join the group.
The Guardian’s Martin Chulov: “Samarra to the north of the Iraqi capital and Sunni areas just to the south remain tense and dangerous, despite more than seven months of air strikes that have supported the embattled Iraqi military and the large number of Shia militias that fight alongside it. Controlling both areas is considered vital to establishing control of Iraq.” More here.
-
Have they tried dropping iPods with collections of Obama's speeches and coexist stickers?
-
U.S. Signals Shift on How to End Syrian Civil War
By ANNE BARNARD and SOMINI SENGUPTAJAN. 19, 2015
Photo
President Bashar al-Assad with troops in Damascus. In one Russian idea, his government and the opposition would share power. Credit Syrian Arab News Agency, via
BEIRUT, Lebanon — American support for a pair of diplomatic initiatives in Syria underscores the shifting views of how to end the civil war there and the West’s quiet retreat from its demand that the country’s president, Bashar al-Assad, step down immediately.
The Obama administration maintains that a lasting political solution requires Mr. Assad’s exit. But facing military stalemate, well-armed jihadists and the world’s worst humanitarian crisis, the United States is going along with international diplomatic efforts that could lead to more gradual change in Syria.
That shift comes along with other American actions that Mr. Assad’s supporters and opponents take as proof Washington now believes that if Mr. Assad is ousted, there will be nothing to check the spreading chaos and extremism. American planes now bomb the Islamic State group’s militants in Syria, sharing skies with Syrian jets. American officials assure Mr. Assad, through Iraqi intermediaries, that Syria’s military is not their target. The United States still trains and equips Syrian insurgents, but now mainly to fight the Islamic State, not the government.
Now, the United States and other Western countries have publicly welcomed initiatives — one from the United Nations and one from Russia — that postpone any revival of the United States-backed Geneva framework, which called for a wholesale transfer of power to a “transitional governing body.” The last Geneva talks failed a year ago amid vehement disagreement over whether that body could include Mr. Assad.
One of the new concepts is a United Nations proposal to “freeze” the fighting on the ground, first in the strategic crossroads city of Aleppo. The other is an initiative from Russia, Mr. Assad’s most powerful supporter, to try to spur talks between the warring sides in Moscow in late January. Diplomats and others briefed on the plans say one Russian vision is of power-sharing between Mr. Assad’s government and some opposition figures, and perhaps parliamentary elections that would precede any change in the presidency.
But the diplomatic proposals face serious challenges, relying on the leader of a rump state who is propped up by foreign powers and hemmed in by a growing and effective extremist force that wants to build a caliphate. Many of America’s allies in the Syrian opposition reject the plans, and there is little indication that Mr. Assad or his main allies, Russia and Iran, feel any need to compromise. The American-backed Free Syrian Army is on the ropes in northern Syria, once its stronghold, and insurgents disagree among themselves over military and political strategy.
And perhaps most of all, the Islamic State controls half of Syria’s territory, though mostly desert, and it has managed to strengthen its grip even as the United States and its allies try to oust it from neighboring Iraq.
Still, Secretary of State John Kerry declared last week that the United States welcomed both initiatives. He made no call for Mr. Assad’s resignation, a notable omission for Mr. Kerry, who has typically insisted on it in public remarks. Instead, he spoke of Mr. Assad as a leader who needed to change his policies.
Continue reading the main story
“It is time for President Assad, the Assad regime, to put their people first and to think about the consequences of their actions, which are attracting more and more terrorists to Syria, basically because of their efforts to remove Assad,” Mr. Kerry said.
On Thursday in Geneva, Staffan de Mistura, the United Nations envoy for the crisis in Syria, also signaled a tactical shift, saying that “new factors” such as the growth of the Islamic State, also called ISIS or ISIL, must be taken into account. He said there was no point in trying to organize a third round of Geneva talks before building unambiguous support from both the Syrian government and its opponents for some kind of “Syrian political process.”
The urgent search for a political solution, Mr. de Mistura said, must “bear in mind” not only the Geneva framework, “but also the need to adjust aspirations without preconditions, in line with the new factors which have come up in the reality of the area, such as ISIS.”
The shifts reflect a longstanding view among United Nations officials in Syria that the West must adapt to the reality that Syrian insurgents have failed to defeat Mr. Assad. Syrians on both sides have said frequently in interviews that they fear the growing influence of foreign militants, and while they mistrust all international players that have financed warring parties, they are willing to explore compromise with other Syrians.
Western diplomats who had long called for Mr. Assad’s immediate resignation say now that while he must not indefinitely control crucial institutions like the military, a more gradual transition may be worth considering.
One Western diplomat at the United Nations said that while a “post-Assad phase” must eventually come, “the exact timing of that, we can discuss,” as long as the solution does not “cement his position in power.”
Western leaders now openly talk about a deal allowing some current officials to remain to prevent Syria from disintegrating, like Iraq and Libya.
“The political solution will of course include some elements of the regime because we don’t want to see the pillars of the state fall apart. We would end up with a situation like Iraq,” the French foreign minister, Laurent Fabius, told a French radio station last Monday.
At the same time, such statements have further alienated Washington from ordinary anti-Assad Syrians and rank-and-file insurgents, reinforcing the idea that the West has decided to tolerate Mr. Assad.
The view that the United States supports Mr. Assad is spreading even among the groups receiving direct American financing, groups deemed moderate enough to receive arms and work with a United States-run operations center in Turkey. A fighter with Harakat Hazm, one such group, said Wednesday that America was “looking for loopholes to reach a political solution and keep al-Assad.”
Tarek Fares, a secular Syrian Army defector who long fought with the loose-knit nationalist groups known as the Free Syrian Army but who has lately quit fighting, joked bitterly about American policy one recent night in Antakya, Turkey. “This is how the Americans talk,” he said. “They say, ‘We have a red line, we will support you, we will arm you.’ They do nothing, and then after four years they tell you Assad is the best option.”
The United Nations freeze proposal tries to improve on efforts over the last 18 months inside Syria, where the government and insurgents have reached local cease-fire deals to restore basic services and aid delivery — most recently on Thursday in the Waer neighborhood of the city of Homs.
But those cease-fires have never had the imprimatur of international bodies, and they often collapse. With a few exceptions they have amounted to insurgents’ surrender to a government strategy of siege and starvation.
Juliette Touma, a spokeswoman for Mr. de Mistura, said that his plan would not resemble the past cease-fires, and that the United Nations, not the Syrian government, would be the guarantor. Yet even the modest Aleppo proposal is on shaky ground. While Mr. Assad has said he will consider it, his government has not signed off on the plan; Mr. de Mistura’s deputy arrived Sunday in Damascus for consultations.
The Moscow talks are arguably in worse shape. While Mr. Kerry said he hoped the talks “could be helpful,” several crucial opposition groups have refused to attend and say the United States has not pressured them to go.
That leaves American policy ambiguous, offering only modest verbal support to the new mediation efforts while continuing to finance some Syrian insurgents, yet not enough to seriously threaten Mr. Assad. Even a new program to train them to fight ISIS will not field fighters until May.
Critics argue that Washington is simply trying to disengage and offload the Syria problem to Mr. Assad’s allies, Russia and Iran, even at the cost of empowering them.
Still, any attempt to bring the parties to the table should be considered constructive, another Western diplomat said. “You can’t say to the Russians, ‘Go to hell.’ ”
Anne Barnard reported from Beirut, and Somini Sengupta from the United Nations. Reporting was contributed by Nick Cumming-Bruce and Michael R. Gordon from Geneva, and Ben Hubbard and Hwaida Saad from Beirut.
-
http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2015/01/19/islamic-state-terrorists-slaughter-13-teen-boys-for-breaking-one-of-its-oppressive-religious-laws-report/
-
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2918338/ISIS-fighters-killed-confirmed-ground-battle-Western-forces-attacking-Canadian-special-forces-training-Iraqi-troops.html?utm_content=buffer6350e&utm_medium=social&utm_source=facebook.com&utm_campaign=buffer
-
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2918338/ISIS-fighters-killed-confirmed-ground-battle-Western-forces-attacking-Canadian-special-forces-training-Iraqi-troops.html?utm_content=buffer6350e&utm_medium=social&utm_source=facebook.com&utm_campaign=buffer
They said if I voted for Romney, we have endless war in the middle east...
-
By
Julian E. Barnes
Updated Jan. 22, 2015 8:47 p.m. ET
217 COMMENTS
TAMPA, Fla.—The U.S. and Iraq have begun preparations for an assault by summer to retake Mosul, selecting and training military units and cutting supply lines to Islamic State militants who control Iraq’s second-largest city, the top American commander in the Middle East said.
Gen. Lloyd Austin, the head of the military’s Central Command, told The Wall Street Journal that the international campaign against Islamic State has inflicted significant damage. Opposing forces have reclaimed about 300 square miles of territory in Iraq and killed some 6,000 members of the Sunni radical group, eliminating about half its leadership.
U.S. defense officials have bristled under criticism from Iraqi officials and others that the campaign against Islamic State is stalled or moving too slowly. U.S. Central Command is eager to show that airstrikes are having an effect on the ground and that the American and Iraqi militaries have a plan to continue to drive fighters out of their key strongholds in Iraq.
U.S. officials said they don’t have a good estimate of the current size of Islamic State forces, although they were once estimated at up to 14,000. They concede that Islamic State fighters still control large parts of northern and western Iraq, but say much of the Kurdish-controlled areas have been reclaimed. Islamic State captured Mosul, a city of 600,000, in June at the start of its blitz across parts of Iraq.
On Wednesday and Thursday, U.S. airstrikes focused on cutting supply lines between militants who control Mosul and Islamic State’s stronghold in Syria. The planes conducted 18 strikes near Mosul and Sinjar, hitting Islamic State fighters, staging positions and armored vehicles, according to the U.S. military.
ENLARGE
A coalition of Iraq’s most experienced military forces, including Kurdish fighters known as Peshmerga and U.S.-trained Sunni fighters, would be ready by the spring or early summer to begin the offensive to retake Mosul, said Gen. Austin, the chief architect of the international military campaign against Islamic State fighters in Iraq and Syria.
Gen. Austin, speaking at his headquarters in Tampa, addressed questions about the pace of the campaign by saying the U.S. must wait for Iraq’s forces to be ready before moving.
“If we did things alone or with some of the other allies on the ground, it could move faster,” he said. “But the Iraqis have to do this themselves.”
Gen. Austin said he had not decided whether to recommend that U.S. ground troops accompany local units pushing into Mosul, but emphasized the military would “do what it takes.”
He said there are signs that Islamic State is having trouble finding new fighters—noting their efforts to recruit child soldiers and to forcibly conscript fighters in Mosul. The group “is beginning to experience a manpower issue,” Gen. Austin said.Defense officials said the estimates of the number of militants killed comes from the battle-damage assessments done by the U.S. after airstrikes. A defense official said the U.S. has a high degree of confidence in their count and that, if anything, it is a conservative estimate. Still highlighting enemy casualties is controversial, and even Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel said body counts haven’t been an accurate measure of progress in the past.
In talks with British Prime Minister David Cameron in London earlier Thursday, Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi said his forces needed more ammunition, equipment and training, a spokeswoman for Mr. Cameron said. In public comments, Mr. Abadi said the sharp drop in oil prices had devastated Iraq’s economy.
Mr. Abadi was in London for an international conference to discuss strategy in the fight against Islamic State. Secretary of State John Kerry told the conference the support for Iraqi efforts against Islamic State wouldn’t fail for want of weapons or ammunition. Mr. Kerry said a “very significant” number of M16 rifles were on the way.
In Washington, Mr. Hagel criticized earlier comments from Mr. Abadi criticizing the amount and pace of the American weapons supplies, saying the prime minister should be mindful of the efforts the U.S. and the coalition are making on behalf of Iraq.
U.S. officials say they believe the population in Mosul will support the Iraqi forces. But they expect a tough fight, with the possibility of booby-trapped houses and roadside bombs.
The U.S. has begun training new Iraqi security forces at four sites, according to military officials. There are about 1,000 Iraqis at the al-Asad base in Anbar province, 1,800 at the Besmaya base to the south of Baghdad, 1,300 at Taji base to the north of the capital, and 300 Kurds in Erbil—the capital of the semiautonomous Kurdistan region.
Those forces won’t be directly involved in the attack on Mosul. Instead U.S. commanders are urging Iraqi leaders to use those newly trained units to take over defensive positions around Baghdad and elsewhere and send more battle-experienced units to Mosul. Under that plan, Gen. Austin said two Iraqi divisions are expected to lead the force that retakes Mosul this spring, forces that will go to U.S.-run training centers in the coming weeks to prepare for the offensive. Those forces will receive four to six weeks training by the U.S. to prepare for the fight in Mosul, according to military officials.
Military officials say they face a challenge in convincing Iraqi leaders to release their best and most experienced units from the defense of Baghdad and commit them to the offensive. Senior U.S. officials have told Iraqi counterparts that the only way to ultimately ensure the safety of the capital is to push Islamic State forces out of Mosul and other key areas they continue to control.
“Most of the best Iraqi units are in Baghdad, and that is the thing we have to shake them free of,” said a senior military officer. “They are reluctant to let their best units leave.”
Last year, Gen. Martin Dempsey, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, raised the possibility in testimony before Congress that U.S. troops might need to accompany Iraqi forces during the Mosul fight to help call in airstrikes. Gen. Austin said he had made no decision but said he may request that the White House send in U.S. advisers alongside the Iraqi divisions.
“I am going to do what it takes to be successful, and it may very well turn out…that we may need to ask to have our advisers accompany the troops that are moving on Mosul,” he said.
But Central Command will not need to make a decision on whether to request U.S. advisers accompany Iraqi troops until close to the operations, Gen. Austin said.
He predicted Islamic State’s leadership wouldn’t be able to reestablish their supply lines, opening a possibility that Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the group’s leader, could be forced to abandon Mosul.
“He could make a decision to fight and retake those lines of communications, which I expect him to do. I expect him to ultimately lose that fight,” Gen. Austin said. “He could make a decision to leave Mosul altogether and go back into Syria.”
—Nour Malas, Nicholas Winning and Jay Solomon contributed to this article.
-
The King Is Dead, Long Live the King
Posted By Robert Spencer On January 23, 2015
Abdullah was dead: to begin with. There is no doubt whatever about that. Old Abdullah was as dead as a door-nail.
So what now?
The crown prince, Abdullah’s half-brother, Prince Salman, has taken over, but it might not be that easy. After all, it wasn’t too many years ago that people were speculating about what Egypt would be like under the rule of Hosni Mubarak’s son Gamal. And the accession of a 79-year-old to the throne does not give the impression that the House of Saud is vigorous and ready to take on the numerous challenges it faces.
And it faces many. This is not an optimum time for a transition. The House of Saud has headed up an obnoxious regime that has spent billions to prepare the ground for the jihad that is now aflame all over the world, by propagating its virulent view of jihad everywhere. Now the Saudis’ massive expenditures to export the jihad doctrine have come back to bite them in the form of the Islamic State, a self-proclaimed caliphate that denies the legitimacy of the House of Saud (and every other government other than its own) and has vowed to conquer it (and every other country, but it is right on the Saudis’ doorstep).
The Saudis want the U.S. to take care of their Islamic State problem for them. They can’t easily do it themselves, because they have taught their own people the idea that the umma, the worldwide Muslim community, should ideally be ruled by a caliph, the successor of Muhammad as the political, military, and religious leader of the Muslims, and so if they move too decisively against the Islamic State, they might be facing an uprising from within. Several weeks ago, a Muslim cleric from Saudi Arabia was killed while fighting for the Islamic State. And Sheikh ‘Aadel Al-Kalbani, former imam of the Grand Mosque in Mecca, has declared: “ISIS is a true product of Salafism and we must deal with it with full transparency.”
Salafism is what the Saudis have used their oil billions to spread throughout the world. And given the fact that Saudi Arabia’s plush rehab facility for jihadists has proven to be a spectacular failure, King Salman may be spending a considerable part of his declining years battling the jihadis to whom his predecessors gave their guiding ideology.
If, on the other hand, the Saudis don’t move decisively against the Islamic State, and Obama continues his cosmetic, face-saving airstrikes and continues to reject strong action of his own, Saudi Arabia may before too long be facing an invasion from without. Maybe not a full-scale invasion, but certainly an escalation of individual acts of jihad terror. In fact, Islamic State jihadis killed three Saudi guards at the Iraq border just a few weeks ago.
The Iranians, meanwhile, are always jockeying to become the leader of the Islamic world, and in that Saudi Arabia is one of their chief rivals. But Iranian-backed Shi’ite Houthi rebels have just won a major victory in Yemen, and Iran has just concluded a military pact with Russia. This could be the Shi’ites’ moment, in a way that could bode quite ill for the House of Saud. Vladimir Putin is clearly trying to reestablish Russia as a world power, and he may think that the death of Abdullah provides him with a grand opportunity to weaken a U.S. ally (however unreliable the Saudis have actually been as an ally). Perhaps now would be just the time for an uprising of the Saudis’ considerable and harshly oppressed Shi’ite minority, emboldened by the Houthi example and backed by Iran.
Could the death of Abdullah be the Iranians’ moment? Or the Islamic State’s? Time will tell – but one thing it is almost certain not to usher in is a time of peace and stability.
-
Iran, Obama, Boehner and Netanyahu
Posted By Caroline Glick On January 23, 2015
Originally published by the Jerusalem Post.
Iran has apparently produced an intercontinental ballistic missile whose range far exceeds the distance between Iran and Israel, and between Iran and Europe.
On Wednesday night, Channel 2 showed satellite imagery taken by Israel’s Eros-B satellite that was launched last April. The imagery showed new missile-related sites that Iran recently constructed just outside Tehran. One facility is a missile launch site, capable of sending a rocket into space or of firing an ICBM.
On the launch pad was a new 27-meter long missile, never seen before.
The missile and the launch pad indicate that Iran’s ballistic missile program, which is an integral part of its nuclear weapons program, is moving forward at full throttle. The expanded range of Iran’s ballistic missile program as indicated by the satellite imagery makes clear that its nuclear weapons program is not merely a threat to Israel, or to Israel and Europe. It is a direct threat to the United States as well.
Also on Wednesday, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was invited to address a joint session of Congress by House Speaker John Boehner.
Boehner has asked Netanyahu to address US lawmakers on February 11 regarding Iran’s nuclear program and the threat to international security posed by radical Islam.
Opposition leaders were quick to accuse Boehner and the Republican Party of interfering in Israel’s upcoming election by providing Netanyahu with such a prestigious stage just five weeks before Israelis go to the polls.
Labor MK Nachman Shai told The Jerusalem Post that for the sake of fairness, Boehner should extend the same invitation to opposition leader Isaac Herzog.
But in protesting as they have, opposition members have missed the point. Boehner didn’t invite Netanyahu because he cares about Israel’s election. He invited Netanyahu because he cares about US national security. He believes that by having Netanyahu speak on the issues of Iran’s nuclear program and radical Islam, he will advance America’s national security.
Boehner’s chief concern, and that of the majority of his colleagues from the Democratic and Republican parties alike, is that President Barack Obama’s policy in regard to Iran’s nuclear weapons program imperils the US. Just as the invitation to Netanyahu was a bipartisan invitation, so concerns about Obama’s policy toward Iran’s nuclear program are bipartisan concerns.
Over the past week in particular, Obama has adopted a position on Iran that puts him far beyond the mainstream of US politics. This radical position has placed the president on a collision course with Congress best expressed on Wednesday by Democratic Sen. Robert Menendez. During a hearing at the Senate Foreign Affairs Committee where Menendez serves as ranking Democratic member, he said, “The more I hear from the administration and its quotes, the more it sounds like talking points that come straight out of Tehran.”
Menendez was referring to threats that Obama has made three times over the past week, most prominently at his State of the Union address on Tuesday, to veto any sanctions legislation against Iran brought to his desk for signature.
He has cast proponents of sanctions – and Menendez is the co-sponsor of a pending sanctions bill – as enemies of a diplomatic strategy of dealing with Iran, and by implication, as warmongers.
Indeed, in remarks to the Democratic members of the Senate last week, Obama impugned the motivations of lawmakers who support further sanctions legislation. He indirectly alleged that they were being forced to take their positions due to pressure from their donors and others.
The problem for American lawmakers is that the diplomatic course that Obama has chosen makes it impossible for the US to use the tools of diplomacy to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons.
That course of diplomatic action is anchored in the Joint Plan of Action that the US and its partners Germany, France, Britain, China and Russia (the P5+1) signed with Tehran in November 2013.
The JPOA placed no limitation on Iran’s ballistic missile program. The main areas the JPOA covers are Iran’s uranium enrichment and plutonium reactor activities. Under the agreement, or the aspects of it that Obama has made public, Iran is supposed to limit its enrichment of uranium to 3.5-percent purity.
And it is not supposed to take action to expand its heavy water reactor at Arak, which could be used to develop weapons grade plutonium.
THE JPOA is also supposed to force Iran to share all nuclear activities undertaken in the past by its military personnel.
During his State of the Union address, Obama claimed that since the agreement was signed, Iran has “halted the progress of its nuclear program and reduced its stockpile of nuclear material.”
Yet as Omri Ceren of the Israel Project noted this week, since the JPOA was signed, Iran has expanded its uranium and plutonium work. And as the Eros-B satellite imagery demonstrated, Iran is poised to launch an ICBM.
When it signed the JPOA, Obama administration officials dismissed concerns that by permitting Iran to enrich uranium to 3.5% – in breach of binding UN Security Council Resolution 1929 from 2010 – the US was enabling Iran to develop nuclear weapons. Enrichment to 3.5%, they said, is a far cry from the 90% enrichment level needed for uranium to be bomb grade.
But it works out that the distance isn’t all that great. Sixty percent of the work required to enrich uranium to bomb grade levels of purity is done by enriching it to 3.5%. Since it signed the JPOA, Iran has enriched sufficient quantities of uranium to produce two nuclear bombs.
As for plutonium development work, as Ceren pointed out, the White House’s fact sheet on the JPOA said that Iran committed itself “to halt progress on its plutonium track.”
Last October, Foreign Policy magazine reported that Iran was violating that commitment by seeking to procure parts for its heavy water plutonium reactor at Arak. And yet, astoundingly, rather than acknowledge the simple fact that Iran was violating its commitment, the State Department excused Iran’s behavior and insisted that it was not in clear violation of its commitment.
More distressingly, since the JPOA was signed, Iran has repeatedly refused to allow the International Atomic Energy Agency to access Iran’s nuclear installations or to inform the IAEA about the nuclear activities that its military have carried out in the past.
As a consequence, the US and its partners still do not know what nuclear installations Iran has or what nuclear development work it has undertaken.
This means that if a nuclear agreement is signed between Iran and the P5+1, that agreement’s verification protocols will in all likelihood not apply to all aspects of Iran’s nuclear program. And if it does not apply to all aspects of Iran’s nuclear activities, it cannot prevent Iran from continuing the activities it doesn’t know about.
As David Albright, a former IAEA inspector, explained in a Wall Street Journal op-ed last May, “To be credible, a final agreement must ensure that any effort by Tehran to construct a bomb would be sufficiently time-consuming and detectable that the international community could act decisively to prevent Iran from succeeding. It is critical to know whether the Islamic Republic had a nuclear weapons program in the past, how far the work on warheads advanced and whether it continues. Without clear answers to these questions, outsiders will be unable to determine how fast the Iranian regime could construct either a crude nuclear-test device or a deliverable weapon if it chose to renege on an agreement.”
Concern about the loopholes in the JPOA led congressional leaders from both parties to begin work to pass additional sanctions against Iran immediately after the JPOA was concluded. To withstand congressional pressure, the Obama administration alternately attacked the patriotism of its critics, who it claimed were trying to push the US into and unnecessary war against Iran, and assured them that all of their concerns would be addressed in a final agreement.
Unfortunately, since signing the JPOA, the administration has adopted positions that ensure that none of Congress’s concerns will be addressed.
Whereas in early 2013, Secretary of State John Kerry declared that “the president has made it definitive” that Iran needs to answer all “questions surrounding Iran’s nuclear program,” last November it was reported that the US and its partners had walked back this requirement.
Iran will not be required to give full accounting of its past nuclear work, and so the US and its partners intend to sign a deal that will be unable to verify that Iran does not build nuclear weapons.
As the administration has ignored its previous pledges to Congress to ensure that a deal with Iran will make it possible to prevent it from acquiring nuclear weapons, it has also acted to ensure that Iran will pay no price for negotiating in bad faith. The sanctions bill that Obama threatens to veto would only go into effect if Iran fails to sign an agreement.
As long as negotiations progress, no sanctions would be enforced.
OBAMA’S MESSAGE then is clear. Not only will the diplomatic policy he has adopted not prevent Iran from developing nuclear weapons (and the ability to attack the US with nuclear warheads attached to an ICBM), but in the event that Iran fails to agree to even cosmetic limitations on its nuclear progress, it will suffer no consequences for its recalcitrance.
And this brings us back to Boehner’s invitation to Netanyahu.
With Obama’s diplomatic policy toward Iran enabling rather than preventing Iran from becoming a nuclear power, members of the House and Senate are seeking a credible, unwavering voice that offers an alternative path. For the past 20 years, Netanyahu has been the global leader most outspoken about the need to take all necessary measures to prevent Iran from becoming a nuclear power, not only for Israel’s benefit, but to protect the entire free world. From the perspective of the congressional leadership, then, inviting Netanyahu to speak was a logical move.
In the Israeli context, however, it was an astounding development. For the past generation, the Israeli Left has insisted Israel’s role on the world stage is that of a follower.
As a small, isolated nation, Israel has no choice, they say, other than to follow the lead of the West, and particularly of the White House, on all issues, even when the US president is wrong. All resistance to White House policies is dangerous and irresponsible, leaders like Herzog and Tzipi Livni continuously warn.
Boehner’s invitation to Netanyahu exposes the Left’s dogma as dangerous nonsense.
The role of an Israeli leader is to adopt the policies that protect Israel, even when they are unpopular at the White House. Far from being ostracized for those policies, such an Israeli leader will be supported, respected, and relied upon by those who share with him a concern for what truly matters.
-
As usual, Glick writes well. The point about Iran's ICBM capabilities is one that needs to be made front and center.
-
http://www.wsj.com/articles/kurdish-fighters-drive-islamic-state-forces-from-kobani-monitors-1422281825?mod=WSJ_hpp_MIDDLENexttoWhatsNewsFifth
-
http://pamelageller.com/2015/01/obama-cuts-off-syrian-rebels-cash-epicfail.html/
-
"He is just such a bald-faced liar"
Isn't that synonymous with the Modern Democrat party?
Thank you Clinton for setting the stage for lying to be so in vogue now we have a real tyrant in the WH who has used propaganda to the max.
Most voters don't care.
-
http://twitchy.com/2015/02/04/hard-core-jordans-king-abdullah-in-combat-gear-and-ready-to-fight-isis-photos/
-
http://twitchy.com/2015/02/04/hard-core-jordans-king-abdullah-in-combat-gear-and-ready-to-fight-isis-photos/
If true, totally badass.
-
http://www.breitbart.com/national-security/2015/02/04/report-u-s-prepared-to-rely-upon-iran-for-regional-stability-in-afghanistan-iraq-syria/
-
http://uk.businessinsider.com/king-abduallh-of-jordan-is-a-total-badass-2015-2?r=US
-
http://uk.businessinsider.com/king-abduallh-of-jordan-is-a-total-badass-2015-2?r=US
Who knew that by Obama's second term, we'd look at a King named Abdullah as a better option?
-
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2015/02/06/isis-barbarians-face-their-own-internal-reign-of-terror.html
-
http://www.nationalreview.com/article/398019/isiss-barbarism-has-logic-charles-krauthammer
Note his comments about Baraq choosing Iran over Turkey.
-
"Obama eschews Turkey, our most formidable potential ally against both the Islamic State and Assad."
Yes but Turkey is also under leadership that makes threats Israel routinely.
"But even they are mortified by Obama’s blind pursuit of détente with Tehran, which would make the mullahs hegemonic over the Arab Middle East. Hence the Arabs, the Saudis especially, hold back from any major military commitment to us."
Does anyone blame them? The US has proven time and again they will abandon allies for political expediency.
O has thrown Israel to the wolfs. He boosts up Iran knowing full well it's existential threat to Israel all for his political agenda.
-
The Lebanese army received on Sunday a shipment of heavy weaponry and ammunition from the United States. According to a report in the An-Nahar Lebanese daily, a ship carrying more than 70 American-made heavy guns docked at the port of Beirut. The weapons are reportedly intended to help the Lebanese Armed Forces (LAF) fight Islamist organizations who are attempting to infiltrate Lebanese territory from Syria. There is little doubt that many of these weapons will eventually end up in the hands of Hezbollah, a terrorist organization threatening Israel with destruction. A separate report on the IHS Jane's news site said the LAF has already received a shipment of M109 155 mm/37 caliber howitzers, which would provide it with a significant boost to its artillery capabilities. "The Lebanese military received 72 M198 power supply (howitzers), and more than 25 million rounds of artillery, mortar and rifle ammunition," the official said on condition of anonymity. The LAF "received about a dozen M109s supplied by Jordan via a third party transfer," the US embassy in Beirut told IHS Jane's. The howitzers were delivered in late January. An AFP photographer at the Beirut port also saw several Humvees, howitzers, ammunition containers and other military vehicles arriving.
In a statement, the US embassy said the aid is worth $25 million, adding that the 26 million rounds of ammunition included small, medium and heavy artillery rounds. "Support for the (Lebanese military) remains a top priority for the United States. Recent attacks against Lebanon's army only strengthen America's resolve to stand in solidarity with the people of Lebanon to confront these threats," said the embassy. It added: "The United States is providing top of the line weapons to the (Lebanese army) to help Lebanon's brave soldiers in their confrontation with the terrorists." The deal comes as Beirut faces a growing jihadist threat on its border with Syria. More than a million refugees have fled the war in Syria by escaping to Lebanon, according to figures from the United Nations. In September, France and Saudi Arabia signed a $3 billion arms deal for Lebanon, the Elysee Palace said following talks between President Francois Hollande and the Saudi crown prince. "We have come together, Saudi Arabia and France, to help Lebanon on the condition that it also helps itself, for its own security," Hollande added, without commenting directly on the joint contract. The French weapons are scheduled to arrive in Lebanon in early April, the French foreign minister's office said.
-
Middle East: The United Arab Emirates restarted its air campaign against the Islamic State, launching airstrikes from a base in Jordan Tuesday morning. American officials said that the UAE -- one of the most prominent members of the U.S.-led coalition against the Islamic State -- had halted strikes in December. The successful resumption of strikes was announced by the Emirates' state news agency, though it did not specify whether the airstrikes occurred in Iraq or Syria.
The deployment of Emirati F-16s to Jordan was announced over the weekend, in a show of solidarity after the brutal execution of Jordanian pilot Moaz al-Kasasbeh. The UAE had suspended its air campaign after Kasasbeh's plane was shot down, though it continued to provide logistical support. American search-and-rescue aircraft have since been moved closer to the battlefield to alleviate allies concerns about the safety of their pilots.
The decision to send aircraft to Jordan was motivated by "deep belief in the need for Arab collective cooperation to eliminate terrorism," according to UAE state media. Jordan announced that it carried out 56 airstrikes against the Islamic State between Thursday and Sunday, as part of the "earth-shattering" response it vowed after the murder of Kasasbeh.
-
Spook note: This came to me from an outspoken supporter of Israel. With that said, it does portray the murdered Ms. Mueller in a role much different than that portrayed in the mainstream US media. What id the truth? Does anybody give a damn? I wonder...:-(
*****
Before you shed too many tears for this latest victim of jihad, read this.
I guess we'll have to wait patiently for the inevitable stage play and motion picture about the "heroic Kayla Mueller"!
Subject: Kayla Mueller - Karma's a bitch for jihadi sympathizers
Kayla Mueller was a member of the International Solidarity Movement (ISM) who spent at least two years working with that terrorist support group. She was involved in demonstrations against the Jews in Sheikh Jarrah (part of East Jerusalem) after a 20 year long court decision recognized the Jews' legal rights to homes they were chased from in earlier wars launched by the Arabs. She also participated in demonstrations to interfere with the IDF demolishing the homes of terrorists and suicide bombers after the courts okayed the demolitions.
Just as with Rachel Corrie, the press tries to paint Kayla as a selfless volunteer helping poor Arab refugees. She may have helped injured Arabs in "refugee" camps, but she was working to support the goals of Palestinian irredentists and to interfere with the IDF on behalf of terrorist groups.
As an ISM activist she was a tool for the worldwide jihad.
A letter she wrote which appears on the ISM’s website describes the usual ISM claims of atrocities that never occurred, but were fabrications worthy of Pallywood.
First, she lived and rioted with other ISM activists with an Arab family that refused to vacate a home they were squatting in after a legal case that took 20 years established it was stolen from the Jewish owners.
She wrote propaganda letters for the ISM website:
“Just the next year in 2009 Ashraf’s brother, Bassem Abu Rahma, was participating in the demonstration and was attempting to communicate with the IDF soldiers telling them to stop shooting the steel-coated rubber bullets as an Israeli activist had been shot in the leg and needed medical attention. Not soon after an Israeli soldier illegally used a tear gas canister as a bullet hitting Bassem in the chest, stopping his heart and killing him instantly,” she wrote.
Of course, the Arab propaganda rag Al Jazeera told the story that way. This really occurred during one of the weekly riots in Bi’ilin in the West Bank where the Arabs demonstrate “nonviolently” by throwing rocks at the IDF soldiers as well as incendiaries. Kayla was there with the ISM to participate. Kayla admitted to being present at the weekly riots.
She was also a human shield in support of terrorists. She wrote:
“I could tell a few stories about sleeping in front of half demolished buildings waiting for the one night when the bulldozers come to finish them off; fearing sleep because you don’t know what could wake you. . . . I could tell a few stories about walking children home from school because settlers next door are keen to throw stones, threaten and curse at them. Seeing the honest fear in young boys eyes when heavily armed settlers arise from the outpost; pure fear, frozen from further steps, lip trembling.”
Most Jewish residents of Judea and Samaria are religious Jews. Many are professionals who wish to lead quiet family lives. They do not generally engage in violence, except for an aberrant few who sometimes engage in non-life threatening vandalism and are severely castigated by the rest. The ISM hit on a strategy of accusing the Jews in the 'West Bank' of what the Arabs do continually to Jews: throw stones, attack school children, destroy produce etc.
Another ISM strategy is to try and disable Israeli security tactics. One of the newer ones is to try and suggest that when the IDF uses tear gas to avoid lethality in controlling weekly Arab rioters, the gas is really deadly and must be stopped altogether. The real reason for this inversion about tear gas is the Palestinians and their ISM lackeys hope they can make it impossible for the IDF to control the weekly riots such as in Bi’ilin, riots Kayla was a part of.
“The smell and taste of tear gas has lodged itself in the pores of my throat and the skin around my nose, mouth and eyes,” she wrote. “It still burns when I close them. It still hangs in the air like invisible fire burning the oxygen I breathe. When I cry tears for this land, my eyes still sting. This land that is beautiful as the poetry of the mystics.
This land with the people who’s (sic) hearts are more expansive than any wall that any man could ever build. Yes, the wall will fall. The nature of impermanence is our greatest ally and soon the rules will change, the tide will turn and just as the moon waxes and wanes over this land so too the cycles of life here will continue. One day the cycle will once again return to freedom.”
Freedom? For whom? Another Arab dictatorship. Arabs who are Israeli citizens are free, but Kayla wanted the "free" Palestinian-state-to-be from the “river to the sea” as a good ISM activist. Her writings suggest the classical thought processes of pampered American student “radicals” and “revolutionaries” who can’t get enough of supporting dictatorships and terrorists overseas as liberation movements, the complete opposite of what they are.
“Oppression greets us from all angles”, she wrote. “Oppression wails from the soldiers radio and floats through tear gas clouds in the air. Oppression explodes with every sound bomb and sinks deeper into the heart of the mother who has lost her son. But resistance is nestled in the cracks in the wall, resistance flows from the minaret 5 times a day and resistance sits quietly in jail knowing its time will come again. Resistance lives in the grieving mother’s wails and resistance lives in the anger at the lies broadcasted across the globe. Though it is sometimes hard to see and even harder sometimes to harbor, resistance lives. Do not be fooled, resistance lives,” Kayla concluded in her letter.
This certainly doesn’t sound like a tireless “aid worker”. Instead, it connotes a supporter of Palestinian Arab terrorist groups. Her praise of the muezzin calls and “resistance” suggests she’s on the side of the worldwide jihad, not viewing all human beings, even Jews, as having the same rights.
Kayla Meuller made it clear she was involved in the weekly riots in Bi’ilin. She wrote of Arabs who died at the hands of the IDF, due to non lethal tear gas usage as if that resulted in several members of the same family who she roomed with dying. Rachel Corrie did the same thing, creating a story for the ISM of protecting an Arab family from IDF bulldozers. One family daughter Kayla guested with died in her own home, not at a demonstration. The fact was the woman was very ill, with leukemia and other internal infections. As in good ISM tactics, her corpse then became another propaganda tool. But like any good ISM activist, Kayla Mueller didn’t let this stand in the way of her propaganda letter home:
“And now just today, the daughter of the Rahmah family, Jawaher, has been asphyxiated from tear gas inhalation. Jawaher was not even participating in the weekly demonstration but was in her home approximately 500 meters away from where the tear gas canisters were being fired (by wind the tear gas reaches the village and even the nearby illegal settlement often). There is currently little information as to how she suffocated but the doctor that attended her said a mixture of the tear gas from the IDF soldiers and phosphorus poisoned her lungs causing asphyxiation, the stopping of the heart and death this afternoon after fighting for her life last night in the hospital. The following is a clip from today showing hundreds of Palestinians, Israelis and international activist carrying her body to her families (sic) home where they said their final goodbyes.”
The IDF doesn’t use phosphorous in the West Bank. The ISM always claims it does. It’s good for propaganda.
“This family has a tragic story, but it is the story of life in Palestine. Thank you for reading. Ask me questions and ask yourself questions but most importantly, question the answers. Forever in solidarity, Kayla”, she concluded.
Kayla Mueller came from Prescott, Arizona where she once volunteered at a women’s shelter. Instead of continuing to help those who needed it in America, she chose to take the ISM’s revolutionary path and to embrace part of the worldwide jihad and she died for it, tragically. But she was no true altruist. She sought “freedom” working to support fascist groups that provide just the opposite for their people and she paid the ultimate price for that choice.
-
second post
A major offensive by the Syrian army in its southern front, in cooperation with Hezbollah and Iranian elements, continued on Fridat, not far from Israel's Golan Heights border. Mere days after the start of the operation, the Syrian Armed Forces declared on Wednesday night that they had made significant achievements in the bloody land battles. So far, Assad's soldiers, aided by Hassan Nasrallah's Hezbollah fighters, successfully retook three towns in the strategic triangle that lies between the Damascus suburbs, Quneitra suburbs, and Daraa suburbs. These include the villages of Deir al-Adas, Al Dnaj, and Deir Makas, in addition to a number of strategic hills, as seen in the map. Media outlets associated with Assad and Nasrallah have been following events on the front very closely, broadcasting videos of land battles accompanied by heavy artillery, as well as the loot purportedly found in conquered areas. Hezbollah's Al Manar network claimed on Wednesday that they had found Ameriacn and Israeli equipment and weaponry alongside an Emirati aid package. Meanwhile, the media outlets have attempted to convey a sense of panic on the part of the rebels and local residents. Among other things, they reported attempts by rebels to reach an agreement with Assad's forces in the face of defeat. The rebels have tried to limit the damage, claiming that the areas taken by Assad's forces with the help of Hezbollah and Iran are insignificant. A look at the operation's targets reveals the army's hopes to drive the rebels and al-Nusra front further away from Damascus and its suburbs. They also seek to prevent the rebels in Quneitra and Daraa, who have over the last four years nearly become a united force, from linking up. The army further feels the need to regain control over the area adjacent to the Israeil border and the Quneitra crossing in particular.
Watch Here
The Asharq Alawsat newspaper reported on Thursday morning that a field commander quoted on Syrian national television said: "The military operation launched by the Syrian army in the south continues under the leadership of Syrian President Bashar Assad and in cooperation with the axis of resistance – Hezbollah and Iran." The Al Mayadeen network has begun referring to the "Syrian army and the resistance" as a single force when referring to the onslaught. Commentators linked to Hezbollah have also been openly admitting that the operation is by the "axis of resistance" and not just the Syrian army. The most senior is Ibrahim al-Amin, editor of the pro-Hezbollah daily Al Akhbar, who related on Wednesday that the so-called axis already decided to begin the operation to retake southern Syria before the airstrike attributed to Israel. "The decision to prevent southern Syria from falling into the hands of Israel's collaborators is more strategic than any other," he said, "and is equally as important as the decision to prevent Damascus from falling to these same collaborators. "The decision was made to allocate everything required to make this decision a reality, and everything required in case of escalation of any kind, direct or indirect, that could occur in the region, including the possibility Israel's involvement in further aggressive actions." Military expect and strategist Amin Hatit, known to be close to Hezbollah, told Asharq Alaswat Thursday morning that "the Golan front currently serves as an example of the first battlefront in which the three components of the axis of resistance (Iran, Syria, and Hezbollah) are operating. The axis is currently testing its capability for joint military action in the field, and it appears that the initial results surpass all expectations. Within 48 hours, goals were achieved for which ten days were allocated." Hatit explained that the operation has four strategic goals: "The first is to prevent the Israeli buffer zone protected by al-Nusra Front. The second is to consolidate the defense around Damascus. The third is directly related to the resistance in Lebanon, which is trying to prevent the opening of a southeastern front (near the Lebanese border), which would exhaust it and involve it in a war of attrition. The fourth goal is to block the American plan to open a war against Syria using the Jordanian option." Meanwhile, in light of the danger posed by the Islamic State group, the Lebanese army – together with Hezbollah – is expected to soon launch a wide-ranging security operation to prevent its advance.
-
"Karma's a bitch for jihadi sympathizers"
Interesting insight into the motives of this young girl. One wonders what someone like her is doing in a war zone. I mean really. What could one young lady do that is going to help anyone?
There is some romantic allure of being a "revolutionary". I noticed this when reading about Stalin and Lenin in the late 1800s and early 1900s. They think of themselves as gallant like movie actors fighting evil.
God and earthly devils only know what became of her. And near her own end she must have wished she stayed in Arizona.
Perhaps I read too much into this but it is interesting that Obama would send a few ground troops in harms way after HER death and not previous ones.
Taking up the Palestinian chant that they are oppressed by Jews is something he clearly believes in as did she.
-
I am reminded of the zen parable of the scorpion and the frog.
-
"I am reminded of the zen parable of the scorpion and the frog"
GM,
Would you explain? I am not familiar with this.
-
http://zen-story.blogspot.com/2010/10/frog-and-scorpion.html
-
Still one question. Who is the scorpion? The Jihadists or Obama?
-
Still one question. Who is the scorpion? The Jihadists or Obama?
I think either applies.
-
http://news.yahoo.com/battle-kobane-us-crews-recount-heavy-bombing-075326579.html
-
Obama’s ISIS Strategy Is Even Worse Than You Think
Posted By Daniel Greenfield On February 19, 2015 @ frontpagemag.com
“We can not win this war by killing them,” Marie Harf said on MSNBC.
Reversing thousands of years of battlefield experience in which wars were won by “killing them,” the State Department spokeswoman argued that you can’t defeat ISIS by killing its fighters.
“We can not kill our way out of this war,” she said. “We need in the medium and longer term to go after the root causes that lead people to join these groups, whether it is lack of opportunity for jobs.”
War is one of the few things in life we can reliably kill our way out of. The United States has had a great track record of killing our way out of wars. We killed our way out of WW1. We killed our way out of WW2. The problem began when we stopped trying to kill our way out of wars and started trying to hug our way out of wars instead. Progressive academics added war to economics, terrorism and the climate in the list of subjects they did not understand and wanted to make certain that no one else was allowed to understand. Because the solution to war is so obvious that no progressive could possibly think of it.
Harf’s argument is a familiar one. There was a time when progressive reformers had convinced politicians that we couldn’t arrest, shoot, imprison or execute our way out of crime.
We couldn’t stop crime by fighting crime. Instead the root causes of crime had to be addressed. The police became social workers and criminals overran entire cities. The public demanded action and a new wave of mayors got tough on crime. While the sociologists, social workers, activists and bleeding hearts wailed that it wouldn’t work, surprisingly locking up criminals did stop them from committing crimes.
It was a revelation almost as surprising as realizing that it does take a good guy with a gun to stop a bad guy with a gun. Addressing root causes won’t stop a killing spree in progress. (That’s another one of those things we can and do kill our way out of.)
But bad ideas are harder to kill than bad people. And stupid ideas are the hardest ideas of all to kill.
The same plan that failed to stop street gangs and drug dealers has been deployed to defeat ISIS. Heading it up are progressives who don’t believe that killing the enemy wins wars.
General Patton told the Third Army, “The harder we push, the more Germans we kill. The more Germans we kill, the fewer of our men will be killed.” That kind of thinking is passé. General McChrystal, Obama’s favorite commander (before he had to be purged for insulting Obama) had a much better plan.
“We will not win based on the number of Taliban we kill,” he said. “We must avoid the trap of winning tactical victories—but suffering strategic defeats—by causing civilian casualties or excessive damage and thus alienating the people.”
Under Obama’s rotating shift of commanders, we avoided the trap of winning tactical victories. Instead of following Patton’s maxim, American casualties doubled. The Taliban struck closer to Kabul while US soldiers avoided engaging the enemy because they wouldn’t be given permission to attack unless the Taliban announced themselves openly while avoiding mosques or civilian buildings.
“We will not win simply by killing insurgents,” McChrystal had insisted. “We will help the Afghan people win by securing them, by protecting them from intimidation, violence and abuse.”
But we couldn’t protect the Afghan people without killing the Taliban. Civilian casualties caused by the United States fell 28 percent, but the Taliban more than made up for it by increasing their killing of civilians by 40 percent. Not only did we avoid the trap of a tactical victory, but we also suffered a strategic defeat. American soldiers couldn’t kill insurgents, protect civilians or even protect themselves.
We’ve tried the McChrystal way and over 2,000 American soldiers came home in boxes from Afghanistan trying to win the hearts and minds of the Afghans. Many more returned missing arms and legs. The Taliban poll badly among Afghans, but instead of hiring a PR expert to improve their image, a Pentagon report expects them to be encircling key cities by 2017.
Unlike our leaders, the Taliban are not worried about falling into the trap of winning tactical victories. They are big believers in killing their way to popularity. As ISIS and Boko Haram have demonstrated, winning by killing works better than trying to win by wars by winning polls.
Now the same whiz kids that looked for the root cause of the problem in Afghanistan by dumping money everywhere, including into companies linked to Al Qaeda and the Taliban, think that the way to beat ISIS is with unemployment centers and job training. Many of the ISIS Jihadists come from the social welfare paradises of Europe where there are more people employed to find the root causes of terrorism through welfare than there are people working to fight them. So far they haven’t had much luck either.
The Europeans were still searching for the root causes of Muslim terrorism back when Obama was smoking pot on a dirty couch. They’re still searching for them even while newspapers, cafes and synagogues are shot up. Meanwhile unarmed police officers lie on the ground and beg for their lives.
Obama’s real ISIS strategy is even worse than his Afghan strategy. He doesn’t have a plan for beating ISIS. He has a plan for preventing it from expanding while the sociologists try to figure out the root causes for its popularity. American air power isn’t there to crush ISIS. It’s there to stop it from launching any major advances and embarrassing him too much. Meanwhile hearts and minds will be won.
At least those minds that haven’t been beheaded and those hearts that haven’t been burned to ash.
We won’t be falling into the trap of winning victories. Instead we’ll be figuring out how to create jobs so that all the ISIS fighters go home to Copenhagen and Paris where they won’t be Obama’s problem.
But while it’s tempting to believe that stupid ideas like these are solely the realm of lefties like Obama, it was Mitt Romney who announced during the final debate that, “We can’t kill our way out of this mess.”
“We’re going to have to put in place a very comprehensive and robust strategy to help the world of Islam and other parts of the world, reject this radical violent extremism,” he insisted, calling for education and economic development.
“Killing our way out of this mess” has become an orphaned strategy. Neither Democrats nor Republicans want to take it home with them. But killing our way out of wars used to be a bipartisan strategy.
Truman believed in a plan to “kill as many as possible.” Eisenhower could casually write, “We should have killed more of them.”
But why listen to the leaders who oversaw America’s last great war when we can instead listen to the architects of the social strategy that turned our cities into war zones?
What did Eisenhower and Truman know that Obama doesn’t? They knew war.
Truman cheated his way into WW1, despite being an only son and half-blind. He took the initiative and took the war to the enemy. They don’t make Democrats like that anymore. They do make Democrats like Barack Obama, who use Marines as umbrella stands and whose strategy is not to offend the enemy.
In Afghanistan, the top brass considered a medal for “courageous restraint”. If we go on trying to not kill our way out of Iraq, that medal will go well with all the burned bodies and severed heads.
-
http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2014/09/16/world/middleeast/how-isis-works.html?_r=0
-
Tell me this doesn't remind us of liberals arguments during the Clinton years like "it's all about his private life", or "what is is?" and the rest. Liberal legaleze arguments without merit again. Does it matter what we call our enemies? Nazis were not Nazis they were guys who had no jobs or bad mothers. Whatever:
http://news.yahoo.com/video/ask-experts-does-matter-call-205045955.html#/pentagon-laying-plans-battle-terror-113649291.html
-
http://www.ijreview.com/2015/02/255150-isil-terrorist-fails/
-
Taking Note - The Editorial Page Editor's Blog
Advocate for Syrian ‘Moderates’ Changes His Mind
By Carol Giacomo
February 20, 2015 3:01 pm February 20, 2015 3:01 pm
POTH
Predictions that so-called “moderates” in Syria could ever prevail over President Bashar al-Assad were always a long shot. Few had military experience. And throughout the civil war, now going into its 5th year, they have been fractured and unable to coalesce under a unified command.
But the opposition had at least one influential American advocate, Robert Ford, the former ambassador to Syria, who pressed the wary Obama administration to arm a vetted group of moderates so they would be more capable of carrying on the fight. When he left government last year, Mr. Ford went public with a blistering critique of American policy in Syria. Six months ago, he wrote an essay in Foreign Policy which asserted that “the moderate rebels in Syria are not finished.”
Now, in a stunning turnabout, even Mr. Ford seems to have thrown in the towel. In recent weeks, Mr. Ford has dropped his call to arms the rebels and is now faulting them as “disjointed and untrustworthy because they collaborate with the jihadists,” according to Hannah Allam of McClatchy News Service .
In a report published on Friday, Ms. Allam said that Mr. Ford still considers American policy in Syria a “huge failure” but is now also blaming the rebels for “collaborating with the Nusra Front, the al Qaida affiliate in Syria that the U.S. declared a terrorist organization more than two years ago.”
He also believes that opposition infighting has worsened.
Mr. Ford’s devastating conclusions come as the administration has been beefing up efforts to train and equip a new, handpicked rebel force to fight Islamic State in Syria. Turkey and the United States just signed an agreement to collaborate on that, the State Department said Thursday.
But Mr. Ford believes that effort is doomed to fail. Ms. Allam quoted him as dismissing as insufficient the amount of money invested in the project and asking: “What are they going to do with 5,000 guys? Or even 10,000 in a year? What’s that going to do?”
Good question.
-
Kurdish forces cut off a supply route from Iraq on Wednesday as part of an offensive against Islamic State militants in northeastern Syria. The Kurdish forces, supported by U.S.-led coalition airstrikes, are challenging Islamic State militants in Syria’s Hassakeh province, seizing more than 100 villages from the fighters and threatening to divide territory they control in Iraq and Syria. Amidst the Kurdish advances, Islamic State militants abducted dozens of Assyrian Christians from villages in the province. The Syriac National Council of Syria said 150 people were kidnapped, though estimates range, and some sources reported both civilians and fighters were seized. The violence forced hundreds of residents to flee to Hassakeh province’s two main cities. Meanwhile, Human Rights Watch released a report Tuesday saying Syrian government forces had dropped barrel bombs on at least 1,000 sites in Aleppo and 450 sites in and around Daraa in the past year, despite a U.N. Security Council resolution condemning their use.
Iraq
The Pentagon reported about $17.9 million worth of weapons, ammunition, and military supplies arrived in Iraq this week. The shipment came after the U.S. Central Command announced last week details of an operation to retake Mosul to be launched with U.S.-trained Iraqi and Kurdish forces, which could begin in April or May. Meanwhile, a series of explosions in and around the Iraqi capital Baghdad Tuesday killed 37 people, with the worst attack twin bombings in the southeastern Jisr Diyala district.
-
A Risky U.S. Proxy Battle Against Islamic State
Analysis
February 26, 2015 | 10:09 GMT
Rebel Jaish al-Islam fighters during a training session in rebel-held Eastern Ghouta outside Damascus on Jan. 11. (ABD DOUMANY/AFP/Getty Images)
Summary
The United States and Turkey signed a deal Feb. 19 to train and equip a new force of Syrian rebels as part of a broader plan to develop ground forces in Syria necessary to defeat the Islamic State. The United States worked closely with Saudi Arabia and Jordan to develop the plan and recently included Qatar as a core member of the training program. Initial training camps will be set up in Turkey and Jordan, followed by Saudi Arabia and Qatar. In the absence of U.S. troops in Syria or a viable partner among the rebels, the United States has decided to create its own ground force. As with all U.S. options in Syria, however, the move carries significant risks.
Analysis
The U.S. plan envisions the eventual deployment of around 1,000 U.S. troops under the leadership of U.S. Maj. Gen. Michael Nagata into the region. This force would include several hundred trainers who will cooperate with counterparts in the intelligence and military services of Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Qatar. Together, they will train the new Syrian rebel force in basic military tactics, firearms, communications and command and control. The United States also announced Feb. 18 that 1,200 Syrian rebels from moderate factions have already been screened and vetted for the program. The United States expects, however, to recruit the bulk of forces from the Syrian refugee population in Turkey and Jordan.
Training is set to begin this spring, with approximately 5,000 fighters trained each year. Turkey will train around 2,000 of these. A Wall Street Journal report Feb. 17 indicated that the United States also plans to provide the rebels trained under the program with additional firepower through specially equipped pickup trucks that they could use to call in U.S. airstrikes. The new training program will be one of the largest U.S. commitments in Syria to date, but there is a possibility that it could founder or backfire.
Past Rebel Support
This is not the first time that the United States has involved itself in the training of Syrian rebels. The United States and its regional allies have carried out smaller train and equip programs through the CIA. The results, however, have not lived up to expectations. The rise of Islamist militant group Jabhat al-Nusra in particular has made it extremely difficult for the United States to support the so-called moderate Syrian rebel forces. The United States has asked the rebels it supports to demonstrate that they have clearly broken with Jabhat al-Nusra to focus on fighting the Islamic State. But the moderate rebel factions find themselves eclipsed by the firepower of Bashar al Assad's forces and their only viable ally — one that has played a critical role in numerous battles — is Jabhat al-Nusra.
Moderate rebel factions that the United States has supported with weapons in the past claim that weapons shipments have been infrequent as well as inadequate and have not made their forces substantially stronger. What the weapons assistance has done, however, is caused other, more extreme rebel factions to brand moderates as U.S. collaborators and, by extension, collaborators with the al Assad government. The fact that the United States has avoided targeting al Assad's forces but has gone after Jabhat al-Nusra fighters as recently as Feb. 19 bolsters this claim, enhancing the vulnerability of moderate factions. Consequently, numerous powerful Islamist rebel militant groups close to both the Free Syrian Army and Jabhat al-Nusra, such as Ahrar al-Sham, have adopted Jabhat al-Nusra's view that Washington is as much an enemy as Damascus.
U.S.-equipped moderate rebel forces, particularly in northern Syria, have been unable to fend off attacks from Jabhat al-Nusra and its allies. Notable among these are the Syrian Revolutionary Front and Harakat Hazm. Fighters from Harakat Hazm and a number of other U.S.-backed Free Syrian Army groups have surrendered, disbanded, or even defected to Jabhat al-Nusra over the past few months. In the face of Jabhat al-Nusra's wrath, Harakat Hazm's core forces have had to seek protection from Jabhat al-Shamiya, a recently formed rebel coalition based in Aleppo province. Harakat Hazm has claimed, for instance, that its fighters had no choice given the disproportionate strength of Jabhat al-Nusra, but these events have understandably made Washington even more hesitant to increase support for the moderate rebels in Syria's north.
In southern Syria, however, the situation is considerably different. Here the Free Syrian Army units of the Southern Front have been far more effective in marshaling and organizing their forces. These units have benefited from increased support and direction from an operations command center in Jordan, in which the United States plays a key role. The continued support of the United States and U.S. allies has been a significant factor in the Southern Front's numerous victories over the past year. In spite of this success — and in spite of frequent official denials — even the Southern Front often works closely with Jabhat al-Nusra units. Jabhat al-Nusra forces, though outnumbered by the 30,000 Free Syrian Army fighters in the south, have proved useful in rebel offensives, often acting as shock troops spearheading attacks on strongly defended loyalist positions.
A New Effort
The United States cannot win its campaign against the Islamic State without ground forces, putting Washington in a difficult position. The political climate back home is against sending in U.S. ground troops. In Iraq, the United States can readily rely on local forces such as the Kurdish peshmerga and the Iraqi army, in spite of the shortcomings of these local forces. The rebel forces in Syria, however, have shown little desire to abandon their fight against Bashar al Assad in order to follow U.S. interests in taking down the Islamic State first. Even if the rebels could be persuaded, continued loyalist offensives on rebel strongholds would largely hamstring such efforts.
Syria's civil war is a contest of three forces, broadly defined as the rebels, the al Assad loyalists and the Islamic State. The United States hopes to bypass the fight between al Assad and the rebels in order to go directly after the Islamic State. One option to achieve this objective would be to increase support for the Kurdish People's Protection Units (YPG). During the battle for Kobani the United States provided direct air support to YPG forces. The Kurdish population in Syria, however, is a distinct minority largely unable to project a presence beyond the Kurdish-populated areas of northern Syria. Furthermore, the United States must include Turkey in tackling the Islamic State in Syria by virtue of Turkey's geographic, logistical and military position. However, Turkey is adamantly against strengthening the YPG beyond the measures already taken, fearing such policies will reignite its own domestic Kurdish militant movement.
The U.S. training program aims to circumvent the pitfalls of bolstering existing players by adding a new — and hopefully more reliable — force into the mix. Unlike the disparate rebel forces already on the ground, the new force can be drawn from refugee populations in Turkey and Jordan, making it easier for U.S. civilian and military officials to vet, monitor and advise troops with the help of regional intelligence agencies. The United States also plans to act as the key logistical power behind the force and to pay fighter salaries, shaping the force's actions.
Old Program and Allies Remain
Meanwhile, the United States and its allies will continue supporting Syrian rebel forces already on the battlefield. The United States has limited its support for rebel factions in the north, but Turkey has stepped in to play an enhanced role. The Jabhat al-Shamiya coalition created in December incorporated three of Ankara's favored rebel factions — Harakat Nour al-Din al-Zenki, the Mujahideen Army and the al-Tawhid Brigade — allowing Turkey to garner significant leverage. Turkey also provides the northern rebel factions with important supply lines that run from Turkey to Aleppo province, enhancing its leverage in potential negotiations with its partners on the future direction of Syria. It also allows Ankara to pressure the al Assad government as part of wider moves against the Islamic State.
In the south, Jordan is an increasingly willing key player. With the Islamic State's immolation of the captured Jordanian pilot, Amman has expressed desire to commit more resources to the fight against the extremist group. With the backing of the United States and the Gulf Cooperation Council countries, Jordan is poised to support future allied strategies in Syria, especially given its strategic location. Indeed, the Jordanians have already been a significant factor in the success of the Southern Front rebels.
Risks and Limitations
Though the new training program is an attempt to avoid the complexities of supporting rebel factions, it still carries risks. Even at this early stage, Turkey is invoking the possibility that the new force could be used to target al Assad's forces. In spite of all the measures in place to direct the new group's efforts, there is no guarantee the United States could prevent it from eventually clashing with loyalist forces. Damascus has also said its forces will attack any foreign group that does not cooperate with the government, increasing the chance that the new force will have to contend with the same distraction as existing rebel groups.
Iran is also heavily invested in sustaining the al Assad regime. More direct U.S. interference in the Syrian conflict through this new force — especially if it clashes with loyalists — will threaten critical negotiations between Washington and Tehran. Iran has embedded Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps units with Syrian loyalist forces, raising the risk of direct clashes with the new U.S.-backed rebel force. The most critical risk, however, is that a schism between the Iranians and the United States over Syria could spill over into what the U.S. considers the more important theater: Iraq. Iranian-backed Shiite militias could pose a threat to U.S. forces stationed there if the United States comes into direct conflict with Iran in Syria.
On top of these substantial risks there is no guarantee that the new force will succeed in defeating the Islamic State. Only 5,000 fighters are scheduled to be trained annually, limiting the force's size. The new rebel army can succeed only if it becomes a nucleus for other moderate Syrian groups and initiates a unified rebel effort in line with U.S. interests. With the many complications that could derail this process, this outcome is highly unlikely. However, in order to defeat the Islamic State, the United States needs a ground force. With no other acceptable options, Washington has chosen the least bad out of many terrible options.
-
http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/191966#.VPNJAC5UWAi
, , , and the Obama White House called Netanyahu chickenshit?!?
:x :x :x
-
Unbelievable. That wart hog face again. The one with his anti-Semite daughter on MSLSD. To think he was not given a job with Obama because he was viewed as anti-Israel.
They thought he would cost them a few Jewish voters.
What a laugh. We just got Obama. And the Jewish Democrats are silent. Indeed many are lashing out at Netenyahu. Not Obama who is selling down the radioactive Iranian freeway but the one guy who is trying to prevent the possibility of another holocaust.
They claim the Zionists don't speak for them on ads in between Mark Levins radio show. That they are Jews who support their country and their President. They are kidding themselves. They are not Jews. They are Democrats. They would be trashing the President if he was a Republican.
-
Benjamin N has more guts to stand up to Obama the tyrant than the vast majority of Republicans. Sad commentary on our politicians.
-
In fairness, I should note that article is essentially RumInt, but IMHO is quite plausible.
-
http://shoebat.com/2015/02/28/isis-jihadists-tries-to-capture-young-christian-girl-she-takes-out-a-machine-gun-and-slaughters-five-of-them-there-is-now-a-major-christian-militia-with-american-australian-and-british-christians/
-
Fourth post of the day:
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2015/mar/1/report-obama-threatened-shoot-down-israeli-warplan/?page=all#pagebreak
-
http://shoebat.com/2014/08/26/muslim-children-parade-heads-victims-crowd-muslim-adults-praise/
-
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/04/world/middleeast/iraq-drive-against-isis-reveals-tensions-with-us.html?emc=edit_th_20150304&nl=todaysheadlines&nlid=49641193
Iraqi Campaign to Drive ISIS From Tikrit Reveals Tensions With U.S.
By ANNE BARNARDMARCH 3, 2015
BAGHDAD — Tensions between Iraq and the United States over how to battle the Islamic State broke into the open on Tuesday, as Iraqi officials declared that they would fight on their own timetable with or without American help, and as United States warplanes conspicuously sat out the biggest Iraqi counteroffensive yet amid concerns over Iran’s prominent role.
On Monday, Iraq launched a politically sensitive operation to oust Islamic State militants from Tikrit, the birthplace of Saddam Hussein, without seeking American approval, officials said. Even as Iraq was taking a first step into a bigger battle to oust the Islamic State from the northern city of Mosul, it was also signaling that its alliance with the United States might be more fraught than officials had let on.
American officials, for their part, voiced unease with the prominent role of Iran and its allied Shiite militias in the Tikrit operation. Shiite militia leaders said that their fighters made up more than two-thirds of the pro-government force of 30,000, and that the Iranian spymaster Maj. Gen. Qassim Suleimani was helping to lead from near the front lines.
Alongside them were advisers and troops from Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps, operating artillery, rocket launchers and surveillance drones, according to American officials, who said that the Iranian forces’ participation in the assault in Iraq’s Sunni heartland could inflame the sectarian divide that the Islamic State has exploited.
The operation comes against the backdrop of Iraqi irritation with American officials after they declared that the assault against the Islamic State in Mosul, Iraq’s second-largest city, would begin in April and then backpedaled, saying Iraqi forces would not be ready until fall, if then.
Ali al-Alaa, a close aide to Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi, expressed frustration with what he described as a sluggish American pace and pessimistic American estimates of how long it would take to drive the Islamic State from Mosul and the western province of Anbar.
“The Americans continue procrastinating about the time it will take to liberate the country,” he said in an interview. “Iraq will liberate Mosul and Anbar without them.”
Abbas al-Moussawi, the spokesman for Mr. Abadi’s predecessor and rival, Nuri Kamal al-Maliki, said that there was “a crisis of trust” between the Americans and the Iraqis, and that “if they will not resolve this problem, we’ll have a big problem in Mosul.”
Still, the United States-led coalition continued to bombard Islamic State militants in other parts of Iraq. And a spokesman for the Defense Ministry, Gen. Tahseen al-Sheikhly, insisted in an interview that Iraq’s military cooperation with the United States was in fine shape, adding that American officials regularly participated in joint operation meetings in Baghdad that include representatives of Shiite militias.
American and Iraqi officials alike said that the Iraqis had not asked for American help in Tikrit, but some Iraqi officials suggested that was because they knew it would not be forthcoming. And while both sides said that the Americans had been warned of the operation, the defense spokesman, General Sheikhly, said that the “zero hour” — the start time of the assault — was known only to Mr. Abadi.
Continue reading the main story
Continue reading the main story
“We still welcome the international alliance’s support,” said Mr. Alaa, the prime minister’s aide. “But if they won’t be supporting us, we have no problem.”
How has ISIS, a 21st-century terrorist organization with a retrograde religious philosophy, spread from Iraq to Syria, Libya and beyond?
Video by Quynhanh Do on Publish Date December 13, 2014.
But progress appeared slow in the push against Tikrit on Tuesday, with no breakthrough in the Iraqi coalition’s efforts to enter the city. Iraqi military officials said they had reached the outskirts of Al Dour, just south of the city, and were advancing slowly after freeing 13 police officers held there by the Islamic State.
Mohammad al-Turkomani, a leader in the militias known as the “popular mobilization” forces, said that with American participation in Tikrit, “we would have moved twice as fast.”
Since the Islamic State swept into Iraq in June, Iran and the United States, longtime enemies that both support the Iraqi government, have maintained an uneasy de facto alliance against the group, with the United States-led coalition unleashing airstrikes, and Shiite militias aligned with Iran fighting alongside army and Kurdish forces on the ground. There have also been growing reports of Iranian forces’ directly joining the fight within Iraq.
The Americans’ discomfort has grown as Mr. Abadi’s government has been unable to mobilize significant Sunni forces to join the fight, something that American officials consider crucial to breaking the Islamic State’s hold on many heavily Sunni areas.
For their part, Iraqi officials increasingly complain that American support has not been as robust as Iran’s. Many Iraqis resent what they see as American squeamishness about the militias, which by all accounts have been crucial to holding back the Islamic State after regular army units fled its assault.
“Americans consider us a militia that does not represent the government, while we are defending the country and helping the government,” said Mueen al-Kadhimy, a leader in the Badr Organization, a prominent militia. “We are the people of Iraq.”
The Tikrit offensive could prove to be a first step toward driving back the Islamic State, or it could deepen longstanding sectarian and political divides that the militants have exploited to win support from some Iraqi Sunnis and acquiescence from others. The group has also used brutal intimidation tactics against Sunnis who reject it or support the government in Baghdad.
But at the same time, Shiite militias have been accused of reprisals against the Sunni population, many of whom regard them with suspicion and fear.
The Tikrit operation is the Iraqis’ first attempt to seize the area since June, when Islamic State militants massacred more than 1,000 Iraqi Shiite soldiers as they fled a nearby military base, Camp Speicher. There have been fears that Shiite militia members from the same areas many of the soldiers hailed from could take revenge on local Sunnis if they enter Tikrit, and some militia leaders have openly called the assault a revenge operation.
“There’s a risk there,” said one senior American military official, expressing concern that the Iraqi operations might not pay sufficient attention to the risks of civilian casualties from indiscriminate artillery and rocket fire.
But the American official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the ongoing battle, acknowledged that if the Iraqis and their Iranian advisers maintained strict controls on their targeting and the operation resulted in “fewer ISIS fighters and chasing them from Tikrit, that’s not unhelpful.”
-
http://pjmedia.com/tatler/2015/03/03/us-backed-syrian-rebel-group-collapses-us-supplied-weapons-end-up-in-al-qaeda-hands-unexpectedly/
-
A glaring omission to not discuss Iran's nukes, but Stratfor is never stupid.
A Middle Eastern Balance of Power Emerges
Geopolitical Diary
March 3, 2015 | 23:32 GMT
Text Size
Print
The battle lines of the Middle East are changing. The chaotic force of the Islamic State has pushed the region's major powers — Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Iran — to rethink decades-old relationships and regional strategies. Nowhere is this more apparent than the Syrian-Iraqi battleground, where a sectarian proxy battle has been the incubator for an emerging balance of power. Though it may look messy on the surface, this dynamic falls in line with the United States' long-term strategy for the region.
Many have criticized Washington's decision not to take a more direct role in containing the violence in Syria or to rely on local forces to combat the Islamic State in Iraq. But the United States' global geopolitical imperatives necessitate a balance of power in the Middle East in which regional actors shoulder more of the burden of managing their problems. Washington's refusal to be dragged back into another ground war in the Middle East is slowly bearing fruit, as Turkey is cautiously re-entering its former sphere of influence along its southern flank, counterbalancing the Saudi-Iranian competition that has fueled much of the violence destabilizing the Middle East.
We wrote last week about Egypt's attempts to craft an Arab response to regional pressures, focused specifically against the Islamic State and other regional militant groups threatening Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi's administration. Cairo lacks the geopolitical heft to shape outcomes in Syria or Iraq, let alone region-wide change. Egypt nevertheless is a crucial part of a broader attempt by Saudi Arabia, using its role in both the Arab and Sunni worlds, to reach out to Turkey in combatting both the Islamic State and an emergent Iran. The challenges are plenty, and regional Sunni cohesion may well prove as elusive as a stable Pan-Arab military alliance. If nothing else Saudi outreach has helped finish what the United States began: pushing Ankara to take a stronger role in the region.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and a delegation of Turkish politicians arrived in Riyadh this past Monday to meet with their Saudi counterparts, including new Saudi King Salman bin Abdulaziz. Few details of the discussions were announced, but both sides agreed to work together on Syria. The meetings, as well as the agreement, represent a marked shift in the relations between the Middle East's two main Sunni powers. Turkish foreign policy (especially under the leadership of Erdogan and his Justice and Development Party) has favored mainstream Islamists, to the consternation of the Saudi government under former King Abdullah. Saudi Arabia still views the Muslim Brotherhood and other Sunni Islamist democratization movements as threat to its long-term national stability, but the concurrent threats of the Islamic State and Iran call for a shift in tactics.
Saudi Arabia has also re-engaged Qatar — a state that, like Turkey, supports mainstream Islamists. This support has put them at odds with Riyadh and, at times, broadly in line with Iran (such as the three countries' opposition to the ouster of Egyptian President Mohammed Morsi in 2013). There are growing indications that Riyadh, Ankara and Doha now working together and supporting similar groups of rebels in Syria, in contrast to backing (sometimes violently) competing rebel forces. Especially in northern Syria, along the border with Turkey, groups like Jabhat al-Shamiya are beginning to enjoy a wider base of regional support, as Gulf actors are continuing to scale back support for more right-wing Salafist-jihadist rebel actors such as Jabhat al-Nusra.
In neighboring Iraq, Saudi Arabia and Jordan are working with disaffected Sunni Arab tribesmen to expand the Iraqi coalition battling the Islamic State, even as Turkey works with both Kurdish forces and Baghdad to strengthen Iraq's anti-Islamic State positions. This Sunni cooperation is not without its challenges, however. Both Turkey and Saudi Arabia would like to shape the futures of Syria and Iraq according to their own strategic interests, and Riyadh and Ankara are ultimately competitors for influence in the region. Both also have to deal with Iran.
Iran's influence over its western periphery has ebbed and flowed for some 2,500 years. However, since the fall of Saddam Hussein in 2003, Iran has been able to consolidate relationships in Iraq to create a Shiite arc of influence from its borders to the eastern Mediterranean. Iraq is the crux to Iran's Middle East strategy; it can serve as the launch pad for Iranian influence into the Arab world or, as it has so many times in history, serve as the staging grounds for a foreign invasion of Iran. It makes sense then that Iran has stepped up its direct military involvement in Iraq over the past week, with Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps forces participating with Iranian-backed Shiite militias, Iraqi army forces and a limited number of Sunni tribal elements in the battle for Tikrit.
Along with long-standing Iranian and Shiite backing of Syrian President Bashar al Assad government (Syria historically served as a critical route for Iranian material support to Hezbollah), Iran has increased its military presence across both Syria and Iraq in fighting the Islamic State. Whereas Turkey and Saudi Arabia are attempting to expand their influence into both states, Iran has been forced into a defensive position, seeking to retain elements of the influence it enjoyed in the period between the U.S. invasion of Iraq and the unrest of 2011's Arab Spring. This strategic reversal is one of the factors pushing Tehran to negotiate with the United States to help gain recognition of its footholds in the Arab world and safeguard its status as a regional power, albeit a weak one.
As the threat posed by the Islamic State gives rise to a tenuous working relationship between Ankara and Riyadh, the U.S. plan for a regional balance of power involves changing more than three decades of strained relations with its former ally, Iran. Iran's direct involvement in the battle for Tikrit raises questions over the eventual battle for Mosul, where Shiite militias are slowly increasing their presence and the United States plans to assist Kurdish and Iraqi forces in the fight against the Islamic State.
Coordinating with Iran is an incentive for the United States. Still, Washington cannot see Iran too weakened (or assertive), and direct competition between Tehran and Riyadh poses too great a risk of regional destabilization — necessitating a greater Turkish role in the region. And so we see the battle lines converging, overlapping and blending into an emerging balance of power.
-
States it was the Iraq invasion by the US that beget ISIS. Wait I thought ISIS birthed in Syria not Iraq. Also no mention of course that Baraq's removal of Americans out of Iraq left a void being filled by ISIS in the West of Iraq and Iran in the East of Iraq. I suspect that ISIS would not have invaded Iraq if we had a real US force still there and Iran would not suddenly be a ally in the fight against them.
****Monday, March 2, 2015 FULL SHOW | HEADLINES | PREVIOUS: Noam Chomsky: After Dangerous Proxy War, Keeping...
Noam Chomsky on How the Iraq War Birthed ISIS & Why U.S. Policy Undermines the Fight Against It
Noam Chomsky: To Deal with ISIS, U.S. Should Own Up to Chaos of Iraq War & Other Radicalizing Acts
Noam Chomsky, world-renowned political dissident, linguist and author. He is institute professor emeritus at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he has taught for more than 50 years. His forthcoming book, co-authored with Ilan Pappé, is titled On Palestine.
Who Bankrolls the Islamic State? Private Donors in Gulf Oil States Cited as Key to ISIS Success
Feb 26, 2015 | Story
Endless War? Obama Sends Congress Expansive Anti-ISIS Measure 6 Months After Bombing Began
Feb 12, 2015 | Story
Rep. Keith Ellison on Obama’s Push to Sign TPP & Seek Authority to Expand War in Iraq & Syria
Jan 21, 2015 | Story
Links
Noam Chomsky's website
Watch more Democracy Now! interviews with Noam Chomsky
Books by Noam Chomsky (Haymarket Books)
DONATE →
This is viewer supported news
Printer-friendly
15,552
SHARED
As Iraq launches a new military operation to retake the city of Tikrit from the self-proclaimed Islamic State, thousands of Iraqi forces and militia fighters have converged in the city Samarra to strike nearby ISIS strongholds. The United States is expected to provide air support as part of its continued bombing campaign. The offensive comes as the Iraqi military prepares for a major U.S.-backed operation to retake Mosul from ISIS in the coming weeks. ISIS "is one of the results of the United States hitting a very vulnerable society with a sledgehammer, which elicited sectarian conflicts that had not existed," says Noam Chomsky. "It is hard to see how Iraq can even be held together at this point. It has been devastated by U.S. sanctions, the war, the atrocities that followed from it. The current policy, whatever it is, is not very likely to even patch up or even put band-aids on a cancer."
Transcript
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. I’m Amy Goodman, with Aaron Maté. Noam Chomsky is our guest for the hour, the world-renowned political dissident, linguist, author of over a hundred books, MIT professor emeritus. Aaron?
AARON MATÉ: Yes. Noam, I wanted to ask you about ISIS. The big news is that Iraq is planning a major offensive to retake Mosul. It’s currently launching strikes to recapture Tikrit with U.S. support. My question is about the effectiveness of the U.S. strategy. To what extent is the U.S. constrained by its own policies in terms of the effectiveness of defeating ISIS, constrains in terms of its ties to Saudi Arabia and its refusal to engage with Iran and groups like Hezbollah, which have been effective in fighting ISIS?
NOAM CHOMSKY: Patrick Cockburn, who has done by far the best reporting on this, describes it as an Alice in Wonderland strategy. The U.S. wants to destroy ISIS, but it’s opposing every force that’s fighting ISIS. So, the main state that’s opposed to ISIS is Iran. They support the Iraqi government, the Shiite government. But Iran is, you know, on our enemies list. Probably the main ground forces fighting ISIS are the PKK and its allies, which are on the U.S. terrorist list. That’s both in Iraq and in Syria. Saudi Arabia, our major ally, along with Israel, is both traditionally, for a long time, the main funder of ISIS and similar groups—not necessarily the government; rich Saudis, other people in the emirates—not only the funder, but they’re the ideological source. Saudi Arabia is committed, is dominated by an extremist fundamentalist version of Islam: Wahhabi doctrine. And ISIS is an extremist offshoot of the Wahhabi doctrine. Saudi Arabia is a missionary state. It establishes schools, mosques, spreading its radical Islamic version. So, they’re our ally. Our enemies are those who are fighting ISIS. And it’s more complex.
ISIS is a monstrosity. There’s not much doubt about that. It didn’t come from nowhere. It’s one of the results of the U.S. hitting a very vulnerable society—Iraq—with a sledgehammer, which elicited sectarian conflicts that had not existed. They became very violent. The U.S. violence made it worse. We’re all familiar with the crimes. Out of this came lots of violent, murderous forces. ISIS is one. But the Shiite militias are not that different. They’re carrying out—they’re the kind of the—when they say the Iraqi army is attacking, it’s probably mostly the Shiite militias with the Iraqi army in the background. I mean, the way the Iraqi army collapsed is an astonishing military fact. This is an army of, I think, 350,000 people, heavily armed by the United States and trained by the United States for 10 years. A couple of thousand guerrillas showed up, and they all ran away. The generals ran away first. And the soldiers didn’t know to do. They ran away after them.
AMY GOODMAN: We have 20 seconds.
NOAM CHOMSKY: Hmm?
AMY GOODMAN: We have 20 seconds.
NOAM CHOMSKY: Yeah. Well, now, it’s basically—the effect, it’s hard to see how Iraq can even be held together at this point. It’s been devastated by U.S. sanctions, the war, the atrocities that followed from it. The current policy, whatever it is, is not very likely to even patch up, put band-aids on the cancer.
AMY GOODMAN: We’re going to have to leave it there, but we’ll continue this discussion tomorrow on Democracy Now! Our guest, Noam Chomsky, institute professor emeritus of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology
-
By George Friedman
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is visiting the United States this week to speak to Congress on March 3. The Obama administration is upset that Speaker of the House John Boehner invited Netanyahu without consulting with the White House and charged Boehner with political grandstanding. Netanyahu said he was coming to warn the United States of the threat of Iran. Israeli critics of Netanyahu charged that this was a play for public approval to improve his position in Israel's general election March 17. Boehner denied any political intent beyond getting to hear Netanyahu's views. The Obama administration claimed that the speech threatens the fabric of U.S.-Israeli relations.
Let us begin with the obvious. First, this is a speech, and it is unlikely that Netanyahu could say anything new on the subject of Iran, given that he never stops talking about it. Second, everyone involved is grandstanding. They are politicians, and that's what they do. Third, the idea that U.S.-Israeli relations can be shredded by a grandstanding speech is preposterous. If that's all it takes, relations are already shredded.
Speeches aside, there is no question that U.S.-Israeli relations have been changing substantially since the end of the Cold War, and that change, arrested for a while after 9/11, has created distance and tension between the countries. Netanyahu's speech is merely a symptom of the underlying reality. There are theatrics, there are personal animosities, but presidents and prime ministers come and go. What is important are the interests that bind or separate nations, and the interests of Israel and the United States have to some extent diverged. It is the divergence of interests we must focus on, particularly because there is a great deal of mythology around the U.S.-Israeli relationship created by advocates of a close relationship, opponents of the relationship, and foreign enemies of one or both countries.
Building the U.S.-Israeli Relationship
It is important to begin by understanding that the United States and Israel did not always have a close relationship. While the United States recognized Israel from the beginning, its relationship was cool until after the Six-Day War in 1967. When Israel, along with Britain and France, invaded Egypt in 1956, the United States demanded Israel's withdrawal from Sinai and Gaza, and the Israelis complied. The United States provided no aid for Israel except for food aid given through a U.N. program that served many nations. The United States was not hostile to Israel, nor did it regard its relationship as crucial.
This began to change before the 1967 conflict, after pro-Soviet coups in Syria and Iraq by Baathist parties. Responding to this threat, the United States created a belt of surface-to-air missiles stretching from Saudi Arabia to Jordan and Israel in 1965. This was the first military aid given to Israel, and it was intended to be part of a system to block Soviet power. Until 1967, Israel's weapons came primarily from France. Again, the United States had no objection to this relationship, nor was it a critical issue to Washington.
The Six-Day War changed this. After the conflict, the French, wanting to improve relations with the Arabs, cut off weapons sales to Israel. The United States saw Egypt become a Soviet naval and air base, along with Syria. This threatened the U.S. Sixth Fleet and other interests in the eastern Mediterranean. In particular, the United States was concerned about Turkey because the Bosporus in Soviet hands would open the door to a significant Soviet challenge in the Mediterranean and Southern Europe. Turkey was now threatened not only from the north but also from the south by Syria and Iraq. The Iranians, then U.S. allies, forced the Iraqis to face east rather than north. The Israelis forced the Syrians to focus south. Once the French pulled out of their relationship with Israel and the Soviets consolidated their positions in Egypt and Syria in the wake of the Six-Day War, the United States was forced into a different relationship with Israel.
It has been said that the 1967 war and later U.S. support for Israel triggered Arab anti-Americanism. It undoubtedly deepened anti-American sentiment among the Arabs, but it was not the trigger. Egypt became pro-Soviet in 1956 despite the U.S. intervention against Israel, while Syria and Iraq became pro-Soviet before the United States began sending military aid to Israel. But after 1967, the United States locked into a strategic relationship with Israel and became its primary source of military assistance. This support surged during the 1973 Arab-Israeli War, with U.S. assistance rising from roughly 5 percent of Israeli gross domestic product to more than 20 percent a year later.
The United States was strategically dependent on Israel to maintain a balance of power in the eastern Mediterranean. But even during this period, the United States had competing strategic interests. For example, as part of encouraging a strategic reversal into the U.S. camp after the 1973 war, the United States negotiated an Israeli withdrawal from Sinai that the Israelis were extremely reluctant to do but could not avoid under U.S. pressure. Similarly, U.S. President Ronald Reagan opposed an Israeli invasion of Lebanon that reached Beirut, and the initial U.S. intervention in Lebanon was not against Arab elements but intended to block Israel. There was a strategic dependence on Israel, but it was never a simple relationship.
The Israelis' national security requirements have always outstripped their resources. They had to have an outside patron. First it was the Soviets via Czechoslovakia, then France, then the United States. They could not afford to alienate the United States — the essential foundation of their national security — but neither could they simply comply with American wishes. For the United States, Israel was an important asset. It was far from the only important asset. The United States had to reconcile its support of Israel with its support of Saudi Arabia, as an example. Israel and the Saudis were part of an anti-Soviet coalition, but they had competing interests, shown when the United States sold airborne warning and control systems to the Saudis. The Israelis both needed the United States and chafed under the limitations Washington placed on them.
Post-Soviet Relations
The collapse of the Soviet Union destroyed the strategic foundation for the U.S.-Israeli relationship. There was no pressing reason to end it, but it began to evolve and diverge. The fall of the Soviet Union left Syria and Iraq without a patron. Egypt's U.S.-equipped army, separated from Israel by a demilitarized Sinai and token American peacekeepers, posed no threat. Jordan was a key ally of Israel. The United States began seeing the Mediterranean and Middle East in totally different ways. Israel, for the first time since its founding, didn't face any direct threat of attack. In addition, Israel's economy surged, and U.S. aid, although it remained steady, became far less important to Israel than it was. In 2012, U.S. assistance ($2.9 billion) accounted for just more than 1 percent of Israel's GDP.
Both countries had more room to maneuver than they'd had previously. They were no longer locked into a relationship with each other, and their relationship continued as much out of habit as out of interest. The United States had no interest in Israel creating settlements in the West Bank, but it wasn't interested enough in stopping them to risk rupturing the relationship. The Israelis were no longer so dependent on the United States that they couldn't risk its disapproval.
The United States and Israel drew together initially after 9/11. From the Israeli perspective, the attacks proved that the United States and Israel had a common interest against the Islamic world. The U.S. response evolved into a much more complex form, particularly as it became apparent that U.S. forces in Afghanistan and Iraq were not going to pacify either country. The United States needed a strategy that would prevent jihadist attacks on the homeland, and that meant intelligence cooperation not only with the Israelis but also with Islamic countries hostile to Israel. This was the old problem. Israel wanted the United States focused on Israel as its main partner, but the United States had much wider and more complex relations to deal with in the region that required a more nuanced approach.
This is the root of the divergence on Iran. From Israel's point of view, the Iranians pose an inherent threat regardless of how far along they are — or are not — with their nuclear program. Israel wants the United States aligned against Iran. Now, how close Tehran is to a nuclear weapon is an important question, but to Israel, however small the nuclear risk, it cannot be tolerated because Iran's ideology makes it an existential threat.
The Iran Problem
From the American perspective, the main question about Iran is, assuming it is a threat, can it be destroyed militarily? The Iranians are not fools. They observed the ease with which the Israelis destroyed the Iraqi nuclear reactor in 1981. They buried theirs deep underground. It is therefore not clear, regardless of how far along it is or what its purpose is, that the United States could destroy Iran's nuclear program from the air. It would require, at the very least, special operations on the ground, and failing that, military action beyond U.S. capabilities. Aside from the use of nuclear weapons, it is unclear that an attack on multiple hardened sites would work.
The Israelis are quite aware of these difficulties. Had it been possible to attack, and had the Israelis believed what they were saying, the Israelis would have attacked. The distances are great, but there are indications that countries closer to Iran and also interested in destroying Iran's nuclear program would have allowed the use of their territories. Yet the Israelis did not attack.
The American position is that, lacking a viable military option and uncertain as to the status of Iran's program, the only option is to induce Iran to curtail the program. Simply maintaining permanent sanctions does not end whatever program there is. Only an agreement with Iran trading the program for an end of sanctions would work. From the American point of view, the lack of a military option requires a negotiation. The Israeli position is that Iran cannot be trusted. The American position is that in that case, there are no options.
Behind this is a much deeper issue. Israel of course understands the American argument. What really frightens the Israelis is an emerging American strategy. Having failed to pacify Afghanistan or Iraq, the United States has come to the conclusion that wars of occupation are beyond American capacity. It is prepared to use air power and very limited ground forces in Iraq, for example. However, the United States does not see itself as having the option of bringing decisive force to bear.
An Intricate U.S. Strategy
Therefore, the United States has a double strategy emerging. The first layer is to keep its distance from major flare-ups in the region, providing support but making clear it will not be the one to take primary responsibility. As the situation on the ground deteriorates, the United States expects these conflicts to eventually compel regional powers to take responsibility. In the case of Syria and Iraq, for example, the chaos is on the border of Turkey. Let Turkey live with it, or let Turkey send its own troops in. If that happens, the United States will use limited force to support them. A similar dynamic is playing out with Jordan and the Gulf Cooperation Council states as Saudi Arabia tries to assume responsibility for Sunni Arab interests in the face of a U.S-Iranian entente. Importantly, this rapprochement with Iran is already happening against the Islamic State, which is an enemy of both the United States and Iran. I am not sure we would call what is happening collaboration, but there is certainly parallel play between Iran and the United States.
The second layer of this strategy is creating a balance of power. The United States wants regional powers to deal with issues that threaten their interests more than American interests. At the same time, the United States does not want any one country to dominate the region. Therefore, it is in the American interest to have multiple powers balancing each other. There are four such powers: Turkey, Iran, Saudi Arabia and Israel. Some collaborate, some are hostile, and some shift over time. The United States wants to get rid of Iran's weapons, but it does not want to shatter the country. It is part of a pattern of regional responsibility and balance.
This is the heart of Israel's problem. It has always been a pawn in U.S. strategy, but a vital pawn. In this emerging strategy, with multiple players balancing each other and the United States taking the minimum possible action to maintain the equilibrium, Israel finds itself in a complex relationship with three countries that it cannot be sure of managing by itself. By including Iran in this mix, the United States includes what Israel regards as an unpredictable element not solely because of the nuclear issue but because Iran's influence stretches to Syria and Lebanon and imposes costs and threats Israel wants to avoid.
This has nothing to do with the personalities of Barack Obama and Benjamin Netanyahu. The United States has shown it cannot pacify countries with available forces. The definition of insanity is doing the same thing repeatedly and expecting a different outcome. If the United States is not involved on the ground in a conflict, then it becomes a problem for regional powers to handle. If the regional powers take the roles they must, they should balance against each other without a single regional hegemon emerging.
Israel does not want to be considered by the United States as one power among many. It is focused on the issue of a nuclear Iran, but it knows that there is no certainty that Iran's nuclear facilities can be destroyed or that sanctions will cause the Iranians to abandon the nuclear program. What Israel fears is an entente between the United States and Iran and a system of relations in which U.S. support will not be automatic.
So a speech will be made. Obama and Netanyahu are supposed to dislike each other. Politicians are going to be elected and jockey for power. All of this is true, and none of it matters. What does matter is that the United States, regardless of who is president, has to develop a new strategy in the region. This is the only option other than trying to occupy Syria and Iraq. Israel, regardless of who is prime minister, does not want to be left as part of this system while the United States maintains ties with all the other players along with Israel. Israel doesn't have the weight to block this strategy, and the United States has no alternative but to pursue it.
This isn't about Netanyahu and Obama, and both know it. It is about the reconfiguration of a region the United States cannot subdue and cannot leave. It is the essence of great power strategy: creating a balance of power in which the balancers are trapped into playing a role they don't want. It is not a perfect strategy, but it is the only one the United States has. Israel is not alone in not wanting this. Turkey, Iran and Saudi Arabia don't want it, either. But geopolitics is indifferent to wishes. It understands only imperatives and constraints.
-
The Battle for Tikrit Reveals Deeper Truths
Analysis
March 5, 2015 | 22:49 GMT
Print
Text Size
Iraqi military and Shiite militia forces fire rockets March 2 in preparation of the assault on Tikrit. (YOUNIS AL-BAYATI/AFP/Getty Images)
Analysis
The ongoing offensive against Islamic State forces holding the Iraqi city of Tikrit in Saladin province is a crucial barometer for future operations. Instead of containing the city and then bypassing it to retake Mosul, military planners have decided to eliminate the Islamic State's presence there first. Aside from being known as the hometown of former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein, Tikrit is an important Sunni Arab stronghold on the highway linking Baghdad with Mosul.
Critical to the conduct of the battle, which began March 1, is the fact that Iran has taken the lead in supporting Iraqi forces as they expand into Sunni territory. Tehran has so far supplied rockets, military advisers and tactical intelligence in an effort to assume responsibility for an area it considers part of its sphere of influence. The United States, while not being overt in its approval, has not vociferously objected either, focusing its own airpower for the time being on other areas held by the Islamic State.
The Iraqi army, recovering from its collapse last year, is making gains in rural areas east of Tikrit, having established a blocking position to the west. By capturing the suburbs of al-Dawr to the south and al-Alam to the north, Islamic State fighters have increasingly been forced to fall back to the city. In an attempt to slow advancing forces and disrupt airstrikes from Iraqi fixed-wing aircraft and attack helicopters, the militants set fire to the Ajil oil field, creating massive clouds of smoke.
Reports indicate that Iraqi attempts to lock down Tikrit have not been successful, with Islamic State fighters still possessing limited freedom of movement. Sources on the ground claim that elements of the Islamic State leadership in Tikrit have already fled the city. Although it is unlikely that the Islamic State would relinquish its grip on Tikrit without extracting a cost on the attacking forces, the exodus of ground commanders could indicate an expectation that the city will fall. Additional reports, however, suggest that Islamic State forces have abandoned Qayyarah Air Base, south of Mosul, to free up reinforcements for Tikrit. This would indicate the militant group is prepared to stand its ground, or in the worst case, counter attack in force.
Battlefield Attrition
Improvised explosive devices and sniper fire are slowing Baghdad's forces as well as anti-Islamic State militias. A roadside bomb in the southern al-Dawr district killed the commander of the Shiite militia League of Righteousness on March 4, along with his bodyguard. Other pro-Iraqi government forces discovered a bomb-making factory in the Naoura district, recovering some 40 explosive devices ready for use.
After tightening the perimeter, about 30,000 Iraqi soldiers and Shiite militia fighters will attack the city with air cover from rotary and fixed-wing aircraft. Fighting in the urban environment will be costlier for the military because the built-up terrain gives the defending Islamic State forces a significant advantage. An estimated 28,000 civilians have already fled the city in anticipation of the coming assault.
A key thing to watch over the coming days and weeks is how the Iraqi military, their Iranian advisers, Shiite militias and Sunni Arabs share the same space. Sunni tribes have been reluctant to join the fight against the Islamic State, though some small elements are helping. The tribes are seen as crucial allies in the fight against the militants. However, perceived injustices by Shiite fighters could exacerbate the sectarian tensions that led to the Islamic State's rise, even pushing the broad Sunni community to overtly support or even join with the militants. The Iraqi air force has already begun dropping leaflets urging civilians to cooperate with Baghdad's forces.
The Tikrit offensive will serve as an indicator of how the Iraqi military will likely fare when it comes to retaking Mosul later in the year. An urban assault will expose any weaknesses in tactics, techniques and procedures, as well as overarching command and control in the urban battle space. The general principals to retake Tikrit are similar to what will be needed to retake Mosul. The two cities have similar combat environments, just on different scales. Suffering heavy casualties or running into problems could force the Iraqi military and its Iranian overseers to further delay any assault on Mosul, though support from the peshmerga and possibly even the United States adds further weight to the far-northern offensive to come.
-
Splits in Islamic State Emerge as Its Ranks Expand
Defectors say discord is mounting in extremist group over pay disparities, battlefield setbacks and corruption
In this photo taken June 23, 2014, Islamic State fighters parade in a commandeered Iraqi security forces armored vehicle on the main road in the northern Iraqi city of Mosul. ENLARGE
In this photo taken June 23, 2014, Islamic State fighters parade in a commandeered Iraqi security forces armored vehicle on the main road in the northern Iraqi city of Mosul. Photo: Associated Press
By
Maria Abi-Habib
March 9, 2015 9:25 a.m. ET
26 COMMENTS
BEIRUT—Islamic State is struggling to maintain unity and discipline in the face of corruption, ideological differences and defections that have mounted along with the expansion of its ranks and cash coffers.
Interviews with four recent Islamic State defectors and civilians living in areas the group controls in Syria and Iraq portray an organization with growing pains as it works to accommodate an expanding number of fighters, who bring a multitude of motivations, ideologies and levels of experience.
While some of the discord within the group stems from the extremist group’s rapid rise from an al Qaeda offshoot to the world’s wealthiest jihadist organization, many of the tensions come from the higher salaries and better lodgings given to foreigners recruited to fight alongside locals. The accounts of the growing fissures are consistent with information provided by U.S. and European officials and analysts tracking Islamic State.
Related Video
The Paris attacks on Charlie Hebdo in January have put new focus on recent terrorist propaganda, which features no shortage of jihadists claiming to be from France.
“The Syrian fighters feel they’ve been treated unjustly in comparison to the foreign fighters,” said a Syrian who cited this favoritism and the “un-Islamic” levels of brutality meted out to civilians as the reasons for his defection in December.
Islamic State continues to portray its fighters as unified and ready to confront U.S. and Iraqi forces in battles in Iraq while maintaining its grip on Syrian territory as new recruits continue to bolster its ranks. It also continues to draw followers, most notably with Saturday’s pledge of loyalty to the group by Boko Haram, whose fighters have terrorized northeastern Nigeria.
This support, however, hasn’t stopped potentially decisive splits forming in the hard-line ideology that forms the backbone of the group.
When Islamic State captured Jordanian air-force pilot First Lt. Muath al-Kasasbeh in December, for example, there were disagreements over his fate. Some members of the group’s Shura council, which dispenses religious guidance, insisted he be ransomed or exchanged in a prisoner swap, saying burning him alive had no precedent in Islamic texts, one defector said.
Eventually, Lt. Kasasbeh was placed in a black steel cage, doused with gasoline and set alight. The move not only dismayed some members of Islamic State but damaged the organization’s reputation among members of rival jihadist groups it is attempting to co-opt, according another defector.
Recent battlefield setbacks have made the formidable group more fragile and less cohesive than at any time in its history, said Hassan Hassan, a Middle East analyst and co-author of a recently published book about Islamic State. The group’s loss of the Syrian city of Kobani to Kurdish fighters in late January sapped morale and spurred desertions, the defectors and Mr. Hassan said.
Iraqi and Iranian forces launched an offensive last week to recapture the Iraqi city of Tikrit from Islamic State forces. If the operation succeeds, deepening dissent could deal another blow to the group’s prestige and pave the way for a U.S.-backed Iraqi assault to seize back control of Mosul, the country’s second-largest city, that Islamic State seized in June.
The Islamist group’s blitz through Syria and Iraq last summer drew recruits from across the world. According to U.S. intelligence estimates, Islamic State has 20,000 foreigners representing some 90 countries, along with about 18,000 Syrians and Iraqis, making it the biggest Arab jihadist group.
In signs of further ideological divisions, Islamic State said in December it had arrested members of an extremist cell who were plotting a coup against the organization’s leaders.
Before executing them, it released videotaped confessions in which the defectors denounced Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, blaming him for tolerating secular Muslims for the sake of the tax proceeds they provided. One of the men charged with subversion branded Mr. Baghdadi an infidel. In the video, the accused charged with deviating from God.
Islamic State hard-liners eager to expand the group’s self-proclaimed caliphate have clashed with recent enlistees from the more secular Free Syrian Army, according to the defectors. The hard-liners worry that the group is selling out its ideology by absorbing hundreds of these fighters, whose main goal is to overthrow Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and whose moderate religious views they deem heretical.
The group also faces problems managing cash as its ranks and operations expand, with more emirs, or princes, directing various governmental departments across Islamic State provinces and reporting to Mr. Baghdadi. Oil sales, extortion, looting, kidnapping for ransom and donations are generating as much as $5 million in proceeds each day, U.S. officials say, all of which Islamic State needs to govern the territory it has conquered. That, in turn, has led to corruption.
In February, two Egyptians overseeing Syria’s Deir Ezzour province for Islamic State fled with thousands of dollars of the group’s funds, including profit from al Omar oil field, the country’s largest, said residents of the province. The head of Islamic State’s religious police in the eastern Syrian city of Raqqa, the group’s de facto capital, stole thousands of dollars from the organization’s coffers before fleeing to Turkey in January, said area residents. Mr. Hassan, the analyst, said he also had evidence of growing graft within the group.
Smoke rises as Iraqi security forces and Shiite fighters clash with Islamic State militants at the town of Tal Ksaiba, near Al-Alam, on Saturday. Iraqi security forces and Shi'ite militia fighters are trying to advance into the towns of al-Alam and al-Dour near Tikrit. ENLARGE
Smoke rises as Iraqi security forces and Shiite fighters clash with Islamic State militants at the town of Tal Ksaiba, near Al-Alam, on Saturday. Iraqi security forces and Shi'ite militia fighters are trying to advance into the towns of al-Alam and al-Dour near Tikrit. Photo: Reuters
U.S.-led airstrikes on oil facilities, along with declining energy prices, have diminished Islamic State’s resources, according to a February report by the Financial Action Task Force, a Paris-based intergovernmental body.
More controversial still are differences in pay and distribution of war booty, part of efforts to lure more recruits from abroad. Foreign recruits are earning monthly salaries of $800, while Syrian fighters are drawing $400, the defectors said. Fighters from abroad are awarded the choicest properties confiscated by the group, while the Syrians are given humbler quarters.
Compounding this resentment that has led to a large increase in defections in recent months is what the Syrian members of Islamic State view as the poor combat performance by foreign fighters, as well as their refusal to serve long stints in the battlefield, as the U.S.-led military coalition pounds the group’s positions from the air.
Some of the foreigners who have flocked to Syria to join Islamic State are reluctant to fight at all, said a defector and a European official who monitors the movement of his country’s citizens in and out of the region. As an alternative, some seek to join the vice-and-virtue squads that enforce the group’s hard-line behavioral and dress codes.
“Some of these fighters go to Syria to live off the welfare of Islamic State—get a house, a wife in exchange for some lowly [bureaucratic] position. But now they’re being asked to fight, and they don’t always want to,” the official said.
Civilians living Raqqa say the group’s forces that patrol the city’s streets are demanding that foreign fighters produce papers from their commanders proving their leaves are authorized.
The choices facing disgruntled foreign fighters for Islamic State are limited, however. Foreign members from the West and the Middle East are unable to go home, as governments increasingly strip them of their citizenship or jail them upon their return.
Besides growing friction between Islamic State’s foreign and local fighters, the organization also faces a crisis in morale, precipitated mainly by the loss of Kobani in January after a four-month battle for control of the Syrian border city. Some militants were angered by the hundreds of deaths the group suffered in trying to retain control of a city they believed had little strategic significance, according to civilians living in Raqqa and defectors.
During the Kobani campaign, summary punishment was meted out to those who refused to fight. Some 60 fighters were executed in January after they retreated from advancing Kurdish forces in Tal Abyad, near Kobani, said a Syrian defector, citing accounts from members of the group with whom he is still in contact. Those executions came after reports by antigovernment activists that another 100 foreign fighters were killed for fleeing the Kobani battlefield in December.
Rival jihadist groups such as al Nusra, al Qaeda’s Syria branch, and Ahrar al Sham are exploiting Islamic State’s internal quarreling helping its disillusioned or exhausted fighters flee and join their ranks.
One former Islamic State fighter said he was jailed after he protested the group’s brutal treatment of civilians. After returning to the battlefield, he deserted with the logistical help of Ahrar al Sham.
“Islamic State is the most afraid of these defections,” he said.
—Mohammed Nour Alakraa in Beirut contributed to this article.
Write to Maria Abi-Habib at maria.habib@wsj.com
Popular on WSJ
-
Share
Saudi-Pakistani Cooperation Could Be Growing
Geopolitical Diary
March 9, 2015 | 23:38 GMT
Text Size
Print
Last Wednesday, Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif arrived in Saudi Arabia. Saudi King Salman met him at the airport. The Saudi king typically meets only the most distinguished visitors at the airport, so this was an early sign that this visit was somewhat more significant than most. It was enough to cause us to wonder about the significance.
A short time later, a spate of news stories beginning with Pakistan's Express Tribune, which claimed to have heard this from contacts in the Pakistani government, reported that the Saudis were requesting an infusion of Pakistani troops to protect the kingdom. The request is not quite as remarkable as it might appear. Pakistani troops were deployed in Saudi Arabia in 1979 during the rise of Ayatollah Khomeini's Islamic republic. Troops were also stationed there during Desert Storm, and smaller numbers have been present in the kingdom from time to time. However, the recent rumors about the Saudi request have become both more detailed and less believable, with claims that the Saudis had requested both Egyptian and Turkish troops to guard the border.
What is a Geopolitical Diary? George Friedman Explains.
There has been no official comment from Saudi Arabia and some upper-midlevel denial from Pakistan. According to a separate source in the initial report, the Saudis offered Pakistan shipments of oil on deferred and discounted payment terms. What is certain is that last week's meetings came after a long string of high-level meetings, including meetings with Sharif, whom the Saudis protected when Pervez Musharraf's regime regarded him as an enemy. So we know that the Saudis have asked for and gotten Pakistani troops before, and we know that Sharif, of all Pakistani prime ministers, would be the most inclined to support the Saudi government. And we know that in spite of the wide repetition and enhancement of the initial report, neither the Saudi nor the Pakistani government has issued a definitive denial.
We also know that the Saudis have good reason to be worried about their security. The Islamic State is entrenched in both Iraq and Syria, and the Saudis are concerned about supporters of the group within the kingdom. The Islamic State is highly unpredictable, and the Saudis could feel that their own military may not be sufficient to manage the threat. In addition, a civil war is raging in Yemen, along Saudi Arabia's southern border. Not only could that spill over into Saudi Arabia, but also the Saudis are trying to manage the crisis, supporting a two-state solution there. They might want Pakistani troops to add weight to their diplomacy. Both of these are sufficient reasons to ask for help.
But the greatest reason is the growing relationship between the United States and Iran. Leaving aside the nuclear negotiations, which are inching forward and certainly not collapsing, the United States and Iran have similar interests in Iraq: Both want to break the Islamic State. The Saudis also want this as well, but they are appalled that what might replace the group is some sort of joint U.S.-Iranian management of Iraq.
As we have said before, the United States wants to limit its direct involvement in regional conflicts and replace it with support for regional powers that have no choice but to become involved. These are wildly different nations, including Turkey, Iran, Saudi Arabia and Israel. The Saudis have bad memories of Ottoman oppression and a fear of Shiite Iran. They have a complex and multilayered relationship with Israel. The United States used to be the guarantor of Saudi national security. In its new role, Saudi Arabia is only one of a constellation of countries in which the United States is involved.
Of all these countries, the one that concerns Saudi Arabia the most is Iran. It is the closest. It has a history of covert interference in Saudi Arabia, and given the convergence of Iranian and U.S. interests, it might well wind up in a favored position in the region. It is a risk that the Saudis cannot accept. Turning to Pakistan gives the Saudis more military and security weight. And it does not hurt that Pakistan is a nuclear power; although the use of nuclear weapons by Pakistan is extraordinarily unlikely, the possibility could still give Iran and other countries in the region pause.
Saudi Arabia, the weakest among the other major regional powers, needs more weight and needs to give the others pause, and the Saudis wouldn't mind the United States wondering at what they are doing. Asking the Pakistanis to resume a role they played in the past — guarantors of the Saudi regime internally, and of Saudi Arabia's borders externally — makes a great deal of sense, and given Sharif's relationship with the Saudis, it is logical. Whether this strategy extends to requests to Egypt and Turkey is dubious for several reasons, not the least of which is that neither is likely to agree to it.
We have long spoken about the shift in how this region works. Even if nothing comes of it immediately, we are seeing moves by the Saudis to try to cope with the new reality. As the patterns change, the region will respond. This is not really a radical move. Other developments could be more surprising, like the Iranians and Americans collaborating against the Islamic State.
-
WASHINGTON — The Islamic State is facing growing dissension among its rank-and-file fighters and struggling to govern towns and villages it has seized, but the militant Sunni group is still managing to launch attacks and expand its ideological reach outside of Iraq and Syria, senior American officials said.
In the seven months since allied warplanes in the American-led air campaign began bombing select Islamic State targets, the Sunni militancy, while marginally weaker, has held its own, senior defense and intelligence officials said.
Even after the Islamic State lost much of the central Iraqi city of Tikrit following more than a week of fierce fighting, Pentagon officials warned that it would be as difficult for Iraqi forces to hold the city as it was to liberate it. The Islamic State fighters were in the meantime mounting one of the fiercest assaults in months in the city of Ramadi, west of Baghdad.
But tensions have become apparent inside the Islamic State, also known as ISIS, ISIL and Daesh. The troubles stem from new military and financial pressures and from the growing pains of a largely decentralized organization trying to hold together what it views as a nascent state while integrating thousands of foreign fighters with Iraqi and Syrian militants.
The tensions were described in recent interviews with a Syrian fighter who recently defected from the group and an Islamic State recruiter who still works with the group but is critical of some of its practices. The troubles were consistent with accounts from residents of areas that the Islamic State controls and from interviews with numerous Syrian activists who oppose both the Islamic State and the Syrian government. Those activists have recently fled from those areas but maintain extensive contacts there.
There are reports of dozens of executions and imprisonments of Islamic State fighters trying to flee the group. There are strains in fighting on multiple fronts, with some fighters being deployed to battles that, they complain, are not strategically important.
There are complaints about salaries and living conditions, disputes over money and business opportunities, and allegations that commanders have left with looted cash and other resources. And there is growing anecdotal evidence that some members of the group — particularly locals who may have joined out of opportunism or a sense that it was the best way to survive — have been repulsed by its extreme violence.
“I still feel sick,” Abu Khadija, the Syrian defector, said recently after witnessing what he said were the beheadings of 38 Kurdish and Alawite war prisoners by Islamic State fighters in Yaroubiyeh, a Syrian town on the Iraqi border. Abu Khadija asked to be identified only by his nickname for his safety.
Despite such accounts, Gen. Lloyd J. Austin III, the head of United States Central Command, said the battle against the Islamic State was nowhere near won. Although General Austin told the House Armed Services Committee last week that airstrikes had killed more than 8,500 militants, eliminated the group’s primary source of oil revenue and hurt the ability of its leaders to command and control its troops, Pentagon and counterterrorism officials said the militant group was increasingly dangerous through new affiliates in Afghanistan, Algeria, Egypt and Libya. Boko Haram, the Islamic militancy in Nigeria, became the latest group to swear allegiance last Saturday.
Continue reading the main story Continue reading the main story
Continue reading the main story
So far the self-declared caliphate has lost only about 20 percent of the territory it seized in Iraq — most of it in the north, to Kurdish pesh merga troops who have been supported by the United States, the Iraqi government and Iran, a senior defense official said. The main areas it has lost — most of Tikrit, territory southwest of Baghdad, some of the areas to the north of the Iraqi capital and the Kurdish city of Kobani in Syria — have been the focus of the overwhelming allied air campaign.
“Other than that, we’re basically looking at what we had before,” said Jessica Lewis McFate, research director with the Institute for the Study of War. “Their numbers are reduced, but their foreign fighter flows are still robust.”
Obama administration officials also said they faced major challenges in countering the Islamic State’s propaganda machine, which pumps out as many as 90,000 Twitter messages and other social media communications every day, and is attracting about 1,000 foreign fighters a month from across Europe, North Africa, the Middle East and the United States.
“ISIL is well-armed and well-financed,” John O. Brennan, the C.I.A. director, said in a speech Friday at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York. “ISIL will not be rolled back overnight.”
Despite the air superiority that the American coalition commands in the skies above Iraq, in late January hundreds of Islamic State gunmen mobilized an attack on Kirkuk, the oil-rich Kurdish city that thus far has been protected by pesh merga forces. Militants temporarily seized an abandoned hotel that the local police had used as their headquarters, suicide bombers detonated their explosives to keep Kurdish forces at bay and militants took over an area southwest of Kirkuk after heavy clashes with Kurdish forces.
Although the Kirkuk attack was ultimately unsuccessful, the group still has control of the largest territory ever held by a terrorist group, Nicholas Rasmussen, the director of the National Counterterrorism Center, told a Senate committee last month. “This safe haven provides ISIL and other extremists with the time and space they need to train fighters and to plan operations,” Mr. Rasmussen said.
Abu Khadija, the defector who witnessed the 38 beheadings, said he was trying to get into Turkey, despite knowing that Islamic State militants might kill him if they caught him. He said he could not forget the beheadings.
Continue reading the main story Video
Play Video|5:42
The Evolution of ISIS
The Evolution of ISIS
How has ISIS, a 21st-century terrorist organization with a retrograde religious philosophy, spread from Iraq to Syria, Libya and beyond?
Video by Quynhanh Do on Publish Date December 13, 2014.
“I can’t eat, I feel I want to throw up, I hate myself,” he said, adding that the executioners had argued over who would wield the knives and finally settled the issue by lottery. “Honestly, I will never do it. I can kill a man in battle, but I can’t cut a human being’s head with a knife or a sword.”
During nearly a year in contact with New York Times reporters, Abu Khadija expressed gradually growing discontent. His grievances ranged from relatively mundane issues like eating canned food and being deployed to a front line far from his family because of a lack of fighters, to discomfort with the group’s strategic priorities and its extreme violence.
Such defections, according to an increasing number of reports, are not isolated cases. In Iraq on Monday, residents of the northern town of Hawija, requesting anonymity for their safety, said that dozens of Islamic State fighters were executed by their comrades for trying to flee the front as the group came under attack from Kurdish pesh merga forces.
Over all, there has always been mistrust between Syrians and foreigners in the Islamic State, said Omar Abu Layla, a longtime activist in Deir al-Zour who is now in Germany and tracks jihadist groups through contacts back home, and uses a nom de guerre for his contacts’ safety.
Islamic State foreign fighters, known as muhajireen, dominate the group’s military leadership and administrative bureaucracy, according to Mr. Abu Layla. “The mistrust was obvious from the beginning,” he said. “They never trusted the locals.”
-
This can't be! Bush lied when he said there was no WMD!
The Kurdistan Regional Government in Iraq announced on Saturday that it has evidence that the Islamic State used chlorine gas in a suicide bomb attack on January 23 between Mosul and the Iraq-Syria border. Kurdish officials said that lab tests showed traces of chlorine, though these tests have not been independently corroborated. Iraqi forces in Tikrit have found chlorine in Islamic State facilities, which they believe were being used in weapons. The Islamic State has been accused of using chlorine before, but this would be the first time it has been proven to have used chemical weapons.
The announcement comes as Kurdish Peshmerga make new gains against the Islamic State and Iraqi forces continue their offensive to retake the city of Tikrit. The battle in Tikrit is currently stalled as the Iraqi Security Forces await reinforcements and to allow civilians to leave the city, security officials have told reporters.
-
WTF?!? 8-) 8-) 8-)
http://www.newsweek.com/iran-and-hezbollah-omitted-us-terror-threat-list-amid-nuclear-talks-314073
Edited to add that I meant to click on :x :x :x
-
WTF?!? 8-) 8-) 8-)
http://www.newsweek.com/iran-and-hezbollah-omitted-us-terror-threat-list-amid-nuclear-talks-314073
Waiting to add the US and Israel.
-
After reading this one can only think Saudies are *already* looking into nucs behind the scenes.
http://www.fool.com/investing/general/2015/03/22/can-you-guess-which-country-is-stockpiling-65-bill.aspx
-
http://blogs.timesofisrael.com/is-turkey-behind-isis/
-
http://freedomjournalism.com/2015/04/05/isis-caliphate-struggling-with-flesh-eating-microbe-epidemic-karma/
-
Normally we would riff about another secret reader of this forum, but I think the Special Operations Forces probably came up with this on their own :-D
http://sofrep.com/38783/independent-kurdistan-pays-pick-winner/
http://sofrep.com/36481/rumint-kurds-seeking-establish-state/
I just signed up to this source for $5 a month. At the URLs posted above you can see the first few paragraphs for free. Here is the second article in its entirety
In a fragmented Iraq, civil war is in fashion and the only shimmer of hope for stability in the region is coming from the north in Kurdistan.
Today SOFREP has heard RUMINT from several sources that Kurdistan is not only taking ground, they are preparing to announce their own statehood.
“The American air support encouraged the Kurdish militiamen to reverse the momentum of the recent fighting and retake Gwer and the other town, Mahmour, both within a half-hour’s drive of Erbil, according to Gen. Helgurd Hikmet, head of the pesh merga’s media office. General Hikmet said some pesh merga fighters had pushed on beyond the two towns, which lie on the frontier between the Arab and Kurdish areas of Iraq.” -NY Times
I had an opportunity to spend some time in the region in with winter of 2006. The one thing that became clear to me from my experience in Sulaymaniyahwas that Kurdistan has their act together, a stark comparison to the rest of the country. In the back of my mind I’ve always thought that the Kurds should have their independence, they’ve been fiercely loyal to America, and I don’t know anyone who’s served in the north of Iraq who wouldn’t think this a good idea.
“Further destabilization rocked Iraq on Sunday as Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki accused President Fouad Massoum of engaging in a “coup” by failing to choose a new prime minister by an Sunday’s deadline.
In a last-minute bid to cling to power, Mr. al-Maliki declared the inaction to be “a clear constitutional violation” and said he planned to file a legal complaint against Mr. Massoum, who was named the new president in late July.
“This attitude represents a coup on the constitution and the political process in a country that is governed by a democratic and federal system,” Mr. al-Maliki said in a surprise address on Iraqi TV.” -Washington Times
Time will only tell if rumor becomes fact. The one thing we can count on, is that anything is possible in the current environment.
We’ll have more updates ASAP.
kurdistan_map
(Main image courtesy of Wikipedia.)
About Our Links
We link to other websites if we find their content compelling. We also link to relevant products on Amazon.com as affiliates. The money we earn from Amazon helps keep the beer cold and the lights on.
About the Author
Brandon Webb is a former U.S. Navy SEAL with combat deployments to Afghanistan, and Iraq. During his last tour he served as the west coast sniper Course Manager at the Naval Special Warfare Center. He is Editor-in-Chief of SpecialOperations.com, a SOFREP contributing editor, and a New York Times best selling author (The Red Circle & Benghazi: The Definitive Report). Follow Brandon on Facebook, Twitter or his website.
Read more: http://sofrep.com//sofrep.com/36481/rumint-kurds-seeking-establish-state/#ixzz3X6qihHwp
-
Here the WSJ takes on an idea I have raised here a number of times:
http://www.wsj.com/articles/would-new-borders-mean-less-conflict-in-the-middle-east-1428680793
-
The Limits of Iranian Expansion
Geopolitical Diary
April 9, 2015 | 23:54 GMT
Text Size
Print
It is easy to look at the fight in Yemen as yet another sectarian proxy battle in the region. Saudi Arabia is fighting Iran-backed rebels and Iranian warships are seemingly facing off against the Saudi navy, which is blockading Yemen's ports. And with the number of security incidents picking up inside the Saudi kingdom, many are questioning whether a more assertive Saudi role in the region could end up bringing more trouble, potentially affecting Saudi Arabia's mostly Shiite oil-rich Eastern Province. A more careful look at Iranian capabilities, however, may reveal a less alarming picture.
First, the framing of the conflict as a sectarian one is a bit of an exaggeration. Yemen has long been fighting with itself. Factions such as the Houthis have taken advantage of a power struggle in Sanaa. Al Qaeda, southern separatists and various tribal factions, meanwhile, are playing various sides. Even Yemen's southern separatists have admitted to receiving Iranian financial support and military training in summer 2013. By framing the war in Yemen as a battle against an Iranian bid for regional hegemony, Riyadh can play on emotions to galvanize a Sunni coalition to fight back.
Iran has played an unclear but minor role in supplying Houthi rebels in Yemen, but with a Saudi-led blockade now in effect, that becomes much more difficult. Iran is also trying to flex its muscles by making a media splash out of the routine rotation of a naval group to the Gulf of Aden. But Iran is not about to enter a losing naval battle with Saudi and Egyptian naval forces in the Bab el-Mandeb strait. While Riyadh projects power from the Arabian Peninsula, it is simply too much of a reach for the small Iranian navy deployment operating far outside the umbrella of Iranian air cover.
What is a Geopolitical Diary? George Friedman Explains.
Second, Iran's reach into the Saudi kingdom is also minimal. A gunbattle in the eastern Saudi city of al-Awamiya on April 5 that ended with one Saudi policeman dead and three others wounded raised alarm that Iran could be stirring the embers of unrest. Sporadic attacks, usually involving small groups of gunmen ambushing security checkpoints, have occurred in Saudi Arabia's Eastern Province over the past couple of years. But we have not seen any enhancement of the capabilities and organization of Shiite activists challenging Saudi authorities. As evidenced by the police raid and the militants' continued reliance on light arms, Saudi Arabia has kept a close watch on Eastern Province for good reason. Moreover, Riyadh appears to have been quite successful in preventing outside material support from reaching rebels in the interior.
At most, Iran is able to encourage Shiite militant activity, primarily through religious conduits in Beirut and Bahrain who go between Iranian intelligence and Saudi Shiite community leaders. As much as Iran would like to build up a fifth column in the Saudi kingdom, Saudi Arabia still appears capable of containing low-level unrest in the east to protect its oil wealth.
To be sure, a U.S.-Iranian rapprochement will help rehabilitate Iran's economy, enabling Tehran to project influence in the region. Consequently, Sunni powers are ramping up efforts to curb Iran's ambitions. But Iran's recovery should not be mistaken for a rapid expansion of power. Iran's power began peaking with the fall of Saddam Hussein in Iraq and declined again when the civil war in Syria gained momentum. Tehran is now struggling to sustain its allies in Baghdad and Damascus. With Turkey and Saudi Arabia striving to fill a void left by the United States, Iran will try to preserve its gains rather than opening new fronts.
-
Middle East Christians Trapped by Islamist Extremists Forge Alliances With Former Foes
Without the protection of functioning states, many Christians face difficult choices
On Palm Sunday, Christians in the Lebanese village of Al-Qaa depended on army troops to shield them from nearby ISIS militants. Another source of protection: Shiite militants in Hezbollah, which backs their decade-long enemy, the Syrian regime.
By
Sam Dagher
April 13, 2015 10:34 p.m. ET
33 COMMENTS
AL-QAA, Lebanon—Three decades ago, plainclothes Syrian agents went door to door in this border village seeking out young Christian men, who were abducted and killed in a notorious chapter of Lebanon’s 15-year civil war.
The village’s nearly 2,000 Christians now find themselves siding with the same Syrian regime they blame for what many call the 1978 massacre.
That is because a few miles away, hundreds of Islamist extremists tied to al Qaeda and Islamic State stalk the porous border region separating Lebanon and Syria. Standing between the militants and the village are Lebanese troops aided by the Iran-backed Lebanese Shiite militia Hezbollah, whose men are also fighting for Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.
“Yes, I prefer the Syrian regime over these terrorist groups,” a 45-year-old Al-Qaa resident said, but it is a choice “between the bitter and more bitter.”
Here and throughout the Middle East, many Christians, under attack and without the protection of functioning states, face difficult choices amid the region’s roiling sectarian conflicts.
Some are taking sides, others are taking up arms. In Iraq and Syria, for example, Christians fight alongside Kurds against Islamic State, even though some Christians accuse the Kurds of seeking to one day incorporate them and their land into Kurdish-controlled territories.
While both Christians and Muslims suffer from the violent extremism engulfing the region, the stakes and consequences differ, said the Rev. Fadi Daou, a Lebanese Maronite Catholic priest and professor of Christian theology.
In Lebanon and Iraq, Shiite Muslims rely on Hezbollah and other militias backed by Iran. Sunni Muslims, while threatened by the Shiite forces, constitute the region’s majority and are backed by insurgents, Father Daou said.
Christians in Lebanon, meanwhile—long viewed as the region’s most empowered and assertive—“are 10 times weaker than they were in 1975,” said Father Daou, who is also chairman of Adyan, a Western-backed organization that promotes cultural and religious diversity across the Middle East.
Lebanon’s symbolic post of president, which must be occupied by a Christian in accordance with the country’s sectarian power-sharing system, has been vacant for nearly a year.
Few Christians in Lebanon, Father Daou said, believe they can repeat what they did at the onset of the Lebanese civil war 40 years ago when they organized themselves into militias to battle armed Muslims.
With the government barely functioning, Christians here see few options: They can emigrate; depend on Hezbollah for protection; or simply pray that regional and world powers will prop up Lebanon’s armed forces and shield the country from falling into sectarian war.
Next to Al-Qaa, in the village of Ras Baalbek, a Christian commander of the Resistance Brigades, a Hezbollah-affiliated unit made up largely of non-Shiites, is rallying residents to take up arms against Sunni extremists because, he said, the army alone can’t protect local Christians.
In early August, the Lebanese army arrested a Syrian Islamist rebel leader tied to Islamic State on the outskirts of Arsal, a predominantly Sunni town near Al-Qaa and Ras Baalbek. Islamist militants then stormed Arsal and nearly 150 people died in the battle with army troops. Militants abducted Lebanese soldiers and security forces. Eventually, eight were released and four killed, two by decapitation. The army sent reinforcements and the skirmishes continue.
ENLARGE
“The entire world knows that Lebanese army posts collapsed during the so-called Arsal raid by militants,” the bearded Christian commander said. “So it’s my natural right to make alternate arrangements.”
The Lebanese Army chief, Gen. Jean Kahwaji, said last month that his troops, with the help of the U.S. and other countries, were capable of protecting the country from militants.
Following the demise of the Ottoman Empire at the end of World War I, the French carved out the State of Greater Lebanon in the Levant, envisioning it as a haven for Christians. The idea of Christians needing the West’s protection lingered after the country gained independence in 1943.
Some Christians in the Middle East, particularly church leaders, believe secular, authoritarian-ruled states offer the best protection. They say regions beset by tribalism and prone to Islamic fundamentalism are ill-prepared for Western-style democracy.
“We do not need lectures from the U.S. about democracy and morality,” said Ignatius Youssef Younan III, Patriarch of Antioch for the Syriac Catholic Church. He favors democratic reform in Syria but not Mr. Assad’s removal.
Many Christians in Egypt, home to the largest Christian population in the Middle East, have embraced the military coup led by Gen. Abdel-Fattah al-Sisi, now president, saying they felt threatened by the Muslim Brotherhood-led government of Mr. Sisi’s predecessor, Mohammed Morsi.
Pope Tawadros II, spiritual leader of Egypt’s Coptic Christians, had urged followers last year to vote for Mr. Sisi, calling him the country’s savior.
Vivian Fouad, former director of the Cairo-based Coptic Center for Social Studies, said most Copts supported Mr. Sisi. But many resented their pope’s foray into politics, she said: “Our best protection is active participation in the rebuilding of Egyptian political life and civil society.”
On Palm Sunday last month, Lebanese soldiers stood guard in front of the Mar Elias Catholic church in Al-Qaa, as families dressed in their finest walked behind a priest, and children carried palm branches in the traditional procession that marked the start of Easter week. Orthodox Christians celebrated Easter on Sunday.
Antoun and Therese Nasrallah, who brought their four children to church for Palm Sunday, are among the Lebanese Christians who fear an attack by Islamist militants.
Mr. Nasrallah has an AK-47 assault rifle at home and his wife keeps a hunting rifle close. “People will fight until the very end if they have to,” she said.
At night, Mr. Nasrallah goes on patrol with other villagers, including those loyal to the Syrian regime and Hezbollah. They face a common enemy but the alliance is difficult for Mr. Nasrallah, he said.
ENLARGE
Mr. Nasrallah, 44 years old, was a child when Syrian agents arrested his three uncles, who were schoolteachers, and two other family members. The men were among 26 Christians taken from Al-Qaa and two nearby villages.
The next day their tortured and bullet-riddled bodies were found in a nearby field—killings that triggered an exodus of local Christians, Mr. Nasrallah said. He was at his grandparents’ house after they heard the news on the radio. “My grandmother was pulling her hair and slapping her face,” he said, “and my grandfather took to the village streets shouting, ‘The boys are gone.’ ”
Like other villagers here, he and his wife believed the goal of Syria at the time was to drive out Christians and others who lived close to the border and who were seen as hostile to the regime.
At the start of Lebanon’s civil war in 1975, many Christians here said they welcomed Syrian soldiers as protectors against Muslim forces. Eventually, though, Syria was seen as a dreaded occupation force.
Al-Qaa residents say they once more feel they are fighting for their existence. This time, the enemy is Islamic State, also known as ISIS or ISIL, whose militants have driven away Christians and other minorities from towns and villages in Iraq and Syria over the past year.
With their focus on survival, longtime opponents of the Syrian regime and Hezbollah speak of having to band together, despite their animosity, against Islamic State.
“We were praying each day for the toppling of the Syrian regime and for its figures to be put on trial for all their crimes, especially the Al-Qaa massacre,” said Bashir Matar, who lost his father, an uncle and two other family members in the 1978 killings.
“The regime has been saved because our focus now is on the imminent danger—ISIS,” said Mr. Matar, a lawyer who heads the local branch of the Lebanese Forces party.
In northern Iraq, Basim Bello faced a similar choice in the Christian town of Al-Qosh. Before Islamic State captured the nearby city of Mosul and surrounding Christian villages last June, Mr. Bello was a vocal critic of leaders in the semiautonomous Kurdistan region.
At the time, Kurds controlled the region known as the Nineveh Plain and backed only Christian clergy and politicians who favored Kurdish control. Kurdish leaders say the area has historically been theirs to govern.
Today, most Christians displaced from Islamic State-controlled areas are sheltered in the Kurdish region, and Christian men fight alongside Kurds against the militants, backed by the U.S. and its Western allies.
“It’s like having your hand stuck under a rock. Today, the enemy is ISIS, but I know Kurds still covet our areas,” said Mr. Bello who heads a political coalition seeking to establish a self-rule area in northern Iraq for Christians and other minorities.
Christians in the Lebanese village of Al-Qaa remember a time when citizens of the newly independent countries of the Middle East dreamed of living in pluralist democracies that respected all faiths.
The era is preserved in the abandoned stone-and-mud rooms that once belonged to the Nasrallah brothers, the schoolteachers who were among the Christian men seized by Syrian agents in 1978. George, Milad and Riyad Nasrallah are remembered here as intellectuals and passionate political activists.
Their books, photographs and political pamphlets are now thickly coated in dust. One tome is titled the “Dawn of Islam.”
—Dana Ballout contributed to this article.
Write to Sam Dagher at sam.dagher@wsj.com
Popular on WSJ
-
As the debate continues over whether the United States will intervene in Syria, many observers have overlooked what Turkey and Saudi Arabia — Washington's two main regional allies — want from the Americans. Both countries want the United States to conduct a more comprehensive strike that weakens the regime, but their interests over the fate of Syria after the intervention differ greatly. Either way, Ankara's and Riyadh's behavior threatens to draw Washington into its third war in the Islamic world in 12 years.
On Thursday, Turkish media reported that the country deployed additional forces along its border with Syria ahead of expected U.S. military action. The previous day, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry said that Arab countries had offered to pay for the cost of any military action against Damascus. Kerry added that there was international consensus involving "Saudi Arabia, the Emirates, Qataris, the Turks and the French" on the need to take action against Syria for its use of chemical weapons against its own people.
What is a Geopolitical Diary? George Friedman explains.
Kerry is right to place the Saudis and the Turks in the same broad category of those that support Washington's use of force against Damascus. But he ignores the fact that both Ankara and Riyadh want the United States to topple the Syrian regime. That, however, is where their agreement ends. Not only does Washington disagree with its two main allies on the scope of the mission, but all three disagree on how they want the conflict to play out.
Neither Washington nor Ankara wants to the regime to fall completely because they do not want transnational jihadists to assume power. In Turkey, the political elites have divergent views on how far they should go in pursing regime change south of the border. Certainly the Syrian civil war presents risks; the threat of Kurdish separatism is far greater if the Syrian regime collapses. But the conflict also presents the opportunity to expand Ankara's regional influence. The United States, however, wants to oust al Assad but not dismantle his regime entirely — Washington is not interested in weakening Iran to the benefit of Sunni radicals.
The Saudis have a much more hawkish position. After two years of disappointment, Riyadh is pleased to see that Washington may finally exercise the military option. Ultimately, it wants Washington to destroy the Alawite government. Regime change would enable the Saudis to defend against the influence of Iran, their biggest enemy, and to undermine Tehran and its two pre-eminent allies, Iraq and Hezbollah.
Riyadh knows that the collapse of the al Assad regime will create a vacuum that will be exploited by transnational jihadists, but that is a negligible concern. From the Saudi point of view, it is a price worth paying if Riyadh can undermine Iranian regional influence. In fact, Saudi Arabia believes that jihadists are the only effective tools that can be used against the Iranians and their Arab Shia allies.
The Saudi perspective is also informed by the assumption it will be spared any blowback from Syrian instability. Unlike Turkey, it does not share a border with Syria. Between its financial power and its being the only state to have actually defeated jihadists within its borders, Saudi Arabia is confident that it can manage whatever jihadist threat emerges in a post-al Assad Syria.
Ankara shares Riyadh's desire to weaken Iran — Tehran stands between the Turks and their regional ascendance — but it is not willing to go as far as the Saudis. Though both Saudi Arabia and Turkey will try to bolster their preferred rebel factions in pursuit of their respective goals, the decision on just how much damage to inflict on the regime still rests with the United States
-
WSJ
http://www.wsj.com/articles/gulf-states-want-u-s-assurances-and-weapons-in-exchange-for-supporting-iran-pact-1430585002
Gulf States Want U.S. Assurances and Weapons in Exchange for Supporting Iran Nuclear Deal
Regional leaders seek quid pro quo of fighters, missile batteries, surveillance equipment
Gulf Arab nations are seeking advanced U.S. military hardware, such as the F-35 fighter pictured, in exchange for their support of a nuclear deal between Iran and the six world powers with which it is negotiating.
By Jay Solomon and Carol E. Lee
May 2, 2015 12:43 p.m. ET
WASHINGTON—Leading Persian Gulf states want major new weapons systems and security guarantees from the White House in exchange for backing a nuclear agreement with Iran, according to U.S. and Arab officials.
The leaders of the six-nation Gulf Cooperation Council, including Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Qatar, plan to use a high-stakes meeting with President Barack Obama next week to request additional fighter jets, missile batteries and surveillance equipment.
They also intend to pressure Mr. Obama for new defense agreements between the U.S. and the Gulf nations that would outline terms and scenarios under which Washington would intervene if they are threatened by Iran, according to these officials.
The demands underscore the complicated diplomatic terrain Mr. Obama is navigating as he drives toward a nuclear deal with Iran, one of his top foreign-policy goals. They also demonstrate how a pact aimed at stabilizing the Middle East risks further militarizing an already volatile region.
Gulf leaders have long sought to bolster their military arsenals, but the requests pose problems for U.S. officials who want to demonstrate support for Arab allies, many of whom host American military bases, while also ensuring that Israel maintains a military advantage in the region.
Any moves by Mr. Obama to meet Arab leaders’ requests could face headwinds in Congress and new friction with Israel, given the continuing negotiations on an Iran nuclear deal. “I’m very worried that President Obama will promise every military toy they’ve always wanted and a security agreement short of a treaty, with the understanding they have to be sympathetic to this deal,” said Sen. Lindsey Graham (R., S.C.). “If I get a hint of that, a whiff of that, then I would do everything I could to block every bullet and every plane.”
Rep. Eliot Engel of New York, the top Democrat on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, said White House officials have indicated that Mr. Obama was seriously considering Arab leaders’ requests. He said he would be shocked if some of them weren’t granted.
“These countries are in the most vulnerable geographical areas, and I think they have a legitimate concern about Iran,” said Mr. Engel, who has discussed the requests with Arab officials in recent weeks. But, he said, “We have to make sure that Israel’s qualitative military edge is kept.”
Mr. Obama is scheduled to host the leaders of Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the U.A.E. at the White House on May 13 and the following day at Camp David, the presidential retreat in Maryland.
The Persian Gulf countries say they need more drones, surveillance equipment and missile-defense systems to combat an Iranian regime they see as committed to becoming the region’s dominant power. The Gulf states also want upgraded fighter jets to contain the Iranian challenge, particularly the advanced F-35, known as the Joint Strike Fighter.
A senior U.S. official played down chances that the administration would agree to sell advanced systems such as the F-35 fighter to those nations—though the planes will be sold to Israel and Turkey—because of concerns within the administration about altering the military balance in the Middle East.
Sales of such advanced equipment would also likely run into opposition from pro-Israel lawmakers who have the power to block transfers, the official said.
The challenge Mr. Obama faces at Camp David is to assuage growing fears among those Sunni countries that want military superiority over Shiite-dominated Iran, while not undermining longtime U.S. security guarantees to Israel. Current law mandates that the U.S. uphold Israel’s qualitative military edge over its neighbors.
Saudi Arabia, the U.A.E. and Qatar share Israel’s concern about a nuclear deal with Iran but don’t have diplomatic ties with the Israeli government. A top concern among the Gulf nations and Israel is the expected unshackling of Tehran’s finances under the nuclear agreement that the U.S. and five other world powers are seeking with Iran by a June 30 deadline.
Iran’s neighbors fear such an influx of cash could allow the country to pour even more arms and funds into its military allies and proxies in Syria, Iraq, Lebanon and Yemen.
‘I’m very worried that President Obama will promise every military toy they’ve always wanted and a security agreement short of a treaty, with the understanding they have to be sympathetic to this deal.’
—Sen. Lindsey Graham, on the Iran nuclear accord and the coming meeting between Mr. Obama and the Arab leaders.
The outlines of the nuclear agreement, announced last month in Switzerland, call for lifting international sanctions on Iran in exchange for curbs on its atomic work for at least a decade. Under terms being discussed, the U.S. and its allies would also be required eventually to release more than $100 billion of Iran’s oil revenues now frozen in overseas bank accounts.
In anticipation of such a change, the Gulf states have stepped up consultations with the White House on creating new security arrangements, according to U.S. and Arab officials. “We have to be very clear about what the future looks like,” said a senior Arab official involved in discussions with the White House.
Mr. Obama had lunch at the White House last month with U.A.E. Crown Prince Mohammad bin Zayed Al Nahyan, at which they had an extensive discussion about security issues, according to the White House.
Secretary of State John Kerry is scheduled to meet with the Gulf states’ foreign ministers on May 8 in Paris.
Some Arab officials, in recent meetings with Obama administration officials, have raised the possibility of the Gulf Cooperation Council forging a mutual defense treaty with the U.S., similar to Japan’s or South Korea’s, according to people briefed on the talks. This would require Washington to intervene militarily if any member of the group came under attack by Iran or another enemy.
‘These countries are in the most-vulnerable geographical areas, and I think they have a legitimate concern about Iran…[But] we have to make sure that Israel’s qualitative military edge is kept.’
—Rep. Eliot Engel of New York, top Democrat on the House Foreign Affairs Committee
The Gulf states tempered this ambition, however, after conceding the Obama administration would face major obstacles in convincing Congress to approve such a treaty, in part because of U.S. lawmakers’ steadfast support for Israel. Instead, the GCC is seeking to establish clear guidelines for when the U.S. would act to check Iranian aggression.
Reaching a common position between the Gulf states and the Obama administration is a difficult task, U.S. and Arab officials say. The Obama administration has at times differed from Saudi Arabia and the U.A.E. in gauging the level of Iranian support for political rebellions in countries like Yemen and Bahrain.
More recently, Saudi Arabia and its Gulf allies launched airstrikes on insurgents in Yemen, who they argue are receiving arms and funds from Iran—something Tehran denies.
On Tuesday, tensions flared when Iranian warships confronted a Marshall Islands-flagged cargo ship in the Strait of Hormuz, prompting the deployment of a U.S. Navy destroyer to the area and stepped-up U.S. measures to protect American commercial vessels.
A White House statement in advance of Mr. Obama’s GCC meeting said the session is designed for the leaders to “discuss ways to enhance their partnership and deepen security cooperation.”
Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the U.A.E. are already some of the largest arms buyers in the world. Last year, Riyadh purchased $80 billion worth of weapons, according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, which tracks the global arms business. The U.A.E. bought $23 billion.
“The Gulf monarchies need a military edge over Iran,” said an American official engaged in the deliberations between the GCC and U.S.
Some of the Gulf states, in particular Saudi Arabia, have argued they should be allowed to obtain the same nuclear technologies Iran maintains as part of any diplomatic agreement with Washington. “We think there should be nuclear parity between us and Iran,” said an Arab official involved in the discussions.
But the Obama administration is expected to push back against any initiatives that risk further spreading sensitive nuclear technologies across the Mideast.
The U.S. commitment to Israel’s military superiority could undercut hopes for substantive agreements being reached at Camp David.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu shares the Arab governments’ belief that Iran poses the greatest security challenge to their region. But there remains fear in Israel that over the long term any sophisticated systems sold to the GCC countries could eventually be turned on Israel, according to Israeli officials.
Congress, as a result, may seek to block some of the arms deals being discussed. “We want to make sure that the one and only democracy in the region is never outgunned,” Mr. Graham said.
Write to Jay Solomon at jay.solomon@wsj.com and Carol E. Lee at carol.lee@wsj.com
-
Why Sunni Unity Is a Myth
Analysis
May 5, 2015 | 09:00 GMT
Brig. Gen. Ahmed Asiri, spokesman for the Saudi-led coalition that is conducting operations in Yemen, speaks to the media in Riyadh on March 26. (FAYEZ NURELDINE/AFP/Getty Images)
Summary
Yemen is the newest battleground in the growing struggle between Saudi Arabia and Iran, two regional and sectarian rivals. With the Saudis leading a military intervention in Yemen against the Iranian-supported Houthi movement, there has been much talk of a Sunni camp mobilizing to counter the threat posed by ascendant Shiite forces. However, competing interests will hobble the fledgling Sunni alliance.
Forecast
Competing interests will keep a Sunni camp from coalescing.
Saudi Arabia and Turkey are at odds with each other over the future of the Arab world.
Pakistan is far removed from the Middle East and does not feel close sectarian ties to Saudi Arabia.
The Saudi-led coalition acting in Yemen is more an Arab grouping than a Sunni bloc, and differences exist even among the Arabs.
Analysis
The Houthi surge in Yemen triggered a response from several Sunni states. Saudi Arabia mobilized a 10-nation coalition of predominantly Arab countries for an air campaign and naval blockade against the Houthis. Turkey responded with a strong and unprecedented criticism of Iran for Tehran's support for the Houthis. Even Pakistan, which is outside the Middle East, got dragged into the conflict, though its role is still undefined. All of this activity from a diverse group of states whose populations are mostly Sunni created clamor about the emergence of a Sunni bloc.
The conflict in Yemen certainly has increased the geopolitical sectarian polarization in the region that was triggered by the rise of a government dominated by Shiites in Iraq in the mid-2000s and exacerbated by Syria's civil war. But the idea that Iran's attempt to expand its influence in the Arabian Peninsula has led the region's Sunnis to close ranks against Tehran and its allies is incorrect. The outcome of the Saudi-led effort to mobilize Sunni nations reveals great divisions between those countries.
Turkey
In Turkey, the most powerful Sunni nation in the region, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan harshly criticized Iran's support for the Houthis in late March. Erdogan said Iran is attempting to dominate the region, and in doing so is "annoying us, Saudi Arabia and the Gulf countries." He called the situation intolerable and asked Iran to withdraw whatever forces it has in Yemen, Syria and Iraq.
However, Turkey has not committed any forces to the war in Yemen. It does not make sense for the Turks to be part of a Saudi-led coalition when Ankara desires regional leadership. The Saudis would like to see the Turks join the Saudi initiative, but they are wary of Turkish ambitions. After all, the Saudi polity emerged in the mid-18th century in opposition to Turkish domination over the Arab lands. Even if Turkey had not declined to participate, the Saudis and other Arab actors are not comfortable with the idea of aligning with Turkey; doing so would give Ankara the opportunity to dominate the region. The Arabs want Turkish help to counter Iran but do not want to facilitate Turkey's aspirations.
Moreover, there is great dissonance between the Turkish and Saudi visions of the future of the region. Turkey wants to recreate the Arab world in its own image, which is why it supports Muslim Brotherhood-type groups. For Saudi Arabia, political Islam and democratization are a lethal mix. That said, when it comes to Iran — specifically, conflicts such as those in Syria and Iraq, where the interests of Riyadh and Ankara align to an extent — the two can benefit from tactical-level cooperation.
The Iran-backed government in Syria is preventing Turkey from expanding its influence in the Arab world. Consequently, Ankara, which has been cooperating with Doha in Syria, is now coordinating with Riyadh, explaining, in part, the rebels' recent gains against Damascus. Likewise, the Saudis need to work with Turkey to topple the Syrian government and eliminate a major element enabling Iranian penetration of the Arab world. Yet their varying goals will make future competition between the Turks and the Saudis inevitable.
Pakistan
Unlike Turkey, Pakistan's conventional power is relatively weak. It is geographically removed from the Middle East and has no ambitions to lead the region. However, Saudi Arabia's relations with Pakistan are also problematic, even though the Pakistanis and Saudis historically have been close allies. Riyadh has been a great source of financial and energy assistance for Islamabad during Pakistan's long-standing dire economic conditions. The Pakistanis have provided military support for the Saudis, both in terms of the kingdom's security and its interests in the region. Moreover, their intelligence services have cooperated closely — first in the efforts to support Islamist insurgents in Afghanistan during the 1980s and 1990s and then in the fight against jihadists over the past decade.
Despite this close relationship, Pakistan openly declined to send forces to Yemen. From the Pakistanis' perspective, their military is already stretched thin as it combats an ideology that originated in Saudi Arabia and has inflicted a great deal of pain in Pakistan. After Iraq, Pakistan has been the deadliest sectarian battleground where Sunni militants have wreaked havoc against Shiites. Islamabad is already struggling to deal with these twin scourges, and the last thing it wants is to join Riyadh's competition with Tehran, particularly in Yemen.
Joining the fight in Yemen would reverse the gains Pakistan has made against religious extremists in the past six years. Moreover, Shiites make up 20 percent of Pakistan's population, and the state is expected to protect the minority against attacks by Sunni militants. Plenty of groups in Pakistan vociferously support a close alignment with Saudi Arabia and are shaping Islamabad's position that Pakistan will not tolerate any threat to the Saudi kingdom's territorial integrity. However, the general mood is that the Houthis pose no threat to the kingdom, because the Saudis are the ones on the offensive. Instead, the threat to the Saudi kingdom and the wider Muslim world comes from the kingdom's Salafist ideology and its renegades, such as the Islamic State and al Qaeda.
While a Sunni nation, Pakistan has little in common with Saudi Arabia or the Arab world. In addition to the geographic and ethnic difference, Pakistan's Sunni Islam is different from the Salafist interpretation of Saudi Arabia. Pakistan also emphasizes the difference between their democratic political culture and the authoritarian character of Saudi Arabia.
After the Pakistani legislature publicly rejected Saudi Arabia's request for military forces, Riyadh now knows it cannot depend on Islamabad as it has before. Effectively, the Saudi-led coalition in Yemen consists of Arab nations — hence the efforts to create an Arab military force.
The Arab World
Thus, the much talked about Sunni camp is really an Arab camp. But Saudi Arabia and certain Gulf Cooperation Council states are doing the heavy lifting in Yemen because the three major Arab states — Egypt, Syria and Iraq — have lost strategic relevance since the 1970s. Egypt's attempts at regional leadership foundered when wars, intra-Arab competition and a structurally weak economy led to the decline of the Nasserite government. In Syria, the minority Alawite sect in Syria's Baathist government under President Hafez al Assad consolidated power and, along with Damascus' rivalry with Baghdad, took the Levantine country out of both the Sunni and Arab categories. The 1991 Gulf War weakened Iraq as a Sunni Arab state. The country later fell into Iran's orbit after the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003.
Moreover, the Sunni-dominated Arab world was long divided between conservative monarchies and radical republican states, a divide that has, in the past three decades, been largely replaced by the ideological struggle between Islamists and secularists or traditionalists. While the more institutionalized Arab states were weakening, the petroleum-rich monarchies emerged as leaders of the Arab world, which is why the Gulf Cooperation Council has been more effective than the Arab League.
For the longest time, the Gulf countries' main tool in shaping the region was their financial heft. Egypt historically was strong politically and militarily but weak financially, and it has since become heavily dependent on Gulf largesse in the post-Hosni Mubarak era. Turmoil in the region increased exponentially after the Arab Spring, which left the Saudis and their Gulf allies to assume greater leadership, especially as the United States began scaling back its involvement in the region and engaging with Iran. In this context, the Saudi-led coalition's military intervention in Yemen emerged.
Saudi Arabia, with 100 aircraft, some naval units and 150,000 troops, is doing the bulk of the work. The United Arab Emirates is a distant second, with 30 jets, even though it has developed a sophisticated defense establishment and engaged in action in Libya and Syria. Kuwait and Bahrain have contributed 15 and 12 aircraft, respectively, while Qatar has committed 10 warplanes. Jordan and Morocco reportedly have provided six jets each while Sudan sent four warplanes, though it is unclear if they have conducted airstrikes and if so how many.
The Arab country with the biggest military, Egypt, has offered some air and naval assets, but again it is unclear how many. The Saudis hoped that Egypt would provide ground forces. But Cairo, despite its financial dependence on Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states, has resisted. From the Egyptian point of view, the Houthi surge in Yemen is not as much of a threat as it is to the Saudis, and Egypt has other matters of concern in its immediate area, such as Libya and Gaza. While the Arab states depend on Riyadh to lead a coalition, they are not comfortable subordinating their national sovereignty to a supra-national institution dominated by Saudi Arabia.
These states have different priorities and face different challenges. Disagreements are bound to occur. Even regarding Yemen, Egypt has tried to maintain a minimal role, while the United Arab Emirates has concerns about how the war has been prosecuted. The change of leadership in Riyadh is also creating anxieties. Not only are Arab countries concerned about the political transition underway in the kingdom, but they are also worried that the kingdom's Salafist ideology remains a destabilizing factor that jihadists can exploit.
Herein lies the strategic dilemma: The Arab world needs Saudi Arabia, but it fears the kingdom's hegemony. Moreover, the character of the Saudi state hinders Riyadh's ability to provide leadership. Its monarchical system depends on Salafism in a unique arrangement that does not apply to other states such as Egypt or even other monarchies such as the United Arab Emirates. While all the Arab countries seek to limit democratic reforms, there is no coherent vision for how Arab governments will evolve and develop.
Despite these many hurdles, there is no alternative to Saudi Arabia assuming leadership of the Sunni Arab world. The Saudis would have to lead any joint Arab military force, but a key part of this effort will be to get Egypt, which has the forces to spare, to play a bigger role. Several critical issues such as logistics, interoperability and political decision-making have to be worked out. Even the United Arab Emirates' de facto ruler, Prince Mohammed bin Zayed al-Nuhayyan, last week called for the creation of a political authority to oversee the envisioned Arab force.
While Saudi Arabia struggles to mobilize the Arab world, Turkey, whose political and economic progress offers a more attractive model for Arab youth, will challenge its decisions continuously. Turkey also has the advantage of being Sunni and better positioned to counter Iran, the sectarian "other."
For now, the Saudi-led Arab coalition is a relatively weak reactive force, which is why Riyadh and its Gulf allies are gearing up to secure U.S. assistance in the Camp David summit in mid-May. In many ways, the problems with forming a Sunni camp have arisen because majorities are typically internally fragmented, while minorities tend to have more cohesion. Similarly, Sunni leadership is contested while Iran faces no challenges from other Shiite states.
-
second post
Share
In Turkey, Saudi Arabia Finds an Unlikely Partner Against Syria
Geopolitical Diary
May 7, 2015 | 22:47 GMT
Text Size
Print
While the war in Yemen remains inconclusive, Saudi Arabia is escalating its intervention in Syria. Unlike the Yemeni theater, where the Saudis are the largest military force, the Syrian battleground will be more complex for Riyadh. The Saudis will be partnering with Turkey, and Riyadh and Ankara are not in complete agreement. Iran's support for the Syrian government will also complicate matters, as will U.S. nervousness about jihadists filling any vacuum left in Damascus if the government falls. Moreover, the U.S.-led coalition operations against the Islamic State in Syria will not make the situation simpler.
Nevertheless, Saudi Arabia and Turkey have reportedly agreed on a deal to greatly enhance support for rebels fighting Syrian President Bashar al Assad's government forces. Separately, AFP reported that Syrian opposition forces had said the Saudi kingdom wants to unite most of Syria's rebel factions and is organizing a gathering in mid-June to this end. Meanwhile, Turkish and Qatari foreign ministers are meeting to discuss Syria and other regional issues.
What is a Geopolitical Diary? George Friedman Explains.
The Turks and the Qataris have long been allies, supporting each other in Syria and across the region. But the Saudis joining this group is a development that began when the new monarch, Saudi King Salman, took office back in late January. Earlier this week we published a report outlining how Turkey and Saudi Arabia may cooperate tactically, but they are strategic competitors for leadership of the Middle East.
In the context of Syria, Riyadh needs Ankara because Turkey's long border with Syria gives it a great deal of influence in the Levantine country. Likewise, Turkey knows it cannot act in an Arab country without Saudi Arabia being on board with the plan, especially since the kingdom's financial muscle enables it to influence many of the factions fighting in Syria. This mutual dependence does not make for more than an uneasy alignment because of the divergent natures of the region's two major Sunni players.
For now, though, the shared goal of toppling al Assad has Riyadh and Ankara cooperating, at least on unifying the rebels. Given the rebels' fractured nature, the key role al Qaeda's Syrian branch Jabhat al-Nusra played in rebel victories, the Islamic State factor and the involvement of Kurdish separatist forces, Turkey will have to take a more assertive military role at some point. To this end, Turkey has even talked of creating "safe zones" — or sending in forces — in northern Syria. Turkey is the only regional power that can insert troops into Syria. But in terms of air support, Turkey could collaborate with Saudi Arabia, Qatar and other Gulf states — especially the United Arab Emirates — and Jordan, which is escalating its involvement in its northern neighbor.
Another factor that has brought the two competing Sunni powers together is their shared frustration with U.S. unwillingness to take decisive action in Syria. From the U.S. perspective, the regional players ought to take the lead. At the same time, Washington has been wary of any plans to create a situation where the al Assad government falls and Syria becomes a vast ungoverned space that transnational jihadists are best positioned to exploit, which is precisely what happened in eastern Syria when the Islamic State declared its so-called caliphate.
In the light of the rebel victories in the northern province of Idlib, it is quite reasonable that at some point Turkish-Saudi-Qatari assistance will enable the rebels to topple the al Assad government. But such developments raise the question of what happens the next day in the minds of the rebels' state sponsors. They are planning to meet next month to specifically discuss what happens when Damascus is in the hands of the rebels.
In order to cooperate, Qatar finally convinced Saudi Arabia that to effectively combat Iran's growing influence in the region, Riyadh needed to ease its opposition to the Muslim Brotherhood. This stance has allowed Saudi Arabia to work with Turkey, which, along with Qatar, has been among the main state backers of the mainstream Islamist movement. Riyadh has decided to prioritize fighting Tehran and its allies for the time being. But it does not mean Saudi Arabia is now embracing the Muslim Brotherhood. It cannot, because the movement is antithetical to Saudi religious and political foundations.
This issue is critical when it comes to a future Syrian government, which the West, the Turks and the Qataris would want to be democratic. Moreover, Ankara and Doha want Muslim Brotherhood-style Islamists to dominate the new Syrian state. Riyadh does not. Such a state would only undermine the Saudis on the home front, who are going through a delicate transition.
However, most of the Syrian rebels are of one Salafist-jihadist persuasion or another, and getting them to accept a post-al Assad democratic setup will be extremely difficult. This difficulty may appear to be to Saudi Arabia's advantage, but Riyadh has no alternative political model to offer either. Worse, jihadist forces will exploit this dispute, and the mess will pale in comparison to what happened when Islamist insurgents toppled the Marxist government in Afghanistan in 1992 — a process that catalyzed the growth of transnational jihadism.
And while Saudi Arabia and Turkey try to sort out how they will manage their joint aims in Syria, they also have to worry about the proxy war with Iran. For Tehran, losing Syria is unacceptable outcome.
-
Here in pockets of the rugged mountains near the Lebanese border, the distinctive yellow flag of Hezbollah now flies where al-Qaeda militants once held sway. These gains in the Qalamoun Mountains represent a bright spot for embattled Syrian President Bashar Assad’s government, now reeling from a unified insurgent assault in the country’s northwest. And again, they show the power and influence of the Lebanese militant group in Syria’s civil war, grinding on into its fifth year after killing more than 220,000 people. A team of Associated Press journalists traveling with Hezbollah into Syria found smiling Hezbollah fighters proudly showing newly dismantled booby traps and food quickly left behind by the Sunni insurgents as commanders promised further advances they say protect Lebanon. But in Lebanon, worries persist that Hezbollah’s battlefield successes only further entangle the tiny country in Syria’s violence, risking attacks back home as well. The Qalamoun Mountains are on the Syrian side of the border with Lebanon. They tower near Syria’s capital, Damascus, and linking that base of Assad’s power to the coast, an enclave of his Alawite sect, an off-shoot of Shiite Islam.
But the Sunni militants of the local al-Qaeda chapter called the Nusra Front and the Islamic State group, have been dug into the terrain for years. Although Hezbollah officials say a full-blown assault to recover Qalamoun hasn’t started, Hezbollah fighters in recent days have captured large areas and strategic hills. On Thursday, Hezbollah fighters attacking from the fields of the Syrian border town of Assal al-Ward met comrades on the offensive from the outskirts of the Lebanese village of Brital. “The situation is better than perfect,” one smiling Hezbollah fighter said, speaking along with others anonymously as part of the conditions Hezbollah set to allow AP journalists to make the trip. Insurgents appear to have left their camps in a hurry. Groceries, medicines and other supplies littered their camps. At a Hezbollah position, fighters installed a 130 mm cannon pointed deeper into Syria. Wooden ammunition boxes nearby bore Persian words — a sign of the support of Iran, a major benefactor of both Hezbollah and Assad. Shelling could be heard in the distance, which Hezbollah fighters attributed to clashes around Syria’s Barouh mountain to the north. Two giant Hezbollah bulldozers ground out a sand road on one of the region’s mountains. Some 3,000 militants are in the Qalamoun region, almost equally split between the Nusra Front and the Islamic State group, a Hezbollah commander recently said in Beirut. He said Hezbollah and Syrian troops surround the Qalamoun from the north, the east and the south, as well as part of the west, squeezing the Islamic militants who remain.
-
15
66
Opinion
Review & Outlook
Assad Still Has Chemical Arms
Inspectors find new evidence at an undisclosed site.
A Civil Defence member carries a damaged canister in Ibleen village in May. ENLARGE
A Civil Defence member carries a damaged canister in Ibleen village in May. Photo: Reuters
May 12, 2015 7:17 p.m. ET
20 COMMENTS
President Obama has often boasted that his diplomacy disarmed Syria’s Bashar Assad of his chemical weapons. Mark that down as another non-achievement following news that investigators in Syria have discovered new traces of the chemical precursors to sarin and VX nerve agents at a previously undisclosed military research site.
This is the latest blow to the credibility of the 2013 U.S.-Russia deal to remove chemical weapons from Assad’s hands. The finding, first reported by Reuters, is the clearest sign that Damascus lied about the size and whereabouts of its existing stockpiles. The deception makes it difficult to monitor compliance and highlights Damascus’s lack of commitment to implementing the deal.
A report last year by the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) found that weaponized chlorine gas has been used “systematically and repeatedly” against civilians in northern Syria. As anti-Assad rebels have made fresh gains on the ground, there has been an apparent uptick in the use of chlorine, which is delivered using barrel bombs dropped from regime helicopters.
U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Antony Blinken says there’s “strong and credible” evidence of chlorine attacks. “As you know, only the regime has helicopters,” U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Samantha Power has said. “So we believe the factual record is straightforward and devastating in terms of regime use.”
The record is clear, but the deal Mr. Obama hailed in 2013 as an arms-control “breakthrough” suffers from the absence of an accountability mechanism. The OPCW lacked the mandate to assign responsibility for the chlorine attacks it documented, and under the U.N. resolution each violation has to be reported to the Security Council, where Moscow and Beijing protect Damascus.
All this casts doubt on the White House’s ability to hold Iran’s leaders to the terms of any deal they might strike over their nuclear program. As with Syria’s chemical weapons, the Iranian deal leaves the West in the dark about the Islamic Republic’s past weaponization activity, meaning international investigators won’t have a baseline against which to measure its future efforts.
And as with Syria, the Iranian deal ties investigators’ hands. Tehran has rejected snap inspections, and the Obama Administration has acquiesced. If the world won’t respond to evidence of cheating by a minor state like Syria, why should anyone believe it would act against cheaters in Iran?
-
Could the Islamic State Survive Losing Its Leaders?
Analysis
May 13, 2015 | 21:38 GMT
Print
Text Size
Abd al-Rahman Mustafa al-Qaduli, also known as Abu Alaa al-Afari, is a high-ranking Islamic State official. (U.S. State Department)
Analysis
On May 13, Iraq's Ministry of Defense reported that the deputy leader of the Islamic State, Abd al-Rahman Mustafa al-Qaduli, also known as Abu Alaa al-Afari, was killed in a May 12 airstrike on the village of al-Iyadhiya, near Tal Afar in the northern Iraqi province of Ninevah. The ministry posted a video on its website purportedly depicting the airstrike, which the government said targeted al-Afari as he met with dozens of Islamic State leaders. A U.S. Defense Department representative was unable to confirm that al-Afari had been killed, but said that U.S. aircraft conducted two airstrikes near Tal Afar on May 12.
The Iraqi government previously reported that Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi was wounded in a March 18 airstrike in Ninevah's al-Baaj district and that al-Afari had assumed operational control of the group. The United States has denied that report. However, even if the worst case scenario for the Islamic State is true, with al-Baghdadi seriously wounded and al-Afari killed, it is unlikely to have any significant and immediate impact on the battlefield in Iraq and Syria.
If al-Baghdadi was wounded and incapacitated in March, the Islamic State's operations have shown no signs of it. The organization is large and highly institutionalized, containing sufficient redundancies and practicing extensive division of labor. It has also prepared for decapitation strikes and has weathered them in the past. For example, in the months following the June 2006 airstrike that killed Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, there was actually an increase in the attacks targeting coalition troops instead of a decrease. The group also survived an April 2010 airstrike that killed its two top leaders, Abu Omar al-Baghdadi and Abu Ayyub al-Masri. Even since the United States and its partners began airstrikes against the Islamic State in September 2014, several of the group's regional emirs have been killed but were quickly replaced. Moreover, al-Afari is a cleric, not a military leader, and the men planning and conducting the group's military operations are still largely intact.
The report of al-Afari's death needs to be taken with some skepticism until it is confirmed. The Iraqi government has repeatedly announced the deaths of jihadist fighters only to have those claims later refuted. If the airstrike is confirmed, however, it will be another sign that the luster is coming off Islamic State's core narrative that it is favored by God and impossible to stop. This, along with reports of desertions, food and medical shortages and even the forced conscription of local men and boys will continue to erode the group's appeal as well as its ability to attract foreign fighters and financing.
-
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2015/05/14/krauthammer_obamas_post-summit_presser_was_a_sellout_announcement_gulf_arabs_should_be_terrified.html
-
second post:
=============
U.S. Special Forces Kill Senior ISIS Leader in Syria, Capture His Wife
Officials say Abu Sayyaf helped direct group’s oil, gas and financial arms, was emerging as a leader of military operations
U.S. Defense Secretary Ash Carter, shown here on May 1, on Saturday said a special forces raid that killed a senior Islamic State leader Abu Sayyaf and captured his wife was a significant blow to the militant group. ENLARGE
U.S. Defense Secretary Ash Carter, shown here on May 1, on Saturday said a special forces raid that killed a senior Islamic State leader Abu Sayyaf and captured his wife was a significant blow to the militant group. Photo: Manuel Balce Ceneta/Associated Press
By
Gordon Lubold
Updated May 16, 2015 12:29 p.m. ET
155 COMMENTS
WASHINGTON—A senior Islamic State leader was killed, and his wife captured, in a raid in eastern Syria by U.S. Special Operations, the first mission in that country targeting wanted ISIS militants, defense officials said early on Saturday.
The operation was conducted on the ground in Al-Amr near the eastern Syrian city of Deir-Ezzour to capture Abu Sayyaf and his wife, Umm Sayyaf, also thought to be part of the organization, Pentagon officials said.
During the mission late Friday, Abu Sayyaf “engaged U.S. forces” and was killed. Special Operations forces, however, captured Umm Sayyaf, the Pentagon said. No American forces were injured or killed, the Defense Department said. The mission was a rare example of U.S. forces conducting an operational maneuver on the ground. Last year, Special Operations forces conducted a risky but ultimately unsuccessful attempt to rescue American journalists James Foley and Steven Sotloff and other hostages in eastern Syria.
“The operation represents another significant blow to ISIL, and it is a reminder that the United States will never waver in denying safe haven to terrorists who threaten our citizens, and those of our friends and allies,” according to a statement issued by Defense Secretary Ash Carter.
Islamic State is sometimes referred to as ISIS or ISIL.
Abu Sayyaf was said to have helped direct the terrorist organization’s illicit oil gas and some financial operations that help fund Islamic State’s operations. He was also emerging as a leader of the group’s military operations. Umm Sayyaf was captured during the operation and is now being held by U.S. officials in Iraq. She is thought to have been holding a young Yazidi woman as a slave. The Yazidi woman was freed and will be reunited with her family in coming days, according to U.S. officials.
‘The operation represents another significant blow to ISIL.’
—U.S. Defense Secretary Ash Carter, in discussing Friday’s raid.
“We suspect that Umm Sayyaf is a member of ISIL, played an important role in ISIL’s terrorist activities and may have been complicit in the enslavement of the young woman rescued last night,” according to National Security Council spokesperson Bernadette Meehan.
The White House has been reluctant to send U.S. forces into harm’s way in Syria and in Iraq, maintaining the pledge President Barack Obama have no “combat boots” on the ground in either country. Mr. Obama authorized Friday’s raid with what the White House described as the unanimous recommendation of his national security team as well as the consent of Iraqi authorities. The mission came after U.S. military officials had developed enough intelligence using drones and other means to be confident enough that the mission could be successful, likely taking extra precautions after the failed rescue attempt for Messrs. Foley and Sotloff last year.
—Carol E. Lee and Adam Entous contributed to this article.
-
Camp David and the U.S. Power of Choice in the Middle East
Geopolitical Diary
May 14, 2015 | 22:45 GMT
Text Size
Print
U.S. President Barack Obama's Camp David retreat for Sunni Gulf leaders will not be remembered for the diplomatic snubs, defense deals or even the nuclear proliferation threats. It will be remembered as the most vivid illustration of a changing balance of power in the Middle East after three and a half decades of acrimonious U.S.-Iran relations
The last major shift in the U.S. relationship with the Persian Gulf states took place in the 1970s, in the thick of the Cold War. The 34-year-old deputy crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman, and the 55-year-old crown prince, Mohammed bin Nayef, may be too young to fully understand what their royal elders struggled with in trying to ensure that the global hegemon would not sacrifice the House of Saud to its Persian allies. After all, an entire generation has only known a world in which U.S. support for Saudi Arabia and hostility toward Iran were a given. But the mandate of King Salman's successors at Camp David was clear: to prevent history from repeating itself.
What is a Geopolitical Diary? George Friedman Explains.
Thanks to a wealth of declassified information from the Nixon-Kissinger years, we now have a much more colorful view of how the White House managed its relationships in the Persian Gulf at the time. The Shah of Iran sold himself to the Americans as the Guardian of the Gulf, worthy of an exorbitant amount of military toys, including squadrons of F-14 fighter jets fresh off the assembly line. The Nixon White House indulged the shah in most of these requests. The logic was that Iran, as a steadfast and modernized partner of the United States in contrast to the House of Saud and the arcane Wahhabism it practiced, would help the United States carry the burden of ensuring freedom of navigation through the Strait of Hormuz. Tehran also would help keep the Soviets at bay, and it would do all of this while serving as a reliable oil supplier to the West.
While Iran sat on a pedestal in Washington, the Saudis were of course more than unnerved. With Soviet-backed militant groups operating across the region and multiple eyes set on Saudi oil fields, the last thing the House of Saud needed was for Washington to place its trust in Riyadh's historical enemy to secure the Gulf. An account by U.S. Ambassador to Iran James Akins on a conversation he had with Saudi Oil Minister Ahmed Zaki Yamani in 1975 is particularly revealing of the Saudi perception of what they viewed as an intolerable U.S. foreign policy. Akins claimed that an infuriated Yamani confronted him about an alleged set of military contingency plans outlined by the shah and the White House. From the Saudi point of view, the Americans were effectively arming Iran to enable an Iranian invasion of the Arabian oil fields and the occupation of the "entire Arabian littoral of the Persian Gulf."
Though Riyadh certainly felt it had to compete for Washington's attention, the House of Saud and Washington also took important steps to build up their own strategic relationship. The United States needed Saudi Arabia to balance against Iran in OPEC policy and bankroll regional governments and proxies in a broader battle against Soviet influence. At Camp David 44 years ago, Nixon devised a plan to break from the gold standard, which relied heavily on Saudi cooperation. As Nixon sought to ensure global demand for the dollar for many decades to come, the House of Saud made a deal with Washington to price oil sales in dollars only and buy up billions of U.S. treasuries with surplus petrodollars. Thanks to the Saudis and Nixon's geopolitical backroom deals, the U.S. dollar has been able to build and preserve its position as the world's reserve currency, enabling the United States to spend beyond its means as any global empire would.
But it was not until the 1979 Iranian Revolution that toppled the shah and elevated the mullahs that the U.S.-Saudi relationship really took off. From that point onward, the House of Saud and the White House forgave and forgot their many differences and remade the security architecture of the Persian Gulf to put the United States firmly behind the Sunni bloc while Iran remained isolated. However, that alliance structure started to crack in 2003, when the United States toppled the Sunni government of Saddam Hussein in Iraq and wittingly opened the door for Iran to anchor itself in Mesopotamia through a Shiite-dominated government in Baghdad.
The Gulf state leaders gathered at Camp David on Thursday may feel betrayed by the United States, but they cannot be surprised by the evolution of U.S. relations in the Persian Gulf. This shift was triggered a dozen years ago, even if it is only fully materializing now. Saudi editorials in the days leading up to the summit were full of contempt. Some argue that Obama's outreach is an admission that he made a losing bet on Iran and is now groveling for reacceptance by Gulf leaders. Another claims that Obama may want special relations with both Iran and the Gulf states at the same time, but that he simply cannot have it both ways.
But in fact, he can. A U.S. detente with Iran does not mean that Washington's relationship with the Sunni states of the Gulf is swept to the side. On the contrary, the United States will be working to build up these states, along with Turkey, to counterbalance Iran in the region. The chessboard is also somewhat simpler for the United States this time around. The United States and Russia may be experiencing Cold War nostalgia today, but Russia's influence in the Middle East is far more limited today than it was a couple of decades ago. That means the proxy battles in the region will primarily involve the local players rather than the overarching superpowers. Instead, the United States will be there when it comes to securing energy chokepoints and neutralizing jihadist threats, picking and choosing its battles wisely along the way.
And that is where the core frustration in Saudi Arabia will fester. The United States has revived the power of choice for itself in the Persian Gulf. When it comes to finding another security guarantor in the region, the Saudi royals will inevitably find themselves back in Washington in their time of need.
-
A very clever analysis, and one in line with previous (and outside the box) Stratfor predictions, but for me the omission of the nuclear variable from the equation leads to GIGO: Garbage In, Garbage Out.
At any rate, here's what Iran makes of it:
http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/05/16/us-yemen-security-iran-khamenei-idUSKBN0O108O20150516?feedType=RSS&feedName=worldNews
-
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2015/may/14/china-sell-jordan-missile-firing-drones-after-obam/
-
By Paul McLeary with Ariel Robinson
Things fall apart. Iraqi forces broke and fled the city of Ramadi in the face of a renewed assault by the Islamic State on Sunday, recalling the full-fledged retreat from Mosul last summer that gave the extremist group access to whole divisions’ worth of American-supplied Iraqi military equipment.
Despite a top U.S. military official’s contention late last week that most of Ramadi was still solidly in government hands and that the Islamic State was “on the defensive,” the latest defeat heaps fresh doubt on Iraqi forces' ability to hold ground, and the speed with which the 3,000 U.S. trainers there can churn out effective troops.
And in another echo of last summer, there have also been reports that the Iraqi Army has lost Camp Ar Ramadi just west of the city, home to the 8th brigade, leaving behind heavy weapons and scores of military vehicles.
Airstrikes and Iranian fighters. American air power – to the tune of over 165 airstrikes around Ramadi over the past month – has proven unable to prevent the Anbar provincial capital from falling. The loss has caused the local Sunni tribes to petition Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi to again call for the assistance of Shiite militias (including some backed by Iran) to stem the losses.
The Shiite fighters were a key player in this spring's battle for the city of Tikrit, but have raised fears among some Sunnis of increased Iranian influence over the country’s security forces. Iranian Defense Minister Hossein Dehghan arrived in Baghdad for talks on Sunday.
Remember, the U.S. suspended airstrikes around Tikrit last month when the Iranian-backed militias were in the thick of the fight. Only when Abadi convinced them to back off did American bombs begin falling again.
Let the dominoes fall. The next major prize for the Islamic State is the massive oil refinery at Baiji. The refinery remains mostly in government hands, despite weeks of ferocious assaults. Reflecting Washington’s scattershot policy in Iraq, there has been a real back and forth among American defense officials over Baiji's importance.
In April, chairman of the Joint Chiefs Gen. Martin Dempsey claimed that Baiji was critical to Iraq’s security, followed just weeks later by Defense Department spokesman Col. Steve Warren claiming that the refinery wasn’t actually all that crucial.
With Fallujah and Ramadi in the hands of the Islamic State, and the Baiji assault still very much underway, it’s safe to assume that the refinery is next. Watch this space to see how important it really is to U.S. and Iraqi planners moving forward.
Read FP’s Colum Lynch and Sean Naylor on how the intelligence gathered during the weekend raid by Delta Force operators on the Syrian compound of the Islamic State’s “oil emir” Abu Sayyaf may lead to more strikes in the future.
Still on top. From drone strikes to secret prisons to torture, the CIA has been pulling the strings on American foreign policy in the Middle East since 9/11. In a new story in the latest issue of Foreign Policy, Yochi Dreazen and Sean Naylor report that despite complaints from Congress and others in government, the arrangement likely won’t change anytime soon.
-
http://www.breitbart.com/national-security/2015/05/20/claim-turkish-govt-arming-islamist-groups-in-syria/
-
http://www.daybydaycartoon.com/comic/eyes-open/
http://www.daybydaycartoon.com/comic/assaults-2/
-
By Paul McLeary with Ariel Robinson
BREAKING: The U.S. Central Command announced this morning that Iraqi forces have broken through the Islamic State’s months-long siege of the Baiji oil refinery and are now resupplying the beleaguered Iraqi troops inside the facility.
“In the past 72 hours, we have seen the ISF make steady, measured progress in regaining some of the areas leading to the Baiji Oil Refinery despite the significant Daesh resistance in the form of IEDs, suicide vehicle borne IEDs, as well as heavy weapon and rocket fire attacks,” Brig. Gen Thomas Weidley said in a statement. It's a start, but will it be enough to turn the tide?
Things may be bad, but business is good. The week is ending with a bang after announcements that the United States is looking to sell $3.8 billion worth of military equipment to Israel and Saudi Arabia. And not to be outdone, Russia is working hard to expand its defense business with Iraq.
In the first instance, Israel has requested 14,500 Joint Direct Attack Munition (JDAM) precision guided weapons for its Air Force in a potential deal worth $1.8 billion. If the sale goes through -- which it should -- Boeing, Lockheed Martin, General Dynamics, and Raytheon Missile Systems should all be pretty happy.
Similarly, the State Department has signed off on the sale of ten MH-60R helicopters with associated radars and dozens of Hellfire missiles -- and 380 laser-guided rockets -- in a $1.9 billion package. Those people you see smiling? They probably work for Sikorsky Aircraft Corporation and Lockheed Martin, both of which should do pretty well when the deal is finalized.
Are the similar dollar amounts and the fact that the deals were announced within 24 hours of each other a coincidence? Your call, friends.
Russia and Iraq. In the midst of the most dire crisis his country has faced since the departure of the last U.S. combat troops in December 2011, Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi this week did the obvious thing to do: he got on a plane and flew to Moscow.
Iraqi officials insisted that the trip was simply part of a long-planned commitment to meet with Russian officials about potential energy and arms deals. No word yet on what those deals might be, but both Iraq and the U.S. have spent billions to buy dozens of Russian attack helicopters over the years (with Washington buying them for both Afghanistan and Iraq), along with some armored vehicles.
At the end of a second day of meetings on Thursday, Russian President Vladimir Putin said that Moscow and Baghdad are “expanding cooperation in the area of military technology,” and that “our companies are working in your country and we are talking of investments in the order of billions of dollars.” Abadi also visited with a group of Iraqi officers being trained in Russia.
How confident is Washington in Abadi’s ability to lead his country through this crisis while navigating his way through the minefield of sectarian politics and rivalries? “He’s the only horse to back,” lamented one former CIA official. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov however, sees things a bit differently, saying recently that in the fight against the Islamic State, Moscow is ”helping both Iraq and Syria, possibly more effectively than anyone else, by providing weapons to their armies and security forces.”
And while all of this is happening, Iraqis are increasingly blaming the United States for the fall of Ramadi.
-
With Victories, ISIS Dispels Hope of a Swift Decline
By TIM ARANGO and ANNE BARNARDMAY 23, 2015
BAGHDAD — Just last month, when Western and Iraqi officials talked about the Islamic State, it was mostly to list a series of setbacks to the terrorist group: defeated in the Syrian town of Kobani, battered by a heavy airstrike campaign, forced out of a growing list of towns and cities in Iraq.
But in just the past week, the Islamic State has turned that story around. Last weekend it solidified its hold on Iraq’s Anbar Province with a carefully choreographed assault on the regional capital, Ramadi. And on Wednesday, it stretched its territory in Syria into the historically and strategically important city of Palmyra.
Confounding declarations of the group’s decline, the twin offensives have become a sudden showcase for the group’s disciplined adherence to its core philosophies: always fighting on multiple fronts, wielding atrocities to scare off resistance and, especially, enforcing its caliphate in the Sunni heartland that straddles the Iraqi-Syrian border. In doing so, the Islamic State has not only survived setbacks, but also engineered new victories.
“Nobody here from the president on down is saying that this is something that we’ll just overcome immediately,” a senior State Department official said in a briefing with reporters on Wednesday, in which the ground rules demanded anonymity. “It’s an extremely serious situation.”
Within Iraq, the group’s offensive was taking shape almost immediately after the government’s victory last month in the central city of Tikrit.
Islamic State fighters took up simultaneous pressure campaigns on Iraq’s largest oil refinery, north of Baghdad in Baiji, and on Ramadi. In Diyala, the group, also known as ISIS or ISIL, orchestrated a prison break, a signature operation it has carried out frequently over the years and which could help restore its capability in the eastern province.
The broad scope of operations now seems to have been designed to wear out the Iraqi security forces and make sure they were dispersed when the Islamic State began its heaviest push against Ramadi this month, said Jessica Lewis McFate, an analyst at the Institute for the Study of War, a research organization in Washington that has advocated a more muscular response by the United States to the threat of the Islamic State.
The Islamic State has been battling for Ramadi, the capital of Anbar Province, since mid-April. The group launched a new assault on May 15 with the backing of sleeper cells to capture government facilities and take control of most of the city just two days later, on May 17. Ramadi is strategic to the Islamic State because of its proximity to
, , ,
Within days, Iraqi security forces flee, and Islamic State fighters take control of key government facilities.
In particular, Ms. McFate said the offensives had depleted and exhausted Iraq’s elite counterterrorism force, known as the Golden Division, which is highly mobile and had long fought on both fronts, in Ramadi and Baiji. The unit, which worked closely for nearly a decade with the American Special Forces, is seen as the most effective government force, although its numbers, compared with the regular Iraqi Army and police forces, are small.
“ISIS tried to stretch the I.S.F. as much as it could to find their breaking point,” Ms. McFate said, using the abbreviation for the Iraqi Security Forces.
When the main Islamic State assault on Ramadi began late on the night of May 14, it employed resources that had been prepared long before and were unleashed in an intense burst of violence that broke the remaining defenders.
As usual, the Islamic State opened the attack with suicide bombers, but in this case on an even bigger scale: The militants sent in 10 bomb-laden vehicles, each believed to have explosive power similar to the truck bomb used in Oklahoma City two decades ago, the senior State Department official said. Entire city blocks were destroyed.
Sleeper cells of Islamic State loyalists then rose up, according to witness accounts, helping the group quickly take control as its fighters advanced into new parts of Ramadi.
Out of fear and exhaustion, local Sunni fighters who had defended the city for nearly a year and a half left in droves last Sunday, taunted by soldiers for abandoning their land.
Staying true to its doctrine of always pushing on multiple fronts, the Islamic State has not stopped with Ramadi: It has also swept into new territory in Syria. In taking Palmyra — a relatively small and remote but strategically located desert city near the country’s geographical center — the group has for the first time seized a Syrian city from government forces, rather than from other insurgents.
It attacked at a time and in a place in which government forces have been increasingly strained, exhausted and unwilling to fight for remote areas. In contrast to the barrage of suicide bombs it used in Ramadi, the Islamic State appears to have won Palmyra with a more ordinary arsenal of foot soldiers, tanks and antiaircraft guns mounted on trucks, relying on its adversary’s weakness and the extreme fear it has managed to instill with its well-publicized atrocities.
It is probably not a coincidence that several days before its main offensive on Palmyra, the Islamic State beheaded dozens of soldiers, government supporters and their families in an outlying village and widely disseminated the images.
The group also chose its target wisely. Palmyra has a relatively small population to provide for and control, but it is a disproportionate prize. It commands access to new oil and gas fields at a time when coalition bombings have targeted many Islamic State oil sources elsewhere; has a critical network of roads; and includes an ancient site that provides endless opportunities for both propaganda and illegal antiquities trafficking.
The offensives have allowed the Islamic State to become even more deeply entrenched in territory whose desert geography and disenchanted local population work in its favor. Particularly in Anbar Province, the group’s Sunni extremist fighters have been more of a native force than an invading one.
After its predecessor, Al Qaeda in Iraq, was driven underground by a long and bloody American military offensive late last decade, its fighters began regrouping among sympathetic Sunni tribes next door in eastern Syria.
The group survived years of battles against Syrian government forces and infighting with jihadist rivals. As it evolved, it engineered a wider hold on swaths of Syria and began plotting its return to power in western Iraq — a move that the group’s founding documents held out as a priority.
That campaign began late in 2013 and led to the takeover of the town of Falluja and other corners of Anbar. Then, in June 2014, the Islamic State made its biggest leaps into Iraq, suddenly seizing Mosul, the northern and Sunni-predominant city that is Iraq’s second largest, and driving all the way south to Tikrit.
In recent months, the group has been pushed back from some territories it seized last summer. These include cities and towns in the north near the autonomous Kurdish region and in eastern Diyala Province. In Syria, the Islamic State has pulled back in recent days from the northern parts of Homs Province, where it has had to compete with other groups and did not win as many locals to its side as it has in eastern Syria.
“ISIS overextended itself and is getting pushed back to areas where they can control more effectively,” said Brian Fishman, a counterterrorism analyst at the New America Foundation, who has spent years studying Al Qaeda in Iraq and the Islamic State. “The historical homeland for this organization is Falluja, Ramadi, Anbar and Mosul.”
With the victory in Ramadi, the Islamic State claimed the last major center of the Sunni Arab heartland and, with the advance into Palmyra, has expanded it.
Hassan Hassan, an author of “ISIS: Inside the Army of Terror,” saw the shift as a particular challenge to the group’s enemies. “It’s really hard to conquer these areas or retake them, because in the local population there’s almost no resistance to the group here.”
As it has consolidated, the Islamic State has been ruthless about beating down Sunni tribes who have opposed it, publicizing its mass slaughters of dissidents. Among the residents who have not actively opposed the group, it has also been skillful in building up its legitimacy as a local ruling force by tapping into Sunni grievances against the Shiite government in Baghdad and the Alawite government in Damascus.
“The only solution for the situation now is national reconciliation governments in both countries, Iraq and Syria, which is impossible now,” said Jalal Zein al-Din, a Syrian journalist who is part of an antigovernment news agency that operates partly in Islamic State territory. “So I.S. is going to remain in the region, a state from Raqqa to Mosul.”
In many ways, the group is staying true to a vision, laid out in documents years ago, of how it would carve out and govern a caliphate, or Islamic State. Even as it differed from Al Qaeda in its desire to hold territory, it envisioned itself as being at perpetual war with its surrounding enemies and saw its turf more as an ever-shifting zone of control rather than a place with boundaries.
In his studies of the group, Mr. Fishman has coined a term for what it has become: a “governmental amoeba.”
“They conceptualize the caliphate as the people living on territory the caliphate controls, rather than a fixed geography,” he said, adding, “What matters to them is commitment to the caliph.”
Indeed, Ramadi was coveted in part because it had taken on great symbolic value as a place where some Sunni tribes were holding out in resistance against the Islamic State. Now, the group again has the momentum, and seems more deeply entrenched than it did even before the setbacks in Kobani and Tikrit.
As with some American officials, Ms. McFate, the analyst at the Institute for the Study of War, saw Tikrit, in particular, as a devastating loss that had put the group on its heels. “I thought they had lost the capability to do what they just did,” she said. “The tide of the war really looked like it had shifted away from ISIS’s terms.”
Things are different now, she conceded.
“Ramadi was a bigger loss for us,” she said, referring to the United States coalition and its Iraqi partners, “than Tikrit was a loss to ISIS.”
-
http://pamelageller.com/2015/05/isis-strategic-asset.html/
-
By Paul McLeary with Ariel Robinson
Here it comes. In what may be the biggest test yet of the Iraqi armed forces’ strength -- and the ability of Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi to wrangle the various Shiite, Kurd and Sunni factions -- Baghdad on Tuesday launched what it says is a major offensive in Anbar province.
Abadi told the BBC over the weekend that the city of Ramadi would be retaken from the Islamic State “in days,” and Ahmed al-Assadi, a spokesman for Iraq's Shiite militias and a member of Parliament, told reporters in Baghdad that the operation will "not last for a long time." He claimed Tuesday that Iraqi forces have almost completely encircled Ramadi.
Word of the day. While the Shiite-led Iraqi Army and some Iranian-backed Shiite militias head deeper into majority Sunni Anbar, the war of words the Obama administration has been having with itself over what happened in Ramadi shows no signs of abating. Over the long weekend, Defense Secretary Ash Carter and Vice President Joe Biden sang pretty different tunes over the performance of Iraqi troops.
Appearing on CNN on Sunday, Carter took a shot at the performance of the Iraqi security forces in Ramadi, saying that they “vastly outnumbered the opposing force. And yet they failed to fight.” The situation was much more complicated than a simple failure to fight -- the exhausted Iraqi units had held a portion of the city for months with intermittent government support. But Carter maintained "that says to me, and I think to most of us, that we have an issue with the will of the Iraqis."
A White House readout of a Monday call between Biden and Abadi walked Carter's statement back a bit. Biden said that he recognized “the enormous sacrifice and bravery of Iraqi forces over the past eighteen months in Ramadi and elsewhere.”
Baghdad calling. The heat isn’t only coming from Washington. With anger building in Baghdad over the performance of the Iraqi Army, in particular the highly-touted “Golden Division” of American-trained special operations forces who fled, Deputy Prime Minister Saleh al-Mutlaq told CNN on Monday that "it's not clear for us why such a unit, which was supposed to be trained by the Americans for years, and supposed to be one of the best units in the army, would withdraw from Ramadi in such a way." Al-Mutlaq -- a Sunni politician -- has long been a critic of Baghdad's Shiite-led governments, and most fiercely of Abadi's predecessor, former Premier Nouri al-Maliki.
War ensemble. The U.S.-led coalition in Iraq lit up dozens of armored vehicles, tanks, and artillery pieces in and around Ramadi over the weekend, destroying what we assume is millions of dollars worth of old American military equipment.
Iraqi forces left hundreds of U.S.-supplied vehicles behind when they “drove” out of Ramadi, but were not “driven out,” in the words of Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Gen. Martin Dempsey.
And now most of them are melted hunks of metal. On Friday, U.S. Central Command announced that airstrikes near Ramadi destroyed “five ISIL armored vehicles, two ISIL tanks, two ISIL vehicles, an ISIL armored personnel carrier...five abandoned tanks, two abandoned armored personnel carriers and two abandoned armored vehicles.”
Quite a haul, and note the emphasis on the word “abandoned.”
Sunday was even more intense, with airstrikes hitting an artillery piece and 15 armored vehicles. We’ve seen pictures of rows of U.S. Army surplus M113 infantry carriers that the Iraqis left behind, many of which -- Defense officials assured the press last week -- were allowed to lapse into such a state of disrepair as to be unusable.
-
http://foreignpolicy.com/2015/05/26/why-are-the-islamic-states-commanders-so-much-better-than-the-iraqi-army/?utm_source=Sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_term=*Editors%20Picks&utm_campaign=2014_EditorsPicksRS5%2F26
-
http://www.defensenews.com/story/defense/international/mideast-africa/2015/05/31/al-abadi-iraq-lost-humvees-mosul/28262103/
-
Kurdish Peshmerga Say They Need Weapons After ISIS Seizes Iraqi Arsenal
Forces worry they cannot hold defensive lines
Lt. Jamal Derwish, pointing in center, commands the last outpost of Kurdish Peshmerga forces before Islamic-State controlled territory in Dabbis, Kirkuk province in Iraq. ENLARGE
Lt. Jamal Derwish, pointing in center, commands the last outpost of Kurdish Peshmerga forces before Islamic-State controlled territory in Dabbis, Kirkuk province in Iraq. Photo: Yaroslav Trofimov/The Wall Street Journal
By
Yaroslav Trofimov
June 4, 2015 7:06 a.m. ET
51 COMMENTS
DABBIS, Iraq—Just before Islamic State territory begins, Kurdish Peshmerga fighters have built a dirt wall across the road. But they don’t have much hope it would stop the militants’ favorite way of breaking front lines—armored trucks filled with explosives and driven by suicide bombers.
Lt. Jamal Derwish, the outpost’s commander, said his men already spotted three such armored vehicles in the area since Islamic State, or ISIS, overran the city of Ramadi last month and seized yet another arsenal of modern U.S.-made heavy weapons from the Iraqi army. Islamic State fighters, he said, have also filled trenches with oil to burn—something that would create a smokescreen to protect them from U.S. airstrikes.
Previous Columns
“We’re facing a very serious threat. Without necessary weapons, this basic defensive line won’t be enough,” Lt. Derwish said shortly after his outpost came under Islamic State’s mortar fire. He held up an old rocket-propelled grenade, something that wouldn’t easily stop a massive armored truck barreling down the road.
“Right now, the only weapons we really have is this and the high morale of our Peshmerga,” he said.
The 160,000 Peshmerga—the troops of the autonomous Kurdish regional government in northern Iraq—may well be the most dedicated and combat-worthy units confronting Islamic State in Iraq. In a paradox of this conflict, they are also the least armed and equipped when compared with the Iraqi army, the Iranian-backed Shiite militias or, crucially, Islamic State itself. Peshmerga ammunition stocks are running low and whatever heavy weapons they have are mostly of Saddam Hussein-era vintage, commanders say.
While the Peshmerga also buckled under Islamic State’s rapid offensive last summer, they have since reconquered most lost territory and now are focused on holding the line. One of the most critical front lines is here near the Islamic State stronghold of Hawija, in the barren hill country punctuated by the burning gas wells of Kirkuk province. The area is home to a sizable chunk of the country’s oil wealth.
“If ISIS combines its forces and pushes into one area with multiple vehicles, they will break through—and then the whole line breaks,” warned Wladimir van Wilgenburg, a Kurdistan-based analyst for the Jamestown Foundation, a Washington think tank.
Iraq’s Shiite-dominated central government—fearing that one day Kurdistan will seek independence from Baghdad—has long tried to limit arms transfers to the Kurdish Regional Government, which, not being a state, can’t legally buy weapons on its own. Because of budget disputes with Baghdad, which is supposed to share 17% of the entire country’s oil income with the Kurdish government, the Peshmerga also haven’t received their salaries for two months.
“Our enemy is very well-armed. The better weapons we get, the fewer sacrifices in lives we will have to make to resist it,” the Kurdish minister for Peshmerga affairs, Mustafa Sayid Qadir, said in an interview. “They target us with weapons that were abandoned in Ramadi. Wouldn’t it have been better if the Iraqi army had given them to us instead of giving them to ISIS?”
While Baghdad denied Kurdish requests for weapons in the past, the country’s current government led by Haider al-Abadi has authorized some U.S. shipments to the Peshmerga. They include 40 MRAP armored vehicles and some 1,000 AT-4 antitank systems, according to the Pentagon.
“Our policy remains that all arms transfers must be coordinated via the central sovereign government of Iraq,” said Pentagon spokeswoman U.S. Navy Cmd. Elissa Smith.
The most useful weapons supplied to the Peshmerga have come not from the U.S. but from allies such as Germany and France, Kurdish officials say. On top of their wish list: the German-supplied Milan guided antitank missiles with an effective range of 2,000 meters—a tool of choice against the suicide truck bombs often fashioned by Islamic State from American-made armored Humvees and MRAPs.
By contrast, the U.S.-supplied AT-4 has an effective range of only 300 meters. By the time it hits a large truck bomb, with its wide radius of destruction, it’s often too late, said Mr. Qadir.
“You are already within the range of the explosion,” he said.
Frontline commanders such as Lt. Derwish say they crave the Milans. However, there are only two such missile systems for 11 Peshmerga brigades along the 44-kilometer stretch of front line near Kirkuk. They are moved between outposts based on intelligence about imminent attacks, said the sector’s commander, Kemal Kirkuki, a former speaker of the Kurdistan regional parliament.
“Out of the two, one doesn’t even have night vision—which is problem considering that ISIS mostly attacks at night,” Mr. Kirkuki added.
Things aren’t better elsewhere. While exact numbers haven't been released, the U.S. military says coalition partners have supplied dozens of Milan launchers to the Peshmerga for a front line with Islamic State that stretches more than 1,000 kilometers .
“ISIS has very advanced weapons that it received from Iraqi army stores. If we do not receive help from our international partners, we may not be able to confront it,” said Lt. Col. Keifi Majid Abdulrahman, operations chief for the 108th Peshmerga brigade at the Hawija front line.
“ISIS is like a virus. It’s better to eliminate it today than let it grow tomorrow. We’d like to see our coalition partners pull up their sleeves and get serious.”
Write to Yaroslav Trofimov at yaroslav.trofimov@wsj.com
-
Analysis
Forecast
After losing much of the east to Islamic State and Kurdish rebels, the Syrian government could lose the north as Turkey and Qatar strengthen rebel forces there.
Iran will give Damascus the support needed to secure approaches to its strongholds in the capital and along the coast.
Russia will try to diversify its relationships in Syria as President Bashar al Assad's hold on power weakens, but it will not cut ties with the Alawite government.
Russia will try to use the Syrian government's vulnerabilities to shape a negotiation that will attract the United States' attention, but its efforts to craft a sustainable power-sharing agreement in Damascus will fail.
As al Assad's forces pull back to anchor themselves in Damascus and along the coast, the United States could increase the intensity of its air campaign against the Islamic State in Syria. However, it will lack a reliable ground force to complement the air campaign as regional players and rebels set their sights on al Assad.
A survey of the Syrian battlefield quickly reveals that the Syrian government is under enormous stress. Loyalist forces are clinging to the Alawite-concentrated coastal region and the core of Damascus as the approaches to both strongholds are looking more precarious. In the north, the rebels have all but taken Idlib province and are increasingly threatening the government's hold on Aleppo. In the critical central corridor, the rebels look set to advance on the government-held Hama from the north while the long-isolated rebel pocket north of Homs has become increasingly active. Furthermore, the rebels in Daraa and Quneitra continue to push up from the south toward Damascus. Meanwhile, the Islamic State is staging powerful attacks against government forces to the east of the Homs-Hama corridor after having consolidated its gains in the eastern desert.
It would be an exaggeration to say the government is cornered, but Syrian President Bashar al Assad and his troops are most certainly on the defensive and in danger of losing northern Syria. A confluence of more assertive external sponsorship, the distracting spread of Islamic State activity and a willingness among increasingly competent rebel factions to set aside their ideological differences and focus on the fight against al Assad have all led to the government's current predicament. Syrian Alawite and Hezbollah morale has plunged dramatically as momentum has risen among the rebels. In the coastal Alawite stronghold of Tartus, locals used to profess their loyalty for al Assad with the chant, "Al Assad, or we set the country on fire." Now, the proliferating mothers of the martyrs bitterly chant, "God willing, we will witness the funeral of your sons," in reference to the sons of the president.
Damascus Looks for Outside Support
In the government's time of need, it can only look to two key sources of external support: Iran and Russia. Iran understands the criticality of sustaining a friendly government in Damascus and a lifeline to Hezbollah in Lebanon. Financial aid from Iran still appears to be flowing into Syria, along with advisers from the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and various Shiite militia reinforcements who are deploying across the country to the front lines in Daraa, Aleppo, Hama, Latakia and more recently Idlib, where the government is preparing a counterattack. Retaking Idlib will be a critical step toward the government's goal of securing the coast, though its success is not assured.
Meanwhile, Hezbollah is sounding the alarm over a pocket of Jabhat al-Nusra militants in the outskirts of the Sunni town of Arsal in northeastern Lebanon, across from the Qalamoun Mountains. Hezbollah had previously flushed out these rebels to safeguard a corridor through Damascus and Homs to the Syrian coast. Hezbollah is steadily being drawn into more pressing battlefronts across Syria. At the same time, the organization is consolidating its hold on western Qalamoun by attempting to secure Zabadani while struggling to compel a weak, unmotivated and divided Lebanese army to extricate the politically delicate Arsal rebel pocket on Hezbollah's behalf. Unable to rely on the army to do the job, Hezbollah will carry out the Arsal operation, which will in turn raise the risk of sectarian violence in Lebanon.
Russia does not appear to be as willing as Iran and its proxies to make grand sacrifices for the Syrian government. In the past several days, Stratfor has received indications from Russian contacts in the region that Moscow's stance regarding Syria is changing and that Russia could withdraw, or at least start restricting, military support for the Syrian government. Iranians can compensate for a reduction in Russian technicians and planners in Syria, but a critical component of Russian support is the supply of spare parts to the Syrian air force. A Stratfor source signaled that the Kremlin believes the Syrian government's fight is futile and that it is time to start creating distance between itself and al Assad. An extensive report published May 31 in the Saudi-owned and anti-al Assad media outlet Asharq Al-Awsat elaborated on this sentiment. Citing its own sources, the report claimed Russia had withdrawn some 100 senior diplomatic and technical officials, many of whom worked at the main operations center in Damascus and were involved in conducting military strategy.
However, this is only part of the story. Russian leaders can see the battlefield as plainly as anyone else can. The Islamic State remains a formidable force and a powerful inspiration to Chechen jihadists that could wreak havoc back home in Russia. At the same time, radical Islamist fighters have spearheaded the major rebel push in the north while moderate forces struggle to maintain their relevance in the fight. In giving up on the government, Russia would be assuming that there are other actors to work with in preserving Russia's interests of maintaining a military foothold on the Mediterranean, some level of influence in the region's sectarian battlespace and the means to counterbalance jihadists who would carry their ambitions back to the northern Caucasus. At the moment, Russia has no such alternative.
Russia lacks the option to give up entirely on the Alawite government. But that does not mean Moscow will decline the chance to turn the Syrian conundrum into an opportunity when it comes to Russia's relationship with the United States. Washington can see the battlefield momentum lies with an array of radical Islamists who will demonize the United States along with the Syrian government. Though the United States is working more closely with regional players Turkey, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and Jordan in selectively sponsoring Syrian rebel factions, it cannot effectively channel the direction of the fight against the Islamic State when that goal is competing with the aim of toppling Iran's ally in Damascus and strangling Hezbollah in Lebanon — a tantalizing prospect for the Sunni powers of the region.
Russia's Motivations in Syria
Just as Russia swooped in with an exit strategy for the United States in 2013 when it presented a plan to destroy Syria's chemical weapons, it is now trying to draw the United States into a political settlement on Syria that will preserve an Alawite-heavy government, even if al Assad does not lead it. To that end, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Mikhail Bogdanov, who owns the Syria file in the Kremlin, has been trying to organize a Geneva conference that would include both Sunni regional players and Iran to work toward a power-sharing agreement.
The plan will not work, though. The Syrian civil war has devolved to a point where outside powers will have enormous difficulty in trying to impose a political reality on the deeply fractured country. Russia and Iran have some leverage with the Syrian government when it comes to drawing it toward a negotiation, but no one effectively speaks for the radical rebel factions that are most relevant on the battlefield. The United States and Russia may believe the fight is going too far in Syria, but there is little indication that the Turks, Qataris and Saudis are growing uncomfortable with its trajectory. On the contrary, their political designs for Syria are only now taking shape as the country's northern belt rapidly slips from Alawite hands. Though the region's Sunni powers do not have strong influence over Jabhat al-Nusra, it nonetheless will be important to see if Russia gets Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Qatar to bring Islamist coalition Ahrar al-Sham to the negotiating table in the days and weeks ahead.
The Syrian government will double down on securing the approaches to its strongholds in Damascus and along the coast, holding out for an opportunity to thrust northward again toward Aleppo. Meanwhile, Turkey and Qatar will work on reinforcing the rebels' hold in the north while Saudi Arabia and Jordan continue to fuel the rebellion from the south. Russia will try to recast itself as a more neutral player in the conflict by spreading the message that it is distancing itself from the Syrian government while seeking out new partners. However, Moscow cannot afford to completely cut ties with the Alawites while it lacks a credible alternative. Moreover, a complete severing of ties between Moscow and the Syrian government would manifest in deep discord between Iran and Russia because Iran would be left alone to preserve the government in Damascus. So far, there are no signs that Iran is reacting to a fundamental shift in Russia's position on Syria.
The question, then, is how long the United States can remain in limbo, supporting nominally moderate rebel factions without actually controlling the direction of the insurgency. The United States' core interest in Syria is to contain the Islamic State, not to impose government change and be left with the messy aftermath of the transition. There is still room for the United States to significantly escalate its air campaign in Syria. If the Syrian government is forced to fall back to its core positions, abandoning most of the north and east, the United States will have to worry less about being perceived as providing air cover to government forces as its air campaign targets Islamic State positions. Stratfor will be watching for shifts in the U.S. military strategy in this direction. Still, any strategy to defeat the Islamic State on U.S. terms requires a reliable ground force to complement a heavier air campaign — a goal that remains elusive.
-
Directive 11: Obama’s Secret Islamist Plan
Posted By Daniel Greenfield On June 8, 2015
Behind the rise of ISIS, the Libyan Civil War, the unrest in Egypt, Yemen and across the region may be a single classified document.
That document is Presidential Study Directive 11.
You can download Presidential Study Directive 10 on “Preventing Mass Atrocities” from the White House website, but as of yet no one has been able to properly pry number 11 out of Obama Inc.
Presidential Study Directive 10, in which Obama asked for non-military options for stopping genocide, proved to be a miserable failure. The Atrocities Prevention Board’s only use was as a fig leaf for a policy that had caused the atrocities. And the cause of those atrocities is buried inside Directive 11.
With Obama’s typical use of technicalities to avoid transparency, Directive 11 was used to guide policy in the Middle East without being officially submitted. It is possible that it will never be submitted. And yet the Directive 11 group was described [2] as “just finishing its work” when the Arab Spring began.
That is certainly one way of looking at it.
Directive 11 brought together activists and operatives at multiple agencies to come up with a “tailored” approach for regime change in each country. The goal was to “manage” the political transitions. It tossed aside American national security interests by insisting that Islamist regimes would be equally committed to fighting terrorism and cooperating with Israel. Its greatest gymnastic feat may have been arguing that the best way to achieve political stability in the region was through regime change.
What little we know [3] about the resulting classified 18-page report is that it used euphemisms to call for aiding Islamist takeovers in parts of the Middle East. Four countries were targeted. Of those four, we only know for certain that Egypt and Yemen were on the list. But we do know for certain the outcome.
Egypt fell to the Muslim Brotherhood, which collaborated with Al Qaeda, Hamas and Iran, before being undone by a counterrevolution. Yemen is currently controlled by Iran’s Houthi terrorists and Al Qaeda.
According to a New York Times story, Obama’s Directive 11 agenda appeared to resemble Che or Castro as he “pressed his advisers to study popular uprisings in Latin America, Eastern Europe and Southeast Asia to determine which ones worked and which did not.”
The story also noted that he “is drawn to Indonesia, where he spent several years as a child, which ousted its longtime leader, Suharto, in 1998.”
The coup against Mubarak with its coordination of liberals, Islamists and the military did strongly resemble what happened in Indonesia. The most ominous similarity may be that the Muslim mobs in Indonesia targeted the Chinese, many of whom are Christians, while the Muslim mobs in Egypt targeted Coptic Christians.
Both were talented groups that were disproportionately successful because they lacked the traditional Islamic hostility to education, integrity and achievement. Islamist demagogues had succeeded in associating them with the regime and promoted attacks on them as part of the anti-regime protests.
Chinese stores were looted and thousands of Chinese women were raped by rampaging Muslims. Just as in Egypt, the protesters and their media allies spread the claim that these atrocities committed by Muslim protesters were the work of the regime’s secret police. That remains the official story today.
Suharto’s fall paved the way for the rise of the Prosperous Justice Party, which was founded a few months after his resignation and has become one of the largest parties in the Indonesian parliament. PJP was set up by the Muslim Brotherhood’s local arm in Indonesia.
His successor, Bacharuddin Jusuf Habibie, was more explicitly Islamist than Suharto and his Association of Muslim Intellectuals (ICMI) conducted a campaign against Christians, Hindus and Buddhists. It helped purge non-Muslims from government while Islamizing the government and Indonesia’s key institutions.
Habibie had been the Chairman of ICMI and ICMI’s Islamists played a key role in moving Suharto out and moving him in. It was obvious why Obama would have considered the Islamization of Indonesia and the purge of Christians under the guise of democratic political change to be a fine example for Egypt.
While we don’t know the full contents of Directive 11 and unless a new administration decides to open the vaults of the old regime, we may never know. But we do know a good deal about the results.
In its own way, PSD-10 tells us something about PSD-11.
Obama’s insistence that human rights be made a core national security interest paved the way for political and military interventions on behalf of Islamists. Obama had never been interested in human rights; his record of pandering to the world’s worst genocide plotters and perpetrators from Iran to Turkey to Sudan made that clear. When he said “human rights”, Obama really meant “Islamist power”.
That was why Obama refused to intervene when the Muslim Brotherhood conducted real genocide in Sudan, but did interfere in Libya on behalf of the Brotherhood using a phony claim of genocide.
Positioning Samantha Power in the Office of Multilateral Affairs and Human Rights at the National Security Council was part of the process that made over the NSC from national security to servicing a progressive wish list of Islamist terrorist groups that were to be transformed into national governments.
Power, along with Gayle Smith and Dennis Ross, led the Directive 11 project.
Secret proceedings were used to spawn regime change infrastructure. Some of these tools had official names, such as “The Office of The Special Coordinator For Middle East Transitions” which currently reports directly to former ambassador Anne Patterson who told Coptic Christians not to protest against Morsi. After being driven out of the country by angry mobs over her support for the Muslim Brotherhood tyranny, she was promoted to Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs.
“The Office” is still focused on “outreach to emergent political, economic and social forces in Egypt, Tunisia, and Libya” even though counterrevolutions have pushed out Islamists in Egypt and Tunisia, while Libya is in the middle of a bloody civil war in which an alliance of the Muslim Brotherhood and Al Qaeda controls the nation’s capital.
But even as Morsi’s abuses of power were driving outraged Egyptians into the streets, Gayle Smith [4], one of the three leaders of Directive 11, reached out to the “International Union of Muslim Scholars [5]”, a Muslim Brotherhood group that supported terrorism against American soldiers [6] in Iraq and which was now looking for American support for its Islamist terrorist brigades in the Syrian Civil War.
The men and women responsible for Directive 11 were making it clear that they had learned nothing.
Directive 11 ended up giving us the Islamic State through its Arab Spring. PSD-11’s twisted claim that regional stability could only be achieved through Islamist regime change tore apart the region and turned it into a playground for terrorists. ISIS is simply the biggest and toughest of the terror groups that were able to thrive in the environment of violent civil wars created by Obama’s Directive 11.
During the Arab Spring protests, Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmed Aboul Gheit had told Hillary Clinton that his government could not hand over power to the Muslim Brotherhood. “My daughter gets to go out at night. And, God damn it, I’m not going to turn this country over to people who will turn back the clock on her rights.”
But that was exactly what Hillary Clinton and Obama were after. And they got it. Countless women were raped in Egypt. Beyond Egypt, Hillary and Obama’s policy saw Yazidi women actually sold into slavery.
Directive 11 codified the left’s dirty alliance with the Muslim Brotherhood into our foreign policy. Its support for Islamist takeovers paved the way for riots and civil wars culminating in the violence that birthed ISIS and covered the region in blood.
And it remains secret to this day.
-
Iraqi City of Mosul Transformed a Year After Islamic State Capture
Beneath a veneer of order, residents live in fear
By
Nour Malas
Updated June 9, 2015 7:49 p.m. ET
BAGHDAD—In Islamic State’s stronghold of Mosul, the extremist group is working day and night to repair roads, manicure gardens and refurbish hotels. Iraq’s second-largest city has never looked so good thanks to strict laws enforced by the Sunni militants.
But beneath that veneer, the group metes out deadly punishments to those who don’t comply with a long list of prohibitions imposed over the year since it took control of Mosul on June 10, 2014, according to interviews with more than a dozen current and former city residents, refugees and Iraqi officials.
Gone are the illegal kiosks that crowded sidewalks and the tangled web of electrical wires once connecting rooftops. New lamps light up streets unusually clear of cigarette butts.
“I have not in 30 years seen Mosul this clean, its streets and markets this orderly,” said Omar, a resident. He said Islamic State has shown an unusual focus on civil works in recent weeks, which he and others described as part of efforts to win popular support.
A luxury hotel stamped with Islamic State logos. Rifle-wielding fighters chaperoning kids at an amusement park. Such is life through the lens of ISIS propaganda in the besieged Iraqi city of Mosul.
Mosul and its population are changed in other ways, too. Gone are the iconic shrines and mosques that towered over the city center. The radical fighters blew many of them up because they believe the veneration of shrines is unholy.
Ancient churches host garage sales where Islamic State members sell war booty or display wares available to members only. The native Christian population, a minority in the Sunni-majority city once peppered with other religious and ethnic groups, was driven out last year under threat of death.
When women step outside, they are fully cloaked with their faces covered. Men have grown mandatory beards.
Islamic State has gone unchallenged because residents from Iraq’s aggrieved Sunni minority are too scared of a military campaign that could bring massive destruction and an uncertain future under the Shiite-led government and allied forces who would retake the city, said current and former residents. Such is the dissonance of life for the more than one million people in the most populous city controlled by Islamic State across the territories it holds in Iraq and Syria. In the past year, the group has tightened its grip on Mosul mostly uncontested, building out its administrative and security apparatus. It has cut the city off from the rest of Iraq and the world beyond by shutting off cellphone towers and the Internet. A year after Mosul fell, Islamic State’s grip on the city stands as its biggest strategic and symbolic victory.
The campaign to retake Mosul is a linchpin of the U.S.-led coalition’s military strategy against Islamic State. But plans for the counteroffensive have been delayed—something the militants appear to be capitalizing on to persuade the population they are better off under the group’s control.
“Islamic State is doing everything to keep Mosul. It’s the capital of their caliphate here,” said Fuad Hussein, chief of staff to the president of the semiautonomous Kurdistan region of Iraq, which borders Mosul. “It will be a disaster if it stays in their hands.”
Airstrikes have hammered areas around the northern city since a U.S.-led air campaign began in August. This year, Kurdish forces backed by the U.S.-led air attacks cut off a key Islamic State supply line from Syria into the city and now surround it from the east, west and north. The plans for a counteroffensive have been put off because Iraq and the U.S. have shifted their priority to driving Islamic State out of Anbar province and its capital Ramadi, which are closer to the capital Baghdad. Mosul is still almost fully inhabited—a contrast to cities where Iraqi and coalition forces have pushed Islamic State out. U.S. officials say it has about a million residents. Iraqi officials say the population is closer to 1.5 million, including people displaced from Tikrit and Beiji.
“Every prisoner in this oppressed city wants salvation from Daesh and a return to normal life,” said Omar, using an Arabic acronym for Islamic State. “But everyone agrees if liberation happens like in Tikrit and Anbar, with destruction and barrel bombs, random shelling and looting, we do not want that kind of liberation.”
Another Mosul resident echoed that sentiment, showing how reports of looting and abuses by Shiite militias in Tikrit weigh heavily in the minds of residents, even though many of those accounts were exaggerated. The second resident said even Iraqi soldiers may be still unwelcome in an offensive.
“The best way to get rid of Daesh is to negotiate with them to leave to Syria,” he said. That seemingly unrealistic proposition reflects a desperation to find a local solution amid deep suspicions and fear of the Iraqi army and its Shiite militia allies.
In the early months of Islamic State rule, some Mosul residents said they thought the new regime was one they could live with, current and former residents said.
“Daesh managed in a short time to create a strong security organization similar, if not stronger, in order and harshness to that of the Saddam Hussein regime,” said Omar. “It governs people and runs life well like this.”
Food staples became more plentiful and cheaper because Islamic State flooded the market with their own products grown in Syria, though the cost of fuel and diesel—monopolized by the group—shot up.
Many stores shut down and local trade came to a halt. As Islamic State filled the ranks of a new security and police force and nearly all other public jobs with its members, thousands of people were left unemployed and idle. Islamic courts and a system of punishments became increasingly severe.
Doctors, judges, and professors who defied or questioned Islamic State laws have been executed, sometimes by public stoning or crucifixion. Prisons are filled with people awaiting their sentences from the Islamic court.
“Nearly no one gets out alive,” one of the residents said.
Then came the attacks on minorities.
“There are many things we do not consider Islamic at all, like the way Christians were treated,” said a female doctor from Mosul who is pious and veiled. “All of Mosul does not accept what has happened to the Christians,” said the woman, who now lives in the northern city of Kirkuk. The group’s attack on minorities “was a major mistake that cost them our support,” she added.
At the markets, lists of prohibited items and imports began to grow. Within months, restrictions that were a simple annoyance became hallmarks of Islamic State’s excessive and extreme rule. A 52-year old woman displaced from Mosul, now living on the outskirts of Baghdad, recalled getting a puzzled call from her daughter in Mosul late last year. The daughter complained that frozen chicken was banned because of possible additives that are prohibited.
“The cigarette ban was absolutely the biggest problem,” a current resident said. The ban has spurred an expensive underground trade in tobacco.
In November, Islamic State instituted an exit law from Mosul barring travel outside the city except in the case of a medical emergency, or to claim retirement benefits in Baghdad. In both cases, the request must be approved by a special court and requires a security deposit—including handing over a car—to ensure the person returns. Last month, fighters dug a deep trench around the city, adding to the feeling of many Mosul residents that they are trapped.
—Ali A. Nabhan and Ghassan Adnan contributed to this article.
Write to Nour Malas at nour.malas@wsj.com
-
A Net Assessment of the Middle East
Geopolitical Weekly
June 9, 2015 | 07:59 GMT
Print
Text Size
By George Friedman
The term "Middle East" has become enormously elastic. The name originated with the British Foreign Office in the 19th century. The British divided the region into the Near East, the area closest to the United Kingdom and most of North Africa; the Far East, which was east of British India; and the Middle East, which was between British India and the Near East. It was a useful model for organizing the British Foreign Office and important for the region as well, since the British — and to a lesser extent the French — defined not only the names of the region but also the states that emerged in the Near and Far East.
Today, the term Middle East, to the extent that it means anything, refers to the Muslim-dominated countries west of Afghanistan and along the North African shore. With the exception of Turkey and Iran, the region is predominantly Arab and predominantly Muslim. Within this region, the British created political entities that were modeled on European nation-states. The British shaped the Arabian Peninsula, which had been inhabited by tribes forming complex coalitions, into Saudi Arabia, a state based on one of these tribes, the Sauds. The British also created Iraq and crafted Egypt into a united monarchy. Quite independent of the British, Turkey and Iran shaped themselves into secular nation-states.
This defined the two fault lines of the Middle East. The first was between European secularism and Islam. The Cold War, when the Soviets involved themselves deeply in the region, accelerated the formation of this fault line. One part of the region was secular, socialist and built around the military. Another part, particularly focused on the Arabian Peninsula, was Islamist, traditionalist and royalist. The latter was pro-Western in general, and the former — particularly the Arab parts — was pro-Soviet. It was more complex than this, of course, but this distinction gives us a reasonable framework.
The second fault line was between the states that had been created and the underlying reality of the region. The states in Europe generally conformed to the definition of nations in the 20th century. The states created by the Europeans in the Middle East did not. There was something at a lower level and at a higher level. At the lower level were the tribes, clans and ethnic groups that not only made up the invented states but also were divided by the borders. The higher level was broad religious loyalties to Islam and to the major movements of Islam, Shiism and Suniism that laid a transnational claim on loyalty. Add to this the pan-Arab movement initiated by former Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser, who argued that the Arab states should be united into a single Arab nation.
Any understanding of the Middle East must therefore begin with the creation of a new political geography after World War I that was superimposed on very different social and political realities and was an attempt to limit the authority of broader regional and ethnic groups. The solution that many states followed was to embrace secularism or traditionalism and use them as tools to manage both the subnational groupings and the claims of the broader religiosity. One unifying point was Israel, which all opposed. But even here it was more illusion than reality. The secular socialist states, such as Egypt and Syria, actively opposed Israel. The traditional royalist states, which were threatened by the secular socialists, saw an ally in Israel.
Aftershocks From the Soviet Collapse
Following the fall of the Soviet Union and the resulting collapse of support for the secular socialist states, the power of the traditional royalties surged. This was not simply a question of money, although these states did have money. It was also a question of values. The socialist secularist movement lost its backing and its credibility. Movements such as Fatah, based on socialist secularism — and Soviet support — lost power relative to emerging groups that embraced the only ideology left: Islam. There were tremendous cross currents in this process, but one of the things to remember was that many of the socialist secular states that had begun with great promise continued to survive, albeit without the power of a promise of a new world. Rulers like Egypt's Hosni Mubarak, Syria's Bashar al Assad and Iraq's Saddam Hussein remained in place. Where the movement had once held promise even if its leaders were corrupt, after the Soviet Union fell, the movement was simply corrupt.
The collapse of the Soviet Union energized Islam, both because the mujahideen defeated the Soviets in Afghanistan and because the alternative to Islam was left in tatters. Moreover, the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait took place in parallel with the last days of the Soviet Union. Both countries are remnants of British diplomacy. The United States, having inherited the British role in the region, intervened to protect another British invention — Saudi Arabia — and to liberate Kuwait from Iraq. From the Western standpoint, this was necessary to stabilize the region. If a regional hegemon emerged and went unchallenged, the consequences could pyramid. Desert Storm appeared to be a simple and logical operation combining the anti-Soviet coalition with Arab countries.
The experience of defeating the Soviets in Afghanistan and the secular regimes' loss of legitimacy opened the door to two processes. In one, the subnational groupings in the region came to see the existing regimes as powerful but illegitimate. In the other, the events in Afghanistan brought the idea of a pan-Islamic resurrection back to the fore. And in the Sunni world, which won the war in Afghanistan, the dynamism of Shiite Iran — which had usurped the position of politico-military spokesman for radical Islam — made the impetus for action clear.
There were three problems. First, the radicals needed to cast pan-Islamism in a historical context. The context was the transnational caliphate, a single political entity that would abolish existing states and align political reality with Islam. The radicals reached back to the Christian Crusades for historical context, and the United States — seen as the major Christian power after its crusade in Kuwait — became the target. Second, the pan-Islamists needed to demonstrate that the United States was both vulnerable and the enemy of Islam. Third, they had to use the subnational groups in various countries to build coalitions to overthrow what were seen as corrupt Muslim regimes, in both the secular and the traditionalist worlds.
The result was al Qaeda and its campaign to force the United States to launch a crusade in the Islamic world. Al Qaeda wanted to do this by carrying out actions that demonstrated American vulnerability and compelled U.S. action. If the United States did not act, it would enhance the image of American weakness; if it did act, it would demonstrate it was a crusader hostile to Islam. U.S. action would, in turn, spark uprisings against corrupt and hypocritical Muslim states, sweep aside European-imposed borders and set the stage for uprisings. The key was to demonstrate the weakness of the regimes and their complicity with the Americans.
This led to 9/11. In the short run, it appeared that the operation had failed. The United States reacted massively to the attacks, but no uprising occurred in the region, no regimes were toppled, and many Muslim regimes collaborated with the Americans. During this time, the Americans were able to wage an aggressive war against al Qaeda and its Taliban allies. In this first phase, the United States succeeded. But in the second phase, the United States, in its desire to reshape Iraq and Afghanistan — and other countries — internally, became caught up in the subnational conflicts. The Americans got involved in creating tactical solutions rather than confronting the strategic problem, which was that waging the war was causing national institutions in the region to collapse.
In destroying al Qaeda, the Americans created a bigger problem in three parts: First, they unleashed the subnational groups. Second, where they fought they created a vacuum that they couldn't fill. Finally, in weakening the governments and empowering the subnational groups, they made a compelling argument for the caliphate as the only institution that could govern the Muslim world effectively and the only basis for resisting the United States and its allies. In other words, where al Qaeda failed to trigger a rising against corrupt governments, the United States managed to destroy or compromise a range of the same governments, opening the door to transnational Islam.
The Arab Spring was mistaken for a liberal democratic rising like 1989 in Eastern Europe. More than anything else, it was a rising by a pan-Islamic movement that largely failed to topple regimes and embroiled one, Syria, in a prolonged civil war. That conflict has a subnational component — various factions divided against each other that give the al Qaeda-derived Islamic State room to maneuver. It also provided a second impetus to the ideal of a caliphate. Not only were the pan-Islamists struggling against the American crusader, but they were fighting Shiite heretics — in service of the Sunni caliphate — as well. The Islamic State put into place the outcome that al Qaeda wanted in 2001, nearly 15 years later and, in addition to Syria and Iraq, with movements capable of sustained combat in other Islamic countries.
A New U.S. Strategy and Its Repercussions
Around this time, the United States was forced to change strategy. The Americans were capable of disrupting al Qaeda and destroying the Iraqi army. But the U.S. ability to occupy and pacify Iraq or Afghanistan was limited. The very factionalism that made it possible to achieve the first two goals made pacification impossible. Working with one group alienated another in an ongoing balancing act that left U.S. forces vulnerable to some faction motivated to wage war because of U.S. support for another. In Syria, where the secular government was confronting a range of secular and religious but not extremist forces, along with an emerging Islamic State, the Americans were unable to meld the factionalized non-Islamic State forces into a strategically effective force. Moreover, the United States could not make its peace with the al Assad government because of its repressive policies, and it was unable to confront the Islamic State with the forces available.
In a way, the center of the Middle East had been hollowed out and turned into a whirlpool of competing forces. Between the Lebanese and Iranian borders, the region had uncovered two things: First, it showed that the subnational forces were the actual reality of the region. Second, in obliterating the Syria-Iraq border, these forces and particularly the Islamic State had created a core element of the caliphate — a transnational power or, more precisely, one that transcended borders.
The American strategy became an infinitely more complex variation of President Ronald Reagan's policy in the 1980s: Allow the warring forces to war. The Islamic State turned the fight into a war on Shiite heresy and on established nation states. The region is surrounded by four major powers: Iran, Saudi Arabia, Israel and Turkey. Each has approached the situation differently. Each of these nations has internal factions, but each state has been able to act in spite of that. Put differently, three of them are non-Arab powers, and the one Arab power, Saudi Arabia, is perhaps the most concerned about internal threats.
For Iran, the danger of the Islamic State is that it would recreate an effective government in Baghdad that could threaten Iran again. Thus, Tehran has maintained support for the Iraqi Shiites and for the al Assad government, while trying to limit al Assad's power.
For Saudi Arabia, which has aligned with Sunni radical forces in the past, the Islamic State represents an existential threat. Its call for a transnational Islamic movement has the potential to resonate with Saudis from the Wahhabi tradition. The Saudis, along with some other Gulf Cooperation Council members and Jordan, are afraid of Islamic State transnationalism but also of Shiite power in Iraq and Syria. Riyadh needs to contain the Islamic State without conceding the ground to the Shiites.
For the Israelis, the situation has been simultaneously outstanding and terrifying. It has been outstanding because it has pitted Israel's enemies against each other. Al Assad's government has in the past supported Hezbollah against Israel. The Islamic State represents a long-term threat to Israel. So long as they fought, Israel's security would be enhanced. The problem is that in the end someone will win in Syria, and that force might be more dangerous than anything before it, particularly if the Islamic State ideology spreads to Palestine. Ultimately, al Assad is less dangerous than the Islamic State, which shows how bad the Israeli choice is in the long run.
It is the Turks — or at least the Turkish government that suffered a setback in the recently concluded parliamentary elections — who are the most difficult to understand. They are hostile to the al Assad government — so much so that they see the Islamic State as less of a threat. There are two ways to explain their view: One is that they expect the Islamic State to be defeated by the United States in the end and that involvement in Syria would stress the Turkish political system. The other is that they might be less averse than others in the region to the Islamic State's winning. While the Turkish government has vigorously denied such charges, rumors of support to at least some factions of the Islamic State have persisted, suspicions in Western capitals linger, and alleged shipments of weaponry to unknown parties in Syria by the Turkish intelligence organization were a dominant theme in Turkey's elections. This is incomprehensible, unless the Turks see the Islamic State as a movement that they can control in the end and that is paving the way for Turkish power in the region — or unless the Turks believe that a direct confrontation would lead to a backlash from the Islamic State in Turkey itself.
The Islamic State's Role in the Region
The Islamic State represents a logical continuation of al Qaeda, which triggered both a sense of Islamic power and shaped the United States into a threat to Islam. The Islamic State created a military and political framework to exploit the situation al Qaeda created. Its military operations have been impressive, ranging from the seizure of Mosul to the taking of Ramadi and Palmyra. Islamic State fighters' flexibility on the battlefield and ability to supply large numbers of forces in combat raises the question of where they got the resources and the training.
However, the bulk of Islamic State fighters are still trapped within their cauldron, surrounded by three hostile powers and an enigma. The hostile powers collaborate, but they also compete. The Israelis and the Saudis are talking. This is not new, but for both sides there is an urgency that wasn't there in the past. The Iranian nuclear program is less important to the Americans than collaboration with Iran against the Islamic State. And the Saudis and other Gulf countries have forged an air capability used in Yemen that might be used elsewhere if needed.
It is likely that the cauldron will hold, so long as the Saudis are able to sustain their internal political stability. But the Islamic State has already spread beyond the cauldron — operating in Libya, for example. Many assume that these forces are Islamic State in name only — franchises, if you will. But the Islamic State does not behave like al Qaeda. It explicitly wants to create a caliphate, and that wish should not be dismissed. At the very least, it is operating with the kind of centralized command and control, on the strategic level, that makes it far more effective than other non-state forces we have seen.
Secularism in the Muslim world appears to be in terminal retreat. The two levels of struggle within that world are, at the top, Sunni versus Shiite, and at the base, complex and interacting factions. The Western world accepted domination of the region from the Ottomans and exercised it for almost a century. Now, the leading Western power lacks the force to pacify the Islamic world. Pacifying a billion people is beyond anyone's capability. The Islamic State has taken al Qaeda's ideology and is attempting to institutionalize it. The surrounding nations have limited options and a limited desire to collaborate. The global power lacks the resources to both defeat the Islamic State and control the insurgency that would follow. Other nations, such as Russia, are alarmed by the Islamic State's spread among their own Muslim populations.
It is interesting to note that the fall of the Soviet Union set in motion the events we are seeing here. It is also interesting to note that the apparent defeat of al Qaeda opened the door for its logical successor, the Islamic State. The question at hand, then, is whether the four regional powers can and want to control the Islamic State. And at the heart of that question is the mystery of what Turkey has in mind, particularly as Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan's power appears to be declining.
-
Ayla Albayrak And
Nour Malas
Updated June 16, 2015 4:26 p.m. ET
34 COMMENTS
AKCAKALE, Turkey—A quick and successful offensive by Kurdish fighters and allied rebels in a northern Syrian town has boosted a U.S.-backed effort to choke off Islamic State’s supply routes.
Emboldened by this week’s recapture of Tal Abyad on the Turkish border, Syrian Kurdish fighters and allied rebels said their next target is Raqqa, Islamic State’s main stronghold about 50 miles south of Tal Abyad. On Monday, these fighters said they had already begun to advance southward toward Raqqa, reaching the town of Ain Issa, only about 30 miles away.
“Now that we have just completed clearing Tal Abyad and the surrounding villages, we will move to liberate Raqqa in the near future. It’s our mission,” said Shervan Darweesh, a spokesman for rebel groups allied with the Syrian Kurdish militia known as YPG.
ENLARGE
The YPG’s political affiliate, the Democratic Union Party or PYD, has ruled the three Kurdish-majority enclaves along the Turkish border in northern Syria since regime forces withdrew from the area in 2012.
The latest advance came amid stepped-up U.S. airstrikes in the region around Raqqa, Kurdish and Syrian fighters said. The U.S. carried out 23 airstrikes near Raqqa over the past two weeks, according to the U.S. military’s Central Command. That was more than double the number in the same area in all of May.
Tal Abyad’s capture is an important milestone for the U.S.-led coalition fighting Islamic State from the air in northern Syria and its allies on the ground. It is part of efforts to cut off the group’s supply lines not just to the city of Raqqa but into neighboring Iraq, where the coalition has struggled to stem recent gains by Islamic State.
The advance recalled a similar battle six months ago in the Syrian Kurdish city of Kobani, where U.S. airstrikes helped YPG and a smaller alliance of Syrian rebels seize the town. However, it was a much longer and bloodier fight that lasted about four months.
On Tuesday, fighters were clearing mines and booby-traps in the Tal Abyad area, Mr. Darweesh said.
Abdulrahman al-Salih, a spokesman for one of the non-Kurdish Syrian rebel groups in the alliance, the Raqqa Revolutionaries, said Islamic State, also known as ISIS, retreated from Tal Abyad on Monday after very little fighting.
He said the YPG-rebel coalition surrounded the town starting Sunday, while airstrikes “prevented ISIS from sending any resupply convoys from Raqqa.”
The offensive cut an important supply line for Islamic State across the porous Turkish border nearby.
Mr. Salih said that most Islamic State fighters withdrew south to Raqqa, or handed themselves over to Turkish forces policing the border. Turkish officials also said at least two Islamic State members had been detained after handing themselves over.
The Islamic State rout followed recent gains by the group that suggested efforts to contain the extremist group were failing. Last month, the militants captured Palmyra, the central Syrian town with a trove of ancient ruins, and Ramadi, the capital of Iraq’s largest province.
Thousands of people fled in recent days as they anticipated a violent offensive, swarming Turkey’s border and cutting holes through a fence to get through when officials briefly closed the crossing. More than 23,000 Syrians have fled into Turkey since early June, mostly fleeing the Tal Abyad offensive, Turkish and United Nations officials said.
—Mohammad Nour Alakraa and Dana Ballout in Beirut contributed to this article.
Write to Ayla Albayrak at ayla.albayrak@wsj.com and Dana Ballout at dana.ballout@wsj.com
Popular on WSJ
-
http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2015-06-22/iran-s-forces-and-u-s-share-a-base-in-iraq
-
http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2015-06-22/iran-s-forces-and-u-s-share-a-base-in-iraq
I thought Obama ended all the wars?
I was told if I voted for Romney, the middle East would descend into chaos....
They were right!
-
To Many Iraqis, U.S. Isn’t Really Seeking to Defeat Islamic State
American military response is criticized as too weak
By Yaroslav Trofimov
Updated June 25, 2015 5:13 p.m. ET
168 COMMENTS
BAGHDAD—In a tent city under a highway overpass in Baghdad, refugees from Iraq’s Sunni province of Anbar were unanimous about whom to blame for their misery.
“I hold Americans responsible for destroying Anbar,” said former policeman Wassem Khaled, whose home was taken over by Islamic State, or ISIS, after the Iraqi army fled from Anbar’s provincial capital of Ramadi last month.
“We all know that America is providing ISIS with weapons and food, and that it is because of American backing that they have become so strong,” added Abbas Hashem, a 50-year-old who also escaped from Ramadi and now lives in the makeshift Baghdad camp that is only occasionally supplied with water.
Such conspiracy theories about America’s support for Islamic State are outlandish, no doubt. But they are so widespread that they now represent a political reality with real-world consequences—making it harder for the U.S. and allies to cobble together Iraqi forces that could regain the country’s Sunni heartland from Islamic State’s murderous rule one day.
Above all, these beliefs stem from the U.S.-led coalition’s inability to reverse Islamic State’s momentum in Iraq despite nearly 10 months of bombing. In contrast, local residents learned the hard way in past conflicts what the full force of U.S. military might looks like.
Ryan Crocker, who served as American ambassador to Baghdad in 2007-2009 when the U.S. tamped down the insurgency in Anbar by wooing and arming local Sunni tribes, said he’s not surprised by Iraqis’ growing frustration.
“It is a pervasive view throughout Iraq and throughout the region that we are simply disengaged, that we are not prepared to exercise the kind of weight that might actually make a difference,” said Mr. Crocker, now dean of the Bush School of Government at Texas A&M University.
“And in the case of Iraq and Anbar, we are dealing with individuals, groups and tribes that remember a very different U.S. engagement. They know it, they lived it, and now the level of bitterness and mistrust is profound,” he said.
This spreading perception that the U.S. isn’t really interested in defeating Islamic State has undermined local resistance to the militant group in Anbar in recent months. It represents a major obstacle to recruiting local Sunni tribes—one of the U.S. strategies in the war—provincial leaders say.
“If you want to help someone, do it with strength to achieve results, not with drip-drip-drip as if you expect them to die anyway,” said Sabah Karhout, chairman of the Anbar provincial council. “The Americans are playing a very shy role—and if this American support had not been so shy, the Sunni tribes would not have gone over to the side of ISIS.”
U.S. officials deny that Washington somehow lacks commitment to routing Islamic State, which is also known in the region as Daesh.
“We could not be more clear in the purpose of the coalition campaign—the mission is to defeat Daesh,” said Brig. Gen. Thomas Weidley, chief of staff of the U.S.-led coalition task force against Islamic State. He said the U.S. bombing has had a “devastating” effect on the militant group, forcing fighters to move in small groups and civilian vehicles, and decimating its manpower.
That optimistic message, however, usually falls on deaf ears in Iraq—where the stubborn belief that the U.S. doesn’t really seek a victory against Islamic State has become one of the few things that still unites the country’s feuding Sunni and Shiite communities.
“We don’t have any trust in Americans anymore,” said Alia Nusseif, a prominent Shiite lawmaker from Baghdad. “We now think ISIS is being used as a tool by America to divide and weaken Iraq.”
Mowaffak Rubaie, Iraq’s national security adviser from 2004-2009 and another prominent Shiite lawmaker, added that—while he doesn’t personally subscribe to conspiracies—he understands why so many Iraqis believe in them.
“The Americans let down the people of Anbar,” Mr. Rubaie said. “But it’s not only the people of Anbar that are suspicious of the intentions of the Americans.”
After the fall of Ramadi, President Barack Obama sent 450 more U.S. troops to Iraq, largely to train Sunni fighters at a base in Anbar, adding to some 3,000 already in the country.
Mr Obama has listed his 2011 decision to withdraw all American troops from Iraq as one of his presidency’s main achievements, and he is loath to put American forces in harm’s way again—especially as Iraq’s own army has shown little will to fight.
In line with that stance, U.S. forces sent back to Iraq after Islamic State’s rise last year aren’t allowed to advise Iraqi units on the front lines or to serve as forward spotters who provide targeting for the air campaign. Partially as a result, the U.S.-led bombing campaign in Iraq averaged 14 strikes per day since the operation began Aug. 8. The garrison in Ramadi had virtually no air support during last month’s Islamic State assault.
There were 953 strikes per day in the 1991 Desert Storm, and 641 strikes per day in the 2003 invasion of Iraq, according to the U.S. military.
U.S. military officials argue that the current operation against Islamic State can’t be compared to the wars of 1991 and 2003 because the U.S. isn’t fighting against a country with fixed installations and because precision weapons account for more than 99% of airstrikes today.
The U.S.-led coalition’s spokesman, Col. Wayne Marotto, said the current air campaign against Islamic State most closely resembles the 2004-2011 air operations against Iraqi insurgents, which averaged less than one strike a day.
Retired U.S. Air Force Lt. Gen. David Deptula, who oversaw the 1991 Desert Storm bombing campaign and headed air operations during the 2001 ouster of the Taliban regime in Afghanistan, disagreed.
“Islamic State is a state. It is not an insurgency. It has a leadership element, it has command and control, established lines of communications that can be halted and interdicted,” said Mr. Deptula, now dean of the Mitchell Institute of Aerospace Studies, a think-tank of the American Air Force Association. “Imagine just how crushing the similar kind of air operation would be if we increase its magnitude.”
Write to Yaroslav Trofimov at yaroslav.trofimov@wsj.com
-
Share
The Jihadist Trap of Here and Now
Security Weekly
June 25, 2015 | 06:00 GMT
Print
Text Size
By Scott Stewart
In recent weeks, I have found myself spending a lot of time thinking about the jihadist strategy of al Qaeda and how it compares to that of the Islamic State. Earlier this month, I wrote about the possibility that the al Qaeda brand of jihadism could outlast that of the Islamic State. Last week, I wrote about how ideologies are harder to kill than individuals, focusing on the effect that the death of al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula leader Nasir al-Wahayshi will have on the group and the wider global jihadist movement.
But beyond the impact of leaders like al-Wahayshi, there are other facets of strategy that will influence the war for the soul of jihadism. Specifically, I am talking about time and place. Both al Qaeda and the Islamic State seek to establish a global caliphate, but both differ quite starkly in how to accomplish this task and how soon it can be achieved.
Al Qaeda argues that the caliphate can be established only after the United States and its European allies have been defeated, to the extent that they can no longer interfere in Muslim lands — either because of a lack of ability or a lack of desire. The organization pursues a long-war approach that emphasizes the need to attack the United States, "the far enemy," before focusing on overthrowing local governments. The Islamic State takes the opposite tack. It has adopted a more urgent "why wait?" approach and concentrates its efforts on immediately taking, holding and governing territory. This strategy banks on being able to use any conquered territory and resources for the purposes of continued expansion. The direct approach explains the Islamic State's decision to quickly proclaim a caliphate at the beginning of Ramadan last year, after it had captured a large portion of Iraq and Syria. The group's message to the Muslim world is that the caliphate is here and now, and there is nothing the world can do to stop its inexorable expansion.
Since the fall of the Taliban's emirate in Afghanistan, several jihadist organizations have attempted to create Islamist polities, with the current attempt by the Islamic State (the organization's second try) being the most recent. So far, each of these attempts has ended in a spectacular failure and in each case, including the Taliban's emirate, western military intervention has played a key role in the downfall of the jihadist polity — and it will do so again in the case of the Islamic State's so-called caliphate.
In 2006, an array of jihadist groups led by al Qaeda in Iraq announced that they were forming an Islamic state in Iraq. They even began to refer to themselves as the Islamic State in Iraq. While the group initially eclipsed the al Qaeda core in terms of attracting foreign fighters, outside funding and publicity, the U.S. surge in Iraq and the Anbar Awakening greatly weakened the group. By 2010, when a U.S. airstrike killed Abu Omar al-Baghdadi and Abu Ayyub al-Masri — the group's top two leaders — the organization had become only a shadow of its former self. The 2011 U.S. withdrawal from Iraq and the sectarian policies of former Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's government allowed the group to survive, and the civil war in Syria helped the organization recover its strength and grow into what it is today.
In 2011, as Yemen was struggling through a crisis that pitted elements of the military against each other, al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula seized the opportunity afforded by the chaos to grab large quantities of weapons, while also extending its influence over large areas of territory in Yemen's south. However, by mid-2012, Yemeni forces aided by U.S. intelligence and training (and some air support) were able to recapture most of the territory taken by al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula.
A unique window into the thoughts of al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula during this period was revealed with the discovery of letters sent by al-Wahayshi to Abu Musab Abdel al-Wadoud, the leader of al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb. In the letters, which journalist Rukmini Callimachi discovered in the Malian city of Timbuktu, al-Wahayshi shared some of the lessons he learned — and mistakes his organization had made — so that al-Wadoud and al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb would not repeat them.
According to one of al-Wahayshi's letters, his group suffered significant losses of men, materiel and money in 2012, far surpassing what they had gained in 2011. The group's higher profile and level of operational activity also resulted in al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula losing a number of important members to U.S. airstrikes, including Anwar al-Awlaki and Samir Khan.
In another of the letters, al-Wahayshi explained why his group purposefully did not proclaim an emirate in southern Yemen: "As soon as we took control of the areas, we were advised by the General Command here not to declare the establishment of an Islamic principality, or state, for a number of reasons: We wouldn't be able to treat people on the basis of a state since we would not be able to provide for all their needs, mainly because our state is vulnerable. Second: Fear of failure, in the event that the world conspires against us. If this were to happen, people may start to despair and believe that jihad is fruitless."
He encouraged al-Wadoud to also refrain from proclaiming an Islamic polity, but his advice went unheeded. Shortly after receiving the letter from al Wahayshi, jihadists aligned with al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb declared an Islamic state called Azawad in northern Mali in April 2012. But the French intervention in Mali in January 2013 rapidly pushed the jihadists out of the territory they had conquered, ending the short-lived jihadist state of Azawad.
Past attempts to create an Islamic polity in Somalia were also thwarted by an international coalition. And in recent months Boko Haram, which now calls itself Wilayat al Sudan al Gharbi after pledging allegiance to the Islamic State, lost most of the territory the group had previously seized in northern Nigeria.
Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula made another land grab in 2015 as the country fell into chaos. In April, the group took control of Mukalla, Yemen's fifth largest city and the capital of Hadramawt province. Meanwhile, jihadist groups in Libya, such as Ansar al-Sharia, the Mujahideen Shura Council and the Islamic State's three Libyan Wilayats (or provinces) are all fighting with secular, nationalist and tribal forces for control of the country.
And of course, the Islamic State took control of large portions of Iraq and Syria last year and declared the re-establishment of the caliphate there. The group's theatrical, genocidal violence resulted in the formation of the coalition that began an air campaign against it in September 2014. Since then, the group has lost much of its strategic momentum, as well as a great deal of its economic infrastructure and many weapons and personnel. The Islamic State also lost control of a good deal of territory in Iraq and Syria, including places such as Tikrit, Kobani and, most recently, Tal Abyad. Still, the Islamic State has taken control of the cities of Ramadi in Iraq and Palmyra in Syria, though the group is under attack from the international air campaign, as well as local ground forces.
Bin Laden's Strategy
The United States and the West played a critical role in the downfall of recent jihadist polities in Iraq, Yemen, Mali and Somalia. This fact would certainly not surprise Osama bin Laden, who lived to witness such events. From the beginning of his public campaign to establish the caliphate, and in his 1996 "Declaration of War against the Americans Occupying the Land of the Two Holy Places," bin Laden warned that the United States had to be driven out of the region before progress could be made. Bin Laden noted the way that Hezbollah's activities in Lebanon had driven U.S. and French forces out of the Levant, which gave the group space to become a powerful player in the region. He sought to replicate that success elsewhere.
It was a strategic vision bin Laden held until his death. In a letter written to his assistant, Atiyah Abd al-Rahman — likely around March or April 2011, based upon the events commented on — he asked al-Rahman to dispatch a letter to al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb asking it to focus on attacking U.S. embassies and oil companies, rather than local security forces. Bin Laden also wanted to warn the franchise about the dangers of prematurely proclaiming a caliphate:
We should stress on the importance of timing in establishing the Islamic state. We should be aware that planning for the establishment of the state begins with exhausting the main influential power that enforced the siege on the Hamas government, and that overthrew the Islamic emirate in Afghanistan and Iraq despite the fact this power was depleted. We should keep in mind that this main power still has the capacity to lay siege on any Islamic state, and that such a siege might force the people to overthrow their duly elected governments.
We have to continue with exhausting and depleting them until they become so weak that they can't overthrow any state that we establish. That will be the time to commence with forming the Islamic state.
Bin Laden understood that while the United States struggles with ephemeral, ambiguous entities, it is very good at attacking a well-defined enemy that it can identify and locate. Declaring an Islamic polity and attempting to hold and govern territory automatically makes an organization a fixed target on which the United States and its allies can focus their formidable power.
Yet, even knowing this fact, al Qaeda has not been immune to the trap of place. The al Qaeda core has always needed a sanctuary to operate effectively, like Sudan or the Taliban's Afghanistan. Lacking a suitable sanctuary, the group's operations since the invasion of Afghanistan have been limited. There are reports that the al Qaeda core sent a group of operatives from the Afghanistan-Pakistan border area to Syria to attempt to establish a base there — the so-called Khorasan group. That group was struck by some of the first U.S. airstrikes in Syria in September 2014. Evidently, having an address has its downside.
It is also not entirely surprising that al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula has lost three senior leaders in Mukalla since the group conquered the city in April. After the loss of two of his lieutenants, al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula leader al-Wahayshi still visited the city for some unknown reason — and it must have been an important reason to override security concerns. In the aforementioned letter to al-Rahman, bin Laden asked him to "send a letter to the brothers in Yemen to have them implement security measures, avoid moving about except for dire need."
Bin Laden knew that controlling territory is a dangerous trap, unless the United States and its allies are vanquished from a given region. But there are times when even groups affiliated with al Qaeda need to run the risk of exposing themselves in contested territory.
The Eventual Progression
When the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant broke from al Qaeda and declared a caliphate in a specific location, the organization once again made itself a fixed target. Its ideology and claims also serve to tie the group to a specific piece of terrain. It suffered major losses the last time it was so bold, surviving only by abandoning territory, reducing the group's overall profile and returning to a low-level insurgency and terrorism campaign. Of course, the group's survival was also greatly aided by Sunni sheikhs in Iraq who did not trust the government of former Iraqi President Nouri al-Maliki government and thus sought to maintain some sort of jihadist presence as a tool to wield against Shiite sectarianism. Allowing the Islamic Sate to survive in Iraq is something those sheikhs surely regret now.
Despite the criticism that U.S. President Barack Obama has received over his administration's policy toward the Islamic State, the organization's expansion has been stopped and is beginning to be rolled back. There are some who would claim that the organization has not been contained, as demonstrated by the proliferation of existing jihadist groups and factions that have declared allegiance to the Islamic State. But make no mistake, these franchises clearly lack the resources and leadership of the Islamic State core, and they have not gained any capacity previously lacking. They are essentially the same groups with the same capabilities. Only their names have changed, as well as perhaps a little bit of their operational and media philosophies.
It may take some time, but eventually U.S. air power paired with local ground forces will drive the Islamic State from its perch in the same manner as the Taliban and the Islamic State in Iraq. It took seven years to cripple the group last time with U.S. forces on the ground. It will likely take years this time — especially without the presence of a reliable allied ground force in Syria. But there is little doubt that the group will slowly be strangled on the ground as it is repeatedly pummeled by precision airstrikes.
The Islamic State, consequently, will eventually follow the same strategy as the Taliban, al Shabaab, al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula and al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb. The group will abandon its territorial gains to return to an amorphous, low-level insurgency and terrorism campaign. It is, of course, the same strategic shift the group made in 2010. If it had not done so, it would not be here today. If the Islamic State does not abandon its here and now attitude, deciding to stand its ground and defend its caliphate to the end, it will be destroyed.
-
Summary
Numerous but unverified reports in the Turkish media say the Turkish military will soon intervene in Syria. Notably, high-level officials including Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu have not denied the claims, and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has taken to Twitter to emphasize that the Turks will not allow terror organizations to take advantage of the chaotic environment along Turkey's borders. However, the operation discussed in the media, especially the possibility of a ground incursion, is unlikely. Still, it is worth highlighting the risks that will constrain Turkey in the off chance it decides to pursue such a course of action.
Analysis
Different scenarios have emerged amid the rumors of a Turkish invasion into Syria. Some reports suggest the military will deploy some 18,000 troops with substantial air support to secure a 30-kilometer (18-mile) deep territory across the border in Syria running from the city of Jarabulus westward to the areas occupied by the rebels around the city of Azaz. The operation would cover an area currently under Islamic State control, and it would attempt to secure a buffer zone for Turkey that would deeply hurt the extremist group, provide assistance to Syrian rebels and facilitate the resettlement of Syrian refugees. It would also drastically escalate Turkey's role in the conflict, making such a scenario highly unlikely.
Other far more plausible scenarios for Turkish involvement have also emerged, including an operation that would provide increased support for the Free Syrian Army and artillery and airstrikes, but that would avoid the more sensitive prospect of introducing ground forces. It is almost certain that the Turks will ramp up their border control efforts as well, hurting the Islamic State's core supply lines through Turkey. It will be important to watch for raids and crackdowns on Islamic State-affiliated smuggling rings in the border towns.
The Politics of War
Domestic political considerations could be motivating talk of invading Syria, especially in the case of more risky options. Talk of a significant unilateral military operation against the Islamic State comes directly after an indecisive election in Turkey. The ruling Justice and Development Party could be trying to mobilize a voter reaction, particularly among the Nationalist Movement Party, as it looks to either build a coalition government or stage early elections.
On top of domestic political motivations, the foreign implications of an operation in Syria are clear. Dealing a blow to the Islamic State would go a long way in repairing Turkey's relationship with the United States and NATO, which have accused Turkey of being complacent against the extremist group. That Turkey would largely avoid territory controlled by the Kurdish People's Protection Units will further mend the relationship. And targeting the Islamic State's flank, especially in the Jarabulus-Azaz zone, would greatly benefit the rebel forces in Aleppo province, enabling them to divert forces away from fighting the Islamic State to secure Aleppo city.
Despite the reasoning supporting potential operations, it is clear that any Turkish military campaign in Syria carries tremendous and varied risks. For instance, an operation to secure a buffer zone running from Jarabulus to Azaz in Syria would constitute nothing less than a major assault on the Islamic State. This specific border area is of paramount importance to the Islamic State, since it is its last significant link to foreign recruits and supplies. Thus, the extremist group could be expected to fight intensively against a Turkish intervention. The Turkish military would need to be prepared to sustain heavy casualties in difficult fighting against an enemy proficient in the use of guerilla strikes and suicide attacks.
Even more important, it is almost certain that the Islamic State would plan mass casualty terrorist attacks inside Turkey itself. The Turkish government probably has not cracked down on the Islamic State up to this point because it wants to avoid such attacks. The Islamic State has also, over time, developed an underground presence in Turkey, facilitating its lines of supplies and men into Syria. Given Turkey's delicate political and economic situation, numerous large-scale terrorist attacks in Turkish cities could have a significant destabilizing effect.
Wider Risks
Blowback from the Islamic State is not the only risk of military intervention. It is unclear how the Syrian government would react to an operation, despite the fact that it has no control over the targeted area. Already angry at Turkey's support for Syrian rebels fighting against its forces in the north, Damascus could militarily engage the Turkish forces crossing the border through ballistic missile strikes or air raids. While these methods probably would not hurt or even disrupt the Turkish operation, they would raise the stakes in an already dangerous conflict and could draw Turkey and potentially its allies deeper into the Syrian civil war.
Iran and Russia, both of which still strongly back the Syrian government, would also be unhappy with direct Turkish involvement in the conflict. Turkey maintains substantial economic links with Iran and Russia, and these countries could punish Turkey economically if it chooses to intervene in Syria. Addressing the reports of an impending Turkish military operation, Iranian Ambassador to Turkey Ali Reza Bikdeli even said that any such move by Turkey would destroy Ankara's ability to influence a peaceful settlement in Syria.
Some extreme rebel groups fighting the Islamic State, such as Jabhat al-Nusra, pose yet another risk to Turkey. While rebel groups such as those within the Free Syrian Army, the Shamiya Front and even allies of Jabhat al-Nusra within the Islamic Front may welcome a Turkish military operation against the Islamic State, Jabhat al-Nusra's reaction remains unpredictable and tenuous. It is entirely possible that Turkish soldiers may find themselves fighting against more than one powerful Islamist group in Syria.
Intervention Is Still a Remote Possibility
Furthermore, reports from Turkey demonstrate that the Turkish military is still hesitant about an operation in Syria, despite the political will to move forward. The Turkish military is fully capable of completing the mission, but it is understandable that commanders would not be keen on commencing such an important operation without a clear mandate, especially given the uncertain political climate following the indecisive elections. Any mandate at this point could potentially be revoked with the new government. Absent strong Turkish military motivation, the mission is likely to suffer from a lack of coordination and purpose.
It is also worth mentioning that for all these risks, the fear that the Kurds will be targeted is not realistic. Turkey has made it vehemently clear that it will not tolerate the establishment of an independent Kurdish state in Syria, and so there is naturally considerable tension with the Kurdish People's Protection Units. However, the operation, as presently discussed in Turkish media, would largely ignore the Kurds. It would take place not only in an area devoid of Kurdish forces, but also in an area that the already overstretched Kurds have no real ability to occupy, regardless of Turkish military intervention. Talk of the way the operation would prevent the future linking of the Afrin and Kobani cantons misses the geographic and capability constraints on the Kurdish People's Protection Units.
A Turkish military move into Syria is still far from certain, but it is more likely now than ever. Raising the potential of such an incursion could be a political maneuver by the ruling government to secure additional votes from other parties in the runup to early elections. But if Turkey undertakes such an operation, it will have to manage multiple and varied consequences, domestically and abroad.
-
http://pamelageller.com/2015/07/obama-blocks-plan-by-allies-to-fight-isis-islamic-state.html/
-
http://foreignpolicy.com/2015/07/08/beating-the-islamic-state-wont-fix-iraq/?utm_source=Sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_term=*Editors%20Picks&utm_campaign=New%20Campaign
-
http://foreignpolicy.com/2015/07/08/beating-the-islamic-state-wont-fix-iraq/?utm_source=Sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_term=*Editors%20Picks&utm_campaign=New%20Campaign
Let's cross that bridge when we get there.
-
Well maybe thinking about this question will guide us in how we get there.
-
Well maybe thinking about this question will guide us in how we get there.
Nope. You kill them until you run out of jihadi to target. At least, that is what you do if you want to win.
-
And so Iran says thank you very much for doing our work and now they bust their move?
-
And so Iran says thank you very much for doing our work and now they bust their move?
If we want to win, we crush both the Sunni and the shiite wings of the global jihad. Of course, this is if we wanted to win...
-
Interview: Present ISIL Middle East paradox?
by Jaime Ortega
The Daily Journalist
July 6, 2015
http://www.investigativeproject.org/4900/interview-present-isil-middle-east-paradox
Steven Emerson
He is considered one of the leading authorities on Islamic extremist networks, financing and operations. He serves as the Executive Director of The Investigative Project on Terrorism, one of the world's largest storehouses of archival data and intelligence on Islamic and Middle Eastern terrorist groups. Emerson and his staff frequently provide briefings to U.S. government and law enforcement agencies, members of Congress and congressional committees, and print and electronic media, both national and international. Since 9-11, Emerson has testified before and briefed Congress dozens of times on terrorist financing and operational networks of Al Qaeda, Hamas, Hezbollah, Islamic Jihad, and the rest of the worldwide Islamic militant spectrum.
1) Abu Sayyaf was killed a month ago, how will that affect ISI operations in IRAQ and Syria?
I think the effect will be short lived. ISIS is an organization that has actually learned from the demise of core Al Qaeda. Its leadership structure is only superficially in the form of a pyramid. But those intelligence specialists tell that ISIS has learned the lessons from the demise of the core Al Qaeda leadership in Afghanistan by building in redundancy into parallel layers of leadership. So that if one leader goes down—killed or captured—his area of jurisdiction, whether it be ISIS finances or ISIS arms acquisitions or whatever, is not fatally affected. This by the way is one of the reasons why ISIS has remained so resilient in the face of some punishing US led strikes, albeit mostly ineffective. Its an asymmetric terrorist group that has created a symmetrical fighting organization—think of a conventional fighting force like the US Army which has multiple levels of built in leadership redundancy—that btw, is also fighting a symmetrical war unlike other terrorist groups. The only asymmetrical aspect of the ISIS strategy—and I don't mean to be callous here—is the headline grabbing horrific decapitations and executions of hundreds and hundreds of those it has designated the enemy which it has captured, ranging from Yazidi men to western journalists to Arab soldiers to Shiite civilians.
2) ISIL just captured Ramadi, and are trying to expel Syrian Armed Forces from Palmyra what message does that send to the those countries that support logistically and militarily govern by Haider Al-Abadi and Al-Assad?
Well, they have already as you know captured Palmyra and have gone on to carry out a massive killing spree in the city of Syrian soldiers who did not make it out as well as other "enemies" it designated. But I am not so sure of what your question means. If you are asking me, what is the effect of iSIS victory in Palmyra on those that support Al-Assad, frankly that is limited to only a few entities: Iran, Hizbollah and Russia. And we see that both Iran and Hizbollah have just redoubled their support of Assad's regime in the belief that ISIS has made too many inroads. If I have misinterpreted your question, let me know.
3) If ISIL theoretically defeated Syrian Armed Forces, and controlled mayor cities in Syria, will Jabat-Al-Nusra oppose an Islamic Caliphate govern by Al-Baghdadi? Would they fight each other, despite greeting their rhetorical alliance combating western forces?
Well, you raise a very interesting question that used to be very hypothetical but given the losses by Assad recently, is not so hypothetical any longer. It is my belief that if the Syrian Armed Forces were defeated, Jabat Al Nusrat would never concede that ISIS had achieved that victory but rather that Al Nusrat itself—not ISIS– was either mostly or partly responsible for the victory. Hence, Al Nusrat would never recognize ISIS as the dominant military and political conqueror of a "liberated" Syria. And since Al Nusrat is an outgrowth and effective franchise of Al Qaeda, it would not agreed to ISIS political dominance of territory that Al Nusrat has occupied or has sought to liberate. For the past year or so, we have witnessed a very tentative cease fire between ISIS and Al Nusrat, who prior to that had been fighting each other with vicious ferocity. But that defacto cease fire I believe would cease to exist if ISIS declared itself the sole political and military heir to the territory of a liberated Syria. And in that scenario, it is my belief that would be a "settling of accounts" between Al Nusrat and ISIS much as we witnessed in Afghanistan in the 1980's between the 7 different Mujahideen factions once they victoriously ousted the Soviets.
4) The US, and NATO, have financially supported Kurdish Pashmerga Troops, to help fight against ISIL in Iraq and Syria, but without ground troops are western forces doing enough?
In an answer, no. Vietnam taught us the limits of air power. Air power alone cannot win wars. Boots on the ground are also required. Without American and other Nato boots on the ground, I just don't see enough firepower by the valiant Kurds.
5) There is intelligence suggesting Recep Erdogan is supporting ISIL, with the help of Intra-Secret/Service-Intelligence in Pakistan because of their former ties with Saddam's Bathist party who is entwined with ISIL fighting Kurds. Is this possible?
You have now entered the Middle East "Twilight Zone" (remember Rod Serling's television series from the 1960s'?) where anything is possible and nothing is impossible. The only thing that I know for sure is that Erdogan has dragged his feet in joining the coalition against ISIS; he has refused to clamp down on the infiltration route to ISIS thru Turkey; he has refused to crack down on the illegal sale of black market oil by ISIS thru Turkish middlemen; he hatred for the Kurds is so visceral that he will do anything it seems to hurt them even if it means helping ISIS although indirectly; and finally because ISIS ultimately is the final perfection of the embodiment of the Muslim Brotherhood, a group whose values and belief system Erdogan religiously enforces (sometimes leading critics to charge him with being a self anointed Calif), then yes, anything is possible.
6) Is their a race between Al-Qaeda and ISIL to regain more power in the Middle East? The control of Lybia is not only ISIL's target, but also Al-Qaeda's?
Forget Al Qaeda. They are not looking to control the Middle East anymore. At this point they are looking only to hang on to franchises that are now defecting to ISIS. ISIS is the new kid on the block. ISIS is the only player in this race. Just look at the attacks in Saudi Arabia last week and in Tunis three weeks ago. And in northern Algeria. Al Qeda in Yemen is AQ's only remaining star franchise.
7) Is there any other group outside of ISIL and Al-Qaeda who can present a serious hazard to western targets like the US or Europe?
I don't see any other transnational group other than Hizbollah with the capabilities of hitting US or Europe. And Hizbollah's threat is totally controlled by what Iran wants. And since Iran wants a deal with the sanctions lifted, Iran is going to play nice for the time being. But don't expect that to last forever. And don't expect Hizbollah to retire into an old age home even while it is still a player to be reckoned with via Israel. Remember until 9-11, Hizbollah was the terrorist group that had killed more Americans than any other terrorist group.
8) If ISIS takes down Assad's regime, then it will be a battle between Al-Nusra, Ahrar- Al-Sham and ISIS because in Nov 2014, they started to attack each other. In case ISIS battled Al-Qaeda, and that is a high possibility, out of the two who would win? Who would receive more support from Qatar, Kuwait, KSA, Turkey and Pakistan? And who would be more successful in unifying with other jihadist groups like Ansar-Al Islam, Ansar Al-Sharia, Al-Tawid al Jihad, besides other smaller faction groups in the Middle East?
Already, ISIS has been battling the Taliban and winning their skirmishes as Taliban forces have been defecting to ISIS. Now when you raise the question of who would win in an Al Qaeda-ISIS confrontation, its hard to see that direct confrontation emerging at this time because the core Al Qaeda in Afghanistan has been decimated. What remains is Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula and ISIS has not ventured forth into Yemen at this point. So the only possible convergence of a confrontation between AQ and ISIS would be between AQ surrogates, like Al-Nusrat and Ansar Al Sharia (not really a surrogate of AQ though). In this case, I think that ISIS would win hands down.
As for receiving support from those countries you mentioned, well you have to remember that ISIS is Sunni and so are those are countries overwhelmingly Sunni. Yet, there is no doubt that ISIS has been taking the battle to these Persian Gulf potentates, even though they are Sunni, because they are seen as Western puppets and committing apostasy. The question has been—ever since the US formed the Sunni coalition—how fierce will these Sunni oil rich regimes fight ISIS. Saudi Arabia certainly showed its military capabilities and willingness to flex it muscles going it alone but going against Iranian backed Shiites, a far more easily political target among its dominant Sunni population that ISIS.
Even though these Arab regimes have participated nominally in the joint US led coalition against ISIS, their participation has been quite wanting. In the case of Turkey, well its got so many conflicts of interests regarding its own interests visa-vis the players in the ISIS/Syria/Kurdistan/Iran spectrum that Turkey cannot be counted on to be a serious combatant against ISIS. Turkey despises the Kurds and sees their victories as threats to Turkish national security. Turkey also maintains good relations with Iran. And Turkey does not want to pick a fight with ISIS. Conversely ISIS has not shown any real desire to confront Turkey head on or destabilize it unlike ISIS' attitude towards Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Tunisia, Jordan, Libya and even Egypt.
As for who would be more successful in unifying the groups, all you need to do is watch how the once-AQ dominated brigades in the Sinai switched over ISIS as did Al Shabab and Boku Haram, certain Libyan factions like we now are seeing with Ansar al Sharia. Military momentum and Islamic ascendancy are certainly with ISIS and those two are as powerful magnets among certain Muslim populations as is the force of gravity in the earth's atmosphere.
9) Democracy does not to suit well the Middle East. Is this because politics will never take over religion? Is western democracy an illusion to reach in the Middle East?
Well, I would never use the term never. Remember the Protestant Reformation took hundreds of years and cost hundreds of thousands of lives. It just seems at the present time that the stars of democracy are not in alignment for many countries in the Middle East. But I would not put the blame on religion or claim that this is a permanent status.
10) A lot of children seem to adopt religious radicalism with danger. Will the hate towards the west ever change the minds of these Middle Eastern children, of is frantic radicalization a process that cannot be achieved by democracy?
I am not so sure of your question here. There is good reason to associate religious radicalism with danger. And that doesn't just apply to Islam but applies to all religions. All religions, not just Islam, have their fanatics and killers.
Yet, Islamic terrorism is responsible for an average of about 65 to 70% of all international terrorism annually for the past decade according to US intelligence studies published by NCIS. Why the disproportionate amount of terrorism within the Islamic world? And when one looks at the state sponsored media and educational curriculum being studied in Islamic schools, not only in the Muslim world but also in the west, outside educators, ngo's and investigators have found a frightening level of continued incitement, conspiratorial allegations against the West and glorification of terrorist violence (rather than an emphasis on pluralism and non violence and equality) that is a natural breeding ground for violence.
When the Palestinian Authority names and honors public squares on the West Bank in the memory of the most horrific terrorists who carried out mass murders, what does that tell the youth? When groups like CAIR, the Council on American Islamic Relations, tell followers in the United States that the FBI is responsible for more "terrorism" than Al Qaeda, what does that invoke in the minds of its followers? When the leaders of the Muslim Brotherhood, like Sheik Yousef Al Qardawi, issue fatwas saying its religiously ok to kill Americans and Jews, it doesn't take a genius to figure out the consequences. And when Muslim dissidents are murdered in the streets—let alone apostates—because they were condemned as blasphemous for their views, what lesson is drawn by the next generation? You ask whether democracy can reverse this radicalization? I am not so sure. I think we in the west make a huge mistake in equating civil society with democracy.
11) History has shown that in 1258 the brutal seizure of Mongols in Baghdad, gave lasting peaceful effects in the region up to 200 years. We have adopted democracy, but an Iron fist seems to be a better alternative to the sectarian violence shown in the Middle East. Has the issue of extermination, historically seen in 12th century by mongol troops ever been presented in congress as an alternative to defeat global Yihadist to secure national and international interest worldwide?
Whoa, this may be above my pay grade. If we equate modern day authoritarianism (eg the Mubarak regime, the Qaddafi regime) with what you call the "Iron Fist," there is no doubt that as they say in the American Express commercials, "membership has its privileges." I personally am not a fan of authoritarianism over democracy but we have to be real here: In the 1930's, Hitler used democracy to obtain power. So democracy in and of itself without the corollary values of an open pluralistic society is not a viable answer to sectarian violence. If anything, we have witnessed the tragedy of the Arab Spring turning into the Arab Winter because the nascent democratic movements were turned into violent jihadist power plays, leaving most of the populations more disenfranchised and more oppressed than even under their previous authoritarian rulers. But you have raised a civilization question that has never been answered and may never produce a final answer. .
- Will the issue of extermination be seriously examined only after another 9-11 strikes the United States?
Remember what Winston Churchill said right after Czechoslovakia was taken over by the Germans in 1938 with full complicity of Britain and France, " Democracies act only when there is blood on the street." How right he was.
12) What is the best issue to resolve the problem?
I don't have one. Sorry. I can only tell you that we in the west are being been eviscerated by the adopted and delusionally progressive notions of multi-culturalism where no set of moral values is greater than any other. I totally disagree. I believe that the values of western civilization, of the separation of church and state, of gender equality and secularism are values that are morally superior to other sets of value systems. Of course, I will be charged with chauvinism, maybe even "fascism" for saying such a thing. But that proves my point.
If I cede ground to my critics, why should Hitler's Nazi ideology be deemed morally inferior at the very least to other western value systems? Radical Islamic values are not mine. Nor ought they be accepted by the high priests of morality in today's world as nothing more than religious fascism? The same goes with the Christian Identity Movement. But no one seems to have a problem recognizing the latter for that dangerous anti-civizational movement it is. Why it is so hard to recognize other values systems for the other regressive movements?
-
http://www.mintpressnews.com/media-blacks-out-pentagon-report-exposing-u-s-role-in-isis-creation/206187/
-
Turkey to Let U.S. Military Use Its Base to Launch Strikes Against Islamic State
By Dion Nissenbaum in Washington, Emre Peker and Ayla Albayrak in Istanbul
Updated July 23, 2015 8:28 p.m. ET
97 COMMENTS
Turkey agreed to allow the U.S. to use air bases there to launch strikes against Islamic State forces in neighboring Syria, a major shift long sought by Washington and sealed hours before a deadly clash between Turkish forces and militants across the border.
After months of tense negotiations, reluctant Turkish leaders agreed to U.S. requests to use the Incirlik Air Base in southern Turkey to send fighter jets and armed drones to attack fighters based in Syria and Iraq, U.S. defense officials said.
Incirlik is a U.S. base about 60 miles from the Syrian border, giving U.S. jets and unmanned drones vastly improved logistics for daily attacks on the radical group compared with other sites across the region now in use. Military officials said the agreement also opens up other bases in Turkey for potential use in the campaign against Islamic State.
“This is a significant shift,” said a U.S. military official. “It’s a big deal.”
ENLARGE
The decision to more closely ally with the U.S. also exposes Turkey to a heightened risk of attack by extremists. Thursday’s clash highlighted the dangers Islamic State, also known by the acronyms ISIS and ISIL, already poses to Turkey, which has long served as the primary lifeline connecting the group’s de facto capital in Syria with the outside world.
“This is a threat at their doorstep,” said a senior U.S. defense official. “In the end, it’s in their self-interest to let us use the base to strike ISIL.”
The broad outlines of the deal were settled in a phone call Wednesday night between President Barack Obama and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, hours before Islamic State forces in Syria opened fire on a border outpost, killing one Turkish soldier and dragging the country even deeper into the chaotic regional conflict.
Turkey has long been accused of aiding Islamic State’s rise by allowing its fighters to freely cross its borders—something its leaders have vehemently denied. The country resisted American pressure to do more in the 60-member international coalition battling Islamic State ever since a bombing campaign started last year. Ankara’s hesitation was due partly to differences with Washington over strategy.
Until now, Turkey has only allowed the U.S. to fly unarmed surveillance drones out of Incirlik. But persistent American pressure, combined with increasing threats from Islamic State forces to turn their weapons on Turkey, finally convinced Turkish leaders to take more decisive steps to fight the militants, officials said.
“In the end, we too have become the target for the ISIS,” said a Turkish official at the Syrian border near Kilis—site of Thursday’s cross-border clash. “There’s a growing nervousness along the border.”
Turkey has pushed the U.S. to focus more attention on driving Syrian President Bashar al-Assad from power and establishing a no-fly zone in northern Syria. But the Obama administration has steadfastly opposed the no-fly zone idea, which would require intensive use of American air power to enforce and could draw the U.S. into a direct confrontation with the Assad regime.
Since the U.S. launched its war against Islamic State last fall, Turkey’s government has engaged in a high-stakes policy gambit: opting to sporadically crack down on the jihadists, but avoiding overt confrontation to limit the risk of retaliatory attacks on Turkish soil.
Declining to open Incirlik base to U.S. warplanes was long seen as a centerpiece of that strategy, allowing Ankara to distance itself from other Western and Muslim nations taking part in airstrikes against Islamic State strongholds in Syria and Iraq.
The decision to open the base appears to move Turkey more definitively into the U.S. camp—and a more direct confrontation with the militants, with uncertain but potentially profound implications for Turkish security.
As the Islamic State threat has grown, Turkish leaders have slowly agreed to play a more active role in battling the group. Turkey has stepped up efforts to choke off the flow of fighters moving in and out of the country and cracked down on the organization in the country by arresting more than 100 suspected militants in recent weeks.
It has also started allowing the U.S. to train moderate Syrian rebels expected to serve as the ground forces battling Islamic State for control of the fractured country.
Turkey’s policy reversal comes as Ankara finds itself increasingly vulnerable to violence from within and beyond its borders. The North Atlantic Treaty Organization member has also been losing its regional prominence as the leading Western security ally over the past year, with Kurdish militants in Syria and Iraq emerging as key forces in the fight against Islamic State.
Turkey blamed Islamic State for a suicide bombing Monday that killed 32 people in the Kurdish town of Suruç on the Syrian border, though the group hasn’t claimed responsibility for it.
If confirmed, it would be a sign that a long-dormant risk to Turkey is turning into an active conflict. It would also add to the regional policy challenges facing Ankara as Kurdish insurgents at home ramp up attacks against security forces, disrupting a two-year-old truce and threatening to derail peace talks.
Escalating violence within and across its southeastern borders increase the risk of civil strife in Turkey, where major security threats are all materializing just as a leadership struggle roils Ankara amid an effort to establish the country’s first coalition government since 2002.
The new danger Islamic State poses to Turkey became clear early Thursday when five militants attacked the Turkish military border post from an Islamic State-controlled area opposite a small border town called Elbeyli, possibly as they were prevented from trying to cross into Turkey, officials said. One soldier was killed and two were wounded, Turkey’s military said.
Turkish soldiers and tanks returned fire, killing one Islamic State fighter in what is believed to be the first direct clash between the rival forces.
Turkey is also facing new threats from the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, known as the PKK, which claimed responsibility for killing two Turkish police officers this week in separate attacks.
The PKK said it killed the two policemen for cooperating with Islamic State, and in retribution for the Monday suicide attack, which targeted volunteers preparing to cross into Syria to help rebuild the Syrian Kurdish town of Kobani.
Syrian Kurdish militants affiliated with the PKK defeated Islamic State in Kobani after a four-month fight that ended in January.
The PKK is listed as a terrorist organization by Ankara, Washington and the European Union. The group has been fighting for autonomy in southeastern Turkey since 1984 in a conflict that killed 40,000 people.
The U.S. cooperates with the PKK’s Syrian affiliate against Islamic State, aiding the Kurdish militants with airstrikes—a policy that has caused friction between Washington and Ankara.
“It’s a very complex situation on the ground, with multiple enemies,” said Salih Akyurek, a former Turkish army colonel who is now a researcher at the Wise Men Center for Strategic Studies in Ankara.
Write to Dion Nissenbaum at dion.nissenbaum@wsj.com, Emre Peker at emre.peker@wsj.com and Ayla Albayrak at ayla.albayrak@wsj.com
-
second post
By Paul McLeary with Adam Rawnsley
Change of heart. The week began with a vicious attack by a suicide bomber with suspected links to the Islamic State in the Turkish border town of Suruc, killing 32 people and wounding more than 100. And it’s ending with Turkey rushing soldiers to the Syrian border to engage in a cross-border firefight with the jihadists, agreeing to allow American warplanes to hit Syria from the the Incirlik air base in southern Turkey, and for the first time sending its own F-16 fighters to smack jihadists in Syria.
The reluctant ally in the fight against the Islamic State joins the coalition just as Kurdish forces have been making real gains in northern Syria -- alarming the Turks who have pledged not to allow a Kurdish state to spring up on its border -- and represents a major shift in Turkey’s willingness to allow the U.S. to use Incirlik. But events, and 1.5 million Syrian refugees straining Turkey’s ability to care for them, have been forcing Ankara’s hand, FP’s Dan De Luce writes, even if Washington continues to ignore Turkish proposals for establishing a no-fly zone over northern Syria.
Northern alliance. Defense Secretary Ash Carter continued his Iran and Islamic State-themed barnstorming through the Middle East on Friday, following up his visit with Iraqi officials in Baghdad with a hop over to the Kurdish city of Erbil in northern Iraq to meet with Masoud Barzani, president of the Kurdish regional government, and other Kurdish government and military officials. It’s a significant visit, since the Kurds -- and some members of the U.S. Congress -- have been pushing for the Pentagon to start directly arming Kurdish fighters, who have been holding the line against the Islamic State in Iraq’s north. The administration of President Barack Obama isn’t as eager as some others in Washington to start pushing weapons to the Kurds, which would antagonize both Baghdad and Ankara, instead preferring to go through the government in Baghdad.
It’s always sunny in Kurdistan. The Kurds remain the darling of the western media and politicians, who love the hard fighters who have scrapped for decades to try and carve out their own homeland along the ethnic faultlines for northern Iraq, Iran, and Syria. But now that they have the excuse to do so, are they pushing out Sunni Arabs in the guise of fighting against the Islamic State? FP contributor Sara Elizabeth Williams writes from northern Iraq that witnesses there say the Kurdish Peshmerga, the military force of Iraqi Kurdistan, “has an agenda that goes beyond fighting the Islamic State: establishing the boundaries of a future Kurdish state and moving the Arabs out.”
-
By Paul McLeary with Adam Rawnsley
Just don’t call it a ‘no-fly zone.’ Reports emerged Sunday night that as part of the deal between Turkey and the U.S to allow American aircraft to use Turkish air bases to hit the Islamic State in Syria, the two countries will establish a safe zone in northern Syria.
Part of the deal involves pushing the Islamic State out of a corridor along the Euphrates River near Aleppo, which would then fall under the control of the ‘moderate’ Syrian opposition, with coalition air power flying in support. But the plan would also bring American warplanes close to Syrian government bases and air defenses, which gives rise to a whole new set of problems. It would, however, help out the rebel groups fighting President Bashar al-Assad’s regime, something that Washington has struggled to endorse.
While this all sounds pretty much how a traditional no-fly zone works, U.S. officials say not so fast. An official no-fly zone would require a vote by the U.N Security Council, where Russia and China would almost certainly block it.
-
http://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/259585/us-state-dept-bars-christians-testifying-about-raymond-ibrahim
-
Analysis
Russia's efforts to assemble a negotiation over a post-al Assad government in Syria may be gaining traction. The Syrian negotiation was on the agenda during a June 19 meeting between Saudi Deputy Crown Prince and Minister of Defense Mohammed bin Salman with Russian President Vladimir Putin at the Konstantin Palace outside St. Petersburg. Following that meeting, Stratfor sources have reported, Syrian National Security Bureau chief Gen. Ali Mamluk made a quiet visit to Riyadh sometime in July and allegedly met with bin Salman.
It appears that Putin and Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Mikhail Bogdanov, who has been Putin's point man on the Syrian negotiation, have pitched the idea of forging an anti-Islamic State alliance that would include Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Syria. By using the anti-Islamic State platform, Moscow hopes to facilitate a dialogue between the regime and its Sunni adversaries about a power-sharing agreement in Damascus. As expected, in his meeting with Mamluk in Riyadh, the Saudi crown prince allegedly demanded a high price for cooperating with the Syrian regime: a cutoff of Syria's ties with Iran. Of course, the Alawite regime is not about to break ties with its only real ally in the region. But it is still highly notable that a dialogue between the Syrian regime and Riyadh is underway.
It is still unclear whether this dialogue will progress far enough to yield a viable power-sharing arrangement between Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Turkey and Qatar on the one hand and Syria and Iran on the other. Saudi Arabia, with its deep misgivings about Tehran's intentions, is more in favor of counterbalancing Iran than of reaching an understanding with the Shiite power. Turkey, meanwhile, is deepening its involvement in northern Syria; it may be more compelled to allow the rebellion to play out and further weaken Syrian government forces before seriously considering any kind of negotiation. And even if all the rebel sponsors could come to an understanding amongst themselves, it is another question altogether whether they could compel enough rebels to come to the negotiating table and countenance sharing power with the Alawites.
At this stage of the crisis, Russia and the United States have their own reasons for supporting a negotiation. The United States is giving Turkey tacit approval to establish a buffer zone in northern Syria, but Washington needs the fight in Syria to stay focused on defeating the Islamic State — not on toppling the Assad government. Russia is trying to maintain leverage in Syria by shoring up its relations with the Sunni stakeholders in the conflict while also using its existing relationship with Damascus, but Moscow also wants to use the Syrian issue to bargain with the United States. This will be the topic of discussion when U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry meets with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov in Doha on Aug. 3. The question remains whether Russia's shuttle diplomacy will be enough to assemble a viable negotiation.
-
Gulf Arab States Voice Support for Iran Nuclear Deal
Positive response from Gulf Cooperation Council follows Kerry’s visit
U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry listens during a meeting of foreign ministers of the Gulf Cooperation Council on Monday in Doha, Qatar. ENLARGE
U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry listens during a meeting of foreign ministers of the Gulf Cooperation Council on Monday in Doha, Qatar. Photo: Brendan Smialowski/Agence France-Presse/Getty Images
By
Jay Solomon
Aug. 3, 2015 12:21 p.m. ET
11 COMMENTS
DOHA, Qatar—Gulf Arab states on Monday cautiously backed the Obama administration’s nuclear agreement with Iran, giving the White House a potentially important diplomatic win as it seeks to build support for its signature foreign policy initiative.
The positive response from the Gulf Cooperation Council—which is comprised of Saudi Arabia, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, Oman and Bahrain—followed months of intense lobbying by the White House that included offers of increased arms sales, intelligence-sharing and military training.
Secretary of State John Kerry held a daylong summit on Monday with the council’s foreign ministers to explain the terms of the nuclear agreement and the need for increased cooperation between Washington and the GCC to guard against Iran expanding its influence in the region.
“This was the best option amongst other options in order to try to come up with a solution for the nuclear weapons of Iran though dialogue, and this came up as a result of the efforts exerted by the United States of America and its allies,” Qatar Foreign Minister Khalid al-Attiyah said at a joint news conference with Mr. Kerry at the end of meetings in Qatar’s capital. The Persian Gulf monarchy currently serves as the chair of the GCC.
He said the GCC countries have welcomed the plan Mr. Kerry laid out. “He let us know that there’s going to be a kind of live oversight for Iran not to gain or to get any nuclear weapons,” he said. “This is reassuring to the region.”
President Barack Obama is locked in a fierce political battle in Washington to drum up support on Capitol Hill for the nuclear deal, which limits parts of Iran’s nuclear program in exchange for the lifting of international sanctions.
Republicans and pro-Israel politicians are fiercely opposed to the agreement, arguing it will undermine the security of Washington’s key Middle East allies, including Israel, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.
They also charge that Tehran will use tens of billions of dollars in new oil money and revenues to fund its militant proxies in the region, including the Assad regime in Syria, Hezbollah in Lebanon, and the Houthis in Yemen.
Congress is currently conducting a 60-day vetting period of the deal and will vote in September on whether to endorse or reject it.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has publicly attacked the nuclear deal and pressed American lawmakers to vote against it. Saudi, Emirati and Qatari officials have privately groused about the deal and voiced concerns that Washington may weaken its decades-old alliance with the Gulf states as it pursues a rapprochement with Tehran, their regional rival.
The GCC’s public backing of the Iran deal could undercut criticism of the White House and leave Israel more isolated on the diplomatic stage. Mr. Kerry was quick on Monday to present a common front with the Gulf Arab states.
“Ministers agreed…that once fully implemented, the [nuclear deal] contributes to the region’s long-term security, including by preventing Iran from developing or acquiring a military-nuclear capability,” Mr. Kerry said at his appearance with Mr. Attiyah. “But frankly, most of the time that we spent this afternoon was spent articulating and working on the full measure of the relationship between the U.S. and the GCC going forward.”
Mr. Kerry is on a regional trip through the Middle East and Asia, which didn’t include a stop in Israel. Israeli officials have voiced a wariness of engaging with the Obama administration during the congressional review period, due Mr. Netanyahu’s strident opposition to the deal.
Write to Jay Solomon at jay.solomon@wsj.com
Popular on WSJ
There are 13 comments.
What else can they do when the U.S. presents them with a done deal other than to get as much as they possibly can in return. They are not dumb.
Flag ButtonShare
Charlie Mongoho
Charlie Mongoho 2 minutes ago
The end of this maybe Israel being confronted with heavily armed middle east nations....is that a peaceful outcome?
Flag ButtonShare
1
Terry Lesniak
Terry Lesniak 2 minutes ago
..."a kind of oversight over Iran"...
Wow! How reassuring!
Flag ButtonShare
Andrei Chivvis
Andrei Chivvis 3 minutes ago
Anybody who has ever dealt with the ME in general and Arabs in particular know that "cautious support" means rejection, but with mitigating secrete conditions. Such as more arms or may be continuation of the US self-imposed oil export ban. We will find out, just not clear when.
Flag ButtonShare
-
Why Middle Eastern Conflicts Will Escalate
Analysis
August 28, 2015 | 09:15 GMT
Print
Text Size
Summary
Editor's Note: This is the third installment of an occasional series on the evolving fortunes of the Middle East that Stratfor will be building upon periodically.
Tehran's competitors in the region will not sit idly by without attempting to curb the expansion of Iranian influence. This will not manifest in all-out warfare between the Middle East's most significant powers; Iran is not the only country well versed in the use of proxies. But the conflicts that are already raging in the region will continue unabated and likely only worsen. These clashes will occur on multiple fault lines: Sunni versus Shiite, for example, plus ethnic conflicts among Turks, Iranians, Arabs, Kurds, and other groups. The Iranian nuclear deal in the short term thus means more conflict, not less.
Analysis
Turkey
Stratfor has long predicted that the role of regional hegemon will eventually fall to Turkey, which boasts the largest economy in the Middle East and is strategically situated at the confluence of the Black Sea and the Mediterranean, on the Sea of Marmara. It is not a coincidence that what is now the Turkish capital spent more than 1,500 years as the center of powerful empires, from 330 CE, when the Byzantine Empire was founded, until 1918, when the Ottoman Empire fell.
Like the United States, Turkey has some converging interests with Iran; its rivalry with its neighbor to the east is not a zero-sum competition. For one, Turkey depends on Iranian oil, which in 2014 made up 26 percent of Turkey's oil imports. Lifting sanctions on Iran will offer Turkey's commercial class, which is hungry for the potential economic returns, ample opportunity to invest. Besides the economic links between the two powers, Tehran and Ankara also share some strategic interests. For example, both oppose the rise of an independent Kurdish state from the ashes of the Syrian civil war and the Iraqi conflict. While Tehran has at times offered military support to Kurds fending off the Islamic State in Iraq, Iran has a significant Kurdish population of its own, with estimates ranging anywhere from 6 million to 7 million people. Almost 15 percent of Turkey's population is Kurdish, and Ankara has had to contend with Kurdish insurgency since 1984.
More broadly, however, Turkey and Iran are natural competitors. And even though Kurdish containment is a common interest between the rivals, the Kurds are also a useful tool for each to undermine the other. Thus, Kurdistan is the natural battleground between Turkey and Iran, and the two powers will use factions against one another as their competition increases. And though Turkey is predominantly Sunni and Iran predominantly Shiite, it is important to note that Ankara and Tehran seek to establish dominance over a region that is predominantly Arab. For many Arabs, choosing between Turkish or Persian rule is like choosing between death by drowning or by immolation.
Turkey's relationship with the Islamic State is unclear; only in recent months has Turkey's policy toward the militant group changed from passive acquiescence to active disruption. This may be because Turkey feels that Islamic State is becoming a domestic threat, with cells and operatives located across the country. Ankara may also have grown weary and frustrated with the fact that the West looks more favorably upon the prospect of Kurdish independence when it hears and sees that the Kurds seem to be the most effective force fighting the Islamic State.
Turkey has been adamant about seeing the downfall of Syrian President Bashar al Assad, actively supplying and training militants to fight Damascus. Ankara regards the Levant as its own sphere of influence, and it does not look kindly upon Iranian attempts to expand in the region. The possibility that Turkey will take a more active role in Syria also cannot be dismissed, especially in light of recent reports that Turkey is considering moving its military into northern Syria to create a buffer zone that would prevent Syrian Kurdish expansion and significantly weaken the Islamic State, enabling Sunni insurgents to focus their resources on continuing the assault on the al Assad government.
Saudi Arabia
Unlike Turkey, Saudi Arabia has relatively few if any shared interests with Iran. The kingdom is an Arab, Sunni power, and the Wahhabism sect of Islam to which most Saudis subscribe views Shiites with deep suspicion. With a Shiite minority making up between 10 percent and 15 percent of its population, and with Iraq no longer a bulwark against Iran's ambitions, Saudi Arabia rightly sees itself on the front line of the conflict with Iran. That most of Saudi Arabia's Shiite population lives in close proximity to the country's massive oil fields, which are the source of Saudi wealth and power, makes the specter of Iranian expansion all the more alarming to Riyadh. As recently as 2011, Saudi Arabia sent troops into Bahrain to help put down unrest in the Sunni-ruled, Shiite-majority country, precisely because it feared Iran might use the situation to extend its reach in the Gulf.
Like Turkey, Saudi Arabia wants to see the downfall of the al Assad government, which would deal a crippling blow to Iranian influence in the region. For a time, the Saudis thought that the Islamic State could help them achieve that goal. That plan has backfired on Riyadh, as it must now deal with threats from both the Islamic State and al Qaeda. Still, Saudi Arabia continues to support other Sunni militants in Syria fighting against loyalist forces, and it, along with Jordan, is reportedly providing arms to Sunni tribes fighting in Iraq.
Unlike Turkey and Iran, Saudi Arabia has no immediate Kurdish problem, and Stratfor is already observing signs that the House of Saud will assist Kurdish elements in Iraq militarily. How far the Saudis will pursue this strategy, and which Kurdish factions the Saudis will support, is unclear. But the Iranians are already trying to provoke minority groups in Saudi Arabia, so the Saudis will likely at least attempt to embolden an autonomous Kurdistan capable of affecting regional economic and security issues — even though supporting the Kurds will mar Riyadh's relationship with Ankara. After all, though both are Sunni powers, Saudi Arabia has almost as little interest in seeing Turkey dominate the Middle East as it does Iran.
In 2014, Saudi Arabia did attempt to start a diplomatic dialogue with Iran, but this effort quickly deteriorated with the beginning of the conflict in Yemen. With Riyadh focused on battling the Shiites and the Islamic State in the rest of the region, it was caught off guard when Iranian-backed Houthi rebels made significant military gains in Yemen, at one point even capturing Sanaa, the capital. Saudi Arabia has since committed air and land power to the conflict, and by April 2015 the tide had begun to turn. Since the six world powers agreed to a nuclear deal with Iran, Saudi-backed anti-Houthi forces in Yemen have won major victories in the Gulf of Aden. These types of conflicts are already the norm across the region, and the rehabilitation of Iran's international image coupled with Tehran's desires to expand its domain will lead to more of the same.
Egypt
Egypt, like Saudi Arabia, is an Arab, Sunni power, but one whose ability to act is much more constrained than Turkey or Saudi Arabia. Still, Cairo is an important part of the balance of power that the United States is trying to establish in the Middle East, as evidenced by Washington's abrupt amnesia regarding the coup that ousted democratically-elected President Mohammed Morsi, a member of the Muslim Brotherhood, as soon as Iranian-backed forces in Yemen reared their heads in 2014. In addition, from the U.S. perspective, the Egypt-Israel Peace Treaty of 1979 remains one of the defining features of the region. Yet Egypt faces serious internal issues of its own, as it tries to roll back a subsidy regime, elect a parliament, contain social unrest, and manage multiple jihadist threats in the country, including disturbingly competent attacks in Cairo and the Sinai Peninsula. Despite this, Egyptian forces are also active in Yemen, and Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi was in Russia this week to discuss economic ties and the situation in Syria with Russian President Vladimir Putin. Egypt and Saudi Arabia have increased cooperation in recent months and may try to pool their resources to protect the Arab heartland of the Middle East. A joint Arab defense force under development could easily become part of this plan and is one of Cairo's ways of attempting to maintain a prominent role in the regional alignment.
Overall, the Iran nuclear deal then will not mean less violence or war; it will mean more. The uprisings in the Arab world in 2011 created power vacuums across the region; proxies supported by outside powers, as well as local militias and groups, found new space in which to operate. Conflict in the region will become increasingly about Turkey, Iran, Saudi Arabia and Egypt using various groups to compete against one other, rather than groups taking advantage of failed states to carve out small fiefdoms of power and responsibility for themselves.
-
Second post of morning
Did Iran Gift the Saudis a Terrorist Suspect?
Geopolitical Diary
August 27, 2015 | 21:18 GMT
Multiple sources, including CNN, AP and Saudi newspaper Asharq Al-Awsat, reported Aug. 27 that Ahmed al-Mughassil was arrested in Beirut and transferred to Saudi Arabia. Al-Mughassil was identified in a 2001 U.S. Department of Justice indictment as the mastermind behind the Khobar Towers bombings, a 1996 attack against a Saudi housing complex where foreign military personnel lived. Nineteen U.S. servicemen were killed, and almost 500 were reported injured in the attack.
The details surrounding al-Mughassil's arrest are rather mysterious. Asharq Al-Awsat reported that al-Mughassil was actually arrested two weeks ago, after Saudi intelligence discovered he had traveled to Beirut from Iran and was in a southern Beirut neighborhood controlled by Hezbollah. CNN did not go so far, reporting merely that al-Mughassil had been "bundled into a plane" and taken to Saudi Arabia.
Stratfor sources have reported an additional detail not currently being covered in the mainstream media: that the Iranians, who had ostensibly provided al-Mughassil safe haven for years, informed the Lebanese Internal Security Forces of al-Mughassil's arrival in Beirut. Lebanon's security forces then picked up al-Mughassil at the Hezbollah-controlled airport and immediately turned him over to the Saudis on a private jet that was waiting for him. Though this account has not been confirmed, it fits within the larger realignment occurring across the region as a result of the U.S.-Iranian nuclear accord. For months, even years, leading up to the accord, Iran attempted to prod the Saudis into a diplomatic conversation, but the Saudis have thus far staunchly refused to participate. The rumors also come in the context of a great deal of diplomatic activity related to the Syrian civil war; both Iran and Saudi Arabia want to settle the conflict in a way that suits their respective, and divergent, interests.
When it occurred, the Khobar Towers bombing was not exactly a clear-cut case. A U.S. indictment claimed that evidence suggested covert Iranian involvement, but no Iranian officials were singled out. It was al-Mughassil, the leader of Hezbollah al-Hejaz (the Saudi faction of Hezbollah), who was identified as the plot's mastermind; numerous others were identified as being involved, many of whom the Saudis have already imprisoned. A U.S. federal judge even ruled in 2006 that Iran owed the families of 17 American victims of the bombings a total of $254 million.
However, history has cast some doubt over Iran's role in the attack. For one thing, Hezbollah al-Hejaz never actually claimed responsibility for the Khobar Towers bombing. Iran maintained that al Qaeda was the guilty party, and the Sept. 11 commission suggested an al Qaeda link. Former U.S. Secretary of Defense William Perry has also said in recent years that he believes al Qaeda, and not Iran, is to blame for the attack.
There has been no confirmation from the Saudi, Lebanese or U.S. governments that al-Mughassil has actually been detained; all reports have been from anonymous officials and confidential sources. But assuming that al-Mughassil has actually been arrested, perhaps the most confusing of the scant verifiable details available is that Lebanon was either actively or passively involved in offering al-Mughassil to the Saudis. Lebanon — the same country that passed a general amnesty law in 1991 giving sanctuary to figures such as Imad Mughniyah, Hassan Ezzeddine, Ali Atwa, Mohammed Ali Hammadi, and Cpl. Wassef Ali Hassoun — is not known for extraditing wanted individuals to foreign countries. In the past, Lebanon has not succumbed to U.S. pressure in similar circumstances, even when the United States demanded control over suspects in the 1985 hijacking of TWA Flight 847.
It is even less clear why Iran would have decided to offer up al-Mughassil in the first place, if it was in fact Iran that informed the Saudis of al-Mughassil's movements. Is it a show of good faith to Saudi Arabia, an Iranian attempt to show that the Islamic republic is interested in at least partially mending ties with the kingdom? It could be, but offering up one militant who authored a bombing in 1996 is not likely to have much of an effect on the Saudi-Iranian relationship. Was it a low-stakes understanding reached between the Americans and the Iranians, a way for Iran to show it is willing to cooperate with the United States in limited ways outside the framework of the understanding reached on Tehran's nuclear program? There is no evidence to support such a theory, but, to a degree, it seems credible. Next week, Saudi King Salman is due to make his first visit to the United States since he ascended the throne. Washington will likely press Riyadh to hand over al-Mughassil. The Saudis, as they have with previous suspects tied even to the case, will likely refuse but will enjoy having something to hold over U.S. President Barack Obama.
Whatever the details, this much is clear: A well-known militant with a $5 million bounty on his head flew from his safe haven in Iran to Lebanon, a country known for harboring wanted suspects, and to territory controlled by Iranian-backed Hezbollah. After landing in Beirut, he was whisked away to Riyadh. Something in the geopolitical relationship between Iran, Lebanon and Saudi Arabia made this possible. And though we can not yet delineate the precise chronology of events or identify who is responsible for what, the strangeness of the events should give us pause and force us to reconsider what other previously held notions about the Middle East need re-evaluation or may be obsolete altogether.
-
http://www.jpost.com/Middle-East/ISIS-Threat/Report-ISIS-beheads-39-of-its-own-members-413697
-
Will Russia Intervene in Syria?
Analysis
August 31, 2015 | 19:38 GMT
Print
Text Size
(Stratfor)
Analysis
Editor's Note: Stratfor closely monitors conflict zones from a geopolitical perspective. What is perhaps the most volatile conflict today can be found in the territories of Iraq and Syria that are controlled by the Islamic State. Though these areas are cartographically distinct, they are functionally linked: Sunni tribal structures, rebel operations, Kurdish interests, external influences and the suzerainty of the Islamic State bind them together as a single, coherent theater.
The Islamic State capitalized on the chaos of the Syrian civil war and the inadequacy of Iraqi security forces to take over a large swath of the Middle East. After making some impressive gains, including the taking of the Iraqi city of Mosul, the Islamic State now finds itself in an increasingly difficult position, against which a wide array of opponents are aligned. Nonetheless, the group is uniquely resilient and, as such, remains extremely dangerous and unpredictable.
In addition to examining the combatants inside the Syria-Iraq battlespace, Stratfor also tracks the political machinations, negotiations and goals of outside the battlespace, including Iran, Russia, the Gulf monarchies and the United States. For the first time, in one place, Stratfor is providing routine updates covering the gains, losses and extent of the Islamic State's so-called caliphate.
Key Analyses
Obama's Strategy Meets Reality in Iraq and Syria
The Islamic State's Gains Mask Its Weakness
The Islamic State's Growth Has Limits
Arab Militaries' Weaknesses are the Islamic State's Strengths
Why Sunni Unity Is a Myth
Why Shiite Expansion Will Be Short-Lived
The Geopolitics of the Syrian Civil War
A Risky U.S. Proxy Battle Against Islamic State
Aug. 31
Syria
Russia could be in the process of greatly expanding its involvement in the Syrian conflict, according to sources from Israeli news source Ynet. An Aug. 31 report suggests that a Russian expeditionary force has already arrived in Syria, setting up camp in a loyalist air base near Damascus. If the reporting is accurate, it could be an early indication that Russia will throw its heft behind the Syrian air campaign against the Islamic State and the rebel-aligned factions in the country. According to Ynet, thousands of Russian military personnel are expected to arrive in Syria in the coming weeks, including military advisers and instructors as well as logistics and technical personnel. Additionally, members of the aerial protection division are expected, alongside pilots who will fly an unknown number of fighter aircraft and attack helicopters.
It is Stratfor's assessment that Russia is steadily increasing its support for Damascus. This assistance ranges from the provision of extra materiel, weaponry and equipment to the greater sharing of intelligence on rebel positions and dispositions. Russian pilots and aircraft mechanics also have a long history of serving in foreign air forces in conflict zones, either at the behest of the government or as private contractors. Evidence that Russia is taking a more combative role is already emerging. Stratfor identified Russian-language speakers in recent combat footage obtained from Syria, further corroborating the likelihood that either Russian military personnel or Russian-speaking private military contractors are now actively involved in the conflict.
Nevertheless, Stratfor has yet to see concrete evidence of expanded Russian participation in the Syrian conflict on the scale suggested by Ynet. In fact, cases of false reporting are common, especially where direct Russian support is concerned. Previous reports of MiG-31 interceptor transfers to Syria were never proved, leading to subsequent Russian denials.
When it comes to providing decisive support to Syria, Russia is torn. Moscow is trying to position itself as a credible power that can negotiate a political solution to the Syrian conflict, yet the Kremlin is also keen to bolster the forces of Syrian President Bashar al Assad. If it hopes to reach a favorable settlement, Russia must ensure that loyalist forces do not suffer devastating losses: A weak Damascus would make it harder for Russia to reach an understanding with the rebels and their backers that would safeguard its overall interests in Syria and the region. Thus, it makes sense for Moscow to bolster Syria's defenses, but a full military commitment is unlikely. Such an intervention in the conflict would undermine Russia's position as a strong mediator, calling into question Moscow's overall objectivity. Regardless, given the inherent volatility of the Syrian conflict, Stratfor will closely watch for any further signs of increased Russian involvement in the conflict.
Elsewhere in Syria, Islamic State fighters battling Syrian rebels moved closer than ever to central Damascus. Street battles reportedly raged in the Asali neighborhood of the capital's southern Qadam district over the weekend, killing at least 15 fighters as Islamic State militants seized at least two streets. The district had been relatively quiet since rebels and government forces reached a localized truce a year ago. Stratfor sources indicate that Moscow may finally have been able to get Damascus and the mainstream rebel opposition to broadly agree on elements of a political transition of power in Syria.
Aug. 29
Syria
Russia long supplied Syrian President Bashar al Assad's forces with the vast majority of their weaponry. Though Iran has since replaced Russia as the primary weapons-provider to the Syrian government, the Russians have continued to ship substantial volumes of small arms, ammunition, spare parts and refurbished material to pro-Damascus forces over the course of the Syrian civil war. This aid, along with support from Iran and other allies, has been vital in maintaining the loyalist armies. And over the last week, there have been indications that the Russians are increasing their support for the al Assad government.
On Aug. 20, the Alligator-class landing ship Nikolay Filchenkov from the Russian Black Sea Fleet was spotted in the Bosporus. On the deck of the amphibious warship, and within the cargo hold as well, were numerous army vehicles and armored personnel carriers, almost certainly headed for the Syrian coast. The same week, videos emerged of BTR-82A armored personnel carriers in action alongside the Syrian Republican Guard and National Defense Forces in the Latakia Mountains. Bearing markings unusual for Syrian equipment, the vehicles are likely recent deliveries from Russia. Recent photos show more Russian equipment recently arrived in Syria, including GAZ Tigr all-terrain mobility vehicles and UR-77 mine-clearing vehicles. Furthermore, on top of a recent rise in Russian military cargo flights into the two Syrian coastal provinces of Tartus and Latakia, reports from sources close to the Syrian government indicate Russia is enhancing its intelligence-sharing program with the Syrians, including the provision of satellite pictures of the battlefield.
The increase in Russian aid is a clear reminder that the Russians are not abandoning the Syrian government. Rather, even as Moscow attempts to mediate a negotiated solution to the Syrian crisis that will safeguard its interests in the region, it will continue to exert considerable effort to make sure the Syrian government can hold its own on the battlefield. It is unlikely that this aid alone will reverse the outcome of the conflict to favor al Assad's forces, because, although generous, it neither fulfills all the Syrian loyalists' weapons requirements nor solves their manpower problems. Still, additional equipment from Russia will bolster the forces as they seek to prevent further rebel gains into their core territories.
However, the origins of the funds being used for these weapons are a mystery. Russia may be providing the increased support without direct financial compensation or the Iranians may have financed the latest Russian shipments. Iran is widely suspected to be behind past aid to Syrian loyalists. It is clear, though, that the money is not coming from Syria itself. Al Assad's government is in dire economic straits and is likely unable to purchase more weapons on its own.
Aug. 19
Syria
Stratfor receives insight from many sources around the world, along with reports not available for public consumption. It is important to caveat that many reports are unconfirmed or speculative in nature, though they provide valuable context. Interpreting information and compiling multiple data points to build a picture is part of intelligence analysis. Any and all reporting is carefully filtered before being disseminated by Stratfor, yet some insight is worth sharing on its own merits, such as this account from Syria, below.
Russia is heavily invested in the Syrian conflict and has a significant stake in shaping any enduring peace. Stratfor sources indicate that Moscow may have finally been able to get Damascus and the mainstream rebel opposition to broadly agree on elements of a political transition of power in Syria. Russia has long insisted that present Syrian President Bashar al Assad must remain in power during any transition. This is a sticking point for many of the rebel groups, but Moscow appears to have been able to negotiate a middle ground. As Stratfor previously noted Aug. 7:
A flurry of meetings is taking place as stakeholders in the Syrian conflict attempt to work out a power-sharing agreement to replace the government of Syrian President Bashar al Assad. Russia has been driving the negotiation, while Oman acts as a neutral mediator relaying messages to and from Iran, Syria, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Russia and the United States. Though the diplomatic activity is picking up, it is still an outside effort divorced from the reality of the battlefield, where Syrian rebels are fighting the al Assad government on their own terms.
According to reports received by Stratfor, al Assad will remain in power during a transition, then cede his political responsibilities to Farouk al-Shara, who will assume the role of Syria's prime minister during the changeover period. In exchange for remaining as a politically neutered figurehead, al Assad will have to let go Syrian National Security Bureau chief Gen. Ali Mamlouk. The opposition will then choose a replacement for Mamlouk — a person that is acceptable to al Assad. The role of army chief of staff would be awarded to an unspecified Alawite and, in addition, the minister of defense portfolio would go to a former brigade commander from the Syrian Republican Guard, Manaf Tlass, who defected to the West in 2012. Stratfor had earlier received word from sources that Tlass, a Sunni, whose family has a long-standing alliance with the al Assad clan, was preparing to re-enter the political scene after spending much of the civil war in Paris.
After a highly publicized defection in 2012, Tlass has been in Paris, keeping a low profile and waiting for the right time to insert himself into negotiations. The Tlass family has a long history with the al Assad family: Manaf's father, Mustafa Tlass, helped rally strong military and Sunni support for al Assad when he took power in 2000. In 2012, we noted that the two families were likely to strike a deal to enable the Tlass family to leave Syria, and we forecast that Manaf Tlass would eventually return to play a role in a power-sharing arrangement. Given that Tlass is a Sunni with a military background who has also maintained close links with the al Assad administration, it is little wonder that he is now allegedly being proffered as a suitable candidate for defense minister in a new Syrian government.
Though Stratfor is unable to confirm the specificity of this insight, there is nothing that is particularly implausible. Farouk al-Shara is one of the more acceptable candidates for the opposition: He is Sunni Muslim, a known nationalist, and publically sought a negotiated solution to the crisis rather than a military one. He also has strong family ties to the rebel-dominated Daraa province. On the other hand, he is staunchly loyal to the al Assad government and is deeply embedded in the Baath Party. Tlass meets the criteria of being a Sunni, but it will be difficult for him to win the trust of the broader Sunni rebellion, which perceives him as being too close to the al Assads. He will also be regarded as out of touch with reality on the ground after spending years in Europe instead of joining the fight.
As Stratfor previously noted, any agreement between Moscow and the Syrian National Coalition is largely irrelevant if it does not have tacit support from fractious rebel groups. The Syrian National Coalition does not speak for the majority of rebel factions, many of which are achieving limited tactical success against Damascus and the Islamic State. This may influence the rebel's willingness to accommodate a political transition, or not. Stratfor closely monitors the behavior of all components of the Syrian conflict and is alert for any change in the political dynamic that could lead to a negotiated solution to the crisis.
Iraq
Muhammad Haji Mahmud, secretary general of the Kurdistan Socialist Democratic Party, said that U.S., U.N., and British representatives have asked Kurdish parties to allow Kurdistan Regional Government President Massoud Barzani to remain in office past the expiration of his term on Aug. 20 and to postpone political reform for two years. According to Mahmud, foreign officials are worried that the Kurds will not be able to undergo political transformation while also effectively fighting the Islamic State and dealing with other regional issues.
Aug. 17
Syria
A previously arranged cease-fire between Syrian rebels and loyalist forces, including Hezbollah elements, collapsed over the weekend. Originally scheduled to end Aug. 16, the cease-fire was in part mediated by Iran and Turkey four days earlier. Centering on the towns of Zabadani, Fuaa and Kafriyeh, the temporary cessation of hostilities showed promise when it was extended beyond the agreed-upon 48-hour duration. Ongoing negotiations seek an end to the conflict in Syria, and localized cease-fires provide important foundations on which to build. However, the collapse of the cease-fire amid entrenched disagreements and mistrust only serves to emphasize the deep divides that exist in Syria. Such divisions will make any comprehensive negotiated solution to the crisis extremely difficult to achieve.
Farther north, the Islamic State showed its determination to hold onto territory in Aleppo province, despite the overarching threat from U.S. and Turkish airstrikes. By continuing its attacks against rebel groups in the area, the Islamic States hopes to undermine a key component of the Turkish-American plan: to train and support certain rebel factions that can then be employed as proxy forces on the ground in Syria. The Islamic State made gains around the key town of Mare, undoubtedly assisted by the withdrawal of Jabhat al-Nusra forces from front-line positions against the Islamic State in Aleppo province.
Damascus recently launched its own offensive in Aleppo province, directed toward Kweiris Air Base, currently besieged by the Islamic State. The latest indications from the ground are that the offensive has already been halted, with little headway made against the extremist group. The loyalist forces simply could not muster enough combat power for a successful push against Kweiris, highlighting the precarious position the air base defenders find themselves in after years of being under siege.
Iraq
Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi announced the cancelation of four ministries and the merging of four others on Aug. 17. Overall, according to a statement from al-Abadi, the Council of Ministers will be reduced from 33 members to 22, plus the prime minister. The cuts include three deputy prime minister posts, as well as the ministries of state for women’s affairs and provincial affairs. Kurdistan Regional Government President Massoud Barzani warned al-Abadi not to dismiss Finance Minister Hoshyar Zebari, a Kurd, Iraqi Arabic Sky Press reported. Entrenched sectarian interests in Iraq may prevent al-Abadi's reforms from being implemented or even plunge Iraq into deeper sectarian conflict.
Also in Baghdad, the Iraqi parliament referred to the judiciary a report calling for former Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki and numerous other Iraqi officials to face trial for their roles in the fall of Mosul to the Islamic State. The report alleges that al-Maliki had an inaccurate picture of the threat to the northern city and that he chose and failed to hold to account corrupt commanders. Also implicated in the report were the governor of Mosul, a former defense minister, a former army chief and a lieutenant general in charge of Nineveh province, among others.
Al-Maliki arrived in Tehran on Aug. 16 for talks on bilateral ties and the regional fight against terrorism. It is unlikely that he will simply go along with al-Abadi's reform agenda without attempting to secure his own power. He also has outside support, namely from Iran: Tehran threatened to withdraw its support for Iraq’s fight against the Islamic State and turn its militias against the government in Baghdad if al-Maliki is put on trial for his role in the fall of Mosul. The office of Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei reportedly has been in contact with al-Abadi, as well as other senior Iraqi leaders, in an effort to preserve al-Maliki’s immunity.
Aug. 16
Syria
Jabhat al-Nusra, al Qaeda's affiliate in Syria, released seven members of the U.S.-backed rebel group Division 30 that were abducted last month. The group also said it hopes Jabhat al-Nusra will release its commander. Following the abduction, Jabhat al-Nusra attacked the Division 30 command in northern Syria, leading to the near-collapse of the group. Jabhat al-Nusra, which withdrew from its positions in northern Aleppo ahead of a U.S.-Turkish operation, said it abducted the rebels because the United States trained them.
Elsewhere, string of Syrian government airstrikes on a marketplace in Douma, a rebel-held town near Damascus, killed at least 58 people. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said that at least 200 people were injured in attack. The airstrikes follow fresh loyalist offensives against the Islamic State in Aleppo province.
Iraq
An Iraqi parliamentary panel found at least 30 security and political officials, including former Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, responsible for the fall of the city of Mosul to the Islamic State. In the panel's report, the committee also placed responsibility for the June 2014 defeat with former Mosul Gov. Atheel al-Nujaifi, former Defense Minister Sadoun al-Dulaimi and Nineveh police commander Khalid al-Hamdani.
Aug. 15
Syria
A representative of rebel group Ahrar al-Sham said that a cease-fire had ended with the government and Hezbollah in the towns of Zabadani, Fuaa and Kafriyeh. Neither Hezbollah nor the government of President Bashar al Assad have yet commented. The rebel group said that fighting resumed after negotiations brokered by Iran and Turkey broke down over rebel demands for prisoner releases. Ahrar al-Sham had been leading the rebel side of the talks, playing a key role in bringing about the cease-fire that began Aug. 12. Ahrar al-Sham is in the midst of an offensive east against the Islamic State in the buffer zone established by the United States and Turkey.
Iraq
A spate of bombings across Baghdad left 24 people dead. The blasts went off in Taji to the north, Jisr Diyala, Madaen, Iskan and other areas. The deadliest of these was carried out in the Shiite district of Habibiya and killed 15, wounding 35 others. Earlier, an Islamic State truck bombing in Sadr City killed 70 people Aug. 13.
Aug. 14
Syria
Forces loyal to Syrian President Bashar al Assad have launched an offensive in rural Aleppo province aimed at reaching the government-held Kweiris air base, which is currently under siege by the Islamic State. With the disastrous August 2014 loss of Tabqa air base fresh in their minds, the Syrian government is keenly aware that an Islamic State massacre of the Kweiris defenders could trigger another wave of popular discontent among the loyalist population. Indeed, over the last few days, there have been a few demonstrations in the government stronghold of Tartus calling on Damascus to break the siege and to get its soldiers out of Kweiris air base.
The air base is around 20 kilometers (12 miles) from the nearest loyalist lines. The government push to break the siege is a risky endeavor because it is being launched with hastily gathered forces at a time when the loyalists are under significant pressure across the country. The forces will have to contend with potential Islamic State attacks on both flanks and the possibility that the relief force might itself become cut off from assistance. For the defenders of the Kweiris air base, however, the relief force may be their last chance: They have been under siege now for years and are suffering from steady attrition.
To the north of Kweiris air base, also in Aleppo province, Ahrar al-Sham is leading an offensive into Islamic State territory inside the buffer zone that United States and Turkey are trying to establish with airstrikes and allied rebel forces on the ground. The Ahrar al-Sham offensive has made considerable initial progress, seizing two border villages and a natural gas plant, although a successful Islamic State counterattack has complicated their advance. It is still too early to make a call on the outcome. One explanation for Ahrar al-Sham's push is that the group is trying position itself as a vital rebel force to occupy the buffer zone in a coalition operation against the Islamic State. However, Ahrar al-Sham is carrying out its most recent offensive alongside other rebel factions that maintain very close ties with Turkey, including the Nour al-Din al-Zenki battalions, meaning the group is more likely to be coordinating its efforts with Ankara.
Ahrar al-Sham is one of the most powerful rebel factions in Syria and has deftly maneuvered to increase its influence and position within the country. The group has especially benefitted from the increased flow of aid reaching the rebels in Syria. Ahrar al-Sham, alongside other key rebel factions such as Jaish al-Islam, has also sought to promote an image of pragmatism and willingness to cooperate with regional and international efforts. Ahrar al-Sham's leadership has aggressively pursued this public relations effort, even publishing op-eds in Western media including in the Washington Post. This is in spite of opposition from fellow Islamist group and ally Jabhat al-Nusra. Because of Ahrar al-Sham's strong links with Jabhat al-Nusra and its goals for a future Syria, the United States is still hesitant to engage with the group.
Islamist groups such as Ahrar al-Sham and Jaish al-Islam, however, simply must be part of any search for a solution to the Syrian conflict. The successful establishment of a cease-fire in the towns of Zabadani, Fuaa, and Kafriyeh illustrated the value of working with Islamist organizations, given Iran and Turkey mediated the agreement with the involvement of Ahrar al-Sham and Hezbollah. Involving such groups is especially important in northern Syria, where powerful Islamist factions overshadow groups that the United States favors. The United States will have to contend with this reality as it works with Turkey to push the Islamic State out of Aleppo province.
Aug. 10
Syria
Jabhat al-Nusra, the al Qaeda affiliate in Syria, will leave many of its major positions along the front line with the Islamic State. Over the weekend, the militant group declared that it would neither oppose nor aid the upcoming Turkish- and coalition-led effort against the Islamic State in Aleppo province. Jabhat al-Nusra understands that it risks heavy damage if it fights against the Turkish-U.S. operation and would rather see its Islamic State enemies be the full target of any upcoming operation.
A retreat by Jabhat al-Nusra from its positions in northern Aleppo, even if it loses territory directly under its control, is advantageous for the group in a number of ways. According to Stratfor sources, the United States has agreed to halt its attacks on Jabhat al-Nusra in exchange for the pullback, a major gain since persistent U.S. attacks over the past months have damaged the group's operational leadership. Furthermore, Jabhat al-Nusra can consolidate its forces on other fronts as Turkey, the United States and other rebel forces effectively secure its flanks from attacks by the Islamic State.
It is important to note that Jabhat al-Nusra has already made its mark with successful attacks on the first batch of the New Syrian Force. Having delayed and damaged the program, Jabhat al-Nusra has created more space and time to retreat from the Aleppo border with Turkey. Nevertheless, the Jabhat al-Nusra retreat does not herald an end to its conflict with the West or determine its future position in Syria. As part of al Qaeda and an enemy of the West, the United States will have to address Jabhat al-Nusra eventually, even if the Islamic State is now the priority.
Aug. 8
Syria
As Iran, Syria, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Russia and the United States discuss issues related to the ongoing conflict, including the shape Syria might take following the exit of President Bashar al Assad, there were a number of developments on the battlefield in Syria. These are important to monitor — credible rebel factions have yet to come to the table to discuss a power-sharing agreement. On Aug. 8, the Syrian government carried out airstrikes in the countryside near the capital of al-Hasaka province as well as across Idlib and in northern Latakia province, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reported. Unconfirmed reports also indicate that U.S.-led coalition aircraft have carried out strikes near Raqqa that killed two Islamic State fighters.
Clashes between loyalist troops and rebel Islamist forces have been reported ongoing around Tabliseh, Homs province. Government troops also managed to rebuff an Islamic State attempt to take control of the area around Jazal oil field in Homs province. In Rif Dimashq province, government troops bolstered by Hezbollah also fought Islamist rebels in the area of Daraya and Zabdani. Fighting began once again in the Jobar neighborhood of Damascus. Aleppo province also saw engagements between government forces and Islamist rebels in the al-Rashdin, al-Sakhour and Jam'ia al-Zahraa neighborhoods. Islamic State clashed with other rebels near Om Hosh village as well.
Aug. 7
Syria
A flurry of meetings is taking place as stakeholders in the Syrian conflict attempt to work out a power-sharing agreement to replace the government of Syrian President Bashar al Assad. Russia has been driving the negotiation, while Oman acts as a neutral mediator relaying messages to and from Iran, Syria, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Russia and the United States. Though the diplomatic activity is picking up, it is still an outside effort divorced from the reality of the battlefield, where Syrian rebels are fighting the al Assad government on their own terms.
Following a trip to Tehran, Syrian Foreign Minister Walid al-Moallem, who has been leading the negotiations on behalf of the al Assad government, traveled to Muscat, where he met with his counterpart, Yusuf bin Alawi bin Abdullah. Though Saudi Arabia has preferred to keep these negotiations more private, the Syrian government is eager to telegraph its involvement in such meetings to boost its legitimacy after years of diplomatic isolation.
The discussion between al-Moallem and bin Alawi allegedly centered on an exit strategy for al Assad. The Syrian government knows that proposing elections in which al Assad runs is a non-starter for negotiations with the Sunni powers, but al Assad is still angling for a graceful exit. Negotiating amnesty for al Assad will be a challenge, however. It is still unclear just how flexible the United States will be on the subject, especially with charges against al Assad pending over his government's use of chemical weapons and other war crimes. Syria has signed but not ratified the International Criminal Court's Rome statute, the founding document for the International Criminal Court, which means the country falls outside its jurisdiction. Unless a future Syrian government ratified the Rome statute or somehow accepted the court's authority, the only way the ICC could bring suit against Syria would be if the United Nations Security Council referred the case to it. However, this is unlikely as long as Russia retains its veto power, which will come in handy during amnesty negotiations. The possibility of a subsequent government charging al Assad in the ICC will also complicate where he can take refuge as part of any deal.
Moreover, Stratfor has received word that Russia invited defected Syrian Brig. Gen. Manaf Tlass, a Sunni, to Moscow later this month. After a highly publicized defection in 2012, Tlass has been in Paris, keeping a low profile and waiting for the right time to insert himself into negotiations. The Tlass family has a long history with the al Assad family: Manaf's father, Mustafa Tlass, helped rally strong military and Sunni support for al Assad when he took power in 2000. In 2012, we noted that the two families were likely to strike a deal to enable the Tlass family to leave Syria, and we forecast that Manaf Tlass would eventually return to play a role in a power-sharing arrangement. Given that Tlass is a Sunni with a military background who has also maintained close links with the al Assad administration, it is little wonder that he is now allegedly being proffered as a suitable candidate for defense minister in a new Syrian government.
Meanwhile, the dialogue over the political transition continues. Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif will head to Turkey on Aug. 11 and then to Moscow later in the month. Russia will also host another round of talks with the highly fragmented Syrian National Council opposition coalition. Multiple factors have been speeding up negotiations: loyalist forces in Syria are suffering setbacks, the United States is trying to avoid a power vacuum in Damascus, and Russia is trying to strike a diplomatic win over Syria. Our assessment remains, however, that these negotiations are largely disconnected from the reality on the battlefield. Sunni rebel forces have the momentum in the fight and are unlikely to agree to a deal at this stage, much less cede power to controversial Sunni figures such as Tlass who have lived comfortably in Paris while others continued the fight in Syria. For this negotiation to yield an effective outcome, it will be vital that Syrian rebel factions get involved.
Aug. 6
Syria
Two ongoing offensives in Syria, staged by Jaish al-Fatah and the Islamic State, are problematic for Damascus as it scrambles to contain multiple threats. Loyalist forces are spread thin across many fronts but still doggedly attempting to defend their positions and mount counterattacks.
Having largely secured Idlib province, Jaish al-Fatah is now channeling its efforts into pushing down through the strategic Sahl al-Ghab plain corridor in northwest Hama province. Securing the plain would improve rebel access to Latakia province while positioning them for a combined assault on the rest of Hama province alongside other rebels positioned close to the town of Morek.
Against considerable loyalist forces massed on the Sahl al-Ghab plain, supported by large numbers of artillery and armored units, fighting has devolved into fluid battles comprising numerous attacks and counterattacks. The overall advantage lies with the rebels, who are adept at using the heights around the plain to their advantage, relying heavily on anti-tank guided missiles to neutralize the government's superiority in armor. Over the last 48 hours, the rebels succeeded in taking the village of Bahsa, approximately 5 kilometers (3 miles) from Joureen. If they can maintain their progress and take Joureen itself, the rebels would be able to largely isolate the remaining loyalist forces, essentially securing control over the plain.
Meanwhile, the Islamic State capitalized on its inherent mobility and staged a successful surprise offensive, seizing the crossroads town of al-Qaryatayn, not far from Homs. The Islamic State is attempting to hold off a loyalist offensive to take back the ancient city of Palmyra. The militant group's offensive on al-Qaryatayn fundamentally undermines the loyalist advance toward Palmyra by hitting the outer lines of Damascus' forces on the flank and threatening essential supply lines feeding the loyalist advance. With al-Qaryatayn taken, currently the loyalists only have access to one road to reinforce their vital T4 Airbase and support the push on Palmyra.
The recent gains against loyalist positions by the rebels and the Islamic State are, however, far from assured. The inevitable backlash from Damascus may restore its lost positions. But the dual offensives from the north and the east threaten key defended areas, highlighting the increasingly precarious situation of the Syrian government, which is trying to protect its core territories in Hama and Homs provinces.
In Aleppo province to the north, reports indicate that Jabhat al-Nusra is pulling back from some of its positions and handing them over to its allies. Stratfor sources suggest this may be a potential accord mediated by Turkey, whereby Jabhat al-Nusra would vacate northern Aleppo province in return for the cessation of airstrikes on its forces by the United States. Stratfor is watching carefully for any change in U.S. air activity to confirm this possibility.
Diplomatic Maneuvers
On the political front, diplomatic efforts to secure a solution to the Syrian crisis proceed. Multiple meetings, visits and proposals are underway, involving all the main countries with a stake in the crisis. U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov met for the third time this week. And the officials are making some headway. For example, the Russians have agreed to support a draft United Nations resolution to identify the perpetrators of chemical weapons attacks in Syria. With this agreement, Moscow could be setting itself up as a credible mediator by offering a way to secure more concessions from Damascus pending the outcome of the U.N. investigation, which will very likely identify loyalist forces as being the main offenders in the use of chemical weapons.
Syrian Foreign Minister Walid al-Moallem continues to engage in shuttle diplomacy with a trip to Oman, which marks his first visit to a Gulf country since the beginning of the Syrian conflict. Because of its more neutral stance, Oman is best positioned among the Gulf nations as a forum for al-Moallem to convey Damascus' position to the Gulf Cooperation Council countries. Iran has also announced it is about to present a peace plan for Syria to the United Nations, without going into further detail. But despite the considerable effort underway to mediate a solution to the Syrian conflict, it will be very difficult to reach a successful outcome given the widely disparate positions of the key actors.
Aug. 5
Turkey, Syria, United States
The United States launched its first airstrike in Syria from the Incirlik Air Base in southern Turkey. On July 23, leaks emerged that Turkey had agreed to allow the United States to use the air base to intervene in neighboring Syria. The U.S. mission in Syria against the Islamic State is complicated by the plethora of armed actors, each with their own intricate web of alliances and interests. U.S. aircraft and drones have been steadily arriving in Turkish air bases for a comprehensive battle against Islamic State militants, Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said. The plans involve cutting off the Islamic State’s access to the Turkish border to cut off cross-border flows of weapons and militants, unnamed diplomats familiar with the negotiations said. Satellite images showing armored vehicles in defensive positions reveal Ankara's concern about retaliation following its recent intervention in Syria. Qatar has also given its full support for the ongoing Turkish campaign of airstrikes in northern Iraq, breaking ranks with the rest of the Arab League, according to a Qatari Foreign Ministry statement.
Analysis: Satellite images taken at the Turkey-Syria border corroborate what Stratfor predicted weeks ago: that Turkey, now partnered with the United States, will strike at Islamic State-controlled territory adjacent to the Turkish border. The Turks reportedly began to reinforce their southern border with troops and equipment as early as July 3. But according to these images, which were taken July 26, we now know that that equipment includes Turkish-made main battle tanks and support units poised in a defensive position on the Turkish side of the border.
The areas shown in the images are located near the Turkish town of Elbeyli, on the border with Syria. On July 23, just three days before the images were captured, Islamic State militants fired across the border from the Syrian village of al-Raaee and traded fire with Turkish forces, resulting in the death of a Turkish soldier and a Syrian militant. The next day, Turkish fighter aircraft bombed Islamic State positions in Syria. Soon after, Washington and Ankara came to an official agreement allowing the United States to use Incirlik Air Base to strike against Islamic State positions. Read the full analysis here: Bringing Turkey's Border Strategy Into Focus.
Aug. 4
Syria
The al Qaeda-linked Jabhat al-Nusra militant group captured five more U.S.-trained rebels in Syria. The fighters were captured during overnight raids in the village of Qah, near the Turkish border. On July 30, at least eight rebels from the same unit, known as the New Syrian Force, were also abducted by the jihadist group. Meanwhile, the United States confirmed Aug. 4 that it is providing air cover for the New Syrian Force, with the first airstrike carried out on July 31.
Analysis: The U.S. struggle to set up a viable Syrian rebel force on the ground were put in stark relief by recent clashes between the Western-backed New Syrian Force and the al Qaeda-linked Jabhat al-Nusra. Over the past weekend, the New Syrian Force was forced to withdraw from its headquarters in rebel-held northern Aleppo province to Afrin canton, controlled by the Syrian Kurdish People’s Protection Units, or YPG.
The plethora of armed actors in Syria, each with their own intricate web of alliances and interests, makes a unified effort against the Islamic State very difficult. This divergence is equally as strong, if not as hostile, at the Syrian combatant and the state levels, as reflected by the differences of opinion between the United States and Turkey regarding which factions to back. Though the Islamic State's presence in northern Aleppo is increasingly vulnerable, and though it almost certainly will be driven from the area, infighting among its various opponents will delay this eventuality. Read the full analysis here: In Syria, Jabhat al-Nusra Complicates U.S. Strategy.
Iraq, United Kingdom
The United Kingdom is extending its participation in U.S.-led airstrikes in Iraq against the Islamic State by another year to March 2017, British Defense Secretary Michael Fallon said. The extension is the second for the squadron of Tornado GR4 fighter bombers based in Cyprus. The United Kingdom is not taking part in the air operations in Syria, but British Prime Minister David Cameron is planning to ask lawmakers next month to vote on whether to join.
Aug. 3
Syria
Russian President Vladimir Putin may give up on Syrian President Bashar al Assad and withdraw the Kremlin’s wholehearted support for him in the future, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said Aug. 3. Putin’s attitude toward Syria has become more encouraging, Erdogan said, and he no longer believes that Russia will support al Assad to the end. Erdogan was citing his impressions from his meeting with Putin in Baku on June 13. Russia has been facilitating a dialogue between the Syrian regime and Saudi Arabia.
The United States will allow airstrikes to back the rebel groups it is supporting against any attackers, including those loyal to Syrian President Bashar al Assad. Washington says the mission's goal is still to combat the Islamic State but that the U.S. airstrikes would be used against anyone inhibiting the U.S.-backed rebels from achieving their purpose. Russia criticized the decision, saying it would hinder Damascus from effectively fighting the Islamic State. The United States is hoping to advance the Syrian civil war to a position whereby a negotiated settlement could remove President Bashar al Assad from power.
July 31
Syria
Fighter jets, thought to be part of the U.S.-led alliance, targeted the al Qaeda-linked group Jabhat al-Nusra near the town of Azaz, north of Aleppo. Meanwhile, the United States denied reports July 30 that rebels it had trained were kidnapped by the jihadist group, Naharnet reported. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights had said earlier that Jabhat al-Nusra kidnapped at least eight members of a U.S.-trained rebel unit. According to the Pentagon, none of 54 graduates of the U.S. training program, known as the New Syrian Force, have been kidnapped.
Analysis: The past three years have been heady times for Syria's Kurds. Since forces loyal to Syrian President Bashar al Assad withdrew from the northeast in July 2012, the Kurds have enjoyed more autonomy than at any other time in recent history. Presiding over this autonomous region is the Democratic Union Party (PYD), a Kurdish political party founded in the wake of 2004 riots in the majority Kurdish city of Qamishli. The PYD's primary objective is to attain Kurdish autonomy within the context of a democratic Syria and its armed wing, the People's Protection Units (YPG), has proved capable on the battlefield. YPG fighters have managed not only to fend off Arab attacks on Kurdish territory but have also scored victories against Islamic State targets with U.S. support, even entering alliances with some of the Free Syrian Army militias fighting the Islamic State.
But Turkey's recent decision to also target the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) in northern Iraq and southeastern Turkey as part of its direct intervention against the Islamic State does not bode well for the Kurds preserving their gains in Syria. There are few if any parties interested in propping up Kurdish autonomy. It will be difficult for the Kurds to maintain the autonomy they have seized, and Turkey's forays into the Syrian conflict directly challenge the relative autonomy the PYD has been able to establish in northeastern Syria. Read the full analysis here: The Fragile Gains of Syria's Kurds.
July 30
United States, Turkey, Syria
A U.S.-backed rebel group known as Division 30 released a statement claiming that its leader, Col. Nadim al-Hassan, was kidnapped by al Qaeda-affiliate Jabhat al-Nusra. Al-Hassan was on a mission to establish connections with other rebel groups near Aleppo when he was captured, along with a number of his colleagues. Most of the 54 graduates from the U.S.-sponsored train and equip program in Turkey came from Division 30.
This is a major setback during the first week of formalized cooperation between Turkey and the United States. After years of political impasse, the countries have finally agreed to work together to fight the Islamic State in Syria and Iraq. The United States and Turkey hope that cooperation will advance the Syrian civil war to a position whereby a negotiated settlement could remove President Bashar al Assad from power.
Though Ankara and Washington are actively working together, there is no agreement on which Syrian rebel groups with whom to partner. Turkey is more pragmatic than the United States about who to include and would like to accommodate groups such as Jabhat al-Nusra, which is already an effective fighting force. But Washington is extremely wary of associating with an organization directly linked to al Qaeda.
Jabhat al-Nusra most likely staged the kidnapping to make a point; which is to highlight their relevancy and ensure the group is not left out of U.S.-Turkish discussions over which group to support. Meaningful resources are scarce in Syria, so backing from major countries like the United States or Turkey is extremely desirable. Whether al-Hassan and his cohort are released will indicate how cooperative Jabhat al-Nusra is likely to be in the future.
Overall U.S.-Turkish cooperation is predicated on the idea that Ankara will be able to get Syrian rebel groups to cooperate with each other. This is key to achieving any kind of success on the ground. Washington and Ankara provide aid and air support to select rebel groups, but neither Turkey nor the United States is willing to commit ground forces in significant numbers. If Ankara is unable or unwilling to facilitate a solution to the rebel-partnering issue, or selects unpalatable allies, Washington could well back away from Turkey, withdrawing U.S. forces from Incirlik air base and reinvigorating its relationship with the Kurds.
July 29
Iraq, Turkey
Saboteurs attacked a pipeline transporting crude oil between the Iraqi city of Kirkuk and the Turkish Mediterranean port of Ceyhan, halting the flow of oil, Turkish Energy Minister Taner Yildiz said. The attack, which took place near the Iraqi border in Turkey’s Sirnak province, comes a day after militants attacked a natural gas pipeline in Agri province, near the Iranian border. The Kurdistan Regional Government in Iraq relies on part of the Kirkuk-Ceyhan pipeline for its own exports. The pipeline has been carrying around 300,000 barrels of oil per day, down from its maximum operational capacity of 400,000 barrels daily, because of other recent attacks, according to Iraqi government figures.
Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi said that his council of ministers views the ongoing Turkish campaign of airstrikes in northern Iraq as a dangerous escalation that violates Iraqi sovereignty. The prime minister said via Twitter that the council is committed not to allow any attack on Turkey from Iraqi territory and called on Ankara to respect good relations between the two countries. An Iraqi Kurdish official also condemned Turkey’s recent attacks against militant Kurdish targets in Iraq, Syria and inside Turkey itself, calling for Kurdish locals in Dohuk province to protest against Turkish military bases in the region. The official, Patriotic Union of Kurdistan Central Council chief Adil Murad, said Turkey’s long-established military presence in Dohuk amounts to a foreign occupation.
Syria
Israeli aircraft struck a car in a rural part of Quneitra in the Syrian Golan Heights, killing three people. A report by the Hezbollah-linked Al-Manar said the strike was carried out by an Israeli drone, and that the two deceased were members of a militia that supports Syrian President Bashar al Assad. The Israeli military would not comment on the report. Israel will continue to prove integral to U.S. aims in Syria by also preventing Turkey from being able to claim the region as its own personal sphere of influence.
Syria’s territorial integrity must be preserved, the Egyptian foreign ministry said in an apparent expression of disapproval of Turkey’s military operations in the country. Cairo supports efforts to combat terrorist groups in Syria, but such efforts must occur within the context of preserving the unity and integrity of Syrian territories, in accordance with international legal norms and decisions. The statement did not mention Turkey by name.
United States, Turkey
Ankara formally signed a deal with the United States over the use of Turkey’s Incirlik air base in the U.S.-led coalition’s campaign against the Islamic State, the Turkish Foreign Ministry said. The agreement covers only the fight against the Islamic State and does not include air support for allied Kurdish fighters in northern Syria, a spokesman for the ministry said. Strategically, Turkey has no interest in an independent Kurdish state appearing on its border with Syria, which would set the stage for Kurds with similar aspirations in Turkey and beyond.
July 28
Syria
Syrian rebels launched an offensive on government-held northwestern Syria in a bid to eventually take over the coastal mountains that are the heart of Syrian President Bashar al Assad's power base. According to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, the insurgents, including Jabhat al-Nusra, took over government-held positions in Jisr al-Shughour and pushed into the northern edge of the Sahl al-Ghab plain. Meanwhile, Syrian Kurds and the Syrian army pushed the Islamic State from al-Hasaka.
Iraq, Turkey
Turkish fighter jets continued to attack militant targets both inside Turkey and across the border in northern Iraq. After taking off from an air base in Turkey’s southeastern Diyarbakir province, two F-16s hit six targets in Iraq, an unnamed official said, Reuters reported. Airstrikes also hit anti-aircraft and mortar positions of the militant Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) in Turkey’s southeastern Sirnak province, near the Iraqi border. The Turkish General Staff said the anti-PKK action was taken following an attack on Turkish gendarmerie forces in the region by suspected PKK militants.
Turkey, NATO
NATO stands in strong solidarity with Turkey against the acts of terror and instability the country is facing along its southern border with Syria and Iraq, NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said at the opening of an emergency meeting requested by Ankara of all 28 member states, AFP reported. Stoltenberg did not comment specifically on Turkey's recently launched campaign of airstrikes targeting Islamic State and Kurdish militant targets in Iraq and Syria. On July 26, the secretary-general said self-defense has to "proportional." On both the domestic and the strategic levels, Turkey's interests have finally brought Ankara into the fight.
Geopolitical Diary: Turkey's decision to take a more active role in the Syrian conflict will be welcomed by many, including the United States. But, for fighters from the Kurdish People's Protection Units (or YPG) in the small northern Syrian town of Zur Maghar, the intervention is decidedly less welcome. Citing Kurdish sources, Hurriyet newspaper reported July 27 that Turkish tanks fired on U.S.-backed YPG elements in Zur Maghar. The Turkish Foreign Ministry was quick to deny the report, insisting that the target set for Turkish forces was limited to Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) militants in northern Iraq and Islamic State positions in Syria.
This raises speculation that the attack was either an accident resulting from misidentification or that Turkish forces exploited an opportunity to target YPG militants with plausible deniability. A co-chairman of YPG's political parent group — the Kurdish Democratic Union Party — told Al Hayat newspaper that the Kurdish militia might be willing to join Syrian government forces, presumably in response to the developing tension between Turkey and the Syrian Kurds. Read the full Geopolitical Diary here: An Invigorated Turkey Lashes Out.
July 27
Turkey, Iraq, Syria, United States
The Turkish military attacked Kurdish insurgent camps for the second consecutive night. The strikes occurred shortly after the Turkish government blamed the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) for a July 25 attack that killed two Turkish soldiers wounded another four, when a car bomb and roadside explosives hit a passing military vehicle near the Diyarbakir air base. Gunmen also opened fire on a nearby police station; no casualties were reported. The July 27 airstrikes targeted PKK positions near the northern Iraqi border town of Harkuk. Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu said that the operations have changed the regional game, and he called for a meeting of NATO states on July 28 to discuss the campaign in Syria and Iraq.
Turkey and the United States agreed to the shared goal of establishing an "Islamic State-free zone" along Turkey’s border with Syria. The agreement involves a roughly 110-kilometer-long (68-mile) area west of the Euphrates River and into Syria’s Aleppo province. This zone would eventually come under control of the Syrian opposition. Several issues, such as the composition of moderate Syrian opposition ground forces that would be used to hold the protected area, are still under discussion, sources said. Washington is reportedly adamant that any joint efforts will not include a formal military-enforced no-fly zone, though Ankara still envisions air cover and protection for the opposition fighters. Ankara's decision to cooperate with the United States and actively battle the Islamic State will have repercussions throughout the Syrian-Iraqi battlespace and within Turkey itself.
Esewhere, Syrian Kurdish forces known as the YPG, or People’s Protection Units, say their positions were hit in cross-border shelling by the Turkish army. The attack occurred on the outskirts of the Islamic State-held town of Jarablus, where the YPG has been fighting the jihadist group. In response, the Turkish military said it has not been targeting Syrian Kurdish forces in northern Syria who say they were hit by cross-border shelling earlier on July 27. A military official said the ministry was investigating claims that Turkish elements engaged positions held by forces other than the Islamic State in Syria or the militant Kurdistan Workers’ Party in Iraq. Earlier, the Kurdish People’s Protection Units, or YPG, which has been fighting the Islamic State, said Turkish tanks hit its positions and those of allied Arab rebels in the Aleppo province border town of Zur Maghar and another nearby village. Activists with the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights also reported the Turkish fire. In a provocative statement, the co-chairman of the Kurdish group the Democratic Union Party, Salih Muslim, said that under the right conditions the YPG could join the Syrian army. According to Muslim, if the Syrian army abandoned the Baathist stance, the group would consider joining it.
Finally, The YPG also captured the town of Sarrin from the Islamic State. The success comes after a monthlong offensive intended to cut the jihadist group’s supply lines. Islamic State fighters had used the town as a launchpad for raids on the Kurdish-held town of Kobani further north. Airstrikes from the U.S.-led coalition supported the assault.
July 26
Syria
More Syrians need to join the army for the military to win the country's civil war against rebel forces, Syrian President Bashar al Assad said in an address July 26. Al Assad, speaking a day after he issued an amnesty for deserters, said that while more people have been joining the army, the number of soldiers was not enough to win a conflict fought on multiple fronts. He also said that his appeal does not mean the military is collapsing.
July 25
Turkey, Syria, Iraq
Turkish ground forces and fighter jets targeted Islamic State militant positions in northern Syria as well as Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) camps in Iraq on July 25. In a press conference that same day, Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu said that Turkey's more direct involvement would continue and as long as the threat to Turkey remains. Ankara's stepped up involvement in Iraq and Syria followed a July 20 Islamic State suicide bombing of a cultural center in Suruc near the Syrian border. Davutoglu added that the goal was to create a "safe zone" in northern Syria by clearing the area of Islamic State militants. Turkish police also began a push to detain people across the country suspected of being Islamist or Kurdish militant group members, arresting almost 600 by July 25. The PKK responded to the airstrikes and arrests with an official statement saying that the group's truce with Ankara had "no meaning anymore."
July 23
Turkey, United States
Ankara is expected to allow the U.S.-led coalition fighting the Islamic State to station aircraft at a NATO base in southern Turkey, according to a July 23 White House statement. U.S. President Barack Obama and his Turkish counterpart, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, reportedly finalized an agreement on use of the Incirlik Air Base in Adana during a telephone call July 22. The two sides initially agreed in principle on use of the base during talks July 7-8. Turkey also announced July 23 that it plans to fly airships and build a two-fenced border system with a moat along its border with Syria. On July 22, Turkey's deputy prime minister said that Turkish authorities had arrested at least 102 Islamic State suspects over the past six months. The United States is coaxing Turkey into playing a more active role in the conflict in Syria.
Geopolitical Diary: Multiple leaks in U.S. and Turkish media on Thursday claimed that the United States and Turkey have reached a deal for U.S.-led coalition forces to use Turkey's Incirlik base for operations against the Islamic State following a phone call late Wednesday between Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and U.S. President Barack Obama. Our team has been closely tracking a number of events over the past month, including a Turkish military buildup at the Syrian border, an intensification of anti-Islamic State security operations in Turkey, a recent visit to Ankara by a high-level U.S. delegation and the recent Islamic State suicide attack in Suruc near the Syrian border. Though it was clear to us that some kind of understanding was developing between Washington and Ankara that would inevitably deepen Turkey's military footprint, the scope and details of that understanding were foggy until now. Read the full Geopolitical Diary here: Hints and Leaks Converge on a Turkish Air Base.
Turkey, Syria
Shots fired from the Syrian side of the Turkish border killed one Turkish soldier and wounded at least one more July 23. According to Turkish outlet Dogan News Agency, the shots came from an area controlled by the Islamic State. So far, Ankara has been reluctant to send troops into Syria to confront Islamic State militants directly, instead cracking down on the Islamic State network within Turkey.
Iraq, United States
U.S. Defense Secretary Ash Carter made a surprise visit to Baghdad July 23 to assess the success of the campaign against the Islamic State. This is Carter's first trip to Iraq since becoming defense secretary in February. He will meet with U.S. commanders and Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi. Meanwhile, Iraqi forces are reporting that the first stages of the operation to liberate Anbar were successful.
Iraqi Federal Police forces attacked Islamic State sites in al-Madyaq and al-Sadiqah, east of Ramadi, killing 25 militants and destroying six vehicles. The same day, troops trained and equipped by a U.S.-led coalition also joined Iraqi operations for the first time to retake Anbar province, Al Arabiya News reported. The United States has over 3,000 troops in the country to train and advise the Iraqi military.
July 22
Syria
Muhsin al-Fadhli, allegedly the leader of a group of senior al Qaeda members known as the Khorasan Group, was killed in a U.S.-led coalition airstrike July 8, a Pentagon spokesman said July 22. Al-Fadhli was traveling in a vehicle near the northwestern Syrian town of Sarmada. The Kuwaiti-born jihadist was reportedly a member of Osama bin Laden’s inner circle and had advance knowledge of the 9/11 attacks. Airstrikes in Syria will weaken, but not destroy militant groups.
Turkey
An alleged member of the Islamic State was shot and killed late July 22 in Istanbul by a member of a militant group allied with an outlawed Kurdish party. According to a statement released by the Patriotic Revolutionary Youth Movement, a wing of the banned Kurdistan Workers' Party (known commonly as the PKK), the man had come to Istanbul seven months ago to receive treatment for wounds sustained while fighting with the Islamic State in the Syrian town of Kobani. The group said it had been tracking his movements for three months and that he was planning attacks in the city. Such assassination operations would continue, the group said. Amid four intersecting crises, Ankara's strategy is to be consistently ambiguous.
July 20
Turkey
At least 27 were killed and 100 more wounded July 20 by an explosion in the Turkish town of Suruc, near the Syrian border. The town is located around 10 kilometers (6.2 miles) from the Syrian town of Kobani, which has been a center of conflict. The blast reportedly targeted a cultural center that housed at least 300 members of a youth organization working to rebuild Kobani. The Islamic State is suspected to be responsible for the attack; Turkey has been considering playing a more active role against the group in Syria.
Analysis: The bombing was carried out in the vicinity of an event at the cultural center, against a soft target and among large crowds. The event drew many volunteers from Istanbul who were on their way to perform relief work in the Syrian city of Kobani. The Islamic State's extensive reach throughout Turkey means it has the capacity to carry out similar attacks in the future. This is particularly true in the region near the Syrian border, where the Islamic State has built up a vast network of safe-houses and agents who facilitate the transfer of recruits and supplies into Syria.
Turkey's decision to crack down on the Islamic State's network in the country left the group with two options: First, it could respond by retaliating against Turkey with terrorist attacks and cross-border raids launched from Syria. Second, the Islamic State could choose not to retaliate to avoid a broader Turkish offensive that could potentially include attacks against Islamic State targets within Syria. Of the two courses of action, the second was always rather unlikely given the Islamic State's previous behavior and its propensity to respond to any pressure with force. Read the full analysis here: The Islamic State Retaliates Against Turkey.
Syria
Kurdish forces are in near full control of al-Hasaka city, following an attack by the Islamic State in the area last month. Control of al-Hasaka had been split between government forces and Kurdish militias. If Kurdish militias backed by the United States gain full control of the city, it would be a major blow to Damascus. The Kurds have accused Damascus of being unable to protect the city from Islamic militants.
July 19
Syria
The Syrian army stepped up airstrikes and retook villages in a new offensive on Islamist rebels in the northeastern coastal Latakia province, army sources said July 19. The army also said it bombarded rebel supply lines and wrested back five villages and hilltops. Islamist rebels, including Jabhat al-Nusra, control many villages in the borderlands north of the government-held port city of Latakia. Governm
-
By
Bernard-Henri Lévy
Sept. 2, 2015 6:46 p.m. ET
53 COMMENTS
I spent last week with the Kurdish Peshmerga as they battled Islamic State. With a film crew, I traveled a long segment of the 600-mile front along which the Kurds of Iraq are taking on the decapitators.
And I tell you, those decapitators, the barbarians with the black flag who, for the time being, have carved out a quasi-state straddling Iraq and Syria, will be defeated. They will be defeated because although they are very adept terrorists they are not good soldiers.
They will be defeated because they act tough for the camera while slitting the throats of defenseless hostages, but they scattered like rabbits when, on Aug. 26 around Albu Najem, a Kurdish people’s army moved in and reoccupied 77 square miles.
They will be defeated because, on that same day in the village of Tal Bassal, local journalists and observers recorded them being routed after inflicting a relatively small number of casualties among the Peshmerga (11, to my knowledge), mostly by planting explosives in the houses and mosques that they abandoned, in jerrycans, or under roadside rocks.
They will be defeated because, contrary to what one hears constantly repeated, they are not as brave as they seem: They love death less than the Kurds love life.
They will be defeated because fewer of them than many think are able to say convincingly why they fight, whereas the Kurds are defending their land and an idea, the dream of a country of their own and a model of society that is unique in the region.
They will be defeated because they are facing an increasingly professional army composed, exceptionally, of men and women of all ages and circumstances, many of whom left behind successful civilian lives, an army whose infantry comprises foot soldiers age 20, 30, 50 and older. I even encountered, in oven-like heat on the highest outcropping of Mount Zartak, an octogenarian serving shoulder to shoulder with his younger comrades. He had been keeping watch the night before, when an Islamic State column crept up the slope hoping to take the Kurdish encampment from behind.
They will be defeated because their leaders lie low and send their brainless zealots to the slaughter, whereas the Kurdish generals whom I have met are right there on the front line, respectable and respected: concrete bunkers for the troops but, for Maj. Gen. Maghdid Harki, the position most exposed to snipers firing from the village of Bartila.
They will be defeated because the black flags that can be seen through binoculars a few hundred yards away in the Kirkuk sector are planted in areas full of civilians—and one never wins by making civilians into human shields.
They will be defeated because the destroyed granaries, the blown-up agricultural facilities, the ruined roads, the collapsed bridge over an irrigation canal overgrown with reeds, the smoldering ruins—in short, the scenes of desolation in the zones that they have briefly controlled and been forced to abandon by the army of liberation—attest that they know no other policy than that of scorched earth. And with that policy one does not prevail for long.
They will be defeated because the Kurds, while loving life, are also capable, when necessary, of risking death to perform deeds of startling bravery, as suggested by the meaning of Peshmerga: one who confronts death. That is the story of one Jamal Mohammed Salih, who, seeing a suicide truck hurtling toward his position, reflected only a split second before putting his tank in its path to save his 80 comrades. He survived. He was gravely wounded, but he survived, and we were able to record his moving account.
They will be defeated because Islamic State has traitors in its ranks who inform the Peshmerga of its movements, allowing the Kurdish fighters to surprise the enemy.
They will be defeated because when, near Gwair, we fell on their radio frequency, it was not hard to imagine that, like the Khmer Rouge, they will end up killing each other in confusion.
They will be defeated because in the past year the Peshmerga, having quickly overcome their surprise of a year ago, have hardened their positions around the Mosul Dam, carved out trails in the scree above Qaraqosh, built a fort at the most strategically located site in the Kirkuk sector, fortified the rocky outcroppings in the Zartak zone, and, on the plains, dug trenches up to 10 yards wide to stop kamikaze trucks.
Finally, they will be defeated because a strong international coalition, led by the United States, is fighting alongside the Kurds. I visited its command center at an old air base from which Saddam Hussein’s chemical-weapons attacks were carried out. And I am convinced that the coalition will end up delivering the final blow to Islamic State.
Mr. Lévy’s books include “Left in Dark Times: A Stand Against the New Barbarism” (Random House, 2008). This op-ed was translated from the French by Steven B. Kennedy.
Popular on WSJ
Set your profile to public to comment
There are 53 comments.
All comments will display your real name. Read our commenting rules.
NewestOldestReader Recommended
JOSEPH HAMBRICK
JOSEPH HAMBRICK 5 minutes ago
The hundreds of thousands of war refugees risking (and thousands losing) their lives fleeing this god-forsaken region appear not as optimistic as Mr. Levy.
Flag ButtonShare
Alan Lowenthal
Alan Lowenthal 5 minutes ago
Hard to imagine a people more deserving of a state than the Kurds. Our government needs to lead this effort forward. This should be done simultaneously with facilitating peace talks with the Turks.
Flag ButtonShare
Lt Col David McCarthy
Lt Col David McCarthy 32 minutes ago
Having served as a U.S. Marine alongside the Peshmerga in 2002-2004 I can state unequivocally that my personal observation is that they are wonderful people and true warriors. If we - the West - would just give them the tools they need they would wipe out the fundamentalist muslim terrorists. It is also my feeling that the Kurdish people deserve their own country. Since I am neither a statesman nor a politician I will not opine as to how well the rest of the region (i.e. the Turks) would stand a free Kurdish Nation.
Flag ButtonShare
1
-
This is another of the many facts NOT being reported by most of the media:
http://pamelageller.com/2015/09/congressional-democrats-paid-by-iranian-lobby-to-support-obamas-nuke-deal.html/
-
http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2015/09/06/heres-the-contract-the-islamic-state-group-is-forcing-christians-to-sign-in-syria/?utm_source=Sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Firewire%20-%20HORIZON%209-6-15%20Build-SUN&utm_term=Firewire
-
http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2015/09/06/panetta-iran-deal-is-bad-pass-it-and-prepare-for-war/
-
Third post:
http://www.breitbart.com/national-security/2015/09/06/world-view-russia-may-be-building-a-new-military-base-in-syria/
-
http://news.yahoo.com/al-qaeda-leader-al-zawahiri-declares-war-isis-151231254--abc-news-topstories.html
-
ISIL intel being massaged:
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2015/09/09/exclusive-50-spies-say-isis-intelligence-was-cooked.html?via=mobile&source=twitter
-
Opinion
Review & Outlook
Putin’s Syria Play
Obama’s vacuum helps Russia reverse 70 years of U.S. Mideast policy.
Vladimir Putin ENLARGE
Vladimir Putin Photo: Zuma Press
Sept. 13, 2015 5:55 p.m. ET
219 COMMENTS
For 70 years American Presidents from both parties have sought to thwart Russian influence in the Middle East. Harry Truman forced the Red Army to withdraw from northern Iran in 1946. Richard Nixon raised a nuclear alert to deter Moscow from resupplying its Arab clients during the Yom Kippur War in 1973. Even Jimmy Carter threatened military force to protect the Persian Gulf after the 1979 Soviet invasion of Afghanistan.
So it says something about the current Administration’s strategic priorities that it is having trouble deciding what to do about Vladimir Putin’s decision to send combat planes to Syria to prop up Bashar Assad’s faltering regime. Should the U.S. oppose the move—or join in?
Last month the Israeli website Ynet reported that the Kremlin planned to deploy combat aircraft to Syria to help the Assad regime. The Russians are also sending an “expeditionary force” of “advisers, instructors, logistics personnel, technical personnel, members of the aerial protection division, and pilots who will operate the aircraft.” That deployment is now underway.
The decision to intervene seems to have been made during a visit to Moscow last month by Qasem Soleimani, the Iranian general in charge of the Quds Force. The general, who armed anti-American Shiite militias in Iraq, now oversees Tehran’s efforts to save Mr. Assad. The Iran nuclear deal lifts international sanctions against Mr. Soleimani and the Quds Force.
So what is the Obama Administration to do? Secretary of State John Kerry warned Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov last week that Russian intervention could “further escalate the conflict” and “lead to greater loss of life,” as if human rights are the lodestar of the Kremlin’s foreign policy. Mr. Obama also weighed in Friday, saying the Russian intervention was “doomed to fail,” and that Moscow was “going to have to start getting a little smarter.”
Mr. Obama made similar tut-tutting remarks about Mr. Putin after the invasion of Ukraine, which hardly dented the Russian’s taste for foreign adventures. But that doesn’t mean the Administration has given up on the Russians.
“The options are to try to confront Russia inside Syria or, as some in the White House are advocating, cooperate with Russia there on the fight against Islamic State,” Bloomberg’s Josh Rogin reported last week. The thinking seems to be that the U.S. has a chance to turn a lemon into lemonade by accepting Russia’s intervention as a fait accompli while defeating a common enemy.
Now that would be a sight: American F-18 pilots becoming wingmen to Russian MiGs to help a blood-soaked dictator stay in power. Yet as far-fetched as that seems, it’s also hard to see this President taking steps that might run any risk of confronting Russia or irritating the Iranians so soon after the nuclear deal. The result is likely to be one more policy abdication: More sermonizing about Russia being on the wrong side of history, and perhaps a few additional economic sanctions.
Russian intervention will not defeat the Islamic State. But it might save the Assad regime, while giving Moscow a new sphere of influence in the Middle East. It will also reinforce the lesson—for Mr. Putin and other autocrats—that the U.S. under Mr. Obama is a pushover and that now is the time to seize their chances.
As for the U.S., Russia’s intervention is another strategic debacle that could have been avoided if Washington had intervened years ago, when Islamic State didn’t exist and we still had credible moderate allies in the country. Had the anti-interventionist wing of the GOP followed John McCain’s and Lindsey Graham’s advice to act forcefully at the start of the uprising, they wouldn’t now be fretting about the Syrian refugees now swamping Europe.
The best option now for the U.S. would be to work with Turkey, Israel and Jordan to establish no-fly zones along their respective borders with Syria, along with protected “no-drive” zones in designated civilian safe havens. The model is Operation Provide Comfort, which established a safe haven for Kurds after the 1991 Gulf War and created the basis for a stable Iraqi enclave that is now our ally against Islamic State.
Russian pilots will not lightly risk a confrontation against superior American firepower and technology. A no-fly zone would also put some teeth into Mr. Obama’s promise to continue to oppose Iran’s regional behavior. Even better would be for the Administration finally to get serious about arming and training a viable Syrian opposition force, but don’t hold your breath.
Still, there’s a chance for the next American President to learn lessons from Syria: Namely, that inaction has consequences, and weakness is provocative. Until then, don’t expect any respite from Mr. Putin’s power plays—in Syria, Ukraine or anywhere else where his ambitions can find an opening in Barack Obama’s weakness.
-
Iran Prepares to Annex Iraq
Iranian President Hassan Rouhani told his nation Tuesday that Iran and Iran alone has the military might in the Middle East to keep the Islamic State at bay. The remarks came during a military parade commemorating the start of the 35-year-old Iraq-Iran War. "[If] terrorists begin to expand in the region, the only hope will be Iran's army and the Revolutionary Guards," Rouhani said. And does anyone think they would leave if they came in to wipe out the Islamic State? Rouhani continued, saying the West had little influence in the struggle: "Today, our armed forces are the biggest regional power against terrorism." Seeing how the United States' proxy fighters are doing against the Islamic State, the Iranian president might just be correct. The fight against the Islamic State has ground to a standstill in Iraq, as an offensive to retake Ramadi from the Islamic State has been delayed. So the U.S. turns to Syria, where only a handful of American-trained Syrian rebels are still in the fight. Many of the fighters were delayed in Turkey, but when they returned, they handed over their weapons to the al-Qaida affiliate Jabhat al-Nusra. This was exactly the worry many people had in giving arms and training to proxy fighters. As Marco Rubio said: Our military "was not built to conduct pinprick attacks." If we want to take a simplistic route to foreign policy and focus our whole attention to the short term — dealing with the Islamic State — then maybe we should just give Iran $150 billion. Oh, wait...
-
By Paul McLeary with Adam Rawnsley
Piggyback. There’s a new report claiming Russia, Iran, and Syria have set up a joint coordination cell in Baghdad that will work with the country's Iranian-backed Shia militias fighting the Islamic State. One would think that Syrian military officials might have their hands full at home, but the unnamed U.S. intelligence officials in the Fox News story say they’ve seen the evidence. What is not so certain is how much the Iraqi government knows, or is involved, in the coordination group.
We’re also learning more about how the Russians managed to get roughly two dozen fighter planes into Syria without detection. A variety of U.S. officials over the past several days have suggested the planes came in with their tracking transponders off, and that the Su-25 Frogfoot and Su-24 Fencer attack planes actually flew in “tight formations” underneath the massive An-124 cargo planes in order to skirt radar.
Easy targets. In an interview that will be broadcast Sunday on “60 Minutes,” Russian President Vladimir Putin cleared up any misconceptions about Moscow’s intention to prop up the regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.
“There is no other solution to the Syrian crisis than strengthening the effective government structures and rendering them help in fighting terrorism,” he said. Putin also took a shot at two countries where the U.S. and NATO have recently ousted dictators, which then promptly descended into chaos. Any action “to destroy the legitimate government [in Syria] will create a situation which you can witness now in the other countries of the region or in other regions, for instance in Libya, where all the state institutions are disintegrated,” he said. “We see a similar situation in Iraq.”
Vlad the builder. The Institute for the Study of War has released a series of new satellite images showing new airstrip construction at the Istamo Weapon Storage Facility southeast of Latakia, Syria. The photos show fresh paving and clearing operations, along with new construction at the facility. Both Russian Mi-17 transport, and Ka-27/28 helicopters, “with possible anti-submarine capability,” the report says, are already parked on the new concrete.
Same as it ever was. And in Iraq, the fight grinds on. After 15 months of combat, the Iraqi army has yet to fully take control over the Baiji oil refinery. Despite previous claims by the Baghdad government that the sprawling facility and the nearby town had been cleared -- or were on the verge of being cleared -- of Islamic State fighters, there’s no real end in sight.
Just last month, Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi said retaking Baiji “is critical to ending Daesh's presence in Iraq,” yet a U.S. official told Reuters this week that Iraqi security forces and their allied Shiite militia forces only control about 20 percent of the refinery and the town. The inability to retake Baiji despite having thousands of troops on the ground backed by months of daily pounding by U.S. warplanes and drones circling overhead has called into question how Baghdad will eventually wrest the heavily fortified city of Mosul from the Islamic State.
-
second post
http://news.yahoo.com/russia-announces-naval-drills-east-mediterranean-082138678.html
-
Obama should draw some sort of red line... :roll:
By Paul McLeary with Adam Rawnsley
Piggyback. There’s a new report claiming Russia, Iran, and Syria have set up a joint coordination cell in Baghdad that will work with the country's Iranian-backed Shia militias fighting the Islamic State. One would think that Syrian military officials might have their hands full at home, but the unnamed U.S. intelligence officials in the Fox News story say they’ve seen the evidence. What is not so certain is how much the Iraqi government knows, or is involved, in the coordination group.
We’re also learning more about how the Russians managed to get roughly two dozen fighter planes into Syria without detection. A variety of U.S. officials over the past several days have suggested the planes came in with their tracking transponders off, and that the Su-25 Frogfoot and Su-24 Fencer attack planes actually flew in “tight formations” underneath the massive An-124 cargo planes in order to skirt radar.
Easy targets. In an interview that will be broadcast Sunday on “60 Minutes,” Russian President Vladimir Putin cleared up any misconceptions about Moscow’s intention to prop up the regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.
“There is no other solution to the Syrian crisis than strengthening the effective government structures and rendering them help in fighting terrorism,” he said. Putin also took a shot at two countries where the U.S. and NATO have recently ousted dictators, which then promptly descended into chaos. Any action “to destroy the legitimate government [in Syria] will create a situation which you can witness now in the other countries of the region or in other regions, for instance in Libya, where all the state institutions are disintegrated,” he said. “We see a similar situation in Iraq.”
Vlad the builder. The Institute for the Study of War has released a series of new satellite images showing new airstrip construction at the Istamo Weapon Storage Facility southeast of Latakia, Syria. The photos show fresh paving and clearing operations, along with new construction at the facility. Both Russian Mi-17 transport, and Ka-27/28 helicopters, “with possible anti-submarine capability,” the report says, are already parked on the new concrete.
Same as it ever was. And in Iraq, the fight grinds on. After 15 months of combat, the Iraqi army has yet to fully take control over the Baiji oil refinery. Despite previous claims by the Baghdad government that the sprawling facility and the nearby town had been cleared -- or were on the verge of being cleared -- of Islamic State fighters, there’s no real end in sight.
Just last month, Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi said retaking Baiji “is critical to ending Daesh's presence in Iraq,” yet a U.S. official told Reuters this week that Iraqi security forces and their allied Shiite militia forces only control about 20 percent of the refinery and the town. The inability to retake Baiji despite having thousands of troops on the ground backed by months of daily pounding by U.S. warplanes and drones circling overhead has called into question how Baghdad will eventually wrest the heavily fortified city of Mosul from the Islamic State.
-
This President will be responsible - via this Iran deal - for the deaths of millions - including Americans. I believe he is aware of this, and doesn't care - because his main goal is the diminution of the United States as a world power.
-
This President will be responsible - via this Iran deal - for the deaths of millions - including Americans. I believe he is aware of this, and doesn't care - because his main goal is the diminution of the United States as a world power.
Yes.
-
Woof All:
In our collective search for Truth around here I do my best to offer solutions, and not just criticism.
I now officially withdraw my previous offering (withdraw recognition of Sykes-Picot lines, recognize Kurdistan and build base there, support Jordan, Egypt, etc) because no longer is it militarily viable.
With what Russia has accomplished in Syria in the last few weeks, the US no longer has any options in the Middle East worthy of the name. Russian has installed jets with high quality air-to-air capabilities. As best as I can tell, the US would be very hard pressed to be plausible in this theater from here forward; air superiority was our last ace in the hole.
The Axis from Iran, Shiastan in Iraq, "Assad-istan" and Lebanon means the US no longer has a secure route into Kurdistan. With Obama-Kerry funding Iranian efforts to the tune of $100-150B, and Obama-Kerry allowing Iran to buy long range missiles on the international market, and Russia now selling them the long threatened ground-to-air radar-missile defense system Iran becomes ever less reachable and freer to intimidate locally , , , and further.
As best as I can tell the Russia-Iran axis may well be effective against ISIS, and Shiastan may well be absorbed in fact if not name into Iran. As landlocked ISIS is crunched, it will be time to move against Israel.
Hard to avoid the conclusion that world war is coming.
-
Too bad we can't get an update on how awesome Obama is from Rachel.
-
Analytic Guidance: What the U.S.-Russia Talks on Syria Portend
Analysis
September 26, 2015 | 13:16 GMT Print
Text Size
U.S. President Barack Obama meets with Russian President Vladimir Putin during the G20 summit in Los Cabos, Mexico, on June 18, 2012. (ALEXEI NIKOLSKY/AFP/Getty)
Analysis
Russian President Vladimir Putin's visit to the United States next week will put his political strategy in Syria to the test. Putin is looking to re-engage with the global power brokers that have been punishing his country since 2014, and he is betting that a strong role in Syria will buy him leverage at the negotiating table. On the sidelines of the U.N. General Assembly in New York, where he is set to give a speech Sept. 28, Putin will try out his newfound bargaining power in a meeting with U.S. President Barack Obama.
The sit-down will be the two presidents' first meeting on U.S. or Russian soil since Putin's 2012 return to the presidency. The top issue will be a Russian proposal for the conflict in Syria, which seeks to coordinate ongoing U.S. efforts with Russia's stepped up operations in a way that recognizes the role of the forces of Syrian President Bashar al Assad in the campaign against the Islamic State. However, Moscow has included a crucial concession in the potential agreement that conforms to a key U.S. demand: a political transition away from the current government. Washington has also proposed that Russia join the U.S.-led coalition against the Islamic State in Syria and Iraq, something the Russian Foreign Ministry has said is "theoretically" possible.
According to reports in U.S. media citing anonymous Russian sources, Moscow is prepared to move forward with a unilateral campaign against the Islamic State if the United States does not cooperate. Leaks to Russian media outlets Kommersant and Novaya Gazeta suggest that Russia might do so while Putin is in New York, perhaps even during his U.N. speech. This is a plausible threat — the Russians already have significant assets in place and are ready to begin air operations. Unconfirmed reports from Syrian government and pro-rebel sources are already indicating that Russian airstrikes may have commenced in support of the push to relieve loyalist forces at Aleppo's Kweiris air base.
Russian operations against the Islamic State would likely take place in several places across Syria. In Homs, Russian forces could support a government counteroffensive against the Islamic State-held city of Palmyra. An intervention could also support the besieged Syrian 104th Republican Brigade in Deir el-Zour or the ongoing push toward Kweiris air base. The Russians are also likely to provide air support to Syrian loyalist forces fighting against non-Islamic State rebels: Jaish al-Fatah in northwest Hama province and the Latakia mountains, Turkish- and Qatari-backed rebels in Aleppo and Saudi-backed Jaish al-Islam in and around the city of Damascus.
Russia's timing is deliberate. Moscow has purposely built up its position in Syria to coincide with Putin's visit. By intervening in the crisis, Russia wants to show that its standoff with the West over Ukraine has neither isolated it nor made it any less integral to the international system. It is also signaling that Russia can still partner with the United States despite the apparent erosion of relations between the two countries. Syria has induced the United States to meet with Russia after months of scant negotiations.
Moscow will take this opportunity to try to initiate talks over a host of other issues, including Ukraine, Western sanctions and NATO's expanding presence. The United States, however, has not indicated a desire to shift its position on these issues. On the contrary, Washington is lobbying the Europeans to maintain sanctions on Russia in spite of a relatively solid cease-fire in Ukraine and election compromise proposals from Russian-backed separatists in eastern Ukraine. The meeting between Putin and Obama will indicate whether the United States plans to stand firm on these issues or open the door for future negotiations.
-
https://mobile.twitter.com/20committee/status/648117659737821184
(https://mobile.twitter.com/20committee/status/648117659737821184)
-
One sotto voce argument the Obama Administration made for its nuclear deal with Iran is that Russia and Iran would return the favor by cooperating to settle the Syrian civil war. As so often in this Presidency, the opposite is turning out to be true.
Mr. Obama said the U.S. departure from Iraq in 2011 would reduce “the tide of war,” but war has returned with a vengeance. He said a “reset” would improve relations with Russia, but tensions are far worse than when he took office. He said the U.S. could safely wind down its military operations in Afghanistan, but on Monday the Taliban took control of the city of Kunduz from the Afghan government.
Even Mr. Obama, addressing the U.N. General Assembly on Monday, had little choice but to acknowledge the rising tide of disorder. “We come together today knowing that the march of human progress never travels in a straight line,” he said. “Dangerous currents risk pulling us back into a darker, more disordered world.” In particular, he added, “we see some major powers assert themselves in ways that contravene international law.”
Nowhere is that clearer now than in Syria, the catastrophe that has killed more than 220,000, nurtured the Islamic State caliphate, and is now flooding Turkey, Jordan, Europe and the U.S. with millions of refugees. Far from cooperating with the U.S.-led Syria strategy, Mr. Putin and Iran are moving to replace the U.S. coalition and strategy with their own.
Mr. Putin said Monday that he will soon introduce a resolution at the U.N. Security Council calling for a coalition against Islamic State in Syria on Russian and Iranian terms. This means supporting Bashar Assad’s regime in Damascus against all opponents, including those few trained and armed by the U.S.
This follows the weekend news that Iraq’s government, supposedly allied with the U.S. coalition, will share intelligence with Russia, Syria and Iran. It’s hard to fault Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi for the decision. He’s watched for a year while the U.S. coalition has made little progress against Islamic State. His decision risks putting Baghdad further under Tehran’s sway, and pushing more Iraqi Sunnis into Islamic State’s arms. But desperate leaders will act in desperate ways.
The Putin-Tehran goal in Syria is part of a strategy to build an arc of influence that extends from Western Afghanistan through the Eastern Mediterranean. It seeks to diminish U.S. influence in the region, pushing on the open door of Mr. Obama’s desire to leave. The goal is to isolate U.S. allies in Kurdish Iraq and Israel, while forcing the Sunni Arabs to accommodate the Shiite-Russian alliance or face internal agitation and perhaps external conflict.
The White House knows all this but so far is doing little more than protest. Mr. Obama told the U.N. Monday that “there cannot be, after so much bloodshed, so much carnage, a return to the prewar status quo” in Syria. He added that “realism also requires a managed transition away from Assad and to a new leader.”
But how is Mr. Obama going to achieve that result? Mr. Putin is establishing facts on the ground each day as he builds up Russian air and tank deployments in Syria. While claiming to target Islamic State, Russian planes can target anyone Assad deems an enemy, creating tens of thousands more refugees. And Mr. Putin publicly laughs at the feeble U.S. efforts to build a pro-Western anti-Islamic State coalition.
Secretary of State John Kerry hopes to convene a new Geneva dialogue on Syria, but Mr. Assad has less reason than ever to compromise. He knows Russia and Iran, aided by Hezbollah’s footsoldiers, will at a minimum establish an Alawite protectorate in western and southern Syria. And even if Mr. Assad were to step into some other role in a diplomatic gesture, what prominent Sunni Syrian is going to serve in an Alawite successor government knowing it will effectively be run out of Tehran?
While Mr. Obama may keep harrumphing, Mr. Putin no doubt believes the U.S. President lacks the will to challenge Russia and Tehran. Even if the U.S. vetoes Mr. Putin’s U.N. resolution, Mr. Obama is likely to accept Russia’s presence in Syria and thus eventually the survival of Mr. Assad or some other Tehran-Moscow factotum in Damascus. By the time he leaves office Mr. Obama may claim it was all his idea.
***
Even as he concedes the growing world disorder, Mr. Obama still won’t admit that his policy of American retreat has created a vacuum for rogues to fill. He exhorted the U.N. on Monday that “I stand before you today believing in my core that we, the nations of the world, cannot return to the old ways of conflict and coercion. We cannot look backwards.”
Oh, yes we can, as the once promising world order deteriorates on Mr. Obama’s watch.
-
How Obama Could Salvage His Hapless ISIS Strategy
Sunni Arabs, trained by the U.S. in the Kurdish region of Iraq, could form an effective fighting force.
A mosque destroyed by Islamic State in Mosul, Iraq. ENLARGE
A mosque destroyed by Islamic State in Mosul, Iraq. Photo: Uncredited/Associated Press
By Max Boot And
Michael Pregent
Sept. 30, 2015 7:07 p.m. ET
58 COMMENTS
Even as Russia launched airstrikes Wednesday against rebel forces in Syria, Obama administration officials and U.S. military leaders claim that the campaign against Islamic State is working. The facts suggest otherwise.
Commanders can point to more than 22,000 sorties flown by U.S. aircraft over Iraq and Syria since the campaign began in August 2014. But fewer than one-third of those flights have dropped bombs. That’s because no U.S. air controllers are allowed on the ground to call in targets. In Afghanistan in 2001, where such controllers were present, the U.S. averaged 86 strike sorties a day; in Iraq in 2003, 596; in Libya in 2011, 46. In Iraq and Syria today, there are on average 11 strike sorties a day.
U.S. Central Command, which is accused by its own intelligence analysts of skewing intelligence, claims that between August 2014 and April 2015, Islamic State, also known as ISIS, “can no longer operate freely in roughly 25 to 30 percent of populated areas of Iraqi territory where it once could.” Note the timing of that assessment: It was delivered before Ramadi, the capital of Anbar province, and Palmyra, an ancient city in central Syria, fell to ISIS in May.
It’s true that in the past year ISIS lost control of the Iraqi town of Tikrit and of some territory in northern Syria, notably the border town of Kobani. But Iraqi forces have made no progress in taking back the far more important cities of Fallujah, Ramadi or Mosul. Much of eastern Syria remains securely in the hands of ISIS. And now ISIS is claiming “provinces” as far away as Libya and Afghanistan.
Central Command says its military operations have killed more than 12,000 ISIS fighters. Yet assessments of ISIS’s overall strength, at 20,000 to 30,000 fighters, remain unchanged, because more than 1,000 foreign fighters a month are joining ISIS, more than making up for its losses.
ISIS is not invincible. Whenever it has run into a disciplined military force supported by U.S. air power, as in Kobani or Tikrit, it has been defeated. The problem is that the U.S. has neither put enough of its own forces on the ground (only 3,000 in noncombat roles in Iraq) nor succeeded in training enough indigenous personnel. On Sept. 16, Gen. Lloyd Austin, head of Central Command, told Congress that, incredibly, there are only “four or five” American-trained rebel fighters currently fighting in Syria.
The training program is falling short of expectations because the U.S. has done a poor job of providing incentives for Sunnis to fight ISIS. Both Baghdad and Damascus are dominated by Iran and its murderous proxies such as Hezbollah and the Badr Corps—groups that make many Sunnis see ISIS as the lesser evil.
Yet the U.S. insists that Syrian fighters battle only ISIS, not dictator Bashar Assad’s forces or Iran’s proxies, and that Iraqi fighters subordinate themselves to an Iranian-dominated chain of command. At the same time, by providing money and arms to the Baghdad government, the U.S. is subsidizing the Iranian takeover of substantial portions of Iraq. Iraq has even joined a new pact with Russia, Syria and Iran intended to keep Mr. Assad in power under the guise of fighting ISIS. Russia’s role—and its warplanes above Syrian territory—further marginalizes U.S. influence.
Maybe it’s time for a different approach.
Washington could announce that as long as the government in Baghdad continues to pursue a sectarian strategy in cooperation with Iranian-backed terrorist groups such as Kataib Hezbollah and Asaib Ahl al-Haq it will no longer receive U.S. support.
Central Command could then relocate U.S. personnel to the Kurdish north, a relatively safe area where they can train a nonsectarian force to take back Mosul. This force would be composed primarily of Sunni Arabs, many of whom are already refugees in the Kurdish region, because only Arabs can take and hold Arab areas.
Considering how few ISIS fighters are holding Mosul (we estimate 3,000 to 6,000 men), a force of 30,000 Sunni soldiers assisted by U.S. air power and embedded American advisers should be enough for “clear and hold” operations.
Once Mosul is taken, a new Sunni force could be trained to take back Anbar province. If a Sunni revolt against ISIS has success in Iraq, it will shatter that organization’s aura of invincibility and likely spread across the border. And if the U.S. is willing to fight against the Assad regime as well as ISIS, Syrian rebels will be more likely to sign up for training in newly liberated parts of Iraq.
This is admittedly a risky strategy that runs the danger of strengthening Iran’s hold over Baghdad in the short run. But Iran is already the dominant player in Baghdad. It is just possible that if the U.S. were to show that it’s not wedded to supporting the existing power brokers in Baghdad, they may take the hard steps necessary to accommodate Sunnis.
The anti-ISIS campaign has no hope of success as long as Sunnis refuse to mobilize en masse. The strategy we propose offers a way to achieve that goal. The current approach doesn’t.
Mr. Boot, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, is the author of “Invisible Armies” (Liveright, 2013). Mr. Pregent, a retired U.S. Army intelligence officer, is a visiting fellow at National Defense University.
-
By James Marson And
Olga Razumovskaya
Updated Oct. 2, 2015 8:06 a.m. ET
79 COMMENTS
MOSCOW—Russian warplanes made their first incursion into Islamic State’s home base, as Moscow continued a bombardment of Syria that one official said Friday could last for months.
Russian aircraft flew 18 sorties in the last 24 hours, attacking 12 Islamic State positions, Russia’s defense ministry said, and destroying command posts, a communication hub and a weapons store.
Twelve Islamic State fighters, including two commanders, one from Tunisia and the other from Iraq, were killed near the Islamic State stronghold of Raqqa, said the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, an opposition-backed monitoring group.
The U.S. has accused Russia of targeting other groups opposed to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s regime, including some U.S.-backed rebels. Russia says it is targeting Islamic State, also known as ISIS or ISIL, as well as other “terrorist groups.”
Russian aircraft destroyed an Islamic State command post and communications hub in Aleppo province—where rebel groups, the Syrian government and Islamic State all have a strong presence—and hit a field camp in Idlib province, a majority of which is rebel-held, according the Defense Ministry.
Related
Russian Airstrikes Defend Assad Stronghold
Putin Holds the Cards in Europe’s Crises
Saudis: Russia’s Move Risks Aiding Militants
Russian strikes also hit and destroyed a concealed command post in a district to the southwest of Raqqa, the ministry said.
The Observatory’s Rami Abdel Rahman, whose organization tracks developments in Syria’s conflict via a network of activists on the ground, said the areas hit by Russian rockets were near the Tabaqa military airport and to the west of the city.
At least nine strikes in total hit Raqqa city and its outskirts on Thursday night, the Observatory said in a report on its website, though it remained unclear how many of the strikes were launched by the Russians and how many by the U.S.-led anti-Islamic State coalition that has been bombing extremists there since last fall.
The province of Raqqa is almost entirely under the group’s control and is the base from which the Sunni Muslim extremist group last summer launched its offensive on bordering Iraq.
The Russian Defense Ministry said its aircraft were using onboard navigation and target-acquisition systems to allow them to carry out strikes “with absolute precision.”
“With the use of such aircraft, strikes can be carried out on terrorist positions on the whole territory of Syria,” the statement said.
Analysts and officials have said Russia’s attacks may be a prelude to sweeping military operations against all of Mr. Assad’s foes. Iran and Shiite militias such as Hezbollah are already supporting Syrian forces and Tehran said Thursday that it backed joint military action in Syria.
An Iranian diplomat told Russia’s Interfax news agency that there was “no need to send military units” to Syria, but that Iranian military advisers were present there. “Iran always supports Hezbollah, and Hezbollah now supports Syria, led by President al-Assad,” the unidentified diplomat was cited as saying.
Russia’s campaign could last three to four months, Alexei Pushkov, the head of the foreign affairs committee in Russia’s lower house of parliament, said.
“There is always a risk of being bogged down, but in Moscow, we are talking about an operation of three to four months,” Mr. Pushkov told French radio Europe 1, adding that the intensity of the strikes was important.
Russian President Vladimir Putin is due to meet leaders of France, Germany and Ukraine for talks in Paris, where Syria is expected to be a major topic of conversation.
The strikes could further destabilize Syria, driving more people to seek refuge in Europe just as a huge tide of refugees is already sowing political discord on the continent.
They also complicate efforts by the U.S.-led coalition. Two Pentagon officials conducted an hour-long video teleconference with their Russian counterparts on Thursday to discuss how to ensure that aircraft operations didn't conflict with one another.
While the two sides didn't agree to how to do that, Pentagon officials and Russia’s Defense Ministry said the call was productive.
Mr. Pushkov criticized the Western coalition for having bombed the positions of Islamic State for a year with “no results.”
Russia’s airstrike campaign was swiftly approved by parliament Wednesday after the president’s request to permit the country’s military involvement abroad. Initially the Russian president said the airstrikes would be limited, but would last for the duration of the Syrian army’s offensive.
—Karen Leigh in Dubai and Dana Ballout in Beirut contributed to this article.
-
Why are most candidates on the GOP side calling for intervention in this mess? Why put limited ground troops in to go after both ISIS and Assad? What happens if Assad is overthrown? The whole place turns into another mess worse than now with Hezbollah taking full control.
-
Why are most candidates on the GOP side calling for intervention in this mess? Why put limited ground troops in to go after both ISIS and Assad? What happens if Assad is overthrown? The whole place turns into another mess worse than now with Hezbollah taking full control.
Great question!
The short answer is that it is not okay for terror groups to become nation-state size or caliphate and keep expanding without resistance. It is not okay for them to hold major territory, host training camps, take in oil revenues, buy arms, recruit around the world, and obtain nuclear weapons, all of which is happening on the current course.
Separate from the threats to us is that the genocide and rape and breeding a region and culture with this level of evil isn't acceptable. There HAS to be a plan, a coalition and a response to it. Trusting it to Putin only invites new problems.
I like seeing terror groups kill each other. Like see Iran fight Saddam Hussein, I am tempted to like seeing the US sit this one out - and hope the problems will take care of themselves. But that is a historically challenged thought.
This one isn't our fight, like it wan't ours or Britain's or France's when Mussolini took Ethiopia (1936) or when Hitler took Austria (1938), Czeckoslovakia, Poland (1939), etc. Or was it the west's fight earlier than we thought?
In the vacuum left by the US absence, we can watch Putin/Russia/new-Soviets flounder, make enemies and fail instead of us. But we also see this KGB trained force expanding its own control and influence over a strategically important region. That also can't end well.
There are no easy or painless solutions. Step one would have been to keep and hold the peace in Iraq when we had it.
-
"Step one would have been to keep and hold the peace in Iraq when we had it."
THIS.
At this point Baraq has destroyed the viability of so many options -- even mine, as I noted here a few days ago -- that it is hard to come up with what to do.
-
Not much we can do but watch things burn. Good thing Obama is gutting the US military.
-
Now this...................does the Admin want to go to war with Russia? How do we protect the Syrian rebels? These are the same rebels who have also used NBC weapons against the Syrian population. Why are they any better than anyone else?
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2015/10/02/pentagon-weighs-using-force-to-protect-us-backed-syria-rebels-targeted-by/?intcmp=hplnws
What did we learn when we took Saddam out? It let every single group in Irag go after each other. And it took years to subdue, but the second we left, it all unraveled. Now we want to do the same with Assad in Syria?
If we go in to fight, we go in against ISIS only. We go to take them out, and we use all force possible. Jacksonian warfare. If not that, we stay the hell out.
(Caveat: I first supported the idea of taking out Saddam, but now I realize how stupid it was.)
-
One can make a fair case that going in was a poor idea-- I thought it a good idea executed quite poorly by Bush until he turned it around and handed over a democratically elected constitutional government.
I don't think that one can make a fair case that leaving was a good idea. What would have happened if we left Germany, Japan, or South Korea within a year or two of their defeat?
What of the formation of the Russia-Iran-ShiaIraq-Syria-Hezbollah axis? Doesn't that eventually lead to war with Israel and significant likelihood of nukes? or nuclear arms race in the most lunatic portion of the planet? With Russia protection, Iran going nuke is a virtual certainty.
-
Ryan Crocker on Fox News Sunday described Russia, Iran and the Assad Syrian regime as one alliance - not aligned with us. Russia started by taking out US backed rebels instead of attacking ISIS. We can check transcript when it comes out to see if I heard that right: http://www.foxnews.com/on-air/fox-news-sunday-chris-wallace/transcripts
Among US options mentioned is a No-Fly-Zone which a) requires credibility we don't have, b) should have been done earlier and c) sets up a superpower confrontation.
Another thing we could try is an Obama red line. Don't cross THIS, or else...
Crocker also said, if I heard him right, that ISIS is fighting in 7 other countries beyond Iraq and Syria.
Looking for that I list, I found:
http://www.christianpost.com/news/isis-global-network-expands-at-least-12-military-allies-in-9-countries-beyond-iraq-syria-130178/
http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2014/11/isis-now-has-military-allies-in-11-countries.html
Iraq, Syria. Militia allies in Pakistan, Algeria, Libya, Egypt, Indonesia, Lebanon, Philippines, Jordan and Gaza/Israel have all announced some sort of cooperation with the Islamic State and al-Baghdadi. Many of these organizations were recently affiliated with Al Qaeda and have since switched to ISIS allegiances over the summer and into the fall.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
An aside for another thread, Rand Paul's bet that this would not be a foreign policy election is disappearing - because of the failure of the non-policies that he advocates. Maybe if we cover our eyes and ears and hum something pleasant this will all go away.
-
http://cdn.pjmedia.com/instapundit/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/Screen-Shot-2015-10-03-at-8.55.31-AM.png
(http://cdn.pjmedia.com/instapundit/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/Screen-Shot-2015-10-03-at-8.55.31-AM.png)
-
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/oct/04/russia-bombing-syria-affects-ousting-of-assad?CMP=fb_gu
-
Okay, this is getting ridiculous. First Snarly, then Carson, and now Rubio......................chance war with Russia over a No Fly Zone?
Have these candidates lost their "collective frickin minds">
http://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2015/10/marco-rubio-wants-us-to-risk-war-with-russia-over-syria/[/b]]http://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2015/10/marco-rubio-wants-us-to-risk-war-with-russia-over-syria/ (http://[b)
HARWOOD: ONE FOREIGN POLICY QUESTION. AND I’M GOING TO TOSS IT BACK TO SCOTT WHO HAS A QUESTION FOR YOU AS WELL. YOU SUPPORT A NO-FLY ZONE IN SYRIA.
RUBIO: I SUPPORT A SAFE ZONE IN SYRIA THAT INCLUDES A NO-FLY ZONE, CORRECT.
HARWOOD: WOULD YOU BE WILLING TO ENGAGE IN MILITARY CONFLICT WITH THE RUSSIANS WHO ARE NOW FLYING BOMBING MISSIONS OVER SYRIA TO ENFORCE THAT ZONE? WOULD YOU BE WILLING TO HAVE WAR WITH RUSSIA OVER THAT?
RUBIO: NO. THE ANSWER TO YOUR QUESTION IS THE FOLLOWING. NUMBER ONE, IF YOU ARE GOING TO HAVE A NO-FLY ZONE, IT HAS TO BE AGAINST ANYONE WHO WOULD DARE INTRUDE ON IT. AND I AM CONFIDENT THAT THE UNITED STATES AIR FORCE CAN ENFORCE THAT, INCLUDING AGAINST THE RUSSIANS. THAT I BELIEVE THE RUSSIANS WOULD NOT TEST THAT. I DON’T THINK IT’S IN THE RUSSIANS INTEREST TO ENGAGE IN AN ARMED CONFLICT OF THE UNITED STATES.
HARWOOD: YOU THINK PUTIN WOULD BACK OFF IF WE HAD A NO-FLY ZONE?
RUBIO: I DON’T THINK HE’S GOING TO GO INTO A SAFE ZONE, ABSOLUTELY. I DON’T BELIEVE HE WILL LOOK FOR A DIRECT MILITARY CONFLICT AGAINST THE UNITED STATES IN ORDER TO GO INTO A SAFE ZONE.
HARWOOD: WHAT IF HE WAS?
RUBIO: WELL, THEN YOU’RE GOING TO HAVE A PROBLEM. BUT THAT WOULD BE NO DIFFERENT THAN ANY OTHER ADVERSARY.
HARWOOD: YOU’D BE WILLING TO ACCEPT THAT CONSEQUENCE?
RUBIO: BECAUSE THE ALTERNATIVE IS THIS MASSIVE MIGRATION CRISIS THAT WE’RE NOW FACING. THE ALTERNATIVE IS THAT ASSAD WILL REMAIN IN POWER, BUT NEVER CONTROL THE WHOLE WHOLE OF SYRIA AGAIN. THE ALTERNATIVE IS THE CONTINUED GROWTH OF NON-ISIS TERRORIST GROUPS IN ADDITION TO ISIS ITSELF. SO I THINK THE ALTERNATIVE IS WORSE.
HARWOOD: DON’T YOU THINK THE PROSPECT OF POTENTIAL MILITARY – HOT MILITARY CONFLICT WITH RUSSIA WOULD SCARE THE AMERICAN PEOPLE?
RUBIO: SURE. BUT THE CONSEQUENCES OF NOT DOING ANYTHING WOULD SCARE THEM EVEN MORE AND THAT INCLUDES ITS ONGOING CRISIS OF THE MIGRATORY CRISIS THAT WE’RE NOW FACING. THE CONTINUED GROWTH, NOT JUST OF ISIS, BUT A JABHAT A- NUSRA AND OTHER GROUPS IN THE REGION AS WELL. AT THE END OF THE DAY, THIS IS NOT AN EASY SITUATION AND WE WISH WE DIDN’T FIND OURSELVES HERE. AND IN MANY REASONS WE ARE IN THIS POSITION, BECAUSE WHAT THE OBAMA ADMINISTRATION DIDN’T DO TWO AND A HALF YEARS AGO WHEN I WAS ADVOCATING FOR THEM TO DO THIS TWO AND A HALF YEARS AGO OR A YEAR AND A HALF AGO. NOT NOW THAT BEING SAID, WE CANNOT SAY, WELL, IF PUTIN IS GOING TO TEST US, THEN WE CAN’T DO ANYTHING. YOU’VE BASICALLY AT THAT POINT CEDED TO HIM AS BECOMING THE MOST INFLUENTIAL GEOPOLITICAL BROKER IN THE REGION.
-
Now Carson really scares me.............
Put in a No Fly Zone beginning at the Turkey border. Is he going to enforce this against Russia?
Inflict pain on Putin........is Carson serious? Does he want to start a war?
Carson and the other NeoCons need to understand the Russian view of their Eastern Borders. Russia is generally attacked through the East in all of history. We start messing around those borders with a full blown No Fly Zone and using financial attacks against Russia, it is only going to worsen thing.
http://www.breitbart.com/video/2015/10/05/carson-establish-no-fly-zone-along-turkish-border-use-all-the-facilities-to-inflict-pain-on-putin/ (http://www.breitbart.com/video/2015/10/05/carson-establish-no-fly-zone-along-turkish-border-use-all-the-facilities-to-inflict-pain-on-putin/)
"Republican presidential candidate Dr. Ben Carson argued for establishing a no-fly zone along the Turkish border and using “all the facilities that we have available to us…to inflict pain” on Vladimir Putin on Monday’s “Cavuto: Coast to Coast” on the Fox Business Network.
Carson stated, “What we, I don’t think, should do, is back down from Putin, right now. We need to make him aware of the fact that we’re not going to alter our flight patterns. We’re not be restricted by anything that he says, same thing with ground, air we will — I would establish a no-fly zone along the Turkish border, because we don’t want the forces to be in juxtaposition, because that will increase the possibility of an international incident. And I would be talking to Putin, and he needs to understand that if he continues with this activity, we’re going to use all the facilities that we have available to us, including financial facilities, to inflict pain on him.”
Carson added, after being told of fellow candidate Donald Trump’s position that if Putin wants to take out ISIS, he should be allowed to do so, “I do not want to allow Vladimir Putin to expand his influence. That’s been his goal for quite some time now. He was very disappointed with the dissolution of the Soviet Union, and its tremendous influence worldwide. We cannot contribute to his ability to re-gain that.”
He continued, “we need to have a global strategy, and it needs not only be in Syria, we need to be talking about the Baltic basin. We need to be talking about all of Eastern Europe. We need to be challenging him there. We need more than one armored brigade there — more than two armored brigades. We need to have a missile defense system re-established, which he was horrified when it was there before. Let’s get in his face a little bit.”
-
http://uk.mobile.reuters.com/article/topNews/idUKKCN0S00TB20151006
You OK with this Pat?
-
second post
A cogent line of thought, but one that leaves out several deeply important variables IMHO.
Obama is Right to be Cautious on Syria
By Eugene Robinson - October 6, 2015
WASHINGTON -- Contrary to popular belief, President Obama does have a plan for Syria. It's just not one that promises to have much immediate impact on the course of the brutal civil war.
Russian President Vladimir Putin, by contrast, has a plan that is far bolder and much more likely to produce results on the ground -- but only in the short term. I struggle to understand all the handwringing in Washington about the implications of Putin's intervention for "American leadership." We're unprepared to wade in -- for good reason, in my view -- and thus in no position to do much of anything about Russia's foray.
From the start, Obama's bottom-line goal has been to avoid getting dragged into a multi-sided conflict in which the lines between good guys and bad guys are faint and shifting. The president has been cautious in sending arms to the "moderate" rebels seeking to oust dictator Bashar al-Assad, fearing those weapons would fall into the hands of the Islamic State or other jihadist forces. Events have proved Obama right.
Last month, the Pentagon admitted that one-fourth of a shipment of vehicles and ammunition intended for U.S.-trained "good" rebels was quickly handed over to the radical Jabhat al-Nusra, an al-Qaeda affiliate. This is the first time U.S. officials have acknowledged such a weapons transfer but reportedly not the first time it has happened.
The big problem is that our most important goal in Syria is different from that of the non-jihadist rebels we support. The overriding American interest, as defined by Obama, is to "degrade and ultimately destroy" the Islamic State. U.S. airstrikes are designed to further that end, with a major focus being support of rebel forces seeking to recapture Raqqa, the Islamic State's de facto capital in the eastern part of the country.
For many of the rebels, however, the Islamic State is a secondary target. Their principal aim is deposing Assad, whose scorched-earth campaign to retain power is responsible for most of the death and destruction in the country -- and the exodus of millions of refugees who have flooded neighboring countries and created a crisis in Europe.
So, according to foreign policy hawks, we're supposed to give substantially more weapons and air support to rebels whose goals are not the same as ours? That dog don't hunt, and I'm glad Obama remains so cautious.
Putin, by contrast, has a single proxy in Syria and a clear goal: keeping Assad in power. Why should this be a surprise? Moscow has a decades-old relationship with the Assad family regime and a strategically valuable naval base in Syria. From Putin's point of view, the "moderate" rebels -- who are stronger in the western part of the country, around the big cities of Aleppo and Damascus -- are the more consequential threat.
That is why the first Russian airstrikes were against "good" rebels rather than "bad" ones. By no means would I ever defend Putin's Syria policy, which is morally bankrupt. But it's important to understand it.
Inevitably, there have already been reports of civilian casualties from the Russian bombing campaign. But the tragic U.S. bombing Saturday of a Doctors Without Borders hospital in Kunduz, Afghanistan, gives Russian officials a convenient retort: We regret that there is always unfortunate collateral damage in war.
Which brings me to the underlying lesson from the Kunduz accident: Be careful how you choose your friends. The U.S. airstrike reportedly was called in by Afghan military officers, who either made a terrible mistake or had their own reasons for wanting the hospital bombed. In Syria's bloody crazy-quilt landscape, where we have even less reliable allies on the ground, the possibilities for such deadly mistakes are myriad.
All of the above makes Syria a place to tread lightly and carefully. Putin's action has provoked calls for Obama to do something, anything, and I'm sure the Republican presidential candidates will have lots of bellicose advice. Most will involve action the president might have taken several years ago, when the war began; only Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., has a real alternative plan of action -- send tens of thousands of U.S. troops into Syria and Iraq -- and he's barely registering 1 percent in the polls.
The simple fact is that Russia has a clear way to achieve its immediate goals in Syria while the United States does not. Obama's continued reluctance to act for action's sake is prudent -- and presidential. He is right to keep the national interest in mind, not the national ego.
eugenerobinson@washpost.com
(c) 2015, Washington Post Writers Group
-
At this point, who knows what the truth is regarding Turkish airspace violations and the duration. It could be innocent or it could be testing Turkey and the US. As to the Russian ground forces in Syria, let the Russians do what they desire.
There is a fine balance of what to do or not do in any situation. Our cold war forces knew what that balance was, and when airspace violations occurred, they knew how to react. Now we have idiot politicians and generals who have no real cold war experience who are going to be in charge.
All it takes is one mistake and we have a mess. I don't have the confidence in the leadership to not make that mistake.
As to the new post you just did, I think Robinson gives Obama too much credit. Instead of real planning and strategy with Obama, I think it is more pure dumb luck.
I ask this question............what happens if Assad is removed? Who fills the power vacuum?
-
BTW, why are we supporting those in Syria who want to create an Islamic State in Syria? Is one Islamic faction "better" than another?
We are soooo stupid.
-
OTOH also to be considered are these variables:
1) The byproduct of the refugee invasion of Europe (and ultimately us too I fear-- already His Glibness talks of taking in 200,000 refugees-with Christians being given a harder time getting in than Muslims) Will Europe survive as such? What implications if not?
2) the formation of the Russian-Iranian-Iraq (a.k.a. Shiastan)-Syria-Hezbollah axis. IMHO this has deep and dangerous middle and long term implications, amongst them:
*Iran acquiring advanced anti-aircraft missile systems-- thus making most military options for insisting they do not go nuke far more dangerous and expensive
*Per the Obama-Kerry deal, in about 5 years Iran can get ICBMs on the international market. Contemplate this-- Iran sets them up in Cuba
*Iranian troops under a Russian umbrella on the Golan Heights. Is it a coincidence that Abbas has just renounced the Oslo Accords?
*Hezbollah also being under the Russian Umbrella
*Will Jordan fall due to the chaos being unleased? What implications for Israel if it does?
*Indeed, speaking of Israel, at what point does it feel cornered into nuclear options?
*the nuclear arms race that is just beginning e.g. Saudi Arabia is already in talks with Pakistan
*Kazakstan a plausible future target for Putin. Already he has said it is "not a real country"
*intimidation of NATO has already begun http://uk.mobile.reuters.com/article/topNews/idUKKCN0S00TB20151006 What implications for how Putin moves next with our NATO allies Lithuania et al? What implications for Ukraine?
*What implications for China in the South China Sea? Will they not be encouraged to militaristic intervention there (where 30-40% of the world's trade sails?) as they face serious internal economic contradictions?
-
http://www.nationalreview.com/article/425107/why-iran-deal-ensures-war
-
Here is a radar pix of our planes and Russian planes in Syria. LG Brown, running the show, seems unconcerned that the Russian planes have come about 20 miles from ours. 20 miles, head on, is less than 1 minute flight time. Add in an AIM or Sidewinder and it is seconds. But I guess I should not be concerned. Our pilots are great, and so are Russians. No one will make a mistake. (Russians are yellow.)
(http://cbsnews2.cbsistatic.com/hub/i/r/2015/10/05/b28669b5-b25e-4da3-8c10-0d7bc092a0e9/thumbnail/620x350/7471a5cfc46f4a52e4e89f1fac45e492/martin-headline-materialframe2139.jpg)
Lt. Gen. Charles Brown, commander of the American air campaign, said the Russians have come even closer than that to his unmanned drones.
"The closest has been within a handful of miles of our remotely piloted aircraft," said Brown. "But to our manned aircraft they've not been closer than about 20 miles."
Brown said he intends to simply work around the Russians in Syria, and he doesn't think they will crowd out American operations.
"We're up a lot more often than [the Russians] are so when we do have to move around [them] for safe operation, it's for a small period of time compared to the hours and hours that we're airborne over Iraq and Syria," said Brown.
Despite the Russians, Gen. Brown said he plans to increase strikes against ISIS sanctuaries in Syria. Many of those missions will be flown by the crews of B-1 bombers who now must avoid run-ins with the Russians.
-
OTOH also to be considered are these variables:
1) The byproduct of the refugee invasion of Europe (and ultimately us too I fear-- already His Glibness talks of taking in 200,000 refugees-with Christians being given a harder time getting in than Muslims) Will Europe survive as such? What implications if not?
2) the formation of the Russian-Iranian-Iraq (a.k.a. Shiastan)-Syria-Hezbollah axis. IMHO this has deep and dangerous middle and long term implications, amongst them:
*Iran acquiring advanced anti-aircraft missile systems-- thus making most military options for insisting they do not go nuke far more dangerous and expensive
*Per the Obama-Kerry deal, in about 5 years Iran can get ICBMs on the international market. Contemplate this-- Iran sets them up in Cuba
*Iranian troops under a Russian umbrella on the Golan Heights. Is it a coincidence that Abbas has just renounced the Oslo Accords?
*Hezbollah also being under the Russian Umbrella
*Will Jordan fall due to the chaos being unleased? What implications for Israel if it does?
*Indeed, speaking of Israel, at what point does it feel cornered into nuclear options?
*the nuclear arms race that is just beginning e.g. Saudi Arabia is already in talks with Pakistan
*Kazakstan a plausible future target for Putin. Already he has said it is "not a real country"
*intimidation of NATO has already begun http://uk.mobile.reuters.com/article/topNews/idUKKCN0S00TB20151006 What implications for how Putin moves next with our NATO allies Lithuania et al? What implications for Ukraine?
*What implications for China in the South China Sea? Will they not be encouraged to militaristic intervention there (where 30-40% of the world's trade sails?) as they face serious internal economic contradictions?
Yes. Epic shiitestorm.
-
Russia Is Repeating Cold War Mistakes in Syria
In 1957, the Soviet Union’s ally Egypt intervened in Syria’s messy politics. It didn’t go well. Why does Putin think this time will be different?
By David W. Lesch October 6, 2015
In 1989, I visited Latakia for the first time. I was a poor graduate student conducting research for my dissertation on U.S.-Syrian relations in the 1950s, and I’d gone to the cosmopolitan coastal city while on my way to Turkey. I stayed in a rather cheap hotel adjacent to the port, right next to a docked Soviet cruiser. One evening I did shots of vodka late into the night with some Soviet sailors at a seaside restaurant.
The next morning, my slumber was disturbed when the window in my hotel room shattered. The cause was a series of loud blasts just outside. They turned out to be explosions on the cruiser. An accident? An Israeli attack? A U.S. strike? It lasted only a few short minutes — and no one could tell me what it was. A couple days later, when I had crossed into Turkey, I found out that two Syrian helicopter gunships had attacked the cruiser, killing two Soviet sailors. But this was puzzling; the Soviet Union was Syria’s long-time superpower patron. Was it simply two crazed or incredibly incompetent Syrian pilots? Or was it a not-so-subtle message from Hafez al-Assad to Mikhail Gorbachev that Damascus did not like the direction of Syrian-Soviet relations at the time — specifically that Moscow had warmed to the West and was pressuring Damascus to make strategic peace with Israel?
To this day, no one knows the truth behind what happened. But whatever the reason, that incident, now largely forgotten, revealed in dramatic fashion the complexity of the relationship between Syria and Russia over the decades. The Russians needed Syria as an area of ingress into the heartland of the Middle East during the Cold War, while the Syrians needed Russian arms and political support to counter Israel and other U.S. allies in the region. It was a strategic patron-client state relationship that saw plenty of ups and downs. And there’s some history that’s worth remembering these days.
Russians are back in and around Latakia: They have sent to a base just outside the city some 30 fighter jets, surface-to-air anti-aircraft systems to protect them, surveillance drones, transport and attack helicopters, T-90 tanks — and troops. This is more than symbolic. Indeed, Russian fighter jets have already carried out bombing runs just north of Homs, reportedly against Syrian opposition groups who made significant gains in recent months against Syrian government forces. Vladimir Putin is making an emphatic statement to those countries who have been supporting various Syrian opposition groups that Russia is not going to let the Syrian regime collapse, so if any of these countries want to continue backing these groups, they had better up the ante and be prepared to be in it for the long haul. If not, they should do what they should have done all along, shift their efforts to ending the war by backing the Syrian government’s fight against terrorists (broadly defined by Russia as anyone fighting the Syrian regime). Moscow can then preserve its strategic interests in Syria as well as secure a central role for itself in any sort of negotiated settlement to the conflict that may ensue.
And it’s not the first time an outside power has played this strategy via Latakia. This history should give Moscow pause: In 1957, Latakia was the point of entry for about 2,000 Egyptian troops, ostensibly to protect Syria from a potential Turkish invasion. In many ways, it was the climax of a tumultuous period in post-independence Syria brought on by both Syria’s own immature political institutions as well as the interference in Syrian affairs by an array of regional and international powers looking to sway Damascus in one direction or another in the midst of two overlapping cold wars, one between Arab states, the other between global superpowers. Through bribery, propaganda, political pressure, and covert (and sometimes overt) military action, these external players attempted to manipulate a fractured Syrian polity for the sake of strategic self-interest.
The culmination of this struggle for Syria occurred during and immediately after the 1957 American-Syrian crisis. In August of that year, Syrian intelligence uncovered a covert U.S. plot to overthrow a government in Damascus that the Eisenhower administration believed was perilously close to becoming a Soviet client-state in the heart of the Middle East. This episode brought together (and out in the open) the matrix of domestic, regional, and international forces at work in Syria during the previous decade: domestic political rivalries; the growth of Arab nationalism led by Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser; the struggle for Syria between Iraq, Egypt, and the Saudis; the intensifying U.S.-Soviet Cold War; and an increasingly nervous Israel. The crisis improved the positioning in Syria of Washington’s putative foes in the Middle East at the time, Egypt and the Soviet Union, as the two countries inserted themselves in the Syrian mix more aggressively.
During this crisis, both Egypt and the Soviet Union claimed they were trying to “save” Syria from the pernicious activities of the West. But as events unfolded, it became clear that their objectives diverged. Egypt’s Nasser had worked long and hard to keep Syria from joining pro-West defense schemes in the region (such as the Baghdad Pact), thus preventing his country’s isolation at the hands of his regional rival at the time, Iraq. He wasn’t about to lose the assets he had cultivated in Syria to another country — even the Soviet Union, with which he had had a strategic but uneasy partnership.
In the end, Egypt “won” Syria by taking direct action while the other stakeholders engaged in diplomatic one-upmanship. Nasser’s hold on Syria was so strong that four months later, Damascus willingly came under his leadership to form a united country: the United Arab Republic (UAR). Certainly Moscow had improved its position in Syria, but Nasser’s Egypt had many more entry points into the country that gave it a distinct advantage over a relatively distant superpower. Although important to Moscow, Syria’s orientation was practically an existential issue for Cairo; its ability to intervene in Syrian affairs was matched by its motivation.
As I’ve watched the news out of Syria over the last couple of weeks, I can almost envision some old Arabist hand in Moscow (there are more than a few left) reminding Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov of the Egyptian “landing” 58 years ago. The number of Egyptian troops was woefully inadequate for the job of protecting Syria from an invasion by Turkish troops that had massed on the border. Nasser understood, though, that Soviet warnings against Turkey had already deterred the Turks. In any event, the landing was more of a political statement to beef up Egypt’s assets in Syria, secure its dominant position in the country, and outflank the Soviets and their allies in the Syrian Communist Party. Nasser had matched words with deeds.
That old Russian Arabist would have told Lavrov or Putin: “We should have done back then what Nasser did. Let’s not make the same mistake twice.” (At least that’s how I imagine it.) Seize the initiative, insert forces on the ground in Syria, beef up the Assad regime, and secure Russian strategic interests in the Middle East.
Be careful what you wish for, Russian Arabist. Nasser learned the hard way that an ownership stake in Syria can be a disaster. After he “saved” Syria, Nasser shackled his country to the Syrian matrix, which compelled him to reluctantly agree to the UAR — a union that quickly failed, taking the luster off Nasser’s glow and deepening divisions in the Arab world. In hindsight, it may have been the beginning of the end of Nasserism, the immensely popular pan-Arabist movement that gained center stage following Egypt’s survival against the British-French-Israeli tripartite invasion in the 1956 Suez Crisis, which also transformed Nasser into a regional hero. The problems Egypt experienced in Syria before and after the breakup of the UAR ultimately led to the disastrous 1967 Six-Day War.
After the 1957 debacle in Syria, the United States could do little but watch events unfold, acquiescing to the realities of the situation and the limits of U.S. power. Indeed, following the Iraqi revolution in July 1958 that swept aside the pro-Western monarchy, the three most important Arab countries (Egypt, Syria, and Iraq) appeared to be aligned with Moscow. But in Washington, one could almost sense a sigh of relief. The Eisenhower administration had waded into the minefield of Middle East politics and got burned. Even as they faced criticism at home for appearing to allow Soviet influence in the Middle East to expand, Eisenhower administration officials seemed only too happy to let the Soviets try to dig out of the hole they had created for themselves. It’s almost as if they dared the Kremlin to maintain productive relations with three Arab countries increasingly in competition with one another in the so-called Arab Cold War.
Perhaps Putin’s intervention in Syria will result in something akin to Egypt’s Pyrrhic victory in 1957 or to the Soviet Union’s sudden expansion of influence in the late 1950s that was accompanied by an exponential increase in foreign-policy headaches. Fifty years from now, historians may identify Russia’s 2015 push in Syria as the beginning of the end of Putinism, just as the 1957 landing was the beginning of the end of Nasserism.
Some see the Obama administration’s reluctance to be more assertive in Syria as a strategic necessity born out of war weariness and a lack of attractive options. Others see it as part of an overall strategic retreat from the region, creating a political vacuum that has allowed a host of mischievous stakeholders into the arena, which could potentially lead to an even greater catastrophe than the one that already exists. With the Russia-Syria relationship nearing age 60, it remains as complex as ever. One wonders if there might be another poor graduate student somewhere down the line who will watch yet another mind-bending incident that shows just how combustible it can be.
-
How America can counter Putin’s moves in Syria
By Condoleezza Rice and Robert M. Gates October 8 at 9:08 PM
Condoleezza Rice was secretary of state from 2005 to 2009. Robert M. Gates was defense secretary from 2006 to 2011.
One can hear the disbelief in capitals from Washington to London to Berlin to Ankara and beyond. How can Vladimir Putin, with a sinking economy and a second-rate military, continually dictate the course of geopolitical events? Whether it’s in Ukraine or Syria, the Russian president seems always to have the upper hand.
Sometimes the reaction is derision: This is a sign of weakness. Or smugness: He will regret the decision to intervene. Russia cannot possibly succeed. Or alarm: This will make an already bad situation worse. And, finally, resignation: Perhaps the Russians can be brought along to help stabilize the situation, and we could use help fighting the Islamic State.
The fact is that Putin is playing a weak hand extraordinarily well because he knows exactly what he wants to do. He is not stabilizing the situation according to our definition of stability. He is defending Russia’s interests by keeping Syrian President Bashar al-Assad in power. This is not about the Islamic State. Any insurgent group that opposes Russian interests is a terrorist organization to Moscow. We saw this behavior in Ukraine, and now we’re seeing it even more aggressively — with bombing runs and cruise missile strikes — in Syria.
Putin is not a sentimental man, and if Assad becomes a liability, Putin will gladly move on to a substitute acceptable to Moscow. But for now, the Russians believe that they (and the Iranians) can save Assad. President Obama and Secretary of State John F. Kerry say that there is no military solution to the Syrian crisis. That is true, but Moscow understands that diplomacy follows the facts on the ground, not the other way around. Russia and Iran are creating favorable facts. Once this military intervention has run its course, expect a peace proposal from Moscow that reflects its interests, including securing the Russian military base at Tartus.
We should not forget that Moscow’s definition of success is not the same as ours. The Russians have shown a willingness to accept and even encourage the creation of so-called failed states and frozen conflicts from Georgia to Moldova to Ukraine. Why should Syria be any different? If Moscow’s “people” can govern only a part of the state but make it impossible for anyone else to govern the rest of it — so be it.
And the well-being of the population is not the issue either. The Russian definition of success contains no element of concern for the dismal situation of the Syrian people. Refugees — that’s Europe’s problem. Greater sectarianism — well, it’s the Middle East! Populations attacked with barrel bombs and Assad’s chemicals, supposedly banned in the deal that Moscow itself negotiated — too bad!
Putin’s move into Syria is old-fashioned great-power politics. (Yes, people do that in the 21st century.) There is a domestic benefit to him, but he is not externalizing his problems at home. Russian domestic and international policies have always been inextricably linked. Russia feels strong at home when it is strong abroad — this is Putin’s plea to his propagandized population — and the Russian people buy it, at least for now. Russia is a great power and derives its self-worth from that. What else is there? When is the last time you bought a Russian product that wasn’t petroleum? Moscow matters again in international politics, and Russian armed forces are on the move.
Let us also realize that hectoring Putin about the bad choice he has made sounds weak. The last time the Russians regretted a foreign adventure was Afghanistan. But that didn’t happen until Ronald Reagan armed the Afghan mujahideen with Stinger missiles that started blowing Russian warplanes and helicopters out of the sky. Only then did an exhausted Soviet Union led by Mikhail Gorbachev, anxious to make accommodation with the West, decide that the Afghan adventure wasn’t worth it.
So what can we do?
First, we must reject the argument that Putin is simply reacting to world disorder. Putin, this argument would suggest, is just trying to hold together the Middle East state system in response to the chaos engendered by U.S. overreach in Iraq, Libya and beyond.
Putin is indeed reacting to circumstances in the Middle East. He sees a vacuum created by our hesitancy to fully engage in places such as Libya and to stay the course in Iraq. But Putin as the defender of international stability? Don’t go there.
Second, we have to create our own facts on the ground. No-fly zones and safe harbors for populations are not “half-baked” ideas. They worked before (protecting the Kurds for 12 years under Saddam Hussein’s reign of terror) and warrant serious consideration. We will continue to have refugees until people are safe. Moreover, providing robust support for Kurdish forces, Sunni tribes and what’s left of the Iraqi special forces is not “mumbo-jumbo.” It might just salvage our current, failing strategy. A serious commitment to these steps would also solidify our relationship with Turkey, which is reeling from the implications of Moscow’s intervention. In short, we must create a better military balance of power on the ground if we are to seek a political solution acceptable to us and to our allies.
Third, we must “de-conflict” our military activities with those of the Russians. This is distasteful, and we should never have gotten to a place where the Russians are warning us to stay out of their way. But we must do all that we can to prevent an incident between us. Presumably, even Putin shares this concern.
Finally, we need to see Putin for who he is. Stop saying that we want to better understand Russian motives. The Russians know their objective very well: Secure their interests in the Middle East by any means necessary. What’s not clear about that?
washingtonpost.com
-
http://www.tabletmag.com/jewish-news-and-politics/193990/putins-great-crime-syria
-
http://www.express.co.uk/news/world/610286/China-preparing-to-team-up-with-Russia-in-Syria-Boost-for-Putin-in-battle-against-ISIS
-
http://www.express.co.uk/news/world/610286/China-preparing-to-team-up-with-Russia-in-Syria-Boost-for-Putin-in-battle-against-ISIS
We are watching the world fundamentally change, right before our eyes.
-
https://www.facebook.com/bbcnews/videos/10153140583362217/
-
http://www.activistpost.com/2015/10/the-mystery-of-isis-toyota-army-solved.html
Tin foil? Or?
-
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3267595/Russian-jet-shot-Turkish-forces-flew-country-s-airspace.html
-
http://neveryetmelted.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/MostInterestingPutin.jpg
(http://neveryetmelted.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/MostInterestingPutin.jpg)
-
https://uk.news.yahoo.com/raf-given-green-light-shoot-133352631.html#vJsqB0x
-
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2015/10/14/iran-s-losing-major-operatives-in-syria.html
-
Second post
http://www.foxnews.com/world/2015/10/14/cuban-military-forces-deployed-to-syria-to-operate-russian-tanks-say-sources/?intcmp=hpbt1
-
Haven't we heard this before in Angola?
-
http://m.washingtontimes.com/news/2015/oct/13/iraq-uses-intelligence-center-operated-by-russia-i/
-
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-10-14/russia-sends-aircraft-carrier-syria-marking-ships-sixth-deployment-history
-
American Killed in Raid to Rescue Kurdish Fighters in Iraq
Rare joint mission freed as many as 70 prisoners held by Islamic State
By Gordon Lubold in Washington and
Matt Bradley in Baghdad
Updated Oct. 22, 2015 11:04 a.m. ET
83 COMMENTS
American special-operations forces conducted a raid with Kurdish fighters inside Iraq and freed as many as 70 prisoners held by Islamic State in a rare, joint mission in which at least one American service member was killed, officials said.
The American, who has not been identified, is the first to be killed in action in Iraq since 2011, U.S. officials said.
A unit of as many as 30 U.S. special-operations forces conducted the joint raid to free Kurdish fighters, known as Peshmerga, at a prison facility held by Islamic State in the town of Hawija, U.S. officials said Thursday. More than 15 Islamic State fighters were killed, U.S. officials said.
The high-risk mission, apparently the first of its kind with Peshmerga forces, came after intelligence showed the 15 Peshmerga fighters being held by Islamic State were in imminent danger. It remains unclear if any of those fighters were among those rescued, U.S. officials said.
“There were indications they were all going to be killed, very soon,” said one U.S. official.
One U.S. official said that the mission was led by Peshmerga fighters and that the U.S. “enabled” them, by providing assistance including helicopters, intelligence, advice, and logistics. American troops are limited to training and advisory roles in Iraq.
The American commandos used two Chinook helicopters to raid the prison near the village of Al-Fedekha, said the mayor of Hawija, Sabhan al-Jabouri. The raid lasted from 3 a.m. to 5 a.m. local time, said Najmaldin Karim, the governor of Hawija’s surrounding Kirkuk Province.
The prison was located in the former home of an Iraqi judge that had been seized by the Islamic State. The building also served as an Islamic State headquarters. U.S. airstrikes were used before and after the operation to isolate the compound where the prisoners were being held.
As the operation unfolded, U.S. officials said a fire fight ensued between U.S. and Kurdish forces and the Islamic State fighters guarding the facility.
Two American officials said the initial raid was to rescue as many as 15 Peshmerga fighters. When the forces arrived at the site, they found and freed many more individuals who were being held captive.
The Thursday raid followed a bombing campaign that took out nearby bridges, checkpoints and roads to prevent reinforcements from attacking the commandos, said Mr. Karim.
“I think this was a good target,” said Mr. Karim. “They knew they could do it, so they went ahead and executed it.”
-
http://www.investigativeproject.org/5013/isis-rapes-women-toward-allah#
(http://www.investigativeproject.org/pics/large/1253.jpg)
Boy, are the vast majority of peaceful muslims gonna be pissed when they find out about this! Imagine how big the protests will be!
-
Unpromising Choices in Syria
Global Affairs
October 21, 2015 | 08:00 GMT Print
Stratfor
By Philip Bobbitt
I don't envy the officials in Washington who are tasked with forming a plan to resolve, or at least mitigate, the crisis in Syria. Like the punch line of the familiar old-timer from Maine's reply to the perplexed tourist from the city, "well, if I was going there I wouldn't start from here," it really doesn't advance things to say — as I have found myself saying — that the time for action was three years ago.
Syria, whose population is less than 23 million, has more than 7.5 million internally displaced persons. One in every four refugees in the world is a Syrian. The United Nations estimates that more than 200,000 persons have died in the conflict; the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights claims that figure is over 320,000.
What is Global Affairs?
Currently, the United States has four main options. One is to try to contain the conflict and stand aside, which in light of Russian aid to the Syrian regime would crush the popular opposition and eventually end the civil war. A second option is to arm the opposition, especially the transborder Kurdish fighters, with more effective anti-aircraft and anti-tank weapons backed by U.S. airstrikes, while acquiescing to Saudi Arabia's arming of the al-Nusra Front and its jihadist allies. A third possibility is to tacitly align with Iran and Syrian President Bashar al Assad's regime in the destruction of the Islamic State. The final option would be to intervene with a coalition including Turkish and U.S. forces, as well as other militaries, striking directly at Damascus and terminating the regime.
The first of these options would be a historic embarrassment for the administration whose "red lines" the Syrian government has so studiedly crossed; nevertheless, embarrassment is seldom a justification for prolonging a deadly civil war. Indeed, some critics think this is one of the lessons of the United States' involvement in Vietnam.
The second option would prolong the civil war, perhaps even increasing the mass depopulation of Syria with all its consequences for human suffering. At least thus far, it seems unlikely that opponents of the regime aligned with the United States could effectively hope to hold enough territory to force a negotiated peace. Indeed, the longer the war continues, the more momentum accrues to the most retrograde and anti-Western insurgents. Arming the Kurds would also enrage Ankara and Baghdad.
The third option is at least consistent with what seems to be a long-term bet on Washington's part of an eventual rapprochement with Tehran. The relative youth of the Iranian population, its level of education compared to those in neighboring states, and a consistent trend in public opinion among the educated and the young that favors closer ties with the United States all seem to encourage this bet. Against such hopefulness, however, we must consider that strategic success by Iran's military forces and theocratic regime is unlikely to lessen their grip on power.
The last option would plunge the United States once again into an open-ended commitment in which it finds itself arrayed against forces that are currently warring with each other. It is not impossible to imagine the "exit strategy" demanded by commentators; in all likelihood, it would amount to a partitioning of the country and some sort of negotiated cease-fire, the policing of which need not require U.S. ground forces. But at least as likely would be an ignominious withdrawal forced by a disillusioned and frustrated American public, making this option the riskiest of all because of its potential domestic consequences. The possibility of armed clashes with Russia would only add to this risk.
Reframing the Issue
Facing such unpromising choices, the wisest course is often to reconfigure the problem. I remember the popular cartoon strip of my youth, Pogo, drawn by Walt Kelly. Few of my readers will remember those brilliant satires, but something of their narrative structure lived on in Charles Schulz's Peanuts and its ensemble of characters. In Pogo, as in Peanuts, the chief character was an earnest, rather gullible straight arrow whose basic decency was often thwarted by the complexities of a small but diverse world. At Pogo's side was his friend Albert. (I should add that Pogo was a sober, sensitive possum and Albert was a rather louche alligator, both always depicted standing upright with human accoutrements.) In the strip I wish to recall for you now, the two friends are playing checkers. Albert is wearing a velvet smoking jacket and chewing meditatively on a cigar. Suddenly, in a frenzied triumph, Pogo jumps all of Albert's checkers, wiping them from the board. The alligator is aghast; the cigar drops from his mouth. But then he recovers his poise. He reaches into his smoking jacket and pulls out a hand of cards. "I got a straight flush! What have you got?"
So I propose that we stop looking at this question as a problem of the Middle East; of course it is that, but it is not just that. More important than any of the United States' assets in the Middle East is the North Atlantic alliance. A refugee crisis of unprecedented proportions, at least in the decades since World War II, is shaking NATO countries to their constitutional foundations. A NATO ally, Turkey, has encountered its own troubles: the Islamic State has attacked it, Russian fighter planes have invaded its airspace, Syria has shelled its villages and its borders have witnessed the worst scenes of war-torn refugees seen since the Yugoslav Wars. In the past two weeks, surface-to-air missile have locked onto Turkish aircraft flying in domestic Turkish airspace. The situation cries out for the United States and its NATO allies to send aid of all kinds to protect a member of the alliance, to relieve the onward pressure of refugee migration to other allies, and to help alleviate the burden on Turkey.
The problem is that Turkey is no longer the repository of our hopes for a progressive democracy among Muslim states. Indeed, the quest for a democracy seems to have destroyed the secular basis of the state. As a result, Turkey's president has supported the very Islamic State that now attacks his country and appears to be responsible for the Oct. 10 massacre in Ankara. He has broken off negotiations with the Kurds, even though they are the most effective fighters in the region who, like the United States, oppose both the al Assad regime and the Islamic State.
In this situation, the creation of safe zones along the Turkey-Syria border offers a different kind of option. The United States has years of experience enforcing no-fly zones in the region with considerable success. The problem, as we saw at Srebrenica, is that safe zones must be enforced by regular ground troops or they will become killing fields. Air power alone, which can enforce a no-fly zone, cannot protect a safe haven. A NATO force including Turkish, American, British and French troops could effectively establish such a zone for refugees. It's only a beginning, and that is to say, something as troubling as it is promising.
-
America's Other Anti-Islamic State Efforts
Security Weekly
October 15, 2015 | 08:00 GMT Print
Stratfor
By Scott Stewart
U.S. C-17 cargo aircraft dropped 122 pallets of small arms and ammunition to rebel groups fighting the Islamic State in northeastern Syria on Oct. 12. The forces belong to the newly minted Syrian Democratic Forces, a coalition of anti-Islamic State Sunni Arab, Kurdish and Assyrian Christian militias.
Many have interpreted the recent U.S. supply drop to the Syrian Democratic Forces as an entirely new initiative – a desperate bid to salvage Washington's Syria strategy after ditching the Pentagon's train-and-equip program. These supplies, however, are just one small part of a longstanding U.S. effort in the area.
The now-defunct U.S. plan to train and equip rebel groups was only one of several programs initiated in Syria and was by no means the most important. Washington's efforts in the southern and northeastern parts of the country have proved far more successful, as has the not-so-covert CIA program to equip rebels battling the government of President Bashar al Assad in the northwest. The latter initiative supplied BGM-71 TOW missiles that greatly enhanced the rebel offensive in Idlib province. These advances against loyalist forces have heightened the threat to the Alawite heartland, which was one important factor prompting Russia to intervene in Syria.
What Success Looks Like
The U.S. programs in the northeast have been ongoing for some time and have in fact proven quite effective. The United States first airdropped weapons in October 2014 to the Free Syrian Army and to Kurdish People's Protection Units (YPG) during the defense of Kobani. Both are now involved in the Syrian Democratic Forces. Washington has since then continued to supply these forces with help from Iraq's Kurdistan Regional Government. The only limit to the program's success and expansion has come from the Turkish government, which objects to assisting the YPG because the Kurdish militia has close ties with Turkey's militant Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK).
With the help of these weapons drops and a robust coalition air campaign, rebel forces managed to defeat the Islamic State at Kobani. The groups then continued their offensive in hopes of pushing the Islamic State completely out of the northeast. Many of these anti-Islamic State militias joined a coalition called Euphrates Volcano, the main coalition force north and east of the Euphrates River in Syria.
The Euphrates Volcano campaign to beat back the Islamic State in Raqqa province has been quite effective, and the rebel coalition has regained a great deal of territory. They have even managed to take all the Islamic State's border crossings east of the Euphrates River and lifted the Islamic State siege of al-Hasaka.
The past year of cooperation has allowed the Euphrates Volcano forces and the U.S.-led coalition to develop an ad hoc but highly effective system to call in air support. The aerial assistance that brought victory at Kobani quickly became a critical component of the coalition's offensive operations.
Now these former Euphrates Volcano forces are operating under the rubric of the Syrian Democratic Forces alongside new anti-Islamic State partners, including Assyrian Christian militias from the al-Hasaka area. Free Syrian Army elements in the bloc such as Jaish al-Thuwar have also incorporated fighters from groups that include the Hazzm Movement and the Syrian Revolutionaries Front.
These new fighters had been pushed out of northwestern Syria by al Qaeda affiliate Jabhat al-Nusra. Both the Hazzm Movement and the Syrian Revolutionaries Front worked closely with the United States in northwestern Syria. They also received U.S. training and weapons, including BGM-71 TOW missiles. These ties likely still endure, which means components of the Syrian Democratic Forces could maintain close relations with the CIA — a vital source for training and advanced weapons.
The Syrian Democratic Forces' inclusion of Arabs and Assyrian Christians is also important because it will allow the new bloc to present itself as more than just a Kurdish proxy. This will help the Syrian Democratic Forces as they conduct offensives outside Syria's Kurdish enclaves, especially if they aim to capture the Islamic State capital, Raqqa. Indeed, the YPG's Arab allies were vital to previous offensives against the Islamic State in non-Kurdish areas of Raqqa province. Emphasizing the Arab elements within the Syrian Democratic Forces may help minimize animosity toward the movement on the part of local Arab tribes and is also intended to help mute concern that Kurdish offensives are part of an ethnically-motivated campaign to seize power.
Retrenchment, not Retreat
The U.S. decision to cut the Pentagon's train-and-equip program must be seen in the context of successful U.S. collaboration with rebel forces elsewhere. The recent abandonment was simply a choice to cut a failing program in order to focus on the much more effective Syrian Democratic Forces initiative.
And in spite of negative press over the U.S. effort in Syria and a focus on the Russian intervention in the northeast, the United States has had real success cooperating with rebel groups on the ground. The Syrian Democratic Forces, backed by coalition air power, pose a serious threat to the Islamic State in Raqqa and have managed to a position themselves just south of Ain Issa — within 48 kilometers (30 miles) of the Islamic State's capital.
Should the Syrian Democratic Forces capture Raqqa from Islamic State, the victory would be highly symbolic. The city was the capital of the Abbasid caliphate from A.D. 769 to A.D. 809, when it moved to Baghdad. As Will McCants notes in his book, "The ISIS Apocalypse," the Islamic State has intentionally sought to emulate the Abbasid caliphate in many ways. The group aims to conquer Baghdad, for example. Driving the Islamic State out of its capital would go a long way toward shattering the group's image as the inexorable heirs of the Abbasids empowered by Allah to conquer the earth.
Taking Raqqa would have clear strategic value for the anti-Islamic State effort as well. The area around the city is an important hub for transporting people and supplies: Raqaa sits on the Euphrates River and controls critical highways. For the Islamic State, rivers are essential – waterways and their flanking roads are the geographic core of the Islamic State's web of control.
Conquering the area around Raqqa will also serve to effectively cut the Islamic State pocket northeast of Aleppo off from the rest of its territory and make it hard to move supplies and troops. This would be particularly devastating if Turkey establishes the safe zone it has discussed implementing in northern Syria between Jarabulus and Azaz. Reaching the Euphrates River would also open up routes to use in an eventual campaign toward Deir el-Zour. This offensive would likely be combined with an operation to push down the Khabur River from al-Hasaka.
Deir el-Zour is another critical logistics hub, and the Raqqa to Deir el-Zour corridor serves as the heart of the Islamic State's Syrian territory. If they lose that area it will be difficult for the various regional arms of their organization to function as a cohesive whole. It would also deprive them of the current advantage they have of being able to operate along internal lines of communication and quickly shift resources from front to front.
While the eyes of the world are currently fixed on Syria's northwest region, tracking the operations of Syrian loyalists and their Iranian, Russian and Hezbollah allies, it will be important to also pay careful attention to the very significant operations happening east of the Euphrates River.
-
Jimmy Carter: A Five-Nation Plan to End the Syrian Crisis
By JIMMY CARTER
OCT. 23, 2015
I HAVE known Bashar al-Assad, the president of Syria, since he was a college student in London, and have spent many hours negotiating with him since he has been in office. This has often been at the request of the United States government during those many times when our ambassadors have been withdrawn from Damascus because of diplomatic disputes.
Stories from Our Advertisers
Bashar and his father, Hafez, had a policy of not speaking to anyone at the American Embassy during those periods of estrangement, but they would talk to me. I noticed that Bashar never referred to a subordinate for advice or information. His most persistent characteristic was stubbornness; it was almost psychologically impossible for him to change his mind — and certainly not when under pressure.
Before the revolution began in March 2011, Syria set a good example of harmonious relations among its many different ethnic and religious groups, including Arabs, Kurds, Greeks, Armenians and Assyrians who were Christians, Jews, Sunnis, Alawites and Shiites. The Assad family had ruled the country since 1970, and was very proud of this relative harmony among these diverse groups.
When protesters in Syria demanded long overdue reforms in the political system, President Assad saw this as an illegal revolutionary effort to overthrow his “legitimate” regime and erroneously decided to stamp it out by using unnecessary force. Because of many complex reasons, he was supported by his military forces, most Christians, Jews, Shiite Muslims, Alawites and others who feared a takeover by radical Sunni Muslims. The prospect for his overthrow was remote.
The Carter Center had been deeply involved in Syria since the early 1980s, and we shared our insights with top officials in Washington, seeking to preserve an opportunity for a political solution to the rapidly growing conflict. Despite our persistent but confidential protests, the early American position was that the first step in resolving the dispute had to be the removal of Mr. Assad from office. Those who knew him saw this as a fruitless demand, but it has been maintained for more than four years. In effect, our prerequisite for peace efforts has been an impossibility.
Kofi Annan, the former United Nations secretary general, and Lakhdar Brahimi, a former Algerian foreign minister, tried to end the conflict as special representatives of the United Nations, but abandoned the effort as fruitless because of incompatibilities among America, Russia and other nations regarding the status of Mr. Assad during a peace process.
In May 2015, a group of global leaders known as the Elders visited Moscow, where we had detailed discussions with the American ambassador, former President Mikhail S. Gorbachev, former Prime Minister Yevgeny M. Primakov, Foreign Minister Sergey V. Lavrov and representatives of international think tanks, including the Moscow branch of the Carnegie Center.
They pointed out the longstanding partnership between Russia and the Assad regime and the great threat of the Islamic State to Russia, where an estimated 14 percent of its population are Sunni Muslims. Later, I questioned President Putin about his support for Mr. Assad, and about his two sessions that year with representatives of factions from Syria. He replied that little progress had been made, and he thought that the only real chance of ending the conflict was for the United States and Russia to be joined by Iran, Turkey and Saudi Arabia in preparing a comprehensive peace proposal. He believed that all factions in Syria, except the Islamic State, would accept almost any plan endorsed strongly by these five, with Iran and Russia supporting Mr. Assad and the other three backing the opposition. With his approval, I relayed this suggestion to Washington.
Advertisement
Continue reading the main story
Advertisement
Continue reading the main story
For the past three years, the Carter Center has been working with Syrians across political divides, armed opposition group leaders and diplomats from the United Nations and Europe to find a political path for ending the conflict. This effort has been based on data-driven research about the Syrian catastrophe that the center has conducted, which reveals the location of different factions and clearly shows that neither side in Syria can prevail militarily.
The recent decision by Russia to support the Assad regime with airstrikes and other military forces has intensified the fighting, raised the level of armaments and may increase the flow of refugees to neighboring countries and Europe. At the same time, it has helped to clarify the choice between a political process in which the Assad regime assumes a role and more war in which the Islamic State becomes an even greater threat to world peace. With these clear alternatives, the five nations mentioned above could formulate a unanimous proposal. Unfortunately, differences among them persist.
Continue reading the main story
Sign Up for the Opinion Today Newsletter
Every weekday, get thought-provoking commentary from Op-Ed columnists, The Times editorial board and contributing writers from around the world.
Continue reading the main story
Recent Comments
Michael 10 hours ago
Carter's diplomatic solutions for ending the Syrian conflict are the best I have heard so far. The US should work with all sides & act...
behaima 10 hours ago
Mr. Carter, under whose watch the Iranian revolution was born, is no less naive now than then. Though well intentioned, the idea that...
nyalman1 10 hours ago
Thank you Mr. Carter for what amounts to a complete repudiation of President Obama and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's Mideast...
See All Comments
Iran outlined a general four-point sequence several months ago, consisting of a cease-fire, formation of a unity government, constitutional reforms and elections. Working through the United Nations Security Council and utilizing a five-nation proposal, some mechanism could be found to implement these goals.
The involvement of Russia and Iran is essential. Mr. Assad’s only concession in four years of war was giving up chemical weapons, and he did so only under pressure from Russia and Iran. Similarly, he will not end the war by accepting concessions imposed by the West, but is likely to do so if urged by his allies.
Mr. Assad’s governing authority could then be ended in an orderly process, an acceptable government established in Syria, and a concerted effort could then be made to stamp out the threat of the Islamic State.
The needed concessions are not from the combatants in Syria, but from the proud nations that claim to want peace but refuse to cooperate with one another.
Jimmy Carter, the 39th president, is the founder of the Carter Center and the recipient of the 2002 Nobel Peace Prize.
-
Analysis
Editor's Note: Russia began airstrikes in Syria on Oct. 1, in part to reinforce its weakening ally, the government of President Bashar al Assad. Moscow's intent is to influence the Syrian conflict in a way that protects Russia's enduring interests in the region. Since Russia established a secure port location and military air base through which to transport personnel and materiel, mainstream media have responded to Moscow's entrance into the conflict with a flurry of reports and speculation. Stratfor has long been monitoring Russia's political and military involvement in the country.
A month before Russia's first airstrikes in Syria, using state-of-the-art satellite imagery, we were able to pinpoint Russian movements in the country, concluding that the presence of air assets would likely mean Russia's physical entry into the conflict. More important, Stratfor noted how Russia's direct presence would send geopolitical ripples not only through the Middle East but throughout the world as it forced major powers to react to the dramatic change in the region's status quo. In this chronology we lay out some core analyses that highlight recent developments in the Syrian civil war, a conflict that has been dramatically altered by a more assertive Russia.
Stratfor's Fourth-Quarter Forecast
Oct. 13, 2015: At the start of 2015, Stratfor forecast that Russia, unnerved by the developing U.S.-Iran rapprochement and locked in a standoff with the United States, would promote itself as a mediator of the Syrian conflict as leverage in its broader negotiation with Washington. Wherever the United States floundered in the Middle East, Russia would position itself as the problem-solver in a bid to rebuild its credibility in the region and make itself indispensable to the United States. That forecast was updated in the third quarter to say that the Russian-led project to cobble together a transitional peace plan for Syria would gain momentum but would ultimately perish on the battlefield as rebel factions and their sponsors lacked both the incentive and the trust to negotiate and uphold a sustainable power-sharing arrangement. These forecasts effectively set the scene for the fourth quarter as multiple interests converge and compete on the future of Syria.
With Russia providing critical reinforcement to loyalist forces in Syria, the regime's primary focus will be on filling out a statelet contoured against the stronghold of the ruling Alawite clan, a region that extends across the Hezbollah-dominated Bekaa Valley through Damascus and up the Homs-Hama corridor before anchoring on the Alawite coast. Under the claimed mandate of combatting terrorism, Russia and Iran will work together to help loyalist forces flush out rebel pockets along this corridor and repel encroaching rebels from Idlib in northeast Syria and Daraa, along the southwestern border with Jordan.
Russia Confronts the Gulf States on Syria
Oct. 12. 2015: Press statements aside, this is obviously a tense time for Russia-Gulf relations. After all, Moscow is doubling down on its support for Iran's main allies in the Levant at a time when the Gulf Cooperation Council states are increasingly unimpressed with U.S. support for a rebel campaign designed — at least, from the Gulf Arab perspective — to push back against Iranian influence in the region. Russia understands perfectly that its actions in Syria will naturally compel the Gulf states to ramp up their own support for the rebels to even out the playing field. A discussion on parameters was thus in order.
Why Turkey Can't Sell a Syrian Safe Zone
Oct. 7, 2015: But Russia is botching Turkey's plans. Russia, Turkey and NATO are still arguing over whether two alleged Russian violations of Turkish airspace near the Syrian border were intentional (as Turkey and NATO claim) or accidental (as Russia insists they were). Russian Deputy Defense Minister Anatoly Antonov said Tuesday that Russia was ready to form a working group and that it would be pleased to host Turkish Defense Ministry officials in Moscow to avoid further misunderstandings in Syria. Ankara has no choice but to interpret Russia's actions as a signal that Moscow is willing to interfere in a Turkish-led safe zone if Ankara tries to push ahead with its plans.
Europe Steps Into the Syria Crisis
Oct. 2, 2015: Tensions have risen in the Middle East over the past two weeks as the United States and Russia have emerged with different ideas on solving the problems in Syria. But there is another heavyweight in this fight — a player with separate entanglements with both Russia and the United States and that could become influential in the region, though its primary concerns currently rest closer to home. That player is Europe.
In Syria, the U.S. Gives Up on Its Rebel Force
Oct. 2, 2015: For now, the United States will be forced to react to unfolding events as it forms a new overarching strategy for Syria. Russia will drive events with its support of al Assad, and Washington will scramble to adjust to Russian moves even as it works with Moscow to deconflict its air campaign. Longer term, the United States sees a negotiated settlement to the conflict as its best option. But because of the myriad competing interests, an understanding between regional and global powers on Syria is still far off — and that assumes Syrian rebel groups would even accept such an agreement.
The Reasoning Behind Russia's Airstrikes in Syria
Oct. 1, 2015: Global news media are buzzing with reports about Russia's first official airstrikes in Syria and the U.S. response to them. To understand the impact of these actions, however, we need to explore Russia's objectives in Syria rather than the airstrikes themselves. Russia's decision to go after rebels other than the Islamic State in its first foray was a bold message, but it was just one phrase in a much broader geopolitical communication between Russia and the rest of the world.
Explaining Russia's True Presence in Syria
Sept. 25, 2015: Stratfor has been closely tracking the Russian buildup of military power at Bassel al Assad air base in Syria, charting the uptick of forces throughout September. Aside from the air assets and defensive ground capacity identified at the air base, reports indicate potential Russian activity at several other locations across the Syrian coastal region.
Widely circulated satellite photography dated Sept. 13 revealed construction at the Istamo weapons storage facility and the appearance of tents at the al-Sanobar military facility south of Latakia. Though this led to conclusions of a possible Russian military presence at those facilities, more recent and detailed imagery provided by our partners at AllSource Analysis seems to contradict this assertion.
Russia Uses Syria to Influence Other Powers
Sept. 21, 2015: Moscow continues to demonstrate a credible investment in the Syrian conflict by reinforcing its position in the country. Over the weekend, satellite imagery revealed new Russian aerial components arriving at Bassel al Assad air base near the Syrian city of Latakia. Footage from the Syrian front lines also revealed a significant number of Russian troops being directly embedded in units loyal to Damascus. This broadening Russian presence suggests that Moscow could be readying itself to provide close air support for Syrian units locked in open conflict against numerous rebel groups as well as the Islamic State.
Confirming Russia's Expanded Presence in Syria
Sept. 10, 2015: The reinforcement of the airport shows that Moscow is preparing to deploy aerial assets to Syria, if it has not already done so. To sustain an overseas presence, Moscow must establish a sustained logistical connection and have forces in place to defend it. In this case, Russia is looking to establish an air bridge, with everything that entails. Stationing Russian aerial assets — such as fighter jets and attack helicopters — inside Syria is a clear escalation of Moscow's involvement in the country. Russia's previous involvement was limited to the transfer of equipment, spare parts and weaponry to the Syrian government and the provision of intelligence support.
-
http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2015/11/putin-wooing-americas-closest-syrian-allies-213317
-
US Intel analyst saying that the Russian aircraft was brought down by a bomb.
http://edition.cnn.com/2015/11/04/africa/russian-plane-crash-egypt-sinai/index.html (http://edition.cnn.com/2015/11/04/africa/russian-plane-crash-egypt-sinai/index.html)
I have a question...........has anyone looked on You Tube to see if there is an offensive video posted that could be the blame for ISIS bringing it down?
-
:lol: :lol: :cry:
-
Here you go.............the reason...............
A pig tried to enter a Muslim Kosher Market.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hnaOGDovr7k&feature=youtu.be (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hnaOGDovr7k&feature=youtu.be)
-
Okay, time to talk about the ISIS problem some more.
It is becoming more and more evident that ISIS or some other group brought down the Russian plane, likely by a bomb in the luggage area. If so, this suggests that ISIS is becoming more aggressive and could increase attacks in a variety of different scenarios, abroad especially, but here also. So let's add an assumption:
ISIS has implanted its people in the illegal immigrants moving into Europe and they will be lying in wait to begin attacks on the populace.
Russia is going to increase their attacks on ISIS in Syria, but they will not go out of the area in all likelihood. They just don't have the forces to go further, and if they do, the US will probably try to restrict operations like we are doing in Turkey/Syria.
So what do we do?
I have been against getting involved due to the nature of any involvement. Our policies are so fractured and confused that any actions would probably do more harm than good. Additionally, our politicians and candidates only consider using air power which never wins a war, or else sending in limited numbers of troops which can have no real influence on the outcome.
To make matters worse, our military has been so beaten down by the last 15 years of warfare, that the troops are worn out. The equipment is aged and outdated besides needing additional units put into service. And, Obama has worked to further downsize the military which makes it even more difficult to fight. (This is in the manner of every war we have ever fought. Downsize the military and wait for the next crisis, then fight the last war over again, until we learn and do things right.) So it will take years to rebuild.
(Don't forget the Navy and Air Force in this either. We are down to about 325 ships. Air Force has seen all too many air wings deactivated. The A-10 is essentially retired. The F-35 appears to be a joke. Rather than spend hundreds of millions per plane, we could have updated and increased the A-10 and added Raptor units and been more effective.)
The Perfumed Princes in the Pentagon have been de-balled. They care only about advancement and nothing about what is right. They will not raise objections to stupid strategies, instead going along with the whims of the politicians.
Add to all of this is the unwillingness to use military force in the most effective manner. We want to fight "moral wars" without risk. Send a few drones over, maybe put into play special forces with limited rules of engagement, and primarily to train local forces to fight in place of our own forces. (We saw what that got us in Iraq. One shot fired and they all run, leaving their US equipment behind.)
The only way to win the upcoming war is Jacksonian Warfare. We have to pull out the stops and fight to win. This means breaking things and killing people. Not playing footsie and being nice.
So what is the solution?
-
Also, just breaking..........the guy stabbing the students at UC Merced.........his last name is Mohammed.
Go figure...........the religion of peace strikes again...............
-
Pat articulates what is always the core question and his summary of the variables is quite close to mine.
-
CD,
You have now confirmed that you are as delusional as I am........ :evil:
-
Syria: The Limits of Foreign Military Support
Analysis
November 6, 2015 | 18:53 GMT Print
Text Size
(Stratfor)
Analysis
Editor's Note: Stratfor closely monitors conflict zones from a geopolitical perspective. What is perhaps the most volatile conflict today can be found in the territories of Iraq and Syria that are controlled by the Islamic State. Though these areas are cartographically distinct, they are functionally linked: Sunni tribal structures, rebel operations, Kurdish interests, external influences and the suzerainty of the Islamic State bind them together as a single, coherent theater.
The Islamic State capitalized on the chaos of the Syrian civil war and the inadequacy of Iraqi security forces to take over a large swath of the Middle East. After making some impressive gains, including the taking of the Iraqi city of Mosul, the Islamic State has lost some momentum, and an array of opponents have aligned against it. Nonetheless, the group is uniquely resilient and remains extremely dangerous and unpredictable.
In addition to examining the combatants inside the Syria-Iraq battlespace, Stratfor also tracks the political machinations, negotiations and goals of those outside the battlespace, including Iran, Russia, the Gulf monarchies and the United States. For the first time, in one place, Stratfor is providing routine updates covering the gains, losses and extent of the Islamic State's so-called caliphate.
Nov. 6
Syria
Rebels from the Free Syrian Army and from various Islamist groups recently defeated an offensive conducted by loyalist forces backed by Iran and Russia in Hama province. Rebels have since launched a counteroffensive, during which they seized important territory in the northern part of the province, including the town of Morek. In light of their losses, loyalists are now marshaling their forces in the city of Hama to repel further rebel advances.
The events in Hama province are revelatory, for they show the limits to Russian and Iranian support. Critical though that support may be, it is not robust enough to comprehensively turn the tide in the loyalists' favor. Russia is mostly providing air support and materiel, but it is not providing what the regime needs most: dependable manpower. Iran has helped to establish the National Defense Forces as an auxiliary force and has dispatched several Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps units and third-country militia forces, but even these cannot replace the tens of thousands of troops the regime has already lost.
It is little surprise, then, that the success of the loyalists has been uneven at best. They have pushed rebels back in places in southern Aleppo province, but they have been less successful in pushing them back in the provinces of Latakia and Homs. Clearly, the swift victory pro-government forces had hoped would accompany increased foreign backing is not in the offing.
The rebels' success in Hama will pressure Russia and Iran to commit even more forces to the conflict. Moscow and Tehran will probably give in to this pressure because even if outright victory is not possible, improving the lot of loyalist soldiers improves their bargaining positions if and when powers convene to negotiate a settlement. Indeed, Russia has already increased its presence in Syria from 2,000 personnel to 4,000. It has also established three forward operating bases beyond its airfield in Latakia, has sent additional surface-to-air missile systems, and has increasingly involved its own artillery units in support of the loyalists.
But therein lies the inherent danger of mission creep. Given how dim the prospects are for negotiating a settlement to the conflict, Russia and Iran could find themselves involved in a difficult war without a clear end in sight.
-
https://www.funker530.com/direct-hit-mortar-round-lands-on-insurgent-during-interview/
-
http://shoebat.com/2015/11/09/muslims-impose-new-law-on-christians-if-you-reject-islam-and-accept-christ-as-your-savior-we-will-force-your-children-to-worship-allah/
-
Is It Iran's Middle East Now?
by Jonathan Spyer
Fathom
Autumn 2015
http://www.meforum.org/5622/iran-middle-east
Share:
Be the first of your friends to like this.
While Iran leads the best organised and most aggressive alliance in the Middle East, the built-in limitations of its methods and the sectarian nature of the conflicts in question will likely stymie Iranian domination of the region.
The Middle East is currently in the midst of widespread instability, civil strife and the collapse or contraction of state authority. Syria, Iraq, Libya, Yemen, Turkey, the West Bank and Gaza Strip, Tunisia and Egypt have all experienced major instability over the last half decade. The first four of these areas have effectively ceased to exist as unitary states, and are now partitioned de facto between warring entities, organised according to ethnic, sectarian or tribal loyalty. The Palestinian territories too are divided into areas controlled by the Islamist Hamas movement in Gaza and the Fatah-dominated Palestinian Authority (PA) in the West Bank.
In this fractious landscape, powerful regional states are seeking to gain advantage, extend their own power, and diminish that of their rivals.
The collapse of states has in turn brought with it the decline of the national identities that supposedly underlay them, and the growth of sectarian identification as a political factor. The result is the emergence of Sunni-Shia conflict as a major overt presence in the Middle East. In Yemen, in Iraq, in Lebanon, and in a more complex way in Syria, Sunni-Shia rivalries form a central dynamic, which are also important in terms of the geo-strategic rivalries among major states competing in the Middle East.
State collapse has brought the decline of national identities and the growth of sectarianism.
Perhaps the single best organised and most aggressive alliance active currently in the Middle East is the bloc of states and movements gathered around the Islamic Republic of Iran. Motivated by clear strategic goals and by powerful ideological motivations, and with long experience of subversion particularly relevant to the current period of instability in the Middle East, Iran and its allies are powerful players in the regional contest.
Prior to the conclusion of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) on Iran's nuclear programme, signed on 14 July 2015, it had appeared that Iran might be approaching a point of overstretch. Tehran was committed to assist a large portfolio of clients engaged in conflict across the region, at a time when Tehran was itself subject to biting economic sanctions. The continued civil war in Syria and the opening of conflicts in Iraq and Yemen – in which the Iranians were heavily committed – seemed to introduce this possibility.
Sanctions relief bolsters Iran's capacity to assist armed clients across the region.
However, the conclusion of the nuclear agreement – and with it the prospect of release of impounded funds as part of sanctions relief – has immediate implications for the related subject of Iranian regional ambitions and outreach. The precise sum likely to become rapidly available to Iran following the signing of the agreement and sanctions relief remains unclear and disputed. Estimates range from $150 billion (the sum frequently quoted by opponents of the nuclear deal) to $56 billion (the likely sum according to US Treasury Secretary Jacob J. Lew).
But even if one assumes the lower estimate, and combines this with additional sums likely to become available to Iran because of renewed economic ties with the outside world as an element of sanctions relief, it may be concluded that the risk of overstretch, and a consequent inability on the part of Iran to sustain its regional commitments, has effectively disappeared as a result of the signing of the JCPOA.
As a result, Iran is well placed in the current period to continue its practice of supporting proxy political-military organisations in a variety of regional locations, in pursuit of Iranian strategic goals.
Iranian Ambitions in the Arab world
Iran is currently actively supporting proxies in major conflicts in the following areas: Syria, Iraq, Yemen, Lebanon, and the Palestinian territories. In addition, there is evidence that Iranian agencies are active among Shia populations – as yet without major effect – in Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and Bahrain. Tehran also has a strategic relationship with (Sunni majority) Sudan.
Iranian aims
Iran's strategic goal is to emerge as the dominant power in the Middle East and, eventually, the entire Islamic world. It seeks to roll back US influence in the region and to work towards Israel's destruction.
Ali Younesi, a senior adviser to President Hassan Rouhani, sees Iran's role as "protecting the interests of all the people in the region – because they are all Iran's people."
At a conference on "Iran, Nationalism, History, and Culture" in Tehran in March 2015, Ali Younesi, a senior adviser on intelligence matters to Iranian President Hassan Rouhani, outlined a clear vision for Iranian regional hegemony. Younesi described Iran's role as "protecting the interests of all the people in the region – because they are all Iran's people ... We must try to once again spread the banner of Islamic-Iranian unity and peace in the region. Iran must bear this responsibility, as it did in the past." He noted Iran's past as an empire, and spoke of a "greater Iran" which stretched from the borders of China to the Persian Gulf.
Younesi's statements are not, of course, a failsafe guide to policy. But the adviser's much noted speech is a fair summary up of the wide ambitions of Iran.
In practice, Iranian resources appear to be directed to realising this vision in two specific areas: firstly, the establishment of a contiguous line of pro-Iranian entities between the Iraq-Iran border and the Mediterranean Sea, and secondly, extending Iranian influence to the Arabic-speaking side of the Persian Gulf, and subverting the interests of Saudi Arabia in this area.
Iraqi militia leader Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis (right) with Iranian Quds Force commander Qasem Soleimani.
The former goal has a number of motivating forces behind it. Firstly, there is an obvious strategic interest in reaching access to the Mediterranean, which has been a feature of Iranian and Persian state policy from antiquity.
Secondly, reaching Lebanon gives Tehran an entry point into the Israel-Arab conflict. The Iranians have invested heavily for over 30 years in their client Hezbollah in Lebanon. As non-Arabs and non-Sunni Muslims, the Iranians suffer from a 'legitimacy gap' in the mainly Sunni Muslim Arab Middle East. They seek to close this gap through commitment to the destruction of Israel, and in practical terms through the sponsorship of organisations engaged in war against the Jewish state. Access to Israel's borders is essential for this.
In addition, Iran has an interest in a weak or subordinated Iraq. The Iranian regime fought a bloody war against Iraq in the 1980s, which forms a core formative experience for the regime. To avoid any possible recurrence, Iran has an interest in ensuring a non-hostile Iraq through sponsorship of friendly political players in that country.
Iran's ballistic missiles and asymmetric conflict abilities offset its weak conventional ground and air forces.
With regard to the Gulf, Tehran sees Saudi Arabia and the Gulf Cooperation Council as rivals for power. Tehran lacks the conventional ground and air forces for projection of power beyond its borders. It seeks to overcome this disadvantage through the development of its ballistic missile programme, and through its efforts in asymmetric conflict.
While the Iranians may hope eventually to isolate Saudi Arabia and cause the Gulf states to abandon their links with the US and to instead come under Iranian protection, this moment is far away in terms of the current balance of power because of Iran's limited military capacities. At present, therefore, the Iranians aim to frustrate any Gulf or US ability to carry out operations in the Gulf or into Iranian territory through the building of a deterrent capacity.
The Iranian practice of harassing international shipping in the Straits of Hormuz and the investment in small boats, coastal defence and UAVs reflects this goal. Because of their limited conventional capabilities, the effective use of proxy warfare has high importance to the Iranians.
So to sum up, Iran's strategic goal is ultimately to build regional hegemony. In the short term its core goals include maintaining domination of the space between the Iran-Iraq border and the Mediterranean as well as deterring the US and intimidating the Gulf states.
These goals place Iran at loggerheads with those status quo states in the region, most importantly Saudi Arabia. The Saudi-Iranian rivalry, combined with the collapse of a number of regional states and the growing importance of sectarian identity as a marker of political loyalty, are producing a cross-border sectarian struggle, with Iranian clients lined up against clients of Saudi Arabia, Turkey or Qatar.
This sectarian element is important, because it represents a built-in limit to Iranian potential. As a Shia power, Iran finds it difficult to gain legitimacy among Sunni Arabs or to successfully develop proxies outside of Shia Arab populations, as becomes apparent when taking a closer look at Iran's main commitments in the region.
The pattern of Iranian success and failure
When assessing how things stand for Iran in the main countries in which it is engaged, an emergent pattern presents itself.
Syria
In Syria, Iran has been determined, since the outbreak of the uprising against the Assad dictatorship in March 2011, to preserve the dictator's rule. Iran and Syria have formal relations of military alliance dating back to 1982. Iranian financial assistance, mobilisation of regional proxies, help in military organisation and now direct provision of military personnel to Assad have been vital in preventing his downfall.
Members of the Iranian-backed Shia militia known as Liwa al-Sayyida Ruqayya in Damascus late last year.
Has the intervention into Syria been a success for Iran and its methods of outreach? Partially. Assad still controls Damascus. But he rules over only about 20 per cent of the entire territory of Syria. There are no prospects of the reconquest of the greater part of the areas lost any time soon. So Iran's efforts may have kept the dictator in his seat, but the result has not been a return to repressive stability, but rather the effective collapse and de facto partition of Syria, with Assad reduced to the status of a single warlord among others, rather than the ruler of a country.
It is noteworthy that despite Iranian assistance, the direction of the Syrian Civil War appeared to be turning decisively against Assad in the course of 2015. The intervention by Russia, beginning this past September derived to a degree from Russian perception that the current levels of support were not working and that if Assad was to be saved, a more direct involvement by Moscow was necessary. According to some reports, the Russian intervention was the direct result of a visit by Iranian Quds Force commander General Qasem Soleimani to Moscow in July 2015 in which he impressed on Russian officials the increasingly desperate predicament faced by Assad. If this was indeed the case, it is testimony to the limited efficacy of Iranian methods in the Syrian context.
Iraq
Iraq has a Shia Arab majority, and a traditionally pro-Iranian party (Dawa) is currently in power. Iranian assistance to the government of Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi in the form of the organising of the Shia militias in the Popular Mobilisation (Hashed al-Shaabi) played a vital role in stopping the Islamic State (IS) advance eastwards in the summer of 2014.
A poster of Iranian Supreme leader Ayatollah Khamenei at the entrance to an office of the Hashd al-Sha'abi (Popular Mobilization) in Baghdad. Photo by Jonathan Spyer.
The most powerful of the militias are political as well as military organisations. While these militias are officially administered by the Popular Mobilisation Committee, in reality the most powerful of them are directly linked to Iran. The Badr organisation, headed by Hadi al Ameri, and the Kataeb Hezbollah, led by Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, are the strongest of these groups. Both Ameri and al-Muhandis are veteran pro-Iranian Shia Islamist activists, with long and verifiable links to the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps (the latter fought on the Iranian side in the Iran-Iraq war). Both are personally linked to the Quds Force and Qasem Soleimani.
The Shia militias, as both political and military organisations, are the key instrument for Iran in Iraq. Through them, the Iranians are able to directly impact the policymaking process in the country. Yet it is also the case that Iraq remains effectively divided into three component parts; the government controlled area in the south, the Islamic State territory in the centre, and the Kurdish north. Neither the Shia militias nor the Iraqi armed forces appear anywhere close to re-uniting the country, and it is difficult to see how they could do so, given their openly sectarian, Shia orientation.
So in the Iraqi context, Iranian influence is deep, but the result of it is the fragmentation of Iraq, and the Iranian domination of one part of it, rather than the emergence of a strong Iran-aligned unitary Iraqi state.
Lebanon
In Lebanon, the success of Iranian methods of outreach and subversion are most clearly showcased. Hezbollah is the prototype of an Iranian created and supported political-military group. Established by the Revolutionary Guards in the early 1980s, Hezbollah has, since 1990, been the only non-governmental organisation permitted to maintain an armed wing in Lebanon (with the exception of Palestinian groups permitted to carry arms within refugee camps). In 2006, Hezbollah launched a war on Israel without seeking the consent of the official government of the country. In 2008, it crushed an attempt to impose the authority of the central government over some of its activities.
Hezbollah Secretary General Hassan Nasrallah declared in a May 24 speech that his Lebanese Shia movement's fighters will deploy to "all the places in Syria that this battle requires."
Hezbollah has played a vital role in the Syrian civil war as an ally of Iran. Its personnel are taking an active part in the fighting. Iran and Hezbollah have also sought to take advantage of the chaos in Syria to establish an additional front for operations against Israel just east of the Quneitra Crossing (facing the Golan Heights). So far this has not been successful. Israeli pre-emptive action to prevent this has included the killing of a number of senior Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps and Hezbollah personnel on 19 January 2015.
No challenge to Hezbollah's military power is on the horizon, though the entry of approximately one million Syrian Sunni refugees since 2011 has undermined the notion of an emergent Shia demographic majority that underlay and deepened the organisation's strength. There is evidence of efforts to organise among the Sunnis by both Jabat al-Nusra and IS.
There are no physical restrictions on Hezbollah's freedom of action. But at the same time, the notion of emergent open Hezbollah rule replacing the Lebanese state, and implementing the Iranian system of government in the country is far-fetched. Hezbollah has neither the need nor the possibility of imposing such rule. Iran has implanted a powerful military machine along the border with Israel, giving itself a direct entry to the Arab-Israeli conflict, and the ability to intervene to help other allies in need (Hezbollah has also involved in supporting pro-Iranian groups in Iraq, Yemen and the Palestinian territories in recent years.) But even in Lebanon, the site of Iran's greatest success, if Iran was hoping to produce a similar Shia Islamic regime to its own, this appears neither imminent nor likely.
Yemen
In Yemen, the Iranian ally/client is the Ansar Allah organisation, more commonly known as the Houthis, after the name of the tribe that controls the organisation. The Houthis seized control of the Yemeni capital, Sana'a, in September 2014. The government of President Abd-al Rabbo Mansour Hadi was forced into exile in Saudi Arabia. The Houthis and their allies then began a march to the south, intending to seize the Gulf of Aden and unite the country under their control.
Saudi and Emirati assistance to Yemeni government forces seeking to prevent this outcome began on 26 March. Egypt, Morocco, Jordan, Sudan, Kuwait, Qatar and Bahrain also joined the coalition against the Houthis. The Houthis, having failed to take Aden City, have now agreed to adhere to a seven point plan brokered by the UN at talks in Muscat, Oman. The plan includes a ceasefire and the return of the government to Sana'a. It is not yet clear if the planned ceasefire will be implemented. But again, we see the pattern of Iranian support resulting in division and renewed conflict, rather than outright victory for the Iranians.
Palestinians
Iranian-backed Islamic Jihad militants in training.
Iran maintains a strategic alliance of long standing with one Palestinian organisation – Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ). Islamic Jihad was founded in the Gaza Strip in 1981 by activists directly influenced by the Islamic Revolution in Iran. PIJ has remained a supporter of Iran and beneficiary of Iranian aid and support ever since. Islamic Jihad, however, is a small organisation, with no serious ambitions for competing for the political leadership of the Palestinians. In the course of the 1990s, Iran sought to establish a strategic relationship with Hamas, largest and most powerful of Palestinian Islamist groups. This burgeoning relationship was disrupted, however, by the post-Arab Spring rise of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt and then by the outbreak of civil war in Syria. Hamas, a Muslim Brotherhood linked group, sought to distance itself from the Iran-aligned Syrian regime, which was engaged in crushing a largely Sunni Arab revolt. The movement transferred its headquarters from Damascus. At the same time, Hamas sought to draw closer to what looked then to be an emergent Muslim Brotherhood regional bloc, centred on Egypt and Qatar.
In the event, no such bloc emerged. But it led to estrangement between Hamas and Iran. As of today, a split pertains in Hamas regarding future relations with Iran, with some elements supporting a return to alignment with the Iranians and others favouring alignment with Qatar and an attempt to repair relations with Saudi Arabia.
During the period of the Second Intifada, the Iranians also maintained contacts with and support for armed elements within the rival Fatah movement. It is likely that these channels of communication and support still exist.
Conclusion
In all areas of Iranian regional "outreach," a common pattern exists. Iranian regional policy is characterised by the establishment and/or sponsorship of proxy political-military organisations. In every case noted, (with the partial exception of Lebanon) the result of the Iranian involvement is not Iranian strategic victory and the constitution of the state in question as an ally of Iran. Rather, Iranian outreach prevents the defeat and eclipse of the local Iranian ally, while ensuring division and continued conflict in the area in question.
This Iranian modus operandi – and its centrality in Iranian regional strategy – as well as the far reaching nature of Iranian goals as outlined above, mean the notion that a post JCPOA Iran can form a partner for stability in the region is deeply flawed, and will quickly be contradicted by the facts.
The export of chaos has the merit, perhaps, of keeping disorder far from Iran's own borders by ensuring that rivals to Tehran are kept busy engaged in proxy conflicts elsewhere. However, it is difficult to see how it can result in regional hegemony and leadership.
This Iranian penchant for fomenting chaos also places them on a different trajectory than the Russians. This is important, because the Russian intervention in the Syrian civil war from September 2015 on has been characterised in some quarters as the birth of a new strategic alliance between Tehran and Moscow. Ibrahim Amin, editor of the pro-Hezbollah al-Akhbar newspaper, happily called this supposed new bloc the "4 + 1" alliance (Iran, Iraq, Syria, Russia and Hezbollah).
Iran can be a spoiler, but not the founder, of a new Middle Eastern order.
But Russia has no interest in strategic support for Islamist proxies in the Middle East. Rather, it seeks powerful state allies, without particular concern as to their internal electoral arrangements or ideological proclivities. The Iranian model of creation and support of proxy Shia Islamist forces contrasts with Russia's desire for powerful, centralised forces with which it can do business. This means that Russia and Iran have different and even opposed regional orientations, even if there is currently an overlap with regard to the Assad regime in Syria.
As a result of the JCPOA, Iran is likely to increase its support for its portfolio of proxy organisations across the region. The net effect of this will be to increase regional disorder and foment continued conflict. However, because of the built in limitations of Iranian methods and because of the sectarian nature of the conflicts in question (which means Iran finds it very difficult or impossible to pursue really lasting alliances with non-Shia Arab clients), it is unlikely that this will result in the attainment by Iran of its strategic goal of regional leadership/hegemony. Iran is a spoiler par excellence. But despite its ambitions and pretensions, it does not look like the founder of a new Middle Eastern order.
Jonathan Spyer is director of the Rubin Center for Research in International Affairs and a fellow at the Middle East Forum.
-
Kurdish officials, with U.S. help, have launched an offensive against ISIS in Iraq, The A.P. said
Wednesday, November 11, 2015 11:55 PM EST
Backed by American air power, Kurdish officials early Thursday morning announced the start of a ground offensive to retake the western Iraqi town of Sinjar from Islamic State fighters and cut a major jihadist supply line between Syria and the Iraqi city of Mosul, The Associated Press reported.
The plan called for American airstrikes to open the campaign. Meanwhile, thousands of Kurdish pesh merga fighters, joined by Yazidi forces, prepared to sweep down from Mount Sinjar and attack fighters for the Islamic State, also known as ISIS or ISIL, on multiple fronts.
-
Rubio went onto Fox and announced his plans for dealing with ISIS.
Bomb the training camps in Syria and also put in Spec Ops to assist. Doing this would make people reluctant to join ISIS. (Isn't this exactly what Russia is doing right now in Syria?)
I would assume that at the highest levels of our government they have no idea what Russia is up to in Syria.
-
Rubio went onto Fox and announced his plans for dealing with ISIS.
Bomb the training camps in Syria and also put in Spec Ops to assist. Doing this would make people reluctant to join ISIS. (Isn't this exactly what Russia is doing right now in Syria?)
I would assume that at the highest levels of our government they have no idea what Russia is up to in Syria.
I'd venture that's a safe guess.
-
My plan to fight ISIS.
1: Order all borders and landmarks on emergency alert, US and all allies.
2. Commence the tracking and enforcing of all visa over-stays in US, and all allies who want our support.
3. Use NSA info and intelligence resources to track all social media celebrations worldwide of the Paris attacks. Surveil, deport, arrest, attack all identified terror sympathizers around the world - wherever justification exists.
4. Take out the nuclear facilities in North Korea all in one wave. (In part, to send a signal to ISIS.)
5. Within 2 days, strike all known nuclear facilities in Iran. Also, in part, to send a signal. The timing is important. No delay.
6. Announce congressional declaration of war against ISIS worldwide while attacking ISIS holdings in Iraq, coming in from at least 3 fronts, with the ground support of at least 5 gulf states, France, Britain and hopefully 70 other countries. Timing again is important, right as they are stilling watching coverage of the 2 previous attacks. Make the Iraq operation as short and decisive as possible.
7. Launch the Syrian phase using intelligence acquired and the same coalition force.
8. Reassign all UN employees and contractors and academics around the world currently working on global warming to working refugee shelters in the recaptured territories of Iraq and Syria.
9. Announce the expansion of Guantanamo and construction of additional detention facilities in the recaptured territories. (Have Trump build them.)
10. Exit the region leaving sufficient residual force. Defend the homeland. Build ships, missiles, drones etc. - preparedness for the next round. Pay for the operation with captured oil revenues and contributions billed to coalition partners.
-
My plan to fight ISIS.
1: Order all borders and landmarks on emergency alert, US and all allies.
2. Commence the tracking and enforcing of all visa over-stays in US, and all allies who want our support.
3. Use NSA info and intelligence resources to track all social media celebrations worldwide of the Paris attacks. Surveil, deport, arrest, attack all identified terror sympathizers around the world - wherever justification exists.
4. Take out the nuclear facilities in North Korea all in one wave. (In part, to send a signal to ISIS.)
5. Within 2 days, strike all known nuclear facilities in Iran. Also, in part, to send a signal. The timing is important. No delay.
6. Announce congressional declaration of war against ISIS worldwide while attacking ISIS holdings in Iraq, coming in from at least 3 fronts, with the ground support of at least 5 gulf states, France, Britain and hopefully 70 other countries. Timing again is important, right as they are stilling watching coverage of the 2 previous attacks. Make the Iraq operation as short and decisive as possible.
7. Launch the Syrian phase using intelligence acquired and the same coalition force.
8. Reassign all UN employees and contractors and academics around the world currently working on global warming to working refugee shelters in the recaptured territories of Iraq and Syria.
9. Announce the expansion of Guantanamo and construction of additional detention facilities in the recaptured territories. (Have Trump build them.)
10. Exit the region leaving sufficient residual force. Defend the homeland. Build ships, missiles, drones etc. - preparedness for the next round. Pay for the operation with captured oil revenues and contributions billed to coalition partners.
I like it.
-
This NY Times article has a pretty good map marking major events relating to ISIS around the world.
Looks like "we have them contained" - to planet earth.
http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2015/06/17/world/middleeast/map-isis-attacks-around-the-world.html
-
Recall if you will the prophetic warning issued by George W. Bush in July 2007: "To begin withdrawing from Iraq ... will be dangerous for Iraq, for the region and for the United States. It will mean surrendering the future of Iraq to al-Qa'ida. It means that we would be risking mass killings on a horrific scale. It will mean we would allow terrorists to establish a safe haven in Iraq to replace the one they had in Afghanistan. It will mean that American troops will have to return at some later date to confront an enemy that is even more dangerous."
-
Obama under fire for saying that ISIS has been 'contained' just hours before Paris attack as he heads to Turkey for G-20 Summit
In an interview with ABC’s George Stephanopoulos on Thursday, Obama said he didn't believe ISIS was gaining strength
The interview aired just hours before ISIS claimed responsibility for the horrific attack in Paris that killed 128 people on Friday
Several social media users, including Donald Trump, have criticized Obama
ISIS has grown during the Obama administration from a group he once called al Qaeda's 'JV team' to the force it is today
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3318751/Obama-fire-saying-ISIS-contained-hours-Paris-attack-heads-Turkey-G-20-Summit.html#ixzz3rgu2qXMz
-
"Obama under fire for saying that ISIS has been 'contained' just hours before Paris attack as he heads to Turkey for G-20 Summit"
I haven't heard any of the MSM sources give him what he deserves on this. Never mentioned.
Did I miss something?
-
"Obama under fire for saying that ISIS has been 'contained' just hours before Paris attack as he heads to Turkey for G-20 Summit"
I haven't heard any of the MSM sources give him what he deserves on this. Never mentioned.
Did I miss something?
ISIS is contained and global warming is the biggest national security threat we face. I know smart, successful people who can't believe he has said these things. Not everyone reads the forum!
-
Isn't 'disproportionate response' what Israel is always accused of doing? Count the UN resolutions condemning them.
Meanwhile: https://www.rt.com/news/322211-france-airstrike-isis-raqqa/
French jets drop 20 bombs in massive anti-ISIS raid in Syria
http://abcnews.go.com/International/french-jets-bomb-syria-police-launched-international-manhunt/story?id=35215091
French Jets Bomb ISIS Targets in Syria After Police Launch Manhunt for 'Dangerous' Suspect
To be clear, I favor disproportionate response as an attempt to deter these kinds of attacks. Just wondering about double standards.
-
AFTER PARIS
How to Beat ISIS: The President Is Partly Right
WALTER RUSSELL MEAD
http://www.the-american-interest.com/2015/11/16/how-to-beat-isis-the-president-is-partly-right/
To cut the flow of recruits and funds to ISIS, we must make ISIS look unattractive and weak—drab. This is what we have to teach our enemies and those tempted to join them: disenchantment.
In a contentious press conference, President Obama vowed to stay the course regarding his ISIS policy in the wake of the Paris attacks. The AP reports:
President Barack Obama on Monday conceded that the Paris terror attacks were a “terrible and sickening setback” in the fight against the Islamic State, but forcefully dismissed critics who have called for the U.S. to change or expand its military campaign against the extremists.
“The strategy that we are putting forward is the strategy that is ultimately is going to work,” Obama said during a news conference at the close of two days of talks with world leaders. “It’s going to take time.”
Both in the United States and abroad, the reaction to the President’s statement has been largely negative. There is a very widespread view that President Obama’s own dilatory leadership style and his refusal to engage seriously in Syria gave ISIS the room it needed to take root and grow. It’s likely that future historians will agree; this president is unlikely to be hailed as a strategic genius by anybody not on his payroll.
Nevertheless, it’s worth noting that President Obama isn’t just blowing smoke when he talks about successes against ISIS. In particular, the strategy of helping the Kurds push ISIS back has led to significant progress on the ground. Just last week, the Kurds cleared ISIS out of Sinjar, and as a result of its military setbacks, ISIS has less access to fresh supplies and recruits coming through Turkey.
This matters. Groups like ISIS depend on two power sources. One is the radical jihadi ideology that now circulates widely among discontented Muslims and rootless young people in the Middle East and elsewhere. The other is the sense of victory and drama. ISIS needs to create wins and excitement to lure new recruits and keep its current fighters loyal and inspired.
The self-styled caliphate isn’t a major military power and has only been able to acquire and hold territory because of state breakdown in Iraq and Syria. For the last few years, ISIS has been following a successful formula: Rapid military gains on the ground led to a huge international profile, which in turn attracted jihadis from all around the globe and established the organization as the new leader of radical Islam. ISIS advertises its success with the pornography of jihad: bloody executions posted on the web, widespread announcements that it is selling captured girls in slave markets, massacres of the “heathen.”
The goal of the terrorists has always been to escape the drab realities of ordinary history and events, to create a kind of magical space—a return to the 7th century, the age of the Prophet, of miracles and legends. Joining the group offered a real life version of a video game.
The problem the jihadis are now facing is that while it is easy to create this kind of illusion in the short term, it is very hard to make it work over the long run. History grinds that kind of illusion down and drags those who tried to sustain it back into the world of real forces, real obstacles, real (as Clausewitz would say) friction.
We’ve seen this before. After 9/11, the great and dramatic attack created a legend, but then al-Qaeda was dragged down, and dogged by its adversaries. The group managed to survive the U.S. attacks on Afghanistan, but, despite that, this attrition little-by-little (and sometimes big step-by-big step) damaged the brand. ISIS represented a new approach, and its victorious march across Syria and Iraq electrified the jihadi universe. But now ISIS, too, is beginning to sag.
On the ground these days, ISIS is engaged in a war of inches that will likely test its capacity to the limits, like its (lack of) ability to manage and operate supply lines, for example. The poor training and quality of its fighters will also now matter more. And the absence of dramatic victories, indeed the reality of setbacks and retreats, will reduce the enthusiasm and undercut the morale of current fighters, to say nothing of the impact on potential recruits.
This may be one reason why ISIS has apparently shifted to prioritize attacks like the Paris horror. It likely needs the acts of drama and violence to replace the revolutionary theater that its military advances once gave it. Running wild through the streets, gunning down the crowds in a night club: This is fantasy violence, video games brought into the real world. ISIS is again the coolest of jihadi brands, the cutting edge of the war against the real. The intent is not so much to terrorize the West as to galvanize the faithful.
Understanding ISIS’ methods can help us counter its aims. One key for us: to step up the grim war of attrition against ISIS on the ground. Life for the average ISIS fighter has to become a miserable affair of holing up, getting shot, running out of food, and putting up with bad medical care and low supplies even as the higher-ups live it up in the ruins of Raqqa. That word needs to filter out across the jihadi grapevine. To cut the flow of recruits and funds to ISIS, we must make ISIS look unattractive and weak—drab. If at the same time we work aggressively to reduce its ability to repeat the Paris attacks, ISIS will continue to fade.
This is a way to weaken ISIS, but it won’t solve the problem of jihadi violence. The cultural fugue of the Islamic world will continue to generate new disorders, new radicalisms, new waves of hate and murder. And the stories of the glory days of the Caliphate and legends of ISIS will continue to resonate and inspire new waves of jihad, just as the legend of al-Qaeda did before it.
But defeat hurts—and the more we keep whacking moles, the more discouraged the other moles will be. So the defeat of “terrorism” is a long way off. But the defeat of individual terrorist groups and forms of jihadi ideology, while short of a complete solution to the problem, is good in and of itself, and it contributes to the long term solution: the definitive disillusionment of potential radicals.
This is what we have to teach our enemies and those tempted to join them: disenchantment. There is no magic road back to the 7th century triumphs of Islam. That door is closed. The Islamic world, like the rest of us, must live in the real world of the 21st century.
So President Obama is partly right. The American partnership with the Kurds has inflicted real damage on ISIS. But he’s wrong if he thinks what we have done is enough, or that a few incremental shipments of ammo and MREs will do the trick. The battle against ISIS is one campaign in a long and brutal war. The bloodiest battles and the greatest dangers may still lie ahead.
-
Searching for a Syrian Solution
Analysis
November 17, 2015 | 09:15 GMT Print
Text Size
U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry (L), U.N. Special Envoy for Syria Staffan de Mistura (C) and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov (R) address the media after the International Syria Support Group meeting in Vienna, Austria, on Nov. 14. (VLADIMIR SIMICEK/AFP/Getty Images)
Summary
In a notable breakthrough in negotiations over the weekend, the International Syria Support Group agreed during a meeting in Vienna to convene Syrian government and opposition representatives on Jan. 1, 2016, in formal negotiations under the auspices of the United Nations. The support group, made up of virtually every direct and indirect foreign state participant in the Syrian civil war, has aspired to find a solution to the destabilizing Syrian civil war, and progress has increasingly appeared to be within reach. However, serious obstacles remain that could rapidly undermine any gains the group hopes to accomplish going forward.
Analysis
The current timeline for the peace plan agreed to by the International Syria Support Group is as follows: By Dec. 14, the group will reconvene to review progress so that the United Nations can seek to convene Syrian government and opposition groups in formal negotiations by Jan. 1, 2016. By May 14, 2016, a cease-fire between Syrian government and opposition groups will come into force, allowing the process for drafting a new constitution to begin. Finally, by May 14, 2017, U.N.-administered free elections will be held under the new constitution, ushering in a new government and, hopefully, bringing an end to fighting in the country.
The International Syria Support Group's aim is to get the foreign state participants in the Syrian conflict to reach an agreement on a solution to the country's civil war that would then be presented to the Syrians. The Washington Post reported that to facilitate the cease-fire, actors in the International Syria Support Group will stop all support and supplies to "various belligerents" on both sides once negotiations are underway.
Despite the latest initiative's ambitious goals, it is still unlikely that the plan will result in an effective end to the conflict. The following issues will prevent further progress in finding a solution:
Syrian Participation
The fact that no Syrian group from either the loyalist or rebel side was included in the negotiations points to the stark divisions that will plague the peace process. This was deliberate: The United States and other negotiating partners wanted to minimize friction during the talks so that the international group of negotiating powers could present a unified message to the key players in Syria.
However, the fact remains that while it will be difficult for the foreign powers to reach a consensus, it will be even harder for the warring parties on the ground in Syria. There are simply too many armed forces of varying ideologies and motivations driving the conflict.
The Opposition Picture
One of the principle difficulties in reaching an agreement, even at this early stage, is agreeing on which rebel groups should lead — let alone be included as representatives of — the opposition in the talks, if and when the talks take place. Even powers that support the rebels have significantly differing opinions. The United States, for instance, has long sought to mainly include the Free Syrian Army. However, it was recently reported that the United States, under pressure from Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Qatar, also conceded to accepting Ahrar al-Sham as a core opposition group.
The Kurdish question is another unresolved issue that does not appear to have been addressed in the latest meeting or subsequent agreement. Turkey will undoubtedly be wary of any significant role given to the Syrian Kurds in upcoming negotiations, while the Kurds are sure to push for greater autonomy, conflicting with both the wider rebel and loyalist positions.
Perhaps the greatest obstacle, however, is the sheer number of armed rebel organizations in the civil war. Hundreds of groups, from the very small to the very powerful, such as the Army of Islam, Ahrar al-Sham and the wider Free Syrian Army, are fighting in Syria. Reaching a consensus on a rebel negotiating position when the rebels themselves can only really agree on the need for President Bashar al Assad's downfall could critically undermine the negotiation process.
Terrorist List
Even with a negotiated agreement between rebel groups and Damascus, the Syrian civil war would not completely stop because two major terrorist groups — the Islamic State and Jabhat al-Nusra — would remain. The Islamic State is an uncontroversial issue since virtually all armed forces in Syria are the Islamic State's enemies. The group's attacks in Paris have also made an end to the Syrian crisis even more desirable, though the issue always had some measure of urgency. But the inclusion of Jabhat al-Nusra and similar groups on the terrorist list would considerably complicate the situation and threatens to unravel any potential agreement.
Several rebel groups including Islamist group Ahrar al-Sham and the largely secular Free Syrian Army have operated and continue to operate closely with Jabhat al-Nusra. Convincing these rebel groups to disentangle themselves from their alliances with Jabhat al-Nusra, whether those alliances are ideological or out of convenience, will be difficult. It would be even more challenging to convince the same rebel groups to stop fighting the loyalist forces and turn their guns on Jabhat al-Nusra.
At the same time, continued strikes on Jabhat al-Nusra in such a narrow and clearly saturated battlefield could also rapidly undermine the negotiation process as other rebel groups are damaged. The Russians have previously struck Free Syrian Army allies of Jabhat al-Nusra, essentially arguing that they operate together and are therefore the same. The Russians will be keen to maximize the number of rebel groups on the terrorist list, likely forcing certain rebel factions into breaking from any negotiation process altogether.
Finally, Jabhat al-Nusra is hardly the only extremist group within the rebel landscape beyond the Islamic State. Jihadist groups such as Jabhat Ansar al-Din and Jund al-Aqsa maintain similar or even more extreme ideological positions. These groups will be especially opposed to a cease-fire pushed from abroad and will likely continue operations even as loyalist and rebel factions seek peace.
Ending Support
Any effort to force belligerents in the conflict to agree to a cease-fire by withdrawing supplies and support will be complicated by the fact that many of the International Syria Support Group members are themselves active participants in the conflict. Iran and Russia are present on the ground in a fighting capacity, while the United States is increasingly inserting itself into the conflict in support of its Syrian Democratic Forces allies. These nations, as well as others such as Turkey and Saudi Arabia, could claim that support given to their respective proxies is meant to combat the Islamic State and Jabhat al-Nusra, rather than other loyalist or rebel forces. All sides will have an incentive to ensure their own preferred groups are better advantaged if and when they reach the negotiating table, making it extremely difficult to halt the flow of all supplies in practice.
Moreover, the International Syrian Support Group process deliberately omitted the question of the Syrian president's future in its most recent meeting. The group's members readily admit that al Assad's position is a polarizing issue, and many fear that raising the issue would undermine progress before it even begins. However, this only highlights the disputes that have yet to be settled in the process.
Ultimately, Russia and Iran are not entirely committed to ensuring al Assad's personal leadership of Syria as long as their interests are met, but stepping in to convince al Assad to leave power — let alone successfully doing so — is a step both Tehran and Moscow would only take when they are truly confortable with the talks' progress. But at this stage, the obstacles that still lie ahead make getting there as distant a prospect as ever.
-
https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/post-partisan/wp/2015/11/18/u-s-drones-have-been-striking-islamic-state-members-planning-attacks-in-america/
-
Generally, most of us here have sneered at Lindsay Graham, but what say we now about his recommended strategy in light of the current situation and trajectory?
-
Generally, most of us here have sneered at Lindsay Graham, but what say we now about his recommended strategy in light of the current situation and trajectory?
Not sure to what you refer:
This? Or please post details.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/lindsey-graham-obama-isis_564cd871e4b00b7997f8c0df
Lindsey Graham Backs Obama's Call For War Powers Against ISIS
Senator proposes granting the White House sweeping authority to attack the terror group anywhere
-------------------------------
Yes, Republicans should pass enabling legislation - as if we did have a commander in chief.
Lindsey Graham is a hawk, very strong on foreign policy and homeland security. If that were the only issue, he would be among the best. (He is also very strong at prosecuting the case against Hillary Clinton and the email and Benghazi mess.) He is a slow learner on some other issues...
-
Fair enough!
Allow me to clarify: For quite a while now he has been advocating a coalition, led by the US (approx 10% US troops) of US, Jordan, Egypt, and IIRC Turkey and Saudi Arabia too to go in and take out ISIS (Assad too, but that was pre-Russia)
-
U.S. Eyes Russia-Iran Split in Bid to End Syria Conflict
Washington’s Middle East allies aim to coax Putin to support limits on Tehran-backed Assad’s time in power
Russian President Vladimir Putin, right, and Syrian President Bashar al-Assad on Oct. 20 arrived for a meeting at the Kremlin in Moscow. Photo: Alexei Druzhinin/Kremlin/Associated Press
By Jay Solomon
Updated Nov. 19, 2015 12:59 p.m. ET
WSJ
WASHINGTON—The Obama administration and European and Arab allies are seeking to peel Russia away from its alliance with Iran, a partnership that has bolstered Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, said senior diplomats involved in efforts to end Syria’s lengthy conflict.
The efforts, which have unfolded quietly through meetings involving Russian President Vladimir Putin and Middle Eastern leaders, are meant to coax support from Moscow for a limit on Mr. Assad’s time in power. Such a step would solidify an emerging international coalition and help clear the way for a more concerted military effort to counter Islamic State in Syria and Iraq.
Iran is seen as a brake on those efforts because of its more staunchly pro-Assad position, which it wants the Kremlin to support. If Russia holds fast to Iran and Mr. Assad, it would undermine hopes for an international consensus.
A senior U.S. official on Tuesday said Washington has seen “increased tensions between Russia and Iran over the question of the future of Syria.”
U.S. and European officials also said they believe Iran’s elite military unit, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, has withdrawn some troops from Syria in recent weeks, because of a strain on its resources. The IRGC has ramped up its military presence in Syria since September, in coordination with Russia’s airstrikes on rebel militias. A number of senior IRGC officers have been killed in Syria in recent months.
Russian President Vladimir Putin, right, met with Iran's President Hassan Rouhani on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly in September. ENLARGE
Russian President Vladimir Putin, right, met with Iran's President Hassan Rouhani on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly in September. Photo: Mikhail Klimentyev/Kremlin/Reuters
Mr. Putin has held discussions in recent weeks with leaders from Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Israel, and has indicated Moscow would seek to limit Iran’s influence inside Syria as part of any negotiated settlement to the conflict, the senior diplomats said.
Saudi Arabia, in particular, has lobbied the Kremlin against supporting Mr. Assad in the long term and empowering Iran, his closest regional ally, said Arab officials.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, meanwhile, held talks with Mr. Putin in Moscow that focused on denying Iran and the Lebanese militia, Hezbollah, the ability to use Syrian territory to launch attacks on Israel.
Related
Abaaoud, Alleged Ringleader or Paris Attacks, Is Dead
Warily, U.N. Security Council Edges in Direction of Unity on Syria
Global Anti-ISIS Alliance Begins to Emerge
Islamic State Publishes Photo of Airliner Bomb
FBI Stymied by Islamic State’s Use of Encryption, Director Says
Russia Says Bomb Brought Down Plane in Egypt
French President François Hollande wants a new international coalition led by his country, the U.S. and Russia to combat Islamic State, which is suspected in last week’s attacks in Paris and the downing of a Russian airliner over Egypt in October.
However, Mr. Hollande, like U.S. President Barack Obama, has long held that Mr. Assad is a chief source of the Syrian crisis and must be removed from office before Syria’s woes can be addressed. Moscow and Tehran are longtime Assad supporters.
Russia offered a resolution before the United Nations Security Council on Wednesday designed to provide international support for efforts to counter Islamic State. France also is expected to offer a resolution, and diplomats said that Security Council members are seeking unity on Syria.
Residents were evacuated on Wednesday in Saint-Denis, near Paris, after a police raid on a terrorist hideout left two people dead. ENLARGE
Residents were evacuated on Wednesday in Saint-Denis, near Paris, after a police raid on a terrorist hideout left two people dead. Photo: Peter Dejong/Associated Press
The resolution from Russia defines terrorist groups in Syria in broad terms while still targeting the Islamic State extremist group. The French text will focus more tightly on Islamic State. François Delattre, France’s ambassador to the U.N., said that France and Russia would work on their respective resolutions but it remained unclear whether the resolutions eventually would be merged or remain separate. Tensions could surface among Council members if one resolution was rejected in favor of the other.
U.S., European and Arab officials said they remain cautious about Mr. Putin’s willingness to distance Russia from Iran and Mr. Assad. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov on Tuesday repeated his government’s official stance that no preconditions be set on the Syrian dictator’s departure as part of the negotiations aimed at ending the Syrian conflict.
Still, the growth of Islamic State in Syria and Iraq, and its suspected role in the recent terror attacks, has intensified calls in Washington and Europe for a unified position with Russia.
Iran offered no indication during recent talks in Vienna on Syria that it was willing to pressure Mr. Assad to leave office. But U.S. and European officials said they are more optimistic that the Kremlin will show flexibility on the Syrian leader’s tenure as the diplomacy continues.
New talks are scheduled for December, and the U.S. and Russia said they would push for a formal cease-fire between Mr. Assad’s forces and his political opponents—but not Islamic State.
“A lot will depend on where the Russians go according to their own interests,” said a European official involved in the Syria diplomacy.
Arab states have made clear to Mr. Putin that their support for the cease-fire was conditional on a time frame being set for Mr. Assad’s departure, the European official added. “They will not do that at all unless there is a clear sign of a political transition” in Damascus, said the official.
Mr. Putin held separate discussions with leaders of Saudi Arabia and the U.A.E. in the Black Sea resort of Sochi on Oct. 11 to discuss Syria, said officials briefed on the diplomacy. Included in the meetings were the crown prince of the U.A.E, Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, and the deputy crown prince and defense minister of Saudi Arabia, Mohammed bin Salman.
The meetings happened weeks after Russia and Iran launched joint military operations in Syria to aid Mr. Assad against an advancing insurgency that includes Islamic State and rebel militias supported by the U.S. and its allies. Saudi officials publicly warned Moscow after its intervention that Moscow could face rising opposition from Sunni Muslim states because of the Kremlin’s alliance with Shiite-dominated Iran and Mr. Assad.
Sunni Arab leaders have warned Russia that its military intervention in Syria has allied it with Shiite Iran, Mr. Assad’s Alawite sect and Christians against the region’s Sunni majority.
Mr. Putin, however, surprised his royal guests by stressing Russia would seek to diminish Iran’s role inside Syria as part of the campaign, said the officials briefed on the talks. The Russian leader specifically that said if the Arab states supported him he would help them in their efforts to contain Tehran.
Russian officials didn’t respond to requests for comment about the discussions.
Mr. Putin met Mr. Netanyahu weeks earlier in Moscow in a bid to make sure that the Russian and Israeli militaries wouldn’t mistakenly target each other inside Syria. But Mr. Putin conveyed a similar message to the Israeli leader—that Russia’s role in Syria could serve to constrict Iran’s and Hezbollah’s operations.
Last week, Mr. Netanyahu voiced confidence during a trip to Washington that Russia and Israel were now largely on the same page with respect to Israel’s interests in Syria. “If Iran wants to establish a second front along the Golan Heights as it’s established in southern Lebanon, we’ll take forceful action, as we have,” he said then.
Historically, Russia and Iran have been strategic rivals. Czarist Russia conquered territories controlled by the Persian Empire in the Caucuses and modern day Azerbaijan during wars fought during the early 1800s.
Moscow helped Iran build its Bushehr nuclear power plant after the 1979 Islamic revolution, but later cooperated with the U.S. to constrain Iran’s nuclear program. Former President Dmitry Medvedev backed United Nations sanctions on Iran that sought to force Tehran to stop producing nuclear fuel.
However, Mr. Putin, since reclaiming the presidency in 2012, deepened military and economic cooperation with Tehran. Moscow recently said it would complete the sale of a sophisticated antimissile system to Tehran. And the two countries have closely coordinated over the past year in defending Mr. Assad.
Still, U.S. and European officials said they believed Iran is concerned that Russia’s growing military presence in Syria could minimize Tehran’s influence in Damascus. And they said these divisions between Moscow and Tehran may become more pronounced as the negotiations continue.
“We think there are some tensions between the Russians and the Iranians,” U.K. Foreign Secretary Phillip Hammond said last week.
—Farnaz Fassihi contributed to this article
-
Gallup: 64% Disapproved of Obama’s Handling of ISIS—Before Paris Attacks
http://cnsnews.com/news/article/terence-p-jeffrey/gallup-64-disapproved-obamas-handling-isis-poll-taken-nov-4-8-paris
-
Just noticed this thread has gone over 100,000 reads :mrgreen:
=================================
By Scott Stewart
Earlier this month I wrote an analysis asserting that time is working against the Islamic State. I argued that the factors responsible for the Islamic State's stunning rise in popularity last year — the group's territorial gains, its successes against authorities and its propaganda — are starting to wear out. Much of the group's appeal lies in its portrayal of itself as an agent of apocalyptic Islamic prophecy, and as time passes without the prophecies coming true, people will become increasingly disillusioned.
Since that analysis was published, it has come to light that the Islamic State's Wilayat Sinai was responsible for the Oct. 31 bombing of Metrojet Flight 9268. Meanwhile, the Islamic State also claimed responsibility for the Nov. 13 Paris attacks. In the wake of these incidents, many people are asking me, "How can the Islamic State be weakening when they are conducting spectacular terrorist attacks?" So I thought it would be a good time to discuss where terrorism fits within the spectrum of militancy and how a weakening militant organization can still effectively employ terrorism, even as its capabilities to wage conventional and guerrilla warfare diminish.
Tool of the Weak
For the most part, terrorism historically has been employed by weak militant organizations against militarily stronger opponents. (There are, of course, exceptions to this.) Many revolutionary theories hold that terrorism is the first step toward launching a wider insurgency and eventually toppling a government. Marxist, Maoist and focoist militant groups have often sought to use terrorism as the beginning phase of an armed struggle. In some ways, al Qaeda and its spinoff, the Islamic State, have also followed a type of focoist vanguard strategy. They attempt to use terrorism to shape public opinion and raise popular support for their cause, expecting to enhance their strength enough to wage an insurgency and later, conventional warfare, to establish an emirate and eventually a global caliphate.
Terrorism can also be used to supplement an insurgency or conventional warfare. In such cases, it is employed to keep the enemy off-balance and distracted, principally by conducting strikes against vulnerable targets at the enemy's rear. Such attacks are intended to force the enemy to divert security forces to guard these vulnerable targets. The Afghan Taliban employs terrorism in this manner, as does the Islamic State. But the goal of most militant organizations that employ terrorism is to progress beyond it and pursue larger, more complex forms of military action. Most revolutionaries do not believe they can overthrow a regime with terrorism alone.
Despite its limited use in overthrowing a government, terrorism is a very economical tool. It takes far less manpower and fewer weapons to conduct a terrorist attack than it does to wage guerilla or conventional warfare. In fact, the manpower and ammunition required for one large guerrilla warfare battle could be enough to support many terrorist attacks.
Organizations that are no longer capable of conventional warfare will often shift to fighting a less resource-intensive, hit-and-run insurgency as a means to continue fighting. Likewise, militant groups who have taken losses on the battlefield often shift from insurgency to terrorism in an effort to remain relevant and continue striking their opponents while conserving resources and attempting to rebuild, with the goal of someday returning to larger-scale military efforts.
Shifting to Terrorism
For many years now, Somalia's al Shabaab has served as a prime example of an organization moving up and down the militancy spectrum. It has switched back and forth between holding and governing areas, waging an insurgency and launching terrorist attacks. Of course, al Shabaab also often used terrorist attacks to supplement its insurgency campaign.
But as outside forces from Ethiopia, Uganda and Kenya invaded Somalia and removed al Shabaab from Mogadishu and then Kismayo, the group also shifted the focus of its terrorist attacks: Instead of purely internal offensives, it began to launch more externally focused attacks in places like Uganda and Kenya. Still, despite lashing out against Uganda and Kenya, al Shabaab continues to be hard-pressed inside Somalia, and it has not been able to maintain a high tempo of attacks outside the country.
The Islamic State's Wilayat al Sudan al Gharbi (better known by its former name, Boko Haram) has also shifted from holding and governing territory to insurgency and terrorism. As noted in a previous analysis, the group's use of suicide attackers has increased dramatically this year as it has lost control of areas it had previously taken over in northeastern Nigeria. Unlike other jihadist groups, a very high percentage of Wilayat al Sudan al Gharbi's suicide bombers are female; in 2015 alone, they employed more female suicide bombers than any group in history. In fact, Wilayat al Sudan al Gharbi has employed more than twice as many female suicide bombers so far this year as its total number of bombers (26) in 2014.
Wilayat al Sudan al Gharbi also lashed out with suicide bombings in Chad, Cameroon and Niger, countries that are supporting Nigeria's fight against the jihadist group. Yet despite this rapid escalation of suicide bombings (the group has conducted well over 100 this year), and their spread to neighboring countries, there is no doubt that the group is considerably weaker now than it was in 2013, when it didn't conduct any suicide bombings, or in 2014, when it conducted only 26 suicide bombings. In other words, the number of terrorist attacks a militant organization launches is not necessarily an accurate gauge of its strength.
The same holds true for the Islamic State's core organization. It is still unclear exactly what the connection was between the Paris attackers and the Islamic State core, but even if the core leadership planned, funded and directed the attack, the Islamic State's ability to hit soft targets in Paris does not mean that it is getting stronger. Indeed, the Paris attack is merely the latest of several Islamic State plots that have emerged in Europe over the past year. The difference is that officials did not detect and thwart the Nov. 13 plot, as they did the others that very well could have achieved similar results. Likewise, the fact that the Islamic State's Wilayat Sinai was able to destroy a Russian airliner has little bearing on the current strength of the Islamic State core or its Egyptian branch.
That said, even though the Islamic State is weakening as its fighters die, it loses financing and territory, and its apocalyptic message loses appeal, the group will continue to pose a terrorist threat. The same was true of its predecessor, the Islamic State in Iraq, after it lost its territory and most of its fighters following the Anbar Awakening. Terrorist attacks ultimately require far fewer resources than holding and governing territory, which will enable the Islamic State to remain dangerous long after it loses control of Ramadi, Mosul, Raqqa and the other territories it governs.
-
I have some big questions about some aspects of this, but the man's track record is serious and his ideas deserve serious consideration:
http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2015/11/obama-isis-strategy-afghanistan-war-213380
-
I have some big questions about some aspects of this, but the man's track record is serious and his ideas deserve serious consideration:
http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2015/11/obama-isis-strategy-afghanistan-war-213380
Treat ISIL like the Taliban? Hammer it initially then pull out and give everything back?
-
http://www.israelvideonetwork.com/syrian-rebels-blow-up-russian-helicopter-after-jet-downed/?omhide=true&utm_source=MadMimi&utm_medium=email&utm_content=Syrian+rebels+blow+up+Russian+helicopter+after+jet+downed&utm_campaign=20151124_m128403273_11%2F24+Breaking+Israel+Video%3A+Syrian+rebels+blow+up+Russian+helicopter+after+jet+downed&utm_term=Syrian+rebels+blow+up+Russian+helicopter+after+jet+downed
-
Reliability completely unknown
https://www.facebook.com/jeanbaptiste.kim.3/videos/146392639052889/
-
Reliability completely unknown
https://www.facebook.com/jeanbaptiste.kim.3/videos/146392639052889/
I'm calling BS.
-
http://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2015/11/what-is-going-on-in-syria-model-this.html
-
(Thread could be called, this is what happens when America fails to lead.)
http://www.nationalreview.com/article/427603/downed-russian-plane-warn-putin-not-to-escalate
Turkey is a member of NATO. Russia is supposed to be attacking ISIS, in lieu of having a US-led coalitions, but really is propping up the Assad regime. Erdogan, our ally, bombs the Kurds, our ally, and launched a Sunni Islamist revival in Turkey, has refused to let NATO use Turkish bases.
'The caliphate survives because its defeat is nobody’s priority. America’s aim is to limit its military commitment in the Middle East. For Saudi Arabia and the Gulf monarchies, the big threat is Iran. Iran’s main mission is to prop up the Syrian dictator, Bashar Assad. Mr Assad’s first concern is holding other rebels at bay. The rebels’ obsession is to get rid of Mr Assad.'
http://www.economist.com/news/leaders/21660123-bombing-kurds-well-islamic-state-turkey-adding-chaos-middle
We are inactively at war with Russia in the Ukraine, while he is our ally acting on 'our behalf' as boots in the air in Syria.
I may have already asked this, what could possibly go wrong?
-
Putin has announced he is putting in his extremely potent anti-aircraft system into Syria.
As best as I can tell, this means short of total war the US (and Turkey, and France) is now denied the airspace.
From our side , , , crickets , , ,
-
"From our side , , , crickets , , ,"
Who is 'our side'? The Obama administration??
-
In the heaviest Russian strikes against the Islamic State to date, the Russian air force and navy deployed dozens of cruise missiles and other weaponry against Islamic State targets in Syria on Tuesday, particularly in and around Raqqa, the militants' self-proclaimed capital. Russian Tu-160, Tu-95 and Tu-22M strategic long-range bombers flew their missions from bases in southern Russia, while the Russian cruiser Moskva fired a number of cruise missiles from the Mediterranean Sea. In a signal that this was just the start, Russian army Gen. Valery Gerasimov has indicated that Russia is allocating 25 strategic bombers for the Syrian mission.
Since Russian airstrikes began in Syria on Sept. 30, Moscow's attention has been focused largely on striking non-Islamic State rebels, some of whom were actively supported by other Arab States, the United States and Turkey. The Russians in effect reinforced the Syrian loyalist strategy of designating the non-Islamic State rebels as the primary threat and sought to reduce these rebels' ability to threaten the core city of Hama as well as the Syrian coast. Over time, Russian efforts did begin to include more Islamic State targets. For example, Russia provided active air support to loyalist forces advancing toward the previously besieged Kweiris air base and the Islamic State-occupied ancient city of Palmyra.
What is a Geopolitical Diary?
The overwhelming Russian focus on the other rebels in lieu of the Islamic State appears to have shifted even more after the Oct. 31 crash of Metrojet Flight 9268 in Sinai, in which 224 (mostly Russian) passengers and crew were killed. The Islamic State claimed responsibility for bringing down the aircraft — a claim Russia finally confirmed on Tuesday. Russian President Vladimir Putin vowed to hunt down those responsible and intensify airstrikes against Islamist extremists in Syria.
Recent events in France may also give Russia more leverage with the Europeans. Fully aware of the effects of the Islamic State attacks in Paris on Nov. 13, Russia will use the attacks to highlight the necessity of Russian-European cooperation in the fight against the Islamic State. Under French President Francois Hollande's stewardship, France has already suffered one major attack in January. Now the president's main concern is not to appear weak, especially considering that his two main rivals — center-right leader Nicolas Sarkozy and the far-right's Marine Le Pen — are traditionally stronger on security issues. Sarkozy and Le Pen also have ties to Russia and have urged Paris to strengthen its relationship with Moscow.
The French have also significantly ramped up their air campaign against the Islamic State over the past two days, and Hollande is set to meet with Putin on Nov. 26 in the wake of the French president's call for a global campaign against radicals. Moreover, Putin has given orders for Russian forces to link up with the French. The Kremlin announced that Putin had spoken to Hollande by telephone. He then ordered the Russian navy to establish contact with a French naval force heading to the eastern Mediterranean, led by an aircraft carrier, and to treat the French forces as allies.
Though the common cause of fighting the Islamic State may cause Russia and the West (particularly France) to collaborate more closely in Syria, there are still very real limits to that cooperation. Russia is ramping up its campaign against the Islamic State, but overall it is likely to remain focused on fighting non-Islamic State rebels. After all, Russia is trying to maintain its strategic position in Syria, and in its view, to fully address the Islamic State threat the country first needs a viable government. So long as these rebels continue to pose a critical threat to the Syrian government, Russia will continue supporting its loyalist allies on the ground against rebel advances. This dynamic will only reinforce U.S., European, Turkish and Sunni Arab support for the rebels, undermining the potential for a credible and lasting cease-fire.
Beyond Syria, the limits of Russia's cooperation on the Syrian battlefield will keep Moscow from getting all the concessions it wants from the Europeans, including relief from the sanctions imposed on Russia for its actions in Ukraine. So far, the United States and its European partners have not let the Russian government link cooperation in Syria to the ongoing Minsk negotiations over Ukraine. Russia may have better chances with France at this stage to try to strike a broader bargain, but even its newfound leverage is probably insufficient. Sanctions removal would require a unanimous European decision, and there are still enough European nations backed by the United States in their opposition to easing restrictions, that for now any efforts to give Russia sanctions relief will likely fail.
-
second post:
By Ambika Vishwanath
The Islamic State's use of natural resources to achieve its strategic goals is nothing new. Oil, one of the group's biggest sources of funding, plays an especially important role in its calculations — something the countries fighting the Islamic State are increasingly coming to realize. And they have begun to adjust their target sets accordingly. The United States and France, for example, have begun to launch airstrikes against the group's oil trucks and distribution centers, hoping to hamper its ability to pay for its military operations.
But what is less talked about, although no less important, is the Islamic State's use of water in its fight to establish a caliphate. Its tactics have brought water to the forefront of the conflict in Iraq and Syria, threatening the very existence of the people living under its oppressive rule. If the Islamic State's opponents do not move to sever the group's hold over Iraqi and Syrian water sources — and soon — it may prove difficult to liberate the region from the Islamic State's hold in the long term.
An Age-Old Conflict
Civilizations have long battled for access to water and founded their empires around great rivers. Historians believe that the ancient Sumerian city of Ur was favored by the empires that followed for its abundance of water and its proximity to the Persian Gulf. Other accounts say the city's inhabitants abandoned it amid severe droughts and the drying up of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers. Today, drought and low rainfall compete with the manmade disaster of terrorism to destroy the same, once-fertile swathe of land stretching along the two rivers.
What is Global Affairs?
Governments and non-state actors alike have used water as a weapon for centuries. While the number of full-blown wars over water resources has been lower than one might expect, given how critical water is to any population's survival, smaller conflicts have been numerous, destructive and deadly. The Middle East has fallen prey to this competition in recent years as states and groups have increasingly shifted from simply cutting off water supplies for a short period of time to diverting water flows or completely draining supplies in an attempt to threaten or coerce consumers.
The Islamic State is no exception. Since the group began expanding its territorial claims in western Syria, it has used water as a tool in its broader strategy of advancing and establishing control over new land. True, the Islamic State has also (and perhaps more visibly) targeted strategic oil and natural gas fields in both Syria and Iraq, but a close look at the group's movements clearly indicates that the Tigris and Euphrates rivers hold a central role in its planning. Recognition of the Islamic State's intention to organize its new caliphate around the Tigris-Euphrates Basin may prove helpful in the long-term fight against the group.
In 2012, the Islamic State emerged from the power vacuum created by the Syrian civil war and made its presence known in the western city of Aleppo. It had little in common with Syria's other rebel groups, which were primarily focused on fighting the forces of Syrian President Bashar al Assad for regime change. Instead, the Islamic State was a terrorist organization with a clear agenda and strategy: It wanted to build an Islamic caliphate that would, from its perspective, follow the truest form of Islam as decreed by the Prophet Mohammed. Over the following year, the group moved quickly and decisively, cutting a path through Syria and toward Iraq, capturing the key towns of Maskana, Raqqa, Deir el-Zour and al-Bukamal — all of which are positioned along the Euphrates River.
The Iraqi front didn't look much different; the Islamic State easily captured the river towns of Qaim, Rawah, Ramadi and Fallujah, two of which (Rawah and Ramadi) gave the group direct access to two of Iraq's major lakes, Haditha Dam Lake and Lake Tharthar. Meanwhile, the Islamic State pursued a similar strategy along the Tigris River, successfully capturing Mosul and Tikrit and attempting to seize other towns and cities along the way. In Iraq the goal was Baghdad, from which the group could rule a caliphate encompassing Syria and Iraq. While the oil and natural gas fields it seized along the way were a means for the group to threaten military forces and make money, the bodies of water and infrastructure were a means to hold the entire region hostage.
Historically, the Euphrates and Tigris rivers have been an important source of contention between Turkey, Syria, Iraq and Iran. The lack of cooperation and coordination between these countries on sharing the mighty rivers has led to a failure to regulate their use and an overconsumption of resources. Consequently, any and all activity by upstream nations regarding the water resources carries the risk of agitating tensions with downstream countries. With no regional coordination and poor security along the rivers themselves, terrorist groups — including the Islamic State — have been able to use water as both a target and a weapon. Not only have they destroyed water-related infrastructure such as pipes, sanitation plants, bridges and cables connected to water installations, but they have also used water as an instrument of violence by deliberately flooding towns, polluting bodies of water and ruining local economies by disrupting electricity generation and agriculture.
Since 2013, the Islamic State has launched nearly 20 major attacks (as well as countless smaller assaults) against Syrian and Iraqi water infrastructure. Some of these attacks include flooding villages, threatening to flood Baghdad, closing the dam gates in Fallujah and Ramadi, cutting off water to Mosul, and allegedly poisoning water in small Syrian towns, to name just a few. Most of these operations are aimed at government forces, designed to fight the military by using water as a weapon against them, though some targeted water infrastructure to disrupt troop movements. Such efforts also often have the added benefit of enhancing recruitment efforts; by allowing water to flow to towns sympathetic to the Islamic State's cause, or even by simply doing a better job of providing necessary services, the group can attract more men and women to its ranks.
With water at the core of its expansionist strategy, the Islamic State has also ensured that bodies of water and their corresponding infrastructure have moved to the forefront of the ongoing conflict in the Middle East. The control of major water resources and dams has, in turn, given the Islamic State a firm grip on the supplies used to support agriculture and electricity generation. Mosul Dam, for example, gave the Islamic State control over 75 percent of Iraq's electricity generation while it was in the group's possession. In 2014, when the group shut down Fallujah's Nuaimiyah Dam, the subsequent flooding destroyed 200 square kilometers (about 77 square miles) of Iraqi fields and villages. And in June 2015, the Islamic State closed the Ramadi barrage in Anbar province, reducing water flows to the famed Iraqi Marshes and forcing the Arabs living there to flee. While coalition and government forces in both countries have managed to recapture some key water sites, the threat of further damage persists.
At the same time, governments and militaries have used similar tactics to combat the Islamic State, closing the gates of dams or attacking water infrastructure under their control. But the Islamic State's fighters are not the only ones hurt by these efforts — the surrounding population suffers, too. The Syrian government has been repeatedly accused of withholding water, reducing flows or closing dam gates during its battles against the Islamic State or rebel groups, and it used the denial of clean water as a coercive tactic against many suburbs of Damascus thought to be sympathetic to the rebels.
Finding a Regional Solution
Because of its importance to both electricity generation and agricultural production, water has the power to run or ruin an economy. And since bodies of water often extend beyond any one country's borders, history shows that the competition for water resources can often only be settled peacefully through regional cooperation. Before Iraq and Syria deteriorated, and groups like the Islamic State arose, countries around the Tigris and Euphrates rivers had only each other to contend with. And in late 2010, the leaders of Turkey, Syria, Lebanon and Jordan appeared to be on the verge of making progress toward setting up an integrated economic region. The countries' leaders called for regionwide cooperation on tourism, banking, trade and other sectors, and could have laid the foundation for further agreements on the distribution of shared natural resources like water. Though ambitious, the ideas and sentiments behind the proposals had the power to transform the region.
But politics prevailed, as is so often the case, and in less than a year the moment was lost. Had Turkey, Iraq and Syria taken the opportunity to act while political conditions were favorable, they would have found it easier to collectively tackle the Islamic State's advance later on. Bodies of water could have been labeled regional commons and thus the collective responsibility of all parties, ensuring swifter reactions by the governments involved to protect the water and associated infrastructure from terrorism. This, in turn, would have better protected the people and areas surrounding the rivers and lakes in the region. Of course, it is easy to look back and lament actions not taken, but the point remains that there is still a chance for these countries to come together and start working collectively to protect the water resources they share.
There is no doubt that the Islamic State has a very clear strategy, one that extends even beyond Syria and Iraq and into the wider region. The group has established bases throughout North Africa, following a similar path of controlling key resources and using them as weapons against the populations and governments it seeks to coerce or destroy. It is time that nearby states and the international community re-examine what they know about the Islamic State's tactics and formulate a new plan of action. Forces fighting the Islamic State must look at the region as a single integrated basin and bring bodies of water — and by extension, the populations dependent on them — to the forefront of their strategies. Water has always formed the core of civilizations; the Middle East — not to mention an Islamic State caliphate — is no different.
-
Why Turkey Can't Sell a Syrian Safe Zone
Geopolitical Diary
October 7, 2015 | 01:24 GMT Text Size
Print
(Stratfor)
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan was in Brussels on Tuesday with an ambitious agenda: to promote the establishment of a "safe zone" in northern Syria. Erdogan can see that the Europeans have no good solutions to their immigration crisis other than to manipulate the route and flow of migrants. The latest idea gaining traction in a host of European capitals is to keep the hundreds of thousands of people trying to cross the Mediterranean off of Europe's shores by bottling them up closer to home instead. Brussels would, of course, pay Ankara to take care of its problem by housing more refugees traveling overland. But Turkey, which already hosts more than 2.5 million Syrians and has spent $7.6 billion on the refugee crisis so far, isn't buying into Europe's offer. Erdogan wants more. Much more.
Now that Turkey has Europe's attention and Russia has blindsided the United States in Syria, Erdogan is attempting to use the chaotic climate to dust off his plans for a Syrian safe zone. The Turkish version of a safe zone entails reinforcing rebel forces that are friendly with Turkey to flush out the Islamic State from a zone measuring 80 kilometers (50 miles) by 40 kilometers in Syria's northern Aleppo province. A no-fly zone, according to the Turkish proposal, would accompany the safe zone. Once the zone is declared safe and free of terrorist activity, refugee camps would be set up and Syrian migrants could live within their country's borders again.
What is a Geopolitical Diary?
The motives behind Turkey's plan are many and thickly layered. Most important, Turkey needs to avoid augmenting the burden migrants are placing on it at home while its economy is deteriorating. Second, Turkey is legitimately threatened by the Islamic State and wants to create as much distance as possible between its borders and those of the self-proclaimed caliphate. But the reasons don't stop there. Turkey can see that its southern neighbor will be fragmented for the foreseeable future. Ankara does not want to eradicate the Islamic State only to see Kurdish forces take its place. Rather, it wants to establish a physical foothold in northern Syria to ensure that the Kurds cannot create a viable autonomous state that could exacerbate Turkey's own Kurdish problem at home.
There is also a broader objective framing Turkey's strategy. A divided Syria undoubtedly creates risk, but it also presents an opportunity for Turkey to expand its sphere of influence in the Levant. This is the main driver behind Turkey's campaign to topple Syrian President Bashar al Assad's government and replace it with a Sunni Islamist-led administration that takes its cues from Ankara. After all, someone would have to provide security to make the zone in northern Syria "safe"; Turkish forces and civilian personnel presumably would take the lead in reinforcing such a corridor, potentially placing Turkish boots back on Arab soil.
Meanwhile, there is a murkier motive to consider. Turkey's ruling Justice and Development Party will enter the Nov. 2 elections with a low chance of winning enough votes to regain its majority in parliament. The likelihood of the elections resulting in another hung parliament, coupled with Erdogan's reluctance to share power, raises the potential (albeit in an extreme scenario) for Turkey to use the premise of a military operation in Syria to stave off a third round of elections.
But Russia is botching Turkey's plans. Russia, Turkey and NATO are still arguing over whether two alleged Russian violations of Turkish airspace near the Syrian border were intentional (as Turkey and NATO claim) or accidental (as Russia insists they were). Russian Deputy Defense Minister Anatoly Antonov said Tuesday that Russia was ready to form a working group and that it would be pleased to host Turkish Defense Ministry officials in Moscow to avoid further misunderstandings in Syria. Ankara has no choice but to interpret Russia's actions as a signal that Moscow is willing to interfere in a Turkish-led safe zone if Ankara tries to push ahead with its plans.
Moscow's strategy has already begun to bear fruit. The European officials who met with Erdogan in Brussels listened politely to his ideas for a safe zone and promised to discuss the idea further. But no European power wants to risk getting mixed up with a brazen Russia on the Syrian battlefield. The Europeans would rather bargain with Erdogan on issues such as visa liberalization for Turkish citizens and Turkey's acceptance of more migrants on the Continent's behalf instead.
The United States has kept Turkey's safe zone plan at arm's length for similar reasons. However, Russia's military adventurism in Syria is accelerating U.S. plans for a rebel offensive that could still at least partially fit with Turkey's interests.
In the coming months, the United States will be focused on the areas east and west of the Euphrates River. To the east, the United States will ramp up its support for Kurdish forces and their allies in preparation for a move toward Raqqa against the Islamic State. Greater U.S. support for Kurdish forces will not please Turkish leaders, but the United States' simultaneous boost in aid for the rebels Turkey has been preparing to the west will. Here, the United States and Turkey will work together to try to carve out a border zone free of the Islamic State's presence. The Americans are avoiding the label of a safe zone to keep the operation from conflating with Turkey's more ambitious agenda. Nonetheless, the United States will be indirectly taking the first crucial steps toward Turkey's ultimate goals for northern Syria.
Of course, Turkey will still have to contend with Russia. Moscow will do whatever it can to play off the fears of the NATO alliance. If a buffer zone were established in Syria and if Turkey, a NATO member, tried to protect the airspace over the zone, who would shoot down the Russian air force in the event that it crossed into the zone? In Brussels, Erdogan reiterated that "an attack on Turkey means an attack on NATO." But if NATO proves too afraid of the consequences of responding to Russian interference, then NATO's credibility will have been dealt a major blow. And that is exactly the outcome the Russians are hoping for.
-
My money is on Putin getting payback, and NATO crumbling.
-
Assad and ISIS are in business together.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/islamic-state/11455602/Oil-middleman-between-Syria-and-Isil-is-new-target-for-EU-sanctions.html
Who knew?
-
ANKARA, Turkey — Turkey and Russia promised on Wednesday not to go to war over the downing of a Russian military jet, leaving Turkey’s still-nervous NATO allies and just about everyone else wondering why the country decided to risk such a serious confrontation.
From Our Advertisers
The reply from the Turkish government so far has been consistent: Don’t say we didn’t warn you.
Though minor airspace violations are fairly common and usually tolerated, Turkey had repeatedly called in Russia’s ambassador to complain about aircraft intrusions and about bombing raids in Syria near the border. President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said on Tuesday evening — and a Pentagon spokesman later confirmed — that before a Turkish F-16 shot down the Russian Su-24 jet, Turkish forces had warned the Russian plane 10 times in five minutes to steer away.
Continue reading the main story
Related Coverage
A military plane in flames after being shot down by Turkish fighter jets near to the Syrian border on Tuesday.
Navigator of Downed Russian Plane Says There Was No WarningNOV. 25, 2015
Kirsan N. Ilyumzhinov, shown in 2011, is accused of “materially assisting” the government of Syria and top banking officials there.
U.S. Announces Sanctions on 2 Accused of Dealings With Assad or ISISNOV. 25, 2015
NATO-Russia Tensions Rise After Turkey Downs JetNOV. 24, 2015
A Russian Internet meme created on Tuesday, just after the nation's president called an attack by Turkey a
Open Source: Anger at Turkey’s ‘Stab in the Back’ Fills Russian Social Networks and AirwavesNOV. 24, 2015
A military plane in flames after being shot down by Turkish fighter jets near to the Syrian border on Tuesday.
video
Turkey Footage Shows Downed PlaneNOV. 24, 2015
video
Russians Pelt Turkish Embassy with EggsNOV. 25, 2015
“I personally was expecting something like this, because in the past months there have been so many incidents like that,” Ismail Demir, Turkey’s undersecretary of national defense, said in an interview. “Our engagement rules were very clear, and any sovereign nation has a right to defend its airspace.”
News Clips: Europe By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS 2:09
Turkey Audio on Downed Russian Plane
Continue reading the main story
Video
Turkey Audio on Downed Russian Plane
In a recording released by the Turkish Air Force, through the prime minister's office, a voice can be heard repeatedly saying ”change your heading south immediately.” By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS on Publish Date November 26, 2015. Watch in Times Video »
embed
Share
Tweet
While that may be true, analysts said Mr. Erdogan had several more nuanced reasons to allow Turkish pilots to open fire. These include his frustration with Russia over a range of issues even beyond Syria, the Gordian knot of figuring out what to do with Syria itself and Turkey’s strong ethnic ties to the Turkmen villages Russia has been bombing lately in the area of the crash.
Turkey has been quietly seething ever since Russia began military operations against Syrian rebels two months ago, wrecking Ankara’s policy of ousting the government of President Bashar al-Assad. The Turks were forced to downgrade their ambitions from the ouster of Mr. Assad to simply maintaining a seat at the negotiating table when the time comes, said Soner Cagaptay, a Turkish analyst at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, a nonpartisan research group.
“That would require Turkey-backed rebels to be present in Syria, and I think Turkey was alarmed that Russia’s bombing of positions held by Turkey-backed rebels in northern Syria was hurting their positions and therefore Turkey’s future stakes in Syria,” Mr. Cagaptay said. “So this is also an aggressive Turkey posture in the Syrian civil war to prevent the defeat of Turkey-backed rebels so they can hold onto territory and have a say in the future of Syria.”
But the fate of the particular rebels the Russians were bombing in the mountainous Bayirbucak area where the plane was shot down is more than just a policy matter to the Turks. Mr. Erdogan particularly emphasized the ethnic tie in a speech Tuesday evening, saying, “We strongly condemn attacks focusing on areas inhabited by Bayirbucak Turkmen — we have our relatives, our kin there.”
Continue reading the main story
Graphic
Sorting Out What Russia and Turkey Say Happened in the Sky
Comparing the conflicting versions of the events.
OPEN Graphic
The Turkish prime minister, Ahmet Davutoglu, said as much on Wednesday while dismissing Russia’s explanation that it was fighting a common enemy, the Islamic State. “No one,” he said, “can legitimize attacks on Turkmens in Syria using the pretext of fighting the Islamic State.”
Advertisement
Continue reading the main story
The bombing was creating political problems for Mr. Erdogan, Mr. Cagaptay said. “In the days leading up to the incident, many newspapers, especially the pro-government publications, were running headlines highlighting the suffering of the Turkmens, who are closely related to Anatolian Turks,” he said. “I think the government felt that, in terms of domestic politics, it had to do something to ease some of this pressure that had resulted from the Russian bombardment against Turkmens in northern Syria.”
Russia’s bombing of Turkmen villages was to be the principal issue Turkey raised with Russia’s foreign minister, Sergey V. Lavrov, in talks that had been set for Wednesday but were canceled after the shooting down of the plane.
Mr. Erdogan’s emphasis on helping the Turkmens has another important political dimension in Turkey. Mr. Erdogan’s political party emphasized Turkish ethnic identity and Sunni Muslim faith in the campaign leading up to critical elections on Nov. 1, as it competed with one rival party heavily composed of Turkey’s Kurdish minority and another committed to preserving Turkey’s status as a secular society and state.
News Clips: Europe By REUTERS 1:46
Putin Criticizes Turkish Leaders
Continue reading the main story
Video
Putin Criticizes Turkish Leaders
A day after Turkey shot down one of Moscow’s jets, Russian president Vladimir V. Putin said Turkey’s political leaders had been "supporting the Islamization of their country." By REUTERS on Publish Date November 25, 2015. Photo by Pool photo by Alexei Nikolsky. Watch in Times Video »
embed
Share
Tweet
Mr. Erdogan managed an important victory in that election, preserving his chances of winning legislative approval to change the Constitution and turn the country’s parliamentary system into a presidential one.
Complicating matters further, Turkey and Syria have a longstanding border dispute in exactly the area where the Russian plane, a Sukhoi Su-24, was shot down, and Russia has sometimes voiced support for Syria’s claim. It is a narrow strip of territory, the Hatay Province of Turkey, that runs south along the Mediterranean Sea, deep into Syria.
The province is a melting pot of ethnic Turks and Arabs. It is also a religious mélange, with many Muslims but also a large Christian population, as Hatay includes the biblical city of Antioch. And the province has an acrimonious history.
The League of Nations granted Hatay Province to France after World War I as part of France’s legal mandate over Syria. Ethnic Turks led the province’s secession from Syria and declaration of an independent republic in 1938, and that republic then joined Turkey the next year — much as Texas seceded from Mexico a century earlier, became a republic and soon joined the United States.
Syria has periodically questioned the loss of Hatay over the years. “If you look at Syrian maps, that province, that chunk of territory, is shown as belonging to Syria,” said Altay Atli, an international relations specialist at Bogazici University.
When Hatay seceded from the French mandate of Syria, Hatay’s borders did not encompass all of the ethnic Turks in the area; many Turkmens remained just across the border in what is now northernmost Syria. For decades, it was difficult for families divided on either side of the border by the secession of Hatay to even visit one another. Tensions finally began to ease during the years immediately before the Arab Spring, but they have resumed in the last several years as Turkey has led calls for the removal of Mr. Assad.
The fact that Russia has over the years expressed sympathy for Syria’s claim to Hatay makes the province even more delicate for Turkey, and Tuesday’s incident with the Russian jet even more important, said James F. Jeffrey, a former American ambassador to Turkey who is now a fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy.
He questioned whether the Russian jet had strayed into Hatay Province’s airspace accidentally or whether Russia might have been deliberately allowing incursions by its jets during military activities in Syria because of Hatay’s tangled history.
Syria
“Turkey was tired of Russia’s intimidating Turkey,” he said.
The Russian and Ottoman Empires battled for centuries for control over the area from the Balkans to the Black Sea, and vestiges of that bloody rivalry keep arising. One of those is reflected in Turkey’s deep concern about Russia’s annexation of Crimea from Ukraine, said Murat Yesiltas, the director of security studies at the Foundation for Political, Economic and Social Research, a large research group in Ankara with close government links.
Turkey now faces across the Black Sea a much wider arc of territory occupied by Russian forces. Many in Turkey are further upset by Russia’s treatment of the Crimean Tatars, who speak a Turkic language and have opposed the Russian annexation. Most of the Crimean Tatars’ leaders have been forced into exile by Russia, and this week Tatars have been blocking repair crews from restringing crucial power lines to Crimea that were mysteriously blown up over the weekend, producing a nearly total blackout on the peninsula.
“Turkey wants to protect the territorial integrity of Ukraine,” Mr. Yesiltas said. Turkey has already provided economic assistance to Ukraine, but it has been reluctant to confront Moscow more publicly because Russia is one of Turkey’s biggest export markets and supplies three-fifths of Turkey’s natural gas.
Photo
President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey said on Tuesday that Turkish forces had warned the Russian plane 10 times in five minutes to leave before a Turkish F-16 shot it down. Credit Pool photo by Kayhan Ozer
With President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia saying things about the jet’s downing like, “We will never tolerate such crimes like the one committed today” and warning of “serious consequences,” the biggest question perhaps is what comes next.
Russia on Wednesday announced plans to deploy its most modern air-defense system, the S-400 mobile antiaircraft missile, to its air base outside Latakia. But while most experts — and Mr. Erdogan himself, in remarks on Wednesday — play down concerns of a wider confrontation, many worry that the biggest losers from Tuesday’s incident could be the Turkmens.
While the jet’s two crew members were able to eject from the plane, Russia said that one of them was killed — possibly by fire from the ground as he floated to earth — as was a marine sent in a helicopter that was shot down by local ground forces while trying to rescue the pilots; the Kremlin said the second crew member had been rescued by Russian special forces.
Several experts warned that Mr. Putin may step up his country’s attacks on the Turkmens in retaliation.
“They’re the real target,” Mr. Jeffrey said. “He can just plaster them.”
-
Picking up from the Cruz thread where we were discussion Cruz vs. Rubio,
In 25-50 words, what are our individual thoughts on what to do right now? On this criterion alone, do we favor Cruz or Rubio?
-
More half measures? More promises that go unfilled? Better to do nothing. The one thing I would do is arm and train the Kurds and pull Christians, Yazidis and other minorities who would be butchered otherwise to Kurd protected areas.
-
In 25-50 words, what are our individual thoughts on what to do right now? On this criterion alone, do we favor Cruz or Rubio?
I wrote my plan here:
http://dogbrothers.com/phpBB2/index.php?topic=987.msg91452#msg91452
First, a new President. No credibility otherwise. Attack ISIS with all allies on all fronts. Kill it from the head and shrink their territory to nothing. Make it top priority. Bring back Petraeus and learn from the ground game used in Fullujah. Use whatever leverage necessary to get enough Sunni Arabs from friendly nations to man the ground game. Split the cost with all allies.
I don't have a plan for Syria and Assad. Perhaps wait on NK, Iran and Assad until their next mis-step. Rogue regimes need to see we are under new management.
Eradicate ISIS, then take inventory of who are our friends and who are the remaining threats.
This is not perfect or risk free but better than letting atrocities go unanswered.
-
http://abcnews.go.com/International/delta-force-commandos-kill-key-isis-leader-ground/story?id=31092834
-
http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/fb86019e-a240-11e5-bc70-7ff6d4fd203a.html#axzz3undWuQYm
Isis proves vulnerable to its own ‘ghost armies’
Isis fighters in Syria
Isis may be claiming to wage a holy war for Islam but the self-declared caliphate is as vulnerable to the region’s deep-seated corruption as the secular Iraqi and Syrian regimes it displaced.
Evidence from its former fighters and officials suggests that “ghost armies” are fighting on both sides of the conflict.
A year ago Iraq denounced deep corruption within its army, alleging 50,000 “ghost” soldiers had been drawing salaries from the military without serving.
According to Omar, a rebel commander who fought with Isis for more than a year before fleeing and asked not be identified by his real name, the same thing happened on his side.
“You’d have a frontline [Isis] commander apply for salaries for 250 people, but really he only has 150,” he said. “When officials discovered the schemes they started sending financial administrators to deliver salaries. Then the administrators started agreeing with commanders on scams, too.”
Ex-fighters and former employees who worked under Isis often argue that, for all the jihadis’ talk of rejecting the secular Iraqi and Syrian governments they drove out, their officials often mimic those regimes’ penchant for bureaucracy — and graft.
From agricultural management to food subsidies, the officials put in charge by Isis often adopt the same systems developed by the ruling parties of Syria and Iraq, including their excessive use of paperwork and stamps.
Locals say Isis co-opted decades-old institutions that secured loyalty through patronage. And the more Isis expands, the more it depends on officials and fighters who prize financial reward over its radical ideology. In Syria some of the officials hired by Isis are the same people once employed by President Bashar al-Assad’s regime.
Abu Rasheed, a hospital pharmacist from Syria’s eastern city of Mayadeen who asked to use a false name for his safety, says he was surprised when Isis hired a medical official fired by the Assad government. The official was accused of embezzlement, and appears to have attempted the same scheme under Isis: he wrote dozens of fake medicine orders and, after receiving the money, burnt down the dispensary to avoid being caught.
“There’s no doubt that some of the effects of this power are turning them into something we would recognise as a corrupt, autocratic system,” said one western intelligence official who follows Isis.
Even so, intelligence officials say Isis tolerates much less graft than previous regimes. The group’s comparative efficiency and lack of corruption was repeatedly mentioned by residents during the jihadis’ takeover as a reason they were prepared to tolerate the group — a sobering assessment for the coalition, which needs to work with partners like the Iraqi government to beat Isis.
“The reality is that prior to [Isis] control of Mosul, things were probably more corrupt,” the western official said. “They deal with corruption harshly.”
Not harshly enough for Abu Rasheed. When Isis leaders discovered the medical scam, they arrested the official, shaved off his hair and beard to disgrace him, and forced him to take a course in Islamic law. “But, according to their own laws, they should have cut off his hand,” he said.
Syrians and Iraqis living under Isis rule say they increasingly sense weak spots in the system that they believe are the result of growing corruption.
They point to the proliferation of people-smuggling out of Isis territory since the leadership banned residents from leaving most parts of its self-proclaimed caliphate. Locals often bribe Isis fighters to look the other way at checkpoints, making its borders more porous.
Isis corruption scandals have become lore among former fighters, who gossip about emirs that spirit fortunes over the border into Turkey, then disappear.
The rebel commander who worked with Isis says that in his area of eastern Deir Ezzor province, an emir known as Abu Fatima al-Tunisi ran off with some $25,000 in zakat (a form of tax) funds. He says the fugitive fighter left a message to former comrades on Twitter: “What state? What caliphate? You idiots.”
Additional reporting by Sam Jones in London
-
Boots on the waves. Defense Secretary Ash Carter visited the French nuclear-powered aircraft carrier Charles De Gaulle in the Persian Gulf over the weekend, as the carrier conducts flight operations against the Islamic State. The visit presented a significant photo op moment, as the ship is the first non-American vessel to take command of the task force carrying out airstrikes against ISIS in Iraq. The deployment of the French ship has also filled a gap in sea-based air power after the USS Theodore Roosevelt left the gulf in early October, leaving the coalition with no carriers there until the French ship arrived earlier this month. The USS Harry S. Truman recently passed through the Suez Canal, however, and should join the De Gaulle in the next several days to start conducting airstrikes.
The visit came after Carter flew out to the USS Kearsarge, also in the Persian Gulf, where the secretary expressed his condolences over what appears to have been an errant U.S. airstrike in Iraq which killed Iraqi forces fighting against the Islamic State near Fallujah. "These kinds of things happen when you're fighting side by side as we are," Carter said. The strike "has all the indications of being a mistake of the kind that can happen on a dynamic battlefield," he added.
Strike out. On top of the visits to ships at sea, Carter also met with Iraqi officials in Baghdad, where his offer of more U.S. troops and attack helicopters was flatly rejected by Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi. Carter also visited U.S. troops in Afghanistan late last week.
-
http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/2/baad34e4-973c-11e5-9228-87e603d47bdc.html#axzz3undWuQYm
-
This is a very telling article from Seymour Hersh. If accurate, it tends to suggest that Obummer is really on the side of the Caliphate.
Military to Military
Seymour M. Hersh on US intelligence sharing in the Syrian war
Barack Obama’s repeated insistence that Bashar al-Assad must leave office – and that there are ‘moderate’ rebel groups in Syria capable of defeating him – has in recent years provoked quiet dissent, and even overt opposition, among some of the most senior officers on the Pentagon’s Joint Staff. Their criticism has focused on what they see as the administration’s fixation on Assad’s primary ally, Vladimir Putin. In their view, Obama is captive to Cold War thinking about Russia and China, and hasn’t adjusted his stance on Syria to the fact both countries share Washington’s anxiety about the spread of terrorism in and beyond Syria; like Washington, they believe that Islamic State must be stopped.
The military’s resistance dates back to the summer of 2013, when a highly classified assessment, put together by the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) and the Joint Chiefs of Staff, then led by General Martin Dempsey, forecast that the fall of the Assad regime would lead to chaos and, potentially, to Syria’s takeover by jihadi extremists, much as was then happening in Libya. A former senior adviser to the Joint Chiefs told me that the document was an ‘all-source’ appraisal, drawing on information from signals, satellite and human intelligence, and took a dim view of the Obama administration’s insistence on continuing to finance and arm the so-called moderate rebel groups. By then, the CIA had been conspiring for more than a year with allies in the UK, Saudi Arabia and Qatar to ship guns and goods – to be used for the overthrow of Assad – from Libya, via Turkey, into Syria. The new intelligence estimate singled out Turkey as a major impediment to Obama’s Syria policy. The document showed, the adviser said, ‘that what was started as a covert US programme to arm and support the moderate rebels fighting Assad had been co-opted by Turkey, and had morphed into an across-the-board technical, arms and logistical programme for all of the opposition, including Jabhat al-Nusra and Islamic State. The so-called moderates had evaporated and the Free Syrian Army was a rump group stationed at an airbase in Turkey.’ The assessment was bleak: there was no viable ‘moderate’ opposition to Assad, and the US was arming extremists.
Lieutenant General Michael Flynn, director of the DIA between 2012 and 2014, confirmed that his agency had sent a constant stream of classified warnings to the civilian leadership about the dire consequences of toppling Assad. The jihadists, he said, were in control of the opposition. Turkey wasn’t doing enough to stop the smuggling of foreign fighters and weapons across the border. ‘If the American public saw the intelligence we were producing daily, at the most sensitive level, they would go ballistic,’ Flynn told me. ‘We understood Isis’s long-term strategy and its campaign plans, and we also discussed the fact that Turkey was looking the other way when it came to the growth of the Islamic State inside Syria.’ The DIA’s reporting, he said, ‘got enormous pushback’ from the Obama administration. ‘I felt that they did not want to hear the truth.’
‘Our policy of arming the opposition to Assad was unsuccessful and actually having a negative impact,’ the former JCS adviser said. ‘The Joint Chiefs believed that Assad should not be replaced by fundamentalists. The administration’s policy was contradictory. They wanted Assad to go but the opposition was dominated by extremists. So who was going to replace him? To say Assad’s got to go is fine, but if you follow that through – therefore anyone is better. It’s the “anybody else is better” issue that the JCS had with Obama’s policy.’ The Joint Chiefs felt that a direct challenge to Obama’s policy would have ‘had a zero chance of success’. So in the autumn of 2013 they decided to take steps against the extremists without going through political channels, by providing US intelligence to the militaries of other nations, on the understanding that it would be passed on to the Syrian army and used against the common enemy, Jabhat al-Nusra and Islamic State.
Germany, Israel and Russia were in contact with the Syrian army, and able to exercise some influence over Assad’s decisions – it was through them that US intelligence would be shared. Each had its reasons for co-operating with Assad: Germany feared what might happen among its own population of six million Muslims if Islamic State expanded; Israel was concerned with border security; Russia had an alliance of very long standing with Syria, and was worried by the threat to its only naval base on the Mediterranean, at Tartus. ‘We weren’t intent on deviating from Obama’s stated policies,’ the adviser said. ‘But sharing our assessments via the military-to-military relationships with other countries could prove productive. It was clear that Assad needed better tactical intelligence and operational advice. The JCS concluded that if those needs were met, the overall fight against Islamist terrorism would be enhanced. Obama didn’t know, but Obama doesn’t know what the JCS does in every circumstance and that’s true of all presidents.’
Once the flow of US intelligence began, Germany, Israel and Russia started passing on information about the whereabouts and intent of radical jihadist groups to the Syrian army; in return, Syria provided information about its own capabilities and intentions. There was no direct contact between the US and the Syrian military; instead, the adviser said, ‘we provided the information – including long-range analyses on Syria’s future put together by contractors or one of our war colleges – and these countries could do with it what they chose, including sharing it with Assad. We were saying to the Germans and the others: “Here’s some information that’s pretty interesting and our interest is mutual.” End of conversation. The JCS could conclude that something beneficial would arise from it – but it was a military to military thing, and not some sort of a sinister Joint Chiefs’ plot to go around Obama and support Assad. It was a lot cleverer than that. If Assad remains in power, it will not be because we did it. It’s because he was smart enough to use the intelligence and sound tactical advice we provided to others.’
*
The public history of relations between the US and Syria over the past few decades has been one of enmity. Assad condemned the 9/11 attacks, but opposed the Iraq War. George W. Bush repeatedly linked Syria to the three members of his ‘axis of evil’ – Iraq, Iran and North Korea – throughout his presidency. State Department cables made public by WikiLeaks show that the Bush administration tried to destabilise Syria and that these efforts continued into the Obama years. In December 2006, William Roebuck, then in charge of the US embassy in Damascus, filed an analysis of the ‘vulnerabilities’ of the Assad government and listed methods ‘that will improve the likelihood’ of opportunities for destabilisation. He recommended that Washington work with Saudi Arabia and Egypt to increase sectarian tension and focus on publicising ‘Syrian efforts against extremist groups’ – dissident Kurds and radical Sunni factions – ‘in a way that suggests weakness, signs of instability, and uncontrolled blowback’; and that the ‘isolation of Syria’ should be encouraged through US support of the National Salvation Front, led by Abdul Halim Khaddam, a former Syrian vice president whose government-in-exile in Riyadh was sponsored by the Saudis and the Muslim Brotherhood. Another 2006 cable showed that the embassy had spent $5 million financing dissidents who ran as independent candidates for the People’s Assembly; the payments were kept up even after it became clear that Syrian intelligence knew what was going on. A 2010 cable warned that funding for a London-based television network run by a Syrian opposition group would be viewed by the Syrian government ‘as a covert and hostile gesture toward the regime’.
But there is also a parallel history of shadowy co-operation between Syria and the US during the same period. The two countries collaborated against al-Qaida, their common enemy. A longtime consultant to America’s intelligence community said that, after 9/11, ‘Bashar was, for years, extremely helpful to us while, in my view, we were churlish in return, and clumsy in our use of the gold he gave us. That quiet co-operation continued among some elements, even after the [Bush administration’s] decision to vilify him.’ In 2002 Assad authorised Syrian intelligence to turn over hundreds of internal files on the activities of the Muslim Brotherhood in Syria and Germany. Later that year, Syrian intelligence foiled an attack by al-Qaida on the headquarters of the US Navy’s Fifth Fleet in Bahrain, and Assad agreed to provide the CIA with the name of a vital al-Qaida informant. In violation of this agreement, the CIA contacted the informant directly; he rejected the approach, and broke off relations with his Syrian handlers. Assad also secretly turned over to the US relatives of Saddam Hussein who had sought refuge in Syria, and – like America’s allies in Jordan, Egypt, Thailand and elsewhere – tortured suspected terrorists for the CIA in a Damascus prison.
It was this history of co-operation that made it seem possible in 2013 that Damascus would agree to the new indirect intelligence-sharing arrangement with the US. The Joint Chiefs let it be known that in return the US would require four things: Assad must restrain Hizbullah from attacking Israel; he must renew the stalled negotiations with Israel to reach a settlement on the Golan Heights; he must agree to accept Russian and other outside military advisers; and he must commit to holding open elections after the war with a wide range of factions included. ‘We had positive feedback from the Israelis, who were willing to entertain the idea, but they needed to know what the reaction would be from Iran and Syria,’ the JCS adviser told me. ‘The Syrians told us that Assad would not make a decision unilaterally – he needed to have support from his military and Alawite allies. Assad’s worry was that Israel would say yes and then not uphold its end of the bargain.’ A senior adviser to the Kremlin on Middle East affairs told me that in late 2012, after suffering a series of battlefield setbacks and military defections, Assad had approached Israel via a contact in Moscow and offered to reopen the talks on the Golan Heights. The Israelis had rejected the offer. ‘They said, “Assad is finished,”’ the Russian official told me. ‘“He’s close to the end.”’ He said the Turks had told Moscow the same thing. By mid-2013, however, the Syrians believed the worst was behind them, and wanted assurances that the Americans and others were serious about their offers of help.
In the early stages of the talks, the adviser said, the Joint Chiefs tried to establish what Assad needed as a sign of their good intentions. The answer was sent through one of Assad’s friends: ‘Bring him the head of Prince Bandar.’ The Joint Chiefs did not oblige. Bandar bin Sultan had served Saudi Arabia for decades in intelligence and national security affairs, and spent more than twenty years as ambassador in Washington. In recent years, he has been known as an advocate for Assad’s removal from office by any means. Reportedly in poor health, he resigned last year as director of the Saudi National Security Council, but Saudi Arabia continues to be a major provider of funds to the Syrian opposition, estimated by US intelligence last year at $700 million.
In July 2013, the Joint Chiefs found a more direct way of demonstrating to Assad how serious they were about helping him. By then the CIA-sponsored secret flow of arms from Libya to the Syrian opposition, via Turkey, had been underway for more than a year (it started sometime after Gaddafi’s death on 20 October 2011).＊ The operation was largely run out of a covert CIA annex in Benghazi, with State Department acquiescence. On 11 September 2012 the US ambassador to Libya, Christopher Stevens, was killed during an anti-American demonstration that led to the burning down of the US consulate in Benghazi; reporters for the Washington Post found copies of the ambassador’s schedule in the building’s ruins. It showed that on 10 September Stevens had met with the chief of the CIA’s annex operation. The next day, shortly before he died, he met a representative from Al-Marfa Shipping and Maritime Services, a Tripoli-based company which, the JCS adviser said, was known by the Joint Staff to be handling the weapons shipments.
By the late summer of 2013, the DIA’s assessment had been circulated widely, but although many in the American intelligence community were aware that the Syrian opposition was dominated by extremists the CIA-sponsored weapons kept coming, presenting a continuing problem for Assad’s army. Gaddafi’s stockpile had created an international arms bazaar, though prices were high. ‘There was no way to stop the arms shipments that had been authorised by the president,’ the JCS adviser said. ‘The solution involved an appeal to the pocketbook. The CIA was approached by a representative from the Joint Chiefs with a suggestion: there were far less costly weapons available in Turkish arsenals that could reach the Syrian rebels within days, and without a boat ride.’ But it wasn’t only the CIA that benefited. ‘We worked with Turks we trusted who were not loyal to Erdoğan,’ the adviser said, ‘and got them to ship the jihadists in Syria all the obsolete weapons in the arsenal, including M1 carbines that hadn’t been seen since the Korean War and lots of Soviet arms. It was a message Assad could understand: “We have the power to diminish a presidential policy in its tracks.”’
The flow of US intelligence to the Syrian army, and the downgrading of the quality of the arms being supplied to the rebels, came at a critical juncture. The Syrian army had suffered heavy losses in the spring of 2013 in fighting against Jabhat al-Nusra and other extremist groups as it failed to hold the provincial capital of Raqqa. Sporadic Syrian army and air-force raids continued in the area for months, with little success, until it was decided to withdraw from Raqqa and other hard to defend, lightly populated areas in the north and west and focus instead on consolidating the government’s hold on Damascus and the heavily populated areas linking the capital to Latakia in the north-east. But as the army gained in strength with the Joint Chiefs’ support, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Turkey escalated their financing and arming of Jabhat al-Nusra and Islamic State, which by the end of 2013 had made enormous gains on both sides of the Syria/Iraq border. The remaining non-fundamentalist rebels found themselves fighting – and losing – pitched battles against the extremists. In January 2014, IS took complete control of Raqqa and the tribal areas around it from al-Nusra and established the city as its base. Assad still controlled 80 per cent of the Syrian population, but he had lost a vast amount of territory.
CIA efforts to train the moderate rebel forces were also failing badly. ‘The CIA’s training camp was in Jordan and was controlled by a Syrian tribal group,’ the JCS adviser said. There was a suspicion that some of those who signed up for training were actually Syrian army regulars minus their uniforms. This had happened before, at the height of the Iraqi war, when hundreds of Shia militia members showed up at American training camps for new uniforms, weapons and a few days of training, and then disappeared into the desert. A separate training programme, set up by the Pentagon in Turkey, fared no better. The Pentagon acknowledged in September that only ‘four or five’ of its recruits were still battling Islamic State; a few days later 70 of them defected to Jabhat al-Nusra immediately after crossing the border into Syria.
In January 2014, despairing at the lack of progress, John Brennan, the director of the CIA, summoned American and Sunni Arab intelligence chiefs from throughout the Middle East to a secret meeting in Washington, with the aim of persuading Saudi Arabia to stop supporting extremist fighters in Syria. ‘The Saudis told us they were happy to listen,’ the JCS adviser said, ‘so everyone sat around in Washington to hear Brennan tell them that they had to get on board with the so-called moderates. His message was that if everyone in the region stopped supporting al-Nusra and Isis their ammunition and weapons would dry up, and the moderates would win out.’ Brennan’s message was ignored by the Saudis, the adviser said, who ‘went back home and increased their efforts with the extremists and asked us for more technical support. And we say OK, and so it turns out that we end up reinforcing the extremists.’
But the Saudis were far from the only problem: American intelligence had accumulated intercept and human intelligence demonstrating that the Erdoğan government had been supporting Jabhat al-Nusra for years, and was now doing the same for Islamic State. ‘We can handle the Saudis,’ the adviser said. ‘We can handle the Muslim Brotherhood. You can argue that the whole balance in the Middle East is based on a form of mutually assured destruction between Israel and the rest of the Middle East, and Turkey can disrupt the balance – which is Erdoğan’s dream. We told him we wanted him to shut down the pipeline of foreign jihadists flowing into Turkey. But he is dreaming big – of restoring the Ottoman Empire – and he did not realise the extent to which he could be successful in this.’
*
One of the constants in US affairs since the fall of the Soviet Union has been a military-to-military relationship with Russia. After 1991 the US spent billions of dollars to help Russia secure its nuclear weapons complex, including a highly secret joint operation to remove weapons-grade uranium from unsecured storage depots in Kazakhstan. Joint programmes to monitor the security of weapons-grade materials continued for the next two decades. During the American war on Afghanistan, Russia provided overflight rights for US cargo carriers and tankers, as well as access for the flow of weapons, ammunition, food and water the US war machine needed daily. Russia’s military provided intelligence on Osama bin Laden’s whereabouts and helped the US negotiate rights to use an airbase in Kyrgyzstan. The Joint Chiefs have been in communication with their Russian counterparts throughout the Syrian war, and the ties between the two militaries start at the top. In August, a few weeks before his retirement as chairman of the Joint Chiefs, Dempsey made a farewell visit to the headquarters of the Irish Defence Forces in Dublin and told his audience there that he had made a point while in office to keep in touch with the chief of the Russian General Staff, General Valery Gerasimov. ‘I’ve actually suggested to him that we not end our careers as we began them,’ Dempsey said – one a tank commander in West Germany, the other in the east.
When it comes to tackling Islamic State, Russia and the US have much to offer each other. Many in the IS leadership and rank and file fought for more than a decade against Russia in the two Chechen wars that began in 1994, and the Putin government is heavily invested in combating Islamist terrorism. ‘Russia knows the Isis leadership,’ the JCS adviser said, ‘and has insights into its operational techniques, and has much intelligence to share.’ In return, he said, ‘we’ve got excellent trainers with years of experience in training foreign fighters – experience that Russia does not have.’ The adviser would not discuss what American intelligence is also believed to have: an ability to obtain targeting data, often by paying huge sums of cash, from sources within rebel militias.
A former White House adviser on Russian affairs told me that before 9/11 Putin ‘used to say to us: “We have the same nightmares about different places.” He was referring to his problems with the caliphate in Chechnya and our early issues with al-Qaida. These days, after the Metrojet bombing over Sinai and the massacres in Paris and elsewhere, it’s hard to avoid the conclusion that we actually have the same nightmares about the same places.’
Yet the Obama administration continues to condemn Russia for its support of Assad. A retired senior diplomat who served at the US embassy in Moscow expressed sympathy for Obama’s dilemma as the leader of the Western coalition opposed to Russia’s aggression against Ukraine: ‘Ukraine is a serious issue and Obama has been handling it firmly with sanctions. But our policy vis-à-vis Russia is too often unfocused. But it’s not about us in Syria. It’s about making sure Bashar does not lose. The reality is that Putin does not want to see the chaos in Syria spread to Jordan or Lebanon, as it has to Iraq, and he does not want to see Syria end up in the hands of Isis. The most counterproductive thing Obama has done, and it has hurt our efforts to end the fighting a lot, was to say: “Assad must go as a premise for negotiation.”’ He also echoed a view held by some in the Pentagon when he alluded to a collateral factor behind Russia’s decision to launch airstrikes in support of the Syrian army on 30 September: Putin’s desire to prevent Assad from suffering the same fate as Gaddafi. He had been told that Putin had watched a video of Gaddafi’s savage death three times, a video that shows him being sodomised with a bayonet. The JCS adviser also told me of a US intelligence assessment which concluded that Putin had been appalled by Gaddafi’s fate: ‘Putin blamed himself for letting Gaddafi go, for not playing a strong role behind the scenes’ at the UN when the Western coalition was lobbying to be allowed to undertake the airstrikes that destroyed the regime. ‘Putin believed that unless he got engaged Bashar would suffer the same fate – mutilated – and he’d see the destruction of his allies in Syria.’
In a speech on 22 November, Obama declared that the ‘principal targets’ of the Russian airstrikes ‘have been the moderate opposition’. It’s a line that the administration – along with most of the mainstream American media – has rarely strayed from. The Russians insist that they are targeting all rebel groups that threaten Syria’s stability – including Islamic State. The Kremlin adviser on the Middle East explained in an interview that the first round of Russian airstrikes was aimed at bolstering security around a Russian airbase in Latakia, an Alawite stronghold. The strategic goal, he said, has been to establish a jihadist-free corridor from Damascus to Latakia and the Russian naval base at Tartus and then to shift the focus of bombing gradually to the south and east, with a greater concentration of bombing missions over IS-held territory. Russian strikes on IS targets in and near Raqqa were reported as early as the beginning of October; in November there were further strikes on IS positions near the historic city of Palmyra and in Idlib province, a bitterly contested stronghold on the Turkish border.
Russian incursions into Turkish airspace began soon after Putin authorised the bombings, and the Russian air force deployed electronic jamming systems that interfered with Turkish radar. The message being sent to the Turkish air force, the JCS adviser said, was: ‘We’re going to fly our fighter planes where we want and when we want and jam your radar. Do not fuck with us. Putin was letting the Turks know what they were up against.’ Russia’s aggression led to Turkish complaints and Russian denials, along with more aggressive border patrolling by the Turkish air force. There were no significant incidents until 24 November, when two Turkish F-16 fighters, apparently acting under more aggressive rules of engagement, shot down a Russian Su-24M jet that had crossed into Turkish airspace for no more than 17 seconds. In the days after the fighter was shot down, Obama expressed support for Erdoğan, and after they met in private on 1 December he told a press conference that his administration remained ‘very much committed to Turkey’s security and its sovereignty’. He said that as long as Russia remained allied with Assad, ‘a lot of Russian resources are still going to be targeted at opposition groups … that we support … So I don’t think we should be under any illusions that somehow Russia starts hitting only Isil targets. That’s not happening now. It was never happening. It’s not going to be happening in the next several weeks.’
The Kremlin adviser on the Middle East, like the Joint Chiefs and the DIA, dismisses the ‘moderates’ who have Obama’s support, seeing them as extremist Islamist groups that fight alongside Jabhat al-Nusra and IS (‘There’s no need to play with words and split terrorists into moderate and not moderate,’ Putin said in a speech on 22 October). The American generals see them as exhausted militias that have been forced to make an accommodation with Jabhat al-Nusra or IS in order to survive. At the end of 2014, Jürgen Todenhöfer, a German journalist who was allowed to spend ten days touring IS-held territory in Iraq and Syria, told CNN that the IS leadership ‘are all laughing about the Free Syrian Army. They don’t take them for serious. They say: “The best arms sellers we have are the FSA. If they get a good weapon, they sell it to us.” They didn’t take them for serious. They take for serious Assad. They take for serious, of course, the bombs. But they fear nothing, and FSA doesn’t play a role.’
*
Putin’s bombing campaign provoked a series of anti-Russia articles in the American press. On 25 October, the New York Times reported, citing Obama administration officials, that Russian submarines and spy ships were ‘aggressively’ operating near the undersea cables that carry much of the world’s internet traffic – although, as the article went on to acknowledge, there was ‘no evidence yet’ of any Russian attempt actually to interfere with that traffic. Ten days earlier the Times published a summary of Russian intrusions into its former Soviet satellite republics, and described the Russian bombing in Syria as being ‘in some respects a return to the ambitious military moves of the Soviet past’. The report did not note that the Assad administration had invited Russia to intervene, nor did it mention the US bombing raids inside Syria that had been underway since the previous September, without Syria’s approval. An October op-ed in the same paper by Michael McFaul, Obama’s ambassador to Russia between 2012 and 2014, declared that the Russian air campaign was attacking ‘everyone except the Islamic State’. The anti-Russia stories did not abate after the Metrojet disaster, for which Islamic State claimed credit. Few in the US government and media questioned why IS would target a Russian airliner, along with its 224 passengers and crew, if Moscow’s air force was attacking only the Syrian ‘moderates’.
Economic sanctions, meanwhile, are still in effect against Russia for what a large number of Americans consider Putin’s war crimes in Ukraine, as are US Treasury Department sanctions against Syria and against those Americans who do business there. The New York Times, in a report on sanctions in late November, revived an old and groundless assertion, saying that the Treasury’s actions ‘emphasise an argument that the administration has increasingly been making about Mr Assad as it seeks to press Russia to abandon its backing for him: that although he professes to be at war with Islamist terrorists, he has a symbiotic relationship with the Islamic State that has allowed it to thrive while he has clung to power.’
*
The four core elements of Obama’s Syria policy remain intact today: an insistence that Assad must go; that no anti-IS coalition with Russia is possible; that Turkey is a steadfast ally in the war against terrorism; and that there really are significant moderate opposition forces for the US to support. The Paris attacks on 13 November that killed 130 people did not change the White House’s public stance, although many European leaders, including François Hollande, advocated greater co-operation with Russia and agreed to co-ordinate more closely with its air force; there was also talk of the need to be more flexible about the timing of Assad’s exit from power. On 24 November, Hollande flew to Washington to discuss how France and the US could collaborate more closely in the fight against Islamic State. At a joint press conference at the White House, Obama said he and Hollande had agreed that ‘Russia’s strikes against the moderate opposition only bolster the Assad regime, whose brutality has helped to fuel the rise’ of IS. Hollande didn’t go that far but he said that the diplomatic process in Vienna would ‘lead to Bashar al-Assad’s departure … a government of unity is required.’ The press conference failed to deal with the far more urgent impasse between the two men on the matter of Erdoğan. Obama defended Turkey’s right to defend its borders; Hollande said it was ‘a matter of urgency’ for Turkey to take action against terrorists. The JCS adviser told me that one of Hollande’s main goals in flying to Washington had been to try to persuade Obama to join the EU in a mutual declaration of war against Islamic State. Obama said no. The Europeans had pointedly not gone to Nato, to which Turkey belongs, for such a declaration. ‘Turkey is the problem,’ the JCS adviser said.
Assad, naturally, doesn’t accept that a group of foreign leaders should be deciding on his future. Imad Moustapha, now Syria’s ambassador to China, was dean of the IT faculty at the University of Damascus, and a close aide of Assad’s, when he was appointed in 2004 as the Syrian ambassador to the US, a post he held for seven years. Moustapha is known still to be close to Assad, and can be trusted to reflect what he thinks. He told me that for Assad to surrender power would mean capitulating to ‘armed terrorist groups’ and that ministers in a national unity government – such as was being proposed by the Europeans – would be seen to be beholden to the foreign powers that appointed them. These powers could remind the new president ‘that they could easily replace him as they did before to the predecessor … Assad owes it to his people: he could not leave because the historic enemies of Syria are demanding his departure.’
*
Moustapha also brought up China, an ally of Assad that has allegedly committed more than $30 billion to postwar reconstruction in Syria. China, too, is worried about Islamic State. ‘China regards the Syrian crisis from three perspectives,’ he said: international law and legitimacy; global strategic positioning; and the activities of jihadist Uighurs, from Xinjiang province in China’s far west. Xinjiang borders eight nations – Mongolia, Russia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Afghanistan, Pakistan and India – and, in China’s view, serves as a funnel for terrorism around the world and within China. Many Uighur fighters now in Syria are known to be members of the East Turkestan Islamic Movement – an often violent separatist organisation that seeks to establish an Islamist Uighur state in Xinjiang. ‘The fact that they have been aided by Turkish intelligence to move from China into Syria through Turkey has caused a tremendous amount of tension between the Chinese and Turkish intelligence,’ Moustapha said. ‘China is concerned that the Turkish role of supporting the Uighur fighters in Syria may be extended in the future to support Turkey’s agenda in Xinjiang. We are already providing the Chinese intelligence service with information regarding these terrorists and the routes they crossed from on travelling into Syria.’
Moustapha’s concerns were echoed by a Washington foreign affairs analyst who has closely followed the passage of jihadists through Turkey and into Syria. The analyst, whose views are routinely sought by senior government officials, told me that ‘Erdoğan has been bringing Uighurs into Syria by special transport while his government has been agitating in favour of their struggle in China. Uighur and Burmese Muslim terrorists who escape into Thailand somehow get Turkish passports and are then flown to Turkey for transit into Syria.’ He added that there was also what amounted to another ‘rat line’ that was funnelling Uighurs – estimates range from a few hundred to many thousands over the years – from China into Kazakhstan for eventual relay to Turkey, and then to IS territory in Syria. ‘US intelligence,’ he said, ‘is not getting good information about these activities because those insiders who are unhappy with the policy are not talking to them.’ He also said it was ‘not clear’ that the officials responsible for Syrian policy in the State Department and White House ‘get it’. IHS-Jane’s Defence Weekly estimated in October that as many as five thousand Uighur would-be fighters have arrived in Turkey since 2013, with perhaps two thousand moving on to Syria. Moustapha said he has information that ‘up to 860 Uighur fighters are currently in Syria.’
China’s growing concern about the Uighur problem and its link to Syria and Islamic State have preoccupied Christina Lin, a scholar who dealt with Chinese issues a decade ago while serving in the Pentagon under Donald Rumsfeld. ‘I grew up in Taiwan and came to the Pentagon as a critic of China,’ Lin told me. ‘I used to demonise the Chinese as ideologues, and they are not perfect. But over the years as I see them opening up and evolving, I have begun to change my perspective. I see China as a potential partner for various global challenges especially in the Middle East. There are many places – Syria for one – where the United States and China must co-operate in regional security and counterterrorism.’ A few weeks earlier, she said, China and India, Cold War enemies that ‘hated each other more than China and the United States hated each other, conducted a series of joint counterterrorism exercises. And today China and Russia both want to co-operate on terrorism issues with the United States.’ As China sees it, Lin suggests, Uighur militants who have made their way to Syria are being trained by Islamic State in survival techniques intended to aid them on covert return trips to the Chinese mainland, for future terrorist attacks there. ‘If Assad fails,’ Lin wrote in a paper published in September, ‘jihadi fighters from Russia’s Chechnya, China’s Xinjiang and India’s Kashmir will then turn their eyes towards the home front to continue jihad, supported by a new and well-sourced Syrian operating base in the heart of the Middle East.’
*
General Dempsey and his colleagues on the Joint Chiefs of Staff kept their dissent out of bureaucratic channels, and survived in office. General Michael Flynn did not. ‘Flynn incurred the wrath of the White House by insisting on telling the truth about Syria,’ said Patrick Lang, a retired army colonel who served for nearly a decade as the chief Middle East civilian intelligence officer for the DIA. ‘He thought truth was the best thing and they shoved him out. He wouldn’t shut up.’ Flynn told me his problems went beyond Syria. ‘I was shaking things up at the DIA – and not just moving deckchairs on the Titanic. It was radical reform. I felt that the civilian leadership did not want to hear the truth. I suffered for it, but I’m OK with that.’ In a recent interview in Der Spiegel, Flynn was blunt about Russia’s entry into the Syrian war: ‘We have to work constructively with Russia. Whether we like it or not, Russia made a decision to be there and to act militarily. They are there, and this has dramatically changed the dynamic. So you can’t say Russia is bad; they have to go home. It’s not going to happen. Get real.’
Few in the US Congress share this view. One exception is Tulsi Gabbard, a Democrat from Hawaii and member of the House Armed Services Committee who, as a major in the Army National Guard, served two tours in the Middle East. In an interview on CNN in October she said: ‘The US and the CIA should stop this illegal and counterproductive war to overthrow the Syrian government of Assad and should stay focused on fighting against … the Islamic extremist groups.’
‘Does it not concern you,’ the interviewer asked, ‘that Assad’s regime has been brutal, killing at least 200,000 and maybe 300,000 of his own people?’
‘The things that are being said about Assad right now,’ Gabbard responded, ‘are the same that were said about Gaddafi, they are the same things that were said about Saddam Hussein by those who were advocating for the US to … overthrow those regimes … If it happens here in Syria … we will end up in a situation with far greater suffering, with far greater persecution of religious minorities and Christians in Syria, and our enemy will be far stronger.’
‘So what you are saying,’ the interviewer asked, ‘is that the Russian military involvement in the air and on-the-ground Iranian involvement – they are actually doing the US a favour?’
‘They are working toward defeating our common enemy,’ Gabbard replied.
Gabbard later told me that many of her colleagues in Congress, Democrats and Republicans, have thanked her privately for speaking out. ‘There are a lot of people in the general public, and even in the Congress, who need to have things clearly explained to them,’ Gabbard said. ‘But it’s hard when there’s so much deception about what is going on. The truth is not out.’ It’s unusual for a politician to challenge her party’s foreign policy directly and on the record. For someone on the inside, with access to the most secret intelligence, speaking openly and critically can be a career-ender. Informed dissent can be transmitted by means of a trust relationship between a reporter and those on the inside, but it almost invariably includes no signature. The dissent exists, however. The longtime consultant to the Joint Special Operations Command could not hide his contempt when I asked him for his view of the US’s Syria policy. ‘The solution in Syria is right before our nose,’ he said. ‘Our primary threat is Isis and all of us – the United States, Russia and China – need to work together. Bashar will remain in office and, after the country is stabilised there will be an election. There is no other option.’
The military’s indirect pathway to Assad disappeared with Dempsey’s retirement in September. His replacement as chairman of the Joint Chiefs, General Joseph Dunford, testified before the Senate Armed Services Committee in July, two months before assuming office. ‘If you want to talk about a nation that could pose an existential threat to the United States, I’d have to point to Russia,’ Dunford said. ‘If you look at their behaviour, it’s nothing short of alarming.’ In October, as chairman, Dunford dismissed the Russian bombing efforts in Syria, telling the same committee that Russia ‘is not fighting’ IS. He added that America must ‘work with Turkish partners to secure the northern border of Syria’ and ‘do all we can to enable vetted Syrian opposition forces’ – i.e. the ‘moderates’ – to fight the extremists.
Obama now has a more compliant Pentagon. There will be no more indirect challenges from the military leadership to his policy of disdain for Assad and support for Erdoğan. Dempsey and his associates remain mystified by Obama’s continued public defence of Erdoğan, given the American intelligence community’s strong case against him – and the evidence that Obama, in private, accepts that case. ‘We know what you’re doing with the radicals in Syria,’ the president told Erdoğan’s intelligence chief at a tense meeting at the White House (as I reported in the LRB of 17 April 2014). The Joint Chiefs and the DIA were constantly telling Washington’s leadership of the jihadist threat in Syria, and of Turkey’s support for it. The message was never listened to. Why not?
-
Also possible is that Seymour Hersh has this wrong even though Obummer has been on the side of the Caliphate.
Interesting rebuttal of sorts here on liberal site Vox, mostly saying the story is weakly sourced, Hersch has been unsubstantiated on other stories lately, and most militarily leaders would resign rather than actively undermine a President's policies.
http://www.vox.com/2015/12/21/10634002/seymour-hersh-syria-joint-chiefs
-
Hersch is never a dull read.
-
The truly sad part is that the story is actually believable under Obummer's reign.
-
Intriguing hypothesis:
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/23/opinion/how-saddam-hussein-gave-us-isis.html?_r=1
-
The ISIS/Iran Conundrum
by Lee Smith
December 29, 2015
http://www.meforum.org/5741/lee-smith
Lee Smith, senior editor at the Weekly Standard and author of The Strong Horse: Power, Politics, and the Clash of Arab Civilizations, briefed the Middle East Forum on December 16, 2015.
The obsessive international preoccupation with ISIS notwithstanding, Iranian expansionism poses a far greater threat to U.S. interests and regional allies than the self-proclaimed Islamic State.
Tehran boasts control of four Arab capitals (Baghdad, Damascus, Beirut, and Sana) as well as a number of powerful Shiite militias (from Hezbollah, to the Houthis, to various Iraqi groups), and has warmed relations with Moscow following the latter's military intervention in the Syrian civil war.
As a result, Washington has effectively abandoned its longstanding goal of toppling President Bashar Assad - Tehran's (and Russia's) foremost regional protégé - whose relentless sectarian cleansing has not only decimated Syria's Sunni population but has flooded Europe with illegal immigrants.
Iraqi militia leader Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis (right) with Iranian Quds Force commander Qassem Suleimani
By contrast, the ISIS problem can be best understood in the context of the territory it controls and the attendant threat to adjacent states. To be sure, the influx of Western jihadists to the nascent state is a novel and highly disturbing development that involves the risk of increased terrorism once these volunteers return home. Yet the extent of this threat should not be overstated. After all, al-Qaeda has killed far more Americans and Europeans than ISIS.
Washington is perfectly capable of defeating ISIS just as it routed its precursor in the 2007 surge, when U.S. forces collaborated with local Sunni tribes against al-Qaeda and its local allies. But to do so it will need to stop its courtship of Iran, which has alienated Sunni societies and reduced their readiness to join the anti-ISIS fight, and to curb Tehran's burgeoning expansionism. This includes penalizing the repeated Iranian violations of the newly-signed nuclear agreement and toppling the Assad regime - the main lifeline to Iran's Hezbollah proxy.
This, however, is probably asking too much of the Obama administration. As the Middle East's simmering problems are exported to Europe and increasingly affect the American homeland, it remains clueless, leaving a very heavy burden for the next administration.
Summary account by Marilyn Stern, Middle East Forum Board of Governors
-
Iraq and the Kurds Are Going Broke
By THE EDITORIAL BOARDJAN. 13, 2016
Iraqi and American officials leading the military campaign against the Islamic State now have to wrestle with a challenge that has the potential to change battlefield fortunes: the slumping price of oil.
The semi-autonomous Kurdistan Regional Government in northern Iraq, an oil-producing region, has racked up $18 billion in debt, which has imperiled its ability to pay state workers and security forces. This is especially worrisome since Kurdish security forces have been instrumental in rolling back the Islamic State’s advances.
The government in Baghdad, meanwhile, is scrambling to avoid a budget shortfall this year. Iraqi officials last year obtained a $1.7 billion loan from the World Bank and reached an agreement with the International Monetary Fund that will allow it to obtain additional loans.
Baghdad is seeking to renegotiate with international energy companies new terms for oil contracts, which have become less advantageous for Iraq as the price of oil has crashed. And it is seeking a $2.7 billion loan from the United States to acquire military equipment.
Iraq’s budget problems have rightly alarmed officials in Washington. While there is little appetite to bankroll a country where so much American money has been wasted and pilfered since the ill-conceived 2003 invasion, Iraq’s economic problems must be addressed. If they are to worsen, more Iraqis will almost certainly join the tide of refugees leaving the Middle East and the government will have a harder time rebuilding areas that Iraqi security forces have wrested back from Islamic State control.
“We’re asking our partners and allies to increase their military aid,” Lukman Faily, Iraq’s ambassador to the United States, said in an email. “Iraqis are willing to do the fighting on the ground, so it would not be unreasonable to expect the international community to provide us with the military and logistics support to effectively wage this war.”
Cash handouts like those America has provided over the years in Iraq and Afghanistan should be out of the question. But the United States could well offer the Iraqis technical advice and help the government secure access to credit from international institutions.
The International Monetary Fund agreement forces Iraq to adopt reforms that will be healthy in the long run. These include measures and policies intended to wean the country from its near-absolute reliance on oil, and slashing wasteful spending by senior government officials. Iraq is also contemplating sensible measures it has long resisted, including fighting corruption, thinning its bloated state payroll and overhauling its taxation system. “In some ways, our economic challenges are an opportunity for us to get our house in order,” Mr. Faily said.
Every weekday, get thought-provoking commentary from Op-Ed columnists, The Times editorial board and contributing writers from around the world.
Baghdad also must address the financial strains on the Kurdistan Regional Government. The Kurdish region, which includes three provinces, received a percentage of Iraq’s national budget until 2014, when Baghdad cut it off as part of a long-running dispute over oil revenue from fields in the north.
Desperate to pay salaries, officials in Iraqi Kurdistan have seized deposits at two branches of Iraq’s central bank, a problematic and unsustainable course. Still, the government has been unable to pay state workers on time.
Brokering a compromise to the budget dispute between the Kurdish region and Baghdad won’t be easy, because a broader fight over oil revenue in the north remains unresolved. But the United States and the international organizations that are stepping in to ease the budget crunch have significant leverage over the parties now. Allowing the dispute to drag on will make it harder to solve and give Islamic State militants breathing room.
-
The Islamic State
Tighten your suicide belts, Islamic State, austerity is coming to the caliphate. A memo from the Islamic State's bureaucratic powers that be has warned fighters that they're going to get a 50 percent pay cut across all positions "on account of the exceptional circumstances the Islamic State is facing." What, specifically, "exceptional circumstances" refers to remains unclear but the U.S. recently bombed a cash distribution facility owned by the group, blowing up millions of dollars of the Islamic State's cash.
The Islamic State released its English language magazine, Dabiq, on Tuesday, including a eulogy confirming the death of notorious executioner Mohammed "Jihadi John" Emwazi in a November 2015 U.S. drone strike. Emwazi gained infamy for murdering reporters and aid workers in a series of savage beheading videos released by the group on the Internet.
-
reliability unknown
http://russia-insider.com/en/politics/turkish-forces-moves-syria-how-will-russia-respond/ri12343
-
Hat tip BBG
http://smallwarsjournal.com/blog/documents-show-degree-of-is-control-over-life-in-its-territories
-
Imagery Supports Claims of U.S. Military Activity in Syria
Analysis
January 22, 2016 | 15:52 GMT Print
Text Size
(Stratfor)
Analysis
As Syria's rebel coalition expands its fight against the Islamic State, so too does it appear that the United States is expanding its support of the rebels. Low-resolution satellite imagery taken Dec. 28 shows construction underway to extend the runway at an airfield in Rmeilan, al-Hasaka province, which would prepare the site to accommodate larger aircraft. (Similar images captured over the course of the last few weeks had been obscured by cloud cover, making it difficult to discern more recent ground activity.) Rumors of the U.S. arrival at Rmeilan originally surfaced in early January; the images confirm that at least some of those rumors are true.
Before the war, the airfield was an agricultural airstrip used by the Syrian government. As such, its runway was only 2,300 feet (700 meters) long, a length that appears to be doubling. The airfield has since been captured by the Kurdish People's Protection Units (YPG), which has controlled the airport for more than two years.
The new and improved infrastructure could help the Syrian Democratic Forces conduct offensive operations against the Islamic State. The United States has already carried out two weapons airdrops to the rebel Syrian Arab Coalition, a faction of the Syrian Democratic Forces. But additional assistance in the Syrian Democratic Forces' fight against the Islamic State, including efforts to drive the extremist group from its self-declared capital in Raqqa, would require a broader logistical effort than is currently underway. Expanding the Rmeilan runway could expedite this process by allowing U.S. airplanes to land and drop off supplies instead of continuing to rely on airdrops.
The U.S. involvement in al-Hasaka province would not be so unusual; the United States nearly always attempts to establish an air bridge to support the semi-permanent positions of the conflicts in which it operates. But it comes at a time when Russia similarly builds up its own military presence there. A Russian detachment composed of logistics personnel and military intelligence officers has reportedly arrived in Qamishli airport, an airfield in al-Hasaka controlled by forces loyal to the Syrian government. While the Russians will likely try to improve the logistical capability of the airfield, they have reportedly already sought to enhance their influence with the various rebel militia groups operating in the province.
-
http://waitbutwhy.com/2014/09/muhammad-isis-iraqs-full-story.html
-
By Paul McLeary with Adam Rawnsley
Loose lips. The general in charge of the nation’s special operations forces recently sent a memo to Defense Secretary Ash Carter, demanding that Pentagon officials stop talking about what his elite troops are doing, FP’s Dan De Luce reports in an exclusive get. Gen. Joseph Votel, who currently runs the U.S. Special Operations Command (SOCOM) and was nominated earlier this month to take over U.S. Central Command, issued the complaint in a Dec. 8 memo that arrived just days after Carter and White House officials announced that a force of about 200 Special Operations Forces (SOF) would be deployed to Iraq to target Islamic State militants.
“I am concerned with increased public exposure of SOF activities and operations, and I assess that it is time to get our forces back into the shadows,” Votel wrote, according to an excerpt provided to FP by a defense official. Votel knows something about secrecy, as he ran the Joint Special Operations Command from June 2011 to August 2014. He isn’t the first official to be angered over too much talk about commando ops, however. Then-Defense Secretary Robert Gates and other Pentagon officials privately admonished their White House counterparts for publicizing key details about the 2011 raid that killed Osama bin Laden, according to Gates’ memoir.
-
How the U.S. Would Assist Turkey in Syria
Analysis
January 26, 2016 | 20:48 GMT Print
Text Size
(Stratfor)
Editor's Note: Stratfor closely monitors conflict zones from a geopolitical perspective. What is perhaps the most volatile conflict today can be found in the territories of Iraq and Syria that are controlled by the Islamic State. Though these areas are cartographically distinct, they are functionally linked: Sunni tribal structures, rebel operations, Kurdish interests, external influences and the suzerainty of the Islamic State bind them together as a single, coherent theater.
The Islamic State capitalized on the chaos of the Syrian civil war and the inadequacy of Iraqi security forces to take over a large swath of the Middle East. After making some impressive gains, including the taking of the Iraqi city of Mosul, the Islamic State now finds itself in an increasingly difficult position, against which a wide array of opponents are aligned. Nonetheless, the group is uniquely resilient and, as such, remains extremely dangerous and unpredictable.
In addition to examining the combatants inside the Syria-Iraq battlespace, Stratfor also tracks the political machinations, negotiations and goals of outside the battlespace, including Iran, Russia, the Gulf monarchies and the United States. For the first time, in one place, Stratfor is providing routine updates covering the gains, losses and extent of the Islamic State's so-called caliphate. For previous updates, read Retaking Ramadi Is Only a Small Victory.
Jan. 27: How the U.S. Would Assist Turkey in Syria
Stratfor has received new information that points toward an understanding between the United States and Turkey and opens the way for a Turkish incursion into northern Syria. Though Stratfor has not been able to fully verify the veracity of the information, Turkey has made no secret of its desire for the United States to help it drive the Islamic State out of northern Aleppo province. Moreover, Turkey would then be able to bolster its rebel proxies and prevent the Kurdish People's Protection Units from controlling the area from Afrin to Kobani.
Our sources note that the United States will mostly assist with air support. Turkey has its own powerful air force, but it is probably hesitant to give Russia an excuse to shoot down its aircraft over Syria in retaliation for its downing of a Russian Su-24 warplane that allegedly crossed into Turkish airspace. The precaution will not necessarily prevent the Russians from carrying out airstrikes and potentially hitting Turkish forces on the ground. Still, the lack of Turkish planes would be one less point of potential conflict.
In preparation for U.S. air support for Turkey, the United States will allegedly use Turkish air bases in Batman, Diyarbakir and Malatya, even though most U.S. combat jets will continue to take off from Incirlik air base in Adana. The United States has also reportedly told the Syrian Democratic Forces to halt their advance toward Manbij to pave the way for the operation. To that end, Stratfor is looking for any further deployments of additional U.S. aircraft, troop movements, logistics buildup, and any additional signs of a pending U.S.-backed Turkish incursion into Syria. Furthermore, we are monitoring the Syrian Democratic Forces close to Manbij to see if their activity over the following weeks matches the information we have received.
Jan. 26: In Syria, Russia Courts the Kurds
According to pro-Syrian government media, Russian officers have met with Syrian Kurdish officials in northeastern Syria to hold preliminary talks on military coordination. These talks include a Russian proposal to aid the Kurdish People's Protection Units (YPG) in taking Jarabulus, a town on the Turkish border that the militia desires.
The reports come after multiple sources, including the United States and Turkey, confirmed Russia's presence in al-Hasaka. The province is of secondary importance for Damascus and, by extension, the Russians in their fight against the rebels and the Islamic State. Thus, the Russian mission to these Kurdish areas only reinforces the narrative that Russia is enhancing ties with the YPG and other armed groups, such as Assyrian and Arab militias, in the north.
The YPG will undoubtedly take advantage of Russia's courtship but will be careful not to fall completely into Moscow's embrace. The YPG can certainly benefit from Russian arms and funding. The Kurdish militia can also use Russian influence with the Syrian government to promote its ambitions for Kurdish autonomy in Syria. But the YPG recognizes that Russian support cannot match that of the United States, even if the United States has been hesitant in supplying direct aid because of its relationship with Turkey.
Of course, the United States does provide considerable political backing to the YPG that protects the group from Turkey. Operating under the U.S.-backed Syrian Democratic Forces shields the YPG from direct Turkish hostility, and Ankara also wishes to avoid directly clashing with a group closely tied to Washington. Furthermore, while the United States has thus far not delivered considerable material aid to the Syrian Democratic Forces, let alone the YPG, it has provided critical air support. Russia cannot match the United States in this regard, since all U.S. airstrikes in Syria use precision-guided munitions, while the Russians primarily use unguided munitions.
More important, Russia's pursuit of Kurdish cooperation threatens to strain the country's already delicate relations with Turkey over the Syrian conflict. The YPG and the Kurdish autonomy it seeks is a sensitive issue for Turkey, and one it considers of vital national interest. Russia also reportedly continues to build up forces, including surface-to-air missiles, in Aleppo province, which would conflict with any direct Turkish involvement in the conflict, the prospects of which continues to be evaluated. U.S. military officials are busy talking with their Turkish counterparts on the best way to fight the Islamic State, with Lt. Gen. Charles Brown scheduled to visit Ankara and southeastern Diyarbakir on Feb. 1-2. The meeting could extend to a joint U.S.-Turkish operation in Syria. It could also simply expand Turkish logistical support for an enhanced U.S. campaign. Either way, the outcome will dictate the likelihood of a clash with Russia.
Jan. 19: Turkey May Be Planning a Syrian Invasion
The Islamic State is fending off attacks from all sides in Syria, and there are growing indications that a Turkish ground invasion could add to the group's list of concerns. The Turks are determined to clear the Islamic State from a corridor of land stretching along the Syrian side of the Turkey-Syria border. In what could be a sign of this intent, Turkish minesweeping vehicles have started clearing mines along a section of the border near the Syrian town of Jarabulus, which the Islamic State controls. According to Stratfor sources, Russia and the United States have discussed the plan, and Russia has agreed not to obstruct Turkey's efforts so long as Ankara does not try to expand the buffer zone to the Mediterranean Sea — a stipulation Turkey has reportedly acquiesced to. Our sources also said liaison officers from Turkey, Russia and the United States will coordinate with one another to prevent cases of accidental fire or, in the event that they do occur, to avoid any escalation between Turkish and Russian forces.
As Stratfor has noted, Turkey has long wanted an international operation to clear the Islamic State from northern Aleppo, and its plan to establish a buffer zone along the border may be the first step toward achieving its goal. If such an operation occurred, it would deal a heavy blow to the Islamic State, which recently launched a suicide bombing against the Turkish capital. It would also strengthen the rebels in northern Syria, in turn preventing the Kurdish People's Protection Units (YPG) from expanding their reach westward. Finally, an international operation would likely draw the United States deeper into the Syrian conflict — a boon for Turkey, which does not want to go it alone.
Until now, though, Turkey's plans for Syria have been greatly complicated by Russia's intervention in the conflict, and Moscow has continued to frustrate Ankara's ambitions since Turkey shot down a Russian Su-24 warplane in November 2015. For instance, the Russians have reinforced their air defense assets in Syria, and in a Dec. 17 interview Russian President Vladimir Putin dared Turkey to fly over Syrian airspace, implying that the aircraft would be shot down if it did.
Despite the considerable risks, Turkey may decide to move forward with its operation anyway. Assaults by Russia-backed loyalists have stretched thin the Syrian rebels allied with Turkey, and the Islamic State has turned its gaze toward Turkey's cities. Meanwhile, the Kurdish YPG is making headway in the territory west of the Euphrates River. Each of these developments could encourage Turkey to take a more active role in the Syrian conflict, even it means risking a clash with Russia.
Still, that does not mean that Ankara, with Washington's help, is not trying to reach an understanding with Moscow, at least in terms of setting up deconfliction procedures to avoid clashing with each other in the Syrian warzone, which is rapidly becoming crowded. On Jan. 22, U.S. Vice President Joe Biden and U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs Victoria Nuland plan to travel to Istanbul for high-level talks with Turkish officials. The United States could use this opportunity to try to bring Turkey back into talks with Russia over the Syrian conflict. However, even if both sides set up deconfliction procedures, they cannot guarantee that miscalculation and escalation will not take place in an atmosphere rife with mistrust and suspicion.
Turkey has already begun to ramp up its artillery strikes along its border with Syria to help its rebel allies and to destroy Islamic State targets. This could indicate an effort to soften enemy defenses ahead of a Turkish ground incursion once minesweeping operations have been completed. An invasion could theoretically occur at any point along the Islamic State-controlled portion of Turkey's border with Syria, but if it begins at Jarabulus, where Turkey is clearing mines, it would have to be mostly carried out by Turkish forces. The nearest Syrian rebel lines are nearly 100 kilometers (62 miles) away, and no coalition ground troops are present in Turkey to offer support.
The threat of an impending Turkish ground offensive is only one of many confronting the Islamic State in northern Aleppo at the moment. The group is already grappling with a three-pronged assault on its territory in the area. From the east, the Kurdish-dominated Syrian Democratic Forces have crossed the Euphrates River, despite Turkey's opposition to the move, and they are now advancing westward toward the Islamic State-held town of Manbij. From the south, Syrian loyalist forces backed by Russian airstrikes are advancing toward the city of al-Bab. And from the west, rebel forces predominantly from the Turkey-backed Mare Operations Room are advancing eastward along the Turkey-Syria border, looking to gain ground held by the Islamic State. The possibility of a ground invasion by Turkey could make the Islamic State's fight for territory even more difficult, albeit at the risk of also complicating the operations of the other parties involved in Syria's civil war.
Jan. 5: In Syria, Loyalist Forces Push South
As the Russians and Iranians ramped up their support for the Syrian government over the last three months of 2015, they focused on counterattacking the largely Islamist rebel forces in northern Syria. However, during the past week the Syrian loyalist forces, with significant aid from their allies, have begun major operations in southern Syria, particularly in Daraa and Quneitra provinces.
The new loyalist offensives in the south focus on Sheikh Miskin, a strategically located crossroads town located just west of the M5 highway. Rebels successfully seized the town in January 2015 and from there have continued to seriously threaten the loyalists' narrow logistical corridor that runs from Damascus to the their embattled forces in Daraa city.
The initial loyalist offensive managed to retake the northern parts of the town and its outlying bases, but a rebel counterattack led to difficult urban fighting and continuous back-and-forth advances by both sides. The loyalists have lost a considerable number of tanks and vehicles in the town but have also inflicted heavy casualties on the rebels with their heavy artillery and airstrikes. There is also a loyalist effort to reach the town of Nawa, located west of Sheikh Miskin.
The battle also involves an expanded Russian air campaign that is targeting the Free Syrian Army Southern Front. This breaks the alleged accord, which has largely held until now, between the Russians and the Jordanians to avoid increasing attacks on their preferred proxies. With loyalist offensives currently taking place in both northern and southern Syria, the Syrian government is rallying once again after its recent losses. However, the intensification in fighting is undermining the international effort to push through the cease-fire that was originally planned for this month.
-
In Syria, Locals Take the Fight Back to Islamic State
by Jonathan Spyer
The Australian
January 23, 2016
http://www.meforum.org/5807/taking-the-fight-back-to-is
Excerpt of an article originally published under the title "Striking a Winning Formula as Locals Take the Fight Back to Islamic State."
In late December, I travelled to northern Syria to take a closer look at how things were working out. Is Islamic State being contained and eroded? And if it is, who are the forces on the ground that are achieving this?
Kobane is a good place to start. This once anonymous Kurdish town on the Syrian-Turkish border was the subject in 2014 of Islamic State's predatory intentions. The jihadists wanted to remove the logistical irritation of a Kurdish enclave poking into their domain. Abu Omar al-Shishani, the most feared of the Islamic State commanders, declared that he would "drink tea in Ayn al-Islam" (the name Islamic State gave the town). He came close to achieving his objective.
By October 2014, the nearly surrounded Kurdish forces were preparing for a last stand. The fighters of the YPG (the People's Protection Units of the de facto Kurdish ¬autonomous region in northern Syria) were determined, but outgunned.
Then something changed. The intervention of US power, partnering with the lightly armed but determined Kurds, turned the tide and proved the formula for success against Islamic State. More than 2000 jihadists died inside the ruins of Kobane, under the relentless US air attacks and the determined assaults of the YPG. In January, the group abandoned the attack. Kobane had survived.
Western air power is partnering with local ground forces across a broad front stretching from the Syrian-Turkish border to Iraq.
This formula for success — Western air power in partnership with carefully selected and directed local ground partners — is now being applied across a broad front stretching from Jarabulus on Syria's Turkish border all the way to deep inside Iraq.
Kobane today bears fearful testimony to the awesome destructive capacity of modern war. There is hardly a building that is not damaged. Roads are ploughed up. Craters made by the bombs, filled with rainwater, offer mute testimony to the fierceness of the fight. Once residential streets are now just lines of damaged structures — rubble and masonry and foundation walls rising like outstretched hands towards the sky.
But, importantly, the war is now far from here. Once the assault on Kobane ended in January last year, the YPG and its US allies continued to push the jihadists back: 196 villages and an area of 1362 sq km were liberated from the jihadists. As of now, since the capture of Ain Issa, the front lines at their most forward point are situated just 30km from Islamic State's "capital" in Raqqa City.
196 villages have been liberated by Syrian Kurdish forces in the past year.
This has enabled life to begin tentatively to return to Kobane. About 40,000 people are now living in the town, although its reconstruction remains in the opening stages. It has also set the stage for the current phase of the war in which Islamic State is often no longer on the attack. Rather, it is being slowly pushed back. What comes next, I asked Colonel Talal Silu, spokesman for the Syrian Democratic Forces, at a facility in al-Hasakah city. The Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), whose existence was announced in October last year, is the 40,000-strong military alliance with which Western air power and special forces are partnering in the war against Islamic State.
Silu, an ethnic Turkmen from northern Syria and a member of the Jaysh al-Thuwar (Army of Revolutionaries), is a living example of the purpose of the SDF.
The victories against Islamic State at Kobane and to its east were won by the combination of determined Kurdish ground forces and US air power. This partnership works militarily. Politi¬cally, however, it is problematic.
The US is committed to the maintenance of Syria as a territorial unit. The PYD (Democratic Union Party) in Syrian Kurdistan is a franchise of the PKK (Kurdistan Workers Party), which is based in Turkey and Iraqi Kurdistan and is engaged in an armed conflict with Turkey. The PYD is widely believed by Syrian Arabs to be seeking to secede from Syria. Yet, more problematically, the PKK remains on the US and EU lists of terrorist organisations. And the secular, leftist YPG in Syria is clearly the creation of the PKK, though spokesmen deny formal links.
Syrian Kurds have taken the initiative in the war with Islamic State.
The SDF, which brings in non-Kurdish organisations and fighters around the nucleus of the 30,000-strong YPG, is intended to remedy this situation. It serves a purpose for both Kurds and Americans. It enables the YPG to present itself as an integral part of Syria. The US, meanwhile, can claim to be working with a multi-ethnic alliance rather than a Kurdish nationalist force.
This latter aspect is of particular importance because of Turkish concerns. The Turks have warned the YPG not to cross west of the Euphrates River. Ankara is concerned at Kurdish ambitions to acquire control of the entire long border between Syria and Turkey. At present, an isolated Kurdish canton in the area of Afrin in northwest Syria remains cut off from the main area of Kurdish control. Areas of rebel and Islamic State control separate the two.
Silu, however, is not interested in discussing the intricacies of ¬Levantine power politics on the morning that we met. What needs to come next, he tells me, is heavy weapons. On October 14, the US dropped 50 tonnes of ammunition to the SDF. This, the colonel says, is not enough. "What they dropped was only enough to fight for two or three days. Not so useful."
So, what would be useful? "Heavy weapons, tow missiles, anti-tank missiles ... The Americans gave million to people who did nothing. Saudi Arabia is supporting forces and providing high-quality weapons. But we are the only force that is fighting Islamic State seriously."
YPG and YPJ fighters at the funeral of three comrades killed fighting Islamic State.
This sentiment is repeated again and again as we follow the SDF front lines down south of al-Hasakah to the last forward positions before the town of al- Shaddadah. The SDF liberated al-Hawl on November 16 and is now pushing beyond it.
The remnants of Islamic State rule are plainly visible as we drive through the town. "The Islamic Court in al-Hawl", one painted structure proclaims grandly. But the building is ransacked and deserted, and someone has painted a livid red YPG emblem above that of the former Islamist rulers. Islamic State is on the retreat.
"If we had effective weapons, we could take Raqqa in a month," says Kemal Amuda, a short and energetic YPG commander on the front line south of al-Hawl. "But the area is very large. And the airstrikes are of limited use."
'If we had effective weapons, we could take Raqqa in a month,' says YPG commander Kemal Amuda.
What would help? Once again: "Anti-tank weapons, tanks, armoured vehicles."
The reason the heavy weapons these commanders desire have not been forthcoming may relate to the provisional nature of the alliance underpinning the SDF.
The Western forces want to use this force as a battering ram against Islamic State. But the Kurdish core of the force has other ambitions, which include the unification of the cantons and acquiring control of the border. The Western coalition may well prefer to neutralise Islamic State advantage in heavy weapons by employing air power, rather than afford the Kurds an independent capacity in this regard.
But despite the absence of such weapons and the political complications, the SDF is proving a serviceable tool in the battle against Islamic State. The strategy appears to be to slowly chip away at the areas surrounding Raqqa City in order to weaken the jihadists' ability to mount a determined defence of the city. The loss of al-Hawl meant Islamic State also lost control of the Syrian section of Highway 47 from Raqqa City across the Iraqi border to Mosul, Iraq's second city and the other jewel in the Islamic State crown.
The SDF captured the Tishrin Dam on December 27.
The conquest of the Tishrin Dam by the SDF on December 27 further isolates Raqqa. The dam was the last bridge across the Euphrates controlled by Islamic State. Its loss significantly increases the time it would take for the ¬jihadists to bring forces from Aleppo province on the western side of the river to the aid of the city.
So the SDF, partnering with US air power, appears to be aiming to split Islamic State in two, before attacking its most significant points.
The YPG component, which accounts for most of the SDF's fighting strength, is an irregular force. It lacks the resources and the structure of a regular army. The fighters have only the simplest of equipment. No body armour. No helmets. Night vision equipment also appears to be absent. Medical knowledge and supplies are basic.
Concerns have been raised regarding the high rate of attrition in this force, including fighters who suffered wounds that ought not to have been fatal had skilled medical attention been close at hand.
But despite all this, they appear to get results, and morale was clearly high among the young combatants that I interviewed in the frontline areas south of al-Hawl and al-Hasakah.
A particularly striking element was the constantly repeated refrain that Islamic State fighters suffered from severe attrition and noticeably declining motivation.
Islamic State fighters reportedly suffer from severe attrition and declining motivation.
As we pass through an eerily silent and seemingly deserted frontline area close to al-Bassel Dam, 30km east of Shaddadah, I come across a group of YPG men defending a position about 3km from the jihadists.
The officer commanding this group refuses to give his name or to be recorded. "Journalists aren't really supposed to be around here," he remarks with a smile. Nevertheless, in the conversation that follows, the commander gives a precise description of the changing tactics used by the jihadists, and what in his view this portends for the fight against Islamic State.
Once, the jihadists attacked en masse. The order, as described by the commander, was that a number of "suicide cars" — vehicles filled with explosives and intended to spread panic among the defenders — would appear first, followed by suicide bombers on foot, who would try to enter the positions of the defenders and detonate themselves. Then a mass of ground fighters would follow behind, with the intention of breaking through the shocked defenders.
These methods had been effective, but also very costly in terms of manpower. Now, however, the jihadists are evidently seeking to preserve the lives of their force. Their tactics have changed accordingly. They move in smaller groups, preferring to leave only token forces to defend areas subjected to determined attack.
The change, suggests the commander, derives from a dwindling flow of eager recruits in comparison with mid-2014. "Formerly, they were attractive as conquerors. Their power derived from intimidation and imposing terror," he says. "This has now gone."
This decline in the stream of recruits for Islamic State probably explains an amnesty for deserters announced last October, as revealed in a recent trove of Islamic State documents leaked to British researcher Aymenn Jawad al-Tamimi. The announcement suggests Islamic State can no longer maintain in their entirety the ruthless and draconian methods that characterised its early stages. The need for manpower precludes this.
The turn to international terrorism by Islamic State in recent months is probably also explained by its loss of momentum in Iraq and Syria. The group needs "achievements" to maintain its "brand". Its slogan is "baqiya wa tatamaddad" (remaining and expanding). But expansion of its territorial holdings is no longer taking place. The downing of the Russian Metrojet passenger airliner on October 31, the coordinated attacks in Paris on November 13 and a series of attacks in Turkey suggest action on the global stage may be a substitute for gains on the battlefield closer to home.
What is most striking about the large swath of northern Syria now administered by the Kurds is its atmosphere of near normality. This was not always the case. This reporter first visited "Rojava", as the Kurds call Syrian Kurdistan, in early 2013 — just a few months after the Assad regime pulled out of most of northeast Syria. At that time, the security structures put in place by the Kurds were rudimentary and somewhat chaotic. And the remaining regime presence in the cities of al-Qamishli and al-Hasakah was far more extensive.
By the end of last year, however, the rule of the PYD and its allies had taken on a look of solidity. Pictures of martyrs are everywhere, testimony to the high cost the maintenance of the enclave continues to exact. But the YPG checkpoints and the presence of both the Asayish (paramilitary police) and the "blue" police force established by the Kurds leaves no doubt as to who is in control here.
Syrian Kurds have carved out an enclave constituting more than 20 per cent of the country's territory.
The US decision to partner with the Kurdish de facto force in this area is an acknowledgment of this achievement. Finding physical evidence of the American presence, however, is a challenge. YPG commanders interviewed by me insisted the process of calling in airstrikes was handled by the YPG alone, via a control room that was in contact with US forces. The Americans, in this telling, were responsible only for advising and some training of forces.
Yet it seems likely that the small complement of US special forces committed to Syria (up to 50 operators, according to the official announcement) are doing more than simply training and advising.
In neighbouring Iraqi Kurdistan, evidence has already emerged of the ground involvement of US special forces in operations against Islamic State. Similar events are likely taking place in Syria, too.
According to a recent report in the regional newspaper al-Hayat, plans are afoot to broaden the US presence, with the construction of a base in which, according to a Western official quoted by the paper, "US experts will reside and from which they will travel to battle lines". The base, according to al-Hayat, is set to be built outside the town of Derik (al-Malikiyah), deep in the heart of the Kurdish-controlled area in northeast Syria. These reports, if they have substance, suggest a deepening of the military alliance between the US and the Kurds of Syria.
...
But this war, in truth, looks nowhere close to conclusion. In the meantime, the Syrian Kurds have carved out an enclave constituting more than 20 per cent of the country's territory of the country and established at least a semblance of normal life.
The jihadists are far from a spent force. On January 15, they launched a ferocious counterattack against Assad regime forces in the Deir ez-Zor area. A massacre of civilians followed. Islamic State's capacity for mass murder should not be underestimated.
Still, as we crossed the Tigris River from northern Syria into Iraq, two memories remained particularly vivid.
The first was of Kobane. As we entered the ruined city, a celebration was taking place. About 100 young Kurds were dancing in an open area, Kurdish music blaring from a primitive sound system, with the ruined, macabre buildings casting their shapes all around.
The second was of a clump of strange mounds that we found by the roadside in the desert south of al-Hawl. These, on closer inspection, turned out to be the torn corpses of a group of Islamic State fighters — killed perhaps in an airstrike. Their foes had covered them lightly with earth before continuing south. The sightless eyes stared skyward.
The war against Islamic State and the larger war of which it is a part are far from over. But on this front at least, the direction is clear. The SDF is moving forward.
Jonathan Spyer is director of the Rubin Center for Research in International Affairs and a fellow at the Middle East Forum.
-
http://nypost.com/2016/02/01/get-ready-for-obamas-next-syria-fiasco/
We will likely need to recognize the demise of Syria and Iraq, and create a new, secular Sunni state from their territory once ISIS is vanquished. America’s failure to act effectively against ISIS to date is readily reversible, and regional allies are all but begging for renewed attention to our own Middle East security interests.
Most importantly, the road to Damascus runs through Tehran. Our attention should be on regime change in Iran first. Only when the ayatollahs are swept aside is there even a glimmer of a chance for Middle East peace and security.
-
Is Assad's Russian-backed Offensive a Game-changer in Syria?
by Jonathan Spyer
The Jerusalem Post
February 5, 2016
http://www.meforum.org/5834/syria-talks
Originally published under the title "Precarious Syria Talks Leave Its Future Uncertain."
The failure of the peace talks was foreseen by most serious analysts on Syria. UN Special Envoy on Syria Staffan de Mistura this week announced the suspension of just-convened peace talks in Geneva intended to resolve the Syrian civil war. The failure of the talks was predictable and foreseen by most serious analysts on Syria. Diplomacy requires compromise. But the forces of President Bashar Assad, Russia, Iran and Hezbollah are advancing in both northern and southern Syria.
The dictator and his allies, as a consequence, see no reason to abandon their core aims or accept a political process leading to a transition of power.
The action of consequence with regard to Syria is taking place on the battlefields of Aleppo, Idlib, Deraa and Quneitra provinces, not in the conference rooms of Geneva and Vienna.
The aim of the regime and its Russian and Iranian allies at present appears to be to destroy the non-Islamic State Sunni Arab rebellion against Assad. This would have the consequence of leaving only three effective protagonists in the war in Syria – Assad, Islamic State and the Kurds in the north.
Russia hopes to lure Syrian Kurds away from their alliance with the US.
Moscow is engaged at the moment in the energetic courting of the Kurds. Should Russia, after defeating the non-Islamic State rebels, succeed in tempting the Syrian Kurds away from their current alliance with the US, this would leave Moscow the effective master of the universally approved war against Islamic State in Syria.
Assad, who was facing possible defeat prior to the Russian intervention in September 2015, would be entirely dependent on Moscow and to a lesser extent Tehran for his survival. This would make the Russians and Iranians the decisive element in Syria's future.
The defeat of the non-Islamic State Sunni Arab rebellion is the first stage in this strategy. The main regime and Russian efforts are currently directed toward the remaining heartland of the rebellion in northwest Syria. But Assad and his allies also appear intent on delivering a death blow to the revolt in the place it was born – Deraa province in the south and its environs. This, incidentally, if achieved in its entirety, would bring Hezbollah and Iran to the area east of Quneitra crossing, facing the Israeli-controlled part of the Golan Heights. It is not by any means certain that the regime will achieve this aim in total. But as of now, Assad and his friends are moving forward.
The first stage following the Russian intervention, and achieved in the dying months of 2015, was to end the rebel threat to the regime enclave in Latakia province. There is no further prospect of the rebels finding their way into the populated areas of this province. The regime has recaptured 35 villages in the northern Latakia countryside.
This achieved, the main fulcrum of the current effort is Aleppo province. Aleppo is the capital of Syria's north. The rebellion's arrival in this city in the late summer of 2012 signaled the point at which it first began to pose a real threat to Assad.
This week, the regime, its Iran-mustered Shi'a militia supporters and Russian air power succeeded in breaking the link between the border town of Azaz and rebel-held eastern Aleppo. This reporter traveled these rebel supply routes from the border when they were first carved out in 2012. They were vital to the maintenance of the rebellion's positions in Aleppo. There is a single link remaining between Turkey and eastern Aleppo – via Idlib province.
The direction of the war is currently in the regime's favor. But the rebel situation is rapidly deteriorating. The regime also broke a two-year siege on two Shi'ite towns, Nubul and Zahra.
The rebels rushed all available personnel and resources to defend these supply routes. Jabhat al-Nusra, the al-Qaida branch in Syria, sent a convoy of 750 fighters to the area. This proved insufficient.
Further south, a recent regime offensive in Deraa province led to the recapture of the town of Sheikh Maskin, which again cuts the rebels off from key supply lines in a province they once dominated.
So the direction of the war is currently in the regime's favor. This is due to the Russian air intervention and to Iran's provision of ground fighters from a variety of regional populations aligned with it. The pattern of events on the ground had a predictable effect on the diplomacy in Geneva.
Any attempt by the regime to claw back the entirety of Syria will lead to overstretch.
All this does not, however, necessarily presage imminent and comprehensive regime and Russian success on the ground. Syrian opposition sources note that the pendulum of the war has swung back and forth many times in the course of the last four years. They hope that fresh efforts from Ankara, Qatar and Saudi Arabia will help to stem regime gains in the weeks ahead.
Perhaps more fundamentally, any attempt by the regime to claw back the entirety of Sunni Arab majority areas or Kurdish majority areas of Syria would lead to the same situation the regime faced in 2012 – namely, overstretch and insufficient forces to effectively hold areas conquered. But as of now, thanks to the Russian intervention, prospects for rebel victory have been averted and the Assad regime, with its allies, is on the march once more.
Comprehensive eclipse for the non-Islamic State Sunni Arab rebel groups is no longer an impossibility somewhere down the line. This reality at present precludes progress toward a diplomatic solution.
As an old Russian proverb has it: When the guns roar, the muses are silent.
-
Syria
The United Arab Emirates (UAE) has added its voice to Saudi Arabia's in the rather small chorus of Gulf Arab countries hypothetically willing to send ground troops to Syria. UAE foreign minister Anwar Gargash told the AP that he is "frustrated" at the slow pace of the war against the Islamic State and that the UAE would be willing to send a small number of troops to Syria to help train anti-Islamic State forces. The UAE already has ground troops fighting Houthi rebels in Yemen.
Iranian-backed militias from Iraq are not wild about Saudi Arabia and the UAE's recent pledges to send troops to Syria, threatening to "open the gates of hell" for them if they deploy there. The threat came from Kataib Hezbollah, an Iranian-supplied Iraqi militia and U.S.-designated terrorist organization which is fighting on behalf of the Assad regime in Syria. The group is also active in Iraq, where it is operating as part of Baghdad’s war against the Islamic State.
The gains made by the government of Bashar al-Assad in the recent offensive around Aleppo spell trouble for the future of armed opposition to the Assad regime, analysts tell Agence France Presse. The loss of the city would deny rebels a crucial base and launchpad from Turkey into the rest of the country. Faced with Russian airpower and little means to counter it, the rebellion against the Assad regime may further radicalize into a deeper embrace of jihadist groups as the Russian and Iranian-backed coalition behind Assad tries to carve out a rump state in the populated west of Syria.
The fighting around Aleppo is also creating a massive refugee problem for Turkey as residents flee toward the border seeking shelter, Al Jazeera reports. Already, as many as 50,000 refugees are waiting on the Syrian side of the Turkish border as Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan pledges that Turkey will let them in if they “have no other choice." Turkish officials estimate that the bombing could force another 70,000 refugees toward the border.
The Islamic State
The Washington Post has identified another member of the Islamic State's kidnap and murder squad, whose English accents earned them the nickname "the Beatles." A U.S. intelligence official confirmed that Alexanda Kotey, a Londoner and convert to Islam, was a member of the group headed by Mohammed "Jihadi John" Emwazi, killed by a U.S. drone strike in November. Kotey's upbringing in the Shepherd's Bush section of London loosely aligns with descriptions of "Ringo," an Islamic State fighter involved in detaining and torturing the group's foreign hostages.
-
FWIW
http://www.newsweek.com/isis-chechen-spies-putin-kadyrov-424090
-
http://en.alalam.ir/news/1787751
-
Putin’s Syria Victory
John Kerry’s cease-fire lets Assad consolidate his strategic gains.
Feb. 12, 2016 6:34 p.m. ET
24 COMMENTS
President Obama has spent five years insisting that there is no military solution to the Syrian civil war. To judge by the “cessation of hostilities” announced Friday in Munich, Vladimir Putin is about to prove him wrong.
In theory the cease-fire that Secretary of State John Kerry negotiated with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov will bring a partial end to the fighting in a week and allow expanded humanitarian aid into the country. This is supposed to be followed by a resumption of peace talks, which collapsed this month as Bashar Assad’s regime backed by Russian warplanes pressed an offensive against moderate Syrian rebels.
In practice, however, this looks like another Russian victory. Russian planes have intensified their bombing of Aleppo, forcing thousands of civilians to flee to the Turkish border through the only corridor that remains beyond Mr. Assad’s control. Mr. Lavrov says the week delay is needed to sort out the “modalities” of the cease-fire, but the real reason is to give the regime time to complete Aleppo’s encirclement.
The cease-fire explicitly excludes attacks on Islamic State (ISIS) and the al Qaeda-backed Nusra Front. This would make sense if the Kremlin weren’t falsely claiming that its targets are “terrorists” even as it neglects to attack ISIS. Expect the charade to go on until Mr. Putin achieves his military and strategic goals.
The fall of Aleppo and other rebel enclaves in western Syria will allow Mr. Assad to consolidate his grip on the most fertile and populated part of the country. Next month’s negotiations can then “freeze” the conflict in place, a tactic Russia used to its advantage after its invasion of Georgia in 2008 and last year’s Minsk agreement over eastern Ukraine. ISIS can be dealt with later, while Mr. Assad can count on U.S. air strikes to degrade ISIS’s capabilities as he deals with his more immediate enemies.
This isn’t the Russian “quagmire” Mr. Obama predicted last year when Moscow stepped into Syria. Mr. Putin has consolidated his strategic position in the eastern Mediterranean with a tough but limited military intervention and minimal casualties. He has strengthened ties to Tehran. He has shown the Muslim world that he’s the power to be reckoned with, which is why Sunni states like Saudi Arabia, Egypt and the United Arab Emirates have backed away from their opposition to Mr. Putin’s gambit.
The Russian has also gained diplomatic leverage that he’ll use to gain further concessions from the U.S. and Europe. This will likely start, but not end, with sanctions relief as Europe and the U.S. gradually acquiesce to his Ukrainian annexations. Mr. Obama will gladly make this trade since the “cease-fire” will ease what had been growing media criticism in the U.S. of his Syrian abdications.
The next U.S. President will inherit the wreckage. This includes the betrayal of the Free Syrian Army and the example it sets for other potential U.S. allies; the non-defeat of ISIS; the loss of credibility with traditional allies in Jerusalem, Riyadh and Cairo; Russia’s renewed influence in the region; the improbable victory of a murderous dictator who Mr. Obama once insisted had to “step aside”; and the consolidation of an Iranian crescent from Tehran through Baghdad and Damascus to Beirut.
Add to that the killing of more than 250,000 Syrians and the greatest refugee crisis since the end of World War II, and this is some record. Mr. Obama might call it success, but George Orwell would have used a different term.
-
Saudi Arabia and Turkey Are Walking into a Trap
by Burak Bekdil
The Gatestone Institute
February 16, 2016
http://www.meforum.org/5864/saudi-turkey-syria-trap
Originally published under the title "Russia's Trap: Luring Sunnis into War."
After Russia's increasingly bold military engagement in war-torn Syria in favor of President Bashar al-Assad and the Shiite bloc, the regional Sunni powers – Turkey and its ally, Saudi Arabia – have felt nervous and incapable of influencing the civil war in favor of the many Islamist groups fighting Assad's forces.
Most recently, the Turks and Saudis, after weeks of negotiations, decided to flex their muscles and join forces to engage a higher-intensity war in the Syrian theater. This is dangerous for the West. It risks provoking further Russian and Iranian involvement in Syria, and sparking a NATO-Russia confrontation.
After Turkey, citing violation of its airspace, shot down a Russian Su-24 military jet on Nov. 24, Russia has used the incident as a pretext to reinforce its military deployments in Syria and bomb the "moderate Islamists." Those are the Islamists who fight Assad's forces and are supported by Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Qatar. The Russian move included installing the advanced S-400 long-range air and anti-missile defense systems.
Turkey and Saudi Arabia say they are ready to directly challenge Russian-backed pro-regime forces in Syria.
Fearing that the new player in the game could vitally damage their plans to install a Sunni regime in Damascus, Turkey and Saudi Arabia now say they are ready to challenge the bloc consisting of Assad's forces, Russia, and Shiite militants from Iran and Lebanon.
As always, Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu spoke in a way that forcefully reminded Turkey-watchers of the well-known phrase: Turkey's bark is worse than its bite. "No one," he said on Feb. 9, "should forget how the Soviet forces, which were a mighty, super force during the Cold War and entered Afghanistan, then left Afghanistan in a servile situation. Those who entered Syria today will also leave Syria in a servile way." In other words, Davutoglu was telling the Russians: Get out of Syria; we are coming in. The Russians did not even reply. They just kept on bombing.
Turkey keeps threatening to increase its military role in Syria. Deputy Prime Minister Yalcin Akdogan pledged that Turkey will no longer be in a "defensive position" over maintaining its national security interests amid developments in Syria. "Can any team," he said, "play defensively at all times but still win a match? ... You can win nothing by playing defensively and you can lose whatever you have. There is a very dynamic situation in the region and one has to read this situation properly. One should end up withdrawn because of concerns and fears."
Is NATO member Turkey going to war in order to fulfill its Sunni sectarian objectives? And are its Saudi allies joining in? If the Sunni allies are not bluffing, they are already giving signals of what may eventually turn into a new bloody chapter in the sectarian proxy war in Syria.
First, Saudi Arabia announced that it was sending fighter jets to the Incirlik air base in southern Turkey, where U.S. and other allied aircraft have been hitting Islamic State strongholds inside Syria. Saudi military officials said that their warplanes would intensify aerial operations in Syria.
"[A] ground operation is necessary ... But to expect this only from Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Qatar is neither right nor realistic," Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said on February 16.
Second, and more worryingly, Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said that Turkey and Saudi Arabia could engage in ground operations inside Syria. He also said that the two countries had long been weighing a cross-border operation into Syria – with the pretext of fighting Islamic State, but in fact hoping to bolster the Sunni groups fighting against the Shiite bloc – but they have not yet made a decision.
In contrast, Saudi officials look more certain about a military intervention. A Saudi brigadier-general said that a joint Turkish-Saudi ground operation in Syria was being planned. He even said that Turkish and Saudi military experts would meet in the coming days to finalize "the details, the task force and the role to be played by each country."
In Damascus, the Syrian regime said that any ground operation inside Syria's sovereign borders would "amount to aggression that must be resisted."
It should be alarming for the West if Turkey and Saudi Arabia, two important U.S. allies, have decided to fight a strange cocktail of enemies on Syrian territory, including Syrian forces, radical jihadists, various Shiite forces and, most critically, Russia – all in order to support "moderate" Islamists. That may be the opening of a worse disaster in Syria, possibly spanning over the next 10 to 15 years.
Allowing Sunni supremacists into a sectarian war is not a rational way to block Russian expansion.
The new Sunni adventurism will likely force Iran to augment its military engagement in Syria. It will create new tensions between Turkey-Saudi Arabia and Iraq's Shiite-dominated government. It may also spread and destabilize other Middle Eastern theaters, where the Sunni bloc, consisting of Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Qatar, may have to engage in new proxy wars with the Shiite bloc plus Russia.
Washington should think more than twice about allowing its Sunni allies militarily to engage their Shiite enemies. This may be a war with no winners but plenty of casualties and collateral damage. Allowing Sunni supremacists into a deeper sectarian war is not a rational way to block Russian expansion in the eastern Mediterranean. And it certainly will not serve America's interests.
Turkey and Saudi Arabia are too weak militarily to damage Russia's interests. It is a Russian trap – and precisely what the Russians are hoping their enemies will fall into.
Burak Bekdil is an Ankara-based columnist for the Turkish newspaper Hürriyet Daily News and a fellow at the Middle East Forum.
-
Second post
And why Erdogan's war against them threatens to undermine his relationship with the United States and spark a civil war in Turkey.
http://foreignpolicy.com/2016/02/18/how-the-kurds-became-syrias-new-power-brokers/?utm_source=Sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=New%20Campaign&utm_term=Flashpoints
Tal Rifaat, Menagh air base, Kefir Naya, Kefir Neris — town after town, village after village is falling to Kurdish-led forces as they blaze their way across northern Syria. The latest push by the U.S.-backed group known as the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) marks an explosive new phase in Syria’s five-year war. Turkey, a key, and increasingly unpredictable, NATO ally, is now on the verge of being sucked into the battle, against the group the U.S. favors.
Turkey has long insisted that Syria’s Kurds pose a greater threat to its security than the Islamic State jihadis do, and is furious that the United States is helping them. On Feb. 18, the Turkish government identified a Syrian Kurd, Salih Necar, as the perpetrator of a car bomb attack in the heart of Ankara. Nacar allegedly drove a car laden with explosives into the midst of shuttle buses carrying military personnel and civilians outside the air force headquarters in the Turkish capital, killing himself and at least 27 other people.
Less than a day later, at least six Turkish soldiers died in the country’s mainly Kurdish province of Diyarbakir following a bomb attack also thought to have been carried out by Kurdish insurgents.
Watch Pope Francis Honor Migrants at the U.S./Mexico Border
Republican frontrunner Donald Trump has called Mexicans who enter the United States illegally rapists who bring drugs, crime, and lots of problems. He's pledged to build a wall, paid for by Mexico, to keep them out. On Wednesday afternoon, just three days before the presidential primary in South Carolina, Pope Francis delivered a powerful counter to Trump's harsh rhetoric with a simple gesture.
Promoted By
The main Syrian Kurdish militia, the People’s Protection Units (YPG), was set up as a franchise of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), which has been fighting the Turkish state on and off since 1984, first for independence and now for Kurdish self-rule inside Turkey. Salih Muslim, the co-chair of the Democratic Union Party, which serves as the political wing of the YPG, swiftly denied any connection to the Ankara blast. The YPG has never attacked Turkey before and would surely desist from any actions that put its alliance with the United States at risk.
However, the Turkish prime minister, Ahmet Davutoglu, an Islamist, insisted that the bomber was “definitely” a member of the YPG who had “infiltrated” Turkey.
Turkey is adamant that the PKK and the YPG are “terrorists.” Washington half agrees. The PKK is on the State Department’s list of terrorist organizations. But the YPG is not, a fact that has paved the way for its deepening partnership in Syria, as Washington has provided the group with air support and weapons.
It remains unclear what sort of retaliatory action Turkey will take. What is certain is that Washington’s delicate balancing act between its Turkish and Kurdish allies is looking more precarious than ever.
Since Feb. 13, Turkish tanks have been shelling SDF positions near the Syrian town of Azaz, which is a vital resupply line for rebel forces in Aleppo who are allied with Ankara and doubles as a rear base against the Kurds. Turkey has vowed to prevent it from falling into their hands. Deputy Prime Minister Yalcin Akdogan made Turkey’s intentions clear, saying that it wants to create a “secure” strip of territory roughly 6 miles deep on the Syrian side of the border, including Azaz. Thousands of Turkish troops have been massing in the area for weeks, prompting Russia to warn that Turkey was planning an invasion of Syria.
These steps have placed Turkey on the brink of a conflict with its regional antagonists. The Kurds say they will fight back against any Turkish aggression. Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, whose own forces are inching their way toward Turkey’s border, says he will do the same. And few doubt that Russia, which is itching to avenge last year’s downing by Turkish pilots of its Sukhoi SU-24 jet, would deliver the biggest whacking of all.
Meanwhile, the SDF is skirting Azaz, punching a corridor further south — well out of Turkey’s range — and recruiting rebel groups along the way. Turkey’s demands that Washington stop aiding Kurdish “terrorists” has so far fallen on deaf ears. Rather, Washington has been calling on Turkey to stop attacking the Syrian Kurds.
Ankara may seem powerless in Syria, but it still has cards to play. It can, and already has begun to, reinforce its rebel proxies against the Kurds. More ominously, it could yet again ease restrictions on the flow of foreign jihadis into Syria.
Turkey’s troubles with its own Kurds explain why it is prepared to go to such extremes. The latest and most promising round of peace talks between the Turkish government and the PKK collapsed last summer when Turkey resumed its battle against the insurgents and began pummeling their strongholds in Kurdish-controlled northern Iraq. The PKK responded by shifting its fight to urban centers in the largely Kurdish southeast of Turkey, where its youth wing is mired in a bloody standoff with Turkish security forces. PKK fighters frequently target army convoys, which is why they cannot be ruled out as a suspect in the Ankara bombing.
The Turkish government claims its fight against the PKK at home is directly connected to the war in Syria. It says it has discovered secret tunnels dug from the Syrian side of the border to the besieged Turkish town of Cizre, scene of some of the grossest rights abuses by the Turkish authorities in recent years. The tunnels are allegedly being used to funnel arms between the Syrian Kurdish insurgents and the PKK. A young Kurdish fighter quoted by Germany’s Der Spiegel confirmed that such tunnels exist.
It didn’t have to be this way — the Kurdish issue didn’t have to threaten to undermine both Turkey’s policy in Syria, and its alliance with the United States. In early 2013, the mood in Ankara was dramatically different: Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the then prime minister who was planning to campaign to become Turkey’s first popularly elected president the following year, was keen to strike a deal with the PKK’s imprisoned leader, Abdullah Ocalan. If the PKK disarmed and withdrew from Turkey, the Kurds would get something substantial — it remains unclear exactly what, but likely greater local autonomy, and some sort of amnesty for those not involved in violence — in return.
That wasn’t all. A deal could have helped Erdogan achieve two of his most cherished goals: The YPG would have had to join the rebel campaign to unseat Assad and refrain from any moves towards self-rule; and Turkey’s largest pro-Kurdish party, the People’s Democracy Party (HDP), would have needed to support Erdogan’s plans not only to become the president but also to expand his powers once in office.
But the PKK refused to play ball, claiming that Turkey’s latter-day “sultan” was stringing them along. Why else had the government not passed a single piece of pro-Kurdish legislation? And why was it arming jihadis in Syria against the YPG? The government replied that it had provided hundreds of wounded YPG fighters with free medical care and opened its doors to more than a quarter of a million Syrian Kurdish refugees, but the PKK was not swayed.
Hopes of an agreement were rekindled a year ago when the PKK unveiled a 10-point roadmap for peace. But Erdogan swiftly disowned the document, and all communication between Ocalan and the HDP has since ceased.
Yet, Syria’s Kurds have continued to thrive. Today they enjoy the rare distinction of being the sole group that simultaneously enjoys U.S. and Russian support. The YPG’s links with Washington were initially forged when U.S. planes intervened to rescue the Kurdish town of Kobani from the Islamic State in 2014. Since last year, the Kurds have teamed up with a gaggle of opposition Arab, Turkmen, and non-Muslim brigades to form the SDF, mostly as a kind of fig leaf that allows Washington to justify its support for them.
The payoff for both sides has been huge. The SDF has driven the Islamic State out of a broad stretch of territory along the Turkish border, while helping to pressure the jihadis in their self-proclaimed capital of Raqqa. The Kurds boast they now control an area “three times the size of Lebanon.”
The Kurds are now looking to link their two self-administered “cantons” that lie to the east of the Euphrates, named Jazeera and Kobani, with the canton of Afrin, which lies to the west. This means dislodging the Islamic State from the 60-mile area wedged between them, and also going through an area that rebel groups friendly to Ankara, including more moderate brigades that have received weapons from the CIA, dominate.
Until recently they had to hold back at Washington’s behest. Turkey, which opened the Incirlik air base to anti-Islamic State combat missions in July, claimed it had done so on the condition that the United States would not help the Kurds move west of the Euphrates.
Turkey wanted to organize a non-Kurdish rebel force to uproot the Islamic State from that area west of the Euphrates. But the force never materialized — and Russia’s intervention on behalf of Assad’s crumbling army has also bolstered the Kurds. Helping the SDF boot out anti-Assad rebels from the areas they covet has the added benefit, for Moscow, of poking Turkey in the eye.
But Syria’s Kurds want more. They are angling for diplomatic recognition. Russia has stepped up to the plate, hinting that it will back the Kurds’ plans for autonomy. It also insists that the Kurds must take part in the now-stalled Geneva talks. The United States also backed the Kurds’ participation in peace talks, but backed off when Ankara threatened to stay away from the talks if the Kurds were allowed to join.
The Kurds are skillfully playing the Russians and Americans off of each other to extract as much influence as possible. Kurdish threats to defect squarely to the Russian camp propelled Brett McGurk, President Barack Obama’s special envoy for the anti-Islamic State coalition, to speed up a long-mulled visit to Kobani. On Feb. 1, a beaming McGurk was photographed receiving a plaque from a YPG commander who used to be, as Turkey shrieked, a member of the PKK. Washington appears to be quietly encouraging the Kurds to grab more territory, even at the expense of moderate rebels it has aided and trained, to ensure that Assad’s Russian-backed forces don’t get there first.
All of this is adding to Turkish fury, and Turkey’s Kurds say they are paying the price. The pain that Turkey would like to inflict on their Syrian brethren, their argument runs, is being meted out on them instead.
Washington’s insistence on maintaining the fiction that the PKK and the YPG are completely separate organizations is only making things worse. Indeed, it would not be surprising if the United States were to step up its military and intelligence cooperation with Turkey against the PKK to tamp down anger over its relations with the YPG.
The longer the conflict continues, the more alienated — and radicalized — Turkey’s Kurds will become. For many, the borders separating them from their Syrian cousins have ceased to exist. Kurdish youths who honed their urban warfare skills against the Islamic State in Syria are now using them against security forces in Turkey. Others continue to take up arms with the YPG in Kobani. Meanwhile, Turkish nationalist sentiment has been further inflamed by the Ankara bombing. Erdogan’s polarizing politics have already divided the country. The specter of intercommunal violence looms.
Achieving some rapprochement between Turkey and the Kurds would be a sure step toward defeating the Islamic State. More critically, it’s the only way to ensure that Turkey does not descend into civil war — or go to war in Syria.
Some suggest the United States should use its leverage over the YPG to get the PKK back to the negotiating table. But it is the YPG that takes its cues from the PKK — not the other way around. Either way, the idea that the Syrian Kurds would ditch their ties with the PKK to preserve their alliance with Washington is outright naive. There will always be others — the Russians or the region’s perennial mischief-maker, Iran — to step into the breach.
The only true way forward is for the United States to lean on both Turkey and the PKK to come to their senses. But the reality is that there is only so much prodding Washington and Turkey’s other Western friends can do. It ultimately falls on Turkey’s elected leaders to extricate themselves from this mess. Unfortunately, past experience suggests that Erdogan is more likely to dig his country into an even deeper hole.
-
How Islamic State’s Secret Banking Network Prospers
Money-exchange offices in Iraq, Syria, Turkey and Jordan funnel millions of dollars daily in and out of militant-held territory
A stretch of storefronts at the Grand Bazaar of Istanbul, where money-exchange offices help move cash in and out of Islamic State-held territory in Iraq and Syria. ENLARGE
A stretch of storefronts at the Grand Bazaar of Istanbul, where money-exchange offices help move cash in and out of Islamic State-held territory in Iraq and Syria. Photo: Nicole Tung for The Wall Street Journal
By Margaret Coker
Feb. 24, 2016 11:42 a.m. ET
51 COMMENTS
More than a year of U.S.-led airstrikes and financial sanctions haven’t stopped Islamic State from ordering supplies for its fighters, importing food for its subjects or making quick profits in currency arbitrage.
This is because of men such as Abu Omar, one of the militant group’s de facto bankers. The Iraqi businessman is part of a network of financiers stretching across northern and central Iraq who for decades have provided money transfers and trade finance for the many local merchants who shun conventional banks.
When Islamic State seized control of the region in 2014, the world’s wealthiest terror group made him an offer he decided not to refuse: You can keep your business if you also handle our money.
“I don’t ask questions,” said Abu Omar, whose money-exchange offices in the Iraqi cities of Mosul, Sulimaniyah, Erbil and Hit charge as much as 10% to transfer cash in and out of militant territory—twice normal rates. “Islamic State is good for business.”
These financiers ensure that millions of dollars in cash churn in and out of Islamic State’s territory every day, muting international efforts to isolate the terror group from the global banking system, say people involved in the business. They operate across borders and battlefields in the midst of one of the world’s most dangerous conflicts, protected by profits and their integral role in the regional economy.
Accounting for Terror
An investigation into terrorism finance and the battle to shut it down
Moreover, despite being ruled by Sunni fundamentalists, Islamic State has shown itself to be relatively pragmatic when it comes to financing its operations.
“Daesh follows the laws of money, not religion or politics. In that way, they are as Iraqi as the rest,” said a money changer from Anbar, referring to Islamic State. His correspondent network reaches from Amman, Jordan, to Fallujah and Baghdad.
U.S. Assistant Secretary for Terror Financing Daniel Glaser said these businesses—there are more than 1,600 in Iraq alone—serve as a worrisome portal for Islamic State, also known as ISIS or ISIL, to connect with the world outside its declared caliphate.
“Diverse efforts are under way to deprive ISIL of its resources and deny it access to the international finance system,” Mr. Glaser said. The Federal Reserve and Treasury Department are collaborating with U.S. allies in the Middle East. But, he said, there “is no simple or quick tool to separate ISIL from its vast wealth.”
Based on trust
The men who run exchange houses and their shell companies reflect a variety of Iraqi ethnicities and religions. Their network works on trust, with members honoring real-time money transfer orders between offices. People pay cash in one office and a recipient draws the equivalent funds at a distant locale, a Middle Eastern practice known as hawala that predates the modern banking system.
Money changers provide a reliable way to conclude deals worth tens of thousands of dollars in towns hundreds of miles apart. They settle their accounts by shuttling bank notes, often through war zones.
Three Iraqi money-exchange operators say they pay Shiite militias, who are at war with Islamic State, to guard cash shipments that travel the road from Baghdad across their front lines to militant-controlled territory in Anbar Province. Iraqi Kurdish fighters, also at war with Islamic State, are bribed to grant passage of cash shipments across their front lines into militant-held areas around Mosul. Both Shiite and Kurdish commanders negotiate flat fees from $1,000 to $10,000, the money changers said.
Islamic State imposes a 2% tax on cash shipments entering its territory, which buys the smuggler protection on the final leg to the exchange houses, according to four people involved in the business.
People pay cash in one money-exchange office and a recipient draws the equivalent funds in a distant locale. Accounts are settled between offices by the shuttling of bank notes, often across war zones and international borders. ENLARGE
People pay cash in one money-exchange office and a recipient draws the equivalent funds in a distant locale. Accounts are settled between offices by the shuttling of bank notes, often across war zones and international borders. Photo: Nicole Tung for The Wall Street Journal
The cash travels on at least three routes. One begins in the narrow streets behind Istanbul’s Grand Bazaar and, via Iraqi Kurdish towns, reaches Mosul, the largest city under Islamic State control. Another connects Jordan’s capital of Amman with Baghdad and Islamic State-controlled parts of Iraq’s Anbar Province. A third links the city of Gaziantep in southern Turkey with Syrian regions around Raqqa, the administrative capital of Islamic State.
Turkish and Jordanian officials say their governments are committed to fighting Islamic State and aggressively investigate and prosecute both money laundering and terror finance.
Iraqi officials say licensed money changers play an important role in the country’s financial sector, but those who break the law or aid terrorists should be punished.
Foreign ministers from the U.S.-led coalition fighting Islamic State repeated their determination last month to disrupt the group’s economy and financial assets, which are estimated at between $300 million and $700 million. Their financial containment effort is one element of a campaign that includes U.S. airstrikes against Islamic State oil wells. There have also been strikes on vaults in downtown Mosul, which U.S. officials suspect store cash to pay fighters.
Treasury and other U.S. agencies regularly send intelligence reports to Baghdad about suspected terrorist financial transactions, U.S. officials said, and maintain close relationships with regulators and security agencies in neighboring countries. The cash flow continues, nonetheless.
The Central Bank of Iraq named 142 currency-exchange houses in December that the U.S. suspected of moving funds for Islamic State. The central bank banned them from its twice-monthly dollar auctions, hoping to keep U.S. bank notes from the terror group, which, like much of Iraq, operates as a cash economy.
Islamic State’s Cash Flow
Hundreds of Iraqi money exchange houses help launder cash across Islamic State borders.
The money exchange office calls a corresponding office to authorize the transaction and the money is paid immediately.
The account is later settled by smuggling banknotes by road, past checkpoints and Islamic State frontlines, to the office that paid the cash.
A client enters a money exchange office to either send cash to or receive cash from someone inside Islamic State territory.
A network of financiers route cash between extremist strongholds and cities in Jordan, Turkey, Syria and Iraq.
Source: Institute for the Study of War (Islamic State control areas)
At least two companies on the list, both based in Mosul, continue making money transfers from Turkey to Iraqi and Syrian cities controlled by Islamic State, according to three clients.
One, Azva El Seyig, said by phone it wasn’t performing financial services, including money transfers, within Islamic State territory because it had become too difficult.
Yet on a rainy February morning, about 20 Iraqi and Syrian men lined up at the company’s office on a street in Istanbul’s Beyazit neighborhood. The clients conducted approximately $50,000 in dollar-denominated transfers bound for Mosul during a 30-minute stretch, according to participants. Two clients received $10,000 from Raqqa, Syria. No one at the office asked the purpose of the transfers or whom the money came from.
The employee behind the glass window had one question for a client seeking a $700 money transfer to Mosul: Was the recipient wanted by Islamic State? “That’s the one transaction that is impossible to do,” the employee said.
‘Easier than water’
Iraqi refugees and businessmen in Turkey, Jordan and the Kurdish city of Erbil in Iraq say many more of these companies have opened over the past 18 months, presumably to capitalize on the growth of Islamic State.
“Money flows easier than water,” said an Iraqi trader named Kemal who uses another Turkish-Iraqi company, Taha Cargo, to transfer funds out of Islamic State, and then employs its logistic network to ship goods in return. Taha didn’t respond to requests for comment.
Such financial operations are woven into the fabric of Middle Eastern society because of their service, discretion and timely delivery. They operate from offices that often give no hint of their services or the wealth they control.
The money-exchange financiers know the liquidity of their trading partners and won’t enter into transactions that can’t be honored. And cheating is rare, as are robberies. In such a tightknit profession, exchange operators know their families would be responsible for unpaid debts, and their tribe would suffer for any dishonesty.
Iraqi bankers and development agencies estimate that more than half of Iraqi retail traders rely on money-exchange and remittance companies instead of conventional banks. As a result, Iraqi officials have to balance international demands with their economy’s health. Closing the exchange network would trigger economic shock.
“They move the wheels of Iraq’s economy. Without them we wouldn’t have imported clothes, fresh shipments of vegetables,” said Yahya al-Kubaisi, an analyst at the Iraqi Studies Center in Jordan and a former Iraqi politician.
Before Islamic State seized Mosul, the city of nearly two million people had 40 banks and around 120 licensed money changers and remittance facilities, according to Iraq’s central bank and money changers.
Only banks and remittance facilities are licensed to transfer money domestically or abroad. But money changers have long flouted these rules and provided such services in Mosul, the economic powerhouse of northern Iraq.
Islamic State’s takeover of Mosul in June 2014, followed by other cities in Iraq and eastern Syria, swiftly shut down local banks. The terror group looted bank vaults of hundreds of millions of dollars, according to U.S. estimates.
The U.S. and regional governments took immediate steps to sever bank branches in Islamic State territory from the international banking network, declaring off-limits transactions with the identification code of seized branches.
That left money changers as the sole providers for a region covering several million people. A currency office owner from Anbar Province said in late summer of 2014 his offices were handling $500,000 a week in money transfers in and out of Islamic State. Fees for such services were 10%, he said. Before the Islamic State takeover, fees were between 3% and 5%.
Some early transactions were made for residents eager to escape the extremist group. The money changers “didn’t question why you were sending money or who was the recipient, even if they knew you were sending it out of Islamic State for yourself or your family,” said Mohammed, a former professor in Mosul, now a refugee, whose declared atheism made him an Islamic State target.
A Fallujah-based money changer said he moved $100,000 to Baghdad in June 2015 for a man from Anbar suspected by Iraqi authorities of being an Islamic State fighter. The money changer said he made the transfer because he didn’t believe the allegation. “I don’t think I did anything wrong,” he said.
By that time, virtually all goods coming into Islamic State territory—such as motor oil for vehicles transporting fighters and the austere clothing mandated for women—were purchased through the money-changer network, according to three merchants involved in the business.
Extremist leaders last year banned exchange houses from approving the transfer of funds outside of Islamic State without a receipt showing the client had paid a 10% religious tax, known as “zakat.”
Besides helping collect taxes, the network of money changers has also helped Islamic State capitalize on currency arbitrage—by providing more money to tax, for example, and in direct profits from exchange operatives.
For years, participants in the twice-monthly dollar auction by the central bank included money-exchange houses that would buy dollars at the official rate and sell them for a profit on the street. The rate difference in the past year was as much as 7 percentage points.
For the first auction in December, money-exchange firms placed orders for more than $20 million. Given the exchange-rate differences between the auction and black markets in Islamic State territory, those contracts represented potential profits of more than $330,000.
The Central Bank of Iraq has an account at the Fed, funded largely by oil reserves, and regularly withdraws large shipments of new $100 bills from a Fed facility in Rutherford, N.J. They travel by chartered plane to Baghdad.
The Fed last summer temporarily shut off deliveries over concerns the notes were going to Islamic State through the exchange houses. A cash crisis loomed until shipments resumed in August, when Iraq agreed to turn over more records.
Many exchange companies based in Islamic State territory—or their correspondent offices elsewhere in Iraq—participated in the auctions until mid-December, when the U.S. pressured Iraq to ban dozens of companies believed to be working with the terror group.
Money changers who still participate in the currency auction doubt the effectiveness of the black list. Iraq has no mechanism to ensure that the owners of banned companies don’t get around the restrictions by simply opening new firms or by hidden ownership stakes in other exchange firms.
“Iraq doesn’t have investigators or auditors,” said Abu Omar, the money-exchange owner. “Iraq has officials who expect bribes.”
— Suha Ma’ayeh in Amman, Emre Peker in Istanbul, Ali Nabhan in Baghdad and Emily Glazer contributed to this article.
Write to Margaret Coker at margaret.coker@wsj.com
-
How Islamic State’s Secret Banking Network Prospers
Money-exchange offices in Iraq, Syria, Turkey and Jordan funnel millions of dollars daily in and out of militant-held territory
-------------------------------
It should read:
Millions of dollars funneled daily in and out of militant-held territory - under the Obama administration's nose.
Are we really unable to cut off their money supply?? Cutting off money is too harsh, but drone strikes are okay?
Besides funding terror, this is human trafficking money. We talk big yet we let this continue. End the Caliphate. Cut off their money and shrink their territory they control down to nothing.
-
https://www.facebook.com/896547897099745/videos/978763598878174/
-
http://www.tabletmag.com/jewish-news-and-politics/198060/what-the-us-is-doing-in-syria?utm_source=tabletmagazinelist&utm_campaign=5815d686f3-Sunday_March_6_20163_4_2016&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_c308bf8edb-5815d686f3-207194629
BTW, I would note that Stratfor predicted that the US would come to ally with Iran, in effect is what has happened here.
-
No bases, no airstrips. Reports keep surfacing that American forces are operating out of an airfield in Kurdish-held territory of northern Syria, and the U.S.-led coalition deeps denying it. In January, several outlets, including CNN, reported that at least some of the 50 American commandos operating in Syria had started using the Rmeilan airstrip, after reports surfaced that the runways there had been lengthened considerably.
U.S. officials quickly said that no troops had taken over any airstrip in the country. Now a new story is out from Kurdish news sources -- picked up by Reuters -- that two airstrips, one in Rmeilan and another near Kobani, are being prepared for use. Monday morning, spokesman for the American-led coalition Col. Chris Garver tweeted to Reuters: “This story is inaccurate. The US is not building air bases in northern #Syria.” he said that the 50 U.S. commandos in the country are only advising the Syrian Democratic Forces, a coalition made up of Sunni Arab, Kurdish and other militias. The truth is out there.
Words under the bridge. In his new book, U.S. diplomat Zalmay Khalilzad -- former ambassador to Iraq, Afghanistan and the U.N. -- says that American and Iranian officials held a series of meetings before the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003. The talks in Geneva featured Mohammad Javad Zarif, then-Iranian ambassador to the U.N. and current foreign minister. “We wanted a commitment that Iran would not fire on U.S. aircraft if they accidentally flew over Iranian territory,” Khalilzad wrote. The Iranians agreed. “We also hoped Iran would encourage Iraqi Shiites to participate constructively in establishing a new government in Iraq,” he wrote. The whole thing fell apart after President George W. Bush’s infamous “Axis of Evil” speech, and Iran continued its support of different terrorist groups. “I am convinced that if we had combined diplomatic engagement with forcible actions, we could have shaped Iran’s conduct,” Khalilzad wrote.
No deal, but how much is shipping? Remember that $3 billion that Saudi Arabia pledged to give to Lebanon to buy French-made weapons? Well, the deal is off. Sort of. Riyadh said over the weekend that the cash is still headed to French defense firms for the hardware, but the Saudi military will keep the gear for themselves. The reason? Saudi officials don’t like the influence Hezbollah wields over the government in Beirut. “We have a situation where Lebanon’s decisions have been hijacked by Hezbollah. The contracts will be completed but the clients will be the Saudi military,” Saudi Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubeir said at a news conference in Paris. The six-member Gulf Cooperation Council declared the Iranian-backed Hezbollah a terrorist group last month, and since the group has members in the Lebanese parliament, the deal is a no go.
-
https://www.facebook.com/PoliticallyIncorrectpage/videos/3095963169813/
-
Share
Russia's Unexpected Withdrawal from Syria
Analysis
March 14, 2016 | 20:01 GMT Print
Text Size
Russia announced it will pull the bulk of its troops from Syria starting March 15, in a process that could take up to 5 months. (Ministry of Defence of the Russian Federation)
Analysis
Russian President Vladimir Putin announced March 14 that Russia had sufficiently achieved its goals in Syria since beginning airstrikes in September, and that it will gradually withdraw the bulk of its forces from the country, starting March 15. According to Putin, the process could take as long as five months. However, Russia's air base in Latakia will continue to operate, as will its naval facility in Tartus.
Russia's involvement in Syria has been guided by a number of key priorities. The first is ensuring the stability of the allied Syrian government and by extension Russian interests in Syria. The second is demonstrating and testing its armed forces, which are undergoing a significant force modernization. The third is weakening the Islamic State and other terrorist organizations, especially given the large number of Russian nationals fighting in Syria among extremist factions. The fourth, and the most important, is for Russia to link its actions in Syria to other issues — including the conflict in Ukraine, disputes with the European Union and U.S. sanctions on Russia.
The support that the Russians and other external actors such as Iran and Hezbollah have given the Syrian government has largely reversed the rebels' momentum, and currently loyalist forces have the advantage. However, rebel troops have not been defeated, and a significant drawdown of Russian forces could weaken loyalist efforts. However, it is important to remember that Russia alone did not reverse the loyalist fortunes; Iranian support for the Syrian government could go a long way in maintaining their advantage.
With their actions in Syria thus far, the Russians have showcased their improved combat capabilities and some new, previously unused weapons, which will likely contribute to important arms sales, including some to Iran. Russia has also largely achieved its goal of weakening the Islamic State, though the Russian contribution against the terrorist group is just a part of a much broader, multilateral effort that includes the U.S.-led coalition, rebel forces and the majority Kurdish Syrian Democratic Forces. All in all, the Islamic State may not be entirely defeated, but its forces in Syria and Iraq are much weaker than they were five months ago.
Still, progress on Russia's primary goal is still uncertain. Moscow intervened in Syria to gain concessions on issues in other regions; whether or not it has been successful may depend in part on the terms of any peace deal. The March 15 drawdown, which is coming just as U.N. peace talks begin in Geneva, could be a sign of a breakthrough in the negotiations. It will be important to keep an eye on any signs of a deal emerging from Geneva and for indications coming out of Europe that could allude to a potential grand bargain.
Of course, it could be that Putin is greatly exaggerating the significance of the drawdown, which may not significantly alter Russian actions in Syria. Though it is highly unlikely, the Russians may even be pulling out in defeat, having realized they cannot achieve their hoped-for grand bargain in Syria after all.
-
second post
The cease-fire that came into effect in Syria on February 27 is a partial success. Humanitarian convoys have begun to get through to some of the areas besieged by government forces.
The death toll is sharply down. According to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, the civilian death toll in Syria fell by 90 percent last week. This was accompanied by an 80% decline in deaths among combatants on all sides.
"Proximity" talks between the sides are set to commence in Geneva on Wednesday. The government has announced it will attend. The opposition High Negotiations Committee has yet to make a final decision but will probably also be there.
So does the cease-fire in Syria represent the beginnings of an endgame in the long and bloody civil war that has racked the country since mid- 2011? This is a war in which, according to a recent report by the Damascus-based Syrian Center for Policy Research, up to 470,000 people have died. Fully 11.5% of the population have been killed or injured, and 45% have left their homes.
There is little chance the Vienna process will produce a 'credible, inclusive, and nonsectarian' transitional government.
As of now, there remains very little chance of the implementation of the plan as outlined in Vienna last November for the diplomatic process in Syria. According to this plan, within six months of the commencement of negotiations, the sides are to establish a "credible, inclusive, and nonsectarian" transitional government. This government will then set about drafting a new constitution and holding free and fair UN-supervised election within 18 months.
The tentative success of the February 27 cease-fire notwithstanding, this plan still sounds utterly unrealistic. Its main stumbling block remains the core disagreement between regime and opposition over the future role of President Bashar Assad. For the opposition, any role for Assad in the course of the transition remains utterly unacceptable.
For Assad, riding high on the results of the Russian intervention that began last September, there is no reason to compromise or contemplate departure. On the contrary, the Syrian dictator bullishly (and absurdly) announced this week that parliamentary elections will take place across Syria on April 13.
Since the officially sanctioned diplomatic process remains somewhat otherworldly, and yet the cease-fire has not been a total failure, what direction are events likely to take? As of now, Syria has fragmented, and a host of related conflicts are taking place over its ruins. The Russian intervention has effectively removed from the table the possibility of the military destruction of the dictatorship.
Russian intervention has effectively removed the option of militarily destroying the Assad regime.
For this to be achieved, an air force capable of besting that of the Russians, who guarantee Assad's survival, would need to enter the fray. Such air power is possessed only by the US. Washington has absolutely no intention of acting as the air wing of the Syrian Sunni rebels, in a way analogous to that of the Russians vis-à-vis the regime.
Since this is likely to remain the case, it follows that there is no longer any credible military threat to the continued existence of the Assad regime in its enclave in Damascus, in the western coastal area, in the cities of western Syria and in the areas linking them.
This being said, it remains the case that a regime reconquest of the entirety of Syria also remains unlikely. Assad, in a recent interview, declared this to be his goal. But it is unlikely that the actual forces that could conceivably achieve this goal for him – Russian air power and Iranian proxies on the ground – are interested in pursuing it.
Iran is withdrawing Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps personnel from northwest Syria. The immediate goal of preventing any threat to the regime has been achieved. The Iranian regime does not appear to wish to commit its own forces to the mutual slaughterhouse that a campaign to reconquer all of rebel and Sunni jihadist-controlled Syria would entail.
The Russians, too, appear wary of a long and grinding campaign of reconquest. With a devalued ruble and very low oil prices, it is not clear that they could sustain the necessary expenditure.
Again, the goal of the Russian campaign appears to have been to preserve the regime enclave, not to enter an all-out assault for the reunification of Syria by military means.
Even Assad himself may be aware that an attempt at reunifying the country under his rule would bring back the original dilemma that caused his withdrawal in the first place. Assad does not possess sufficient forces to securely govern those areas that reject his rule. The Russian intervention has not altered this core reality.
Russia wants to see the removal of Ukraine-related sanctions on it, and to be treated as a world power. Backing its allies and ensuring their survival forms a part of this. An ongoing bloody campaign of reconquest is unlikely to do so.
So if the disparate rebellion can't beat Assad, and if Assad is unlikely to achieve or even try for a knockout blow against the rebellion, and if there is no basis for a negotiated settlement, doesn't that mean that the diplomacy is doomed, the cease-fire bound to be short-lived, and a return to full-blown conflict inevitable?
Maybe, but not necessarily. It is worth remembering that there are two other vital players on the Syrian map, apart from the Assad regime and the Sunni Arab rebellion. The two other elements are the Kurds, and Islamic State. As of now, a Western-backed military alliance, the Syrian Democratic Forces, is making steady headway against Islamic State. If this progress can continue, the prospect opening up in Syria will be for a Russian-guaranteed, Assad-ruled west, and a US-guaranteed east, in which Islamic State has either been destroyed or is in the process of eclipse.
On this basis, with neither side able to dislodge the other and neither side having an obvious interest in continued conflict (or with each side deterred by inescapable realities if they do), it is possible to imagine the beginning of a diplomatic process based on the emergence of a confederal or de facto divided Syria.
Such an outcome is, of course, not certain, but it is possible. If it does not emerge, the bloodletting in Syria is likely to recommence with full force in the future, and the current cease-fire to be remembered as little more than a brief respite.
Jonathan Spyer is director of the Rubin Center for Research in International Affairs and a fellow at the Middle East Forum.
-
http://www.clarionproject.org/news/confirmed-isis-now-possesses-anti-aircraft-missiles
-
https://www.facebook.com/jeanbaptiste.kim.3/videos/203463176679168/
-
Crafty,
Great video
Hip Hip Hurray! :-D
-
It looks like a delegation of Iraqi Kurds is headed to Moscow to talk arms sales, according to Russian news outlet RIA Novosti. The news agency said Thursday that Russia has already supplied weapons to Iraqi Kurd fighters, and the first shipment arrived on March 14. It’s unclear why the Kurds would need anti-aircraft weapons, but that shipment reportedly included five Zu-23-2 anti-aircraft cannons and 20,000 shells. Back in January, Russia's Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said that his government was working to begin arming the Kurds, who have often complained about how long it takes Washington to ship much-needed weaponry.
-
Related to other posts here, what is Putin up to in Syria?
It's nice having others fight wars instead of us, except that they have far different objectives and we have no control or even knowledge over what is happening and decisions that are made along the way.
Interesting fact, analysis and speculation here:
https://pjmedia.com/michaelledeen/2016/03/17/whats-putin-up-to-in-syria/
(Excerpt) ... offer from Iran: if the Russians joined Iran on a big scale, Tehran would cover the Kremlin’s Middle Eastern expenses up to $5 billion per year, starting April 1. Details would be managed, as always, by Ali Bagheri, Iran’s point man on everything Russian.
Putin was certainly impressed; the question is whether he wants that sort of relationship with the ayatollahs. He’s got problems with radical Islamists on his borders, long supported by Tehran, and Khamenei’s help would be welcome in the ‘stans. On the other hand, what’s an Iran deal worth? The economy is a mess, even with Obama’s gifts. The banks are pretty much rupt, the pension funds have been looted, industry is gasping along at roughly one-quarter of capacity, unemployment is about 8 million, and the government owes a cool $21 billion to infrastructure companies.
No wonder the Iranians are the second biggest group of foreign émigrés in Germany.
What kind of ally is that? Shaky, at best. And he knows they’re not great fighters. That’s what got the Russian soldiers and warplanes into Syria in the first place.
Then it turns out the Iranians aren’t content with the Russian S-300 antiaircraft missiles. They want the 400s. And they want cooperation on operations against Israel, which Putin surely doesn’t. Indeed, there are so many rumors about Russian/Israeli/Egyptian/GCC/Saudi joint ventures that I can’t keep track of them all. And next month the Iraqi Kurds will be discussing arms deals in Moscow.
So Putin is hedging his Iranian bet. He says he can send bombers any old time, and he’s keeping his ground and sea bases, so it’s clear that Khamenei did not have advance warning from the Kremlin, and you can be sure he’s cursing out the Russian president as the New Year approaches.
Final point: like Khamenei, Putin knows time is running out on The Wonderful Thing That Happened in Washington (aka the Obama administration). So whatever he wants to get, now is the time. Maybe he’s got plans for those bombers …
-
BEIRUT, Lebanon — One admirer of President Bashar al-Assad of Syria compared him to Charles de Gaulle, the French leader stubborn and confident enough to defy a more powerful ally, the United States, even after its decisive help against Nazi Germany.
His critics offer another analogy: the fable of the scorpion that persuades a frog to carry it across the river, then stings it, drowning both. Russia, having rescued Mr. Assad with its air force, is the frog. Now it is swimming for a political settlement to the Syrian war, hoping to cement its renewed status as a global power — but given Mr. Assad’s history, he may very well sink the negotiations and explain, as several diplomats put it, that making deals is not in his nature.
Ever since President Vladimir V. Putin’s surprise announcement last week that Russia was scaling back its aerial bombing campaign in Syria, speculation has swirled about whether Mr. Putin’s next move is to force Mr. Assad to make a substantive political compromise to end the war.
But while Mr. Assad’s dependence on Russia’s military, money and political influence has only grown during Mr. Putin’s six-month aerial assault in Syria, the campaign has also bolstered Mr. Assad’s confidence and ambitions as it has shored up Syrian government forces.
“Putin apparently thinks Syria needs Russia more than the other way around,” said David W. Lesch, an Assad biographer and professor at Trinity University in San Antonio. “But Assad and his inner circle probably arrogantly think it is quite the reverse.”
Mr. Assad inherited the presidency in 2000 from his father, who governed for 30 years. He relies on a small, cohesive ruling coterie, mostly members of his family and security officials. While Mr. Putin’s withdrawal appeared to take Syrian officials briefly by surprise, they quickly told diplomats that Russian support was undiminished and dismissed any notion that they were under pressure.
Bushra Khalil, a Lebanese lawyer who has longstanding contacts with Syrian government insiders and has met several times in recent weeks with senior officials, including the interior minister and a powerful intelligence chief, Ali Mamlouk, described their mood as buoyant. Mr. Assad’s advisers believe not only that he has passed “the risky period” and will remain the president of Syria, she said in a recent interview, but also that his ability to “stand up to the whole world” will make him more prominent than ever as “a leader in the region.”
They insist that Russia is steadfast, she added, but they also hold an insurance card: their even closer relationship with Iran and their ability to juggle two very different allies.
“They are like a man with two wives,” said Ms. Khalil, best known for defending Saddam Hussein in his war crimes trial in Iraq. “There is something you like in each one.”
Ms. Khalil, who compared Mr. Assad to de Gaulle, is a longtime supporter of his, with a flair for flamboyant statements, and her meetings with officials were not about the war but about a court case involving a son of Muammar el-Qaddafi, the deposed Libyan dictator.
But her description of the inner circle’s mood and modus operandi was echoed by many others, both supporters and detractors, who have met with Mr. Assad or his advisers and allies in recent months. They include scholars, humanitarian officials, Syrian associates, diplomats and officials with the pro-government alliance that includes Iran, Russia and Hezbollah. Most of them spoke on the condition of anonymity in order to preserve their access to government officials or to avoid reprisals.
Over and over again in separate interviews, these people described a leadership that is expert in playing allies off one another; often refuses compromise, even when the chips appear to be down; and, if forced to make deals, delays and complicates them, playing for time until Mr. Assad’s situation improves.
Mr. Putin seems bent on capping a triumphant return to the world stage by presiding over a political solution for Syria, hand in hand with the United States. Several diplomats said that Russia defined victory as a negotiated solution that would leave Mr. Assad in power — showing that Western aspirations for regime change had failed — but that Mr. Putin might back a deal that would ease the Syrian leader out later or diminish his power.
While Iran appears more attached to keeping Mr. Assad in power, it is becoming clear that without Russian air power, Iranian support is not enough to help Syrian government forces advance, despite thousands of ground troops from Hezbollah and other Iran-backed militias.
So Mr. Assad most likely realizes that he has to engage in some kind of political process, at least to satisfy Mr. Putin, said Mr. Lesch, the biographer, who regularly visited Mr. Assad from 2004 to 2009 and has met with high-level Syrian government officials and opposition members since the civil war started in 2011.
But the Syrian government could drag out and complicate the process, Mr. Lesch said, and “say ‘no’ 49 times until saying ‘yes’ on the 50th.” He added that Mr. Assad “probably figures he can game the system in a way that preserves the existing core in power.”
Another problem, analysts say, is that Mr. Assad and his father before him deliberately created a system dependent on a single leader, without strong institutions or deputies. Some believe it is so brittle that even the slightest compromise is likely to bring it down — the assessment that led Mr. Assad to crack down on protesters rather than accede to political changes in the first place.
Mr. Assad has proved to be the ultimate survivor. He has held on through five years of upheaval, beginning with political protests that seemed to have the momentum of a widespread Arab revolt and American support, and devolving into a proxy war that has killed hundreds of thousands and displaced half of Syria’s population.
His opponents, domestic and international, have time and again underestimated not just Mr. Assad’s readiness to use violence to preserve his authority, but also the staying power of his inner circle and core loyalist forces.
Mohammad al-Shaar, the interior minister, sleeps in a paper-stacked office, still working long hours despite three attempts on his life — a poisoning and two bombs, one of which damaged his right hand — said Ms. Khalil, a longtime friend.
Mr. Assad’s brother-in-law, Asef Shawkat, died in a bombing in 2012 along with three other top security officials; Mr. Assad’s brother Maher was maimed but remained a powerful general. Yet Mr. Assad still holds meetings in his ceremonial palace overlooking Damascus with only minimal visible security, leading several recent visitors to joke that they could have walked in with a gun.
Opponents also miscalculated the willingness of a critical mass of ordinary Syrians, including many who dislike Mr. Assad, to remain quiescent for fear of uncertain alternatives.
Mr. Assad excels at running the clock. His officials show up at peace talks but essentially refuse to negotiate. They broadly promise humanitarian aid access while denying the vast majority of specific requests. Mr. Assad agreed in 2013, under threat of United States military action, to destroy Syria’s arsenal of chemical weapons, yet conventional attacks on civilian areas, and accusations of chlorine gas use, remain routine.
As time passes, the rise of the Islamic State and the refugee crisis spilling into Europe have shifted Western priorities away from Mr. Assad’s ouster. Washington no longer insists he step down at the beginning of a transition.
Mr. Assad and his allies believe that the West has concluded it needs him to control Syria’s borders to fight the Islamic State and stem the flow of refugees, said an official with the pro-government alliance.
Those who support Mr. Assad are counting, in part, on the fractured nature of the conflict, saying they do not believe Russia will be able to find a set of opposition figures who are both willing to share power with Mr. Assad and are acceptable to all parties.
At the same time, Mr. Assad and his circle often test the patience of badly needed allies, according to a Syrian who, while deeply critical of the president, supports the government over the opposition. This Syrian, who speaks often with officials, said the government had tangled with Iran over bills, with Hezbollah over turf and with Russia over military performance.
That is nothing new. A diplomat with long experience in the region recounted that in the 1980s, a British diplomat asked the Soviet ambassador about the superpower’s relationship with Mr. Assad’s father, Hafez.
“They take everything from us,” the Soviet said, “except advice.”
Many Syrian officials, steeped in Arab nationalism and often educated in Moscow, feel comfortable with a secular Russia and its emphasis on preserving state institutions. But many also value a theocratic Iran for its commitment to a long fight in Syria and its confrontational policy toward Israel.
Several prominent pro-Assad insiders have also sought to woo the United States. But a Western scholar and former official who met Mr. Assad and his advisers last spring said the Syrians demonstrated unrealistic hopes and had failed to grasp how brutal they appeared to Washington.
But Western officials who hoped for a split inside the inner circle were also unrealistic, this scholar said. Russia’s aid has now most likely squelched any fears for their personal fate that could have tempted Mr. Assad’s closest confidants to leave.
Mr. Lesch, the biographer, said that some advisers believed some decentralization of authority was needed, but that it remained to be seen “if they can form a critical mass to convince Assad to negotiate seriously.”
Hwaida Saad contributed reporting from Beirut, and an employee of The New York Times from Damascus, Syria.
-
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/ct-syria-militias-us-cia-islamic-state-20160326-story.html
-
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/ct-syria-militias-us-cia-islamic-state-20160326-story.html
This is the awesomeness of Obama's Smart Power!
-
11/2015
http://www.aei.org/publication/brennan-admits-isis-was-decimated-under-bush-but-has-grown-under-obama-by-as-much-as-4400-percent/
-
Note my previous comments about the Sykes-Picot line and the idea that we should get ahead of the curve in abandoning them.
http://foreignpolicy.com/2016/03/28/the-eagles-of-the-whirlwind/?utm_source=Sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=New%20Campaign&utm_term=*Editors%20Picks
-
http://foreignpolicy.com/2016/03/29/qatar-wants-to-buy-dozens-of-u-s-warplanes-why-wont-washington-sell-them/?utm_source=Sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=New%20Campaign&utm_term=*Editors%20Picks
-
second post
http://foreignpolicy.com/2016/03/29/the-syrian-revolution-against-al-qaeda-jabhat-al-nusra-fsa/?utm_source=Sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=New%20Campaign&utm_term=*Editors%20Picks
-
Russia appears to be shipping more equipment to Syria after President Vladimir Putin announced a partial withdrawal from the conflict earlier this month, according to a new analysis by Reuters. The wire service tracked Russian naval traffic by pouring over shipping databases and examining photographs of Russian vessels as they transited to and from Syria past the Bosphorus. Pictures of the ships heading back and forth between Russia and Syria show the vessels sitting low on the way to Syria and with higher load lines heading back to Russia. While Russia appears to have removed about half of its estimated 36 aircraft from Hmeymim air base in Syria, it now has about 12 warships in the Mediterranean, likely to protect its supply route back and forth to Syria.
Russia is opening up a bit about the role its special operations troops are playing in Syria now that the focus of its fighting has shifted from taking on rebel groups opposed to the Assad regime to fighting the Islamic State, the Washington Post reports. A number of different Russian special operations units are now active in the country, including Spetsnaz, Zaslon, and KSO, and experts say they've played an important role in guiding Russian airstrikes and holding together Syria's remaining ground forces by acting as advisors. They've also been participating more directly in frontline combat, with Russian officials citing their role in the recapture of Palmyra from the Islamic State.
Iraq
The early days of Iraqi forces' much-hyped push on Mosul has hit some major snags in the face of low morale and bad weather, according to USA Today. Last week, Iraqi troops advanced along the Tigris on a handful of villages held by the Islamic State south of Mosul, but heavy rains slowed their progress and inhibited U.S. air support, as stiff resistance from Islamic State fighters led to some desertions. In sum, Iraqi forces' campaign towards Mosul has gotten off to an inauspicious start, but U.S. officials say that they’re in no particular hurry to move on the city, which ISIS has held for almost two years.
-
second post
http://www.meforum.org/5929/war-madness
-
http://yezidipost.com/2016/03/23/kurds-leave-islam-to-become-zoroastrians-again/
-
Stratfor
How Middle Eastern States Consolidate Power
Global Affairs
April 2, 2016 | 12:56 GMT Print
Selim III, the sultan of the Ottoman Empire in 1789-1807, holds court in front of the Gate of Felicity at Topkapi Palace in Istanbul. (Wikimedia Commons)
Editor's Note: The Global Affairs column is written by Stratfor's editorial board, a diverse group of extraordinary thinkers whose expertise inspires rigorous and innovative thought in our analysis. Though their opinions are their own, they inform and sometimes even challenge our beliefs. We welcome that challenge, and we hope our readers do too.
By Kristin Fabbe
Commentators speculating on the chaos engulfing the Middle East almost inevitably point to the Sykes-Picot Agreement as its underlying cause. The artificial borders laid down by the colonial-era deal, the argument goes, primed the region for ethnic and sectarian conflict. At some point the borders would have to be redrawn, and when they were, the process was bound to be painful. We need only look at Syria's drawn-out conflict and growing calls for its partition to see that.
But artificial borders are only part of the Middle East's problem. Equally important, though far less understood, is the legacy of the Ottoman Empire and the lasting mark it made on how Middle Eastern states consolidate power. The Ottoman Empire served as the precursor to the modern nation-state for much of the region. At its peak, it spanned from North Africa to the Persian Gulf's periphery. However, Ottoman rule was radically different than that of its early European counterparts or the modern governments that followed it, in part because of one of its defining features: the millet system.
What is Global Affairs?
In what was essentially a loose and informal federation of theocracies, the millet system created a network of legal courts that allowed non-Muslim minority groups to rule themselves with little interference from their Ottoman rulers. It emerged, in some ways organically and in others by design, as a means of managing the complexities that came with governing the empire's many and varied religious groups. Christians, Muslims and Jews alike were given a large degree of religious and cultural autonomy, and many religious elites held high economic and administrative posts in the empire.
As centuries passed, the millet system molded local societies and governments around religious identity. The traditions of religious authorities became institutionalized in many places, and people widely began to defer to them. Meanwhile, religious elites enjoyed a fairly high level of autonomy and became deeply embedded in the institutions that today fall under the purview of the nation-state, including legal, administrative, educational and social welfare structures.
At first, the millet system proved helpful in governing the Ottoman Empire's diverse subjects. But in the 18th and 19th centuries, the empire's military prowess began to slip relative to its neighbors, and its rulers were put on the defensive. Gradually, it became clear that if the Ottoman Empire were to survive at all, it would have to adopt some of the strategies used by its Western rivals to organize its military and society.
The resulting reforms, known as Tanzimat, aimed to fundamentally reshape the Ottoman state's relationship with its subjects. Previously, the empire's citizens had never been granted rights beyond those guaranteed to Muslims by Islamic law and those that came with the protective status of the millet communities. But in 1839, Sultan Abdulmecid declared that all of his empire's subjects — both Muslims and non-Muslims — also had secular rights that transcended any religious, ethnic or linguistic affiliation. In addition to this borrowed model of secular citizenship, the Tanzimat more clearly defined the millet system and formalized the distinct religious communities. The paradoxical result was that the reforms, originally intended to bridge religious divides, actually reinforced existing fissures within society.
Religion and State: Partners or Competitors?
When the Ottoman Empire collapsed in 1923, the distinct religious identities and rifts solidified by the millet system and Tanzimat reforms did not dissolve with it. Instead, they were handed down to the states that emerged in the empire's wake, creating serious obstacles to state-building and modernization efforts. Religious elites could be either potential competitors or powerful allies, or both, to governing officials trying to assert their authority.
In general, the region's new states tended to follow one of three paths as they consolidated power. The first usually occurred in states that European powers failed to occupy and that had a single dominant religion. In these circumstances, states usually just co-opted the religious majority's institutions and leaders in an effort to centralize their authority. In doing so, piety and nationalism were fused into an "official religion," thus weakening religious institutions, domesticating religious rhetoric, binding religious authorities to the state and facilitating the state's growth. In Turkey, for instance, even as Islam was pushed out of politics, banners advocating Ataturk's reforms hung between mosques' minarets. Secularizing reforms were more about asserting the state's control than a genuine attempt to separate religion and state. In the long run, these states were more stable, but they bred exclusionary policies and forced migrations that were largely based on religion. For the religious minorities left behind, inequalities became entrenched. The states, now more homogenous and constantly skeptical of outsiders, often relapsed into authoritarianism.
Alternatively, some states — usually those with colonial occupiers and a solid religious majority — took a hands-off approach to religion instead. Such states tried to sidestep religious institutions as they consolidated power, often accommodating religious minorities (at least initially) in the process. Because this meant religion was not weakened by early cooptation, governments later found it difficult to nationalize the institutions of the biggest religions. Leaders of the dominant religions often positioned themselves in opposition to the state, fueling radicalization and undermining any attempt to create an official Islam friendly to the government.
The final path Middle Eastern states followed was to rely heavily on alliances with religious minorities while quashing other religious rivals. This outcome usually occurred in places ruled by colonial powers and riven by religious factionalism. European colonizers would often resort to indirect rule, designed to prevent nationalist uprisings and maintain minimal authority by forming strategic partnerships with privileged minority groups, such as certain Christian sects in the French-held Lebanon. More often than not, this gave rise to repressive minority regimes, which in turn led to sectarian strife, militia politics and attempts by third parties to meddle in domestic affairs. All impeded efforts to create strong national identities and establish state sovereignty, while at the same time empowering non-state actors with religious agendas.
Unstable States Make for an Unstable Region
Given these historical patterns, it is no wonder that Middle Eastern states today seem helplessly stuck between two extremes: religious radicalization and state-sponsored discrimination. Nor is it a surprise that the consequences of their internal governance have not remained confined within their borders.
In all three types of states, instability within generates instability without. For one, political leaders rarely have a secure hold on power, and when they feel particularly threatened, they often turn to ethnic, religious or national identities to bolster their legitimacy and improve their chances of survival. This tactic works not only within a single state but also among many. Indeed, politicized identities lie at the heart of three current Middle Eastern conflicts: the dispute between Israel and the Arab world, the competition between Shiite Iran and its Sunni rivals, and the thorny Kurdish question spanning Turkey, Syria, Iraq and Iran.
Even the region's comparatively "stable" states, including Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Iran, have exploited religious and ethnic discord outside their borders to gain influence at home and abroad. We need only look at the ongoing civil wars in Iraq and Syria, or at Hezbollah's activities on the Israel-Lebanon border, to see evidence of regional powers becoming entangled in their neighbors' strife.
Thanks to the lasting imprint of the Ottoman millet system and the colonial-era practices that followed it, political development and regional stability in the Middle East have become chained to the vagaries of identity politics. But identity politics are a double-edged sword, both a crutch by which states govern and a wedge by which they are driven apart, and they are more likely to prevent stability than create it.
-
ISIS Camp a Few Miles from Texas, Mexican Authorities Confirm
http://www.judicialwatch.org/blog/2015/04/isis-camp-a-few-miles-from-texas-mexican-authorities-confirm/
But what happens in the Middle East doesn't affect us. We can't be the world's policeman. I guess we won't need to fight wars outside our borders; they're coming to us.
-
ISIS Camp a Few Miles from Texas, Mexican Authorities Confirm
http://www.judicialwatch.org/blog/2015/04/isis-camp-a-few-miles-from-texas-mexican-authorities-confirm/
But what happens in the Middle East doesn't affect us. We can't be the world's policeman. I guess we won't need to fight wars outside our borders; they're coming to us.
Remember how the lefties laughed when it was explained that we fight them over there, so we don't fight them over here. Investment advice, go long on prosthetic limb companies.
-
http://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/originals/2016/04/israel-al-sisi-egypt-saudi-arabia-islands-transfer-alliance.html#
-
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/monkey-cage/wp/2016/04/14/putin-just-sent-armenia-mig-29-fighters-and-military-aid-here-are-the-3-key-reasons-why/
http://www.glennbeck.com/2016/04/15/iraqi-christians-rise-up-and-form-100000-man-christian-army-to-fight-isis-hordes/?utm_source=homepage&utm_medium=contentcopy_link&utm_campaign=homepage%3Futm_source%3Dglennbeck
-
Does not mess with Israel which surprises me:
http://www.jpost.com/Arab-Israeli-Conflict/Concern-in-the-North-ISIS-cells-in-the-Golan-could-use-chemical-weapons-452425
-
FSA-linked Commander Threatens Kurdish Civilians
by John Rossomando • May 4, 2016 at 4:19 pm
http://www.investigativeproject.org/5341/fsa-linked-commander-threatens-kurdish-civilians
A radio transmission between the commander of an Islamist brigade with ties to the U.S.-backed Free Syrian Army (FSA) and a Kurdish man contained a chilling message threatening to slaughter Kurdish civilians in Syria.
"My fighters are just like lions, and you know the people of Homs and that they always meet their words with action. We will crackdown on their mothers, sisters, fathers. We will target women before men. Do not talk to me anymore, and you can keep our martyrs with you," the commander said in Arabic.
"We will deal with you in our own way, and we will find the Kurds wherever they go, in Aleppo or anywhere else."
The exchange came in the retaliation for a video showing Kurdish forces parading the bodies of hundreds of FSA fighters killed after attacking the Kurds on the back of a trailer truck through a Kurdish town north of Aleppo. Representatives of the Kurdish factions condemned the incident as did the U.S. State Department.
A pro-Kurdish Twitter account @FuriousKurd published the exchange threatening the lives of Kurdish civilians on Saturday. The exchange originally was released by a pro al-Qaida account on Telegram.
Jaysh Al-Sunna, the commander's faction, also is part of the Army of the Conquest (Jaish al-Fateh), a coalition of Islamist and other rebel factions supported by that Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Qatar that includes Al-Qaida's affiliate Jabhat al-Nusra. News reports show that CIA-backed groups have cooperated with Jaish al-Fateh. The FSA also has received CIA support.
-
Stratfor
Golan Heights: The Pinnacle of Syrian Nation-Building — As a rocky peace process begins, leaders may try to unite the Syrian people around a popular national cause: retaking the Golan Heights.
After years of bloody conflict, Syria's quest for peace is sure to be neither quick nor smooth. At some point, the government will have to begin rebuilding the country from the shambles that protracted civil war have left. But forging a bond between ruling officials and rebels will be a difficult task, and Syria's leaders will have to rely on any semblance of commonality among the country's disparate factions to pull them back together. Like so many post-conflict countries before it, Syria may turn to the tried-and-true method of uniting its people by galvanizing citizens around a popular national cause. For Damascus, the Golan Heights offers just such a rallying point.
-
http://www.tabletmag.com/scroll/202533/100-years-later-the-sykes-picot-agreement?utm_source=tabletmagazinelist&utm_campaign=0f90b11c7f-Monday_May_16_20165_16_2016&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_c308bf8edb-0f90b11c7f-207194629
-
http://www.tabletmag.com/scroll/202533/100-years-later-the-sykes-picot-agreement?utm_source=tabletmagazinelist&utm_campaign=0f90b11c7f-Monday_May_16_20165_16_2016&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_c308bf8edb-0f90b11c7f-207194629
An interesting history most around here don't know about anymore. It's not fun to study failure and dysfunction.
There was more to it that just Sykes-Picot:
http://www.the-american-interest.com/2016/05/16/the-bullshistory-of-sykes-picot/
-
This caught my attention:
"If the seeds of today’s Middle Eastern troubles were sown in the 1914-18 period, they do not come from supposedly artificial borders drawn by imperial edict, of which Sykes-Picot was a part of middling significance. They come instead from the attempted imposition of the Western concept of the secular, Weberian territorial state onto a part of the world where no precedent for such a form existed. The motive was, at least to some degree, benign—to make this part of the world more modern, more “progressive” in the language of the day. The result, however, was the creation ultimately of a series of weak independent states, each with a different but not, historically speaking, a very long half-life. Their decay is now upon us at a time when the stresses felt by all states have increased markedly. Not surprisingly, the weakest ones turn to dust first."
-
Analysis
It has been said that the Kurds are a nation without borders, though that is only partly true. They are, of course, citizens of any number of countries, ones that envelop their homeland in the Middle East and ones much farther afield. But for the Kurds — a nation of some 25 million people who, despite their shared culture, speak different languages, practice different religions, subscribe to different political ideologies and hold different passports — citizenship is not such a simple matter.
It would be more accurate to say that Kurds, having assimilated into countries they do not consider their own, tend to be citizens in name but not in practice. And they are subject, therefore, to discrimination and outright oppression. In Turkey, Kurdish language curricula are still banned in most schools. In Iraq, an estimated 50,000 to 100,000 Kurds were killed in the late 1980s during Saddam Hussein's al-Anfal campaign. In Iran, as many as 1,200 Kurdish political prisoners were allegedly executed after the Iranian Revolution of 1979.
The Kurds had no choice but to assimilate, for the country most of them would prefer to call home — Kurdistan — does not exist and probably never will.
Countless other ethnic groups have lobbied for independence, but this is the story of the Kurds, who for more than a century have tried and failed to create a state of their own. Their failures were, perhaps, inevitable; establishing a state is difficult when the disenfranchisement of its prospective citizens has been codified into international law. The 1923 Treaty of Lausanne — which replaced the failed Treaty of Sevres, a document that sought to set up a bordered Kurdistan — saw to that. Still, the Kurds succeeded in doing so, albeit briefly, in 1946, with the creation of the Mahabad Republic, a nominally Kurdish enclave in Iran that was supported by the Soviet Union and lasted less than a year. They have succeeded, moreover, in earning a degree of autonomy, if not outright statehood, with the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) in northern Iraq, as well as in the Rojava area of northern Syria.
And so the Kurds find themselves not entirely displaced but not entirely with a state of their own, awkwardly situated in a region punctuated by chaos and exploited by foreign powers. The explanation for their predicament begins, as is so often the case, with geography.
Shattered Identities
Kurdistan, the colloquial name given to the Kurds' historical homeland, is a landlocked region that lies at the crossroads of Turkey, Syria, Iraq and Iran. The Zagros Mountains cut through its core from the southeast to the northwest, forming a formidable terrain that has impeded the kind of cohesion endemic in the countries that surround it. The Kurds, therefore, are ethnically distinct from their Arab and Turkish neighbors, even if many of them share the same Sunni religious tradition. (There are, notably, pockets of Jewish, Shiite, Yazidi and Zoroastrian Kurds scattered throughout the region.) And though the Kurds more closely approximate Persians than they do any other ethnic group, they are culturally unique, and that has imbued them with a strong, singular identity.
But if the conditions of their existence forged a singular cultural identity, those same conditions shattered their linguistic identity. Kurdish dialects fall roughly into two categories: Kurmanji in the north (Turkey, Armenia, Syria and northern Iraq) and Sorani in the south (central Iraq and Iran). Those who speak different dialects can generally understand one another, but there can be major linguistic differences. And, in keeping with the complexity of Kurdish identity politics, there is also a branch of the Gorani dialect known as Zaza, spoken by as many as 4 million in Turkey who sometimes identify as Kurds and sometimes as a distinct group.
Those conditions have also created political divisions. Most of the region's various organizations generally agree that the Kurds should create a state of their own, but they disagree on the best way to do so. Some advocate cooperating with state governments; others do not. Those disagreements have sometimes turned violent. When Iraq's Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) allied with the government in Ankara in August 1995, for example, Turkey's Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) responded by attacking the KDP — a stark reminder of the cost of supporting a regional adversary.
As if this were not enough, external benefactors have exploited these rivalries to contain the growth of independent Kurdish states. Their reasons for doing so are manifold. There is, of course, the issue of territory, which no state would voluntarily surrender to anyone, let alone an ethnic minority that could challenge its rule. Nor does any state want to set a precedent that would encourage other ethnic minorities in the Middle East to secede. States also block Kurdish statehood for financial reasons. Turkey, for example, wants continued access to northern Iraq's energy resources, not to mention its continued influence over Iraqi Kurdistan — hence its decision to support the KDP. Iraq, too, benefits financially from the oil revenue generated by the KRG, which it might be less inclined to share with Baghdad were Kurdistan an actual state.
What complicates the issue further is that in their efforts to exploit the Kurds, these states compete with one another as well. In fact, there is an ongoing competition in which Iran and Turkey use their affiliate Kurdish parties to jockey for influence in the KRG. A recent alliance between the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) and the offshoot Gorran party appears to imperil the Turkey-KDP association for now, but if history is any indication, the situation could change at a moment's notice.
The Drive for Autonomy
With so much at stake, it is little wonder that governments in the region have repeatedly silenced Kurdish calls for independence. Failed uprisings have taken place in Syria, Iran, Turkey and Iraq since World War II. But in 1991, the Gulf War and another unsuccessful rebellion of Iraqi Kurds reinvigorated the Kurdish drive for autonomy. International condemnation of Saddam Hussein's invasion of Kuwait — and the United States' subsequent no-fly zone over Iraq — created a safe space in which a de facto Kurdish state began to emerge. Political unity remained elusive, however, and in 1994 civil war broke out between two of Iraq's biggest Kurdish parties: the KDP, supported by the Turkish and Iraqi governments, and the PUK, backed by the Turkish PKK and the Iranian-influenced Badr Brigade. It was not until four years later that the United States was able to broker peace between the two parties, which, along with the other Kurdish parties, now constitute nearly 20 percent of the Iraqi legislature.
The extremist groups that have sprung from the militant arms of these political parties continue to hinder the formation of a Kurdish state. Turkey's Kurdistan Freedom Falcons, the urban terrorist wing of the PKK, have launched attacks for more than a decade, though their assaults have become more frequent over the past few months. An Iranian PKK offshoot, the Party for a Free Life in Kurdistan, meanwhile, has sporadically attacked Iranian security forces in Kurdish-majority areas for the better part of a decade. Iranian voters tend to remember these bouts of violence when they go to the polls and have frequently voted against Kurdish candidates accordingly.
But there are some recent signs of cohesion. The conflicts in Iraq and Syria have brought Kurdish factions a little closer together, thanks to the rise of a common enemy: the Islamic State. Despite their conflict-ridden past, even the PKK and KDP are working together to combat the jihadist group, though the KDP continues to allow Turkey to strike PKK targets on a regular basis. Still, deep fissures remain among the Kurdish people. The KDP and PUK, in particular, continue to squabble as the PUK works to ensure that it remains free of the KDP's control, even going so far as to strike deals with Baghdad to do so. Because these groups command their own armed forces, known as peshmerga, in the struggle against the Islamic State, tension among them often translates into incoherence and territorial losses on the battlefield. So while Iraqi Kurds have had some success in establishing a de facto state, a broader Kurdish state is unlikely to emerge anytime soon.
Instead, the Kurds will continue to be easy targets for foreign powers — even ones outside their region of origin — that want to use them for their own political ends. The British did so in Turkish Kurdistan in the 1920s, and the United States is doing so now in Syria, where it supports Kurdish Peoples' Protection Units to wage a proxy war against the Islamic State. And it is these powers, not the ones that aspire for a united and independent Kurdistan, that will shape the future of the Kurds.
-
http://www.investigativeproject.org/5399/leader-of-us-supported-syrian-rebel-group-backs
-
http://www.investigativeproject.org/5472/us-backed-syrian-rebel-commander-boasts
-
Looks like someone has been reading my posts!
http://www.investigativeproject.org/5500/the-case-for-kurdish-statehood
-
Stratfor
Syria's Rebels Lose Support When They Need It Most
Analysis
July 25, 2016 | 09:30 GMT Print
Text Size
Locals survey the damage in an area of Aleppo city held by forces loyal to Syrian President Bashar al Assad. Al Assad's backers continue to receive substantial aid from their foreign allies, while rebel forces are losing support from theirs. (GEORGE OURFALIAN/AFP/Getty Images)
Forecast
The aftermath of the coup in Turkey will distract Ankara from its efforts in Syria.
The United States, seeking greater cooperation with Russia, is unlikely to follow through on an increase in aid to the Syrian rebels.
As loyalist offensives mount and outside support falters, the rebels will be forced to go on the defensive in the months ahead.
Analysis
Shifts in momentum have marked the Syrian civil war since it began in 2011. At different times, the rebels and the loyalists have each held the upper hand on the battlefield. But lately, the most decisive element determining who maintains the advantage has been the degree of outside assistance each side receives. Consequently, flagging support for the rebellion at a time of unwavering aid for the Syrian government bodes ill for the rebels' prospects in the months ahead.
Diverted Allies
For the Syrian rebels, Turkey has been a major benefactor, if not their most important. The chaos in Turkey, however, in the aftermath of its failed coup is likely to distract the government in Ankara from the conflict in Syria. From the rebels' perspective, the timing could not be worse: At the moment, they are both heavily dependent on Turkish aid and under extreme pressure from their foes.
Nowhere is this clearer than in and around the city of Aleppo, where a decisive battle is taking place. Loyalist forces have effectively besieged opposition-held parts of the city, and rebel efforts to relieve units there are underway. Most of these units receive weapons, ammunition and supplies from nearby Turkey. As Turkey reorganizes itself, these flows could be disrupted, hampering rebel operations throughout northern Syria. Already there are unconfirmed reports that Turkish logistics officers coordinating supplies in Syria have been summoned home as Ankara attempts to gauge the loyalty of its troops and weed out dissenters.
Another dark cloud on the horizon for the rebel cause is the growing coordination of action in Syria between the United States and Russia, which is problematic for the rebellion for two reasons. First, Washington and Moscow's coordination is focused on targeting one of the rebellion's most effective and deadly groups, Jabhat al-Nusra, al Qaeda's branch in Syria. Despite significant differences in outlook and ideology with other rebel outfits, Jabhat al-Nusra cooperates extensively with them against loyalist forces. The weakening of the group without a simultaneous strengthening of other rebel units will ultimately work to the Syrian government's advantage. Second, the United States' increased coordination with Russia means that rebel expectations of more U.S. aid and weapons, which Washington promised to send if talks in Geneva on ending the civil war fail, will likely go unfulfilled. In sending a proposal to Moscow for greater collaboration, Washington showed that it is keen to avoid escalating tension with Russia and with loyalist forces, since doing so could undermine its wider military effort to weaken the Islamic State.
Even worse for the rebels, fractures among them could spread if Jabhat al-Nusra strikes back against U.S.-backed rebels in retaliation for U.S. attacks on its units. There is also a chance that if more U.S. aid does not materialize, members of the Free Syrian Army, seeking the most capable rebel units, will defect to the more extremist wings of the rebellion in an effort to continue the fight against their increasingly advantaged enemies.
Some rebel allies, principally Qatar and Turkey, have been trying to persuade Jabhat al-Nusra to dissociate itself from al Qaeda. These efforts, which can be expected to continue despite Turkey's disarray, have reportedly accelerated as the United States' mobilization against the group has become more apparent. If Qatar and Turkey succeed, Washington might reconsider its agreement with Moscow to target Jabhat al-Nusra. But given the group's ideological makeup and historically close ties to al Qaeda, the chances of success are slim.
A Well-Supported Enemy
Compounding the rebels' problem is the sustained support their loyalist enemies are receiving from their allies. Over the past few months, Iran, Hezbollah and Russia all have maintained their direct aid, and in some places, increased it. In southern Aleppo province, for instance, Iran has all but taken charge of the front lines, while Russian airstrikes have figured prominently in the loyalist effort to besiege the rebel-held parts of Aleppo city. As Hezbollah leader Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah promised in a speech in late June, his group has also bolstered its presence across Syria, including in the prominent battlefields of Aleppo.
The rebellion against Syrian President Bashar al Assad's rule can keep relying on outside assistance from countries in and outside the region, but as Washington shifts its policy and Ankara remains preoccupied, that help is at serious risk of weakening. If it does, the rebels' momentum in areas of northern Syria (for example, in southern Aleppo province and northern Latakia) would be difficult to sustain, since limited resources would have to be prioritized for the defense of key areas threatened by the loyalist offensives. Faced with uncertain levels of foreign support and heavily backed, advancing loyalists, the Syrian rebels no doubt have several challenging months ahead of them.
-
By Paul McLeary with Adam Rawnsley
Trust, but verify? How much do Pentagon leaders trust Russia to keep its word when it comes to the proposed new intel sharing agreement being negotiated over operations in Syria? Not a whole lot. Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Gen. Joseph Dunford told reporters Monday that “we’re not entering into a transaction that’s founded on trust. There will be specific procedures and processes in any transaction we might have with the Russians that would account for protecting our operational security.”
The plan, which Secretary of State John Kerry recently pitched to the Kremlin, would involve sharing some intelligence on the Islamic State and Nusra Front fighters, in return for grounding much of the Syrian air force to keep them from bombing moderate forces there. Speaking after a meeting with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov on Tuesday, Kerry said that if all goes well, he hopes to unveil the plan in August. The talks come on the heels of two incidents where Russian aircraft bombed a secret U.S. and British special operations base in southeast Syria, followed by another strike on a CIA-backed site that housed U.S.-backed rebels.
-
http://foreignpolicy.com/2016/03/02/u-s-snags-key-isis-leader-as-fight-for-mosul-gets-underway/?utm_source=Sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=New%20Campaign&utm_term=*Situation%20Report
-
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2016/07/28/why-s-obama-covering-for-russian-war-crimes-in-syria.html
OTOH transgenders in our military and multi-sex bathrooms are a different matter!
Would Trump do any different with the Russkis?
-
http://www.investigativeproject.org/5563/hizballah-uses-attack-drone-as-offensive
-
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/global-opinions/the-challenge-in-mosul-wont-be-to-defeat-the-islamic-state-it-will-be-what-comes-after/2016/08/12/ce972904-5f2a-11e6-af8e-54aa2e849447_story.html?utm_term=.67d4932c17e3
-
From HillBillary thread, by request.
"the failure to build up Syrian rebels battling President Bashar Assad "left a big vacuum, which the jihadists have now filled." - Hillary Clinton The Atlantic, Aug 10, 2014 Link below
"It is striking, however, that you have more than 170,000 people dead in Syria. You have the vacuum that has been created by the relentless assault by Assad on his own population, an assault that has bred these extremist groups, the most well-known of which, ISIS — or ISIL — is now literally expanding its territory inside Syria and inside Iraq," Clinton said.
Iran Deal:
"it’s important to send a signal to everybody who is there that there cannot be a deal unless there is a clear set of restrictions on Iran," adding, "little or no enrichment has always been my position."
Clinton said Obama's political message on foreign policy might be different from his worldview, noting, "Great nations need organizing principles, and 'Don’t do stupid stuff' is not an organizing principle."
Her own organizing tactic? "Peace, progress and prosperity."
http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2014/08/hillary-clinton-failure-to-help-syrian-rebels-led-to-the-rise-of-isis/375832/
http://thehill.com/policy/international/214796-clinton-criticizes-obama-foreign-policy
-
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/27/world/middleeast/syria-civil-war-why-get-worse.html?emc=edit_th_20160827&nl=todaysheadlines&nlid=49641193
-
And, in illustration of the point of my previous post:
http://en.alalam.ir/news/1855129
-
Cleared hot. Still no deal between the U.S. and Russia on a ceasefire agreement in Syria, despite talks in Geneva last week and two meetings over the weekend between Secretary of State John Kerry and Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov during the G-20 summit in Hangzhou, China. President Obama said over the weekend that the “gaps of trust” between the two sides make it a “tough negotiation, and we haven’t yet closed the gaps in a way where we think it would actually work.”
The proposed deal, first outlined by Kerry to Putin in July, would ground the Syrian air force to allow humanitarian aid to reach civilians trapped in cities across the country. If that works, then, and only then, would Washington begin talking to Moscow about working together to target Nusra Front. But the Pentagon, and the White House, aren’t so sure about the whole thing. “I don’t trust the Russians one iota,” a senior defense official with knowledge of the negotiations told FP’s Paul McLeary. “No one thinks that any of this is actually going to come to pass.”
-
http://pamelageller.com/2016/09/us-trained-sniper-now-minister-of-war-for-isis.html/
-
What Happens After ISIS Falls?
Islamic State’s self-declared caliphate is shrinking, but its demise is likely to bring new problems: fresh regional clashes, a revived al Qaeda and more terrorism in the West
By Yaroslav Trofimov
Sept. 9, 2016 11:30 a.m. ET
213 COMMENTS
On July 4, 2014, a black-turbaned cleric named Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi took to the pulpit of the Grand Mosque in the Iraqi city of Mosul and proclaimed the founding of a new caliphate. Already in control of eastern Syria and western Iraq, this so-called Islamic State had global ambitions, Mr. Baghdadi declared. The self-appointed caliph vowed to restore “dignity, might, rights and leadership” to his fellow Sunni Muslims everywhere.
That audacious sermon from the heart of Iraq’s second-largest city was the culmination of a jihadist blitzkrieg that had seized most of the Sunni Arab parts of Iraq in previous weeks. It was also, it turned out, the high point of Islamic State’s bid to conquer the world.
Islamic State now seems likely to fall as swiftly as it rose. In the past two years, the group has gone to war with everyone from al Qaeda to Iran’s Shiite theocracy to the U.S. and Russia. It has launched attacks in the West and elsewhere—or, at any rate, claimed credit for them—with rising frequency, even as it has suffered a series of battlefield defeats and surrendered one city after another.
Turn of the Tide?
Islamic State has lost significant territory over the past year, and further setbacks in the year ahead may bring an end to the grand ambitions of the self-styled caliphate.
It is easy to think that Islamic State is still on the march. It isn’t. Over the past year, the territory under its control—once roughly the size of the U.K.—has shrunk rapidly in both Iraq and Syria. Islamic State has lost the Iraqi cities of Ramadi and Fallujah, the ancient Syrian city of Palmyra and the northern Syrian countryside bordering on Turkey. Its militants in Libya were ousted in recent weeks from their headquarters in Sirte. In coming months, the group will face a battle that it is unlikely to win for its two most important remaining centers—Mosul in Iraq and Raqqa in Syria.
It may be tempting fate to ask the question, but it must be asked all the same: What happens once Islamic State falls? The future of the Middle East may well depend on who fills the void that it leaves behind both on the ground and, perhaps more important, in the imagination of jihadists around the world.
As we mark the 15th anniversary this weekend of the terrorist attacks of 9/11, one likely consequence of the demise of ISIS (as Islamic State in Iraq and Syria is often known) will be to revive its ideological rival, al Qaeda, which opposed Mr. Baghdadi’s ambitions from the start. Al Qaeda may yet unleash a fresh wave of terrorist attacks in the West and elsewhere—as may the remnants of Islamic State, eager to show that they still matter.
“Simply having ISIS go away doesn’t mean that the jihadist problem goes away,” said Daniel Benjamin of Dartmouth College, who served as the State Department’s counterterrorism coordinator during the Obama administration. “Eliminating the caliphate will be an achievement—but more likely, it will be just the end of the beginning rather than the beginning of the end.”
What made Islamic State unique—and, until recently, so appealing to many young, disaffected Muslims—is that it managed to create an actual state in Syria and Iraq. In Mosul last year, food prices were lower than in Baghdad and the streets were kept clean, even as the group drove out the city’s Christians and Shiites, banned women’s beauty salons, forbade men from shaving their beards and threw gay men from rooftops. Unlike Taliban-ruled Afghanistan in the 1990s, it was also a place in the heart of the Middle East to which adepts from around the world could migrate relatively easily, by way of Turkey’s porous borders.
When Mr. Baghdadi proclaimed his caliphate, demanding that all Muslims world-wide pledge allegiance to him and, if possible, relocate to the new state, more established jihadist leaders and clerics decried the move as illegitimate. They dismissed the new “caliph” as unqualified and warned that the whole venture would inevitably collapse, imperiling the jihadist cause.
Al Qaeda’s leader, Ayman al-Zawahiri, was one of the most virulent of these critics. He branded Islamic State as the new “Kharijites”—a universally reviled splinter sect of early Islam known for killing indiscriminately and falsely labeling other Muslims as infidels.
But as long as Islamic State kept going from strength to strength, such criticism didn’t seem to matter. Victories on the battlefields of Syria, Iraq and Libya were seen by Islamic State—and its potential backers and recruits—as divine validation of its project. Al Qaeda affiliates as far away as the Philippines and the North Caucasus switched their allegiance to Mr. Baghdadi.
A fighter from a U.S.-backed force helps civilians evacuated from a neighborhood formerly held by Islamic State in Manbij, Syria, on Aug. 12.
A fighter from a U.S.-backed force helps civilians evacuated from a neighborhood formerly held by Islamic State in Manbij, Syria, on Aug. 12. Photo: Rodi Said/Reuters
By the same token, however, battlefield losses today are undermining Islamic State’s theological foundations. “The loss of territory will pose a major problem because a great part of Islamic State’s legitimacy since the establishment of the caliphate in 2014 has arisen from control of territory,” said Stéphane Lacroix, a specialist in Islamist movements at Sciences Po University in Paris. The group has argued “that the caliph is legitimate precisely because he controls territory,” he said.
Today Mr. Baghdadi controls less and less of it, with Islamic State abandoning the Syrian town of Jarablus and scores of nearby villages without much of a fight in recent weeks. “We are at a point here where we are now really into the heart of the caliphate,” said Gen. Joseph Votel, the commander of U.S. Central Command, on Aug. 30. “We do see momentum building in Iraq and Syria.”
Islamic State itself has acknowledged that not much may be left of the caliphate soon. The group’s chief spokesman, Abu Muhammad al-Adnani, tried to prepare its followers in a speech released in May. “Will we be defeated and you victorious if you took Mosul or Sirte or Raqqa or all the cities and if we returned as we were in the beginning?” he asked the organization’s enemies. “No, defeat is losing the will and the desire to fight.” (Adnani was killed in an airstrike in Syria in late August.)
Islamic State won’t vanish completely, as an ideology or a terrorist organization, even if it loses all its land. Its precursor in Iraq survived the U.S. troop surge in 2007-09, bouncing back as the sectarian policies of the Shiite-led Iraqi government and the uprising against Syrian President Bashar al-Assad provided new opportunities for recruitment and expansion. And Islamic State is almost certain to try to demonstrate its relevance by staging more headline-grabbing massacres in the region and the West. The death rattle, counterterrorism experts warn, could be ferocious.
“As the physical caliphate disintegrates, and as it comes apart, as we dismantle it, I think that they will return to more of their terrorist-like roots. And so they will continue to try to either direct or support or potentially inspire attacks outside of the core in Iraq and Syria,” Gen. Votel said.
Still, the transformation of a de facto state into just another terrorist organization, one concerned with its own survival and discredited even among many fellow jihadists, is bound to shake the Middle East anew. Millions of people chafing under Islamic State rule will sigh with relief, as will the millions more ousted from their homes. But dismantling the “caliphate” won’t end the conflict now raging in and around Syria and Iraq—and may even intensify it.
Over the past two years, the campaign against Islamic State has brought together an unusually broad coalition that included Western democracies, Russia, Iran, Shiite militias, Turkey, Kurdish militias and Sunni Gulf monarchies. As Islamic State dwindles, some of these unlikely partners will probably turn on each other as they fight for the caliphate’s spoils.
Already, Turkey (a U.S. ally and fellow NATO member) and U.S.-backed Kurdish forces have clashed in northern Syria over lands recently wrested from Islamic State. Iraq’s Shiite-dominated government is also increasingly squabbling with the leaders of the country’s autonomous Kurdish region, with Baghdad refusing to recognize Kurdish control over several areas liberated from Islamic State by Kurdish fighters.
“The setbacks that ISIS is facing are creating more problems than its existence ever did,” said Hassan Abu Haniyeh, a Jordanian researcher of jihadist groups. “The pretext of fighting ISIS delayed the conflicts and the protest movements across the Middle East. Eliminating ISIS will bring back the conflicts everywhere. And it will embolden the people who had been holding back on demanding reforms by their countries’ regimes because they were concerned about ISIS.”
Moreover, the sectarian strife between Sunnis and Shiites over dominance of the region—the rivalry that helped to foster Islamic State’s initial rise in Iraq and then Syria—isn’t going away. That rift would only be deepened if more of the caliphate’s territory, largely inhabited by Sunni Arabs, fell into the hands of the pro-Iranian Shiite militias that have done much of the fighting against Islamic State, particularly in Iraq. A Shiite-controlled corridor from Iran to Lebanon would be a strategic nightmare for Saudi Arabia and its Sunni allies—which will try to ensure that Sunni Arabs freed from Islamic State control can still fend for themselves, one way or another.
“There will not be a military solution unless there is also a political solution for all the problems in the Sunni areas, problems that have been there since the occupation of Iraq,” said Saleh al-Mutlaq, a leading Sunni Iraqi politician and the country’s former deputy prime minister.
All of this could be exploited by Islamic State’s main ideological rival in the jihadist universe, Mr. Zawahiri’s al Qaeda, which claims to stand for Sunnis combating what it alleges is a “Safavid-Crusader alliance” between the U.S. and Iran. (The Safavid dynasty converted what is now Iran from Sunni Islam to Shiism in the 16th century.)
Mr. Zawahiri has long been a vocal critic—first privately and then publicly—of Islamic State. The group grew out of the Iraqi franchise of al Qaeda shortly after its founder, the Jordanian terrorist Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, was killed by a U.S. airstrike in 2006. Mr. Zawahiri quarreled with Mr. Zarqawi, and even more so with his successors, over Islamic State’s strategy of wantonly killing Shiite civilians and refusing to seek popular support.
Beaten back by the U.S. troop surge and pro-government Sunni militias in Iraq, Islamic State roared to life again after Syria plunged into civil strife in 2011. The resulting vacuum gave the group a haven in which to capitalize on Sunni grievances, attract international volunteers and become the world’s most prominent jihadist organization. In February 2014, after months of increasingly bitter disagreements, Islamic State openly broke with al Qaeda—a split that also severed Mr. Baghdadi’s relationship with al Qaeda’s Syrian offshoot, the Nusra Front, which remained loyal to Mr. Zawahiri.
Al Qaeda has been eclipsed by Islamic State’s gory attacks and gruesome videos, but it has not been idle. Under the leadership of Mr. Zawahiri, an Egyptian doctor now widely thought to be based in Pakistan, the organization has embraced a more pragmatic approach: decentralizing its operations, burrowing deep into its host countries and creating alliances with less radical groups.
“Zawahiri must be luxuriating. He steered al Qaeda in a much more nuanced and subtle approach and has always played the long game—and what he sees now is a validation of his strategy,” said Bruce Hoffman, the director of the Center for Security Studies at Georgetown University, who has advised the U.S. government on counterterrorism issues. With Islamic State “consuming all the oxygen in the room” for Western counterterrorism officials, Prof. Hoffman said, “nobody is paying much attention to al Qaeda.”
In recent weeks, Mr. Zawahiri has intensified his condemnations of Islamic State—which he sneeringly calls “the Ibrahim al-Badri group,” after Mr. Baghdadi’s real name—describing the rival organization as “a dagger in the back” of real Sunni jihadists. In a speech released online, Mr. Zawahiri contrasted Islamic State’s “abyss of extremism, infidel-branding and shedding forbidden blood” with al Qaeda’s efforts to bring Sunnis together.
Al Qaeda’s new emphasis on working as part of a broader alliance has been particularly striking in Syria. The Nusra Front has denied any interest in attacks outside Syria and, in July, said that it had cut ties with al Qaeda’s core—a move that Western officials dismissed as a ruse but that made the front more acceptable to other Sunni groups. The rebranded Nusra Front now operates as part of a rebel coalition known as the Army of Conquest, which includes both jihadists and more moderate, U.S.-backed militias. Many of these Syrian Sunnis cheer on the Nusra Front’s fighters for battling the Iranian-backed Assad regime, particularly in the northern city of Aleppo, and fume at U.S. efforts to target the group.
“I’m very impressed by how much [al Qaeda’s leaders] have learned from their mistakes and their bad experiences in Iraq,” said Robert Ford, who was the U.S. ambassador to Syria in 2011-14 and is now a senior fellow at the Middle East Institute. “They are much less brutal in Syria than they were in Iraq, and they work with non-jihadi factions, which al Qaeda in Iraq never did. They are more subtle in their tactics, and they have a lot more local support…This will make them much harder to contain: It’s going to be a much harder job to develop forces to fight them, and it’s going to be a much harder job to develop public support for that.”
Al Qaeda’s other large franchises—in Yemen and North Africa—could also take advantage of Islamic State’s fall. Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, which claimed credit for last year’s massacre in Paris of journalists at Charlie Hebdo magazine, has “a chance to flourish now” by focusing on backing its fellow Sunnis in the increasingly bitter and sectarian civil war in Yemen, notes Farea al-Muslimi, a Yemen expert at the Carnegie Middle East Center in Beirut. And as Islamic State fades, al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb—which has launched deadly assaults over the past year on international hotels in Mali, Burkina Faso and Ivory Coast—could forge closer ties with Mr. Baghdadi’s erstwhile subordinates in Nigeria’s ruthless Boko Haram insurgency, which is now riven by a leadership split.
“I don’t think everybody should relax after we get ISIS out of Mosul and Raqqa. The pressure must continue: If we relax, they will come back,” said Mahmoud Irdaisat, a Jordanian analyst and retired major general. “And we should not forget al Qaeda, because al Qaeda was the cradle from which ISIS came.”
Write to Yaroslav Trofimov at yaroslav.trofimov@wsj.com
-
http://pamelageller.com/2016/09/video-american-commandos-forced-to-run-away-from-us-backed-syrian-jihadis-to-the-cheers-of-allah-akbar.html/
-
http://pamelageller.com/2016/09/video-american-commandos-forced-to-run-away-from-us-backed-syrian-jihadis-to-the-cheers-of-allah-akbar.html/
Thank allah those were moderate muslims!
-
https://foreignpolicy.com/2016/09/22/hillary-clintons-new-colder-cold-war-russia-putin-election/
-
Russian and Syrian regime forces renewed their offensive against the besieged city of Aleppo on Friday, killing 27 civilians in air and ground bombardments. But this time the Obama Administration isn’t taking the outrage lying down. Behold Ben Rhodes, warning the Kremlin that there are limits to the White House’s diplomatic patience after Russia flouted another cease-fire by bombing a humanitarian aid convoy.
“The question is whether or not we just walk away from the table completely at this point,” the deputy national security adviser said this week, “or whether or not we do some more diplomacy and consultation to determine whether or not there is some path forward.”
To whether or not—when it comes to the Administration’s Syria policy, that’s always been the question. President Obama dithered for months over whether to call on Bashar Assad to step aside, first deciding in favor of it only effectively to reverse himself last year. He struggled with the question of whether and to what extent to arm a credible opposition force, only to spend a half-billion dollars training a handful of fighters. He drew a red line against the use of chemical weapons, but whether to enforce it was another matter.
More recently, Mr. Obama has been of two minds over whether to oppose Moscow’s intervention in Syria, or join it in a mutual effort against Islamic State. He’s also unsure of whether to provide Syria’s Kurds—by far the most effective U.S. ally in the war—with the weapons they would need to evict ISIS from its Syrian capital in Raqqa. Whether it’s worth alienating Turkey by doing so is another White House puzzle.
All this is causing some presidential misgivings, not least because Mr. Obama knows he’ll be judged harshly for his Syrian abdication. In an interview for Vanity Fair, Mr. Obama told historian Doris Kearns Goodwin that Syria “haunts me constantly,” and that he asks himself what a Winston Churchill or Dwight Eisenhower might have done in his place. Yet he continues to insist that he got all the big calls right. Regrets, he’d have a few—if only he could think of what they might be.
If Mr. Obama is really looking for a Churchillian answer to Syria’s dilemmas, he could arm our Kurdish friends, destroy the Assad regime’s air force and its armor reserves, and redraw the map of Syria to take account of the new dividing lines of a broken country. Instead of dispatching John Kerry on more negotiating dead ends with Russia, he could also impose further economic costs on Moscow for its Mideast adventurism.
None of this would require deploying U.S. ground troops in large numbers to Syria. But it might warrant restoring Winston’s bust to the Oval Office where it belongs.
-
Other than VDH, WRM is my favorite Democrat. American Interest, subscribe at the link:
http://www.the-american-interest.com/2016/09/23/the-real-middle-east-story/
September 23, 2016
BIBI'S REALPOLITIK
The Real Middle East Story
WALTER RUSSELL MEAD
Precisely because he has a colder view of international affairs than Obama, Netanyahu’s leadership has made Israel stronger than ever.
Peter Baker notices something important in his dispatch this morning: at this year’s UNGA, the Israel/Palestine issue is no longer the center of attention. From The New York Times:
They took the stage, one after the other, two aging actors in a long-running drama that has begun to lose its audience. As the Israeli and Palestinian leaders recited their lines in the grand hall of the United Nations General Assembly on Thursday, many in the orchestra seats recognized the script.
“Heinous crimes,” charged Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian president. “Historic catastrophe.”
“Fanaticism,” countered Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister. “Inhumanity.”
Mr. Abbas and Mr. Netanyahu have been at this for so long that between them they have addressed the world body 19 times, every year cajoling, lecturing, warning and guilt-tripping the international community into seeing their side of the bloody struggle between their two peoples. Their speeches are filled with grievance and bristling with resentment, as they summon the ghosts of history from hundreds and even thousands of years ago to make their case.
While each year finds some new twist, often nuanced, sometimes incendiary, the argument has been running long enough that the world has begun to move on. Where the Israeli-Palestinian conflict once dominated the annual meeting of the United Nations, this year it has become a side show as Mr. Netanyahu and Mr. Abbas compete for attention against seemingly more urgent crises like the civil war in Syria and the threat from the Islamic State.
Baker (and presumably many of his readers) don’t go on to the next, obvious question: What does this tell us about the relative success or failure of the leaders involved? The piece presents both Netanyahu and Abbas as irrelevant. They used to command the world stage, but now nobody is interested in their interminable quarrel.
What the piece doesn’t say is that this situation is exactly what Israel wants, and is a terrible defeat for the Palestinians. Abbas is the one whose strategy depends on keeping the Palestinian issue front and center in world politics; Bibi wants the issue to fade quietly away. What we saw at the UN this week is that however much Abbas and the Palestinians’ many sympathizers might protest, events are moving in Bibi’s direction.
There is perhaps only one thing harder for the American mind to process than the fact that President Obama has been a terrible foreign policy president, and that is that Bibi Netanyahu is an extraordinarily successful Israeli Prime Minister. In Asia, in Africa, in Latin America, Israel’s diplomacy is moving from strength to strength. Virtually every Arab and Middle Eastern leader thinks that Bibi is smarter and stronger than President Obama, and as American prestige across the Middle East has waned under Obama, Israel’s prestige — even among people who hate it — has grown. Bibi’s reset with Russia, unlike Obama’s, actually worked. His pivot to Asia has been more successful than Obama’s. He has had far more success building bridges to Sunni Muslims than President Obama, and both Russia and Iran take Bibi and his red lines much more seriously than they take Obama’s expostulations and pious hopes.
The reason that Bibi has been more successful than Obama is that Bibi understands how the world works better than Obama does. Bibi believes that in the harsh world of international politics, power wisely used matters more than good intentions eloquently phrased. Obama sought to build bridges to Sunni Muslims by making eloquent speeches in Cairo and Istanbul while ignoring the power political realities that Sunni states cared most about — like the rise of Iran and the Sunni cause in Syria. Bibi read the Sunnis more clearly than Obama did; the value of Israeli power to a Sunni world worried about Iran has led to something close to a revolution in Israel’s regional position. Again, Obama thought that reaching out to the Muslim Brotherhood (including its Palestinian affiliate, Hamas) would help American diplomacy and Middle Eastern democracy. Bibi understood that Sunni states like Egypt and its Saudi allies wanted Hamas crushed. Thus, as Obama tried to end the Gaza war on terms acceptable to Hamas and its allies, Bibi enjoyed the backing of both Egypt and Saudi Arabia in a successful effort to block Obama’s efforts. Israel’s neighbors may not like Bibi, but they believe they can count on him. They may think Obama has some beautiful ideas that he cares deeply about, but they think he’s erratic, unreliable, and doesn’t understand either them or their concerns.
Obama is an aspiring realist who wanted to work with undemocratic leaders on practical agreements. But Obama, despite the immense power of the country he leads, has been unable to gain the necessary respect from leaders like Putin and Xi that would permit the pragmatic relationships he wanted to build. Bibi is a practicing realist who has succeeded where Obama failed. Bibi has a practical relationship with Putin; they work together where their interests permit and where their interests clash, Putin respects Bibi’s red lines. Obama’s pivot to Asia brought the US closer to India and Japan, but has opened a deep and dangerous divide with China. Under Bibi’s leadership, Israel has stronger, deeper relationships with India, China and Japan than at any time in the past, and Asia may well replace Europe as Israel’s primary trade and investment partners as these relationships develop.
The marginalization of Abbas at the UN doesn’t just reflect the world’s preoccupation with bigger crises in the neighborhood. It reflects a global perception that a) the Sunni Arab states overall are less powerful than they used to be and that b) partly as a result of their deteriorating situation, the Sunni Arab states care less about the Palestinian issue than they used to. This is why African countries that used to shun Israel as a result of Arab pressure are now happy to engage with Israel on a variety of economic and defense issues. India used to avoid Israel in part out of fear that its own Kashmir problem would be ‘Palestinianized’ into a major problem with its Arab neighbors and the third world. Even Japan and China were cautious about embracing Israel too publicly given the power of the Arab world and its importance both in the world of energy markets and in the nonaligned movement. No longer.
Inevitably, all these developments undercut the salience of the Palestinian issue for world politics and even for Arab politics and they strengthen Israel’s position in the region and beyond. Obama has never really grasped this; Netanyahu has based his strategy on it. Ironically, much of the decline in Arab power is due to developments in the United States. Fracking has changed OPEC’s dynamics, and Obama’s tilt toward Iran has accelerated the crisis of Sunni Arab power. Netanyahu understands the impact of Obama’s country and Obama’s policy on the Middle East better than Obama does. Bibi, like a number of other leaders around the world, has been able to make significant international gains by exploiting the gaps in President Obama’s understanding of the world and in analyzing ways to profit from the unintended consequences and side effects of Obama policies that didn’t work out as Obama hoped.
Bibi’s successes will not and cannot make Israel’s problems and challenges go away. And finding a workable solution to the Palestinian question remains something that Israel cannot ignore on both practical and moral grounds. But Israel is in a stronger global position today than it was when Bibi took office; nobody can say that with a straight face about the nation that President Obama leads. When and if American liberals understand the causes both of Bibi’s successes and of Obama’s setbacks, then perhaps a new and smarter era of American foreign policy debate can begin.
© The American Interest, subscribe at link above.
-
What is it with Democrats who see fit to use are armed services for political gain. It is not about this but the timing of this.
Now all of a sudden just before an election. :x
https://www.yahoo.com/news/us-prepared-send-more-troops-iraq-mosul-offensive-135438730.html
-
What is it with Democrats who see fit to use are armed services for political gain. It is not about this but the timing of this.
Now all of a sudden just before an election. :x
https://www.yahoo.com/news/us-prepared-send-more-troops-iraq-mosul-offensive-135438730.html
Well, I was told that if I voted for McCain, we'd have troops in Iraq in 2016. They were right!
-
https://www.clarionproject.org/news/veiled-woman-assassinates-isis-jihadis-checkpoint#
http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/iraqi-grandmother-beheaded-cooked-isis-soldiers-heads-avenge-her-familys-murder-1584068?utm_source=social&utm_medium=facebook&utm_campaign=%2Firaqi-grandmother-beheaded-cooked-isis-soldiers-heads-avenge-her-familys-murder-1584068%3Futm_medium%3DSocial%26utm_campaign%3DEchobox%26utm_source%3DFacebook%26utm_term%3DAutofeed
-
How can anyone NOT be cynical and not think this is political right before an election?
We know Obama and Clinton will stop at nothing for political gain:
https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/2016/10/17/american-troops-on-the-outskirts-of-mosul-during-iraqi-kurdish-offensive/
-
Haven't had a chance to give this a proper read, but it seems intriguing:
http://thefreethoughtproject.com/serena-shim-killed-syria-war-conspiracy/#ylI1Mv8kwj9yw0aV.99
-
http://en.alalam.ir/news/1879701
-
https://wikileaks.org/podesta-emails/emailid/3774
-
https://sofrep.com/67808/three-green-berets-killed-isis-infiltrator-cia-ignored-warnings/
-
Food for thought.
https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2016/12/08/the-kurds-are-nearly-there/
See map: https://www.nybooks.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/Caryl-Kurdistan-2-col-120813.jpg
The Kurds Are Nearly There
Christian Caryl DECEMBER 8, 2016 ISSUE
From Tribe to Nation: Iraqi Kurdistan on the Cusp of Statehood
a report by Amberin Zaman
Wilson Center, 31 pp., available at www.wilsoncenter.org
The Kurds: A Modern History
by Michael M. Gunter
Markus Wiener, 256 pp., $68.95; $26.95 (paper)
Invisible Nation: How the Kurds’ Quest for Statehood Is Shaping Iraq and the Middle East
by Quil Lawrence
Walker, 386 pp., $17.00 (paper)
Kurdistan Rising? Considerations for Kurds, Their Neighbors, and the Region
by Michael Rubin
American Enterprise Institute, 139 pp., available at www.aei.org
1.
The battle for Mosul has begun. For the past two years, Iraq’s second-largest city has languished under the harsh rule of the Islamic State (ISIS). Now a combined force of Iraqi army troops, Shiite militias, and Kurdish fighters, backed up by a US-led coalition of more than sixty nations, is pushing forward to retake the city. The stakes are high. Dislodging ISIS from the city where its leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, declared his “caliphate” in 2014 promises to be a formidable undertaking, given the ferocity of resistance so far. But if the coalition manages to restore Iraqi government control over Mosul, it will certainly count as a major blow to the ambitions of the jihadists—even if final victory over them is still a long way off.
So far the campaign appears to be going well. Yet its initial successes—to be expected, perhaps, in a situation where the attackers outnumber the defenders by more than twenty to one—cannot conceal the fact that the members of the anti-ISIS forces in Iraq have strikingly divergent interests. The United States and its Western allies are concerned above all with thwarting the Islamic State’s ability to stage terrorist attacks against them. Preserving the territorial integrity of Iraq, while important, is a secondary aim. The Iraqi prime minister, Haider al-Abadi, is intent on restoring his government’s sovereignty over the country as a whole and reasserting, along the way, the dominance of the Shiite majority over a restive Sunni minority that, at least for a time, saw the Islamic State as a protector of its interests.
And then there are the Kurds. For the past twenty-five years, since a crucial intervention following the first Gulf War by the United States to protect them from Saddam Hussein’s killings, the 5.5 million Kurds of northern Iraq have been quietly running their own affairs. Currently some 40,000 Kurdish troops are taking active part in the effort to retake Mosul, and dozens have died since the operation began. But the peshmerga, as the Iraqi Kurdish militias are known, are not fighting to preserve Iraq. They are fighting to remove a major threat to their own homeland, the three northern provinces that make up the Kurdish Region of Iraq. The Islamic State, which is dominated by Salafist Sunni Arabs, has always regarded the Kurds as mortal enemies, and when the jihadists staged their surprise attack on Mosul in the summer of 2014, the momentum of their offensive brought them within just a few miles of the Iraqi Kurdish capital of Erbil. It took a series of hasty American air strikes to stop the jihadists from going further.
Since then the Kurdish region has shared an uneasy thousand-mile border with the territory controlled by the Islamic State to its south, and the Kurds are determined to put an end to this lingering security threat. There is an urgency to their mission. For the continued existence of the ISIS caliphate is, in effect, the last remaining obstacle between the Iraqi Kurds and their fondest wish: the creation of the first independent Kurdish state.
There are more than 30 million Kurds scattered across the Middle East, most of them in the four countries of Turkey, Iran, Iraq, and Syria—a circumstance that helps to explain the label they are often given—“world’s largest people without a nation.” The Kurds in all of these countries have endured various forms of persecution. And yet, as the Turkish journalist Amberin Zaman notes in her report “From Tribe to Nation,” “The Iraqi Kurds have endured far greater horrors and betrayal than any of their brethren across the borders.” The government of Saddam Hussein repeatedly subjected his Kurdish population to acts of genocidal violence, including, most notoriously, the use of chemical weapons against Kurdish communities in 1988. Every Iraqi Kurd has long and searing tales of trauma: childhoods spent in refugee camps, relatives dispatched to the anonymity of mass graves, villages razed to the ground.
The dream of a national homeland is one that all Kurds share, no matter where they currently live. For the past century—ever since World War I brought about the collapse of the Ottoman Empire and the subsequent creation of new nation-states that excluded Kurdish aspirations—they have yearned in vain. Yet now circumstances have conspired to bring the Kurds—or some of them, at least—closer to achieving a workable state than at any other time in recent memory.
To be sure, not all of the Kurds are equally well positioned to take advantage. The Kurds of Iran, who briefly enjoyed a self-governing state under Soviet tutelage after World War II, seem the least likely to strike out on their own, given the strength of the Tehran government and the relative weakness of the Kurdish nationalist movement. In southeastern Turkey, the goal of self-determination has long been pursued with particular ferocity by the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), which has carried on a four-decade-long insurgency against the government in Ankara. After years of effectively denying the existence of the roughly 15 million Kurds within its borders, the Turkish state embarked on a policy of cautious rapprochement that culminated in the launching of peace negotiations in 2013. Last year, however, the war flared up again, prosecuted on the Turkish side by President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, who had, for a time, pursued the peace process with more determination than any of his predecessors. The return to war, amid scenes of extraordinary destruction in Kurdish communities, makes the attainment of any sort of independence for the Turkish Kurds—a long shot under the best of circumstances—even less likely.
The situation in Syria, at least on the surface, offers more grounds for hope. The outbreak of the civil war in 2011 led to the weakening of government control over the Kurdish regions in the country’s northeast corner, and the Kurds there were quick to seize their chance. Over the past five years the Syrian Kurds have steadily built up formidable institutions of self-rule. In contrast to Iraq’s Kurdish region, however, the regions currently controlled by their Syrian counterparts contain large populations of Arabs and other minority groups, and their presence might well complicate an aggressive push for independence.
Even so, it is hard to overestimate the degree of international goodwill that the Syrian Kurdish forces have managed to acquire thanks to their muscular prosecution of the war against the Islamic State. Since the Assad government doesn’t seem especially keen on confronting the caliphate, the Kurdish-dominated forces have been supplying most of the fighters on the Syrian front of the war against ISIS. It is precisely for this reason that the Obama administration has recently begun directly supplying the Syrian Kurds with weapons. This would amount to an extraordinary departure from past practice, since providing arms would implicitly bolster the Kurds’ control over their part of Syria, and potentially bring them closer to independence—a prospect of which Washington policymakers have long been leery, since it would entail a fundamental redrawing of the borders of the Middle East.
Such caution is understandable. Yet US policy toward the Kurds will face a crucial test in the next few years—and it will almost certainly come from the Kurds of Iraq, who believe that their twenty-five-year experiment in self-government is approaching its logical culmination. The leaders of the Kurdistan Regional Government, based in Erbil, have explicitly declared that they have independence in their sights. Masoud Barzani, president of the Kurdish Region of Iraq, has announced plans to conduct a referendum on statehood once the threat from ISIS has abated. Washington, meanwhile, doggedly maintains that nothing can be allowed to compromise Iraq’s territorial integrity, periodically warning its Kurdish allies not to test its resolve. In view of the long history of thwarted Kurdish aspirations, one has to wonder: When the day finally comes, will the Kurds really be willing to wait for permission?
2.
As a people, the Kurds are magnificently contradictory. They have a sharply formed sense of identity, and yet their ethnic self-understanding allows for a dizzying diversity. Most Kurds adhere to the beliefs of Sunni Islam, yet there are also Kurds who profess Shiism, Christianity, Judaism, and radical secularism—not to mention ancient sects such as the Yazidis and the Shabaks. Moreover, millions of Kurds have, over the years, fled oppression at the hands of the nations in which they lived, creating a vast global diaspora. There are some 800,000 Kurds in Germany alone. (The largest concentration of Kurds in the United States is a population of some ten thousand in Nashville, Tennessee.)
Kurdish identity often delineates itself along linguistic lines. The Kurdish tongue—based on three rather distinct dialects—belongs to the Indo-Iranian language family, giving the Kurds a degree of cultural kinship with Iran. (Unlike the Turks and Arabs, the Kurds observe Newroz, the traditional Persian New Year.) Geography is also an important source of Kurdish self-understanding. The core Kurdish population has long been centered on the spine of mountains that reach from southeastern Turkey across northern Iraq and into the northwestern corner of Iran.
Some Kurds trace their origins back to the Medes, an ancient people who built an empire in what is now Iran and Iraq. Historians are inclined to doubt this, but it seems clear enough that Kurds have had a long presence in their region. Saladin, the leader of the Muslim armies who defied the invading Crusaders in the twelfth century, was a Kurd—though he gained fame as a religious and military leader, not as a representative of his ethnic group. The Ottomans recognized the Kurds as a distinct minority, even coining the term “Kurdistan.” The Kurds engaged in periodic uprisings against Ottoman rule, but their rebellions were almost always cloaked in the language of religious discontent. Like so many other peoples of the Middle East, they were relative latecomers to the modern idea of ethnic nationalism.
The collapse of the Ottoman Empire seemed, at first, to offer a perfect opening for a Kurdish state. The victorious Allies originally planned to carve a Kurdish homeland out of the old Ottoman territories, a Kurdish delegation having pleaded its case at the Paris Peace Conference. But the Turkish nationalist leader Kemal Atatürk had other ideas. His victory in the Turkish War of Independence thwarted the West’s plans for the partition of Anatolia, and the 1923 Treaty of Lausanne, which endorsed his new Turkish Republic, scotched the idea of a Kurdish state by including a large chunk of Kurdish-populated territory within the new Turkish borders.
This amounts to one of the great ironies of history. As Michael Gunter writes in The Kurds, Atatürk had originally envisioned his new state as a mutual homeland for both Turks and Kurds, and Kurdish fighters had formed a large part of his forces. The first Turkish parliament included seventy-five Kurdish deputies. As the years went on, however, Atatürk began to narrow his vision of the new republic to a mono-ethnic state for Turks alone. Ankara’s policies became correspondingly repressive. Within a few decades merely acknowledging the existence of a Kurdish minority had become a criminal offense.
The Kurds in the new post-Ottoman state of Syria had it somewhat better, at least at first. But as Syrian democracy withered, to be replaced by the Arab national socialist ideology of Baathism, the state’s tolerance for ethnic difference evaporated. During the 1960s, the government came up with a novel approach to making its Kurdish problem go away: it simply denied citizenship to many Kurds.
To the east, the post–World War I settlement had created yet another new state, called Iraq, which had been cobbled together from three Ottoman provinces, to be ruled under a British mandate between 1920 and 1932. The British soon found themselves facing a major threat from the Kurds of the north, who launched a full-blown jihad against their colonial masters under the leadership of a charismatic chieftain named Sheikh Mahmud Barzanji.
One of his deputies, Mullah Mustafa Barzani, would go on to become a central figure in the twentieth-century history of the Kurds—a career that ran from an old-fashioned tribal revolt to a cold war–style national liberation struggle. In the mid-1940s Barzani found himself turning for help to the Soviet Union, which became his patron during his brief period as defense minister of the short-lived Kurdish republic in Iran in 1946. When it collapsed, Moscow granted him asylum until he was finally able to return to Iraq a decade later, where he continued the struggle against the increasingly intransigent regimes in Baghdad in the 1960s and 1970s. Despite these contortions, Barzani never quite managed to live down his origins as a traditional tribal leader. The organization he created in Iraq, the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP), remains to this day very much under the spell of the Barzani family.
Other claimants to leadership of the Kurdish independence movement soon appeared. Within Iraq, critics of the KDP’s ascendancy—many of them members of the rival Talabani clan—formed in 1975 a party of their own, the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK), setting the stage for a tortuous relationship that has, on occasion, been known to explode into outright warfare.
In Turkey, the increasingly harsh oppression of the Kurdish minority under successive military governments prompted the rise of another resistance leader, Abdullah Öcalan, who founded the PKK in 1978. Unlike its Iraqi counterparts, who remained beholden to their clannish origins, the PKK started off as a classic Marxist-Leninist party but with strong nationalist claims. Öcalan ran his party along rigidly authoritarian lines, and like so many of his revolutionary predecessors, he pursued and eliminated rival Kurds with even greater ruthlessness than he attacked his enemies in the Turkish military. His claim to ultimate leadership of the global Kurdish community invariably brought him into conflict with the Iraqi Kurdish parties—a feud that continues to shape the Kurdish question today. (Öcalan, captured in 1999, is still held in a Turkish prison.)
The Kurds became deeply enmeshed in cold war politics, something that had a great deal to do with the fateful geography of their homeland. Both Turkey (with one of NATO’s biggest armies) and Iran, vital US allies, shared borders with the Soviet Union; Iraq, increasingly controlled by its own particularly virulent strain of Baathism, found a natural ally in Moscow. The PKK accordingly received active support from various revolutionary regimes around the Middle East. It sent its fighters to train in East Bloc–sponsored camps in Lebanon’s Bekaa Valley alongside a hodgepodge of other terrorist groups.
The United States was just as happy to exploit the Kurds for its own purposes—most infamously in the 1970s, when Secretary of State Henry Kissinger backed the Shah of Iran, Washington’s most important regional client, in sponsoring an Iraqi Kurdish rebellion against the Iraqi government, by then well on its way to becoming a Soviet client state. Once the rebellion had achieved the Iranian aim of extracting concessions from Baghdad, the Shah, and Kissinger, cut off support for the insurgents, leaving them to face the full wrath of their enemies. Thousands of Kurds died in the reprisals that followed. It wasn’t the first time the Kurds were betrayed by their ostensible friends; nor was it the last. Their own propensity for factionalism didn’t help their cause. For much of the cold war they appeared powerless to break the curse of history.
3.
The turning point came from an unexpected quarter. President George H.W. Bush, an old-school foreign policy realist, had no intention of supporting Kurdish self-determination when he set out to defeat Saddam Hussein in the first Gulf War in 1990. But in the war’s aftermath, his administration confronted an appalling humanitarian crisis in northern Iraq, where hundreds of thousands of Kurds were fleeing retribution from Saddam’s forces. (Bush himself had called upon the Kurds and Shias to bring down Saddam’s regime, but then failed to offer the rebels air cover, leaving them at the mercy of Baghdad’s air force.)
The images of women and children suffering amid the snowy peaks excited a public outcry, and in April 1991 the United States, the UK, and France agreed to create a safe haven for the Iraqi Kurds. Operation Provide Comfort, as it came to be called, imposed a no-fly zone north of the 36th parallel, effectively preventing Saddam’s planes and helicopters from killing Kurds, and enabling the Kurdish militias to push Iraqi troops back out and reassert control.
They have never relinquished it. “The Kurdish safe haven was supposed to serve Washington’s Iraq containment strategy, a launching pad for the harassment of Saddam Hussein,” as Quil Lawrence writes in Invisible Nation:
But there was an unintended consequence: one of the most successful nation-building projects in American history. The Kurds held elections, set up their own social services, and started educating their children in Kurdish, not Arabic. They banned the Iraqi flag and the currency with Saddam’s face on it.
This nation-building effort continued apace after the US-led invasion in 2003. Ironically, Ankara’s refusal to allow US troops to cross Turkish territory on the way to Iraq compelled the Americans to seek other options for the northern prong of the campaign; the Kurds were only too happy to offer their support. Throughout the war the Kurds proved themselves conspicuously loyal allies of the US. While the rest of Iraq descended into a frenzy of war and sectarian chaos, the Kurdish region became for the coalition a secure and reliable hinterland (with a relatively stable economy). The Kurds are rightfully proud that the US military didn’t lose a single servicemember on Kurdish territory during the war. This goes a long way to explaining why the Iraqi Kurds have managed to build strong bipartisan support in both houses of Congress over the past fifteen years, which could prove useful when the issue of independence comes to a head.
Even so, Iraqi Kurds will need more than congressional goodwill if they want to turn their region into a state. Though they can probably defy the Iraqi government in a pinch, achieving independence with Baghdad’s acquiescence would certainly be more desirable than the alternative. They may already be on their way to getting it. Amberin Zaman, one of the sharpest observers of Kurdish issues, observes that the Kurdistan Regional Government and the Iraqi government have already created two committees to discuss the details of a possible divorce. She also points out that Baghdad and Erbil have worked out a resource-sharing agreement for the rich oilfields in the region around the disputed city of Kirkuk—just the sort of compromise that could accompany Iraqi Kurdistan’s separation from Iraq.
But what about the neighbors? Given their own restive Kurdish minorities, would the Turks, Syrians, and Iranians be prepared to tolerate a Kurdish proto-state on their borders? In fact, current indications are that Turkey, and to some extent Iran, may be willing to accept just this possibility. Much depends on the factional fault line that still divides the Kurds themselves. During the past decade, the Turkish government, fully aware of the bad blood between its own Kurdish rebels and their Iraqi rivals, has seen the wisdom of cultivating good relations with the Iraqi KDP as a way of undermining the Turkish PKK.1 There are also sound economic reasons for such a partnership, since Turkey has benefited hugely by serving as the main conduit for Iraqi Kurdish oil to global markets. An independent Iraqi Kurdistan, given its landlocked position, is unlikely to prove economically workable without some sort of access to global markets—but the Iraqi Kurdish leaders in Erbil have already signed long-term agreements with the Turks to ensure just this sort of access.
If all this sounds far too optimistic, Michael Rubin, in Kurdistan Rising?, has good reasons for pessimism, pointing to the many obstacles to Kurdish statehood—whether restricted to an Iraqi enclave or incorporating larger swathes of the regional Kurdish population. For all its successes, he writes, the Kurdish region of Iraq remains plagued by deep-seated pathologies. The collapse of global oil prices, coupled with the costs of prosecuting the war against ISIS and the influx of a huge number of refugees (1.8 million at last count, more than a third of the population), have sent the economy into a tailspin. Corruption remains pervasive at every level of government. Factional differences between the KPD and the PUK affect every level of administration, including the peshmerga themselves, who still answer to their respective party leaders rather than to the Kurdish government.2 The Kurds’ hard-earned reputation for relatively democratic governance has been undermined by the extension of emergency powers to President Barzani, who, citing the exigencies of the war, has remained in office long beyond his legally set term—much to the anger of the other parties in the Erbil parliament.
Rubin has a novel suggestion for future sources of Kurdish money. He suggests that the Kurds issue a symbolic currency “equivalent in value to the US dollar or European euro. In this, there is precedent in Panama and Timor-Leste, which utilize the US dollar as their currency for all practical purposes.” When it comes to the idea of a future Kurdish state achieving recognition by its neighbors, however, Rubin remains deeply skeptical—a view he shares with many other outside experts.
Rubin is entirely right to scrutinize these potential pitfalls. Creating a new Kurdish state is likely to be a highly complex affair in the best of cases. Yet it is also true that some new countries have started life under even less auspicious circumstances. As Zaman points out, Kurds have been waiting for a state of their own for a century—and they’re unlikely to go on waiting until conditions are optimal. “The ‘we are not ready’ camp cites the economic crisis, corruption, the lack of unity, and opposition from Iran and Turkey as the main obstacles to Iraqi Kurdish statehood,” she writes. “Yet, many of these issues will not be resolved by remaining part of Iraq.” The Kurds are already on the march. Their friends in the rest of the world—including the next US president—will soon have to decide whether they want to keep up.
-
Perhaps he has been lurking here :-D
-
Second post:
TOWNSHEND, Vt. — The civil war in Syria is over. Now it is time to stop the fighting.
Aided by Russia, Iran, Shiite militias and Hezbollah, the government of President Bashar al-Assad is on the verge of taking Aleppo, once Syria’s largest city. Supported by its powerful allies, the Syrian Army will then move to eliminate the remaining pockets of resistance, notably around the northern city of Idlib. While Iran has been Mr. Assad’s most important military ally, the Syrian regime would still want to have Russian airpower to finish its reconquest of the country’s populous west.
The Assad regime has prevailed through tactics of unspeakable brutality — barrel bombs, starvation, the targeting of hospitals and rescue workers and the suspected use of chemical weapons — but it has prevailed. Samantha Power, the United States ambassador to the United Nations, has rightly focused attention on these war crimes, but these denunciations will make no difference to the situation on the ground.
There is an absolutely counterproductive idea favored by Washington’s foreign policy elites of both parties, recycled recently by President Bill Clinton’s secretary of state Madeleine K. Albright and Stephen J. Hadley, national security adviser to President George W. Bush, for providing additional military support to the moderate Syrian opposition. Such aid cannot possibly now change the trajectory of the war, but will certainly get more people killed.
Though the outcome is clear, how the war ends matters greatly. The United States has an interest in a result that allows as many Syrians as possible to go home, that ensures the total defeat of the Islamic State and other extremist groups, and that safeguards the Syrian Kurds, who have been America’s principal ally against the Islamic State.
Achieving these goals will require close collaboration with Russia, whose intervention enabled Mr. Assad to turn the tide of the war. Fortunately, Russia shares many of America’s objectives, even if its Syrian ally does not.
The United States and Russia could start by negotiating terms that would end the fighting between the regime and the moderate opposition. The terms might include an amnesty for the rebels, the right of Syrian refugees to return and equal access to reconstruction assistance. It could even include some promises of basic political freedoms, international monitoring and the removal of Syrian officials (not including Mr. Assad) responsible for the worst crimes.
Sign Up for the Opinion Today Newsletter
Every weekday, get thought-provoking commentary from Op-Ed columnists, the Times editorial board and contributing writers from around the world.
Receive occasional updates and special offers for The New York Times's products and services.
See Sample Manage Email Preferences Privacy Policy
The Russians have considerable leverage with a Syrian government that wants Russian backing for mopping-up operations. The United States, with less leverage, will have to persuade the non-Islamist opposition that a negotiated surrender is better than total destruction.
European countries have a strong interest in creating conditions to encourage refugees in Jordan, Lebanon and Turkey to return to Syria rather than heading west. America should work to ensure the diplomatic engagement of European allies to bring an end to hostilities, as well as their financial support for reconstruction in Syria.
In eastern Syria, Kurdish forces supported by the United States Air Force and special forces are battling the Islamic State in a largely separate conflict. On a recent trip to the Kurdish areas, I traveled to within 15 miles of Raqqa, the capital of the Islamic State. Kurdish fighters feel confident that they can take the city, but their leaders understand that they’re not in a position to govern a large Arab city. Since there is no viable Arab alternative to the Syrian government, this will mean transferring control of Raqqa to the regime in Damascus.
Finally, the United States must provide long-term guarantees to the Syrian Kurds, who now control a large territory, not all of which is Kurdish. For now, the Syrian Army is in no position to take on the Kurdish forces, but eventually, Mr. Assad will surely try to recreate the centralized Arab state he inherited from his father. He will also want to use Syria’s oil resources — much of which are now under Kurdish control — to finance reconstruction.
One option is to establish an American-protected Kurdish safe area in northeastern Syria similar to the one created in northern Iraq after the first gulf war. That expensive option is complicated by the inability of the United States to use Turkish air bases to enforce it. (Turkey regards the Kurds as its leading enemy in Syria.) The less costly alternative is to co-sponsor a Russian plan for an autonomous Kurdish area within a federal Syria.
However, Russia’s leverage with Mr. Assad will diminish as the opposition crumbles in Syria’s west and Russian airpower becomes less important. At that point, the opportunity to extract concessions will disappear, and the field will belong to Mr. Assad and Iran.
President-elect Donald J. Trump has stated his intention to work with Russia and Mr. Assad to defeat the Islamic State. The sooner America reaches out to Russia, ideally before January’s handover of administration, the better.
Peter W. Galbraith is a former United States ambassador to Croatia.
-
http://ahtribune.com/world/north-africa-south-west-asia/1381-avigdor-liberman.html
-
http://www.investigativeproject.org/5732/aleppo-fall-signals-rise-of-emboldened-radical
Print
Send
RSS
Share:
Be the first of your friends to like this.
Recent sweeping gains by the pro-Assad alliance in Aleppo signal the rise of an emboldened Iranian-led radical Shi'ite axis. The more this axis gains strength, territory, weapons, and influence, the more likely it is to threaten regional and global security.
Ideologues in Iran have formulated a Shi'ite jihadist vision which holds that the Iranian Islamic revolution must take control of the entire Muslim world. Losing the Assad regime to Sunni rebels, many of them backed by Tehran's Gulf Arab state archenemies, would have represented a major setback to Iran's agenda.
This same ideological agenda also calls for the eventual annihilation of Israel, the toppling of Sunni governments, and intimidating the West into complying with Iran's schemes.
Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei and Tehran's military elites, in the form of the Islamic Republican Guards Corps (IRGC), use the current regional chaos to promote these goals.
In Syria, Iran has mobilized tens of thousands of Shi'ite militia fighters from all over the Middle East, as well as those from Hizballah in Lebanon, and sent them to do battle with Sunni rebel organizations to help save the Assad regime.
As the Shi'ite axis wages a sectarian war against Sunnis moderate groups and jihadists, it mobilizes and arms its proxies, and moves military assets into Syria, gaining a growing influence that can be used for bellicose purposes in the not too distant future.
The conquest of east Aleppo is a victory for the wider, transnational Iranian-led alliance, of which the Damascus regime is but one component. The Assad regime is composed and led by Syria's minority Alawite population, which makes up just 11 percent of Syrians (Alawites are seen as an offshoot of Shia Islam).
A look at the order of battle assembled in Aleppo reveals that the war in Syria is not a civil conflict by any measure. In addition to Assad regime forces sent to fight Sunni rebels, such as the Fourth Division, Syrian army special forces, and paramilitary units, there is also the Iranian-backed Hizballah, which has transformed itself into a regional Shi'ite ground army, deployed across Syria and Lebanon.
These are joined by Shi'ite Iraqi Kataib Hizballah militia, Afghan Shi'ite militia groups, and Iranian military personnel on the ground in Syria, all of whom receive the assistance of massive Russian air power.
The large scale, indiscriminate airstrikes and shelling in places like Aleppo resulted in mass slaughter and ethnic cleansing of many Sunni civilians, producing the largest humanitarian catastrophe and refugee crisis in the 21st century. Such extreme war crimes will be sure to produce a new generation of radical recruits for ISIS and al-Qaida.
The IRGC's Quds Force, under the command of Qassem Suleimani, orchestrates the entire ground war effort. Suleimani is very close to the Iranian supreme leader.
The Quds Force uses Syria as a transit zone to traffic advanced weapons from Iranian and Syrian arms factories to the Hizballah storehouses that pepper neighboring Lebanon.
Hizballah has amassed one of the largest surface to surface rocket and missile arsenal in the world, composed of over 100,000 projectiles, all of which are pointed at Israeli cities.
According to international media reports, Israel recently launched two strikes in the one week, targeting attempts to smuggle game-changing weapons to Lebanon.
Syrian dictator Basher Assad owes his survival to Iran and Hizballah, and their military presence in Syria should continue and expand further.
Assad regime and Hizballah representatives boast of this fact in recent statements highlighted by the Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI).
"The power-balances will change not only in Syria but in the entire region," said Hizballah Executive Council Chairman Hashem Safi Al-Din.
"Syria's steadfastness, and the support from its allies, have shifted the regional and international balance [of power], said Assad political adviser Bouthaina Sha'aban. "The recent developments in the international arena are bringing the countries of the region face to face with a new world.
If it takes western Syria with Russian air support, the Shi'ite axis victors will likely turn their sights on seizing southern Syria, near the Israeli border. To accomplish that, they will need to do battle with an array of Sunni rebels that now control that area (groups that include ISIS-affiliates). If successful, the axis could be tempted to build bases of attack throughout Syria against Israel, a development that would certainly trigger Israeli defensive action, as has reportedly occurred in the past.
The same pattern repeats itself in Iraq, where Iran-backed militias are moving in on Mosul, and could later be used to threaten Iraq's Sunnis, and in Yemen, where Iranian-armed Houthi rebels control large swaths of the country, and are currently at war with a Saudi-led military coalition. The Houthis also threaten international oil shipping lanes and have fired on the U.S. Navy using Iranian-smuggled missiles.
In this way, the fundamentalist Iranian coalition gains a growing foothold.
Iran's ballistic missile program, which is developing long-range strike capabilities that could place Europe in range, and its temporarily dormant nuclear program, represents investments that would make the Shi'ite axis more powerful than any Sunni Islamist camp.
Defense officials in Israel and in pragmatic Sunni states will watch for the danger that Iran will use its presence, proxies, and bases in Syria and Iraq to wage a Shi'ite jihad that extends well beyond the battlegrounds there.
The Iranian coalition can also lure armed Sunni groups into its orbit as well, as it has done in the past with the Palestinian Hamas terrorist regime in Gaza.
While the Israeli defense establishment has no desire to be dragged into Syria's conflict, Jerusalem has indicated that it would act to remove any Iranian-Hizballah base it detects in Syria that is designed to launch attacks on Israel, and would not tolerate the trafficking of advanced weapons to Hizballah.
Few events illustrate more clearly how an ascendant Shi'ite jihadist axis is redrawing the map of the region than a recent military parade held by Hizballah in the western Syrian town of Al-Qusayr, which it conquered from the rebels in 2013.
According to an assessment by the Tel Aviv-based Meir Amit Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center, that parade featured Soviet-made tanks, American armored personnel carriers, artillery guns, anti-aircraft guns, and powerful truck-mounted rocket launchers with an estimated range of between 90 to 180 kilometers. "It is clear that state-owned capabilities, some of them advanced, were delivered to Hizballah, which is a terrorist organization," the Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center said in its report.
Hizballah, like the Assad regime and armed groups in Iraq and Yemen, is a component of an international axis whose battles against ISIS have managed to dupe some decision makers into believing that they are stabilizing forces. In actuality, the Shi'ite jihadists are as radical as their Sunni jihadist counterparts – albeit more tactically prudent – and are far better armed and better organized.
Yaakov Lappin is a military and strategic affairs correspondent. He also conducts research and analysis for defense think tanks, and is
the Israel correspondent for IHS Jane's Defense Weekly. His book, The Virtual Caliphate, explores the online jihadist presence.
-
https://www.facebook.com/afghandispatch/videos/577821109074163/?hc_ref=NEWSFEED
VERY GRAPHIC :x :x :x :x :x :x :x :x :x
-
The JV team. What kind of sick monsters do we have to tolerate. I was for the war against Saddam because I could not stand the terror coming out of Iraq from him and his sons. I thought Bush did a humanitarian thing to rid them of that monster. Instead the void simply gets filled with even worse monsters. What is wrong with Muslims. Yes they should be ashamed.
Those poor men. The damn cruelty of this world!
:cry:
-
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/global-opinions/aleppo-and-american-decline/2016/12/22/1c025a5a-c877-11e6-85b5-76616a33048d_story.html?hpid=hp_no-name_opinion-card-c%3Ahomepage%2Fstory&utm_term=.ddf23712408d
-
http://www.defensenews.com/articles/no-us-carrier-now-in-the-mideast?utm_content=bufferae070&utm_medium=social&utm_source=facebook.com&utm_campaign=buffer
-
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/31/opinion/can-russia-make-peace-as-well-as-war.html?emc=edit_th_20170101&nl=todaysheadlines&nlid=49641193
-
Coming to a theater near you, this is the last story I read this morning before showing a rental to a peaceful, recent immigrant family, unvetted from that region.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4054312/Jihadi-parents-teach-young-daughters-suicide-bombers-kiss-goodbye-startling-footage-shortly-seven-year-old-walked-Damascus-police-station-blown-remote-detonator.html
What does the seven year old daughter - suicide bomber - do with the hundred virgins waiting, play dolls?
Am I reading this wrong, is this an unreliable source, they have it on video. As Larry Elder says about his microphone, is this thing on? Do they cover this kind of thing in American media?
-
"Do they cover this kind of thing in American media?"
No here the MSM is too interested in covering the real evil scourge of the Earth - Republicans and the fascist evil nazi authoritarian Trump.
-
By Michael M. Phillips and
Gordon Lubold
Jan. 9, 2017 11:16 a.m. ET
103 COMMENTS
One night this past fall, a U.S. radar plane flying a routine pattern over Syria picked up a signal from an incoming Russian fighter jet.
The American crew radioed repeated warnings on a frequency universally used for distress signals. The Russian pilot didn’t respond.
Instead, as the U.S. plane began a wide sweep to the south, the Russian fighter, an advanced Su-35 Flanker, turned north and east across the American plane’s nose, churned up a wave of turbulent air in its path and briefly disrupted its sensitive electronics.
“We assessed that guy to be within one-eighth of a mile—a few hundred feet away—and unaware of it,” said U.S. Air Force Col. Paul Birch, commander of the 380th Expeditionary Operations Group, a unit based in the Persian Gulf.
A Russian Su-35 Flanker fighter shadows U.S. F-15s as they refuel over Syria in September. The photo, taken by a camera on one of the American planes, shows the Russian pilot far closer than the three-mile safety limit set in a 2015 U.S.-Russian agreement.
The skies above Syria are an international incident waiting to happen, according to American pilots. It is an unprecedented situation in which for months U.S. and Russian jets have crowded the same airspace fighting parallel wars, with American pilots bombing Islamic State worried about colliding with Russian pilots bombing rebels trying to overthrow Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad. Russian warplanes, which also attack Islamic State targets, are still flying daily over Syria despite the recent cease-fire in Moscow’s campaign against the anti-Assad forces, according to the U.S. Air Force.
The U.S. and Russian militaries have a year-old air safety agreement, but American pilots still find themselves having close calls with Russian aviators either unaware of the rules of the road, or unable or unwilling to follow them consistently.
“Rarely, if ever, do they respond verbally,” said Brig. Gen. Charles Corcoran, commander of the 380th Air Expeditionary Wing, who flies combat missions in a stealth fighter. “Rarely, if ever, do they move. We get out of the way. We don’t know what they can see or not see, and we don’t want them running into one of us.”
Complicating the aerial traffic jam, the Russian planes don’t emit identifying signals, flouting international protocols.
The Russian Ministry of Defense didn’t respond to written requests for comment on the actions of Russian pilots over Syria.
The aerial anxiety adds to bilateral tensions between the U.S. and Russia, already rising over Moscow’s increasingly assertive role in propping up Mr. Assad, its alleged interference in the U.S. presidential campaign and its earlier seizure of Crimea. In this environment, American commanders worry that a collision could become a flash-point.
“If an aircraft crashes, it is statistically more likely that it’s some type of mechanical problem that caused that crash, rather than someone shooting down an airplane,” said U.S. Air Force Col. Daniel Manning. “But in the fog and friction of war, people will be predisposed to conclude there’s some type of malign activity that took down that aircraft.”
In 2015, U.S. and Russian commanders signed a four-page memorandum of understanding intended to keep their warplanes from crashing into each other or shooting each other down.
Now senior military officials at the Pentagon are pushing to boost the communications and coordination between the two militaries. Under the proposal, three-star generals at the Pentagon would routinely discuss Mideast operations with their counterparts in Moscow. One impetus for the Pentagon effort is the belief that President-elect Donald Trump may want to increase cooperation with Moscow in the region, senior military officials say.
For the moment, day-to-day efforts to avoid a midair catastrophe go through Col. Manning, a Russian speaker who works out of Al Udeid air base in Qatar. Col. Manning has three scheduled calls a week with his Russian counterpart, a colonel based in Syria, to clear airspace for both militaries’ operations. Most weeks they have impromptu talks daily. When combat operations are especially intense, the two colonels might talk 10 times a day, as they did last month, when U.S. aircraft destroyed 168 tanker trucks delivering oil for Islamic State.
In addition, a senior Pentagon civilian leads a video teleconference on Syria every six to eight weeks with her Russian counterpart.
One of the most serious mishaps so far was caused by the U.S. In September, an American airstrike intended to hit Islamic State militants in Deir Ezzour, Syria, killed dozens of Syrian government troops instead.
The incident highlighted vulnerabilities in the colonel-to-colonel hotline. The day of the strikes, Col. Manning was away from the Qatari base that houses the American air operations center. After the strikes began, a Russian officer called on the hotline and asked to speak to another U.S. colonel he knew. That American wasn’t available. The Russian hung up, and 27 minutes passed before the Russians called back to warn the Americans they were bombing the wrong target, according to U.S. defense officials.
At the time, the Russian military issued a statement saying: “If the airstrike was caused by erroneous coordinates of targets, it is a direct consequence of the stubborn unwillingness of the American side to coordinate with Russia [on] its actions against terrorist groups in Syria.”
Col. Manning said the current coordination efforts are making the war safer.
“We continue to assess that the Russian have no intent to harm coalition forces in the air or on the ground,” he said. “Because we believe there is no malign intent towards the coalition forces, we’re able to de-conflict.”
But things look different from the cockpit, and U.S. pilots say the Russians sometimes seem to be pushing the limits just to see if they can get away with it.
It’s a situation further complicated by the soup of aircraft conducting combat missions, including Americans, Russians, Syrians, Australians, Britons, Danes, Turks, Emiratis, Saudis and Jordanians. On any given day, there are usually 50 to 75 manned and unmanned coalition aircraft over Raqqa, the Islamic State stronghold in Syria, and another 150 or so over heavily contested Mosul, Iraq, according to one U.S. radar officer. The 64-member coalition—Russia is not a member—had conducted more than 51,500 sorties against Islamic State, two-thirds of them by U.S. aircraft, as of mid-December.
The 2015 agreement between the U.S. and Russia led to negotiation of what Americans call the “rule of threes.” Pilots should keep at least three nautical miles of separation horizontally, or 3,000 feet vertically. Should they get closer, they’ll remain for no more than three minutes.
“We’ve agreed to coexist peacefully,” said Gen. Corcoran.
But the Russians are prone to ignoring the conventions of air safety, according to the American pilots. Planes world-wide carry transponders that emit a four-digit code allowing air-traffic controllers to identify them, a practice called squawking. Russian planes over Syria don’t squawk, and they appear as an unidentified bleep to allied radar installations.
Nor do the Russians usually answer “guard calls,” urgent summons on a common emergency radio frequency. In one eight-hour shift on Dec. 11, for instance, the crew of a U.S. radar plane, called an AWACS, made 22 such calls to some 10 Russian planes and received not a single response. A few of the Russians approached within five miles of allied aircraft.
The controller aboard the AWACS scattered U.S. planes to keep them clear of the Russians. “We’ve had several co-altitude incidents,” the officer said, referring to planes flying too close together.
Russian pilots have sometimes broken their silence when contacted by a female air-traffic controller.
In early September, a female U.S. air-surveillance officer spotted an unidentified plane approaching allied aircraft over Syria. “You’re operating in the vicinity of coalition aircraft,” she warned the pilot.
A heavy Russian accent emerged through the static: “You have a nice voice, lady. Good evening.”
“Some of the closest calls I’m convinced they don’t know we’re there,” said Gen. Corcoran.
That’s not always the case. In September, an Su-35 shadowed an American F-15 fighter as it ended a bombing run over Syria and pulled up to a tanker plane to refuel. The U.S. pilot filmed the Russian running alongside the American planes, about a mile-and-a-half away, said Col. Birch.
At times, Russian planes plow through tightly controlled groupings of allied aircraft over Raqqa. Russian bombers, flying to Syria via Iran, have crossed Iraq and disrupted allied flight patterns over the battlefields of Mosul.
Lt. Col. August “Pfoto” Pfluger, a stealth-fighter pilot, witnessed such an incident over Iraq in August. He compared the Russians’ behavior to jumping out of the stands at a professional football game and bolting onto the field.
“You just don’t do that,” he said.
—James Marson and Noam Raydan contributed to this article.
-
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/17/world/middleeast/obama-isis-syria-kurds.html?emc=edit_th_20170118&nl=todaysheadlines&nlid=49641193
-
http://dailycaller.com/2017/01/22/mattis-celebrates-first-day-at-pentagon-by-blowing-up-isis-31-times/?utm_campaign=thedcmainpage&utm_source=Facebook&utm_medium=Social#ixzz4WXgR1jaD
-
https://theconservativetreehouse.com/2017/01/29/stunning-win-saudi-king-salman-agrees-to-supportfinance-safe-zones-in-syria-and-yemen/
Seems like a big deal to me but if it were surely our pravdas would let us know , , ,
-
Advocates: Kurds Keeping Christians and Yazidis From Going Home
by John Rossomando
IPT News
February 14, 2017
http://www.investigativeproject.org/5788/advocates-kurds-keeping-christians-and-yazidis
Iraq's Assyrian Christians and Yazidis face an uncertain future, and advocates claim that the Kurdish Regional Government (KRG) intends to prevent the minority groups from returning to the lands they fled in 2014 when ISIS took over. They also don't forget that the KRG and its Peshmerga militia fighters refused to defend them from the ISIS onslaught in 2014.
The Kurdish Peshmerga disarmed Christians and Yazidis prior to ISIS's June 2014 rampage across Iraq. Survivors of the ISIS onslaught told the Daily Beast in August 2014 that Kurdish authorities and the Peshmerga misled them and abandoned them when they came under attack.
Bitter feelings remain even after Kurdish and Yazidi forces and ended the terrorist group's presence in the Sinjar province in December 2015 where most Yazidis lived and freed several Christian towns from ISIS control last October.
Khalid Hayder, a Yazidi living in West Virginia after serving as a translator for the U.S. Army in Iraq, expressed bitterness about how the Kurds "betrayed" the Yazidis and the Christians by leaving them to be wiped out.
"My fellow Yazidis and my brothers and sisters the Christians are going to face the same horrific tragedy once again if the Kurds dominate the region unless there is international protection," Hayder said.
State Department officials formally designated both religious minorities as genocide victims last year. Prior to June 2014, Iraq's Christian community numbered around 350,000, a fraction of the estimated 800,000 to 1.4 million Christians from various sects who lived in the country prior to the 2003 U.S. invasion.
The history of the Christians and other religious minorities in Iraq and Syria offers little expectation that the Kurds will protect them, Hayder said. He claims that many crimes against the Christians and Yazidis were committed under the Kurdish flag. Not everything is simple. Hudson Institute religious freedom expert Nina Shea notes that the Kurds feel overextended and that they are stretched very thin by their approximately 500-mile front line.
"They [claim they] cannot take more security responsibility for Nineveh unless they claim Nineveh," Shea said.
A law passed by the KRG since ISIS invaded allows Kurds to take ownership of abandoned Christian or Yazidi buildings, said Jeff Gardner, an American advocate who runs an organization called Picture Christians.
"The Kurds are keeping the Yazidis out of the Sinjar; they won't even let them bring food and spare parts in for things like cars and people. And they are moving into cities that the Islamic State has been driven out of and saying, 'See these are abandoned' and making legal claims," Gardner said. "Many of those making legal claims [for the abandoned properties] are Kurdish businessmen."
For example, in October a Kurdish court ruled in favor of a Kurdish man who occupied the home of an Assyrian Christian. U.S. Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., complained about "reports of land confiscation and statements you have made regarding Kurdish territorial claims to the Nineveh Plains region" in a letter last May to Kurdish President Masoud Barzani.
No one seems to want to help the Assyrians reclaim their properties, Kaldo Ramzi, foreign relations director of the Assyrian Democratic Movement (ADM), told the Investigative Project on Terrorism (IPT) in an email. His people feel trapped between the "big sharks" – the Shias, Sunnis and Kurds – without much of a voice of their own, Ramzi said.
Kurdish officials need to explain their blockade and their allowing these businessmen to seize Yazidi and Christian homes, Gardner said.
Complaints made to the Kurdish government in Erbil have fallen on deaf ears, Ramzi said.
Ensuring that the Assyrian Christians and Yazidis can return to their homes is in the U.S. national interest and the State Department should take steps to ensure this happens, Shea said.
"If they feel that they don't have any hope there, if they don't have justice and rights to their land – the lands that they own – then they will disappear; they will leave," Shea said. "They will emigrate out of there, and that will be the end of diversity and pluralism in Iraq."
A KRG representative told the IPT that Christians and Yazidis are being kept away for their own good, claiming that ISIS littered their villages with improvised explosive devices (IEDs). That's not true, Gardner said.
"I have been through the liberated areas. I have sent reporters into the liberated areas, and they are not full of IEDs," Gardner said. "And even if they were, they have a force trained by the American military – trained by the forces of Delta Force – that can deal with the clearing of the IEDs and explosives."
Kurdish authorities also keep the Nineveh Plain Protection Units (NPU), one of two ethnic based armed units legally recognized by Baghdad, bottled up in refugee camps rather than letting them into areas freed from ISIS control. Moreover, the Iraqi Kurds blocked an Assyrian request to recruit 1,000 extra troops for the NPU under the umbrella of their joint command. The NPU currently has somewhere between 400 and 500 men. Kurdish security forces also try to prevent NPU soldiers from returning to their units when they get back from leave, an NPU representative told the IPT.
The U.S. government has tremendous leverage over the Kurds, Shea said, and should review Kurdish treatment of Assyrian militia members.
"There is no other solution for security for Christians other than their own militia," Shea said. "Unless there is a big plan on how to make the Christian areas and the Yazidi areas of Nineveh safe, they have to have their own militia. Otherwise it stands to reason that they cannot live there."
Obama administration officials never bothered to develop a plan to protect the Christians, Yazidis and other minorities from the major powers in Iraq, Shea said.
Since the end of the 1991 Gulf War, Barzani has worked to permanently displace religious minorities and increase the Kurdish population the Nineveh province, Gardner said, as part of a long-term plan to build a greater Kurdistan. Sunni Kurds have settled into Assyrian Christian and Yazidi areas to help stake a claim to their land. This plan aims to extend Kurdish authority beyond the firm boundaries found in Iraq's 2004 constitution by expanding its de facto control westward to the Syrian border and southward into the Sinjar region where most Yazidis live, Gardner said.
Two weeks after capturing areas around Khazir in Nineveh governorate last June, Peshmerga commander Hadi Halabjayi declared them "Kurdistan's now. We will not give them back to the Iraqi army or anybody else."
Human Rights Watch cited Halabjayi's statement in a report last November, noting that Assyrians, Yazidis and other minorities complained about heavy-handed tactics against those opposed to the Kurds expansionist plans. These tactics included arbitrary arrests, detentions and intimidation.
This is nothing new. Assyrian Christians complained about the illegal settlement of Kurdish families on Assyrian land in the early 1990s. The ultimate strategy aims to unify Iraq's Kurds with those in Syria and Turkey in a broader Kurdish state, Gardner said.
But Turkey considers Kurdish independence a nonstarter, so realizing the Kurdish dream is sure to incite the Turks and put ending Syria's civil war out of reach.
The Peshmerga have Assyrian and Yazidi units, the KRG office in Washington told the IPT, and it called Gardner's claim that the Kurds have been harsh to the religious minorities "completely false."
The best possible solution would be the creation of a separate province for Assyrians and other minorities, Ramzi said.
This also includes Catholic Assyrian Christians known as Chaldeans.
"... [A]ll the Cha[l]dean Syriac Assyrian political parties ... demand [an] International protected zone to monitored by international community," Ramzi wrote in an email. "The popular demand for Nineveh Plain is to become new province and for sure we should ask Iraqi government for that."
-
Trump is not stupid to want to find a way to have Russia and US work together, but IMHO this idea is a bridge too far and is doomed to failure.
Here is an article in a similar vein:
http://www.aei.org/publication/pitting-russia-against-iran-in-syria-get-over-it/?utm_source=paramount&utm_medium=email&utm_content=AEITODAY&utm_campaign=021717
-
The Gulf States Are Ready for Peaceful Coexistence—if Iran Is
With Washington now alert to the threat, we welcome greater U.S. engagement in the region.
The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps display a ballistic missile during a parade outside Tehran, Sept. 21, 2016.
The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps display a ballistic missile during a parade outside Tehran, Sept. 21, 2016. Photo: Associated Press
By Yousef Al Otaiba
March 2, 2017 6:57 p.m. ET
30 COMMENTS
When the Iranian nuclear deal took effect more than a year ago, there were high hopes that it would set Tehran on a new course of responsible engagement in world affairs. Instead, the country has chosen increased conflict and aggression. The Trump administration’s early move to impose new sanctions on Iran was a measured reaction—long overdue and welcomed by all of America’s friends in the region.
Iran’s hostile behavior is only growing worse. There have been multiple interceptions of illicit Iranian weapons destined for Houthi rebels in Yemen. On New Year’s Day, Iranian-backed militants in Bahrain organized a prison break of convicted terrorists. Later in January, Tehran tested a nuclear-capable ballistic missile, at least its 12th violation of a U.N. Security Council resolution barring such tests. Meanwhile, Iran has steadily escalated its support for the Houthis, prolonging a war that has had horrible humanitarian consequences and distracted from the fight against al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, one of the world’s most dangerous terrorist franchises.
As Defense Secretary James Mattis said at his confirmation hearings, Iran is “the biggest destabilizing force in the Middle East.” Last month he called the regime “the single biggest state sponsor of terrorism in the world.” Last year Mr. Mattis said Iran had used the rise of Islamic State as an excuse “to continue its mischief.”
Tehran promises more of the same. Gen. Hossein Salami, deputy commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, praised Iran’s “great missile power” last month, saying: “We are adding to our numbers of missiles, warships, and rocket launchers every day.”
What exactly does Iran want? Its constitution calls for exporting its Islamic-inspired revolution to the rest of the world. Its leaders talk of “Greater Persia”—a sphere of influence encompassing much of the Middle East. And “Death to America” remains a favorite rallying cry in Tehran.
Checking Iranian aggression will not be easy, but the stability of the region depends upon it. Holding the country to its commitments would be an important first step. Rebuilding America’s ties to its traditional partners in the region would be another. So too would be directly confronting Iranian interference in places like Yemen.
Along with the U.S., the United Arab Emirates believes that the nuclear deal should be strictly enforced. The same is true for U.N. resolutions barring Iranian arms transfers and ballistic-missile tests. Violations ought to be exposed immediately and countered with additional economic sanctions.
Revitalizing security cooperation between the U.S. and the Arab Gulf states would have an immediate effect in Yemen. Increased American support for the Arab coalition would help combat the Houthis, who overthrew the legitimate government. It would help counter the thousands of Iranian-supplied missiles and rockets launched by the Houthis into Saudi Arabia. It would also help protect shipping in the Red Sea, a vital international waterway leading to the Suez Canal.
The effort in Yemen demonstrates that the U.A.E. and other Arab Gulf states are taking the lead to protect not only our own interests, but also American ones. Support from the U.S. is as vital as ever, but that does not necessarily mean we are seeking boots on the ground. It is more about determined leaders in Washington providing clear intentions and consistent policies.
When the U.S. is disengaged, conflicts like those in Syria, Libya and Yemen are prolonged and intensified. Aggressors like Iran, Islamic State and al Qaeda become more powerful and dangerous.
Further violence can be avoided. Iran could suspend its missile tests and its support for violent proxies like Hezbollah, Hamas and Al Hashd al Shaabi, Shiite militias in Iraq. It could end its sectarianism and its destabilizing actions in the Arab World. Tehran’s leaders must ask themselves: Do we want to be part of the solution or remain the region’s biggest problem?
The U.A.E. and the other members of the Gulf Cooperation Council believe that engagement can achieve a long-term solution. In January the council proposed a direct strategic dialogue with Iran, resting on three principles: noninterference in other countries’ domestic affairs, a halt to exporting the revolution, and a commitment to reducing Sunni-Shiite sectarianism.
We will persist in trying to convince Iranian leaders that peaceful coexistence is possible. The upside would be immense—greater trade and economic opportunities, expanded cultural exchanges, and an Iran that can assume its rightful place in the global community. The nuclear deal could have been a first step toward this future.
But Iran clearly has different ideas. With Washington now alert to the growing threat, we are making plans too. Among them is a renewed security partnership with the U.S., which would provide the basis for a collective and firm response to the Islamic Republic’s provocations. It is an urgent and necessary effort to defend our shared interests and make us all safer and more secure.
Mr. Otaiba is the United Arab Emirates’ ambassador to the U.S.
-
Jordan at the Precipice
by Daniel Pipes
The Washington Times
March 8, 2017
http://www.meforum.org/6579/jordan-at-the-precipice
-
http://www.meforum.org/6589/post-islamic-state-landscape-in-iraq-and-syria?utm_source=Middle+East+Forum&utm_campaign=8223a7d1c5-spyer_jonathan_2017_03_14&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_086cfd423c-8223a7d1c5-33691909&goal=0_086cfd423c-8223a7d1c5-33691909
-
Trump Embraces The PLO Fantasy
The new president is gearing up to make the same mistake as his predecessor.
March 15, 2017
Caroline Glick
Originally published by the Jerusalem Post.
US President Donald Trump is losing his focus. If he doesn’t get it back soon, he will fail to make America great again or safe again in the Middle East.
After holding out for a month, last week Trump indicated he is adopting his predecessors’ obsession with empowering the PLO.
This is a strategic error.
There are many actors and conflicts in the Middle East that challenge and threaten US national interests and US national security. Iran’s rise as a nuclear power and regional hegemon; the war in Syria; Turkey’s abandonment of the West; and Russia’s regional power play all pose major threats to US power, security and interests. The Muslim Brotherhood, Islamic State, Hamas and other Sunni jihadist movements all threaten the US, Europe and the US’s Sunni allies in the region in a manner that is strategically significant to America.
None of these issues, none of these actors and none of these threats are in any way related to or caused by the PLO and its interminable, European-supported hybrid terror and political war against Israel. None of these pressing concerns will be advanced by a US embrace of the PLO or a renewed obsession with empowering the PLO and its mafia-terrorist bosses.
To the contrary, all of these pressing concerns will be sidelined – and so made more pressing and dangerous – by a US reengagement with the PLO .
And yet, over the past week, Trump has indicated that the PLO is now his focus.
Last Friday, Trump spoke on the telephone with Mahmoud Abbas. Abbas is head of the PLO and the unelected dictator of the corrupt, terrorism-sponsoring, PLO -controlled Palestinian Authority in Judea and Samaria.
According to media reports, Trump told Abbas – whose legal term in office ended eight years ago – that he views him as a legitimate leader. According to the official White House report of the conversation, Trump also reportedly told Abbas that he supports reaching a deal between Israel and the Palestinians. Such a deal, to the extent it is ever reached, involves expanding PLO control over Judea and Samaria and parts of Jerusalem at Israel’s expense.
Trump also invited Abbas for an official visit to Washington. And the day after they spoke, the Trump administration moved $250 million in US taxpayer dollars to Abbas’s police state where for the past 25 years, Abbas and his cronies have enriched themselves while feeding a steady diet of antisemitic, anti-American jihadist bile to their impoverished subjects.
To build up his credibility with the PLO , Trump put his electoral pledge to move the US embassy to Jerusalem on ice. The real estate mogul ordered Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to deny Jews the right to their property and their legal right to use state lands in Judea and Samaria.
And swift on the heels of that conversation with Abbas, Trump’s chief negotiator Jason Greenblatt was dispatched to Jerusalem to begin empowering the PLO at Israel’s expense.
According to media reports, Greenblatt intended to use his meeting Monday with Netanyahu to reject Netanyahu’s commitment to build a new Israeli town in Samaria. Greenblatt was also reportedly intending to dictate the parameters for yet another round of negotiations with the PLO.
After meeting with Netanyahu, Greenblatt continued on to Ramallah to embrace Abbas.
Also during his stay, Greenblatt is scheduled to meet with IDF generals who are responsible for giving money and providing services to the PLO.
And Greenblatt doesn’t have the Palestinians to himself.
Following Trump’s conversation with Abbas, plans were suddenly afloat for Trump’s son-in-law and senior adviser Jared Kushner and Trump’s daughter Ivanka Trump to visit Israel and spend an afternoon with Abbas in Ramallah.
If things develop as reported, then Trump is serious about embracing the PLO and intends to have his top advisers devote themselves to Abbas and his henchmen. If that is the case, then Trump is setting himself, his advisers, his daughter and the US up to fail and be humiliated.
The PLO is the Siren that drowns US administrations. It is to the PLO that America’s top envoys have eagerly flown, gotten hooked on the attention of the demented, anti-Israel press corps, and forgotten their purpose: to advance US national interests.
If Trump is serious about repeating this practice, then rather than repair the massive damage done to the US and the Middle East by his two predecessors, the 45th president will repeat their mistakes. Like them, he will leave office in a blaze of failure.
To understand why this is the case, three things must be clear.
First, the PLO will never make peace with Israel. There will never be a Palestinian state.
There will never be a peace or a Palestinian state because the PLO wants neither. This is the lesson of the past 25 years. Both Abbas and his predecessor Arafat rejected peace and statehood multiple times and opted instead to expand their terrorist and political war against Israel.
Why did they do that? Because they are interested in two things: personal enrichment – which they achieve by stealing donor funds and emptying the pockets of their own people; and weakening, with the goal of destroying Israel – which they achieve through their hybrid war of terrorism and political warfare.
The second thing that needs to be clear is that the Palestinians are irrelevant to the rest of the problems – the real problems that impact US interests – in the region. If anything, the Palestinians are pawns on the larger chessboard. America’s enemies use them to distract the Americans from the larger realities so that the US will not pay attention to the real game.
Iran will not be appeased or defeated if Trump empowers the PLO in its war against Israel and continues feeding PLO leaders’ insatiable appetite for other people’s money.
The Sunni jihadists will not beat their swords into plowshares if the US coerces Israel to cough up land to the PLO . To the contrary, they will be emboldened.
Russian President Vladimir Putin will not move his forces out of Syria or stop giving nuclear technologies to Iran if the US turns the screws on Israel. Putin will come to the conclusion that Trump is either weak or stupid to damage Israel, the US’s most serious ally.
And of course, Israel will not be better off if Trump decides to push it back onto the peace train which has caused it nothing but harm for the past quarter century.
Trump’s election opened up the possibility, for the first time in decades, that the US would end its destructive obsession with the PLO. For three months, Israelis have been free for the first time to discuss seriously the possibilities of applying Israeli law to all or parts of Judea and Samaria. And a massive majority of Israelis support doing just that.
On the Palestinian side as well, Trump’s election empowered the people who have been living under the jackboot of Abbas and his cronies to think about the possibility of living at peace with Israel in a post-PLO era. Polling results indicate that they too are eager to move beyond the Palestinian statehood chimera.
But now, it appears that Trump has been convinced to embrace the PLO obsession. The same entrenched bureaucrats at the State Department and the same foreign policy establishment in Washington that brought the US nothing but failure in the Middle East for a generation appear to have captivated Trump’s foreign policy. They have convinced him it is better to devote his top advisers to repeating the mistakes of his predecessors than to devote his energies and theirs to fixing the mess that Obama and George W. Bush left him with. They have gotten him to believe that it is better to empower the PLO than develop coherent strategies and plans for dealing with the problems of the region that actually endanger US interests and imperil the security and safety of the American people.
-
http://nypost.com/2017/03/12/the-coming-middle-east-crisis-after-isis-is-gone/
"What should we do? Discard our preconceptions for a start. Why shouldn’t dysfunctional borders change? In fact, they’re changing themselves. How many American lives is it worth to serve the vision of dead Europeans and grisly Arab dictators? We need not act to change those borders, but we shouldn’t stand in the way."
-
A point I have made here in similar fashion for a few years now.
-
The Trump Administration Searches for a MidEast Policy
A briefing by Thomas Parker
March 16, 2017
http://www.meforum.org/6595/the-trump-administration-searches-for-a-mideast
Thomas Parker teaches security studies at George Washington University. Previously, he served as a policy planner for the Middle East at the State Department and advised the secretary of defense. Mr. Parker briefed the Middle East Forum on March 6, 2017.
Summary account by Marilyn Stern, Middle East Forum Communications Coordinator.
After the frustrating Obama years, the conservative Arab states and Israel look forward with cautious optimism to the Trump era. But can the new administration address the numerous problems left by its predecessor? A quick review of the region's main trouble spots offers some clues:
• Iran. While the nuclear agreement seems likely to stand, it remains to be seen whether the administration will sustain its tough approach to Tehran's ballistic missile tests, which were not covered by the agreement. Judging by their cancellation of a new missile test following the American reprimand, the Iranians are likely to adhere to the agreement in the foreseeable future for fear of a U.S. or Israeli strike. The moment of truth will come when the agreement sunsets in seven or eight years, allowing Tehran to develop nuclear weapons virtually undetected.
• Turkey and the Kurds. Given longstanding Turkish-Kurdish tensions, the administration will need to weigh the relative balance of costs and benefits attending the Kurdish contribution to the anti-ISIS campaign and the military bases offered by Turkey. The administration may seek to allay Ankara's fears of the growing Kurdish assertiveness by increasing U.S. military presence in Syria.
An estimated 400 U.S. marines were deployed to Syria early this month.
• Iraq, Syria, and the war against Islamic State (ISIS). In line with President Trump's repeated vows to defeat ISIS, hundreds of U.S. Marines have recently arrived in Syria to expedite the attack on the terror group's capital of Raqqa. A general loosening of the rules of engagement will allow a more proactive approach, which will in turn lead to ISIS's eventual defeat in Syria and Iraq. For its part, the Assad regime will likely remain in power given Moscow's preference for a secular ruler.
• Egypt. After the chilly Obama-Sisi relationship, a significant warming in U.S.-Egyptian ties is likely, and notably the resumption of close military cooperation.
• Israel. The widespread euphoria in right-wing circles over Trump's election has ebbed as the administration adopts a more conventional approach to both the West Bank and moving the embassy to Jerusalem. A consensus seems to be emerging in Washington whereby neighborhoods within the security barrier, comprising some 80 percent of the West Bank's Jewish population, would be allowed to expand but those outside the barrier would not. Thus far, most Israeli discussions with the administration, including in Netanyahu's meeting with Trump, have primarily focused on the Iranian threat rather than the Palestinian issue.
• Russia. Defying widespread predictions of doom, Moscow's Syrian intervention has greatly enhanced its regional prowess, and President Putin shows no intention to relinquish this new gain. President Trump may have thus overrated his ability to translate Russia's goodwill toward his administration to concrete collaboration against ISIS. On the contrary, attributing the ongoing regional mayhem to the 2003 Iraq war and the 2011 Libyan intervention, Moscow seems bent on keeping Washington out of the region and views the persistence of U.S.-Iranian tensions as a useful means to this end.
Whatever President Trump's personal instincts, he has surrounded himself with mainstream advisors like Secretary of State Tillerson and Generals Mattis and McMaster, both military leaders with long experience and familiarity with the Arab world. This may result in a less revolutionary, yet more robust Middle Eastern policy.
-
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/sas-special-forces-hit-list-iraq-syria-isis-terrorist-attacks-drones-a7400756.html
-
WSJ: "A central goal for the U.S. should be to empower the Kurdistan Region. We are a stable, longstanding U.S. ally amid a sea of unrest. We’ve proved to be a valuable partner in the war on terrorism and share common values and a commitment to democracy."
By Aziz Ahmad
March 26, 2017 4:11 p.m. ET
97 COMMENTS
Erbil, Iraq
‘I swear by God we are not brothers,” the Sunni Arab sheik shouted from the audience in response to a conservative Shiite lawmaker’s plea for brotherhood. The occasion was a conference last summer at the American University of Kurdistan, in Duhok. It was the two men’s first encounter since the fall of Mosul, Iraq’s second largest city, to Islamic State in June 2014.
Conference organizers had hoped for reconciliation, but there was little sign of it. “We were never brothers,” the sheik said. “We’ve always been afraid of each other.” His candor drew nods from the Sunni men seated in front rows. The speakers and audience members condemned one another as failures and exchanged blame for the army’s flight, for embracing Islamic State, and for perpetrating massacres.
Sectarian distrust—a problem that has plagued Iraq for much of its modern history and has been amplified since Saddam Hussein’s fall in 2003—was laid bare that day. A country that should have been brought together under the adversity of Islamic State’s rampage seemed to be further apart than ever, with divisions extending far beyond Mosul.
Almost a year later, a fragile coalition of Kurdish, Arab and American forces is slowly advancing in Islamic State’s primary stronghold in Mosul. But retaking the city will not unify Iraq. The current Shiite-led political discourse in Baghdad is synonymous with the denial of rights to minorities, including Kurds. Conversely, in Mosul a Sunni Arab majority marginalizes minorities, who in turn accuse Sunnis of supporting ISIS.
Sinjar, west of Mosul, is a case in point. When I visited last year I saw no sign of peaceful coexistence. The local security chief, a Yazidi, told me that Sunni Arabs from his village, Kojo, had joined ISIS’s brutal terror against the Yazidis, a religious minority. Men from the al-Metuta tribe helped kill “hundreds,” he said, including 68 members of his own family. “Of course I remember them,” he said. “Those Arab men had a hand in the honor of our women. It’s not possible to live together again.”
In meetings with Iraqi officials and community leaders, I’ve seen how Islamic State’s campaign has aggravated animosity across tribal, ethnic and religious lines. Without a political track to address tensions between Sunnis and Shiites or Kurds and Arabs, the day-after scenario remains perilous.
Addressing the problems begins by restoring trust. For Mosul, Baghdad is already on the wrong foot. The offensive against ISIS includes a coalition of Shiite militias, despite strong protests from Mosul’s predominantly Sunni provincial council. The new formula must tackle minorities’ fears of marginalization by granting local autonomy, including to Christians persecuted by ISIS militants, and by implementing laws already in place to give Sunnis a stake and isolate extremists.
We Kurds can help. We make up a third of the province’s population. For over a year, our Peshmerga fighters were poised for an assault on Mosul, but our persistent calls for a political agreement were ignored. An agreement during the military campaign is still necessary to prevent intercommunal conflict.
Such an agreement should outline a path toward governance and offer more than a Shiite-centric alternative. In parallel, there must be an effort to demobilize Shiite militias formed in the aftermath of the war by engaging the Iraqi Shiite spiritual leader, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, for a religious decree. It should also call for the groups’ withdrawal from areas liberated by the Peshmerga.
Baghdad should not impose solutions. It should instead lead talks with Turkey and Iran to defuse regional tensions that intersect in Mosul. Iraq’s problem with Turkey can be solved by ending Baghdad’s payments to the anti-Ankara Kurdistan Workers’ Party, known as PKK, in Sinjar and demanding the group’s withdrawal, in line with calls from local officials and the provincial council.
More broadly, once the fight is over, there needs to be a political reckoning by Kurds and Arabs about how the Iraqi state can go forward. It’s too late to salvage the post-2003 project; the country has segregated itself into armed enclaves. The Kurdish people suffered a litany of abuses, including genocide, under successive Sunni regimes. More recently, despite a shared history, the Shiite-led government reneged on promises for partnership and revenue sharing. It suspended Kurdistan’s budget and prevents us still from buying weapons. Given that experience, Kurdish loyalty to an Iraqi identity remains nonexistent.
For us, complete separation is the only alternative. Our pursuit of independence is about charting a better course from Iraq’s conceptual failure. The path forward should begin from a simple truth: Iraq has already fallen apart, and the country will be better off realigned on the parties’ own terms.
A central goal for the U.S. should be to empower the Kurdistan Region. We are a stable, longstanding U.S. ally amid a sea of unrest. We’ve proved to be a valuable partner in the war on terrorism and share common values and a commitment to democracy.
The advance on Mosul represents the turn of a chapter that transcends Iraq’s three-year war. It represents a moment of reckoning and an opportunity to consolidate the Kurdistan Region on terms that will de-escalate conflict and safeguard its peoples.
Mr. Ahmad is an assistant to the chancellor of the Kurdistan Region Security Council.
Appeared in the Mar. 27, 2017, print edition.
-
I'm all for a Free Kurdistan. Turkey can pound sand.
WSJ: "A central goal for the U.S. should be to empower the Kurdistan Region. We are a stable, longstanding U.S. ally amid a sea of unrest. We’ve proved to be a valuable partner in the war on terrorism and share common values and a commitment to democracy."
By Aziz Ahmad
March 26, 2017 4:11 p.m. ET
97 COMMENTS
Erbil, Iraq
‘I swear by God we are not brothers,” the Sunni Arab sheik shouted from the audience in response to a conservative Shiite lawmaker’s plea for brotherhood. The occasion was a conference last summer at the American University of Kurdistan, in Duhok. It was the two men’s first encounter since the fall of Mosul, Iraq’s second largest city, to Islamic State in June 2014.
Conference organizers had hoped for reconciliation, but there was little sign of it. “We were never brothers,” the sheik said. “We’ve always been afraid of each other.” His candor drew nods from the Sunni men seated in front rows. The speakers and audience members condemned one another as failures and exchanged blame for the army’s flight, for embracing Islamic State, and for perpetrating massacres.
Sectarian distrust—a problem that has plagued Iraq for much of its modern history and has been amplified since Saddam Hussein’s fall in 2003—was laid bare that day. A country that should have been brought together under the adversity of Islamic State’s rampage seemed to be further apart than ever, with divisions extending far beyond Mosul.
Almost a year later, a fragile coalition of Kurdish, Arab and American forces is slowly advancing in Islamic State’s primary stronghold in Mosul. But retaking the city will not unify Iraq. The current Shiite-led political discourse in Baghdad is synonymous with the denial of rights to minorities, including Kurds. Conversely, in Mosul a Sunni Arab majority marginalizes minorities, who in turn accuse Sunnis of supporting ISIS.
Sinjar, west of Mosul, is a case in point. When I visited last year I saw no sign of peaceful coexistence. The local security chief, a Yazidi, told me that Sunni Arabs from his village, Kojo, had joined ISIS’s brutal terror against the Yazidis, a religious minority. Men from the al-Metuta tribe helped kill “hundreds,” he said, including 68 members of his own family. “Of course I remember them,” he said. “Those Arab men had a hand in the honor of our women. It’s not possible to live together again.”
In meetings with Iraqi officials and community leaders, I’ve seen how Islamic State’s campaign has aggravated animosity across tribal, ethnic and religious lines. Without a political track to address tensions between Sunnis and Shiites or Kurds and Arabs, the day-after scenario remains perilous.
Addressing the problems begins by restoring trust. For Mosul, Baghdad is already on the wrong foot. The offensive against ISIS includes a coalition of Shiite militias, despite strong protests from Mosul’s predominantly Sunni provincial council. The new formula must tackle minorities’ fears of marginalization by granting local autonomy, including to Christians persecuted by ISIS militants, and by implementing laws already in place to give Sunnis a stake and isolate extremists.
We Kurds can help. We make up a third of the province’s population. For over a year, our Peshmerga fighters were poised for an assault on Mosul, but our persistent calls for a political agreement were ignored. An agreement during the military campaign is still necessary to prevent intercommunal conflict.
Such an agreement should outline a path toward governance and offer more than a Shiite-centric alternative. In parallel, there must be an effort to demobilize Shiite militias formed in the aftermath of the war by engaging the Iraqi Shiite spiritual leader, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, for a religious decree. It should also call for the groups’ withdrawal from areas liberated by the Peshmerga.
Baghdad should not impose solutions. It should instead lead talks with Turkey and Iran to defuse regional tensions that intersect in Mosul. Iraq’s problem with Turkey can be solved by ending Baghdad’s payments to the anti-Ankara Kurdistan Workers’ Party, known as PKK, in Sinjar and demanding the group’s withdrawal, in line with calls from local officials and the provincial council.
More broadly, once the fight is over, there needs to be a political reckoning by Kurds and Arabs about how the Iraqi state can go forward. It’s too late to salvage the post-2003 project; the country has segregated itself into armed enclaves. The Kurdish people suffered a litany of abuses, including genocide, under successive Sunni regimes. More recently, despite a shared history, the Shiite-led government reneged on promises for partnership and revenue sharing. It suspended Kurdistan’s budget and prevents us still from buying weapons. Given that experience, Kurdish loyalty to an Iraqi identity remains nonexistent.
For us, complete separation is the only alternative. Our pursuit of independence is about charting a better course from Iraq’s conceptual failure. The path forward should begin from a simple truth: Iraq has already fallen apart, and the country will be better off realigned on the parties’ own terms.
A central goal for the U.S. should be to empower the Kurdistan Region. We are a stable, longstanding U.S. ally amid a sea of unrest. We’ve proved to be a valuable partner in the war on terrorism and share common values and a commitment to democracy.
The advance on Mosul represents the turn of a chapter that transcends Iraq’s three-year war. It represents a moment of reckoning and an opportunity to consolidate the Kurdistan Region on terms that will de-escalate conflict and safeguard its peoples.
Mr. Ahmad is an assistant to the chancellor of the Kurdistan Region Security Council.
Appeared in the Mar. 27, 2017, print edition.
-
I have posted in favor of Kurdistan around here for years.
As posted previously, I'm guessing they would love to host a big US base-- which could be very helpful in our dealings with the Russian-Iranian axis.
-
I have posted in favor of Kurdistan around here for years.
As posted previously, I'm guessing they would love to host a big US base-- which could be very helpful in our dealings with the Russian-Iranian axis.
This is a great idea.
-
U.S. War Footprint Grows in Middle East, With No Endgame in Sight
By BEN HUBBARD and MICHAEL R. GORDONMARCH 29, 2017
Civilians in Mosul waited for aid this month. American forces have stepped up airstrikes in support of Iraqi forces’ fight for the city. Credit Ivor Prickett for The New York Times
BEIRUT, Lebanon — The United States launched more airstrikes in Yemen this month than during all of last year. In Syria, it has airlifted local forces to front-line positions and has been accused of killing civilians in airstrikes. In Iraq, American troops and aircraft are central in supporting an urban offensive in Mosul, where airstrikes killed scores of people on March 17.
Two months after the inauguration of President Trump, indications are mounting that the United States military is deepening its involvement in a string of complex wars in the Middle East that lack clear endgames.
Rather than representing any formal new Trump doctrine on military action, however, American officials say that what is happening is a shift in military decision-making that began under President Barack Obama. On display are some of the first indications of how complicated military operations are continuing under a president who has vowed to make the military “fight to win.”
In an interview on Wednesday, Gen. Joseph L. Votel, the commander of United States Central Command, said the new procedures made it easier for commanders in the field to call in airstrikes without waiting for permission from more senior officers.
“We recognized the nature of the fight was going to change and that we had to ensure that authorities were down to the right level and that we empowered the on-scene commander,” General Votel said. He was speaking specifically about discussions that he said began in November about how the fights in Syria and Iraq against the Islamic State were reaching critical phases in Mosul and Raqqa.
Concerns about the recent accusations of civilian casualties are bringing some of these details to light. But some of the shifts have also involved small increases in the deployment and use of American forces or, in Yemen, resuming aid to allies that had previously been suspended.
And they coincide with the settling in of a president who has vowed to intensify the fight against extremists abroad, and whose budgetary and rhetorical priorities have indicated a military-first approach even as he has proposed cuts in diplomatic spending.
To some critics, that suggests that much more change is to come, in difficult situations in a roiled Middle East that have never had clear solutions.
Robert Malley, a former senior official in the Obama administration and now vice president for policy at the International Crisis Group, said the uptick in military involvement since Mr. Trump took office did not appear to have been accompanied by increased planning for the day after potential military victories.
“The military will be the first to tell you that a military operation is only as good as the diplomatic and political plan that comes with it,” Mr. Malley said.
The lack of diplomacy and planning for the future in places like Yemen and Syria could render victories there by the United States and its allies unsustainable.
“From harsh experience, we know that either U.S. forces will have to be involved for the long term or victory will dissipate soon after they leave,” he said.
Others fear that greater military involvement could drag the United States into murky wars and that increased civilian deaths could feed anti-Americanism and jihadist propaganda. Some insist that this has already happened.
“Daesh is happy about the American attacks against civilians to prove its slogans that the Americans want to kill Muslims everywhere and not only the Islamic State’s gunmen,” a resident of the Syrian city of Raqqa wrote via WhatsApp, using the Arabic acronym for the Islamic State, also known as ISIS or ISIL. He gave only his first name, Abdul-Rahman, for fear of the jihadists.
The shift toward greater military involvement extends into one of Mr. Obama’s central legacies: the prolonged American presence in Afghanistan, where more than 8,400 American soldiers and 5,924 troops from NATO and other allies remain, and where the Taliban have been resurgent.
Plans have been announced to send 300 United States Marines to Helmand Province, their first deployment there since 2014. And the American commander, Gen. John W. Nicholson Jr., told Congress in February that he would like another “few thousand” American and coalition troops.
But the changes have also been notable in Yemen, Syria and Iraq, all home to overlapping conflicts in failed states where jihadist groups like Al Qaeda and the Islamic State have taken advantage of the chaos to step up operations.
Even while being drawn more deeply into those conflicts, the Obama administration sought to limit American engagement while pushing — mostly in vain — for diplomatic solutions. It also launched frequent airstrikes to kill individual jihadists or to destroy their facilities and sent thousands of American troops back to Iraq to train and advise Iraqi forces, and also provide firepower, so they could “degrade and ultimately destroy” the Islamic State.
But under Mr. Obama, the White House often spent weeks or even months deliberating certain raids and airstrikes out of concern for American service members and civilians — and often to the frustration of commanders and American allies.
Mr. Trump’s tough statements before coming into office, and the rise in civilian deaths in recent American strikes, have raised questions about whether the new president has removed constraints from the Pentagon on how it wages war.
But administration officials say that has not yet happened. And military officials insist that the streamlined process for airstrikes does not exempt commanders from strict protocols meant to avoid civilian casualties.
Speaking before the House Armed Services Committee on Wednesday, General Votel said the Pentagon had not relaxed its rules of engagement. He called the mounting toll of civilian deaths in Iraq and Syria “absolutely tragic and heartbreaking” and said Central Command was investigating their cause.
The complexity of these wars and the American role in them is clear in Yemen, where the United States has two distinct roles, both of which have increased under Mr. Trump.
The country, the Arab world’s poorest, has been split in half since militants known as the Houthis allied with parts of the military and seized the capital, pushing the internationally recognized government into exile.
Two years ago, a military coalition led by Saudi Arabia began bombing the rebels, hoping to weaken them militarily and restore the government. They have made little progress, while more than 10,000 people have been killed and large parts of the country are on the verge of famine, according to the United Nations.
Under Mr. Obama, the United States provided military support to the Saudi-led coalition, but halted the sale of precision-guided munitions over concerns that airstrikes by Saudi Arabia and its allies were killing too many civilians.
But since Mr. Trump took office, his administration has advanced some arms deals for coalition countries, while approving the resumption of sales of precision-guided munitions to Saudi Arabia, according to an American official familiar with Yemen policy.
Get the Morning Briefing by Email
What you need to know to start your day, delivered to your inbox Monday through Friday.
Receive occasional updates and special offers for The New York Times's products and services.
See Sample Manage Email Preferences Privacy Policy
Mr. Trump’s more muscular approach has been hailed by Gulf leaders, who felt betrayed by Mr. Obama’s outreach to Iran and who hope that they now have an ally in the White House to help them push back against their regional foe.
“It understands that it is uniquely positioned to play a unique role in bringing some stability to the region, and I think there is a meeting of the minds between the Saudi leadership and the Trump administration,” said Fahad Nazer, a political consultant to the Saudi Embassy in Washington who said he was speaking on his own behalf.
At the same time, since Mr. Trump’s inauguration, the United States has stepped up its long-running drone campaign against the Yemeni branch of Al Qaeda, believed to be the organization’s most dangerous.
Mr. Trump granted a Pentagon request to declare parts of three provinces in Yemen as an “area of active hostilities,” giving commanders greater flexibility to strike. Later, a Special Operations raid in late January led to the death of many civilians and an American commando.
So far this month, the United States has also launched more than 49 strikes across Yemen, most of them during one five-day period, according to data gathered by the Critical Threats Project at the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative think tank. That is more strikes than the United States had carried out during any other full year on record.
Some analysts note that this military surge has not brought with it a clear strategy to end Yemen’s war or uproot Al Qaeda.
“As the military line has surged, there has not been a surge in diplomacy,” said Katherine Zimmerman, a research fellow at the American Enterprise Institute.
The United States faces a similarly complex set of overlapping conflicts in Syria, where a brutal civil war opened up opportunities for Al Qaeda to infiltrate the rebels seeking to topple the government while the Islamic State seized an area of territory that extended over the border into Iraq.
While intervening covertly to support the rebels, the United States has ordered airstrikes on the jihadists — alone in the case of Al Qaeda and as part of a coalition against the Islamic State. It has also built ties with the Iraqi security forces, and with Kurdish and Arab fighters in Syria to battle the jihadists on the ground.
But recently, a string of airstrikes have exposed the United States to allegations of killing large numbers of civilians. More than 60 people were killed in a strike on a mosque complex where local residents said a religious gathering was taking place. The United States said it was targeting Qaeda leaders. The military has been accused of killing about 30 Syrians in an airstrike on a school, but has insisted that the early indications show it hit Islamic State fighters. A strike in Mosul killed scores of civilians, although the military is investigating whether militants herded the people into the building or possibly rigged it with bombs.
The rise in reports of civilian deaths linked to the United States and its allies has been so significant that Airwars, a group that tracks airstrikes, said last week that it was suspending its investigations into Russian airstrikes to avoid falling behind on those by the United States.
American officials have attributed the rising number of strikes and the danger to civilians to the urban battlefields in Mosul and Raqqa and the high concentration of civilians in areas held by the jihadists. They say they try to avoid civilian casualties while the Islamic State deliberately kills anybody who stands in its way.
This month, American officials also said they would send an additional 400 troops to Syria to help prepare for the assault on Raqqa, the Islamic State’s self-proclaimed capital, nearly doubling the total there.
In Iraq, General Votel said that in just the past 37 days, as the fight moved into the denser western side of Mosul, 284 of the Iraqi forces had been killed and 1,600 more wounded, underlining the ferocity of the battles.
-
Endgame: Nuke Mecca and Medina flat. Kill anyone who still wants to fight after that.
Until we are ready to go there, this will go on.
-
http://www.breitbart.com/national-security/2017/01/29/jordanian-king-visit-us-next-week/
-
I have read: 1) this was a chemical weapons use by the government of Syria, 2) that the rebels in Syria did this to blame Assad and gain support for their side, and 3) that this was unfortunate accident of spill or explosion.
Hearing all that makes me want to pause for the facts to come in, though none of the above change the situation in Syria where Assad already has crossed that red line and the rebrls and other forces have problems of their own.
-----------------------------
http://www.timesofisrael.com/syria-chemical-attack-was-direct-order-from-assad-liberman-says/
Syria chemical attack was ‘direct order’ from Assad, Liberman says
Defense Minister Avigdor Liberman accused Syrian President Bashar Assad of being directly responsible for a chemical attack this week that left scores dead and spurred international outrage and calls for action against Damascus.
In an interview with the Yedioth Ahronoth daily published Thursday, Liberman said that he has “100 percent certainty” that Assad himself was directly responsible for the attack, but also said Israel would not become involved militarily to stop the bloodshed.
“The murderous chemical weapons attacks on citizens in Idlib province in Syria and on a local hospital were carried out on the direct order and planned by the Syrian president, Bashar Assad, using Syrian planes,” he said.
The attack on the rebel-held village of Khan Sheikhoun, in which at least 72 people were killed, among them 20 children, has been blamed on Assad by the US and EU, among others.
-
Not our problem.
-
https://ca.news.yahoo.com/russia-warns-negative-consequences-u-targets-syria-005056501.html
Russia warns of 'negative consequences' if U.S. targets Syria
Reuters April 6, 2017
UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - Russia's deputy U.N. envoy, Vladimir Safronkov, warned on Thursday of "negative consequences" if the United States carries out military strikes on Syria over a deadly toxic gas attack.
"We have to think about negative consequences, negative consequences, and all the responsibility if military action occurred will be on shoulders of those who initiated such doubtful and tragic enterprise," Safronkov told reporters when asked about possible U.S. strikes.
When asked what those negative consequences could be, he said: "Look at Iraq, look at Libya."
-
http://www.cnsnews.com/blog/michael-w-chapman/leftist-hero-noam-chomsky-trump-russia-collusion-story-joke-and-not-major
of course he has to put it in the light that the US was far worse then anything Russia has ever done but the part of it being a "joke" is otherwise so true.
-
Not our problem.
Could be argued either way. It became partly our problem with 1) his predecessor's red line promise. A promise now kept.
2) The war is spinning out the refugee crisis, giving terrorists a path to the west. Our problem, in part.
3) The Syrian war is a threat to Israel. The Levant in ISIL includes Israel, a US security Interest.
-
https://ca.news.yahoo.com/russia-warns-negative-consequences-u-targets-syria-005056501.html
Russia warns of 'negative consequences' if U.S. targets Syria
Reuters April 6, 2017
UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - Russia's deputy U.N. envoy, Vladimir Safronkov, warned on Thursday of "negative consequences" if the United States carries out military strikes on Syria over a deadly toxic gas attack.
"We have to think about negative consequences, negative consequences, and all the responsibility if military action occurred will be on shoulders of those who initiated such doubtful and tragic enterprise," Safronkov told reporters when asked about possible U.S. strikes.
When asked what those negative consequences could be, he said: "Look at Iraq, look at Libya."
And Trump responds...
-
Not our problem.
Could be argued either way. It became partly our problem with 1) his predecessor's red line promise. A promise now kept.
The Chinese say "Kill the chicken to scare the monkey". Perhaps this was really aimed at the NorKs.
2) The war is spinning out the refugee crisis, giving terrorists a path to the west. Our problem, in part.
Strange how much closer nations, like Saudi Arabia and the UAE don't have a refugee problem. Funny how that works. Almost like the refugee crisis is just a cover for an invasion.
3) The Syrian war is a threat to Israel. The Levant in ISIL includes Israel, a US security Interest.
Israel will act as it sees it needs to. Unless Assad tried targeting Tel Aviv with WMD, I don't see this as a threat to Israel. Assad knows what would happen if he tried to use WMD on Israel and the US wouldn't be his biggest concern then.
-
U.S. Commanders in Cautious Mood After Syria Strike
Analysis
April 9, 2017 | 15:19 GMT Print
Text Size
An F-22 Raptor fighter aircraft refuels prior to strike operations against the Islamic State in Syria. Such missions will be more cautious after the U.S. missile strike on a Syrian air base. (Maj. Jefferson S. Heiland/U.S. Air Force via Getty Images)
Analysis
Even before launching the missile strike on the Syrian government-controlled Shayrat air base, the United States knew the risks to its anti-Islamic State campaign and its wider operations in the country would grow substantially. After all, U.S. aircraft fly within range of Syrian and Russian air defense systems every day, and U.S. forces are present on the ground in Syria, in some cases such as in Manbij, within proximity of Syrian loyalist troops.
Unsurprisingly, the U.S. military and its allies are adopting a cautious stance in Syria while they assess the changed dynamics and monitor signs of any moves to retaliate over the Shayrat missile strike. The New York Times, for instance, reported April 8 that the U.S.-led coalition in Syria has sharply curtailed its air operations over Syria. Instead, it's relying on highly survivable aircraft such as the stealth F-22 for essential missions over the country. This caution has been further driven by the Russian withdrawal from the 2015 deconfliction agreement with the United States, which was designed to limit the potential for accidental encounters between U.S.-led coalition aircraft and Russian aircraft over Syria.
While coalition flight operations over Syria could quickly revert back to their normal pace as the United States assesses the operating environment, U.S.-led coalition forces will still have to remain at a heightened state of alert for the foreseeable future. Worries include not only an accidental collision with Russian forces or retaliation ordered by the Syrian high command in Damascus, but also the highly fragmented state of the Syrian military after more than six years of war. A local officer or powerful Syrian field commander, going rogue, could conceivably elect to open fire on U.S. aircraft independent of the Syrian loyalist chain of command. There have already been unconfirmed reports of loyalist-manned anti-aircraft gunfire directed at U.S. spy drones flying over the province of al-Hasaka in northeastern Syria. Before the April 7 strike, Syrian forces generally gave a wide berth to U.S. anti-Islamic State operations, in a sort of unofficial acceptance.
Situations like these can rapidly escalate in a conflict such as Syria, with the United States increasingly involved in a civil war that has already drawn in so many nations.
-
Bush neocon Wolfowitz makes his case:
What Comes After the Syria Strikes
With American credibility restored, Trump should lead a diplomatic effort to replace Assad.
By Paul Wolfowitz
Updated April 10, 2017 7:32 p.m. ET
Strong American action can dramatically change the attitudes of other countries. It makes enemies more cautious, friends more supportive, and fence-sitters more cooperative. It provides leverage in negotiations and improves opportunities for coalition building. Last week President Trump demonstrated American resolve by retaliating against the Syrian government after Bashar Assad used chemical weapons. Now Mr. Trump must follow through with a broad diplomatic effort to end the country’s bloodshed.
Among the most interesting reactions to the American strike were two from Iraqi Shiite leaders. Last Thursday Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi, a moderate, and the cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, a firebrand, both called for Mr. Assad to step down. Mr. Sadr predictably denounced the American strike. Mr. Abadi indirectly praised it by noting how Iraqis had suffered from Saddam Hussein’s chemical weapons.
These calls for Mr. Assad to step down might seem at odds with the conventional wisdom, which puts the Sunni-Shiite conflict at the heart of everything in the Middle East. Shouldn’t Iraq’s Shiites naturally side with Iran’s Syrian proxy and approve of Mr. Assad’s brutal treatment of Sunni opponents? Yet there are issues more important than the commonly noted sectarian divisions. The people of Iraq know well that the Assad regime has supported the insurgents and suicide bombers who have killed thousands of Iraqis, and hundreds of Americans, since 2003. The Bush administration largely turned a blind eye to that support, and President Obama did so even more.
In August 2009 then-Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki demanded that Syria hand over two Iraqis in Damascus who were believed to be connected to car bombings in Baghdad. The Obama administration, rather than support the Iraqi government—or even demand an investigation—said nothing for a week. The State Department then announced that the U.S. was officially neutral. Last week’s decisive action was a different sort of American signal.
America can now lead the effort to bring some semblance of stability to Syria. Washington should recognize that peace is impossible with Mr. Assad still in power, but also that millions of Syrians—particularly the Christian and Alawite minorities—may feel endangered by the strongman’s departure. The aim should be to replace Mr. Assad’s regime with new governance arrangements that can provide assurance to these minorities while also ending the current government’s oppression of the country’s Sunni majority.
Fashioning such an outcome would require diplomacy of extraordinary creativity. But the U.S. starts with a distinct advantage. Unlike Iran and Russia, America has no interest in exercising control over or acquiring a military position in Syria. To the contrary, as long as the bleeding stops, the U.S. would be happiest to leave Syria to the Syrians. So how can Washington strengthen its diplomatic effort in Syria and at the same time weaken Iranian influence in Iraq?
First, the U.S. should use public diplomacy to highlight the responsibility of the Assad regime for the suffering of thousands of innocent Iraqis over the past 14 years. This effort should also explain, to the extent that evidence is available, Mr. Assad’s efforts to strengthen Islamic State. The dictator has tried to make his regime seem like the only alternative to domination by terrorists. He has done this by attacking Syrian moderates and freeing imprisoned extremists who went on to become ISIS leaders.
The U.S. should encourage Saudi Arabia to play a constructive role in Iraq by using its considerable economic weight to counterbalance Iranian influence. The Saudis have in the past shown a willingness to treat Iraq as an Arab partner and not a Shiite adversary. That realism, which was evident under an earlier Saudi leadership, seems to be re-emerging. Two months ago Saudi Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubeir visited Baghdad, the first such trip in 27 years.
The Trump administration should also counter the mistaken belief that Saudi Arabia prevented the U.S. from supporting the Shiite uprising against Saddam Hussein after the liberation of Kuwait in 1991. Many Iraqis, and even some reputable historians, still believe this. Yet the truth is exactly the opposite. The U.S. should make public the record of Saudi efforts to persuade the first President Bush and President Clinton to support anti-Saddam Shiite rebels. It will be difficult for Saudi-Iraqi relations to develop without countering the belief that Saudi Arabia is partly responsible for mass graves of Iraqi Shiites.
American diplomats should seek to engage the regional Arab players in addressing the difficult challenge of postconflict reconciliation. This will confront Syria in the aftermath of any peace settlement, and it will become important in Iraq once Mosul is liberated. Reconciliation processes that are suited to local cultures and deal with the horrific legacy of totalitarian Arab regimes cannot be overseen by outsiders. But the diplomatic effort should emphasize their importance regardless.
These political and diplomatic actions could complement and reinforce more-concrete measures to change facts on the ground in Syria, such as creating safe zones or imposing some kind of no-fly zone. These efforts will not be simple, nor will they yield immediate results. But this framework would go a long way in addressing the common danger of radical extremism and in stemming the flow of refugees that has become a humanitarian disaster and a threat to U.S. interests.
Mr. Wolfowitz, a scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, has served as deputy defense secretary and ambassador to Indonesia.
Appeared in the Apr. 11, 2017, print edition.
-
https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-syria-sham-and-the-iran-deal-1438039181
The Syria Sham and the Iran Deal
Syria cheated on its chemical commitments. Iran will cheat on its nuclear ones. Obama provides cover for both.
A young Syrian victim of a chemical weapons attack, May 22, 2014.
A young Syrian victim of a chemical weapons attack, May 22, 2014. Photo: Reuters
By Bret Stephens
July 27, 2015 7:19 p.m. ET
336 COMMENTS
Once upon a time Barack Obama chose multilateral diplomacy over military action for the sake of ridding a dangerous Middle Eastern regime of its weapons of mass destruction. The critics mocked and raged and muttered, but everything worked out well and now the only thing that’s missing is someone who will give the president credit.
Or so Mr. Obama would like you to believe.
“You’ll recall that that was the previous end of my presidency,” Mr. Obama told the New Yorker’s David Remnick of his September 2013 deal to get Syria’s Bashar Assad to hand over his WMD stockpile, “until it turned out that we are actually getting all the chemical weapons. And no one reports on that anymore.”
Nor were these the only hosannas the president and his advisers sang to themselves for the Syria deal. “With 92.5% of the declared chemical weapons out of the country,” said Susan Rice in May 2014, the U.S. had achieved more than any “number of airstrikes that might have been contemplated would have done.” John Kerry also boasted of his diplomatic prowess in a March 2015 speech: “We cut a deal and were able to get all the chemical weapons out of Syria in the middle of the conflict.”
And there was Mr. Obama again, at a Camp David press conference in May: “Assad gave up his chemical weapons. That’s not speculation on our part. That, in fact, has been confirmed by the organization internationally that is charged with eliminating chemical weapons.”
Note the certitude of these pronouncements, the lordly swagger. Now note the facts. “One year after the West celebrated the removal of Syria’s arsenal as a foreign policy success, U.S. intelligence agencies have concluded that the regime didn’t give up all of the chemical weapons it was supposed to.”
So note the Journal’s Adam Entous and Naftali Bendavid in a deeply reported July 23 exposé that reveals as much about the sham disarmament process in Syria as it foretells about the sham we are getting with Iran.
Start with the formal terms under which inspectors were forced to operate. The deal specified that Syria would give inspectors access to its “declared” chemical-weapons sites, much as Iran is expected to give U.N. inspectors unfettered access to its own declared sites. As for any undeclared sites, inspectors could request access provided they furnish evidence of their suspicions, giving the regime plenty of time to move, hide and deceive—yet another similarity with the Iran deal.
The agreement meant that inspectors were always playing by the regime’s rules, even as Washington pretended to dictate terms. Practical considerations tilted the game even further. “Because the regime was responsible for providing security, it had an effective veto over inspectors’ movements,” the Journal reported. “The team decided it couldn’t afford to antagonize its hosts, explains one of the inspectors, or it ‘would lose all access to all sites.’ ”
In other words, the political need to get Mr. Assad to hand over his declared stockpile took precedence over keeping the regime honest. It helped Mr. Assad that he had an unwitting accomplice in the CIA, whose analysts certified that his chemical declaration “matched what they believed the regime had.” Intelligence analysts at the Pentagon were more skeptical. But their doubts were less congenial to a White House eager to claim a win, and hence not so widely advertised.
You can expect a similar pattern to emerge in the wake of the Iran deal. Western intelligence agencies will furnish policy makers with varying assessments; policy makers will choose which ones to believe according to their political preferences. Tehran will cheat in ambiguous and incremental ways; the administration will play down the violations for the sake of preserving the broader deal.
Over time, defending the deal will become a matter of rationalizing it. As in: At least we destroyed Syria’s declared chemical stockpile. Or: At least we’ve got eyes on Iran’s declared nuclear sites.
Perhaps the most interesting details in the Journal story concerned the sophistication of the Syrian program. Chemical weapons-production facilities were hidden in the trailers of 18-wheel trucks—exactly of the kind that were rumored to have been moved to Syria from Iraq in 2003.
(!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!)
Inspectors were impressed by the quality of Syrian-made munitions. The regime was also able elaborately to disguise its chemical research facilities, even during site visits by inspectors.
The CIA now admits that Syria retains significant quantities of its deadliest chemical weapons. When Mr. Obama announced the Syria deal, he warned that he would use military force in the event that Mr. Assad failed to honor his promises. The threat was hollow then. It is laughable now. What ties the Syrian sham to the Iranian one is an American president bent on conjuring political illusions at home at the expense of strategic facts abroad, his weakness apparent to everyone but himself.
Write to bstephens@wsj.c
-
Second post
https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-price-of-obamas-mendacity-1491866392
-
Third post
http://www.weeklystandard.com/are-syrias-chemical-weapons-iraqs-missing-wmd-obamas-director-of-intelligence-thought-so./article/2007610
-
Great points. Also missing words from the left is where did Assad's Chemical WMD come from, when it was reported here on the forum (and below) that Saddam was trucking them away from inspection and destruction, over to his closest ally and neighbor Assad during the 6 months notice we gave him to prepare for invasion and inspection. If that is true, it negates the foreign policy narrative of the last 12 years for the left, the media and even the Trump campaign.
Doesn't "gassing his own people with chemical weapons" sound at least a little bit familiar?
https://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/PLAW-107publ243/html/PLAW-107publ243.htm
"Iraq had large stockpiles of chemical weapons and a large scale biological weapons program, and that Iraq had an advanced nuclear weapons development program"
A clause in a resolution that Hillary, Kerry and Biden all supported, and then what? Changed their minds when fake news indicated otherwise?
Same gas??
http://www.cnn.com/2017/04/05/middleeast/syria-sarin-chemical-weapons-explainer/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halabja_chemical_attack
http://www.economist.com/news/21720252-dictator-defies-world-bashar-al-assad-kills-least-72-chemical
http://www.weeklystandard.com/are-syrias-chemical-weapons-iraqs-missing-wmd-obamas-director-of-intelligence-thought-so./article/2007610
As Gomer Pyle might say, surprise, surprise, surprise! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2TnkJ8_BmSI
Were we wrong to invade Iraq and topple Saddam with his WMD and his demonstrated willingness to use them, or were we just wrong to leave no stay behind force after all that was invested to end that threat? Was the left (and the media) wrong once, twice or more in that costly conflict?
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2003-10-29/news/0310290219_1_illicit-weapons-clapper-weapons-inspector
Syria said to have Iraq arms
Ex-official cites satellite images
October 29, 2003|By Douglas Jehl, New York Times News Service.
WASHINGTON — The director of a top U.S. spy agency said Tuesday that he believes that material from Iraq's illicit weapons program had been transported into Syria and perhaps other countries as part of an effort by the Iraqis to disperse and destroy evidence immediately before the recent war.
The official, James Clapper Jr., a retired lieutenant general, said satellite imagery showing a heavy flow of traffic from Iraq into Syria, just before the U.S. invasion in March, led him to believe that illicit weapons material "unquestionably" had been moved out of Iraq.
"I think people below the Saddam-Hussein-and-his-sons level saw what was coming and decided the best thing to do was to destroy and disperse," Clapper, who leads the National Imagery and Mapping Agency, said at a breakfast with reporters.
He said he was providing a personal assessment. But he said "the obvious conclusion one draws" was that there "may have been people leaving the scene, fleeing Iraq, and unquestionably, I am sure, material."
A spokesman for Clapper's agency, David Burpee, said he could not provide further evidence to support the general's statement.
Other U.S. intelligence officials said Clapper's theory is among those being pursued in Iraq by David Kay, a former UN weapons inspector who is leading the U.S. effort to uncover the weapons cited by the Bush administration as the major reason for going to war against Iraq.
Clapper's comments came as the CIA prepared to defend its prewar assertions that Iraq had chemical and biological weapons and that it sought to reconstitute its nuclear program. The director of central intelligence, George Tenet, has written a letter to the chairman and vice chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence saying the agency will be ready to provide an assessment by late November.
In the letter, the contents of which were described by several intelligence officials on Tuesday, Tenet proposed that a team headed by John McLaughlin, the deputy director of central intelligence, provide a briefing for the committee after Nov. 20, when the agency's internal review is expected to be completed.
Clapper's agency is responsible for interpreting satellite photographs and other imagery.
-
http://www.nationalreview.com/article/446593/donald-trump-syria-strike-american-strategic-shift-middle-east-israel-sunni-alliance?utm_source=Sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Daily%20Trending%20Email%20Reoccurring-%20Monday%20to%20Thursday%202017-04-10&utm_term=NR5PM%20Actives
-
Tribal Loyalties Drive Jordan’s Effort to Free Pilot
This article came to my attention recently. Though it is over two years old, I found the light it sheds on the role of tribal politics to be very interesting.
By ROD NORDLAND and RANYA KADRIJAN. 31, 2015
Photo
Safi Youssef al-Kasasbeh, the father of a pilot held by the Islamic State, in Amman on Saturday. Credit Warrick Page for The New York Times
AMMAN, Jordan — It is often said that in the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan all politics is tribal.
That goes a long way toward explaining the country’s reaction to the hostage crisis involving a Royal Jordanian Air Force pilot and a Japanese journalist, including Jordan’s offer to free an extremist on death row and willingness to look the other way when protesters disparaged the king in the presence of his powerful intelligence service.
It is not just that First Lt. Moaz al-Kasasbeh is a handsome young F-16 fighter pilot with a prominent social media presence, and the first member of the international coalition bombing the Islamic State to be captured by the extremists. He is also a member of a politically influential tribe, part of a crucial base of tribal support for the king.
“The social structure of Jordan is tribal more than institutional,” Lieutenant Kasasbeh’s father, Safi Youssef al-Kasasbeh, said as he sat in a diwan, or social hall, in Amman on Saturday waiting for word of his son’s fate, surrounded by a shifting crowd of well-wishers sometimes numbering in the hundreds. “The cohesiveness is very strong, and now we feel that every tribal member is supported by every tribe in Jordan.”
The monarchy has not only maintained good relations with the tribes, it has also built them into the structure of the state by heavily recruiting their members into the military and security services, analysts say. That is a legacy of Jordan’s past, which has left its eight million citizens split between “East Bankers,” or native Jordanians, and “West Bankers,” the descendants of Palestinians displaced by the creation of Israel and its subsequent wars with its Arab neighbors.
Continue reading the main story
Related Coverage
Jordan Lets Islamic State’s Deadline for a Prisoner Exchange Pass JAN. 29, 2015
All-but-Forgotten Prisoner in Jordan Is at Center of Swap Demand by ISIS JAN. 28, 2015
ADVERTISEMENT
Continue reading the main story
Most Jordanians whose origins are in East Jordan belong to one of a dozen major or numerous smaller tribes, and are viewed as unquestionably loyal.
The Kasasbeh clan is part of the Bararsheh tribe from southern Jordan. As the crisis has unfolded, elders and notables from the tribe, based in the city of Karak, rushed to the capital, Amman, where they huddled together to back Lieutenant Kasasbeh’s family — and to sing the praises of its captured pilot.
Lieutenant Kasasbeh was shot down during an air raid in Syria on Dec. 24. In the first sign of the pilot’s importance, Jordan’s ruler, King Abdullah II, went immediately to his family’s home in Karak to assure them of his concern for their son’s safety.
Separately, Bararsheh tribal leaders quietly approached the government and asked officials to offer to trade Sajida al-Rishawi, a convicted would-be suicide bomber on death row, for Lieutenant Kasasbeh’s freedom.
Late last month, attempts to free Lieutenant Kasasbeh became more complicated when the Islamic State, also known as ISIS or ISIL, suddenly threatened two Japanese hostages, then released a video showing the beheading of one. Although the militants had initially asked for ransom, they later changed their demand, asking to trade the second Japanese hostage for the release of the same woman, Ms. Rishawi, that the tribe hoped Jordan would swap for the pilot.
When Japanese officials announced that they were working with Jordan to win their hostage’s release — days before a video Saturday that appeared to show his death — the reaction in Jordan was furious.
Protests began springing up, especially among members of the pilot’s Bararsheh tribe, and at one point last week they even demonstrated outside King Abdullah’s Royal Palace in Amman. It is a measure of the sensitivity with which tribes are treated that even though the protesters were chanting slogans calling the king a coward bought by American dollars, Jordan’s usually proactive intelligence services and riot police refrained from intervening.
Instead, King Abdullah defused the situation by inviting the pilot’s father, mother and wife into the palace.
“You always have to pay attention to the tribes; you can’t neglect them,” said the retired Maj. Gen. Ali Shukri, who ran the private office of King Hussein, King Abdullah’s father.
Morning Briefing
Get what you need to know to start your day in the United States, Canada and the Americas, delivered to your inbox.
Receive occasional updates and special offers for The New York Times's products and services.
See Sample Manage Email Preferences Privacy Policy
Jordan’s king takes his legitimacy, to a large degree, from the support of its tribes, most of which trace their roots to nomadic groups that roamed throughout the Arabian Peninsula. The Hashemite dynasty is built around a clan that is part of a powerful tribe in present-day Saudi Arabia, the Qureish tribe. “All these tribes are really important in the military,” General Shukri said. “They have to accommodate the family as much as possible.”
Tribal loyalty trumps even strongly held political views. Mustafa Rawashdeh, a member of Parliament who signed a petition against Jordan’s joining the coalition against the Islamic State, was sitting on Saturday next to the pilot’s father at the diwan, as a member of the same tribe. He also publicly warned against opposition members using the pilot’s plight to political advantage. At one point so many tribal supporters had come to Amman that the family built a huge tent outside to accommodate overflow visitors and the news media.
The issue of the pilot’s fate has been so sensitive that Jordanian officials have scarcely mentioned the Japanese journalist, Kenji Goto, although Japan is a major aid donor to Jordan and Japanese officials have been in Amman seeking government help to try to win his release. The Islamic State eventually put the pilot’s fate into the mix, saying he would be killed along with Mr. Goto if Ms. Rishawi was not released, according to a video attributed to the militants.
The video did not say the pilot would be released — only that his life would be spared if she were freed by a deadline that expired Thursday.
Jordanian officials responded that they wanted to see proof the pilot was alive before freeing Ms. Rishawi, who had been held since 2005 after hotel bombings in Amman by Al Qaeda in Iraq. Then there was mainly silence from the two sides until Saturday, when the new video that appeared to show Mr. Goto being beheaded by a militant was released.
It is unclear what calculations the militants may be making and whether they may also factor in Jordan’s powerful tribes, especially if they want to maintain a base of support there.
The Islamic State’s cause had already won some sympathy in Jordan, where some back its goal of establishing an Islamic empire and chafe at the continuing autocracy of their own Western-allied government. Jordan is believed to be, after Saudi Arabia, the second-biggest outside contributor of Islamic State fighters.
Karak, Lieutenant Kasasbeh’s hometown, has its own minority of pro-Islamic State young men, according to Alaa Fazzaa, an exiled Jordanian dissident who follows online extremism in the country.
“They are thinking they could use the case of Moaz to stir up disturbances in Jordan,” Mr. Fazzaa said, warning other government critics to hold back — not a position he normally takes. “Anyone who has a bare minimum of national feelings must stay quiet now,” he said.
Referring to Karak, Mr. Rawashdeh, the lawmaker, said, “Some of our young men, out of ignorance or because they’re suffering economically, did support ISIS, but right now we’re noticing that people no longer do.
“If anything happens to Moaz, the whole street will turn against ISIS,” he said.
By Saturday night, Lieutenant Kasasbeh’s fate remained unknown. The video that appeared to show Mr. Goto’s death on Saturday made no mention of the pilot. But many Jordanians were concerned that the reason the militants did not provide proof he was alive, as Jordan’s government demanded, was that they had already killed him.
-
Second post
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/13/world/middleeast/syrian-fighters-airstrike-american-military.html?emc=edit_na_20170413&nl=breaking-news&nlid=49641193&ref=cta
-
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-04-08/former-cia-officer-intelligence-confirms-russian-account-syria
-
In view of CD's post above I post this from a few days ago.
Maybe Assad didn't do it. Buchanan asks some good questions though I don't know if I agree with him or not FWIW:
http://buchanan.org/blog/trump-enlisting-war-party-126799
also from Judge Napolitano offers opinions form other intelligence that this was not Assad's doing:
http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2017/04/13/andrew-napolitano-trumps-attack-on-syria-was-both-emotional-and-illegal.html
-
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/15/world/middleeast/syria-bashar-al-assad-evidence.html?emc=edit_ta_20170415&nl=top-stories&nlid=49641193&ref=cta&_r=0
-
http://jordantimes.com/news/local/muslim-youth-take-initiative-guard-churches-easter-celebrated
-
After ISIS, the U.S. Military Could Help Keep Iraq Stable
A limited troop presence would support a strategy aimed at containing Iranian aggression.
By James Jeffrey
April 16, 2017 2:09 p.m. ET
Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi has called on the U.S. to deepen cooperation with Baghdad under the 2008 U.S.-Iraqi Strategic Framework Agreement. That makes sense. America has expended incalculable resources in Iraq, intervening militarily four times since 1990. Iraq is worth the effort—the center of the Middle East, with almost two-thirds of the oil and gas reserves of Saudi Arabia, abundant water, an educated population and a functioning democracy. But if the U.S. doesn’t want to intervene again, assistance must be linked to maintaining a small military contingent there.
An American-Iraqi decision on keeping U.S. troops in the country must be taken soon, as the rationale for their current presence—to defeat Islamic State—will fade as it is destroyed. The justification for a longer-term presence would be to train and equip Iraqi forces and assist against ISIS remnants. Strategically, it could also help keep Iraq independent of Iran.
The impending destruction of ISIS as a “caliphate” will rank with the 2003 Iraq war, the Arab Spring, the Iran nuclear agreement and Russian intervention in Syria as a regional game-changer. The first four advanced the Iranian and Russian quest to upset the U.S.-led regional security order. But the defeat of ISIS could help the U.S. reverse this trend.
To do so Washington must view the region differently. Since the Cold War the U.S. has treated Middle East challenges—Iran, Saddam Hussein, Syria, Yemen, terrorism, and more—as discrete problems, not part of a larger endeavor. The U.S. assumed that the region’s core, an American-led regional order, would endure.
Threats to that order from Iran, Russia and Sunni Islamists challenge this assumption. In this environment, Cold War principles—alliance solidarity and U.S. credibility—must be reinvigorated. Anything the U.S. does must support the strategy to contain Iran and combat Sunni extremists. The two are linked: Under Iranian influence, Damascus and Baghdad so oppressed their Sunni Arab populations that they turned to ISIS.
Keeping a troop contingent in Iraq would support such a strategy. The Trump administration appears interested, but success is uncertain given that Iraq did not allow the U.S. to extend forces in Iraq in 2011. Prime Minister Abadi appears supportive, but other political leaders, the public and Iran are more or less opposed. To keep a troop presence, the U.S. will have to proceed on three avenues: “sell” the presence, link it to other assistance, and keep it noncontroversial.
Iraqis must be convinced that an American presence would support the fight against terrorism and ensure the Iraqi army does not implode as it did in Mosul in 2014. They must also be convinced that it would support Iraqi unity, by signaling to skeptical Sunni Arab and Kurdish minorities that the largely Shiite Baghdad government seeks ties to the West. Also important is the perception that the U.S. supports Iraqi sovereignty, by signaling to Iran that Iraq will not become anyone’s vassal state.
The U.S. will have to link economic assistance and diplomatic cooperation—in short, “tough love”—to clarify that in exchange for such help, Iraqi politicians have to be flexible on troops. U.S. support for Iraq beyond security has been remarkable: an IMF-led $15 billion loan, mediation of disputes between Baghdad and Kurdistan, and the facilitation of oil production. The U.S. has a vital interest in preventing Iraq from descending into violence, enabling Iranian regional aggression, or spawning another terrorist movement, and that requires not just political and economic support but continued military ties.
But Iraq must also be reassured that a U.S military presence would be acceptable to Iraqis. Based on the troop-extension talks with Iraq in 2011, the following would be politically acceptable.
First, the troop contingent should be limited and not permanent. The 5,000 troops contemplated in 2011 are likely the maximum politically sustainable. U.S. troops should also be part of an international contingent and stationed on Iraqi bases. The U.S. should not again ask for Parliament-approved legal immunities for U.S. personnel, but rather extend the administrative status under which they now operate.
Second, the formal troop mission should focus on training and equipping Iraqi forces, and specific intelligence, counterterrorism and perhaps air-support functions. Everyone in the region would understand that such a presence would also help contain Iran and promote stability, but diplomacy requires that this not be explicit.
Third, the U.S. should be careful not to suggest that troops in Iraq are a combat force to project power into Syria or Iran against Baghdad’s interests.
None of this guarantees that Iraq will allow such a military presence but it will make the choice easier. Stability in the entire region hangs on Iraq making the right one.
Mr. Jeffrey served as U.S. ambassador to Turkey (2008-10) and Iraq (2010-12).
v
-
https://www.yahoo.com/news/mit-expert-claims-latest-chemical-100819428.html
-
https://www.yahoo.com/news/mit-expert-claims-latest-chemical-100819428.html
I don't know the truth but it was reported that Israeli intelligence declared 100% certainty this chemical attack was ordered by Assad.
https://www.i24news.tv/en/news/israel/society/142007-170406-israelis-urge-gov-t-to-establish-safe-zone-in-southern-syria-after-gas-attack
Must say it would not be wise for Israel to wrongly manipulate Trump this early in his presidency. A strike on an airfield that they could have done themselves is not much of a gain for the risk of losing their largest ally.
-
http://www.dailywire.com/news/15746/stampede-disgruntled-blessed-boars-rampages-isis-joshua-yasmeh?utm_source=dwemail&utm_medium=email&utm_content=042617-news&utm_campaign=position3
-
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/S/SYRIA?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2017-04-28-13-49-00
-
http://conservativetribune.com/trump-mattis-1-order/
-
http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2017/05/22/israeli-officers-to-trump-youre-doing-isis-wrong-215172
Their idea sounds good.
Question: What about the refugees created?
Question: What about the ever increasing solidity of the Russian-Iranian axis? Does not Trump's strategy of getting the Sunnis lined up against it have the same "let them all fight it out" essence to it?
-
http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2017/05/22/israeli-officers-to-trump-youre-doing-isis-wrong-215172
Their idea sounds good.
Question: What about the refugees created?
*Who cares? Not our problem. Their fellow muslims can see to them.
Question: What about the ever increasing solidity of the Russian-Iranian axis? Does not Trump's strategy of getting the Sunnis lined up against it have the same "let them all fight it out" essence to it?
*I'm all for a massive Sunni-Shia war. Let them burn.
-
Jordan already is past full with refugees.
VERY bad for US if Jordan falls into chaos and war.
-
Jordan already is past full with refugees.
VERY bad for US if Jordan falls into chaos and war.
I'm pretty sure Jordan has already stopped taking in refugees.
-
It can be hard to control long expanses of desert without a fence I'm told. Just ask our Border Patrol.
-
Sent to me by a professional:
http://www.realclearlife.com/news/isis-near-collapse-comes-next/
-
http://www.meforum.org/6717/eclipsing-caliphate-the-fight-for-eastern-syria?utm_source=Middle+East+Forum&utm_campaign=07623d312b-spyer_jonathan_2017_05_28&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_086cfd423c-07623d312b-33691909&goal=0_086cfd423c-07623d312b-33691909
-
https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2017/05/us-military-admits-failures-to-monitor-over-1-billion-worth-of-arms-transfers/
-
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2017/05/28/mattis_nothing_scares_me_i_keep_other_people_awake_at_night.html
Fazce the Nation May 28, 2017
Mattis on destroying ISIS:
MATTIS: Our strategy right now is to accelerate the campaign against ISIS. It is a threat to all civilized nations.
And the bottom line is, we are going to move in an accelerated and reinforced manner, throw them on their back foot. We have already shifted from attrition tactics, where we shove them from one position to another in Iraq and Syria, to annihilation tactics, where we surround them.
Our intention is that the foreign fighters do not survive the fight to return home to North Africa, to Europe, to America, to Asia, to Africa. We are not going to allow them to do so. We are going to stop them there and take apart the caliphate.
DICKERSON: Explain what it means to be moving in an annihilation posture, as opposed to attrition.
MATTIS: Well, attrition is where you keep pushing them out of the areas that they are in, John, and what we intend to do by surrounding them is to not allow them to fall back, thus reinforcing themselves as they get smaller and smaller, making the fight tougher and tougher.
You can see that right now, for example, in Western Mosul, that is surrounded, and the Iraqi security forces are moving against them. Tal Afar is now surrounded. We have got efforts under way right now to surround their self-declared caliphate capital of Raqqa.
That surrounding operation is going on. And once surrounded, then we will go in and clean them out.
DICKERSON: One of the things you mentioned in this new accelerated tempo is that the president has delegated authority to the right level. What does that mean?
MATTIS: When you are in operations, the best thing you can do at the top level is get the strategy right.
You have to get the big ideas right. You have to determine, what is the policy, what is the level of effort you are willing to commit to it, and then you delegate to those who have to execute that strategy to the appropriate level.
What is the appropriate level? It's the level where people are trained and equipped to take decisions, so we move swiftly against the enemy. There is no corporation in the world that would, in a competitive environment, try and concentrate all decisions at the corporate level.
But I would point out here that we have not changed the rules of engagement. There is no relaxation of our intention to protect the innocent. We do everything we can to protect the civilians. And actually lowering, delegating the authority to the lower level allows us to do this better.
DICKERSON: After the annihilation has been done, does that mean you can't let it fall back into ISIS hands?
MATTIS: Once ISIS is defeated, there is a larger effort under way to make certain that we don't just sprout a new enemy. We know ISIS is going to go down.
We have had success on the battlefield. We have freed millions of people from being under their control. And not one inch of that ground that ISIS has lost has ISIS regained. It shows the effectiveness of what we are doing.
However, there are larger currents, there are larger confrontations in this part of the world, and we cannot be blind to those. That is why they met in Washington under Secretary Tillerson's effort to carry out President Trump's strategy to make certain we don't just clean out this enemy and end up with a new enemy in the same area.
DICKERSON: You served under President Obama. You are now serving President Trump. How are they different?
MATTIS: Everyone leads in their own way, John.
In the case of the president, he has got to select the right people that he has trust in to carry out his vision of a strategy. Secretary Tillerson and I, we coordinate all of the president's campaign. We just make certain that foreign policy is led by the State Department.
I inform Secretary Tillerson of the military factors. And we make certain that then, when we come out of our meetings, State Department and Defense Department are tied tightly together, and we can give straightforward advice to the commander in chief.
DICKERSON: President Trump has said, to defeat ISIS, he has said that there has to be a humiliation of ISIS. What does that mean?
MATTIS: I think, as we look at this problem of ISIS, it is more than just an army. It is also a fight about ideas.
And we have got to dry up their recruiting. We have got to dry up their fund-raising. The way we intend to do it is to humiliate them, to divorce them from any nation giving them protection and humiliating their message of hatred, of violence.
Anyone who kills women and children is not devout. They have -- they cannot dress themselves up in false religious garb and say that somehow this message has dignity. We're going to strip them of any kind of legitimacy. And that is why you see the international community acting in concert.
DICKERSON: When should Americans look to see victory?
MATTIS: This is going to be a long fight.
The problems that we confront are going to lead to an era of frequent skirmishing. We will do it by, with, and through other nations. We will do it through developing their capabilities to do a lot of the fighting. We will help them with intelligence. Certainly, we can help train them for what they face.
And you see our forces engaged in that from Africa to Asia. But, at the same time, this is going to be a long fight. And I don't put timelines on fights.
DICKERSON: What about civilian casualties as a result of this faster tempo?
MATTIS: Civilian casualties are a fact of life in this sort of situation.
We do everything humanly possible, consistent with military necessity, taking many chances to avoid civilian casualties, at all costs.
DICKERSON: Under this new aggressive posture, what can be done that would not have been done, say, six months ago?
MATTIS: Probably the most important thing we are doing now is, we are accelerating this fight. We are accelerating the tempo of it.
We are going to squash the enemy's ability to give some indication that they're -- they have invulnerability, that they can exist, that they can send people off to Istanbul, to Belgium, to Great Britain, and kill people with impunity.
We are going to shatter their sense of invincibility there in the physical caliphate. That is only one phase of this. Then we have the virtual caliphate that they use the Internet. Obviously, we are going to have to watch for other organizations growing up.
We cannot go into some kind of complacency. I am from the American West. We have forest fires out there. And some of the worst forest fires in our history, the most damage were caused when we pulled the fire crews off the line too early.
And so we are going to have to continue to keep the pressure on the enemy. There is no room for complacency on this.
DICKERSON: A hundred civilians were killed after a U.S. bomb hit a building in Mosul in Iraq. Is this the result of this faster tempo? Is this the kind of thing Americans needs to get used to as a natural byproduct of this strategy?
MATTIS: The American people and the American military will never get used to civilian casualties.
We will -- we will fight against that every way we can possibly bring our intelligence and our tactics to bear. People who had tried to leave that city were not allowed to by ISIS . We are the good guys. We are not the perfect guys, but we are the good guys. And so we are doing what we can.
We believe we found residue that was not consistent with our bomb. So we believe that what happened there was that ISIS had stored munitions in a residential location, showing once again the callous disregard that has characterized every operation they have run.
-
https://friendsofsyria.wordpress.com/2017/05/27/al-qaedas-godfather-is-dead-good-riddance/
-
Although it is Breitbart, this does read like actual news:
http://www.breitbart.com/national-security/2017/06/05/5-jun-17-world-view-us-and-iran-backed-troops-head-for-confrontation-at-al-tanf-on-iraq-syria-border/
-
Go figure. After all we have been hearing in the past couple of weeks a sell out to the military industrial complex is how I read this:
https://www.yahoo.com/news/qatar-signs-12-billion-deal-034012941.html
-
http://americanmilitarynews.com/2017/06/russia-says-it-will-now-target-us-aircraft-and-come-after-them-following-downed-syrian-jet/?utm_source=colddeadhands&utm_campaign=alt&utm_medium=facebook
-
http://americanmilitarynews.com/2017/06/russia-says-it-will-now-target-us-aircraft-and-come-after-them-following-downed-syrian-jet/?utm_source=colddeadhands&utm_campaign=alt&utm_medium=facebook
It could quite easily happen. But as it doesn't fit the left's narrative, not much attention from the MSM.
-
http://mobile.reuters.com/article/idUSKBN19D10J?utm_campaign=trueAnthem%3A+Trending+Content&utm_content=594bb27104d3013a29b37503&utm_medium=trueAnthem&utm_source=twitter
-
Previously I have dialed in on the relevance of competing natural gas routes from Central Asia to Europe. It appears the theme repeats itself.
https://dailyreckoning.com/u-s-wants-assad-not-isis-middle-east/
-
I'm thinking there are some details here that would be better off not here , , ,
===========================================
Commando Raids on ISIS Yield Vital Data in Shadowy War
By ERIC SCHMITTJUNE 25, 2017
Photo
Armed men identified by the Syrian Democratic Forces as American Special Operations forces in the Syrian province of Raqqa last year. Credit Delil Souleiman/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
WASHINGTON — One late afternoon in April, helicopter-borne American commandos intercepted a vehicle in southeastern Syria carrying a close associate of the Islamic State’s supreme leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.
The associate, Abdurakhmon Uzbeki, was a rare prize whom United States Special Operations forces had been tracking for months: a midlevel but highly trusted operative skilled in raising money; spiriting insurgent leaders out of Raqqa, the Islamic State’s besieged capital in Syria; and plotting attacks against the West. Captured alive, Mr. Uzbeki could be an intelligence bonanza. Federal prosecutors had already begun preparing criminal charges against him for possible prosecution in the United States.
As the commandos swooped in, however, a firefight broke out. Mr. Uzbeki, a combat-hardened veteran of shadow wars in Syria and Pakistan, died in the gun battle, thwarting the military’s hopes of extracting from him any information about Islamic State operations, leaders and strategy.
New details about the operation, and a similar episode in January that sought to seize another midlevel Islamic State operative, offer a rare glimpse into the handful of secret and increasingly risky commando raids of the secretive, nearly three-year American ground war against the Islamic State. Cellphones and other material swept up by Special Operations forces proved valuable for future raids, though the missions fell short of their goal to capture, not kill, terrorist leaders in order to obtain fresh, firsthand information about the inner circle and war council of the group, also known as ISIS.
“If we can scoop somebody up alive, with their cellphones and diaries, it really can help speed up the demise of a terrorist group like ISIS,” said Dell L. Dailey, a retired commander of the military’s Joint Special Operations Command and the chairman of the Combating Terrorism Center at West Point.
American military and intelligence officials caution that the Islamic State is far from defeated, particularly with a sophisticated propaganda apparatus that continues to inspire and, in some cases, enable its global following to carry out attacks. But in the self-proclaimed caliphate across swaths of Iraq and Syria, the terrorist group’s last two major strongholds are under siege, many senior leaders have fled south to the Euphrates River Valley, and its legions of foreign fighters are battling to the death or slipping away, possibly to wreak havoc in Europe.
The race to drive the jihadists out of eastern Syria, where they have held sway for three years, has gained new urgency as rival forces converge on ungoverned parts of the region. Syrian forces and Iranian-backed militias that support them are advancing east, closer to American-backed fighters battling to reclaim Raqqa. Russia threatened on Monday to target American and allied aircraft the day after the United States military brought down a Syrian warplane.
This highly volatile environment puts an increasing premium on the Special Operations missions.
Despite his nom de guerre, Mr. Uzbeki, 39, was a native of Tajikistan, not Uzbekistan, and honed his fighting skills with the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan, a Taliban-allied jihadist group, according to an American military official. About 10 years ago, he moved to Pakistan, where he had extensive contacts with Al Qaeda, the official said. In recent years, he had moved to Syria and joined the Islamic State’s fighting ranks.
Mr. Uzbeki was close to Mr. Baghdadi, the Islamic State’s leader, and helped plot a deadly attack on a nightclub in Istanbul on New Year’s Day. He was targeted for his role in the Islamic State’s plotting of attacks around the world, said Col. John J. Thomas, a spokesman for the United States Central Command. “He facilitated the movement of ISIS foreign terror fighters and funds,” Colonel Thomas told reporters in April.
After months of waiting for an opportunity to seize Mr. Uzbeki without putting civilians at risk, one arose on April 6 for the so-called expeditionary targeting force, a group of commandos from the secretive Joint Special Operations Command who hunt Islamic State leaders in Iraq and Syria.
About 3 p.m., Mr. Uzbeki was driving from Mayadeen, a city in southeastern Syria that has become an enclave for Islamic State leaders fleeing Raqqa. (The Central Command said this past week that it had killed Turki al-Bin’ali, a senior recruiter and propagandist, in an airstrike on May 31 in Mayadeen.)
“As Mosul and Raqqa come under increasing pressure, we’ve seen ISIS elements moving into the Euphrates River Valley over the past few months,” said Cmdr. William Marks, a spokesman for the Defense Intelligence Agency.
Mr. Uzbeki had just dropped off a higher-ranking Islamic State leader in Mayadeen and was returning to Raqqa when the commandos ambushed him. Though he died, the soldiers were able to recover cellphones and other materials, a military official said.
In a similar raid in early January, American commandos killed another midlevel Islamic State leader they had been trying to capture and interrogate in the eastern Syrian province of Deir al-Zour, which is largely under Islamic State control. The insurgent, whom the military did not identify, was also killed when he resisted capture. Important information was also collected from this raid, military officials said.
The model for these kinds of operations in Syria emerged in May 2015 when two dozen Delta Force commandos entered Syria aboard Black Hawk helicopters and V-22 Ospreys from Iraq and killed Abu Sayyaf, whom American officials described as the Islamic State’s “emir of oil and gas.”
The information harvested from the laptops, cellphones and other materials recovered in the raid yielded the first important insights about the Islamic State’s leadership structure, financial operations and security measures.
Equally important, Abu Sayyaf’s wife, Umm, who was captured in the operation, provided information to investigators for weeks, American officials said, before she was turned over to the Iraqi authorities.
So successful was that raid that seven months later, Ashton B. Carter, then the defense secretary, disclosed at a House hearing that he was creating a “specialized expeditionary targeting force.”
The commandos — initially numbering about 100 troops, including support personnel — would have a mission similar to, but smaller than, the one they carried out in tandem with President George W. Bush’s surge of American troops in Iraq in 2007. There, commandos conducted a series of high-tempo, nightly raids to capture or kill fighters from Al Qaeda and other former Baathist groups in Iraq.
In recent months, the targeting force has intensified its drone strikes and raids in Syria against the Islamic State’s external operations planners, who have inspired, supported and directed attacks beyond their declared caliphate and into the West. A small number of capture missions are in the works, tracking insurgent leaders, military officials said.
“When the target is indeed captured alive, then we often can get even more valuable information through interrogations, immediate and continuing over time,” said William Wechsler, a former top counterterrorism official at the Pentagon. “All of this helps us better understand the enemy network, prioritize new targets, and identify external terrorist plots.”
-
What does this stand for?
'Pride of the Hill'
'Puttin' On The Hits'
'Plain Old Telescope Handset'
Read more: https://www.allacronyms.com/POTH#ixzz4lICsOwQF
-
How many years have you seen me using that and not asked? :lol: :lol: :lol:
Pravda on the Hudson a.k.a. The New York Times :evil: :lol: :lol:
-
Iran Won in Lebanon. What About Iraq?
Officials in Beirut see no alternative but to accommodate the Hezbollah militia.
A Hezbollah supporter during a Jerusalem Day rally in Lebanon, June 23.
A Hezbollah supporter during a Jerusalem Day rally in Lebanon, June 23. Photo: wael hamzeh/European Pressphoto Agency
By Danielle Pletka
June 26, 2017 7:05 p.m. ET
WSJ
Beirut
In the violent Middle East, Lebanon looks like a miracle. A mix of Christians and Sunni and Shiite Muslims who have fought a brutal civil war, and have weathered aggressive outside interference, Lebanon is still puttering along as a semifunctioning democracy. To encourage and strengthen the Lebanese Armed Forces, the U.S. has given more than $1 billion over the last decade.
But looks are deceiving. In Lebanon, despite America’s help, Iran has won.
Step back a few decades and remember the pitched battles of the Lebanese civil war—Sunni vs. Shiite vs. Christian. The kidnapping and killing of countless innocents; the murder of the CIA station chief in Beirut; and finally, the end of the civil war with the 1989 Taif Accords, a rare Arab-led initiative, which dictated terms that enabled weary Lebanese fighters to lay down their arms.
The many militias that had grown up as appendages of the Lebanese political process were disarmed, the army was successfully deconfessionalized, militias melted into the Lebanese Armed Forces, Shiites were reassigned to Sunni units, Christians to Shiite ones and so on. The fighting ground to a halt. Israelis, and eventually even Syrian occupying forces, withdrew.
Except for Hezbollah. This Shiite militia was created by Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps to be an Iranian proxy, nominally “resisting” Israel, but in fact resisting the normal governance of Lebanon by its people. After more than 30 years, Hezbollah is still in Lebanon, sacrificing lives, resisting democracy, dictating foreign policy and corrupting the true Lebanese Armed Forces. For the past six years, it has been fighting assiduously on behalf of Iran and the Assad regime in Syria.
On a recent visit, my first after a long lapse, I found a palpable change in tone: Lebanese officials once privately noted their hostility to Hezbollah and Iranian interference. No longer. Now Hezbollah is something to accommodate, part of the “fabric of Lebanese life,” as one senior military official put it. Since the 2006 war with Israel, Hezbollah has rearmed dramatically, with an estimated 150,000 missiles, including short-range Katyusha-type rockets and thousands of medium-range missiles capable of striking Tel Aviv. Thousands of Lebanese have either volunteered or been forced to fight in Syria for Bashar al Assad.
Even the Lebanese Armed Forces, long considered a pillar of the state, is now cozy with Hezbollah, as the latter’s leader, Hassan Nasrallah, affirmed in a recent speech. And contrary to the oft-expressed hopes of senior U.S. officials, not only has the army failed to limit Hezbollah’s reach within Lebanon, but reports suggest it may also have shared weaponry. A recent Hezbollah military parade in Syria showed U.S.-sourced M113 armored personnel carriers of the kind supplied by Washington to Beirut. Senior Lebanese officials insist the APCs “could have come from anywhere.”
Iran is pursuing a similar strategy in Iraq. As in Lebanon, irregular militias have been part of the political and military scene since Saddam Hussein ruled. But since the withdrawal of U.S. forces in 2011 and the rise of Islamic State, some militias have proved useful to the Iraqi government—and to the U.S.—in taking on ISIS, much as Hezbollah proved itself useful to Beirut in ousting Israel from southern Lebanon.
The Baghdad government has accommodated the so-called Hashd al Shaabi, or Popular Mobilization Forces; and Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, one of Shiite Islam’s greatest eminences, has blessed their fight. The Iraqi legislature has approved the PMF’s nominal incorporation into the Iraqi army, even as Iraqi government officials acknowledge that 30% of the PMF are under Iranian government control. Once the fight with ISIS ends, what will happen to these militias?
There’s already a hint of how the future of the PMF will play out: Like Hezbollah, some units are fighting at Iran’s behest in Syria on behalf of Mr. Assad. Iraqi leaders, as their Lebanese counterparts once did, are fretting about the future of Iran’s proxies. The Iraqis rightly see the militias as instrumental in the counter-ISIS battle, and also rightly judge them a danger when that fight is done. Perhaps, with the help of Ayatollah Sistani, some of the PMF will be legitimately incorporated into the Iraqi army—subsidized by U.S. taxpayers to the tune of $715 million in the last fiscal year alone—and answerable in its chain of command. But Iraqi leaders know full well that some will not.
That is why more must be done soon to ensure that the Iraqi leadership understands, as the Lebanese government does not, that the continued existence of Iranian proxy forces within and working alongside its military is incompatible with long-term assistance from the United States.
Congress can predicate assistance and weapons transfers on clear assurances that Iran and its proxies are not indirect beneficiaries. If it does not, Iraq, like Lebanon before it and others to come, will become yet another pawn in Iran’s Middle East game.
Ms. Pletka is a senior vice president at the American Enterprise Institute.
Appeared in the June 27, 2017, print edition.
-
America Needs a Post-ISIS Strategy
The U.S. should recognize Iran and Russia as adversaries—and that Iraq isn’t a friend.
A defaced Islamic State sign in Ba’aj, Iraq, June 20.
A defaced Islamic State sign in Ba’aj, Iraq, June 20. Photo: Getty Images
By John Bolton
June 28, 2017 6:15 p.m. ET
90 COMMENTS
The headlines out of Syria are eye-catching: There are signs the Assad government may be planning another chemical attack. American pilots have struck forces threatening our allies and shot down a Syrian plane and Iranian-made drones. The probability of direct military confrontation between the U.S. and Russia has risen. Yet the coverage of these incidents and the tactical responses that have been suggested obscure the broader story: The slow-moving campaign against Islamic State is finally nearing its conclusion—yet major, long-range strategic issues remain unresolved.
The real issue isn’t tactical. It is instead the lack of American strategic thinking about the Middle East after Islamic State. Its defeat will leave a regional political vacuum that must be filled somehow. Instead of reflexively repeating President Obama’s errors, the Trump administration should undertake an “agonizing reappraisal,” in the style of John Foster Dulles, to avoid squandering the victory on the ground.
First, the U.S. ought to abandon or substantially reduce its military support for Iraq’s current government. Despite retaining a tripartite veneer of Kurds, Sunni Arabs and Shiite Arabs, the capital is dominated by Shiites loyal to Iran. Today Iraq resembles Eastern Europe in the late 1940s, as the Soviet anaconda tightened its hold. Extending Baghdad’s political and military control into areas retaken from ISIS simply advances Tehran’s power. This cannot be in America’s interest.
Iraq’s Kurds have de facto independence and are on the verge of declaring it de jure. They fight ISIS to facilitate the creation of a greater Kurdistan. Nonetheless, the Kurds, especially in Syria and Turkey, are hardly monolithic. Not all see the U.S. favorably. In Syria, Kurdish forces fighting ISIS are linked to the Marxist PKK in Turkey. They pose a real threat to Turkey’s territorial integrity, even if it may seem less troubling now that President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s plans have turned so profoundly contrary to the secular, Western-oriented vision of Kemal Atatürk.
Second, the U.S. should press Egypt, Jordan and the Gulf monarchies for more troops and material assistance in fighting ISIS. America has carried too much of the burden for too long in trying to forge Syria’s opposition into an effective force. Yet even today the opposition could charitably be called “diverse.” It includes undeniably terrorist elements that are often hard to distinguish from the “moderates” the U.S. supports. Getting fresh contributions from Arab allies would rebalance the opposition, which is especially critical if the U.S. turns away, as it should, from reliance on the Iraqi forces dominated by Tehran.
Third, the Trump administration must take a clear-eyed view of Russia’s intervention. The Syrian mixing bowl is where confrontation between American and Russian forces looms. Why is Russia active in this conflict? Because it is aiding its allies: Syria’s President Bashar Assad and Iran’s ayatollahs. Undeniably, Russia is on the wrong side. But Mr. Obama, blind to reality, believed Washington and Moscow shared a common interest in easing the Assad regime out of power. The Trump administration’s new thinking should be oriented toward a clear objective: pushing back these Iranian and Russian gains.
Start with Iran. Tehran is trying to cement an arc of control from its own territory, through Baghdad-controlled Iraq and Mr. Assad’s Syria, to Hezbollah-dominated Lebanon. This would set the stage for the region’s next potential conflict: Iran’s Shiite coalition versus a Saudi-led Sunni alliance.
The U.S.-led coalition, enhanced as suggested above, needs to thwart Iran’s ambitions as ISIS falls. Securing increased forces and financial backing from the regional Arab governments is essential. Their stakes are as high as ours—despite the contretemps between Qatar and Saudi Arabia (and others)—but their participation has lagged. The U.S. has mistakenly filled the gap with Iraqi government forces and Shiite militias.
Washington is kidding itself to think Sunnis will meekly accept rule by Iraq’s Shiite-dominated government or Syria’s Alawite regime. Simply restoring today’s governments in Baghdad and Damascus to their post-World War I boundaries would guarantee renewed support for terrorism and future conflict. I have previously suggested creating a new, secular, demographically Sunni state from territory in western Iraq and eastern Syria. There may well be other solutions, but pining for borders demarcated by Europeans nearly a century ago is not one of them.
At the same time, the U.S. must begin rolling back Russia’s renewed presence and influence in the Middle East. Russia has a new air base at Latakia, Syria, is involved in combat operations, and issues diktats about where American warplanes in the region may fly. For all the allegations about Donald Trump and Russia, the president truly in thrall to Moscow seems to have been Mr. Obama.
Russia’s interference, particularly its axis with Mr. Assad and Tehran’s mullahs, critically threatens the interests of the U.S., Israel and our Arab friends. Mr. Assad almost certainly would have fallen by now without Russia’s (and Iran’s) assistance. Further, Moscow’s support for Tehran shatters any claim of its truly being a partner in fighting radical Islamic terrorism, which got its modern start in Iran’s 1979 revolution. Both Iran and the Assad regime remain terror-sponsoring states, only now they are committing their violence under Russia’s protective umbrella. There is no reason for the U.S. to pursue a strategy that enhances Russia’s influence or that of its surrogates.
As incidents in Syria and Iraq increasingly put American forces at risk, Washington should not get lost in deconfliction negotiations or modest changes in rules of engagement. Instead, the Trump administration should recraft the U.S.-led coalition to ensure that America’s interests, rather than Russia’s or Iran’s, predominate once ISIS is defeated.
Mr. Bolton is a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and author of “Surrender Is Not an Option: Defending America at the United Nations and Abroad” (Simon & Schuster, 2007).
-
second post
http://www.nationalreview.com/article/449082/syria-iran%20isis-challenge-trump-foreign-policy-should-confront
Destroying ISIS in order to return the territory to Bashar al-Assad is tantamount to giving Syria to Iran. In Syria, the U.S. is directing the lion’s share of its energy toward defeating the Islamic State (ISIS) rather than containing Iran. Reflecting that reality, the caliphate’s days on the physical battlefield are numbered, with U.S.-backed forces assaulting their de facto capital in Raqqa. As a result, the other major powers and patrons involved in the Syrian cauldron are redeploying their forces as they vie for political, economic, or military influence over its future.
The situation brings into focus the other fronts opening up that have far more to do with Iran than with ISIS. Ready or not, the race is on in the south and east, and how those upcoming battles play out will likely shape the balance of power in the region.
It is in this unfolding context that one should view the recent White House warning to Bashar al-Assad over the use of chemical weapons. It comes amid a noticeable escalation in Syria involving pro-Assad regime attacks against U.S.-coalition positions in the north and south, America’s downing of a Syrian fighter jet and several Iranian drones, and Iran’s firing of ballistic missiles into eastern Syria.
Iran remains on the march and poses a greater long-term strategic threat to the United States and its allies than does ISIS. Having succeeded in effectively propping up the Assad regime, the Iranian priority is to complete a Shia corridor through the country, giving Tehran a land bridge to the Mediterranean Sea.
Tehran must take one of three primary arteries from Iraq into eastern Syria to make its land bridge contiguous. One path runs through the Raqqa war zone on the Euphrates River where the U.S.-backed Syrian Democratic Forces are currently engaged. That’s where the U.S. downed the Syrian fighter jet.
Another potential corridor runs to the southeast through Deir el-Zour from the Abu Kamal-Qaim border crossing. The province remains largely in the hands of the Islamic State and was the target of Iran’s recent launch of ballistic missiles. Iraqi militias backed by Iran already took the border town of Ba’aj from ISIS and told the Guardian they are exploring possible paths to create a supply line to Deir el-Zour that could bypass the crossing.
The most strategic passage, however, is the main highway connecting Baghdad to Damascus in the southeast along Syria’s border with Jordan and Iraq. That’s where the U.S. and allied forces set up shop with a military outpost next to the al-Tanf border crossing. The de-confliction area recently became a flashpoint, prompting the U.S. to down several Iranian drones in the past few weeks. With U.S.-aligned forces increasingly under attack, they moved a High Mobility Artillery Rocket System (HIMARS) into the area from Jordan to dissuade Iranian-backed militias from targeting American troops.
These events at all three strategic locations aren’t isolated incidents but the opening salvo in the next phase of the Syrian conflict. In Washington, however, few in the Trump administration are willing to publicly state the challenge Iran presents in Syria.
According to a recent article published in Foreign Policy, Secretary of Defense James Mattis, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs General Joseph Dunford, and Brett McGurk, the lead U.S. diplomat and an Obama holdover — who is overseeing the anti-Islamic State coalition — all favor keeping America’s military focus on ISIS and away from Iran’s proxies.
Few in the Trump administration are willing to publicly state the challenge Iran presents in Syria. That position was reinforced with the U.S. Combined Joint Task Force statement that reaffirmed that the “mission is to defeat ISIS,” not the Syrian regime or those associated with Assad. Colonel Ryan Dillon, the spokesman for the U.S.-led coalition, went even further addressing reporters: “We as a coalition are not in the land-grab business. We are in the killing-ISIS business,” Dillon explained, “and if the Syrian regime wants to [fight ISIS] and they’re going to put forth a concerted effort and show that they are doing just that in Abu Kamal or Deir el-Zour or elsewhere, that means that we don’t have to do that in those places.”
This antiquated definition of America’s interest in the conflict will prove to be untenable as Iranian-backed forces continue to gather and encircle U.S. positions. Moreover, the message it sends to Tehran reads more as an invitation, not a warning.
Destroying ISIS in order to return the territory to Assad is tantamount to giving it to Iran. If that is really the goal, one must ask why American military forces are in harm’s way in Syria, in the crosshairs of the very nation the U.S. is helping to succeed. It would be better to return home, as the trajectory of the war indicates that Assad will emerge victorious in a matter of time absent an American military presence and leadership.
The answer is that for the United States, the war in Syria should be more about Iran than ISIS. Without a plan reflecting that priority or at least putting it on par with the defeat of the Islamic State, the regional objectives President Trump laid out are sure to be undermined.
In that scenario, there will be little hope of holding together any outside Sunni coalition. As Iranian proxies gather strength in Syria’s southwest near the Golan Heights, Israel or Hezbollah will feel compelled to act militarily and all of Lebanon will be drawn in. The next iteration of ISIS will surely form in the Sunni-majority regions in the heart of the Middle East — rendering as a wasted effort today’s narrowly defined mission. And as it unfolds, Iran will be several years closer to possessing nuclear weapons.
Syria today represents the center of the new Great Game in the Middle East. “The Islamic State is the military target of our forces in Syria,” a senior White House official told this author Tuesday. He chose his words deliberately. “That doesn’t mean we don’t understand the broader geostrategic reality and the interplay of all the other actors involved in the theater,” he continued. “All of the principals in the administration are fully aware of the complexity of the situation.”
When pressed further on how the U.S. plans to push back on Iran in Syria, he replied, “Look, the situation in Syria is exclusively the situation in Syria. What we have in Iran is an expansionist, terror-sponsoring, theocratic, globally ambitious actor. Since Day One that reality has been in the forefront of our minds. One should not underestimate the seriousness with which this White House takes the issue of Iran.”
That’s a refreshing acknowledgment from the White House that could very well mean more is in the works than meets the eye or that can be said publicly.
With the nuclear deal under a top-to-bottom review by the National Security Council, there are still several paths available to the Trump administration to contain nefarious Iranian behavior in areas not covered in the agreement. One such effort is reflected in the new sanctions on Iran’s ballistic-missile program and Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps that recently passed the Senate by a 98–2 margin. An even more meaningful way to do so would be to push back on Iran’s advances on the ground in Syria, including through covert means.
Syria today represents the center of the new Great Game in the Middle East. Navigating it may require the ability to play three-dimensional chess, but the cost of allowing Iran to complete its land bridge poses a long-term threat to the U.S. and its allies.
Despite most of the rhetoric coming out of Washington, the answer to the war in Syria evolved long ago beyond the question of the Islamic State and the future of Bashar al-Assad. The balance of power in the Middle East depends on America adapting its regional strategy to fit this new reality. READ MORE: America’s War against ISIS Is Evolving into an Invasion of Syria Raqqa and the Conundrum of Arming the Kurds The Great Muslim Civil War — and Us — Matthew RJ Brodsky is a senior Middle East analyst at Wikistrat and the former director of policy at the Jewish Policy Center in Washington, D.C. He can be followed on Twitter: @RJBrodsky
Read more at: http://www.nationalreview.com/article/449082/syria-iran%20isis-challenge-trump-foreign-policy-should-confront
-
Will U.S. and Russian Forces Clash in Syria?
by Jonathan Spyer
Foreign Policy
June 26, 2017
http://www.meforum.org/6779/trump-crossing-iran-russia-red-lines-in-syria
Originally published under the title "Trump Is Tripping Over Iran and Russia's Red Lines in Syria."
In the past five weeks, U.S. forces in Syria have struck directly at the Assad regime and its allies in Syria no less than four times. On May 18, U.S. warplanes struck regime and allied militia forces that breached a 34-mile exclusion zone around a U.S. outpost in southeastern Syria. Then on June 8 and June 20, the United States shot down Iranian-made drones as they approached the outpost.
But the most dramatic event so far was the June 18 downing of a Syrian air force Su-22 by a U.S. Navy F/A-18 Super Hornet. This took place after regime forces attacked a town held by the U.S.-aligned Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) near Tabqa, in northern Syria. The Su-22 dropped bombs near the SDF fighters, ignored U.S. warnings, and was then shot down.
The downing of the Su-22 threatened to bring Washington and Moscow into conflict in the war-torn country. In the aftermath of the incident, Russia announced the end of deconfliction arrangements with U.S. forces and that it had decided to treat future U.S. flights west of the Euphrates River as hostile.
Syria is quickly devolving into a free-for-all. There is a high possibility of further friction among regional powers, as the Russians, Americans, and their various clients scramble to realize mutually incompatible objectives — specifically in the areas of eastern Syria held by the now collapsing "caliphate" of the Islamic State.
Syria is quickly devolving into a free-for-all.
So how did events in Syria reach this pass, in which direct confrontation between United States and Russia is no longer unthinkable? And what might happen next?
Syria has been divided into a number of de facto enclaves since mid-2012. But a series of events over the past 15 months has served to end the stalemate in the country, ushering in this new and dangerous phase.
Russia's entry into the conflict in September 2015 ended any possibility of rebel victory and the overthrow by arms of the regime. Syrian President Bashar al-Assad — with invaluable help from Russia, as well as Iran and its various militia proxies — went on to clear the rebels out of the key cities of Homs and Aleppo. A diplomatic agreement establishing four "de-escalation" zones then consolidated regime control of western Syria.
Direct confrontation in Syria between the U.S. and Russia is no longer unthinkable.
This development has enabled the regime to divert forces to the effort to reassert control over the east of the country. As it does so, the regime is encroaching on a conflict from which it had previously been largely absent: the war between the U.S.-supported, Kurdish-dominated SDF — along with other, Arab rebel clients further south — and the now retreating jihadis of the Islamic State.
The confluence of interests between Damascus and Tehran on this battlefield is clear. Iran, whose proxies form the key ground forces available to the regime, wants to secure a land corridor through eastern Syria and into Iraq. The Assad regime wants to re-establish a presence on Syria's eastern border.
Regime forces are thus now advancing eastward on two axes: one from the town of Palmyra and the second from south of Aleppo. It was friction along the second axis, as regime forces closed up against areas controlled by the SDF, that caused the events leading to the downing of the Syrian Su-22.
A geographically inevitable contest of wills is developing — between the regime and its associated forces as they drive east into Islamic State territory and U.S.-associated SDF and Arab rebel fighters, who also seek to control the former Islamic State areas. Moscow's forces are an integral part of this regime push east, with Russian air power and Russian-supported ground forces especially present in the Palmyra offensive.
For a while, it seemed as though the United States and its allies had the upper hand. In mid-2016, the United States established a base in the Tanf area at which U.S. and allied special forces personnel have been training the Maghawir al-Thawra (Revolution Commandos) rebel group. This raised the possibility that these Western-supported Arab forces might link up with SDF fighters in the north. Together, they would then clear the Islamic State out of the Euphrates River valley, complete the conquest of Raqqa, and establish that they control the territory in question before regime forces could make an advance.
Maghawir al-Thawra fighters in eastern Syria.
In order to decisively preempt this possibility, Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), Hezbollah, and Assad regime and Iraqi Shiite militia forces on June 9 made a lunge for the Syria-Iraq border along a line north of Tanf, effectively dividing U.S.-supported elements from one another. Maghawir al-Thawra was trapped south of the new line established by the regime side, as the SDF still engaged the Islamic State far to the north. The rebels, if they wish to progress further, now need to break through regime lines to do so. That would be inconceivable without U.S. help.
Iranian and pro-Iranian regional media were quite frank about the intentions behind this sudden move. A report in the IRGC-linked Fars News Agency described the thinking behind it as follows: "America ... wants to link the northeastern part [of Syria, which is controlled by the Kurds] with the southeastern part, which is why it has stepped up its activity in the al-Tanf area." The Syrian army and its allies, the article went on to say, defied American "red lines" in a military advance designed to thwart this strategy.
This is where the war currently stands. The latest reports suggest that the United States is in the process of beefing up its presence in the Tanf area.
A new base is being built at Zakaf, 50 miles northeast of the town, according to pro-U.S. rebels. The United States has moved its High Mobility Artillery Rocket System (HIMARS) into southern Syria for the first time. Capable of firing rockets and missiles to ranges of nearly 200 miles, the system constitutes a significant increase in U.S. firepower on Syrian soil.
So where is it all heading? The downing of the Su-22 may serve, for a while at least, to demarcate the zones of U.S. and Russian air activity over the skies of Syria. But the real contest is the one on the ground. And here, the prize is the eastern governorate of Deir Ezzor, the site of a large part of Syria's oil resources. Does Russian President Vladimir Putin's warning about American air activity west of the Euphrates mean that this area will need to be ceded in its entirety to the regime? Will the United States agree to this?
The Russians have no crucial interest of their own causing them to back the ambitions of the Iranians in the east. But for as long as the going is relatively easy, it appears that Putin also feels no special compunction to rein in his allies. Perhaps both Moscow and Tehran simply assume that American interest in the area is limited and hence that Washington will not take risks in order to counter red lines set down by other players.
The crucial missing factor here is a clearly stated U.S. policy.
The crucial missing factor here is a clearly stated U.S. policy. Trump can either acquiesce to the new realities that Russia seeks to impose in the air, and that Iran seeks to impose on the ground, or he can move to defy and reverse these, opening up the risk of potential direct confrontation. There isn't really a third choice.
Fars News Agency concluded its recent report in the following terms: "The imbroglio in eastern Syria has only begun, and stormy days are ahead of us." In the face of much uncertainty, this point at least seems crystal clear.
Jonathan Spyer, a fellow at the Middle East Forum, is director of the Rubin Center for Research in International Affairs and author of The Transforming Fire: The Rise of the Israel-Islamist Conflict (Continuum, 2011).
Related Topics: Iran, Russia/Soviet Union, Syria, US policy | Jonathan Spyer
-
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2017/jul/2/donald-trumps-isis-annihilation-strategy-quickly-l/?mkt_tok=eyJpIjoiWmpBeU5EUXlabVJtTWprMiIsInQiOiJ2U3NXMWttVytWKzVlZjh0OTNEZDUrOVpvbWdqTVJrZ0RSTlwvTnN6MnAzQmx3Nndqc3ZoSnVDWm5tcWhcL1dnbzE4Z3hMeEpwT09tRmpZYzR6cVBBRGZDYlZsSUZ3S1N5Nk5Jamk2cnpERFJwVlwvWm0zSkZySEF4c2prbVwvSU9aM2cifQ%3D%3D
Is that a machete/small sword on the middle man's right side?
-
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2017/jul/2/donald-trumps-isis-annihilation-strategy-quickly-l/?mkt_tok=eyJpIjoiWmpBeU5EUXlabVJtTWprMiIsInQiOiJ2U3NXMWttVytWKzVlZjh0OTNEZDUrOVpvbWdqTVJrZ0RSTlwvTnN6MnAzQmx3Nndqc3ZoSnVDWm5tcWhcL1dnbzE4Z3hMeEpwT09tRmpZYzR6cVBBRGZDYlZsSUZ3S1N5Nk5Jamk2cnpERFJwVlwvWm0zSkZySEF4c2prbVwvSU9aM2cifQ%3D%3D
Is that a machete/small sword on the middle man's right side?
It appears to be something like that.
-
This comes recommended to me:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fIeo1Zk0UWQ&feature=youtu.be
-
you may want to watch the video posted by "Hamdi" who shoots at two Iraqis walking street and then laughs after one of the women is screaming in terror - sick sadistic bastard!:
https://pjmedia.com/homeland-security/2017/07/06/general-iraqi-forces-sdf-get-credit-for-astounding-reversal-of-isis-fortune/
-
Fascinating
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/resources/idt-sh/is_fighters
-
Fascinating
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/resources/idt-sh/is_fighters
"The photographs begin as bright family snapshots, but soon darken. The young man is seated, with the trace of a smile on his face. He is doe-eyed beside a little girl. Perhaps it is his sister. He holds her close, and she has her index finger raised - the Islamic sign for one true god."
5 bucks says it's his "wife".
-
You're wicked , , , ly funny.
-
You're wicked , , , ly funny.
Sadly, i'm not entirely joking. As Mohammed's (Bacon be upon him) 3rd wife was 6 years old when he married her, lots of girls in the islamic world get married off at such ages. The islamic state was big on this. There is actually islamic doctrine on the marriage and divorce of girls who have not yet gone through puberty.
Good thing the west is smart enough to keep people with these ideas out of our countries.
______________________________________________________
http://quotingislam.blogspot.com/2011/06/islamic-scholars-explanations-of-quran.html
Top Islamic scholars' explanations of Qur'an 65:4 show that the verse assumes consummation of marriage with prepubescent girls
Before quoting the scholars on Quran 65:4, it should be noted that Quran 33:49 lays down that when a divorced female is to marry a new spouse, a waiting period is required only if the previous marriage was consummated. The scholars I will be quoting below all know this. One of them, Maududi, mentions and explains it.
With that in mind, first consider Ibn Abbas, a companion of Muhammad, and one of many authorities who affirm that Qur'an 65:4 refers to the waiting period for prepubescent girls to remarry after divorce.
Ibn Abbas paraphrasing and explaining Quran 65:4
(And for such of your women as despair of menstruation) because of old age, (if ye doubt) about their waiting period, (their period (of waiting) shall be three months) upon which another man asked: “O Messenger of Allah! What about the waiting period of those who do not have menstruation because they are too young?” (along with those who have it not) because of young age, their waiting period is three months. Another man asked: “what is the waiting period for those women who are pregnant?” (And for those with child) i.e. those who are pregnant, (their period) their waiting period (shall be till they bring forth their burden) their child. (And whosoever keepeth his duty to Allah) and whoever fears Allah regarding what he commands him, (He maketh his course easy for him) He makes his matter easy; and it is also said this means: He will help him to worship Him well.
Some eight hundred years later appeared the Tafsir al-Jalalayn, one of the most widely used interpretations of the Qur'an. Tafsir al-Jalalayn also paraphrases Quran 65:4 and says part of it speaks of the waiting period before remarriage of divorced, prepubescent girls:
And [as for] those of your women who (read allā’ī or allā’i in both instances) no longer expect to menstruate, if you have any doubts, about their waiting period, their prescribed [waiting] period shall be three months, and [also for] those who have not yet menstruated, because of their young age, their period shall [also] be three months — both cases apply to other than those whose spouses have died; for these [latter] their period is prescribed in the verse: they shall wait by themselves for four months and ten [days] [Q. 2:234]. And those who are pregnant, their term, the conclusion of their prescribed [waiting] period if divorced or if their spouses be dead, shall be when they deliver. And whoever fears God, He will make matters ease for him, in this world and in the Hereafter.
65:4, according to Wahidi's respected explanation of the Quran:
(And for such of your women as despair of menstruation…) [65:4]. Said Muqatil: “When the verse (Women who are divorced shall wait, keeping themselves apart…), Kallad ibn al-Nu‘man ibn Qays al-Ansari said: ‘O Messenger of Allah, what is the waiting period of the woman who does not menstruate and the woman who has not menstruated yet? And what is the waiting period of the pregnant woman?’ And so Allah, exalted is He, revealed this verse”. Abu Ishaq al-Muqri’ informed us Muhammad ibn ‘Abd Allah ibn Hamdun Makki ibn ‘Abdan Abu’l-Azhar Asbat ibn Muhammad Mutarrif Abu ‘Uthman ‘Amr ibn Salim who said: “When the waiting period for divorced and widowed women was mentioned in Surah al-Baqarah, Ubayy ibn Ka‘b said: ‘O Messenger of Allah, some women of Medina are saying: there are other women who have not been mentioned!’ He asked him: ‘And who are they?’ He said: ‘Those who are too young [such that they have not started menstruating yet], those who are too old [whose menstruation has stopped] and those who are pregnant’. And so this verse (And for such of your women as despair of menstruation…) was revealed”.
The bracketed text is not me, it's in the Wahidi at Altafsir.com.
Ibn Kathir is perhaps the Muslim world's most respected Quran expositor.
Kathir says of 65:4
Allah the Exalted clarifies the waiting period of the woman in menopause. And that is the one whose menstruation has stopped due to her older age. Her `Iddah [waiting period before remarriage] is three months instead of the three monthly cycles for those who menstruate, which is based upon the Ayah [verse] in (Surat) Al-Baqarah. (see Qur'an 2:228) The same for the young, who have not reached the years of menstruation. Their `Iddah [waiting period before remarriage] is three months like those in menopause. This is the meaning of His [Allah's] saying;
[Qur'an 65:4] (and for those who have no courses...)
Syed Abul Ala Maududi (died 1979), another famous Qur'an expositor, says of Quran 65:4:
Here, one should bear in mind the fact that according to the explanations given in the Quran the question of the waiting period arises in respect of the women with whom marriage may have been consummated, for there is no waiting-period in case divorce is pronounced before the consummation of marriage. (Al-Ahzab: 49) [Quran Chapter 33, Verse 49]. Therefore, [the Quran] making mention of the waiting-period for the girls who have not yet menstruated, clearly proves that it is not only permissible to give away the girl in marriage at this age but it is also permissible for the husband to consummate marriage with her. Now, obviously no Muslim has the right to forbid a thing which the Quran has held as permissible.
So major Muslim expositors of the Quran agree that Quran 65:4 assumes and supports consummation of marriage with prepubescent girls. These expositors know what Maududi above mentions: per Quran 33:49, a waiting period before remarriage is only required if the dissolved marriage was consummated.
Also, many Muslim translations of 65:4 make absolutely clear that the verse refers to the waiting period before remarriage of prepubescent girls. See for example these translations: Al-Muntakahb, Abdel Haleem, Abdul Majid Daryabadi, Aisha Bewley, Ali Quli Qara'i, Muhammad Mahmoud Ghali, Muhammad Taqi Usmani.
__________________________________________
Also, from Sahih al-Bukhari, the most canonical hadith collection, see this hadith which refers to the waiting period for girls "before puberty":
Volume 7, Book 62, Number 63:
Narrated Sahl bin Sad:
While we were sitting in the company of the Prophet a woman came to him and presented herself (for marriage) to him. The Prophet looked at her, lowering his eyes and raising them, but did not give a reply. One of his companions said, "Marry her to me O Allah's Apostle!" The Prophet asked (him), "Have you got anything?" He said, "I have got nothing." The Prophet said, "Not even an iron ring?" He Sad, "Not even an iron ring, but I will tear my garment into two halves and give her one half and keep the other half." The Prophet; said, "No. Do you know some of the Quran (by heart)?" He said, "Yes." The Prophet said, "Go, I have agreed to marry her to you with what you know of the Qur'an (as her Mahr)." 'And for those who have no courses (i.e. they are still immature). (Qur'an 65.4) And the 'Iddat [waiting period before remarriage] for the girl before puberty is three months (in the above Verse).
[The last lines are what the man knows of the Quran.]
-
Giving organized religion a bad name since 610 AD.
-
To the top, I believe this column is a keeper. The enemy of your enemy is your enemy.
This has been posted before but buried; this might help frame the middle east scorecard.
http://www.pe.com/2014/09/12/victor-davis-hanson-few-interests-fewer-friends-in-middle-east/
VICTOR DAVIS HANSON: Few interests, fewer friends in Middle East
By VICTOR DAVIS HANSON | Press-Enterprise
September 12, 2014 at 5:00 am
Try figuring out the maze of enemies, allies and neutrals in the Middle East.
In 2012, the Obama administration was on the verge of bombing the forces of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. For a few weeks, he was public enemy No. 1 because he had used chemical weapons on his own people and because he was responsible for many of the deaths in the Syrian civil war, with a casualty count that is now close to 200,000.
After Obama’s red lines turned pink, we forgot about Syria. Then the Islamic State showed up with beheadings, crucifixions, rapes and mass murders through a huge swath of Iraq and Syria. Now the United States is bombing the Islamic State. Sometimes Obama says that he is still seeking a strategy against the jihadist group. Sometimes he wants to reduce it to a manageable problem. And sometimes he says that he wants to degrade or even destroy it.
The Islamic State is still trying to overthrow Assad. If the Obama administration is now bombing the Islamic State, is it then helping Assad? Or when America did not bomb Assad, did it help the Islamic State? Which of the two should Obama bomb — or both, or neither?
Iran is steadily on the way to acquiring a nuclear bomb. Yet for now it is arming the Kurds, dependable U.S. allies in the region who are fighting for their lives against the Islamic State and need American help. As Iran aids the Kurds, Syrians and Iraqis in the battle against the evil Islamic State, is Tehran becoming a friend, enemy or neither? Will Iran’s temporary help mean that it will delay or hasten its efforts to get a bomb? Just as Iran sent help to the Kurds, it missed yet another U.N. deadline to come clean on nuclear enrichment.
Hamas just lost a war in Gaza against Israel. Then it began executing and maiming a number of its own people, some of them affiliated with Fatah, the ruling clique of the Palestinian Authority. During the war, Mahmoud Abbas, president of the Palestinian state, stayed neutral and called for calm. Did he wish Israel to destroy his rival, Hamas? Or did he wish Hamas to hurt his archenemy, Israel? Both? Neither?
What about the Gulf sheikdoms? In the old days, America was enraged that some of the Saudis slyly funneled cash to al-Qaida and yet relieved that the Saudi government was deemed moderate and pro-Western. But as Iran gets closer to its nuclear holy grail, the Gulf kingdoms now seem to be in a de facto alliance with their hated adversary, Israel. Both Sunni monarchies and the Jewish state in near lockstep oppose the radical Iran/Syria/Hezbollah/Muslim Brotherhood/Hamas axis.
But don’t look for understandable Shiite-Sunni Muslim fault lines. In this anti-Saudi alliance, the Iranians and Hezbollah are Shiites. Yet their allies, the Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas, are Sunnis. The Syrian government is neither, being Alawite.
They all say they are against the Sunni extremist Islamic State. So if they are enemies of the Sunni monarchies and enemies of the Islamic State, is the Islamic State then a friend to these Gulf shiekdoms?
Then there is Qatar, a Sunni Gulf monarchy at odds with all the other neighboring Sunni monarchies. It is sort of friendly with the Iranians, Muslim Brotherhood, Hezbollah and Hamas — all adversaries of the U.S. Why, then, is Qatar the host of CENTCOM, the biggest American military base in the entire Middle East?
Is Egypt any simpler? During the Arab Spring, the Obama administration helped to ease former president and kleptocrat Hosni Mubarak out of power. Then it supported both the democratic elections and the radical Muslim Brotherhood that won them. Later, the administration said little when a military junta displaced the radical Muslim Brotherhood, which was subverting the new constitution. America was against military strongmen before it was for them, and for Islamists before it was against them.
President Obama and Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Recep Erdogan were said to have a special friendship. But based on what? Erdogan is strangling democracy in Turkey. He is a big supporter of Hamas and at times a fan of Iran. A NATO ally, Turkey recently refused to let U.S. rescue teams use its territory to stage a rescue mission of American hostages — two of them eventually beheaded — in Syria.
Ostensibly, America supports moderate pro-Western consensual governments that protect human rights and hold elections, or at least do not oppress their own. But there are almost no such nations in the Middle East except Israel. Yet the Obama administration has grown ever more distant from the Jewish state over the last six years.
What is the U.S. to do? Leave the Middle East alone, allowing terrorists to build a petrol-fueled staging base for another 9/11? About the best choice is to support without qualification the only two pro-American and constitutional groups in the Middle East, the Israelis and Kurds.
Otherwise, in such a tribal quagmire, apparently there are only transitory interests that come and go.
-
Outstanding article.
New variables to consider:
a) Iran establishing a land bridge to the Mediterranean-- and implications for a war with Israel;
b) The Russian-Iranian Axis from the Indian Ocean to the Baltic Sea;
c) Iran going nuke, perhaps in conjunction with the Norks;
d) the Russian presence in and of itself;
e) the potential collapse of the House of Saud
f) the likelihood of a second and possibly much greater flood of refugees should the excrement hit the fan
-
quote author=Crafty_Dog
Outstanding article.
New variables to consider:
a) Iran establishing a land bridge to the Mediterranean-- and implications for a war with Israel;
b) The Russian-Iranian Axis from the Indian Ocean to the Baltic Sea;
c) Iran going nuke, perhaps in conjunction with the Norks;
d) the Russian presence in and of itself;
e) the potential collapse of the House of Saud
f) the likelihood of a second and possibly much greater flood of refugees should the excrement hit the fan
---------
Great post by Crafty. The VDH piece was Sept 2014 and the Russians escalated operations in Syria in Sept 2015. Besides Russia in, we have the pink line enforcer, PLO backer Obama out, ISIS losing territory, Assad staying. (?) We also have US fracking and $2 gasoline discounting the strategic value of the medieval 2017 Middle East. We have the US backing Israel again and now add India to that. (?) Iran nuclear deal, Turkey in transition from NATO ally to Islamic dictatorship and the whole refugee migration flooding Europe.
The US does not want to be the world's policeman. But when we don't step in, it isn't other forces for good that fill the void. Enter al Qaida, Iran, ISIS, Russia. And the cost doesn't go down by neglect. I wonder if the US stuck in a permanent, low level, Middle East quagmire is the best and only answer to stopping the ongoing threats detailed in Crafty's post, the Russia-Iran-Syria land bridge for example.
-
http://mashable.com/2016/09/17/bedouins/?utm_cid=mash-com-fb-retronaut-link#GzbEidKxbiqk
-
Note the date
US Strategy and Israel's Stake in Eastern Syria
by Jonathan Spyer
The Jerusalem Post
June 24, 2017
http://www.meforum.org/6794/us-strategy-and-israel-stake-in-eastern-syria
A corridor linking Shia in Iran, Iraq and beyond with Shia and Alawites (a related sect) in Lebanon and the Syrian coast would be a strategic nightmare for Israel.
The downing on June 18th of a Syrian Air Force SU-22 by a UA Navy F-18 Super Hornet over the skies of northern Syria sharply raises the stakes in the emergent stand-off in the country. This stand-off is no longer between local militias, nor between regional powers. Rather, through interlocking lines of support, it places the United States in direct opposition to Russia.
The last move has almost certainly not yet been made. And while events in north east Syria may seem a distance away, there is a direct Israeli interest in the outcome of the current contest.
This latest move was a probably inevitable outcome of two sharply opposing outlooks currently in play in Syria. The US seeks to maintain a divide between the war against Islamic State in the east of the country and the civil war between Assad and the rebellion against him in the west of it. In the east, US-supported Kurdish and Sunni Arab rebel forces are forbidden from attacking Assad's forces.
The US statement following the downing of the SU-22 reflected this position. Pentagon Spokesman Cpt. Jeff Davis noted that the US does 'not seek conflict with any party in Syria other than ISIS, but we will not hesitate to defend ourselves or our partners if threatened.'
From the point of view of the regime and its Russia and Iranian allies, by contrast, no such division exists. For them, the Syrian war is a single system, in which the 'legitimate government' (ie the Assad regime) is engaged in a fight against various illegitimate entities. The latter group includes ISIS, but also the Sunni Arab rebels and the Kurdish-dominated Syrian Democratic Forces, with whom the US is aligned.
The defeat of the Islamic State as an entity controlling territory is now only a matter of time.
The recent Astana agreement for the creation of four 'de-escalation' areas has freed up regime and allied forces to take a more active role in the war against ISIS further east. Regime forces are advancing along two axes – from Palmyra in the south, and from Aleppo province further north. The second axis is bringing the regime and its allies into direct and close proximity with the US-supported SDF. The incident this week took place, according to the US version, after regime forces attacked the SDF in the town of Jadin south of Tabqa. Further tactical clashes are probably inevitable as each side seeks to take control of areas abandoned by ISIS as it retreats.
But these tactical matters are part of an emergent strategic reality. The defeat of the Islamic State as an entity controlling territory is clearly only a matter of time. The actions of the Assad regime (or more accurately the Iranian and Russian interests that dominate it) equally clearly reflect their determination to confront and defeat all other armed elements within Syria. The United States is currently backing certain non-governmental armed elements in Syria, for the stated purpose of defeating Islamic State.
So the situation is leading the US inexorably toward a choice. At a certain point, perhaps after the final eclipse of IS, but also perhaps before it, Washington will need to decide if it wishes to abandon its allies to destruction at the hands of the regime, Iran and Russia, or whether it wishes to help to defend the forces it has armed and trained.
US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) fighters are leading the assault on Raqqa.
At this point, the US will need to decide its end objective in Syria. Is it a federalized, decentralized Syria, with the regime dominant in the west and US allies in the east? Is it the destruction of the Assad regime? The construction of safe zones and ongoing negotiation? Which is it to be?
None of this is easy and all choices have a price. Failure to decide, and a tactical, localized response to immediate threats is also a kind of choice, of course. So far, this type of response has resulted in the pro-Iranian forces reaching the Iraqi border, north of al-Tanf, and cutting off the US-backed rebels in the area from the possibility of further progress northwards.
As of now, on four occasions, US forces have responded to the regime coming too close. But this has the appearance of a piecemeal response. All sides await the discovery or emergence of US strategy in Syria.
If the US and its allies are eclipsed in eastern Syria, Iran will enjoy a contiguous land bridge to Israel's borders.
Why does all this matter for Israel? For the following reason: if the US and its allies are eclipsed in eastern Syria, the result will be the establishment of a contiguous land link from Iran, across Iraq and Syria and to Lebanon and the Israeli border. This in turn will transform the threat picture facing Israel in the event of a renewed war with Hizballah. This is not only or mainly to do with the transfer of weapons systems to the Lebanese Shia jihadis.
One must observe and study the style of war that Iran has conducted in Syria and Iraq over the last half decade to grasp this essential point. In both contexts, with no official Iranian declaration of war, a coalition of Teheran-aligned militias have acted in a coordinated fashion on behalf of Iranian allies and interests. This coalition of forces has played a crucial role in the survival of the Assad regime. In Iraq, a similar coalition of Iran-aligned forces played a crucial role in the fight against IS, and now constitutes the key instrument of power in that country.
At no time have the pro-Iranian forces been constricted by nominal state borders or 'national' divisions. Lebanese Hizballah personnel have played a vital role in Syria and have been present also in Iraq. Iraqi militiamen have been active in Syria. Afghan fighters were among the first to reach the Syria-Iraq border on June 9th.
Pro-Iranian forces aren't constricted by nominal borders or 'national' divisions.
There is no reason for Israeli planners to assume that a future war with Hizballah would be immune from this pattern. To reiterate, it does not require a formal declaration of war from Iran. Proxies are mobilized and deployed under the stewardship of the IRGC, but with no direct or acknowledged involvement given or demanded from Iran at any stage.
The loosely and ambiguously governed nature of these territories would serve as an advantage for the Iranian forces, perhaps providing the kind of diplomatic cover for them that the presence of the toothless Siniora government in Beirut did in 2006. Thus the tried and tested Iranian model of revolutionary warfare.
The creation of a contiguous corridor all the way from Iran to Lebanon would make possible the prosecution of such a war at an appropriate time and opportunity for Teheran, against Israel.
For this reason, the prevention of the emergence of this direct land route through eastern Syria is a direct Israeli national interest. Unfortunately, the tactical and piecemeal nature of the US response, and the apparent absence of a clearly formulated strategy to face the Iranian, Russian-supported advance may yet facilitate its creation. Perhaps a clear strategy will yet emerge. It is Trump's move.
Jonathan Spyer, a fellow at the Middle East Forum, is director of the Rubin Center for Research in International Affairs and author of The Transforming Fire: The Rise of the Israel-Islamist Conflict (Continuum, 2011).
-
NY Times has difficulty writing the name of the President who conducted the handoff:
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/15/world/middleeast/iran-iraq-iranian-power.html
Iraq After U.S. ‘Handed the Country Over’
By TIM ARANGOJULY 15, 2017
BAGHDAD — Walk into almost any market in Iraq and the shelves are filled with goods from Iran — milk, yogurt, chicken. Turn on the television and channel after channel broadcasts programs sympathetic to Iran.
A new building goes up? It is likely that the cement and bricks came from Iran. And when bored young Iraqi men take pills to get high, the illicit drugs are likely to have been smuggled across the porous Iranian border.
And that’s not even the half of it.
Across the country, Iranian-sponsored militias are hard at work establishing a corridor to move men and guns to proxy forces in Syria and Lebanon. And in the halls of power in Baghdad, even the most senior Iraqi cabinet officials have been blessed, or bounced out, by Iran’s leadership.
When the United States invaded Iraq 14 years ago to topple Saddam Hussein, it saw Iraq as a potential cornerstone of a democratic and Western-facing Middle East, and vast amounts of blood and treasure — about 4,500 American lives lost, more than $1 trillion spent — were poured into the cause.
Tehran’s Turn
Articles in this series examine Iran’s growing regional influence.
From Day 1, Iran saw something else: a chance to make a client state of Iraq, a former enemy against which it fought a war in the 1980s so brutal, with chemical weapons and trench warfare, that historians look to World War I for analogies. If it succeeded, Iraq would never again pose a threat, and it could serve as a jumping-off point to spread Iranian influence around the region.
In that contest, Iran won, and the United States lost.
Over the past three years, Americans have focused on the battle against the Islamic State in Iraq, returning more than 5,000 troops to the country and helping to force the militants out of Iraq’s second-largest city, Mosul.
But Iran never lost sight of its mission: to dominate its neighbor so thoroughly that Iraq could never again endanger it militarily, and to use the country to effectively control a corridor from Tehran to the Mediterranean.
“Iranian influence is dominant,” said Hoshyar Zebari, who was ousted last year as finance minister because, he said, Iran distrusted his links to the United States. “It is paramount.”
The country’s dominance over Iraq has heightened sectarian tensions around the region, with Sunni states, and American allies, like Saudi Arabia mobilizing to oppose Iranian expansionism. But Iraq is only part of Iran’s expansion project; it has also used soft and hard power to extend its influence in Lebanon, Syria, Yemen and Afghanistan, and throughout the region.
Iran is a Shiite state, and Iraq, a Shiite majority country, was ruled by an elite Sunni minority before the American invasion. The roots of the schism between Sunnis and Shiites, going back almost 1,400 years, lie in differences over the rightful leaders of Islam after the death of the Prophet Muhammad. But these days, it is about geopolitics as much as religion, with the divide expressed by different states that are adversaries, led by Saudi Arabia on one side and Iran on the other.
Iran’s influence in Iraq is not just ascendant, but diverse, projecting into military, political, economic and cultural affairs.
At some border posts in the south, Iraqi sovereignty is an afterthought. Busloads of young militia recruits cross into Iran without so much as a document check. They receive military training and are then flown to Syria, where they fight under the command of Iranian officers in defense of the Syrian president, Bashar al-Assad.
Passing in the other direction, truck drivers pump Iranian products — food, household goods, illicit drugs — into what has become a vital and captive market.
Iran tips the scales to its favor in every area of commerce. In the city of Najaf, it even picks up the trash, after the provincial council there awarded a municipal contract to a private Iranian company. One member of the council, Zuhair al-Jibouri, resorted to a now-common Iraqi aphorism: “We import apples from Iran so we can give them away to Iranian pilgrims.”
Politically, Iran has a large number of allies in Iraq’s Parliament who can help secure its goals. And its influence over the choice of interior minister, through a militia and political group the Iranians built up in the 1980s to oppose Mr. Hussein, has given it substantial control over that ministry and the federal police.
Perhaps most crucial, Parliament passed a law last year that effectively made the constellation of Shiite militias a permanent fixture of Iraq’s security forces. This ensures Iraqi funding for the groups while effectively maintaining Iran’s control over some of the most powerful units.
Now, with new parliamentary elections on the horizon, Shiite militias have begun organizing themselves politically for a contest that could secure even more dominance for Iran over Iraq’s political system.
To gain advantage on the airwaves, new television channels set up with Iranian money and linked to Shiite militias broadcast news coverage portraying Iran as Iraq’s protector and the United States as a devious interloper.
Partly in an effort to contain Iran, the United States has indicated that it will keep troops behind in Iraq after the battle against the Islamic State. American diplomats have worked to emphasize the government security forces’ role in the fighting, and to shore up a prime minister, Haider al-Abadi, who has seemed more open to the United States than to Iran.
But after the United States’ abrupt withdrawal of troops in 2011, American constancy is still in question here — a broad failure of American foreign policy, with responsibility shared across three administrations.
Iran has been playing a deeper game, parlaying extensive religious ties with Iraq’s Shiite majority and a much wider network of local allies, as it makes the case that it is Iraq’s only reliable defender.
A Road to the Sea
Iran’s great project in eastern Iraq may not look like much: a 15-mile stretch of dusty road, mostly gravel, through desert and scrub near the border in Diyala Province.
But it is an important new leg of Iran’s path through Iraq to Syria, and what it carries — Shiite militiamen, Iranian delegations, trade goods and military supplies — is its most valuable feature.
It is a piece of what analysts and Iranian officials say is Iran’s most pressing ambition: to exploit the chaos of the region to project influence across Iraq and beyond. Eventually, analysts say, Iran could use the corridor, established on the ground through militias under its control, to ship weapons and supplies to proxies in Syria, where Iran is an important backer of Mr. Assad, and to Lebanon and its ally Hezbollah.
At the border to the east is a new crossing built and secured by Iran. Like the relationship between the two countries, it is lopsided.
The checkpoint’s daily traffic includes up to 200 Iranian trucks, carrying fruit and yogurt, concrete and bricks, into Iraq. In the offices of Iraqi border guards, the candies and soda offered to guests come from Iran.
No loaded trucks go the other way.
“Iraq doesn’t have anything to offer Iran,” Vahid Gachi, the Iranian official in charge of the crossing, said in an interview in his office, as lines of tractor-trailers poured into Iraq. “Except for oil, Iraq relies on Iran for everything.”
The border post is also a critical transit point for Iran’s military leaders to send weapons and other supplies to proxies fighting the Islamic State in Iraq.
After the Islamic State, also known as ISIS, ISIL or Daesh, swept across Diyala and neighboring areas in 2014, Iran made clearing the province, a diverse area of Sunnis and Shiites, a priority.
It marshaled a huge force of Shiite militias, many trained in Iran and advised on the ground by Iranian officials. After a quick victory, Iranians and their militia allies set about securing their next interests here: marginalizing the province’s Sunni minority and securing a path to Syria. Iran has fought aggressively to keep its ally Mr. Assad in power in order to retain land access to its most important spinoff in the region, Hezbollah, the military and political force that dominates Lebanon and threatens Israel.
A word from Maj. Gen. Qassim Suleimani, Iran’s powerful spymaster, sent an army of local Iraqi contractors scrambling, lining up trucks and bulldozers to help build the road, free of charge. Militiamen loyal to Iran were ordered to secure the site.
Uday al-Khadran, the Shiite mayor of Khalis District in Diyala, is a member of the Badr Organization, an Iraqi political party and militia established by Tehran in the 1980s to fight against Mr. Hussein during the Iran-Iraq war.
On an afternoon earlier this year, he spread a map across his desk and proudly discussed how he helped build the road, which he said was ordered by General Suleimani, the commander of the Quds Force, the branch of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps responsible for foreign operations. General Suleimani secretly directed Iran’s policy in Iraq after the American invasion in 2003, and was responsible for the deaths of hundreds of American soldiers in attacks carried out by militias under his control.
“I love Qassim Suleimani more than my children,” he said.
Mr. Khadran said the general’s new road would eventually be a shortcut for religious pilgrims from Iran to reach Samarra, Iraq, the location of an important shrine.
But he also acknowledged the route’s greater strategic significance as part of a corridor secured by Iranian proxies that extends across central and northern Iraq. The connecting series of roads skirts the western city of Mosul and stretches on to Tal Afar, an Islamic State-controlled city where Iranian-backed militias and Iranian advisers have set up a base at an airstrip on the outskirts.
“Diyala is the passage to Syria and Lebanon, and this is very important to Iran,” said Ali al-Daini, the Sunni chairman of the provincial council there.
Closer to Syria, Iranian-allied militias moved west of Mosul as the battle against the Islamic State unfolded there in recent months. The militias captured the town of Baaj, and then proceeded to the Syrian border, putting Iran on the cusp of completing its corridor.
Back east, in Diyala, Mr. Daini said he had been powerless to halt what he described as Iran’s dominance in the province.
When Mr. Daini goes to work, he said, he has to walk by posters of Iran’s revolutionary leader, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, outside the council building.
Iran’s militias in the province have been accused of widespread sectarian cleansing, pushing Sunnis from their homes to establish Shiite dominance and create a buffer zone on its border. The Islamic State was beaten in Diyala more than two years ago, but thousands of Sunni families still fill squalid camps, unable to return home.
Now, Diyala has become a showcase for how Iran views Shiite ascendancy as critical to its geopolitical goals.
“Iran is smarter than America,” said Nijat al-Taie, a Sunni member of the provincial council and an outspoken critic of Iran, which she calls the instigator of several assassination attempts against her. “They achieved their goals on the ground. America didn’t protect Iraq. They just toppled the regime and handed the country over to Iran.”
The Business of Influence
The lives of General Suleimani and other senior leaders in Tehran were shaped by the prolonged war with Iraq in the 1980s. The conflict left hundreds of thousands dead on both sides, and General Suleimani spent much of the war at the front, swiftly rising in rank as so many officers were killed.
“The Iran-Iraq war was the formative experience for all of Iran’s leaders,” said Ali Vaez, an Iran analyst at the International Crisis Group, a conflict resolution organization. “From Suleimani all the way down. It was their ‘never again’ moment.”
A border dispute over the Shatt al Arab waterway that was a factor in the hostilities has still not been resolved, and the legacy of the war’s brutality has influenced the Iranian government ever since, from its pursuit of nuclear weapons to its policy in Iraq.
“This is a permanent scar in their mind,” said Mowaffak al-Rubaie, a lawmaker and former national security adviser. “They are obsessed with Baathism, Saddam and the Iran-Iraq war.”
More than anything else, analysts say, it is the scarring legacy of that war that has driven Iranian ambitions to dominate Iraq.
Particularly in southern Iraq, where the population is mostly Shiite, signs of Iranian influence are everywhere.
Iranian-backed militias are the defenders of the Shiite shrines in the cities of Najaf and Karbala that drive trade and tourism. In local councils, Iranian-backed political parties have solid majorities, and campaign materials stress relationships with Shiite saints and Iranian clerics.
If the Iraqi government were stronger, said Mustaq al-Abady, a businessman from just outside Najaf, “then maybe we could open our factories instead of going to Iran.” He said his warehouse was crowded with Iranian imports because his government had done nothing to promote a private sector, police its borders or enforce customs duties.
Raad Fadhil al-Alwani, a merchant in Hilla, another southern city, imports cleaning supplies and floor tiles from Iran. He slaps “Made in Iraq” labels in Arabic on bottles of detergent, but the reality is that he owns a factory in Iran because labor is cheaper there.
“I feel like I am destroying the economy of Iraq,” he said. But he insists that Iraqi politicians, by deferring to Iranian pressure and refusing to support local industry, have made it hard to do anything else.
Najaf attracts millions of Iranian pilgrims each year visiting the golden-domed shrine of Imam Ali, the first Shiite imam. Iranian construction workers — many of whom are viewed as Iranian spies by Iraqi officials — have also flocked to the city to renovate the shrine and build hotels.
In Babil Province, according to local officials, militia leaders have taken over a government project to set up security cameras along strategic roads. The project had been granted to a Chinese company before the militias intervened, and now the army and the local police have been sidelined from it, said Muqdad Omran, an Iraqi Army captain in the area.
Iran’s pre-eminence in the Iraqi south has not come without resentment. Iraqi Shiites share a faith with Iran, but they also hold close their other identities as Iraqis and Arabs.
“Iraq belongs to the Arab League, not to Iran,” said Sheikh Fadhil al-Bidayri, a cleric at the religious seminary in Najaf. “Shiites are a majority in Iraq, but a minority in the world. As long as the Iranian government is controlling the Iraqi government, we don’t have a chance.”
In this region where the Islamic State’s military threat has never encroached, Iran’s security concerns are mostly being addressed by economic manipulation, Iraqi officials say. Trade in the south is often financed by Iran with credit, and incentives are offered to Iraqi traders to keep their cash in Iranian banks.
Baghdad’s banks play a role, too, as the financial anchors for Iraqi front companies used by Iran to gain access to dollars that can then finance the country’s broader geopolitical aims, said Entifadh Qanbar, a former aide to the Iraqi politician Ahmad Chalabi, who died in 2015.
“It’s very important for the Iranians to maintain corruption in Iraq,” he said.
The Militias’ Long Arm
For decades, Iran smuggled guns and bomb-making supplies through the vast swamps of southern Iraq. And young men were brought back and forth across the border, from one safe house to another — recruits going to Iran for training, and then back to Iraq to fight. At first the enemy was Mr. Hussein; later, it was the Americans.
Today, agents of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards openly recruit fighters in the Shiite-majority cities of southern Iraq. Buses filled with recruits easily pass border posts that officials say are essentially controlled by Iran — through its proxies on the Iraqi side, and its own border guards on the other.
While Iran has built up militias to fight against the Islamic State in Iraq, it has also mobilized an army of disaffected young Shiite Iraqi men to fight on its behalf in Syria.
Mohammad Kadhim, 31, is one of those foot soldiers for Iran, having served three tours in Syria. The recruiting pitch, he said, is mostly based in faith, to defend Shiite shrines in Syria. But Mr. Kadhim said he and his friends signed up more out of a need for jobs.
“I was just looking for money,” he said. “The majority of the youth I met fighting in Syria do it for the money.”
He signed up with a Revolutionary Guards recruiter in Najaf, and then was bused through southern Iraq and into Iran, where he underwent military training near Tehran.
There, he said, Iranian officers delivered speeches invoking the martyrdom of Imam Hussein, the revered seventh-century Shiite figure whose death at the hands of a powerful Sunni army became the event around which Shiite spirituality would revolve. The same enemies of the Shiites who killed the imam are now in Syria and Iraq, the officers told the men.
After traveling to Iran, Mr. Kadhim came home for a break and then was shipped to Syria, where Hezbollah operatives trained him in sniper tactics.
Iran’s emphasis on defending the Shiite faith has led some here to conclude that its ultimate goal is to bring about an Iranian-style theocracy in Iraq. But there is a persistent sense that it just would not work in Iraq, which has a much larger native Sunni population and tradition, and Iraq’s clerics in Najaf, including Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, the world’s pre-eminent Shiite spiritual leader, oppose the Iranian system.
But Iran is taking steps to translate militia power into political power, much as it did with Hezbollah in Lebanon, and militia leaders have begun political organizing before next year’s parliamentary elections.
In April, Qais al-Khazali, a Shiite militia leader, delivered a speech to an audience of Iraqi college students, railing against the United States and the nefarious plotting of Turkey and Saudi Arabia. Then, a poet who was part of Mr. Khazali’s entourage stood up and began praising General Suleimani.
For the students, that was the last straw. Chants of “Iran out! Iran out!” began. Scuffles broke out between students and Mr. Khazali’s bodyguards, who fired their rifles into the air just outside the building.
“The thing that really provoked us was the poet,” said Mustafa Kamal, a student at the University of al-Qadisiya in Diwaniya, in southern Iraq, who participated in the protest.
Mr. Kamal and his fellow students quickly learned how dangerous it could be to stand up to Iran these days.
First, militiamen began threatening to haul them off. Then media outlets linked to the militias went after them, posting their pictures and calling them Baathists and enemies of Shiites. When a mysterious car appeared near Mr. Kamal’s house, his mother panicked that militiamen were coming for her son.
Then, finally, Mr. Kamal, a law student, and three of his friends received notices from the school saying they had been suspended for a year.
“We thought we had only one hope, the university,” he said. “And then Iran also interfered there.”
Mr. Khazali, whose political and militia organization, Asaib Ahl al-Haq, is deeply connected with Iran, has been on a speaking tour on campuses across Iraq as part of an effort to organize political support for next year’s national election. This has raised fears that Iran is trying not only to deepen its influence within Iraqi education, but also to transform militias into outright political and social organizations, much as it did with Hezbollah in Lebanon.
“It’s another type of Iranian infiltration and the expansion of Iran’s influence,” said Beriwan Khailany, a lawmaker and member of Parliament’s higher-education committee. “Iran wants to control the youth, and to teach them the Iranian beliefs, through Iraqis who are loyal to Iran.”
When a group of Qatari falcon hunters, “including members of the royal family, were kidnapped in 2015 while on safari in the southern deserts of Iraq, Qatar called Iran and its militia allies — not the central government in Baghdad.
For Mr. Abadi, the prime minister, the episode was an embarrassing demonstration of his government’s weakness at the hands of Iran, whose proxy militia Kataibb Hezbollah was believed to be behind the kidnapping.
So when the hostage negotiations were about to end, Mr. Abadi pushed back.
Around noon on a day in April, a government jet from Qatar landed in Baghdad, carrying a delegation of diplomats and 500 million euros stuffed into 23 black boxes.
The hunters were soon on their way home, but the ransom did not go to the Iranian-backed militiamen who had abducted the Qataris; the cash ended up in a central bank vault in Baghdad.
The seizure of the money had been ordered by Mr. Abadi, who was furious at the prospect of militias, and their Iranian and Hezbollah benefactors, being paid so richly right under the Iraqi government’s nose.
“Hundreds of millions to armed groups?” Mr. Abadi said in a public rant. “Is this acceptable?”
In Iraq, the kidnapping episode was seen as a violation of the country’s sovereignty and emblematic of Iran’s suffocating power over the Iraqi state.
In a post on Twitter, Mr. Zebari, the former finance minister, who was previously foreign minister, called the episode a “travesty.”
Mr. Zebari knows firsthand the power of Iran over the Iraqi state.
Last year, he said, he was ousted as finance minister because Iran perceived him as being too close to the United States. The account was verified by a member of Parliament who was involved in the removal of Mr. Zebari, and who spoke on the condition of anonymity to avoid angering Iran.
Mr. Zebari, who recounted the events in an interview from his mountainside mansion in northern Iraq, said that when President Barack Obama met with Mr. Abadi last September at the United Nations, the American leader personally lobbied to save Mr. Zebari’s job. Even that was not enough.
Mr. Abadi now finds himself in a difficult position. If he makes any move that can be seen as confrontational toward Iran, or as positioning himself closer to the United States, it could place a cloud over his political future.
“He had two options: to be with the Americans or with the Iranians,” said Izzat Shahbander, a prominent Iraqi Shiite leader who once lived in exile in Iran while Mr. Hussein was in power. “And he chose to be with the Americans.”
Mr. Abadi, who took office in 2014 with the support of both the United States and Iran, has seemed more emboldened to push back against Iranian pressure since President Trump took office.
In addition to seizing the ransom money, he has promoted an ambitious project for an American company to secure the highway from Baghdad to Amman, Jordan, which Iran has opposed. He has also begun discussing with the United States the terms of a deal to keep American forces behind after the Islamic State is defeated.
Some are seeing an American troop commitment as a chance to revisit the 2011 withdrawal of United States forces that seemingly opened a door for Iran.
When American officials in Iraq began the slow wind-down of the military mission there, in 2009, some diplomats in Baghdad were cautiously celebrating one achievement: Iran seemed to be on its heels, its influence in the country waning.
“Over the last year, Iran has lost the strategic initiative in Iraq,” one diplomat wrote in a cable, later released by WikiLeaks.
But other cables sent warnings back to Washington that were frequently voiced by Iraqi officials they spoke to: that if the Americans left, then Iran would fill the vacuum.
Ryan C. Crocker, the American ambassador in Iraq from 2007 to 2009, said that if the United States left again after the Islamic State was defeated, “it would be effectively just giving the Iranians a free rein.”
But many Iraqis say the Iranians already have free rein. And while the Trump administration has indicated that it will pay closer attention to Iraq as a means to counter Iran, the question is whether it is too late. more at link above
-
Very glad you posted this while I was out of town.
I too noted the flagrant failure to name Obama.
I also noted the notion of the primal importance for Iranians of the Iraq War. This seems a very fair point to me and one that I had not considered. Note too the US's very active role in enabling this war-- in which one million died? Yes we were doing this in part as payback for seizing our embassy, but nonetheless the point is worth noting.
-
We owe Iran a good nuking, IMHO.
-
yea, sure. I believe it. NK and Iran will become nuclear with ICBMs. Sunnis will do the same for MAD doctrine among the Arabs-Persians.
http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2017/07/17/537793465/state-department-certifies-irans-compliance-with-nuclear-deal
-
Iran may well be technically complying; the deal does not stop it from developing ICBMs or going nuke in ten years.
-
The United States and Russia have reached a cease-fire agreement in Syria, but the ramifications of the deal will almost certainly be less drastic than many would like. The July 7 accord covers the southwestern Syrian provinces of Quneitra, Daraa and Sweida, and marks a new level of cooperation between the United States and Russia in Syria. Prior to their bargain, coordination had been limited to deconfliction mechanisms aimed at preventing an accidental skirmish between the U.S.-led coalition and Russian-backed forces in the country.
The White House has made it clear that it hopes to use the agreement as a way to breathe new life into negotiations with the Kremlin on settling the ongoing conflict. But the end of the civil war remains a distinctly distant prospect, especially since the new cease-fire deal already has been violated several times in the past week.
Stability, or Else
The United States' newfound willingness to work with Russia in Syria didn't come out of nowhere. As the battle — or at least, the conventional battle — against the Islamic State reaches its final phases in Iraq and Syria, Washington can no longer escape the fact that it needs to plan for the aftermath. Based on the Islamic State's emergence in Iraq after the United States left, the extremist group will likely remain a persistent insurgent force for years to come, even after its conventional battlefield defeat. Absent a comprehensive and successful effort to at least stabilize Syria, the Islamic State and other extremist groups will continue benefiting from the security vacuum and chaos in the country. Indeed, it could easily rebuild and re-emerge as a powerful force: In Syria, the Islamic State already has been able to expand its power in less critical areas of the country while its enemies were distracted with one another.
It's abundantly clear that there needs to be a comprehensive stabilization effort in Syria, but whether Washington and Moscow can work together toward that goal is not as evident. A number of past cease-fire agreements spearheaded by the United States and Russia have collapsed amid bitter recriminations and violations. And beyond the implementation of the cease-fire, there is little evidence suggesting that Russia is truly interested in the same goals in Syria as the United States. Washington sees an eventual move away from Syrian President Bashar al Assad's government and toward a less divisive transitional government as a necessary step to repair damaged relations between loyalist factions and the opposition. But Moscow seems less willing to go out of its way in pushing for the dissolution of an allied government in Damascus. Moreover, as U.S. President Donald Trump emphasized in his recent address in Poland, the United States is aiming for a political solution in Syria that limits Iran's influence and reach. Considering Moscow has worked closely with Tehran on a number of fronts in Syria, it is unlikely Russia would share that same objective.
Russia's sway over the Syrian and Iranian governments is hardly exhaustive, and both countries would likely do little more than pay lip service to any Russian initiatives they deem to be against their core interests.
Easier Said Than Done
Even if Moscow held the same goals as the United States, it is not at all clear that it could actually deliver on them. There is no doubt that Russia has significant influence over the Syrian government and its Iranian patron. This influence has grown in recent years as Russia has backed loyalist forces on the battlefield and the Syrian government in the United Nations. However, Russia's sway over the Syrian and Iranian governments is hardly exhaustive, and both countries would likely do little more than pay lip service to any Russian initiatives they deem to be against their core interests. Loyalist forces have already violated numerous Russian-backed cease-fire plans, including the four de-escalation zones set up in the January negotiations among Russia, Turkey and Iran known as the Astana Process. Loyalist troops completely ignored two of the de-escalation zones as they maintained offensive operations against rebel units in those areas.
In fact, one of these failed de-escalation zones was eventually divorced from the Astana Process and taken up in the latest U.S.-Russian agreement, which also involves two other participants: Israel and Jordan. Israel is alarmed by Iran's rising influence in Damascus, heightened support for Hezbollah and growing focus on the Golan Heights. It is therefore even more determined than the United States to curb Iran's reach in Syria. But Israel remains critical of what it perceives to be a flawed cease-fire agreement between the United States and Russia. Israel is fully aware of Iran's ambitions in the region and is not convinced that the cease-fire will last. And with the United States, Jordan and Israel unwilling or unable to station monitoring forces on the ground in Syria at this time, it will be difficult to enforce the cease-fire or hold the rebels and loyalist forces accountable for any violations.
In the best-case scenario, even if local cease-fire efforts were to succeed, the greater systemic challenge of translating them into a strategic political agreement would remain. The Iranian and Syrian governments are nowhere near ready to make concessions to set up the inclusive transitional government needed to stabilize the country. Given their battlefield edge and momentum, Tehran and Damascus will instead continue with a maximalist position that seeks to increase their territorial control. Thus the alternative to the current pace of the Syrian civil war is unlikely to mark much improvement. At best, the country will be increasingly divided and partitioned into separate zones under different armed factions — hardly the stable environment that would preclude the re-emergence of the Islamic State or other violent extremist groups.
-
yea, sure. I believe it. NK and Iran will become nuclear with ICBMs. Sunnis will do the same for MAD doctrine among the Arabs-Persians.
http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2017/07/17/537793465/state-department-certifies-irans-compliance-with-nuclear-deal
I trust gas station sushi more than this certification.
-
https://www.investigativeproject.org/6419/iran-lebanese-missile-factories-in-new-and-very
-
http://www.latimes.com/world/middleeast/la-fg-syria-chaos-2017-story.html including pictures and maps
Molly Hennessy-FiskeMolly Hennessy-FiskeContact Reporter
American-backed Syrian opposition fighters were standing watch against Islamic State militants from atop a water tower earlier this month when they were shocked to face a barrage of mortar shells — not from militants, but from the Syrian army.
“We are fighting ISIS. They are fighting ISIS. Why are they fighting us?” Raad Abdullah Hamoud, 17, said as he stood at the foot of the remote desert tower. “This is what they’re doing now. Think what they’re going to do after ISIS is gone.”
Syrian opposition fighters and their U.S. allies tried to maintain a strained detente with President Bashar Assad’s Russian-backed forces as the battle against Islamic State has shifted this month across the border from northern Iraq to eastern Syria.
But there’s an essential conflict: Many of the U.S.-backed fighters also want to overthrow Assad, who has stubbornly clung to power through six years of a civil war that has spawned a multitude of competing armed groups and drawn in forces from Russia, the United States, Iran, Iraq, Turkey and Lebanon.
As Assad’s troops gain a foothold in Dair Alzour, the crossroads of a strategic land corridor from Tehran to Beirut, U.S.-trained opposition fighters and allies nearby said they hope to take a stand with American backing, potentially drawing the U.S. into a long and costly conflict.
In recent weeks, an 80-mile stretch of the Euphrates River has served as a buffer zone — a so-called deconfliction line — between U.S.-backed opposition fighters and the Syrian government.
To the west of the river, some of Assad’s estimated 40,000 soldiers are fighting with support from allied militias, Russia and Iran. To the east, some of the 55,000 opposition forces are fighting with help from U.S. forces. The U.S.-backed coalition said it has about 500 troops in Syria, but experts estimate that has grown to include up to 1,500 Marines, Army Rangers and special forces, plus 1,000 contractors. U.S.-backed forces have largely focused on recapturing Islamic State’s self-declared capital, Raqqah, while Assad’s forces and allies advanced on the militant stronghold of Dair Alzour to the southeast.
“The coalition mission is to defeat ISIS,” the coalition said. “We have no fight with Syrian or pro-regime forces as long as all forces adhere to the agreed-upon deconfliction line.”
But the Syrian government and its supporters have already made several forays across the buffer zone. Last month, a Syrian fighter jet clashed with U.S.-backed forces south of Raqqah. Farther south, near the border with Jordan and Iraq, what appeared to be an Iranian-made drone attacked American advisers training Syrian opposition forces at a U.S. base in Tanf. That clash came soon after U.S. warplanes struck Iranian-backed Shiite militias approaching the base for the third time in as many weeks.
A U.S. coalition spokesman declined to say last week whether it would back Syrian opposition fighters should they confront Assad’s forces.
“Future operations depend on many different factors and we will not speculate on what the coalition or partner forces may do in the future,” the statement said.
Complicating matters is the instability of the Syrian opposition’s alliance of multiethnic militias that includes Assyrian, Arab and Kurdish forces, among others. Most are fighting as part of the Syrian Democratic Forces, an umbrella group created with help from the Pentagon, but each has its own agenda for what it will do once the militants’ “caliphate” falls.
The largest opposition militia is the Kurdish People’s Protection Units, or YPG, with about 25,000 troops, including Hamoud’s unit at the water tower. The militia’s political wing has been governing northeastern Syria since Assad’s government withdrew about four years ago, adopting the Marxist-inspired philosophy of Abdullah “Apo” Ocalan, whose image adorns not just YPG command posts but billboards and local squares.
Ocalan’s leadership could prove problematic for the U.S., particularly in its relations with Turkey. He was convicted of treason and sentenced to life in prison, and his Kurdistan Workers Party, or PKK, is considered a terrorist group by both Turkey and the U.S.
Earlier this month, YPG military leaders on the front lines said eastern Syria should govern itself according to Ocalan’s principles, not be beholden to Turkey or Assad.
“The regime allies are trying to extend, to control as much as they can,” said YPG commander Daman Frat from his post north of Dair Alzour. “We need to coordinate with the coalition to do an advance before the regime comes.”
He compared the situation outside Dair Alzour to Syria’s embattled northwestern border region of Afrin, where Turkey deployed added troops this month and shelled Kurdish fighters as tensions increased. The head of the Syrian YPG said the buildup amounted to a “declaration of war” and warned of coming clashes.
Confused by all those groups fighting in Syria? We break it down with arm patches
“If the coalition doesn’t help us now, the same thing will happen here,” Frat said — this time with the Syrian army, not Turkish, forces.
Outside his compound, a convoy of what appeared to be U.S. forces passed, headed south toward the front line. Marine convoys were visible farther north, as were encampments behind dirt berms that YPG officials identified as U.S. bases. The U.S. has at least 10 bases across northern Syria, the Turkish state news agency Anadalou reported last week.
U.S. officials declined requests to accompany or interview those forces.
Warriors, dreamers and just plain crazy: U.S. civilian volunteers fighting Islamic State in Syria »
One Kurdish commander, Orkesh Serdam, has been encouraged to see the U.S. expanding its makeshift bases in eastern Syria, but said that doesn’t mean America is willing to take on Assad’s troops.
“Now when we are fighting, we don’t put all our hope in the Americans. We always say, ‘Just imagine you don’t have airstrikes,’” said Serdam, 27.
Arab militia commanders in the Syrian Democratic Forces said they also want to recapture Dair Alzour, but are unsure if they can count on the U.S. to support them.
Members of an affiliated group, the 10,000-strong Army of the Revolutionaries militia, traveled east from Idlib province this month as a U.S.-Russian negotiated ceasefire was declared there. They had come to fight in Raqqah and, they hoped, Dair Alzour. They complained the U.S. coalition had failed to provide them with needed equipment, including armored cars and night vision goggles.
Why, the fighters asked, was the U.S. helping Iranian-affiliated Popular Mobilization Forces (also known as Hashd al Shabi) across the border in Mosul, Iraq, and would those militias ultimately help Assad — also aligned with Iran — recapture Dair Alzour?
“We all know that Hashd al Shabi are Iranian militias, they are under the control of Iran. And the U.S. is training them,” complained one of the fighters, Abu Ghayas, 45.
The Free Syrian Army, another opposition militia, already has about 2,500 forces north of Dair Alzour, according to a spokesman leading about 1,000 of the fighters in Raqqah who identified himself as Abu Imad, the nickname he’s known by on the battlefield. They are waiting to see if the battle becomes a proxy war.
“The future of Syria is in the hands of America and Russia, like a card game,” he said as he sat surrounded by dozens of fighters armed with rifles and automatic weapons at their post in an abandoned house east of the embattled city earlier this month.
Abu Imad, 30, mentioned what he saw as encouraging signs: President Trump called Assad “an animal” in an April interview with Fox News. When Syrian forces unleashed chemical weapons on civilians in the central city of Khan Sheikhoun in April, Trump ordered swift retribution in the form of missile strikes. U.S. forces had trained some of Abu Imad’s militia fighters, and promised to train an additional 500.
He hopes they follow through soon. There has been infighting among the militias. Earlier this month, a Free Syrian Army commander squabbled with a Kurdish counterpart after withdrawing some troops from Raqqah under fire. The Kurdish commander accused them of deserting. Abu Imad insisted they had only partially withdrawn.
The Sunni Muslim militia leader saw a showdown coming in Dair Alzour, at least between Syrian militias and Assad’s forces (he insisted the opposition is largely united).
“If the regime takes Dair Alzour, they will not stop there. They will go to Raqqah and Hasakah” to the north, he said. “I want America to help us fight in Dair Alzour.”
To the west in Resafa, a remote desert village built around an ancient fortress, Zinar Kobani, the local YPG commander, also said he hopes he can count on U.S. support if his forces continue on their collision course with Assad’s army.
“It’s not part of our plan to attack the regime. But if someone comes to fight us, we will fight back,” said Kobani, 27.
For now, their red line is the water tower north of Resafa. If Assad’s forces try to pass it, closing the roughly five-mile dusty no man’s land in between, YPG troops will return fire.
They recently overheard military radio chatter suggesting an attack by Syrian forces in coming days. Soon after, Syrian troops closed the gap. So far, they haven’t tried to pass the tower.
-
Forecast Highlights
The end of a CIA program for training and equipping rebels is a strategic shift by the United States in its approach to the Syrian civil war as it looks beyond the inevitable conventional defeat of the Islamic State.
Such a shift, however, even if it leads to less violence in the short term, is unlikely to secure a stable Syria.
Syria will remain a hotbed of unrest and conflict, a situation that the Islamic State will exploit to rebuild and other extremists will use to form new militant groups.
Previous U.S. policies to influence the Syrian civil war haven't worked, or at least that's what the White House seems to believe. The Washington Post reported on July 19 that U.S. President Donald Trump decided a month ago to phase out the CIA's covert train and equip program launched in 2013 to support Syrian rebel forces opposed to the government of President Bashar al Assad. The end of the program points to a strategic shift by the United States in its approach to the Syrian civil war, acknowledging Washington's inability to force al Assad from power and its almost exclusive focus on the fight against the Islamic State over the past few years. But what happens in Syria after the militant group's inevitable conventional defeat can't be ignored. And unfortunately for the United States, no matter what it does diplomatically or militarily, even if its efforts lead to less violence in the short term, it won't secure a stable Syria.
A Not-So-Covert Covert Program
Even before the United States launched its military forces against the Islamic State, Washington has long understood that the Syrian civil war is a threat to U.S. national security interests. The conflict has weakened governance in Syria, driving refugee flows across the region and into Europe and creating a power vacuum that has been exploited by various extremist organizations such as the Islamic State, enabling them to grow in strength and plan and launch attacks throughout the region and the globe.
While the Pentagon directs the mission against the Islamic State, the covert CIA program was launched even before that as a response to the Syrian civil war conundrum. The United States, having learned from the disastrous disbandment of Iraqi government institutions shortly after the 2003 Iraq War began, didn't want to see a similar government collapse in Syria. The program was launched in the hopes of bolstering the rebels to pressure the al Assad government to make the necessary concessions that could lead to a compromise transitional government that would end the conflict.
The CIA program was also a way for the United States to exert control over its regional allies and their effort to arm the rebels. Through it, the United States could have greater leverage in coordinating with Turkey, Qatar, Jordan and Saudi Arabia, among others, on the type of weaponry being sent to Syria as well as the groups receiving the support. The program achieved some success in this regard, curtailing the transfer of problematic weaponry such as man portable air defense systems.
The covert program was initially successful. It undermined loyalist forces, particularly with shipments of anti-tank guided munitions during the 2015 Idlib campaigns that negated the Syrian military's advantage in armor. The program also bolstered the longevity of the Free Syrian Army, particularly through U.S. efforts to channel the bulk of the support to the some 80 rebel groups that passed the vetting process.
But even as the pressure was mounting on the Syrian government in 2015 (partly as a result of the CIA program's enhancement of rebel capabilities), the concessions from the Syrian government never materialized. Instead, Iran dramatically escalated its support for Damascus at the same time that Russia intervened in the conflict on the side of the loyalists. Support for the rebels, including the CIA program, simply could not compete with the backing the Syrian government received, which extended beyond equipment and funding to a significant Russian air force contingent and large numbers of Iran-directed militia forces. While Tehran and Moscow were willing to put their forces in the line for the al Assad government, the United States and its regional allies were not willing to do the same for the rebels.
What Is the U.S. Willing to Do?
Over the past two years, the United States has largely focused on the fight against the Islamic State, occasionally attempting diplomatic initiatives with Russia toward an end of the conflict that were bound to fail given the disparate goals of both sides. In the meantime, the rebels suffered another massive blow with the fall of Aleppo, a defeat that was in no small part linked to Turkey's growing desire to curb the ascendant Kurdish People's Protection Units (YPG) to the detriment of the rebel fight against the Syrian government. With odds becoming ever more precarious, the rebel landscape (particularly in Idlib) became increasingly dominated by extremist factions such as al Qaeda-linked Hayat Tahrir al-Sham.
With the conventional battle against the Islamic State reaching its last phases in Syria, it's become clear to the United States that the Syrian civil war is a conflict it can no longer largely ignore. Absent a comprehensive and successful effort to stabilize the fighting, the Islamic State or other extremist groups will continue to benefit from the chaos in the country to rebuild and potentially re-emerge as a powerful force. After all, when its enemies focused on each other in the past, the Islamic State benefited, using the security vacuum to grow and expand its power in the less critical areas of Syria.
Absent a comprehensive and successful effort to stabilize the fighting, the Islamic State or other extremist groups will continue to benefit from the chaos in the country to rebuild and potentially re-emerge as a powerful force. After all, when its enemies focused on each other in the past, the Islamic State benefited, using the security vacuum to grow and expand its power in the less critical areas of Syria.
That leaves the United States with two choices. It can either redouble its efforts to support the rebels in the hope of forcing the Syrian government to compromise, or change tack completely by giving up on the removal of the al Assad government and working with Russia on cease-fire efforts that would stabilize, if not end, the conflict.
The first option is remote. It's been abundantly clear for years that the United States has no intention of going toe to toe with Russia and Iran over Syria, and was instead absorbed almost exclusively with the fight against the Islamic State. Moreover, even if the United States again started aiding the rebels, after years of fending off Iran- and Russia-backed offensives, there is little chance that the they could pose the same threat to the Syrian government they did in 2015 and before, even with U.S. support. Facing a depleted enemy, Damascus has little incentive to compromise anyway. The second U.S. option of working with Russia in Syria at least takes advantage of Moscow's desire to engage more with the United States and to secure its achieved objectives in Syria by drawing down the conflict.
Out of the Ashes
Unfortunately for the United States, the decision to reverse its approach to the Syrian civil war won’t be painless. First, the end of the CIA program all but seals the fate of the vetted Syrian rebel groups, discarding them to be gradually overwhelmed and annihilated by extremist groups such as Hayat Tahrir al-Sham. Second, with Turkey still prioritizing the fight against the YPG and with the Qatar dispute roiling the Gulf Cooperation Council, the other allies of the rebels could prove equally ineffective in sustaining their proxies against the loyalists and extremists alike. Aside from Turkey-backed rebel forces integrated in its Operation Euphrates Shield, the Southern Front, and some isolated Free Syrian Army units, it's now all but inevitable that extremist rebel factions will dominate the Syrian rebel landscape. Idlib, the largest rebel bastion in Syria, may in time go over entirely to Hayat Tahrir al-Sham and like-minded factions.
It's also clear that the al Assad government will persevere, securing a divisive president who will continue to foment unrest in Syria for the rest of his government's reign. Indeed, the U.S.-Russia cease-fire and de-escalation zone agreements only mask the fact that the Syrian government, with Iran's backing, has no intention of surrendering any part of the country. With Damascus angling for total victory against the rebellion and with Turkey determined to find a way to cut down the Kurdish YPG, a stable Syria in the next several years is unlikely. The country will be a hotbed of unrest and conflict, which will be exploited by the Islamic State in attempts to regroup, and by other, new extremist groups emerging from the conflict.
-
Trump’s Syria Muddle
Iran and Russia won’t negotiate a cease-fire until they have to.
Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) fighters, prepare to move for a battle against the Islamic state militants, in Raqqa, northeast Syria.
Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) fighters, prepare to move for a battle against the Islamic state militants, in Raqqa, northeast Syria. Photo: Hussein Malla/Associated Press
By The Editorial Board
July 23, 2017 5:26 p.m. ET
140 COMMENTS
Does the Trump Administration have a policy in Syria worth the name? If so it isn’t obvious, and its recent decisions suggest that the White House may be willing to accommodate the Russian and Iranian goal of propping up Bashar Assad for the long term.
Last week the Administration disclosed that it has stopped assisting the anti-Assad Sunni Arab fighters whom the CIA has trained, equipped and funded since 2013. U.S. Special Operations Command chief Gen. Raymond Thomas told the Aspen Security Forum Friday that the decision to pull the plug was “based on an assessment of the nature of the program and what we are trying to accomplish and the viability of it going forward.”
That might make sense if anyone knew what the U.S. is trying to accomplish beyond ousting Islamic State from Raqqa in northern Syria. In that fight the Pentagon has resisted Russia and Iran by arming the Kurdish Syrian Democratic Forces and shooting down the Syria aircraft threatening them. Mr. Trump also launched cruise missiles to punish Mr. Assad after the strongman used chemical weapons.
The muddle is what the U.S. wants in Syria after the looming defeat of Islamic State. On that score the Trump Administration seems to want to find some agreement with Russia to stabilize Syria even if that means entrenching Mr. Assad and the Russian and Iranian military presence.
Cutting off the Sunni Free Syrian Army has long been a Russian and Iranian goal. FSA fighters in southern Syria have helped to contain the more radical Sunni opposition formerly known as the Nusra Front and they’ve fought Islamic State, but they also want to depose Mr. Assad. Not all of the Sunni rebels are as moderate as we’d like, but they aren’t al Qaeda or Islamic State. The arms cutoff caught the rebels by surprise and will make our allies in the region further doubt American reliability.
This follows the deal Mr. Trump struck at the G-20 meeting with Vladimir Putin for a cease-fire in southern Syria near its border with Israel and Jordan. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson hailed it as a potential precedent for other parts of Syria, and Administration sources advertised that Israel and Jordan were on board.
But we later learned that Israel is far more skeptical. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told a recent cabinet meeting that “Israel will welcome a genuine cease-fire in Syria, but this cease-fire must not enable the establishment of a military presence by Iran and its proxies in Syria in general and in southern Syria in particular.”
Yet by this point any territory controlled by Mr. Assad will come with Iranian military tentacles. Iran’s Hezbollah footsoldiers from Lebanon helped rescue Mr. Assad’s military, and they’d love to open another frontline against the Jewish state.
President Trump and Mr. Tillerson may want to negotiate a diplomatic settlement with Mr. Putin on Syria, and no doubt the Russian is pitching his “common front” line against radical Islamists. But CIA Director Mike Pompeo told the Aspen forum on Friday that Russia has done little fighting against Islamic State. Mr. Putin also has no incentive to give ground in Syria while his side is winning.
Russia and Iran know what they want in Syria: a reunified country under Mr. Assad’s control. Iran will then get another Arab city—Damascus—under its dominion. It will have another base from which to undermine U.S. allies in Jordan and attack Israel when the next war breaks out. Russia wants to show the world that its allies always win while keeping its air base and a Mediterranean port.
None of this is in the U.S. interest. The only way to reach an acceptable diplomatic solution is if Iran and Russia feel they are paying too large a price for their Syrian sojourn. This means more support for Mr. Assad’s enemies, not cutting them off without notice. And it means building up a Middle East coalition willing to fight Islamic State and resist Iran. The U.S. should also consider enforcing “safe zones” in Syria for anti-Assad forces.
It’s hard to imagine a stable Syria as long as Mr. Assad is in power. But if he stays, then the U.S. goal should be a divided country with safe areas for Sunnis and the Kurds who have helped liberate Raqqa. Then we can perhaps tolerate an Assad government that presides over a rump Syria dominated by Alawites. But none of that will happen if the U.S. abandons its allies to the Russia-Assad-Iran axis. And if abandoning Syria to Iran is the policy, then at least own up to it in public so everyone knows the score.
-
FWIW
http://thefederalist.com/2017/07/24/good-america-not-russia-stop-cia-funding-syrian-jihadists/
-
From May 20-- this just came to my notice:
Articles
Regions & Countries
Topics
Themes
After four months in office, U.S. President Donald Trump is beginning to hone his policy on the Middle East. As the weeks have worn on, his priorities for the region have started to emerge, and for the most part they seem to be focused on matters of security. Combating terrorist groups, including the Islamic State, and containing Iran's "destabilizing" activities in the region will be at the top of the agenda during his visit to Saudi Arabia this weekend — his first trip abroad as the leader of the free world. From there, he will travel to Israel, where he will raise the prospect of making a fresh (albeit ill-fated) attempt at reopening the country's stalled peace negotiations with Palestinian leaders.
Luckily for Trump, many of these priorities align with those of the Middle East's most prominent leaders. The president has already met with Jordanian King Abdullah II, Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, Abu Dhabi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Zayed al-Nuhayyan and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. But his ability to maintain those relationships, all while balancing their interests with his own and nudging them toward cooperation rather than conflict with one another, will shape his success in putting his regional policy into practice. And based on his decision to dust off ties with Israel and Turkey and to encourage greater coordination among the Middle East's powerful Arab states, Trump appears determined to undo the changes his predecessor wrought on Washington's strategic relationships in the region.
Shifting the Sectarian Balance
Prior to former President Barack Obama's tenure, the balance of power in the Middle East had been upset. The removal of Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein under the administration of George W. Bush left the country — and its Shiite majority — open to Iran's influence. As Washington remained distracted by growing instability in Iraq after 2003, Tehran seized the opportunity to build up its nuclear program. Iran was then able to leverage its newfound capabilities to pull the United States into negotiations, demanding that Washington recognize Tehran's prominence in the region.
By the time Obama entered office in 2009, pressure was mounting to ease back on military operations overseas. Overextended and hoping to shift its attention to other emerging foreign policy priorities, such as growing tension with Russia and a much-touted "pivot to Asia," the administration worked to minimize the risk of clashing with Iran, particularly in the critical Strait of Hormuz. After much haggling and a change of leadership in Tehran, the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) was developed. Of course, Washington wasn't the only party that needed the nuclear deal; Tehran, too, hoped it would lessen the chance of war with the United States and allow it to concentrate on defending its interests in the region. After all, the Middle East's Sunni powers had begun to push back on Iran's attempts to meddle in Iraq, Lebanon, Bahrain and Yemen. The Iranian economy had also begun to founder under the weight of sanctions related to its nuclear program, and lifting them became a top priority.
Trump assumed the presidency on the one-year anniversary of the nuclear deal's implementation. By then, the JCPOA had become a policy fixture that neither the Iranian government nor the West intended to upend. And from a strategic perspective, the United States has little to gain from walking away from the deal and ramping up the risk of conflict once more. It's no surprise, then, that Trump is trying to rein in an increasingly unrestrained Iran by bolstering its Sunni rivals in the region, rather than by scrapping the nuclear agreement outright.
Adjusting the regional balance of power is not without its own risks, however. Cozying up to Iran's fiercest competitors will doubtless ratchet up tension between Washington and Tehran — a relationship that has already been visibly strained since the start of Trump's presidency. And in a region where inertia often supersedes intention, there will be limits to the White House's success in keeping Iran in check.
Aligning Against Iran
The Trump administration's distrust of Iran has been on full display from the start. The White House has openly expressed concerns about Iranian-funded Shiite militias in Iraq, Iranian-equipped militants in Yemen and Bahrain, Iranian-backed fighters in Syria clashing with U.S. allies, and Iranian-linked Palestinian groups in Gaza threatening to attack Israel. When Washington looks at the Middle Eastern instability, it often sees Tehran at its center.
Despite the steady finger-pointing, though, Trump has approached his relationship with Iran more cautiously than his campaign pledge to rescind the JCPOA might suggest. While the president could still make good on that promise if Tehran chooses to resume the development of its nuclear program — and reneging on the deal first would almost certainly encourage that — he will likely seek to contain Iran in other ways. Chief among them will be combating militias throughout the region that Iran supports and slapping new sanctions on Iranian entities for human rights violations.
The United States will also look to crack down on Iran by targeting designated terrorist groups throughout the Middle East. Operationally, Washington's counterterrorism efforts won't mark a significant departure from Obama-era policies but would instead be an augmentation of them. This has already become clear in Trump's approach to fighting the Islamic State: Military operations to retake Mosul and Raqqa from the jihadist group have followed the blueprints laid out by his predecessor. Trump's White House has, however, granted additional decision-making power in Iraq and Syria to the Pentagon and has put more pressure on al Qaeda in Yemen.
There is a more notable strategic difference in the Trump and Obama policies. The current president's hard-line stance on Iran has created more room for the United States to call on its Sunni allies — and Tehran's adversaries — for help. Over the past few months, the White House has pushed its Middle Eastern partners, including Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Egypt and Jordan, to step up their roles in the ongoing fight against the Islamic State. Of course, Obama endeavored to do the same, but he lacked the common cause that Trump's renewed hostility toward Iran has created between its Sunni rivals and the U.S. administration. As Washington's ties with these states have warmed, they have proved more willing to coordinate with the United States.
Some of these allies, such as Saudi Arabia, have even positioned themselves to lead the fight against terrorism in the region — and promote their own Sunni allies in the process. Trump's presence at a Saudi-led counterterrorism summit this weekend will signal the White House's trust in these states to shape the dynamics of their own neighborhood. To that end, the administration has also encouraged the formation of a NATO-like structure among Sunni Arab states, echoing proposals Riyadh has already floated in hopes of tamping down on Iranian meddling in its backyard. Trump, who arrives in the Saudi capital today, is expected to oversee the signing of $100 billion in deals for U.S. defense firms to supply the Saudis with a variety of weapons. That would come just days after Saudi Arabia created its own state-owned defense company.
Though initiatives such as the Sunni anti-terrorism alliance will no doubt encounter familiar problems with cooperation caused by a lack of trust among Arab states, Saudi Arabia and Turkey have already signaled their willingness to work with the United States against the Islamic State and Iran. Other Sunni states, including Jordan and Egypt, have shown their commitment to regional counterterrorism efforts as well, in large part through their participation and deep military ties with the United States.
Amman and Cairo will also be critical partners to Washington on another pressing Middle Eastern issue: maintaining a balance of power between Arab states and Israel. Both have firmly rejected any interference in the political status of Jerusalem and have continued to support a two-state solution to Israeli and Palestinian sovereignty. Egypt, for its part, also stands as an example of the Trump administration's early diplomatic successes. After a year of tension between Cairo and Riyadh, Washington was able to cajole the two into mending ties. Though no amount of wheedling will persuade Cairo to abandon its position of neutrality and send troops to aid the Saudi-led coalition in Yemen, the presence of a military power of Egypt's caliber in Saudi Arabia's counterterrorism campaign would lend it added weight. The United States is also rumored to have mediated a reconciliation between Egypt and Saudi Arabia in their long-standing dispute over two Red Sea islands and has encouraged Riyadh to resume sending energy supplies to Cairo.
Downplaying Human Rights and Aid
With the new administration in Washington have come other small shifts in policy that will ease tension in some of its Middle Eastern relationships. Chief among them is the lower priority placed on human rights, state-building and the promotion of democracy. Trump, for instance, is wary of being bogged down in Libya's political quagmire, despite calls for greater U.S. involvement by key allies such as Italy. Meanwhile, the president called his Turkish counterpart, Erdogan, to congratulate him two days after Turkey held a constitutional referendum granting the leader greater power — a vote many of the United States' European partners have questioned as being neither free nor fair. Trump's attempt to set a positive tone with Ankara could create room for greater cooperation in the future, though it will not help bridge the divide on some issues, such as Washington's support for Kurdish fighters in Syria.
The White House's decision to quietly lift human rights restrictions on arms sales to Bahrain will likewise smooth its historically bumpy relationship with Manama. The same can be said of Trump's unequivocal praise of al-Sisi, whose government has grown tired of being chastised for human rights abuses in the wake of the Arab Spring. But the White House's outreach hasn't been warmly received by every Middle Eastern state. The administration's emphasis on conflict above all else has shone through clearly in its proposals for slashing foreign aid. The proposed cuts in assistance offered by the State Department and the U.S. Agency for International Development would deal a heavy blow to the economies of many U.S. partners in the Middle East, including Jordan and Egypt. (The two are facing possible cuts of 22 percent and 47 percent, respectively, in Economic Support Fund money.) Countries deeply threatened by the Islamic State, on the other hand, are not on the list of suggested cutbacks. Though this list is just a proposal, it communicates the importance Trump has placed on targeting terrorist groups — at the expense of state building and economic development. And if the president follows through with his plan for belt-tightening, it will not go over well with the countries that are poised to lose funding.
Pursuing an Elusive Peace
Ironically, the partnership Trump's administration has touted as the most important in the Middle East — that with Israel — may also be the least fruitful. Aware of the security risks that Israel's recent assertiveness poses, the White House has adopted a more neutral position on Jewish settlement building in the West Bank. And though Washington has hinted at its intention to relocate the U.S. Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem — a controversial move sure to trigger international outcry — the administration has said it will not announce the measure during Trump's trip to Israel on May 22-23.
The United States has indicated that it wants its Arab state allies to help bring Palestinian political parties to the table to negotiate a long-elusive peace deal with Israel. But moving its embassy to Jerusalem would risk shuttering the talks before they even begin and alienating countries with sizable Palestinian populations, like Egypt and Jordan. These states would then be forced to choose between appeasing their restive citizens and acquiescing to Washington's demand for their support in pursuing peace talks. Already facing instability at home, Jordan and Egypt may well choose internal calm over their external ally.
Relying on regional powers to corral feuding Palestinian factions, moreover, hasn't proved to be an effective path toward peace in the past. In fact, divisions within the parties on either side of the talks have only deepened over the past few years. Faced with a polarized ruling coalition in Israel and a fragmented leadership in the Palestinian territories, it is clear that finding a peace deal acceptable to all will be the most difficult goal to achieve among those at the top of Trump's regional agenda. And like many U.S. leaders gone before, he may not be able to surmount the many obstacles to peace that exist in the Middle East.
-
https://sofrep.com/86353/dod-sockpuppeting-losing-game-convinces-no-one/
-
http://www.oann.com/kurdish-government-officials-meet-with-trump-administration-ahead-of-independence-vote/
-
Writing for Powerline, David Horowitz has this about right.
http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2017/07/david-horowitz-why-the-middle-east-is-a-disaster.php
POSTED ON JULY 30, 2017 BY JOHN HINDERAKER IN MIDDLE EAST, OBAMA FOREIGN POLICY
DAVID HOROWITZ: WHY THE MIDDLE EAST IS A DISASTER
During the eight years of the Obama administration, half a million Christians, Yazidis and Muslims were slaughtered in the Middle East by ISIS and other Islamic jihadists, in a genocidal campaign waged in the name of Islam and its God. Twenty million others were driven into exile by these same jihadist forces. Libya and Yemen became terrorist states. America – once the dominant foreign power and anti-jihadist presence in the region – was replaced by Russia, an ally of the monster regimes in Syria and Iran, and their terrorist proxies. Under the patronage of the Obama administration, Iran – the largest and most dangerous terrorist state, with the blood of thousands of Americans on its hands – emerged from its isolation as a pariah state to re-enter the community of nations and become the region’s dominant power, arming and directing its terrorist proxies in Lebanon, Syria, Gaza and Yemen.
These disasters are a direct consequence of the policies of appeasement and retreat of the Obama administration. Beyond that, they are a predictable result of the Democratic Party’s long-standing resistance to the so-called war on terror, and its sabotage of George Bush’s efforts to enforce 17 UN Security Council resolutions in Iraq, aimed at maintaining international order and peace in the Middle East.
In fact, the primary cause of the disasters in the Middle East is the Democratic Party’s sabotage of the War in Iraq. Democrats first voted to authorize the armed overthrow of Iraq’s terror regime but within three months of its inception reversed their position 180 degrees and declared the war “immoral, illegal & unnecessary.” The reason for the Democrats’ reversal on the war had nothing to do with the war itself or the so-called absence of weapons of mass destruction, but was rather a political response to the fact that an anti-war Democrat, Howard Dean, was running away with their presidential nomination. It was this that caused John Kerry and his party to forget that the war was about Saddam’s defiance of 17 UN Security Council resolutions, and refusal to allow the UN inspectors to carry out their efforts to ascertain whether he had destroyed his chemical and biological arsenals.
Beginning in June 2003, Democrats began claiming – falsely – that Bush had lied to secure their support for the war. “Bush lied, people died,” became the left’s slogan to cripple the war effort. Bush couldn’t have lied because Democrats had access to every bit of intelligence information on Iraq that he did. But this false narrative began what became a five-year campaign to demonize America’s commander-in-chief and undermine his efforts to subdue the terrorists and pacify the region.
The Democrats’ anti-war crusade climaxed with the election of Barack Obama, a leftwing activist and vocal opponent of the war, and of the majority of Senate Democrats who voted for it. At the time of Obama’s election, America and its allies had won the war and subdued the terrorists by turning the Sunnis in Anbar province against them. But the new commander-in-chief, refused to use American forces to secure the peace, and instead set out to withdraw all American military personnel from Iraq. This was a fatal step that created a power vacuum, which was quickly filled by Iran and ISIS.
Obama’s generals had advised him to maintain a post-war force of 20,000 troops in country along with the military base America had built in Baghdad. But Obama had made military withdrawal the centerpiece of his foreign policy and ignored his national security team’s advice. Had he not done so, American forces would have been able to effectively destroy ISIS at its birth, saving more than 500,000 lives and avoiding the creation of nearly 20 million refugees in Syria and Iraq.
Instead of protecting Iraq and the region from the Islamic terrorists, Obama surrendered the peace, turning Iraq over to Iran and the terrorists, and betraying every American and Iraqi who had given their lives to keep them out. The message of the Obama White House – to be repeated through all eight years of his tenure – was that America was the disturber of the peace, and not “radical Islamic terrorism” – words he refused to utter. Instead he even removed the phrase “war on terror” from all official statements and replaced it with “overseas contingency operations.”
Second among the causes of the Middle East’s human tragedy was Obama’s support for the Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad whom his secretaries of state, Clinton and Kerry both endorsed as a democratic reformer on the very eve of his savage war against his own people. This was followed by Obama’s refusal to enforce the red line he drew to prevent Assad from using chemical weapons on the Syrian population. When Assad did use them, Obama averted his eyes and papered over his culpability by arranging a phony deal with Russia to remove Assad’s chemical arsenal. Six years later, Assad was again using chemical weapons on Syrian civilians, the exposing Obama’s ruse.
This capitulation to the Syrian tyrant was a powerful reiteration of Obama’s signature message: The United States is the problem and is therefore committed to taking itself out of the picture. In other words, anti-American dictators and genocidal maniacs in the Middle East can have their way.
The third cause of the Middle Eastern morass was Obama’s failure, early on in his Obama administration, to support the green revolution in Iran, when its brave citizens poured into the streets in 2009 to protest a rigged election and the totalitarian regime. Obama’s silence was in effect support for the Jew-hating and America-hating regime, into whose ruling group Secretary of State Kerry’s daughter soon married. Obama’s betrayal of the Iranian people was a reiteration of his signature message to the region: America no longer cares to support freedom, and is willing to support its enemies, even those who kill Americans in the name of Islam.
The fourth cause of the Middle Eastern morass was Obama’s intervention in Egypt – his overthrow of an American ally, Hosni Mubarak, and his open support for the Muslim Brotherhood, the spawner of al-Qaeda and Hamas and the chief sponsor of the Islamic jihad against the West. Obama’s support for the Brotherhood was so strong that when it was overthrown by the Egyptian military following massive protests of the Egyptian people, the White House opposed the new regime of the pro-American General, Abdel Fattah el-Sisi. Through these policies, Obama alienated America’s most important Arab ally in the Middle East and opened the door to Russia’s influence in the region, and to the Kremlin’s alliance with its most barbaric regimes, Syria and Iran.
The fifth cause of the terrorist upsurge that has shattered the peace of the Middle East was Obama’s unauthorized, illegal intervention in Libya and murder of its ruler Gaddafi – a ruthless dictator no doubt – but a dedicated enemy of al-Qaeda with whom he was actively at war. The result of this naked American aggression, whose chief advocates were Hillary Clinton and Samantha Power, was a Libya devoured by the terrorist wolves who now rule it – a failed state and a haven for the bloodthirsty savages of al-Qaeda and ISIS.
The sixth reason the Middle East is now in flames is Obama’s policy of what he calls “strategic patience” but is in effect strategic cowardice and worse. Obama’s failure to act decisively against ISIS – to take only one example – allowed the Islamic State (which Obama has even refused to concede is Islamic), to become the largest terrorist force ever, and to provide its armed missionaries with a free hand to destroy the oldest Christian community in the world in Iraq, exterminating 200,000 members of the faith, while driving many more into exile.
By way of contrast and showing what the Obama White House could have done, sixth months into the Trump administration, the ISIS stronghold of Mosul is liberated and Raqqa is about to fall, spelling the end of the Islamic State. The blood of those slaughtered Christians, as well as the Yazidis and Muslims, is squarely on the head of Barack Obama and his White House enablers – the Democratic Party and the Democrats’ kept press.
The seventh cause of the humanitarian crisis in the Middle East – and the one with the most long-lasting consequences – is Obama’s embrace of the terrorist regime in Iran. Iran has killed more Americans than any other enemy of this country. Its kill list goes back to the Marine bombing of 1983 and includes the supply of every I.E.D. in Iraq used to blow up several thousand American soldiers.
Yet Obama built his entire Middle East policy around the so-called “deal” with Iran, which provides that nation with a path to nuclear weapons, and has no realistic inspection or enforcement mechanisms. The “Iran deal” lifted the sanctions that had been placed on a regime whose leaders were so openly contemptuous of Obama that they led chants of “Death to America” in the middle of the negotiations. The Iran deal brought America’s mortal enemy out of international isolation, provided it with the opportunity to acquire nuclear weapons, turned a blind eye to its ballistic missile development and stuffed its war chest with $200 billion in cash payments used to fund its weapons programs, and to support terrorist armies, including Hizbollah, Hamas and the Yemenite Houthis, busy creating havoc throughout the Middle East.
The Obama regime’s role in the human disasters in the Middle East is a warning about what happens when American leaders sympathize with our enemies, hamstring our armed forces and abandon our responsibilities to help maintain the peace and defend freedom in a fractious, authoritarian and bloody-minded world. The Obama administration’s enabling of the most barbaric forces in the Middle East is a national disgrace, and the most shameful episode in America’s post-World War II experience.
The path to rectifying these disasters and to stopping Islamic genocides of “infidels” in the Middle East, is first of all to restore America’s active presence in the region, taking a firm stance against radical Islamic terrorism. This is an effort which, thankfully, the Trump administration has already begun. Second, it is to make America’s policy firmly and consistently anti-terrorist, which the Trump administration has not yet done. This would mean, for example, cutting off all funds to the terrorist Palestinian Authority and the Hamas government in Gaza, and halting all “peace” negotiations until the Palestinians renounce terror and support Israel’s right to exist.
The lesson to remember in all this is that despite its human weaknesses and flaws, America is still the only great power in the world today that cares about human dignity and decency and has the wherewithal to defend them and the peace.
-
Another lurker on our forum!
Excellent piece!
-
• Iraq: Prominent Iraqi Shiite leader Muqtada al-Sadr visited Saudi Arabia and met with the new crown prince. Another prominent Iraqi Shiite leader, Ammar al-Hakim, will reportedly also visit the kingdom. We need to examine why top Shiite leaders are reaching out to Saudi Arabia. What does this say about Iranian influence in Iraq and the wider balance of power across the Persian Gulf?
-
http://www.meforum.org/6875/the-kurds-are-about-to-blow-up-iraq
The Kurds Are About to Blow up Iraq
by Michael J. Totten
World Affairs Journal
August 17, 2017
The overwhelming majority of Iraqi Kurds want an independent state.
Next month, on September 25, the Kurdistan Regional Government in Erbil will hold a binding referendum on whether or not to secede from Iraq. It will almost certainly pass. More than a decade ago, the Kurds held a non-binding referendum that passed with 99.8 percent of the vote.
No one knows what's going to happen. Iraq is the kind of place where just about anything can happen and eventually does.
Kurdish secession could go as smoothly as a Scottish secession from the United Kingdom (were that to actually happen) or a Quebecois secession from Canada, were that to actually happen. It could unfold like Kosovo's secession from Serbia, where some countries recognize it and others don't while the Serbs are left to stew in their own juices more or less peaceably.
This is a serious business, though, because Iraq is not Britain, and it is not Canada. And there's a potential flashpoint that travelers to the region would be well advised to stay away from for a while.
Shortly after ISIS invaded Iraq from Syria in 2014, the Kurdistan Regional Government effectively annexed the oil-rich governorate of Kirkuk. Ethnic Kurds made up a plurality of the population, with sizeable Arab and Turkmen minorities, before Saddam Hussein's Arabization program in the 1990s temporarily created an artificial Arab majority.
Since then, Kurds have been returning to the city en masse while many Arabs, most of whom had no history in the region before Saddam put them there, have left. No one really knows what the demographics look like now.
It's a tinderbox regardless of the actual headcount. Some of the Arabs who still live there could mount a rebellion at some point, either immediately or down the road. If they do, they might engage in the regional sport of finagling financial and even military backing from neighboring countries.
Then again, Arabs have been trickling north into the Kurdistan region for years because it's peaceful and quiet and civilized. It's the one part of Iraq that, despite the local government's corruption and inability to live up to the democratic norms it claims to espouse, works remarkably well.
I've been to Iraqi Kurdistan a number of times. It's safer than Kansas. My only real complaint is that it gets a bit boring after a while. If you're coming from Baghdad or Mosul, it's practically Switzerland.
Kurdish graffiti on the walls of an Iraqi army base outside Kirkuk reads, "We will not leave Kirkuk."
Kirkuk Governorate, though, is—or at least recently was—another story. The three "core" Kurdish governorates—Dohuk, Erbil, and Suleimaniyah—have been free of armed conflict since the toppling of Saddam Hussein, but Kirkuk was down in the war zone. I went there ten years ago from Suleimaniyah and was only willing to do so under the armed protection of Kurdish police officers. Had I wandered around solo as I did farther north, I would have risked being shot, kidnapped or car-bombed. I still could have been shot or car-bombed alongside the police, but at least kidnapping was (mostly) off the table. The very fact that Kirkuk was a war zone at a time when the Kurdish governorates to the north were not suggests that the Kurds may be swallowing more than they can digest.
Kirkuk has oil, though, while the governorates to the north mostly don't, so of course the Kurds want it. Baghdad, of course, wants to keep it for the same reason. Will Iraq's central government go to war over it? Probably not. Saddam Hussein lost his own war against the Kurds in the north, and he had far more formidable forces at his disposal than Baghdad does now. Still, it's more likely than a war between London and Edinburgh, or between Ottawa and Montreal.
The biggest threat to an independent Iraqi Kurdistan comes not from Baghdad but from Turkey.
The biggest threat to an independent Iraqi Kurdistan comes not from Baghdad but from Turkey. The Turks have been fighting a low-grade counter-insurgency against the armed Kurdish separatists of the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) since the 1970s that has killed tens of thousands of people, and they're deathly afraid that a free and independent Kurdish state anywhere in the world will both embolden and assist their internal enemies.
While Turkey is no longer likely to invade Iraqi Kurdistan on general principle if it declares independence—a going concern shortly after the overthrow of Saddam Hussein—the Turkish government is making it clear that it is supremely unhappy with the KRG including Kirkuk in its referendum. "What really concerned us," a spokesperson for Turkey's president said in June of this year, "was that Kurdish leaders want to include Kirkuk in this process while according to the Iraqi constitution Kirkuk is an Iraqi city and is not within Kurdish boundaries ... If any attempts will be made to forcefully include Kirkuk in the referendum question, problems will be made for Kirkuk and its surrounding areas."
One can sympathize with Turkey's fears. The Marxist-Leninist Kurdistan Workers Party is, without question, a terrorist organization. Even so, nations have a right to exist even if they are inconvenient to Turkey—especially considering that Iraq's Kurds are not terrorists.
Iraq's Kurds are America's only reliable allies in the entire country.
Rather than terrorists, Iraq's Kurds are America's only reliable allies in the entire country. They're as pro-American as Texans; they're the only ones who didn't take shots at us during and after the overthrow of Saddam; and they were, for a time anyway, the only ones willing and capable of taking on ISIS directly and winning. They do not align themselves with Iranian-backed militias as the central government in Baghdad does, and they certainly aren't on side with Hezbollah and the Kremlin like the Syrian government. They are as allergic to political Islamism as Americans are. They view it, with some justification, as an alien export from the Arab world.
The Trump administration opposes Kurdistan's bid for independence. It could, says the White House, be "significantly destabilizing." Perhaps. But it's a bit rich for Americans, of all people, to say no to people who want to break away from a country that smothered them beneath a totalitarian regime, waged a genocidal extermination campaign against them, and then convulsed in bloody mayhem for more than a decade.
An independent Iraqi Kurdistan is far more likely to be stable with U.S. backing than without it.
We Americans mounted a revolution for our own independence against a government far more liberal and enlightened than Iraq's. And we support at least the notion of a Palestinian state alongside the Israeli state, the only properly functioning democracy in the entire region, despite the fact that the Palestinians have mounted one terrorist campaign after another for their own independence while the Kurds of Iraq never have.
An independent Iraqi Kurdistan is far more likely to be stable with American backing than without it, but the Kurds are going forward regardless. As Jack Nicholson's character Frank Costello said in Martin Scorsese's scorching film, The Departed, "no one gives it to you. You have to take it."
Michael J. Totten is a contributing editor at The Tower, a Middle East Forum writing fellow, and the author of seven books, including Where the West Ends and Tower of the Sun.
-
See the relevant URL's in my post today in the Jordan thread:
-
Who's Up and Who's Down in the Middle East
by Efraim Inbar
Israel Hayom
August 24, 2017
http://www.meforum.org/6883/where-is-the-middle-east-headed
The Middle East has been transformed by state collapse in (clockwise from upper left) Libya, Syria, Iraq, and Yemen.
Since the Middle East events of 2011 (mislabeled "the Arab Spring"), the region has been in turmoil. The inability of the Arab statist structures to overcome domestic cleavages became very clear. Even before 2011, Lebanon, Iraq, Somalia, as well as the Palestinian Authority failed to hold together. After 2011, Syria and Yemen descended into a state of civil war. Similarly, Egypt underwent a political crisis, allowing for the emergence of an Islamist regime. It took a year for a military coup to restore the praetorian ancient regime. All Arab republican regimes were under stress. While the monarchies weathered the political storm, their future stability is not guaranteed.
Growing Islamist influence put additional pressure on the Arab states. The quick rise of the Islamic State group in Syria and Iraq was the most dramatic expression of this phenomenon that spread beyond the borders of the Middle East. Despite its expected military defeat, the ideology behind the establishment of an Islamic caliphate and variants of radical Islam remain resonant in many Muslim quarters. Therefore, the pockets containing ISIS and al-Qaida followers, as well as the stronger Muslim Brotherhood are likely to continue to challenge peace and stability in the Middle East and elsewhere.
The Sunni-Shiite divide has come to dominate Middle Eastern politics.
The Sunni-Shiite divide, a constant feature of Middle Eastern politics, has become more dominant as Iran becomes increasingly feared. The 2015 nuclear deal (the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action) between Iran and world powers has been generally viewed in the Middle East as an Iranian (Shiite, Persian) diplomatic victory. Shiite-dominated Iraq (excluding the Kurdish region) turned into an Iranian satellite as well, while the military involvement of Iran and its proxies on behalf of Syrian President Bashar Assad in Syria appears to achieve the completion of a Shiite corridor from Iran to the Mediterranean. Iran continues its long-range missile program unabated and makes progress even in the nuclear arena within the limits of the flawed JCPOA. Its proxies rule Baghdad, Beirut, Damascus, and Sanaa, signaling increasing Iranian clout.
In contrast, the Sunni powers display weakness. Saudi Arabia (together with Sunni Turkey) failed to dislodge Assad, Iran's ally, in Syria. Saudi Arabian Crown Prince and Defense Minister Mohammed bin Salman pushed Saudi Arabia into a more muscular posture, but failed to win the civil war in Yemen -- its backyard. Moreover, Riyadh has not been successful so far in strong-arming its small neighbor Qatar into dropping its pro-Islamist and pro-Iranian policies.
Egypt is an important Arab Sunni state in the moderate camp. Yet the traditional weight it has carried in the Arab world is lighter nowadays, primarily because of its immense economic troubles. Providing food for the Egyptian people is Cairo's first priority. At the same time, Cairo is fighting an Islamist insurgence at home. This situation, which leaves little energy for regional endeavors, is hardly going to change any time soon.
Israel is now an informal member of the moderate Sunni camp.
Israel is an informal member of the moderate Sunni camp since it shares its main concern -- the Iranian quest for hegemony in the region. While powerful and ready to use force when necessary, Israel, under the leadership of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, is reluctant to interfere beyond its borders.
This prudent approach is based on the understanding that Israel, a small state endowed with limited resources, lacks the capacity for political engineering in the Middle East. A growing Iranian presence near Israel's borders and the reestablishment of an eastern front might become a serious military challenge.
The disengagement of the U.S. from the Middle East, accentuated by the foreign policy of then-President Barak Obama, continues. Under Obama, the attempts to engage Syria and Iran were generally viewed as weakness, perceptions that were reinforced by the signing of the JCPOA with Iran. The obsessive campaign to defeat ISIS, started by Obama and continued by President Donald Trump, primarily helped Iranian schemes.
The new Trump administration has failed so far to formulate a coherent approach to the Middle East.
The new Trump administration has failed so far to formulate a coherent approach to the Middle East. Moreover, the gradual erosion in the U.S. capability to project force into the region amplifies the sense that America has lost the ability to play a role in regional politics.
The vacuum created by American feebleness has been filled to some extent by the Russians. The Russian military intervention in the Syrian civil war saved the Assad regime from defeat. It constrained Turkey's involvement in Syria and helped Iranian encroachment in the region.
The regional vacuum created by U.S. feebleness invites growing Russian and Chinese involvement.
We also see growing Chinese interest. The ambitious One Belt One Road infrastructure project tries to tie the Middle East to Chinese economic and political endeavors. China inaugurated its first overseas naval base in Djibouti in July 2017. Located astride a crucial maritime choke point, the military installation is symbolic of its growing confidence as an emerging global power, capable of projecting military force and directly protecting its interests in the Middle East, Africa and the western Indian Ocean.
Yet extra-regional powers can hardly change the political dynamics in the region. The regional forces are usually decisive in determining political outcomes. Moreover, Middle East history provides many examples of external actors being manipulated by regional powers for their own schemes.
Adopting such a perspective on outsiders, and in view of the deep crisis in the Arab world, it stands to reason that the relations between Iran and Turkey will be a key factor in designing the future trends in the region. They are the two largest powers and they are both ambitious and capable enough to play a serious role. Despite the historical rivalry and the dividing Shiite-Sunni religious identity that could lead to competition, it seems that they are cooperating. Turkey and Iran have discussed possible joint military action against Kurdish militant groups. Both are siding with Qatar. Both are using Islamic motifs and anti-Israel positions to win hearts in the Arab world. We may well see an Iranian-Turkish duumvirate in the Middle East, but the statist interests and the different interpretation of Islam could push the two former empires into an adversarial relationship.
Efraim Inbar, professor emeritus of political studies at Bar-Ilan University and former director of the Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies, is a Shillman-Ginsburg fellow at the Middle East Forum.
-
And the Winner in Syria Is ... Iran
by Jonathan Spyer
The Jerusalem Post
August 26, 2017
http://www.meforum.org/6886/and-the-winner-in-syria-is-iran
A flurry of diplomatic activity is currently taking place in the Syrian and Iraqi arenas. While the moves are occurring on separate and superficially unrelated fronts, taken together they produce an emergent picture. That picture is of two camps, one of which works as a united force on essential interests, the other of which at present does not.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu this week travelled to Sochi to discuss the issue of Syria with Russian officials. Specifically, Jerusalem is concerned with Iranian advances in the country. Israel considers that the de-escalation agreement for south west Syria reached by Washington and Moscow makes inadequate provision for ensuring that Teheran and its militia allies do not establish themselves along the borderline with the Israeli-controlled part of the Golan.
It is noteworthy that this visit followed an apparent failure by a senior Israeli security delegation to Washington DC to ensure a US commitment in this regard.
As the officials were talking, the fighting fronts were on the move. Sunday saw the opening of the offensive to take the town of Tal Afar, 60 kilometers west of Mosul city, from the now crumbling Islamic State. Among the forces taking part in the offensive are the Hashd al-Sha'abi/Popular Mobilization Units. The PMU is the alliance of Shia militias mobilized to fight IS in the summer of 2014. Most prominent among them are Iranian-supported groups such as the Badr Organization, Ktaeb Hizballah and the Asaib Ahl al-Haq.
Iraqi Kurds are on track to overwhelmingly vote for independence in a referendum next month.
An additional notable process now under way is the attempt to induce the Iraqi Kurds to abandon their proposed independence referendum, scheduled to take place on September 25. Iran is fiercely opposed to any Kurdish move toward independence. Teheran is in the process of moving forward to a clearly dominant position in Iraqi politics, through its sponsorship of the Shia militias and the ruling Dawa party. The last thing Teheran wants would be for a major part of the country to split away.
But as has become clear, the European and US allies of the Kurds are also hostile to any Kurdish bid for independence. Both German Foreign Minister Sigmar Gabriel and US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson have made their respective countries' opposition to the referendum and any hopes of Kurdish exit from Iraq plain.
Last week saw evidence of the growing closeness between Iran and Turkey. Iran's chief of staff, General Mohammad Hossein Bagheri, met with President Recep Tayepp Erdogan. Following the meeting, Erdogan announced that the two countries have agreed on joint military action against the Kurdish PKK and its Iranian sister organization, PJAK. Bagheri's visit to Ankara was the first by an Iranian chief of staff since the Islamic Revolution of 1979.
PMU deputy commander Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis (right) with Iranian Quds Force commander Qassem Suleimani.
An additional new development came to light in the course of last week – namely, the new role of Egypt as a player in the Syrian arena. Egypt has in recent weeks played a role as a mediator in de-escalation agreements in the eastern Ghouta area and in Homs, with the permission and approval of both the Russians and the Saudis.
Finally, the recent period saw the surprising visit of Iraqi Shia leader Muqtada al-Sadr to Riyadh, where he met with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman. Sadr, a sectarian Shia figure who retains ties to Iran, has nevertheless sought to position himself as an Iraqi patriotic leader in recent months.
So what does all this diplomatic and military activity mean?
In looking to locate the pattern of events, one becomes immediately aware that the activities of only one player add up to a unified whole. That player is Iran. In backing the Shia militias as political and military forces, opposing Kurdish aspirations to independence, seeking by all possible means to establish forces along the border with Israel, and seeking to draw Turkey away from the west and toward itself, Teheran is pursuing a coherent, comprehensive policy and strategy. This strategy ignores any distinction between Iraq, Syria and Lebanon, treating all three as a single arena of conflict. Allies and assets are all utilized to build the project of maximizing Iranian geographic reach and political and military potency within this space.
The Russians have limited goals in Syria, and little interest in Iraq.
Russia should not be considered a strategic ally in this. The Russians have more modest goals in Syria, and little interest in Iraq. Moscow favors the increased Egyptian role in Syria which Teheran surely opposes. Russia is also not indifferent to Israeli and Saudi concerns and interests, hence the Netanyahu visit to Sochi.
The US also does not currently seem to wish to be a primary player in this arena. Washington does not appear to be developing a real strategy for containing the Iranians in eastern Syria. The internal strains and turmoil in the US may indeed be a core factor preventing any real possibility of a US focus on this contest.
Washington doesn't appear to be developing a real strategy for containing Iran in eastern Syria.
This leaves the local players. The components of the Iran-led alliance in this space are Iran itself, the Assad regime, Hizballah, the Iraqi Shia militias and important elements within the Iraqi government. Turkey appears to be moving in the direction of this bloc, though its size and Sunni nature mean it will never fully be a part of it.
Perhaps most notable of all in this emergent strategic picture, in which a clear shape is discernible as the waters settle, is the absence of a really powerful Sunni Islamist bloc. The once ascendant group of Muslim Brotherhood type states and movements is effectively no more – with Qatar besieged, Turkey moving closer to Iran, and Hamas also attempting to rebuild its relations with Teheran.
The Salafi jihadis are also reduced back to the level of a terrorist irritant – a sometimes lethal one, to be sure, but far from a contender for power. The Islamic State is on the verge of destruction. The core al-Qaeda leadership is dominant only in Idleb Province in Syria.
This is an anomalous situation. Political Islam continues to dominate Sunni Arab politics at street level. But the resilience and return of relatively stable Sunni Arab autocracies in Cairo, Riyadh, Abu Dhabi and Amman, and the eclipse of the Sunni Arab rebellion in Syria have removed it – for now at least – from the real power game in the Middle East.
The Sunni Arab bloc lacks the organization and broad ideological commonality of the Iran axis.
What is as a result facing the cohesive and coherent Iran-led bloc is a much more nebulous gathering, but one which if combined possesses more power, more population and more wealth than the Iranians. It lacks, however, the binding organizational capacity provided by the Revolutionary Guards Corps. It also does not possess the broad ideological commonality of the Teheran-led group.
Observe the forces mentioned in this article: Israel, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, the Kurdish Regional Government, Egypt, the Kurdish paramilitary forces in Turkey and Iran. (Add in Jordan and the remaining non-jihadi Syrian rebels to complete the picture) These are the core elements, each on its own relevant front, standing in the way of Iranian advancement in the Middle East. There are differences, disputes, in some cases sharp rivalries between them. Much will depend on the creation of lines of communication and cooperation in this camp. The contest between these two groups in the Iraq-Syria space is today the core strategic conflict in the Middle East.
Jonathan Spyer, a fellow at the Middle East Forum, is director of the Rubin Center for Research in International Affairs and author of The Transforming Fire: The Rise of the Israel-Islamist Conflict (Continuum, 2011).
-
Daniel Pipes on Trump's Foreign Policy and Turkey's Erdoğan
Vocal Europe
August 28, 2017
http://www.meforum.org/6889/daniel-pipes-on-trumps-foreign-policy-and-turkeys
-
second post
Stratfor
Lebanese militant group Hezbollah, the Syrian army and the Islamic State agreed over the weekend on a plan to rid Lebanon of Islamic State fighters. But the implementation of the plan, which began Aug. 28, is drawing ire from Iraqi officials and from the U.S.-led coalition fighting extremism there.
Following a Lebanese army offensive on Islamic State territory, militants from the group have agreed to be moved from Arsal, a pocket in northeastern Lebanon near the border with Syria, to Abu Kamal, a town along the Syria-Iraq border. The Lebanese government, for its part, celebrated being free of the Islamic State on Aug. 30. But Iraq, dragged down as it is by its lengthy war against extremism, is not happy with the prospect of more militants at its borders.
Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi spoke out against the plan Aug. 30. And, in a nod to the unifying effect a common enemy can have, officials from the Iraqi Kurdistan region vowed that Kurdish peshmerga would cooperate with Iraqi forces to defend Iraq's borders against any renewed Islamic State threat. Iraqi forces are losing no time. The Anbar Operations Command launched anti-Islamic State operations in the western desert areas of Anbar province on Aug. 29 to eradicate stubborn militant cells and is patrolling the borders to stop any spillover.
The United States was uncomfortable from the outset with the Hezbollah-negotiated deal, given that it was designed to provide safe passage for militants across miles of open desert and that it could compound security threats for Iraq and for the broader region. Though it has supported similar deals with the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria in the past, it's since changed to a strategy to what it calls a "policy of annihilation." But the deeply divided Lebanese army was wary of confronting the Islamic State directly, and Hezbollah needed to solve the Islamic State problem in Lebanon to focus on the Syrian war effort, so the deal was struck.
The United States will not sit idly by. The U.S.-led coalition against the Islamic State launched an airstrike to prevent the convoy of militants, which includes 17 vehicles and some 300-400 militants, from moving farther east toward Abu Kamal. However, because the convoy contains women and children, the United States was limited in its options. The coalition said it did bomb some vehicles that were "clearly identified" as belonging to the Islamic State.
Rumors circulating in the Lebanese press say that the United States is considering cutting vital military aid to the Lebanese army. The United States, however, is not directly blaming the Lebanese government for the deal, even if it disproves of it, and U.S. Gen. Joseph Votel reassured Lebanese army officials that Washington will continue its financial support for Lebanon's forces — negating the rumors for now. Restrictions in military aid are still possible given U.S. unease over Hezbollah's influence in the Lebanese army. But in this instance, Washington's focus is clearly on spoiling the deal on the battlefield rather than at the bank.
-
It appears the Syrian civil war is entering its final stages. On Sept. 5, Syrian loyalist forces, in close conjunction with Iranian and Russian military forces, broke the Islamic State's three-year siege on the loyalist forces in Deir el-Zour. The arrival of the relief force in the city is one of the biggest developments on the Syrian battlefield since the loyalists captured Aleppo city, and heralds the extent to which government forces have gained the upper hand in the Syrian civil war since a year ago.
On the same day the loyalists forces reached Deir el-Zour, Israel began its largest military exercise since 1998. The combined arms exercise focuses on preparing for a potential war with Hezbollah along Israel's northern border, and is set to run for 10 days and involves tens of thousands of Israeli troops. The exercise, though planned more than a year in advance, is not unconnected to developments in Syria. Israel has been keenly observing the Syrian battlefield, deeply concerned by the momentum the Iran- and Russia-backed loyalist forces have seized over the past year.
He Who Controls Syria (and Its Borders)
Israeli leaders are increasingly aware that the Syrian civil war has reached the beginning of its end phase. As the conflict draws down, with Syrian troops reasserting their control over much of the country, Hezbollah will no longer be overstretched and encumbered by its massive involvement in the fighting. Hezbollah would in effect be able to redeploy its forces to Lebanon, boosted by years of tough combat experience as well as increased arms and equipment backing from Syria and Iran.
The relief of the Deir el-Zour garrison also factors into the increased support Hezbollah is expected to receive going forward: Retaking the city presages the completion of the logistical supply line running from Iran through Iraq to Syria and then to Lebanon. The arrival of Syrian loyalists at the Iraqi border isn't imminent: The loyalists still need to consolidate control over the city, fend off Islamic State counterattacks and cross the Euphrates River. Still, with the Iraqi border located less than 100 kilometers (62 miles) east of Deir el-Zour through sparsely populated terrain, the arrival of the loyalist forces there is more certain than ever.
The relief of the Deir el-Zour garrison also factors into the increased support Hezbollah is expected to receive going forward: Retaking the city presages the completion of the logistical supply line running from Iran through Iraq to Syria and then to Lebanon.
Contending with this loyalist advance eastward are tribal Arab fighters of the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), a few thousand of whom are positioned around al-Shaddadi to the north. These U.S.-backed forces have made their ambitions to drive southward clear, and may end up skirmishing with loyalist forces on their way to the Iraqi border. The area also has many critical natural gas and oil fields, which will drive competition — and fighting — further. But the balance of forces in the area is decisively tilted toward the loyalists. And absent direct and sustained U.S. military action in support of an SDF drive south that pushes back loyalist attempts to advance (with all the ramifications such a move would have with Iran and Russia), the loyalist forces should be able to seize the energy fields and reach the Iraqi border east of the Euphrates River. Even in the unlikely event that the loyalist forces are impeded, they will still be able to secure a supply line to Iran by seizing the road through al-Bukamal further to the south that runs into Iraq at a border location on the west bank of the Euphrates River.
A More Aggressive Approach
With a direct Iranian land route to Lebanon all but certain and with the militant group able to draw down its commitments in the Syrian civil war, Israel faces the increased prospects of having to again face off against a stronger Hezbollah. The window in which Israel could attack Hezbollah while it's still distracted and overstretched with its commitments in Syria is closing. So, as Israel conducts its largest military exercise in 20 years, it's worth remembering that the military preparations are not entirely defensive. Tel Aviv will likely adopt a more aggressive approach toward Hezbollah in the coming months.
The extent of this approach depends on the calculations Israeli leaders make. The response could range from simply intensifying strikes on Hezbollah convoys to launching an outright preventive war against Hezbollah's missile and rocket stockpiles in Lebanon. Even if Israel only increases the scope of its airstrikes on Hezbollah positions in Syria, the likelihood of a full Israeli-Hezbollah conflict is very high, if not inevitable, especially as an emboldened Hezbollah would find it necessary to retaliate to deter further Israeli attacks. The Syrian civil war, then, could lead to another regional conflict, even as it reaches its end stages.
-
Some excellent maps herein will not print here:
Syria’s Shattered Future
Sep 7, 2017
Editor’s Note: This Deep Dive was adapted from a piece originally produced for the Valdai Discussion Club, an institute devoted to analyzing Russia’s place in the world. The full version can be accessed here.
Summary
It’s useful to look at the past to predict the future. Little that happens in the world is truly new, and lessons can be learned from the way things transpired before. So, in trying to picture Syria’s future, observing the events that shaped present-day Lebanon is a useful exercise. Lebanon is much smaller than Syria, and its ethnic groups were more evenly proportioned before its civil war. Even so, in 1975, it went to war – and at war it stayed for 15 years. We expect Syria’s civil war – which is already midway through its sixth year – to last at least as long.
Lebanon’s post-war years haven’t exactly been peaceful either. Syria’s will be worse. The U.S. and Russia are working under the public supposition that Syria can be put back together once the fighting stops. They want a lot of the same things: to defeat the Islamic State and al-Qaida, then to build a new political system in the country. But Russia also wants to destroy any other rebel group fighting the Syrian regime, which Russia maintains is the legitimate government in the country, while the U.S. wants to form a new political system that is democratic and that excludes President Bashar Assad. They’re both likely to be disappointed. Syria is a broken country, and no amount of diplomatic handwringing or bombing is going to put it back together.
Demographic Chaos
The reason is simple: ethnic and sectarian chaos. The single-largest population group within the country is Sunni Arabs, whose main political forces are the Islamic State, al-Qaida and the Free Syrian Army (not counting the large number of Sunnis who still support the Assad regime). The U.S. and Russia will not accept a political system built around either of the first two forces, and the Free Syrian Army is too weak to defeat the radical Islamists or the Assad regime.
It is impossible to know the exact demographic breakdown of the country today because of the fighting and migration, but before the war, roughly 68 percent of Syria was Sunni. Of that, 10 percent was Kurdish and the rest was Arab. Alawites made up another 11 percent of the total population. We can assume that the country remains divided between three groups: Alawites, Syrian Kurds and Sunni Arabs. The Alawites are loyal to Assad; the Syrian Kurds are loyal to the People’s Protection Units, or YPG; and the Arabs are divided – some Islamist, some champions of Assad, and all competing for influence.
(click to enlarge)
The Assad regime, the Alawites and other minorities that Assad protects will never consent to democracy in Syria. To do so would open those communities to certain reprisal by Sunni Arab forces should they come to power. The same is true of the Syrian Kurds, who, despite being the smallest and newest Kurdish population in a Middle Eastern country, have secured a de facto state for themselves and are taking as much territory as they can to try to lend strategic depth to their indefensible position on the border with Turkey. Even if an agreement emerged that all sides agreed to, the system would collapse just as the U.S.-backed political system in Iraq collapsed.
Many of the areas dominated by Sunni Arabs are in the desert, in cities hugging the Euphrates River. Attacking these cities is difficult: It requires long supply lines through the desert, which invites the kind of guerrilla tactics at which IS excels. Similarly, the Alawite stronghold on the coast is mountainous and thus very defensible. Little suggests that these dynamics will change soon.
The most likely scenario is that Syria will eventually be divided into three main areas. The first area will be controlled by the remnants of the Assad regime, which will maintain authority over the major cities and the coastal strongholds that are the Alawites’ core territories. The second area will be the Syrian Kurdish territories. There are two main pockets of Syrian Kurds: an isolated and small group in Afrin canton and a larger group in northeastern Syria, which before the breakout of war had significant natural resources and decent farmland. The Syrian Kurdish territories are on a relatively flat plain and are vulnerable to attack, both from IS and from Turkey, which has thus far not attacked the Syrian Kurds besides the occasional artillery shelling.
(click to enlarge)
The third area will be a lawless swath of Sunni Arab territory. The precise names of the groups and the ideologies they employ are almost impossible to track, but they will be fighting each other for supremacy in these areas, as well as launching opportunistic attacks against Assad forces and Syrian Kurdish forces. Fighters will continue to move across the porous Iraq-Syria border and will increasingly put pressure on neighboring countries.
IS, al-Qaida and the Power of Ideas
This Sunni Arab territory deserves a closer look, specifically at the future of jihadist forces not just in Syria but throughout the region. The Islamic State and al-Qaida are the most substantial of these forces today, but this will not always be the case. Eventually, IS and al-Qaida will lose their strongholds. They will melt back into the civilian population until foreign forces leave. Another group may arise in their place, or they may regenerate their fiefs and even try to grab more land to the south, greatly straining two Sunni Arab countries that have thus far stayed out of the fray: Jordan and Saudi Arabia. They will not be able to stay on the sidelines forever.
At its height of IS expansion, the lands it controlled amounted to roughly 50,000 square kilometers (19,500 square miles), roughly the size of Croatia. Taking into account the sparsely populated deserts and other areas where IS can operate with relative freedom, even though it is not directly in control, this territory expands to approximately 250,000 square kilometers, roughly the size of Great Britain.
The U.S. State Department boasts on its website that U.S. coalition partners have recaptured 62 percent of IS territory in Iraq and 30 percent in Syria. In war, such statistics are meaningless. What matters is not the size of the territory but whether that territory is strategically important. So far, anti-IS forces in Syria and Iraq have not conquered enough territory from the Islamic State to cripple its ability to operate.
The Islamic State’s core territory is the stretch of land from Raqqa to Deir el-Zour in eastern Syria. The most recent Syrian census, done in 2004, estimated that close to half a million people lived in these two cities alone. In recent weeks, this territory has come under serious threat. Syrian Kurdish forces have closed in on Raqqa, and despite the Islamic State’s diversionary attacks, the U.S.-backed Syrian Democratic Forces have advanced methodically on the city. Meanwhile, the Russia-backed Syrian army has been making gains of its own. Syrian government forces crossed into Raqqa province at the beginning of June, and more important, they have begun an offensive into eastern Syria targeting Deir el-Zour and al-Mayadin.
(click to enlarge)
All evidence seems to indicate that the Islamic State has chosen to retreat from Raqqa to reinforce its position in Deir el-Zour and al-Mayadin. The SDF has made progress in Raqqa, but notably, it left the main highway heading east out of the city open. For months, reports have said IS fighters were leaving the city. When IS convoys have attempted to head west, Russia has made a point of targeting them, but there seems to be a coordinated effort between U.S. and Russian allies on the ground to push IS into a smaller area in eastern Syria that will eventually be attacked head on.
This would all seem to suggest that the defeat of the Islamic State is nigh. That would be a premature judgment. The hallmark of the Islamic State’s military capabilities has been its ability to avoid costly defeats. IS routinely retreats from positions it knows it cannot defend, regroups and then launches new attacks where its enemies are unprepared for them. If it turns out IS cannot protect its territory against the approaching forces, the most likely course of action is that IS fighters will withdraw or blend into the civilian population and give up the city without a fight. For all of the Islamic State’s religious bravado, it has shown itself to be pragmatic in its approach to war, and it would be out of character for it to make a suicidal stand against incoming forces. IS uses suicide bombs for offensive purposes; it does not view suicide in defense as any more noble than defeat.
Even if the physical caliphate is destroyed, the Islamic State’s ideology will persist in a region that is ripe for recruitment. The attacking armies are united in their opposition to IS but will find little in the way of a common cause if the Islamic State’s territorial integrity is broken. They will instead take to fighting among themselves, opening up new spaces for IS to capitalize on and return. The forces will eventually have to withdraw from formerly IS-held territories to attack al-Qaida and other targets in Syria as well, which will mean IS can bide its time. The Islamic State is playing a long game, and its religious ideology can and will preach patience to the faithful. It will not conceded defeat.
Al-Qaida’s position in Syria is more tenuous than the Islamic State’s, and as a result, al-Qaida is not seen as an equal threat and has been able to fly much more under the radar than its territorially focused offshoot. In Syria, the group has changed its name several times (the latest incarnation is Tahrir al-Sham), but it would be a mistake to call it anything but what it is: al-Qaida in Syria. Al-Qaida in Syria has tried to forge connections with other Syrian rebel groups and has captured fiefdoms of its own outside of Aleppo and Idlib. It has fewer fighters than IS, but like the IS fighters, they are extremely capable and have proved much more successful on the battlefield than any of the moderate Syrian rebel groups.
Al-Qaida is surrounded, however, by Syrian government forces. It is only a matter of time before the regime turns its attention to the group. The U.S. has said repeatedly that it plans to solve the IS problem before targeting al-Qaida, and one reason it can afford that approach is that it knows Assad and Russia view al-Qaida, which is closer to the heartland of the regime, as their more pressing problem. Once the Assad regime focuses the bulk of its forces on al-Qaida’s territories in and around Idlib, al-Qaida will gradually have to retreat and blend into the civilian population. The operation to retake these areas will come with mass executions and purges of all suspected al-Qaida sympathizers and collaborators.
The result is that likely in the next one to three years, the entities in Syria currently known as the Islamic State and al-Qaida will be dislodged from full control of their possessions. But the problem is not defeating these groups or taking their lands; with sufficient manpower and foreign support, these groups’ grip over their territories can be loosened if not broken entirely for a time. The problem is that unless a foreign force occupies these territories, the groups will reconstitute themselves and recapture the land they lost. And there is no country in the world whose strategic interests are served by holding territory in the middle of the Syrian and Iraqi deserts indefinitely.
Fighting groups like the Islamic State and al-Qaida takes place on two levels. The first is the military level. Tactical difficulties stand in the way of victory, but they can be overcome. The second level, however, is the realm of ideas. That radical Islamist ideology has a force of its own is indisputable at this point. For whatever reason – the lack of economic opportunity, the history of colonial oppression, whatever – this ideology has given meaning and organization to a generation of people.
In this sense, then, the Islamic State, al-Qaida and the myriad other groups that have sprouted up out of the power vacuum left by the civil war are unbeatable, because it is impossible to defeat an idea. This is a civil war between Muslims in the Middle East. The religious wars of Europe around the time of the Enlightenment each took decades if not centuries to play out before a somewhat stable system of political entities emerged. (And even this system eventually became so unbalanced that in the 20th century it twice brought the entire world into war.) There is no reason to expect that the Muslim wars will take less time than that, nor is there reason to believe that the U.S. or Russia or any outside power will be able to subdue these forces with the right combination of coalition fighters.
The best that can be achieved is containing these forces where they are. For the U.S., preventing their spread south into countries it counts among its allies is of prime importance. For Russia, preventing their spread north into the Caucasus is the bigger priority. Either way, the two sides share an interest in keeping these religious wars confined, as much as possible, to the deserts of the Middle East, rather than the streets of Manhattan or the subway stations of St. Petersburg.
Smoke billows in the embattled northern Syrian city of Raqqa on Sept. 3, 2017, as Syrian Democratic Forces battle to retake the city from the Islamic State. DELIL SOULEIMAN/AFP/Getty Images
When it comes to Syria, then, the U.S. and Russia are already working together even if they don’t include each other in their coalitions. The tacit coordination in the Raqqa and Deir el-Zour offensives is evidence enough of that. Neither wants to see radical Islamism spread into its spheres of influence. Neither wants or has the forces available to commit to conquering radical Islamism in Syria and Iraq – and policing the territories after the fact. The U.S. and Russia do not see eye to eye on the legitimacy of the Assad regime, but the U.S. does not have the luxury of pushing for Assad’s downfall; what would arise in his place might be far worse. The U.S. will continue to search for partners to keep IS in a cage, and Russia will continue to prop up Assad as he eventually moves on to targeting al-Qaida. And while Russia and the U.S. continue to butt heads in other parts of the world, in this part of the world, they will quietly work, perhaps not quite together, but still in pursuit of a similar goal.
Great Power Politics
But the Syrian civil war will not stay contained in Syria. Even if the U.S. and Russia succeed in keeping radical Islamism bottled up in the country, Syria has become a battleground for proxies supported by countries around the Middle East. Here, too, Russia and the U.S. share an overarching goal, but occasional disagreements may arise. The only way this could be derailed is if both sides fail to put their Cold War rivalry behind them.
The balance of power in the Middle East mattered during the Cold War – when the region was responsible for a much greater share of global oil production than it is today, and when the balance of power in all regions mattered. The region’s wars were not just local; they were between the U.S. and the USSR. But those days are over. Now, Russia is back to Soviet-era levels of oil production. The U.S. has become one of the top oil producers in the world and no longer depends as much on the Middle East. And despite U.S.-Russia tensions since the Orange Revolution in Ukraine in 2004, there is no current conflict between the two that has the same weight as the Cold War.
Russia in 2017 is smaller, weaker and less ideological than its Soviet predecessor. This does not mean Russia has given up its position as a global power, but it does mean that a region like the Middle East is less important than it once was. Eastern Europe, the Caucasus and Central Asia – all former Soviet lands – are far more important for Russia’s continued power. What the Middle East offers, however, is a chance to distract the U.S. from interfering in the regions where Russia cannot afford to lose influence, as well as the potential to inflate the price of oil – Russia’s top export – by hampering Middle East producers.
The U.S., meanwhile, has been desperately searching for a way out of the Middle East since 2007. The Bush administration tried to end the Iraq War with the overwhelming force of the troop surge, which had no lasting effect. The Obama administration tried to do as little as possible, and when it did act, its policy was largely incoherent. The Trump administration now seems to be contemplating a kind of surge of its own, which is sure to be ineffective. If Russia wanted to take over management of the Middle East and its crises, the U.S. would welcome it. The point is that the Middle East is no longer a battleground for world power. It is an annoyance that neither Russia nor the U.S. particularly wants to face.
The main threat for the U.S. is that a country or group of countries will come to dominate the entire region. Besides the threat of Islamist terrorism, the U.S. views IS and its sister groups as potential unifiers of the Sunni Arab world against the United States. It also views these groups as a direct threat to the countries the U.S. depends on to maintain a balance of power in the region, particularly Egypt, Jordan and Saudi Arabia.
Egypt is an economic basket case with an active IS insurgency of its own in Sinai. That Jordan has gone this long unscathed is a minor miracle. According to the U.N. refugee agency, Jordan has received over 650,000 Syrian refugees since 2011 – and those are just the registered ones. Syrian nationals now make up more than 20 percent of Jordan’s population. Saudi Arabia has built the legitimacy of its political system on all the generous services that petrodollars can buy. The decline in oil prices and the kingdom’s diminished share of global production have already manifested in significant cuts to social services and to the privileges of the royal family. Saudi Arabia is a breeding ground for the types of Islamist ideologies that have broken Syria and Iraq apart, and the Islamist groups want little more than to control the holy cities of Mecca and Medina.
The U.S. upended the regional balance of power in 2003, and in recent years it has tried to re-establish it on the backs of four states: Turkey, Iran, Israel and Saudi Arabia. Israel is too small to balance against Turkey and Iran, which makes Saudi Arabia a crucial part of the equation. Without the Saudis, the region devolves into a contest between the Turks and the Iranians, and Turkey has the edge in military strength, economic heft and geography. It would win out in the long term. The U.S. and Turkey have been allies for many decades, and Turkey is a NATO member, but Turkey is strong and growing stronger, and more and more it is disagreeing with Washington on major issues of national interest. Turkey is not yet strong enough to challenge the U.S. on these issues, but that time is coming. When it does, the U.S. will want to be sure that the Turks cannot dominate the Middle East unimpeded.
This is another area where the interests of Russia and the U.S. converge. Turkey and Russia have a long history of war between them. The most recent major incident between them was in 2015, when Turkey shot down a Russian aircraft over northern Syria. They have since resolved the dispute, but relations remain uneasy and complicated. As Russia weakens and Turkey rises, Turkey will start to challenge Russian influence in the Caucasus and the Balkans, areas that for Russia hold greater strategic significance than any country in the Middle East.
This is why Russia and the U.S. have both, to varying degrees, reached out to Syria’s Kurds. In March, the Syrian Kurds said Russia had agreed to build a base in northern Syria and to send military personnel to train the YPG. Russia’s Ministry of Defense disputed this depiction, saying it was setting up a “reconciliation center.” Whatever it is called, the construction is a symbol of closer relations.
The U.S., for its part, has come to rely on the Syrian Kurds as the largest ground force in Syria that is both able and willing to take on the Islamic State directly. The Obama administration tacitly supported the Syrian Kurds, but the Trump administration went a step further in May when it announced that it would supply them with weapons to fight the Islamic State.
Russian and U.S. support has not gone unnoticed in Turkey’s capital. In the same way that Ukraine is of fundamental importance to Russia, or that Cuba is to the U.S., the Kurdish issue is crucial for Turkey. It is also the one issue that could significantly complicate Turkey’s rise to power. The Kurds in Syria are not the problem – at least, they are not the only problem. The issue is that Kurds, with all their separatist ambitions, make up about 18 percent of Turkey’s population – about 14 million people – and most of them live in the southeastern part of the country near Syria. The Kurds are not a monolithic group; the roughly 29 million to 35 million Kurds in the Middle East speak different languages, have different tribal and national loyalties, and even have different religious faiths. But Syria’s Kurds are closely related to Turkey’s Kurds. In Turkey’s eyes, the YPG is the same level of strategic threat as IS or the Kurdistan Workers’ Party militant group, or PKK.
Both the U.S. and Russia have an interest, then, in preventing Turkey from intervening in Syria in any capacity beyond fighting the Islamic State. For one thing, Turkey is anti-Assad, and the rebel groups with which it is closest are ideologically incompatible with the U.S. and Russia. For another, Turkey would try to destroy the Syrian Kurdish statelet that has popped up during the war for fear that the spirit of independence might spread into Turkey’s own Kurdish region in the southeast, which has seen more and more clashes in the past two years between the PKK and Turkish security forces. The stronger both the Syrian Kurds and the Assad regime are, the harder it will be for Turkey to extend its power into the Levant, and the greater the balance against Turkey in the region will be as its strength grows over the next two decades.
Iran is another part of the equation, and here the intersection of U.S. and Russian interests is more complicated. The U.S. signed the nuclear deal with Iran because it needed Iran’s help to contain Islamic State forces in Iraq, but the U.S. also does not want to see Baghdad and the Shiite parts of Iraq become de facto provinces of Iran. The Americans need Iran’s help – and over the long term need Iran as a counterweight to Turkish power – but they will not allow Iran to acquire a nuclear weapon. They will block any attempt by Iran to establish regional dominance, just as they would stop Turkey from forming a unified Sunni Arab force.
Russian relations with Iran have historically been fraught, but at the moment they are positive. This is in part because Iran supports the Assad regime and views every group in the region that is not Sunni as a potential proxy group. Iran’s Shiite proxies, such as Hezbollah, are also important for keeping up the fight against the Islamic State. Unlike the U.S., Russia is not too concerned with Iran’s westward expansion. It would not, however, tolerate Persian influence in the Caucasus any more than it would accept Turkish influence there.
The U.S. and Russia are not in total agreement in the Middle East, but their disagreements are not close to reaching the scale of the Cold War. And they both share a desire to limit the spread of Islamist ideology and to prevent any country or group in the Middle East from rising to challenge their interests. They will continue to compete in some ways – supporting groups in Syria that are fighting groups the other supports, for instance – but they ultimately want the same thing: for the Middle East’s problems to stay in the Middle East.
Syria’s immediate future, then, is bleak and will be marred by more years of war and Islamist insurgency. IS and al-Qaida will suffer defeats but will not be defeated. Turkey will rise. Saudi Arabia will fall. Iran will scheme. The Kurds will fight. And neither the U.S. nor Russia will be able to wash their hands of the region as this chaos unfolds.
The U.S. and Russia took different routes to Syria – the U.S. through the war on terror and a botched invasion of Iraq, Russia through a revolution in Ukraine and an unexpected drop in oil prices – but both are there to stay. They are at odds in many parts of the world, especially in Eastern Europe. But in the Middle East, they will work side by side – if not together – to eliminate IS and al-Qaida and prevent the emergence of any dominant regional power. The U.S. and Russia face different challenges from an unstable Middle East and will disagree over many of the particulars, but at the broadest level they will be working toward the same goal: a predictable balance of power. The Cold War is over, but for great powers, the world is a small place. The U.S. and Russia cannot help but run into each other.
The post Syria’s Shattered Future appeared first on Geopolitics | Geopolitical Futures.
-
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/09/14/israel-becomes-first-state-back-independent-kurdistan/
-
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/09/14/israel-becomes-first-state-back-independent-kurdistan/
Good.
-
Several detailed maps in the original:
================================
In less than a week, the largest nation in the world without a state of its own — the Kurds — may finally hold a vote on whether to declare one. The approaching independence referendum, which Iraqi Kurdistan has planned for Sept. 25, marks the culmination of a long-running battle between the Kurdish government in Arbil and the central government in Baghdad. Thanks to the former's disarray and the latter's international backing, the vote seems doomed to fail in producing a distinct territory that the Kurds may call home. However, it could set Iraqi Kurdistan on a path toward greater autonomy, shaking the region from its stagnation and threatening further instability in the volatile Middle East.
A Cause That Unites and Divides
Though a familiar (and often futile) refrain throughout Iraq's history, calls for Kurdish independence have recently reached a crescendo. To most Iraqi Kurds, the referendum is a legitimate attempt to increase their autonomy from a central government that they believe to be unresponsive to their needs. Moreover, many within the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) believe that the promise of a vote — whether or not it is actually held — will help solve the troubled region's financial and political woes by giving Arbil leverage over Baghdad in the governments' negotiations over budget battles, the distribution of oil revenue and the status of disputed territories.
The rest of Iraq views the vote differently. Baghdad, along with citizens in the country's central and southern regions, has cast the plebiscite as a controversial and unconstitutional effort to destroy Iraq's territorial integrity and rob it of coveted land on the nation's fringes. The central government also worries about the precedent a Kurdish referendum might set for other regions of Iraq that have flirted with the idea of seeking more autonomy.
As history has shown, though, translating the referendum's likely "yes" result into action won't be easy. After a vote in favor of independence in 2005, Kurdish officials were thwarted in its implementation by a process rife with political and legal barriers. Many of those obstacles persist today, including infighting among Kurdish parties. Though many of Iraqi Kurdistan's factions support the plebiscite that the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) has championed, they disagree with the ruling party's motives. After all, the KDP hopes to use the vote as a mandate to keep Kurdish President Massoud Barzani or his son in power, maintaining its control over the KRG's economy in the process.
For Arbil, an Uphill Battle
Aided by inertia and the country's distraction with the Islamic State's rise, the KDP has had little trouble keeping its grip on Iraqi Kurdistan for the past few years. In fact, Arbil's participation in the fight against the extremist group has helped sway public opinion in favor of allowing the president to extend his tenure in the name of security. At the same time, Kurdish and Iraqi officials have temporarily set aside their deep-seated differences to beat back their common enemy.
But as the campaign against the Islamic State comes to an end, sparring between Arbil and Baghdad has begun to resume, driven in part by the looming independence vote. And given the immense popular support behind the initiative, it will likely be tough to stop. Nevertheless, the Gorran party is determined to try. Prominent members of Gorran, the second-largest party in the Kurdish parliament, have spearheaded a campaign to stall the referendum in hopes of weakening the position of their longtime KDP rival at the head of Kurdish politics. Though in the past the opposition party has proved willing to negotiate with its political competitors on matters related to oil revenue-sharing and the payment of civil servants' salaries, it has consistently refused to budge in its dissent regarding Barzani's extended presidency. Unless an opportunity arises to install an alternate candidate, Gorran and its allies will continue to try to block many of the KDP's proposals.
Meanwhile, the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) — the third-largest party in the Kurdish Parliament — has remained steadfast in its support of the referendum and the KDP. Just last week, the smaller organization backed the ruling party's play to reopen the shuttered Kurdish Parliament so that lawmakers could issue a decision on the vote in time for its scheduled kickoff on Sept. 25. The PUK, however, is so deeply fractured that it has become an unreliable partner. The party's divisions were on full display Sept. 16 when prominent PUK leader Barham Salih defected to form a new ticket ahead of the KRG's presidential and parliamentary elections on Nov. 1. These electoral contests will lay bare the rifts running throughout Kurdish politics, regardless of whether the independence referendum takes place as planned.
Baghdad, for its part, is exhausting every legal avenue it has to make sure the vote is canceled. A nonbinding resolution by the Iraqi parliament, a ruling by the Federal Supreme Court of Iraq and firm statements by the prime minister have all challenged the constitutionality of the referendum and have demonstrated the central government's willingness to wield its legislative and judicial power against Arbil. Baghdad will continue to use these tools, and others, to try to coerce the KRG into delaying the vote in exchange for economic and political concessions. Because the two governments boast loyal military forces, however, there is a considerable risk of clashes breaking out as each side defends its interests and the territories both claim as their own, such as Kirkuk.
A Local Vote With Regional Impact
Though only Iraqi Kurds are participating in the referendum, its consequences will extend well beyond the bounds of the KRG and into the Kurdish communities of Iran, Syria and Turkey. Estimated to number some 25 million to 30 million throughout the Middle East, the Kurds live on lands that stretch across several countries' borders, and the century-long quest for statehood has repeatedly galvanized them all. Because of the overlap in the region's Kurdish communities, two of the KRG's closest neighbors — Turkey and Iran — have watched preparations for the referendum with mounting trepidation. Though long-standing rivals, Ankara and Tehran grapple with Kurdish insurgencies and secessionism at home, and in trying to stop the approaching plebiscite, they have found common ground.
Of the two, Turkey has more reason to be concerned about the vote. Home to a larger Kurdish population spread over valued arable land and strategic territory, Turkey faces more severe ramifications within its borders than Iran does in the event that Iraqi Kurdistan declares independence. In fact, Ankara's determination to prevent the Kurds from carving out a space of their own was one of the primary motives behind its military intervention into northern Syria in August 2016. Turkey will continue to work toward this goal, maintaining its pressure on Syrian Kurds while pounding the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) in northern Iraq. Ankara has already threatened to ramp up its military presence in Iraqi Kurdistan if the PKK, which has waged an insurgency within Turkey's borders, continues to threaten its security. Ankara could even increase pressure by using its position as one of Arbil's largest trade partners and as the host of a Kurdish oil pipeline to cut off energy revenues to the KRG. In addition, some rivers that feed into Iraqi Kurdistan flow through Turkey, giving Ankara the ability to curtail the region's water supplies.
While Iran has a smaller stake in events in Iraqi Kurdistan, it, too, has an interest in blocking the referendum. Tehran maintains a close relationship with Iraq's central government and strong ties to many of the Shiite militias that are loosely under Baghdad's control. Some of those groups have condemned the approaching vote for fear of losing the country's disputed territories to Arbil and have moved fighters into heavily contested areas, including Diyala and Kirkuk. On Sept. 17, Iran's National Security Council chief backed the militias by vowing to close Iran's border with the KRG, blocking the passage of goods and people across it.
The Kurds do enjoy the support — at least rhetorically — of one of the most powerful external actors with a foothold in Iraqi Kurdistan: the United States. Washington, long an ally of the KRG, is sympathetic to the Kurds' push for greater autonomy. But for the United States, timing is everything. An independence referendum could disrupt the international fight against the Islamic State, which will not end for several more months. Concerned about Tehran's attempts to gain influence over Baghdad, Washington would also prefer that Iraqi leaders have the ability to prepare for the country's 2018 elections without having to address the problem of a Kurdish referendum.
Over the past few years, the United States has funneled hundreds of millions of dollars to Kurdish peshmerga fighters combating the Islamic State. In theory, Washington could try to leverage some of this aid to persuade Arbil to postpone the vote. Since doing so could be detrimental to the coalition against the extremist group, however, U.S. officials will likely stick to less contentious tactics as it asks the Kurds for patience in their pursuit of independence. At best, they will acquiesce and use the specter of the referendum (or the mandate it yields) to revive stalled talks between Arbil and Baghdad. At worst, the Kurds will dig in their heels, worsening the conflict between Iraq's north and south while giving foreign players an excuse to intervene as they seek to protect their own interests.
-
second post
Negotiations are underway between the Iraqi government and the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) over the planned Kurdistan independence referendum, scheduled for Sept. 25. Numerous international powers oppose the referendum — including the United States, the United Kingdom, Turkey, Iran, Germany and other EU powers — and pressure is mounting on KRG President Massoud Barzani to delay the referendum. Meanwhile, Barzani is trying to turn popular approval among Iraqi Kurds for the referendum into a mandate that will improve his bargaining position. But the rallying support — and opposition — is bringing a political charge that's already spilled over into violence and could do so again.
The prospective referendum includes territories that the central government in Iraq and the KRG both claim as their own. As political negotiations continue, the security situation in the disputed territories is tense and risks escalating. In one such province, Diyala, Iranian-backed Shiite militias recently tried to claim territory, with militia leaders saying that the Kurds had no right to it. In Kirkuk province (which is more valuable than Diyala in part because of its oil reserves), not only do both the Iraqi and Kurdish governments lay claim to overlapping portions of the province, but outside powers Turkey and Iran also claim some degree of ownership and maintain ties to militia forces on the ground.
On Sept. 18, clashes erupted in Kirkuk between Kurdish paramilitary forces and Turkmen, resulting in the death of one Kurdish fighter and the wounding of a total of five men from both sides. As of Sept. 19, a nighttime curfew had been issued in Kirkuk to quell the violence and circumvent an escalation. Earlier the same day, in a pro-referendum rally in Kirkuk, provincial Governor Najmiddin Karim made an appearance in support of Kurdistan independence, underlining the political tension in the province. Many Kirkuk residents, particularly Arabs and Turkmen, do not support the referendum. Because neither Baghdad nor Arbil wields ultimate power over the militia forces scattered throughout the province, there is the risk further clashes will occur. More unrest could, in turn, invite the deployment of even more military forces — from both the Iraqi government and the KRG — to the province. Going forward, Kirkuk will be a province to watch as a bellwether for the mounting risk of violence over the upcoming referendum.
-
third post
STRATFOR
Russian state energy firm Rosneft's relationship with Iraqi Kurdistan will expand dramatically with the construction of a natural gas pipeline to Turkey.
Iraqi Kurdistan has relied on Turkey in the past to export its oil, but the new natural gas pipeline will increase Turkey's dependence on the autonomous region.
Turkey will welcome an alternative to Iranian and Russian natural gas, though buying from the Kurds will limit its influence over them.
The budding relationship between Russian energy firm Rosneft and Iraq's Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) is closer than ever. The company announced Sept. 18 that it was in the final stages of negotiating a deal with the KRG to finance and build a $1 billion natural gas export pipeline to Turkey. Once complete, the pipeline will transform the way the autonomous region in northern Iraq exports its energy. And its effect on regional politics will be no less dramatic.
Pipelines and Power
As a landlocked region, Iraqi Kurdistan relies on pipelines through nearby territories to carry the energy it exports to markets abroad. Its dependence on its neighbors has proved a vulnerability, though. The Kirkuk-Ceyhan pipeline that transports oil from Kurdistan to southern Turkey, for instance, gave Baghdad considerable influence over KRG leaders in Arbil because it crosses through territory under the Iraqi federal government's control. To squeeze concessions from Kurdistan, the Iraqi federal government could block the KRG's access to the pipeline.
The negotiating tool lost its power in 2014 when Arbil closed a 50-year export agreement with Ankara that enabled it to construct its own oil pipeline to Turkey through Iraqi Kurdistan. Under the new arrangement, however, the KRG simply traded its reliance on Iraq's federal government for dependence on Turkey. And though Ankara is a less demanding administrator than Baghdad was, it still has a great deal of power over Arbil, its energy exports and even its oil revenues, since the KRG conducts its energy transactions through Turkish Halkbank. Turkey, moreover, could shut off the KRG's access to the pipeline without jeopardizing its energy security because it, like Iraq, consumes only a small portion of the Kurdish oil that passes through its territory.
So far, Ankara hasn't exploited its advantage over the KRG as Baghdad did. Nevertheless, Arbil is well aware of the risk. Turkey's support for KRG President Massoud Barzani is based largely on convenience and could waver as the leader continues to back an independence referendum scheduled for Sept. 25. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan recently announced that his government would reveal its planned response to the referendum after meetings of his Cabinet and national security council Sept. 22. Though it's unclear whether Ankara's response will involve the KRG's pipeline, the possibility is worrisome for Arbil and has prompted it to look for a way to even the playing field with Turkey.
Enter Russia
The Rosneft-financed natural gas export pipeline would do just that. With a planned annual capacity of 30 billion cubic meters (98.43 billion cubic feet), the pipeline will be able to transport nearly two-thirds of the total volume of natural gas that Turkey imported last year. Not all of that natural gas would wind up in Turkey; some would likely travel on to markets in southeastern Europe. Even so, the pipeline would boost Turkey's consumption of natural gas from Iraqi Kurdistan, particularly since Ankara is eager to find alternative sources to reduce its dependence on Iranian and Russian supplies. The more natural gas Turkey imports from Iraqi Kurdistan, the less leverage Ankara will have over Arbil.
Rosneft stands to gain from the new pipeline, too. The firm's expansion in Iraqi Kurdistan not only dovetails with the Kremlin's strategy to insinuate itself into as many global hotspots as possible, but it also supports Rosneft's strategy to compete with Russian natural gas giant Gazprom. Rosneft has long tried to break Gazprom's monopoly on piped natural gas exports from Russia. With its plans to export natural gas each year from Iraqi Kurdistan to Turkey and southeastern Europe, Rosneft has set its sights on two of Gazprom's most important markets.
But Rosneft's pipeline deal is just the latest of in a string of recent agreements that bode well for the Kurdish energy sector. Earlier this year Rosneft became the first major oil company to start pre-purchasing Kurdish oil exports, throwing Arbil a financial lifeline. The Russian firm then used the arrangement as a springboard for the pipeline deal, along with an agreement to explore and develop five blocks in Iraqi Kurdistan. Apart from forging deeper ties with Rosneft, the KRG also finally settled its long-standing dispute with the Pearl Petroleum Co. over energy payments. The two sides reached an agreement that included future investments into natural gas production, which will contribute to the initial feedstock for the Rosneft pipeline.
The natural gas export pipeline that Rosneft and the KRG are negotiating could immediately change the way regional powers operate and behave. Although the infrastructure won't alter countries' individual interests in the region, it will change the factors at play in the dispute between Arbil and Baghdad — a dispute that will only intensify as Iraqi Kurdistan's independence referendum approaches.
-
Iraqi Kurdistan’s Unlikely Ally
Sep 22, 2017
By Kamran Bokhari
Efforts to create a new state are always contentious and frequently violent. The Iraqi Kurds’ move toward independence, however, is even more contentious and complex than usual. The unfolding crisis affects many countries besides Iraq, including the United States, Russia, Turkey and Iran. But there’s one country that is in prime position to not just be affected by the crisis, but to shape its outcome: Turkey.
As long as it doesn’t give in to mounting pressure to cancel, the autonomous Kurdistan Regional Government in northern Iraq is expected to hold an independence referendum on Sept. 25. In the likely event that the “yes” vote prevails, the KRG leadership would use the result as the foundation for a negotiated exit from the Iraqi state. It will be an uphill battle from there. The Shiite-led central government in Baghdad has no reason to negotiate away its territory.
To make matters worse, the Kurds want to take with them disputed territories that are well south of the three provinces (Dahuk, Irbil and Sulaimaniyah) that formally constitute the KRG. These include significant parts of Ninevah, Salahuddin, Kirkuk and Diyala – areas that are energy-rich and heavily Kurdish, but also areas that Baghdad is unlikely to give up without a fight. And it won’t be alone: The government will have the full backing of its patron, Iran. Furthermore, the Sunnis – who are either a majority or a significant minority in the provinces in question – will be major participants in whatever comes next. The Islamic State, in particular, will look to exploit the situation to change its fortunes.
Unlikely Partners
With so many actors aligned against them, the Kurds will need help from a major player. Turkey may be just the partner that they’re looking for. All things being equal, Turkey should be vehemently opposed to the emergence of an independent Kurdish state across the border from its own restive Kurdish area. The political statements coming out of Turkey certainly give the impression that the government in Ankara will not tolerate the Iraqi Kurds making a run at full sovereignty. Reality is not so simple, however.
Iraqi Kurds fly Kurdish flags Sept. 15 during an event to urge people to vote in the upcoming independence referendum in Irbil, the capital of the autonomous Kurdish region of northern Iraq. SAFIN HAMED/AFP/Getty Images
The Turks are certainly not thrilled with the prospect of the KRG becoming the Republic of Kurdistan – definitely not at a time when the Kurds in Syria are galloping toward their own de facto Kurdistan. The Kurdish community is far from monolithic and suffers from deep divisions in all four countries where they make up a sizable share of the population. The Iraqi Kurds don’t deal much with the Kurds in Turkey, but Syria’s Kurdish separatists are closely allied with Turkey’s Kurdish rebels, the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or PKK. No country has a larger concentration of Kurds than Turkey, so this is a major concern for the Turks. Fortunately for Ankara, however, it has options.
For the better part of the past decade, Turkey has been forging deeper relations with the KRG to the point that the KRG has almost become a client statelet. It has taken full advantage of the fact that the KRG is landlocked and surrounded by hostile forces. Though the Shiites who dominate the Iraqi central government agreed to give the Kurds regional autonomy, they have always sought to severely limit its scope. The key to doing so was to constrain Irbil’s ability to export the ample supply of hydrocarbons in the KRG.
The only export routes ran south through most of Iraq to the Persian Gulf – routes controlled by the Shiites. Until 2014, the KRG relied heavily on exports by road, which limited their output to roughly 60,000 barrels of oil per day. The breakthrough came when the KRG constructed a pipeline that connected to Turkey’s pipeline network and export terminals at the port of Ceyhan. This pipeline provided the KRG with an escape route from its dependence on Baghdad.
In the process, however, the KRG has come to depend on Turkey. Most of the 600,000 bpd that the KRG exports today run through Turkish territory. As much as 90 percent of the KRG’s operating budget comes from oil proceeds. Over the years, Turkish companies have begun to dominate the various sectors of the KRG’s economy, and Turkish goods dominate its markets. In this way, Turkey has become more than a close partner for the Iraqi Kurds; it’s become a necessary partner.
For Turkey, this relationship could be helpful on many fronts. First, imports from the KRG help Turkey to diversify its sources of energy. Second, the KRG has helped Turkey contain the PKK insurgency. It provides Turkey with intelligence on PKK hideouts and doesn’t make a big deal of Turkish military operations in northern Iraq. Finally, the relationship prevents Turkey’s historical rival, Iran, from enjoying a near-monopoly over influence in Iraq.
Trying Times
It’s a useful arrangement, but it’s being tested by the Iraqi Kurdish move to secede from Iraq. Turkey’s entire southern flank is chaotic, and Ankara is already busy in Syria dealing with the Syrian Kurds, the Assad regime, the Islamic State and other jihadists, Iran and Russia. Publicly, Turkey has warned the KRG that it will shut down oil exports if Irbil does not cancel the referendum. In truth, Turkey would likely be able to live with an independent Kurdistan because the new state would be so reliant on Turkey for its well-being. It’s not independence itself that complicates things for Turkey – it’s the timing.
The Turks aren’t about to throw away their entire investment of so many years by assuming an uncompromising attitude toward the Iraqi Kurds. At the same time, the KRG isn’t going to alienate the one state on which the entire political economy of its envisioned state relies. But the Kurdish leadership in Iraq has already mobilized the masses, and it can’t back down now from at least holding the referendum – if not following through on independence, should the “yes” vote prevail. It would thus not be a surprise to see Irbil and Ankara eventually reach an understanding whereby Turkey has a major seat at the table where the future of Kurdistan is being shaped gradually.
Though this is a risky move that could embolden the Syrian and Turkish Kurds to emulate their Iraqi counterparts, if an independent Kurdistan arises from the shattered state that is Iraq, it wouldn’t mean the sky is falling for Turkey. The Turks will have to carefully navigate the aftermath, but the relationship they have cultivated with the KRG gives them a lot of leverage to manage the Kurds on a regional level. The Turks can live with a Kurdistan that is beholden to them, and in fact, it will provide them with a way to manage the Syrian Kurds and to roll back Iran’s growing influence in the region. What the Turks say publicly, however, is a different story.
-
Second post
According to Stratfor's Third-Quarter Forecast, the push by Iraq's Kurdistan Regional Government for an independence referendum would inspire other Kurdish groups in the region to also push for greater autonomy. This is precisely why there is so much regional opposition to the referendum in Iraq. Roughly 25 million Kurds inhabit land that stretches through parts of Turkey, Syria, Iran, Iraq, Azerbaijan and Armenia. But the Kurds have no state of their own — and the countries they inhabit want to keep it that way.
Syria's Kurds are taking the first of three steps that are needed to formalize a governing structure for Syrian Kurdistan, which according to one of the region's dominant political groups, the Rojava Federal Council, stretches across the Afrin, Jazira and Euphrates regions of Syria. On Sept. 22, Kurds in northern Syria, living in territory known as Rojava, are voting for communal representatives in 3,700 communes. The leaders elected will then be included in another vote in November to create local councils and one in January to create a parliament.
Syrian Kurds, notoriously divided as they are, have tried to organize in the past, and momentum for these elections has been building for some time. But the timing of this latest attempt is still notable: It comes as the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) in Iraq is preparing for an independence referendum on Sept. 25. The referendum is supported by many Kurdish groups outside of Iraq and is inspiring the Syrian Kurds to renew their bid for more autonomy. Most Middle Eastern nations have come out in opposition to the KRG's referendum, but Turkey is particularly concerned about the possibility of an emboldened Kurdish population. Turkey has been waging a long-term fight against the Kurdistan Workers' Party in Turkey, which also has a strong presence within Syria. Yet, it's important to note that just because Syria's Kurds are organizing, doesn't mean that the region has gained any actual autonomy. That is, however, what the group is eventually pushing for.
-
How to Help Iraq’s Religious Minorities
Trump should undo an Obama policy that largely blocks them from getting U.S. aid.
Displaced Yazidis walk from Sinjar, Iraq toward Syria, Aug. 10, 2014.
By Nina Shea
Sept. 21, 2017 7:01 p.m. ET
As Islamic State heads toward defeat in Iraq, Christian and Yazidi survivors of genocide should be returning to their hometowns in Nineveh province. Instead, these fragile minority communities mostly remain stranded at displacement shelters in Kurdistan without the means to rebuild their villages. Many are fleeing Iraq, and the country now risks losing these religious minorities entirely. The Trump administration is making the situation worse by continuing Obama policies that effectively exclude these non-Muslims from U.S. aid in Iraq.
Today there are fewer than 250,000 Christians in Iraq, according to the State Department, down from as many as 1.4 million before the 2003 invasion. These Christians speak Aramaic, like Jesus of Nazareth, and trace their faith to Thomas the Apostle, whose relics were spirited from Nineveh by Orthodox monks as ISIS approached. The Iraqi Jewish community, its roots in the Babylonian exile, was forced out over the past 70 years; fewer than 10 Jewish families remain in Baghdad. Yazidis—who have lived near the Sinjar Mountains—number about 400,000. Nadia Murad, the voice for thousands of Yazidis enslaved by ISIS, warned a congressional panel earlier this year that her people could soon disappear because of emigration. This would signal the end of Iraq’s indigenous non-Muslim communities.
Since fiscal 2014, the U.S. has provided $1.4 billion in humanitarian aid for Iraq, but very little of it has reached the beleaguered Christian and Yazidi communities. This is because the Obama administration decided to channel most of it through United Nations refugee and development agencies, a practice the new administration has continued. There is no protection for religious minorities in the U.N.’s overwhelmingly Muslim camps, and Christians and Yazidis are terrified of entering them. The U.N. doesn’t operate camps in Iraq for displaced Christians, and the international body has enough resources to shelter only half the Yazidis who congregate around Dohuk, in Iraqi Kurdistan. U.N. programs also exclude the local churches that struggle to care for these minorities, forcing them to raise aid on a piecemeal and insecure basis from other sources.
President Trump has spoken about the plight of Christians in the Middle East, but he has done little to effect change. Far lower percentages of Christians and Yazidis are returning from displacement to their homes in the devastated Nineveh Plains and Sinjar, respectively, compared with the larger religious groups in Tikrit, Fallujah and Mosul. The prior administration decided to have U.S. reconstruction assistance, now at $265 million since fiscal 2015, also flow through the U.N. The director of the U.S. Agency for International Development, Mark Green, started only last month and has not yet moved to change this policy.
USAID lacks direct oversight in Nineveh and relies heavily on U.N. Development Program reports that claim progress in Christian towns. One local church authority told me the U.N. reports “grossly overstate the quality and substance of the actual work” and their projects’ influence is “minimal or nonexistent.” A representative from the Nineveh Reconstruction Committee, a unified church group, told me earlier this month that the only major projects under way are its own. These are supported by Hungary and the Knights of Columbus. Samaritan’s Purse and Aid to the Church in Need are planning projects in Qaraqosh, also without U.S. government assistance. These private charities can rebuild houses, but large infrastructure projects need government aid.
The U.N. acknowledges that most of the displaced minorities have not returned home and have shown “a reluctance to return without guarantees of their security and the stability of their towns and villages.” Church leaders close to the displaced are excluded from U.N. and Iraqi government committees that decide stabilization projects, track progress and ensure locals are hired for them. Rex Tillerson’s State Department has not changed this policy. Nor has it answered my request for information.
Security remains a problem and threatens America’s regional interests. Iran is moving in on the towns minorities have been unable to reclaim. The U.N. has focused on minor projects in Bartella, a main Christian town. Yet on Sept. 15 the “Imam Khomeini” elementary school and mosque complex opened there at an official ceremony, a “gift from the Islamic Republic of Iran.” In several towns, Iranian-backed militias stand guard.
President Trump can take immediate steps to ensure U.S. aid reaches Iraq’s most vulnerable minorities. First, he can direct his administration to address their humanitarian and stabilization needs. This should include dropping the U.N. as a pass-through for U.S. aid. He can also appoint an interagency coordinator to ensure that bureaucratic hurdles don’t interfere with getting aid to all groups. These relatively small tweaks would help preserve the region’s religious minorities.
Iraq’s religious minorities are small in number, but assisting them would affirm that the U.S. stands against genocide, protects religious freedom and aids vulnerable minority groups.
Ms. Shea is director of the Hudson Institute’s Center for Religious Freedom.
Appeared in the September 22, 2017, print edition.
-
https://www.cnsnews.com/news/article/patrick-goodenough/son-hamas-founder-shakes-un-human-rights-council-if-israel-did-not
I heard this guy speak on radio several years ago , I don't remember which show perhaps Aaron Klein
-
Our (second?) best ally in the region hasn't earned its iown thread?
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2017/09/26/iraqi-kurds-voted-in-their-independence-referendum-now-what/?utm_term=.3c8718f9104f
For millions of ethnic Kurds in Iraqi Kurdistan, Monday was a historic day. After a century of despair and neglect, they had the chance to vote for their own independence in a controversial referendum staged by the Kurdistan Regional Government — the body that holds sway over the predominantly Kurdish areas of northern Iraq. Official results are expected in the coming days, with a "yes" vote in favor of independence almost certain to win out.
-
Hmmmm , , , a fair question but I'm thinking let's continue to keep the Kurds in this thread. They are spread out over Turkey, Syria, Iraq, and Iran. Trying to separate them out into a separate thread would likely lead to more confusion than comprehension.
-
http://www.nationalreview.com/article/451758/donald-trump-kurdistan-independence-isis?utm_source=Sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=NR%20Daily%20Monday%20through%20Friday%202017-09-26&utm_term=NR5PM%20Actives
-
http://www.nationalreview.com/article/451758/donald-trump-kurdistan-independence-isis?utm_source=Sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=NR%20Daily%20Monday%20through%20Friday%202017-09-26&utm_term=NR5PM%20Actives
That's right. Who is our ally, Turkey or Kurds?
Turkey blocked our access to Iraq from the North. How many US lives and dollars did that cost us? Is that what an ally does?
March, 2003: http://articles.latimes.com/2003/mar/02/world/fg-iraq2
Turkey bombs US allies:
http://www.cnn.com/2017/04/25/politics/turkey-bombs-kurds-iraq-us-concerned/index.html
Democracy dies in Turkey
https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2017/04/turkey-referendum-erdogan-kurds/522894/
our policy would be like recognizing the Chinese Communist Party over the free state of Taiwan. Ooops.
-
http://www.aei.org/publication/approach-kurdistan-with-realism-not-romanticism/?mkt_tok=eyJpIjoiT1RCaU1tRTVPVGsyTjJJNCIsInQiOiJ4UWhwMWRwYXNZTWFITDBGTWp1clJPZ1l2dkxWSGtoXC9uOFwvbFdpbk5OYTU2OWJyNCtpN09yUTArNnJ1YU5PQm9VZ21iM1E1WXBDZzRMdUZcLzVcL1hpTkU5NTFzV2ZFOXlwU0E5dnV2aWFSU3RBeDVwQVwvQ282RFZPd3RjbTNPKytFIn0%3D
-
https://pjmedia.com/spengler/2017/09/25/washingtons-despicable-hypocrisy-towards-kurds/
SPENGLER
Washington's despicable hypocrisy towards the Kurds
BY DAVID P. GOLDMAN SEPTEMBER 25, 2017
At Asia Times today, I explain why the entire world (excepting Israel) have lined up against the Kurds:
Except for the State of Israel and the Kingdom of Jordan, there isn’t one state in Western Asia that is viable inside its present borders at a 20-year horizon. All the powers with interests in the region want to kick the problem down the road, and that is why the whole world (excepting Israel) wants to abort an independence referendum to be held by Iraq’s eight million Kurds on Sept. 25.
I just want to add that our foreign policy elite is a pack of hypocritical, yellow-bellied, two-faced, fork-tongued, lying polecats who wouldn't acknowledge the truth if it were tattooed on their ophidian foreheads.
Since September 11, 2001, we've been told that America has to ally with moderate Muslims against "extremism." There are in fact moderate Muslims in the world. The Kurds are "moderate Muslims." The Kurds do not persecute nonbelievers. They don't hate Jews and Christians. They don't forbid women to leave the house without a male relative; in fact, their militias are the only effective fighting force in the world that includes women in front-line combat units. They protect Iraqi Christians against ISIS, and Iraq's Christians in turn support Kurdish independence. They have excellent and long-standing relations with the State of Israel. Jewish life is flourishing in the Kurdish Autonomous Region in the north of Iraq.
Most of all, Kurdish fighters are the spearhead of American-backed ground forces fighting ISIS in Syria and Iraq. They do not only act the way we say we want Muslims to act, protecting Christians and Jews and promoting the equality of women. They shed blood for what they believe in.
The Kurds are everything that George W. Bush and Barack Obama told us we should find in the Islamic world, and more. They want nothing but friendship with the United States of America. And we have thrown them under the bus. There isn't an Appalachian outhouse that stinks worse than our foreign policy Establishment.
Why have we thrown them under the bus? Because we're afraid of unsettling "extremists," that is, the radical jihadists who have been killing Americans for decades. Kurdish independence would below up the artificial state of Iraq, which turned into an Iranian satrapy under majority Shi'ite rule as arranged by George W. Bush, Condoleezza Rice and the nation-builders of the Republican Establishment. It would destabilize Turkey, where Kurds of military age will outnumber Turks a generation from now. Turkish President Erdogan wants to restore Ottoman glory and the prospect of losing the Kurdish-majority Southeast drives him crazy. Turkey, notionally the Southeast flank of NATO, has already turned its back on the West, and lined up with Russia and China.
Thanks in small part to our bungling and in large part to Iran's predation, the whole of Western Asia is unstable. Syria and Iraq look like the kind of scene from a Quentin Tarantino film where everyone has a gun trained on everyone else. The one island of stability in the whole miserable landscape, Iraqi Kurdistan, becomes a threat to the momentary stability of the region.
There are 40 million Kurds living in Turkey, Iraq, Iran and Syria, and the question of Kurdish statehood can't be untangled from the regional mess by a referendum. There is good reason to counsel the Kurds to exercise patience and careful statecraft in clearing this minefield. But it is utterly disgusting to ignore their national aspirations. Washington has reasons of state to manage the regional crisis artfully, and to ask the Kurds to be patient. But why are we so beholden to the doomed and destructive regimes of Iran, Syria, Turkey and Iraq that we cannot extend a hand of friendship to the Kurds? Their path to statehood may be tortuous and prolonged, but America should offer our counsel and support. If we do not, the rest of the Muslim world will smile grimly and exploit our moral cowardice.
-
lets not forget George *H* Bush calling for them to rise up against Saddam , offer them zero help and they are left to get slaughtered.
-
IIRC that would include the Shias in the south as well-- which in part is why there was a lot of hesitation from them when we went back in.
-
http://www.jordantimes.com/news/region/syria%E2%80%99s-deadliest-month-2017-claims-3000-lives
-
http://www.jordantimes.com/news/region/hizbollah-says-israel-pushing-region-war
-
http://www.jpost.com/Opinion/COLUMN-ONE-Trump-and-Obamas-third-term-506779
COLUMN ONE: Trump and Obama’s third term
Column one: Burying Obama’s legacy
Israeli minister: Relations with Trump are more important than calling out Nazis
By Caroline B. Glick
October 5, 2017 20:42
The problem is that substantively, there is no real difference between Obama and Trump, not in the Middle East and not anywhere.
In an interview with Walla news site Tuesday, Defense Minister Avigdor Liberman said that “the more active the US is [in the Middle East], the better it will be for Israel.”
On paper, Liberman’s sentiments seem reasonable enough. President Donald Trump is far friendlier than his predecessor Barack Obama was. The tone of US-Israel relations has vastly improved since Trump took office. The problem is that substantively, there is no real difference between the two administrations – not in the Middle East and not anywhere.
Take Iran’s nuclear program for example.
In accordance with the US Nuclear Agreement Review Act (2015), on October 15, Trump is obligated to make his quarterly report to Congress certifying or decertifying Iranian compliance with the terms of the nuclear deal it concluded with Obama two years ago.
The issue of whether or not to certify Iranian compliance has been the beginning, middle and end of all US policy discussions on Iran’s nuclear program since Trump entered office.
Despite Trump’s stated opposition to the deal, his top advisers Defense Secretary James Mattis and Secretary of State Rex Tillerson have pressured him into twice certifying Iranian compliance.
On the face of it, the debate about Iranian compliance ought to be about competing interpretations of Iran’s behavior. In practice, though, facts play little role in the discourse.
The Iranians announced as soon as the deal was concluded that they would not permit UN inspectors to enter any nuclear site they define as a “military installation.”
This hollowed out the entire inspections regime.
After all, if Iran can bar inspectors from its nuclear installations, there is no way for inspectors to know if Iran’s nuclear operations accord with or breach of the restrictions it agreed to in the agreement. In other words, neither Obama nor Trump has had any way to credibly certify Iranian compliance, because the US has no idea what Iran is doing. And everyone knows this. Since everyone knows this, the debate about presidential certification of Iranian compliance clearly is not about Iranian compliance.
Instead, the debate has been about one thing only: reality.
Specifically, does reality have a place in US policy regarding the nuclear deal with Iran? Because if reality does have a role to play, obviously, Trump cannot certify Iranian compliance.
To date, proponents of barring reality have won the debate. In testimony Tuesday before the Senate Armed Services Committee, Mattis said that in his opinion, maintaining the nuclear deal is the US interest. Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen.
Joseph Dunford told lawmakers that “Iran is not in material breach” of the accord.
According to an AP report Tuesday, national security officials involved in the recertification process now aim to change the Nuclear Agreement Review Act in a manner that would deny Trump the power to determine whether or not Iran is complying with the deal. According to AP, the issue is being framed as a way to free Trump from the embarrassment of having to certify the deal every three months.
The worst thing about the entire debate about certifying Iranian compliance is not that it is delusional. It is that it is irrelevant.
Obama’s nuclear pact is yesterday’s news.
Obama’s nuclear deal with Iran gave the Iranians all the benefits up front. In exchange for a handshake, Iran received a $100 billion in cold hard cash and foreign direct investment. The international arms markets opened to them. The international financial markets opened to them.
Non-certification won’t bring back the money.
More important than the financial advantages Iran has already won, and will not lose if the US decertifies, is the fact that due to the deal, Iran has had two years to freely advance its nuclear program without meaningful inspections and without sanctions. And again, while the Iranians have advanced, the US has debated the two-year old deal over and over again as if it matters. This instead of constructing a strategy to block Iran’s entrance into the nuclear club.
This brings us to Iran’s ally North Korea, which thanks to feckless US policy-makers of previous administrations, is already a member of the nuclear club.
During Mattis’s testimony Tuesday he said that despite the fact that he and Trump are threatening to annihilate North Korea and Tillerson is trying to appease North Korea, there is no contradiction in the administration’s policy.
Substantively he is right. Since both of the policies being discussed are imaginary, whether the administration talks about military action or diplomacy, its statements are meaningless.
The fact is that unless the US is willing to see tens of thousands of South Koreans vaporized in a North Korean artillery assault on Seoul in response to a US military strike on Pyongyang, the US has no viable military option for dealing with North Korea. Since the Trump administration has given no indication that it is willing to see that sort of destruction in South Korea to achieve the goal of denuclearizing the Korean peninsula, its threats to annihilate North Korea are not credible.
As for Tillerson’s search for a diplomatic solution, this too is futile. For 24 years, three US administrations reached “historic deal” after “historic deal” with Pyongyang, and Pyongyang breached all of them as it raced to the finishing line of its nuclear weapons program.
Now, with Kim Jung Un testing hydrogen bombs and ICBMs and threatening to nuke Guam, there is no chance that US diplomacy will fare any better than it did in the past.
And so the US is back where it has always been. It has one card to play with North Korea: China.
China is the only actor that can end North Korea’s nuclear brinkmanship without war. But to compel China to act the US requires far more leverage over the Chinese than it has presently mustered or brought to bear. So the only way for the US to avert war with North Korea is to escalate its competition with China on America’s terms.
Unfortunately, once Trump’s senior strategist Stephen Bannon left the White House in August, no senior administration official has been working on building leverage over China.
Back to Iran. As bad as North Korea is, at least it’s a Chinese client state. If Trump can make China an offer it can’t refuse, he can achieve the US’s strategic goals without a devastating war.
Iran on the other hand is no one’s client. Iran has its own client states.
And just as the Trump administration is unable to extricate itself from Obama’s legacy of delusion and failure with respect to Iran’s nuclear weapons program and North Korea, so it cannot – or will not – shift away from Obama’s delusional policies toward Iran’s client states.
Consider Syria.
In Syria the Trump administration has maintained Obama’s policy of pretending that the most dangerous actor and gravest threat to the US and its interests in Syria is Islamic State. Although under pressure by Israel, the administration has begun to talk about the threat of Iranian expansionism in Syria, it has no policy for blocking Iran’s empowerment. The same is the case with relation to Russia’s rise as a regional power broker – at the US’s expense – through its deployment in Syria.
As bad as the US’s Syria policy is, its Lebanon policy is even worse.
In Syria the US is simply pretending its enemies do not exist, or if they exist, that they do not threaten the US. In Lebanon, the US is collaborating with its enemies.
In June Liberman told the Knesset’s Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee, “Today the Lebanese army is a subsidiary unit of Hezbollah and [Lebanese President] Michel Aoun is another [Hezbollah chief Hassan] Nasrallah operative.”
Liberman’s assertions were not a theory. They were grounded in statements made by Aoun himself and by Lebanese military commanders. But the Americans will not listen to what the Lebanese say or see what they are doing. Instead, they remain devoted to their fantasy that the Lebanese government is independent and the Lebanese Armed Forces is not a subsidiary of Hezbollah. In support of this lie, this year the US pledged and delivered the bulk of $100 million worth of sophisticated weapons to the Hezbollah- controlled LAF.
In August, the US delivered eight M1-A2 Bradley Fighting Vehicles. According to US Ambassador Elizabeth Richard, they were the first of 32 set for delivery by the end of the year. The US had also delivered M-4 assault rifles, howitzers, grenade launchers, machine guns, mortars, hellfire missiles, night vision devices and thermal sight technology to Hezbollah’s proxy force.
As Middle East analyst Tony Badran noted, the weapons the US supplied to the LAF “have been on Hezbollah’s shopping list consistently for almost a decade.”
And the US is not only arming Hezbollah through its surrogate. It is also fighting alongside Hezbollah through its surrogate. In August, US special forces fought alongside LAF forces to wrest control of the Lebanese border with Syria from Islamic State-associated Sunni militia. The battle was a joint LAF-Hezbollah operation – commanded by Hezbollah.
Quoting a source “close to Hezbollah and the LAF,” Al-Monitor’s Nour Samaha wrote, “US Central Command called the Lebanese army chief and asked him to deny any cooperation [with Hezbollah], telling him that while they are aware of cooperation, it has to be denied publicly.”
In other words, it isn’t that the Pentagon isn’t aware it is empowering Hezbollah. It knows what it is doing. It just doesn’t want the American public to know what it is doing.
This brings us finally to the Palestinians. On Tuesday Jerusalem Affairs Minister Ze’ev Elkin was the first senior minister to publicly criticize the Trump administration’s policy toward Israel and the Palestinians. Elkin told Yediot Aharonot that despite the friendly tone of administration officials and the fruitful cooperation Israel enjoys with the administration on a host of other issues, on the issue of Jewish property rights in Judea and Samaria, “they are walking on the same path as the Obama administration.”
The same of course can be said of the Trump administration’s policy toward Fatah and the Palestinian Authority. No matter how open PA President Mahmoud Abbas is about his cooperation with Hamas and no matter how many hundreds of millions of dollars he transfers to the bank accounts of terrorists, the Trump administration continues to treat Abbas and the PA as moderates and peace partners. Even worse, the administration is coercing Israel to do the same.
No matter where you look around the globe, in the Middle East, in Asia, in South America and in Europe, you see the same thing. The Trump administration has changed America’s tone in foreign affairs.
But substantively, there has been little change.
Trump may be the anti-Obama. But his policies indicate that all the same, he is the second Obama.
www.CarolineGlick.com
-
second post
Since it first entered the conflict in 2015, Russia has changed the course of the Syrian civil war. The country managed, along with Iran, to turn the tides of battle back in the Syrian government's favor. And now that it has, it is looking for a way off the battlefield. Moscow doesn't want to be stuck in the Syrian conflict, but neither does it want to lose gains it has made there in solidifying its presence in the country and establishing itself as a critical influence in the region.
To that end, Russia has advocated a divide and conquer strategy with its Iranian and Syrian allies. First, it will draw down the rebellion against the Syrian government by offering the rebels and their backers "de-escalation zones" to freeze key sectors of the battlefield. Once the de-escalation zones have freed up enough manpower, Russia will then go after hard-line extremist groups in the country such as the Islamic State. The strategy has so far enabled Russian and Iranian-backed loyalist forces to switch their focus from fighting rebels in western Syria to claiming as much territory as possible in the eastern part of the country in the Islamic State's wake. But as Moscow is finding out, achieving its goals in Syria will be far more complicated than it anticipated.
Despite Russia's apparent advantages in Syria, the flaws in its exit plan are starting to show. The de-escalation zones the country set up during earlier peace talks in Kazakhstan have all but collapsed. Part of the problem is that independent rebel groups in the regions have shown no sign of acceding to outside pressure. The militant group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, for example, has refused to recognize the ceasefire negotiations and has launched offensive operations on loyalist positions in Hama province from its stronghold in nearby Idlib. Russia's own allies have also undermined its plan. Though Iran and the Syrian government understand the logic of the Russian strategy, they are reluctant to give up their claim to rebel-held territory by suspending hostilities there. Tehran and Damascus, unlike Moscow, are in the war for the long haul and won't back down until they achieve complete victory. Consequently, Syrian loyalist forces have continued their assaults on rebel positions in the west, particularly in Jobar and in the eastern Ghouta region.
Beyond the de-escalation zones' failings, Russia is also facing setbacks as the loyalist troops under its aegis push east toward the Iraqi border. Moscow is frustrated, for instance, that the U.S.-backed Syrian Arab Coalition (SAC) may block the loyalists' advance toward Deir el-Zour with its own march down the Khabur River. While the SAC has made headway, the loyalists have run up against counterattacks from the Islamic State that have caused considerable casualties across the broad battle zone in the east. These strikes have cost Russia high-ranking officers, including a lieutenant general. In addition, on Oct. 3 the Islamic State released video footage showing two captured Russians, likely private military contractors, whom the group claims to have seized in a recent raid.
Complicating matters for Moscow is the decreasing popularity of its intervention in Syria back home. According to a survey in early September from the Levada Center, an independent pollster, less than one-third of Russians support their country's involvement in the Syrian civil war, down from two-thirds in 2015. Protesters across Russia have turned out at demonstrations with signs calling on the government to end the expensive operation and to focus its spending on feeding its people instead. To shore up their positions before elections in 2018, Russian leaders have highlighted the value of the Syrian mission by pointing out that it has enabled the Federal Security Services to find and arrest Islamic State operatives planning attacks in Russia.
Yet notwithstanding the challenges that have impeded — and will continue to impede — its exit plan in Syria, Moscow is unlikely to give up on the strategy anytime soon. Russia will continue to use a combination of military pressure on rebel forces and diplomatic outreach to their supporters, and to its own allies, to influence the conflict. Even if it can't end the war in Syria, Moscow can at least try to get the conflict to a point that won't require such a big military commitment on its part.
-
third post
Saudi King Salman just made history as the first-ever Saudi king to visit Russia. Saudi Arabia and Russia aren't on the friendliest of terms, but circumstances have aligned in such a way that each needs the other. King Salman will spend four days in Moscow, meeting with high-ranking Russian officials, including President Vladimir Putin, mainly on energy and the economy. But the two sides will also try to find common ground on other more contentious issues, including Russia's involvement in Middle Eastern conflicts and Saudi Arabia's ties to Muslim regions in Russia.
Saudi Arabia cut ties with the Soviet Union during the Cold War over divisions that have not completely mended. Moscow accuses Saudi Arabia of financing Muslim separatism in Russia in the 1990s, leading to two brutal wars in the Northern Caucasus. So it can hardly be blamed for worrying about Saudi Arabia's current ties to Russia's Muslim republics. The Kremlin is concerned that Muslim separatism could rise again, given that many Muslim regions, including Tatarstan, have vocally criticized the Russian government recently, and that regions, such as Chechnya, have independent, powerful military forces. Both Tatarstan and Chechnya have looked to Saudi Arabia for investment and financing in recent years. Moscow hopes that by opening a line of communication with Saudi Arabia it can curb any covert support to its Muslim regions and avoid instability.
Meanwhile, Russia is a visible and powerful force in many of the Middle Eastern conflicts on which Saudi Arabia is keenly focused, including those in Syria, Yemen and Libya. Russia and Saudi Arabia often find themselves on opposite sides in these conflicts, but sometimes there is utility in being on different sides of the same table. Saudi Arabia's chief adversary, Iran, has a complex relationship with Russia that the Saudi government could be hoping to exploit. Despite Russia's significant collaboration with Iran over the past few years, their interests don't always line up, and Saudi Arabia could use this to its advantage as it works to counter Iranian expansion in the Middle East.
Their differences aside, when it comes to energy and the economy, Russia's and Saudi Arabia's interests are overlapping more than ever. The economic yield of this week's visit is expected to be substantial: State-run energy company Saudi Arabian Oil Co., or Saudi Aramco, and the Russian Direct Investment Fund (RDIF) will reportedly be announcing a $1 billion fund for oil-services projects in Russia, and Saudi Arabia and the RDIF will set up a $1 billion technology fund; the Saudi government is expected to announce a $150 million investment into Eurasia Drilling Company; Saudi Aramco is expected to discuss a potential investment into Novatek's Arctic liquid natural gas project and to talk about a joint venture with Sibur Holding to build a synthetic-rubber manufacturing plant; memorandums of understanding will be signed, such as one planned between Saudi Arabia and Rosatom; and Saudi Arabia Military Industries has already agreed to begin negotiating the potential purchase of a significant number of Russian weapons and military equipment.
As two of the three largest oil producers in the world, Russia and Saudi Arabia are vital to any globally coordinated action on oil markets, and right now their interests align. Energy ministers Khalid al-Falih and Alexander Novak met Oct. 5 to discuss oil markets and the effort to extend a deal to reduce global oil production. Neither minister admitted they were working jointly on an extension deal, but both will certainly be closely monitoring energy markets over the next few months and, if needed, will work together on an extension. A day before the energy meeting, Putin said that he would be open to extending the deal to the end of 2018 but that a decision would not be made until around March of next year. One thing is clear: Neither country can afford for the oil market to crater because of a disorderly exit from the deal. If an extension is not negotiated, Saudi Arabia and Russia need to organize what that exit would look like.
The mutual benefits of the trip attest to the fact that the visit is mostly about Saudi-Russian economic and energy collaboration. Saudi Arabia has the hard cash that Russia needs for the myriad projects it's developing. For its part, Saudi Arabia needs Russian buy-in on its energy plans, which are vital to its broader Vision 2030 economic plan. Collaborative Russian-Saudi projects, such as the synthetic-rubber plant that would be built in Saudi Arabia, help achieve Saudi Arabia's Vision 2030 aims. Any political benefit from the visit will be less immediate, but it's clear that Saudi Arabia and Russia have an interest in building closer ties for both political and economic reasons.
-
fourth post
The U.S. military said on Oct. 6 that it would be halting some of its joint exercises with members of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) in an effort to encourage a resolution to the countries' monthslong dispute with Qatar, AP reported. GCC members Bahrain, Egypt, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates began economically boycotting Qatar on June 5, citing Qatar's alleged support for extremists and its relationship with Iran.
-
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4955096/Full-scale-surrender-General-says-ISIS-collapsing.html#ixzz4ulskV881
-
A very good map in this article will not post here:
=================================
Weeks after Turkish forces started to deploy in large numbers along the border with Syria, adjacent to the province of Idlib, Ankara appears to be on the verge of launching yet another significant military operation into the war-torn country. Unlike Operation Euphrates Shield, which targeted lands occupied by the Islamic State, the upcoming operation into Idlib will be directed toward lands occupied by Syrian rebels. As befitting a convoluted conflict such as Syria, Turkey's advance into Idlib will be assisted by other Syrian rebel groups trained over time by Turkey in neighboring Aleppo province. And according to Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan's latest statements, they will be supported by Russian aviation.
Given that Turkey has for years directly supported rebel factions in Idlib in their fight against Russian- and Iranian-backed loyalist forces, the prospect of Turkish forces advancing into Syria under Russian air cover appears jarring at face value. The signs of a significant shift in direction by Turkey on Syria, however, have been visible for some time. The first indication was the Turkish abandonment of the rebel defense of Aleppo in favor of Operation Euphrates Shield in late 2016. This occurred amid steadily improving ties between Ankara and Moscow despite both sides maintaining opposite positions on the Syrian civil war, at least in principle. There were also increasing signs throughout 2017 of a significant drop in the flow of Turkish supplies to key rebel factions in northern Syria, particularly in Idlib. Turkey instead focused its resources on developing the capabilities of its Syrian rebel proxies that were directly under its management as part of Operation Euphrates Shield in northern Aleppo province.
The biggest shift in Turkey's stance, however, came through the Astana process, where Turkey negotiated at length with Russia and Iran in a number of negotiation rounds in the Kazakh capital on the setup of "de-escalation" zones in Syria. These talks enabled the establishment of a "de-escalation" zone in Idlib, on whose borders Turkish troops are now poised alongside their rebel allies from Operation Euphrates Shield.
A map of Syria showing de-escalation zones and zones of influence
Turkey's shifting position over the past 18 months that is now culminating with a military operation into rebel-held lands can be explained by three overarching factors. The first is the dawning realization in Ankara that the rebels it supported were on the losing end of a conflict with Iran- and Russia-backed loyalist forces. Every major loyalist victory that bolstered Syrian government control in northern Syria, in turn, diminished Turkey's ability to influence events in the country.
The second factor was the growing power of independently minded rebel groups such as Hayat Tahrir al-Sham in northern Syria, particularly in Idlib province. As rebel forces suffered successive defeats and despaired from ever receiving enough external support to match the level of direct backing Iran and Russia gave loyalist forces on the battlefield, they became increasingly prone to defect and turn to the better resourced and organized hardline groups such as the al Qaeda-linked Hayat Tahrir al-Sham. This trend has only accelerated in recent months with the end of the CIA program that supplied rebel groups in Syria with key weaponry such as anti-tank guided missiles. Unlike the Syrian groups supported by Turkey — and previously by the United States — in northern Syria, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham has no compunction in upholding its own interests over Ankara's. Indeed, in recent months, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham has even monopolized control over Idlib province by cracking down on Turkish-backed rebel groups. For Turkey, the rise of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham in Idlib threatens to entirely remove what little influence it has remaining in the province.
Finally, and most important, Turkey has consistently prioritized its goal of undermining and pushing back against Kurdish empowerment in Syria over its desire for regime change in Damascus. Before the United States started to provide significant support to the Kurdish-dominated Syrian Democratic Forces in 2015, and before the loyalists started to regain momentum in the conflict that same year, Turkey could undermine the Kurds and pursue regime change in Damascus through its support of rebel forces. However, as the U.S.-backed Kurdish forces spread their control over northern Syria and as the rebel hold was reduced through consecutive loyalist offensives, Turkey could no longer rely on weakened and distracted rebel forces to act as a bulwark against the Kurds, much less topple the regime of Syrian President Bashar al Assad. To that end, Ankara has increasingly prioritized an improved relationship with Moscow in the hopes that the influence leveraged through that relationship would allow it to counter the emboldened Kurds. For instance, Turkey still can hope to translate a cooperative mission in Idlib with the Russians into an opening for a subsequent operation against the Kurdish forces of the People's Protection Units (YPG) in Afrin canton, which are thus far insulated by a Russian presence.
A Turkish operation into Idlib province is nevertheless not without considerable risk. Indeed, there is even a possibility that it could backfire on Ankara. First, there is still no guarantee that such an operation would translate into increased Russian assistance against the YPG and predominantly Kurdish Syria Democratic Forces. Moscow, after all, has maintained its ties with the Syrian Kurds and has even blocked Turkish operations against the Kurds in the past. Further, Turkey and its local rebel allies may find themselves going up against very determined resistance from Hayat Tahrir al-Sham fighters, many of whom are locals, and operating in terrain that is geographically more challenging than that faced by Turkey and its proxies during Operation Euphrates Shield. Turkey, however, appears determined to tolerate the risks as it seeks to expand its presence and control in Syria in pursuit of its greater objectives.
-
second post
A very good map will not post here:
=============================
As the consequences of last week's Kurdish independence referendum unfold in Iraq, the U.S. role in the conflict is under the spotlight. Over the past two years, the U.S. government has helped pay Kurdish peshmerga salaries in exchange for their support against Islamic militants in Iraq. But peshmerga officials recently told media, including Al Monitor, that there are no plans to renew direct U.S. military aid to the group. (The last round of aid expired in early September.) If Washington does, in fact, pull its direct financial aid to the Kurdish fighters, it would mark a distinct change in approach. The peshmerga have formed a critical part of the U.S. fight against the Islamic State.
Yet, that fight has changed considerably since the United States first began supporting the Kurdish forces, shifting geographically and leaving a significantly weakened Islamic State. Though the peshmerga remain key U.S. allies, they are no longer on the front lines. Kurdish fighters played a key role in clearing and securing the eastern front of Mosul in 2015, and they have fought in Nineveh, Kirkuk and Diyala provinces over the past year. But they are not active in Anbar province, where most Islamic State militants are now based. Moreover, Iraqi security forces — which have much fewer Kurdish fighters than Arab ones — have taken a more prominent role in the last two major operations against the Islamic State, in Tal Afar and Hawijah. Shiite popular mobilization forces have also figured more prominently in the most recent fighting.
It's also worth noting that, though it would be a financial blow to the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG), a non-renewal of direct U.S. aid to the peshmerga would not preclude the United States from supporting the Kurds in other ways, such as through the provision of training and equipment. Furthermore, if the United States does decide to pull direct aid to the peshmerga it could minimally help the KRG by giving it an easy scapegoat for any future inability to pay government salaries. And, no matter the timing, Washington's decision likely does not directly stem from its opposition to the Kurdish referendum. Still, the KRG is undoubtedly disappointed by U.S. support for the Iraqi federal government's stance against the referendum on the grounds that it will destabilize Iraq at a critical time for the country. General elections are planned for next year, and the fight against the Islamic State, though evolved, is not over.
-
Hizballah's Nasrallah Escalates Threats as Syria Turns Into Iranian Base
by Yaakov Lappin
Special to IPT News
October 8, 2017
https://www.investigativeproject.org/6758/hizballah-nasrallah-escalates-threats-as-syria
-
Iraq Invites Its Own Demise
Oct 9, 2017
By Jacob L. Shapiro
As the political organization of the Middle East continues to deteriorate, some countries are starting to form new relationships with old enemies. Last week, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan paid an official visit to Iran, a regional competitor that has backed different militant groups in the Syrian war. In a joint press conference after the meeting, Iranian President Hassan Rouhani said that Turkey, Iran and Iraq will work together to ensure that the region’s political borders do not change. The following day, Iraq’s Foreign Ministry spokesman said Iraq had officially requested that both Turkey and Iran close border crossings and halt all commercial transactions with Iraq’s Kurdish region after Kurds there voted in favor of independence in a referendum last month. The disarray in Iraq has gotten so bad that Baghdad is looking to Turkey and Iran for help controlling its Kurdish population.
Strange Bedfellows
The notion that these three countries would find common cause on any subject is counterintuitive. Turkey and Iraq have been at each other’s throats in recent years, and as recently as December 2015, they were involved in a protracted diplomatic spat over Turkish deployment of troops and armor in Iraq without the permission of the government. The Turkish troops were there ostensibly to help train Kurdish peshmerga to fight the Islamic State. Turkey also routinely bombs militants from the Kurdistan Workers’ Party – Turkey’s own Kurdish rebel movement – in northern Iraq without permission from Iraqi authorities. In effect, Turkey is announcing its intention to help defend the territorial integrity of a country whose integrity it regularly violates.
Turkey and Iran are also strange bedfellows. Though there has been no open antagonism between the two countries of late, both aspire to regional hegemony in the Middle East, and their long-term interests are mutually exclusive. They, for example, support rival groups in the Syrian civil war. Turkey has long opposed the Assad regime and has supported, with limited success, rebel groups of various stripes since the war broke out. Iran, meanwhile, has long been an ally of the Assad regime, which was a critical part of its strategy to forge alliances with a string of states and militant groups that allowed it to project power all the way to the Mediterranean. Tehran also put pressure on its proxy group Hezbollah to commit itself to fighting Assad’s would-be usurpers.
Iranian President Hassan Rouhani (C) walks with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan (C-R) during an official welcoming ceremony following the latter’s arrival at the Saadabad Palace in Tehran on April 7, 2015. ATTA KENARE/AFP/Getty Images
As for Iraq’s relationship with Iran, that is even more complicated. On the one hand, Shiite-majority Iran has developed a close relationship with Baghdad since Saddam Hussein’s Sunni, Baathist regime, which severely persecuted Shiites, was deposed. On the other hand, there is a deep level of enmity between Arabs and Persians that stretches back many centuries. That is why Iraq and Saudi Arabia have sought to bury the hatchet in recent months. Saudi Arabia cut ties with Iraq in 1990 after the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait, but efforts to repair the relationship seem to be working. A visit by influential Iraqi Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr to Riyadh in August was just the latest in a series of meetings aimed at creating a more cooperative relationship between Baghdad and Riyadh. Shortly after al-Sadr’s trip, Saudi Arabia and Iraq announced they would open the Tal Afar border crossing, which had been closed for 27 years, for trade.
The Kurdish Issue
The most surprising thing in all these complex relationships is that Iraq – once a major Arab power in the Middle East – has become so weak that it is reaching out to Turks and Persians to help solve its internal problems, particularly when it comes to Iraqi Kurdish aspirations for independence. From Iraq’s perspective, the enemy of its enemy is its friend, and both Turkey and Iran have taken a hard stance against their respective Kurdish populations. The regime in Baghdad doesn’t want the country to break apart, but it’s happening nonetheless. The independence vote in Iraqi Kurdistan is not a declaration of independence, but that’s only because the region knows that if it declares independence, it may very well be wiped off the map. It may not face a significant threat from Baghdad – the government there can’t even keep its own house in order – but Turkey and Iran border Iraqi Kurdistan and do not want to see the rise of an independent Kurdish state, albeit for different reasons. And the Iraqi Kurds don’t even have the support of the U.S. – which opposed the referendum – or any other foreign power on the independence issue.
Turkey’s major concern is that allowing Iraqi Kurds to declare independence could set a precedent for the region. Iran is concerned about this as well, but the bigger issue for Tehran is maintaining its relationship with Baghdad. Despite the ethnic differences between Iraq and Iran, Tehran hopes that the fact that they are both Shiite countries will be enough, over time, to forge a strong alliance between Iraq and Iran. Baghdad wants to keep its country together, and if Iran can show Baghdad that it can depend on Tehran in its hour of need, it could help make the Iraqi-Iranian relationship that much stronger.
The trouble for Iraq is that these relationships are not going to remain at the bilateral level. Turkey held military drills on the Iraqi Kurdish border the week before the referendum as a show of force and support for Baghdad’s position. Shortly after the referendum, Iranian tanks approached the Iraqi Kurdish border in Tehran’s own show of force, which was reportedly part of a military drill with Iraqi forces. But Turkey and Iran also appear to be building closer ties with each other – ties that do not include Iraq. The two sides have shown the ability to cooperate in the past, most recently by coordinating their efforts in Syria. But the rare meeting between Turkish and Iranian leaders and the prospect of military cooperation represents a step beyond previous levels of cooperation.
Their alliance can’t hold in the long term, but their mutual interests make increased cooperation possible in the short term. Neither side wants to deal with an agitated Kurdish separatist movement. And neither side sees eye to eye with the United States right now – Turkey because of U.S. support for Syrian Kurds, and Iran because its nuclear deal with the U.S. is facing great pressure in Washington. Both Turkey and Iran also are unconcerned with the strength and integrity of the region’s Arab nations.
And this is also one of the reasons this cooperation can’t last in the long run. For most of the region’s history since the death of the Prophet Muhammad, Turkish and Persian empires ruled the Middle East and its Arab population. These empires also used Kurdish populations to fight against each other – either by inciting one Kurdish group to create instability in the other country, or by using Kurdish troops as shock troops in their own armies.
The convergence of Turkish and Iranian interests will be ephemeral, but before it passes into historical patterns of antagonism, it has the potential to generate a significant alliance, one that temporarily reshapes the balance of power in the region. It decreases U.S. and Russian power in the region; it hastens the already accelerating deterioration of political stability in the Arab world; and it ensures that all the region’s various Kurdish populations will continue to only dream of independence without actually realizing it. The emergence of this reality was predictable. But that Iraq would hasten its own eventual doom by inviting the Turks and Persians in was not. Like any good story, geopolitics has its ironies.
The post Iraq Invites Its Own Demise appeared first on Geopolitical Futures.
-
second post
Tragically, this appears to be all too true. Even Gen. Mattis appears to be on board with fg the Kurds.
By
Bernard-Henri Lévy
Oct. 9, 2017 7:18 p.m. ET
The Iraqi Kurds held a dignified, orderly referendum Sept. 25 that conformed with all the rules of a democratic vote. Afterward, they refrained from declaring the independence that is their right and that a century of treaties promised them.
President Masoud Barzani —who has stood with America and the West against Islamic State for two years—made this crucial point: In his mind, independence can come only after patient, sustained, possibly drawn-out negotiation with Baghdad.
And yet all the region’s dictatorships immediately unleashed their ire on him and his people. From the instant the results were announced, it was a race to see which one could go further to condemn, smother, block, embargo and imprison a small population whose only crime is to express the desire to be free, to flourish as an island of democracy and peace.
We have Iraq, a supposedly federal state that in recent years has observed none of its constitutional obligations to the Kurds—yet it has the nerve to declare the referendum unconstitutional.
We have Turkey, which has traduced the rule of law in its treatment of intellectuals, journalists, lawyers, dissidents and defenders of human rights—yet asserts its offense at the affront to legal form the Kurds allegedly committed by expressing their desire for orderly independence.
We have Iran, which has temporarily suspended the Sunni-Shiite quarrel, so urgent was the need to conclude with the Turks an alliance that will allow it to deal with the irredentism of its own Kurds.
And we have the Syrian regime, butcher of its own people, divider of its own nation, now touting the unity of Iraq and declaring the Kurdish referendum “unacceptable.”
Years ago, the phrase “Gang of Four” was coined to describe a cabal of leaders who believed that the Chinese revolution had not devoured enough of its children and that the massacre had to continue. Here we have a new Gang of Four composed of Haider al-Abadi, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Bashar al-Assad and Ali Khamenei, who, in their distinctive ways, are threatening an air blockade, a land blockade, an oil embargo, a military intervention. How long before we hear the threat of rivers of blood?
Sorriest of all, when the Kurds—who have faced threats before, but sense in the Gang of Four a threat to their existence—call for help, the world, with the U.S. in the lead, finds nothing to say, averts its eyes and in so doing takes the side of the dictators. The Peshmerga were all we could talk about when we needed them to fight Islamic State. But now that the Iraqi phase of the war is almost won, we are discarding them—a disposable ally.
True, French President Emmanuel Macron mentioned the rights of the Kurdish people when Prime Minister Abadi visited Paris. Mr. Macron declared that the Kurds have long been a friend of France. But that is not enough. In the absence of a stern and solemn warning to the Gang of Four—without a clear reminder that there is only one side to the escalation and it is theirs, without the reaffirmation of the great principles that underpin international law and universal morality—the worst may come to pass.
And France would find it difficult to carry on, without America, a fight for the honor, dignity, and the larger interest of the democracies. Don’t they urgently need, in this region, an ally with the mettle of the Kurds?
So, are we facing Munich-grade appeasement? Are we agreeing that might makes right? Will we give in to the world’s consummate blackmailers? Is the West—and the U.S. in particular—making a colossal error of judgment in not grasping that there is something suicidal about abandoning a brave and loyal ally in favor of its adversaries?
Or perhaps the Kurdish people—who are not Arabs, are secular, believe in pluralist democracy, practice equal rights for women, and have consistently protected, rescued and taken in minorities—are one more of the world’s expendable peoples.
There is only one solution: to speak up; to say calmly but firmly that there is something absurd about allowing authoritarian regimes to preach constitutional law to a people who only yesterday were under their boot; and to ensure that the Iraqi authorities respond, without delay or precondition, to the offer of dialogue the Kurds have extended to them.
Mr. Lévy is director of the documentary films “Peshmerga” and “The Battle of Mosul.” Translated from French by Steven B. Kennedy.
Appeared in the October 10, 2017, print edition.
-
third post
Tensions Rise Between Iraqis and Kurds After Referendum
As the threat of ISIS recedes, the risk that Iraqi and Kurdish forces could clash in the future is growing
By Isabel Coles and Ali A. Nabhan
Oct. 8, 2017 3:02 p.m. ET
DAQUQ, Iraq—For more than three years, the weapons along a front line held by Kurdish forces in northern Iraq have been aimed at Islamic State militants occupying the nearby city of Hawija.
Now, they are pointed toward Iraqi forces who have just routed the militants from Hawija—the latest in a series of victories that have brought Islamic State to the verge of defeat in Iraq.
Islamic State’s loss of Hawija removed the last buffer between Kurdish and Iraqi forces just as tensions between their respective leaders are intensifying over last month’s referendum in which Kurds voted overwhelmingly for independence.
Up until now, the two forces cooperated for years to oust Islamic State, sharing intelligence and coordinating troop movements.
“We used to have a common enemy, but now things are changing,” said Col. Aso Ali Ahmed, a deputy commander of a brigade of Kurdish Peshmerga forces stationed near Hawija. “There may be war or there may not.”
As the threat of Islamic State recedes and the alliance between Kurdish and Iraqi forces weakens, the risk that the one-time partners will turn their guns on each other in future is growing, though leaders on both sides say they want to avoid conflict.
In the wake of the referendum, Iraq’s parliament authorized Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi to deploy troops to retake areas outside the official boundary of the semiautonomous Kurdistan region that have come under Kurdish control in recent years, including during the fight against Islamic State.
Mr. Abadi also accused the Kurds of seeking to delay the Hawija operation, which was launched four days before the Kurdish independence referendum, which took place on Sept. 25. A Peshmerga official denied that.
The central government in Baghdad and the Kurds—backed by the U.S.-led coalition fighting Islamic State—came together to fight the terror group after it overran around about a third of Iraq in 2014, setting aside differences over land and resources that have strained relations for more than a decade.
The areas taken over by the Kurds during the war on Islamic State include the oil-rich province of Kirkuk, from which the Kurds have been exporting crude without the blessing of the central government in Baghdad.
Iraq is the second-largest oil producer in the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries, and its economy is heavily dependent on oil. A significant portion of those resources are in the north, some within the Kurdistan region and some in territory controlled by Kurdish forces.
The most controversial aspect of the Kurdish referendum was the decision to conduct the vote in areas controlled by Kurdish forces outside the official boundary of the semiautonomous region of Kurdistan.
Kurdish leaders vow that they will not relinquish the territory they seized or protected from Islamic State—especially Kirkuk, which is economically and symbolically indispensable to the state the Kurds dream of declaring.
.
Masoud Barzani, the Kurdish regional president, visited Peshmerga commanders in Kirkuk last week and instructed them to fortify their positions as Iraqi forces advanced in Hawija.
At one outpost on this front line, Peshmerga fighters surveyed the changing landscape on Friday, picking out the flags of Iraqi security forces and assorted government-backed paramilitary groups on the other side of the berm. The mood was relaxed, but wary.
“We don’t know what their intention is, where they are going, or what they want to do,” said Capt. Beevan Mohammed. “We won’t attack anyone, but we won’t accept anyone attacking us.”
A makeshift shrine at another outpost commemorates 21 Peshmerga fighters killed defending a stretch along the front.
“We paid for this with blood and it will take blood to make us leave,” said Cpl. Hiwa Ahmed.
So far, Mr. Abadi has eschewed force, instead imposing a ban on international flights to and from the landlocked Kurdistan region. He also threatened to seize Kurdish border crossings with Iran and Turkey, which shared Baghdad’s opposition to the referendum and staged joint military exercises with Iraqi forces to express their anger.
“We don’t want armed confrontation. We don’t want clashes. But federal authority must prevail,” Mr. Abadi said during a visit to France on Thursday, where he announced the victory in Hawija, the last territory the terror group controlled in northern Iraq.
Although the referendum doesn’t automatically confer statehood, the government in Baghdad opposed it, as did the U.S., which warned of more conflict and chaos in the Middle East.
The Kurdish leadership also says it doesn’t want conflict, and has called for dialogue with Baghdad, and diplomats are seeking to defuse tensions.
But there has also been aggressive rhetoric, including from leaders of some government-backed Shiite paramilitary groups known collectively as the Popular Mobilization Forces, which have fought Islamic State alongside the Iraqi military.
“Until recently there were people who said dialogue would work with the separatists, but they [the Kurds] did as they pleased because they were not dealt with by force,” Qais al-Khazaali, who heads one group that is part of the Popular Mobilization Forces, said in a recent speech.
Some of the militias within the Popular Mobilization Forces are loyal to Iran, which has been one of the staunchest opponents of the referendum and could mobilize its allies in Iraq against the Kurds.
Both sides have recruited local residents from the disputed territories in northern Iraq. It took an intervention by senior Kurdish, Iraqi and Iranian officials to end clashes last year between members of the local ethnic Turkmen minority who have joined Shiite paramilitary groups, and Kurdish forces in a town south of Kirkuk.
Among those who fought in the Hawija operation was Arab tribal leader Sheikh Burhan al-Assi, who assembled a small militia of 75 fighters to recapture his own village just yards from the new front line with the Kurds.
Mr. Assi, who is also a member of the Kirkuk provincial council, said he hoped Baghdad and the Kurds would reach an agreement. “I am not against self-determination for the Kurdish people as long as it does not infringe upon the rights of others,” he said.
—Ghassan Adnan contributed to this article.
-
An Iraqi government official is proposing a confederal system instead of Kurdish independence, NRT reported Oct. 9. Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) official Fazil Mirani said a confederacy would be a good option — unless Baghdad seeks preconditions — that would allow Kurdistan to enjoy independence without secession from Iraq. A confederal system would require the Iraqi parliament to pass a constitutional amendment, which Mirani says is unlikely to happen. This proposition is among the latest following the Sept. 25 Kurdish independence referendum.
-
Although the Islamic State is on the run in most of Iraq, the fight for power, autonomy and resources among Iraq's ethnic and sectarian groups is only just beginning. This struggle will be most evident in the territories disputed by the Iraqi government Baghdad and the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) in Arbil, most of which voted in the Kurdish independence referendum last month. The prize of the dispute is the oil-rich province of Kirkuk. After a tense four-day standoff between the Kurdish peshmerga, Iraqi Security Forces (ISF) and the pro-Baghdad Shiite-led Popular Mobilization Forces, Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi ordered the ISF, the Federal Police and the Iraqi Counter Terrorism Service forces to move into the city of Kirkuk early on Oct. 16 to secure federal bases and installations in the area.
Prior to Islamic State's rapid advance across western and northern Iraq in 2014, Kirkuk province and its infrastructure was largely controlled and administered by Iraq's federal government. The Iraqi army provided much of the province's security while Baghdad's institutions — such as the North Oil Company and the North Gas Company — ran and controlled Kirkuk's oil and natural gas industry, home to about 300,000 barrels per day of production. But as the Iraqi army collapsed in Mosul in the north and Hawija in southwestern Kirkuk province, it withdrew from the city as the Islamic State closed in. The militant group even briefly captured the K1 military base outside the city of Kirkuk. Kurdish peshmerga fighters forced Islamic State fighters from K1 military base and many of the surrounding oil fields and were able to prevent them from taking control of the city as well. The Kurds took advantage of the situation by gaining control of the city, control that Baghdad doesn't want to give up over territory that it considers rightfully under central government control. Evidently, the Iraqi military advance is geared at securing the oil and gas infrastructure as well as the K1 military base.
The KRG will not want to give up its valuable leverage, but that doesn't mean it wants to start a war either. Two Kurdish parties — the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) and Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) — on Oct. 15 issued a statement calling for "an unconditional, responsible and constructive dialogue" with Baghdad over the referendum results. There were even rumors on social media suggesting that both parties agreed to certain concessions they would afford Baghdad in negotiations on Kirkuk, such as removing the Kirkuk governor, freezing the referendum results for one year, and joint ISF and peshmerga control of the K1 military base, along with other installations in Kirkuk. There may be a deal in the works between Baghdad and the KRG — or at least elements of the Kurdish government more willing to negotiate with Baghdad — to reduce tension by allowing the ISF to control some of the facilities in the region. Al-Abadi's recent announcements called for Iraqi forces to work with the peshmerga to secure the installations. And KRG President Massoud Barzani knows that conflict will undercut his Western support, leading him to order the peshmerga not to initiate any conflict, but allowing them to respond if Iraqi forces fire first.
While the broader dispute over Kirkuk's status is between Baghdad and Arbil, the struggle for Kirkuk is much more complicated. Kirkuk is a multi-ethnic city of Arabs, Kurds, Turkmen and other groups. Many of Kirkuk's non-Kurdish populations did not support the referendum. This is critical because the fight against the Islamic State in Hawija was led in part by Iraq's Popular Mobilization Forces. Although these forces are technically under the control of al-Abadi, they are a conglomeration of dozens of militias, some of which are closer to Iran and al-Abadi's political rivals. In the region around Kirkuk, two of the more powerful militias are Turkmen militias that are linked to the Iran-backed Badr Organization. There have already been sporadic skirmishes between militias and the PUK peshmerga, most recently in the past week in Tuz Khurmatu, about 50 kilometers (30 miles) outside of Kirkuk. Al-Abadi has so far only ordered the Iraqi military and police force to move into the city — not the Popular Mobilization Forces. It is possible that by moving in more trusted forces first, al-Abadi is seeking to prevent a real conflict from erupting. Additionally, keeping the Popular Mobilization Forces out of Kirkuk means they are likely to be mobilized to Sunni-populated Anbar province instead, where the Islamic State still remains. This raises another set of problems for Baghdad.
What remains to be seen over the next few days is how the various moves will play out. Tensions in the region are high and the movement of forces comes with risk. There have already been unconfirmed reports that the Kurdish peshmerga have reinforced the city, sending in the elite Heza Rashaka unit, which was used to secure control of oil installations in March. There are been reports of the peshmerga destroying four Iraqi Humvee vehicles. Various KRG officials also said that Popular Mobilization Forces have been involved in the operation, despite al-Abadi's conflicting statements. At least seven Popular Mobilization Forces militiamen have allegedly been killed in Kirkuk's Hay al-Sanna. As Stratfor expected, the next phase of Iraq's conflict is underway.
-
second post
Iraqi Security Forces (ISF) have quickly captured critical infrastructure points in Iraq's Kirkuk province and in the surrounding areas. After beginning its operation overnight Oct. 15, the Iraqi military has reportedly taken control of the North Oil Company and North Gas Company headquarters, Kurdistan's K1 military base, the Bai Hassan oil field and the Baba Gurgur and Avanah domes of the Kirkuk oil field. Currently, the Kurdish Democratic Party (KDP) claims to still hold some of the oil fields in the area.
The Iraqi government's purpose for the operation is to reassert federal control over the disputed province of Kirkuk's most strategic assets, which fell under the control of the Kurdish peshmerga after the Islamic State rose to power there in 2014. But the pace of the ISF's advance appears to have been hastened by newly exposed splits within both the two main Kurdish political parties and the region's powerful but divided peshmerga military.
Iraq's Kurds, A Divided People
For years, the political scene in Iraqi Kurdistan has been dominated by two parties: the KDP, which is closely associated with the powerful Barzani family, and the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK), which is tied to the similarly powerful Talabani family. In the Kurdistan Regional Government, the KDP is the ruling party, but in the eastern portions of Iraqi Kurdistan — including the heavily disputed province of Kirkuk — the PUK is dominant. Moreover, Kurdistan's peshmerga forces are divided between loyalty to the KDP and to the PUK. The majority of the region's peshmerga units remain directly controlled by either PUK or KDP political bureaus, and only a few report to the politically blended KRG government itself.
These differing chains of command have led to conflict. Soon after the start of last night's ISF advance, peshmerga forces under the control of the PUK reportedly received orders to withdraw from Kirkuk and to allow Baghdad's forces to take control of various installations. These events may have been the result of a prearranged agreement between the PUK's leadership — or, at least its Talabani factions — and the central government in Baghdad, which the Talabani family has courted closely. The Iraqi Oil Ministry's statement that both sides of the conflict agreed to avoid fighting around Kirkuk's oil fields provides further evidence that a deal was struck with the PUK.
The PUK's decision to withdraw has earned it intense criticism from the KDP, which has been sending in more KDP peshmerga brigades to reinforce Kurdish positions in Kirkuk. Right now, the PUK and the KDP seem more divided than ever, and there is a high risk of intra-Kurdish conflict during the coming days and weeks. In addition to reports of fighting between Kurdish and Iraqi forces, there have been indications of conflict between the PUK and the KDP's respective arms of the peshmerga. Eyewitnesses even report Kurdish civilians angrily protesting the perceived departure of PUK peshmerga forces from Kirkuk.
Increasing Uncertainty
In the aftermath of last month's Kurdish independence referendum, the Talabani-led faction of the PUK has pushed to work closely with Baghdad, believing the referendum was an attempt for Kurdish President Masoud Barzani to consolidate political control. Indeed, Bafel Talabani, the son of recently deceased PUK leader Jalal Talabani, went on television Oct. 12 to call for a de-escalation of conflict between Arbil and Baghdad and to urge the creation of a joint administration between the two that would run Kirkuk. However, it also appears that some of the PUK's peshmerga are more loyal to a splinter faction of the group led by Kosrat Rasul. These forces have actually been working alongside the KDP, reinforcing the group's positions in Kirkuk.
It is possible that Baghdad's moves in Kirkuk province were not initially intended to culminate in seizing the city itself. Statements by PUK-linked officials suggested that the goal was to take over the K1 military base on the outskirts of the city, as well as the oil and natural gas fields located in the province's hinterlands. But strong military pushback from the Kurds could have led to an operational decision to make a move onto the city — something the PUK might not have bargained when it made its alleged deal with Baghdad. And at this point, an Iraqi or Kurdish civil conflict could be on its way, whether any party intended it.
In the coming days, outside powers including the United States will likely try to exert pressure on Baghdad and Arbil to end the conflict. Meanwhile, Turkey has said that it backs Baghdad's moves against the Kurds, despite the fact that it has supported the KRG against Baghdad in the past. Turkey's choice can be attributed to its contentious relationship with the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), which has also reportedly become involved in Kirkuk, as well as Turkey's overall disapproval of Iraqi Kurdistan gaining greater autonomy. The PKK was one of the Kurdish units to remain at the frontlines against the Islamic State the longest, and the group has even called for Kurds looking for an alternative means of resistance to join the PKK instead of the peshmerga. The more active the PKK becomes in the dispute, the more support Turkey will lend to Baghdad.
The Threat of Ethno-Sectarian Fighting
The events in Kirkuk have developed rapidly and have sharpened divisions within military and government groups. But perhaps the biggest question surrounding the conflict right now is whether or not it will devolve into broader sectarian fighting. Underlying sectarian disputes in the region have recently been exacerbated by Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi's decision to replace the Kurdish governor of Kirkuk, Najmadin Karim, with the Sunni Arab Rakan Said. The move is an especially sensitive one, given the Arabization campaign that former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein led to curtail Kurdish nationalism.
Sectarian tension is set to grow even more if Iraq's Popular Mobilization Forces (PMUs) become more involved in the conflict in Kirkuk. The bulk of the PMUs in Kurdistan are made up of Brigades of Turkmen Shiite and Arab Shiite — and the Arabs and Turkmen were two of the largest regional minority groups to oppose the Sept. 25 independence referendum. And though the PMUs have not been very involved in the fighting so far, they participated in the takeover of Hawija from the Islamic State in southern Kirkuk province. It's possible that the PMUs — particularly the Iranian-supported Turkmen brigades — will move into Kirkuk once the ISF consolidates control. There are already unconfirmed reports that Hadi Al-Amiri and Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, two key PMU commanders, have entered the city. Finally, there is the sectarian conflict between the Shiites and Kurds and the Sunnis. Turkmen Shiites and the Kurds have both been accused of displacing and ejecting Sunni Arabs and Sunni Turkmen from both the region and their governments as a response to Islamic State's rise.
Even if outside powers can end the fighting between the ISF and the KRG, underlying tension between Kirkuk's rival factions and sects will likely endure. Over the last few years, a shared enemy, the Islamic State, forced many of these groups to cooperate. But now that the threat of the Islamic State is dwindling, their differences have been thrown into sharp relief.
-
Assault on the Kurds
Defeat for the U.S. allies in northern Iraq is a victory for Iran.
Iraqi forces advance towards the city of Kirkuk during an operation against Kurdish fighters, Oct 16.
Iraqi forces advance towards the city of Kirkuk during an operation against Kurdish fighters, Oct 16. Photo: ahmad al-rubaye/Agence France-Presse/Getty Images
By The Editorial Board
Oct. 16, 2017 7:01 p.m. ET
156 COMMENTS
A central tenet of the Trump foreign policy, a work in progress, has been that the U.S. would rebuild its relationship with America’s allies. That commitment is being put to the test in northern Iraq.
On Monday Iraq’s army, assisted by Iranian forces, launched a major assault on the Kurds in the northern Iraqi city of Kirkuk. Across the length of America’s recent history with Iraq, we have had no more reliable ally than Iraq’s Kurds and their fighting force, the Peshmerga.
So far the Trump Administration has said little about the attack on the Kurds. “We’re not taking sides, but we don’t like the fact that they’re clashing,” President Trump told reporters at the White House Monday. “We’ve had, for many years, a very good relationship with the Kurds, as you know. And we’ve also been on the side of Iraq, even though we should have never been in there in the first place. But we’re not taking sides in that battle.”
But if the U.S. allows one of its most visible allies to be defeated in the Middle East, make no mistake: Other allies in the region will notice and start to recalculate their relationship with the Trump Administration.
The Iraqi Kurds, to be sure, have contributed to their current plight. Kurdish President Masoud Barzani went forward with a needless independence referendum last month, despite pressure from the U.S. not to hold the vote. The pro-forma vote gave the Baghdad government a pretext to play the nationalist card and retake Kirkuk.
Kirkuk is a multi-ethnic city that lies just south of Iraq’s Kurdistan, an autonomous region whose borders abut Iran and Turkey. The Kirkuk region is also rich in oil. The Kurds gained control of Kirkuk in 2014 after Iraq’s army famously fled under attack from Islamic State, which seized control of Mosul in June that year.
After the Iraqi forces abandoned the region, the Peshmerga became the primary reason that Islamic State was never able to consolidate its control of northern Iraq. Arguably, the Kurds, backed by U.S. air power, saved Iraq by giving Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi time to reconstitute his nation’s army into a fighting force capable of driving Islamic State out of Iraq’s major cities, with the help of the Peshmerga.
Possibly the phrase “no good deed goes unpunished” originated in the Middle East. Having taken back Mosul from Islamic State, Mr. Abadi now wants to drive the Kurds back into their northern Iraqi homeland. But the strategic details of this attack on the Kurds are important. Iraq’s offensive includes Iran. According to the Washington-based Institute for the Study of War, Iranian-backed militias and the 9th Iraqi Armored Division moved toward Kirkuk last week to support the Iraqi army.
The Abadi government in Baghdad is under constant pressure from Shiite Iran to align itself against the interest of Iraq’s Sunni populations in the north and west. It follows that after Iraq’s progress on the battlefield against Islamic State, Iran would encourage the Iraqis to drive the Kurds out of Kirkuk.
Notice this is all happening within days of President Trump decertifying the Iran nuclear deal, based in part on the assumption that Europe will support U.S. efforts to resist Iran’s ballistic-missile program and its penetrations across the Middle East. But what will the Europeans or our allies in the Middle East conclude if we abandon one of our oldest regional allies, the Iraqi Kurds?
The U.S. no doubt has lost much of the political leverage it had before the Obama Administration pulled out of Iraq in 2011. But abandoning the Kurds to an Iraq-Iran Shiite alliance would only deepen U.S. losses.
Before Iraq and the Kurds go to war, the U.S. could insist that Iraq reaffirm the autonomy of Iraqi Kurdistan and also that it work out an agreement to share revenue from the region’s oil reserves. The alternative to such a modus vivendi for Prime Minister Abadi is a capable Kurdish fighting force in a state of permanent insurrection.
The U.S. owes a debt to the Kurds. Abandoning them now would damage America’s credibility, and not least Mr. Trump’s ability to enlist allies against Iran’s expansion across the Middle East. The assault on Kirkuk matters.
-
second post:
The Global Consensus Against the Iraqi Kurds
Oct 17, 2017
By Kamran Bokhari
Iraqi government forces took control of the Kurdish-dominated city of Kirkuk on Oct. 16, part of a growing dispute between the Kurdistan Regional Government, which held an independence referendum last month, and the government in Baghdad. While Iraq’s disintegration as a country has been apparent for years now, this latest dispute indicates that the situation isn’t going to get any better. It’s unlikely that Iraqi Kurdistan will achieve independence, even though the majority of voters supported independence. What’s more, this issue has drawn in a number other countries, most notably Turkey and Iran, which encouraged Baghdad to quell the growing Kurdish separatist movement.
Long at Odds
The latest reports suggest that Baghdad’s security forces are facing little resistance from the forces of the Kurdistan Regional Government, which governs Iraq’s northern Kurdish region. The KRG has controlled the oil-rich Kirkuk province, just south of Iraqi Kurdistan, since 2014, when Iraqi forces abandoned the area as Islamic State fighters approached. Iraqi soldiers have now taken over key energy and military installations. Much of this can be blamed on divisions among the Iraqi Kurds themselves – the region’s second-largest party, the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, cut a deal with Baghdad and Tehran and withdrew its forces from the region when the Iraqi army advanced. The move comes three weeks after 93 percent of Iraqi Kurds voted in favor of independence in a referendum held by the KRG, which wants to form an independent Kurdistan that would include areas well south of the current autonomous Kurdish region, including Kirkuk.
Members of the Iraqi Kurdish security forces stand guard at a checkpoint in Altun Kupri, 25 miles south of Irbil, the capital of the autonomous Kurdish region of northern Iraq on Oct. 16, 2017. SAFIN HAMED/AFP/Getty Images
Baghdad and Irbil have long been at odds. After the fall of Saddam Hussein’s regime in 2003, Washington helped the country devise a new political system that would allow the Shiites – who are a majority in Iraq – to dominate the central government and the Kurds to enjoy regional autonomy. But this new polity suffered from two main flaws. First, it marginalized the Sunni minority, which led to a massive insurgency that resulted in the rise of the Islamic State. Second, it led to a bitter struggle between the Shiites and the Kurds, as the Kurds continued to push for more autonomy, especially over the right to export hydrocarbons and expand their power southward.
For many years, the friction between the Shiites and the Iraqi Kurds was contained because of the Sunni insurgent threat. The two sides engaged in multiple rounds of negotiations to resolve their dispute over control of oil and gas resources and revenue sharing. But they were never able to reach an agreement. Landlocked, the KRG needed partners to help it export oil without the assistance of the central government; it therefore forged close ties with bordering Turkey.
Baghdad was furious with both Irbil and Ankara, but it could do little to disrupt the arrangement between the Iraqi Kurds and the Turks. This became the status quo, until the Islamic State emerged in 2014 and seized Iraq’s second-largest city, Mosul. When the Iraqi army retreated from Mosul, which is just south of Iraqi Kurdistan, it presented both a threat and an opportunity for the Kurds.
It was a threat because it left the Kurds vulnerable to an IS attack. It was an opportunity because the departure of Iraqi forces from the region could allow KRG forces to seize additional territory. The failure of the Islamic State to expand into Kirkuk left this region firmly under the KRG’s control. After a three-year struggle, the liberation of Mosul last July created the conditions for the Kurds to make a move toward full sovereignty. And with the IS threat receding, the conflict between the Shiites and the Kurds became the biggest challenge facing the country.
Broader Implications
If Iraqi Kurdistan were to move from being an autonomous region in Iraq to an independent state, it would have serious implications for the security of neighboring states, especially Turkey and Iran – the region’s two strongest powers. The Turks and the Iranians are locked in a long-term struggle for influence in Iraq and Syria, as well as the wider Middle East. When Turkey helped the KRG with energy exports, it was actually an attempt to counter the influence of Iran, which sees the Shiite-dominated government in Baghdad as an ally.
But when it comes to Kurdish independence, the Turks and the Iranians actually have some interests in common. Both countries have their own Kurdish separatist movements – although the movement is stronger in Turkey, which has the largest Kurdish population of any country in the Middle East. They both, therefore, opposed the Iraqi Kurds’ move toward independence. It would be in both their interests for the Iraqi government to retake Kirkuk.
Buoyed by Turkey and Iran, Baghdad is pushing ahead to contain the Iraqi Kurds. It is also deeply encouraged by the fact that the United States opposes the Kurdish move toward sovereignty. The KRG has been a key ally of Washington – in many ways, a far closer partner than the Iraqi central government given Baghdad’s close ties with Tehran. But Kurdish independence is not in the American interest because it would further aggravate the existing conflicts in the region. If Washington supported the creation of an independent Kurdistan in Iraq, it could encourage the Kurds in Syria and Turkey to also push for independence, which would create far more problems between Turkey and the United States.
The U.S. will therefore try to mediate a truce between Baghdad and Irbil, but it will mainly try to stay out of the issue as it did when Iraqi forces took Kirkuk from the KRG. Turkey and Iran will be much more deeply involved given that it has more direct implications for them. Both want to prevent the Iraqi Kurds from claiming independence and from expanding southward. But that is the extent of their shared objectives.
In the end, the Iraqi Kurds will remain pawns in the power struggle between regional and global powers. As for Iraq, it will continue to be a failed state – internationally recognized as a country but effectively unable to act like one.
The post The Global Consensus Against the Iraqi Kurds appeared first on Geopolitical Futures.
-
http://www.tabletmag.com/jewish-news-and-politics/247203/kurdistan-iran-united-states?utm_source=tabletmagazinelist&utm_campaign=a11c27f59b-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2017_10_18&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_c308bf8edb-a11c27f59b-207194629
-
http://www.tabletmag.com/jewish-news-and-politics/247203/kurdistan-iran-united-states?utm_source=tabletmagazinelist&utm_campaign=a11c27f59b-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2017_10_18&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_c308bf8edb-a11c27f59b-207194629
W.T.F.??
Why are the Kurds being abandoned? This pisses me off to no end.
-
second post
For the record, I would like to register my deep concern that by abandoning the Kurds, we are accepting that the Iranians will have uncontested control all the way to the Mediterranean; indeed with our active campaign against DAESH/ISIS under President Trump we have actively enabled this outcome!
It may well be that when Trump took office it was too late for the outcome to be otherwise, and certainly in Sec Def Mattis we have a man whose integrity, warrior spirit, leadership, and vision that we respect mightily , , , but , , ,
How are we going to get in Iran's face over the nuke deal given this context?
What meaning our friendship now given we look the other way instead of backing the Kurds?
I know this is all very complicated (the Kurds are fragemented, the implications with Turkey, etc etc) but I'm thinking this may prove to be a very big error.
IMHO it would have been better to back the Kurds, establish base(s) there, etc as the beginning of an Israeli-Jordanian-Kurd-Saudi alliance (Egypt joining in when it saw our intention. (With the Kurds as a refueling point, Israeli options against Iran increase dramatically too).
Note this article published in the Jordan Times: http://www.jordantimes.com/news/region/defeat-daesh-raqqa-may-herald-wider-struggle-us
-
F*ck Turkey. The Kurds are much more important. I hate our foreign policy structure.
second post
For the record, I would like to register my deep concern that by abandoning the Kurds, we are accepting that the Iranians will have uncontested control all the way to the Mediterranean; indeed with our active campaign against DAESH/ISIS under President Trump we have actively enabled this outcome!
It may well be that when Trump took office it was too late for the outcome to be otherwise, and certainly in Sec Def Mattis we have a man whose integrity, warrior spirit, leadership, and vision that we respect mightily , , , but , , ,
How are we going to get in Iran's face over the nuke deal given this context?
What meaning our friendship now given we look the other way instead of backing the Kurds?
I know this is all very complicated (the Kurds are fragemented, the implications with Turkey, etc etc) but I'm thinking this may prove to be a very big error.
IMHO it would have been better to back the Kurds, establish base(s) there, etc as the beginning of an Israeli-Jordanian-Kurd-Saudi alliance (Egypt joining in when it saw our intention. (With the Kurds as a refueling point, Israeli options against Iran increase dramatically too).
-
I share the sentiment, but having them commit against us is not a small thing e.g. they could start enabling refugee flows again, facilitate Russian naval movements out of Crimea through the Bosphorus into the Mediterranean e.g. the Russian port in Syria, not to mention the possibility of invading parts of Syria etc.
I do not opine on this, I merely note the complexity.
Question: At some point do we not have to trust that Mattis knows best?
-
I share the sentiment, but having them commit against us is not a small thing e.g. they could start enabling refugee flows again, facilitate Russian naval movements out of Crimea through the Bosphorus into the Mediterranean e.g. the Russian port in Syria, not to mention the possibility of invading parts of Syria etc.
I do not opine on this, I merely note the complexity.
Question: At some point do we not have to trust that Mattis knows best?
How much of this is the deep state pulling levers despite what the appointees are trying to do?
-
I could be wrong, but I sense that Mattis and McMaster have a certain Big Army/Marine perspective on the Middle East. This includes being willing to see Israel as a PITA for what the mission they have been given with regard to the Arabs (Sunni, of course). Think e.g. of Marine general Zinni in the run-up to the Iraq War strongly warning against it.
I must acknowledge that what I advocated a couple of posts ago would require a considerable investment of bandwidth. Mattis/MacMaster may well feel we don't have that bandwidth to spare with the Nork nukes and the Chinese SCS issues front and center and may feel that if we solve the Norks first we may find it easier to communicate effectively :wink: with the Iranians.
Of course by not backing the Kurds at this critical juncture it seems to me that we have made it even harder to persuade the Iranians to back off the nukes-- perhaps this is why Mattis was hinting in his congressional testimony a week or so ago that staying in the Iran nuke deal was in our interest. Arguably this distinguishes President Trump's decision to decertify the deal (a matter of US law, not the deal itself- if I have this right).
Yes this kicks the sanctions issue over to Congress (a good thing IMHO to force Congress to do its fg job and commit itself) but it also kicks the can down the road as to what we do if/when the Iranians tell us to fk off and sprint for the nukes.
I am reading chatter that some serious players are saying the the Norks are three months away. Is not the reality similar with the Iranians?
WE MUST BE PREPARED TO HAVE OUR ASSUMPTIONS SHATTERED.
-
Second post
http://www.jpost.com/Opinion/Irans-very-good-week-507929
-
we screw over the Kurds again.
:cry:
-
AND I'm not seeing how this makes an already exceedingly difficult and dangerous hand against the Iranians near impossible short of all out war , , , as best as I can tell.
-
I share the sentiment, but having them commit against us is not a small thing e.g. they could start enabling refugee flows again, facilitate Russian naval movements out of Crimea through the Bosphorus into the Mediterranean e.g. the Russian port in Syria, not to mention the possibility of invading parts of Syria etc.
I do not opine on this, I merely note the complexity.
Question: At some point do we not have to trust that Mattis knows best?
How much of this is the deep state pulling levers despite what the appointees are trying to do?
https://amgreatness.com/2017/10/21/how-the-state-department-is-undermining-trumps-agenda/
How the State Department is Undermining Trump’s Agenda
By The Editors| October 21, 2017
Secretary of State Rex Tillerson has isolated himself from his own department and allowed subordinates to fill a handful of top positions with people who actively opposed Donald Trump’s election, according to current and former State Department officials and national security experts with specific knowledge of the situation.
News reports often depict a White House “in chaos.” But the real chaos, according to three State Department employees who spoke with American Greatness on the condition of anonymity, is at Foggy Bottom.
Rumors have circulated for months that Tillerson either plans to resign or is waiting for the president to fire him. The staffers describe an amateur secretary of state who has “checked out” and effectively removed himself from major decision making.
Hundreds of Empty Desks
About 200 State Department jobs require Senate confirmation. But the Senate cannot confirm nominees it does not have. More than nine months into the new administration, most of the senior State Department positions—assistant and deputy assistant secretary posts—remain unfilled.
What’s more, the United States currently has no ambassador to the European Union, or to key allies such as France, Germany, Australia, South Korea, and Saudi Arabia. Meantime, Obama Administration holdovers remain ensconced in the department and stationed at embassies in the Balkans, Africa, and the Middle East.
The leadership vacuum has been filled by a small group opposed to the president’s “America First” agenda.
At the heart of the problem, these officials say, are the two people closest to Tillerson: chief of staff Margaret Peterlin and senior policy advisor Brian Hook, who runs the State Department’s in-house think tank.
Peterlin and Hook are longtime personal friends who current staffers say are running the department like a private fiefdom for their benefit and in opposition to the president and his stated policies.
‘Boxing Out’ Trump Supporters
The lack of staffing gives the duo unprecedented power over State Department policy. Since joining Tillerson’s team, Peterlin and Hook have created a tight bottleneck, separating the 75,000 State Department staffers—true experts in international relations—from the secretary. As the New York Times reported in August, “all decisions, no matter how trivial, must be sent to Mr. Tillerson or his top aides: Margaret Peterlin, his chief of staff, and Brian Hook, the director of policy planning.” In practice, however, that has meant Peterlin and Hook make the decisions.
More important, sources who spoke with American Greatness say, Peterlin and Hook have stymied every effort by pro-Trump policy officials to get jobs at the State Department.
Margaret Peterlin
Margaret Peterlin
“Peterlin is literally sitting on stacks of résumés,” one national security expert told American Greatness. Together, Peterlin and Hook are “boxing out anyone who supports Trump’s foreign policy agenda,” he added.
Peterlin, an attorney and former Commerce Department official in the George W. Bush Administration, was hired to help guide political appointments through the vetting and confirmation process. She reportedly bonded with Tillerson during his confirmation hearings, and he hired her as his chief of staff.
Brian Hook
Brian Hook
Peterlin then brought in Hook, who co-founded the John Hay Initiative, a group of former Mitt Romney foreign-policy advisors who publicly refused to support Trump because he would “act in ways that make America less safe.” In a May 2016 profile of NeverTrump Republicans, Hook told Politico, “Even if you say you support him as the nominee, you go down the list of his positions and you see you disagree on every one.”
Hook now directs the department’s Office of Policy Planning, responsible for churning out policy briefs and helping to shape the nation’s long-term strategic agenda.
NeverTrumpers on Parade
In September, Peterlin and Hook hired David Feith, a former Wall Street Journal editorial writer and the son of Douglas J. Feith, one of the architects of the Iraq War. Feith shares with Peterlin and Hook a deep dislike for President Trump. Feith, according to one State Department employee with knowledge of the hire, had been rejected by the White House precisely because of his opposition to the president and his policies. Peterlin and Hook forced him through anyway.
Incredibly, even the State Department’s spokesman, R.C. Hammond, was an outspoken NeverTrumper before the election, frequently tweeting jibes and barbs at the candidate. Hammond, a former aide to Newt Gingrich, is now the face and one of the leading voices of U.S. public diplomacy.
Many of these anti-Trump hires have occurred in the face of a hiring freeze Tillerson imposed earlier this year following an executive order to review agency and department staffing, along with the White House’s request to cut the State Department’s budget by 30 percent. But rather than put a check on untrustworthy career bureaucrats, the move had the opposite effect of empowering the president’s opponents.
State’s anti-Trump climate has shut out several top-notch foreign policy hands.
Kiron Skinner, founding director of the Institute for Politics and Strategy at Carnegie Mellon University and a fellow at Stanford’s Hoover Institution, worked on Trump’s national security transition team and was hired as a senior policy advisor. She was considered for the job Hook now has in the Office of Policy Planning. But she was isolated from career staffers and quit after a few days.
At least Skinner managed to get into the building. Another former Reagan Administration staffer with decades of experience in U.S.-Russian affairs and international economics had spent months in 2016 campaigning for the president in critical battleground states, including Pennsylvania and Ohio. As soon as Trump won the election, this experienced analyst and several other pro-Trump associates were passed over for State Department jobs. It’s to the point that even internship candidates are being rejected if they volunteered for the Trump campaign.
Tillerson or No, Personnel is Policy
When he agreed to take the top diplomat’s job, Tillerson reportedly asked President Trump for autonomy‚ and got it. Unfortunately, his leadership style has changed from his days running ExxonMobil. In his definitive history of ExxonMobil, journalist Steve Coll described Tillerson’s approach as open and informal. By contrast, Tillerson’s modus operandi at state has been described as isolated, unapproachable, even “draconian.”
In government today, the maxim that “personnel is policy” is truer than ever. As a result, the State Department mirrors the management style not of its leader, but of Tillerson’s chief aides who are at odds with the president’s stated foreign policy agenda.
Tillerson this week told the Wall Street Journal he would remain on the job “as long as the president thinks I’m useful.” But whether it’s Tillerson behind the secretary’s desk, or CIA Director Mike Pompeo, or any other foreign policy hand, a State Department staffed with opponents of the president is hardly useful to Americans who voted to reject the failed foreign policies of the past two administrations.
President Trump made “draining the swamp” a cornerstone of his campaign. How can he drain the swamp if the swamp dwellers control his administration and drown out voices of his most innovative supporters?
-
Please post in "Trump Administration" and "US Foreign Policy" as well.
-
In Stratfor's Fourth-Quarter Forecast, we outlined how Turkey, Iran and the United States would continue to support Baghdad's position against the Kurdish independence referendum and how mounting pressure would cause Kurdish infighting to worsen. Kurdish President Massoud Barzani's decision not to run for re-election shows how heavily that pressure has weighed on him and his party. But far from uniting his people, Barzani's decision is likely only to widen the divisions.
Iraqi Kurdistan may soon be governed by new leaders, but bitter rivalries and social divisions will endure. Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) President Massoud Barzani announced that he will not extend his term when it expires Nov. 1, after he apparently gravely underestimated how the central Iraqi government in Baghdad would react to the KRG's independence referendum Sept. 25. Since the referendum, Iraqi federal troops have retaken control of disputed territory and critical infrastructure previously held by Kurdish forces and conflict among and within different Kurdish political parties has increased.
Though Barzani is stepping down from his role as president, he plans to remain active in politics as head of the KRG's High Political Council. Meanwhile, other figures in the ruling Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) may take a more active role in the Kurdish government. On Oct. 29, the region's parliament approved to split the majority of the presidency's functions three ways between the prime minister and the Cabinet, the parliament, and the judiciary — which are all largely under the control of or are directly influenced by the KDP. This indicates that Barzani may be aiming to maintain his lead from behind the scenes.
As Barzani prepares to step down from the presidency, power within the KDP and the Barzani family may begin to shift. Barzani's nephew and current prime minister, Nechirvan Barzani, for example, is in a position to assume more political power. Nechirvan is known to have a contentious relationship with Barzani's eldest son and current head of the Kurdistan Region Security Council, Masrour Barzani, who like his father supported the independence referendum. If Barzani is stepping down from the presidency to deflect criticism away from the KDP for the referendum, it would be counterproductive for Masrour to assume more responsibility in the Kurdish government since he could face the same criticism as his father. Nechirvan, on the other hand, opposed the referendum and could represent a new era of leadership after the referendum, particularly in the eyes of Iraqi Kurdistan's neighbors Turkey and Iran.
Since the referendum, KRG politics have become more volatile. Iraq's Kurdish population is split along several ethno-sectarian and partisan lines, which have a history of coming into conflict. Now, in the wake of Barzani's announcement, dormant rivalries may again awaken. Already, powerful Kurdish parties such as the Gorran Movement and the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) have reported attacks on their offices and on members of parliament. Major political figures within KRG politics have long been able to manage these bitter political divisions. Leaders such as Jalal Talabani of the PUK, Nawshirwan Mustafa of the Gorran Party and Massoud Barzani were crucial in maintaining a united front. But Mustafa and Talabani both passed away earlier this year, and now that Barzani is planning his own political exit, the next leaders of Iraqi Kurdistan have their work cut out for them
-
second post
Hamas Pursues Reconciliation - with Hizballah and Iran
by IPT News • Nov 1, 2017 at 2:30 pm
https://www.investigativeproject.org/6849/hamas-pursues-reconciliation-with-hizballah
====================
https://www.investigativeproject.org/6825/hamas-rejoins-iran-terrorist-axis
-
https://www.facebook.com/DoreGold/videos/10154804237977676/?hc_ref=ARQXz-Hzn9AqrO5rAp6ogrx14p8U2bOk3nCP_HHAR0BgCxvFwYqXmG93NlMuCXW29JU
-
insight, analysis and commentary from Stratfor’s Board of Contributors and guest contributors who are distinguished leaders in their fields of expertise.
Print
Save As PDF
Listen
Iraqi Kurdistan is one step closer to achieving its dearest ambition of self-determination. In a historic (if not entirely unexpected) move, an overwhelming majority of voters in Iraqi Kurdistan recently opted to create an independent state. Since the Sept. 25 referendum, nationalist fervor has spread like wildfire through the regional capital of Arbil and the smaller towns surrounding it as Kurds celebrate the long-awaited step. But without proper planning, the region's dream of building a functional state may prove elusive.
More Questions Than Answers
In many ways the seeming victory has already backfired, leaving the region and its people with more problems to solve than ever. With the exception of Russia and Israel, most of the international community staunchly opposed the referendum for fear of the instability it might bring to an already volatile region. Moreover, Iraq's immediate neighbors, Turkey and Iran, are concerned that any success the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) has in breaking away from Baghdad will inspire their own large Kurdish populations to do the same.
Amid the political and diplomatic fallout of the vote, KRG President Massoud Barzani announced his resignation and declared that Arbil would not make any immediate moves toward claiming independence, even offering to freeze the implementation of the referendum's result. But the gestures were not enough to appease Iraq's central government, which demanded that the KRG nullify the vote's outcome. Until Baghdad and Arbil resolve the many points of controversy between them, the referendum will continue to be little more than an opinion poll in practice.
Among the hotly contested issues surrounding Kurdish statehood are questions about borders, energy resources, refugees and the ethnic Arab communities living in Iraqi Kurdistan — all of which have featured prominently in recent commentary and debate. One important aspect of Iraqi Kurdistan's future that has yet to receive much attention, however, is water security.
Fertile but Fragile
With an average annual rainfall of between 300 and 1,000 millimeters, the fertile valleys of the KRG have largely escaped the desertification threatening the rest of Iraq and its neighbors. According to government statistics, 95 percent of urban households and 62 percent of rural households in Iraqi Kurdistan had access to safe water sources prior to the Islamic State's rise. By comparison, less than 75 percent of urban households in Iraq proper had access to the same resources. (Because of the extremist group's activities, these figures are much lower and more difficult to accurately assess today.)
Yet scarcities do exist, and in many cases they have been exacerbated by political, socio-economic and environmental factors. Since 2007, Iraqi Kurdistan — like the rest of the surrounding region — has suffered severe drought, reduced snowmelt and groundwater depletion as high as 40 millimeters in some areas. To make matters worse, insufficient environmental regulations, aging distribution networks, inadequate sanitation, years of civil war and water use in upstream countries have further diminished the region's water supplies. As is true in so many places, mismanagement and neglect stemming from assumptions of abundance have proved even more detrimental than climate change to the availability of water. Several estimates predict that the average water discharge from the Tigris and Euphrates rivers will drop by anywhere from 50 to 80 percent by 2025, and though there are few clear estimates for the rivers flowing into Iraq from Iran, most are equally dire.
Compared with the rest of Iraq, the KRG has achieved a stronger system of governance, more developed infrastructure and higher standards of living for its people — all advantages that would serve the region well in the event that it becomes its own country. But Iraqi Kurdistan has few concrete policies in place for dealing with the problems of transnational water sharing that are bound to arise. Not for lack of trying, though; the KRG has always prioritized water security. In 2012, Arbil's Ministry of Planning worked with the U.N. Development Program to produce a needs assessment that devoted roughly a third of total investment into the region until 2020 to water, sanitation and the environment. Kurdish leaders also considered several programs designed to tackle overconsumption and sanitation needs.
Most of Arbil's existing water agreements, however, are with Baghdad. Should the region gain independence, it would have to negotiate and sign its own water-sharing deals with countries upstream. Chief among them are Turkey and Iran, from which nearly 60 percent of Iraqi Kurdistan's renewable water flows. But striking new bargains with these countries will not be easy, because Ankara and Tehran — both of which have made their displeasure with the concept of Kurdish independence clear — are unlikely to treat with Arbil. Turkey has already proved unwilling to sign an accord with Iraq on the use of the Tigris River's resources. Iran, meanwhile, has been extremely vocal in its opposition to the Kurdish referendum; Kurdish officials fear it will further dam the river, delay the construction of pipelines and shut down border crossings in retaliation for the referendum.
Until Baghdad and Arbil resolve the many points of controversy between them, the referendum will continue to be little more than an opinion poll in practice.
Building a Sustainable Future
Water scarcity could cause the simmering ethnic tensions in Iraqi Kurdistan to bubble to the surface as well, especially in the disputed oil-rich region of Kirkuk. Home to ethnic Arabs, Turks and Kurds, Kirkuk boasts a large agrarian community that relies on the waters of the Little Zab River to survive. On the tributary, which flows from Iran to join the Tigris River, rests the Dukan Dam. Built in 1955, the Dukan Dam is one of three main dams in Iraqi Kurdistan and holds 1.3 million cubic meters of water. Dips in its supplies have created friction in the region before; any future shortages will likely do the same, reinforcing local Arabs' perception that the allocation of fewer supplies is simply a means of pushing them out of the area.
Distributing limited resources among competing ethnic groups is no easy feat, and the Kurdish government will have to tread with care. In hopes of becoming more self-reliant in meeting the region's water and electricity demand, the KRG's Water Ministry plans to build 20 new dams to supplement the 17 that already exist. Although the move could bring several long-term benefits, it also risks ratcheting up tension with Baghdad in the event that the dams constrict the flow of rivers feeding into the rest of Iraq. As an upper riparian state wedged between more powerful hostile neighbors, Iraqi Kurdistan will need to use its water access as an instrument of peace, working with the central government in Baghdad to overcome their differences and find compromises that are equitable.
Water is crucial not just to farming or daily consumption, but also to the health of the nation's economy. The KRG still lacks many of the financial characteristics of a country: Baghdad currently controls the region's air space and periodically threatens its oil sales. Iraq, moreover, allocates some 17 percent of its annual budget to the long-term development of the Kurdish region. As Arbil presses for independence, it must take these factors into account, as well as the poor track record that nearby states have in cooperating on water issues.
But perhaps the KRG's leaders will learn from these failures, rather than perpetuate them. History has shown that while water can be a difficult issue for countries to manage, often overshadowed by religion, ethnicity, patriotism and ego, it is not impossible. Iraqi Kurdistan has reached a rare crossroads, where it can make a choice to protect future generations from scarcity or become yet another state thirsty for water.
-
https://www.cruz.senate.gov/?p=press_release&id=3474
-
Daniel Pipes on Trump, Iran, and a Fast-Changing Middle East
L'Informale (Italy)
November 13, 2017
http://www.meforum.org/7022/daniel-pipes-on-trump-iran-and-a-fast-changing
-
This is all quite interesting, but I wish it would address the implications of Iran's arc to Lebanon, the prospects for war with Israel, and the budding Saudi-Israeli alliance:
Nov. 16, 2017 Iran has been quiet about Moscow and Riyadh’s newfound friendship – and the weapons that friendship has procured.
By Jacob L. Shapiro
Last month, well before Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman purged the government of potential rivals, his father, King Salman, did something unprecedented as well: He visited Russia, Saudi Arabia’s erstwhile enemy. After the visit came the usual slew of announced business deals that promise a lot but deliver little. On Nov. 13, however, Russia’s Federal Service for Military-Technical Cooperation announced that it would provide Saudi Arabia with its sophisticated S-400 air defense missiles. King Salman’s visit appears to have delivered real cooperation.
A Relationship Redefined
That Saudi Arabia and Russia would redefine the nature of their relationship is surprising in its own right. These were two countries firmly on opposite ends of the Cold War. But even more jarring is that Iran, Saudi Arabia’s regional rival, has been silent. Iran and Russia have a complicated relationship in their own right, one marked for centuries by suspicion and distrust. But in recent years they had set aside their differences, becoming military allies to save Bashar Assad and destroy the Islamic State. Now, Russia is promising to supply Iran’s biggest enemy with air defense missiles – and Iran hasn’t made a peep. Something doesn’t add up.
Consider Russia’s position in the Middle East. Most observers claim that by partnering with Iran to save the Assad regime, Russia enhanced its influence in the region at the expense of the United States. This is a misunderstanding. Russia’s intervention was actually pretty limited. At the height of its involvement, it had only 30-75 fighter jets and helicopters operating in the country. Its commitment was small but successful, insofar as it prevented the Syrian government from falling and the Islamic State from rising.
But it did not undermine U.S. strategic goals in the Middle East. If anything, it enhanced them. When the Syrian civil war started, the U.S. was determined to remove Assad. Yet there weren’t enough moderates for it to train and arm, and in any case, the Islamic State looked as though it may take Damascus for itself. And so the United States prioritized its fight against IS over its fight against Assad. Russia was, in effect, helping the U.S. do its dirty work. For all the bluster surrounding their relations, the U.S. and Russia have been coordinating their efforts in Syria in pursuit of a common goal for years.
Russian S-400 Triumph medium-range and long-range surface-to-air missile systems ride through Red Square during the Victory Day military parade in Moscow on May 9, 2017. NATALIA KOLESNIKOVA/AFP/Getty Images
Now that Assad has been saved and the Islamic State’s caliphate vanquished, the question is: What comes next? With IS out of the picture, the U.S., Saudi Arabia, Israel, Russia, Turkey and Iran – which had if nothing else a common enemy – no longer have a reason to cooperate with one another. Life after IS is actually more difficult for Russia than life with it. Iran, Turkey and Saudi Arabia are all competing to fill the power vacuum left by the group’s departure, and Russia’s long-term interests don’t align with any of theirs.
Unlike the Islamic State, all three countries have the power to threaten Russian interests directly. Take Turkey, for example. It can cut off Russia’s access to the Mediterranean by closing the Bosporus. It competes with Russia in the Caucasus. And as it strengthens, it will begin to project power into the Balkans, another region in Russia’s sphere of influence.
Iran, like Turkey, has interests in the Caucasus. It also shares a border with Central Asia and Afghanistan – another Russian sphere of influence where Iran can cause serious problems for Moscow.
And Saudi Arabia, for its part, poses two challenges of its own. First, Saudi Arabia can still influence global oil prices, where even small fluctuations can hurt the Russian economy. Second, Saudi Arabia is the worldwide leader in exporting jihadism, a threat to a country like Russia, which has a large minority Muslim population that is fast increasing.
Russia has met these challenges not by choosing one country to align with but by trying to forge better relationships with all of them. Its relationship with Turkey is rocky but sustainable. (In fact, in September, Turkey signed its own agreement to receive S-400s from Russia.) Its relationship with Iran is solid but not without drama. A Russian announcement in August 2016 that it was using an Iranian air base for attacks in Syria set off a short-lived political controversy in Iran, sparking backlash from Iranian politicians who felt Russia’s use of the base violated Iran’s Constitution. Now Russia is reaching out to Saudi Arabia, and besides the agreements on military cooperation, Moscow secured a promise from King Salman during his visit last month to stop Saudi proselytizing to Muslims in Russia.
Russia is cultivating other ties too. Officials from Moscow have met with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu several times this year and have kept lines of communication open over Hezbollah’s potential acquisition of advanced weaponry. Russia has also expressed some support for various Kurdish groups vying for independence in the region. Moscow has, for example, kept open its embassy in Irbil, the capital of Iraqi Kurdistan, throughout the contentious independence referendum.
And while Russia has said it does not support the PYD, the Kurdish political party in northern Syria, in its push for independence, it nonetheless invited the group to a congress comprising all relevant parties to discuss Syria’s future – much to the chagrin of Turkey, Iran and anti-Assad Syrian opposition groups.
Silence and Blindness
Russian foreign policy can be disruptive, but it would be a mistake to think of it as monolithic or unchanging. The Cold War, for all its faults, simplified foreign policy. (Simple doesn’t mean easy.) It was unclear whether the U.S. or USSR was more powerful. Regions like the Middle East became battlegrounds to see which one was. The U.S. had its allies (Saudi Arabia, Israel, Turkey) and the USSR had its allies (Egypt, Syria, Iraq). Sometimes countries switched sides, but ultimately it was a zero-sum game, with each side trying to weaken the other.
But the Cold War has been over for more than two decades. Today’s Russia is not yesterday’s Soviet Union. The U.S. and Russia actually share some long-term interests in the Middle East. Neither wants to see any one country dominate the entire region. Washington and Moscow want parity; they prefer that the region’s countries compete with one another rather than cause problems for them. In a perfect world, the U.S. would be embroiled in the Middle East and Russia would be free. But theirs is not a perfect world, so Moscow’s primary objective is to make sure the problems and ambitions of the Middle East stay in the Middle East.
This altogether different strategy of containment brings us back to Iran – and its silence on the budding Saudi-Russia friendship. Iran does not think it needs to attack Saudi Arabia head on. The government in Tehran believes Saudi Arabia will eventually collapse under the weight of its own problems, and that, in the meantime, the best thing Iran can do is engage Saudi Arabia in expensive and time-consuming proxy wars. Iran may not particularly like Russia’s providing Saudi Arabia with S-400s, but it can look past this particular issue because none of its red lines have been crossed. Russia is, after all, still playing an important role in helping the Assad regime – a key Iranian ally – retake the parts of Syria it has lost in the war. That is worth more right now than a public denunciation of some missile acquisitions.
But just because Iran is silent doesn’t mean it is blind to what’s happening. And just because Iran and Russia have cooperated in recent years doesn’t mean their relationship is ironclad. Russia cannot be everything to everyone in the region, and at some point it will be forced to make difficult decisions. In the meantime, pragmatism reigns. By improving relations with Saudi Arabia, Russia is hedging the bets it placed on Iran. By keeping quiet, Iran continues to reap what benefits it can from Russia’s moves. News about the S-400s doesn’t change much, but it underscores just how quickly change can come
-
second post
Turkey, U.S.: Turkish Foreign Minister Says U.S. Won't Arm Kurds
Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said that following a conversation between the presidents of Turkey and the United States Nov. 24, U.S. President Donald Trump agreed to close down the supply of weapons to the Kurdish People's Protection Units (YPG) in Syria, CNN reported. Washington originally agreed to supply the Syrian Democratic Forces — a group dominated by the YPG — with lethal aid in May, in support of the operation to retake the Syrian city of Raqqa from the Islamic State. Following Cavusoglu's statement, the White House officially announced "pending adjustments" to the level of support provided for U.S. allies on the ground in Syria, but mentioned no specific groups or intentions. As Stratfor wrote on Nov. 22:
While Turkey shares common goals with the United States in finding a meaningful political transition and limiting Iran, the Kurdish question remains a critical dividing factor. U.S. support for the SDF, which is dominated by the People's Protection Units (YPG), has angered the Turks, whose first priority in the conflict remains to limit Kurdish expansionism, even at times to the detriment of Syrian rebels they also support. Frustrated by Washington, Ankara has attempted to work closer with Moscow, especially through the Astana process.
-
The always interesting to read Caroline Glick:
http://carolineglick.com/portents-of-a-quagmire-in-syria/
-
Tehran Is Winning the War for Control of the Middle East
by Jonathan Spyer
Foreign Policy
November 21, 2017
http://www.meforum.org/7034/tehran-is-winning-war-for-middle-east
-
Tehran Is Winning the War for Control of the Middle East
by Jonathan Spyer
Foreign Policy
November 21, 2017
http://www.meforum.org/7034/tehran-is-winning-war-for-middle-east
They are right; at this moment Iran is winning. But Syria is not much of a win as a failed state, the Kurds will never stop fighting back, Russia has its own motives, Saudi survival depends on stopping Iran, Israel has become a major power, and Iran lost its Obama-Kerry ally. No more plane loads of free cash are coming.
"Tehran has proved to have severe difficulties in developing lasting alliances outside of Shiite..."
That takes us back to the Sunni-Shia majority map:
(https://static.independent.co.uk/s3fs-public/styles/story_medium/public/thumbnails/image/2016/01/05/16/middle-east-divide-map.jpg)
Assuming some forces fight back, Iran's longer term success will be limited to controlling the Shia portion of Iraq, which is what we feared in the Iraq war. They will stir up trouble elsewhere, but not control the region.
That the Saudis and Sunni areas including Egypt and Jordan (and the Kurds) need to partner with the US and Israel is a good thing.
The region is less strategic to the rest of the world than previous decades due to other sources of oil and the collapsed price of oil. Their biggest export is terror. Reaching some elusive peace or power equilibrium would slow the flow of refugees out of the region.
I don't know the strategic value of Syria and Lebanon anymore if they are failed states. That area potentially gives Iran, Russia or China a port to the Mediterranean. Why don't we have our dealmaker President negotiate travel passageways and commerce lanes through the region for all the parties at some point in exchange for an end to the fighting?
"Mohammed bin Salman, at least, appears to have signaled his intent to oppose Iran and its proxies across the Arab world. The game, therefore, is on. ..."
By 'game' they mean war which is mostly proxy war. The forecast for the region is (continuing) war and it will not end with one unified Caliphate. It will end up divided, with new borders I assume.
The US should approach this region as a permanent war. Not go all in and minimize our ground presence but not leave the region to its own demise either. We can keep showing them ways they could stop fighting, like having self determination in Iraq, but we may wait hundreds of years for them to see the benefit.
-
Iran Reshapes the Middle East
By George Friedman
Iran has always seen itself as being in competition with the Arab states for domination of the Persian Gulf. Its ambitions were put on hold in the late 1980s, at the end of an eight-year war with Iraq that cost Iran more than a million casualties. The war ended in a military draw, but strategically it blocked Iran’s hopes for expanding its power westward. The war against the Islamic State, particularly in Iraq, has opened that door again.
The Iranian Surge
The primary burden of the fighting in Iraq fell on the Iraqi army, coupled with several Shiite militias, which fought a long battle of attrition to defeat IS. Embedded in the Iraqi army, and in direct control of the militias, were Iranian advisers. The United States had advisers and troops there too, but the Iranians were far more effective at gaining influence in the predominantly Shiite army. The U.S. reluctantly accepted this state of affairs – it needed IS defeated, but it didn’t want to absorb the casualties that would result from the long, grinding battle that was required. Instead, the U.S. relied on airstrikes.
There obviously had to be some degree of coordination among the Iraqi forces and militias – enough, at least, to prevent fratricide. That means there had to be some coordination with Iranian advisers, who were effectively commanding some units of the Iraqi army. How much coordination is unclear, but IS was defeated in the end, and Iran was left in control of at least a significant portion of the military force in Iraq. Given Iran’s influence and presence around Basra in southern Iraq, the Iranians are in a powerful position inside Iraq, with no major forces in position to contain them. And they are free to send more forces into Iraq if they wish.
Iran is also in a strong position in Syria. Together, Iran and Russia have prevented the collapse of the Assad government. Lebanon’s Hezbollah has been deeply involved in the fighting in Syria, with a large number of Iranian officers deployed with it, and Iranian forces are scattered in support of Assad’s Syrian army. The Russians are already discussing an endgame in which Assad regains the parts of Syria he lost. Whether that happens or not, the pressure is off the Assad regime now. Moreover, Russia has already said it plans to reduce its presence in Syria, which leaves the Iranians as the primary influence on the Syrians, deepening a relationship that existed even before the civil war broke out.
Yemen is another area of Iranian strength. In Yemen, bordering Saudi Arabia to the south, the Iranians are supporting the Shiite Houthi rebels. As the Houthis grew stronger in recent years, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and others launched airstrikes against them. The airstrikes failed to defeat the Houthis, and now they’re even more powerful. A missile was fired from Yemen toward Riyadh early this month. It was allegedly an Iranian-made missile, and a warning to the Saudis to get out of Yemen.
It is important not to overstate Iran’s strength. It is clearly influential, and the door to more power is open, but Iran is not yet positioned to exert decisive military force in the Middle East. At the same time, Iran’s achievements shouldn’t be understated either. It is the most influential power in Iraq and has a significant number of forces there. It more or less controls the most powerful military force in Lebanon and has limited capabilities in Syria. It also has at least advisers in Yemen.
Finally, Iran has even made inroads in Saudi Arabia’s sphere of influence. Qatar’s relationship with Iran is part of the reason it has been boycotted by much of the Arab world.
The Potential Coalition
Saudi Arabia is currently the greatest threat to Iran’s ambitions. In the 1960s, when the Shah of Iran was still in control, Iran fought a war against the Saudis in Oman. Their relationship remained hostile after the Iranian revolution. Part of the issue is religion: Saudi Arabia is the heartland of Sunni Islam, Iran of Shiite Islam. But there are deeper issues.
The first is oil. The domination of oil resources by the Saudis and related principalities on the west coast of the Persian Gulf created a perpetual threat to Iran because of the military power it bought. In addition, U.S. guarantees to Saudi Arabia intended to assure the flow of oil supplies from the Persian Gulf gave the Saudis an invulnerability that their own military force couldn’t provide.
At the moment, Saudi Arabia is facing extreme difficulties. The decline in the price of oil has created economic and political problems for Riyadh, which has always used its oil wealth to maintain stability. The introduction of a 32-year-old crown prince, and his decision to arrest some of the key figures in the kingdom, creates a level of internal instability that is unpredictable.
Given this domestic situation, Saudi Arabia’s ability to protect itself from Iran is unclear. The Saudis have already demonstrated the limits of their air power in Yemen. The historical expectation was that first the British, then the Americans, would guarantee their national security. But that was when the Persian Gulf was an indispensable supplier of the world’s oil. The price of oil is down, but as important, the sources of oil have multiplied, along with producers’ eagerness to sell it. Saudi oil is simply not that important anymore.
The Saudis have been reaching out to the Israelis. Israel can certainly provide military hardware. But the fact is that Israel could be facing its own threat from Iran, and its military is actually relatively small and isn’t designed for large-scale foreign deployments. Because of the size of its force, Israel can’t sustain extended, high-attrition warfare of the sort Iran endured in the 1980s. So the Iranians can threaten Israel with the one strategy that is most dangerous to it: a war of attrition. It’s a distant possibility but one that Israel must consider. Simply put, Israel can’t promise Saudi Arabia much more than materiel, no matter what the Saudis offer in return, and materiel is the one thing the Saudis have in abundance already.
The greatest long-term threat to Iran’s interests, however, is Turkey. The Turks face a fundamental geopolitical question. When the Iranians were relatively confined, Turkey was able to focus on domestic affairs, not venturing deeply into Syria or Iraq. But now, Turkey must decide whether it can live with Iran as the major regional power, or it must assert its own claims on the region. Turkey, by geography and inherent military capability, can block Iran if it chooses to make the effort and take the risk, but at the moment it is working with Iran, particularly on Kurdish issues. Eventually, Turkey will have to choose between the Kurdish issue and the broad strategic issue. Part of that will be determined by the U.S. position on various Kurdish factions and the U.S. vision for dealing with Iran.
A Test of U.S. Disengagement
The U.S. is capable of containing Iran but only with a substantial force. The U.S. has been at war since 2001. At this point, it doesn’t have a clear strategy for the Middle East. In Iraq, the American approach has been to block both Sunnis and Shiites from dominating the country – while reducing the number of U.S. forces present. This left it in the position of having to rely on forces controlled or influenced by Iran to defeat the Islamic State. In Syria, U.S. strategy has been to create a proxy force to overthrow Assad. That has failed. American guarantees to Saudi Arabia and Israel are still in place, but what they mean at this point is unclear. Israel has no need for direct U.S. involvement except under the most extreme war-of-attrition scenario. As for the Saudis, the guarantee the U.S. gave and delivered on during Desert Storm was a very different situation. Oil prices and supply being what they are, it’s not clear what that guarantee is worth.
The U.S. is not configured to deal with the new reality – one that it helped create by invading Iraq and then leaving it, and by supporting the Arab Spring in Syria, which turned into a disaster. These U.S. policies led to the rise of IS, and the fight against IS in turn opened the door to Iran in Iraq and, to a lesser extent, in Syria. Washington has been obsessed with Iranian nuclear capabilities and didn’t anticipate that Iran’s conventional capability and political influence would turn out to be more effective. At this point, it’s not clear what the American interest is in the region and what price it’s prepared to pay to pursue it.
The Middle East has a new and radically different shape. For the moment, Iran has been freed to assert itself. But it still has a long way to go to assert significant power. Apart from the United States, it faces a potential coalition of Saudi Arabia, Israel and Turkey. Each has its weaknesses, but Iran does too, and together they can manage the problem and probably will. Don’t forget the Sunni jihadists, either. Defeated in the guise of IS, they have merely dispersed, not surrendered. And Iran has been their enemy. Thus the Iranian surge must be placed in context. It has changed the dynamic of the Middle East, but it remains vulnerable.
-
"the Iranian surge must be placed in context. It has changed the dynamic of the Middle East, but it remains vulnerable."
One vulnerability of Iran is dissent from within. Is there a way we could unleash that if they extend themselves beyond proxy wars to invading Saudi or Israel?
Another vulnerability of Iran, same as Saudi, is the low price of oil. What else do they produce, rugs? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_Iran
"Attrition" in war refers to the willingness of leaders to let their soldiers die. What the US and Israel lack is inability to supply ground troops in the region.
It looks to me like more of the same in the Middle East until someone realizes that peace, self determination and a free economy is a better route. GDP per capita is 8 times higher in Israel than in Iran. That is not interesting to others in the region, but conquering destroyed lands and people is.
-
Lefty Jewish magazine The Tablet
http://www.tabletmag.com/jewish-news-and-politics/250592/realism-and-the-kurds?utm_source=tabletmagazinelist&utm_campaign=ff11d94195-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2017_11_30&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_c308bf8edb-ff11d94195-207194629
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Why do the Kurds and their struggles arouse so little interest or sympathy or solidarity around the world? It is because of the doctrine of political “realism,” of which the greatest theoretician is Henry Kissinger—and, to be sure, Kissinger, as practitioner of his own theory, was the founder of America’s tradition of betraying the Kurds. The Kurds in Iraq in the early 1970s staged a rebellion against the Baathist dictatorship in Baghdad, and they enjoyed some American support. But, in 1975, Kissinger, as secretary of state, deemed the rebellion to be no longer in the American interest, and America’s support disappeared. With what consequences? The Kurds suffered terribly. Baathism flourished in Iraq. And, in time, the United States ended up at war with the Baathists, anyway.
Realism, the doctrine, affirms that, in matters of international affairs, the strong count, and the weak do not. That is because realism entertains a utopia, which is that of stability. And stability can be achieved only by a concert of the big and the powerful. It cannot be achieved by the small and the weak. Therefore realism is hostile to rebellions for freedom, hostile to small nations, hostile to invocations of morality or principle—hostile with a good conscience, on the grounds that, in the long run, the stability of the strong is better for everyone than the rebellions of the weak. Realism is, in short, an anti-Kurdish doctrine.
What good are the Kurds, anyway? From a realist standpoint, I mean. They are good for short-term interests, and not for long-term interests. Kissinger used them in the 1970s, and then tossed them away. The Reagan Administration in the next decade was content to see them gassed by Saddam Hussein. And in our own time? We needed the Kurds to fight the Islamic State in Syria and Iraq, and they did fight. They are the heroes of the anti-Islamic State war. They ought to be parading in triumph along the boulevards of Manhattan and Paris. They are, in what appears to be their great majority, visibly the most progressive population in the Middle East, outside of Israel—self-reliant, tolerantly and beautifully Muslim, accepting of Yazidis and Christians and even of Jews, relatively open to women’s rights, reliably allergic to the mad totalitarianisms and apocalyptic fantasies of the modern age. But now that, for the moment, the insane Caliphate has been mostly defeated, our short-term interests have come to an end. And no one wants to hear about the Kurds.
Bernard-Henri Lévy has been telling us about the Kurds. A few months ago in Tablet, I commented on one of his journalistic documentaries of the Kurdish struggle in Iraq, The Battle of Mosul, and just now I have seen his other such documentary, Peshmerga, which might be regarded as Part One of the same film. The two films together are a feat of military journalism, stirring, appalling, and revealing. They are immense—Peshmerga more beautifully filmed, The Battle of Mosul more intense, both of them face-to-face with military courage and brotherhood and death. If these films were a poem, they would be composed in heroic verse. There is, in truth, something Homeric in the films. There are many extraordinary and dreadful aspects. I am writing in the minutes after having seen Peshmerga, and I cannot say that I have rebounded from having watched the prematurely white-haired Kurdish general, who, we learn, was shot and killed directly after the camera turned away from him—the general who seemed so high-spirited as he led his troops in battle, so animated, so confident, whose brother weeps to the camera, the general whose face we see once again as a photograph on a poster, presented as a martyr of the Kurdish cause.
But ultimately the most striking aspect of these two films is the articulation of political values by the Kurds themselves, some of them civilians, the rest of them soldiers. Words tumble from their lips that could never tumble from the lips of the man currently occupying the White House in Washington, D.C. These people are fighting for civilization, and know they are doing so, and say they are doing so.
Civilization, though, is not a category within the realist imagination. Realism is a matter of power, and civilization is a matter of principles. A realist analysis can explain many things, but it cannot explain why the Kurds have persistently fought, over the generations. It cannot see that a persistent rebellion in the name of civilization might amount to power, if only we would give it a chance. A realist analysis cannot see that our own power has to rest on something more than our own power, if it is to remain a power. It cannot see, therefore, what is obvious in Bernard-Henri Lévy’s magnificent films, which is that, in a world of vicious political movements and dangers on every side, the Kurds are our friends and allies, and perhaps they are our conscience. They gaze at the camera. We gaze back. They speak to us. We have nothing to say back to them.
The betrayal of the Kurds—will this be the black mark on our era, similar to the black mark of betrayal that fell across the foreheads of generations past, in the face of other persecutions and struggles for liberty? Twice now I have exited a hall where BHL’s Kurdish films have played, each time with my heart pounding and my head bowed in shame.
***
Paul Berman writes about politics and literature for various magazines. He is the author of A Tale of Two Utopias, Terror and Liberalism, Power and the Idealists, and The Flight of the Intellectuals.
-
If the Kurds want to become the darlings of the UN and the "global community", all they have to do is swear to push the Jews into the sea and start sending bomb vest clad peshmerga into Israeli busses and schools.
-
“Let me reiterate Israel’s policy: We will not allow a regime hell-bent on the annihilation of the Jewish state to acquire nuclear weapons. We will not allow that regime to entrench itself militarily in Syria, as it seeks to do, for the express purpose of eradicating our state,” said Netanyahu.
https://www.timesofisrael.com/arab-media-12-iranians-killed-in-israeli-strike-in-syria/
-----------------------
[I was hoping to see news of a strike like that with Bush-Cheney hitting Iran's nuclear sites and with Trump striking NK sites.]
This helps to answer the geopolitical questions posed here in the last couple weeks about who will stop Iran's advances. The more Iran advances, the more resolve there should be to stop them on the part of ... Saudi, US, Israel, Gulf States, Egypt, and others? Does Russia want Iran to dominate the region?
-
cut a deal with S. Arabia's Mohammed Bin Salman:
http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2017/12/04/report-jared-kushner-rex-tillerson-feud-deepens-over-middle-east-policy/
Sec of State Tillerson against..........
I agree with Tillerson. Haven't we learned enough ?
-
PLEASE let's really minimize the use of Breitbart!
Surely there must be a better source for the same info?
-
Some interesting between the lines considerations here , , ,
https://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/originals/2017/12/pentagon-increases-weapons-lebanon.html
-
https://www.thecipherbrief.com/article/middle-east/trump-administration-assad-moscow-youre-not-winning
The Trump administration wants you to know that Syrian strongman Bashar Assad isn’t doing as well as he, or his Russian and Iranian allies want you to think, and that’s why they’re going to have to agree to some concessions at U.N.-sponsored talks in Geneva, rather than retaking the country as Assad has vowed to do.
Senior administration officials gathered a small group of journalists Monday to walk them through how they see Assad’s chances at winning the peace – spoiler alert: not much, because the regime’s forces are in tatters, the economy is on Russian- and Iranian-provided life support, and Syrian troops have used scorched-earth tactics that breed future rebellion.
The officials were fighting back against a message they say is spread by Russian, Iranian and Syrian media to portray the conflict as won and done, with Assad the inevitable victor, well on his way to retaking the country. The narrative also dictates that the mostly Sunni Arab refugees who fled should stay where they are outside Syria, troublemakers-turned-wards of the international community – but Assad would welcome that same international community’s hundreds of billions of dollars in aid to rebuild a country shattered by the regime’s own crackdown.
The U.S. backs the off-and-on U.N-brokered Syrian peace talks in Geneva, saying that it doesn’t see a future for Assad but not demanding his ouster as a precondition for talks. Russia has proposed a competing peace conference in the Black Sea resort of Sochi with the Syrian government and rebels in attendance – a notion the Trump administration rejects, together with what they see as a Russian-backed campaign to present the Syrian crisis as a fait acompli.
In contrast to the occupant of the Oval Office who regularly downplays Russian influence operations, these Trump officials wanted to fight back with what they see as the facts on the ground in Syria as observed by the U.S.-led coalition and U.S. intelligence.
They started by ticking off the cost of the civil war thus far, “provoked” by Assad in 2011 by his harsh crackdown on protests:
The Assad regime has killed around half a million Syrians and wounded far more;
There are 5 million-plus estimated internally displaced Syrians;
There are 6 million-plus refugees outside the country;
Several million Syrians are living beyond the regime’s reach.
“The Assad regime controls less than half of Syria’s on pre-war population…and less than half of its populated territory,” the lead official said, speaking anonymously as a condition of describing the administration’s assessment of the war.
He described a Syria that is an economic shell of its former self:
The country remains sanctioned by the U.S., the U.N. and the European Union, for crimes including using weapons of mass destruction against its own people;
Syria has no exports of value compared to pre-war economy and is dependent on cash handouts and bulk transfers of oil and wheat from Iran and Russia “just to subsist”l
Unemployment is near 50 percent;
The currency has lost most of its value, and faces 50 percent inflation;
Syria’s infrastructure has suffered between $200 to $300 billion in damage and the regime’s major allies, Iran and Russia, are unlikely to be able to help with reconstruction because they are facing their own economic issues at home;
Syria was an oil exporter, but the regime now controls only a third of the country’s oil and gas resources;
13.5 million Syrians are dependent on international assistance to survive, more than half of the country’s pre-war population;
The regime generates only half a billion dollars in revenue annually, down from a 2010 estimate of $21 billion, but the government spends $2.7 billion annually, and is thought to have run out of cash reserves, meaning it requires infusions of cash from Russia and Iran to keep the state running and the military operations going.
“The bottom line is, [Assad] can’t afford his own war effort without significant assistance from Iran and Russia,” the lead official said.
And that military effort is struggling, with an army severely damaged by six years of war, especially the grueling 2016 battle to take Aleppo.
“The narrative that the Russian media, the Syrian regime media, the Iranian media and their friends have constructed is that Aleppo represented…a clear regime victory, and the regime’s military capacity has grown,” and that they’re in a mopping-up phase against rebel elements, the lead official said. “The Aleppo operation actually depleted the regime’s own military capabilities significantly in terms of manpower and heavy weaponry,” as well as providing a gut punch to their morale and organization.
They described the Syrian army as a hollow force:
Since Aleppo, Syrian regular forces are so depleted that they have been forced to use their own elite military troops for major operations;
Only two units are left that can conduct offensive operations: the Tiger Forces commanded by Brig. Gen. Suheil Hassan; and the 4th Armoured Division, commanded by the president’s brother, Maher al Assad;
The regime relies increasingly on foreign forces to fight, including Lebanese Hezbollah, and Iraqi and Afghan Shi’ite foreign fighters provided and commanded by Iranian Quds Force military advisers.
The official said a recent battle for the town of Abu Kamal, which the regime billed as the final step in the Syrian campaign to take territory back from ISIS, had few Syrians taking part.
“It was almost entirely non-Syrians, who were essentially, as far as we can tell, commanded by the IRGC (Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps) and Lebanese Hezbollah…with mostly Russian air cover,” the official said.
Not only are Assad’s troops so weak that they need Russian and Iranian help to take new territory — they don’t have enough top troops to hold it, the officials said. The Syrian forces leave behind a ragtag band of older, “poorly trained…poorly led” troops to police the newly regained territory, and time and again, they are run off by ISIS. Then the main Syrian force backed by Iran and Russia needs to attack again to win the area back – a yo-yo phenomenon that most recently happened in the Palmyra-Deir-Ezzor corridor.
“What that tells us is there is just not enough cream cheese to spread over the bagel there,” one of the officials said.
When Assad’s forces take an area, they do so brutally and they don’t have the resources to follow up with most basic government services, much less reconstruction. The combination means they leave a seething population ready to take up arms the next time they see a chink in the regime’s armor.
“If the regime just continues doing what it’s doing, and trying to consolidate control, absent meaningful political change inside Syria, we think you’ll see Syria fall back into large-scale civil war,” the lead senior official said. “The grievances are sharper now than they were at the beginning of this conflict.”
And that’s further complicated by the presence of “destabilizing spoilers” like al Qaeda, and the diminished-but-still-there ISIS.
“If you don’t…stabilize the territories where you’ve eliminated them, they can come back,” the official said of ISIS, adding that there are already signs the group is reverting to acting as a clandestine terror organization, or even a mafia-style criminal organization to survive.
And the Syrian government can barely police, employ and feed those in the territory it controls, mush less provide for a war-shattered country, he said.
“When we look at what would it take to make a peace sustainable in any country, the Syrian regime does not have it,” the official said. The officials would not share how many troops the U.S. might be willing to commit in future, to keep the peace.
CORRECTION NOTE: This story was corrected to indicate that 13.5 million Syrians, not 5 million Syrians, are dependent on international assistance to survive, more than half of the country’s pre-war population
Kimberly Dozier is executive editor of The Cipher Brief. Follow her on Twitter @KimDozier.
-
Dec. 4, 2017 Israel is devising a strategy to deal with a rising Iran.
By George Friedman
Israel fired missiles at a base near Damascus, Syria, over the weekend. According to Syrian news agency SANA, two Israeli missiles were shot down. Arab media reported that the target was an Iranian military base. After the attack, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu warned that Israel would not tolerate Iranian forces in Syria. Israel previously had chosen not to conduct airstrikes on this reported Iranian base as it had done against other targets – mostly Hezbollah weapons convoys – in Syria. Israel obviously knew this site was well protected, proven by the fact that it had anti-missile capabilities.
Israel has had very limited involvement in Syria. In fact, it has had limited involvement in much of the upheaval that has been sweeping the Middle East. Given Netanyahu’s statement and the substantial public coverage of this airstrike, it would seem that the Israelis are on the threshold of changing this policy. And in changing the policy, Israel is adding to the complexity of a rapidly changing Middle East.
Benjamin Netanyahu Israel
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu opens the weekly Cabinet meeting at his Jerusalem office on Nov. 26, 2017. GALI TIBBON/AFP/Getty Images
Iran’s Rising Power
Last week, I wrote about the fact that since the defeat of the Islamic State, Iran has emerged as a major power in the region, with the potential of becoming the dominant power. Historically, Iran has been a defensive power, hemmed in by Russia, Turkey and the leading global powers, Britain and then the United States. As a result, for example, Iran was divided between Russia on one side and Britain and the U.S. on the other during World War II. It has also faced powerful Sunni forces in the Persian Gulf and the Arabian Peninsula. In the 1980s, it fought an eight-year war with Iraq that cost it a million casualties and ended in a military draw and a strategic victory for Iraq. Iraq had room for maneuver, invading Kuwait, but Iran had little.
To increase its security, it needs to break out of its encirclement. It has long desired, since before the Islamic Republic emerged, to become the dominant power in the Persian Gulf, both to secure its western frontier against another war with Iraq and to dominate the oil fields. Given the opening that the collapse of the Islamic State provided, Iran must try to take advantage. The goal is to achieve a fait accompli against great powers like the United States and regional powers like Turkey, Israel and Russia.
One of the focuses of Iran’s power is Lebanon, where Iranian-supported Hezbollah is based. Hezbollah also operates in Syria, but a substantial number of Iranian advisers are also there, supporting the Syrians. The Russians are pressing for a peace settlement, based on their reasonable assertion that the Assad regime, with Russian and Iranian support, has effectively won the civil war. The Americans have not rejected the idea out of hand, but it’s not clear what the terms might be.
Whether or not there is a peace agreement, the fighting is declining, and the need for Iranian advisers has declined as well. Bashar Assad reportedly opposes a large Iranian presence in Syria after a settlement, but if Iran wants to create substantial infrastructure to permanently base Iranian forces, then now is the time to do it: The heavy fighting is over, but the Syrians can’t afford to do without the Iranians yet.
This is not as easy as it sounds, since the logistics of basing large numbers of troops in Syria is complex. But if the Iranian goal is to be the dominant power between the Persian Gulf and the Mediterranean, this is a move it would have to make. It would lock in Assad as an ally and put Iran in a position of dominating Lebanon and surrounding western Iraq’s Sunnis from the west and the east. Iran would also have forces near the Turkish border, also in the west and the east.
The Israeli Dilemma
Whether Iran intends to engage Israel is not clear. From the Israeli point of view, a large, permanent presence of troops in Syria could recreate a strategic problem Israel hasn’t had to cope with since after 1973. Israel has had to deal with Hezbollah, but there has been no substantial threat from Syria. Rocket fire from the war there has occasionally landed in Israel, but there has not been a conventional threat that would require permanent deployment of substantial Israeli forces on the Golan. But the situation may not stay this way forever.
The attack over the weekend was designed to tell the Iranians that their more ambitious plans will be met by pre-emptive Israeli strikes. Since the Iranians had to have anticipated this, they likely won’t be deterred. The opportunity is too great. Ideally, the Israelis would use air and missile strikes to destroy Iranian facilities before they are in place. But if Iran will accept the cost, it can surge forces in, presenting Israel with too many targets to destroy.
At a certain point, air power alone isn’t going to be enough. The Israelis faced this in the 2006 war with Hezbollah in Lebanon. Israel launched primarily an air campaign, which ultimately failed to neutralize Hezbollah. Some missions still require large-scale ground forces. In 2006, the Israelis didn’t think the prize was worth the price. But if the Iranians manage to create a large presence in Syria, airstrikes might not be sufficient in the event of war. And launching ground operations would mean potentially heavy Israeli casualties.
Israel must somehow block an Iranian presence from emerging. But if Iran is determined, Israel’s efforts will not be enough. Israel then must decide on a strategy for dealing with a strong Iranian force in both Syria and Lebanon while also avoiding a costly ground war. This may not be possible. In that case, Israel will need to strengthen Saudi Arabia, and above all to reach an understanding with Turkey. Turkey has historically been uncomfortable with a powerful Iran, and having an Iranian presence on Turkey’s western border in force will make the Turks even more uncomfortable. Israel and Turkey, whose relations now are pretty good, could have a common interest in containing Iran, and a Turkish-Israeli coalition would force Iran to be very careful.
The Iranians have broken out of their box, and now all of the players in the region need to consider how this affects their strategy. What we saw this weekend seemed to be the start of Israel’s response. But the Israelis have not shown their full hand yet, and it seems to me that they don’t like the hand they are going to have to play.
-
• Turkey, Syria: There are several reports of Turkish troop movements in northern Syria, including near Syrian Defense Forces positions in Afrin. Meanwhile, Turkish-backed Free Syrian Army elements have reportedly formed a 22,000-strong “national army” to support Turkish operations in northern Syria. Turkey has been claiming that it’s going to launch a major operation in Afrin “any day now” for the past two months. Is this time different? We need to take the temperature of the Turkey-Russia relationship and survey the conflict map in Syria to see if Turkey or any of the other forces may be seeing any tactical openings.
-
Reality Check
By Jacob L. Shapiro
In Syria, an Attack on Russia’s Narrative
Russia will now have to demonstrate that it can finish a job it said was already done.
It has been less than a month since President Vladimir Putin declared a successful end to Russia’s intervention in the Syrian civil war and announced the imminent withdrawal of Russian forces from the country. Not even a fortnight later, Islamist militants conducted a deadly mortar attack against Russian forces in Syria.
The Syrian civil war is not over, and it won’t be anytime soon. The short-term damage to Russia’s public relations campaign is acute. But far more important is whether Russia is getting dragged into its very own Middle Eastern morass, and what this means for the various forces competing for power in Syria.
Russian President Vladimir Putin (L) toasts with Defense Minister Sergey Shoigu at a reception for military servicemen who took part in Syrian campaign at Grand Kremlin Palace on Dec. 28, 2017, in Moscow, Russia. MIKHAIL SVETLOV/Getty Images
On Jan. 3, Russian business daily Kommersant reported that an Islamist mortar attack on Hmeimim air base on Dec. 31 had knocked out four Su-24 bombers, two SU-35S fighters and a military transport aircraft. Russia’s Defense Ministry disputed the specifics of the Kommersant report but not the attack itself. The ministry said that the base had come under mortar fire from a “mobile militant subversive group” and that two Russian soldiers had been killed in the attack.
At this point, it is hard to know for sure the extent of the damage at Hmeimim. Kommersant is generally a reliable source of information and has little reason to fabricate this story. In addition, at least one Russian war reporter posted photographs on social media purported to show the damaged aircraft, though it is not yet possible to confirm their authenticity. If we accept for a moment that the reports are true, it was a highly destructive attack. We don’t know how many aircraft Russia has stationed at Hmeimim currently, but at the height of Russia’s Syria intervention in 2016, it had about 70 aircraft and 4,000 personnel at the base. Recently, Russia’s defense minister said 36 aircraft had returned to permanent bases in Russia. If Kommersant’s reporting is correct, that would mean at least 20 percent of Russia’s air assets at the base – and half of its SU-35S fighters stationed there – were damaged.
The extent of the damage is important for establishing the degree of the damage done to Russia’s image, but for that information we will have to wait. Either way, we can say for sure that the attack occurred and took Russian forces by surprise. Russia’s Defense Ministry has already announced that Russia will expand the security zone around the base and that Russian troops will now be responsible for its security – not Syrian troops, as had been the case. Whichever version of events – or combination of them – is true, it doesn’t change the fact that this is a major blow to Russia’s carefully crafted image. A few more incidents like this one will make it very difficult for Russia to pretend that its Syria intervention has achieved its goal.
Lost in the focus on this attack are the numerous other military operations Russia has undertaken in Syria just this week. Earlier on Jan. 3, Russia’s Defense Ministry reported that an Mi-24 helicopter crashed near Hama military airfield, killing both pilots. Meanwhile, on the same day, Reuters reported that Russian air assets supported a Syrian army assault on a rebel group just east of Damascus. Putin did not set a date for the withdrawal of Russian forces from Syria when he announced victory last month, and recent activity on the ground hardly suggests that Russia will be pulling the bulk of its forces out anytime soon. If anything, Russia will now have to demonstrate that it can finish a job it said was already done.
The question now becomes what the future of Syria looks like. Russia has tried to engineer a diplomatic solution that effectively locks in the status quo. At the moment, none of the entities competing for influence in Syria can gain an upper hand. The problem for Russia is that no one, except perhaps the Syrian Kurds, is interested in maintaining the status quo. The status quo does not suit Iran, which wants to see the full restoration of the Bashar Assad regime and Damascus’ resumption of its role as Iranian proxy and linchpin in Iran’s dream to project power to the Mediterranean. It also does not suit Turkey, which just this past week lent its support to the creation of the “National Army,” a 22,000-strong force that will reportedly fight Assad, the Islamic State and the PKK Kurdish militant group but whose first target is to be Syrian Kurds in Afrin. Assad’s regime, for its part, would like to have its country back without having to kowtow to any one power, and that means keeping Russia on the ground in Syria indefinitely to help in its efforts to reconquer the country.
-
Drone Swarm vs. Russian Base in Syria
Posted: 09 Jan 2018 11:00 AM PST
The Russians have been using drone swarms against the Ukrainians to good effect (blowing up ammo dumps). Here's one being used against a Russian base on the coast of Syria.
Recount as reported by the Russian MoD reported it this morning:
Security system of the Russian Khmeimim air base and Russian Naval CSS point in the city of Tartus successfully warded off a terrorist attack with massive application of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) through the night of 5th – 6th January, 2018.
As evening fell, the Russia air defence forces detected 13 unidentified small-size air targets at a significant distance approaching the Russian military bases.
Ten assault drones were approaching the Khmeimim air base, and another three – the CSS point in Tartus. Six small-size air targets were intercepted and taken under control by the Russian EW units. Three of them were landed on the controlled area outside the base, and another three UAVs exploded as they touched the ground.
Seven UAVs were eliminated by the Pantsir-S anti-aircraft missile complexes operated by the Russian air defence units on 24-hours alert. The Russian bases did not suffer any casualties or damages.
The Khmeimim air base and Russian Naval CSS point in Tartus are functioning on a scheduled basis. Currently, the Russian military experts are analyzing the construction, technical filling and improvised explosives of the captured UAVs.
Having decoded the data recorded on the UAVs, the specialists found out the launch site.
It was the first time when terrorists applied a massed drone aircraft attack launched at a range of more than 50 km using modern GPS guidance system. Technical examination of the drones showed that such attacks could have been made by terrorists at a distance of about 100 kilometers.
Engineering decisions applied by terrorists while attacks on the Russian objects in Syria could be received from one of countries with high-technological capabilities of satellite navigation and remote dropping control of professionally assembled improvised explosive devices in assigned coordinates. All drones of terrorists are fitted with pressure transducers and altitude control servo-actuators. Terrorists’ aircraft-type drones carried explosive devices with foreign detonating fuses.
The Russian specialists are determining supply channels, through which terrorists had received the technologies and devices, as well as examining type and origin of explosive compounds used in the IEDs.
The fact of usage of strike aircraft-type drones by terrorists is the evidence that militants have received technologies to carry out terrorist attacks using such UAVs in any country.
Some NOTES: The swarm used what appears to be off the shelf tech. It was a small swarm (only 13), and it was divided (two targets), which made it impossible overwhelm defenses. It didn't fly low enough to avoid detection by anti-air. The swarm also appears to be remotely controlled, likely as a means to provide target acquisition and terminal guidance. This allowed defense units to hack them.
-
Turkey Breaks With Iran and Russia
Jan 11, 2018
By Jacob L. Shapiro
The “Astana troika” is in danger of breaking up. After meeting in Astana, Kazakhstan, in mid-September, Turkey, Iran and Russia agreed to serve as guarantors of a cease-fire agreement in Syria. Four “de-escalation zones” were established with the goal of a six-month pause (subject to further extension) in fighting between the forces of Syrian President Bashar Assad’s regime and anti-government rebels in these zones. The problem with this arrangement is that these countries don’t see eye to eye. Turkey supports the anti-government rebels. Russia and Iran support Assad’s regime. Now the two sides are accusing each other of supporting their favorites rather than keeping the peace.
(click to enlarge)
On Jan. 9, the Turkish Foreign Ministry summoned the Russian and Iranian ambassadors to express its concerns over the Assad regime’s advances in the Idlib de-escalation zone, the largest, most strategic and most contested of the four zones. The next day, Turkey’s foreign minister pointed the finger at Russia and Iran, insisting that Turkey’s two purported partners needed to do more to stop the Syrian regime and fulfill their duties as guarantors of the cease-fire. The same day, Yeni Safak, a Turkish newspaper known for its strong support of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s government, claimed that the Assad regime’s advance was coordinated with the Islamic State, with the tacit support of Russia and Iran. Turkey likes to accuse all its enemies of being in cahoots with IS, but Russia and Iran aren’t supposed to be enemies. That makes the report notable, regardless of its admittedly dubious veracity.
This isn’t the first time Turkey has had cause for concern about the actions of Russia and Iran. On Dec. 20, Reuters reported that the Syrian army, backed by Russian air support, had seized 50 villages in southern Idlib province the previous week. On Dec. 25, Anadolu Agency reported Syrian and Russian airstrikes in both Idlib and Hama provinces. On Jan. 7, TRT reported additional airstrikes in Idlib, and the next day, Anadolu reported that a Turkish military convoy in Idlib had come under fire from unknown assailants. And on Jan. 10, Syria’s state-run news agency SANA reported that Syrian government forces and allies had captured 23 new villages in the Idlib countryside.
Different Points of View
From Turkey’s perspective, the Assad regime, with Russian air support and Iran’s blessing, is attempting to assert its control over territories currently held by anti-Assad regime rebels. The victims of this offensive are civilians and moderate opposition groups that Turkey has pledged to defend.
Russia, for its part, does not accept that the terms of the cease-fire apply to all elements of the opposition. The dominant militia in Idlib is Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, a jihadist group whose core element is al-Qaida’s Syrian branch. Russia views HTS as a fair target and is encouraging the Assad regime to attack HTS fighters wherever they hold territory. HTS strongholds happen to be in Idlib, so that is where Russia is concentrating its resources. Eliminating jihadists, from Russia’s point of view, is a necessary part of maintaining the de-escalation zones. Furthermore, Russia expected Turkey to put pressure on HTS to give up its arms and disband when its forces entered Idlib province. Turkey has declined to do so, at times even collaborating with HTS on the ground, giving Russia the pretense it needs to support further Assad regime consolidation efforts.
It’s important to keep in mind that none of this was Russia’s preferred outcome. Russian President Vladimir Putin announced the defeat of IS and the imminent withdrawal of Russian troops from Syria on Dec. 6, in part because he calculated that conditions were ripe for a political solution to the Syrian civil war. Putin’s political solution and the triumphant recall of Russian troops now seem a distant memory. On Dec. 31, at least two Russian soldiers were killed when Hmeimim air base was shelled, reportedly by jihadist militants. Russia disputed reports that a significant number of its planes were damaged in the attack. Then, on Jan. 6, 13 unmanned aerial vehicles attacked the base at Hmeimim and a logistics center at Tartus. According to Russia’s Ministry of Defense, the attacking UAVs were neutralized. The two attacks have underscored just how far Russia is from being able to pull out its forces, and how vulnerable its forces are to attack.
Russia has since made a point of providing two more details about the Jan. 6 attack. On Jan. 8, the Russian Ministry of Defense said the UAVs were of such sophistication that they “could have been received only from a country with high technological potential on providing satellite navigation and distant control of firing.” In other words: the United States. (The Pentagon has rejected these claims as ludicrous and noted that IS regularly uses primitive UAVs to attack U.S.-backed Syrian Democratic Forces fighters in eastern Syria.) Then, on Jan. 10, the Defense Ministry’s newspaper published a report that said the UAVs had been launched from Muazzara in southwestern Idlib. The report said that this territory was under the control of “moderate opposition” forces backed by the Turkish government and that Russia had sent a formal complaint of its own to high-level Turkish officials exhorting them to ensure Turkey enforced the cease-fire.
Iran Leans Toward Russia
Iran has not made its views known on this particular incident. The presence of Iran’s foreign minister in Moscow on Jan. 10, however, as well as its own military support of Assad’s advances in Idlib, indicate that Iran’s views are more closely aligned with Russia than with Turkey on this matter, which only makes sense. Though Turkey and Iran have some interests in common, they diverge in Syria, despite prior short-term tactical cooperation against Kurdish groups. Iran looks at the Assad regime as integral to its strategy to increase its power. Turkey views Iran as a long-term rival that has amassed an impressive strategic advantage in recent months and needs to be cut back down to size. Turkey also sees that Iran, at least for now, has tied its ambitions to Russia, another long-term Turkish rival.
Nevertheless, the “alliance” among these three countries was built on a mismatch of interests. It’s a perfect example of the old adage that two’s company, three’s a crowd. The more countries you try to cram into an alliance, the more tenuous the alliance becomes. It was one thing to coordinate moves when all sides could agree that defeating the Islamic State was the main priority. But the defeat of IS eliminated the only common ground these countries had in Syria. Turkey’s ideal political solution sees Assad removed and the country stitched back together under Sunni aegis. Iran’s ideal political solution sees Assad restored but dependent on Iran and its proxies for survival. Russia’s ideal political solution is any that makes it appear strong and keeps Assad as a somewhat independent actor, neither dependent on Tehran nor fearful of Ankara’s next move. Something’s got to give.
Now these fissures are coming out into the open, just a week before representatives of Iran, Turkey and Russia are to meet to plan the Sochi Congress on Syria’s Future, scheduled for Jan. 29-30. Even the preparations for this meeting have been tense, with some Syrian opposition groups refusing to attend and Turkey insisting that it will not attend any meeting that includes the YPG, the militia representing Syrian Kurds. Russia reportedly had invited YPG representatives in October but backed off when Turkey objected. Syrian Kurdish officials insisted as recently as two weeks ago that Moscow has promised them an invitation, while Turkey maintains that Russia has agreed not to do so. Russia, for its part, has a history of supporting anti-Turkish Kurdish groups when it’s strategically useful to keep Turkey distracted.
Regardless of who attends the Sochi meeting, Syria’s future will not be decided there, or in Astana or Geneva or Timbuktu. It’s being decided on the ground in Syria right now, and it’s bringing Turkey into conflict, however unwillingly, with its historical rivals. The Astana troika may very well figure out a way to paper over these inconsistencies during the meeting in Sochi, but it’s all a charade. On the ground, the Assad regime has the upper hand and Russia is calling the shots, still very much at war. Iran is biding its time, hoping to capitalize on Russia’s eventual fatigue. Turkey finds itself backed into a corner but without the requisite strength to preserve its interests. It needs to stall, but angry comments to ambassadors won’t stop Assad or Russia, though they will produce nice headlines. Turkey is searching for a way to stop Assad, and if it can’t find one, it will be on the losing end of this breakup.
-
• Syria: Reuters reported that the U.S. was helping to set up a 30,000-member Border Security Force in Syria. The story was initially reported by the Defense Post, which said an inaugural class of around 230 fighters was being trained and that half of the eventual force would consist members of the Syrian Defense Forces. Turkey has responded with predictable rage, promising to attack the “terror army” and repeating its threat that military action in Afrin is imminent. The reporting here is strange. Is the U.S. actually doing this? If so, what are the implications for U.S.-Turkish relations? Are there signs that Turkey is preparing for an offensive?
-
https://www.timesofisrael.com/in-syria-only-the-octopus-and-a-motley-crew-of-rebels-keep-iran-from-israel/
-
second post
Tired of holding back against the Kurdish People's Protection Units, Turkey could soon unilaterally launch an offensive on Afrin canton and possibly Manbij.
Up to this point, Turkey has pursued military operations in Syria only after gaining Russian or U.S. support.
If Turkey departs from this approach, it will inevitably harm its relationship with both Russia and the United States and will considerably increase the risk of a dangerous accident.
Active U.S. and Russian engagement in Syria over the past few years has crowded out Turkey's ambitions for and pursuits in the country, but now its patience is wearing thin. Turkey's primary goal in Syria is to make sure that the two cantons controlled by Syrian Kurdish People's Protection Units (YPG) remain isolated from each other.
Turkey had halted military operations toward this goal to avoid clashing directly with U.S. and Russian forces embedded with the YPG, but now evidence is mounting that it is planning a full-out military assault on the YPG, which would undoubtedly damage its relationship with both Russia and the United States.
Turkey had been hoping to wait out the American presence in Syria and to gain Russian authorization for a military assault on the YPG. In exchange it was willing to compromise on its desire to oust Syrian President Bashar al Assad and to work with Russia on a diplomatic solution to the Syrian civil war through peace talks known as the Astana process. But now after several years of waiting and amid a battlefield flare-up that has pitted Russian-backed forces against Turkish-supported rebels, Turkey looks to be abandoning this plan.
War With Friends
Now that the Islamic State has been degraded as a conventional fighting force in Syria, the focus of the war has shifted to the west, where Russian- and Iranian-backed loyalist forces are attempting to eradicate the last of the rebel groups, which Turkey still supports even as it engages in diplomatic talks. Over the past few months, Syrian government forces backed by Russia and Iran have launched a series of interconnected offensives to drive rebels from key terrain in the northwestern provinces of Aleppo, Hama and Idlib. Rebel forces, including several groups heavily armed and supported by Turkey, have met the latest offensive, spearheaded by the Syrian army's Tiger special forces unit to capture the rebel-held airport at Abu al-Duhur, with a fierce counterattack.
The offensive and counteroffensive have heightened tension in the Turkey-Russia relationship. Idlib, after all, is supposed to be part of a de-escalation zone according to parameters set out by Russia, Turkey and Iran during the Astana talks in Kazakhstan. Turkey blames the Syrian government for violating the de-escalation agreement most often and has demanded that Russia do more to prevent further loyalist attacks. Russia argues that the operations in Idlib target terrorist groups and are necessary, and it blamed Turkey for a drone attack on its air base in Latakia.
To confront the deteriorating relationship, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan spoke by phone with his counterpart, Vladimir Putin, on Jan. 11. After the call, Putin announced that Turkey was not guilty of the drone attack and that it was staged to frame Turkey and undermine its relationship with Russia. Despite how adamant the two leaders are to put their differences aside and work together, the Syrian conflict will strain their relationship. As Turkey-backed rebels engage Russia-backed loyalist forces in vicious battles in northern Syria, it is clear that Russia and Turkey are engaged in a full-blown proxy war.
War With Enemies
A major reason Turkey signed on to the Astana process was to reach an understanding with Russia to exert more pressure on the YPG, but Russia has been uncompromising on the issue. Far from allowing Turkey to wage a military attack on the YPG, Russia has maintained forces in positions blocking Turkish access to Kurdish positions in Afrin and has demanded that the political party representing the YPG, the Democratic Union Party (PYD), be involved in future peace talks in Sochi, Russia. The Kremlin believes that the YPG must buy into any peace agreement for Syria, considering that the group has emerged as a key stakeholder in the conflict and has U.S. support.
Turkey, however, is just as uncompromising on the issue and is growing increasingly impatient with the strengthening of the YPG along the border with Syria. It is growing so impatient, in fact, that it may be ready to move against the YPG without Russian consent. Turkish artillery fire directed at YPG positions in Afrin increased over the weekend, and signs that Turkish forces are moving from other parts of the border to Afrin have been reported. Meanwhile, the United States has announced that it will help train and establish a Syrian border force of 30,000 fighters, including many members of the YPG. Turkey is furious at the prospect of a U.S.-YPG collaboration even after the conventional defeat of the Islamic State and will not idly accept it.
As Turkey prepares for an attack, concerns are rising that an errant Turkish strike could cause Russian or American casualties and lead to a dangerous escalation of the conflict. This danger and the assumption that U.S. support for the YPG was temporary have prevented Turkey from waging full-out war on the YPG. But now as the United States bolsters its support for the YPG and the relationship between Turkey and Russia tightens, Turkey is appearing more and more willing to assume the risks inherent in a strike.
-
• Turkey: There have been notable developments in northern Syria. U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson has tried to walk back the announcement of the Border Security Forces, claiming news of its formation has been “misportrayed.” Turkey remains unsatisfied and continues to amass forces on its southern border. The Turkish chief of general staff and the head of Turkish intelligence are in Russia to discuss a potential military operation. The Syrian government has said that for Turkey to attack Afrin would be an act of aggression that would be responded to accordingly. What do these developments tell us about what comes next? Would Syria actually attack Turkey? Could it withstand a Turkish response?
• Syria: The Islamic State, meanwhile, has designated nearby Idlib province an “Islamic governorate.” Let’s find out what territories the group actually holds. Can it defend what territory it has, or does it show up to weak areas, claiming them for its own, only to retreat when a larger force contests it?
-
second post
https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2018-01-16/turkey-notifies-nato-imminent-massive-invasion-syria-fight-kurds
-
Though many interesting points are made and valid questions raised, I find this piece rather empty when it comes to what I see as a central geopolitical issue-- the Iranian drive for a land bridge to the Mediterranean. The merits of keeping the Kurds strong also seems to go unconsidered. The cautions at the end of the piece may well prove prescient however.
==================================
Another Long War Unfolds in Syria
By Charles Glass
Board of Contributors
Charles Glass
Charles Glass
Board of Contributors
Children survey the damage to a building just outside Damascus that sustained a missile attack from forces loyal to the Syrian government Jan. 18.
(ABDULMONAM EASSA/AFP/Getty Images)
Contributor Perspectives offer insight, analysis and commentary from Stratfor’s Board of Contributors and guest contributors who are distinguished leaders in their fields of expertise.
Print
Save As PDF
Listen
The war in Syria should be ending. The Islamic State has lost all the territory it seized in 2014. The Syrian army, backed by Russia and Iran, has confined other anti-government rebels to besieged pockets in the south, on the eastern outskirts of Damascus and in the northwest. Opposition hopes of removing Syrian President Bashar al Assad have vanished. But the war refuses to die. It just takes new forms.
The latest phase has little to do with Syria, apart from the fact that it's taking place there. The antagonists are Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and the United States, which has declared a post-Islamic State mission that will keep American advisers and their local surrogates in Syria for years to come. The mission calls for the United States to train, arm and advise a 30,000-strong, mostly Kurdish border security force. Following the announcement of the project Jan. 14, Erdogan pledged "to strangle it before it's even born." He has moved Turkish military units to the border and launched artillery shells at Kurdish positions in their western enclave of Afrin.
Aware that his opposition to the U.S.-backed Kurdish force pits him against his largest NATO ally, Erdogan told members of parliament from his Justice and Development Party, "Hey, NATO! You are obliged to take a stance against those who harass and violate the borders of your members." The mission threatens to tear the military bloc apart and to commit the United States to a long-term presence in a country where it has no strategic interest. (Marc: What about stopping Iran's drive for land bridge, positioning itself to go after Israel?)
Irreconcilable Differences
Erdogan sees the backbone of the proposed border security force — a Kurdish militia known as the Yekineyen Parastina Gel (YPG), or People's Protection Units — as an arm of the Partiya Karkeren Kurdistane (PKK), or Kurdistan Workers' Party. Turkish security forces have been fighting the PKK off and on since 1984. In fact, Turkey regards the group as a terrorist organization and long ago persuaded the United States and European Union to do the same. No one doubts the PKK's influence over the YPG or the role its fighters played, alongside other Kurdish groups, in defeating the Islamic State in Syria and Iraq. To pull off its plan, the United States must either take the PKK off the register of terrorist groups or sell its NATO allies on the idea that the group is a terrorist organization in Turkey but not in Syria.
Erdogan's resistance to a prolonged U.S. presence in Syria under the guise of the new force has received support even from Turkey's adversaries in the Syrian civil war — namely al Assad's government, Russia and Iran. These three entities undoubtedly see the U.S. scheme as a pretext to keep a military presence in Syria, deprive Syrian authorities control over large swaths of the country and gain leverage over the war's putative victors.
A Precedent for Peril
In his testimony to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on Jan. 11, David Satterfield, the State Department's senior bureau official for near eastern affairs, explained the new border force. Satterfield described it as an effort "to not only diminish Iranian foreign influence in Syria generally, but to protect our allies from the very real threat Hezbollah poses in southwest Syria to our allies." But that raises the question: How often have Hezbollah or other militias backed by the Syrian government attacked Israel across the cease-fire lines Henry Kissinger negotiated in 1974?
The answer is never. Israel is capable of protecting its border with Syria, where a U.N. disengagement force has been in place for 40 years. A U.S. presence in the form of a Kurdish-dominated militia, particularly one that is overextended in areas with Arab majorities, is unlikely to increase border security. It will, however, present a tempting target for attacks by groups loyal to the Syrian government, which will do everything in its power to remove the United States and its clients from Syrian territory. Tensions have already surfaced in the Kurdish-occupied town of Manbij, where members of the Arab al-Bouna tribe protested the death by torture of two young Arabs held by the Kurds.
One of the leading American experts on Syria, Joshua Landis at the University of Oklahoma's Center for Middle East Studies, wrote:
"By controlling half of Syria's energy resources, the Euphrates dam at Tabqa, as well as much of Syria's best agricultural land, the US will be able to keep Syria poor and under-resourced... The US should be helping the PYD [Partiya Yetikia Demokrat, or Democratic Union Party, the civilian wing of the YPG,] to negotiate a deal with Assad that promotes both their interests: Kurdish autonomy and Syrian sovereignty. Both have shared interests, which make a deal possible. Both see Turkey as their main danger. Both need to cooperate in order to exploit the riches of the region. Both distrust radical Islamists and fear their return. Neither can rebuild alone."
In the absence of U.S.-Russian-Syrian cooperation to end the war in Syria, U.S. troops on the ground will be hostages to guerrilla warfare against them. There is a precedent for successful Syrian covert action against the United States and Israel. It was set in Lebanon after Israel's 1982 invasion when assassination, suicide bombings and direct attacks drove the United States out in 1984 and forced a total Israeli withdrawal from Lebanon 16 years later. The current U.S. administration may be unaware of this history, but Damascus isn't. And this time, its agents will be operating in their own country with the full support of Iran and Russia, and with Turkey's acquiescence. Syria would thus join Iraq and Afghanistan as the locale of a long, unwinnable American war.
-
https://us12.campaign-archive.com/?e=9627475d7f&u=b7aa7eddb0f2bb74bfa4f6cb5&id=3d9f28d05f
-
Updated Jan. 20, 2018 8:44 p.m. ET
Turkish jets began airstrikes on a Syrian Kurdish force allied with the U.S. in the fight against Islamic State, opening a new front in the seven-year Syrian war.
The assault on the Kurdish enclave of Afrin in northern Syria follows weeklong threats from the Turkish government to crack down on the main Syrian Kurdish militia known as the YPG. The militia has proven to be the most effective partner on the ground in Syria to the U.S.-led coalition battling Islamic State. But Turkey, a U.S. NATO ally, is troubled that the Kurds have gained strength, land and a greater degree of autonomy in a region along the Turkish border through their role in battles against Islamic State.
Turkey has fought the separatist Kurdish movement PKK at home for decades and views the YPG as an extension of the PKK, branding both terrorist organizations.
While the YPG has been a strong American ally, the U.S. says it doesn’t directly support the Kurds in Afrin. Nevertheless, U.S. officials warned over the past week that a Turkish incursion into the area risked escalating tensions in northern Syria. The top U.S. military commander in the region said Saturday he feared that the Turkish action could distract from efforts to counter Islamic State and urged a quick resolution and end to the hostilities.
“The fight against ISIS continues in Syria,” said Army Gen. Joseph Votel, head of U.S. Central Command. “We’re still involved in day-to-day fighting with our partners against ISIS, trying to liberate the remaining parts of the terrain that they control.”
Gen. Votel said he spoke earlier Saturday with Turkey’s deputy defense chief, though he offered no details. “We would urge the parties to try to resolve this quickly and avoid escalation on it and try to get back to our common threat, which is ISIS,” he said.
Earlier Saturday, before the strikes began, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said a military operation had “de facto” begun. He pledged to expand it to Manbij, another semiautonomous Kurdish area in northern Syria.
“Later we will, step by step, clear our country up to the Iraqi border from this terror filth that is trying to besiege our country,” Mr. Erdogan said.
Turkey has been an erstwhile support of the Syrian rebels throughout the conflict that began nearly seven years ago as an uprising against the dictatorship of President Bashar al-Assad. Turkey stepped up its military foray into northern Syria in 2016, occupying parts of northern Syria with their allies in the Syrian rebel group Free Syrian Army.
A main objective of the Turkish mission, dubbed “Euphrates Shield,” was to capture the Kurdish enclave of Manbij, which Mr. Erdogan still swears he will do. While the Turkish mission was aimed both at defeating Islamic State and blocking the expansion of the Syrian Kurds, Turkey has recently turned its attention more narrowly to containing the Kurds.
This weekend’s strikes are the latest example of how the defeat of Islamic State in most of Syria and Iraq has rekindled old rivalries that were set aside temporarily to defeat a common enemy.
Russia’s Defense Ministry, whose troops control the area around Afrin as part of a de-escalation agreement with Turkey and regime ally Iran, said it had moved its forces from Afrin to the Tel-Adjar area “to prevent possible provocations, to exclude any threat to the lives and health of Russian service members.”
The withdrawal came after Turkish top military and intelligence officials on Thursday visited Moscow, which backs the Syrian regime in the country’s multisided war, to seek support for the operation.
The Russian Defense Ministry, In a separate statement, blamed “provocative steps” by the U.S., including “uncontrolled deliveries of modern weapons by the Pentagon to pro-American formations in the north of Syria,” that it said were aimed at segregating off territories with a predominantly Kurdish population. The ministry said that U.S. actions harmed peace negotiations “in which the Kurds should play a full part.”
The Turkish military said it had launched the offensive, called “Operation Olive Branch,” against Kurdish fighters in Afrin. Members of the Turkish-backed Syrian rebel group Free Syrian Army entered areas around Afrin in northern Syria close to the Turkish border, according to Syrian Kurdish fighters.
“Nearly all targets have been destroyed. As of tomorrow, in accordance with developments, our ground forces will also conduct necessary operations,” Turkish Prime Minister Binali Yildirim said Saturday. Turkish officials claimed their forces were also attacking Islamic State militants in the Afrin area.
However Sam Heller, a research fellow at the Century Foundation think tank, said earlier this week that the U.S. doesn’t support the YPG in Afrin because Islamic State fighters aren’t present in the area. “There is no ISIS there,” he said.
Urging the Turks not to attack Afrin, the State Department drew a distinction between the Kurdish territories and Islamic State.
“We don’t want them to engage in violence, but we want them to keep focused on ISIS,” State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert said Thursday of Turkey.
The Turkish government intensified its rhetoric against the Syrian Kurds after the U.S. proposed about a week ago the creation a border force of 30,000 troops in northern Syria, a majority of whom would be Kurds.
Turkey views American backing for the Syrian Kurds as support for a Kurdish drive for independence and a threat to Turkish sovereignty. After Turkish protests, the Pentagon backtracked on its announcement about the proposed border force.
The Turkish military said the operation was being conducted within the framework of Turkey’s rights under international law and United Nations Security Council’s resolutions on fighting terrorism, the U.N. charter’s right to self-defense and in respect of Syria’s territorial integrity.
“In the planning and execution of the operation, only terrorists and shelters, control areas, weapons and equipment are being targeted,” the military said.
According to the opposition monitoring group Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, more than 10 Turkish aircraft carried out simultaneous strikes on Afrin and its outskirts at the start of the operation. More than hundred targets were hit according to state-run Anadolu Agency.
The Observatory also said the attacks caused civilian casualties, but didn’t provide any numbers.
Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu claimed on Turkish NTV channel that those who were injured were “PKK/YPG terrorists.”
Mr. Cavusoglu said the Syrian regime in Damascus was provided with written information regarding the Afrin operation.
According to Turkish state-run Anadolu news agency, the chief of missions of the U.S., Iran and Russia in Turkey have been summoned to the Turkish Foreign Ministry in relation to the latest developments on the operation.
On Saturday before the strikes, the U.S.-backed and Kurdish-dominated Syrian Democratic Forces warned that a Turkish attack on the Kurdish fighters could hamper the fight against Islamic State.
“The sudden and unjustified threats of offensive operations from Turkey into Afrin, Syria, threatens to breathe new life into Daesh,” the group’s spokesman Mustafa Bali said.
In a separate development in the war on Saturday, Syrian government forces captured the Abu al-Duhur air base in northern Idlib province—an advance in the regime’s offensive to retake the last rebel-held province in Syria. Turkey, which faces the possibility of a new influx of Syrian refugees if fighting in Idlib escalates, urged Iran and Russia to calm the Syrian government campaign there.
-
More on this here: https://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/originals/2018/01/turkey-upend-us-syria-strategy-attack-ypg-aleppo.html
Who is our allly here, turkey or the Kurds?
Who is Turkey's ally, the US or Russia?
Why is turkey still in NATO? They aren't an ally of the US.
-
At the more fundamental end of the spectrum, I am struck with just how much of an error it was for Obama to invite the Russians back into the Middle East , , , and before that to withdraw from Iraq. Now it just looks like we are in the eternal wars of the Middle East. If we leave, Iran (and the Russian-Iranian axis) gets the land bridge to Lebanon and the Mediterranean, thus setting up a possibly nuclear war with Israel and if we stay, well we are drained by strategies based upon the shifting sands of the region.
:-P :-P :-P :x :x :x
-
"I am struck with just how much of an error it was for Obama to invite the Russians back into the Middle East , , , and before that to withdraw from Iraq. Now it just looks like we are in the eternal wars of the Middle East. If we leave, Iran (and the Russian-Iranian axis) gets the land bridge to Lebanon and the Mediterranean, thus setting up a possibly nuclear war with Israel and if we stay, well we are drained by strategies based upon the shifting sands of the region.
:-P :-P :-P :x :x :x
-----------------
That's right. ( We don't want to be the world's policeman, but Russia will act in our best interests??! This former President is highly regarded? It reminds me of the basic argument Romney couldn't make to Obama's voters, do you support him for his failed economic policies or for his awful foreign policies? What a disaster!
----------------
More on the Turkey versus Kurd conflict, this from the YFG Kurd leader:
https://anfenglish.com/rojava/sipan-hemo-russia-betrayed-the-kurds-but-victory-will-be-ours-24350
"Russia betrayed the Kurds, but victory will be ours"
-
I heard Sen Dan SUllivan, R-Alaska, Marine combat veteran, this morning tout what a great US ally Turkey has been, especially pre-Erdogan.
http://www.hughhewitt.com/wp-content/uploads/01-24hhs-sullivan.mp3
My recollection was how they refused accessand made us fly around Turkey to launch the 2003 Iraq action, but they have been helpful in other ways.
Note USAF use of Incirlik Air Base: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incirlik_Air_Base A very strategic location, map at link.
Something like this is part of the leave-behind we should have insisted on in Iraq and would likely have prevented the genocidal ISIS occupation.
The relationship reminds me of the Glick piece on Jordan. Our interests with some of these allies(?) only partly overlap.
-
Turkey Invades, NATO Benefits
Jan 25, 2018
By Xander Snyder
Less than a week after Turkey began its invasion of Afrin – the northwestern pocket of Syria that borders Turkey and is controlled by the Kurdish People’s Protection Units, or YPG – NATO has voiced its consent of the operation. On a visit to Istanbul, NATO Deputy Secretary General Rose Gottemoeller told a Turkish newspaper that NATO recognizes the threat terrorism poses to Turkey. While the language Gottemoeller used wasn’t highly specific, she was referring to the threat posed to Turkey by the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or PKK, an internationally recognized terrorist group. Over the past three decades, the PKK has led an insurgency that has caused the deaths of roughly 40,000 people.
Turkey sees Afrin as a security threat due to the presence of the YPG, considered by Turkey to be a branch of the PKK. The YPG having control over an area that sits on the border with Turkey means it could potentially launch more destructive attacks on Turkish soil. For Turkey, any concession to a Kurdish group – militant or otherwise – is a slippery slope that could lead to greater Kurdish demands for independence.
NATO’s announcement sheds some light on an underlying reality: that NATO benefits from Turkey’s intervention. While the NATO deputy secretary general said the threat
posed to Turkey was from terrorism, NATO’s true fear is Russia. If President Bashar Assad, a Russian ally, were to reassert control over Syria, it would place Russia in a stronger position in the Middle East. A Syria fully controlled by Assad – no longer in need of Russian military support – would also let Russia withdraw its forces from Syria. While Russian President Vladimir Putin would desperately like his declared victory to be real, to secure his public relations boon and get out, a war that continues to threaten Russia’s ally continues to threaten the purported success of Russia’s intervention. Meanwhile, Europe is quite content to keep Russia tied down in the Middle East, drawing at least part of Russia’s focus and military hardware away from its European borders.
(click to enlarge)
Of course, NATO would like to keep Russia tied down with minimal or preferably no involvement of its own. But the elephant in the room whenever a NATO ally is threatened is Article 5, the lynchpin of the NATO alliance, which stipulates that an attack on one NATO member is an attack on all, and therefore warrants a collective military response. Article 5 has been invoked only once – when the U.S. was attacked in 2001 by al-Qaida. Many will question whether the PKK attacks on Turkey are a substantial threat and, therefore, are asking: Could Turkey make the argument to invoke Article 5 and involve the rest of the alliance in Afrin?
(click to enlarge)
The answer is simpler than it may seem at first: It doesn’t matter. Neither Turkey nor the rest of Europe wants NATO to get involved in Turkey’s Afrin operation. As Turkey’s power grows and enables greater projection of power into the Middle East, it will try to take advantage of opportunities to act on its own. The key for Turkey is independence of action; it does not want its options dictated to it by others, whether the U.S. or NATO. If NATO were to get involved in the Afrin operation, even if it were supporting Turkey, it would nevertheless introduce a myriad conflicting command structures and interests. It would complicate Turkey’s freedom to maneuver and ability to unilaterally pursue its own military objectives, which include not just eliminating the threat of terrorism on its border, but also checking Iranian and Russian ambitions in Syria.
NATO also benefits from Turkey’s intervention in Afrin. Much like the U.S., NATO fears Russian expansion. It also fears Iranian expansion but to a lesser degree than the U.S. does (in part due to the business opportunities presented by an open Iranian economy). If Turkey takes Afrin – which currently seems like the most likely outcome given the balance of forces between Turkey and the Afrin defenders – that would put in Turkish control (including its proxies) a contiguous swath of territory that surrounds Aleppo on three sides. Even if Turkey did not immediately move to capitalize on this tactical situation following the acquisition of Afrin, the fact that this land would be in Turkish possession still poses a risk to Assad, Russia’s regional proxy. NATO is more than happy to let Turkey do this on its own and not have to risk its soldiers in the process.
Notably, NATO’s interests in Turkey’s intervention align closely with those of the United States. For the U.S., despite its public rhetoric urging Turkey to take caution in its intervention, ultimately it is content to let Turkey check the powerful position that Iran has acquired in the course of the Syrian civil war. The European contingent of NATO is predominantly concerned with Russia, and Turkey capturing Afrin would place Russia in a difficult situation. Russia has no desire to confront Turkey directly, at least not right now (and, for that matter, neither does Turkey want to confront Russia directly). But Russia wouldn’t mind a situation in which Turkey and Iran challenge one another in Syria, as long as Turkey remains tied down in the struggle and doesn’t emerge victorious.
Turkey’s operations in Syria, however, depend heavily on a number of proxy groups in the west of the country – such as the Free Syrian Army – that Russia has continually identified as one of the core security threats to the Assad regime. The FSA has therefore been one of Russia’s primary targets. If Aleppo were to become surrounded, Russia would be compelled to continue supporting Assad by attacking Turkish proxies, but would be careful to avoid attacking Turkish soldiers. Most important for Russia, such a scenario would further ruin the image of a victory that Putin was hoping to walk away with, and would risk tying Russia down in the Middle East for an indefinite amount of time.
Russia’s prolonged involvement in the Middle East with no easy out would be a clear win for NATO, especially if it doesn’t need to commit any of its own forces to bring this about. Clearly, this wouldn’t eliminate the security threat that Russia poses to Europe’s eastern flank, but it would be an ongoing financial strain on Russia, which is already struggling with economic challenges. NATO’s inaction will amount to tacit support of Turkey’s intervention in Afrin. But it’s happy to sit this one out.
-
Second post:
Here the WSJ has a wildly different take on things from GPF. Is it being simplistic here in not distinguishing the YPG from the rest of the Kurds? Or?
By The WSJ Editorial Board
Jan. 24, 2018 6:57 p.m. ET
The U.S. and its allies have all but defeated Islamic State in Syria, but the Trump Administration is in danger of squandering the strategic gains. Witness the unfolding fiasco there, with invading Turkish forces battering America’s Kurdish allies and threatening an area close to U.S. troops. This is what comes of muscular talk without the will or strategy to enforce it.
President Trump spoke by phone to Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Wednesday, and it must have been tense. Mr. Erdogan’s troops are pounding Kurdish positions in northern Syria, and on Wednesday he threatened to attack the city of Manbij, where U.S. forces are based. Mr. Erdogan is vowing to clear the Kurds out of those enclaves, and the danger is that U.S. and Turkish soldiers, two NATO allies, could soon clash.
Mr. Erdogan claims to be furious at U.S. media reports that the Pentagon plans to train a 30,000-troop Kurdish-led force in northeast Syria that he claims is aligned with the terrorist Kurdish PKK. The U.S. has tried to soothe Mr. Erdogan that the Kurdish border force would pose no threat.
But Secretary of State Rex Tillerson confirmed in a speech last week that the U.S. does plan to keep some military force in Syria for the foreseeable future. The goal is to support the Kurds and Sunni Arabs who fought with us against ISIS, block Iran from dominating post-ISIS Syria, and retain some leverage in talks to end the Syrian civil war. U.S. forces would turn the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), including Kurds and Arabs, into a “stabilizing” force.
The idea has merit. The U.S.-backed Kurdish People’s Protection Units in Syria, known as the YPG, fought valiantly to defeat the Islamic State and deserve training and protection until they can protect themselves. So do local Arab groups who fought alongside the SDF.
Turkey would also benefit from a stable border zone supervised by U.S.-backed forces. Ankara has accepted millions of refugees during the Syrian civil war and doesn’t need more. A Kurdish safe zone, rich with energy resources, could also create goodwill between Ankara and the Kurds.
The question is whether the Trump Administration is prepared to do what it takes to execute such a policy. That would mean explaining to Mr. Erdogan, at the highest military and diplomatic level, how this can serve Turkey’s interests in a more stable Syria. This seems to have been a diplomatic afterthought for team Trump.
It would also mean dropping illusions about Russia’s malign influence. Messrs. Trump and Tillerson seem to believe that Russia wants to broker an end to the war—and it does, but only on its terms. If America’s Kurdish and Sunni allies control no territory in Syria, the U.S. might as well be Guatemala in the peace talks.
Speaking of malign, Russia continues to provide political cover for chemical-weapons use in Syria, almost certainly by Bashar Assad’s forces. Another chlorine gas attack occurred Monday in the rebel stronghold of East Ghouta. Russia dismissed the reports, which is convenient because late last year it blocked an extension for the U.N. group investigating such claims. Russia is also supporting Mr. Erdogan’s military campaign against the Kurds, the better to embarrass the U.S. for not being able to defend its allies.
All of this is setting up Mr. Trump for an Obama-sized strategic embarrassment. The President showed resolve in punishing Assad for his chemical attack last year and by stepping up the military campaign against Islamic State. That signaled to the region’s bad actors that the days of American retreat might be over.
But now that the U.S. and Kurds have done the dirty work, Russia, Syria, Turkey and al Qaeda want to push the U.S. out. If they succeed, Mr. Trump will pay a price in lost credibility on par with Mr. Obama’s failure to enforce his famous red line on chemical weapons. The White House has to show the diplomatic and military will to sustain a safe zone in Syria, or tell our allies they’re on their own so they can make their our accommodations with the bullies of Ankara, Tehran and Moscow.
-
Third post!
http://www.breitbart.com/jerusalem/2018/01/25/caroline-glick-us-playing-lose-win-turkey/
-
Iraqi Kurdistan's Post-Referendum Isolation Boosts Iran
by Jonathan Spyer
The Jerusalem Post
January 20, 2018
http://www.meforum.org/7183/iraqi-kurdistan-4-months-after-the-referendum
-
https://www.memri.org/reports/russian-political-analyst-isaev-assad-liquid-asset-russia-will-demand-steep-price-him
-
Welcome to Syria 2.0
by Jonathan Spyer
Foreign Policy
January 25, 2018
http://www.meforum.org/7188/welcome-to-syria-20
-
Caroline Glick: Syria – The War Everyone Must Fight and No One Can Win
Caroline Glick 10 Feb 2018
Saturday morning’s violent clashes along the Israeli-Syria border between Israel on the one hand and Iran and Syrian regime forces on the other occurred against the backdrop of multiplying acts of war and violence among a seemingly endless roster of combatants.
To understand the significance and implications of the clashes – which saw Israel destroy an Iranian drone that penetrated its airspace and destroy the drone base in Syria from which the drone was deployed, and the downing of an Israeli F-16 by a massive barrage of Syrian anti-aircraft missiles – it is necessary to understand the basic logic of violence in Syria.
There are a dozen or so actors fighting in Syria. The US is fighting in coalition with the Kurdish dominated Syrian Democratic Forces. The Kurdish YPG militia is part of the SDF. Political representatives tied to the YPG have denied it, but the YPG is widely considered to be allied with the Turkish PKK group, which is listed as a terrorist group by the State Department and the Turkish government.
Russia is fighting with Iran, the Syrian-regime forces, Hezbollah and Iranian-organized Shiite militias that include fighters from Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Iraq.
Russia also sometimes acts indirectly with Israel against its coalition partners. On the basis of understandings that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has reached with Russian President Vladimir Putin, Russian forces in Syria do not interfere with Israeli air strikes against Iranian, Hezbollah and Syrian-regime targets which directly threaten Israel’s strategic interests.
The Turks are fighting largely independently. Sometimes they are supported by the U.S., sometimes they are supported by the Russians.
Turkey belatedly joined the anti-ISIS coalition led by the U.S. But the Turks’ main target in Syria is the Kurdish forces. Three weeks ago, the Turks launched yet another campaign against the Kurds in Syria. Their current operation is focused on the Afrin province controlled by YPG. But Turkey is also threatening Manbij, where US special forces are deployed in support of the SDF.
Non-ISIS rebel forces are being destroyed systematically by regime forces in Idlib province and in the Damascus suburban area known as Eastern Ghouta. According to a New York Times‘ summary of recent violence in Syria, regime forces have reportedly killed four hundred people, including a hundred children in Eastern Ghouta since December. Since the start of 2018, the Syrian regime reportedly carried out three chlorine gas attack against civilians in Ghouta.
As the New York Times noted, Ghouta was the site of the regime’s 2013 sarin gas attack which killed 1,400 people including 400 children. Then-president Barack Obama had said a year earlier that such an attack would be a red line that would provoke US action against the regime. Obama’s refusal to attack regime forces after the sarin gas attack empowered Russia, which deployed forces to Syria for the first time since the end of the Cold War in 2015.
Finally, there are ISIS forces. ISIS continues to control territory along the Syrian border with Iraq and pockets of territory in the vicinity of Deir Ezzor and Palmyra. Perhaps more importantly, ISIS forces from areas seized by coalition forces have melted away and are viewed as responsible for a spate of bombings in Damascus and elsewhere in recent months and weeks.
advertisement
Over the past several weeks, numerous articles have appeared analyzing the recent rise in violence in Syria. The main question is: why is the violence continuing? The prevailing sense in the West had been that, following ISIS’s loss of most of the territory it had held, the war had wound down. The U.S. and its allies had made their peace with Syrian President Bashar Assad’s survival and with Russia’s newfound role as powerbroker on the one hand. And, on the other hand, the Russians and their Iranian, Syrian, and Hezbollah allies had made their peace with Kurdish control over large swathes of former Syrian territory and their alliance with the U.S.
Israel, the U.S., and Turkey were seen as actors with specific issues which could be remedied with intermittent tactical strikes that wouldn’t challenge the overall post-civil war order.
This assessment was false because there is nothing tactical or limited about any of the parties’ interests and concerns relating to Syria.
Consider the Turks and the U.S. The Turks oppose Syrian Kurdish control over territory along the border with Turkey because they view it as a strategic threat to Turkey. Turkey’s Afrin offensive – which Ankara envisions as the first stage of a broader offensive which will include Manbij – also has implications that far exceed the borders of Syria or the wider Middle East.
Russia is supporting the Turkish anti-Kurdish offensive for reasons that have nothing to do with Syria and everything to do with Russia’s strategic rivalry for great power status with the US.
By supporting Turkey’s anti-Kurdish offensive, Russia is placing NATO member Turkey in direct confrontation with the US. If the US stands with the Kurds and Turkey fails to back down, then the likelihood that American and Turkish forces will fight one another in battle grows to near certainty. If this happens, Turkish membership in NATO will effectively end.
On the other hand, if the US doesn’t stand with the Syrian Kurds, the U.S. will lose its residual credibility as an ally in the region. The stakes in Syria are critical in light of the U.S.’s failure to defend its Iraqi Kurdish allies last October, when the US-trained Iraqi military wrested control over the oil-rich Kirkuk province from the Kurdish regional government in Erbil.
For the US then, Syria is a moment of truth. It can stand with its allies on the ground and so assure its long-term ability to work with allies in the Middle East and beyond. Or it can betray its allies on the ground and preserve the idea of its strategic alliance with Turkey, even though, on the ground, that alliance no longer exists.
This then brings us to Israel, and Saturday morning’s violent clashes with Iran.
Although Bashar Assad still holds the title President of Syria, to all intents and purposes, he is an Iranian puppet. His forces take their orders from Iran and Hezbollah. He has no independent power to make decisions about anything in Syria.
Israel has eyed this development with great and growing concern over the years. Iran’s assertion of control over Syria has massive implications for Israel’s national security. And, over the years, Israel has set and enforced specific red lines in Syria designed to prevent Iran’s effective control over Assad’s regime from passing specific limits. Israel’s red lines include blocking Iran from transferring precision-guided missiles, other advanced weapons systems and non-conventional weapons to Hezbollah in Lebanon through Syria territory including the Damascus airport. Israel’s red lines also include blocking Iran from setting up permanent bases in Syria. To enforce these and other red lines, over the years Israel has conducted repeated air attacks against targets in Syria.
Immediately after Putin first deployed his forces to Syria in 2015, Netanyahu flew to Russia to coordinate Israel’s air operations with him and prevent direct confrontations between Israeli and Russian forces. Since their first meeting, Netanyahu has flown to Russia on ten subsequent occasions to develop a working relationship with Putin with the aim of weakening his strategic commitment to Iranian power in the region and cultivating his perception of shared strategic interests with Israel in Syria and beyond.
Netanyahu’s last meeting with Putin was on January 29. In media briefings before and after their meeting, Netanyahu said that he spoke to Putin about three issues. First, due to Israel’s success in blocking Iran from transferring precision-guided missiles to Hezbollah in Lebanon through Syria, Iran is now building missile factories for Hezbollah inside of Lebanon. Netanyahu pledged to destroy those factories.
In his words, “Lebanon is becoming a factory for precision-guided missiles that threaten Israel. These missiles pose a grave threat to Israel, and we cannot accept this threat.”
Second, Netanyahu warned Putin that Israel will not accept Iranian military entrenchment in Syria through the construction of permanent bases, among other things. Netanyahu explained, “The question is: Does Iran entrench itself in Syria, or will this process be stopped. If it doesn’t stop by itself, we will stop it.”
Third, Netanyahu spoke to Putin about improving Obama’s nuclear deal with the Iranian regime.
Russia is both a resource and a threat to Israel. It is a resource because Russia is capable of constraining Iran and Hezbollah. Israel treated Russia as a resource Saturday, when in the wake of its violent confrontations with Iran, which included Israel’s Air Force’s first combat loss of an F-16 since the 1980s, Israel turned to the Russians with an urgent request for them to restrain the Iranians.
Russia is a threat to Israel because it is Iran’s coalition partner. Until Russia deployed its forces to Syria, it appeared that the regime and its Iranian overlords were losing the war, or at least unable to win it. After Russia began providing air support for their ground operations, the tide of the war reversed in their favor.
At any rate, Israel is in no position to persuade Russia to abandon Syria. Russia’s presence in the region limits Israel’s actions but also guarantees that Israel will continue to act, because its vital interests will continue to come under threat and intermittent attack.
In all, the situation in Syria is and will remain unstable and exceedingly violent for the foreseeable future. Syria is not only a local battlefield where various Syrian factions vie for control over separate areas of the country – although it remains such a local battlefield.
And it isn’t only a regional battlefield where Iran and its proxies seek to expand and entrench the Shiite crescent while preparing the ground for wars against Israel, and Israel is engaged around the clock in efforts to block their progress and curb their entrenchment. But it is a critical regional battlefield.
Syria is also a fight between superpowers. Russia owes its reemergence as a superpower in the Middle East to its entrenchment in Syria. And the U.S.’s ability to continue to assert its superpower status in the region is largely dependent on its willingness to stand its ground in Syria by among other things, blocking the Turks from defeating the Kurds.
None of the sides to the conflict can depend on their deterrent posture to prevent attacks or escalation because for deterrence to work, the warring sides need to acknowledge one another’s spheres of authority. This cannot happen because all of these battlefields represent wars that no side can lose – and as a result, no side can win. So the war will go on, indefinitely.
In Israel’s case, the best outcome at this point is that its responses to Iranian aggression, including its response Saturday, are powerful enough to convince the Iranians that they have no interest in a full-blown war. Ultimately, if Iran is defeated, it will likely be the result of developments on battlefields outside of Syria.
And it isn’t only a regional battlefield where Iran and its proxies seek to expand and entrench the Shiite crescent while preparing the ground for wars against Israel, and Israel is engaged around the clock in efforts to block their progress and curb their entrenchment. But it is a critical regional battlefield.
Syria is also a fight between superpowers. Russia owes its re-emergence as a superpower in the Middle East to its entrenchment in Syria. And America’s ability to continue to assert its superpower status in the region is largely dependent on its willingness to stand its ground in Syria by among other things, blocking the Turks from defeating the Kurds.
None of the sides to the conflict can depend on their deterrent posture to prevent attacks or escalation because for deterrence to work, the warring sides need to acknowledge one another’s spheres of authority. This cannot happen because all of these battlefields represent wars that no side can lose — and as a result, no side can win. So the war will go on, indefinitely.
In Israel’s case, the best outcome at this point is that its responses to Iranian aggression, including its response Saturday, will be powerful enough to convince the Iranians that they have no interest in a full-blown war. Ultimately, if Iran is defeated, it will likely be the result of developments on battlefields outside of Syria.
-
Israel, Iran and the War for Syria
Feb 12, 2018
By Jacob L. Shapiro
For years, Israel and Iran have attacked each other with words and through their proxies. In Iran, calls for Israel’s destruction are routine, and support for militant groups in Syria, Lebanon and the Gaza Strip intentionally challenges Israel’s security. For Israel, meanwhile, “the year is 1938 and Iran is Germany.” Those are the words of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, the second-longest serving leader in the country’s history. He has held his position for so long in part because of his ability to convince Israelis that he is best suited to lead Israel in this existential battle with Iran.
It is not surprising, then, that this past weekend’s events seem like a watershed moment. On Feb. 10, an Iranian drone crossed into Israeli territory and was shot down. Israel responded to the Iranian incursion by dispatching fighter jets to attack targets in Syria, including the Tiyas air base, near Palmyra, where the Iranian drone reportedly took off from. Syrian anti-air systems retaliated, striking an Israeli F-16, which crashed after making it back to Israeli territory. This prompted Israel to hit eight Syrian targets and four Iranian positions, according to the Israel Defense Forces. The war of words and proxies seems to be turning into a war between nations.
(click to enlarge)
Lost in this sequence of events is the broader context. Israel is not the only country to have military aircraft shot down by enemy fire in Syria recently. Last week, Russia intensified airstrikes in Idlib province after al-Qaida-linked militants brought down a Russian fighter jet. On the same day the Israeli F-16 went down, Syrian Kurdish fighters reportedly brought down a Turkish military helicopter that was part of Turkey’s invasion of northern Syria. Israel, Russia and Turkey all lost military aircraft during operations in Syria in the past week, and all three are currently working at cross purposes. The Israel-Iran showdown is about far more than just Israel and Iran. It is one aspect of a much larger war for regional power that is being waged more openly with each passing day.
Hazy Alliances
Last week’s crucial developments were not confined to downed military aircraft. On Feb. 6, pro-Assad forces attacked Turkish military forces attempting to set up an outpost close to the city of Aleppo. Some sources reported that an Iranian-backed militia was also involved in the attack. Just two months ago, Turkey and Iran were coordinating a cease-fire in Syria. Now, they are at each other’s throats.
Then on Feb. 7, pro-Assad forces attacked the U.S.-backed Syrian Democratic Forces in eastern Syria, resulting in U.S. airstrikes. Just two months ago, pro-Assad forces and the SDF were coordinating an offensive against the Islamic State. Now, they too are at each other’s throats. The war in Syria has become more than simply a civil war; it is now a regional war featuring Israel, Iran, Russia, Turkey and the United States.
If this seems confusing, that’s because it is. Allegiances are in a constant state of flux, dependent more on what various sides can do for each other in the short term than on long-standing arrangements or promises of trust. Consider that the U.S.-backed SDF, made up primarily of Syrian Kurdish fighters, is cooperating with the Assad regime so it can send reinforcements into Afrin to combat Turkish troops. In effect, the SDF is cooperating with Assad in one part of Syria and coming under attack from Assad in another part of Syria. Consider too that Turkey, officially part of a tripartite agreement with Russia and Iran to bring an end to the Syrian war, has invaded Syria to protect its interests from Russia and Iran, and yet it is equally hostile to Russia and Iran’s main enemy, the United States, because the U.S. is providing support for Syrian Kurds. The only thing that is certain in this conflict is that no alliance is certain.
Hazy as these strategic arrangements are, they all boil down to one thing: Iran’s attempt to take over Syria. Turkey talked about its invasion of northern Syria for over a year, and its troops entered Afrin with great media fanfare. But while Turkey was talking, Iran was actually doing. Since the Syrian civil war started in 2011, Iran has been dispatching soldiers, militias, money and weapons to support the Assad regime. The result has been the transformation of Syria from an authoritarian military dictatorship friendly to Iran to an Iranian proxy in desperate need of Iranian support just to stay alive. For Iran, that is a massive strategic opportunity: It can make its continued support of Bashar Assad contingent on Assad’s allowing Iran to do whatever it wants in Syria. And what Iran wants in Syria is a forward base into the Levant.
(click to enlarge)
That is what has Israel so nervous. Despite all the rhetoric, Israel and Iran haven’t fought a war against each other because there is no way for Israel and Iran to fight a war. They are too far apart. That would no longer be the case if Iran can make Syria a staging ground for Iranian attacks against Israel. It is one thing for an Iranian proxy like Hezbollah, with its limited number of fighters, to fire rockets at Israel from Lebanon. It is quite another thing for Iran to start building missiles, massing ground forces and stationing aircraft in Syria, just across the Israeli border. To make matters worse for Israel, it has no comparable position on the Iranian border. Even if it did, Israel cannot expend soldiers the way Iran can in a protracted conflict. For Israel, Iran’s nuclear program is concerning, but Syria as a base of Iranian operations is a mortal threat.
Israel’s Advantages
Israel has a few things going for it, though. The Assad regime is not dependent on just Iran but Russia too, and Moscow has no interest in Syria becoming an Iranian protectorate. Russia wants to preserve Syria as an independent actor and a Russian ally, not as a part of Iran’s plan to project power throughout the region. The Tiyas air base, which was the target of the Israeli strike over the weekend, has also been a base for Russian aircraft in Syria. Russia and Israel have close relations – Netanyahu was in Russia just last month to express Israeli concerns to Moscow – and Russia is not looking to pick a fight with Israel. Israel may not be able to fight a conventional war against Iran, but the Israeli air force is without peer in the Middle East – and that includes Russia’s aerial presence. Furthermore, the U.S. has Israel’s back on this one. It doesn’t want Iran in Syria any more than Israel does. The Russian-Iranian marriage of convenience will fracture the more ambitious Iran gets.
Iran’s moves in Syria also directly threaten Turkey, which also has no desire to see Iranian bases on its border. The more Iran engages in Syria, the closer it pushes Israel and Turkey together. Ties between the two have been strained since the Mavi Marmara flotilla incident in 2010, but the real reason Israeli-Turkish relations are tense is that Turkey’s position in the Middle East has changed. It went from being a dependable U.S. and NATO ally to a powerful nation-state concerned primarily with securing its own interests, which Israel must view with inherent suspicion. That said, both will see eye to eye on limiting Iran in Syria. If Israel comes to believe Russia is not doing enough to rein Iran in, it will also not hesitate to deepen coordination with Turkey, which would be disastrous from Moscow’s perspective. It would also align with our 2018 forecast.
Last but not least is that the majority of the region’s powers are hostile to Iran. Notably absent from the recent developments in Syria is Iran’s most vociferous enemy, Saudi Arabia. The Saudis, who as recently as November were threatening war against Iran, have fallen eerily silent. But make no mistake: Saudi Arabia remains extremely antagonistic to Iran and will support Israeli moves against it (and Saudi Arabia, unlike Israel, is within range of Iran). In addition, Egypt and Jordan remain aligned with Israel. Egypt invited Hamas leaders to Cairo for a meeting this past weekend, perhaps to let them know that their recent willingness to mend relations with Iran is a nonstarter.
Iran is attempting to take control of Syria. Israel does not want that to happen. Israel has been bombing targets in Syria for years to prevent it from happening. It will continue to do so. But Israel’s future depends not on its bombs but on its ability to position itself within a regional coalition that opposes Iran’s ambitions for power. The outline of that coalition is beginning to take shape: The interests of Israel, Turkey and the Arab states are converging. In a sense, Iran is now in the position the Islamic State was mere months ago. The Islamic State’s emergence created strange bedfellows, all of whom cooperated to ensure its demise. Now Iran is seeking to fill the power vacuum left behind by the Islamic State’s defeat. The responses, of which Israel’s attacks over the weekend are just one example, show why in the long term Iran’s gains are likely to be ephemeral. In the short term, however, Iran will press its advantage. The war in Syria has only just begun.
The post Israel, Iran and the War for Syria appeared first on Geopolitical Futures.
-
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/13/world/europe/russia-syria-dead.html?emc=edit_na_20180213&nl=breaking-news&nlid=49641193&ref=cta
-
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/13/world/europe/russia-syria-dead.html?emc=edit_na_20180213&nl=breaking-news&nlid=49641193&ref=cta
Luckily, Putin is known for his merciful nature. I'm sure there won't be any sort of payback.
-
Sarcasm function on:
Like the payback when the Turks shot down one of his jets?
Sarcasm function off :-D
-
Sarcasm function on:
Like the payback when the Turks shot down one of his jets?
Sarcasm function off :-D
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/turkish-soldiers-syria-russia-air-strike-military-jet-vladimir-putin-erdogan-a7571936.html
-
https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2018-02-16/russia-attacked-u-s-troops-in-syria
-
https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2018-02-16/russia-attacked-u-s-troops-in-syria
Pretty strange, given Trump being Putin's puppet and all...
-
Iran’s Syrian Front
Assad’s atrocities grow as Tehran builds a new anti-Israel satellite.
Smoke rises from the rebel held besieged town of Hamouriyeh, eastern Ghouta, near Damascus, Feb. 21.
Smoke rises from the rebel held besieged town of Hamouriyeh, eastern Ghouta, near Damascus, Feb. 21. Photo: bassam khabieh/Reuters
By The Editorial Board
Feb. 21, 2018 7:24 p.m. ET
96 COMMENTS
Bashar Assad’s Syrian military committed more atrocities this week, bombing the opposition stronghold of Eastern Ghouta and killing at least 200. Rescue workers had to haul dead civilians from the rubble, including a family of five. As everyone deplores the killings, the point to keep in mind is that the driving political power here is Iran and its attempt to make Syria part of its growing Shiite-Persian empire.
Iran has propped up Assad since the Syrian civil war erupted in 2011, and along with Russia is largely responsible for the regime’s survival. After its 2016 victory in Aleppo and the ouster of Islamic State from Raqqa, this axis is now trying to roll up the last opposition strongholds. The trio will then use Russia-sponsored peace talks to re-establish Assad’s control over Syria. Russia will keep its military bases, and Iran wants to establish a new imperial outpost on the border with Israel.
Toward that end, Iran is building a robust military presence of Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) troops, Iran-backed Lebanese Hezbollah, foreign fighters from Pakistan, Iraq and Afghanistan, and local Syrian militias in Assad-controlled areas. Iran’s ultimate goal is “the eradication of Israel,” as the leader of the IRGC’s Quds Force, Qasem Soleimani, said recently.
Military analysts estimate Hezbollah could have more than 100,000 rockets pointed at Israel from its home base in Lebanon and possibly from Syria too. An Iranian redoubt in Syria would open another front in a war with Israel from which to launch more rocket and other attacks. U.S. National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster worried publicly in December about “the prospect of Iran having a proxy army on the borders of Israel.”
Tehran’s confidence abroad is growing despite its recent protests at home. Earlier this month Iran-backed forces launched a drone from Syria’s Homs area into Israeli air space. The Israeli military shot down the drone and sent F-16s to bomb the base from where the drone operated, as well as other military targets. The mission was a success, but the Israelis lost a fighter jet, the first such loss since the early 1980s.
The provocation is a sign that Iran is turning its attention from propping up Assad and toward establishing a more permanent presence in Syria, including the construction of military bases and weapons factories. Iranians are investing in Syria’s local economy to help Assad “rebuild,” and working to convert local Alawites to Shiite Islam.
Iran is also exploiting a “cease-fire” in southwestern Syria that the U.S. negotiated with Russia last year. Russia is supposed to stop Iran from building up its forces there, but the U.S. has been left to protest feebly as Russia lets Iran continue.
That leaves the policing to Israel, which has bombed Iranian and Hezbollah sites in Syria many times in the last year, including an Iranian base southwest of Damascus in December. On Sunday at the Munich security conference, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said, “We will act without hesitation to defend ourselves” and “not just against Iran’s proxies that are attacking us, but against Iran itself.”
Israel’s military is formidable, and the country is protected by a robust antimissile system. But even Israel’s defenses would be strained by 1,500 to 2,000 incoming missiles a day from Syria and Lebanon, especially if Iran succeeds in upgrading Hezbollah’s arsenal to precision-guided weapons. Hezbollah attacks from civilian centers, which means an Israel-Lebanon conflict would be an extensive and bloody undertaking, as Israeli forces would have to attack fighters near homes and hospitals.
If the Trump Administration is worried about this gathering storm, you can’t tell from its actions. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson toured the region last week and called for a “whole, independent, democratic Syria with no special demarcations dividing Syria and with the Syrian people selecting their leadership through free and fair elections.” That’s something John Kerry might have said, with a similar lack of credibility with Iran or Russia.
Mr. Trump promised in October to work with allies to counter Iran’s “destabilizing activity and support for terrorist proxies in the region,” but in Syria the U.S. has shown no strategy for doing so. Meanwhile, an Iran-Israel conflict grows more likely by the day.
-
Russian Attack on US Troops in Syria Elicits Deafening Silence from Politicians and Press
by Michael J. Totten
World Affairs
February 22, 2018
http://www.meforum.org/7215/russian-attack-on-us-troops-in-syria-elicits
Share:
Originally published under the title "The Russian Attack Against America You Didn't Hear About."
Russia committed an act of war against the United States a little more than a week ago.
You probably didn't hear this because few media organizations have even mentioned it, but Russia committed an act of war against the United States a little more than a week ago. No, this is not about more social media and election shenanigans. Russia mounted an armed assault against American soldiers and our allies in Syria, including Kurdish security forces affiliated with the People's Protection Units, or YPG, at a military base in the city of Deir Ezzor, the largest in eastern Syria. Russian combatants fought alongside Assad regime fighters and Shia militias armed, funded and directed by Iran.
Both the Pentagon and the Kremlin are going out of their way to keep this as quiet as possible. If you only read the New York Times story about the incident on February 13, you'd have to squint and zero in on the subtext. After the United States used air and drone strikes to obliterate incoming assailants, including dozens of Russians, American military spokespeople assured the press in calm tones that there was never any chance that Russian and American forces would clash directly in Deir Ezzor or anywhere else. The Kremlin, for its part, said any Russians who might have participated in the assault were mercenaries unaffiliated with the Russian armed forces.
The problem with the Kremlin statement is that Russian mercenaries in Syria are employed by the Wagner Group, which works for the Russian government, and, specifically, for Russia's Ministry of Defense, not for the Syrian or Iranian governments. And the problem with the American statement is that the Pentagon is asking us to assume that dozens of Russians were killed not by the bombs it had just dropped but by somebody else...or perhaps by spontaneous heart attacks or a catastrophic series of vehicle accidents.
Some fine reporters at Bloomberg News dug a bit deeper. First, on February 14, Henry Meyer and Stepan Kravchenko reported that wounded Russians were flown from the battlefield to hospitals administered by the Ministry of Defense in Moscow and St. Petersburg, belying the claim that they were freelancing for somebody else.
Second, Eli Lake reported on February 16 that several US officials confirmed that the Russian government understood perfectly well what was going on in Deir Ezzor—thanks to the so-called "deconflicting" agreements in place to prevent American and Russian soldiers from accidentally shooting each other. He also helpfully pointed out that one of the leaders of the Wagner Group, Dmitry Utkin, is closely linked to Yevgeny Prigozhin (aka "Putin's chef"), one of the 13 Russian nationals whom FBI Special Counsel Robert Mueller just indicted for information warfare during the 2016 presidential election.
Whatever the reason or reasons, Americans have missed an opportunity to take stock of a terrible fact—that Russia is an outright enemy of the United States.
Take a look at how carefully Secretary of Defense James Mattis describes what happened in Deir Ezzor: "I have no idea why [the Russians] would attack there," he told reporters after the incident. "The forces were known to be there, obviously the Russians knew. We have always known that there are elements in this very complex battle space that the Russians did not have, I would call it, control of." He's going along with the story that the Russian government has "no control" over the Wagner Group, which clearly isn't the case.
And why would he do that? Lake thinks Mattis is committing a "noble lie" for the common good of both countries. "If Mattis acknowledges the obvious," he writes, "that the Kremlin authorized a direct assault on a U.S.-sponsored base by non-uniformed personnel -- he risks an escalation spiral in Syria. Better to express bewilderment and give Russian President Vladimir Putin a chance to back down and deny culpability, which he ended up doing despite the heavy casualties suffered by his mercenaries."
Aside from the stories I've cited above, this incident has received almost no media coverage in the United States. Perhaps it's because Americans suffered no casualties while, according to numerous Russian media accounts, as many as 200 Russians were killed, and three separate sources told Reuters that Russia suffered as many as 300 killed and injured. Maybe it's also because during what would have been this story's news cycle, Americans were transfixed by yet another bloody massacre at a high school, this time in Parkland, Florida. Another possibility is that, in this inward-looking and tribal partisan time in American history, a botched Russian attack doesn't neatly fit into one of our pre-existing media narratives, where the Democratic Party is focused on Russian election meddling and the Republican Party would rather talk about almost anything except the Kremlin's malfeasance.
Whatever the reason or reasons, Americans have missed an opportunity to take stock of a terrible fact—that Russia is an outright enemy of the United States that just committed an act of war against us in the Middle East. Unless Vladimir Putin has suddenly and silently been deterred—fat chance of that being the case—something else will have to happen to get our attention. Something bigger, something worse, something more dangerous.
Michael J. Totten is a contributing editor at The Tower, a Middle East Forum writing fellow, and the author of seven books, including Where the West Ends and Tower of the Sun.
-
What would you call this ? An act of love? This too not in news much:
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/13/world/europe/russia-syria-dead.html
-
http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/putin-ally-said-to-be-in-touch-with-kremlin-assad-before-his-mercenaries-attacked-us-troops/ar-BBJtGXQ?li=BBnb7Kz&ocid=DELLDHP
-
Some very important thoughts from the WSJ. And very much worth noting is that at yesterday's joint press conference with Australian PM is that President Trump said we had no goals there beyond defeating ISIS.
We love President Trump and Sec Def Mattis, but it is time to decide whether to shit or get off the pot. It IS a terrible problem. If we leave, the Iranians will have land bridge to the Mediterranean (including direct connection with Hezbollah and all that implies) backed by Russia's anti-aircraft systems i.e. Israel will no longer have dominance in the skies. All out war (including nukes?) seems likely.
If we stay, we are permanently in the morass of the Middle East, and thus overloaded China takes the South China Sea and the Norks finish their ability to deliver nukes.
Is this why yesterday President Trump said is ONLY issue with China was trade even while the Australian PM spoke of holding China to the rule of law (i.e. respecting rights in the South China Sea?
======================================================
Russia’s Attack on U.S. Troops
Putin’s mercenaries are bloodied in Syria, as he tries to drive Trump out.
Businessman Yevgeny Prigozhin, left, shows Russian President Vladimir Putin around his factory which produces school means, outside St. Petersburg, Russia, Sept. 20, 2010.
Businessman Yevgeny Prigozhin, left, shows Russian President Vladimir Putin around his factory which produces school means, outside St. Petersburg, Russia, Sept. 20, 2010. Photo: Alexei Druzhinin/Associated Press
By The Editorial Board
Feb. 23, 2018 6:50 p.m. ET
354 COMMENTS
The truth is starting to emerge about a recent Russian attack on U.S. forces in eastern Syria, and it deserves more public attention. The assault looks increasingly like a botched attempt to bloody the U.S. and intimidate President Trump into withdrawing from Syria once Islamic State is defeated. The U.S. military won this round, but Vladimir Putin’s forces will surely look for a chance at revenge.
Here’s what we know. Several hundred men and materiel advanced on a U.S. Special Forces base near Deir al-Zour on the night of Feb. 7-8. Pentagon spokeswoman Dana White confirmed soon afterward that the “battalion-sized unit formation” was “supported by artillery, tanks, multiple-launch rocket systems and mortars.” U.S. forces responded in self-defense “with a combination of air and artillery strikes.”
Ms. White wouldn’t confirm how many attackers were killed or who was fighting, though the U.S. had “observed” the military buildup for a week. Defense Secretary James Mattis called the confrontation “perplexing,” adding that “I have no idea why they would attack there, the forces were known to be there, obviously the Russians knew.” He’s referring to the U.S.-Russia “deconfliction” agreement in which the Russians agreed to stay west of the Euphrates River.
Now we’re learning that Russian fighters were killed in the attack, and Lebanese Hezbollah was also involved. The Kremlin has tried to cover up the deaths, but that’s getting harder as the body bags come home and Russian social media spread the word. The Foreign Ministry finally admitted Tuesday that “several dozen” Russians were killed or wounded but claimed that “Russian service members did not take part in any capacity and Russian military equipment was not used.”
That depends on how you define “Russian military.” Evidence is growing that the attack was orchestrated by Yevgeny Prigozhin, the Russian oligarch who does much of Mr. Putin’s dirty work. His businesses include the Internet Research Agency, a media operation indicted by a federal grand jury last week for meddling in the 2016 U.S. election.
Mr. Putin has a history of using mercenaries in Crimea and southern Ukraine, the better to preserve deniability if something goes wrong. The Obama Administration blacklisted Mr. Prigozhin in 2016 for supporting Russia’s Ukraine invasion, and in June the Trump Administration sanctioned Dmitry Utkin, a former Russian intelligence officer associated with Mr. Prigozhin’s Wagner Group of mercenaries.
Wagner has been fighting in Syria since 2015, according to the Institute for the Study of War’s Bradley Hanlon, including campaigns to retake oil-rich areas. Mr. Putin has been doling out contracts tied to oil and mining to mercenaries in Syria, including to Mr. Prigozhin.
The Washington Post reported Thursday, citing intelligence sources, that Mr. Prigozhin had “secured permission from an unspecified Russian minister” for the attack and had also “discussed” it with Syrian officials. Mr. Prigozhin would never undertake such an operation unless he felt he had clearance from the highest levels of the Kremlin.
Why risk such an attack, especially given how badly it went for Russia? Mr. Putin is constantly probing for weaknesses in adversaries, and perhaps he wanted to embarrass Mr. Trump by capturing some Americans. Perhaps he hoped to push the U.S. troops back and seize the nearby oil fields. With Mr. Trump sending no clear signals about U.S. intentions after Islamic State, and given his 2016 campaign claims that Syria is someone else’s problem, Mr. Putin might have thought that some American casualties, prisoners or a retreat would increase calls inside the U.S. to leave Syria.
The U.S. military response was impressive and laudable, but American silence about the Russian attack is puzzling. The attack shows again that Mr. Putin is looking to damage U.S. interests wherever he sees an opportunity, even at the risk of a U.S.-Russia military engagement. Maybe Mr. Trump doesn’t want to humiliate Mr. Putin, but the Russian won’t forget this defeat merely because the U.S. is quiet about it.
The danger is that he’ll interpret U.S. silence to mean that he can risk an attempt at revenge. Mr. Putin is running for re-election this spring, and while he has rigged the vote to guarantee victory, the Russian public needs to know his mercenaries suffered a humiliating defeat. If the U.S. won’t tell the truth, Mr. Putin has an easier time telling lies.
The Russian engagement also shows that the U.S. is operating a de facto safe zone for allies in eastern Syria. The Pentagon is still pursuing dispersed Islamic State fighters, but another goal is to influence the shape of post-ISIS Syria. Mr. Putin wants to push the U.S. and its allies out so its axis with Iran can dominate Syria. Look for more such confrontations to come.
-
Also see
https://www.nationalreview.com/2018/02/syrian-war-crimes-criminals-wont-bought-justice/?utm_source=Sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=NR%20Daily%20Saturday%202018-02-24&utm_term=NR5PM%20Actives
-
'cause I sure as hell ain't up to keeping track!
================================================
George Friedman:
Turkey’s invasion of Afrin in northern Syria has redrawn the established lines of battle. Turkey proposed cooperation with the United States in Afrin and Manbij, both of which are held by Syrian Kurds—whom the US has been supporting and the Turks consider hostile. Though no formal agreement has been reached, US Secretary of Defense James Mattis said the US would work with Turkey to coordinate their actions in Syria. Then, the Syrian Kurds apparently invited pro-regime forces into Afrin to help fight back against the Turkish assault.
Joining the Fray
With Turkey joining the fray in Afrin and inching closer to Aleppo, a critical city over which Syrian forces have already fought a bloody battle, Bashar al-Assad has a choice: either escalate his military conflict with Turkey and its proxies or come to a settlement. To win a military victory in the region, Assad would need to move his forces along the southern edge of Afrin until they reach the Turkish border in the west and then turn farther south until pro-Turkish forces in Idlib—a region largely controlled by another Turkish proxy, Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham—are surrounded. Assad will try to encircle Turkish proxies in Idlib and cut off their supply routes to Turkey.
Source: Geopolitical Futures (Click to enlarge)
From the regime’s perspective, therefore, working with the Kurds makes sense. It can use the 8,000–10,000 Kurdish fighters from the People’s Protection Units (YPG) in Afrin to repel the Turkish invasion and avoid expending its own resources. It also makes sense for the Kurds, who are facing a Turkish assault with few allies, since the US has said it will not support the YPG in Afrin.
But Turkey has its own plans to surround the YPG and cut off access to its allies. On Feb. 20, Erdogan announced that the Turkish military would attempt to envelop Afrin in the next several days, blocking the YPG from receiving support from pro-Assad forces. Turkey and Assad are therefore applying the same strategy to different regions, while trying to avoid a confrontation that could draw in more outside powers and escalate the conflict.
This situation could give rise to a tactical settlement in Afrin. Faced with the risk of a far bloodier battle than it anticipated, Turkey may be willing to halt its advance if the Syrian regime—and by extension, Iran and Russia—agrees to move the Kurds out of Afrin and Manbij to an area east of the Euphrates, and if it could also guarantee to control the Kurds’ actions thereafter. The Syrian government could then take control of areas that have been held by semi-autonomous Kurdish entities for several years. The Syrian Kurds might also agree to this arrangement—it would allow them to avoid even more bloodshed, and they could negotiate a role for themselves in the Syrian government. Iran, an Assad ally, might also accept an agreement because it would reverse Turkey’s advance east. Such a settlement wouldn’t end the Syrian war, but it would help temper the conflict in Afrin.
It remains unclear whether the pro-regime forces that were deployed to Afrin have made much progress. Turkey said it halted their advance by shelling them as they entered the province, promising to engage directly if the fighters helped defend the YPG.
-
https://www.wsj.com/articles/in-syria-a-russian-ex-commando-dies-in-the-shadows-1519727401
The official response:
https://www.polygraph.info/a/us-wagner-russia-syria-scores-killed/29044339.html
-
http://www.jordantimes.com/news/region/mosul-hundreds-fear-arrest-sharing-names-extremists
-
Earlier this month, Dubai hosted the World Government Summit, welcoming dignitaries from around the world for talks on global happiness. But amid all the discussions of more contented societies lurked a more pressing issue right on the Emiratis' doorstep: the prospect that 5 million workers are set to enter the Middle East's job market each year, even as gainful employment is in short supply. That, at least, was on the mind of Christine Lagarde, managing director of the International Monetary Fund, who once more exhorted Arab governments to address youth unemployment — and fast. No one was about to disagree. From Morocco to Iran, states and leaders of all sects, political systems and governing systems understand the threat posed by the region's high youth unemployment.
Although regional leaders agree on the need to increase employment, there is a good reason why youth unemployment remains stubbornly above the global average in the Middle East and North Africa. From building vibrant private sectors to finding the right jobs for youth to chasing technological silver bullets, many states have encountered hurdles in searching for a solution. Even if these countries do foster their private sectors and a technological boom, they will open themselves to market forces that they can scarcely control — a development that would challenge their already-strained social contracts with their people. Countries in the region are not blessed with decades to solve the issue of youth employment, but if they fail to find a resolution soon, the survival of these states will come into question.
-
https://nypost.com/2018/03/04/white-house-slams-russia-for-killing-innocent-civilians-in-syria/
-
Syria: Pentagon officials said on March 5 that the U.S.-backed offensive against the Islamic State in eastern Syria was on hold after the Syrian Democratic Forces withdrew from the fight to support the Syrian Kurds under attack in Afrin and other Syrian Kurdish positions on the Turkish border. IS has not gone away and still maintains control over areas in eastern Syria. Will IS seek to take advantage of this lull? More important, is there any way for us to determine how many SDF fighters have left the fight against IS to join the battle in Afrin or other parts of northern Syria? The Syrian Kurds may believe that the U.S. will give up on them and are therefore quitting the coalition against IS.
-
http://thehill.com/policy/cybersecurity/376998-wyden-presses-leading-us-voting-machine-manufacturer-on-potential
-
March 12, 2018
The Role of Militias in Iraq’s Strategy for Iran
By George Friedman and Xander Snyder
I am back from the 2018 Strategic Investment Conference, and as usual, it was an outstanding three days. I was particularly impressed by the panel discussion between Niall Ferguson and David McWilliams, who managed to disagree with wit and insight. McWilliams tied the future of the global economy to the poetry of W.B. Yeats—not an easy feat by any means. I also was surprised to hear China bull Louis Gave point out the grave issues facing China as Xi Jinping solidifies his dictatorship over the country—something my team and I have been pointing out for a long time. I am looking forward to revisiting these and other talks from SIC, and if you are interested in watching a recap, you can purchase a SIC Virtual Pass at a steep discount until March 18. Now, on to This Week in Geopolitics.
Iran’s activities in Syria get a lot of press, but less attention is paid to what Iran has done in Iraq to make those activities manageable. Iran operates a Shiite foreign legion that over the years has trained 200,000 fighters in Iran, Iraq, Lebanon, Syria, and Yemen. And one part of that foreign legion is the Popular Mobilization Forces in Iraq. The militias of the PMF all but control northern Iraq, which Iran has transformed into a land bridge to supply its other proxy groups in Syria and Lebanon.
Shaping Battle Plans
The term “Popular Mobilization Forces” was first used in 2013 by former Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki to refer to the Shiite militias in Iraq, but it wasn’t until the fall of Mosul in 2014 that the PMF really came into existence. As IS flooded into the city, Iraqi Shiite cleric Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Husseini al-Sistani issued a fatwa calling on all able-bodied men—regardless of sect—to mobilize and oppose the invasion. Around the same time, al-Maliki signed a decree mandating the formation of the PMF Commission, which administers Iraqi state funds for PMF groups. Iran also discreetly funds some of these groups, and many pro-Iran militia leaders today occupy important positions within the Iraqi government, giving them substantial control over funding decisions… and even battle plans.
According to a report by the Washington Institute for Near East Studies, an American think tank, there are 67 unique PMF militias, approximately 40 of which are pro-Iran in some form or another. Estimates of the total size of all PMF groups vary from 100,000 to 140,000 fighters. Most of these are Shiite fighters, but not all—approximately 25,000 to 30,000 are Sunnis. Minorities like Yazidis, Kurds, and Turkmen also fight in PMF militias.
In 2014, when IS started to advance on Mosul, the Iraqi security forces fled. American support was practically nonexistent, and the Iraqi government was defenseless. The Popular Mobilization Forces came to Mosul’s aid. During the PMF’s siege to retake Mosul, Hadi al-Amiri, Badr’s current leader and an Iraqi member of parliament, ordered a significant adjustment at the last minute.
Source: Geopolitical Futures (Click to enlarge)
The original plan was to enclose the city on three sides, leaving open an escape corridor to the west for civilians to flee. Of course, this would also allow IS fighters to escape in the direction of Syria, whose borders are only some 110 miles (180 kilometers) from Mosul along the road through Tal Afar. But Iran did not want IS fighters flooding into the Syrian theater and making the fight harder for Bashar Assad just as he was beginning to turn the tide of the civil war. Under al-Amiri’s revised plan, PMF forces completely enveloped Mosul, forcing IS to fight to the death. The late move also gave pro-Iran PMF groups control of more territory in northern Iraq, which solidified Iran’s supply lines through Iraq into northern Syria. The intervention of an Iraqi politician was therefore instrumental in securing Iran’s control of a northern land bridge through Iraq and into Syria.
PMF Factions
Broadly speaking, there are three main factions within the PMF: those loyal to Iran and Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, those loyal to Iraqi Shiite cleric Grand Ayatollah al-Sistani, and those loyal to Muqtada al-Sadr, another Iraqi Shiite cleric known for his populism. Notably, all three of these factions are majority Shiite, meaning the Sunni-Shiite fault line that often defines Middle Eastern conflicts hardly applies in this case. The more relevant division is between Iraqi nationalists and Iran loyalists. Groups that side with al-Sistani and al-Sadr are in the Iraqi nationalist camp.
The pro-Iran groups advocate and fight to further Iran’s interests regardless of whether they conflict with the interests of Iraq. In addition to the funding they get from the PMF Commission, they are usually funded by Iran and report either directly or indirectly to the Quds Force, the foreign expeditionary arm of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard. Further, they support Iran’s vision of a pan-Islamic state that is governed by Iran’s Islamic institutions and, importantly, report to Iran’s supreme leader (a religious-political theory known as wilayat al-faqih, or Rule of the Jurisprudent).
Other Shiite groups, such as those loyal to al-Sadr, advocate a system similar to that in Iran but with a strictly Iraqi nationalist flavor and its own leader. (Al-Sadr would be his own choice as Iraq’s version of supreme leader.) Al-Sistani’s focus, meanwhile, was on defeating the Islamic State, and in the past, he has called for the forces loyal to him to demobilize after beating IS. He has since seemed to backtrack, recognizing that PMF factions are perhaps the best way to resist Iranian influence, not to mention the risk of an IS resurgence.
Iran’s Strategy
Iran’s strategy in Iraq, like its strategy with Hezbollah in Lebanon, is to gradually exercise greater control over Iraqi state institutions. It has already succeeded to a degree, although Iran’s influence is not yet as pervasive in Iraq as it is in Lebanon, in part because of the sheer number of competing factions.
Iran wants a weak, but stable, Iraq. The first part is easy to pursue, but not without endangering the second part. Iran does not want Iraq to be strong enough and nationalistic enough to challenge it outright, which would put its supply routes to Syria and Lebanon at risk and could threaten it with another general war. But if Iran pushes too far, Iraqi state institutions could be imperiled, potentially providing the opportunity for a re-emergence of an IS-like group. Iran also risks triggering a concerted pushback by the Sunnis—either in the form of, again, an IS-like group, or simply staunch electoral opposition. And Iran doesn’t want Iraq to become so divided that secession of any group becomes a possibility. Secession would set a worrying precedent for Iran, which is facing its own domestic political challenges and difficulty in spurring more equitable economic growth.
An ideal situation for Iran is one in which, even if the Iraqi government is not fully under its control, it is weak enough to allow for the ongoing presence of pro-Iran militias. Even if Iran’s militia groups do not become as fully incorporated into the Iraqi government as Hezbollah is in Lebanon, Iran could use its groups to launch attacks in Syria and elsewhere in the Middle East.
-
Iran: Iran is building new military bases close to Russian bases to prevent Israel from being able to attack them, according to London-based Asharq al-Awsat, citing security sources in Tel Aviv. Russia is reportedly unhappy with the development, and it is causing friction between Russia and Iran. Let’s check the validity of the report. Have there been any recent Israel-Russia meetings, and have we seen any evidence of discord between Moscow and Tehran?
-
https://www.cnn.com/2018/03/29/politics/trump-withdraw-syria-pentagon/index.html
-
https://www.cnn.com/2018/03/29/politics/trump-withdraw-syria-pentagon/index.html
The official pointed to several challenges, including figuring out what to do with the some 400 foreign ISIS fighters currently being held by the US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces as one example of the obstacles to a US withdrawal.
*I have a solution for that. It involves a shovel and 400 rounds of ammunition.
-
https://gellerreport.com/2018/04/iran-pakistan-axis-evil.html/
-
http://www.breitbart.com/jerusalem/2018/04/03/caroline-glick-leave-syria-kurds/
-
The Syria Debate. How will Trump's desire for a quicker withdrawal from Syria end up squaring with plans by incoming national security adviser John Bolton and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo to build out a comprehensive containment strategy against Iran? Iran, Russia, the Syrian government and Turkey would all benefit in their own ways from the United States' early exit from this proxy battleground. And while the Islamic State has been defeated as a conventional force, the roughly 2,000 U.S. troops in Syria is still a manageable military commitment to deal with the potent insurgent threat Islamic State poses today. Suffice to say, this White House debate is far from over.
-
http://carolineglick.com/no-time-to-go-wobbly-on-syria/
-
second post
Syria: Country's Largest Airbase Attacked, Israel Likely Responsible
A breaking report from Stratfor on the latest strikes against a Syrian airbase -- the image shows the Middle East and North Africa highlighted in red.
As we said in our 2018 Second Quarter Forecast; "troops loyal to al Assad, along with their Iranian allies, will also risk coming face to face with Israel as they conduct operations against rebel positions in southern Syria. Israel has a narrow window in which it can strike at its longtime adversary, Lebanese militant group Hezbollah, and at Iranian targets across its northeastern border with Syria. Israel will probably take it, with the aim of preventing the entrenchment of Iranian-backed fighters along the edge of the Golan Heights."
Reports are emerging of an attack on the Tiyas (T4) Military Airbase in Syria. The facility, 100 kilometers (62 miles) northeast of Damascus, is operated in part by the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps and was reportedly struck April 8 — the early hours of April 9, local time. It is likely that the base was hit by cruise missiles as opposed to air-dropped munitions. Observers on the ground in Homs, immediately to the west of the airbase, recorded video showing missiles in the skies around the time of the attack, most likely Syria air defense responding to the attack. The strike follows the deployment of chemical weapons against the rebel enclave in Douma on April 7, which resulted in at least 48 fatalities. In a joint statement, U.S. President Donald Trump and French President Emmanuel Macron agreed to "coordinate a strong, joint response." The United Nations Security Council is meeting tomorrow to discuss the chemical attack. The Pentagon issued a statement denying U.S. or coalition involvement in the attack on the T4 airbase. A Syrian military source said that 8 'missiles' had been shot down over Syrian airspace, Al Ekhbariya reported. Almost a year ago to the day — April 6, 2017 — the United States launched a major cruise missile attack against Shayrat air base in Homs province.
Israel has a narrow window of opportunity to target Hezbollah and other strategic targets while the group is still exposed in the Syrian civil war and while Israel has strong backing from a White House that is particularly hawkish on Iran.
Though unconfirmed, there is a strong possibility that the Israel Defense Forces were behind the April 8 strike on the Tiyas airbase. This is the same airbase from which an Iranian drone entered Israeli airspace in February. An Israeli F-16 was shot down when it retaliated against the drone incursion by striking the base Feb 10. Israel claimed at the time that T4 was operated by the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps Quds Force and was the site of weapons transfers to allied militant groups, including Hezbollah. The strong and widespread condemnation of the April 7 chemical attack in Douma has provided Israel with a window to carry out the strike. And with the United States and France vowing a strong joint response to the chemical attack, more strikes in Syria may be in store. The rise in military frictions in Syria sets the scene for U.S. National Security Advisor John Bolton's first day on the job, April 9. Bolton is a strong advocate for a comprehensive containment strategy against Iran, including proxy battlegrounds such as Syria — a policy preference that is at odds with Trump's expressed interest in an early withdrawal from the country. As we wrote in our 2018 Annual and Second Quarter Forecasts, Israel has a narrow window of opportunity to target Hezbollah and other strategic targets while the group is still exposed in the Syrian civil war and while Israel has strong backing from a White House that is particularly hawkish on Iran.
-
How do you define a death wish? How about, “using chemical weapons in an area where their effects are likely to be recorded on camera, right before John Bolton becomes national security adviser”? You don’t tug on Superman’s cape, you don’t spit into the wind, you don’t pull the mask off the ol’ Lone Ranger, and you don’t mess around with The ‘Stache.
A month ago, then-private citizen John Bolton wrote:
Security Council weapons inspectors monitoring North Korea’s compliance with United Nations sanctions have reportedly concluded that, for several years, the North has been selling Syria materials for the production of chemical weapons. Additional sanctions violations also are reported, but none compare to the gravity of this evidence that Pyongyang is trafficking in weapons of mass destruction (WMD) technology.
Pyongyang’s dangerous behavior today dramatically foreshadows exactly what it will do with nuclear and ballistic-missile technology as soon as it thinks it is safe to do so.
The U.N. report and other sources also indicate considerable involvement by Iran, China and Russia in financing and transporting North Korea’s chemical and other weapons-related materials to Syria. The complex web of business dealings shows serious, perhaps insoluble, problems in the enforcement of international sanctions applicable to both Pyongyang and Damascus.
That certainly sounds like a man fed up with the status quo approach to the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction. And certainly President Trump’s Sunday morning tweets — the first to criticize Vladimir Putin directly by name(!) — suggest the commander-in-chief is appalled and outraged at the use of chemical weapons.
Meanwhile, someone — everyone suspects the Israelis — bombed Syrian airbase T4 early Monday morning, a base used by Syrian and Iranian-backed militias.
Former secretary of State John Kerry, in his farewell memo to America’s diplomats, touted the alleged success of destroying 1,000 tons of Syria’s chemical weapons stockpiles and then added, “unfortunately, other undeclared chemical weapons continue to be used ruthlessly on the Syrian people.” It’s been said that the easiest way to persuade President Trump to do something is to tell him Obama refused to take a particular course of action. Is someone like Bolton going to tell Trump that Obama refused to enact a lengthy campaign of punitive airstrikes, aiming to destroy any suspected Syrian chemical weapons stockpiles?
-
Second post
https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/why-trumps-threat-to-make-assad-pay-a-big-price-rings-hollow?mbid=nl_Daily%20040918&CNDID=50142053&spMailingID=13279562&spUserID=MjAxODUyNTc2OTUwS0&spJobID=1380774260&spReportId=MTM4MDc3NDI2MAS2
-
The Signs, Options and Risks of a U.S. Strike on Syria
Highlights
• The United States is building a military coalition to deter Syria's use of chemical weapons.
• This coalition may conduct a broader operation with a bigger target list than the U.S. strikes conducted in April 2017, but it would not be intended to change the civil war's frontlines.
• Like 2017's strikes, any potential operation will try to avoid Russian casualties and mitigate risk of further political escalation for the coalition.
________________________________________
The United States is building a coalition against Syria to respond to an alleged chemical weapons attack on April 7 against civilians and rebel forces in Douma, near Damascus. The primary objective of an operation against Syria will be to deter the further use of chemical weapons, something that a punitive missile strike launched last April by the United States did only temporarily.
This time around, however, a U.S.-led strike against Syria likely would be wider in scope, aiming not only to deter Damascus, but also to impair the Syrian government's ability to carry out chemical weapons attacks. But even with the support of a coalition, and even with a bigger operational scope, the same factors that constrained the United States in April 2017 would also constrain a military operation this time.
In our 2018 Second-Quarter Forecast, we wrote that, "Having failed to translate peace talks into an exit from the protracted civil war, Moscow will settle for a conflict frozen in place instead. De-escalation zones will offer a means to that end. But Syrian President Bashar al Assad and foreign patron Iran won't be willing to recognize these areas, throwing a wrench into Russia's plans." It is clear that even though Russia and other powers have sought to slow down the civil conflict in Syria through implementing de-escalation zones, the Syrian government is intent on fighting rebels in areas like Douma, in eastern Ghouta. The apparent use of chemical weapons as part of those anti-rebel operations is driving a U.S. desire to strike Syrian government assets to deter future chemical weapons attacks.
________________________________________
Middle East and North AfricaThe Syrian Civil War
There are, however, some important differences between last year and now. Last April, the United States acted alone when it launched cruise missiles at Syria's Shayrat air base, which was alleged to be the starting point for a sarin gas attack on the town of Khan Shaykhun. This time, a wider operation could involve multiple strikes across several days and would necessitate significantly more forces, including likely coalition members France and the United Kingdom. It is possible Saudi Arabia, Qatar and/or the United Arab Emirates could be involved in a hosting and facilitation capacity. More remotely, one or any of these states might involve themselves militarily. The Qatari emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani visited the White House on April 10. The inclusion within a coalition of Qatar and members of the Gulf Cooperation Council has a chance of creating limited military cooperation between the council's feuding states.
The operation could expand relative to the Shayrat airstrike to focus on degrading the Syrian government's capability to deliver chemical weapons. French President Emmanuel Macron gave greater weight to the possibility of a wider operation when he said on April 10 that France would target Syria's chemical facilities in a strike. The new round of strikes might include Dumeir, Marj Ruhayyil and Mezzeh air bases around Damascus, which have been instrumental to the government's offensive in eastern Ghouta. They also may include a wider range of other locations associated with Syria's chemical weapons program.
Because a coalition strike would include a widened target set, Stratfor is looking closely for the additional deployment of U.S. and allied forces to the Middle East. Regionally, the largest bases for potential use in an operation against Syria are the U.S. base at al-Udeid in Qatar and British military bases in Cyprus; increased military activity at these locations may indicate the scope of an impending attack.
A wider target set could necessitate basing and securing access for attack routes from Turkey, Jordan and Iraq, which would require negotiations to acquire their consent. While the United States is already in conversation with Iraq on the issue of a potential strike, Baghdad's close ties with Iran might force it to deny the United States and its partners a flight path through Iraq. Iraq's need to balance its interests between its ties to Iran and to the United States was clear after the 2017 Khan Shaykhun attack, when Iraq's government condemned the use of chemical weapons on Syrian civilians but questioned whether Damascus was culpable.
A wider strike also would likely require the involvement of more assets, such as aircraft carriers from the United States. The USS Harry S. Truman and its support ships are scheduled to leave Norfolk, Virginia, for the Mediterranean and Middle East on April 11, while the USS Theodore Roosevelt and its fleet may redeploy from the Pacific. It will take the USS Truman a week to arrive in the Mediterranean.
The broader the campaign against Syria the greater the risk to Russian forces in the country. The political fallout of Russian deaths from U.S.-led strikes will depend on if the Russians killed are military members or private military contractors. Private military contractors already have been killed by direct U.S. action in Syria with minimal fallout, leaving open the question of how Russia would react if regulars were to be killed in a U.S.-led campaign. The United States may attempt to mitigate this risk, as it did in April 2017, by warning Russia of impending strikes. The Russian presence in Syria — which is mostly concentrated in Tartous, Latakia and Damascus — also limits U.S. options to a defined set of targets. A more holistic campaign would increase the risk of collision with Russian forces. In contrast, striking Iranian forces in Syria has fewer implications for the United States. This was most recently evinced when Israel struck the T4 air base in Syria on April 8, killing several Iranians, without immediate retaliation from Iran.
Meanwhile, in the diplomatic realm, the United States has called for the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons to investigate this weekend's attack. The organization has already said it will send investigators to Douma (Russia and Syria are cooperating), but as was clear in 2017, the launch of an investigation will not necessarily delay military action. The longer any potential operation goes on, as well, the more likely that political constraints, such as the U.S. War Powers Act, come into play.
Here is what Stratfor wrote in April 2017 ahead of the U.S. cruise missile strike on the Shayrat air base. It remains applicable today:
Limited Punitive Strikes
A limited punitive strike on government targets is the least risky option and the one requiring the fewest resources. This option would be meant to demonstrate U.S. credibility and to deter further loyalist use of chemical weapons by striking a select number of Syrian government targets, including command and control facilities and other high-value and symbolic targets. Punitive strikes can come in varying levels of intensity, duration, and scope, but they are essentially designed to send a message rather than to remove the Syrian government's ability to use chemical weapons.
Target Set
In this scenario, there are more possible targets than the United States would be interested in attacking. Command and control facilities would likely be the priority, driving home the message that the Syrian government leadership, particularly the military leadership, would pay for the decision to use chemical weapons. However, Syrian President Bashar al Assad himself would probably not be targeted because a strike on the upper leadership levels could quickly draw the United States into a full conflict, which it would want to avoid under this scenario. Specific facilities that may be targeted are the airport from where the Syrian aircraft carried out the chemical weapons attack and the specific headquarters of the commander who launched the operation.
Degrade the Government's Chemical Weapons Delivery Capability
Should the United States decide to take the mission a step further, it could also attempt to degrade Damascus' ability to use chemical weapons — not just discourage their use. The command, control and communication facilities could still be targeted, but the operation would also need to strike at a much wider network of targets and potentially even their associated defenses.
Target Set
The mission would focus on the three main ways Damascus can deliver its chemical weapons: the air force, the ballistic missile force and the artillery force.
Although several government airfields have been neutralized or captured by the rebels, several others are still operational. There are at last six major Syrian airfields that are linked to the Syrian chemical weapons arsenal. To neutralize an airfield, the United States can crater the airfield, strike parked aircraft, destroy fuel and ammunition stores and disable ground control, radar and maintenance facilities.
Beyond the Syrian Air Force, other loyalist forces also possess large numbers of artillery and ballistic missiles that can be used to launch chemical weapons attacks. The United States however is highly unlikely to comprehensively go beyond air force targets since that would effectively commit the United States to a direct and full-scale war against the al Assad government, an option that is in all likelihood completely of the table at this point.
The Risk Factor
While the ranges of options available to the United States for a military response in Syria vary in risk, none of them are risk-free. The dangers are many and long-term, ranging from loss of material and personnel to the triggering of an active conflict with Russia. Even assuming that a strike was carried out in a seamless fashion with little to no collateral damage, there would undoubtedly be consequences for U.S. operations in Syria. For one thing, the likelihood that the Syrian loyalists would seek to interfere with U.S. flight operations, or even ground activity in the country, would greatly increase, and even the deconfliction process with Russia will not survive unscathed. The bottom line is: There are no easy military options in Syria, and even the best run operation will inevitably lead to escalation and a multiplication of the miscalculation factors already present in such a convoluted conflict.
-
some good points
except for Isis I don't know what we are doing here .
Haven't we seen this movie before. Another sequel of a disaster of a movie?
https://www.nationalreview.com/2018/04/trump-is-poised-to-make-a-series-of-terrible-mistakes-in-syria/
-
What are we doing there?
Keeping Iran from getting a land bridge to Hezbollah and to the Mediterranean, thus lessening the chance of war, possibly nuclear, with Israel. Also, this is good for Kurds.
Do we have a coherent, long term strategy?
Not that I can tell, though I suppose that it can be argued we are simply doing enough to turn it into a long term quagmire for Russia and Iran.
-
Crafty: "I suppose that it can be argued we are simply doing enough to turn it into a long term quagmire for Russia and Iran."
-----------------
Yes, maybe we learned a strategy from our enemies. We cannot win in Syria because we don't have a side to help that can win and govern. A quagmire for our enemies is preferable to allowing them to tie up the loose ends and rule the entire region.
The same strategy could have been applied in Iraq. Topple Saddam for the threat he posed and then topple the next regime when a new threat develops until they get it right. We tried to do something better than that in a humanitarian sense and it was expensive for us in lives and money, and not very effective.
Russia cannot afford a permanent intervention in the Middle East any more than we can and Iran needs to be countered on every front until they change their ways. America needs to use its scarce resources wisely. There aren't good options in Syria, just varying levels of bad ones. Doing nothing is one of the worst options. Crippling a murderous regime with good justification and support from allies, and retreating, looks like our best option.
If this is a war starting, he needs to go to Congress and it would likely die there.
-
The Syrian Tangle
Apr 13, 2018
By George Friedman
About a year ago, the Trump administration carried out a cruise missile strike on a Syrian airfield within 48 hours of a major chemical weapons attack on civilians, allegedly carried out by the Assad regime. The strike did some damage but nothing of such significance as to force the regime to change its strategy, either in general or on chemical weapons. Indeed, there was no expectation of change. The response was the military equivalent of a strong diplomatic note and was treated as such by the Syrians.
It’s almost been a week since the latest major chemical attack, this time targeting the Damascus suburb of Douma. Assad’s regime is again generally assumed to have been responsible. U.S. President Donald Trump vowed a short time later that there would be a “big price to pay” and, outside of an ambiguous tweet on April 12, has continued to threaten military action, yet this time he has held off on launching it. The more time goes by and the more the threat is repeated, the greater the anticipation and anxiety. By implying that the response will be more substantial than the previous one, Trump has allowed imaginations to run wild over what the U.S. might do.
Everyone is preparing. The Russians moved their ships in Syrian ports out to sea. A ship in a port is a relatively easy target, and the Russians seem unsure whether their ships might be targeted. This suggests the Russians are considering their ability to counterstrike against enemy assets in the eastern Mediterranean. There have also been widespread rumors in Arabic media that Bashar Assad and his family have left Damascus. A Russian lawmaker denied the rumors, but the mere existence of such rumors gives a sense of the regional tension over the American response. Turkey has renewed its call for Assad’s removal but asked the Americans and Russians to talk. British submarines set course for the region, something that the Russians chose to ridicule. The Saudi crown prince said Saudi Arabia would join any allied strike against Syria. The expectation seems to be that an attack could come at any time.
A Disturbing Threat
What’s odd about this is that earlier this month, before the chemical weapons attack, endless leaks claimed that the U.S. Department of Defense wanted the U.S. to take a more active role in Syria but that the president resisted. Trump publicly said he wanted a reduction of force in Syria. During his campaign and through much of his presidency, he has said he wanted to reduce U.S. responsibility for and exposure to global instability. In the wake of the chemical attack, however, Trump has reversed course. Through his repeated threats and delay, Trump has placed the United States back at the center of the Syria equation.
As tragic as it is, the chemical attack was not a critical moment. Assad’s regime has killed many of its people, including with chemical weapons. That part is not new. What may be moving things in this direction, though, is Iran’s role in Syria. Iran has long been active in the region, but since the defeat of the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, it has gotten more involved, placing substantial forces in Syria and Iraq, in addition to its usual support of proxies like Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in Gaza.
Shortly after the Douma attack, Israel launched a substantial airstrike on an Iranian base near Palmyra. This was not retaliation for the chemical attack; Israel has stayed away from that sort of action. Israel’s concern is rather with the transfer of advanced weaponry (including potentially the very chemical weapons the Assad regime is accused of using in Douma) to the Iranian proxy Hezbollah, as well as Iran’s construction of a permanent presence in Syria. Israel has always been able to count on distance to protect itself from Iran, but as Iran builds up its forces in Syria, it becomes more of a direct threat to Israel. Israel does not want to retaliate to such attacks but to stop them before they occur.
Russia in the Crossfire
Israel notified the U.S. of the airstrike in advance, and the U.S. had no objection because it sent the message that Washington wanted to send: Anyone using chemical weapons in Syria will be hit hard. At this point, the Russians and Syrians have insisted that they did not use chemical weapons. This is more than pro forma. The Russians know that if Iran in particular, but also Syria, use chemical weapons, then the Israelis and Americans will strike.
Russia is not in Syria to engage the Americans or the Israelis. The Russians do not have the forces in Syria to match the force the Israelis or Americans could bring to bear. Their purpose in the country was to gain political leverage with the U.S. by preserving Assad. An alliance with Iran strengthened Russia’s position, but this chemical attack threatens to draw the Russians into a conventional battle in the region that they are not prepared to fight. Russian supply ships would have to come through the Bosporus, and Turkey couldn’t be trusted to stand aside. Turkey does not want Assad in power, and his use of chemical weapons gives Turkey even more reason to pursue that objective.
This means the Russians need to defuse the situation. They have made it clear to the Israelis and Americans that they had nothing to do with the chemical attacks. But even if a low-level Syrian officer ordered the chemical attack on Douma, that would make Russia complicit in the use of chemical weapons, which would provide a legitimate reason for the Israelis or even an international coalition to strike sensitive targets in Syria. This leaves the Russians in a difficult position, and trying to distance themselves from the chemical attack does them no good. All it does is signal that Russia has no control over the Syrian regime, which also means it probably can’t control Iran. Therefore, Russia is now caught in a potential crossfire.
Looked at in this way, the more pressure exerted on the Russians, the more likely they are to feel the threat and modify their position. A threat of massive American action is even better than actual massive American action. A major U.S. attack could fail – or fail to impress. Instead, Trump has created serious uncertainty among all players in the region, save probably the Israelis. Syria, Iran and Russia do not know what, if anything, is coming, and of the three, Russia is in the weakest position. The Syrians have nowhere to go. The Iranians didn’t fight their way to this point to simply leave. But the Russians weren’t in Syria to fight a major conflict. They were there to show the flag. And that makes the threat of being drawn into a larger conflict unappetizing for Moscow.
Direct intervention is not an appealing option for Trump, but the creation of uncertainty is. Of course, uncertainty has a limited shelf life. A serious U.S. attack on Syria – one whose aim would be to degrade the Assad regime’s fighting ability, not just to slap Assad on the wrist – is unlikely, if still possible. The U.S. is happy to rely on Israel to keep attacking Iranian facilities from time to time. Trump can threaten, but the Israelis have no choice but to act.
Whatever happens next, the risk is relatively low for the United States. The same can’t be said for everyone else.
-
second post
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/12/us/politics/trump-syria-attack.html?emc=edit_th_180413&nl=todaysheadlines&nlid=496411930413
-
U.S. President Donald Trump confirmed that he authorized precision airstrikes April 13 (the early hours of Saturday, April 14, local time), targeting facilities in Syria linked to the government's chemical weapons program. Trump said that the strikes had been authorized in a combined effort with the United Kingdom and France, and that the operation against the Syrian government's chemical weapons capabilities would be sustained, integrating "all instruments of national power." British Prime Minister Theresa May issued a statement aligned with the White House statement, clarifying that the strikes were intended to be "limited and targeted" and are not about intervening in Syria's civil conflict. Pentagon officials confirmed that normal deconfliction channels with Russia were used, but that the Russians were not notified of target sites in advance and they did not attempt to intervene in the strikes, as had been expected.
A map of Syria showing locations of chemical weapons facilities attacked by U.S., French and British forces.
The scope of the operation is beyond a punitive strike, extending into a concerted effort to severely degrade the Syrian government's ability to manufacture and use chemical weapons.
Concurrent with Trump's speech, reports emerged from Syria of airstrikes targeting scientific research facilities in Damascus and Homs provinces. In addition, attacks were reported against the Mezzeh airfield — a major Syrian Republican Guard helicopter and air base and one of the installations linked to the government's operations targeting rebels in Eastern Ghouta. There were also reported strikes on the Jabal Qassioun mountain range overlooking Damascus, an area replete with army headquarters and artillery positions that supported the Eastern Ghouta campaign. State television also reported that the Syrian government launched anti-aircraft missiles over Damascus. The reported targeting aligns with a priority on striking facilities linked to chemical weapons. The target set was significantly expanded from the 2017 strike on the Shayrat airbase, which hit more than half a dozen targets, including air bases and chemical weapons sites. This indicates that the scope of the current operation is beyond a punitive strike, extending into a concerted effort to severely degrade the Syrian government's ability to manufacture and use chemical weapons.
Beyond the immediate tactical objective of degrading the Syrian government's ability to deliver chemical weapons — and a promise to sustain the military campaign as needed — Trump's speech touched on a broader strategic intent to challenge Iran's presence in Syria. The United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia and Qatar were named as allies in the effort to not only degrade the Syrian government's chemical weapons capability, but also to work against Iranian interests in the region. Qatar reportedly provided a staging ground for U.S. B1 bombers involved in the airstrikes.
-
Thanks for posting this. It looks like Trump and the allies got this just about right in a difficult situation. They did real damage; st back the program. Showed they could penetrate and hit anywhere, anytime they want. Got involvement from France and Britain and support from Merkel in Germany. Add to that what Strat reports, the Gulf states are part of the alliance.
It was a 'measured' response. Facilities destroyed and no civilian casualties? More than that would have required authorization from Congress. We aren't entering the Syrian war any more now than we were before these attacks. We just aren't sitting by and letting rogue regimes develop and use deadly chemical WMD without consequence.
One early report turned out to be fake news. Russia claimed it shot down 71 of the missiles when they didn't hit any of them or even try. In that sense, perhaps Russia also cooperated in letting us execute a limited strike right that was bound and determined to happen - inside of what they consider their jurisdiction. A message was sent to Putin as well as to Assad.
A message was sent to Un as well. Those after the attack pictures could be his facilities with not much more than the push of a button. It would cost us not much more than 0.0% of our GDP to set back his weapons and palace building programs a decade or two.
Face the Nation host Margaret Brennan confronted Nikki Haley this morning with a graphic showing how the US went from allowing thousands per year of Syrian refugees to just 11 last year or this year and asking why the US isn't doing more. Outside of Washington that is seen as evidence this President acting to protect us.
-
Check out the CNN Pravda woman's face!!!
https://www.facebook.com/derekmke/videos/599007993778650/?hc_ref=ARSqp5lz9pDNj6pWhzgLO-Z6ISIbzh-Wi6DqM-qT-lr3m3nqQCklQIwCLQwxHS0yggY
-
yeah the Democr :wink:at propaganda news anchor tried to spin the praise for Trump into a negative and instead of getting him to go along with he threw it right back in her God darn face . FU CNN!
-
https://www.haaretz.com/middle-east-news/syria/full-text-french-declassified-intelligence-report-on-syria-gas-attack-1.5995544
-
Haven't had a chance to give this a proper read yet, but it looks interesting:
https://arcdigital.media/america-bombed-syria-but-what-does-the-u-s-want-1bffedaa6cf5
-
By Jacob L. Shapiro
The West Rebukes Russia in Syria
Western powers made clear that they would hold Russia partly responsible for Assad’s actions.
Late last week, the U.S., U.K. and France launched coordinated missile strikes on select regime targets in Syria. It was the second time the Trump administration had ordered strikes on the Assad regime, and only two things distinguish last week’s strikes from the ones that were carried out a year ago: Twice as many missiles were fired in the most recent attack, and the U.K. and France participated. But the strikes will not change the Syrian war. They were driven mainly by domestic politics in the three countries involved, which have emphasized both that regime change is not their goal and that Russia is partly responsible for Bashar Assad’s actions.
Four Powers
There are now four global powers intervening in Syria: Russia, the U.S., the U.K. and France. Russia ventured south to distract from problems at home. The U.S., which intervened initially to try to destroy the Islamic State, has struck Assad twice, mainly because President Donald Trump does not want to be compared to former President Barack Obama, who didn’t enforce his own red line on Assad’s use of chemical weapons. The U.K. has latched on to Russia as Europe’s boogeyman and is using both diplomatic expulsions and now airstrikes against a Russian client state to distract from contentious Brexit negotiations, which as recently as a few months ago threatened to bring down Prime Minister Theresa May’s government. France, which is dealing with crippling labor unrest and a president, Emmanuel Macron, with rapidly declining popularity ratings, wants to hide what everyone already knows: France has become Germany’s junior partner in the EU.
All four are equally unprepared for a war over Assad’s alleged use of chemical weapons. The U.S. is desperately searching for a way to leave Syria. The U.K. and France are hardly willing to deploy the type of military force that would be necessary to bring down the Assad regime, much less militarily confront Russia. Russia’s Syria deployment has always been limited, concentrated mostly on air assets to help the Assad regime defeat rebels who can’t challenge Russia in the skies. This is not Desert Storm, nor is it a prelude to World War III. It is foreign powers doing what they’ve always done in the Middle East: pushing pawns around on a chessboard to make a point to each other and even to themselves.
Meanwhile, the real players in this war were remarkably quiet over the weekend. Israel, which has bombed Assad regime targets and Iranian targets in Syria multiple times, reportedly supplied some intelligence on Syrian chemical weapons facilities but otherwise did not participate in the expedition. (A blast at a Hezbollah base south of Aleppo over the weekend appears to have been a weapons depot explosion and not an Israeli air attack, as many news outlets reported.) Turkey was busy mediating between Russia and the United States right up until the missiles started falling. Iran called the attacks a crime but has confined its vengeance to rhetorical flourishes thus far.
The Syrian civil war may yet morph into a much larger conflagration – but if that happens, it will be because of a clash of Turkish-Iranian interests, not because of limited Western airstrikes on Assad’s chemical weapons facilities. While Russia and the U.S. exchange condemnations at the U.N., the Assad regime will continue to mop up the opposition; Turkey will continue its incursion into northern Syria; Iran will continue building bases and strengthening proxies throughout the country; Israel will apply its deterrence strategy to a much larger target; and the Syrian Kurds will inch closer to the inevitable moment that they are hung out to dry by their patron – the U.S. – which no longer has a use for them. The sooner the threat of Western airstrikes abates, the sooner the belligerents can get back to the real fighting.
An Anti-Russia Coalition
But Western powers insist that they will continue to intervene so long as the Assad regime continues to use chemical weapons. Something here has never quite added up. There is little publicly available proof that chemical weapons were used in Douma. The U.S. has said it believes they were, but its track record when it comes to evaluating the presence of weapons of mass destruction in the Middle East leaves something to be desired. Furthermore, coalition airstrikes started shortly before investigators from the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons arrived in Damascus. The timing of the Western strikes – which were delayed to give Russia an opportunity to remove its forces from harm’s way – is thus confusing, considering that launching the strikes before the investigation could be carried out gives Russia a useful talking point.
Moreover, there is little reason for the Assad regime to use such weapons. It’s too easy to explain this away by insisting that Assad is just a monster – he might be a monster, but he’s been an exceedingly pragmatic one up to this point, and there’s little reason to think that has changed. Assad and his patrons have no motive for using chemical weapons in this case. The regime is on the cusp of securing Damascus – why engage in a chemical attack on a mostly defeated opposition? Using chemical weapons offers little in the way of a military advantage and gives Assad’s enemies a useful pretext to launch attacks. Russia is trying to leave Syria and has been trying to move toward a negotiated settlement for months. Iran’s position in Syria is menacing but weak – it needs time to establish a robust presence and secure its long supply lines – and becoming a Western target is detrimental to its agenda.
Amid this confusion, the one thing that can be said for certain is that an anti-Russia coalition has been defined. The Western strikes did not change the balance of power in the Syrian war, and indeed, they have relatively little to do with the conflict that is grinding Syria into dust and ruin. It seems more likely at this point that the strikes were a political statement against Russia. (Germany was reportedly offered an opportunity to join the strike, but it has a more complicated relationship with Russia than the others do and didn’t want to engage in direct military action against a Russian ally.) The U.S., the U.K. and France may have bombed chemical weapons facilities in Syria, but they also went out of their way to demonize Russia as a menace to the liberal international order.
Our forecast for this year didn’t anticipate that the West and Russia would be clashing to this extent. Russia wants a balance of power in the Middle East, one that keeps Turkey and Iran fighting each other indefinitely, preventing both from becoming powerful enough to challenge Russian interests in its desired spheres of influence. The Western powers also want a balance of power. But old habits die hard. Cold War comparisons, however wrongly applied to the current situation, are understandably compelling in a morally ambiguous conflict. Domestic imperatives also sometimes outweigh international ones. Trump wants to look strong, May needs Europe focused on foreign threats instead of the border with Northern Ireland, and Macron is desperate for a political win – and all can be had at the low cost of bombing insignificant targets in a Middle Eastern pariah. As for Russian President Vladimir Putin, it’s now Moscow versus the West – and a great deal of economic dysfunction can be forgiven if it is suffered in defense of Mother Russia.
There are two wars being fought here: a military war for Syria, and a public relations war between Russia and the West. The airstrikes in Syria were salvos in the latter. The former has no end in sight.
-
The White House is reportedly seeking to build an Arab force to replace the U.S. military presence in northeast Syria and help stabilize the area after the Islamic State is defeated, The Wall Street Journal reported April 17. U.S. President Donald Trump's administration has requested billions of dollars from Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates to restore northern Syria. In March, Trump said he wants to withdraw the approximately 2,000 U.S. troops deployed in Syria, which would likely damage U.S. credibility, impact the fight against the Islamic State and weaken Washington's ability to counter Iran in the region.
-
The White House is reportedly seeking to build an Arab force to replace the U.S. military presence in northeast Syria and help stabilize the area after the Islamic State is defeated, The Wall Street Journal reported April 17. U.S. President Donald Trump's administration has requested billions of dollars from Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates to restore northern Syria. In March, Trump said he wants to withdraw the approximately 2,000 U.S. troops deployed in Syria, which would likely damage U.S. credibility, impact the fight against the Islamic State and weaken Washington's ability to counter Iran in the region.
Doug: If he succeeds in building the coalition and stopping the enemy, our credibility won't be lost.
---------------
Walter Russell Mead, American Interest / WSJ 4/16:
Both Russia and Iran are overstretched. They suffer from weak economies and parasitical state structures. Their populations are not in love with their Syrian adventures. Despite recent increases, oil prices remain well below the level they require to fund their ambitious foreign policies while meeting domestic needs. Expanded sanctions against both Russia and Iran are gaining support in Europe. Simultaneously, Arab-Israeli cooperation against Iran continues to gel. A coalition of front-line states, promoted and supported by the United States, may ultimately address the Iran problem in ways no outside power ever could.
The Trump agenda has a real chance of success in the Middle East—but only if the Trump administration can master the dark arts of alliance management. That may seem unlikely, but if there is one thing we have learned about this president, it is that he can be tactically flexible in pursuit of his goals.
-
Please print entire WR Mead article!
-
Please print entire WR Mead article!
"Rather than seek to impose an order of its own design on the turbulent region, Washington would simply ensure that no other power or group of powers succeeds in dominating the Middle East."
"A coalition of front-line states, promoted and supported by the United States, may ultimately address the Iran problem in ways no outside power ever could."
-----------------------
Along with VDH, WRM is my favorite Democrat.
Trump’s Realist Syria Strategy
By Walter Russell Mead, American Interest, WSJ
April 16, 2018
As the echoes from President Trump’s second Syrian missile strike died away, many observers criticized the administration for lacking a coherent strategy. There is more than a little truth to the charge. The drama and disarray of this often-dysfunctional White House does not suggest a Richelieu at work. The presidential Twitter feed has not always been consistent or levelheaded on the topic of the Syrian war, and it is hard to reconcile Mr. Trump’s denunciations of Bashar al-Assad and his warnings about Iranian aggression with his apparent determination to remove U.S. troops from Syria as quickly as possible.
The tangled politics of last week’s missile strikes illustrate the contradictions in Mr. Trump’s approach. The president is a realist who believes that international relations are both highly competitive and zero-sum. If Iran and Russia threaten the balance of power in the Middle East, it is necessary to work with any country in the region that will counter them, irrespective of its human-rights record. The question is not whether there are political prisoners in Egypt; the question is whether Egypt shares U.S. interests when it comes to opposing Iran.
Yet the rationale for the missile strikes was not realist but humanitarian and legalistic: Syria’s illegal use of chemical weapons against its own people demanded or at least justified the Western attacks. For any kind of activist Middle East policy, Mr. Trump needs allies—including neoconservatives and liberal internationalists at home and foreign allies like Britain and France abroad—and the realpolitik approach he wishes to pursue would alienate them.
Nevertheless, as is often the case with this unconventional administration, a pattern if not quite a strategy is beginning to emerge—one defined as much by what the president rejects as by what he seeks to accomplish. The administration’s approach looks and often is erratic, but beneath the rants and the posturing Mr. Trump seems to be working toward an approach to the Middle East that reflects the interplay of American politics and interests in a strangely coherent way.
Mr. Trump sounds inconsistent at least in part because his choices are so unappealing. Iran’s Russia-assisted march toward regional dominance leaves the U.S. caught between two courses. Letting Iran have its way in Syria opens the door to a much more dangerous confrontation between Israel and its Arab partners on one side and Tehran on the other. But denying Iran a victory in Syria almost certainly would mean major American military commitments, as well as another extended exercise in nation-building as the U.S. tries to cobble together some kind of viable, nonradical government in Damascus.
Mr. Trump recoils from both choices on both political and policy grounds. Standing back while Russia and Iran run the table in the Middle East would be bad policy and bad politics—but so, too, would rushing into another Iraq-style military and political effort to stabilize Syria. The goal is to avoid bailing out without getting sucked in.
Mr. Trump may be unintentionally arriving at a form of offshore balancing. Rather than seek to impose an order of its own design on the turbulent region, Washington would simply ensure that no other power or group of powers succeeds in dominating the Middle East. When the balance of power appeared secure, the U.S. would have a low profile in the region; but when, as now, the balance appeared to be threatened, the U.S. would be more forward-leaning, working with partners who share its concerns to contain the ambitions of revisionist powers. Mr. Trump also seeks compensation from the countries whose independence America supports; rich allies like Saudi Arabia and Kuwait should help pay for their defense.
For Mr. Trump, this is a common-sense approach to a thorny problem, and while the pressures of events—and the united efforts of his advisers—may sometimes cause him to deviate, his inner compass always returns to this course.
Mr. Trump’s approach carries its share of risks, but its failure is by no means assured. Both Russia and Iran are overstretched. They suffer from weak economies and parasitical state structures. Their populations are not in love with their Syrian adventures. Despite recent increases, oil prices remain well below the level they require to fund their ambitious foreign policies while meeting domestic needs. Expanded sanctions against both Russia and Iran are gaining support in Europe. Simultaneously, Arab-Israeli cooperation against Iran continues to gel. A coalition of front-line states, promoted and supported by the United States, may ultimately address the Iran problem in ways no outside power ever could.
The Trump agenda has a real chance of success in the Middle East—but only if the Trump administration can master the dark arts of alliance management. That may seem unlikely, but if there is one thing we have learned about this president, it is that he can be tactically flexible in pursuit of his goals.
-
Superb piece! Please post in Foreign Policy thread as well. TY
-
Mohammed Haydar Zammar has been accused of recruiting some of the September 11 hijackers.
https://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/244655
Kurds keep reminding us who are friends are in the region.
-
Nice synopsis here of the situation, issues and implications.
https://www.hoover.org/research/syria-quagmire
Basically they agree with us.
Non-proliferation is over if Iran goes nuclear, and especially dangerous if they get the land bridge to the Mediterranean.
Old alliances fading, new ones needed.
Chemical weapons treaty dead if not enforced.
Genocide has been legalized.
"Over half a million people have been killed with several million displaced or in refugee flight through the region and beyond, amounting to the most extensive human disaster since the Second World War."
Kurds deserve a state but that invites war on all fronts.
Send a message to the wrongdoers. Tomahawk cruise missiles and carrier-based airstrikes - which we did.
And then back to my NHL referee strategy. Let the parties fight until the system collapses into exhaustion before stepping in to break it up. But even that does not stop the refugee crisis that is killing the west.
-
https://israelunwired.com/iranians-killed-in-strike-on-syrian-base/
-
Iran, Russia: After Russia issued a statement calling for the removal of all foreign bases from Syria, Iran said that it rejects Russia’s position and that its bases in Syria are there at the Syrian government’s request. It’s not clear what Russia was hoping to accomplish with its statement. Has it made a deal with Israel or Turkey?
-
Iran, Russia: What’s at Stake in the Syrian Civil War
May 23, 2018
By Xander Snyder
The era of foreign intervention in Syria is coming to an end – at least that’s what Russian President Vladimir Putin said when Bashar Assad, Syria’s president, visited Sochi last week. Granted, Putin’s statement was ambiguous – “in connection with the significant victories … of the Syrian army … foreign armed forces will be withdrawn from the territory of the Syrian Arab Republic” – but Russia’s Syria envoy clarified the next day that Putin was, in fact, calling on all militaries to vacate the country.
Needless to say, this didn’t sit well with Iran, which has been cooperating with Russia in support of the Assad government. Iran rejected Russia’s announcement, insisting that it deployed its military at the behest of the Syrian government. Iran has its own reasons for being in Syria, of course, regardless of what the government in Damascus wants. It means to establish greater command of the Middle East and acquire land access to Lebanon and sea access to the Mediterranean. Even if this territory isn’t under its direct authority, Iran wants to keep Israel and Turkey from encroaching on its borders. In the process, Iran, the de facto leader of Shiite Muslims, hopes to quell Sunni resistance, which, as the Islamic State showed, can be a potent threat.
Russia shares none of these goals with Iran. The two may tactically work toward the same goal – keeping Assad in power – but cooperation between Russia and Iran has always been a marriage of convenience, not a true alliance. Russia needs to prevent any one power from controlling too much of the Middle East. A state that eliminates competition in the Middle East would be able to look north, to the South Caucasus, a critical buffer region for Russia. Any power that can gain a foothold in the South Caucasus threatens the North Caucasus, which, in turn, threatens the Russian heartland. Russia must keep Middle Eastern powers competing against one another if it is to prevent any single actor from cementing a position of strength in the South Caucasus.
Russia and Iran’s interests also diverge on oil. The government in Moscow relies heavily on oil and natural gas revenue, so any increase in the price of oil benefits Russia. Iran has a relatively low fiscal breakeven point for producing oil – it can turn a profit when oil is roughly $55-65 per barrel – so it could afford to produce more to keep prices low. Now that the Iran nuclear deal is all but dead, uncertainty around Iranian production has driven up oil prices, giving Russia a little more breathing room. In other words, sanctions on one U.S. enemy, Iran, benefit another, Russia.
Then there’s Israel, with which Russia has friendly relations. Iran’s expansion has begun to invite attacks from Israel, which objects to having an Iranian presence so close to its northeastern border. While Russia is content to bomb rebels in Syria who have no real way to defend against air attacks, it is far more apprehensive about getting caught up in a war against a country with a powerful military and strong motivations to intervene. Israel’s fight isn’t with Russia, and Russia’s isn’t with Israel. But Russia and Iran’s joint support of Assad nevertheless risks pitting Russia against a country it has no interest in fighting.
(click to enlarge)
This explains why Russian declined to retaliate after Israel attacked Russian anti-aircraft installations controlled by the Syrian military. In fact, Moscow didn’t even mention the incident. Sure, the installations in question were outdated, but the fact that Russia decided against selling Syria a more modern air-defense system, the S-300, a day after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s visit to Moscow illustrates Russia’s desire to avoid providing Syria with the capability to damage Israel’s air force.
But for all the geostrategic reasons behind Russia’s intervention in Syria, Moscow also had a far simpler reason for propping up Assad: It needed to show the Russian people that, despite ongoing hardships, Russia had re-emerged as a global power. After 25 years of losing ground to NATO and the West, it needed to prove that it could counter the United States. It needed to test the preparedness of its military, which has undergone a number of reforms since its 2008 war with Georgia. (For Russia, the war was a success, but it exposed some weaknesses in its air force and in its missile capabilities.)
In Syria, a successful show of Russian force requires a victory and an exit strategy. Claiming that the Syrian military is strong enough to fend for itself, thanks largely to Russian assistance, fits with this narrative. It enables Russia to save face despite the fact it has been in Syria months after it declared its mission accomplished.
It’s unclear when, exactly, Moscow intends to withdraw its forces. When it does, Iran will be left with only a few options. It can continue to support Assad by spending more on the Syrian war, and begin to commit its air force, which, compared with Russia’s, is dated and dilapidated. Spending more is a difficult proposition for a country in the throes of protests over economic issues.
Otherwise, Iran could maintain its current level of support of Assad, but if Russia were to withdraw, Iran would be faced with Israel in its south and Turkey, which also has a modern air force, to its north. Without Russia’s backing, rebels, especially those who benefit from Turkish air support, would stand a better chance of retaking territory that they had lost to Assad.
Last, Iran could reduce its presence in Syria and instead focus on gaining greater control of Iraq, which is much closer to home anyway. That, however, presents its own set of challenges, and in any case risks opening up Syrian territory currently serving as buffer space to be taken by Turkey.
Though Russia hasn’t yet left Syria, its departure will put even more pressure on Iran and open the Middle East up to Turkey. Russia just needs a public relations victory. Iran’s battle is existential, and there are no clear paths to exit in sight. Nevertheless, fissures in the Iran-Russia relationship, even if just rhetorical, reflect the weakness of Russia’s position in the Middle East.
The post Iran, Russia: What’s at Stake in the Syrian Civil War appeared first on Geopolitical Futures.
-
https://www.nationalreview.com/2018/06/iraqi-christians-say-trump-administration-not-serious-ally/
Those in Iraq who struggle to restore their ancient homes now that ISIS has been expelled express bitterness about an administration that promised them much.
Mosul, Iraq — It’s not the crushed buildings, open bomb craters, or even the bloodstained floors where the bodies of ISIS fighters have been rotting since the liberation of the Old City of Mosul that shock especially. It is the clumps of beard hair in the ruined churches. ISIS fighters used most of the 45 churches in the old city for shelter, target practice, and torture and, in the case of the Dominican church, as a place to hang their victims from inside the bell tower. As the battles intensified, many fighters shaved off their regulation long beards, which ISIS required of every man in Mosul (all of them were Muslims at that point), fighter or not. Rather like former Nazi troops shedding their uniforms before the approaching Allies, the soldiers of the caliphate thought they would evade capture if they got rid of their facial hair. The clumps were everywhere as we walked through the destroyed churches last week. The many dead bodies of ISIS fighters found in the desecrated churches are evidence that, for some, the barbershop escape plan came too late.
With my traveling companion, Catholic journalist Edward Pentin, I got to within a few miles of Mosul last year as the bombing intensified. We reached the abandoned Christian town of Karemlash. The damage was bad: ISIS had burned many of the houses and rigged them with IEDs, and, of course, desecrated both of the churches — in every church they captured in Iraq, every visible cross or image was defaced.
We made that visit to assess the damage and the possibilities, if any, for the displaced Christian population of the Nineveh Plain to return. People seemed optimistic, if security could be guaranteed and aid were granted, that they would go back and rebuild their houses and their lives.
This time, as we were driven around the Old City last month, getting out and walking gingerly through the rubble, which still concealed bodies and bombs, the Iraqi police general who was guaranteeing our safety kept turning to us and saying, “Mosul very good, yes?” Unfortunately not. The rather sinister fellow in the dark glasses and heavily dyed black hair was attempting to show us that life was back to normal in Mosul, but that is far from the case. The city still has no bishop or priest, and only ten Christian families have returned, from a population of more than 3,000 families in 2014. The Syriac Orthodox archbishop, who has not come back, has reportedly told his people to follow his example.
Across the Nineveh Plain, where Christians trace their roots back to the time of the Apostles, many Christians have returned nonetheless, some to the region’s formerly largest Christian town, Qaraqosh, but only because they are employees of the Iraqi government, which would not pay their salaries otherwise. The people we spoke to, in numerous villages and towns, so optimistic after the defeat of ISIS last year, are now living in a kind of no man’s land. Their houses are slowly being repaired, but there are no jobs, and the security is precarious. Like the many Germans who after World War II took pains to deny, downplay, or deflect any involvement of theirs with the Nazis, the Christians’ neighbors in Mosul today, who stole their houses and welcomed the ISIS fighters warmly, would now have us believe that they were only putting on a show of support, to protect themselves. Perhaps the barbershop strategy works.
“We are so weak,” one priest told me, “and no one in the West will protect us.” It’s not only the danger that ISIS sleepers and supporters could reemerge. Christians are also caught in the escalating tensions between the Iraqi government and the Kurdish desire for independence. The Shabak, a Shia group, is now surrounding the formerly Christian town of Bartella, buying houses and changing the demography of the area. The whole Nineveh Plain is now called “the disputed territories.”
“Disputed by who?” a parish priest experiencing the pressures of demographic change said to me. “We have always lived here. Show me the Kurdish cemeteries, if they claim this is their land.”
One senior cleric in Iraq told me wearily that it might be better to stop holding conferences full of beautiful words and to start taking action to alleviate the crisis.
The despair becomes most palpable when the conversation turns to the question of U.S. assistance, or the dearth thereof,. During the 2016 presidential election, candidate Donald Trump made much of his support for persecuted Christians throughout the world. I was in Iraq before the election and again last March, not long after Trump took office. Every person we met, priest or layperson, supported Trump, loathed Obama, and believed good things were coming. Now, they say, it was all talk, empty words.
In May 2017, Vice President Pence declared that the defense of persecuted Christians would be a “foreign-policy priority” for the administration: “America will support these people in their hour of need.” Last October, to great acclaim from many Christian groups, he announced that the U.S. would bypass the United Nations and direct funds through faith-based groups and USAID (United States Agency for International Development). That aid has yet to appear. Obama holdovers, sources tell me, are directing funds to “dialogue programs” on the Nineveh Plain. It is unlikely that people who lost their homes, whose churches were used for torture, and whose dead were exhumed and decapitated are ready for teatime diplomacy.
–– ADVERTISEMENT ––
Comments
Meanwhile, the number of Middle Eastern Christians admitted to the United States in 2017 dropped, because of the administration’s restrictions on immigration from various Muslim-majority countries. One senior cleric in Iraq told me wearily that it might be better to stop holding conferences full of beautiful words and to start taking action to alleviate the crisis.
Even amid the broken buildings and crushed bodies in Mosul, and in every town we visited, we brought a smile, and sometimes laughter, to the battered Christians there when we mentioned how ISIS fighters who returned to Europe were being received there. Rehabilitation, jobs, and apartments for the jihadis. For the persecuted Christians, not so much. Such grim amusement is about the only kind available to them these days.
===================================================================================================
https://www.wsj.com/articles/help-is-on-the-way-for-middle-eastern-christians-1528931329
By Mark Green
June 13, 2018 7:08 p.m. ET
32 COMMENTS
When Islamic State captured the Iraqi town of Telskuf four years ago this week, terrorists desecrated the local Chaldean Catholic church and beheaded congregants on the altar. The slaughter was only one episode from the genocide ISIS waged on Christians and other vulnerable religious groups across its so-called caliphate, nearly exterminating some of the region’s most ancient faith communities.
The U.S. stands with the persecuted religious and ethnic communities of the Middle East. And the federal government won’t rest until these oppressed people receive the help they need to thrive again. That’s the message I will deliver personally to Christian and Yazidi leaders when I visit Iraq this month. On behalf of President Trump, I will assure them that American assistance will soon turn from an inconsistent trickle into a steady stream.
President Trump already has directed U.S. armed forces to finish the fight against the ISIS barbarians, and today the group no longer holds territory in Iraq. But as Vice President Pence said at this year’s religious broadcasters convention, “Victory in combat is only half the battle.” The president directed his administration last October to end its support for United Nations programs that fail to provide aid for every group in need. Now, the U.S. Agency for International Development, which I lead, is charged with providing more effective and direct support to persecuted religious and ethnic minorities.
Four days after Vice President Pence announced the shift, I directed USAID to develop aid projects that address the challenges facing Christians, Yazidis and other minority groups in the region. To this end, USAID has redirected more than $60 million in humanitarian and stabilization assistance to provide infrastructure support and lifesaving aid in Northern Iraq. The money has helped rebuild schools, hospitals, power stations and wells, and eased the transition of those returning home.
In too many cases, however, assistance has taken too long to arrive. We have yet to reach many of the communities with the greatest need. Decisions made by the previous administration, such as an overreliance on the U.N. and an inadequate appreciation for the work accomplished by faith-based organizations, have proved hard to overcome. And the often rigid processes of federal bureaucracy have slowed implementation further.
At the direction of the president and vice president, USAID is now redoubling its effort to swiftly deliver and distribute the aid that Iraq’s persecuted religious communities desperately need. The delays must end, and they will.
Every day of delay brings persecuted communities that much closer to extinction. In Iraq alone, nearly 90% of Christians have fled in the past 15 years, emptying entire villages that had stood for more than a thousand years. The Yazidi population has been similarly decimated. Without immediate additional support, these groups may be forced to continue their unprecedented exodus, perhaps never to return to their ancient homes.
After my visit to Iraq, I will present President Trump with a comprehensive assessment of any roadblocks that prevented the speedy distribution of aid. I also will provide a detailed plan to expedite the delivery of crucial assistance to the most vulnerable communities.
Congress also has a crucial role to play. A more flexible budget and eased regulations would make USAID more effective in fulfilling its mission. And organizations across the federal government must continue working with Iraq to increase its order and stability, which are essential to the delivery of American aid.
The time to act is now. Christians, Yazidis and other persecuted religious communities in the Middle East have suffered unspeakable harm for too long. Their plight has touched the hearts of the American people and stirred this nation to step up with compassion and conviction. President Trump promised to provide them with the help they need to rebuild their communities and restore their hope, and we will work tirelessly to break down any barrier that stands in the way.
The ancient faith communities in Iraq and across the Middle East are counting on us. We will not let them down.
Mr. Green is USAID administrator.
-
http://www.breitbart.com/jerusalem/2018/06/27/caroline-glick-trump-putin-syria/
-
Note the last two lines here!
http://www.jordantimes.com/news/region/air-raids-hit-more-syrian-towns-knock-out-hospitals-%E2%80%94-monitor
-
http://www.jordantimes.com/news/region/syrian-refugees-fear-conscription-prevents-return-home
https://israelunwired.com/syrian-refugees-running-to-israeli-border-fleeing-brutal-assad-attacks-on-daraa/
-
https://israelunwired.com/israel-strikes-syrian-targets-as-iranian-general-warns-israel-of-islamic-army-in-syria-waiting-to-destroy-israel/
-
Russia's Iraq War
Russia is showing signs of mission creep in Syria.
In September 2015, Russia began a military campaign to support the regime of Bashar Assad in Syria. Russia had a number of goals for the campaign: to crush the Islamic State, preserve a key ally in the Middle East and appear strong to the Russian public. But nearly three years later, the war continues, and Russia hasn’t found a way out of it. As jihadist groups in the country appear to be weakening, Russia’s motivations for staying in Syria are shifting. It wants to establish a regional balance of power and ensure that, when the civil war subsides, it still has ways to limit the reach of its historical adversaries – mainly Turkey but also Iran. Assad will play a role in this, but it is looking ever more likely that the Syrian Kurds will as well.
Iran and Russia’s Diverging Interests
Russia’s position in Syria is inevitably affected by another stalwart Assad ally, Iran. With substantial influence over the regimes in Iraq and Syria and its support for Houthi rebels in Yemen and Hezbollah in Lebanon, Iran has a formidable presence throughout the Middle East. This threatens to disrupt the balance of power that Russia wants to see in the region. But Iran is facing pressure at home, with the unraveling of the nuclear deal and protests since January over the struggling currency and deteriorating economic conditions. And even though they support the same side in Syria, Iran’s losses could be Russia’s gains. U.S. sanctions on Iran, set to take effect in early August, could give Moscow a larger share of the international oil market. Though sanctions could limit Iran’s capacity to support Assad due to declining finances, the Syrian regime’s military needs are likely to change anyway, from offensive to defensive capabilities, as it shifts its focus from retaking territory to holding territory. The need for Iranian support, therefore, may become less critical than it once was.
(click to enlarge)
The remaining pockets of anti-Assad resistance are in the southwestern province of Daraa and the northern province of Idlib. Even if Iranian support diminishes, Russia is prepared to offer Assad air support in these battles because it can’t risk letting the regime fall and having jihadists retake large swaths of Syria – and possibly encouraging jihadists in parts of Russia. A smaller Iranian presence could also make Assad more dependent on Russia and, therefore, more likely to act in Russia’s interests.
Pushing Back Against Turkey
Once Assad retakes Daraa and Idlib, which we expect he will do, he will then turn his attention to semi-autonomous, Kurdish-controlled parts of northeastern Syria. Russia’s role in this fight will be more complicated. Russia has a long history of supporting and working with Kurdish groups throughout the Middle East. It has at different times supported autonomy for Kurdish groups in Iraq and Syria and even advocated for a Kurdish republic in Iran during the Cold War. (Of course, this was when Iran was still a U.S. ally.)
And Russia has another reason to support the Kurds in Syria: They could give Moscow a way to push back against Turkey and Iran in another key region, the Caucasus. Turkey designated the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or PKK, a terrorist organization, and it sees the group as its most immediate security threat. Aligning with Kurdish groups would give Russia leverage over Turkey and Iran, both of which have the power to destabilize the South Caucasus along Russia’s southern border. Russia, Iran and Turkey have all fought for control over the Caucasus. Most recently, in the early 1990s, Turkey and Russia nearly confronted each other directly in the Nagorno-Karabakh War.
When Armenia threatened to invade Nakhchivan (an exclave of Azerbaijan surrounded by Armenia, Iran and Turkey), Turkey sent thousands of troops to the Armenian border to deter the invasion. Russia responded by sending thousands of its own troops to the other side of the Turkish-Armenian border. Then Russia went a step further, proposing the establishment of an exiled Kurdish parliament in Russia. Turkey responded by throwing its support behind Chechen insurgents in Russia. In 2005, the two countries agreed to stop supporting insurgent groups in each other’s territory, but it’s clear from this example that Turkey is a threat to Russia in the Caucasus.
Russia, then, could use the Syrian Kurds to keep Turkey in check. In theory, the same goal could also be accomplished through a unified, Assad-controlled Syria – which was Russia’s strategy in the Cold War. But this has some drawbacks. If Assad were to take full control of Syria, he’d have greater independence of action, and thus could refuse Russian requests to push back against the Turks. But if Kurdish groups in the north retained a semi-autonomous state with Russian support, these groups would be beholden to Moscow, and Assad would have to risk a confrontation with Russia to dislodge them, a maneuver he likely wouldn’t try.
The People’s Protection Units, or YPG, which is the main Kurdish group in Syria, has been supported primarily by the United States, but Russia has provided air cover to the YPG in certain anti-Islamic State operations and has been open to including the YPG in peace talks. What could lead the YPG to lean closer to Russia? The answer might be Manbij, the city that was held by the Syrian Democratic Forces, of which the YPG is the main constituent part, after the group defeated IS there. The U.S. repeatedly insisted that SDF fighters in Manbij were under American protection, and that it would not withdraw from the area. But it nonetheless agreed to leave the region in June, or at least reduce its presence there, after Turkey threatened to sever relations with the United States. The YPG subsequently said its advisers left the town. Currently, Turkey and the U.S. are conducting patrols around Manbij that the U.S. claims are “independently coordinated.”
The remaining SDF forces in northern and eastern Syria are now likely wondering what will happen when they, too, are no longer strategically useful to the United States. Washington still needs to maintain good relations with Ankara, in part to maintain access to Incirlik air base. As the U.S. continues to look for a way out of Syria, Russia will quietly step up cooperation with or support of the YPG so that it is well-positioned in the event of a complete American withdrawal.
Why, though, did the U.S. abandon the SDF in Manbij? America’s interests in Syria are narrower than Russia’s. The U.S. wants to eliminate the Islamic State, and while IS hasn’t disappeared altogether, it has lost almost all the territory it held in the Middle East. As the U.S. reassesses its global commitments, it will be increasingly inclined to limit its presence in Syria – and, therefore, its support of the SDF – if it appears that regional actors are capable of keeping IS in check. This is what the YPG fears, and what Russia is waiting for.
Naval Assets in Syria
We can’t talk about Russian interests in Syria without mentioning the naval base at Tartus. The base is in a strategic location on the coast of the Mediterranean. But it has some disadvantages. Based on a 2016 agreement with Syria, Russia is allowed to dock only 11 warships there, limiting the amount of force it can project from that location. Russia also faces supply problems. It can supply the base by sea either through the Black Sea via the Bosporus (which is controlled by Turkey); through the Atlantic Ocean via the Strait of Gibraltar (which is controlled by Britain); or through the Indian Ocean via the Red Sea and the Suez Canal (which is controlled by Egypt). Russia could also supply Tartus by air, but this would be costly and would limit the number of supplies it could send. In late 2017, Russia announced that it will be making the Russian Hmeimim air base in Latakia province a permanent installation. Hmeimim is only about 40 miles (65 kilometers) north of Tartus and directly accessible via the M1 highway, which runs parallel to Syria’s Mediterranean coast.
A naval base south of the Bosporus that’s allowed to dock a limited number of ships and faces supply challenges provides a small boost to Russia’s power projection capabilities but wouldn’t be a huge help if Turkey were to close the Bosporus and cut off Russian access to the Mediterranean. Still, having naval assets on both sides of the Bosporus is strategically valuable, especially considering that the Bosporus played a key role in the Russo-Turkish wars of the 18th and 19th centuries, as the Russian Empire grew more powerful and sought greater access to the rest of the world.
Like most things in the Middle East, Russian interests in Syria are complicated – which explains why Russia is showing signs of mission creep there. Its goal has gone from propping up the Assad regime to establishing a balance of power in the Middle East. This is where most foreign powers go wrong: Russia in Afghanistan, or the U.S. in Afghanistan and Iraq. Russia could easily get bogged down in a conflict it can’t control. The question now is whether Russia could handle the type of quagmire that the U.S. faced in Iraq. Time will tell.
-
Is Southern Syria Heading For 'Lebanonization'?
by Jonathan Spyer
Jerusalem Post
July 12, 2018
https://www.meforum.org/articles/2018/is-southern-syria-heading-for-lebanonization
The raid on the T4 base at Tiyas in southern Syria this week was, according to global media reports, the third such action by Israeli air power against this facility in the course of 2018. It is the latest move in an apparently ongoing campaign to prevent the entrenchment and consolidation (these are the words favored by Israeli officials) of the Iranian military infrastructure in Syria.
Meanwhile, the Assad regime is moving into the final stages of its offensive against the rebellion in Deraa province. Evidence has emerged of the presence of Iran-supported Shia militias among the forces operating on behalf of the regime in Deraa. The two forces whose commanders were photographed in the area are Liwa al-Zulfiqar and the Abu al-Fadl al-Abbas Brigade.
Haidar al-Jubouri, Zulfiqar’s commander, was photographed in the operations room of the Syrian Arab Army’s 4th Division in Deraa. Commanders of the Abu al-Fadl al-Abbas Brigade, meanwhile, were seen in the area of Tafas. Notably, the latter individuals were pictured in Syrian Army uniform and in conversation with Russian officers.
A number of Israeli commentators this week downplayed the significance of these revelations.
They argued that the apparently minor and limited presence of the Shia militias in the Deraa offensive was testimony to the success of Israeli diplomatic efforts to impress upon the Russians the importance of limiting the Iranian presence in the offensives in southwestern Syria.
The Israeli concern is not primarily with Deraa.
Rather, Jerusalem is watching carefully to see which forces will be involved in the regime’s advance on Quneitra province, adjoining the Israeli-controlled part of the Golan.
If the Quneitra offensive involves a mix of forces similar to that in Deraa, this will enable officials to claim that Russian pressure is working, while presumably restating Israel’s determination to continue efforts to expel Iran from Syria in its entirety.
Defense Minister Avigdor Lieberman said this week that “the fact Iranian forces are present in Syria at all is unacceptable, and we will act against any Iranian consolidation in the area.” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, meanwhile, met this week with Russian President Vladimir Putin. Prior to the meeting, the Prime Minister’s Office issued a statement reiterating that “Israel will not tolerate a military presence by Iran or its proxies anywhere in Syria and that Syria must strictly abide by the 1974 Separation of Forces Agreement.”
So Israel makes clear its determination that Iran should quit Syria in its entirety, acts against specific Iranian targets, and appears to ignore or downplay those elements of the Iranian presence against which air action would have more limited or problematic application (such as pro-Iranian units integrated into the Syrian Army).
The Iranians, meanwhile, appear at present to be absorbing the blows with little apparent attempt at response, while maintaining their overall presence in Syria.
Where may all this be headed? First of all, it is important to understand the nature and dimensions of the Iranian project in Syria.
Iran’s deep alliance with Assad’s Syria goes back to the first days of the Islamic Republic of Iran, and to Hafez Assad’s support of Tehran in the Iran-Iraq War. Over the past seven years of civil war, however, the nature of the relationship has changed. Iranian provision of manpower and organization of paramilitary forces have been essential to the regime’s survival.
Tehran has invested upward of $30 billion in Syria. The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps has also recruited young Syrians into locally based IRGC-associated paramilitary groups (Quwaat al-Ridha, 313 battalion) and, of course, brought its paramilitary proxies onto Syrian soil, along with IRGC personnel.
This is a major, far-reaching process, resembling in its key particulars parallel projects in Lebanon and Iraq. The intention is to establish political-military structures that will serve to enable the projection of Iranian power over the long term. The Iranian expertise in this area is without parallel in the region. As a result of this approach, Tehran now dominates Lebanon and has the upper hand in Iraq. Assad’s Syria, which has an openly dictatorial system, is a different political context, of course, but the evidence suggests that the Iranians are digging in to stay.
Will the Russians act as the lever for the removal of this Iranian project? This appears to be the hope of Israeli policy-makers. But the facts would appear to indicate that Russia has neither the will, nor even the ability, to achieve this objective.
Regarding the former, on July 4, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov described US and Israeli demands for a complete Iranian withdrawal as “completely unrealistic.”
The Iranian pro-regime media is full of fear and speculation at the prospect of Russian betrayal. The Russian agenda in Syria does not directly parallel that of the Iranians (Moscow seeks good relations with all interested parties, the better to make itself the essential arbiter). But Moscow also has no interest in seeing the Iranians humiliated or their project reversed, particularly because they remain essential to the viability of Assad’s regime.
In any case, the Russian intervention in Syria has been predicated on a modest ground presence.
It is thus not clear by which mechanism Russia could seek to induce such a withdrawal, even if it wished to.
So the Iranian project in Syria is likely to continue, and Iranian- associated forces in one guise or another are likely in the period ahead to be operating close to the border with Israel. Israel, meanwhile, is likely to maintain its intelligence domination across Syria, and to continue periodically to strike at Iranian and Iranian-associated targets, in order to build deterrence and prevent the consolidation of weapons systems and deployments.
Does this sound familiar? It ought to. It is in its essentials the situation that pertains in south Lebanon and (in a far less threatening way) the Gaza Strip.
What we see here is a contest between two systems with entirely different areas of expertise. The Iranians excel in establishing and utilizing political and paramilitary clients to build power within regional spaces. They are, however, sharply deficient in conventional military skills. Israel, meanwhile, is outstanding in the fields of air warfare and intelligence, and seeks to avoid being sucked into involvement in the complex and cutthroat world of proxy warfare within Arab societies (the now soon-to-beabandoned cooperation with the rebels of Quneitra represented only a partial exception to this rule).
The likely emergent picture in Syria, as in Lebanon, is therefore the ongoing consolidation of another IRGC project, in the framework of a weakened and truncated Arab state, along with an ongoing Israeli effort to deter the masters of this project from acts of aggression, or to confine such acts to the realm of rhetoric.
Such a state of affairs is, by its nature, precarious and potentially combustible. At the same time, the Israeli system has shown considerable skill in recent years precisely in the management of comparable situations.
Jonathan Spyer is a fellow at the Middle East Forum and a research associate at the Jerusalem Center for Strategic Studies.
Related Topics: Iran, Syria | Jonathan Spyer
-
second post
In Syria, the Harder Fight Is in the North
The south has been mostly retaken. But danger lurks in Idlib.
Even as the Syrian government hoists its flag over the newly reconquered southern city of Daraa, its offensive in the southwest continues. The remaining pockets of rebel resistance are growing smaller. With the continued support of Russia and Iran, Bashar Assad will almost certainly retake the last holdouts there as well.
The only thing that complicates the offensive is Israel. Israel has been adamant that it will not tolerate Iranian or Hezbollah positions too close to its border – in fact, it will attack Iranian supply lines far from its border, as it did last month when it struck Syria’s border with Iraq near Abu Kemal. More recently, on July 15, Israel launched another strike near the Nayrab airport, close to Aleppo. Though some reports identified the target as a Syrian government installation, others claimed it was a logistics site used by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps – a more plausible explanation, considering Israel has always said its fight is with Iran, not Assad.
Neither Iran, Syria nor Russia want to draw Israel into the fight in southern Syria – they all want Assad to reassert control there. And that’s why they will (largely) leave it to Assad’s army to reclaim it. It’s a difficult balance to strike, since Iran still has an imperative to expand its influence westward toward the Mediterranean. Hence the reports of pro-Iran militias, including Iraq-based Popular Mobilization Forces, roaming the areas disguised in Syrian army uniforms. Still, the threat from Israel will limit Iran’s involvement in the south.
Bigger difficulties lay to the north in Idlib, which, unlike the south, has a large Turkish presence. Turkish conventional armed forces are stationed there, and they support a network of proxy groups composed of rebel factions of the Free Syrian Army, which were instrumental in the taking of Afrin. (Estimates vary, but as many as 25,000 fighters were believed to have been rerouted from Idlib to participate in the Afrin offensive.)
(click to enlarge)
Now, Afrin is mostly subdued. The Peoples’ Protection Units, dominated by the Kurds and considered a terrorist group by Turkey, is withdrawing from Manbij. Turkey is busy learning how to administer a conquered region. So while some FSA fighters will remain in Afrin and Manbij, more will be free to return to Idlib, where those fleeing the south will likely regroup, their flight made all the more easy by the cease-fires Moscow has been brokering while the Syrian military retook the south. In other words, when Assad finally consolidates control over the south, he will then have to face as many as 40,000 fighters in Idlib. That’s not even counting the Turkish military, which doesn’t want Syrian forces roaming around on its turf.
And when Assad faces these much larger forces in Idlib, he will probably do so without Russian air support. Moscow has no interest in starting a war with Turkey, and if the Russian air force were to support an Assad offensive in Idlib, the opportunity for direct clashes between Russian forces and Turkish forces (or their respective proxies) would be high.
In theory, Turkey and Russia could arrange a deal whereby Russia attacked only rebel positions in Idlib that are not allied with Turkey. In practice, neither side would be willing to take the risk. Indeed, in recent days Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan reportedly spoke to Russian President Vladimir Putin, during which he warned that targeting civilians in Idlib could destroy the spirit of the Astana accord. An anonymous Turkish official echoed the statement, saying Idlib was a “red line” for Turkey. Russia will likely cite the de-escalation agreement from 2017 as a reason to recuse itself from the offensive. Assad may have to simply accept a more permanent Turkish presence in his country.
After all, Turkey hasn’t spent the past two years establishing itself in northwest Syria just to give it up. It has an imperative to acquire greater strategic depth in the region, to meet what it considers a Kurdish terrorist threat along its borders and to insulate itself from Iran. Turkey has even begun issuing identification cards for people in northern Syria and is working to establish new systems of governance over the areas it has conquered. Retaking Idlib would require Assad to do something he has not yet had to face throughout the course of the entire Syrian civil war: risk state-to-state war – with a more powerful country to boot.
What happens in Idlib will, to a large extent, depend on Russia. Propping up Assad currently serves Russia’s interest, but Moscow doesn’t need Assad to retake the entire country for its interests to be satisfied. In fact, Russia benefits when Syria is divided between Syrian and Kurdish forces in the north. If those divisions enable Russia to maintain a semi-autonomous Kurdish presence in the north – which it could use against Turkey when convenient – then there’s really no reason for Russia to risk war with Turkey now. There aren’t enough benefits, and the costs are too great.
-
Russian officials have been exceedingly busy with the Middle East. A high-level Russian delegation traveled to Lebanon on July 26 to discuss developments in Syria. From there, the delegation went to Turkey on July 27 to hold talks on the same subject. Back in Moscow, Russia hosted Palestinian intelligence officials on July 27 and discussed “growing tensions” in the West Bank and Gaza Strip – at least according to Russia’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs website. On Monday, Russia is hosting Iranian and Turkish officials in Sochi for so-called Astana-3 talks. If prior gatherings are any indication, they will agree to next steps with great fanfare and then ignore those agreements on the ground. In any event, Russia is highly active right now in the Middle East and may be accelerating a push for some kind of diplomatic solution to its Syria quagmire.
Turkish-U.S. relations, meanwhile, continue to founder. While U.S. Secretary of Defense James Mattis attempted to pour cold water on potential U.S. sanctions against Turkey by citing continued military cooperation between the two sides, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan turned the heat back up, accusing the U.S. of psychological warfare and insisting that if the U.S. did not change its tune, it would “lose a sincere and strong partner.” The two most pressing issues right now are a dispute over the imprisonment of an American pastor in Turkey (and Turkey’s long-running demand for the extradition of Fethullah Gulen, whom Ankara accuses of plotting an attempted coup in 2016) and the threat of sanctions from the U.S. if Turkey continues buying natural gas from Iran – which Erdogan says Turkey has no intention of stopping. These are superficial issues, but they highlight a widening divergence between U.S. and Turkish strategic views of the Middle East – a far more important development than U.S. wishful thinking on the emergence of an Arab NATO to combat Iran.
-
GPF: "widening divergence between U.S. and Turkish strategic views of the Middle East – a far more important development than U.S. wishful thinking on the emergence of an Arab NATO to combat Iran"
The importance of Turkey I recognize but don't fully appreciate. There is value in that relationship but they have been an unreliable ally, if an ally any more at all. The coalition that includes Israel and Arab nations like Saudi to contain Iran I consider to be a very promising development, not wishful thinking.
-
Turkey, Russia, Iran and Syria may be settling on a common enemy in Idlib. On Tuesday, following a meeting with his Turkish counterpart, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov hinted at an agreement to cooperate against Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, an al-Qaida-linked group formerly known as Jabhat al-Nusra. With the Islamic State largely defeated in Syria, Lavrov said, HTS is now the main target.
Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu reiterated that jihadist rebels and more moderate opposition groups in Idlib need to be separated, and that province-wide bombing by Syrian forces would lead to catastrophe. Turkey’s support against any effort to isolate HTS would be key, given that HTS has served as something of a Turkish proxy in Syria in the past (though its ties with Ankara have always been strained) and that Russia is seeking to head off a confrontation with Turkey as Syrian President Bashar Assad prepares an offensive to retake Idlib province, the only remaining rebel-held province in Syria. Lavrov also said the U.S. is standing in the way of further progress against the group.
Meanwhile, activists say airstrikes and shelling of targets in Idlib by Assad’s forces has reached its most intense level since Russia, Turkey and Iran agreed to set up a de-escalation zone in the province last year. And Turkish media reported that the Kurdish People’s Protection Units, or YPG, is now keen to work with Assad in Idlib, with thousands of fighters moving to Aleppo in recent weeks to take part in the impending offensive.
-
https://www.timesofisrael.com/head-of-syrian-intelligences-palestine-department-assassinated-report/amp/?__twitter_impression=true
-
second post
https://www.meforum.org/articles/2018/the-future-of-eastern-syria-and-the-israeli-intere?utm_source=Middle+East+Forum&utm_campaign=7095080c15-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2018_08_17_08_19&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_086cfd423c-7095080c15-33691909
-
Trump Administration Implements MEF Plan to Sideline UNRWA
News from the Middle East Forum
August 31, 2018
https://www.meforum.org/articles/2018/trump-administration-implements-mef-plan-to-disman
PHILADELPHIA – August 31, 2018 – In announcing today an immediate end to all U.S. government funding to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), the Trump administration has adopted one of the Middle East Forum’s signature policy prescriptions.
The U.S. taxpayer contributed $364 million in 2017, about one-third of the total UNRWA budget, almost triple the European Union contribution and by far the most from any single UNRWA donor.
At the State Department’s request, the Forum on Aug. 8 provided it with a detailed plan to dismantle UNRWA – a refugee agency that perversely sees its mandate as creating ever-more refugees. Today’s announcement takes a first step toward that end.
The second step should be for the US government to divert funds to local partners on the ground via direct relationships with hospitals, clinics, schools, municipalities, micro-financing programs, vocational capacity building initiatives, infrastructure managers, social service providers, and others.
The third step will be to end U.S. recognition of the fake Palestine refugees. In 1950, UNRWA counted 625,000 Palestine refugees; today it counts 5.3 million of them. MEF estimates that actual Palestine refugees – those who fled in 1948-49, did not take on a nationality, and do not live in the West Bank or Gaza – number about 20,000. That means that over 99 percent of UNRWA-recognized Palestine refugees do not fit the definition of refugee according to the U.S. government. UNRWA’s unique definition nourishes Palestinian irredentism and terrorism, renders diplomacy futile, and creates regional instability. MEF advises treating the 99 percent as needy people deserving of assistance, not as refugees.
Key advantages of this three-step plan include: ending the creation of new Palestine refugees, limiting UNRWA’s anti-Israel propaganda, and encouraging the constructive development of a Palestinian polity, economy, culture, and society.
MEF efforts to change U.S. policy began in 2010, when it worked closely with then-Sen. Mark Kirk (Republican of Illinois) to require the State Department to issue a report detailing how many individuals currently considered Palestine refugees fit the U.S. government definition of a refugee, and how many are currently supported by U.S. aid. That led to passage of the “Kirk Amendment” in 2012.
MEF has also worked with Representatives Chris Stewart (Republican of Utah), Kay Granger (Republican of Texas), Chuck Fleishmann (Republican of Tennessee) and Ann Wagner (Republican of Missouri) toward ending Palestinian refugee proliferation; and is currently working with Congressman Doug Lamborn (Republican of Colorado) and Senator James Lankford (Republican of Oklahoma) on legislative initiatives addressing the topic in-depth.
_____
The Middle East Forum promotes American interests and works to protect Western civilization from the threat of Islamism.
For immediate release
For more information, contact:
Gregg Roman, Director
Roman@MEForum.org
+1-215-546-5406 ext. 104
Related Topics: Arab-Israel conflict & diplomacy, Arab-Israeli debate in the U.S., Hamas, Palestinians, US policy
-
Summary
After seven years of conflict, the future of the Syrian civil war may come down to the battle for Idlib. Syrian leader Bashar Assad has already taken back control of much of the country, and this northwestern province is the last remaining rebel stronghold.
But taking back Idlib won’t be easy. In fact, it’ll be harder and more complicated than many of the other recent campaigns in the south for two reasons. First, it is a much larger region than the areas in the south, such as Daraa, Eastern Ghouta and Quneitra, that the Syrian army seized in recent months. It is, therefore, also more heavily populated with rebels, in part because many of the cease-fires brokered by Russia in the south allowed rebels safe passage out of these areas and into Idlib. Second, Turkey has a military presence in Idlib. This complicates the situation for all parties involved because Turkey and the Syrian regime have conflicting interests in this region. Russia supports the regime but doesn’t want to go to war with Turkey, a country with which it needs to maintain good relations. For this reason, the Syrians are afraid the Russians may abandon them. Meanwhile, Turkey wants room to maneuver in relation to the U.S., and having hostile relations with Russia would limit its options.
A battle over Idlib would therefore pose a threat to all parties involved in the conflict. In the wider power struggle among countries in this war, Idlib may be little more than a distraction, but it’s a dangerous one. Winning a military battle here may cost far more than anyone is prepared to pay. This Deep Dive will consider another option: a deal among these countries to oust the rebel group that controls much of the province. All of these parties have an interest in eliminating this group – one of the most extreme in Idlib – and so it’s the one area where they can cooperate. They may not get everything they want out of such a deal, but they will all benefit in some way. And at this point, that may be the best they can hope for.
The Battle for Idlib
In early 2015, Assad looked to be losing the Syrian war. Russia, one of Syria’s key allies, couldn’t let that happen, and later that year it decided to join the fray to keep Assad in power. Its intervention, especially its air support for Syrian troops on the ground, began to turn the tide in Assad’s favor. Now, after having retaken much of the south, Assad is setting his sights on Idlib.
He’ll likely try to enlist the help of Moscow, but for Russia, Idlib has little consequence. Sure, taking back the province would be a big victory for the Syrian regime, but even with Idlib under its rule, there will still be areas of rebel-held territory in the north controlled by the U.S.-backed Syrian Democratic Forces. But for Turkey, the province has substantial strategic significance. Ankara sees it as a place from which it can launch attacks against Syrian Kurdish groups, including the People’s Protection Units, or YPG, which it considers a terrorist organization. Turkey also sees Idlib as a buffer area, positioned as it is on the Turkey-Syria border, from where it can limit refugee flows, which have been a growing problem for Ankara. Turkey has therefore been fortifying its “observation posts” – military outposts sanctioned by the Astana accords in late 2017 – with anti-air defenses and concrete walls, and building hospitals and a helicopter field.
Russia knows that attacking Turkish positions in Idlib will be seen as an act of war against Ankara, which it wants to avoid. Turkey is a regional power and a NATO member, and an assault on Turkish forces may draw in other NATO members in Ankara’s defense. This would unite Turkey and the West just when cracks in the relationship between Ankara and Washington are growing. (Although, if NATO were to refuse to intervene on Turkey’s behalf, that would deepen the divide in the alliance.) Even an attack on Turkish proxies would likely push Turkey closer to the West. Russia, therefore, is looking for a way out of this quagmire.
Currently, much of Idlib is controlled by one group: Hayat Tahrir al-Sham. HTS arrived on the scene in July 2017, roughly three months before Turkey’s military entered Idlib. At that time, Turkey had already been cooperating with militias there, including, most importantly, Ahrar al-Sham, which effectively controlled Idlib prior to July 2017. But a split in Ahrar al-Sham started to grow between two factions: pragmatists, who wanted to establish an Islamist party that could gain international legitimacy and even seek support from the West, and hard-liners, whose approach was more akin to al-Qaida’s and who wanted to establish an Islamic state. This division weakened Ahrar al-Sham and gave HTS (and its spinoff, Hurras al-Din) an opening.
HTS is the product of a merger between al-Qaida’s Syria affiliate, Jabhat al-Nusra, and several other rebel groups. Jabhat al-Nusra wanted to establish an Islamic caliphate and was among the most ideologically rigid groups active in Syria at the time. HTS was thus able to attract hard-liners from other groups, including Ahrar al-Sham. The two groups became fierce enemies as HTS’ power in Idlib grew and Ahrar al-Sham’s faded. The leader of HTS, Abu Mohammed al-Jolani, publicly declared the group’s independence from al-Qaida, and in May 2017, al-Qaida announced it had severed all ties with HTS.
(click to enlarge)
When Turkey was preparing to enter Idlib, it had two options: try to crush HTS by force, or cooperate with a staunch rival of its main proxy in the province. Turkey chose the latter. It was a partnership born of necessity – one that Turkey would rather not have made, all things being equal. But its focus at the time was on establishing a presence along the Turkey-Syria border that would enable it to exert pressure on the YPG and manage cross-border refugee flows.
But now, Turkey has a stronger hand to play. It invaded Afrin – a province in northwest Syria that was controlled by the YPG – in January 2018 and through this conquest now has command over a significant piece of Syrian territory in the north. It can thus turn its attention to HTS, a militia group that it never really trusted and couldn’t control.
Turkey has since established relations with other rebel groups in Idlib. In February, what remained of Ahrar al-Sham joined forces with another group called Nour al-Din al-Zenki to form the Syrian Liberation Front, which was meant to balance HTS’ presence in Idlib. HTS began launching attacks on the SLF, and for three months, the two fought for control of the province. Given Turkey’s ties with Ahrar al-Sham and its distrust of HTS, Turkey likely encouraged the formation of SLF to either counterbalance HTS, weaken it or, at least, figure out where HTS forces were most strongly positioned.
In July, Turkey helped form the National Liberation Front, a coalition of rebel groups in Idlib that included the SLF. Estimates suggest the NLF has some 85,000-100,000 militants. Turkey reportedly invited HTS to join the NLF, but it refused, proving that Ankara still couldn’t control the group. HTS continues to attack Syrian army positions around Idlib – which could provoke Assad into launching an assault on the province. Turkey would rather not face off against the Syrian regime there, but it can’t stop HTS from attacking regime forces in southern Idlib and northern Hama. Partnering with HTS may have helped Turkey in the short term, but if Assad were to invade Idlib, it could prove costly in the long term.
What a Deal Would Look Like
Idlib is one place where all the parties involved in the war have a common interest: They all want HTS gone. So what would a deal among these countries look like? One of the more likely scenarios is that they would agree – either formally or informally – to join forces to eliminate the group from the province. After HTS is forced out, Turkey would be allowed to remain in the province but would cede portions of southern Idlib – where HTS has a strong presence – to the Assad regime. Russia would support Assad in southern Idlib but would stop short of providing air support to any offensive that risks bringing it into direct confrontation with Turkey. Turkey would be allowed to stay, so long as it could control its proxies and keep them from attacking the Syrian regime. In effect, this would amount to a semi-permanent territorial acquisition by Turkey, even if no party would be willing to admit as much.
In such a scenario, Turkey would end up administering portions of Idlib and Afrin, and in exchange, it would protect these areas from the Syrian regime, which would have to put up a much more powerful offensive than it did in the south if it wanted to challenge Turkey and its proxies. Insurgent groups that disobeyed Turkey and continued to attack the regime would either be forced out of Idlib by Turkey’s proxies or, should they leave Idlib to continue the assault on the Syrian army, be dealt with by Assad.
This arrangement would lead to a greater balance of power between the principal players in the broader war and possibly even a respite in the fighting. It may not be a permanent solution, but it could usher in the next phase of the conflict. Why would each of these parties agree to cooperate to get rid of HTS?
Turkey
Turkey would prefer not to have to deal with HTS at all. The group is unpredictable and could threaten its position in Idlib. HTS’ forces are concentrated in southern Idlib, so a deal would likely require Turkey to withdraw from that part of the province, which would then be controlled by the Syrian army, with Russia’s support. In other parts of Idlib where Turkey has a presence, it would be up to Turkish proxies to eliminate the remaining HTS forces.
But it’s hard to imagine that Turkey would withdraw from Idlib entirely. Its primary concern remains the YPG in the north, and it wouldn’t want problems in Idlib to threaten its position in Afrin. Ceding Idlib to the Syrian regime would leave Turkey exposed and the Turkish province of Hatay vulnerable to massive refugee flows that would result from a regime offensive. It would also give the momentum in the conflict to the regime, which could then focus on taking back the Kurdish-held territories. This would be unacceptable to Turkey, since it would lose the ability to keep military pressure on the YPG in Syria. A full withdrawal from Idlib could lead to a full withdrawal from northern Syria, and at that point, Turkey would have to trust the Syrian regime to control the Kurdish population in the north in a way that’s consistent with Turkey’s interests. Turkey therefore is more likely to stand its ground in northern Idlib with the help of its proxies.
(click to enlarge)
Turkey’s Proxies
Turkey’s proxies are also eager to get rid of HTS. The group’s approach has resulted in conflict and division among other rebel groups that would rather focus on their battle against Assad. They’re concerned that the lack of unity against the regime could create a power vacuum, which could be filled by the Islamic State.
The groups that make up the NLF would cooperate with a deal that focuses first on dismantling HTS, but they wouldn’t want to be held back from continuing their fight against Assad. Some of these groups could choose to break off from the NLF, but they would do so at the risk of being targeted by Turkey, Turkey’s proxies and the Syrian government. The other pro-Turkey groups that choose to abide by the deal would accept Turkey’s control of the region in exchange for protection from regime forces. These forces could then bide their time, waiting for an opportunity to take advantage of a potential dissolution of the agreement.
Syrian Regime
Assad likely wouldn’t feel completely comfortable with a deal that leaves a fairly large area protected by Turkey. But he would nonetheless be inclined to accept it since it would eliminate arguably the least controllable and most extreme rebel group remaining in Idlib, and would probably help him retake more territory in southern Idlib. For Assad, it’s a step in the right direction.
Even absent a deal, Assad is unlikely to launch an assault on the province for three reasons. First, he couldn’t rely on Russian air support in the areas where Turkey is entrenched. Second, he would have to confront a far greater number of militants there than he did in battles in southern Syria, making the fight bloodier, costlier and far less predictable. This is partly because the deals brokered by Russia in the south allowed rebels to flee and guaranteed their safe passage to Idlib in exchange for handing over territory to Assad. In many of the areas Assad retook, he didn’t actually eliminate the militants fighting against him; they simply relocated to another part of the country. Third, and relatedly, even though Assad has recently reconsolidated his hold over large portions of the country, a substantial segment of his army isn’t capable of carrying out offensive operations, since it’s mainly used for garrison duties. This means that the heavy casualties the Syrian army is likely to incur will be among Assad’s most experienced and well-trained contingents – which may encourage rebels to challenge the regime in other territories, knowing its resources will be stretched to the limit. It is safer for Assad to accept the presence of Turkish forces and their proxies, for now, while he rebuilds his country and secures his prior conquests. Assad could benefit from a period of stability to refortify his military.
Russia
Russia would also support a deal on Idlib because it would bring Assad one step closer to securing rule over the entire country. But Russia doesn’t actually need Assad to control all of Syria. On the contrary, Russia is more than happy to play the role of broker for the various entities fighting each other in Syria – most notably, Turkey, Assad, the Syrian Kurds and Iran. Letting Turkey keep a chunk of Syria under its control would constrain Iran in Syria and limit its expansionist aims throughout the region. Russia has an interest in preventing a regional hegemon from emerging in the Middle East that could also set its sights on the Caucasus, which would threaten Russia more directly.
A deal that would at least temporarily end hostilities would also bring Russia closer to being able to claim some sort of victory in Syria. The last thing Russia wants right now is for Assad to drag it into a confrontation with Turkey that would end the gradual warming of relations between Moscow and Ankara, and push Turkey into cozying up to the West. A Russia-backed offensive in Idlib could do just that.
The U.S.
The United States’ involvement in Idlib has been limited, but it would welcome the defeat of an al-Qaida-linked group there. Signing on to a deal that would allow Turkey a more permanent presence in Idlib could also help smooth over relations between Washington and Ankara, which have been strained of late. It would also limit Assad’s reach and ensure that, for now at least, he doesn’t have complete control over all of Syria.
How the Deal Could Break Down
A deal to eliminate HTC would, therefore, be in the interest of all these parties. But it could break down in two ways.
The first would be through insurgent groups’ refusal to accept Turkish control. Even rebels that are part of the Turkey-backed NLF may grow tired of the status quo and want to break from the coalition to continue fighting Assad. Weakening Turkey’s hold over the coalition would require a substantial number of rebels to leave the NLF at once. But if it were to happen, Assad would have to respond regardless of whether he would have Russian air support. Moscow would prefer to stay out of it, but even if it did offer Assad some assistance, it would be limited and wouldn’t target Turkish positions directly.
Over time, this could result in a gradual withdrawal of Turkey from other areas of northern Idlib, as the weakening of its proxies would force it to either increase its own military involvement or retreat back to Afrin. Turkey would be insistent on standing its ground in Afrin and Manbij, but its ability to devote additional manpower and resources anywhere in Syria would be, like Iran’s, partially contingent on its economic situation back home, which is currently in flux.
The second possible breakdown would involve Assad making moves to take back control of Idlib. This would, however, largely depend on how much support the regime could count on from its other stalwart ally, Iran. Given the recent instability in Iran, especially with the looming imposition of more sanctions in November and talks in the U.S. to sever Iran from the SWIFT banking network, it’s difficult to predict how involved it will be in Syria and where it will concentrate its efforts. It won’t pull out of the war completely – it couldn’t take the risk of Assad’s regime collapsing – but if massive protests, similar to those that erupted at the beginning of this year, flare up again, it may be forced to reduce its spending on adventures abroad and instead invest in keeping its own economy running.
In this case, it would have limited leverage in Idlib. It would be in favor of eliminating rebel groups that challenge Assad’s power, and so would support a deal to get rid of HTS, though Shiite-majority Iran wouldn’t welcome the ongoing presence of Sunni-majority Turkey in Syria. Nevertheless, Iran doesn’t want to push Turkey further into the Western orbit – in part for its own economic reasons. The chances that Turkey will continue to purchase natural gas from Iran even after November are stronger now that ties between Washington and Ankara have frayed. (Indeed, Turkey would be loath to have to depend more on Russia for natural gas than it currently does, so it has an interest in buying energy from other suppliers.)
If Iran reverses course and becomes stronger than it is now, however, it may after some time encourage Assad to take more aggressive action in Idlib regardless of Turkey’s presence there. Iran’s goal would be to eliminate the Sunni insurgent groups in Syria that can challenge its own position in the country. This scenario would also bring Turkey and Iran closer to confrontation, which we have predicted will happen at some point.
For now, though, the most likely next phase in Idlib and the Syrian civil war is a concerted effort to eliminate HTS (and its offshoots like Hurras al-Din), and an acceptance of a more permanent Turkish presence in northwest Syria. A solution to the struggle over this pocket of the country is less important than the relations among the big players in this war. It would therefore have to involve some sort of balance among them, perhaps with intermittent and indecisive small-scale combat but without a full-blooded attempt to win.
Print
Tweet
Share on Facebook
Categories
-
https://www.jns.org/satellite-images-indicate-iran-is-building-another-missile-site-in-syria/?utm_source=IVN&utm_medium=email
https://israelunwired.com/iranian-casualties-in-apparent-israeli-airstrike-on-syrian-airforce-base/
-
Erdoğan's Dilemma
by Jonathan Spyer
Jerusalem Post
August 30, 2018
https://www.meforum.org/articles/2018/beyond-the-lines-erdogan-s-dilemma
Syrian regime and Russian forces are preparing for an offensive into Idlib province in northwest Syria. The attack on Idlib is set to mark the final major action in the war between the Assad regime and the insurgency against it.
Moscow has moved 10 warships and two submarines into the waters off the western coast of Syria. This represents the largest concentration of Russian naval forces since the beginning of Moscow’s direct intervention in the civil war in Syria in September 2015.
The regime, meanwhile, is dispatching ground forces from further south, as its forces complete a recent offensive against Islamic State fighters in the Sweida area.
Idlib is set to form the final chapter in a Russian-led strategy that commenced nearly three years ago. According to this approach, rebel-controlled areas were first bombed and shelled into submission and then offered the chance to “reconcile” – that is, surrender to the regime. As part of this process, those fighters who did not wish to surrender were given the option of being transported with their weapons to rebel-held Idlib.
This approach was useful for the regime side. It allowed the avoidance of costly last-stand battles by the rebels. It also contained within it the expectation that a final battle against the most determined elements of the insurgency would need to take place, once there was nowhere for these fighters to be redirected. That time is now near.
There are around 70,000 rebel fighters inside Idlib. The dominant factions among them are Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (the renamed Jabhat al-Nusra, the al-Qaeda franchise in Syria) and the newly formed, Turkish-supported Jaish al-Watani (National Army), which brings together a number of smaller rebel groups.
The presence of the Turkish-supported Jaish al-Watani among the Idlib rebels reflects the complex, broader political/diplomatic situation surrounding the upcoming Idlib offensive. The offensive will not mark the end of conflict in Syria. Rather, once Idlib is returned to the regime, the dynamic in Syria will conclusively shift – from one at least partially led by autonomous political-military organizations, to one entirely directed from above by sundry state interests, which make use of various militia groups as proxies.
As this dynamic emerges, it represents a particular dilemma for Turkey. Ankara in the early stages of the war abandoned a burgeoning relationship with the Assad regime to throw its full weight behind the Sunni Arab rebellion. It saw the insurgency (correctly) as one of a number of conservative Sunni Arab movements then sweeping the Middle East. The AKP government envisaged itself as the natural patron and leader of these movements. Unfortunately for the Turks, the Sunni Islamist wave was brief and has left little permanent imprint on the region.
With the entry of the Russians onto the Syrian battlefield, and the decision by the US not to offer major support to the rebels, the insurgency lost any hope of defeating the Assad regime.
Turkey then transferred its focus in Syria to two areas: preventing the Kurdish area of control in the northeast from extending across the 900-km. Syrian-Turkish border in its entirety, and, slightly more nebulously, preventing the complete defeat and destruction of the rebels, which if allowed to happen would represent a humiliating failure for the government of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
The first goal was achieved in two stages: in August 2016, in Operation Euphrates Shield, the Turks established an area of control in northern Syria from Jarabulus to Azaz, leaving the Kurdish Afrin canton isolated. In January 2018, in the creatively named Operation Olive Branch, they then destroyed and occupied Afrin, thus creating an area of exclusive Turkish control, stretching from Jarabulus to Jandaris in the Aleppo Governorate.
The second goal appeared for a while to be progressing in a satisfactory way. The Turks have invested in administration and education in their area of control in northwest Syria. Signs in Turkish, Turkish-trained police, Turkish administration in schools and hospitals are all features of the “Euphrates Shield Zone.” The authorities there have even issued new ID cards for residents of the area, marked with the opposition flag and translation in Arabic and Turkish. The formation of the Jaish al-Watani forms a key element of this effort.
But this project is placed into question by the prospect of the regime offensive in Idlib. There are 3.5 million civilians in the province. Turkey fears the possibility that this offensive could generate a new rush of refugees for Turkey’s borders or into the Euphrates Shield Zone. Also, given Assad’s determination to reconquer Syria in its entirety, a successful Idlib offensive will surely be followed by pressure on the Turks to quit this zone. It would at that point constitute the last remaining barrier to Assad’s full reincorporation of northwest Syria.
But for Turkey to quit this area would be to accept the final and total eclipse of the Sunni Arab cause, and the clear and humiliating total defeat of Turkey’s aims. To do so while the PKK-associated Kurds retain a large de facto area of control east of the Euphrates would represent a double defeat.
Turkey is currently engaged in diplomacy to forestall this possibility. Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu last week warned against a military operation in Idlib, saying it would be a disaster. Cavusoglu, notably, was speaking to reporters in Moscow, after meeting with his Russian counterpart, Sergei Lavrov.
Russia is key here. A notional Moscow-brokered truce has been in place in Latakia, Idlib and Hama provinces for the last three weeks. But it is subject to daily violations by regime forces and seems likely to go the way of previous Russian-brokered agreements in other parts of Syria which preceded regime and Russian assaults.
Erdogan is due to travel to Iran on September 7, to meet with presidents Putin and Rouhani. The future of northwest Syria is set to dominate the discussions.
Why is the Russian position pivotal? Iran, of course, supports the reunification of Syria by the regime. Turkey clearly prefers the status quo. Russia, meanwhile, has broader interests. On the one hand, it is in alliance with the regime and Iran. On the other, Moscow has a clear interest in drawing the government in Ankara further away from its fraying connections with the US. Offering Turkey at least part of what it wants in northern Syria would be useful in this regard but would have a cost for Moscow’s relations with its allies. It is probable that Putin will seek some face-saving formula for Turkey. But the dilemma showcases the fragility of Russia’s current stance as the supreme arbiter in Syria, enjoying positive relations with all forces.
Erdogan will be seeking in Tehran to use the Russian desire to draw him away from NATO, and perhaps Iranian hopes that Ankara may act as an oil-sanctions buster for Iran after November, to salvage something of Ankara’s project in Syria.
As the Syrian revolution goes down to military defeat, the great game of the presidents and the diplomats over the ruins of the country is moving into high gear.
Jonathan Spyer is a Writing Fellow at the Middle East Forum and a research associate at the Jerusalem Center for Strategic Studies.
Related Topics: Russia/Soviet Union, Syria, Turkey and Turks | Jonathan Spyer
===============================
Also see:
https://www.westernjournal.com/ct/trump-nikki-haley-ratchet-pressure-syria-issue-warning-military-action/?utm_source=email&utm_medium=AE&utm_campaign=can&utm_content=2018-09-04
-
https://clarionproject.org/us-tracks-elaborate-scheme-by-iran/
-
Trump’s Syria Moment
The looming massacre in Idlib shows the lack of U.S. leverage.
49 Comments
By The Editorial Board
Sept. 4, 2018 7:29 p.m. ET
What happens in Syria rarely stays there, as Barack Obama learned the hard way and Donald Trump is now discovering. Bashar Assad’s forces and his Iranian and Russian allies are preparing an assault on Idlib province, the last major opposition redoubt, and the attack is putting Mr. Trump’s lack of a Syria strategy in sharp relief.
The White House issued a statement Tuesday warning against “a reckless escalation of an already tragic conflict.” The press secretary also warned against another use of chemical weapons, while the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, Marine Gen. Joseph Dunford, worried about a “humanitarian catastrophe” in Idlib. “We don’t see any way that significant military operations are going to be beneficial to the people of Syria,” Gen. Dunford said.
This is all well meaning, but it’s the kind of diplomatic pleading that John Kerry and Mr. Obama were famous for in Syria, and we know how that worked. Amid these U.S. entreaties, Russia began air strikes around Idlib on Tuesday and a Kremlin spokesman promised to finish the job “unconditionally.”
Mr. Trump has dined out politically on his two air strikes responding to Mr. Assad’s use of chemical weapons, but those pinprick attacks didn’t change the underlying reality in the conflict: Mr. Assad, Russia and Iran are on their way to controlling Syria in the post-civil war, post-Islamic State era. This axis of opportunism allowed the U.S. and Kurds to roll up ISIS in Syria’s northeast while the axis focused on wiping out opposition strongholds.
Mr. Trump’s impulse has been to withdraw U.S. troops from Syria once its stronghold in Raqqa was liberated, but he is slowly figuring out that this has damaging strategic consequences for U.S. interests.
One problem is that it lets Iran turn Syria into another forward operating base on Israel’s border. National Security Adviser John Bolton has been demanding that Iran leave Syria, and seeking Russia’s help in the effort. But Iran and Russia respond to power, not pleading, and they’ve heard Mr. Trump announce many times that he wants out of Syria.
Meanwhile, Turkey, Russia and Iran are meeting later this week in Tehran to decide on their next steps in Syria. The Turks want a buffer zone in the north from refugees, as well as some assurance that Kurdish separatists won’t be allowed to operate from Syria. Russia wants to be seen as having assured the victory of its client, Mr. Assad, while retaining air and naval bases. Iran wants to be Mr. Assad’s puppet-master.
Mr. Obama left Mr. Trump with a mess in Syria, but in 20 months the President has done little to alter the balance of forces. Mr. Trump seems content to issue tweets about Idlib, but Mr. Assad and his allies won’t stop there. Their next target will be the Kurds and Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), America’s main ground partners, who are working with U.S. special forces in Syria east of the Euphrates River.
The danger is that the Kurds and SDF will begin to negotiate a cease-fire to save themselves from becoming the next Idlib. Then U.S. forces would be isolated in Syria and a withdrawal would be inevitable. Iran will own the place, despite Mr. Trump’s speeches about containing its regional aggression.
The U.S. needs to reassure the Kurds and SDF that it will protect them if they’re attacked while working out a longer-term strategy that raises the price for Iranian intervention. An Obama-style retreat from Syria will not end well for U.S. interests.
Appeared in the September 5, 2018, print edition.
-
Turkey has allocated more money to Syria – despite its economic problems at home. The government in Ankara plans to provide funds for training programs for young Syrians in areas it currently controls. It also said it would compensate the families of rebels who have died fighting for Turkey in Afrin. These are bald attempts to generate goodwill among the people Turkey now finds itself governing. It’s not the behavior of a country that intends to leave anytime soon.
-
https://mailchi.mp/0c4afe6887c0/what-the-battle-for-idlib-really-comes-down-to?e=8f1f2f26d2
-
http://www.jordantimes.com/news/region/clashes-between-kurds-and-syrian-army-troops-leave-18-dead
-
http://www.jordantimes.com/news/region/us-marines-conduct-large-drills-rebels-southern-syria
-
By George Friedman
Creating an Arab NATO
It is hard to imagine an Arab alliance that can cohere as a military giant.
The United States has announced plans to hold a summit in January to launch what’s being called an Arab NATO, officially the Middle East Strategic Alliance. On the sidelines of the U.N. General Assembly meeting last week, U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo held preliminary talks with the other main countries involved – namely, the six members of the Gulf Cooperation Council plus Egypt and Jordan – to discuss the summit. The idea has been batted around before, but for the first time, the U.S. president is planning to preside over a meeting intended to discuss its creation. The story didn’t receive much coverage last week, with other stories monopolizing the press, but in other times, it would have dominated the news.
In the past, the idea of an Arab NATO was motivated by a desire to unite Arab nations against jihadists. Political realities delayed its creation, but this time around, it’s being motivated by the expansion of Iranian influence, which poses an existential threat to Arab states. Iran already has a dominant position in Iraq, substantial influence in Syria and Lebanon, and is supporting Shiites fighting in Yemen. And though its economy is under extreme pressure, particularly with the addition of U.S. sanctions, Iran would become a more direct threat to Arab regimes, if only it could consolidate its position. Iran’s interest in the Arab world is to guarantee its own security and, as important, to gain control of Persian Gulf and Arab oil. It's a distant threat, but distant threats should be addressed early rather than later. Hence the meeting between the leaders of the future Arab NATO.
(click to enlarge)
In creating the invitation list, however, the summit hit its first snag. Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates are deeply hostile to Qatar. Qatar is close to Iran geographically and in policy. Given the direction the winds are blowing, cozying up to Iran was prudent. For the Saudis and the UAE, it was a betrayal. This and undoubtedly other less visible issues triggered a diplomatic crisis last year, when a Saudi-led group formed a blockade against Qatar. The U.S. position seems to be that including Qatar – which hosts U.S. bases – would protect Doha and shift it away from Iran.
This is one of the virtues of an Arab NATO. It would bring Arab nations together and lock them into place, just as NATO did in Europe. It would start as a defensive platform, providing military, economic and political support to limit Iranian influence. Later, it could take on an offensive role, reversing Iranian gains in the region.
There are several questions still unanswered. Would the alliance include a collective defense clause, similar to NATO’s Article 5, stating that if one member is attacked, all the others must take action? Would the United States make such a commitment? Would it have a command structure with forces from each country committed to war plans, as NATO does?
It also poses some strategic questions. If this alliance actually works, then the Arabs go from being a divided and mutually hostile people to a united and potentially powerful entity. There’s a very real chance this could threaten both Turkey and Israel. Since both countries have large militaries, this could wind up, in the worst case, as an Arab power surrounded by non-Arab powers (Israel, Turkey and Iran). That would make quite a battle.
I am likely looking too far in the future of an organization that doesn’t yet exist and is still struggling over what to do with Qatar. It is hard to imagine an Arab alliance that can cohere as a military giant. But in geopolitics, imagination is a more powerful tool than common sense, since history constantly confounds common sense. The likelihood of this alliance surviving and growing powerful is small, but it is not impossible. If it happens, it could change the region, threaten other powers, and generate conflict.
-
Highlights
The United States is expanding its goal in Syria to include the full withdrawal of Iranian forces from Syria and the replacement of the current government in Damascus.
A more assertive U.S. approach to the Syrian government and the Iranian presence in Syria is bound to lead to more friction between Moscow and Washington.
Concerns about possible chemical weapons and refugees involved in an offensive in Idlib further limit the potential for the United States and Russia to reach an understanding.
The United States is expanding its goal in Syria to include the full withdrawal of Iranian forces from Syria and the replacement of the current government in Damascus. A more assertive U.S. approach to the Syrian government and the Iranian presence in Syria is bound to lead to more friction between Moscow and Washington. Concerns about possible chemical weapons and refugees involved in an offensive in Idlib further limit the potential for the United States and Russia to reach an understanding.
The Big Picture
Syria is a major battleground that has drawn in countries near and far. It currently remains a center of competition between the United States and Russia, as both nations pursue their own interests. And in terms of progress – or lack thereof – on cooperation, Syria serves as an indicator of the overall direction of the U.S.-Russia relationship.
See 2018 Fourth-Quarter Forecast
See Middle East and North Africa section of the 2018 Fourth-Quarter Forecast
Specifically, the United States is now striving for the full withdrawal of Iranian forces from Syria and a transition from the current government in Damascus to one more acceptable to Washington. This is not the first time the United States has significantly altered its goals in Syria. At various points during the Syrian Civil War, the country has vacillated between two policies: one of actively working against the Syrian regime and one of focusing strictly on the defeat of violent extremist groups. This latest shift, however, will firmly dash any prospect of significant cooperation with Russia in the country. Moscow has taken an expansive approach to preserving its gains in Syria by establishing an equilibrium in the country – and that effort requires working with the U.S. government in a way that lends legitimacy to the Syrian government. Thus, a more aggressive U.S. approach to the Syrian government and Iran's presence in the country is bound to lead to more friction.
Complicating the dynamic between the United States and Russia in the country is the imminent Syrian loyalist offensive in Idlib province. Ever since the United States ended its CIA program to arm rebel forces in Syria last year, the United States has had very little influence or presence in Idlib. Still, two factors could drive a bigger U.S. response to the offensive on the province. The first is the threat of yet another massive spillover of refugees into Turkey – and from there, into Europe. Approximately 3 million more refugees could attempt to flee significant loyalist operations around Idlib, and the threat of this massive influx has not only strengthened Turkey’s resolve to oppose such an offensive but also elicited warnings from the United States and its European allies.
A map showing the current areas of control in the Syrian Civil War
The second factor is the potential use of chemical weapons by Syrian government forces. On numerous occasions, Damascus has resorted to the use of chemical weapons, including nerve agents, in its efforts to regain territory. And in two instances, this has prompted U.S.-led punitive military strikes. According to U.S. officials who have cited intelligence reports, Syrian President Bashar al Assad has approved the use of chlorine gas in the upcoming military operations in Idlib, The Wall Street Journal reported Sept. 9. While U.S. officials have said nothing about nerve agents (which has been a clear American red line), even the use of chlorine on a large scale would likely draw another U.S. punitive strike. Such a response is especially likely due to the high visibility of the Idlib situation and Washington's multiple warnings about chemical weapons use. Beyond the risky prospect that the strikes could escalate the conflict (particularly given the Russian and Iranian presence in the country), they would also make it more difficult for the United States and Russia to cooperate on a shared plan in Syria.
Russia's recent threats over the Al-Tanf garrison, an area in eastern Syria where the United States maintains a small number of troops alongside rebel forces, are one indicator of the deteriorating relationship between the two major powers. According to U.S. officials, the Russians have twice threatened to conduct military operations in the area over the last 10 days, prompting the U.S. military to warn against any such move and deploy Marine reinforcements to the area.
Unless Russia or the United States makes a significant miscalculation or causes a severe accident, it is unlikely that either will escalate their dispute in Syria to the point of active hostilities. After all, neither power is willing to run the risk of sparking a wider war over Syria. Still, the significant differences that are coming to the fore as the United States takes a more assertive stance on Iran and al Assad ensure that Moscow’s hopes of an agreement with Washington on Syria will not bear fruit.
-
https://www.meforum.org/articles/2018/israel-s-war-with-iran-is-inevitable?utm_source=Middle+East+Forum&utm_campaign=11b9fe85c8-INBAR_CAMPAIGN_2018_10_08_10_06&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_086cfd423c-11b9fe85c8-33691909&goal=0_086cfd423c-11b9fe85c8-33691909
-
Iran's Imploding Strategy
by Jonathan Spyer
Jerusalem Post
October 05, 2018
https://www.meforum.org/articles/2018/iran-s-imploding-strategy
Originally published under the headline "The logic behind Iranian moves in the Middle East."
The effort by the US and its allies to contain and ultimately roll back the gains made by Iran in the region over the last half decade is currently taking shape, and is set to form the central strategic process in the Middle East in the period now opening up.
-
The world retains its ability to surprise , , ,
Remember all those predictions when President Trump moved our embassy to Jerusalem?
.
Israel and Oman. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu traveled to Oman on Friday with a high-profile delegation that included his national security adviser, the Mossad chief and the director general of the Foreign Ministry. The trip appears to have been a success. On Saturday, Oman’s foreign minister said that it might be time for Israel “to be treated the same” as other states in the region and that the U.S. is helping broker a “deal of the century” to put an end to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. (Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas paid a visit of his own to Oman just a few days earlier.) From its strategically invaluable location at the mouth of the Persian Gulf, Oman has long been a (mostly) nonaligned country, a position that enables to it to play a quiet role as mediator in the region’s many disputes. Perhaps more notable was the reaction by other states in the region. At a summit attended by U.S. Defense Secretary James Mattis, the foreign ministers of Bahrain and Saudi Arabia said they supported the meeting and the broader peace process. The show of support subtly reveals the real target of all this diplomatic maneuvering – Iran, whose foreign minister criticized the meeting, and which Israel blamed for rocket attacks from Gaza on Friday night.
-
https://clarionproject.org/khashoggo-affiar-derail-arab-nato/
-
A quick update on Syria. It was a busy weekend for the beleaguered country. Syrian warplanes struck rebel territory in Idlib province for the first time since Russia and Turkey agreed to create a buffer zone in September, according to activists. In Aleppo, more than 100 people were injured in a suspected gas attack on Saturday. Syria and Russia blamed the rebels, and Moscow launched airstrikes on rebel positions following the attack. Meanwhile, the United States has started building five observation posts on the Syria-Turkey border, despite opposition from Ankara. Major clashes between Islamic State militants and U.S.-backed Kurdish forces in eastern Syria killed dozens of civilians and fighters. The defense ministers of Turkey and Russia held talks on Syria on Sunday. Clearly, they had a lot to talk about.
Honorable Mentions
Saudi crude oil production hit an all-time high in November – 11.2 million barrels per day, according to Bloomberg.
-
Honorable Mentions
Saudi crude oil production hit an all-time high in November – 11.2 million barrels per day, according to Bloomberg
maybe a deal made by Trump in return for ignoring the kashoggi murder
CNn could be honest and explain why it would have been better for 330 million people to pay more at the gas pump because of this one Bin Ladin lover .
Not defending his murder but which outweighs which. If brock was still the Prez he would have lectured the Saudis for the cameras holding his chin high up in the air with a stern look then do nothing about say something about a red line - and the media would have fawned all over him !
-
https://www.newyorker.com/news/dispatch/is-the-trump-administration-pivoting-the-fight-in-syria-toward-a-war-with-iran?mbid=nl_Daily%20112618&CNDID=50142053&utm_source=nl&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Daily%20112618&utm_content=&utm_brand=tny&utm_mailing=Daily%20112618&hasha=52f016547a40edbdd6de69b8a7728bbf&hashb=e02b3c0e6e0f3888e0288d6e52a57eccde1bfd75&spMailingID=14683457&spUserID=MjAxODUyNTc2OTUwS0&spJobID=1522011946&spReportId=MTUyMjAxMTk0NgS2
-
Iran’s Ambitions Persist,
Checking the pulse of our annual predictions, every two weeks.
GPF Staff |November 16, 2018
From the Forecast: “Tehran must … move quickly to secure its objectives – to become the leading power in the Persian Gulf, and then to dominate the Arab world from the gulf to the Mediterranean. This will be Iran’s challenge in 2018.”
Update: If the demise of the Islamic State was the center of gravity in our 2017 forecast for the Middle East, the Iranian attempt to fill the power vacuum left in the group’s wake was the center of gravity in our 2018 forecast for the world’s most frenetic region. Iran has had a difficult year, capped off by the reimposition of U.S. sanctions targeting its oil sector. The U.S. has granted temporary waivers to many of Iran’s top energy importers to try to stave off a spike in oil prices. But as oil prices drop and it becomes clear that the market is oversupplied even with Iran on the sidelines, the incentive for U.S. leniency will soon pass as well.
Overall, it has been a mixed year in Iran and for this forecast. The Iranian economy seemed poised for meltdown at several points, and domestic politics seethed with such dissent that the government’s survival became a legitimate concern. We did not anticipate the level of discontent in Iran, nor did we fully appreciate that Iranian expansionism in the Middle East would exacerbate its domestic economic problems to the point that the Islamic republic’s foreign adventures in places like Syria would become as much a target for protesters as the U.S. and Israel historically have been.
Throughout the Middle East, too, Iran’s actions have had ripple effects. Iran-backed Shiite militias and their former leaders have gained substantial influence with the government in Baghdad, as Tehran tries to replicate in Iraq the success it has had in Lebanon with its proxy Hezbollah. Iran also has established bases throughout Syria and, together with Hezbollah, has stabilized the position of Bashar Assad, a stalwart ally. It has provoked Israel to launch multiple attacks in Syria and provided Hezbollah with technology and weapons to increase its potency should a war with Israel break out. All the while, Iran has continued to look for friends in the gulf, weakening Saudi Arabia in its own backyard.
Each of these dynamics, from Iran’s struggling economy to its expanding reach in the region, has been in play in recent weeks. For every report of a truckers’ strike or teachers’ protest against the mullahs, there are stories of Iran finding ways to evade sanctions by, for example, creating a new banking mechanism with China. Iraqi Shiite militias now receive the same salaries as Iraqi soldiers – which means Iran’s strategy to embed itself in Iraqi state structures is proceeding apace. Meanwhile, Iran remains defiant of the U.S. and, despite Israeli warnings, continues to press its positions in Syria and Lebanon. Iran faces many challenges, but it has not pulled back from its regional ambitions in any meaningful way, and that makes this particular forecast, while imperfect, a success.
-
Is the Idlib deal dead? The agreement Russia and Turkey reached in September over the status of Idlib, the embattled province of northwest Syria, is on the verge of breaking down. The Syrian government claims Turkey has failed to hold up its end of the bargain because it has yet to remove the most extreme elements of armed opposition – namely, the 15,000 or so members of the al-Qaida affiliate known as Hayat Tahrir al-Sham. It also accused Turkey of resuming artillery bombardment of the demilitarized zone the agreement established and of deploying heavy military equipment to Idlib instead of the light equipment stipulated in the deal. Finally, Damascus said that the raising of Turkish flags over the Syrian cities Turkey now controls constitutes an act of aggression. Parties to the Astana talks – Russia, Turkey and Iran – agreed that under no circumstances would Idlib compromise Syria’s sovereign territory. Not for nothing, Russia said it was ready to start bombing HTS positions in Idlib again, going so far as to note that it would cooperate with both the Syrian government and the Syrian rebels that have honored the Idlib agreement to eliminate the jihadist threat there.
-
https://clarionproject.org/syria-is-granting-citizenship-millions-iranians/
Big implications here!
-
A Kurdish bus line. A new bus line from Iraqi Kurdistan to Kurdish cities in northeastern Syria has begun operating. Though it may seem like a minor development, it’s noteworthy because the Syrian Democratic Forces, the U.S. ally in Syria that is dominated by Kurds, will oversee it. This will surely frustrate Turkey. Ankara considers the Kurds in question terrorists, so it won’t be too happy to find them strengthening ties with Iraqi Kurds, with whom Turkey has comparatively better relations. Behind all this is Turkey’s fear that Kurds throughout the region will coalesce into an independent Kurdistan. So long as cross-border collaboration – tacitly OK’d by the U.S. – continues, Turkey will distrust Washington’s intentions. After all, the U.S. has already established new observation posts along the Syria-Turkey border, ostensibly to create a shield for Kurdish forces in northern Syria against future Turkish offensives.
-
By GPF Staff
Daily Memo: Conflicts Brewing in the Middle East
All the news worth knowing today.
The U.S., Turkey and the Kurds. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan announced that Turkey’s military will soon start operations east of the Euphrates River, a move that will directly target Syrian Kurdish forces allied with the United States. Rumors have begun to surface that he made the announcement in response to Washington’s construction of observation posts along the Syrian border despite Turkey’s objections. Turkish news agencies, which have begun to set up shop near the border to be closer to the action, have reported that heavy military equipment is already being shipped to Sanliurfa province in southeastern Turkey. Washington’s response has been a little inconsistent: A Pentagon spokesman said unilateral action by Turkey against the Kurds in the area is unacceptable before noting that Washington still wants to coordinate and cooperate with Ankara.
The Kurdish issue is a major sticking point in U.S.-Turkey relations. The U.S. needs Kurdish fighters to help fight its battles in Syria, but Turkey considers the Kurds terrorists. The interests of other countries further complicate the issue. Russia has been stirring the pot, trying to capitalize on the tensions by temporarily allying itself with Turkey in Syria. Its foreign ministry has said the “excessive” U.S. military presence in Syria threatens the Idlib peace deal, which Moscow would continue to enforce with Turkey. The U.S. and Turkey keep kicking the can down the road, but the Kurdish issue is not something they can put off indefinitely.
Bellicose words from Israel. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Israel would not rule out any type of military action against Iran to ensure his state’s survival – including potential action against Iranian proxies. Netanyahu underscored that Iran has missiles capable of striking anywhere in Israel and that Israeli forces are already engaged in airstrikes against Iran-backed groups in Syria. At a meeting of the U.N. Security Council, U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo backed Netanyahu’s stance, saying that Iran’s ballistic missile activity is “out of control” and calling for increased efforts to halt Iranian weapons exports.
Netanyahu has also appealed to Saudi Arabia, a potential ally, as the two work to improve relations. The prime minister said Israel is not an enemy of Arab countries but a partner, and he emphasized that Israel’s support for the current Saudi government, despite the murder of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi, is critical to stability in the Middle East – and in the rest of the world. Russia has chimed in too, repeating calls to end the fighting in the Golan Heights. The Israel Defense Forces are currently excavating and destroying tunnels along the border with Lebanon and in the Golan Heights to reduce Israel’s vulnerability to a surprise attack by Iranian proxies like Hezbollah.
-
For my fellow geopolitical junkies:
To view this email in your browser, click here.
Download as PDF
Geopolitical Futures
Dec. 20, 2018
By Xander Snyder
The US Leaves Syrian Kurds High and Dry
Washington’s plans to withdraw from Syria will pave the way for Ankara’s offensive on Kurdish-held territory east of the Euphrates River.
The U.S. is reportedly on its way out of Syria. On Wednesday morning, U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration said it would withdraw all U.S. forces from the country within the next 100 days. An anonymous official further claimed that all State Department Officials in Syria would be evacuated within 24 hours. On Thursday, anonymous U.S. officials told Reuters that the U.S. air campaign against the Islamic State in Syria would also stop. The announcements came days after the Syrian Democratic Forces, a largely Kurdish, U.S.-backed rebel group, declared victory over the last major Islamic State stronghold in eastern Syria. Now that the group’s defeat is near, the U.S. has accomplished its goals in Syria.
The United States’ departure will leave its Kurdish partners in Syria high and dry. The U.S. has partnered with the SDF over the years to fight against the Islamic State. Since Ankara launched Operation Euphrates Shield in 2016, it has also shielded the Kurdish People’s Protection Units – or YPG, the SDF coalition’s largest member – from an assault by Turkey, which considers the group a terrorist organization. Without a U.S. presence on the ground, Turkey will have free rein to move into the Kurdish-held portions of northern and northeastern Syria.
(click to enlarge)
And Turkey does indeed appear to be preparing to go after the Kurds. For the last week, it has been broadcasting its intention to start a new offensive east of the Euphrates River. It won’t be a small one, either: A spokesperson for Syria’s pro-Turkey rebels claimed Dec. 14 that 15,000 fighters are mobilized for the operation, and a few days later, Turkish newspaper Yeni Safak said that 24,000 troops, including Turkish soldiers, are ready for the fight. If these accounts are accurate, Turkey is planning to commit more of its own soldiers to this new operation than it did to its offensive in Afrin earlier this year. Reports have also surfaced that Turkey is moving tanks and artillery to its border with Syria, albeit west of the Euphrates. According to Washington’s announcement, the Kurds in northeast Syria will have to face this threat on their own.
Complementary Interests
Although the White House’s announcement reportedly took some U.S. officials by surprise, the timing makes sense. Proclaiming the Islamic State’s defeat will enable Washington to withdraw troops from Syria with something like a victory to show for it. Transnational jihadism has long been the main issue for the United States in Syria. The SDF’s capture of the last major IS stronghold east of the Euphrates demonstrates the success of its efforts against transnational jihadist forces there (apart from Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, which Turkey has yet to disband).
That’s not all the U.S. has to gain from the move. Earlier in the Syrian civil war, Washington wanted Turkey to take on a more active role in the conflict. Its hope, of course, was that Ankara would engage in the fight against jihadist organizations like IS. But the Turkish government was reluctant to invade Syria for the purpose of repelling a Sunni group that was weakening the administration of Syrian President Bashar Assad, whom it considered a regional adversary. The YPG, by contrast, is a much more appealing target for Turkey. Once Turkish forces have wrested control of northern and northeastern Syria from the Kurds – and it almost certainly will, given its military superiority – they will establish permanent administrative structures there, as they have in Afrin, to try to create a lasting buffer. Turkey will then take the YPG’s place as the target of IS attacks in the region – another of which reportedly occurred in Raqqa on Wednesday – forcing the country to confront the jihadist group.
(click to enlarge)
The U.S., then, will get what it wanted from Turkey all along – not because Ankara has changed its tune but because its interests once again align with those of Washington. The U.S. withdrawal from the region will pave the way for the offensive Turkey wants to launch against the YPG. Turkey’s offensive, in turn, will pave the way for the more permanent professional military force the United States wants in the region to keep IS at bay.
Stopping Iran
On top of that, Turkey’s offensive will further constrain Iranian power in Syria. It is in the interest of the United States to minimize the amount of territory the Assad administration reclaims in Syria. Even if Assad recovers 75 percent of his country, that’s still 25 percent that Tehran won’t have influence over. Were the war to continue as it has been going, Assad would consolidate all the territory held by non-Kurdish rebels, leaving Idlib as the only outlier, before turning his attention to the north and northeast. (Assad had a tacit pact with the Kurds to leave them alone while he dealt with the rest of Syria, but he and his foreign backers knew that at some point he would need to bring the territory they held back under the central government’s control.) By moving into the Kurdish-occupied territory now, Ankara will stop Assad before he has even had a chance to deal with Idlib, where Turkey also has a presence. Iran will still have access to some of its supply routes through southern Syria, though they have been under such strain recently that Tehran has found other ways to get arms and equipment to Hezbollah, including developing weapons in Lebanon.
As it prepares for its offensive east of the Euphrates, Turkey is also busy hashing out a peace plan for Syria with Iran and Russia. The three have agreed on the structure of a constitutional committee that could bring the war to a political end. It would consist of 150 delegates, including 50 representatives from the Assad government and 50 representatives from Syria’s rebel groups. The disposition of the remaining 50 delegates, reserved for “independent” members – in other words, representatives from Turkey, Russia and Iran – is still up in the air. Turkey is trying to gather as many bargaining chips as it can to strengthen its position in the talks, as states often do when negotiating a political compromise in a war. So long as Ankara doesn’t use its eventual presence in northern Syria to undermine Assad’s rule, Moscow probably will be willing to settle for an arrangement in which some territory remains outside the Syrian government’s control.
Ankara’s Ambitions
These other parties’ gain will be the Syrian Kurds’ loss. The U.S. support for Syria’s Kurdish groups was always a tactical alliance, meant to minimize the number of American troops fighting IS on the ground. As that fight winds down, Washington has much less of a strategic rationale for maintaining that support, especially since doing so would jeopardize its relations with Turkey, which now appear to be on the mend after a tumultuous year. The U.S. special representative for Syria engagement seemed to back up the idea that Washington is ending its support for the Kurds, saying in a speech Monday at the Atlantic Council that the U.S. does “not have permanent relations with sub-state entities.” There’s every reason to believe Turkey’s pending offensive will succeed in defeating Kurdish forces after the U.S. withdraws its support. After all, it did so in northwestern Syria with Operation Euphrates Shield in 2016, and again in Afrin with Operation Olive Branch this year.
(click to enlarge)
Depending on how quickly U.S. troops pull out of Syria, Turkey may have to delay its invasion. It may also face operational hurdles, as it did during Euphrates Shield, that slow its progress. Then, too, there’s always the possibility, however remote, that Washington and Ankara have reached a private understanding whereby Turkish forces will stop their advance at a certain point, or else the U.S. will resume its support for the YPG. Regardless, the developments in Syria reflect Turkey’s growing role in the Middle East, and the attending expansion of its geographic interests. No longer is Turkey focused on defending its own borders; it is turning its gaze much farther east.
-
second post
Fallout from the Syria withdrawal. Nothing that happens in Syria happens in isolation. Washington’s decision to remove its troops will be felt throughout the region, perhaps nowhere more so than in Israel. Washington’s help in the fight against Iran is an important component of U.S.-Israel relations, one that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu would rather not lose. To that end, he spoke to President Donald Trump and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, who he said confirmed that the U.S. will continue to influence the outcome in Syria and aid Israel through other means. It’s unclear exactly how the U.S. will do so, but it is clear that Israel is already trying to figure out how much risk the U.S. may have put it in – Israeli fighter jets have already been spotted in Lebanese airspace near the Syrian border.
Others are anticipating changes as well. The Syrian Democratic Forces, backed by the U.S. but dominated by the Kurds, warned that the withdrawal will lead to a jihadist revival. A leading Kurdish politician hinted that they may need to reconsider their alliances. The French government said the fight against terrorism was, in fact, not over and that its troops would remain in Syria accordingly. Russia’s Foreign Ministry said that the U.S. has the potential to usher in a political settlement in Syria but remained skeptical until seeing more action.
-
The Cost of Betraying Syria’s Kurds
A U.S. pullout would have catastrophic humanitarian consequences and cause harm to U.S. interests.
4 Comments
By Tommy Meyerson
Dec. 20, 2018 7:00 p.m. ET
Kurdish fighters hold a position in northern Iraq, March 29.
Kurdish fighters hold a position in northern Iraq, March 29. Photo: safin hamed/Agence France-Presse/Getty Images
I returned this year from military service in northeastern Syria, where the U.S. has supported local Kurdish, Arab and Syriac Christian militias in a grim campaign to dislodge Islamic State. Now refugees are returning to their homes, and locals are starting to rebuild after five years of fighting and nightmarish ISIS rule. In most places I was greeted by civilians thankful for the U.S. presence. I’ll never forget the little girl who ran up in a recently liberated market town and hugged my leg, refusing to let go.
But this fragile rose blooming in the desert will likely be crushed if the U.S. departs.
With peace finally in sight, Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan last week threatened to invade northern Syria and “cleanse” the region of our Kurdish partners. After a phone call with Mr. Erdogan, President Trump tweeted that the U.S. may soon pull all 2,000 troops from Syria. The best way for the U.S. to avoid dishonor and calamity is to walk back this policy shift and publicly commit to safeguarding its Kurdish partners until a durable peace agreement can be reached.
The U.S. and the West have quietly relied on the Syrian Kurds to sacrifice their young men and women by the thousands to defeat the Islamic State. Thanks largely to their efforts, ISIS in Syria has gone from a fearsome juggernaut to a ragged band of die-hards trapped in a shrinking patch of wasteland.
The partnership dates to 2014, when the Kurds mounted an inspiring last-ditch defense of Kobani against ISIS’ advance. The Kurds could have halted and focused on consolidating their own territory, but at America’s urging they expanded their effort against ISIS. In a coalition with Arabs and Syriacs of the Euphrates River Valley, they’ve swept south to dislodge ISIS from one-third of Syria.
I met many young Syrian fighters of all ethnicities, who under Kurdish leadership were determined to liberate their lands from Islamist despotism. In Raqqa and along the Euphrates I witnessed firsthand as steady trains of field ambulances carried Kurdish casualties in battle after battle. The Kurdish-led civil administration does the heavy lifting of guarding hundreds of ISIS’ most dangerous foreign fighters while their home countries drag their feet on extradition.
The West owes them a debt for the price they’ve paid. Instead, a U.S. departure would threaten them with disaster. Already Mr. Erdogan has directed two invasions of Syrian border regions—in 2016 north of Aleppo and this January in the northwestern Afrin region. Mr. Erdogan labels America’s Syrian Kurdish partners “terrorists,” links them with separatist rebels in Turkey, and suggests resettling their land with Arab refugees from elsewhere in Syria.
The Kurds have earned a reputation for fighting bravely, but without U.S. air power their prospects against a modern army with a robust air force would be grim. An invasion would force Kurdish forces to pull back from the front lines against the remnant of ISIS, allowing the jihadists to regroup and proliferate. It would likely spawn a fresh humanitarian catastrophe, including areas that have been mostly spared the worst of Syria’s civil war.
I heard frequently from Kurds about their fears of ethnic cleansing should Turkey invade. Invasion would also leave the door wide open for the Assad regime to launch an assault with help from Russia, Iran and Hezbollah. I witnessed just such an incursion attempt by regime elements this February, while the Kurds were distracted with Ankara’s invasion of Afrin—an incursion repelled only by U.S. firepower.
A pullout would harm U.S. interests as well. It would shred America’s credibility as a counterterrorism partner world-wide, while abandoning a strategic area and making it harder to check jihadist, Iranian and Russian ambitions. Mr. Trump should make clear the U.S. stands with the Syrian Kurds and won’t permit a Turkish invasion. No one wants American troops to stay in Syria forever, but U.S. interests and honor demand that they stay for now.
Mr. Meyerson, a former U.S. Marine, is a student at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School of Business.
-
fourth post
Note that if Turkey actually buys the Russian Missile System it will likely enable the Russkis to reverse engineer US Airforce technology or something like that-- this is a serious issue!
Key U.S. Partner in Syria Thrown Into Disarray
Kurds consider abandoning the fight against Islamic State and seek new partners, including possibly the Assad regime, as U.S. forces leave Syria
By Sune Engel Rasmussen in Beirut and
David Gauthier-Villars in Istanbul
Dec. 20, 2018 4:10 p.m. ET
A key U.S. partner in Syria said President Trump’s abrupt order to withdraw American troops from the country could prompt it to leave the fight against Islamic State and seek new partners, including possibly Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.
The Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces have been at the forefront of an international coalition battling the extremist group since 2015. The U.S. has supported the fighters with training and airstrikes, allowing the SDF to capture around one-third of Syria’s territory and most of its oil reserves.
But without American troops to back them, the Syrian Kurds are vulnerable to attacks from both Islamic State and Turkey, which views them as terrorists and a threat to its security. Mr. Assad, backed by Russia and Iran, has repeatedly vowed to retake control of the entire country despite diplomatic and military efforts by the U.S. and its allies to thwart a leader it considers responsible for hundreds of thousands of deaths.
The Consequences of U.S. Withdrawal From Syria
President Trump ordered the withdraw of U.S. troops from Syria, and declared that America had "defeated ISIS." WSJ's Gerald F. Seib discusses the significance of the decision and its consequences. Photo: AP
Left in a lurch, the Kurds—the U.S.’s most reliable partner in Syria—could seek a settlement with Mr. Assad who, as opposed to Turkey and Islamic State, can offer them some protection. Kurdish leaders met with intelligence and security officials from the Syrian government this summer, but initial talks didn’t yield an accord.
“We are going to leave all of our options open,” SDF spokesman Mustafa Bali said. “We will look for the best decision that will fill the gap left by U.S. forces so that we can fight Islamic State. This does not preclude building new relationships with parties internationally and domestically."
A war monitor, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, reported that SDF was considering releasing about 1,100 Islamic State fighters and some 2,000 relatives from captivity following Mr. Trump’s announcement.
Mr. Bali declined to comment on the Observatory reports. But he suggested the SDF’s commitment to fight Islamic State could falter without U.S. backing.
“We will have to shift our troops according to the developments and to defend,” he said. “We might have to leave the fronts with Islamic State entirely.”
A State Department official said Thursday “the Syrian Democratic Forces are an integral part of the fight to defeat ISIS,” and the department continues to back the United Nations-led peace process.
“Coordination and consultation between the U.S. and Turkey is the only approach to address issues of security concern in this area,” the official said, citing a recent high-level meeting between the U.S. and Turkey.
Based on their past priorities, Kurdish political representatives are likely to push in any talks with Syria for some degree of administrative autonomy and permission to teach the Kurdish language in schools, while Mr. Assad will want control of national borders and a majority of natural resources in the area.
On Thursday, the Kurds railed at Mr. Trump’s sudden decision to withdraw troops from Syria, saying such a move will hamper the fight against terrorism and further destabilize the region.
“This decision to withdraw will strike at joint efforts to eradicate terrorism,” the SDF said in a statement. “It will create a political and military void in the region and leave people at the mercy of opposing forces.”
SDF members were in a “state of shock,” said one U.S. peaceworker based in Beirut. “SDF officials have painted this as a betrayal locally.”
Threats to the Kurds are already growing. Turkey has moved military forces to its border with Syria in recent weeks. President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has said they stood ready to start an offensive on Kurdish militants “at any moment.”
Earlier in the year, Turkish troops captured Afrin in the northwest and in November began joint patrols with U.S. soldiers in Manbij, east of Afrin, after continuously threatening to capture the town by force.
Kurdish demonstrators gathered near the border wall separating Turkey from Syria in the western Syrian countryside of Ras al-Ain to protest Turkish threats of an offensive against them. President Trump’s order to pull out U.S. troops leaves Syrian Kurds vulnerable.
Kurdish demonstrators gathered near the border wall separating Turkey from Syria in the western Syrian countryside of Ras al-Ain to protest Turkish threats of an offensive against them. President Trump’s order to pull out U.S. troops leaves Syrian Kurds vulnerable. Photo: delil souleiman/Agence France-Presse/Getty Images
A U.S. withdrawal would diminish the risk of American soldiers in the vicinity of Kurds being hit accidentally by Turkish fire. It would also accommodate Mr. Erdogan’s demand that Washington stop supporting the Kurdish groups, smoothing relations between the two North Atlantic Treaty Organization allies, analysts said.
“It will remove the main problem between the U.S. and Turkey,” said Can Acun, an analyst at SETA, an Ankara-based think tank close to the Turkish government. “All other matters are secondary.”
The U.S. withdrawal also risks boosting an embattled Islamic State, whose fighters have fought the Syrian Kurds in a guerrilla-style insurgency for months, using suicide bombers, sleeper cells and kidnappings. The militants have killed more than 500 SDF fighters since September, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.
Mr. Trump’s sudden reversal of U.S. policy in Syria is also creating divisions within the SDF, which is led by Kurds, but includes Arabs, and has both a political and a military wing. In addition, some Kurds may leave their current positions and move into territory controlled by Syria’s government to be safe from Turkish attacks, said the U.S. peace worker. This could splinter the SDF would further weaken the fight against Islamic State.
U.S. allies outside Syria also questioned Mr. Trump’s decision. The British and French governments both said that Islamic State still poses a threat. Mr. Bali said the British and French foreign ministries have reassured SDF that their troops would remain in Syria.
Russia’s President Vladimir Putin, meanwhile, praised Mr. Trump and said leaving Syria was “the right decision.”
Russia, one of the main arbiters of the Syrian war, has in the past said Kurdish rights in Syria must be defended. But Moscow is unlikely to throw its support behind Kurdish fighters in eastern Syria to counter a Turkish intervention there, analysts said.
“Moscow is interested in preserving the remnants of a quasi-alliance with Turkey, so backing the Kurds is still out of the question,” said Pavel Baev, a professor at the Peace Research Institute in Oslo and a former analyst at the Soviet Ministry of Defense.
But analysts said the fate of the Turkish-Russian alliance hinged on Turkey meeting its side of recent bilateral agreements. Last year, Turkey agreed to buy S-400 missile defense systems from Russia. In September, Turkey also pledged to remove radical militants from the Syrian province of Idlib, one of the last pockets of resistance to the Assad regime and home to millions of refugees, after Russia accepted to hold off on attacking the area.
Should Turkey turn its back to Russia by seeking to cancel the S-400 contract, which has angered Washington, Moscow could retaliate by going back on the Idlib pact and launching an offensive on the Syrian province together with the Assad regime, the analysts said.
“Moscow is actively looking for ways and means to break the agreement,” Mr. Baev said, noting any move from Ankara “makes the offensive imminent rather than probable.”
—Nazih Osseiran in Beirut contributed to this article.
-
https://www.jpost.com/Middle-East/How-Russia-defeated-America-in-Syria-574930
-
http://www.jordantimes.com/news/region/us-likely-end-air-war-against-daesh-syria
-
Fourth post
More on the Syria fallout. U.S. officials on Thursday said President Donald Trump’s order for a quick withdrawal of U.S. troops from Syria will also include an end to the U.S. air campaign against the Islamic State. Details remain vague at this point; U.S. Central Command said merely that the air campaign would continue so long as U.S. troops are on the ground. But defense leaders from nearly every partner in the U.S.-led coalition combating the Islamic State – including Israel, France, the U.K., the Netherlands and Germany (most of which vowed to remain in Syria), as well as U.S. lawmakers and senior defense officials – voiced concern about the speed of the move. The main critique: The job isn’t quite done yet. Kurdish officials, meanwhile, warned that the loss of U.S. air cover would force them to effectively abandon the fight against the Islamic State, so they could shift resources north to counter the impending Turkish offensive, potentially allowing IS forces to reconstitute. According to one Kurdish official, this would force the Syrian Democratic Forces to release more than a thousand IS detainees. Given all the opposition to the move from inside the U.S. and out, it’s not hard to see the U.S. withdrawal timeline getting pushed back quite a bit. But it’s clear that the U.S. campaign will not be open-ended.
On U.S. allies and credibility. Concern about the U.S. move to leave Syria was compounded Thursday by the announcement that U.S. Defense Secretary James Mattis will resign in February. One man won’t fundamentally alter the U.S. strategic course. We’ve been saying for years that the U.S. is overexposed and would seek to shift more of the security burden to allies and partners and manipulate global affairs from afar. Geopolitical structures are only as sustainable as the alignment of interests underpinning them. But Mattis’ resignation letter, in which he lambasted Trump’s apparent disregard for the value of long-standing U.S. alliances and diplomatic prowess, will only deepen the sense that the U.S. is a capricious and distracted power. Whatever the merits of the U.S. moves to recalibrate its global strategy, they are already creating vacuums of power that friends and foes alike are scrambling to fill. Along these lines, it’s worth noting that Philippine Defense Minister Delfin Lorenzana announced that Manila would re-evaluate the U.S.-Philippine Mutual Defense Treaty due to Washington’s continued refusal to confirm that it covers Philippine-claimed parts of the South China Sea. Meanwhile, North Korea’s explicit demand yesterday that U.S. troops withdraw from South Korea, if not the entire region, was partially an attempt to gauge just how far and fast the Trump administration is willing to accelerate the U.S. recalibration.
-
fifth post
https://www.nationalreview.com/2018/12/trump-syria-withdrawal-intervention-questionable/?utm_source=Sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=181221_G-File&utm_term=GFile-Smart
-
sixth post
A lot to update in Turkey. Turkey, Russia and Iran said they will support the creation of a committee to bring a political settlement to the Syrian civil war. But they haven’t agreed on who exactly will sit on it. The committee will comprise 150 delegates – 50 from the Syrian government, 50 from Syria’s various rebel groups and 50 from so-called “independent” members (i.e., Iran, Turkey and Russia). It’s nothing less than a competition for who will have the most influence in Damascus once the Syrian conflict is over.
Meanwhile, there are signs that U.S.-Turkey ties are improving. The United States has approved a $3.5 billion sale of Patriot air defense systems to Turkey, presumably as an alternative to the Russian S-400 system, which can’t be integrated into NATO air defense systems. (The U.S. has long opposed its acquisition.) Russia is indifferent to the Patriot deal, claiming it won’t affect the S-400 sale. That’s true. S-400s and Patriots are similar but not identical; S-400s have a longer range, better intercontinental and intermediate-range ballistic missile potential, and greater versatility, while the Patriot is better for point defense. Turkey can claim it needs both.
Moreover, the U.S. said Tuesday that it is considering extraditing Fetullah Gulen, the Muslim cleric Turkey believes orchestrated the failed 2016 coup. The announcement contradicts a statement Washington made just one day earlier. It’s a subtle but important development – a public confirmation means Washington is probably looking for ways to reconcile with Ankara. To that end, the Trump administration said Wednesday that it would withdraw completely from Syria, something it said it wanted to do earlier this year (in March) but quickly backtracked on (in April). Along with a recent statement from Washington’s envoy to Syria – that the U.S. has “no permanent relationships with sub-state entities” – this is a foreboding prospect for the Kurds.
Behind the tree. Lebanon’s army was put on high alert after Lebanese and Israeli forces had a minor verbal altercation about the placement of a security fence. A video shows soldiers from Israel and from Lebanon only a few yards apart, arguing about where the fence should be erected relative to the Blue Line, the internationally recognized border established after the 2006 war. (Soldiers kept shouting the phrase “behind the [olive] tree.”) Israeli activity toward Hezbollah has raised the possibility of another war, making tiffs like this a little more troubling than before.
-
seventh post
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-12-21/trump-call-that-went-rogue-hands-erdogan-surprise-win-on-syria?fbclid=IwAR278xcIXX-suwod-NoTMGMtxSfBGRfgezrKaKnYbHI574-0RSYnKIM31Mk
-
https://www.jns.org/israel-jordan-saudi-arabia-join-forces-against-iran-in-syria/?fbclid=IwAR3mWiRzvlc_qyXddcCG_MuY6mDWKvqaLHpDf3jpVIgBwJuFBmNKmYpUX0k
-
second post
http://carolineglick.com/pros-and-cons-of-the-us-pullout-from-syria/
-
Good analysis
and concise summary of "pros and cons"
Like you noted,
CD we screw over the Kurds again . Why would anyone trust us?
-
Wasn't there something a few months ago where Trump/Mattis promised the Turks we would take back certain arms from the Kurds after ISIS was beaten or something like that? I'm looking for it but can't find it.
-
second post
https://amgreatness.com/2018/12/21/out-of-syria/?fbclid=IwAR3QV20bbS5gJyPVrd1GXKbwUapEV05AJDYDwdVyG-6uu-Wolbab7rcPWb0
-
https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/13470/turkey-turns-on-america
-
Fourth post
More on the U.S., Turkey and Syria. U.S. President Donald Trump and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan spoke on Sunday. Erdogan described the call as “productive,” and Trump said afterward that the U.S. withdrawal from Syria would be both “slow” and “highly coordinated” with Ankara. This seems to contrast with initial claims that the withdrawal would take 60 to 100 days. Trump signed the executive order for the withdrawal on Sunday. Ankara has signaled that it is willing to delay its offensive on Manbij and areas east of the Euphrates River. But reports indicate Turkey has sent a 100-vehicle convoy of reinforcements, including tanks and other weapons, to positions north and northwest of Manbij. Additionally, Yeni Safek reported that 8,000 Free Syrian Army fighters were deployed to the Manbij area. (It’s unclear if this deployment is part of or in addition to the 15,000 FSA fighters that were already mobilized.)
Meanwhile, Kurdish forces are doing what they can to cope with the fallout from the U.S. withdrawal. Over the weekend, officials from the Syrian Democratic Forces traveled to Moscow, seeking some sort of settlement with Russia that would prevent or at least limit the anticipated Turkish offensive. Russia reportedly offered to deploy border guards east of the Euphrates, but the SDF insisted that they be Syrian army units rather than the Iran-backed Popular Defense Forces that were sent to Afrin in February. With the U.S. withdrawing, Kurds in northern Syria are essentially faced with two options: quickly reach an agreement with Assad – presumably brokered by Russia – or face a Turkish offensive and long-term occupation. Russia will need to walk a fine line to broker such a deal, as it would like to see President Bashar Assad retake as much territory as possible and use the Syrian Kurds as leverage against Ankara, all the while avoiding a direct confrontation with Turkey.
-
https://www.militarytimes.com/news/your-army/2018/12/19/heres-what-may-be-driving-a-us-troop-withdrawal-from-syria/?utm_source=facebook.com&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=Socialflow+ARM&fbclid=IwAR0ZeCKZ1UNo2xLWC2gWVwe_2EL1zvzc-U7qt2CBnvgxb9FlsjHJ2SvgY-0
Notice the words by Mattis
-
https://www.jpost.com/Middle-East/How-a-breakdown-in-relations-with-Turkey-could-lead-to-an-MBS-Bibi-bromance-575433
-
By GPF Staff
Daily Memo: Strange Bedfellows in Syria, Anti-Marxism in China, Competition in the Indo-Pacific
All the news worth knowing today.
Alliances shift in Syria. For about as long as the U.S. has been engaged in operations against the Islamic State in Syria, the People’s Protection Units, a Syrian Kurdish militia funded by the U.S. and better known as the YPG, has done the bulk of Washington’s dirty work. So when U.S. President Donald Trump abruptly announced a quick end to U.S. involvement in Syria — a move that opened the door for Turkey to uproot Kurdish positions along the Turkey-Syria border — the YPG reached out to an unlikely partner for protection against a Turkish invasion: the Syrian government. On Friday, the rebels asked officials in Damascus to deploy troops to the city of Manbij and other Kurdish-held areas in northern Syria. The government is said to have complied. (Notably, accounts differ. Russia and Iran say Syria now controls Manbij, while the U.S., Turkey and local rebel groups say it doesn’t.) Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said Ankara has “no interest” in Manbij so long as the YPG leaves the city. But nothing is settled, and the fallout from the U.S. withdrawal is just beginning. Turkey may be happy to see the Kurds go, but if Syrian forces – and, by extension, Iran itself – gain a foothold on Turkey’s doorstep, it’s a bit of a Pyrrhic victory. Unsurprisingly, on Friday, Turkey’s primary rebel proxy group in Syria said its convoys were moving with some Turkish forces toward Manbij to “liberate” the town. Russian President Vladimir Putin and Erdogan are expected to meet soon to decide everyone’s fate.
-
https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/pentagon-defends-syria-withdrawal-deliberate-thought-mutually-supportive/story?id=60056404
-
https://nypost.com/2019/01/10/turkey-to-launch-attack-against-kurds-in-syria/
Let's see how the Progressive Neocons respond to this!
Wonder if they will call for President Trump telling Erdogan to put up or shut up.
-
Will Turkey Invade Northeast Syria?
by Jonathan Spyer
The Jerusalem Post
January 11, 2019
https://www.meforum.org/57580/will-turkey-invade-northeast-syria
The announcement by US President Donald Trump on December 19 of his intention to rapidly withdraw US forces from eastern Syria led to expectations of a rapid move by Turkish forces into all or part of the area currently controlled by the US-aligned, Kurdish-dominated Syrian Democratic Forces.
The precipitating factor that led to Trump's announcement, after all, was a phone call between the president and his Turkish counterpart, Recep Tayyip Erdogan. For Turkey, control by what Ankara regards as the Syrian franchise of the PKK of a large swath of the 900-km. Syrian-Turkish border has long been seen as entirely unacceptable.
The Kurdish dominated SDF has capable and proven fighters. But without US help, and facing Turkish air power and artillery, they would be able to resist only for a while. This had already been proven in Turkey's Operation Olive Branch in January 2018, when Ankara invaded and destroyed the Kurdish canton of Afrin in northwest Syria.
For Israel, the prospect of a Turkish invasion was and remains a matter of concern. Pro-Iranian Iraqi Shia militias are deployed close to the border adjoining the Kurdish-controlled area. In the event of a Turkish incursion from the north, SDF fighters would likely leave the southern part of their area of control to try to stop the Turkish forces further north. This could leave the way open for a push by the Shia militias into the oil rich Deir al-Zor province. Alternatively, Syrian regime forces along with Iran-associated militias could push into the same area from west of the Euphrates River. In either case, the result would be a dramatic widening of the Iranian "land corridor," the area of freedom of activity for Iran and its allies. Israel was hence strongly opposed to the abandonment by the US of its Kurdish allies and their area of control.
Similarly, the US and allied base at Tanf is located in the area adjoining the Baghdad-Damascus highway. Its abandonment would thus leave the way open from the Albu Kamal border crossing between Iraq and Syria to Quneitra province, adjoining the Golan Heights.
For A number of reasons, however, the prospect of an early large-scale entry of Turkish forces into northeast Syria now seems less likely than it did a couple of weeks ago.
Firstly and most importantly, the US withdrawal, which alone would make possible a major Turkish incursion, currently looks less immediately imminent. On this matter, a certain confusion appears to reign, with different US officials saying different things.
The tendency to chaos of the current US administration is a double-edged sword. On the one hand, it can produce sudden apparent bonanzas, of the kind that the president's announcement of imminent US departure must have seemed to Turkey.
On the other hand, the chaotic approach to policy-making means that presidential statements of this kind can't necessarily be safely "banked," in a way that would be assumed to be possible with other administrations.
National Security Adviser John Bolton found himself cold-shouldered by Erdogan in Turkey this week, after he appeared, in a statement made in Israel, to be conditioning the withdrawal on Turkish agreement not to target Kurdish forces who had fought with the Americans.
Trump nevertheless tweeted on Monday that "we will be leaving at a proper pace while at the same time continuing to fight ISIS and doing all else that is prudent and necessary!"
Thus, the US timetable and the precise nature of US intentions remain something of a mystery for friend and foe alike. But for Erdogan, as long as US special forces and air power remain in and over eastern Syria, a Turkish entry would be possible only in coordination with them. And if it proves that the US is indeed not prepared to accept the wholesale crushing of its Kurdish partners in the war against ISIS (as the Turkish leader clearly envisages), this places a question mark over the Turkish planned action.
A second area of concern for the Turkish leader is the Russian stance. Russia has emerged as the key power broker between all countries and elements seeking to act within the Syrian space (with the exception of the US). Moscow chose to allow the Turkish incursion into Afrin in January 2018, probably as part of an attempt to draw Turkey away from its traditional Western alignment.
But statements by Russian officials this week appear to indicate that Russia prefers lands currently administered by the Syrian Kurds to return to the control of the Assad regime. Foreign Ministry representative Maria Zakharova, for example, unambiguously expressed this stance. Moscow evidently wants to be able to present the Syrian war as effectively over as soon as possible. A new standoff between a large Turkish-controlled area of north and east Syria and the Assad regime would not facilitate this. Erdogan said on Wednesday that he will visit Moscow in the near future, presumably with the intention of clarifying this matter.
Sipan Hemo, the senior military figure in the Kurdish YPG, has been leading a delegation taking part in Russian-brokered talks with Assad regime representatives in recent days. Kurdish sources close to the SDF confirmed that if forced to choose, the Syrian Kurds will prefer to allow the Assad regime to resume control of their areas of control, rather than face an onslaught from the Turks.
But, of course, as long as the US position remains ambiguous, and American withdrawal does not look immediately imminent, the Kurds are unlikely to accept the conditions of the regime. As seen in an earlier round of contacts over the summer, the regime will settle for nothing less than the resumption of its full sovereignty east of the Euphrates. That is, the termination of the Kurdish de facto autonomy that has held sway over the last half decade. The Kurds are likely to agree to these terms of surrender if the Americans are about to leave and the Turks are about to enter. But this is not yet quite the situation.
Lastly, it is not clear how effectively Turkey, with its Sunni Arab rebel allies, would be able to police the territories it would conquer from the SDF in the event of a major military operation. Kurdish attacks on Turkish forces in Afrin are a common occurrence. The area that would be taken in the event of a major operation into northeast Syria would constitute a far larger and more complex space.
Thus, in spite of the Turkish saber rattling on the border, and Erdogan's pledge in his New York Times op-ed this week that Turkey can "get the job done," significant obstacles remain before a large-scale Turkish incursion into northeast Syria.
Jonathan Spyer is a Writing Fellow at the Middle East Forum, a research associate at the Jerusalem Center for Strategic Studies, and a columnist at the Jerusalem Post. He is the author of The Transforming Fire: The Rise of the Israel-Islamist Conflict (2010).
-
https://www.meforum.org/57632/israel-strikes-syria-era?utm_source=Middle+East+Forum&utm_campaign=74412fb0f8-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2019_01_22_09_06_COPY_01&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_086cfd423c-74412fb0f8-33691909&mc_cid=74412fb0f8&mc_eid=9627475d7f
-
Iraqi Kurds attack a Turkish military camp. Kurdish outlet NRT News’ reports yesterday of Iraqi Kurdish protesters attacking a Turkish military camp in northern Iraq appear to be true. NRT said the attack on the camp in Shiladze, roughly 43 miles (70 kilometers) north of Mosul, was meant to protest a recent Turkish airstrike that killed four people in northern Iraq. Turkey’s Defense Ministry has condemned the attack, blaming it on a Kurdistan Workers’ Party provocation, and said it damaged at least two tanks. Local Kurdish news sources report as many as three dead and 10 wounded in the incident, which appears to have ended, as well as increased Turkish air activity in the region. Turkey’s presence in northern Iraq is nothing new, but this attack illustrates greater Iraqi Kurdish hostility to it.
-
second post
https://www.meforum.org/57640/hasnt-syria-used-s-300?utm_source=Middle+East+Forum&utm_campaign=41b4f816b0-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2019_01_23_06_15_COPY_01&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_086cfd423c-41b4f816b0-33691909&mc_cid=41b4f816b0&mc_eid=9627475d7f
-
http://www.hurriyetdailynews.com/turkey-hits-ypg-targets-in-northern-syria-140810
January 27 2019 17:42:00
Turkish army yesterday hit YPG targets in northern Syria, “neutralizing” many militants, state-run Anadolu Agency said in a report based on local sources. Turkish howitzer hit YPG positions in Azaz and Mare districts, the agency said.
The Turkish military also struck YPG target in Syria’s Tal Rifat over the past three days.
Tal Rifaat is some 20 kilometers west of Afrin, which has been under the control of Turkey and its Free Syrian Army allies since an operation last year aimed at driving out the YPG.
Ankara considers the YPG as a terrorist organization due to its links with the PKK, which is listed a terror group by Turkey, the United States, and the European Union.
-
https://www.meforum.org/57709/tehran-plans-control-syria?utm_source=Middle+East+Forum&utm_campaign=5ecb49793f-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2019_02_04_08_53_COPY_01&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_086cfd423c-5ecb49793f-33691909&mc_cid=5ecb49793f&mc_eid=9627475d7f
-
By Xander Snyder
Russia’s Balancing Act in Syria
The war is coming to an end, and so too might be some of Moscow’s alliances.
After eight years of war, Syria is mostly under Bashar Assad’s control once again. Russia, which joined the war in 2015 as one of Assad’s major supporters, must now consider its future involvement in Syria and its relationship with Assad’s other main backer, Iran. Moscow and Tehran have cooperated thus far, but Russia’s vision for a post-war Syria likely doesn’t include a strong Iranian presence. So what does the future hold for relations between the two countries as their need to work together fades? And how will Russia handle the other major players in Syria now that the war is largely over?
How We Got Here
Before considering what lies ahead, we have to examine how we got here. Russia and Iran cooperated in Syria to achieve a common objective: keeping Assad in power. But in supporting the Syrian regime, they had very different motivations. Russia wanted to distract from its underwhelming performance in Ukraine and its challenging economic situation at home. It also wanted to prove to Russians and the world that it’s still a major global player. Iran had more ambitious goals in mind. For Tehran, Syria was part of a broader plan to expand its influence and control throughout the Middle East. So while Russia was content to see Assad survive the war and pull its forces out once the conflict was over (save for a small contingent in Hmeimim air base and Tartus naval base), Iran wanted to maintain a presence in Syria long after the war’s conclusion. These different ambitions also resulted in different military approaches: Russia supported the Syrian military primarily through air power while Iran committed its own forces and backed proxy groups engaged in on-the-ground combat.
(click to enlarge)
They also had different views on other external actors involved in Syria – primarily Israel, which sees Iran’s presence in southern Syria as a direct threat to Israeli territory. Israel has, therefore, repeatedly struck Iranian and Hezbollah targets in southern Syria, even publicly announcing these attacks (most recently a week ago) to make clear that it will not tolerate an Iranian presence along its border. These are troubling signs for Russia, which would rather attend to more pressing security concerns than the fighting in Syria. Renewed hostilities could lead to the revival of jihadist groups that Assad would need Russia’s help to eliminate.
Russia, however, hasn’t exactly been going out of its way to limit Israeli airstrikes. It has condemned Israel’s attacks against non-jihadist groups in Syria, but it has stopped short of preventing or retaliating against Israeli attacks on Iranian targets because it doesn’t want to risk direct confrontation with Israel for two reasons. First, facing off against Israel’s well-equipped air force would be far costlier than launching airstrikes against militant groups, as it has been doing in Syria for years now. Second, Israel is a close ally of the United States, and a Russian attack on Israeli forces may provoke a U.S. response, which Russia wants to avoid.
Moreover, Russia may actually benefit from limiting Iran’s presence in Syria. It doesn’t want another conflict between Israel and Hezbollah, Iran’s proxy in Lebanon, and the probability of such a conflict will increase as long as Iran’s presence in Syria grows. In addition, with Iran out of the picture, Russia could solidify its place as Assad’s primary patron, especially with much of the fighting now over.
Indeed, there are some indications that Russia is allowing Israel’s strikes to continue. Last September, after Russia blamed Israel for an incident that led to Syrian forces shooting down a Russian military plane, Moscow delivered a number of S-300 air defense systems to Syria. These systems are more advanced than those already owned by the Syrians and would be a greater threat to Israel’s air operations in Syria. So far, though, Syria hasn’t used them against Israeli airstrikes, possibly because the S-300s aren’t operational yet or because Syrian forces still need to be trained to operate the Russian-made weapons. Syrian media have claimed that the S-300s came online in November, while Russian media have claimed that some of the launchers were installed this month and that the systems will be activated shortly.
In January, however, an Iranian lawmaker accused Russia of deactivating the S-300s during a Jan. 20 Israeli strike. Both the accusation and the airstrike came shortly after a Russian military delegation visited Israel to meet with Israel Defense Forces officials. Israel launched more airstrikes a week later and again on Feb. 12 – the S-300s weren’t used against either attack. This is all circumstantial evidence that Russia is delaying activation of the S-300s, but it supports the theory that Moscow doesn’t want Syria to shoot down an Israeli jet with Russian-supplied arms.
Russia may also be concerned about the efficacy of the S-300s. If they were to fail during an attack, it would be an international embarrassment for Moscow, which is trying to expand its arms export industry. Russia could blame Syrian operators for the failure, of course, but that would also be troubling for potential customers who may have concerns over usability. Moreover, Israel has performed drills against the S-300 and demonstrated the ability to penetrate areas covered by advanced air-defense systems in the past, so even if the system works as it should, it may not be able to stop an Israeli strike. In other words, Russia doesn’t have much to gain from activating the S-300s. Why did it deliver the systems if it didn’t want Syria to use them? It needed to responded to the downing of the Russian jet somehow, and this was likely the least consequential way to do it.
Looking Ahead
While Russia’s motivation to cooperate with Iran is fading, it’s finding more and more reason to work with another country that’s vying for influence in Syria: Turkey. Both countries want to eliminate jihadist groups in Syria’s northwestern Idlib province, though they remain at odds over Turkey’s desire for greater control over the Kurdish-dominated regions in northeastern Syria. A larger Turkish presence there could hamper efforts at a political settlement and endanger Assad’s hold over the country. Nonetheless, they have reached an accommodation over certain issues. Earlier this month, following peace talks in Sochi, a Kremlin spokesperson suggested that Turkey could invoke the 1998 Adana Agreement to justify an incursion in northern Syria. (The agreement allows Turkey to pursue fighters from the Kurdistan Workers’ Party – a Kurdish group based in Turkey – 3 miles, or 5 kilometers, into Syria.)
Last August, Turkey and Russia signed an agreement to prevent a Syrian offensive against rebel forces in Idlib and to establish a buffer between the province and Syrian forces. Under the deal, Turkey agreed to handle the jihadist militias in Idlib that were not under its control, most notably Hayat Tahrir al-Sham. But Turkey has largely failed to do so. HTS remains the most powerful force in the province and recently launched an offensive against Turkish-backed militias there. Russia, meanwhile, can’t pull out of Syria while groups like HTS pose a threat to Assad. Turkey may need to send in its own forces, rather than rely mainly on proxies, to eliminate or at least hold back HTS. In doing so, however, it would need to avoid direct confrontation with Syrian forces, which would risk pitting Russia against Turkey.
By not pushing back against strikes on Iran in the south and by accommodating the Turks in the north, Russia has been able to balance these two powers against each other. It’s a strategy that will keep Iran weak and Turkey compliant, at least so Moscow hopes, and it has the added benefit of ensuring that neither becomes powerful enough to challenge Russia in the Caucasus, a region over which the three countries have gone to war many times in the past. Whether the strategy works remains to be seen.
-
https://warontherocks.com/2019/02/do-great-nations-fight-endless-wars-against-the-islamic-state-they-might/
-
An analogy I read captures a certain notion in play here: If you have a lawn, weeds will sprout up. You either get rid of them or you let them proliferate.
I get President Trump's idea here, (which I suspect includes the notion of bandwidth-- we have a very full plate elsewhere in the world) but as I expressed to Sebastian Gorka in my call in to his radio show, I fear the vacuum left for Iran and the implications thereof. (Gorka's response was "Good question, but not to worry; NS Advisor John Bolton is on the job and President Trump and he fully get it and things are happening behind the scenes that cannot be spoken of.")
-
March 12, 2019
By George Friedman
Alliances Shift as the Syrian War Winds Down
The countries that aligned to help protect Assad may be reconsidering their allegiances.
Last week, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced that Israel and Russia had agreed to cooperate on withdrawing foreign forces from Syria. If confirmed, it would mean that Russia has agreed to force the Iranians out of Syria, a significant development for both Israel and the Syrian war itself. It’s even more critical given that another round of talks between Turkey, Iran and Russia to find a settlement to the war is looming.
Russia has yet to confirm or deny Netanyahu’s comments, but it seems unlikely the Israelis would put Russia on the spot this way if they weren’t true. Israel wants Iran out of Syria, but it also wants accommodation with Russia. And the two countries have already shown some degree of cooperation in their Syrian operations. Israel has likely provided Russia with advance notice of its airstrikes on Iranian targets in Syria, and so far, Russia has not blocked or, as far as we can tell, notified the Iranians about the strikes. In addition, Turkey, one of three countries negotiating an end to the conflict, appears relatively calm on the subject. Around the time Netanyahu made the announcement, Turkey’s pro-government Daily Sabah newspaper published an article dispassionately analyzing Russia’s relationship with both Israel and Iran in Syria. It seems clear Russia has indeed agreed to push foreign forces out of the country.
Before we can understand why Russia would do this, however, we need to understand why Russia went into Syria in the first place. The official explanation was that it wanted to protect Bashar Assad, a longtime Russian ally. But this explanation is hard to buy as Assad’s government is not strategically important to Moscow. Some have speculated that Russia was really trying to secure naval bases in Syria. The problem with that explanation is that supplies for a significant Russian naval squadron in the Mediterranean would have to flow through the Bosporus, which is controlled by Turkey. Turkey and Russia have an extraordinarily complex relationship, and the Russians simply could not rely on Turkish cooperation to supply the squadron in the event of war. Russian bases at Syrian ports would also be highly vulnerable to U.S. attack. So that reasoning never made much sense. Another possible explanation was that Russia wanted to gain control of energy pipelines, but given the price of energy and the cost of Russia’s military intervention, that explanation makes little economic sense.
It seems more likely that Russia intervened to demonstrate that it could undertake significant operations in the Middle East. It wanted to deliver this message to the Americans but more importantly to the Russian people. It was a low-risk operation that involved limited forces and an attainable goal. The Russians did save Assad, and that in itself had some strategic value.
Turkey, meanwhile, didn’t want Assad to survive the war, but in the wake of the 2016 coup attempt, Ankara wasn’t eager to involve itself in a foreign conflict. It needed to get its own house in order first. So although there was always some tension and distrust between them – in part because of Russia’s coveting of the Bosporus and in part because of Turkey’s desire to project influence in the Caucasus, a region located on Russia’s doorstep – Russia and Turkey found ways to manage their relationship. They were content to keep out of each other’s way.
Russia, however, was willing to provide only air support and a limited number of special forces to help Assad. It didn’t want to inject massive ground forces to protect the Syrian government, especially not against potential U.S. incursions or Turkish involvement, should Ankara change its mind. Inevitably, the amount of resources Moscow devoted to Syria climbed, but it was intent on avoiding the U.S. experience in the Middle East.
In particular, Russia had no desire and limited capability to extend its operations to southern Syria and areas along the Iraqi border – the territory in which the Islamic State was operating. It needed someone else to handle IS. Enter Iran. It was active in fighting IS in Iraq and was also a close ally of Assad. Assad was a member of the Alawites, a Shiite sect of Islam, and Shiite Iran wanted to ensure its ally remained in power. But the Iranians also had strategic reasons for protecting Assad.
(click to enlarge)
Iran, with its anti-IS operations in Iraq, had managed to project power beyond the Zagros Mountains on its western border. It already dominated Lebanon, whose major faction, Hezbollah, was an Iranian proxy. The Iranians were thus one country away from having an empire stretching from the Persian Gulf to the Mediterranean – which would make them the dominant country in the region, more powerful than the fragmented Sunni nations.
The one country missing in the Iranian project was Syria. While Russia wanted to limit its exposure there and supported Assad for reasons having little to do with Syria itself, Iran had an overriding interest in destroying IS and saving Assad. This formed the basis for a logical alliance.
But the Russians were wary of cooperating with Iran because, like Turkey, Iran has interests in the Caucasus. The Caucasus guard southern Russia and are, after the buffer states in Eastern Europe, the most important region for Russian national security. Azerbaijan, Georgia and Armenia were part of the Soviet Union, but after its collapse, they became independent states. The North Caucasus remained part of Russia, but this included places like Chechnya and Dagestan that were occasionally difficult to manage and always capable of posing a challenge.
Azerbaijan, in particular, is a place that could present problems for Russia in the future. The Iranians have tried to project power in Azerbaijan through schools, propaganda and other sources of influence. A significant number of ethnic Azeris live in Iran today, mainly in the north, an area that was also occupied by the Soviets during World War II. Azerbaijan therefore is a complex place where Russia and Iran compete for power. If Russia dominated all of Azerbaijan, it would be an enormous threat to Iran. If Iran took control of Azerbaijan, it would be a dagger pointing at the North Caucasus.
Russia therefore doesn’t want Iran to build an empire stretching to the Mediterranean. In fact, it’s privately happy to see U.S. sanctions cripple Iran, though it won’t admit as much publicly. Russia needed Iran in Syria for a time, but as the saying goes, nations have no permanent friends or allies, only permanent interests. So, having saved Assad, it’s now time for the Russians to move the Iranians out of Syria and deny them their empire.
Israel would be content if Russia were to manage to push Iran out of Syria. The Turks don’t want to see Assad stay in power in the long term but will tolerate him in the short term. The United States has mostly let the conflict play out, showing for one of the first times since 9/11 that it can restrain itself in a major Middle Eastern issue. And Russia got the boost in prestige it was seeking, though it has myriad other problems to contend with at home. Assad, meanwhile, has survived the war thanks to the help of his closest allies. All things considered, he was the biggest winner of all.
-
https://www.nordicmonitor.com/2019/01/turkish-court-authenticates-audio-that-revealed-intel-agency-mits-false-flag-in-syria/?fbclid=IwAR3Izbi8WoWKR5FkU_oYlmdYb3Fnrn9CqS07cbYLAzyRZijTFXqascuvRjU
-
https://www.defenseone.com/politics/2019/03/day-after-syria-finally-came-what-comes-next/155919/?oref=defenseone_today_nl
-
second post of day
http://www.kurdistan24.net/en/news/d47030a4-122b-49ac-b9ad-2ba8510da2f1?utm_source=GPF+-+Paid+Newsletter&utm_campaign=80cfe1f6ec-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2019_03_29_03_25&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_72b76c0285-80cfe1f6ec-247660329
-
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gEG6MuzfAl0&fbclid=IwAR3Tk1yFWDtK-bB2lXO1kyMI63C0ylVCJhX9mbYm00a9-0q5oXRJJaSx_Q8
-
second post
Now quite the neocon line that the New Yorker espoused during the Bush 43 and the Obama years, , , but what are the merits of the analysis here and now?
https://www.newyorker.com/news/dispatch/how-trump-betrayed-the-general-who-defeated-isis?utm_campaign=aud-dev&utm_source=nl&utm_brand=tny&utm_mailing=TNY_Daily_040419&utm_medium=email&bxid=5be9d3fa3f92a40469e2d85c&user_id=50142053&esrc=&utm_term=TNY_Daily
-
Third post
https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/04/qatar-is-the-weakest-link-in-an-arab-nato/?utm_source=Sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=NR%20Daily%20Monday%20through%20Friday%202019-04-04&utm_term=NRDaily-Smart
-
https://www.spartareport.com/2019/04/how-the-people-of-kurdistan-view-trump-and-america/?utm_medium=Referral&utm_source=onesignal
-
https://off-guardian.org/2017/01/06/leaked-john-kerry-audio-white-house-wanted-isis-to-rise-in-syria/?fbclid=IwAR1ohZSpy7t8PhwGM-QA1FCRvyA4i7UsMJkWLXXg0rGSAcWiPc96lFmlNQo
:-o :-o :-o :-o :-o :-o :-o :-o :-o
Quite congruent with my theory about Hillary supervising gun running out of eastern Libya , , ,
-
Turkey planning for the long run in Syria. ANSA, an Italian news agency, reported that Turkey was building a wall between Afrin, the Turkey-controlled province in northwestern Syria, and the neighboring area of Tell Rifaat, which is still controlled by the Syrian government. At the same time, even as Russia continues to bomb positions in Idlib province, Russian President Vladimir Putin announced that there are no plans for a ground offensive in Idlib despite Turkey’s failure to contain violence against the Syrian regime stemming from the province. All this points to Turkey preparing for a long slog in Syria.
==============
Also see
http://www.ansamed.info/ansamed/en/news/sections/politics/2019/04/30/turkey-building-separation-wall-in-syrias-afrin_c6673ab8-7c1c-42ef-9f2f-3eead4577b15.html?utm_source=GPF+-+Paid+Newsletter&utm_campaign=a53757fc7b-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2019_05_01_03_32&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_72b76c0285-a53757fc7b-247660329
-
We have noted this here previously:
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/may/02/persecution-driving-christians-out-of-middle-east-report?CMP=share_btn_fb&fbclid=IwAR0FMZx81eN3mMD4LN4Cg-EY75I7Pkzf-462D2aRLhc0ERQc_zBdhcAZ0yQ
IIRC even the Kerry State Dept. had to admit there was genocide of Christians in Syria.
-
https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/14193/looming-crisis-mideast
-
https://www.tabletmag.com/jewish-news-and-politics/284611/new-strategy-to-counter-iran?utm_source=tabletmagazinelist&utm_campaign=a1d3770bb9-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2019_05_14_06_48&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_c308bf8edb-a1d3770bb9-207194629
-
Iraqi Kurds and Iran. Iraqi Kurdistan’s Peshmerga Ministry has called on peshmerga and Iraqi forces to conduct a joint operation against Islamic State fighters. The ministry claims that the IS fighters are taking advantage of poor security between the peshmerga lines and those of Iraqi security forces to increase attacks. This news isn’t particularly surprising. Despite the Islamic State’s near-complete loss of territory, IS fighters still exist and were bound to take advantage of any security vacuum that may arise. What’s notable is that the call to arms comes alongside another announcement by an Iraqi Kurdish official claiming that the U.S. said it won’t abandon Iraq’s Kurds. Promises are cheap, especially when it comes to U.S. commitments in the Middle East. But with the ongoing standoff between the U.S. and Iran, the focus on Iran’s militias in Iraq, and some evidence that the U.S. is increasing its support of Iraq’s Kurdish insurgents to intensify pressure on Iran, these joint announcements may indicate where the U.S. would focus its military forces in Iraq, if a conflict with Iran emerges.
Iraq and U.S.-Iran tensions. Iraqi Prime Minister Adel Abdul-Mahdi said Baghdad will attempt to mediate and reduce tensions between the U.S. and Iran, and that Iraq has plans to send delegations to Washington and Tehran. Videos circulating on Iranian social media show the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps transporting S-300 air defense systems through the Persian Gulf. At the same time, the USS Abraham Lincoln and its carrier strike group conducted drills with a U.S. amphibious ready group in the Arabian Sea. The Navy said the exercises were aimed at threats coming from Iran and at increasing the “lethality and agility to respond to threats.” For its part, the Iranian regime’s desire for survival may ultimately help it avoid war: Intelligence Minister Mahmoud Alavi floated the idea that “heroic flexibility,” a concept used in Iran to soften hardline stances in the past and to pave the way for nuclear talks in 2013, could be applied to the current situation.
• Four warships of the Russian Black Sea Fleet have left Sevastopol for joint exercises in the Black Sea, according to a fleet spokesperson. Russian media suggests the exercises could be in response to late April comments from the U.S. House Foreign Relations Committee, which called on the U.S. to increase military sales and security assistance to Ukraine.
-
By Xander Snyder
In Syria, An Opportunity for US-Russian Cooperation
A political settlement between the U.S., Russia and Israel could address Iran’s presence in Syria.
The U.S. and Russia may be at odds from Ukraine to North Korea, but they appear to be much more aligned in Syria, where neither wants to see Iran gain a substantial foothold. As the Syrian civil war winds down, Moscow wants to make sure that it – not Tehran – remains the primary benefactor of President Bashar Assad; that it retains its bases at Tartus and Hmeimim; and that Iran’s presence in the Middle East is curbed. These interests may account for the reports of increasing competition between Russia and Iran in Syria, including skirmishes between groups supported by each.
(click to enlarge)
The U.S., of course, is trying to halt Iran’s advance across the Middle East. It’s unlikely the U.S. can fully displace Iran from Syria, but at minimum it wants to limit the number of Iranian ground forces in Syria to prevent Tehran from having a contiguous overland route to the Mediterranean Sea. And so, as U.S. and Russian interests converge and an opportunity for cooperation arises, Russian, U.S. and Israeli officials will meet next week to discuss what’s next in Syria.
Israel: The Linchpin
Israel's participation is crucial because Israel has in its estimation the strongest interest of the three to keep Iran out of Syria – protecting its territorial integrity. And while both Russia and the U.S. need to curb Iran’s influence, neither wants to attack Iran directly. Both are happy to let Israel do the heavy lifting, at least in southern Syria, where Israel has its own direct interest in pushing Iran and its proxies in Syria away from its borders. While Russia did provide Syria with S-300 missile defense systems, nominally to protect itself from airstrikes, it’s done little else to halt Israel’s attacks on Iranian positions in Syria. Instead, the two have maintained backchannel communications so that Moscow can be notified when Israel intends to strike. Russia has, moreover, reportedly refused to sell S-400 missile defense systems to Iran. Moscow would be wary of providing Iran with air defense systems that could frustrate Israeli airstrikes targeting Iran in Syria. (Iran denied ever seeking to purchase S-400s.)
Still, Israel can’t do it alone. While it hammers southern Syria with airstrikes, the U.S. and Russia will have to play their parts in what is, if not an outright alliance, at least a collaborative effort among the three. Russia will continue to support Assad’s ground forces as they reclaim territory and provide ground support through militias like the Tiger Forces, hoping to reduce Assad’s dependence on Iran-backed ground forces. Russia may also play a more political role, trying to lessen Iran’s influence on the Assad regime. In this, it may already be somewhat successful. A recent reshuffle of Syrian security forces weakened the position of Maher Assad, a brother of the president who is believed to be particularly close to Iran. The U.S., meanwhile, will hold onto positions in northeastern Syria, ostensibly in support of its allies like the Syrian Democratic Forces, but also to prevent Iran from seizing the oil fields in that part of the country that could increase Iran’s power in a final political settlement. Iran won’t be willing to directly attack those U.S. forces for fear of retaliation.
And while Russia may complain about the continued U.S. presence in Syria, it at least temporarily serves Russia’s interests by preventing Iran from seizing territory in northern and northeastern Syria and keeping the Islamic State contained to a limited insurgency with no real ability left to threaten the Assad regime. For its part, the U.S. may be willing to exchange cooperation against Iran in Syria for sanctions relief for Russia.
Turkey: The Wild Card
The U.S. presence in northern Syria serves another purpose for Russia: It mitigates the threat of a Turkish invasion from the north. A complete U.S. withdrawal – the kind that U.S. President Donald Trump threatened in December 2018 but subsequently backtracked from – would open the path for Turkey to push further into northern Syria. Russia would rather reach a settlement between Damascus and the SDF than have to account for Turkish demands, which would inevitably be far greater if Turkey held more territory – and therefore greater negotiating power – in northern Syria.
(click to enlarge)
But even in a settlement between the U.S., Russia and Israel, Turkey is the wild card. It’s not that its interests are unclear – it would want to trade its current semi-occupation of Idlib province for greater control over its shared border with northern Syria, where the majority of Syria’s Kurds live. The question is what that control looks like, and how much Assad and Russia would be willing to cede to Turkey in the north in exchange for relinquishing its hold on Idlib to Assad.
Turkey’s issue is that it wants substantially greater control over northern Syria east of the Euphrates River, but on its own timeline. Despite Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s incessant threats to invade northern Syria, he urged temperance when Trump unexpectedly announced a U.S. pullout back in December. Turkey was not ready for the kind of deployment that would be necessary to move into northern Syria on Washington’s timeline and at a scale necessary to hold the territory and eject the Kurdish forces it wanted gone, all the while preventing a recapture of territory by IS. No, Turkey would much prefer to have its cake and eat it too. If the U.S. stays where it is, providing stability in portions of northern Syria, Turkey can selectively and gradually assert control over small pockets of that region.
In a U.S.-Russia-Israel agreement on Iran, Turkey may have to give up Idlib so that Assad can eliminate the rebel presence there without the support of Iranian ground forces. But Turkey would want something in exchange, and it’s possible that Turkey will not be capable of a full-scale invasion of northern Syria before Assad reaches some sort of agreement with the SDF to surrender its autonomy, or before the U.S. decides to withdraw its own forces. Turkey may talk a big game, but having to confront the Syrian government is a different game entirely from attacking ground militias, which is what Turkey has done on its two incursions into Syria so far.
So, what would Turkey get out of such a settlement? Most likely it would take some form of an updated Adana agreement, the 1998 settlement between Turkey and Syria in which Syria agreed not to harbor members of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), and Turkey was allowed limited incursions into Syrian territory (up to 5 kilometers, or 3 miles) to pursue any PKK members that Syria didn’t control. Russia would guarantee the terms of the agreement, Turkey would cede Idlib while retaining some buffer space in northwestern Syria and rights to move into northern and north eastern Syria in order to eliminate specific PKK-related threats when necessary. Turkey may not be thrilled with the result, but it would be enough to meet some of its security needs and wouldn’t necessitate a full-scale occupation of northern Syria, which may be more of a strain on its resources in the long-term than Turkey could handle.
A three-way agreement between Russia, Israel and the U.S. to counter Iran wouldn’t immediately end the Syrian civil war, and neither would it guarantee a complete expulsion of Iran from Syria. But it would be a major step toward establishing shared cause to find meaningful political resolutions to problems that have mired the country in an all-consuming war for nearly a decade.
-
Kushner condos in Gaza and West Bank?
https://www.newsmax.com/politics/us-united-states-mideast/2019/06/22/id/921569/
-
https://www.defenseone.com/politics/2019/06/exclusive-countries-may-begin-backfilling-american-ground-troops-syria-within-weeks-envoy-says/158097/?oref=defense_one_breaking_nl
-
The Syrian Civil War Grinds On, Largely Forgotten
By Charles Glass
Board of Contributors
Charles Glass
Charles Glass
Board of Contributors
Fighters with the U.S.-backed, Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces guard women and children waiting to leave the al-Hol camp in northeastern Syria on June 3, 2019.
(DELIL SOULEIMAN/AFP/Getty Images)
Contributor Perspectives offer insight, analysis and commentary from Stratfor’s Board of Contributors and guest contributors who are distinguished leaders in their fields of expertise.
Highlights
Though Syrian President Bashar al Assad's government won the Syrian civil war two years ago, large parts of Syria remain beyond its reach.
These areas are scenes of continuing fighting between the Russian-supported Syrian army and rebel forces dependent on Turkish assistance. Jihadists are also nearby, with nowhere left to go.
Meanwhile, the United States fears a Turkish assault against its Kurdish allies, and Hezbollah, Iran's surrogate in Syria, is redeploying some of its fighters home to Lebanon to threaten Israel if the United States and Iran go to war.
While the United States and Iran risk all-out war with their game of chicken in the Persian Gulf, their proxy war is still playing out in Syria. Iranian ally and Syrian President Bashar al Assad won the war two years ago, but his victory was incomplete. Al Assad secured his throne, but two large swaths of the country remain beyond his reach. The Turkish army and rebel militants control the northwest. The mainly Kurdish Syrian Democratic Forces, supported by a small but unspecified number of U.S., British and French special forces, hold the area northeast of the Euphrates River near the Syria-Turkey-Iraq border triangle. Al Assad has said he will not give up the struggle until both areas revert to his dominion. The only other part of the country under foreign occupation is the Golan Heights, but al Assad is in no position to expel the Israelis.
Combat rages on the periphery of Idlib province in Syria's northwest, where hundreds of civilians have lost their lives and as many as 300,000 have fled to relative, if uncomfortable, safety since the Syrian army launched its latest offensive two months ago. Rebel leaders told Reuters that Russian special forces were fighting alongside Syrian troops, although Russia has yet to comment on the allegation. What is known is that Russian warplanes from the Hmeimim air base have bombed towns in the rebel-held areas. On the rebel side, dependence on Turkish army protection, logistics, communications, ammunition and other supplies balances Russian help to al Assad. The Turks expelled the U.S.-backed Kurdish militia, the People's Protection Units and Kurdish civilians from Afrin province near Idlib last year. That left a large zone abutting government-held areas around Aleppo, Hama and Latakia under Turkish occupation with local and foreign fighters to sustain pressure on al Assad's forces.
Nowhere Else to Go
An estimated 3 million people — about half of them displaced from other areas in Syria — dwell in the Turkish zone. Added to their number are 60,000 rebels, according to Charles Lister, who has tracked the Syrian opposition from early in the war for the Washington-based Middle East Institute. "About half of that number," Lister writes, "owe their allegiance to factions from the broad-spectrum opposition mainstream, and the other half belong to jihadi groups, some loyal to al Qaeda." Primary among the al Qaeda affiliates is the rebranded Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, formed from the merger of Jabhat Fatah al-Sham, formerly known as Jabhat al-Nusra, and other militant groups in 2017. Hayat Tahrir al-Sham enforces Islamic State-like control in its areas, where Armenians, other Christians, Yazidis and Kurds endure murder, rape, torture and other crimes. Many Arab Sunni Muslims, however, have adapted to the Turkish-jihadi presence and do not welcome the return of al Assad's army.
For al Assad to dislodge the jihadists and other fighters from their last bastions in Syria, he cannot replicate his successful removal of them between 2016 and 2018 from Aleppo, Homs and the Damascus suburbs. In those encounters, the Syrian government besieged the militants and offered them what it called "reconciliation." That meant a choice of safe conduct to rebel-held areas, removal to displaced-persons camps or giving up their weapons and remaining at home. Tens of thousands chose to ride buses with their families, observed for their safety by the United Nations and Russian troops, to Idlib. With only Idlib and the surrounding areas left to them, there is nowhere else to go. Turkey, despite having enabled them to cross its frontiers into Syria in years past, does not want them back on its territory. One Syrian security source admitted to me, "They have no use out of the chessboard, and now they are squeezed in a corner." That leaves them little choice but to fight or die unless Turkey and Russia contrive an imaginative solution. While relations between the two formerly hostile powers have improved with the sale of Russia's S-400 air defense missiles to Turkey, they have not brought a resolution any closer in Syria.
The Kurds still rely on U.S. guarantees to maintain the autonomy they enjoy from Damascus and protection from a Turkish offensive.
In the northeast, al Assad has discussed a peaceful restoration of government sovereignty with the Kurds without achieving an agreement. He and the Kurds have consistently avoided attacking each other, undoubtedly in the belief that the Syrian army will return one day without a fight. The Kurds still rely on U.S. guarantees to maintain the autonomy they enjoy from Damascus and protection from a Turkish offensive to expel Kurds from the northeast as it cleared them from Afrin. The United States, despite its pique over NATO ally Turkey's purchase of Russian weaponry and its retaliatory cancellation of F-35 stealth jet sales to Turkey, is discussing a buffer zone between Turkey and the Kurds. At the same time, American observers fear that Turkish mobilization near Tal Abyad and Ras al-Ayn in Syria presages an assault against America's Kurdish allies that the United States must either ignore or oppose.
A Broken U.S. Policy
Four American officials with newly coined titles — James Jeffrey, Joel Rayburn, William Roebuck and David Schenker — are coordinating U.S. policy in Syria. But the policy has yet to gel. "The bottom line is Syria policy is broken, but the proliferation of diplomats taking charge only makes matters worse," former Pentagon adviser Michael Rubin, an American Enterprise Institute fellow and advocate of war with Iran, wrote in the Washington Examiner. Rubin maintains that the Syrian Kurds negotiating with the plethora of American diplomats have no idea who is in charge or what the plan is.
Hezbollah, which has been Iran's surrogate in the Syrian war, is redeploying some of its shock troops home to Lebanon. "We are present in every area (of Syria) that we used to be," said party chief Hassan Nasrallah on his Al-Manar TV channel. "We are still there, but we don't need to be there in large numbers as long as there is no practical need." The unstated element is that Hezbollah's experienced warriors may be needed in Lebanon to support Iran by threatening Israel with its store of surface-to-surface missiles in the event of a U.S.-Iran conflict.
So, the war in Syria grinds on, denying Syrian civilians peace and keeping the United States, Turkey, Russia and Iran with daggers poised at one another's throats. It is not unreasonable to ask whether those countries should end one war before starting a new one. Or perhaps avoid war altogether? If anyone thought the wars in Iraq from 2003 and Syria from 2011 were disastrous, just wait for the Iran debacle.
-
second post
Turkey's Delicate Dance in Iraqi Kurdistan
Kurdish officials attend a signing ceremony in Suleimaniyah, Iraq, on May 5, 2019.
(FERIQ FEREC/Anadolu Agency/Getty Images)
Highlights
After a brief hiatus following the September 2017 failed independence referendum, the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) has reclaimed its place at the helm of the Kurdish government in northern Iraq.
The return of the political status quo in the region will open the KDP up to deeper diplomatic and economic cooperation with Turkey, its most important external ally.
The KDP will continue to grant Turkey leeway to increase its military operations against the Kurdistan Workers' Party in exchange for closer economic and trade ties with Ankara.
But in its effort to curtail an independent Kurdish state, the Turkish government will further irk its own Kurdish population, thus exposing itself to additional security and political risks at home.
On July 17, a Turkish diplomat was shot and killed in eastern Arbil, the capital of Iraq's northern Kurdish region. The assassination was likely perpetrated by a sympathizer of the Kurdistan Workers' Party, the Kurdish group that Turkey has been targeting in regional military operations for decades. Ankara's high-risk tolerance will serve it well in the months ahead, as it continues to prioritize building its Iraqi-Kurdish ties — taking advantage of the economic leverage it wields over the newly formed Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG). But just how much violence and political backlash Turkey can endure to prevent the formation of an independent Kurdish state will be tested because the ricks in the region, as evidenced by the latest incident, remain as high as ever.
The Big Picture
Iraqi Kurdistan contains roughly a third of the known oil and gas reserves in Iraq, one of the world's most oil-rich countries. After a tumultuous couple of years, politics in the region are now seemingly returning to equilibrium. Meanwhile, its most important economic and political ally, Turkey, is eager to capitalize on this renewed stability for its own gain.
See Rebalancing Power in the Middle East
See Turkey's Resurgence
A Return to the Political Status Quo
The KRG has operated as a semi-autonomous region of Iraq since the United States backed a no-fly zone over the province in 1992 to help shield ostracized Kurds from then-Iraqi President Saddam Hussein. In September 2018, the country held an election that failed to produce a government due to inter- and intraparty fighting over coveted Cabinet positions. The election was the first attempt to return to political normalcy after a long-promised independence referendum in September 2017 yielded only lost territory and lost political capital for the Kurdish government. But after a couple of tumultuous years, Kurdistan politics are now seemingly returning to equilibrium.
In early July, the government selected a new, streamlined Cabinet. Longtime energy and foreign ministers have stepped down in recent weeks, creating space for fresh blood in the government for the first time in almost 15 years. But any new faces must still be approved by the old guard, which is led by the Barzanis — the leading family of the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP). On July 10, Mansour Barzani was sworn in as prime minister of the KRG, shortly after Nechirvan Barzani (the nephew of the former longtime President Massoud Barzani) was selected as the Kurdish government's president in June, thereby extending the clan's long reign as the dominant political force in the region.
A chart listing the major Kurdish groups in Iraq.
The Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) is the KDP's primary rival, run by the Talabani clan. Other smaller parties, including Gorran, speckle the playing field and contest elections. But Iraqi Kurdish politics still primarily centers around the KDP and the PUK, with the latter jostling for dominance and the former typically coming out on top. Despite lacking both leadership positions in Arbil, the PUK is still a force to be reckoned with. In addition to having influence with the presidency in Baghdad via Iraqi President Barham Salih, the party has so far been able to thwart the KDP's ability to name a Barzani member to the now-vacant energy ministry position, and also maintains seats in the Kurdish parliament. Several key points of contention, such as control of the oil-rich Kirkuk province, will cause the two parties to butt heads in the coming months — thus reinstalling the familiar tug-of-war that has long defined Kurdish politics in Iraq.
A New Chapter for Turkey-Kurdish Cooperation in Iraq
The KDP's renewed place in power, along with its perpetual need to edge out the PUK, opens the door for Turkey to fortify its own economic, political and security ties in northern Iraq. Ankara has historically worked closely with the KDP because of its proximity (the Barzanis' tribal reach includes swaths of Iraqi Kurdistan that borders Turkey) and power (the Barzanis have always controlled the levers of the Iraqi Kurdish government including, most importantly, oil and gas policymaking).
Although the KDP-Turkish relations have hit low points over the years, Ankara has recently solidified its relationship with Arbil. Turkey is well-positioned as a much needed economic partner of the Kurdish government (and thereby, the KDP), providing the semi-autonomous region with a valuable trade route out for Kurdish oil. The two border crossings between Turkey and northern Iraq help facilitate $10 billion in annual trade flow. And Turkey is currently in discussions with Arbil to open yet another border crossing to facilitate even more trade.
But for the KDP, this inflow of Turkish funds comes at a cost. Turkey and the KDP have a tacit understanding of Ankara's ability to target the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) militant group — that is, as long as the KDP grants Ankara the freedom to conduct anti-PKK activities in the region, Ankara will continue to provide economic support to the Kurdish government in Iraq. This is possible in part because, among all the many inter-Kurdish rivalries across the region, there is none as pronounced as the animosity between the KDP and the PKK. So while there is an inherent tension in allowing Turkey to target fellow Kurds, the KDP's own deep-rooted distrust for the PKK helps facilitate this unspoken policy.
Turkey's Renewed Anti-PKK Push
Here, it is important to understand that when it comes to its regional strategy, Turkey's primary imperative is preventing the PKK or any of its secessionist sympathizers from forming an independent Kurdish state. Some within Turkey's own Kurdish population, which makes up roughly 20 percent of its population, have threatened to secede for decades. And Ankara knows that the establishment of a Kurdish state elsewhere in the region could fan the secessionist flames back home, which would have dire consequences for Turkey's territorial integrity, social stability and economy.
A map of Kurdish regions in Turkey, Syria, Iran and Iraq.
Thus, for years, one priority within Ankara's regional strategy has largely focused on keeping the PKK from gaining ground and spreading its message. In Syria, this has included amassing troops near Tel Abyad to fight against a PKK ally, the People's Protection Units. And in northern Iraq, this has meant going head-to-head against the PKK itself in places like Qandil (which is the militant group's current hub) and Sinjar.
Eager to secure more Turkish economic cooperation, the ruling KDP in Arbil will continue to grant Turkey leeway on its military operations in northern Iraq. And in turn, Ankara will capitalize on that added freedom to move more aggressively against the PKK, which it is already doing. Turkey is deepening its existing military presence in the province via a military operation against PKK militants called Operation Claw, which just recently entered its second phase. And as part of this phase, Turkish forces have also begun killing high-ranking PKK leaders.
The Inherent Risks
These deepening operations, however, will complicate Ankara's relations with its own Kurdish population at home. Ramped up military action against the PKK will ultimately hamper the prospects for negotiation between the Turkish government and Kurdish interest groups across the political spectrum while fueling the Peoples' Democratic Party's (the dominant Kurdish political party in Turkey, also known as the HDP) opposition against the country's ruling Justice and Development Party.
Allowing Turkey to continue fighting against the PKK also poses political risks for the KDP. Some Kurdish groups in the region are opposed to Arbil working so closely with Turkey, which they see as actively fighting against the whole of Kurdish interests. This delicate balance of allowing certain Kurds to be killed in order to maintain its lucrative ties with Ankara has always been difficult for Arbil to navigate. With its solidified place in power, the KDP is now in a better political position to withstand some of the potential domestic pressure from anti-Turkey Kurdish groups. But the more Turkey pushes against the PKK in the region, the harder it will be for the KDP to justify Ankara's actions with its citizens.
Targeting Kurdish insurgents in northern Iraq will make Anakara a target of retaliation anywhere their sympathizers reside.
But perhaps most importantly, the recent assassination of a Turkish diplomat in Arbil serves as an acute reminder that there is a direct link between what Turkey does in Iraq and what Turkey does at home. In other words, targeting Kurds in one place makes Anakara a target of retaliation anywhere their sympathizers reside. As Turkey broadens its anti-PKK operations in northern Iraq, it exposes itself to more risk of blowback and retaliatory attacks.
Violent clashes between PKK and Turkish forces are already a common occurrence in parts of the country. And this renewed anti-Kurd push in Iraq could result in even more frequent or deadly acts of violence in retaliation. But Ankara sees curtailing the PKK's ability to extend its reach as more important than protecting Turkey's overseas presence from overseas attack. And thus, the country will continue to take advantage of the KDP's renewed power to do just that — opening the door for more political backlash and bloodshed on both sides in the process.
-
The Iran-Israel War Is Here
More than a decade of civil strife has opened up the region for the escalating state-to-state conflict.
By Jonathan Spyer
Aug. 27, 2019 7:09 pm ET
The scene of a drone attack against Hezbollah in Lebanon, Aug. 25. Photo: ANWAR AMRO/AFP/Getty Images
Israel and Iran are at war. Israeli strikes this week in southern Syria, western Iraq and eastern Lebanon—and possibly even Beirut—confirm it.
This war is a very 21st-century affair. For now it involves only small circles among the Israeli and Iranian populations. Parts of the air force, intelligence services and probably special forces are active on the Israeli side. The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, its expeditionary Quds Force and proxy politico-military organizations in Iraq, Syria and Lebanon are engaged on behalf of Iran.
The war marks a hinge point in Middle Eastern geopolitics. For the past decade and a half, the region has been engaged mainly with internal strife: civil wars, insurgencies and mass protests. These are now largely spent, leaving a broken landscape along the northern route from Iran to Israel.
Trump at the G-7
Subscribe
The three “states” in between—Iraq, Syria and Lebanon—are fragmented, partly collapsed and thoroughly penetrated by neighboring powers. Their official state structures have lost the attribute that alone, according to German sociologist Max Weber, guarantees sovereignty: “monopoly on the legitimate use of physical force.” These nations’ territory has become the theater of the Iran-Israel war.
The regime in Tehran favors the destruction of the Jewish state, but this is a longstanding aim, dating to the 1979 Islamic Revolution and before it, in the minds of the revolutionaries. What’s brought it to the fore is that Iran has emerged in the past half decade as the prime beneficiary of the collapse of the Iraqi, Syrian and Lebanese states. This has substantially increased its capacity to menace Israel, which has noticed and responded.
Iran’s Revolutionary Guard has no peer in the Middle East—and perhaps beyond—in the practice of irregular warfare. Its proxies today dominate Lebanon (Hezbollah), constitute the single strongest politico-military force in Iraq (Popular Mobilization Units, or PMU), and maintain an independent, powerful military infrastructure in Syria, in partial cooperation with the Assad regime and Russia. This nexus, against which Israel is currently engaged, brings Iran de facto control over much of the land from the Iraq-Iran border to the Mediterranean and to the Syrian and Lebanese borders with Israel.
Iran treats this entire area as a single operational space, moving its assets around at will without excessive concern for the notional sovereignty of the governments in Baghdad, Beirut and Damascus. Lebanese Hezbollah trains PMU fighters in Iraq. Iraqi Shiite militias are deployed at crucial and sensitive points on the Iraqi-Syrian border, such as al-Qa’im and Mayadeen. Revolutionary Guard and Hezbollah personnel operate in southwest Syria, close to the Golan Heights.
Israeli attacks in recent days suggest that Israel, too, has begun to act according to these definitions and in response to them. If Iran will not restrict its actions to Syria, neither will Israel.
There is a crucial difference between the Israeli and Iranian positions in this conflict. Iran’s involvement in Iraq, Syria and Lebanon is deep, long-term and proactive. Tehran seeks the transformation of these areas into Iranian satrapies, and it has made considerable advances toward its goal. Israel’s involvement is entirely reactive, pushing back against Iranian domination and destroying the missile caches that bring it within Iran’s range. Israel has no interest in the internal political arrangements of Lebanon, Syria or Iraq, except insofar as these constitute a danger to Israel itself.
This imbalance defines the conflict. Iran creates political organizations, penetrates state structures, and seeks to make itself an unchallengeable presence in all three countries. Israel has been wary of entering the mire of factional politics in neighboring countries since its failed intervention in Lebanon leading up to the 1982 war. Jerusalem instead uses its superior intelligence and conventional military capabilities to neutralize the military and paramilitary fruits of the Iranian project whenever they appear to be forming into a concrete threat.
Israel is largely alone in this fight. The U.S. is certainly aware of Israel’s actions against Iran and may tacitly support them. Yet the Trump administration shows no signs of wishing to play an active part in the military challenge to Iranian infrastructure-building across the Middle East. This White House favors ramping up economic pressure on Tehran, but both its occupant and his voter base are wary in the extreme of new military commitments in the Middle East.
Saudi Arabia is targeted by the Ansar Allah, or Houthi, movement, another Iranian proxy closely assisted by the Revolutionary Guard. The Saudis’ interests are partly aligned with Israel’s, but Saudi Arabia is a fragile country, requiring the protection of its allies rather than constituting an asset for them.
So it is war between Israel and Iran, prosecuted over the ruins of Iraq, Lebanon and Syria. But it won’t necessarily stay that way. A single kinetic and successful Iranian response to Israel’s airstrikes could rapidly precipitate an escalation to a much broader contest. State-to-state conflict has returned to the Middle East.
Mr. Spyer is director of the Middle East Center for Reporting and Analysis and a research fellow at the Jerusalem Institute for Strategy and Security and at the Middle East Forum. He is author of “Days of the Fall: A Reporter’s Journey in the Syria and Iraq Wars.”
-
one can only speculate what would be if Iran had a few nuclear weapons
have not seen anything about how close they are to this lately.
-
one can only speculate what would be if Iran had a few nuclear weapons
have not seen anything about how close they are to this lately.
Let's assume they are close, just need testing, stockpiles, delivery systems.
Sec of State Mike Pompeo made clear this morning that the US has Israel's back in this conflict.
Nuclear weapons are the red line but the problem is the regime. How about having state sponsored terror be the red line? We are in danger as long as the Mullahs are in power.
Along those lines and with everyone saying now how wrong the US war in Iraq was, without toppling Saddam Hussein he would have nuclear weapons by now.
How do you deter a regime not afraid of taking any number of casualties?
US timidity toward NK, even under Trump, incentivizes rogue nations like Iran to go nuclear.
US Presidents kept hands off of NK because of China. Would Russia really protect Iran in this conflict?
https://www.asiatimes.com/2019/08/article/attack-on-iran-would-be-an-attack-on-russia/
Or would an Israeli attack expose the weakness in Russian technology and in the Russian 'red line'?
Israel should do whatever is in its own best national security interest including attacking tose who threaten to destroy them.
-
https://www.meforum.org/59223/us-syria-presence-blocks-iranian-gains?utm_source=Middle+East+Forum&utm_campaign=cea8c46430-mef_frantzman_2019_08_30_04_08&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_086cfd423c-cea8c46430-33691909&goal=0_086cfd423c-cea8c46430-33691909&mc_cid=cea8c46430&mc_eid=9627475d7f
-
https://www.meforum.org/59236/the-images-and-maps-behind-irans-land-bridge?utm_source=Middle+East+Forum&utm_campaign=3ab7d9bbce-MEF_Frantzman_2019_08_29_10_02&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_086cfd423c-3ab7d9bbce-33691909&goal=0_086cfd423c-3ab7d9bbce-33691909&mc_cid=3ab7d9bbce&mc_eid=9627475d7f
-
https://mosaicmagazine.com/observation/politics-current-affairs/2019/09/seven-black-swans-in-the-middle-east/
Nassim Nicholas Taleb, argued that the most dramatic changes in politics, economics, and technology come out of the blue. A black-swan event, ran his definition, “lies outside the realm of regular expectations, because nothing in the past can convincingly point to its possibility”
...
In hindsight, all the evidence was there. (It always is.)
-
https://mailchi.mp/meforum.org/the-us-cannot-neglect-iraqi-kurdistan-frantzman-at-jerusalem-post?e=9627475d7f
-
https://www.meforum.org/59451/does-israel-have-secret-arab-allies?utm_source=Middle+East+Forum&utm_campaign=855feb246b-MEF_Frantzman_2019_09_29_07_34&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_086cfd423c-855feb246b-33691909&goal=0_086cfd423c-855feb246b-33691909&mc_cid=855feb246b&mc_eid=9627475d7f
-
https://www.defenseone.com/ideas/2019/10/us-trying-restore-deterrence-gulf-wont-be-enough/160394/?oref=defense_one_breaking_nl
-
https://news.yahoo.com/white-house-says-u-forces-034659131.html
-
Leaving the Syrian Kurds high and dry. According to an official White House press release, U.S. President Donald Trump informed Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan that U.S. forces would withdraw from areas in northern Syria that are soon to be the target of a Turkish military operations. Trump tried to withdraw U.S. troops from Syria before, only to be reined in by the faction of foreign policy advisers that think doing so would hurt U.S. interests. It seems as though that is no longer the case. By giving Turkey the green light, the U.S. has effectively declared it will no longer protect Syria’s Kurds, whose People’s Protection Units were the vanguard for much of the U.S.-supported military operations against the Islamic State. The development means a short-term improvement in U.S.-Turkish relations – but in the long term sets the two on a collision course. It is also hard not to see the similarities between this move and former President Barack Obama’s military withdrawal from Iraq – short-term moves designed to please domestic political constituencies but that will have dangerous unintended consequences for both the region and U.S. interests.
also see
https://clarionproject.org/us-allies-face-slaughter-by-turks-after-trump-retreat/?utm_source=Clarion+Project+Newsletter&utm_campaign=f40f67f008-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2019_10_07_12_49&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_60abb35148-f40f67f008-6358189&mc_cid=f40f67f008&mc_eid=d7eaaa3130
https://special-ops.org/52019/american-special-operations-forces-to-retreat-from-northern-syria/
-
https://havokjournal.com/national-security/defense/u-s-abandons-its-allies-in-syria/
-
The question is
why did Trump make this decision NOW?
seems like it was done to change the subject a bit in DC.
remember when Clinton was getting impeached. He would announce something every day to change the topic
trying to "triangulate" if one wants to use the MSM adjective
is Trump trying to do the same?
-
https://www.jpost.com/International/Trumps-abandonment-of-Kurds-will-reinforce-Israels-sense-it-604006?fbclid=IwAR1tE5t4j96Ecr_7czV9LkafzhuerqsFn4GJyaeScSQ8pBjTXwW3yf7fiOU
-
https://ivn.us/2014/08/19/kurds-americas-greatest-ally-middle-east?fbclid=IwAR07xyiIu2iLzJE2J8o0jcKKq3EOf1DUdTU3dVB-BWPZAatzDN4nwW33d-I
-
third post
I had not appreciated the point about Turkey wanting to get millions of Syrian Arab refugees out of Turkey.
https://www.latimes.com/world-nation/story/2019-10-07/why-are-syrias-kurds-accusing-the-united-states-of-betrayal?utm_source=Today%27s+Headlines&utm_campaign=b7fb8e996b-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2016_12_12_COPY_01&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_b04355194f-b7fb8e996b-80108809
-
4th post
https://www.defenseone.com/ideas/2019/10/syria-trump-withdrawal-isis/160451/?oref=defense_one_breaking_nl&fbclid=IwAR1BU697g7FrzNsKUIzEHuKauR7QUkOJ-nRFcsYOYGB2_ed9glAs-gUWRzo
-
Obama abandoned Iraq - and ISIS took over, destroying people and villages. Now it looks like Trump is making the same mistake, abandoning our allies and our victories in Syria - and similar or worse results could come from it. One of our best allies in the region, the Kurds, is about to be annihilated by our pretend NATO ally Turkey, at least that's the way it appears.
36 months ago Donald Trump didn't know Kurds from Quds and didn't know what the nuclear triad was. Is this a boneheaded move by a Commander in Chief who should be listening better to his military advisers?
Or is he one step ahead of us?
American troops pulling out doesn't mean the Kurds are defenseless. They are perhaps the most underrated fighting force on the planet. In the 10 months and longer this has been brewing, maybe Sec. Pompeo has made arrangements with others to help in our place, UAE, Qatar, Egypt, Israel, or Saudi for examples.
Also he has put Turkey on notice not to take advantage of what he has opened up for them.
Trump, in his mind, needs to extract the US from "endless wars". Keeping that promise and showing restraint militarily could put him in a the better position to pass a good defense, which would do more for our strategic preparedness (with China for example) than keeping a small presence in Syria.
My 2 cents, let's see how this goes before we make a final judgment.
-
https://townhall.com/columnists/kurtschlichter/2019/10/08/critics-aghast-as-trump-keeps-word-about-no-more-wars-n2554328
Obama abandoned Iraq - and ISIS took over, destroying people and villages. Now it looks like Trump is making the same mistake, abandoning our allies and our victories in Syria - and similar or worse results could come from it. One of our best allies in the region, the Kurds, is about to be annihilated by our pretend NATO ally Turkey, at least that's the way it appears.
36 months ago Donald Trump didn't know Kurds from Quds and didn't know what the nuclear triad was. Is this a boneheaded move by a Commander in Chief who should be listening better to his military advisers?
Or is he one step ahead of us?
American troops pulling out doesn't mean the Kurds are defenseless. They are perhaps the most underrated fighting force on the planet. In the 10 months and longer this has been brewing, maybe Sec. Pompeo has made arrangements with others to help in our place, UAE, Qatar, Egypt, Israel, or Saudi for examples.
Also he has put Turkey on notice not to take advantage of what he has opened up for them.
Trump, in his mind, needs to extract the US from "endless wars". Keeping that promise and showing restraint militarily could put him in a the better position to pass a good defense, which would do more for our strategic preparedness (with China for example) than keeping a small presence in Syria.
My 2 cents, let's see how this goes before we make a final judgment.
-
Continuing my research: Perhaps Erdogan has a point to consider here?
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Addressing his ruling Justice and Development Party on September 5, Erdogan said, in part:
"We have been hosting about 3,650,000 Syrian refugees for the last eight years... [The West] sometimes thanks us [but]... gives us no support. Our expenses have reached $40 billion. The EU has given only $3 billion, but it is not sent to our budget. It goes to AFAD [Turkey's Disaster and Emergency Management Presidency] and Kızılay [the Turkish Red Crescent] through international organizations... [Europe] has not kept its promises. But we will continue taking that step [to establish a safe zone], whether it supports us or not.
"The number of Syrians that have returned to the areas that we have made safe is now 350,000. But we do not find this sufficient. We want to create such a safe zone... and we have talked about it with Trump and Putin – as well as with Merkel and with Britain -- and asked them to build houses there with us and transfer people to those houses. If we do that, Turkey will relax.
"We have container cities and tent cities [for refugees]. But there is no humane living there. On the one hand, [the West] talks about humane living; on the other hand, they call our offer of a safe zone 'beautiful'... [But when we say], 'Let's start,' they say 'no.'...
"If they do not do [what we are demanding], we will have to open the gates... We have tolerated [housing so many refugees] to a certain extent. Are we the only ones to carry that burden?...
"I am saying this today: We have not got the required support from the world -- particularly from the EU -- to share the burden of the refugees we have been hosting, so we might have to [open the gates] to get the support."
-
"they call our offer of a safe zone 'beautiful'... "
I wonder who said that :wink:
If it was Obama he could have said , you should be happy with the refugees , diversity is your strength.
We have 20+ million illegals in our country of 300 mill. which we are told is great . Some work .
so I could see 3.6 million refugees in a country of 79 million is a lot. I guess Turkey doesn't have the jobs to give them for cheap labor.
that is progress . few hundred yrs ago Turkey might have made them into slaves.
sarcasm aside Turkey is by far the largest "host" of Syrian refugees:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Refugees_of_the_Syrian_Civil_War
-
Isn't there another answer to this short of Americans on the ground in the battlefield?
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/kurds-desert-isis-jails-to-face-turkish-attack-9q8t3spqv
-
Doug,
I am confused
didn't trump say we were only talking about 50 ? troops
so what was the big deal about such a small number?
were they at risk? I suppose.
-
Doug,
I am confused
didn't trump say we were only talking about 50 ? troops
so what was the big deal about such a small number?
were they at risk? I suppose.
I heard this morning it is something like 2000 troops in the area. This article says 500.
https://abcnews.go.com/International/us-troops-syria-heres-theyre/story?id=46020582
In any case it is a relatively small number - unless they get killed and then it was a large number
Personally, I am on both sides (or more than two sides) of this issue. Leaving the Kurds sure looks like deserting an ally. But they have had more than 10 months notice and people like Kushner and Pompeo have been working at building alliances wider. Why not have Arab allies provide on the ground support.
Turkey is either a lousy ally or not an ally at all. Those are the trickiest relationships. Driving Turkey further into the Putin orbit is a big potential step backward, but the inevitable outcome of the US telling Erdogan to go to hell right now.
The Kurds might win a war with Turkey. On the other side of it, maybe Trump loses his Presidency for allowing what the news now calls a genocide.
The next real big thing in the Middle East is most likely what Nassim Taleb calls the black swan event, that which no one expects (but all the signs were there). Sorry I can't tell you what that is.
What changed in the Middle East is US fracking. Saudi lost half its production capability to a surprise Iran attack and I paid 2.44'9 to fill my Prius a week later. They don't have us by the short hairs anymore.
We want no terror groups to have a safe haven. Not a lot more directly affects us in the Middle East. If we stay it is endless war and being 'the world's policeman' and if we leave, we caused the genocide. It's hard to win.
-
https://nypost.com/2019/10/08/how-obamas-team-set-up-trumps-syrian-dilemma/
"How Obama’s team set up Trump’s Syrian dilemma"
-
By GPF Staff
Turkey takes the fight to northern Syria. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan announced on Wednesday the start of a long-awaited major Turkish operation to take control of Kurdish-held areas of northern Syria. Behind the scenes, Turkish officials have been trying to portray this as a peaceful, largely political operation, but Turkish TV networks have been broadcasting footage of airstrikes and/or artillery strikes on Syrian Kurdish People’s Protection Units positions in areas around Tal Abyad and Ras al-Ayn. Turkish media is also reporting a broad buildup of Turkish forces along the border. There are also unconfirmed reports that Syrian forces, with Russian and Iranian backing, are eyeing a move on Syrian Democratic Forces-held areas from the south. According to Kurdish media, Iran also held an unannounced drill near its border with Turkey. All this comes after the Trump administration announced the abrupt withdrawal of the small number of U.S. forces stationed in the area earlier this week following a phone call with Erdogan. The Kurdish SDF has claimed that it would have no choice but to abandon a network of jails holding captured Islamic State fighters as it moves forces into positions along the border. On Wednesday, Trump said it would be up to Turkey to take responsibility for the detainees. What’s left of the Islamic State is evidently trying to take advantage of the situation, reportedly activating sleeper cells to launch an attack in Raqqa, the Syrian city that just two years ago was serving as the Islamic State’s capital.
-
https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/10/trumps-wise-turkey-policy/?utm_source=Sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=NR%20Daily%20Monday%20through%20Friday%202019-10-09&utm_term=NRDaily-Smart
-
Turkey: For Ankara, Strategic Gains in Syria Are Worth the Economic Pain of Sanctions
4 MINS READOct 10, 2019 | 21:45 GMT
The Big Picture
The United States and European Union are looking at new sanctions on Turkey because of its military operation in northeastern Syria. But Ankara has signaled clearly that no matter what comes down the pipe, it will absorb the economic pain for the strategic gain of a new buffer zone along its Syrian frontier.
See The Syrian Civil WarSee Turkey's Resurgence
The U.S. Congress and the European Union are mulling sanctions to punish Turkey for its military operation in northeastern Syria. U.S. Sens. Lindsey Graham, a Republican, and Chris Van Hollen, a Democrat, have introduced legislation that targets high-level officials in President Recep Tayyip Erdogan's government and Turkey's defense industry. Their bill would also activate sanctions against Turkey that Congress previously passed under the Countering America's Adversaries Through Sanctions Act (CAATSA). The Europeans are more broadly considering action against Turkey, and Norway and Sweden, which supply Turkey with small arms, already have suspended new arms exports. To prevent Turkey from ending its 2016 refugee agreement with Europe and flooding the Continent with refugees from Syria, the European Union has offered up to $1 billion in additional support to help Ankara feed and shelter them in Turkey.
Threatening Sanctions
International outrage over Turkey's military operation in Syria is forcing nominally allied states to condemn Ankara. In the United States, in particular, this outrage is propelling sanctions legislation. For now, President Donald Trump appears positioned to veto the legislation in part because of his political desire to reduce the U.S. footprint in the Middle East, and in part because of his warm relationship with Erdogan, whom he has invited to visit the White House on Nov. 13.
But Congress may have the bipartisan support it needs to override Trump's veto — which would be a first during his presidency. The Republican Party is less unified behind Trump on Turkey and Syria, and the party's base is more split on the Turkish incursion against the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) than just about any other issue, in large part because of the SDF's positive reputation as a partner in the campaign against the Islamic State. The strong political incentives to punish Turkey also means the current sanctions legislation may herald more action: Members of Congress can expand or add to the penalties as they see fit.
Though Congress is likely to pass sanctions in some form, the measures are not necessarily as wide-ranging as they appear. They are meant to intimidate and to deter Turkey's incursion. But it will still take time for Congress to vote on and implement them, if they survive a Trump veto. By then, the Turkish operation might be over, and the United States and Turkey can negotiate to reduce the threat of sanctions.
Willing to Endure the Pain
Turkey will take the sanctions pain. Its military operation is broadly popular with the Turkish public, which largely sees the SDF as an extension of Turkey's own insurgent Kurdistan Workers' Party. Erdogan also has little left to lose on his economic record. A rebellion within the ranks of the ruling Justice and Development Party is already in full swing, attacking Erdogan for his economic stewardship, and Turkey has not yet recovered from a recession early this year. Instead, Erdogan is leaning on nationalist policies to maintain legitimacy, especially with his parliamentary majority dependent on the Nationalist Movement Party to govern.
Moreover, Turkey's economic problems and fortunes are bigger than the sanctions threat. The penalties may worsen its economy, but other major factors such as the weak lira, slowing construction and manufacturing sectors, large private debt and weakened investor sentiment drive the ups and downs of its economy. For Turkey, disruptions to its economic relationships will be worth the payoff if it succeeds in stopping a Kurdish statelet on its border.
-
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2019/10/10/turkeys-erdogan-threatens-send-millions-refugees-europe-eu-calls/?fbclid=IwAR2ooX8lMCd_EsjUf9Q9P77c_XieZIWkLP_ZzozI9q-OiTdyddTDyV_ZyqM
-
second post
FWIW
https://www.jihadwatch.org/2019/10/dont-romanticize-the-kurds?fbclid=IwAR1uy02aY_XEkXFPXwLN7ShvWmSQDE_Z9hausW8F7jTGj4J6g-iv1q1zEnE
-
http://carolineglick.com/trump-did-not-betray-the-kurds/
https://havokjournal.com/politics/international/why-the-kurds-may-be-behind-the-u-s-pullout-from-syria/?fbclid=IwAR207tKMnkx6ocSS-6k_iEGrFUena9MAtlDSl5eH2cGC0EUKoeEfUFtrYHA
-
https://www.meforum.org/59554/state-department-distrust-of-syrian-kurds?utm_source=Middle+East+Forum&utm_campaign=cf944af252-MEF_Frantzman_2019_10_11_10_19&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_086cfd423c-cf944af252-33691909&goal=0_086cfd423c-cf944af252-33691909&mc_cid=cf944af252&mc_eid=9627475d7f
-
https://m.washingtontimes.com/news/2019/jan/22/deciphering-confusion-about-the-kurds/?fbclid=IwAR2uYPbgCqUrHWuK5qbBiItnp2o_Dc8XL9eeKGSq9nr8ImfdZhzdeOkliOo
-
The Turk and the President
The Syrian retreat is all too typical of Trump’s decision-making.
By The Editorial Board
Oct. 11, 2019 6:52 pm ET
Turkey's President Recep Tayyip Erdogan addresses a conference of parliament speakers in Istanbul, Oct. 11. Photo: /Associated Press
President Trump prides himself on one-on-one diplomacy, but too often it results in rash and damaging decisions like his abrupt order Sunday for U.S. troops to retreat from northern Syria. Turkish strongman Recep Tayyip Erdogan is now dictating terms to the American President, and the consequences are likely to be felt far beyond Syria and Turkey.
Mr. Trump made his decision after a phone call with Mr. Erdogan in which we now know the Turk said he wanted to follow through on his threat to invade. U.S. officials had been negotiating for months with Turkey to establish a safe zone in the region that would protect Kurdish and Turkish interests while maintaining the gains against Islamic State.
California Goes Dark, Intentionally
Subscribe
Jennifer Griffin of Fox News reports that Mr. Trump was supposed to tell Mr. Erdogan to stay north of the border. When the Turkish bully made his threats, Mr. Trump could have said that the U.S. military controls the air above the region and would respond to protect the Kurds and U.S. soldiers. Ms. Griffin reports that Mr. Trump instead “went off script” during the call and agreed to stay out of Turkey’s way.
Turkey’s invasion has now begun, and State Department officials are left to plead on background that it is a “very big mistake.” Mr. Erdogan can be forgiven if he pays more attention to Mr. Trump’s comments this week that he acceded to Turkey’s invasion because he wants to end America’s “endless wars.” The Turk called the President’s bluff.
How this will play out isn’t clear, but the early signs are troubling. Mr. Trump claimed Mr. Erdogan would take control of the more than 10,000 Islamic State prisoners under Kurdish control, but a senior adviser to Mr. Erdogan told CNN this week that Turkey “never said” it would “shoulder the burden” of holding the prisoners.
Watch out if the Kurds stop holding the prisoners as they flee the invading Turks. The ISIS fighters could break free to rejoin the estimated 15,000 jihadists who haven’t been killed or captured. They could hoist their flag again over territory in Syria or Iraq.
Kurds and Syrians took nearly all of the ground casualties in the previous fight against the caliphate. Why would they do so again after Mr. Trump abandoned them against the Turks? And especially after Mr. Trump said this week that the Kurds might have helped against ISIS but they were well paid and hadn’t helped us at “Normandy”—as in D-Day.
Mr. Trump’s retreat is also a thumb in the eye to our friends in Europe. The State Department spent months seeking Europe’s help to share the burden of maintaining a safe zone in northern Syria, and with some success. Mr. Trump’s decision undercuts that effort, and now Mr. Erdogan is threatening Europe with a new refugee wave if its leaders criticize his invasion. “We will open the gates and send 3.6 million refugees your way,” he said this week.
Some sages claim Mr. Trump made this concession to Turkey as part of a strategy to win Mr. Erdogan’s support against Iran. But Mr. Erdogan has undermined America’s Iran sanctions in the past. And on Friday Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said Mr. Trump had given him “very significant new sanctions authorities” against individuals in the Turkish government if their invasion goes too far.
The hope is that this sanctions threat will deter Mr. Erdogan, but it also contradicts the win-over-Turkey strategy. This looks like one more tactical U.S. gambit to offset the tactical mistake of bowing to Turkey’s invasion.
Tell us again what the benefit of this retreat is beyond appeasing the isolationist wing of the GOP? With the departure of John Bolton as national security adviser, Mr. Trump’s most significant security counselor is Kentucky Senator Rand Paul, who would withdraw to a Fortress America if he had the chance.
***
As Commander in Chief, Mr. Trump has been mostly tactical and rarely strategic. He shifts positions from week to week, even day to day, for the sake of a summit or short-term appearances. Allies are informed about his reversals after the fact and left to wonder if they can still rely on the United States of America.
As Mr. Trump runs for re-election, this habit of impulsive judgment will be front-and-center. As an incumbent he should be the safer presidential choice. But Mr. Trump’s judgment can be so reckless that many voters who took a risk on him the first time will ask if he’s worth a second gamble when he would no longer be disciplined by having to face the voters again. Impeachment won’t defeat Donald Trump in 2020, but Donald Trump might.
-
https://foreignpolicy.com/2019/10/10/kurds-syrian-democratic-forces-us-donald-trump/?fbclid=IwAR3Zn0Y4qgTGQ04EzJAl3V_NMvIepTKGFxI4lbsh6E8axhZAUYJAHOtEDJY
-
https://theweek.com/speedreads/871455/kurdish-general-either-protect-move-aside-let-russians
-
Previous post:
Re: Kurd general: Protect or we will bring in the Russians
This is how allies talk?
----------------------------
This is a very difficult issue with no good choices. If we defend Syria, we are defending Iran's Assad. If we fought with the Kurds before, we have to defend them forever or we have betrayed them? The people who wanted a stronger US footprint in the Middle East, right or wrong, lost the last several elections at home. What is the mission if we stay? What is the end game? What defines victory? What is the US stake in it? What is the cost of it? When did Congress, eager to criticize, declare war? On whom? All very hard to answer.
We have been in Afghanistan going on two decades. I'm not judging that except to say it's costly in dollars and lives, politically unpopular, and the marginal utility of staying longer keeps falling. We have been in Syria for 5 years? We defeated Hitler in 4 1/2 years. With no vision of victory or commitment to achieve it, this fits the definition of endless wars. Trump made an important campaign promise and he won on it. He stole the Iraq war issue from the Democrats and this is an extension of it from America's point of view. Once in a while, when we don't a dog in a fight, they may have to fight without us.
----------------------------
Good readings on both sides of this. Here is some narrative busting by Caroline Glick:
https://carolineglick.com/trump-did-not-betray-the-kurds/
-
https://www.timesofisrael.com/kurdish-politician-among-9-civilians-killed-by-turkey-backed-rebels-monitor/?fbclid=IwAR35G71tIJLy40ScyNOPr_cuq7bzr3W6dYhTpxkcTnNyJfxRnSXdRixBPts
-
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/oct/13/kurds-say-785-isis-affiliates-have-escaped-camp-after-turkish-shelling?CMP=fb_gu&utm_medium=Social&utm_source=Facebook&fbclid=IwAR1rKnLyG04ZWzAp8h9djlC5jNvuyxvFfpoCKSRBuwBDYm048iY--LflVrI#Echobox=1570967968
-
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2019/10/13/kurds-agree-russian-brokered-plan-allow-assad-territory/?fbclid=IwAR3LyY-kWgVE_XXhlMZDe5FpsEix4Ggh8CxC8OYPA1tptjtDHbPseBz1_I0
-
In Syria, Turkey Will Pay the Price for an Imperfect Buffer
6 MINS READOct 14, 2019 | 10:00 GMT
This photo shows fighters with the Turkish-backed Syrian National Army gathered near the Turkish border in northeastern Syria on Oct. 11, 2019.
(ANAS ALKHARBOUTLI/picture alliance via Getty Images)
Fighters with the Turkish-backed Syrian National Army gather near the Turkish border in northeastern Syria on Oct. 11, 2019. Turkey has long sought to establish a buffer zone in Syria to protect itself from the effects of that country's civil war.
Highlights
Turkey will expand its buffer zone along its border with Syria to buttress it from the effects of the Syrian civil war, but the expansion will bring repercussions from Syria, Russia, Iran, the United States and Europe.
Turkey will endure the risks of U.S. and European sanctions to gain as much as it can from a new, northeastern Syrian buffer zone, but it will not want a military clash with Syrian, Russian or Iranian forces that enter the northeast.
Turkey's expanded buffer zone will also be subject to insurgent attacks by the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces or the Islamic State.
The Turkish military is moving into Syria's northeast as Ankara chases its strategy of expanding a buffer space between Turkey and Syria's civil war. But while Turkey will succeed in building up this buffer zone from Afrin in the west to Iraq in the east, it will also pay a price. Turkey's actions will increase tensions not only between it and Syria and Syria's Russian and Iranian backers, but also between it and the United States, the region's former protector, and Europe. Meanwhile, an insurgency by the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) will complicate Ankara's bid to establish a truly safe zone for Syrian refugees and Turkish security interests.
The Big Picture
Turkey has an opportunity to build a larger buffer zone along its border with Syria to prevent the growth of a Kurdish statelet and militancy and to push back against Russia and Iranian influence in Syria. But Turkey's gains will come at a price, including new tensions with Syria, Russia and Iran; additional U.S. congressional outrage; and increased anger from Europe.
See Middle East and North Africa section of the 2019 Fourth-Quarter Forecast
See The Syrian Civil War
Turkey is moving ever closer to its goal of establishing a broad buffer zone in Syria. It wants to prevent the Syrian border from becoming like its border with Iraq, where an autonomous Kurdish region hosts Kurdish militants in the form of the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK). Ankara also wants to build up space to slow refugees fleeing the Syrian civil war from entering Turkey or even to return some of the 3.6 million refugees it has been sheltering at great expense.
Finally, by establishing a zone of influence along the border, Turkey aims to maintain a degree of influence in neighboring Syria and thus the Arab world — and a means to create some counterbalance against the sometimes unfriendly Russian and Iranian influence inside Syria.
Why a Buffer Zone Is Tricky
Building this buffer zone, however, comes with costs, from rising tensions with Syria, Russia and Iran to problems with the United States and Europe, to an ongoing Kurdish insurgency. And the more Turkey expands the buffer, the more of these costs it will incur.
A bigger buffer will increase tensions between Turkey and Syria and, by extension, between Turkey and Russia and Turkey and Iran. The Turkish incursion is coming about because the United States is signaling it is no longer protecting the SDF, creating a power vacuum for Turkey to exploit. But the SDF will not just step aside as Turkey rolls in. It has already signaled it will reach out to Damascus for protection to offset the U.S. withdrawal. A partnership with Damascus will likely erode the SDF's goal of autonomy, but the SDF, without the United States, will have little choice.
By bringing in Damascus, the SDF will create a new front between Syria and Turkey — and, again by extension, with Russia and Iran, which Syria will rely on to help it take control of the northeast. A larger buffer zone in the northeast will require Turkish proxies and forces to extend their reach to maintain it, creating opportunities for mistakes and friction between Syria and its allies on one side and Turkey on the other. The recurrent de-escalation talks between Ankara, Moscow and Tehran will also increasingly have to factor in the northeast.
This map shows the location of Turkish, Kurdish and other forces along the Turkey-Syria border.
Even as the big powers seek to de-escalate the conflict, the SDF will build on the anti-Turkish insurgency already present in Afrin and extend it to whatever new buffer zones are built up in northeastern Syria. Once more, the larger the zone, the more targets there will be for the insurgency. This insurgency will also reflect the geographic reality of the region: With such a vast area to patrol, Turkey will not be able to wholly control the border, and thus will not completely cut off the SDF-PKK links it is seeking to sever. Smuggling of arms and supplies back and forth will continue on some scale. In addition to the increased risks from the SDF, the Islamic State's underground elements will also potentially strike Turkish proxies and forces as they stay in Syria. This situation will create a long-term drain on Turkish military and security resources while failing to fully address its security concerns.
A Place to Resettle Syrian Refugees
Turkey also will not be able to use the expanded buffer zone to solve all of its refugee-related problems. Many refugees are from Syria's west — which is under regime control — and will resist resettlement in the northeast; they will not want to move to an unfamiliar part of the country. The northeast also lacks housing and employment opportunities. Even in pre-civil war Syria, the Syria-Turkish border region was relatively underdeveloped, and its cities small. Housing will be hard to find, and many refugees will realize they will be placed in long-term camps, dependent on aid.
That does not mean Turkey will not force some refugees to go to the safe zones. With anti-Arab sentiment rising in cash-strapped Turkey, the Turkish government needs to show it is not prioritizing foreign refugees over its own citizens. But the harsher Turkey acts toward Syrian refugees, the more Ankara risks outrage from Europe and the United States, with disruptions in their relationships possible. In addition, to find suitable housing for refugees and to disrupt the connections between Turkish Kurdistan and Syrian Kurdistan, Turkey will be tempted to repeat its Afrin population strategy, ejecting people it considers disloyal and replacing them with other Syrian refugees. In doing so, Turkey once more would risk international outrage from its Western partners and create a new incentive for sanctions against it.
Building a buffer zone in Syria comes with costs. And the more Turkey expands the buffer, the more of these costs it will incur.
Finally, the more Turkey expands its buffer zones, the more it will risk its ties with the United States, particularly with the U.S. Congress, whose members are already outraged by Turkish military action against the SDF, a U.S. ally in the fight against the Islamic State. A larger or lengthier Turkish military operation will increase Congress' desire to penalize Turkey. Further humanitarian-related concerns may arise as Turkey resettles refugees and carries out military operations. Congress could introduce fresh legislation in response to such incidents, producing more tension between the United States and Turkey.
But because of its imperative to diminish Kurdish militancy that could lead to a Kurdish state, Ankara will have a high tolerance for some of these risks as it seeks to gain as much as it can from its current military operations. While it will not want to escalate the situation to a military confrontation with Syria, Russia or Iran, Turkey will brave sanctions from the United States and Europe to achieve its buffer zone — before Syria and its allies move into parts of the northeast.
-
I just heard a great call on Dr. Sebastian Gorka radio on this topic, points brought up on the forum, familiar voice...
-
:-D :-D :-D
Very frustrating at my end-- on and off there was cross chatter from a completely other phone call then my call got cut off altogether before I could ask my big question: What is the balance of power after we leave? Does Turkey block Iran? What is the Russians play viz each of the players? etc.
Someone was able to track down the URL for the audio of my previous call , , ,
-
:-D :-D :-D
Very frustrating at my end-- on and off there was cross chatter from a completely other phone call then my call got cut off altogether before I could ask my big question: What is the balance of power after we leave? Does Turkey block Iran? What is the Russians play viz each of the players? etc.
Someone was able to track down the URL for the audio of my previous call , , ,
You handled the distractions well. It sounded like he ran out of time and closed it with his answer to what you were asking.
I wonder if this is the White House statement he referred to:
Statement from President Donald J. Trump Regarding Turkey’s Actions in Northeast Syria
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EG3SarFWsAUW-Ed.jpg
12:55 PM - 14 Oct 2019
I wonder if this was the statement
-
quote author=Crafty_Dog
Someone was able to track down the URL for the audio of my previous call , , ,
------------------
https://www.sebgorka.com/broadcast/10-14-19/
Hour 3, 40:10 mark
-
Far out, thank you.
-
https://www.conservativereview.com/news/trump-actually-right-syria-now-lets-follow/?fbclid=IwAR0d6264RmNE-6TY5dqVNNQMBwZdXu989xv7e9FNaT1pDmrvEI6UILLTw3I
-
https://www.cnsnews.com/news/article/susan-jones/senators-once-leery-about-us-troops-going-syria-now-want-them-stay?fbclid=IwAR3sSzcjBve3dVV4MpohS4RI4tlBaIlZJFTHGBcznVcCWs2kDaqCJrjv9Gc
-
Putin visits Saudi Arabia in sign of growing ties
Putin signs oil agreements and discusses regional security in his first visit to the kingdom since 2007.
21 hours ago
Russian President Vladimir Putin with Saudi Arabia's King Salman in Riyadh [Reuters]
Russian President Vladimir Putin with Saudi Arabia's King Salman in Riyadh [Reuters]
more on Saudi Arabia
Saudi football team criticised for occupied West Bank match
today
Pakistan's Imran Khan in Tehran to facilitate Iran-Saudi talks
2 days ago
Iran decries 'cowardly attack' on oil tanker off Saudi coast
3 days ago
US to deploy 3,000 additional troops to Saudi Arabia
4 days ago
Russian President Vladimir Putin has visited Saudi Arabia in his first trip to the kingdom in over a decade, signing oil agreements and discussing regional security, in particular, Saudi Arabia's ongoing rivalry with Iran.
A mounted guard escorted Putin's limousine to King Salman's Al-Yamamah palace in Riyadh after his arrival on Monday, his first visit since 2007.
At the palace, Putin listened to a Saudi military band play Russia's national anthem. He then greeted officials before sitting with King Salman for a conversation captured by state television.
The meeting signified strengthening relations between the two countries, who have worked together in recent years to keep oil supplies low, and thus keep prices high, but have been on opposite sides of regional conflicts.
Moscow has supported President Bashar al-Assad in the Syrian civil war, while Riyadh backed groups which fought for his overthrow.
Russia has also strengthened ties in recent years with Iran, which is locked in a decades-old contest with Saudi Arabia for influence in the wider Middle East.
In recent months, tensions between the two sides have soared and veered towards open conflict. Putin has previously said he could play a positive role in easing tensions between Tehran and Riyadh, given Russia's strong ties with both sides.
In a statement broadcast during the visit, Putin praised King Salman's efforts at maintaining relations.
"Russia sees the expansion of friendly and mutually beneficial ties with Saudi Arabia as particularly important," Putin said.
In brief remarks, the 83-year-old King Salman said, "We look forward to working with Russia to achieve security and stability and fight terrorism."
Prince Abdulaziz bin Salman, the country's assistant oil minister, then lead a signing ceremony for 20 agreements between the two nations, most memoranda of understanding in the fields of energy, petrochemicals, transport and artificial intelligence.
Earlier in the day, a broadly grinning Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MBS), the country's de facto leader, had greeted Putin. The crown prince later met with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov.
Energy and Security
The Saudi Press Agency (SPA) said the two leaders discussed developments in Syria, where Turkey recently launched a cross-border offensive, and the ongoing civil war in Yemen, where a Saudi-led coalition has been fighting Houthi rebels since 2015.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Putin also discussed oil prices with King Salman and the crown prince.
WATCH
25:30
Saudi scholar Alaoudh: 'MBS is not Saudi Arabia'
"A substantial exchange of opinions took place, on regional problems, on situation at the energy markets, or on oil prices, to keep it simple," he told reporters in Riyadh.
Putin previously offered to provide Russian defence systems to Saudi Arabia after the September 14 attacks on its state-owned oil facilities.
While Yemen-based Houthi rebels claimed the attacks, Riyadh and several Western powers, have said Iran is to blame. Tehran has denied the allegation. The attack halved Riyadh's output of crude oil.
Threat to US-Saudi ties?
Any movement in a defence system deal would likely cause disquiet in Washington, which is sending 3,000 troops and additional air defence systems to Saudi Arabia following the attacks.
Asked about concerns Riyadh was cosying up to Moscow at the expense of relations with the United States, senior foreign ministry official Adel al-Jubeir said he saw no contradiction.
"We don't believe that having close ties with Russia has any negative impact on our relationship with the United States," he told reporters on Sunday. "We believe that we can have strategic and strong ties with the United States while we develop our ties with Russia."
SOURCE: Al Jazeera and news agencies
-
I heard that Erdogan posted an important piece today somewhere. Would someone find it please?
Also I heard that Turkish troops were advancing so aggressively towards a position of ours that a Blackhawk hovered mere feet off the ground in front of them in menacing manner.
WTF?!?
The President is looking like a blustering blowhard.
============================================
Trump Speaks Loudly, Carries a Toothpick
Betraying the Kurds harms U.S. allies and interests. It’s already made Israel nervous.
By William A. Galston
Oct. 15, 2019 6:53 pm ET
You may also like
Up Next
Opinion: 'Israel Will Defend Itself, by Itself,' Says Netanyahu
Opinion: 'Israel Will Defend Itself, by Itself,' Says Netanyahu
Politics & Ideas: Three days after Trump announced the U.S. troop withdrawal from Syria, Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu spoke about Israeli security concerns during a speech at a Yom Kippur War memorial ceremony. Image: Abir Sultan/Shutterstock
Game, set and match to Vladimir Putin in Syria. President Trump’s hasty and ill-advised withdrawal of American tripwire forces from Syria has forced the Kurds into a deal with dictator Bashar Assad, whose forces are re-entering the country’s Northeast region. With a modest investment, the Russian president not only staved off defeat for Mr. Assad but has moved close to his goal of reunifying Syria under his client’s control.
Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei is also taking a victory lap. With the collapse of America’s position in Syria, his long-sought arc of Iranian influence from Tehran to the Mediterranean is within reach. Iranian-backed militias, key supporters of Mr. Assad during the civil war, are certain to be a long-term presence in his country. Forces commanded by Iran and Hezbollah along the Golan Heights border now represent a heightened threat to Israel.
The Mess in Syria, and Questions for the Democratic Debate
Subscribe
America’s closest ally in the Middle East is worried, and rightly so. Reports from Jerusalem indicate that Israeli officials received no warning of the withdrawal. In a commentary echoed throughout the Israeli press, the daily newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth declared, “Trump abandons allies without blinking and Israel is liable to be next,” adding that “the entire balance of power in the Middle East is built on a very delicate web of supports, pressures, understandings and agreements—and Trump is unraveling that web.” Amos Yadlin, former head of Israeli military intelligence, said: “It goes to the role of America as a superpower in the Middle East. If Americans leave, it’s easier for Iran, it’s easier for Bashar al-Assad, it’s easier for Hezbollah. All of these are our enemies.”
It’s news when a veteran Israeli official compares Mr. Trump unfavorably with Barack Obama. This is what a former Israeli ambassador to the U.S., Michael Oren, did in a recent interview. During Mr. Obama’s last meeting with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, the U.S. president said that “if Israel ever got into a serious war, of course the U.S. would intervene,” Mr. Oren recalled, then added: “I don’t think Israel can bank on that today” and “I don’t know now.”
Although blunders by previous presidents had eroded America’s standing before Mr. Trump took office, his actions have accelerated the decline. His last-second decision to cancel a retaliatory strike against Iran in response to Tehran’s downing of an American drone raised questions about U.S. resolve, which only deepened when the U.S. failed to respond in the wake of Iran’s attack on the heart of Saudi Arabia’s oil industry. Mr. Trump has turned Theodore Roosevelt’s famous dictum on its head: He speaks loudly and carries a toothpick.
There’s no doubt that many Americans are tired of “endless wars,” a phrase Mr. Trump now shares with the left wing of the Democratic Party. But equating 18 years of costly and bloody conflict in Afghanistan with America’s involvement in Syria obscures reality. The U.S. was protecting the Kurds, deterring the Turks and preventing Assad from consolidating his power—all of this with a small deployment of troops and remarkably few casualties over the past five years.
As the final report of the congressionally mandated, bipartisan Syria Study Group makes clear, there were viable policy options that could have safeguarded U.S. and allied interests. Instead, hardened Islamic State fighters are escaping from the prisons their Kurdish guards were forced to abandon, contradicting the central aim of U.S. involvement in Syria and Iraq during the past five years.
The costs of Mr. Trump’s chaotic retreat extend beyond the geopolitical. There is a moral dimension to statecraft, whether Mr. Trump acknowledges it or not. Keeping promises matters, as do decency and loyalty and trust. Reputational damage weakens a nation’s balance sheet.
Sen. Lindsey Graham, one of President Trump’s closest confidants, declared that abandoning the Kurds would be a “stain on America’s honor,” and he’s dead right. Here’s what the Syrian Kurdish forces’ commander in chief, Mazloum Abdi, had to say about recent events: “At Washington’s request, we agreed to withdraw our heavy weapons from the border area with Turkey, destroy our defensive fortifications, and pull back our most seasoned fighters. Turkey would never attack us so long as the U.S. government was true to its word with us. We are now standing with our chests bare to face the Turkish knives.”
This is a textbook description of betrayal. American troops who have worked side by side for years with the Kurds are ashamed of their country. As a citizen and Marine Corps veteran, I am too. Mr. Trump is not, because he is incapable of feeling shame for anything he does, whatever its consequences for others, so long as it serves his immediate needs and gratifies his insatiable ego.
The Lord says to the prophet Isaiah, “there is no peace for the wicked.” But now, thanks to Mr. Trump, there may be peace for Mr. Putin, Iran and Islamic State.
-
Our Doug said:
""As far as notice goes, he has been telling them this is coming from the start, 10 months ago and again a couple of months ago. Didn't he lose Mattis and Bolton over this? It was in all the papers. , , ,
"In spite of the way the evening news words it, this offensive didn't start because of America's withdrawal. This offensive was delayed because of America's presence in the area. The 10 month delay from the first notice gave them some time to take cover or make peace."
Apparently the Kurds noticed too
https://www.stripes.com/news/middle-east/fearing-us-abandonment-kurds-kept-back-channels-with-syria-russia-wide-open-1.603174?fbclid=IwAR3x0Vgmpl6QBaVnwi_qBy56WRz1TveyEugftVRvdhRV6pz-YI4t0JQwjjk
-
https://havokjournal.com/culture/military/voices-from-a-quiet-war-in-syria/
-
second post
https://www.nationalreview.com/magazine/2019/09/30/russias-middle-east-power-play/#slide-1
-
https://www.defenseone.com/ideas/2019/10/intelligence-fallout-trumps-withdrawal-syria/160696/?oref=defense_one_breaking_nl
-
I found this piece quite interesting:
https://www.defenseone.com/ideas/2019/10/10-hard-realities-americas-next-syria-policy/160699/?oref=defense_one_breaking_nl
-
Recommended to me by a serious person:
https://www.armyupress.army.mil/Portals/7/military-review/Archives/English/Rojansky-Victory-for-Russia-1.pdf?fbclid=IwAR287RpujPiNN6lrhkEFEI95AXg0S_ZWSAEUhwdTr5nC0q4WeTUpOmP_a-o
-
https://www.theblaze.com/glenn-radio/rand-paul-trump-syria-turkey?utm_content=buffer7a103&utm_medium=referral&utm_source=facebook&utm_campaign=fb-glennbeck&fbclid=IwAR0pwi74gnMn2t517NbczODwhyhlQ5bSPTa_9Ljmmmh4Vx7CJ49gGP-_7hk
-
https://www.meforum.org/59608/turkeys-offensive-could-displace-million-kurds?utm_source=Middle+East+Forum&utm_campaign=d826ad2252-MEF_Spyer_2019_10_21_04_00&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_086cfd423c-d826ad2252-33691909&goal=0_086cfd423c-d826ad2252-33691909&mc_cid=d826ad2252&mc_eid=9627475d7f
-
second post
https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/15038/isis-prisoners-return
-
third post
As America Leaves Syria, Iran Isn’t as Happy as You Think
Tehran finds itself at cross-purposes with Damascus and Ankara as Baghdad slips away.
By Ray Takeyh
Oct. 20, 2019 3:21 pm ET
Syrian soldiers in Kobani, Syria, Oct. 18. Photo: Agence France-Presse/Getty Images
It is the conceit of the commentariat that Iran is a winner of the latest mayhem in the Middle East—the departure of U.S. troops from Syria and the subsequent Turkish incursion. Yet the clerical oligarchs seem anxious about all that is happening around them.
A continuing Syrian civil war was working for Tehran. It had managed to navigate skillfully the politics at play, developing good relations with both Bashar Assad and the Kurdish militias opposing him. The latter’s U.S. support created a sort of balance between the sides. Despite his precarious situation, Mr. Assad dreams of unifying Syria. His Iranian patrons have long advised him to limit his ambitions and consolidate power in the territory he commands. With the U.S. backing the Kurds, Mr. Assad had to follow Iran’s advice or risk a wider war he could ill afford.
Now that the U.S. is gone and the militias have been forced to ally with Mr. Assad, little stops him from trying to seize the 40% of the country he doesn’t control. After nearly a decade of war, Syria is exhausted. Any attempt to control more land is bound to jeopardize Mr. Assad’s existing gains. If Mr. Assad is mired in a longer and costlier war, Tehran would have to commit even greater resources to this conflict at a time when its economy is suffering due to sanctions and mismanagement.
Turkey looms large in the clerical imagination. In a region littered with weak and failing states, Turkey is a formidable power with its own ambitions for the Middle East. Iran is already at loggerheads with Saudi Arabia and caught in a costly sectarian conflict across the region. Ankara’s intervention in Syria is bound to complicate Iran’s designs in the Levant. Iran had forged decent ties with Kurdish forces and it viewed its buffer zone in northern Syria as a useful check on Turkey. With the U.S. gone, the Kurds have been swept back before the Turkish advance.
Iranian leaders including President Hassan Rouhani and Foreign Minister Javad Zarif urged Turkey not to move in to Syria. Ayatollah Ahmad Khatami, the hard-line Friday prayer leader, captured the essence of Iran’s concerns, warning Turkey “not to stumble into America’s trap” and thus find itself in a quagmire similar to the Saudi predicament in Yemen. In a nonverbal warning, Iran conducted military maneuvers along its border with Turkey shortly before Ankara invaded Syria, according to Reuters.
With the U.S. gone, Iran’s attempts at persuasion will do little to restrain Turkey. In Syria, Ankara is bound to be more powerful, Mr. Assad more reckless, the Kurds substantially weakened, and Islamic State reconstituted. None of this is good news for Iran, which hoped to make incremental gains in the Levant by keeping the Syrian conflict simmering at a low burn.
And the current flare-up comes at a bad time for Tehran. In one of the many paradoxes of the Middle East, Iran gained much from the U.S. toppling Saddam Hussein. Iraq’s Sunni strongmen have haunted Persian monarchs and mullahs for decades, even launching an invasion in 1980 that traumatized a generation of Iranians. Since the 2003 invasion, Iran-backed Shiite militias have operated as an auxiliary force, coming to dominate Iraq—one of the Islamic Republic’s most consequential successes. Iran uses Iraq to transport its oil to the global markets in defiance of American sanctions.
But Iran’s domination doesn’t go over well. Tehran is the key actor in selecting Iraq’s prime ministers and Parliaments. This means it gets the blame for the Iraqi government’s corruption and inefficiency. Iraqi resentment of Iran exploded into protests this month that shook the foundations of the Baghdad government.
Tehran has tried to smooth things over. Iranians repeat the conspiracy theory that the U.S. and Saudi Arabia instigated Iraqi protests. Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei warned that “Iran and Iraq are two nations whose hearts and souls are tied together. . . . Enemies seek to sow discord, but they’ve failed, and their conspiracy won’t be effective.” Mr. Khamenei’s putative successor, Ayatollah Ebrahim Raisi, reinforced his narrative, stressing that sedition is taking hold of Iraq. Beneath the stale rhetoric, the mullahs likely realize that the Iraqi government’s hold on power is tenuous. If it collapses, there could follow another messy civil war whose outcome Tehran may not be able to condition.
On top of all of that, now Syria is in flames. There are many sound arguments about why the U.S. should not have withdrawn its modest presence. But the notion that the pullout empowers Tehran is belied by its leaders’ expressions of anxiety. The Middle East rarely offers a respite to ambitious nations, even Iran.
Mr. Takeyh is a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations.
-
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/04/04/AR2007040402306.html
-
Time to bite the bullet in Syria
Oct 21,2019 - Last updated at Oct 21,2019
CANBERRA — Recent events in Syria have naturally raised two questions: Who lost the country? And where might the international community go from here?
The first question is easier to answer. Looking back, Syria has probably been lost since the popular uprising in 2011. When President Bashar Al Assad’s regime stubbornly refused any effort to resolve the matter peacefully, no outside power proved willing to intervene. Instead, everyone hoped that a mix of sanctions, UN-led diplomacy and halfhearted attempts to support a “moderate” opposition would eventually bring down the regime.
It did not work. Fundamentalist forces gained political ground and territory, and others, including Iranian-backed militias and the Russian military after the fall of 2015, rushed to Assad’s defence. Although the regime had long deprived the Kurds in northern Syria of most of their rights, it started making concessions to them when it came under pressure. As a result, Kurdish militias abstained from challenging Assad, which led much of the broader Syrian opposition to shun them.
After Daesh established its “caliphate” in Mosul and Raqqa in 2014, enabling it to strike even Baghdad, there was an understandable rush to confront the terrorist threat. In Iraq, that task fell largely to Iranian-aligned Shia militias. But in Syria, the situation was more complicated. The United States had no intention of sending in its own combat forces, but it also knew that the Syrian opposition groups that it, and Turkey, had been arming were not up to the challenge. In any case, those groups were focused on toppling Assad, which had ceased to be a high priority for Western policymakers.
Given these constraints, the US threw its support behind the Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG). The US has long recognised the YPG as an affiliate of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), which it, along with the European Union and Turkey, classify as a terrorist organisation. But even if the decision did not fit with any long-term strategy, it did satisfy short-term tactical needs, and supporting the YPG ultimately proved successful in depriving Daesh of its territory, though the group will remain a long-term threat.
The uprooting of Daesh would have been a good time to launch a political process to resolve the broader conflict. In fact, there were at least two options on the table. The first was to establish a Kurdish/YPG-governed entity in northern and northeastern Syria. But, of course, that would have raised the ire of Turkey, which was not ready to tolerate any PKK presence on its border. In addition to requiring an open-ended US military presence, this scenario would have resulted in Kurds ruling over substantial swaths of non-Kurdish territory.
The other option was to pursue a broader political settlement, with the goal of creating an inclusive governance structure acceptable to the regime in Damascus. Over time, this process could have led to an arrangement similar to that in northern Iraq, where the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) now cooperates closely with Turkey.
But this did not happen. As the US position evolved, the Trump administration rejected the first option and then actively discouraged the second, making a crisis inevitable. The trigger for the crisis was a telephone call in which US President Donald Trump gave Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan a green light to send forces into Syria. Trump ordered the US military to abandon the area immediately, and added insult to injury by announcing it all on Twitter, shocking both the Kurds and many of his own advisers.
Since then, everything has come crashing down. With their credibility in tatters, US officials have desperately sought to create some kind of policy out of the ruins created by the presidential tweets. The president has threatened to destroy Turkey’s economy if it does what he enabled it to do. With Kurds, most of them civilians, fleeing Turkish bombs, the UN Security Council has remained typically silent, while the Europeans have condemned everything and everyone involved.
As foreign-policy disasters go, this is one for the record books. But the seeds for this larger conflagration were sown long before the now-infamous Trump-Erdogan call. Absent any coherent policy, the conditions were ripe for a crisis. The question now is whether there is any constructive way to proceed.
For now, the US has agreed with Turkey on establishing the wide security zone in northern Syria it sought. Russia, meanwhile, has evidently brokered some sort of arrangement between the YPG and the Assad regime. With Russian and Syrian government forces now entering some of the areas vacated by the US, the Trump administration is left trying to manage its relations with Turkey. As for the EU, there is little to be done. Having already cut off all high-level political contacts with Turkey, it is impotent in the face of this latest crisis.
Logic dictates that all of the relevant parties in the region should now sit down and try to come to some kind of agreement. In addition to the KRG, Iraq and other Arab countries, there also needs to be a place at the table for Turkey, Iran and the Syrian government. Yes, the Assad regime is associated with a wide range of horrors and atrocities; but there is simply no other way forward.
Regional talks certainly will not come easy. Many parties will have to swallow hard and face difficult realities. Unfortunately, the prospect of a democratic Syria was lost years ago. The top priority now must be to restore stability and prevent further catastrophes. There are no longer any good options, if, in fact, there ever were.
Carl Bildt was Sweden’s foreign minister from 2006 to 2014 and Prime Minister from 1991 to 1994, when he negotiated Sweden’s EU accession. A renowned international diplomat, he served as EU Special Envoy to the Former Yugoslavia, High Representative for Bosnia and Herzegovina, UN Special Envoy to the Balkans, and Co-Chairman of the Dayton Peace Conference. He is Co-Chair of the European Council on Foreign Relations. ©Project Syndicate, 2016.
www.project-syndicate.org
-
second post
Post reports. Then Trump added, “I go out to Dover and meet parents and it’s the most unpleasant thing I do.” More on developments linked to Syria below...
Problems viewing? View as a web page
October 22, 2019
Turkey's military is set to renew its offensive against Kurds in northern Syria beginning at 3 p.m. EDT today. Turkish state-run television even had a running clock to let viewers know exactly when the operational pause will end — until it was flagged on social media Monday and apparently taken down.
Turkish President Erdogan is meeting with his Russian counterpart today in Sochi as the Wall Street Journal writes "both Ankara and Moscow [are] seeking to capitalize on a rebalancing of power in the region."
One significant detail still to be worked out: "Ankara wants control over territories in northeastern Syria to relocate half of the nearly four million Syrian refugees living in Turkey," the Journal reports. "But the agreement with Washington covers only about a quarter of Mr. Erdogan's proposed 300-mile-long safe zone." And that's why "Moscow's commitment to securing the remaining three quarters will be essential because the Russian-backed army of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad last week struck an agreement to work with the Kurdish militia."
Where the parties stand, via the Associated Press: "Turkey has suggested it wants Russia to persuade the Syrian government to cede it control over a major chunk of territory in the northeast. The Kurds are hoping Russia can keep Turkey out and help preserve some of the autonomy they carved out for themselves during Syria's civil war." Meantime, "Syrian President Bashar Assad has vowed to reunite all the territory under Damascus' rule."
To that end, Assad today called Erdogan "a thief," and said he was ready to support any "popular resistance" against Turkey's invasion, AP reports. Said the Syrian strongman to his troops in northwestern Idlib province: "We are in the middle of a battle and the right thing to do is to rally efforts to lessen the damages from the invasion and to expel the invader sooner or later."
Assad also said he's offered clemency to Kurds who want to fight against Turkey, even as regime troops moved into "new areas in Hassakeh province at the far eastern end of the border, under the arrangement with the Kurds," AP reports from across the border in Turkey.
ICYMI: The U.S. military may keep a small number of forces in northeastern Syria, despite President Trump's apparent order to remove all of them from that region, Defense Secretary Mark Esper told reporters in Afghanistan (AP) on Monday. "There has been a discussion about possibly doing it," Esper said. "There has been no decision with regard to numbers or anything like that."
Reminder why this is a concern: "The United States, through the Syrian Democratic Forces, were sitting on one-third of Syrian territory, which happens to be the most resource-rich part of Syria," Dana Stroul of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy told us in our latest Defense One Radio podcast episode. "And via leverage of that land we could influence the political outcome for the broader underlying causes of the Syrian conflict."
But that would all seem to be all but lost now with the Trump-directed reduction in U.S. troops in NE Syria.
Said Trump during his cabinet meeting about pulling the U.S. out of wars: "It would be much easier for me to let our soldiers be there, let them continue to die," the Washington Post reports. Then Trump added, "I go out to Dover and meet parents and it's the most unpleasant thing I do."
-
https://www.defenseone.com/ideas/2019/10/10-ways-americas-situation-middle-east-will-get-worse/160752/?oref=defenseone_today_nl
-
https://lauraloomer.us/2019/10/22/jordans-king-abdullah-rejects-pelosi-and-schiff-by-endorsing-trump-withdrawal-from-syria/?fbclid=IwAR1JkefZwGvO5vXO2YhGPFzMahjaLqu4sXpw1mXTWt-m8MGc-9DzxE_GIHE#.Xa_62a97lqM
-
The Role of the Caucasus in Russia’s Middle East Strategy
Moscow is trying to play all sides.
By
Ekaterina Zolotova -
October 21, 2019
Open as PDF
Amid mounting tensions in the Persian Gulf and the Turkish incursion in northern Syria, Russian President Vladimir Putin is trying his best not to burn any bridges in the Middle East. Last week, Putin visited Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, and this week, he will meet with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan in Sochi. So far, the Kremlin has managed to maintain good relations with all parties involved in the turmoil, but in order to continue to do so, it will need to enlist the help of some of Putin’s closest allies in the North Caucasus.
A Precarious Position
Needless to say, this puts Russia in a precarious position. It’s trying to play all sides, claiming to be partners with multiple countries that have conflicting interests. Russia’s own interests in the Middle East are many, but chief among them is to maintain stability in the region, in large part so that the volatility doesn’t spread to Central Asia and the Caucasus – a critical area of concern for Russian security.
North and South Caucasus
(click to enlarge)
The North Caucasus is one of the most unstable regions in Russia. It has a diverse, multiethnic population and is highly dependent on financial support from Moscow. Without that support, the Kremlin would have a much harder time controlling this part of the country. The relative proximity of the Caucasus to the Middle East increases the risk that violent extremism will spread to Russian territory. Many of the Islamic State’s foreign fighters originate from the North Caucasus and Central Asian countries, which share a border with Russia. With the Islamic State effectively defeated, some of these foreign fighters have already returned home. The recent Turkish airstrikes have also allowed several hundred IS supporters to escape from Kurdish-guarded camps in northern Syria, creating the risk that some could find their way into the Caucasus. Russia sees this as a serious national security threat. Speaking at the Commonwealth of Independent States summit in Ashgabat on Oct. 11, Putin said he had doubts about the Turkish military’s ability to control prisons housing IS militants.
Russia, therefore, wants to have a say in how the situation in northern Syria and the Persian Gulf unfolds. It doesn’t want to be dragged into another military conflict, which would be expensive and unpopular and could jeopardize its relations with some of its partners in the region. Instead, it prefers to play the role of mediator – which requires a careful balancing act. In the Persian Gulf, Russia has cultivated ties with both Saudi Arabia and Iran, though the two countries are longstanding enemies and the Saudis have blamed the Iranians for last month’s attacks on Saudi oil facilities. In the Syrian war, Russian support for Bashar Assad and Assad-backed forces has pitted it against Turkey, which has supported the government opposition. Though Russia and Turkey are historical rivals, Moscow doesn’t want to antagonize Ankara, and both have worked together to find a resolution to the conflict in Syria. Moscow therefore has to be careful not to rock the boat with either Damascus or Ankara. The Syrian Kurds have also asked Russia for help; Russian troops are currently patrolling parts of northern Syria to prevent clashes between the Turkish army and Kurdish forces.
Room to Maneuver
The Kremlin has successfully managed relations with all these parties by using leaders from the North Caucasus, including most notably Chechen chief Ramzan Kadyrov, to build ties throughout the Middle East. Kadyrov, who accompanied Putin to Saudi Arabia and the UAE last week, is an important ally for the Russian president. He has maintained control of Chechnya and ensured that the republic remains stable. In exchange, Kadyrov has secured substantial subsidies for Chechnya from the Kremlin. (Chechnya is among the top five most subsidized Russian regions.)
In recent years, Chechnya has also attracted investment from Arab donors. The UAE has invested $350 million there, funds that have supported projects like a five-star hotel in Grozny called The Local, a large shopping center, and the Akhmat Tower high-rise complex. Saudi Arabia has also invested in projects, including a sheep breeding program in the Chechen mountains. In fact, Chechnya is the only region in the North Caucasus that has been successful in attracting foreign investment, mostly because of Kadyrov’s links to Middle Eastern investors. He has visited the UAE, Saudi Arabia and Bahrain many times over the course of his leadership and even met with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman during Putin’s visit last week. These personal ties are part of the Kremlin’s strategy to win over allies in the Middle East. So while Moscow continues to support Iran publicly, Kadyrov has worked to smooth things over with the Saudis – giving the Kremlin more room to maneuver throughout the region.
Russia could also lean on Chechen leaders to help maintain relations with opposing sides in the Syrian war. According to unconfirmed reports, Syrian Kurdish leaders have reached out to the Kremlin, asking Russia for help in their fight against Turkish forces in northern Syria. Moscow has reportedly agreed to transfer some special forces – more precisely, from the Chechen special forces – to the northeast. Though unconfirmed, this scenario would make sense considering that the Chechens have historical grievances against Turkey. In the past, Kadyrov has accused Turkey of financing terrorists and luring tens of thousands of Chechens to Turkey during the Second Chechen War (about 70,000 Chechens live in Turkey today).
Russia has managed to involve itself in various conflicts in the region without jeopardizing its relations with key partners. It has done so by relying on the cooperation of its republics in the North Caucasus. It has positioned itself as a mediator in the Syrian war and the Persian Gulf crisis and will continue to maneuver as much as possible between opposing sides in these conflicts.
-
I had not appreciated this until just now:
"If Israel wishes to continue its clandestine war against Iranian weapons transfers and infrastructure-building in Syria, it will be able to do so only with Russian permission, in an arena in which Moscow’s hand is now profoundly stronger. Expect a busy shuttle route to Moscow for whoever emerges as Israel’s prime minister."
===================================================
Putin Is the New King of Syria
The U.S. withdrawal makes Russia the new arbiter of everyone’s interests, including Israel’s.
By Jonathan Spyer
Oct. 16, 2019 6:17 pm ET
Hassan Rouhani, Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Vladimir Putin in Ankara, Turkey, Sept. 16. Photo: Pavel Golovkin/Associated Press
By giving Turkey a green light to invade northern Syria, the U.S. upended the balance of power in the Middle East with a single stroke. Russia is the biggest winner.
The Turkish attack, launched in conjunction with Sunni Arab Islamist groups in Syria’s north, had the predictable effect of causing Washington’s erstwhile Kurdish allies to request Bashar Assad’s assistance. Some 150,000 Kurdish civilians had already fled their homes to escape the advance of the Turkish military and its Islamist proxies.
Mr. Assad has already deployed his forces in Tal Tamr, Manbij, Tabqa and Kobani—towns formerly under the exclusive control of Kurdish forces. Details have begun to leak from the proposed deal cementing the surrender of the Syrian Kurds to Mr. Assad. The Turkish offensive continues but has made little progress. The U.S. is still extricating its forces and moving them to the safety of Iraqi Kurdistan.
Vladimir Putin is now the indispensable strategic arbiter in Syria. None of the remaining pieces on the broken chessboard can move without Mr. Putin’s hand. The Assad regime owes its survival to Moscow’s air intervention in September 2015. This reporter and others who have spent time in Damascus note the impunity with which Russian security and other personnel conduct themselves. They are effectively beyond the reach of the local authorities.
Moscow has co-opted important commanders within the Syrian security forces. The powerful and prominent Col. Soheil Hassan, commander of the Tiger Forces, is chief among them. Other than Mr. Assad himself, Col. Hassan was the only Syrian commander invited to meet with President Putin when he visited the Russian air base at Khmeimim in late 2017 to celebrate that year’s dramatic victories against Islamic State.
Russia also has its own forces embedded in the Syrian Arab Army, notably in the Fifth Assault Corps. Danny Makki, a British-Syrian analyst with contacts in the Syrian government, reported on Monday that the detail of the Assad-Kurdish agreement includes a provision for “the abolishment of the SDF”—the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces—“with all the current Kurdish forces and military groups joining the 5th Corps (Assault Legion) under Russian control.”
It is worth pausing for a moment to consider what this means. The SDF consists of some 100,000 seasoned fighters. Until this week it was the sole armed force able to operate east of the Euphrates. Since late 2015, when U.S. Special Forces helped to midwife the alliance, the SDF’s constituent parts—the Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG) as well as Assyrian Christian forces and Arab tribal militias—have fought under a single banner. In the victorious campaign to retake territory from Islamic State, the SDF has been the decisive actor and the U.S. ground partner of choice. Suddenly this powerful army appears to be coming under Russian control.
The Kurds still operate their civilian administration east of the Euphrates. Their forlorn hope is to salvage and maintain as much as they can of the autonomy they have painstakingly built since 2012. Baathist regimes—Mr. Assad’s as well as Saddam Hussein’s —are noted for unforgiving attitudes toward ethnic separatist projects, and especially those of the Kurds. But the ruling Kurdish party in eastern Syria maintains an office in Moscow. Such hopes as remain will depend on Russia. No one else is available.
Turkey will also depend on Russia to maintain its project in northern Syria. It isn’t clear if there was prior Russian knowledge of the Turkish operation. But by triggering America’s departure and then the rush of the Kurds to embrace Mr. Assad, Turkey’s action delivered two long-sought gifts to Moscow.
As the de facto arbiter, however, Russia now faces a tricky task. It must stand firm against a too-ambitious Turkish project that could trigger chaos and even an Assad-Turkish war east of the Euphrates. At the same time, Moscow aims to permit Turkey sufficient gains to speed its drift away from the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and toward alignment with Russia.
To accomplish this, the Russians must first intimidate and then partly accommodate the Turks. Moscow has managed this delicate maneuver west of the Euphrates over the past two years. It will now try to do so on the east side as the Americans head for the exit.
Then there’s Israel—and Iran. With the Americans leaving (except for a residual presence in al-Tanf), de facto U.S. control of the skies of eastern Syria will also end. The SDF is asking for a Russian no-fly zone over eastern Syria to protect the Kurds from the Turkish air force.
If Israel wishes to continue its clandestine war against Iranian weapons transfers and infrastructure-building in Syria, it will be able to do so only with Russian permission, in an arena in which Moscow’s hand is now profoundly stronger. Expect a busy shuttle route to Moscow for whoever emerges as Israel’s prime minister.
Mr. Assad, the Kurds, Turkey and Israel all now depend on Moscow’s approval to advance their interests in Syria. This outcome has been sealed by this week’s sudden windfall, all without the firing of a single Russian bullet. All roads to Syria now run through Moscow. Mr. Putin could hardly ask for more.
Mr. Spyer is director of the Middle East Center for Reporting and Analysis and a research fellow at the Jerusalem Institute for Strategy and Security and at the Middle East Forum. He is author of “Days of the Fall: A Reporter’s Journey in the Syria and Iraq Wars.”
-
second post
https://www.middleeasteye.net/opinion/what-could-syria-tell-us-about-us-foreign-policy-and-security-establishment?fbclid=IwAR3ToprNzFkNw5e1Zn8CGmTl9b-VPwf1gIwOb3V9LtrQ_QyZQ2cZIW-jL7Y
-
Third post
https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/10/an-ignominious-retreat-in-syria/?utm_source=Sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=NR%20Daily%20Monday%20through%20Friday%202019-10-23&utm_term=NRDaily-Smart&fbclid=IwAR1iqX2jQqpgBWrSLaqaTrax0DzZZjpmBbdBrmzk0VbctYdNRB72fJvTqfY
-
Kenneth R. Timmerman is the best-selling author of “ISIS Begins: A Novel of the Iraq War.” He lectured on Iran at the Pentagon’s Joint Counter-Intelligence Training Academy from 2010-2016.
https://nypost.com/2019/10/19/trump-didnt-sell-out-the-kurds-by-pulling-out-of-syria/?fbclid=IwAR3OBR3xg2ssO4dNnnkQIjRXwoMdzZitphvIoHa3O3GW9V8VCuc8BK-HVAc
-
https://www.theepochtimes.com/us-turkey-tie-up-important-to-stabilize-multi-faceted-conflict-in-syria-insider_3121239.html
and a serious read from a serious man
https://www.cnn.com/2019/10/24/opinions/syria-kurds-trump-withdrawal-kent/index.html?fbclid=IwAR0jaZSXk1o3FI7oCOZScPBC7wBRFDPyXVSlhPgV3AgfYecANb_fJf9jD_o
-
https://www.meforum.org/59659/trump-balfour-moment?utm_source=Middle+East+Forum&utm_campaign=d196471878-MEF_Mainen_2019_10_25_08_15&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_086cfd423c-d196471878-33691909&goal=0_086cfd423c-d196471878-33691909&mc_cid=d196471878&mc_eid=9627475d7f
-
Turkey May Have Stepped Into Its Own 'Endless War' in Syria
Charles Glass
Charles Glass
Board of Contributors
8 MINS READOct 25, 2019 | 10:00 GMT
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan is pictured here during a meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Sochi, Russia, on Oct. 22, 2019.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Russian President Vladimir Putin agreed to deploy joint Russian-Turkish patrols in the so-called security zone Erdogan has ordered Syrian Kurds to evacuate.
(SEFA KARACAN/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images)
Highlights
Since its emergence as a republic after World War I, Turkey has largely considered it futile to intervene in the former lands of the Ottoman Empire. President Recep Tayyip Erdogan's involvement in Syria reverses that outlook.
Erdogan's decision to expand Turkey's military occupation in Syria has prompted international outrage, but the action is widely popular in Turkey.
Turkey has much to gain if its incursion into Syria succeeds, but it also has much to lose. Turkish history provides a warning: Offensives that start well can end badly.
"The Turks have always pursued an unhappy policy in regard to native populations," wrote German Gen. Erich Ludendorff of his World War I Ottoman allies. "They have gone on the principle of taking everything and giving nothing. Now they had to reckon with these people (Kurds, Armenians and Arab tribes) as their enemies." The Turkish army, driven out of Syria after four centuries in 1918 by the British and "native populations," is back. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan's involvement in Syria reverses the policy of the republic's first president, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, that kept Turkey out of the Arab world. Ataturk looked westward and saw the futility of returning to lands that had rejected Turkish rule.
That arrangement worked for Turkey until 2011, when the uprising in Syria opened the way to foreign interference. The United States, the United Kingdom, France, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates were backing assorted militias in their effort to depose Syrian President Bashar al Assad. Erdogan would not be left out. His border with Syria offered the most extensive terrain for infiltrating fighters and war materiel. Moreover, his Justice and Development Party had a long friendship with Syria's Muslim Brotherhood, whose attempt to depose al Assad's father, Hafez al Assad, in 1982 ended with the infamous massacre in Hama. Erdogan looked to the Muslim Brotherhood and its offshoots to play a leading role in the resistance to the younger al Assad. In 2012, a Syrian former Cabinet minister told me that Erdogan had asked al Assad to put Muslim Brothers into his Cabinet. When al Assad refused, the former minister said, Erdogan made clear that he would back all efforts to remove the president and replace him with Islamists.
Step by Step Into Syria
One of the stated reasons for excluding the Muslim Brothers, in addition to their history of violent opposition to the regime, was that Syria had not legalized religiously based political parties. The divisive effects of sectarian parties had played out badly in Lebanon after 1975 and had done little to benefit Iraq after the U.S. invasion in 2003.
Al Assad countered Erdogan's support for his opponents by allowing Turkey's Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) to threaten Erdogan from Syria. The PKK was instrumental in the formation of the Syrian Kurdish People's Protection Units (YPG) that fought with the United States against the Islamic State without joining the U.S.-backed opposition to al Assad.
Erdogan went step by step into Syria, opening the border to jihadists, facilitating weapons deliveries and, when needed, backing the rebels with firepower — as when Turkish artillery shelled the Armenian Syrian village of Kassab before the Islamists conquered it in March 2014. Barely one year later, Erdogan sent Turkish troops over the border on an innocuous mission, code-named Operation Shah Euphrates, to rescue the remains of Suleyman Shah, an ancestor of the first Ottoman sultan. Erdogan's next venture into Syria was an all-out invasion, Operation Euphrates Shield, ostensibly to combat Islamic State militants but effectively to force the YPG to retreat from the border zone in the northwest.
George Orwell would have appreciated Turkey's operational code names in Syria.
Then came Operation Olive Branch from January to March 2018 in the largely Kurdish province around Afrin. In that onslaught into a hitherto peaceful corner of northwestern Syria, Turkey relied on about 25,000 Free Syrian Army and other rebel fighters to occupy towns and villages. "Instead of protecting vulnerable civilians' rights, these fighters are perpetuating a cycle of abuse," Human Rights Watch declared. The United States refrained from assisting its Kurdish allies, a precedent for its behavior when, following his now-famous telephone conversation with President Donald Trump, Erdogan ordered his army and its allied Islamist militia to advance into northeastern Syria on Oct. 9. Turkey's Operation Peace Spring followed the Operation Olive Branch game plan (George Orwell would have appreciated these operational names) that expels Kurds, civilians and fighters, from the northeast, executes Kurdish politicians and gives Turkey control of a 20-mile-wide belt from the Mediterranean to the Iraqi border.
Despite international outrage and sanctions, Erdogan's decision to expand his military occupation of northwest Syria to the northeast and destroy the YPG is popular among all factions in Turkey. The new mayor of Istanbul, Ekrem Imamoglu, who won office on promises to resist Erdogan's Islamist and anti-Kurdish policies in Turkey's most cosmopolitan city, backs the military operation. On Twitter, he called the YPG a "treacherous terror group," betraying the Kurds who helped elect him. A leading opposition daily, Sozcu, headlined its front page, "Americans, Europeans, Chinese, Arabs — all united against Turkey. Bring it on." The pro-war fever infecting Turkey replicates the parades, flag-waving and oaths of allegiance that accompanied the country's entry into World War I in 1914. When the Ottoman fleet attacked Russia's forts along the Black Sea, Turkish political parties and media outdid each other to demonstrate support for an offensive that started well and ended badly. Turkey lost its empire, and the European Allies occupied Istanbul.
Much to Gain, Lots to Lose
Turkey has much to gain if its Syria gamble succeeds — control of a large area it abandoned in 1918, removal of thousands of Syrian refugees from Turkey to parts of Syria they do not know, containment of the YPG and PKK to areas south of its so-called safe zone and a voice in Syria's future. It also has much to lose — the lives of its soldiers, perpetual warfare along its border and the undying animosity of Kurds in both Syria and Turkey.
Erdogan's new collaboration with Russian President Vladimir Putin — with whom he agreed at Sochi, Russia, on Oct. 22 to deploy joint Russian-Turkish patrols in the 20-mile security zone that he has ordered the Kurds to evacuate — dilutes his control in northeastern Syria. It also permits al Assad's Syrian army to return to an area where Syria has a greater claim to sovereignty than has Turkey. The obstacle to ending the eight-year Syrian civil war remains Turkey's sole control of the northwestern Syrian provinces of Idlib and Aleppo and the estimated 60,000 rebels, most of them jihadists, it controls there and has used as its mercenaries against the Kurds. The politician most likely to decide the fate of that area is, as with the Kurdish northeast, neither Trump nor Erdogan, but Putin. Watch that space.
The politician most likely to decide the fate of northwestern Syria is, as with the Kurdish northeast, neither Trump nor Erdogan, but Putin.
Trump permitted the Turkish invasion, then decided it was not such a good idea and, while not sending the Turkish army back into Turkey, imposed selective economic sanctions, which he lifted Oct. 23. Many Americans support Trump's stated desire to end the "endless wars" in the belief that taxpayers' money is better spent on education, health and infrastructure at home than on military operations abroad. Trump, however, has not brought troops home. About 200 American soldiers are to remain at al-Tanf military base, part of a 55-square-kilometer (21-square-mile) area of oil-rich desert where the borders of Syria, Iraq and Jordan meet. He redeployed 1,000 special operations forces from Syria to western Iraq. He is sending 1,800 soldiers to Saudi Arabia. He is threatening Iran with war following his abrogation of the 2015 nuclear deal. He supplies weapons, intelligence and logistical support to Saudi Arabia's relentless war in Yemen.
Ending the endless wars is not unlike decolonization, which Europeans undertook following the bankruptcy of their economies during World War II. Most of the colonial withdrawals were as disastrous for the countries involved as the colonial conquests had been. Think of the massacres that followed the partition of India in 1947, the war in Palestine when the British withdrew in 1948, the French wars in Algeria and Vietnam, and Belgium's criminal actions in the Congo. Among the most irresponsible colonial retreats was Portugal's from lands it had occupied for four centuries: Angola, Mozambique and East Timor. The first two suffered protracted civil wars, while Indonesian troops invaded East Timor in December 1975 with American approval and massacred a third of its population by the time they were forced to leave in 1999. Now the United States, after arming and earning the trust of Syria's Kurds, is leaving them to face the Turkish onslaught.
When President Barack Obama considered the covert operation to train and equip Syrian rebels in 2013, code-named Operation Timber Sycamore, he said to his aides, "Tell me how this ends." As Turkey is discovering, it doesn't.
-
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/abu-hassan-al-muhajir-isis-spokesman-killed-syrian-kurdish-forces-al-baghdadi-dead-a9174576.html?fbclid=IwAR08fT7WnOcwMuE2xoAPnv704nK9Gg-BMN6MnUJ7Neihdm43rZLAvCze9-8
-
https://www.militarytimes.com/flashpoints/2019/10/24/syrias-assad-gets-a-prize-with-american-troop-withdrawal-turkey-russia-deal/?utm_source=clavis
-
Turkish operations in Syria. The Syrian Kurdish Hawar News Agency has reported that the Turkish army shelled a Russian military police patrol near the Syrian town of Al-Darbasiyah along the Turkish border. According to the agency, two Russian military personnel were injured along with two journalists and four civilians. The story has not been confirmed, but if accurate, its potential implications cannot be overstated. Turkey and Russia have cooperated in Syria because it has been convenient for both of them to do so, but as the war winds down, this cooperation will come into question as both countries reevaluate their roles and goals in the country. There are underlying geopolitical differences and competing interests that make further cooperation difficult. Incidents like the shelling of a Russian police patrol could have dangerous consequences down the road.
-
State Department Official Demanded Kurds Capitulate to Islamists
by John Rossomando
IPT News
October 30, 2019
https://www.investigativeproject.org/8137/state-department-official-demanded-kurds
Share:
State Department Special Envoy for Syrian Joel Rayburn talks last week with Syrian Democratic Council President Ilham Ahmed.
First, the United States agreed to withdraw special operations forces from a section of northeastern Syria, opening the door to a Turkish invasion aimed at U.S.-allied Kurdish, Arab and Syriac Christian forces there who played a key role in defeating ISIS.
Now, the State Department is demanding that those vulnerable Kurds work with Islamist forces who support the very Turkish onslaught that places them in harm's way.
A top State Department official made the demand last week during a meeting with Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Council (SDC) leaders, said an SDC source who was present. The Kurds were told to capitulate politically to the Muslim Brotherhood-dominated National Coalition of Syrian Revolution and Opposition Forces (ETILAF).
That means the Kurds will not get any say in negotiations over Syria's future, but Islamists will.
ETILAF is based in Istanbul and closely follows the Turkish party line, including endorsing Turkey's invasion which aims to ethnically cleanse Kurds from a swath of northern Syria. It is dominated by members of Syria's Muslim Brotherhood who support a theocratic future for Syria, and have supported al-Qaida-aligned jihadists in Syria.
President Obama recognized ETILAF as the legitimate representative of the Syrian people in 2012 even though it controls no ground in Syria. In contrast, the SDC controlled a third of Syria's territory prior to Turkey's invasion two weeks ago.
In supporting the Turkish assault, ETILAF cited "the transnational terrorism organizations which make of [sic] these areas a haven for spreading chaos, violence and terrorism," in a press release about the invasion. "The Coalition also supports the [Syrian] National Army, the Ministry of Defense and the Chief of Staff in their efforts. Syria is a platform to threaten the security and stability of Syrians and neighboring countries."
An Oct. 15 meeting at the State Department between Joel Rayburn, the U.S. Syria envoy, and SDC officials quickly grew heated over the U.S. direction that the Kurds work with the same people supporting Turkey's assault on them. Rayburn angrily broke a pencil in the face of SDC President Ilham Ahmed's translator after the SDC representatives reminded him of a 2016 incident when U.S. Special Forces had tried joining the fight alongside the ETILAF-supported Free Syrian Army (FSA).
These FSA fighters had threatened to kill them and shouted "Death to America" at them.
The SDC members also told the State Department official they would not work with the Islamist-dominated group because they could not be trusted.
State Department officials declined to comment about the meeting.
Despite U.S. policies, the SDC's military arm, the Syrian Democratic Forces ( SDF), continued to demonstrate its worth as an American ally when intelligence it provided helped make possible Saturday's special forces raid that killed self-appointed ISIS Caliph Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. SDF spies worked with the CIA since May to track Baghdadi's movements, tracking him down to a house near the Turkish-controlled town of Jarablus, Syria, Polat Can, a top SDF adviser wrote on Twitter. They got so close that they were able to steal a pair of Baghdadi's underwear to verify his DNA.
"You don't sell out an ally like that, my God," said Anne Speckhard, director of the International Center for the Study of Violent Extremism (ICSVE).
Speckhard spent considerable time in northeastern Syria getting to know Ahmed and members of the YPG/YPJ Kurdish militia, which Turkey considers part of the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK). Turkey's contention that the militia and the PKK are the same organization and that it poses a threat to the Turks is false.
"I've worked with those YPG people; they're amazing," Speckhard said. "Anyone who can manage to put together a government that acts and looks like a democracy in the Middle East on the ashes of ISIS should be congratulated and win the Nobel Prize."
Recent decisions have left that work in ruins.
The source from the State Department meeting named three people with Muslim Brotherhood ties with whom Rayburn demanded the SDC cooperate. They are former ETILAF President Anas al-Abdeh, former Syrian National Council President Mouaz al-Khatib and former Syrian National Council member Hassan Hachimi. All three have made public statements supportive of al-Qaida terrorists.
Al-Abdeh told London-based Al-Hayat in 2016 that the Free Syrian Army (FSA) and al-Qaida-linked Jabhat al-Nusra were "all in the same trench."
"We cannot differentiate between fighters," al-Abdeh said.
He also opposed the Obama administration's decision in 2015 to partner with the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) to oust ISIS from its self-proclaimed capital of Raqqa. SDF forces lost 11,000 lives fighting to defeat al-Qaida and ISIS.
Hachimi and al-Khatib each made statements in late 2012 that condemned the Obama administration for declaring Jabhat al-Nusra as a terrorist organization.
Speckard's primary work involved interviewing ISIS prisoners held by the SDF.
"Everybody knows when taking a look into it that Turkey was arming ISIS and helping ISIS to fight the Kurds," Speckhard said. "That went on for years, and Turkey also let 40,000 foreign fighters stream through; they let the wounded come to be treated. Now they are back at it."
ETILAF's "Prime Minister" Abdul Rahman Mustafa toured the border town of Tal Abayad on Thursday, a week after evidence showed the Turkish military using incendiary white phosphorus munitions against civilians. Mustafa also toured the headquarters of the "Syrian National Army" (SNA) Third Legion. Top SNA commander Maj. Gen. Selim Idris, who endorsed al-Qaida's Syrian affiliate Jabhat al-Nusra in 2015, accompanied Mustafa on the visit. The SNA previously was known as the Free Syrian Army (FSA).
The Third Legion includes Jabhat al-Shamiya, a jihadist group considered a terrorist organization by the Dutch government. It seized homes from Christians in the town, according to an Arab news correspondent who took photos and posted them online. The legion also recently was responsible for the brutal murder and beheading of Hevrin Khalaf, a prominent Kurdish politician, early in the invasion.
Video showed another element of the Third Corps, Faylaq al-Majd, known in English as the Glory Corps, mutilating the body of a dead female Kurdish fighter.
ETILAF also showed its unreliability when weapons the Obama administration supplied to FSA-umbrella groups found their way into the hands of the al-Qaida affiliate Jabhat al-Nusra and ISIS.
Due to last week's agreement between Turkey and Russia, an approximately 20-mile "safe zone" has been imposed along the border between Syria and Turkey. The SDF was required to withdraw from the zone.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan acknowledged his desire to ethnically cleanse his 20-mile wide security zone along Turkey's border with Syria, replacing Kurds with Arabs.
"The most suitable for this area are Arabs. These areas are not suitable for the lifestyle of Kurds. Because these are virtually desert regions," Erdogan told the Turkish state TV channel TRT.
So far, a supposed cease-fire Turkey agreed to has not held, despite President Trump's decision to remove economic sanctions against Turkey.
Sources in Syria told Speckhard on Thursday that Turkish drones continue to attack Kurdish targets and bombs continue to fall. At least two dozen Kurds were killed since Sunday, Telegraph reporter Raf Sanchez wrote.
Related Topics: John Rossomando, Turkey, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Kurds, Syrian civil war, Syrian Democratic Council, National Coalition of Syrian Revolution and Opposition Forces, State Department, Joel Rayburn, Ilham Ahmed, Free Syrian Army, Anne Speckhard, SDF, Muslim Brotherhood
-
https://www.latimes.com/world/middleeast/la-fg-cia-pentagon-isis-20160327-story.html
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/sep/16/us-military-syrian-isis-fighters
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BsAH6_3XLtA&feature=youtu.be&fbclid=IwAR2L0Wy2rM3Ic0UjSzhQ1X-_Yw6FtwdtthuZU5RnIhJkWPevnE4IFffMGHM
https://foreignpolicy.com/2014/10/07/joe-biden-is-the-only-honest-man-in-washington/
-
The ever thoughtful Israeli journalist Caroline Glick
http://carolineglick.com/al-baghdadi-and-trumps-syrian-chessboard/
Articles
Al-Baghdadi and Trump’s Syrian Chessboard
11/01/2019
It's only fair to share...Share on FacebookTweet about this on TwitterEmail this to someoneShare on Google+
US President Donald Trump’s many critics insist he has no idea what he is doing in Syria. The assassination of ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi over the weekend by US Special Forces showed this criticism is misplaced. Trump has a very good idea of what he is doing in Syria, not only regarding ISIS, but regarding the diverse competing actors on the ground.
Regarding ISIS, the obvious lesson of the Baghdadi raid is that Trump’s critics’ claim that his withdrawal of US forces from Syria’s border with Turkey meant that he was going to allow ISIS to regenerate was utterly baseless.
The raid did more than that. Baghdadi’s assassination, and Trump’s discussion of the mass murderer’s death showed that Trump has not merely maintained faith with the fight against ISIS and its allied jihadist groups. He has fundamentally changed the US’s counter-terror fighting doctrine, particularly as it relates to psychological warfare against jihadists.
Following the September 11 attacks, the Bush administration initiated a public diplomacy campaign in the Arab-Islamic world. Rather than attack and undermine the jihadist doctrine that insists that it is the religious duty of Muslims to fight with the aim of conquering the non-Muslim world and to establish a global Islamic empire or caliphate, the Bush strategy was to ignore the jihad in the hopes of appeasing its adherents. The basic line of the Bush administration’s public diplomacy campaign was to embrace the mantra that Islam is peace, and assert that the US loves Islam because the US seeks peace.
Along these lines, in 2005, then secretary of state Condoleezza Rice prohibited the State Department, FBI and US intelligence agencies from using “controversial” terms like “radical Islam,” “jihad” and “radical Islam” in official documents.
The Obama administration took the Bush administration’s obsequious approach to strategic communications several steps further. President Barack Obama and his advisors went out of their way to express sympathy for the “Islamic world.”
The Obama administration supported the jihadist Muslim Brotherhood against Egypt’s long-serving president and US ally Hosni Mubarak and backed Mubarak’s overthrow with the full knowledge that the only force powerful enough to replace him was the Muslim Brotherhood.
As for the Shiite jihadists, Obama’s refusal to support the pro-democracy protesters in Iran’s attempted Green Revolution in 2009 placed the US firmly on the side of the jihadist, imperialist regime of the ayatollahs and against the Iranian people.
In short, Obama took Bush’s rhetoric of appeasement and turned it into America’s actual policy.
The Bush-Obama sycophancy won the US no good will. Al Qaeda, which led the insurgency against US forces in Iraq with Iranian and Syrian support was not moved to diminish its aggression and hatred of the US due to the administration’s efforts.
It was during the Obama years that ISIS built its caliphate on a third of the Iraqi-Syrian landmass and opened slave markets and launched a mass campaign of filmed beheadings in the name of Islam.
In his announcement of Baghdadi’s death on Sunday, Trump unceremoniously abandoned his predecessors’ strategy of sucking up to jihadists. Unlike Obama, who went to great lengths to talk about the respect US forces who killed Osama bin Laden accorded the terrorist mass-murderer’s body, “in accordance with Islamic practice,” Trump mocked Baghdadi, the murdering, raping, slaving “caliph.”
Baghdadi, Trump said, died “like a dog, like a coward.”
Baghdadi died, Trump said, “whimpering and crying.”
Trump posted a picture on his Twitter page of the Delta Force combat dog who brought about Baghdadi’s death by chasing him into a tunnel under his compound and provoking him to set off the explosive belt he was wearing, and kill himself and the two children who were with him.
Trump later described the animal who killed Allah’s self-appointed representative on earth as “Our ‘K-9,’ as they call it. I call it a dog. A beautiful dog – a talented dog.”
Obama administration officials angrily condemned Trump’s remarks. For instance, former CIA deputy director Mike Morell said he was “bothered” by Trump’s “locker room talk,” which he said, “inspire other people” to conduct revenge attacks.
His colleague, former vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff retired admiral James Winnefeld said that Trump’s “piling on” describing Baghdadi as a “dog” sent a signal to his followers “that could cause them to lash out possibly more harshly in the wake.”
These criticisms are ridiculous. ISIS terrorists have richly proven they require no provocation to commit mass murder. They only need the opportunity.
Moreover, Trump’s constant use of the term “dog” and employment of canine imagery is highly significant. Dogs are considered “unclean” in Islam. In Islamic societies, “dog” is the worst name you can call a person.
It is hard to imagine that Baghdadi’s death at the paws of a dog is likely to rally many Muslims to his side. To the contrary, it is likely instead to demoralize his followers. What’s the point of joining a group of losers who believe in a fake prophet who died like a coward while chased by a “a beautiful dog – a talented dog?”
Then there is Russia.
Trump’s critics insist that his decision to abandon the US position along the Syrian border with Turkey effectively surrendered total control over Syria to Russia. But that is far from the case. The American presence along the border didn’t harm Russia. It helped Russia. It freed Russian President Vladimir Putin from having to deal with Turkey. Now that the Americans have left the border zone, Turkish President Recep Erdogan is Putin’s problem.
And he is not the main problem that Trump has made for Putin in Syria.
Putin’s biggest problem in Syria is financial. The Russian economy is sunk in a deep recession due to the drop in global oil prices. Putin had planned to finance his Syrian operation with Syrian oil revenues. To this end, in January 2018, he signed an agreement with Syrian President Bashar Assad that effectively transferred the rights to the Syrian oil to Russia.
But Putin hadn’t taken Trump into consideration.
US forces did not withdraw from all of their positions in Syria last month. They maintained their control over al-Tanf airbase which controls the Syrian border with Jordan and Iraq.
More importantly, from Russia’s perspective, the US has not relinquished its military presence adjacent to Syria’s oil facilities in the Deir Azzour province on the eastern side of the Euphrates River. Indeed, according to media reports, the US is reinforcing its troop strength in Deir Azzour to ensure continued US-Kurdish control over Syria’s oil fields.
To understand how high a priority control over Syria’s oil installations is for Putin it is worth recalling what happened in February 2018.
On February 7, 2018, a month after Putin and Assad signed their oil agreement, a massive joint force comprised of Russian mercenaries, Syrian commandos and Iranian Revolutionary Guards forces crossed the Euphrates River with the aim of seizing the town of Khusham adjacent to the Conoco oil fields. Facing them were forty US Special Forces deployed with Kurdish and Arab SDF forces. The US forces directed a massive air assault against the attacking forces which killed some 500 soldiers and ended the assault. Accounts regarding the number of Russian mercenaries killed start at 80 and rise to several hundred.
The American counter-attack caused grievous harm to the Russian force in Syria. Putin has kept the number of Russian military forces in Syria low by outsourcing much of the fighting to Russian military contractors. The aim of the failed operation was to enable those mercenary forces to seize the means to finance their own operations, and get them off the Kremlin payroll.
Since then, Putin has tried to dislodge the US forces from Khusham at least one more time, only to be met with a massive demonstration of force.
The continued US-Kurdish control over Syria’s oil fields and installations requires Putin to continue directly funding his war in Syria. So long as this remains the case, given Russia’s financial constraints, Putin is likely to go to great lengths to restrain his Iranian, Syrian and Hezbollah partners and their aggressive designs against Israel in order to prevent a costly war.
In other words, by preventing Russia from seizing Syria’s oil fields, Trump is forcing Russia to behave in a manner that protects American interests in Syria.
The focus of most of the criticism against Trump’s Syria policies has been his alleged abandonment of the Syrian Kurds to the mercies of their Turkish enemies. But over the past week we learned that this is not the case. As Trump explained, continued US-Kurdish control over Syria’s oil fields provides the Kurdish-controlled Syrian Democratic Forces with the financial and military wherewithal to support and defend its people and their operations.
Moreover, details of Baghdadi’s assassination point to continued close cooperation between US and Kurdish forces. According to accounts of the raid, the Kurds provided the Americans with key intelligence that enabled US forces to pinpoint Baghdadi’s location.
As to Turkey, both Baghdadi and ISIS spokesman Abu Hassan al-Mujahir, who was killed by US forces on Tuesday, were located in areas of eastern Syria controlled by Turkey. The Americans didn’t try to hide this fact.
The Turkish operation in eastern Syria is reportedly raising Erdogan’s popularity at home. But it far from clear that the benefit he receives from his actions will be long-lasting. Turkey’s Syrian operation is exposing the NATO member’s close ties to ISIS and its allied terror groups. This exposure in and of itself is making the case for downgrading US strategic ties with its erstwhile ally.
Even worse for Turkey, due to Trump’s public embrace of Erdogan, the Democrats are targeting the Turkish autocrat as Enemy Number 1. On Tuesday, with the support of Republican lawmakers who have long recognized Erdogan’s animosity to US interests and allies, the Democratic-led House overwhelmingly passed a comprehensive sanctions resolution against Turkey.
The al-Baghdadi assassination and related events demonstrate that Trump is not flying blind in Syria. He is implementing a multifaceted set of policies that are based on the strengths, weaknesses and priorities of the various actors on a ground in ways that advance US interests at the expense of its foes and to the benefit of its allies.
Originally published in Israel Hayom.
-
Maybe the President is smarter than we think?
======================================
Inching Toward the End of the Conflict in Syria
By: Hilal Khashan
Starting a protracted conflict is much easier than ending it. That’s especially true when the regime in question is callous and fossilized and foreign countries are waiting for an opportunity to take advantage of a deteriorating situation. These two factors explain how the brutal armed conflict in Syria got underway. Before his death in 2000, Hafez Assad entrusted select members of his old guard with shoring up the safety of the future regime of his politically inexperienced son, Bashar Assad.
Instead of applying Hafez's Machiavellian approach in addressing a seemingly spontaneous and innocuous protest movement, the old guard recommended heavy-handed action. The regime's use of excessive coercive force militarized the uprising and invited foreign intervention – from Iran, to rescue the younger Assad, and Saudi Arabia, to bring Iran down and prevent the formation of the Shiite Crescent (that is, Iran’s overland route to the Mediterranean).
(click to enlarge)
Syrian army defectors established the Free Syrian Army, with the goal of bringing down their former commander in chief. But as uncoordinated material support from outside militaries flowed to rebel groups, jihadist militias arose in Syria’s overwhelmingly religious society.
Syria, a Geopolitical Chessboard
The United States did not seek to overthrow Assad's regime, despite what people may think. (This was borne out, in particular, when the Obama administration failed to punish the regime for crossing the notorious “red line” of using chemical weapons against the Syrian people.) Rather, the CIA’s 2013 program was aimed at supporting the FSA against radical Islamic movements, such as the Nusra Front. But when the program proved ineffective, Langley terminated it in 2017 and recognized Russia's leading role in defeating jihadism in Syria and restraining Iran’s burgeoning power.
Russia, in partnership with the Syrian air force, had already begun in 2015 a systematic air campaign to support Assad’s army, which, despite massive backing by Iran and its multinational Shiite militias, had been forced into retreat. Russia also intended to help rebuild the Syrian state.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan abandoned the core demands of Syrian rebels in favor of establishing a safe zone despite American, Russian and Iranian reservations. While moderating Turkish ambitions, clearly with tacit U.S. backing, Russia seems determined to rein in Iran’s influence in Syria. Foreign power players share a desire to prevent Iran from extending its territorial control in eastern Syria and filling the vacuum caused by the withdrawal of most U.S. troops from the area. Russia has been keen to recruit young Syrians away from Iran; it invested in the formation of the Fifth Assault Corps that reports directly to Russian officers, and whose 50,000 members come from pro-regime groups and elements of the defunct Free Syrian Army. Russia is also expanding its Hmeimim air base and naval facility in Tartus. Russia deployed FAC units last year in southwestern Syria and near the cease-fire line in the Golan Heights after reaching an understanding with the U.S. and Israel. Iran demonstrated its anger at Russian efforts to weaken its influence on the government in Damascus by ordering its Shiite militia allies to refrain from participating in the battle for Idlib in June, which rendered it an unnecessary war of attrition.
Contrary to media reports that Islamic militants sought to attack Russia’s Hmeimim air base near Latakia, the truth is that the Iranian-created 313th Battalion in Qardaha, the Assad family's hometown, sent drones to fly over the base only for harassment. The Russians ordered the Syrian regime to disband this battalion after implicating it in launching drones.
Competition between Russia and Iran in Syria goes beyond military influence on the ground to economic supremacy. Russia has a competitive advantage over Iran in winning big reconstruction projects. Russian President Vladimir Putin angered the Iranians when he negotiated to grant Russian businesses the lion’s share of postwar projects in return for propping up Assad’s regime. Assad is unhappy about Iranian attempts to control the centers of decision-making in Syria. He prefers to work with Russia because Moscow wants to be a junior partner, whereas Tehran wants to be the dominant partner.
Assad also understands that the United States, Russia and Israel have decided to disallow Iran's permanent presence in Syria. Russia has concerns that Iran will be an obstacle to its long-term economic interests in Syria. The Russians reason that Syria will emerge from the devastating civil war as a fragile state. Putin does not want to have rivals in determining Syria’s domestic and foreign policy, and he made this point clear to Assad before committing himself to rescuing Syrian regime. Russia understands Syrian sectarian and ethnic sensitivities, and, unlike Iran, which promotes a strictly religious agenda, it has no reservations about dealing with the country's diverse groups. When Moscow secured the withdrawal of Islamist rebels from Greater Damascus last year, it used Chechen military police officers to communicate with them. The Russians want to work with an able Syrian government and avoid getting stuck there, whereas the Iranians prefer to work with a lackey administration. The crippling sanctions against Iran curtail its ability to preserve its achievements in Syria. The eventual readmission of Syria to the Arab League, which Assad is eager to realize, threatens to distance its regime from Iran.
The cost of staying in Syria is high and useless. In addition to business opportunities in Syria, Putin is more interested in flexing military muscle to project the surge of Russian military might and win concessions in Europe. The Russian public sees no strategic reason to squander scarce resources on such a volatile country, while poverty-stricken Iranians are unable to comprehend their mullahs' ideological drive in Syria. In terms of articulating their Syrian policy, Russia is pragmatic, while Iran is dogmatic. Thanks to Russian mediation, there is increasing evidence that Turkey is willing to work with the Syrian government whose forces, even if token, are positioning themselves in specific border posts. The release of 18 Syrian soldiers recently arrested by the Turkish army, despite Assad's anti-Turkish rhetoric, points in that direction. Erdogan had to shelve his ambitions to overthrow Assad's regime and install a pro-Turkish government in Damascus. He's now resigned to the establishment of a safe zone along the Syrian border under strict American and Russian surveillance after halting Operation Peace Spring.
Iran’s heavy involvement in the Syrian conflict generated the false impression that its influence there has become paramount. This claim is far from reality. Iran faces a fundamental weakness in determining the future of Syria, mainly because of its overbearing political style and the small size of Syria’s Shiite community. Shiite proselytization is not as widespread as the Iranians think it should be, since Sunnis have an aversion to it and Alawites disfavor it. Despite Iran's best efforts, there are less than 300,000 Syrians who follow Twelver Shiite Islam – the branch of Shiite Islam favored by Iran. Even though Iran founded Syrian Shiite militias (such as Imam al-Rida Forces in Homs and al-Baqir Brigade in Aleppo), the main forces commanded by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps are Iraqi and Afghan Shiites.
Postwar Syria
No matter what shape postwar Syria takes, the country will look different than what it was before 2011. Nearly 600,000 Syrians have lost their lives, and more than half of the country’s population of 21 million on the eve of the uprising have been displaced, both internally and externally. Even though Assad escaped the fate of other presidents in the countries of the Arab Spring uprisings, he did not win the war; in fact, he is the biggest loser in the battle for Syria. Syria is economically devastated, and he is presiding over a shattered country, whose cost of reconstruction could reach a staggering $1 trillion. (For reference, Syria’s gross domestic product in 2010, just before the war, was about $60 billion.) It is doubtful whether reconstruction can occur in Syria's massively corrupt business and bureaucratic environment. Postwar reconstruction efforts in Iraq and Lebanon do not bode well for Syria. The regime lost critical oil and water resources and the fertile agricultural areas of northeastern Syria. Iran’s IRGC and Russian forces control the command structure of most Syrian military and security formations, and the Turks established their much-sought security belt to prevent the Kurds on both sides of the border from linking up. The perceived Kurdish threat remains a top priority for Turkey and a stable determinant of its foreign policy choices.
The ongoing understandings among the major actors in Syria, be they bilateral or multilateral, are setting the stage for military action in Idlib, the site of the last major battle in the Syrian armed conflict. Syria's march toward the final settlement of its conflict will commence only then. One must not assume that Iran's presence there is about to end. It will not, but its scale would not live up to the expectations of Iran's conservative ruling elite. Unlike Iran’s sway over Iraqi politics, Syria is reemerging as an arena of inconclusive regional competition.
-
Stable genius?
Maybe the President is smarter than we think?
======================================
Inching Toward the End of the Conflict in Syria
By: Hilal Khashan
Starting a protracted conflict is much easier than ending it. That’s especially true when the regime in question is callous and fossilized and foreign countries are waiting for an opportunity to take advantage of a deteriorating situation. These two factors explain how the brutal armed conflict in Syria got underway. Before his death in 2000, Hafez Assad entrusted select members of his old guard with shoring up the safety of the future regime of his politically inexperienced son, Bashar Assad.
Instead of applying Hafez's Machiavellian approach in addressing a seemingly spontaneous and innocuous protest movement, the old guard recommended heavy-handed action. The regime's use of excessive coercive force militarized the uprising and invited foreign intervention – from Iran, to rescue the younger Assad, and Saudi Arabia, to bring Iran down and prevent the formation of the Shiite Crescent (that is, Iran’s overland route to the Mediterranean).
(click to enlarge)
Syrian army defectors established the Free Syrian Army, with the goal of bringing down their former commander in chief. But as uncoordinated material support from outside militaries flowed to rebel groups, jihadist militias arose in Syria’s overwhelmingly religious society.
Syria, a Geopolitical Chessboard
The United States did not seek to overthrow Assad's regime, despite what people may think. (This was borne out, in particular, when the Obama administration failed to punish the regime for crossing the notorious “red line” of using chemical weapons against the Syrian people.) Rather, the CIA’s 2013 program was aimed at supporting the FSA against radical Islamic movements, such as the Nusra Front. But when the program proved ineffective, Langley terminated it in 2017 and recognized Russia's leading role in defeating jihadism in Syria and restraining Iran’s burgeoning power.
Russia, in partnership with the Syrian air force, had already begun in 2015 a systematic air campaign to support Assad’s army, which, despite massive backing by Iran and its multinational Shiite militias, had been forced into retreat. Russia also intended to help rebuild the Syrian state.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan abandoned the core demands of Syrian rebels in favor of establishing a safe zone despite American, Russian and Iranian reservations. While moderating Turkish ambitions, clearly with tacit U.S. backing, Russia seems determined to rein in Iran’s influence in Syria. Foreign power players share a desire to prevent Iran from extending its territorial control in eastern Syria and filling the vacuum caused by the withdrawal of most U.S. troops from the area. Russia has been keen to recruit young Syrians away from Iran; it invested in the formation of the Fifth Assault Corps that reports directly to Russian officers, and whose 50,000 members come from pro-regime groups and elements of the defunct Free Syrian Army. Russia is also expanding its Hmeimim air base and naval facility in Tartus. Russia deployed FAC units last year in southwestern Syria and near the cease-fire line in the Golan Heights after reaching an understanding with the U.S. and Israel. Iran demonstrated its anger at Russian efforts to weaken its influence on the government in Damascus by ordering its Shiite militia allies to refrain from participating in the battle for Idlib in June, which rendered it an unnecessary war of attrition.
Contrary to media reports that Islamic militants sought to attack Russia’s Hmeimim air base near Latakia, the truth is that the Iranian-created 313th Battalion in Qardaha, the Assad family's hometown, sent drones to fly over the base only for harassment. The Russians ordered the Syrian regime to disband this battalion after implicating it in launching drones.
Competition between Russia and Iran in Syria goes beyond military influence on the ground to economic supremacy. Russia has a competitive advantage over Iran in winning big reconstruction projects. Russian President Vladimir Putin angered the Iranians when he negotiated to grant Russian businesses the lion’s share of postwar projects in return for propping up Assad’s regime. Assad is unhappy about Iranian attempts to control the centers of decision-making in Syria. He prefers to work with Russia because Moscow wants to be a junior partner, whereas Tehran wants to be the dominant partner.
Assad also understands that the United States, Russia and Israel have decided to disallow Iran's permanent presence in Syria. Russia has concerns that Iran will be an obstacle to its long-term economic interests in Syria. The Russians reason that Syria will emerge from the devastating civil war as a fragile state. Putin does not want to have rivals in determining Syria’s domestic and foreign policy, and he made this point clear to Assad before committing himself to rescuing Syrian regime. Russia understands Syrian sectarian and ethnic sensitivities, and, unlike Iran, which promotes a strictly religious agenda, it has no reservations about dealing with the country's diverse groups. When Moscow secured the withdrawal of Islamist rebels from Greater Damascus last year, it used Chechen military police officers to communicate with them. The Russians want to work with an able Syrian government and avoid getting stuck there, whereas the Iranians prefer to work with a lackey administration. The crippling sanctions against Iran curtail its ability to preserve its achievements in Syria. The eventual readmission of Syria to the Arab League, which Assad is eager to realize, threatens to distance its regime from Iran.
The cost of staying in Syria is high and useless. In addition to business opportunities in Syria, Putin is more interested in flexing military muscle to project the surge of Russian military might and win concessions in Europe. The Russian public sees no strategic reason to squander scarce resources on such a volatile country, while poverty-stricken Iranians are unable to comprehend their mullahs' ideological drive in Syria. In terms of articulating their Syrian policy, Russia is pragmatic, while Iran is dogmatic. Thanks to Russian mediation, there is increasing evidence that Turkey is willing to work with the Syrian government whose forces, even if token, are positioning themselves in specific border posts. The release of 18 Syrian soldiers recently arrested by the Turkish army, despite Assad's anti-Turkish rhetoric, points in that direction. Erdogan had to shelve his ambitions to overthrow Assad's regime and install a pro-Turkish government in Damascus. He's now resigned to the establishment of a safe zone along the Syrian border under strict American and Russian surveillance after halting Operation Peace Spring.
Iran’s heavy involvement in the Syrian conflict generated the false impression that its influence there has become paramount. This claim is far from reality. Iran faces a fundamental weakness in determining the future of Syria, mainly because of its overbearing political style and the small size of Syria’s Shiite community. Shiite proselytization is not as widespread as the Iranians think it should be, since Sunnis have an aversion to it and Alawites disfavor it. Despite Iran's best efforts, there are less than 300,000 Syrians who follow Twelver Shiite Islam – the branch of Shiite Islam favored by Iran. Even though Iran founded Syrian Shiite militias (such as Imam al-Rida Forces in Homs and al-Baqir Brigade in Aleppo), the main forces commanded by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps are Iraqi and Afghan Shiites.
Postwar Syria
No matter what shape postwar Syria takes, the country will look different than what it was before 2011. Nearly 600,000 Syrians have lost their lives, and more than half of the country’s population of 21 million on the eve of the uprising have been displaced, both internally and externally. Even though Assad escaped the fate of other presidents in the countries of the Arab Spring uprisings, he did not win the war; in fact, he is the biggest loser in the battle for Syria. Syria is economically devastated, and he is presiding over a shattered country, whose cost of reconstruction could reach a staggering $1 trillion. (For reference, Syria’s gross domestic product in 2010, just before the war, was about $60 billion.) It is doubtful whether reconstruction can occur in Syria's massively corrupt business and bureaucratic environment. Postwar reconstruction efforts in Iraq and Lebanon do not bode well for Syria. The regime lost critical oil and water resources and the fertile agricultural areas of northeastern Syria. Iran’s IRGC and Russian forces control the command structure of most Syrian military and security formations, and the Turks established their much-sought security belt to prevent the Kurds on both sides of the border from linking up. The perceived Kurdish threat remains a top priority for Turkey and a stable determinant of its foreign policy choices.
The ongoing understandings among the major actors in Syria, be they bilateral or multilateral, are setting the stage for military action in Idlib, the site of the last major battle in the Syrian armed conflict. Syria's march toward the final settlement of its conflict will commence only then. One must not assume that Iran's presence there is about to end. It will not, but its scale would not live up to the expectations of Iran's conservative ruling elite. Unlike Iran’s sway over Iraqi politics, Syria is reemerging as an arena of inconclusive regional competition.
-
It would not be the first time the man has surprised me to the upside , , ,
-
France Can Lead Europe and Save Syria’s Kurds
Following Chirac’s Bosnia example, Macron should assume the responsibility Trump’s U.S. abdicated.
By Bernard-Henri Lévy
Nov. 12, 2019 7:22 pm ET
Kurdish civilians flee Kobani, Syria, Oct. 16. PHOTO: BAKR ALKASEM/AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE/GETTY IMAGES
Nothing remains to be said about the American abandonment of Syrian Kurdistan. But what about Europe?
Is not Europe also responsible for the fate of our most dependable allies in the war against Islamic State? Is it not at least as affected by the strategic and moral disaster of leaving the field open for Turkey, Iran, Russia and the thousands of jihadists the Kurds had been holding, who are now in the hands of Bashar Assad and Recep Tayyip Erdogan ?
And does Europe not possess the means, with its 500 million inhabitants and 28 national armies, to take up the gauntlet, to step in for the 2,000 Special Forces troops the U.S. is withdrawing, and, for the first time, to begin to assure a share of its own defense while standing up for its values?
That is the proposal I made in January after President Trump’s first withdrawal announcement. At the time, I floated the idea of a European military unit made up of as many of the 28 European Union members as were willing to recognize the geopolitical significance of the event unfolding on the Turkey-Syria border. With France already having some 200 Special Forces soldiers on the ground, it wouldn’t be hard, given the political will, to arrive at 2,000 with troops from elsewhere in Europe.
A precedent exists—one I witnessed up close.
It is June 1995. The war against Bosnian civilians has been raging for three years. The international community is doing nothing. The United Nations Protection Force is on the ground, but Unprofor is a prisoner of its own mandate, which leaves it a spectator as the Serbs shell Sarajevo and commit acts of genocide in Srebrenica. The U.S. under Bill Clinton, like Mr. Trump today in Syria, deems the Balkans a faraway quagmire that is to be avoided at all costs.
Such is the situation when newly elected French President Jacques Chirac arrives on the scene. With consternation, he sees the French members of Unprofor chained to the Vrbanja bridge and humiliated. He observes that when two blue helmets fall in the center of Sarajevo, struck dead by Serbian rockets fired from the surrounding hills, Unprofor is unable to respond.
The North Atlantic Treaty Organization convenes in Paris to discuss once more the possibility of responding to what are euphemistically termed Belgrade’s provocations. When the meeting concludes with another resounding decision to do nothing, Chirac cannot help but notice. He presents the idea of forming—outside the NATO framework and free of the paralyzing procedures of the EU—a force composed of those of France’s partners who share his sense of urgency.
The French, the British, a small Dutch contingent and troop transports furnished by Germany are forged into a Rapid Reaction Force with flexible rules of engagement. It breaks free from the rut of cruelty and cowardice that Bosnia has been for the past three years.
The Rapid Reaction Force remains, in principle, under the command of U.N. Gens. Rupert Smith and Bernard Janvier. Its sole mission, in principle, is to protect a U.N. force that has become a hostage to itself and its absurd mandate.
But the soldiers who make it up are not wearing blue helmets. Their Warrior armored vehicles, Lynx antitank helicopters and AMX-10 tanks are not covered with the white paint that has become a synonym for impotence, dishonor and surrender. Instead, each wears the uniform of his own nation’s military—a detail that makes all the difference.
Soon they are protecting the rutted road through Mount Igman that is the sole remaining supply route for besieged and famished Sarajevo. With 120mm mortars, they pound the artillery position that launched the rockets that killed the two U.N. peacekeepers. One day, an arms depot is destroyed; the next, a Mirage 2000 drops laser-guided missiles on the Serbian snipers’ command center in Pale. So begins the virtuous cycle that will end with Operation Deliberate Force in August 1995, the routing of Serb forces whose strength was based on the West’s weakness, and, finally, the Dayton peace accords.
Syria in 2019 isn’t Bosnia in 1995. But couldn’t the same solid core of European countries that succeeded in deploying 4,500 troops in an entirely hostile theater of operations deploy 2,000 on the border of a nation that still pretends to be our NATO ally? Can’t the modicum of political will needed to lend aid to the brutalized Muslims of Bosnia now be summoned in defense of another group of beleaguered Muslims, the Kurds, who, moreover, fought for us and protected us from Islamic State?
Why wouldn’t France, Britain and other willing countries of Europe jump at the chance to provide not an armada, not a regiment, but a few hundred elite troops to replace those who, until recently, had been enough to keep northern Syria a sanctuary?
French President Emmanuel Macron, in a splendid interview in the Economist, pronounced NATO “brain dead.” He seems to know better than anyone that a page of Western history is turning and that Europe will have to reinvent its own security. He also knows that the germ of the collective European defense that he has pursued with such energy since his election may lie between Erbil and Raqqa.
Mr. Macron’s hour has arrived. That is the message addressed to him by the many Americans of goodwill—Republican, Democrat and independent—I have had the good fortune to meet during a weekslong tour of America I made to support the Kurds in cooperation with the New York–based nonprofit Justice For Kurds.
May Mr. Macron act—not against but alongside the best of the United States.
Mr. Lévy is author of “The Empire and the Five Kings: America’s Abdication and the Fate of the World” ( Henry Holt, 2019). This article was translated from French by Steven B. Kennedy.
-
The Middle East in Flux: Eight Trends
by Daniel Pipes
The Washington Times
November 11, 2019
Send
Print
Originally published under the title "Middle Eastern Gyrations: Oil, Water, Islamism and anti-Zionism in Flux."
Eight trends, most of them negative.
As ever, the Middle East is monumentally in flux. As usual, most developments are negative. Here's a guide:
Water replaces petroleum as the key liquid: Oil and gas still provide nearly 60 percent of the world's energy, but this number is declining and even the wealthiest oil producers are feeling the pinch ("GCC states look to new taxes as oil revenues remain weak"). Contrarily, tensions over water are becoming a major source of international tensions (e.g., Turkey vs. Syria, Ethiopia vs. Egypt) and a driving force of domestic change (the Syrian revolt of 2011). It's also a potential cause of massive migration; a former Iranian minister of agriculture predicts that water shortages will force up to 70 percent of the country's population, or 57 million Iranians, to emigrate.
Anarchy replaces tyranny: Of course, some tyrannies remain, notably in Turkey and Iran, but anarchy has become the region's greater bane, including whole countries (Libya, Yemen, Syria) and parts of others (e.g., Sinai). Though generally less threatening to the outside world, anarchy is an even more miserable personal experience than tyranny, for it lacks guidelines. As a thirteenth century Koran scholar noted, "A year of the sultan's tyranny does less harm than a moment of the people's anarchy."
Efforts to overthrow the old order have had few beneficial consequences.
The failure of Arab youths' efforts to make improvements: Around 1970, many Arabic-speaking countries began an era of corrupt strongman rule. Starting in Tunisia in December 2010, efforts to overthrow the old order have shaken governments but had few beneficial consequences. In some cases (Libya, Yemen, Syria), they led to civil war; in another (Egypt), they merely brought on a younger strongman. Recent uprisings in Algeria, Sudan, Iraq, and Lebanon have yet to conclude but odds are, they too will end badly.
The decline of Islamism: After peaking in about 2012, the radical attempt to apply Islamic law severely and in full has lost ground in the Middle East. Several factors account for this: a fear of wild-eyed fanatics like Boko Haram, Shabaab, ISIS, and the Taliban; the dismal experience of Muslim peoples who have lived under Islamist rule (e.g., Egypt in 2012-13); and the fracturing of Islamists (e.g., in Syria) into competing and hostile factions. What might come after Islamism is unclear, but after a century of failure with it and other extremist ideologies (including fascism and communism), an era of anti-ideology might lie ahead.
Governments that once treated Israel as the archenemy now work with it.
Iran is the most divisive country, not Israel: For decades, the issue of the Jewish state drove and divided Middle East politics; now, it's Iran. The Islamic Republic dominates four Arab capitals (Baghdad, Damascus, Beirut, and Sanaa), aggresses elsewhere, and spreads its radical version of Islam. Governments that once treated Israel as the archenemy, notably Saudi Arabia, now work with it in a range of ways, overt and covert. As a side note, the global Left has inherited the Arab states' old toxic anti-Zionism; Israel now enjoys better relations with Saudi Arabia than with Spain or Sweden.
Iran and Turkey take up the Arab states' anti-Zionism: The era of Arab state warfare on Israel lasted only 25 years, 1948-73, and ended 46 years ago because politicians found this conflict too expensive and risky. Instead, they abandoned it to sub-state actors like the Palestinians. Eager to take up the slack, Iran's Khomeini and Turkey's Erdoğan made opposition to Israel central to their messages. If so far, they have mostly limited their aggression to words, that could dramatically change.
More Americans find war excessively costly and adventurous.
Americans react against over-involvement: George W. Bush began nearly simultaneous wars in Afghanistan and Iraq that many Americans found excessively costly and adventurous, prompting a long-term backlash. Barack Obama and Donald Trump each responded in characteristic ways (one critical of the United States, the other boisterously nationalist) to reduce U.S. military commitments in the region. Obama's 2012 red-line retreat and Trump's 2019 pulling of soldiers, both involving Syria, symbolize this retreat.
Russia makes noise but China builds: Vladimir Putin seems to be everywhere – closing commercial deals, selling arms, sending troops, convening conferences – but these are the pyrotechnics of a power in decline. Meanwhile, Xi Jinping's China quietly builds its economic infrastructure, a network of political alliances, and military power in the region, to be called upon whenever Beijing decides to exert its will. Beijing, not Moscow, poses the great threat.
One piece of unabashed good news (Islamism's decline) stands out among these many and protracted problems.
-
Intriguing , , ,
=====================
Russia pushes back. Russia said it was “perplexed” by the Turkish Foreign Ministry’s announcement that Turkish forces could halt the cease-fire in northern Syria and relaunch their offensive there. The Turkish foreign minister said Russia and the U.S. had violated the agreement made with Ankara in October, warning that Turkey would “do what is necessary” if powers continued to disregard Turkish demands. Russia’s Defense Ministry warned that such actions would further escalate the situation and highlighted Russian efforts to help stabilize the area. Despite their collaboration on some key issues, Russian and Turkish strategic interests in northern Syria have been at odds: Russia has sought two additional air bases to counter Turkish forces and the Turkey-backed Free Syrian Army, and both powers have tried to lay claim to strategic locations like Deir el-Zour and Idlib.
-
GPF
The military mess in Syria. Northern Syria is becoming increasingly crowded, and tensions are rising among Russian, Iranian, Turkish, Syrian and Kurdish affiliates. There are multiple reports that Turkish soldiers and Turkey-backed Free Syrian Army militias in Ain Issa, Kobani, Tal Tamir and Abu Rasayn have violated the October cease-fire agreement between Russia, Syria and Turkey. Turkish forces have continued to clash with Syrian Kurd-affiliated militia groups, while Iran has been accused of using Russia-made cluster munitions in camps controlled by the Turkey-backed National Army. Moscow has considered joint patrols in northern Syria as a mechanism to contain Turkish aggression and prevent any territorial push from Ankara into southern Syria, but collaboration has been limited; Russian military police have clashed with Turkey-backed paramilitaries and have been aggravated by anti-regime groups in Kobani and Rojava that have thrown Molotov cocktails and stones at joint patrol armored vehicles.
-
China Is Europe’s Problem Too
Only the trans-Atlantic alliance can counter Beijing’s moves in the Pacific.
By Walter Russell Mead
Nov. 25, 2019 7:06 pm ET
Opinion: China's Rise Makes U.S.-European Alliances More Important
YOU MAY ALSO LIKE
UP NEXT
Opinion: China's Rise Makes U.S.-European Alliances More Important
Opinion: China's Rise Makes U.S.-European Alliances More Important
Global View: As the United States focuses its foreign policy on the Pacific and the rise of China, U.S.-European alliances should be recognized as an important tool in countering the burgeoning Moscow-Beijing alliance. Image: Pang Xinglei/Zuma Press
What will the trans-Atlantic alliance look like in a world focused on the Indo-Pacific? That, more than President Trump’s unpredictable diplomacy, is the question that haunts Europe. During the Cold War, protecting Europe from Soviet aggression was Washington’s highest foreign-policy priority. That didn’t only mean that the U.S. put troops in Europe. Washington took European opinions seriously, engaged with Europeans, cut deals with them and was willing to make concessions to preserve alliance unity.
Clearly, some of that has changed. The next U.S. president may not share Mr. Trump’s undiplomatic instincts or his affinity for Brexiteers such as Nigel Farage and anti-Brussels figures like Hungary’s Viktor Orbán. But will he or she engage in the ritualistic ceremonies of diplomatic consultation with the various chancellors, presidents, commissioners and high representatives that Europeans so love? When America’s most urgent foreign policy worries involve smoothing over Japanese-Korean spats or facing down China in the Taiwan Strait, just how relevant will Europe be? When Europe calls Washington, will anybody answer the phone?
The French like to say they are a Pacific nation, thanks to Tahiti and other outposts, but it takes more than a sprinkling of islands, however idyllic, to make you a serious factor in Pacific politics. From a military standpoint, the European powers—and NATO itself—won’t play a large role in the Indo-Pacific zone. Nor will European ideology or Europe as a model have much appeal there. The memories of colonialism are too strong, and many Asian countries see the slow-growth, high-regulation European social model as a trap to avoid, not a goal to be reached.
Yet as China looms larger, a new trans-Atlantic consensus is forming. German Chancellor Angela Merkel, in one of her rare political missteps, decided last month to allow China’s Huawei to supply components for Germany’s 5G internet. Americans made the usual protests and threats, to be met by the usual refusals. But the matter didn’t end there. Delegates to her party’s conference last week revolted, adopting a resolution that could lead to a Bundestag vote to block Huawei from Germany’s 5G rollout. Prominent Social Democrats, the center-left party uneasily allied with Mrs. Merkel’s Christian Democrats, agree. Chinese companies cannot be trusted with German data.
The convergence between European and U.S. views on China is far from complete. France has refused to exclude Huawei from its 5G program, and other European governments as well as many European companies still see China through rose-tinted lenses. But opinions are changing. Like Americans, Europeans sympathize with Hong Kong’s democracy movement, and are horrified by Beijing’s treatment of the Tibetans and Uighurs. The Federation of German Industries has been voicing sharp criticism of Chinese business practices for the past year.
There is another force pushing Americans and Europeans closer together: Vladimir Putin, who appears to have resigned himself to a full-fledged alliance with China. Russia’s disruptive agenda in Europe, ranging from the annexation of Crimea to efforts to influence European elections through disinformation, has always suffered from a lack of money that is the curse of Russian power projection. A perception that Russian activity in Europe is more of a nuisance to the U.S. than a strategic threat has gained ground in some neo-isolationist circles. But as China makes major investments in Greece and across Southern and Eastern Europe, that perception could change. The closer Russia and China are aligned, the more important Europe’s Russia problems become for a China-focused U.S. foreign policy.
The Indo-Pacific isn’t Las Vegas—what happens there doesn’t stay there. As China’s economic, political and military reach expands in Africa, Latin America and the Middle East, European as well as U.S. interests will be affected. Efforts by China to export its method of authoritarian governance backed by high-tech surveillance will pose a serious threat to a vision of the open society that Europeans and Americans mostly share.
One hates to say anything so obvious, but world politics is a global endeavor. During the Cold War, America’s main focus was on Europe, but Japan and South Korea were important allies without whose support and counsel the Cold War would have been much harder to win.
The real question isn’t whether the U.S. will take the problems of the Indo-Pacific too seriously and write off its old allies in Europe. It is whether Americans and Europeans will recognize the global nature of the challenge before us.
About this, I am an optimist. The Americans who best understand the potential threats emerging from China also know that without Europe’s help it will be difficult and perhaps impossible to prevail. The harder Americans think about China, the more they will care about Europe. If enough Europeans share U.S. concerns about Beijing, the Western alliance will remain a vital force even as the world’s political center of gravity shifts to the Indo-Pacific.
-
https://www.meforum.org/59983/france-seeks-to-fill-uvoid-in-middle-east-left-by-us?utm_source=Middle+East+Forum&utm_campaign=739598cb2a-MEF_Frantzman_2019_11_29_01_10&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_086cfd423c-739598cb2a-33691909&goal=0_086cfd423c-739598cb2a-33691909&mc_cid=739598cb2a&mc_eid=9627475d7f
-
https://geopoliticalfutures.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/Imam_Ali_in_Syria.png?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_term=https%3A%2F%2Fgeopoliticalfutures.com%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2F2019%2F12%2FImam_Ali_in_Syria.png&utm_content&utm_campaign=PAID+-+Everything+as+it%27s+published
-
https://www.hoover.org/research/syrian-front
-
https://www.meforum.org/60141/uae-fm-tweets-about-israel-arab-alliance?utm_source=Middle+East+Forum&utm_campaign=0845b944d5-MEF_Frantzman_2019_12_22_04_23&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_086cfd423c-0845b944d5-33691909&goal=0_086cfd423c-0845b944d5-33691909&mc_cid=0845b944d5
-
Third post
Is Iran's Influence in Syria About to Wane?
7 MINS READ
Dec 23, 2019 | 09:30 GMT
This Aug. 14, 2016, picture shows heavily damaged buildings in the al-Khalediah neighborhood of the central Syrian city of Homs.
This Aug. 14, 2016, picture shows heavily damaged buildings in the al-Khalediah neighborhood of the central Syrian city of Homs. Tehran helped Damascus win the civil war, but it might not be able to help it normalize.
(LOUAI BESHARA/AFP via Getty Images)
HIGHLIGHTS
Syria's government has won the civil war in part because of Iran's help. To win the peace, however, it'll need aid from elsewhere. ...
Nearly nine years on, the Syrian government is winning the country's civil war, thanks in large part to strong Iranian and Russian support. But as the war winds down, questions are rapidly emerging about how it might secure the peace — and what that means for the influence of the allies that helped get it there. In particular, there is great uncertainty about Iran's deep influence in Syria, as Damascus strategizes ways to emerge from its economic isolation, restore its sovereignty over its internal affairs and reduce its exposure to Israel's repeated attacks. These imperatives, however, clash with some of Iran's strategy for Syria, creating a situation in which Damascus might have no choice but to cut Tehran's influence down to pre-war levels if it's ever going to find a way to rebuild.
The Big Picture
As Syria's civil war becomes more stable, the value of its allies is changing. While the conflict was hottest, Iran managed to turn Syria into a forward position against Israel, a strong supply route to Hezbollah and a proxy theater against its Gulf Arab rivals. But now that Damascus needs to overcome its economic isolation and reassert control of its internal affairs, it is facing pressure to push back against the aspects of Iranian strategy that isolate it from potential new friends and expose it to recurring Israeli attacks.
See The Syrian Civil War
Iran's Diminishing Value
For decades, Tehran and Damascus have maintained close relations, in part because of their shared mistrust of Israel and their uniqueness as non-Sunni islands (at least in terms of Syria's rulers, if not most of its population) in the Middle East. Over the course of the civil war, however, Iran has managed to gain more influence in Syria because its intervention was exactly what Damascus required in its hour of need. Tehran supplied arms and militias that bolstered Syria's flagging national army, which had been torn apart by defections and paralyzed by distrust. Indeed, Iranian and Iranian-linked forces supplied much of the resources that allowed Damascus to retake Syria's major cities and push rebel factions toward the northern border with Turkey.
But as major cities like Damascus, Latakia, Aleppo and others have come firmly under Syrian control, residents of these areas, especially government loyalists, are yearning for a return to normalcy and economic recovery. U.N. estimates, however, put the price of reconstruction as high as $400 billion, meaning that the rebuilding effort will require the aid of many nations, including ones hostile to the current government. Given this, as Iran struggles under the weight of sanctions it has less to offer than it would like.
This graphic charts Syria's economic performance over the course of the civil war.
Today, the Syrian government controls most of the country's major cities, where up to 77 percent of its prewar population lived (displacement and poor record-keeping during the war mean there is no precise figure for the population today). Within the relative security of government-controlled areas, the population was, up until recently, experiencing an economic rebound: The Central Bank even reported a 1.9 percent growth in gross domestic product in 2017, the last year the institution published such data (the World Bank, however, still believes Syria's GDP regressed during the same time).
But now a series of problems are hampering economic progress, forcing the country to rethink its strategies to overcome economic isolation. U.S. sanctions against Syria's biggest economic ally, Iran, have hurt Tehran's ability to fund infrastructure projects and provide credit lines for essential goods. Before U.S. sanctions, Iran gave up to $8 billion a year to Syria, but it appears it is no longer able to fulfill prior obligations, as Tehran slashed wages for Iranian-aligned militias and delayed projects — or handed them to Russian companies.
And in terms of trade and energy flows, normal service hasn't resumed either. Syria's old trade routes remain largely disrupted, as the major Turkish frontier remains closed while routes through Iraq and Jordan have failed to supplant it. At the same time, Syria's small energy fields are still in the hands of the U.S.-backed Syrian Democratic Forces. Long-standing internal corruption, too, continues to drain resources. Compounding Syria's economic woes are the economic and political crises in Lebanon, Syria's last major local trade partner and one of its primary economic outlets to the world.
Time to Make New Friends
Though Damascus has defeated most of its most serious enemies, even loyalists are raising questions about Syria's future. Discontent emerged last summer in Damascus as ongoing energy shortages resulted in long lines to purchase fuel. And over the border in Lebanon, a shortage of dollars is now affecting business in Syria, fostering further resentment at the country's isolation.
Working to decrease Iranian influence to pre-civil war levels would not only bring Syria closer to the Gulf Arabs, it would also reduce Israel's incentive to continue its long campaign against Iranian forces in Syria.
Even Syria's government — which remained united in the face of the uprising — remains riven with its own internal factionalism, warlordism and politicking. The close family of President Bashar al Assad dominates the state, but sectarian clans, business leaders, militia commanders, military officers and parliamentarians are all jostling for a share of the spoils that loyalty to the state warrants. Finding a balance among these internal factions has been a longstanding priority for the al Assad family and will continue to be so in the year ahead.
Given its situation, Syria must find new economic resources to dole out to the factions. As Tehran is limited in what it can do, and Moscow and Beijing have so far been reluctant to open their checkbooks, Syria is looking farther afield — specifically, to some Gulf states, where it has made some diplomatic inroads with the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain. The former, in particular, is wealthy enough to invest in some of Syria's reconstruction; Abu Dhabi is also a useful diplomatic partner that could convince Riyadh to join in some capacity as well. For the time being, impending U.S. secondary sanctions on Syria will ensure that only companies with a high tolerance for risk will loosen their purse strings, however.
Naturally, too, these Gulf Arabs have a price of their own: a reduction in Iran's influence in Syria. But with security relatively normalized in regime territories, it's a price that Syria might be able to stomach, as it no longer needs the same level of Iranian involvement as it did in years past — in fact, Iranian forces might now be doing Damascus more harm than good in some areas. That is especially the case with Israel, as Israeli forces continue to hit Iranian forces inside Syria, further damaging vital Syrian infrastructure like the capital's airport. Working to decrease Iranian influence to pre-civil war levels would not only bring Syria closer to the Gulf Arabs, but it would also reduce Israel's incentive to continue its long campaign against Iranian forces inside Syria.
As it is, al Assad's government itself is loath to allow foreign influence to become permanent in Syria's internal politics. But as Syria seeks to restore some independence of action and cut back on Iran's clout in the country, Tehran will naturally move to preserve its influence — but in doing so, it may end up antagonizing Syria, the Russians, or both, especially if it does so too assertively or quickly for Syria.
As Syria attempts to reintegrate into the international community and find someone to bankroll some of its reconstruction, the era of Tehran's ascendence in Damascus might be drawing to a close. If so, Iran might find itself back in the position it held in 2011, when it was a major Syrian ally — but not a major patron able to use Syria at will.
-
Interesting read:
https://www.meforum.org/60026/why-russia-wants-lebanon
-
https://www.meforum.org/60216/new-year-same-chaos-in-syria?utm_source=Middle+East+Forum&utm_campaign=730daf47b6-MEF_Spyer_2020_01_08_03_56&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_086cfd423c-730daf47b6-33691909&goal=0_086cfd423c-730daf47b6-33691909&mc_cid=730daf47b6
-
https://www.dailywire.com/news/breaking-key-middle-east-leader-dies-could-cause-more-conflict-between-u-s-iran?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=benshapiro
-
second post
https://www.businessinsider.com/pentagon-blames-trump-for-return-of-isis-syria-and-iraq-2019-8
-
second post
https://www.businessinsider.com/pentagon-blames-trump-for-return-of-isis-syria-and-iraq-2019-8
"ORANGE MAN BAD"! cried the deep state.
-
"The report specifically said President Donald Trump's decision to rapidly draw down troops in Syria and pull diplomatic staff from Iraq increased instability and allowed the militants to regroup."
Would it not make military sense to allow them to regroup
get them all out in the open and then smash them?
get rid of the sickos once and for all.
But in the politically correct world we instead allow this to fester. We must be *nice*
-
Turkish threats in Syria. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has threatened to launch a military operation in Idlib, Syria, due to Turkey's frustration over alleged Russian and Syrian cease-fire violations. Erdogan fears that repeated Russian and Syrian bombings of civilian areas in Idlib will result in a new wave of migration and undermine Turkey's efforts to send Syrian refugees currently residing in Turkey to a “peace corridor” in northern Syria. Erdogan blamed Russia for escalating the fighting in the country and said, “We will have no choice but to resort to the same path again if the situation in Idlib is not returned to normal quickly.” On Friday, Turkey’s Security Council vowed additional measures to counter “terror attacks” in Idlib, while its Defense Ministry said Turkish forces would respond “in the harshest way” to attacks on Turkish posts in Idlib. Though Ankara has not yet clarified how it plans to follow through on these threats, its statements raise the risk of direct confrontation with Russia and Syrian forces.
, , , ,
Clashes in Syria. Tensions between Moscow and Ankara are rising after Russian and Syrian forces launched strikes on the Turkey-controlled city of al-Bab on Sunday. On Monday, Syrian forces attacked Turkish soldiers who entered a de-escalation zone in Idlib, killing six Turkish troops and injuring nine. Turkey denied Russian claims that it had not informed Moscow of the movement of Turkish troops in the area beforehand. Ankara has responded by “neutralizing” (read: capturing or killing) 35 Syrian personnel and has hinted that it may attack another 45 regime targets. Turkish forces are already advancing in northern Syria, as Turkish F-16s attacked regime forces in Idlib, Latakia and Hama provinces. Meanwhile, Syrian forces have reportedly seized two villages west of Saraqib in Turkish-controlled territory. The recent escalation jeopardizes the Jan. 10 cease-fire brokered by Russia, an ally of the Syrian regime.
On Monday, Turkey’s defense minister headed to Syria, though Ankara signaled that Turkish officials have already been in touch with their Russian counterparts. Ankara warned Moscow not to stand in its way in Idlib. The two countries canceled a joint-patrol that would have taken place in Kobane on Monday.
Ukraine-Turkey talks. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan met on Monday with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in Kyiv, where they held the eighth meeting of the High-level Strategic Council. They discussed cooperation on energy, investment and trade, including a possible free trade agreement. (Ukraine and Turkey have already agreed on roughly 95 percent of issues that would be covered in a trade deal.) Erdogan said Turkey considered Ukraine a strategic partner in the Black Sea region. He added that Ankara didn’t recognize Russia's annexation of Crimea and would continue to monitor the status of the Crimean Tatars, an issue Erdogan planned to raise during his meeting with Zelensky. The Kremlin has already expressed its concern with Erdogan’s comments. Turkey also announced plans to provide $50 million in financial assistance to the Ukrainian army.
-
Daily Memo: The Battle Over Idlib
By: GPF Staff
The battle over Idlb. The major players in the Syrian war may be on the edge of direct confrontation in Idlib. Syrian government forces surrounded three Turkish observation posts in the province on Wednesday, just days after Turkey sent three convoys of more than 400 military vehicles into Syria. Regime forces killed seven Turkish troops. They have moved slowly toward Turkish positions in Idlib, capturing Jawbas, Tell Mardikh and al-Nerab, three villages outside of Saraqib, a city considered the gateway to the capital of Idlib and one of the last rebel-held strongholds in the province. If the Syrian government were to capture Saraqib, its Iranian and Russian partners could cut off links between the rebels and their partners in Aleppo.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has warned Damascus to stay away from Turkish observation posts in Idlib and to withdraw from the de-escalation zone by the end of this month. He also vowed to retaliate against any threats posed to Turkish forces. There has been limited dialogue between Turkey and Syria-ally Russia, but both have tried to reduce the risk of direct confrontation. They have said they want to hold working meetings and implement emergency measures that would strengthen cooperation. Turkey, however, has also seized on the opportunity to gain more ground in Syria. Erdogan has communicated to Russian officials that he expects Kurdish YPG fighters to withdraw from Tel Rifat, which Ankara considers a strategic location between Afrin and Idlib. A rupture in the understanding between Russia and Turkey would have ramifications beyond Syria, including in North Africa and Ankara’s relationship with Washington.
Additional Intelligence
• Chinese President Xi Jinping made his first public appearance in more than a week – a conspicuous absence as public discontent rises over Beijing’s handling of the coronavirus outbreak.
• The European Commission released a proposal for changing accession procedures for potential new members of the bloc, though it said the changes would be minor.
• The prime ministers of the U.K. and Italy reiterated their support for a political solution to the conflict in Libya. They also agreed to strengthen bilateral ties in the areas of trade, investment and security.
• Greece, in coordination with the U.S., Britain and France, said it would send a portion of its Patriot defense missiles to Saudi Arabia to help secure energy infrastructure.
• Iran’s Central Bank will gradually release 500 trillion rials ($17 billion) from a credit fund to boost liquidity for productive sectors like manufacturing. The fund reportedly boasts 700 trillion rials.
• Iran’s ambassador to Iraq has repeated Iran’s desire to boost ties with Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates “as quickly as possible.”
-
Daily Memo: Idlib Escalation, Coronavirus Mismanagement
By: GPF Staff
Raising the stakes in Idlib. Turkish forces have dispatched more convoys of equipment to observation posts in Syria’s Idlib province, where Syrian forces have re-entered the city of Saraqib after surrounded Turkish positions there. Turkey sent 50 vehicles to a post in Taftanaz, set up another observation post in the area and deployed 150 commando forces, weapons, Howitzers and armored vehicles to southern Turkey, where the armed forces appear to be mobilizing for a potential ground offensive. The escalation in Idlib places Russia in a difficult position: forced to decide whether it will continue to support its longtime ally, Syria, and risk direct confrontation with NATO-member Turkey. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has said that the recent escalation amounts to a “new era” in the conflict and called on involved parties to revisit the Sochi agreement and Astana Process in March of this year. Iran has offered to mediate between Turkey and Syria. Over the next two days, a Russian military delegation will meet with Turkish officials to discuss de-escalation plans and future opportunities for dialogue.
-
Idlib attacks and counterattacks. After a Syrian bombardment on Monday that killed five Turkish soldiers and wounded five more in Idlib province, Syria, Turkey vowed retaliation. Later that day, Turkish forces shelled 115 targets in Idlib, and Ankara said it had killed 101 Syrian soldiers while destroying three tanks and two artillery pieces. Turkey on Tuesday shot down a Syrian helicopter in Nayrab, killing the two pilots and compelling Bashar Assad’s forces to withdraw from the township. However, the Assad regime has been making moves as well. Regime forces took over the M5 highway linking Damascus, Aleppo, Homs and Hama to Idlib city, a strategic roadway that had been under rebel control since 2012. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has vowed that Syria will pay “a heavy price” for its advance in Idlib and has warned Iran and Russia to end their support for the Assad regime. Russia, meanwhile, has called for all attacks on Syrian and Russian forces to stop at once, urging Turkey to implement the Sochi and Astana peace agreements. While Erdogan and Russian President Vladimir Putin will hold a phone call to discuss de-escalation on Tuesday, talks between diplomatic and military delegations have been fruitless. NATO has condemned the attack on Turkish troops but has mostly concentrated its statements on Russian and Syrian airstrikes on civilian areas, withholding direct mention or words of support for NATO member Turkey. The United States has dispatched a midlevel diplomat and a delegation to Ankara.
-
Idlib update. As Russia, Syria and Turkey fight over Idlib province, the United States has signaled that it may rejoin the fray. After a meeting between U.S. Special Representative on Syria James Jeffrey and Turkish diplomats in which the U.S. said it would support Turkey, U.S. soldiers tasked with protecting oil fields in Qamishli, in northeast Syria, engaged with Syrian government forces reportedly after being attacked. Villagers also participated in the incident, throwing potatoes and stones at American personnel. One Syrian was reported killed. The Syrian state news agency, SANA, reported that the attack damaged four U.S. armored vehicles. Meanwhile, U.S. fighter aircraft struck two regime targets in Khirbet Ammo village, where clashes with regime forces also occurred.
As Turkey entertains potential U.S. cooperation, it will also continue to discuss the situation with Russia, its partner in the Astana process and Sochi cease-fire agreements. After talks with a Russian military delegation and a phone call between President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Russian President Vladimir Putin, Turkey announced it would send a delegation to Moscow in the “coming days.” And to send signals to Ankara, the Syrian government has hosted talks with leaders of the Kurdish-dominated People’s Protection Units – rivals Turkey considers to be associated with Kurdish terrorists – at the Russian Hmeimim air base in Latakia. Turkey continues to stand its ground; the Defense Ministry has announced it will not withdraw from any observation posts in the area, and Erdogan has vowed to hit Syrian government forces “on the ground and in the air” if the Syrian military continues its push into Idlib.
-
I've been posting about these events in the Turkey thread-- hard to know where to post sometimes!
Anyway, here's this:
https://www.meforum.org/60464/iran-hezbollah-stir-chaos-in-syria-southwest?utm_source=Middle+East+Forum&utm_campaign=c9c76c3d77-MEF_Spyer_2020_02_22_01_36&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_086cfd423c-c9c76c3d77-33691909&goal=0_086cfd423c-c9c76c3d77-33691909&mc_cid=c9c76c3d77
-
Near a breaking point in Syria. Over the weekend, one Turkish soldier died during a firefight with Syrian regime forces, leading the Turkish army to destroy 21 regime targets in retaliation. Syrian regime forces have advanced westward after capturing the strategic M5 highway, taking Maaret al-Numan and pushing toward Saraqeb, a stronghold where Turkey and Turkish-backed militias operate numerous observation posts. And Russian airstrikes over Idlib have continued, targeting civilian and Turkish locations in Jabal al-Zawiya in northwest Idlib, enabling regime ground forces to seize several townships and villages south of the M5 and M4 highways. On Monday, Turkey sent fresh special operations reinforcements and supplies into Idlib, including a 50-vehicle convoy accompanied by Syrian National Army troops. And Russian outlets have reported that Turkey may close the Bosporus to Russian warships in an attempt to weaken the Syrian regime’s operational capabilities and buy time to redeploy Turkish forces into Idlib. After brief discussions last week, Germany, France and Turkey agreed to hold a summit on March 5 in Istanbul to discuss political solutions to the situation in Idlib. While the hosts indicated that Russia is also invited, Moscow has yet to confirm its participation.
Drills in the Mediterranean. NATO initiated its Dynamic Manta-2020 naval drill off the coast of Sicily, with nine countries taking part – Turkey, Greece, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, the U.S. and the U.K. An admiral participating in the regularly scheduled drill noted that the operation was intended to test NATO’s maritime operational readiness for “unexpected and urgent events,” particularly as tensions continue over hydrocarbon resources in the Eastern Mediterranean, the Libyan civil war and Greek-Turkish division in Cyprus. Turkey in particular has sought to boost its naval presence in the region. It acquired a third drilling vessel over the weekend to operate in the Eastern Mediterranean or Black Sea. Turkey and its greatest Mediterranean rival, Greece, recently agreed a plan of confidence-building measures for the year to mitigate disputes over territorial violations, beginning with weeklong talks hosted in Athens. In Libya, the leader of the U.N.-recognized Government of National Accord, Fayez al-Sarraj, met with the U.S. ambassador to Turkey, David Satterfield, over the weekend to discuss paths to de-escalation. After the meeting, the GNA’s interior minister announced that Libya would not stand in the United States’ way if it decided to establish military bases in the country in an effort to counter the rival Libyan National Army, which is backed by Russia, the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia and France.
-
The battle over Idlib. Turkey and Russia are trying to reach some kind of agreement on the situation in Idlib, Syria. On Wednesday, a small delegation of Russian officials arrived in Ankara for negotiations on the conflict there. The talks continued on Thursday, but cracks in the relationship are evident. Even as the negotiations were taking place, the fighting in Syria continued. Turkey said three of its soldiers were killed in Idlib province by Syrian forces, raising the total number of Turkish troops killed in February to 21. Turkish-backed rebels retook the city of Saraqeb, a gateway to the provincial capital that has been at the center of the tug of war between Russian-backed Syrian forces and Turkish-backed militias in recent days. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said the capture of Saraqeb indicated that the tide had turned in Turkey’s favor. Syrian forces, however, have been advancing in the southern regions of the province. Turkey may have captured Saraqeb, but the fight over Idlib city is far from over.
-
Turkey Finds Itself on the Defensive in Syria
The Big Picture
________________________________________
The Syrian government's offensive against rebel forces in Idlib province carries significant risks for Turkey and Russia. Ankara supports many of the rebel groups in Idlib and wants to prevent another flow of Syrian refugees into Turkey. Moscow backs the Syrian offensive. Each wants to avoid a direct confrontation while deterring the other's intervention. The stakes are high. And standing by is the United States, ready to exploit the rift to try to bring Turkey back into its fold.
________________________________________
The Syrian Civil War
Situated in northwestern Syria, Idlib province is the last major rebel-held area that isn't directly protected by Turkey or the United States. Throughout the Syrian civil war, the province has become a place where Syrian rebels and refugees retreated as other resistance pockets were overrun by Syrian government forces. Now, however, the Syrian government, in part in reaction to a burgeoning economic crisis behind the front lines, is driving quickly to retake as much of the province as possible, having recently captured the key M5 highway that links Damascus to the city of Aleppo.
Breaking Through Old Russian-Turkish Agreements
So far, Turkey's responses have not stemmed from these assaults. They have set up new military observation points to deter Syrian advances (on top of the original 12 agreed to between Russia and Turkey in September 2018), but Syrian forces have simply gone around them. They have deployed additional hardware and troops to the province, but these forces have largely stayed away from the front lines, and Syria, with Russian and Iranian support, has continued its push toward Idlib city. As its previous attempts to deter Syria have failed, Ankara is now trying to find a way to limit the damage the offensives can do to Turkey's interests — and is finding few answers it likes.
To that end, Turkey has now officially requested the United States deploy Patriot missile batteries to help discourage Russian airpower near Idlib — a clear ploy to warn the Russians that Ankara will try to draw in the Americans should the offensives continue. Turkey has also played up rebel attacks and Turkish support for them in state media, and, on Feb. 20, announced the deaths of two Turkish soldiers in what Ankara claimed were Syrian airstrikes. Though this kind of rhetoric is escalating, Turkey is also keeping doors to the Russians open: It continued to carry out patrols with Russia in the northeast of the country and continues to wrangle with Moscow over the terms of a March 5 summit designed to jumpstart de-confliction.
Before such deconfliction can take effect, Syria, with Russian and Iranian aid, is gambling that it can maximize government advances in Idlib province, and push Turkey and the rebels much closer to the Turkish border. Even as Turkey has built up its forces, Russia has continued to fly air sorties to support Syrian advances and suppress Turkish-supported rebel counterattacks, while Moscow has been offering Turkey new terms for Idlib that seem to indicate that Ankara will have a much-reduced role there.
The United States — Turkey's NATO ally so recently on the outs with Ankara over its invasion of northeastern Syria in October 2019 (as well as Turkey's purchase of the Russian S-400 missile system) — is for now deploying its diplomats to exploit tensions between Russia and Turkey, with U.S. State Department officials from Secretary of State Mike Pompeo to James Jeffries, the special representative for Syria engagement, providing rhetorical support to Turkey over its Idlib policy. That appears to have born some fruit in the form of the request for the Patriot missiles — an indication that Turkey wants closer coordination with Washington over the future of at least northwest Syria. But America's answer to that request is far from certain.
What's Next?
What Turkey, the United States, Syria and Russia do next will determine the outcome of the Idlib situation. But few signs right now seem to indicate Turkey will get what it needs to stop the Syrian offensive and preserve its influence in Idlib.
Turkey and Russia. The Turkey-Russia relationship is likely to deteriorate in the short term, but how far and how deep remains to be seen. Some compartmentalization of the fallout has already taken place, suggesting a limit in how far Turkey wants to go against Russia, even in Syria itself: Turkish and Russian troops began joint patrols again in the northeast on Feb. 17, even as fighting in Idlib took place. But such compartmentalization could become more and more difficult for both sides as time goes on.
For now, there is little to indicate that Ankara will get what it needs to stop the Russian-supported Syrian government's offensive in Idlib province and preserve its influence there.
Meanwhile, Turkey will try to slow the Syrian offensive without sparking a military crisis. But as Turkey signals it will send in troops to deter Syrian advances, Russia will try to signal that such troops are a weak deterrence by supporting further offensives. All such tit-for-tat exchanges could readily escalate into a more serious crisis between the two countries, as each side attempts to maintain some measure of leverage over the other. Even the S-400, which symbolized a new level of ties between Russia and Turkey, may at one point become a football used by the two.
Turkey and the United States. The U.S.-Turkey relationship is the next area to watch — specifically, how much the United States tries to use the Idlib situation as a way to reduce Russian influence in Turkey. The United States wants to minimize budding Russian-Turkish ties, especially in the military sphere, but how far it's willing to go in terms of providing tangible support to Turkey in that pursuit is unknown.
The United States is showing signs it will throw its diplomatic heft behind Turkey, but that is low risk since it's unlikely to spread to other parts of the U.S.-Russian relationship — like the tense U.S.-Russia situation in Syria's northeast. Moreover, Turkey will want the United States to show stronger measures than just diplomatic ones if it's about to start reducing ties with Moscow in favor of Washington. The Patriot missile system request is just one potential area where Washington might win favor in Ankara, in particular because the last time Turkey faced a crisis with Russia in 2015, the United States was not willing to provide the same system for Turkey's defense needs (a German unit eventually rotated into Turkey). The United States may also go with less public measures to support Turkey, including considering new defense deals, a notable change in their relationship after Russia's delivery of the S-400 left the future of U.S.-Turkish military relations uncertain.
Turkey and Europe. Finally, there is the Turkish-European relationship, and in particular Turkey's ties with France and Germany. Turkey is signaling that it wants diplomatic support against Russia, and potentially material support for another refugee flow, should Idlib worsen enough to see another Syrian exodus from the province. So far, it's unclear how far Paris and Berlin will go beyond words of support for the humanitarian situation — let alone if they would readily take part in another line of support for a new refugee wave from Syria, as they did in 2016. If France and Germany disappoint Turkey yet again, there remains the potential that Ankara repeats history and threatens to send refugees to Europe again.
Should the United States show more substantial support to Turkey beyond rhetoric, it would embolden Turkey to remain in Idlib. But if the United States doesn't follow through, Ankara will be faced with the tough choice of facing down Russian-supported Syrian offensives alone, something it's unlikely to be successful doing — leaving the future of Turkey's Syria strategy in need of a serious adjustment, and potentially presaging an unraveling of Turkey's influence in other parts of Syria.
-
Posting this not because I necessarily agree with it (for example it fails to even notice Turkey's legit concerns over millions of refugees) but because it makes a particular point which needs to be considered:
https://www.commentarymagazine.com/foreign-policy/middle-east/syria/this-is-what-american-disengagement-looks-like-syria/?utm_source=ActiveCampaign&utm_medium=email&utm_content=This+Is+What+American+Disengagement+Looks+Like&utm_campaign=Daily+newsletter+02%2F28%2F20
-
second post
Daily Memo: Fallout From an Attack in Syria
By: GPF Staff
With one day left on its ultimatum, Turkey is attacked. Tensions are running high between Russia and Turkey after an airstrike in southern Idlib, allegedly conducted by Russia, killed 33 Turkish soldiers. Ankara has been careful not to call out Moscow directly; state-run media agencies have indirectly blamed the Syrian military, and Ankara shut down social media, possibly to curb reports that fail to follow the company line. Russia has denied its involvement in the airstrike, stating that its air force does not operate in this zone of Idlib and instead crediting Syrian government artillery with the attack, but the Defense Ministry noted that Turkish soldiers had no right to be in southern Idlib in the first place. There’s still one day left on Turkey’s ultimatum for Russia and Syria to withdraw their troops to the lines set by the 2018 Sochi agreement, after which Ankara will begin an offensive on Idlib, according to a government spokesman. But that hasn’t stopped Turkey from retaliating for last night’s airstrike. It hit Syrian government targets in Latakia and Aleppo provinces and killed 16 Syrian soldiers in southern Idlib.
As it considers its next step, Turkey has reached out to NATO and the U.S. hoping to secure more support. So far, NATO has met in accordance with an Article 4 consultation request by Turkey and condemned the strikes against Turkish forces. Erdogan also spoke with Russian President Vladimir Putin, with whom he discussed options for increasing coordination through their defense ministries. It’s worth noting that many Russian lawmakers have supported last night’s attack, accusing Turkish forces of sponsoring terrorism in Syria.
Turkey-EU ties. Also at stake is Ankara’s relationship with the European Union, specifically over immigration. Turkish officials have said they ordered the police, the coast guard and border security agents to no longer stop migrants from crossing into Europe. Some accounts say this state of affairs will endure for 72 hours. A mayor of one Greek border town said Turkish border agents had disappeared, and there are multiple reports and images of migrants massing at border checkpoints or departing for Greek islands on boats.
Either way, Greece and Bulgaria, the two EU countries with land borders to Turkey, have taken matters into their own hands. Bulgaria’s defense minister announced that the government was ready to deploy 1,000 soldiers and 140 pieces of equipment to the border with Turkey to prevent migrants from entering. Maritime border patrols also received reinforcements. The country’s prime minister has requested a meeting with Erdogan. Greece has gone further, deploying tear gas at one checkpoint to repel an estimated 500 refugees and migrants, and Greece is rumored to have closed all crossings with Turkey to anyone trying to enter Europe. Athens is providing regular updates to the German government.
If the reports are true, they will jeopardize the 2016 agreement whereby Turkey agreed to shelter the vast majority of displaced Syrians. The country hosts some 3.6 million refugees and has become more insistent that it needs additional EU funding to support them. This time, however, it is political or even military support over its position in Syria that Ankara wants most.
Russia strengthens its navy in the Mediterranean. As tensions with Turkey rise, two frigates from Russia’s Black Sea Fleet, the Adm. Makarov and the Adm. Grigorovich, both equipped with Kalibr cruise missiles, have passed the Bosporus and the Dardanelles. The frigates are new and permanent additions to Russia’s naval contingent in the Mediterranean Sea, which already includes 15 warships and support vessels. Moscow has said the deployment is meant to maintain the balance of power and bolster the Russian navy, especially in the fight against terrorism. (Russia has, in fact, used its ships in the Mediterranean to strike terrorist targets.)
-
Third post
Stratfor Worldview
Turkey's Syria Strategy Suffers a Blow in Idlib
4 MINS READ
Feb 28, 2020 | 21:37 GMT
HIGHLIGHTS
A Russian-linked airstrike has left 33 Turkish soldiers dead -- and Ankara scrambling to salvage what remains of its offensive in northern Syria....
The Big Picture
Turkey has been steadily building up a sphere of influence in northern Syria in recent years. But with the country's civil war entering its final phases, the Syrian government, with the help of Russia and Iran, is now directly attacking the country's northwest Idlib province. To prevent further deterioration of its position in Syria's last rebel-held territory (as well as in Syria in general), Turkey is now trying to enlist the much-needed help of its European and U.S. allies.
What Happened
Turkey is scrambling to keep its Syrian strategy afloat after a Russian-linked airstrike killed 33 Turkish soldiers on the southern frontier of the Idlib front line. The Feb. 28 attack has sparked a new level of urgency in the ongoing Syrian government offensive against Idlib province, which has been at the center of the country's ongoing civil war and related refugee crisis. The incident also highlights how Turkey’s current strategy is failing to deter Syrian military advances in the region, as Damascus, Russia and Iran feel increasingly emboldened to attack Turkish military forces head-on.
What It Means for Turkey
Turkey has been steadily running out of counters to stem the Syrian-led offensive in Idlib, which — should it fall — would not only send a new flood of refugees across Turkey's southern border (adding to the roughly 3.6 million refugees already in Turkey) but also embolden Syria to prepare military campaigns to push Turkey out of its other occupation zones along the border. Losing those areas of influence would jeopardize Turkey's anti-Kurdish strategy in Syria, as Ankara fears that a border under Damascus' control would do little to keep Kurdish militants in the region from continuing to launch attacks inside Turkey itself.
For now, Turkey is using its armed forces to target Syrian government troops to try to stem the military offensive itself, though this is more of a time-buying tactic than a sustainable solution. What Ankara really needs is a clear and consistent signal from its major allies strong enough that it convinces Russia to push for de-escalation in the region sooner rather than later. Neither Russia nor Turkey wants the Idlib confrontation to spread beyond the province. Indeed, both have working military relations in other parts of Syria, in addition to sizable economic and diplomatic ties. But as evidenced by the recent airstrike, Moscow is gambling it can continue to support a Syrian offensive in Idlib without rupturing relations with Turkey elsewhere, or sparking any substantial action from Europe or the United States.
What's Next
With Russia upping the pressure, Turkey is now aiming to cajole Europe into action with a long-threatened, potent piece of leverage: Syrian refugee flows into Europe. Focusing on the refugee crisis signals to Europe that Idlib is its problem as well as Turkey's, and that Ankara will not host refugees on the Continent's behalf without additional economic or diplomatic support in Syria. But unleashing the refugees risks escalating the already simmering tensions between Ankara and Brussels over issues such as Turkey’s invasion of northeast Syria in 2019, offshore drilling in the eastern Mediterranean and Turkey’s human rights record. And even if the Europeans offer more support, it still may not be enough to outweigh Russian support for Syria, let alone prevent the roughly 1 million refugees in Idlib from moving into Turkey.
A deadly, Russian-linked airstrike in Idlib has left Turkey scrambling to salvage what remains of its Syrian strategy.
Turkey is also trying to enlist the United States' help. But with the White House wary of further engagement in Syria, on top of its already tense relations with Ankara, the Trump administration seems unlikely to take a stance in the conflict beyond supportive statements. Without substantial European or U.S. support, however, Turkey will be forced to face the increasingly daunting task of stemming Russian-backed Syrian forces alone, and with fewer ways to do so.
-
fourth post
European officials fear a large war could break out of northwestern Syria after Turkey lost nearly three dozen soldiers Thursday in an airstrike by Russian-backed Syrian regime forces in Idlib province. The Associated Press called the Thursday attack "the largest death toll for Turkey in a single day since it first intervened in Syria in 2016," and "a major escalation in a conflict between Turkish and Russia-backed Syrian forces." The BBC reports "The air strike came after the opposition retook the key town of Saraqeb, north-east of Balyun."
Turkey says it responded with drone and artillery attacks, state-run Anadolu Agency news reports today. According to Turkey's Defense Minister Hulusi Akar, "Turkish forces destroyed five Syrian regime choppers, 23 tanks, 10 armored vehicles, 23 howitzers, five ammunition trucks, a SA-17, a SA-22 air defense system as well as three ammunition depots, two equipment depots, a headquarter and 309 regime troops."
The actual number of regime forces killed is 16, Agence France-Presse reports from Istanbul. (And Turkey shut off much of the country's internet after news of the 33 surfaced Thursday.)
From the POV of Russia's defense ministry, the Turkish troops hit by Syria "were in the battle formations of terrorist groups" from the Hayat Tahrir al-Sham alliance (formerly the Nusra Front), the Telegraph reported Thursday evening off a statement from Russia's military.
Defense One eBook
The Cybersecurity Challenge: How is the Defense Department meeting the challenge of ever-present cybersecurity threats?
In this eBook:
• Suspected Iranian Cyber Attacks Show No Signs of Slowing.
• New Tech Aims to Tell Pilots When Their Plane Has Been Hacked.
• Should Cyber Arms Be Treated Like Bioweapons?
• Russian Hackers Used Stolen Iranian Malware to Attack 35 Countries, NSA Says.
• And More.
Brought to you by DLT/Solarwinds, Verizon, and Cisco
Today, Russia says it had nothing to do with the airstrike; and, at any rate, Turkey never told Russia its troops were in that location at Balyun, or Behun, the Washington Post reports this morning from Moscow.
"There is a risk of sliding into a major open international military confrontation," the EU's foreign policy chief, Josep Borrell, tweeted Thursday evening. "It is also causing unbearable humanitarian suffering and putting civilians in danger."
NATO ambassadors met in an emergency session today in Brussels, AP reports. From there, Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg asked Syria and Russia "to stop their offensive, to respect international law and to back U.N efforts for a peaceful solution." Stoltenberg also said alliance members "expressed full solidarity with Turkey," the Post reports.
For the record, AP notes that "France in particular has tried to launch a debate on what Turkey's allies should do if Ankara requests their assistance under Article 5 of the Washington Treaty — which requires all allies to come to the defense of another member under attack — but that discussion has not happened."
Turkey and Russia's presidents spoke by phone today, after "Moscow announced that two of its warships were transiting through the Bosphorus Strait in Istanbul in plain sight of the city," AFP reports.
BTW: The Kremlin today warned Turkey not to let any of its citizens or property get hurt or damaged while in Turkey. That from Reuters, here.
And Turkish President Erdogan is about to ask the U.S. for "real support" in NW Syria, Reuters reports separately today ahead of a phone chat between the two leaders. Erdogan also wants a no-fly zone in NW Syria. But it's not clear at all right now how that might take shape.
And as Erdogan threatened previously, Turkey is now openly allowing Syrian migrants to travel to Europe; but don't worry — Erdogan said — because it won't hurt Turkey's relationship with the West. Recall, AP writes, that "Turkey hosts some 3.6 million Syrians and under a 2016 deal with the EU agreed to step up efforts to halt the flow of refugees to Europe. Since then, Erdogan has repeatedly threatened to 'open the gates,' playing on European nervousness about a new surge."
Within hours of the announcement, hundreds of migrants arrived at the border with Greece, AFP reported.
And so Greece began tightening its border control measures in response, Reuters reported.
Bulgaria, too, is tightening its border security in response to Turkey, sending its army, national guard and police to the border, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty reports this morning. Reuters has still more from families who heard the word from Turkey Thursday and headed northwest almost immediately.
Reminder: The U.S. and the Taliban could sign some sort of deal on an American troop withdrawal on Saturday from Qatar. Today is day seven of the weeklong "reduction in violence" plan drummed up by the Trump White House in an effort to end the war in Afghanistan before election day in November.
However, the Taliban don't expect a full withdrawal sooner than May 2021, AP reports today from Kabul. "Taliban leaders told The Associated Press that if everything goes according to plan, all U.S. soldiers would be out of Afghanistan in 14 months. Washington has not confirmed such a timeline.
Should we all make it to Saturday satisfactorily, the next step is getting the Taliban and the Afghan government to talk. That's supposed to happen within 15 days of signing whatever document is produced tomorrow. That's no small task, since AP reports that in that tentative meeting "Negotiators will try to figure out how to re-integrate tens of thousands of Taliban insurgents and thousands more militiamen loyal to warlords in Kabul, who have grown powerful and wealthy during 18 years." Read on, here.
The Taliban and Afghan officials mulled a prisoner swap today in Qatar, Reuters reports from Doha. One procedural stumbling block: "The Afghan delegation has no authority to agree on a prisoner swap," Reuters writes, which means "It will consult and report back to the president" before authorizing the release of any of the 5,000 or so estimated Taliban prisoners in the Afghan government's custody. The Taliban say they have an estimated 1,000 prisoners of their own to release in exchange.
The overall mood at this juncture is cautious optimism. More from Reuters, here.
-
fifth post
https://www.meforum.org/60026/why-russia-wants-lebanon?utm_source=Middle+East+Forum&utm_campaign=3bbe0b1e86-MEF_Melamedov_2020_02_28_05_57&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_086cfd423c-3bbe0b1e86-33691909&goal=0_086cfd423c-3bbe0b1e86-33691909&mc_cid=3bbe0b1e86
-
sixth post
https://thedispatch.com/p/idlib-is-a-disaster-where-is-the?mkt_tok=eyJpIjoiT1RBd09EUXhZakkyT0RSbCIsInQiOiJ0VWh3eUNxN1J1N3h6MVExMVk1MlQzYUVZV2hTM0dWd2ltcXhNNXZRTTJqTFRNN0JFNGlwXC9xQ0p6ZHZ4aXBPWDRrNTZRN3Y5cklobzdlMWNHUnVxcklkeXpsdVAwYVBxdWhlSEo5SWFCVDVFRzZENFNvZnV1YStsajJCcHYwRDkifQ%3D%3D
-
Daily Memo: A Cease-fire in Idlib, Suspicions in Manila
By: GPF Staff
Cease-fire in Syria. Turkey and Russia have agreed to a cease-fire in Idlib. The terms of the new deal are similar to those of the 2018 Sochi agreement but with new lines of controls that reflect the current balance of power between Russian and Turkish forces. The deal demarcates control above and below the M4 highway. Syrian forces are allowed to keep recently consolidated territory south of the highway, while Turkey keeps its observation posts throughout Idlib province. In the few hours since the cease-fire has been implemented, the signatories have been cautious not to overstep their boundaries. For example, although the deal does not include a no-fly zone over Idlib, Russian and Syrian warplanes have not been spotted over Syrian airspace.
Still, we have already seen some signs of clashes. Just a half-hour after the truce was announced, Syrian forces began bombarding rebels in west Aleppo and Hama in what some have called a cease-fire violation. And three hours after the truce was announced, Syrian forces and rebel fighters exchanged rocket fire around the city of Saraqeb. In addition, the Turkey-backed group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham reported that regime and Russian forces initiated clashes in Jabal al-Zawiya, in southern Idlib province. So far, six Syrian troops and nine fighters from the Turkistan Islamic Party have been reported killed in the fighting. Despite the deal, Turkey doesn't seem prepared to back down. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said during a joint press conference with Russian President Vladimir Putin that “the main goal of the regime in Idlib is to ravage this region and put Turkey into a difficult position, facing a new wave of refugees.” He added that Turkey would not “stand idle in the face of such a threat” and would remain active in Syria so long as the civil war continues.
-
Don't Expect a Turkey-Russia War in Syria
by Jonathan Spyer
The Jerusalem Post
March 6, 2020
https://www.meforum.org/60536/turkish-syrian-conflict
-
Coronavirus and now plunging oil prices might just end the mullahs.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-03-07/saudi-aramco-slashes-crude-prices-kicking-off-price-war
-
Interesting!
Please post in the Saudi Arabia thread as well.
-
Coronavirus and now plunging oil prices might just end the mullahs.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-03-07/saudi-aramco-slashes-crude-prices-kicking-off-price-war
Falling demand is what is plunging oil prices, and yes it might bring down the Mullahs of Iran. Let's bring down Putin with it too.
-
https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/15707/oil-price-russia
-
https://www.investigativeproject.org/8348/as-islamists-spread-conspiracies-isis-seeks-to
https://www.meforum.org/60619/workers-locked-into-qatar-labor-camps?utm_source=Middle+East+Forum&utm_campaign=a0176d2dbd-MEF_Frantzman_2020_03_27_01_03&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_086cfd423c-a0176d2dbd-33691909&goal=0_086cfd423c-a0176d2dbd-33691909&mc_cid=a0176d2dbd
-
A New Tripartite Alliance in Syria?
By: Caroline D. Rose
As the coronavirus pandemic continues to consume the world's attention, Syria is hanging by a thread. The March 5 cease-fire agreement between Russia and Turkey that formalized new lines of control in Idlib province is proving extremely fragile. Both of the cease-fire deal’s brokers, especially Turkey, seem to be flouting the terms of the agreement. Though direct conflict has not broken out, Turkey has quietly ramped up its presence in Idlib, deploying over 20,000 light infantry brigades, armored units and special operations (commando) forces to reinforce its positions in eastern and southern Idlib. Meanwhile, the Syrian government has deployed more weapons to the front lines, and Russia has sent two more Su-24 fighter jets to its air base in Latakia. Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu recently visited Damascus to discuss the next steps with Syrian officials.
Joint Russia-Turkey patrols along the security corridor, a 6-km-deep (3.7 miles) zone running along the M4 highway, have already broken down over security concerns. Frequent attacks by jihadist militants and Turkey-backed groups like al-Nusra Front and Hayat Tahrir al-Sham targeting regime positions risk escalating the fighting even more. The two powers have counted on the coronavirus pandemic to distract the rest of the world while they reinforce their positions, raise the stakes for confrontation and reshape the power dynamic in Idlib in their favor.
Meanwhile, the Syrian Kurds are waiting patiently in the wings. But to navigate Syria’s bloody war, the Kurdish Democratic Union Party and its militant wing, the People’s Protection Units, or YPG, have had to form new alliances. Since 2014, the U.S. had been the Kurds’ main security guarantor. Now that the U.S. is withdrawing most of its forces from the conflict, Turkey – the Kurds’ main adversary – is becoming an even bigger player in the war. And as the security landscape changes, the Kurds are being forced to adapt and look to some unlikely allies for support, namely Russia and the Syrian regime.
(click to enlarge)
The Kurds’ Changing Alliances
The Kurds and the Syrian government share a difficult history. The Kurds have long been marginalized by the ruling Assad family. Throughout the civil war, the YPG, a branch of the Syrian Democratic Forces, has fought against the regime, and the regime has excluded the Kurds from multilateral talks over Syria’s postwar future. For example, the Syrian Constitutional Committee allows Russia, the regime and the United Nations to each select one-third of the representatives on the panel, while the YPG and SDF have no representation.
Still, the Kurds’ greatest enemy is not Damascus but Ankara. Since the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, Turkey has considered Kurdish militants in Turkey an existential threat and has sought to sever their ties to Kurdish communities abroad. This includes eliminating links between Kurdish groups in Turkey and the Syrian YPG, an organization Ankara views as an extension of the Kurdistan Workers' Party, which is classified as a terrorist group in Turkey.
The U.S. has served as the YPG’s main security guarantor since the group in 2014 joined Operation Inherent Resolve, the U.S.-led campaign against the Islamic State. The U.S. needed troops to fight battles against IS on the ground, and the Kurds needed an ally that would protect them against Turkey and Russia. With the aid of American weapons and training, the Kurds proved to be an effective fighting force against groups like IS and al-Qaida, and managed to maintain control over large swaths of territory in the northeast.
However, in late 2019, the U.S. decided to withdraw from Syria, pulling thousands of troops from the country and leaving the Kurds hanging in the balance. Though the U.S. had managed to balance its relationships with the Kurds and Turkey for a long time, ultimately it had to choose sides, and it chose Turkey, the stronger and higher-value ally.
Protecting the East Euphrates
The Kurds have two main priorities in Syria: maintaining control over areas of the northeast, and driving Turkey out of an area of northern Syria known as the Euphrates Triangle, which was captured by Turkish forces in the 2016-17 Operation Euphrates Shield. After its successful campaign against IS, the YPG focused on advancing and sustaining control over territories east of the Euphrates along the Turkey-Syria border and in the Abu Kamal desert near the Syria-Iraq border. For years, thanks to U.S. support, the Kurds have held this region, which became one of the last areas of Syria outside the control of either the regime or Turkish forces. But as Turkey increased its presence in Syria by threefold and the regime made considerable gains in the west, the Kurds have been losing their grip.
On Oct. 9, Turkey launched Operation Peace Spring against Kurdish-held areas in the northeast. It established a new zone of influence – what Turkey calls its “peace corridor” – along the Turkey-Syria border. And as the U.S. drew down its presence in the country, the Kurds suddenly found themselves alone in the fight to maintain an autonomous region in the northeast.
Though the U.S. still provides the Kurds with arms, training and limited political support, Washington has blocked the YPG (and the SDF) from militarily engaging with Turkey, its NATO ally, by making aid conditional on refraining from engaging with Turkish forces. Though U.S.-Turkey relations have been strained of late, the U.S. has repeatedly told YPG officials that it would not offer its support if the Kurds entered into conflict with Turkey. Moreover, the coronavirus outbreak is forcing the U.S. to scale down its presence in the region. Operation Inherent Resolve has handed over three of its Iraqi bases to the government in Baghdad and transferred most of its troops to bases in the Gulf or more fortified locations in Iraq.
In addition, the Kurds have received mixed messages from Washington. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said the U.S. would “stand by Turkey.” But U.S. Special Envoy to Syria James Jeffrey said the U.S. would supply Turkey with only limited aid, and National Security Adviser Robert O’Brien said that, beyond sanctions, the U.S. will play only a modest role in Syria.
With the U.S. downscaling its presence in Syria and Turkey upscaling its own, the Kurds’ options are limited. They have turned, therefore, to the Syrian regime and its allies, Russia and Iran, for support. Since 2015, the Syrian regime has been an enemy – both ideologically and militarily – of the YPG. But the Kurds no longer have the luxury of standing by their ideological principles. As the saying goes, “The enemy of my enemy is my friend” – and to avoid annihilation at the hands of the Turks, the Kurds are now looking to a former foe to ensure their very survival.
(click to enlarge)
Entente
This is not the first time that the YPG has cozied up to Russia and the Assad regime. YPG and SDF officials and generals met with Russian officials at Hmeimim air base in December to discuss cooperation. No agreement resulted, however, since Iran, another key regime ally that has its own Kurdish separatist movement at home, opposed partnering with the Kurds. In addition, despite Russian lobbying, the regime and the Kurds clashed over whether the YPG should be integrated into the Syrian armed forces under Damascus’ command and whether Kurdish autonomy in the northeast should continue.
But as the Kurds have become more desperate, they have also become more open to collaboration. Last week, the co-chair of the Democratic Union Party, Aisha Hasso, did an interview with Syria Direct, a Jordan-based publication funded by the U.S. Department of State. Hasso said the SDF could play a decisive role in the military balance in Idlib. Hasso indicated that the SDF was very interested in engaging in dialogue with the regime, and that the group would not rule out fighting alongside Russian, Iranian and Syrian forces. Notably, this time Hasso and the SDF defined vague conditions for collaboration: that the regime end its suppression of Kurdish semi-autonomy and that it recognize the success of Kurdish fighters against jihadist terrorist organizations. Essentially, they’re asking that Damascus allow the Kurds to maintain limited autonomy and political representation after the war.
An alliance of Kurdish and regime forces would alter the military balance in Idlib province. As it stands, Russia controls all of Syria’s airspace, though it’s been reluctant to launch strikes on Turkish forces. Turkey, meanwhile, has stronger ground capabilities, with effective commando and light infantry units. It has an estimated 25,000 to 30,000 forces on the ground and can deploy up to 40,000 total by dispatching personnel from Hatay province. Turkey can also call on its proxies like Hayat Tahir al-Sham and the Free Syrian Army.
But the regime’s ground capabilities would certainly get a boost with the support of Kurdish troops, who have been trained by the U.S. An alliance between the two would also mean the regime has one less enemy to fight, allowing Damascus to focus on eliminating other sources of opposition. If the regime wins Idlib, it will look next to Afrin, a Turkish-controlled province and part of the Euphrates Triangle. Afrin is a strategically important region connecting Idlib to Azaz. Regaining control there would enable the regime to unify territory as it pushes east of the Euphrates. The Kurds and Turkey have clashed over Afrin, Tel Rifat and Manbij, and the pro-YPG Afrin Liberation Forces have signaled their willingness to partner with Russia and the regime.
These locations are close to Turkey’s peace corridor, and if the Kurds join forces with the Russians and the regime, it would certainly jeopardize Turkey’s hold in the northeast.
Russia, however, has been cautious about cooperating with the Kurds. Though the prospect of winning over a former American ally is enticing, there are risks as well. The YPG wants a place at the decision-making table – something that Damascus, Moscow and Tehran have resisted. The regime is also less desperate for Kurdish support now than it was when it first tried to retake Idlib. That’s because Damascus and Moscow were able to capture villages in Aleppo province and consolidate most of the south relatively quickly. In fact, in roughly a year, the regime was able to force Turkey and its proxies into a corner, drawing new cease-fire lines that codified the regime's territorial gains.
The regime has remained open to working with the Kurds, hoping to either use the possibility of an alliance to restrain Ankara, or formalize a military alliance if clashes with Turkey escalate. The YPG, too, has occasionally used talks with Moscow to pressure the U.S. for further support. For the most part, however, negotiations between them have been kept private; Kurdish sources have merely confirmed that meetings have taken place. Russia understands that if collaboration with the Kurds is cemented, Turkey will have to raise the stakes in Idlib, so it prefers to keep the Kurds waiting in the wings until an alliance is necessary.
(click to enlarge)
The Syrian Kurds are now hedging their bets. The ugly truth is that, based on the current balance of power in Syria, Kurdish capitulation is inevitable. Since the Assad regime has cemented its position in postwar Syria, the YPG won’t be able to secure long-term, full autonomy in Syria’s northeast. The real question now is: Whom does the YPG want to capitulate to, and how much are they willing to lose? With Turkey at the helm, the Kurds would face total annihilation. But with the regime at the helm, there would be room for negotiation; the Kurds would have to sacrifice the limited American support they receive and some of the autonomy they enjoy in exchange for protection from the Turks. Bottom line: The Kurds would nonetheless survive if they partnered with Russia and the regime.
For now, the Russians will merely use the possibility of an alliance with the YPG to increase pressure on Turkey. A formal Kurdish-Syrian alliance would develop only in the event of an intense escalation of fighting between the Russians and the Turks. And if this does occur, the situation in Idlib would become even more complicated, as the Turks face a more capable, united ground force.
-
Daily Memo: US Forces Scaling Down Mideast Presence
By: GPF Staff
U.S. forces pack up. The Pentagon is eyeing a large-scale military withdrawal not only from the Levant but also from the Greater Middle East. U.S. Secretary of Defense Mark Esper has suggested that U.S. forces depart from a peacekeeping mission in Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula, a move deeply opposed by Israel, which has seen Sinai as a buffer between itself and Arab states since Israeli forces left the peninsula in 1982 as part of the Egypt-Israel peace agreement.
In the Gulf, the U.S. has announced that it is moving four of its Patriot anti-missile defense systems from Saudi oil facilities as well as withdrawing other military assets in Saudi Arabia. Two squadrons of fighter jets have also been withdrawn from the Middle East, and there are reports that the Pentagon is seriously considering reducing its naval presence in the Persian Gulf.
The sudden flurry of departures indicates a recalibration of U.S. military strategy in the region, with the United States backing off its military campaign against Iran and its pursuit of a Shiite crescent across the region.
-
https://www.newyorker.com/news/our-columnists/can-the-middle-east-recover-from-the-coronavirus-and-collapsing-oil-prices?utm_source=nl&utm_brand=tny&utm_mailing=TNY_Daily_050820&utm_campaign=aud-dev&utm_medium=email&bxid=5be9d3fa3f92a40469e2d85c&cndid=50142053&hasha=52f016547a40edbdd6de69b8a7728bbf&hashb=e02b3c0e6e0f3888e0288d6e52a57eccde1bfd75&hashc=9aab918d394ee25f13d70b69b378385abe4212016409c8a7a709eca50e71c1bc&esrc=bounceX&utm_term=TNY_Daily
-
For Iran, a US Withdrawal Is a Blessing and a Curse
By: Caroline D. Rose
Next month, a U.S. delegation will board a plane to Baghdad to discuss with Iraqi leaders the prospect of reducing Washington’s military footprint on Iraqi soil. It would have been an unthinkable idea at the beginning of the year, when U.S.-Iran tensions came to a head after the assassination of Qassem Soleimani, the leader of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. Even then, the Iraqi parliament voted on a bill that would have sent the U.S. packing had it ever been executed. But where the parliament failed, the coronavirus pandemic, a mounting recession and global uncertainty may succeed in getting Washington to withdraw from the region – something it had tacitly wanted to do anyway, at least on its own terms – more quickly. Ready and waiting to capitalize on its departure is Iran.
Despite Iran’s own problems in managing the coronavirus outbreak, its foreign policy seems to be having a moment in the sun. Over the past three months, the IRGC and its Shiite proxies have taken advantage of the international distraction and Washington’s absence to launch successive attacks on American targets. Indeed, it appears as though Iran is getting what it wants: a path to project power in the Levant. But it won’t be that easy for the IRGC. U.S. force reduction will not necessarily translate to sanctions relief or give way to an unobstructed march to the Mediterranean. Plenty of constraints remain, even in the absence of the U.S.
(click to enlarge)
Cutting the Cord
Since 1979, the Levant, particularly Iraq, has been a battleground for political and military influence in the Middle East. Boxed in by the Zagros Mountains and with difficult maritime access due to the Strait of Hormuz, Iran crafted a policy by which it projects power abroad primarily through proxy forces to its west. And since the 2003 invasion of Iraq, the United States has stood in its way.
Fast-forward to 2020. As the world tried to make sense of the ongoing pandemic, Iran resumed its attacks on the U.S. and its anti-Islamic State coalition partners. Just this week, the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad’s Green Zone was struck by a rocket, very likely launched by an IRGC-aligned militia. Iran also upped the ante in the Persian Gulf. In April, 11 Iranian fast boats harassed a warship from the U.S. 5th Fleet, edging so close that the U.S. threaten to shoot the Iranian ships out of the water if they came within 100 meters again. U.S. aggression has proved almost entirely rhetorical. Washington has long wanted to leave; Iranian attacks and a global viral outbreak gave it an excuse to cut the cord. The Pentagon thus began pulling forces from coalition bases, reducing troop counts or withdrawing altogether. In just four months, the U.S. has drawn down from more than five bases, including the strategically important base in al-Qaim, which straddles the Syria-Iraq border.
And instead of beefing up American operational presence in the Persian Gulf – something you may expect to happen in the wake of maritime provocations – the Pentagon signaled a large-scale plan that actually reduces the official number of overall personnel in the region, and is reportedly considering scaling down the 5th Fleet’s presence in the Persian Gulf by one aircraft carrier strike group, withdrawing two Patriot missile defense systems, air defense systems and jet fighters from Saudi Arabia, while mulling a reduction in the Multinational Force and Observers peacekeeping mission in the Sinai Peninsula.
Iran has acted quickly to increase its military hold in Iraq and Syria, beefing up its defensive presence and smuggling capabilities along the al-Qaim highway. Recent satellite imagery from ImageSat International shows an Iranian tunnel project under the Imam Ali military base in Abu Kamal, Syria, on the Syria-Iraq border. Tunnels between pro-Iran proxy strongholds in western Iraq and IRGC locations in eastern Syria strengthen Iran’s strategy to expand its influence west, allowing IRGC forces and their proxies to store vehicles, shelter personnel, transport advanced weapon systems, and smuggle arms from the east to the Mediterranean.
(click to enlarge)
Related, Iran has been engaging more in the Israel-Palestine conflict. With reduced American presence in Sinai – the traditional buffer between Israel and Arab countries – Iran has begun rallying Palestinian militant groups such as Hamas and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, both sympathetic to Iran, to confront Israel, all while increasing its own military exchanges with Israel through Hezbollah and cyberattacks on Israeli water installations.
Remaining Challenges
And yet, Iran isn’t without challenges. In light of the drawdown, Saudi Arabia, for example, has begun to rethink its Iran strategy. With an oil price crisis, creeping global recession and sudden withdrawal of Patriot systems, Riyadh wants to find a quick, cost-effective way to keep Iranian aggression at bay. Saudi officials have therefore sanctioned talks with Iran, with Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman nominating Iraq’s new prime minister to act as mediator. Even so, discussions between the two have long proved fruitless, and diplomacy should be seen only as a measure of first resort. Indeed, Riyadh has already made plans to replace the two U.S. Patriots with its own missile defense system, increase military training exercises with U.S. advisers and secure a Boeing contract of 1,000 air-to-surface and anti-ship missiles – all to curb Iranian attacks.
Israel, too, will be one of Iran’s largest impediments. Already it has increased strikes on IRGC and Hezbollah equipment storage locations and bases in Syria by sevenfold. It has also intensified its border patrols, destruction of cross-border tunnels, and cyberattacks on Iranian entities. This week alone, Israel conducted a cyberattack on Iran’s Shadi Rajaee port facility, causing a major backlog in terminal arrivals and maritime traffic. With reduced U.S. presence in the Levant, Israel will likely up the ante in attacks on IRGC factions in Syria and Lebanon. (Notably, Israel and the Arab Gulf states have entered a quiet alliance against Iran, sharing intelligence and engaging in back-channel talks.)
Just as daunting are the internal challenges Iran will face in sustaining the political and military influence it’s built in the region. Since the fall of 2019, massive political movements have emerged in Lebanon and Iraq protesting economic conditions, unemployment, corruption and rising inflation. A key feature of these protests has been mounting resentment of foreign interference – particularly by the U.S. military and Iranian proxies. In Iraq, elements of the nationalist Sadrist movement have been especially loud in their opposition to Iran, with some even attacking Iranian consulate buildings and IRGC-sponsored militia headquarters. In Lebanon, much of the anti-Iran sentiment has been directed at Hezbollah, a major beneficiary of Iranian political, military and financial support (even though sanctions have put a dent in aid in recent years). With the U.S. withdrawn, protesters will hone in on Iranian intrusion even more.
Syria is perhaps even more problematic. The country has been one of Iran’s strongest Arab allies for decades, and its presence in Syria depends overwhelmingly on President Bashar Assad remaining in power. There are signs, however, that Iran is struggling to keep influence there. Rumors have begun to circulate that Russian President Vladimir Putin, another staunch Assad ally, is unhappy with the Syrian government. Since 2015, Moscow has helped Assad stay in power, providing aid, airpower and infrastructural investment that has allowed the regime to regain a majority of rebel-held provinces. If Russia decides its gambit in Syria is no longer worth the cost, either withdrawing its forces or looking to an alternative source of power to unify the country, Iran is at risk of losing its proxy influence in Syria.
Then there is the U.S., which will still have plenty of in-theater capabilities in the Middle East. The U.S. 5th Fleet and air defenses aren’t going anywhere. The Air Force still maintains multiple squadrons of fighter jets in Qatar, the United Arab Emirates and other undisclosed locations. And though the U.S. is reducing its physical footprint in the Middle East, it will increase its reliance on economic statecraft – sanctions, oil embargoes and foreign aid – as its primary mechanism to pressure Iran into financial and political collapse. Washington has already proposed extending the U.N. arms embargo on Iran, plans to sanction Iranian officials and companies that support the Assad regime under the Caesar Act, and is considering a blockade on Iran-Venezuela mutual assistance over recent Iranian oil shipments.
So while Iran may seem well suited to take the reins of the Middle East when the U.S. is away, the reality is more difficult. Its recession has gotten worse. Oil exports have crashed. The rial has been put on life support. The cost of living has skyrocketed. And there is a network of enemies and tenuous friendships that stand in its path to the Mediterranean. The U.S. departure from the Middle East may not create a proverbial power vacuum, but it will dramatically shift the regional balance of power in ways that will constrain Iran.
-
https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/16094/iran-iraq-christians
-
NAPSHOTS
Turkey Expands Its Military Operations in Northern Iraq
3 MINS READ
Jun 18, 2020 | 11:00 GMT
The escalation of Turkey’s operations against Kurdish militants in northern Iraq has shown Ankara’s willingness to encroach on Iraqi territory, even if it risks damaging ties with Baghdad. On June 17, Turkey deployed commandos in northern Iraq’s Haftanin region as part of Operation Claw-Tiger, a follow up to the air-intensive Operation Claw-Eagle launched the day before. Turkey's defense ministry described the operations as Turkey’s largest in the area in five years. Although Turkey has been conducting airstrikes in northern Iraqi territory against Kurdish militants and extremists for many years, the deployment of ground forces is an unusual development illustrating escalation in the urgency with which Turkey views these operations, which continue Ankara’s goal of targeting and destroying enclaves of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK).
The Iraqi government is limited in its ability to push back against these Turkish military operations, but such escalation will still risk triggering diplomatic breakdowns between Turkey and Iraq depending on the longevity and severity of the operations. Despite its objection to these operations on the basis of their violating Iraqi sovereignty, Iraq lacks economic leverage against Turkey because it depends in part on Turkey for trade. Moreover, Iraq’s federal government does not exert full territorial control over the Kurdistan Region of Iraq (KRI), nor over all of the military forces operating in the area. But if Turkey encroaches further south (away from the KRI toward federal Iraqi territory), or if it conducts operations near tense hot spots such as Sinjar or the oil-rich Kirkuk region, Iraq may feel compelled to defend itself rhetorically or even physically, though a viable military response remains unlikely.
The escalation of Turkey's operations against Kurdish militants has shown its willingness to encroach on Iraqi territory, even if it means jeopardizing its ties with Baghdad.
Turkey will stay committed to anti-Kurdish military operations in Iraq as well as in neighboring Syria, despite both regional and Western governments’ growing discomfort with Turkey’s broadening military footprint abroad. If it were to significantly escalate its military activity in northern Iraq, Turkey risks incurring sanctions and spoiling the well of diplomatic relationships both with its neighbors and with Western countries, especially in light of Turkey’s two other controversial deployments in Libya and in Syria. But Turkey will stay committed to preventing the development of an independent Kurdish state within or near its border, which it views as a serious territorial and sovereignty risk. Ankara cited the increase in PKK-affiliated attacks on Turkish bases in Syria and southern Turkey as the reason why it launched these latest phases of Operation Claw. It’s unclear, however, whether or not there’s actually been such an uptick in PKK activity across Syrian and Turkish territory. But what remains apparent is Turkey’s commitment to degrading the capabilities of any PKK-allied Kurdish militant groups both inside and outside Turkey.
-
https://www.sfgate.com/news/article/Lights-go-out-on-Lebanon-s-economy-as-financial-15419130.php
-
The Mideast Pudding Loses Its Theme
Shapeless and chaotic, the geopolitical situation looks little like it did at the end of the 20th century.
By Walter Russell Mead
July 29, 2020 6:28 pm ET
“Take away this pudding! It has no theme,” Winston Churchill is said to have exclaimed when confronted with an undistinguished dessert. The Middle East today resembles one of those puddings, but Uncle Sam may not send it back. A themeless pudding is better than a poisoned one.
It is hard to overstate how much the Middle East has changed in the past five years. The great themes and grand narratives that shaped the region in the 20th century have largely disappeared. This wasn’t a Fukuyaman “end of history,” in which one ideology absorbs or defeats all rivals. All the ideologies competing to shape the region have failed.
The U.S. hope that the region would reshape itself into a collection of peaceful democracies collapsed with the failures of the Arab Spring. There are still liberals in the Arab world, and some of them are secular, but nobody thinks they will drive policy for the foreseeable future.
The dream of a modern democratic form of Islamist governance, once represented by Recep Tayyip Erdogan and his AK Party in Turkey, has also died. Mr. Erdogan’s authoritarian drift, the overthrow of the Morsi government in Egypt, and the descent of the Syrian rebels toward more-radical Islamist ideologies leaves the moderate Islamists looking almost as naive and irrelevant as the liberals.
After ISIS, radical jihadist terror ideologies have also lost some appeal. A 2019 BBC/Arab Barometer poll showed large increases in the percentage of under-30 Arabs identifying as “not religious,” and trust in religious leaders has also waned.
OPINION LIVE Q&A
Are the U.S. and China Headed for a New Cold War?
Join WSJ Opinion’s Paul Gigot, Jillian Melchior and Jason Willick for a live online discussion and Q&A on China-U.S. relations on Thursday, July 30. Register Now with WSJ+
The fiery old Arab nationalism of Nasser’s day has faded out. Saddam Hussein was the last powerful pan-Arab leader; nobody has picked up the banner he let fall.
Great-power rivalries continue, but at a lower intensity than in the recent past. The one great power with the ability to impose itself on the region, the U.S., is limiting its commitments and reducing its exposure. With China also playing down any geopolitical interest in the region, the emerging superpower rivalry leaves the Middle East aside.
Among the lesser powers, Russia, Turkey and Iran are all engaged, but none seem poised for serious gains. The Soviet Union might have aspired to bring nearly the whole Middle East into its orbit, but Vladimir Putin’s Russia has more-modest ambitions. It has intervened in Syria and Libya, and looks to bolster its position as a power broker and oil partner, but it lacks the resources to impose a grand design on the region.
The Iranian mullahs also seem stymied. The corruption and economic weakness of the revolutionary regime has stripped Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s ideology of its power at home. The economic pressure from American sanctions limits the regime’s ability to promote its ambitions and support its proxies abroad.
And while Mr. Erdogan dreams of making Istanbul the new political and spiritual center of the Middle East, modern-day Turkey—like the Ottoman and Byzantine empires before it—is both blessed and cursed by geography. Its central position makes it a significant force in Mediterranean, Balkan, Caucasian and Middle Eastern affairs, but that centrality also leaves Turkey exposed on all sides to potentially hostile powers. At the moment its relations with the European Union, Russia, Iran, Israel, Egypt and Greece are uniformly poor.
The Arab countries are even less likely to drive events in the region. Iraq, Syria, Lebanon and Libya are war-torn, impoverished and divided. The Gulf Arabs are unable to bring peace to Yemen and clearly depend on Israel and the U.S. for help against Iran. Egypt, once the cultural and political powerhouse of the Arab world, has turned inward. Besides the Sisi government’s effort to contain Islamist opponents, the country must grapple with the collapse both of its tourism industry and the remittances from Egyptian workers in the Gulf, now sidelined by the coronavirus lockdown.
The status quo is neither benign nor sustainable. The wars in Syria, Yemen and Libya grind on with only perfunctory peacemaking efforts. Economic and political stagnation means that millions of young Arabs leave school every year with no jobs, little freedom and less hope.
For now, the muddled Middle East is a place where no one is happy but American interests are reasonably secure. Oil flows freely to the world’s markets; Israel is as safe as a country in the region can be; and the defense of this messy status quo doesn’t depend on large-scale deployments of U.S. power.
The American withdrawal from the Middle East began under President Obama as his administration’s hopes for democratic Islamism faded away. Interrupted briefly to fight ISIS, the withdrawal has continued under President Trump. A President Biden might try a reset with Iran and engage more diligently in peacemaking in Libya and Syria, but barring major new challenges, his administration would likely continue on the basic Trump-Obama course.
-
Never Trumper Thomas Friedman,NYT:
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/13/opinion/israel-uae.html?action=click&module=Opinion&pgtype=Homepage
"For once, I am going to agree with President Trump in his use of his favorite adjective: “huge.”
The agreement brokered by the Trump administration for the United Arab Emirates to establish full normalization of relations with Israel, in return for the Jewish state forgoing, for now, any annexation of the West Bank, was exactly what Trump said it was in his tweet: a “HUGE breakthrough.” "
-
Trump’s Mideast Breakthrough
The Israel-UAE accord discredits Obama’s regional vision.
By The Editorial Board
Aug. 13, 2020 7:19 pm ET
SAVE
PRINT
TEXT
212
The city hall in the Israeli coastal city of Tel Aviv is lit up in the colors of the United Arab Emirates national flag on Aug. 13.
PHOTO: JACK GUEZ/AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE/GETTY IMAGES
President Trump’s Mideast strategy has been to strongly back Israel, support the Gulf monarchies, and press back hard against Iranian imperialism. His liberal critics insisted this would lead to catastrophe that never came, and on Thursday it delivered a diplomatic achievement: The United Arab Emirates and Israel agreed to normalize relations, making the UAE the first Arab League country to recognize the Jewish state in 20 years.
The agreement is worth celebrating on its own terms but it also holds lessons for U.S. foreign policy. On regional strategy, this shows the benefit of the U.S. standing by its historic allies in the Middle East. President Obama shunned Israel and the Gulf states and sought to normalize Iran. His nuclear deal, an economic boon to Tehran, was a means to that end. But Iran does not want to be normalized. It’s a revolutionary regime that wants to disrupt the non-Shiite countries, spread its military influence from Syria to Lebanon to Yemen, and destroy Israel.
Mr. Trump’s pivot from Iran reassured Israel and the Gulf states and put the U.S. in a position to broker agreements. Israel and the UAE have worked together covertly, but the agreement will allow deeper economic ties and strengthen regional checks on Iranian power. UAE’s move could also spur Bahrain and possibly Oman to seek the benefits, in Jerusalem and Washington, from closer Israel ties. For decades Israel was treated as a pariah state in the Middle East, but that era may be ending.
As for the Israel-Palestine question, as part of the deal Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu agreed to call off annexation of parts of the West Bank. Public support in Israel for annexation was shaky. It was also opposed by the military establishment and would have carried diplomatic costs. With the UAE deal, Mr. Netanyahu can avoid annexation while protecting against criticism from his right.
The UAE can say it blocked annexation and protected the Palestinian cause. But the fact that annexation was a bargaining chip at all shows how the balance of power in the Israel-Palestine conflict has shifted in Israel’s favor. Arab states would previously have demanded far greater concessions in exchange for recognition. But the Iran threat, plus the Palestinians’ long-running rejectionism, has made that issue less important to Arab states.
Recall that mandarins of Obama foreign policy said moving the U.S. Embassy to Jerusalem would cause an Arab backlash. In fact, it is being followed by some of the closest Arab-U.S.-Israeli cooperation on record. Larger strategic realities in the Middle East are more important and are driving this change.
One question is whether a Joe Biden Administration would grasp this, or whether it would follow the Obama model of retrenchment against Iran plus browbeating Israelis for their supposed moral failings. The Biden campaign praised the deal while Ben Rhodes, an architect of Obama Administration policy, blasted it for “the total exclusion of Palestinians.”
Yet the coterie of anti-Israel and Iran-friendly Democratic foreign-policy hands may soon find their influence reduced. The UAE deal strengthens the anti-Iran coalition and withdraws an excuse—annexation—that the left could use to attack Israel. Whoever wins in November, the breakthrough leaves the U.S. in a better position in the Middle East.
-
https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/08/trump-middle-east-achievement/?utm_source=Sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=NR%20Daily%20Monday%20through%20Friday%202020-08-14&utm_term=NRDaily-Smart
-
Secret Ties Between U.A.E. and Israel Paved Way for Diplomatic Relations
Deal opens path for other Arab and Muslim nations that have warming relations with Israel, including Bahrain, Oman and Morocco
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, left, met in 2018 with the now-deceased Sultan Qaboos bin Said of Oman.
PHOTO: ISRAELI PRIME MINISTER'S OFFICE/ASSOCIATED PRESS
By Dion Nissenbaum
Aug. 14, 2020 2:06 pm ET
BEIRUT—The diplomatic breakthrough between Israel and the United Arab Emirates caps more than a quarter-century of deepening—but largely secret—business and security ties between the two countries that signals a major shift in the geopolitics of the Middle East.
A major driver bringing the Israelis and Emiratis together has been their shared distrust of Iran, which they view as a destabilizing force in the region, and their concern about its growing military capabilities. That drove increasing intelligence cooperation between the two, according to current and former U.S. officials.
Business connections also grew. Even though the two nations didn’t maintain direct air or telecommunications links, deals got done. It became possible to hear Israeli businessmen quietly speaking Hebrew in certain Dubai hotels.
“This was more or less something that has developed, I would say, organically” and in “many, many areas,” said Anwar Gargash, Emirati minister of state for foreign affairs. This week, he said, the establishment of diplomatic relations transformed it into “something tangible.”
Thursday’s agreement now paves the way for other Arab and Muslim nations that have warming relations with Israel, including Bahrain, Oman and Morocco, to follow the Emirati lead. Trump administration officials said they are cautiously optimistic that they will see similar steps by the end of this year.
Like the U.A.E., other Arab nations have quietly developed budding business, security and intelligence ties with Israel. Israeli businessmen have meetings with Saudi counterparts in Riyadh restaurants. In 2018, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu made a rare visit to Oman. Morocco is looking at opening up commercial flights with Israel. And last year, the foreign ministers of Bahrain and Israel had their first public meeting in Washington.
Bahrain hailed the deal, but didn’t respond to request for comment about its own relations with Israel. U.S. officials said they expect Bahrain will be the next to follow the Emirati lead.
A tentative outreach from Israel to the U.A.E in the 1990s planted the first seeds from which the relationship grew, according to people familiar with the talks. Israeli diplomats quietly met with Emirati intermediaries to talk about the U.A.E.’s efforts to buy new F-16 fighters from America.
Then, as now, Israel was concerned about maintaining its military edge over its Middle East neighbors. After discussing the deal with Emiratis, Israel told the U.S. it wouldn’t object to the sale.
There have been ups and downs. Relations took a hit in 2009, when the U.A.E. denied a visa to Shahar Pe’er, one of Israel’s most celebrated tennis players, who was planning to compete in the Dubai Tennis Championships.
She would have been the first professional Israeli athlete to compete in the U.A.E., but the initiative was derailed after organizers said they couldn’t let an Israeli compete weeks after an Israeli military campaign in the Palestinian-populated Gaza Strip. Venus Williams condemned the Emirati visa denial and Andy Roddick withdrew from the tournament in protest.
The next year, suspected Israeli assassins using fake passports killed a top Hamas leader at a Dubai. The killing threw relations into turmoil. The U.A.E. identified 11 suspects and sought international help in securing their arrest.
Despite these setbacks, Israeli and Emirati relations continued to deepen.
Emirati officials also bought sophisticated Israeli spyware, according to lawsuits filed against the company that created the hacking tools. The Emiratis were accused of using hacking tools to spy on domestic dissidents and rivals around the world. Emirati officials have denied those allegations.
Efforts to bring the unofficial Israeli-Emirati ties into the open gathered momentum when President Trump took office in 2017. Mr. Trump asked his son-in-law, Jared Kushner, to spearhead Middle East policy for the White House. Mr. Kushner set out to bridge the divide between Israel and vital Arab neighbors, like the U.A.E.
Last year, the Trump administration organized a Middle East security conference in Warsaw that brought Mr. Netanyahu together with Arab leaders concerned about Iran’s regional ambitions.
The conference paved the way for the U.S. to broker secret talks between the U.A.E. and Israel, mostly focused on Iran. Israeli and Emirati negotiators met in Washington, Abu Dhabi and Israel, according to U.S. officials.
Emirati business leaders were also reaching out to Israel. The U.A.E. extended an invitation to Israel to take part in the 2020 Dubai Expo. Israel was planning to set up a pavilion to showcase technology and its eagerness to work with the Gulf. The event was postponed because of coronavirus fears.
At the same time, the Trump administration was looking to secure a regional nonaggression pact between Israel and the U.A.E., Bahrain, Oman and Morocco, the officials said. But the initiative never got much traction, so the Trump administration then turned its attention toward brokering individual deals with each country.
The pandemic provided an unexpected opening for Israeli-Emirati detente. Last May, the first commercial flight from the U.A.E. landed in Israel with 16 tons of emergency aid to help Palestinians battle Covid-19. Israel and the U.A.E. then announced that researchers in the two countries would work together to fight the virus.
In June, Yousef Otaiba, the influential Emirati ambassador in Washington, wrote an op-ed in an Israeli newspaper which carried an explicit warning for Israel that its plans to annex massive Jewish settlements in the West Bank would torpedo its hopes of official ties with its Arab neighbors by killing the prospect that the area would become part of a future Palestinian state.
“In the U.A.E. and across much of the Arab world, we would like to believe Israel is an opportunity, not an enemy,” he wrote. “We face too many common dangers and see the great potential of warmer ties.”
There followed a new round of talks that produced Thursday’s breakthrough, in which Israel agreed to suspend plans to annex parts of the West Bank in return for a plan to normalize relations with the U.A.E.
—Stephen Kalin in Riyadh and Michael Bender in Washington contributed to this article.
-
Times of Israel, Michael Oren is Israel’s former ambassador to the United States
https://blogs.timesofisrael.com/upending-the-rules-about-peace-in-the-middle-east/
Stunning Israel-UAE deal upends the ‘rules’ about peace-making in Middle East
Setting aside a focus on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as the main impediment to peace, to work on the region’s other priorities, marks a fundamental shift that just might work
AUG 14, 2020, 6:39 PM
President Donald Trump announces an agreement to establish diplomatic ties between Israel and the United Arab Emirates (UAE), in the Oval Office of the White House on August 13, 2020, in Washington, DC. (Doug Mills-Pool/Getty Images/AFP)
President Donald Trump announces an agreement to establish diplomatic ties between Israel and the United Arab Emirates (UAE), in the Oval Office of the White House on August 13, 2020, in Washington, DC. (Doug Mills-Pool/Getty Images/AFP)
The impending peace agreement between Israel and the United Arab Emirates is more than just a stunning diplomatic breakthrough. It represents a fundamental shift in the paradigm of peace-making.
For more than 50 years, that paradigm has been based on seemingly unassailable assumptions. The first of these was that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict was the core dispute in the Middle East. Resolve it, and peace would reign throughout the region. The premise was largely dispelled by the Arab Spring of 2011 and the subsequent civil wars in Syria, Libya, Iraq, and Yemen. Still, a large body of decision-makers, especially from Europe and the United States, continued to regard a solution to Israel-Palestine as the panacea for many, if not most, of the Middle East’s ills. Then-secretary of state John Kerry’s intense shuttle diplomacy, which paralleled the massacre of half a million Syrians in 2012-14, proceeded precisely on this assumption.
The next assumption was that core of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict was settlement-building in Judea/Samaria, East Jerusalem, and Gaza. Freeze it and the dispute would be easily mediated. This, theory, too, collapsed in the face of facts. Israel withdrew from Gaza, uprooting 21 settlements, in 2005, and then froze settlements for much of 2009-10. The conflict nevertheless continued and even worsened, but that did not prevent foreign policymakers from persisting in the belief that peace is incompatible with settlements.
And, in addition to ceasing construction in the territories, Israel was expected to give virtually all of them up. This was the third assumption — that peace with the Arab world could only be purchased with Israeli concessions of land. This belief is as old as Israel itself. The first Anglo-American peace plans — Alpha and Gamma — were predicated on Israeli concessions in the Negev and elsewhere. After 1967, the principle applied to areas captured by Israel in the Six Day War and, after the return of Sinai to Egypt in 1982, to Judea, Samaria, and Gaza. The same secretary of state Kerry repeatedly warned Israel that failure to forfeit those areas would result in its total international isolation.
Yet another assumption held that “everyone knows what the final agreement looks like.” With minor modifications and territorial swaps, this meant that a Palestinian state would be created along the pre-1967 lines with a capital in East Jerusalem. The Palestinians would give up the so-called right of return for Palestinian refugees, agree to end the conflict with Israel and to cease all further claims, and to accept the formula of “two states for two peoples.” Israel, in turn, would remove dozens of settlements, redivide its capital, and outsource West Bank security either to the Palestinians or some international source. Of all the assumptions, this was the most divorced from reality. Not a single aspect of it was achievable. In fact, no one knew what final agreement looked like.
Finally, successive peace-makers assumed that the Palestinians, as the weaker party, had to be rewarded, especially when they left the negotiating table. The Palestinian Authority could promote terror and reject far-reaching peace plans and in return receive major increments of aid, as well as increased international recognition. Not surprisingly, this reinforcing behavior merely incentivized the Palestinians to ramp up their support for terror and to keep rejecting peace.
But now comes the Israel-UAE agreement and overturns each of these assumptions. It shows that resolving the Israel-Palestinian conflict is nowhere near as important as countering the Iranian threat and stimulating Middle East development. It proves that, in order to achieve peace with a powerful Arab state, Israel does not have to uproot a single settlement or withdraw from a meter of land. It opens the way to alternative approaches to addressing the dispute, one that is not dependent on Israelis and Palestinians offering concessions that neither can ever make. And the agreement punishes, rather than rewards, the Palestinians for leaving the table. It will not be surprising if, in the coming weeks, the Palestinian Authority begins to intimate its willingness to return.
For more than half of a century, the paradigm of Middle East peace-making has proven highly resistant to change. Yet even the fiercest advocates of that belief-system must recognize the seismic shift that will take place once the UAE-Israel treaty is signed. Some will no doubt insist on adhering to disproven assumptions. Those who care about peace will abandon them.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR Michael Oren, Israel’s former ambassador to the United States and a member of Knesset, is the author of Ally: My Journey Across the American-Israeli Divide(Random House, 2015).
-
https://news.yahoo.com/shifting-dynamics-mideast-pushed-israel-160341652.html
-
https://m.jpost.com/arab-israeli-conflict/five-countries-that-could-be-next-to-make-peace-with-israel-638821
-
http://carolineglick.com/the-uae-and-the-democratic-cair-partnership/
-
https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/09/jared-kushner-middle-east-peace-deals-critics-clueless/?utm_source=Sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=NR%20Daily%20Monday%20through%20Friday%202020-09-18&utm_term=NRDaily-Smart
-
October 9, 2020 View On Website
Open as PDF
The Great Divide Between the Arab People and Their Leaders
The Arab public has grown disillusioned with its leaders’ broken promises.
By: Hilal Khashan
The modern Arab state emerged in the 20th century, roughly around the time of the Arab League’s establishment in 1945. Since then, it has been dominated by a small group of religious, military and aristocratic elites who avoid discussions about the role of religion in politics and society. To this day, there remains tension between the masses and the ruling class on the legitimacy of the state, and how and why it should act. In most Arab countries, the state quickly dominated religious institutions: Subservient clerics were appointed, religious opposition movements were suppressed and Arab leaders, whether monarchical or presidential, systematically used religion to legitimize their grip on power.
From Egypt, where Anwar Sadat preferred to be called the faithful president, to Sudan, where President Jaafar Numayri implemented Sharia law, Arab leaders haven’t shied away from publicly declaring their religiosity. But what sets the ruling class apart from the people is not differences in their levels of religiosity but the political environment in which the elite must operate. Arab leaders must navigate complex regional and international norms that demand that they relinquish some of their critical cultural values to hold on to their positions of power. The ensuing dichotomy between the two groups centers on their different views on pan-Arabism, justice, fairness and Islamic solidarity.
Pan-Arabism
Arab leaders have always shown less enthusiasm for pan-Arab issues than the Arab public has itself. In 1946, King Farouk of Egypt invited the Arab heads of state to a summit in Alexandria to discuss Palestine’s deteriorating situation. The Arab public had high hopes that the meeting would lead to real change for the Palestinian people and the Arab world as a whole, but, although the Arab leaders committed to working closely to pursue joint interests, the summit did not live up to expectation. It did, however, establish a pattern for subsequent Arab summits.
(click to enlarge)
Indeed, Arab leaders frequently make bold promises but fail to deliver. In 1964, they agreed to divert the Jordan River’s tributaries to reduce the flow of water into Israel. But in subsequent conflicts with Arabs, Israel was able to seize the river’s headwaters. In 2018, Arab states decided to allocate $100 million monthly to improve the quality of life of impoverished Palestinians in the West Bank, but the plan was never implemented. Earlier this year, the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain signed peace agreements with Israel that undermined the Arab Peace Initiative – a proposal to bring an end to the Arab-Israeli conflict – which was announced at an Arab League summit in Beirut in 2002. The Arab League even rejected a proposal by the Palestinian Authority to condemn the UAE and Bahrain for violating the Arab peace deal.
At a summit in Khartoum following the 1967 Six-Day War, wealthy oil-producing states (Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Libya) displayed unusual solidarity by pledging to give financial aid to Egypt and Jordan, which had suffered financial and territorial losses in the war. Several other Arab countries – such as Iraq, Sudan, Algeria and Morocco – sent military contingents. But these were token gestures and did not contribute much to the war effort. In fact, the Saudis, who disliked Gamal Abdel Nasser intensely for supporting the coup in Yemen in 1962 that ignited a civil war between the Saudi-backed royalists and Egyptian-backed republicans, privately welcomed Egypt’s defeat in 1967.
In August 1990, one week after the Iraqi army invaded Kuwait, Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak convened an emergency summit in Cairo, ostensibly to find an Arab solution to the crisis. In reality, however, the Arab governments effectively paved the way for a U.S. military intervention. They could not agree on a draft resolution condemning the invasion by Iraqi forces and demanding an immediate and unconditional withdrawal. Mubarak himself supported the resolution and objected to a proposal allowing Iraq a face-saving exit from Kuwait. The Arab masses, however, sided with Iraq; massive demonstrations against the U.S.-led military buildup in Saudi Arabia erupted in many Arab countries, including Egypt.
When Operation Desert Storm began in January 1991, Iraq launched dozens of Scud missiles on Israel. Upon hearing of the news, the defense minister for Syria, which had sent an armored division to Saudi Arabia to join the U.S.-led coalition, knelt in prayer to thank God for the missile attack. His response is an example of the clash between the behavior that’s expected of Arab officials in diplomatic circles and the deeply held beliefs of many across the Arab world.
Justice, Fairness and Islamic Solidarity
Arabs would argue that these beliefs should inform not just cultural practices but also policy in Arab countries. Justice, fairness and brotherhood are cardinal components of Islamic law. Religious principles like these heavily influence Arab political thought and approaches to foreign policy matters like the Palestinian issue. So whereas Westerners think about this issue in practical terms and try to find realistic solutions, Arabs see it as a question of right and wrong.
Thus, Arab leaders know that their populations will view the signing of normalization agreements with Israel through this lens. The best they can do to circumvent public opposition is to assert that such agreements can pave the way for a peace deal that would benefit the Palestinians. They are essentially deceiving their publics to avoid looking like they have lost interest in the Palestinians and their conflict with Israel.
This problem also extends to issues involving non-Arab states. The UAE ambassador to India recently described New Delhi’s move to strip Kashmir of its autonomous status as a step toward peace, a comment that didn’t sit well with the people of the UAE. And despite China’s persecution of Uighur Muslims, Saudi Arabia has strengthened its economic ties with China over the past few years, a move that has been criticized in Arab media and among Arab dissidents.
Human rights organizations and Arab media outlets have rebuked Saudi Arabia for its harsh treatment of Muslim Rohingya refugees fleeing Myanmar, some of whom were incarcerated for years in horrible conditions. Although Gulf states have given the Rohingya humanitarian aid, they have done so mainly to escape criticism for otherwise ignoring their plight. Arab Muslims are socialized to believe that all Muslims, regardless of their ethnicity, are part of a community of believers and therefore have a right to unconditional assistance from their fellow Muslims.
The Split Widens
Arab people and Arab leaders do not see eye to eye on the role of the state. Arab governments have long been able to suppress their publics and the Islamist opposition thanks to their tools of coercion. But they are now in need of a new, mutually agreed upon social contract that can govern the relationship between the ruling elite and the people. The counter-revolutions defeated the Arab Spring uprisings, but critical societal problems and questions over the role of the state and ideology remained unresolved. Oil-rich countries in the Arab world were able to temporarily buy the loyalty of their citizens using their vast wealth, but instability will continue to plague them until their leaders realize that they need to reach a deal with the masses that respects their values. It will take only one country to break the cycle of elite domination; the others will then follow – which is precisely why counter-revolutionaries fight so hard to maintain the status quo.
-
Brief: A New U.S. Base in Syria
The drawdown from the Middle East was never going to happen overnight.
By: Geopolitical Futures
Editor’s Note: The following is a new content type we are calling Briefs. They are real-time updates on the world’s most pressing geopolitical events, broken down into a reader-friendly format. Please let us know if you have any questions or concerns.
Background: The United States is trying to reduce its military footprint in the Middle East so that it can focus on what it sees as greater national security threats elsewhere, namely the Indo-Pacific. It was always going to be a gradual process; Washington simply has too many security, energy and political interests there to abandon the region overnight.
What’s Happened: A recent spate of attacks conducted by militias backed by the Syrian and Iranian governments in Deir el-Zour, the oil-rich province in northeastern Syria, has prompted Washington to beef up its military presence there. Reports from local media suggest the U.S. Army has already begun construction of a base in the area, setting up a helipad for delivery of supplies and recruiting fighters from the Syrian Democratic Forces for security. Once completed, the base will be situated near several Syrian facilities along the western bank of the Euphrates River.
Bottom Line: The base’s proximity to the Syrian-Iraqi border is a clear indication that there is a renewed interest in Washington to counter the Syrian government – and, by extension, the Iranian and Russian governments that support it. Its construction doesn’t mean the U.S. is defying expectations that it will reduce its footprint in the Middle East. Leaving the region entirely was never the point, and from the U.S. perspective, it can’t afford to let such a strategically important and resource-rich swath of land to fall into the hands of foreign militias or, worse, the remnants of the Islamic State.
-
https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/16679/us-leader-middle-east
-
For Oman, It's the End of an Era
By: Hilal Khashan
When Qaboos bin Said declared himself sultan of Oman in 1970, he strove to modernize the country and disentangle it from the Middle East's political and religious problems. Under Qaboos, Oman established itself as a mediator for regional disputes and gateway for backchannel diplomacy. It advocated moderation, refrained from intervention in neighboring countries' domestic affairs, and built relations with nations around the world.
In January, Qaboos passed away after 50 years in power. Prior to his death, Qaboos, who did not have children, handpicked his cousin, Haitham bin Tariq, to succeed him. But the new ruler's ascendancy has coincided with profound changes in the geopolitical environment in which Oman now finds itself, challenging his ability to maintain the country's unique role as a modernizing force in the Arab region.
Oman's Evolution
Historically, Oman has had little interest in the Arab region, at least in part because the Islamic sect that dominates the country, Ibadism, is uncommon in other parts of the region. Ibadism emerged after the Battle of Siffin was fought between two rival caliphs in 657. The sect's adherents opposed the two factions and called themselves "the people of straightness." They sheltered in Oman, where they established their imamate in the country's hinterland in 749. The rise of the Ibadis predated the formal appearance of Sunni and Shiite Islam. They avoided getting involved in the rivalry between the two groups, whom they called "the people of opposition."
Oman's Maritime Empire, 1856
(click to enlarge)
In 1507, the Portuguese invaded Oman to reroute the spice trade to the Cape of Good Hope, but in 1650, the British-backed Omani army re-established the country's independence. Oman then created a vast maritime empire that lasted from 1696 until 1856 and stretched from the coasts of Pakistan and Iran to the Gulf of Aden, and from Somalia to Mozambique. The Sultanate of Zanzibar in East Africa split from Oman in 1861. Oman held on to its exclave in Pakistan's port city of Gwadar until 1958.
The country carried its neutral approach to foreign affairs into the 20th century. It opted to partner with Britain and India over its Middle Eastern neighbors and still has close relations with New Delhi, despite the Gulf Cooperation Council's preference for partnerships with Islamabad. The Arab regional order in the second half of the 20th century did not appeal to Oman, which loathed the so-called progressive Arab republics and was wary of Saudi Arabia's imperiousness.
Qaboos carved out a niche for Oman as an international peace negotiator, a role well suited to the Omanis, who are known as being conservative, modest and averse to the limelight. He adopted a subtle and balanced approach to foreign policy as he built trust with other nations and avoided joining irrational and self-destructive alliances. He had an open-door policy with other world leaders, characterized by wisdom, courtesy and persistence.
Qaboos modeled Oman as an independent and sovereign Arab-Islamic state. He was not an ideological ruler and did not particularly support the cause of Arab nationalism or of building an Islamic caliphate. He maintained relations with China and the Soviet Union, despite their support for the Dhofar rebels during their 1962-75 insurgency, believing that mutual interests supersede chronic enmity.
Qaboos' foreign policy centered on political realism and impartiality. He welcomed Egyptian President Anwar Sadat's attendance at the Camp David peace talks with Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin that yielded a breakthrough agreement in September 1978. Qaboos made it clear that he enthusiastically supported any attempt to make peace in the Middle East. Unlike many other Arab states, Oman did not sever relations with Egypt after the 1979 peace treaty with Israel, or with Iraq after Saddam Hussein's invasion of Kuwait in 1990. It also maintained ties with the Syrian regime following the 2011 uprising, opposed the overthrow of President Bashar Assad, and took a firm stand against the opposition's radical Islamist movements.
Gulf Cooperation Council Countries
(click to enlarge)
Neither did Qaboos take sides between the U.S. and Iran. He accepted military assistance from Iran in the conflict against the Dhofar insurgents and maintained friendly relations with Tehran after the 1979 Islamic Revolution. He also sent troops to join the U.S. coalition after Iraq invaded Kuwait and helped Washington relay messages to Tehran following the deterioration of their relations after the 1979 hostage crisis.
However, Qaboos refused to involve Oman in the Saudi-led war against the Houthis in Yemen and warned Saudi King Salman against getting trapped in an unwinnable conflict. Unlike Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, Oman did not relocate its embassy from Houthi-controlled Sanaa to Aden following the outbreak of the war. Qaboos also urged King Salman to engage Iran and identify areas of mutual interest instead of draining Saudi resources on an avoidable war. He was intent on securing peace and stability in the Persian Gulf and Yemen because they directly affected Oman.
Regional Challenges
Saudi Arabia and the UAE never liked Qaboos' independent foreign policy, especially his cordial relations with Iran. Though he slowly opened up the country to the Arab region and joined the Arab League in 1971, he preferred to keep Oman out of the region's instability, including the Arab-Israeli conflict. He even built bridges with Israel and, in 2018, invited Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to Muscat.
Haitham is intent on following the example Qaboos set. But Abu Dhabi and Riyadh will likely try to make doing so difficult. Mohammad bin Salman still considers Saudi Arabia the standard-bearer for the GCC states, and Mohammad bin Zayed aspires to transform the UAE into a maritime power. They have not forgiven Oman for playing a role in facilitating the Iranian nuclear deal in 2015.
The rise of the UAE poses a threat to Oman's foreign policy, even its territorial integrity. Abu Dhabi has been trying for years to extend its authority to Oman's Musandam exclave, which overlooks the Strait of Hormuz, compelling Muscat to impose a ban on the sale of land in border areas to foreigners. In Yemen's al-Mahrah governorate, which borders Oman, the UAE has provided food, medical supplies and cash to tribal leaders and established a loyal military force. Abu Dhabi claims that its actions there are meant to stop Oman from smuggling arms to the Houthis. Oman has denied the charge and accused the UAE of trying to topple the government in Muscat or force it into submission. Over the past decade, Oman has reported uncovering two spy cells that reported to UAE intelligence. During the Dhofar insurgency, the rebels used weapons that originated from al-Mahrah.
A Foreign Policy Hole
Since the election of U.S. President Donald Trump in 2016, the value of Oman's peacemaking credentials has been somewhat diminished, since Trump has given Saudi Arabia and the UAE a free hand in the Arabian Peninsula and tolerated Abu Dhabi's ventures in the Horn of Africa, the Red Sea and Libya. Meanwhile, Oman is also facing declining oil revenues, youth unemployment exceeding 13 percent and a fiscal deficit reaching 20 percent. The cash-strapped country's lack of liquidity will curb the government's ability to meet its obligations and erode its legitimacy. (After the UAE and Israel normalized relations in September, Oman expressed its support for the deal and immediately reaped the benefits: the approval of a $2 billion bridge loan from a UAE bank to the Bank of Muscat.)
Qaboos was the architect of Oman's foreign policy and its unique role as a peace facilitator. However, his personalized leadership style did not support the creation of state institutions. The country has failed to establish a professional ministry of foreign affairs and train competent staff. Qaboos' death left a hole in Oman's foreign policy that Haitham will find difficult to fill.
-
https://www.defenseone.com/threats/2020/11/outgoing-syria-envoy-admits-hiding-us-troop-numbers-praises-trumps-mideast-record/170012/
-
"https://www.defenseone.com/threats/2020/11/outgoing-syria-envoy-admits-hiding-us-troop-numbers-praises-trumps-mideast-record/170012/"
has this site been erased
not censored yet?
-
Brief: Tensions Flare in Iraq Again
A busy week or so has pitted Washington against Tehran.
By: Geopolitical Futures
Background: Tensions heightened earlier this year after the United States killed Qassem Soleimani, the head of the elite Quds Force in Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. Tehran responded by bombing U.S. installations, even as the U.S. followed through with plans of a modest withdrawal of troops. They settled into an informal truce last month.
What Happened: A lot, it turns out. Iran-backed militias operating in Iraq have taken credit for the rocket attacks last night on the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad. Notably, the attacks come just after an announcement that the U.S. State Department would impose weekly sanctions on Tehran, and after reports surfaced that U.S. President Donald Trump considered striking one of Iran’s nuclear facilities. Over the past 24 hours, the U.S. also announced a military scale-down from Iraq (from 3,000 troops to 2,500) and U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo called Prime Minister Mustafa al-Kadhimi, a reformist who Iran wishes to reign in, to discuss bilateral ties. And just a few hours after the attacks, Iraq and Saudi Arabia, Iran’s regional rival, agreed to reopen a land border at the Arar crossing – some 30 years after they severed diplomatic ties after the invasion of Kuwait. Naturally, it was extremely unpopular among Iraq’s Shiite and pro-Iran factions.
Bottom Line: Though a U.S. military withdrawal from Iraq certainly gives Iran something to celebrate, Tehran and its proxies don’t want to take any chances; they want Baghdad and Washington to stick to their timelines and get out as soon as possible. But the Trump administration is keen to up the pressure on Iran before Joe Biden takes office in January, likely to discourage the president-elect from revitalizing the Iran nuclear deal. It’s a risky strategy, one that carries a high risk of military escalation.
-
https://www.dailywire.com/news/historic-netanyahu-meets-saudi-prince-in-saudi-arabia-reports-say
-
https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/16866/biden-trump-middle-east
-
The Kurdistan Regional Government: Divided and Dysfunctional
Recent protests are a sign of the growing anger in the region.
By: Hilal Khashan
In a 17th-century poem titled “Mem and Zin,” renowned Kurdish poet Ahmad Khani wrote: “If only there were harmony among us, if we were to obey a single one of us … we would perfect our religion, our state, and would educate ourselves in learning and wisdom.” Khani’s work, which inspired many modern-day Kurdish nationalist writers and activists, was often critical of the ever-present fractiousness within Kurdish communities. His warnings about the dangers of division are nowhere more applicable than the Kurdistan Regional Government.
Established in 1992, the autonomous region in northern Iraq was once a beacon of hope for Kurdish groups in other countries that had yet to achieve similar levels of self-governance. But tribal loyalties continue to dominate in Iraqi Kurdistan, where Kurds are increasingly frustrated by an ongoing economic crisis and their leaders’ lack of action.
Turbulent Path to Autonomy
The path to Kurdish autonomy in Iraq was not an easy one. During the First World War, the British promised Kurdish leader Sheikh Mahmud Barzanji independence for the Kurds in exchange for his cooperation against the Ottoman Empire. They reneged on their promise but instead appointed Barzanji governor of Sulaymaniyah province in 1921, hoping to use the Kurds as a buffer between Iraq and the Ottomans. He then took advantage of the 1920 Iraqi revolt and British preoccupation with pacifying the country, declaring himself the king of Kurdistan in 1922. The British unseated him in 1924, and his futile uprisings ended in 1931.
The center of the Kurdish movement shifted to Iran during the Second World War, especially after the Soviet army occupied northern Iran in 1941. In 1946, Qazi Muhammad announced the creation of the Mahabad Republic in Soviet-controlled Iran. Mustafa Barzani, who had become a prominent Iraqi Kurdish leader, relocated to Mahabad and became minister of defense. The Iranian army crushed the fledgling republic immediately after the Soviets pulled out of Iran – less than a year after its formation. Before fleeing to the Soviet Union, however, Barzani established the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP).
After a 1958 military coup overthrew the Hashemite monarchy, Iraqi Prime Minister Abd al-Karim Qasim invited Barzani to return to Baghdad. Qasim, who was unpopular among Iraq’s Sunnis, shortsightedly armed the KDP and dragged the Kurds into an intra-Arab rivalry. In 1959, Barzani allowed his militia to quell the anti-Qasim Mosul rebellion, which engendered an enduring perception among Sunni and Shiite Iraqi Arabs that the Kurds are undependable partners.
Realizing that Kurdish statehood was unattainable, the KDP started an insurgency that lasted from 1961 until 1970, when the Iraqi government and Barzani signed an autonomy agreement. The deal soon collapsed because the Iraqi government refused to include oil-rich Kirkuk, Khanaqin and Sinjar regions in the agreement. With Iranian encouragement and military assistance, the Kurds in 1974 resumed their attacks on the Iraqi army. However, a 1975 agreement between Iran and Iraq on the Shatt al-Arab waterway ended the shah’s support for the Kurds, which led to the end of the insurgency.
Its defeat led to the defection of Jalal Talabani, who then established the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) in Syria with like-minded, secular Kurdish intellectuals. Toward the end of the 1980-88 Iraq-Iran War, and in response to the PUK’s alliance with Iran, the Iraqi military launched the Halabja chemical attack, which killed 8,000 Kurdish civilians. Talabani traveled to Washington in 1990 and offered to join the U.S.-led coalition against Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait.
Fractured Government
The 1991 Gulf War once again gave Iraqi Kurds hope that independence was within reach. Iraq’s defeat in the war triggered two simultaneous uprisings: one led by Shiites in the south and another led by Kurds in the north. Regime forces crushed both within a month. Backed by the U.S., which imposed a no-fly zone over northern Iraq, PUK and KDP fighters joined forces in a rare show of unity and seized control of most Kurdish-populated areas. Aware that neither Turkey nor Iran would tolerate a Kurdish state next door, the U.S. urged the Kurds to limit their self-determination demands to autonomy.
In 1992, Iraqi Kurdistan held its first parliamentary elections. Both the PUK and KDP claimed they won a majority, and to avoid a conflict, they split the 100 seats reserved for Kurdish voters equally. The parliament then founded the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG), the official governing body in Iraqi Kurdistan, which is composed of four provinces. The PUK controls Sulaymaniyah province and is an urban party that leans toward social democracy; the KDP prevails in Dohuk and Irbil provinces and is mainly a rural and tribal party. Geography has influenced their regional affiliations: The KDP maintains close relations with Turkey, and the PUK is on good terms with Iran.
Kurdish Groups in Iraq
(click to enlarge)
Relations between two have been contentious and, until recently, even bloody. (They fought a civil war between 1994 and 1997.) Their leaders have continuously failed to cooperate, and their rank and file refuse to associate with each other.
In 2017, KRG President Masoud Barzani called a nonbinding independence referendum, despite warnings from Baghdad. After 93 percent of voters voted for independence, the Iraqi army launched an offensive that seized 40 percent of KRG territory, including Kirkuk, and nearly half its oil fields. Barzani resigned, and the presidency was left vacant for 18 months. In keeping with the KDP’s history, Barzani’s nephew, Nechirvan, became KRG president and his son, Masrour, became prime minister.
Financial Crisis
In addition to its other challenges, the KRG is in the midst of a financial crisis, which has left the government unable to pay public employees. Kurdish officials blame low oil prices and declining transfers from Baghdad, but there are also serious underlying causes for the region’s economic woes.
Despite the influx of vast amounts of oil money, the KRG failed to launch a single project aimed at employing Kurdish youth. (Estimates suggest that more than 1 million young people will enter the job market over the next few years.) Sulaymaniyah province saw a series of violent protests in December that targeted the KRG – but they echoed similar protests that have erupted in Baghdad, Basra and Nasiriyah. Ordinary Iraqis, irrespective of their ethnicity or ideology, are frustrated with the country’s economic condition and the lack of action from political parties claiming to represent them.
In the KRG, however, these frustrations have been directed at the KDP and PUK, which monopolize the regional government’s resources. They have failed to introduce political and administrative reforms that could modernize the KRG political system. They have also closely guarded their hold on power and failed to implement measures that would increase accountability and transparency. Kurds have viewed with indignation the lavish spending of government officials and the elite class in the capital, Irbil. The ostentatious lifestyles of the nouveau riche business class, who partnered in joint ventures with neo-tribal party officials, were a stark contrast to impoverished Kurds who were not paid their salaries.
Betrayed
The protests in Sulaymaniyah last month were a result of these long-simmering tensions. Protesters attacked the offices of all the parties active in the region – not just the PUK, which dominates Sulaymaniyah – sending a forceful message that politicians from every party had failed to defend the interests of their constituents.
In the 2018 KRG parliamentary elections, the PUK won 21 seats, three more than its 2013 total but 29 fewer than it had won in the KRG’s first elections in 1992. The Movement for Change, also known as Gorran, lost five seats in 2018 (for a total of 12) compared to 2013, while the Islamic parties gained two (also for a total of 12). The KDP, meanwhile, increased its total from 34 to 45.
It’s unlikely, however, that the KDP will hold on to its gains given the deep economic crisis facing the KRG. The party’s 2018 result was probably related to the referendum on independence, which is popular among the Kurds. As the recent protests show, the Kurds feel betrayed by the PUK and KDP after generations of suffering war, abuse, discrimination and ethnic cleansing. They see their politicians as reactionary feudal chiefs masquerading as Western-minded nation-builders.
Kurdish leaders, meanwhile, have accused the region’s enemies of stirring dissension to sabotage Kurdish prospects for statehood. The truth is that the leaders themselves have failed to set aside their own interests to build on the autonomy the region won in 1992. Some PUK representatives recently even called for creating a Kurdish political entity in Sulaymaniyah province separate from the KRG. While waging fratricidal wars, they have lost sight of centuries of struggle.
-
https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/17032/trump-successes-middle-east
-
A recent United Nations Security Council report concluded that ISIS currently controls more than 10,000 fighters, organized in small cells in Syria and Iraq.
https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/17023/isis-return-biden
After Trump, we barely have a thread anymore for Middle East war.
Here we go again...
-
https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/17023/isis-return-biden
-
https://www.defenseone.com/threats/2021/02/exclusive-photos-deadly-rocket-attack-us-base-iraq/172095/
-
By: Geopolitical Futures
Background: Russia’s strategy in the Middle East involves active balancing between actors including Iran, Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Israel. It often uses the leader of the Chechen Republic, Ramzan Kadyrov, as a mediator in relations with the Muslim world. Kadyrov is an ideal candidate because of his Muslim background and deep ties with the Kremlin.
What Happened: Kadyrov traveled on Thursday to the United Arab Emirates, where he met with the crown prince of Abu Dhabi, Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, and passed on a message from Russian President Vladimir Putin. Putin reportedly hailed the “productive and multifaceted” relations between Russia and the UAE, and thanked the Emirates for supplying the North Caucasus with personal protective equipment to deal with the pandemic. Kadyrov highlighted the role of Emirati projects in developing Chechnya and discussed other areas of cooperation.
Bottom Line: A visit of this nature between these two figures means Putin wants something from the Arab world. It’s notable that the visit came on the heels of a meeting between Russia, Turkey and Iran on the Syrian peace process. Essentially, Russia continues to engage multiple sides to strengthen its influence. As long as the basic structure of the nascent Israel-Arab coalition remains unstable, conditions will be favorable for Moscow to advance its diplomatic strategy.
-
https://twitter.com/CNN/status/1362604595533533184?utm_source=piano&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=2906&pnespid=i7l0pKdSHleN4r9WsX5AQ74Ca5TkM7rOkdsUBZE.
-
https://www.defenseone.com/threats/2021/02/troops-describe-night-fire-shadowy-iraqi-militants/172172/
-
No Peace for the Middle East
The Arab-Israeli normalization deals are unlikely to bring stability to the fractured region.
By: Hilal Khashan
The Middle East’s location has long made it an arena for great power competition. Over the past few centuries, the region has seen conflict between the Ottoman and Iranian empires, and Russian and Western meddling in its affairs. The Anglo-French establishment of the Middle East state system in the 20th century failed to bring stability. Iran and Turkey went on to build the foundations of a modern state on their own, and the newly rising Arab states, divided as they are, have not managed to come to terms with the creation of a Jewish state in Palestine. The Egyptian and Jordanian peace treaties with Israel also failed to spread peace and stability throughout the region.
Today, the recent normalization deals between Israel and the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Sudan and Morocco once again promise to open a new chapter in Middle East relations. But its complex problems and diverse political landscape mean peace is still out of reach for this fractious region.
Relying on the West
When former U.S. President Donald Trump visited Saudi Arabia in May 2017 to attend the Riyadh summit, he announced the formation of the Middle East Strategic Alliance, a kind of security partnership that would help fill the power vacuum in the region. He wanted to create a unified defense mechanism and common economic and energy platform that would prevent China and Russia from filling the void. Both Turkey and Iran boycotted the summit, believing that it was part of an effort to undermine their influence. Either way, the MESA never materialized because Egypt, Jordan and Qatar did not see Iran as a security threat, and Kuwait and Oman preferred to mostly stay out of the region’s explosive conflicts.
In fact, most Arab countries, with the exception of Saudi Arabia, did not take the MESA seriously, believing it would turn them into pawns rather than allies. The project was never likely to stem the region’s chronic instability as it ignored the local issues – state repression and regime intolerance of peaceful opposition – that so often cause it.
But the U.S.-brokered plan was emblematic of a larger problem: Arab countries have been largely unable to cooperate with each other and often prefer to rely on a Western mediator. The Arab League’s 1950 Joint Defense and Economic Cooperation Treaty collapsed because Egypt and Saudi Arabia feared domination by Iraq’s Hashemites. The Joint Arab Command, established in 1964 as a platform from which to confront Israel, quickly became defunct, making Israel’s stunning victory in the 1967 Six-Day War even easier.
When Egypt made peace with Israel in 1978, the Arabs held a summit in Baghdad and decided to establish the Eastern Front between Syria and Iraq to make up for the loss of Egypt. But the project failed because of the personal rivalry between Hafez Assad and Saddam Hussein. In 1991, right after the end of Operation Desert Storm, the Gulf Cooperation Council states signed the Damascus Declaration with Syria and Egypt, both of which agreed to provide troops to help support Arab security, but the agreement was later scrapped because the Saudis preferred to rely on Washington’s support instead .
For many in the Middle East, the ideal scenario would be for Saudi Arabia to establish an alliance with Israel and Turkey as a countervailing force against Iranian regional ambitions. This makes sense: Israel is eager to partner with the larger Gulf countries such as Saudi Arabia and the UAE, and Turkey has of late tried to befriend Arab countries. But such an alliance is still beyond reach. Ankara has had little success in wooing Arab states, with the exception of Qatar and Libya’s beleaguered Government of National Accord. And the Saudis are paranoid about trusting their fellow Arabs, believing they're only interested in Saudi money and in subverting Riyadh's rule. But with the Biden administration scaling back ties with Saudi Arabia, Riyadh will need to rethink its hesitancy.
Emerging Israel-UAE Alliance
For the UAE, its rapprochement with Israel is about more than just normalizing relations. It believes their relationship can evolve into an economic and military alliance. Abu Dhabi has strategic needs that it believes Israel can help meet in areas such as agricultural technology, food self-sufficiency, cybersecurity, tourism, high-tech and commerce. It sees itself and Israel as having modern economies and efficient armed forces that can change the shape of the region. Abu Dhabi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan wants to transform the UAE into an economic empire safeguarded by a strong military and a network of relations with strategic partners, chief among them the U.S. and Israel. (Notably, China had a mixed response to the Israeli-UAE peace accord. It issued a vague but measured response that warned against ignoring the Palestinian question and further radicalizing the region.)
Israel and the Arab League
(click to enlarge)
Israel and the UAE have different expectations of the normalization deal. Abu Dhabi’s crown prince has delusions of grandeur and thinks Israel needs him to legitimize its existence. As a hub for air transport, education, culture and media, the UAE believes it can link Israel to the region and thus to the rest of the world. Israel, on the other hand, wants to build an alliance against Iran. It’s unlikely that the UAE would go along with such a project, especially since the Biden administration is pursuing a diplomatic path to solving the Iran nuclear issue, and the UAE would not join an alliance that brings with it the risk of war without U.S. backing.
Their prospects for economic cooperation are also limited. The UAE’s economic development hinges on its ability to maintain domestic stability, which goes hand in hand with Sheikh Mohammed’s policy of fostering good relations with military dictators such as Egypt’s Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi, Libya’s Khalifa Haftar and Sudan’s Abdel-Fattah Burhan, and ambitious leaders like Saudi Arabia’s Mohammad bin Salman. A potential armed conflict with Iran is therefore out of the question.
Indeed, in many ways, their economic interests don’t align. Israel plans to link its Haifa Port to the Maritime Silk Road component of Beijing’s Belt and Road Initiative. The project bypasses the Persian Gulf, to avoid the volatile Strait of Hormuz, and will effectively reduce the significance of the UAE’s Jebel Ali Port, currently the largest in the Middle East.
China's Silk Road in the Middle East
(click to enlarge)
It’s therefore unlikely that the UAE-Israeli entente will go beyond security cooperation, which was already in the works between Israel and several Arab states for years, including with Jordan since 1948, Egypt since the Camp David agreement, and the Gulf countries since the 2002 Arab Peace Initiative. In the Middle East, alliances with Israel are difficult to build because Israel inevitably emerges as the leading force and its Arab allies the junior partners. The balance of power tilts decisively in Israel’s favor.
Russo-Turkish-Iranian Triangle
The two major Middle East players left out of the emerging Arab-Israeli alliance are, of course, Turkey and Iran – both of which have complicated relationships with an external power that often looms over many regional conflicts, Russia. To some extent, Russia, Turkey and Iran seem to have more bringing them together than pulling them apart. Russia and Turkey’s total trade rose from $4.5 billion in 2000 to $25.7 billion in 2018. The balance of trade favors Russia because of Turkey’s import of Russian oil and gas. Turkey also has a negative trade balance with Iran because of its imports of Iranian energy. U.S. sanctions on Iran, however, have hurt trade between the two countries – which shrank from $25.7 billion in 2013 to $3.4 billion in 2020. Turkey hopes to increase trade with Russia to $100 billion and with Iran to $30 billion.
However, the ideological and historical differences among the three countries, as well as their rivalry as regional powers, rule out any chance of them becoming close allies. Russia and Turkey have different agendas in Syria, and Ankara’s intrusion into the South Caucasus, especially in support of Azerbaijan in the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, irritates Moscow.
Turkey’s relationship with Iran is also complex. The two countries need each other economically and are keen on keeping channels of communication open despite their sharp political divisions. In the absence of a unified Arab world, competition between Turkey and Iran is likely to eventually escalate as they seek to dislodge each other in their near abroad, especially in Syria and Iraq.
Syria gives Iran access to the Mediterranean, Hezbollah in Lebanon and the Israeli border. For Turkey, Syria provides land access to Lebanon, Jordan and the Arabian Peninsula. As for Iraq, it was for centuries a battleground between the Ottoman Empire and Persia. Saddam Hussein’s ouster in 2003 made Iran the dominant force in Iraq, but Turkey is also trying to establish a foothold there – which could revive their historical rivalry in the country. With proven oil reserves totaling 115 billion barrels, which could rise to 215 billion once the rest of the country is explored, Iraq will be a major focus for Turkey in the future.
For now, however, Turkey’s reliance on Iran (and Russia) for oil and gas is the main factor preventing tensions from escalating. But Ankara is also seeking alternative sources. It already has a stake in the Caspian Sea’s oil reserves through the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan Pipeline, the Trans Adriatic Pipeline, the Trans Anatolian Pipeline and the land-based component of China’s BRI. It’s also drilling for gas in the Eastern Mediterranean, though many countries have expressed concern about its operations there.
Real peace in the Middle East remains elusive. Trump’s MESA project did not take off, and the Israel-UAE alliance is unlikely to lead to any concrete changes. Turkey and Iran may find it challenging to get over their past disagreements and concentrate on potential economic cooperation.
The one remaining factor is China. It has succeeded in establishing economic ties with U.S. allies in the region, especially Israel, Saudi Arabia and the UAE, without compromising its business links to Iran and Turkey. But its investments will not bring prosperity to the Middle East. The Chinese project requires regional stability and willingness to cooperate, both of which are woefully absent in the Middle East. What’s more, China has become increasingly authoritarian. Its Social Credit System is an attempt to control all aspects of people’s lives in China and could be spread to other parts of the world as part of the BRI. In a region that remains gripped by violence and factiousness, China’s rise will not bode well.
-
https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/17148/lessons-middle-east
-
Iran, Azerbaijan and Armenia. Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif is in Azerbaijan to meet with President Ilham Aliyev. They will discuss bilateral relations and a host of regional and international issues, according to Iran’s diplomatic service. Zarif will visit Armenia next.
Israel, the U.S. and Azerbaijan. Not so coincidentally, the United States and Israel have also reached out to Azerbaijan in support of its government. President Joe Biden wrote a letter to Aliyev thanking him for his country’s contributions to energy diversification in Europe and his commitment to helping to negotiate a long-term political settlement of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict. Israeli media, meanwhile, has been trumpeting statements made by Aliyev highlighting cooperation in the defense industry. Israeli press also reported on Tuesday comments made by Aliyev late last week about cooperation in the defense industry and emphasized Azerbaijan’s “full access” to Israeli defense industry products. The comments were made during an event hosted by the Nizami Ganjavi International Center, which focused on prospective cooperation in the South Caucasus.
Russian bombers in Syria. Russia flew Tu-22m3 long-range bombers to its air base in Khmeimim, Syria, for the first time. From there, the aircraft will conduct training exercises over the Mediterranean Sea and will soon return to Russia. The true purpose of the deployment is to show that the air base is capable of
-
https://thefederalistpapers.org/us/biden-sharply-reducing-patriot-missile-defense-systems-middle-east-despite-hard-line-leaders-election?utm_source=Email&utm_medium=brief-FP&utm_campaign=dailyam&utm_content=2021-06-21&ats_es=%5B-MD5-%5D
-
https://thefederalistpapers.org/us/biden-sharply-reducing-patriot-missile-defense-systems-middle-east-despite-hard-line-leaders-election?utm_source=Email&utm_medium=brief-FP&utm_campaign=dailyam&utm_content=2021-06-21&ats_es=%5B-MD5-%5D
I wonder if he should be tried for treason or just voted out in the next election.
-
Yes.
-
For Iraq, an Arab Alliance Remains Illusive
The latest attempt at building an Arab coalition is likely to suffer a similar fate as its predecessors.
By: Hilal Khashan
In August 2020, Iraqi Prime Minister Mustafa al-Kadhimi unveiled the New Sham project, an initiative aimed at fostering economic integration between Iraq, Egypt and Jordan, as a prelude to full-scale political, security and military cooperation. The endeavor follows in the footsteps of the short-lived Arab Cooperation Council, which was founded by Iraq, Jordan, Egypt and North Yemen in 1989 but collapsed after Iraq invaded Kuwait in 1990. The two plans are nearly identical in their scope and substance and resemble the Arab League’s 1945 charter, which advocated the promotion of inter-Arab cooperation. However, al-Kadhimi’s project is unlikely to fare much better than its predecessors. The three signatories to the New Sham project lack the political will and resolve to seeing it through.
Arabs Search for Allies
In 1954, Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser argued that Egypt’s economic development hinged on developing close ties with the Arab countries in West Asia. He believed merging Egypt’s skilled labor force with Arab oil was the key to the region’s modernization. Unfortunately, he failed to achieve his goal and ended up antagonizing nearly all Arab rulers.
In 1989, Iraq emerged victorious – though economically devastated – from its eight-year war with Iran. Shunned by the Gulf Cooperation Council, it looked to its war-time allies, namely Egypt, Jordan and North Yemen, for support. They had similar issues – regional isolation and denial of access to the GCC, especially Egypt, which wanted to reengage with the Arab world following a decade of ostracism after making peace with Israel.
The New Sham Project
(click to enlarge)
Today, the countries of the defunct ACC continue to grapple with their political and economic problems. Egypt, whose relations with the GCC countries are less than amicable, has failed to sway Ethiopia to agree to a deal over the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam and feels abandoned regionally and internationally. Jordan is coping with an existential split among the Hashemite royals and feels threatened by Israel’s West Bank policy. Iraq’s al-Kadhimi, meanwhile, hopes to use the New Sham project, which he developed with American prodding, to arrest Iran’s dominance of his country by strengthening ties with its Arab neighbors. His main rationale for the project is that it could help connect Egypt’s vast labor force, Iraq’s abundant oil wealth and Jordan’s strategic location.
An Unworkable Project
But al-Kadhimi’s broader goal is to transform Iraq into a mediator between regional powers instead of an arena for competition. Citing their shared Arab destiny, Baghdad is eager to promote an alliance that, in addition to Egypt and Jordan, includes Saudi Arabia and Syria. (Syria’s membership in the Arab League was suspended in 2011.) Over the weekend, however, Jordanian King Abdullah and Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sissi attended a summit in Baghdad – the first visit to Iraq by an Egyptian president since 1990 – that produced few tangible results. The leaders released a weak declaration that failed to promote European Union-style economic cooperation, linkages between the Egyptian and Iraqi power grids and unrestricted cross-border movement of workers and tourists. The summit’s cliched closing statement also urged Israel to end its obstructionist measures and expressed solidarity with Egypt over its water dispute with Ethiopia.
Iraq's Increasing Energy Dependance
(click to enlarge)
Iraq says it is willing to provide oil-poor Egypt with oil supplies at low prices in exchange for some of its surplus electricity. El-Sissi is also interested in acquiring part of Iraq’s large and lucrative food market, which could be profitable for Egypt’s military-dominated food and nutrition sector. After the U.S. invasion in 2003, Iraq lost its status as a producer state, but there’s little chance that Egypt can compete with Turkish food and other products, which are cheaper and of better quality than similar goods from Egypt. Last year, Turkish goods exports to Iraq totaled $20 billion, the second-largest total after Germany.
Iraq cannot contain Turkey’s and Iran’s influence simply by opening up economically to Egypt and Jordan. According to 2017 figures, the Turkish economy is the world’s 17th largest, whereas Egypt ranks 44th and Jordan 88th. Even Iran’s sanctioned economy is well ahead of Egypt’s, ranking 26th worldwide. Many Egyptians would be skeptical of al-Kadhimi’s proposal to supply Egypt with oil in exchange for workers who could assist in Iraq’s reconstruction. Thousands of Egyptian workers were killed by discharged Iraqi soldiers looking for jobs after the Iran-Iraq War in 1988. It’s also unlikely that Egyptian laborers would be interested in working in a country with very high unemployment, especially given the increased risk to their safety, even as skilled laborers.
Iraqi’s negotiations with GCC members to link their power grids have been ongoing for nine years. Baghdad has yet to accept a Saudi offer that would cost about 20 percent of what Iran is currently charging it. Iranian proxies in Iraq, particularly the Popular Mobilization Forces, have blocked the signing of any power deal with Riyadh. Connecting the Iraqi and Egyptian power grids, which has not yet begun, would take at least three years, provided pro-Iranian Iraqi politicians and the PMF do not obstruct the process. In all likelihood, however, the New Sham project will be added to the long list of ill-conceived and never-implemented Arab integration projects. The failure of the Arab League countries to deal with Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait in 1990 led to the destruction of Iraq as a regional power. It made Iran and Turkey, in addition to Israel, the dominant forces in the region. And since all three of these forces are not Arab, there’s no room for Iraq in the regional balance of power.
Al-Kadhimi’s Ambiguity
Given Iraq’s negotiations with the GCC, Iran and the U.S. on electricity, it’s hard to take al-Kadhimi’s interest in getting surplus power from Egypt seriously. Iran supplies more than 40 percent of Iraq’s power and has already signed deals to supply the country with electricity for the next two years. Iraq also signed an $8 billion deal with U.S. companies to build power stations and reduce its dependence on Iran.
Al-Kadhimi is an independent politician who has no base of popular or party support. Next October, Iraqi voters will head to the polls to elect a new legislature, and odds are that he will not be reelected as prime minister, which would shelve his New Sham project. Al-Kadhimi has expressed a lack of interest in running for parliament, which makes sense because even if he wins a seat, he will not be part of a parliamentary bloc. He would therefore have no chance of winning another term as prime minister. (Al-Kadhimi became prime minister last year as a part of a compromise deal because of his appeal among Iraqi Kurds, Sunni Arabs and secular Iraqis.) The upcoming elections are unlikely to end the political deadlock, so his chances of winning another term as prime minister are better from outside parliament. Given the political situation, it would serve his career better to maintain his favorable rating among Iraq’s minority groups and distance himself from Iran, even if he fails to effect real political change.
On the seventh anniversary of the PMF’s establishment, which coincided with the summit in Baghdad on Sunday, al-Kadhimi attended its most extensive military parade yet, which included artillery, tanks, troop carriers and thousands of foot soldiers. Iran will not abandon Iraq, no matter what, and even though the public generally backs al-Kadhimi’s attempt to move away from Iran, he won’t be able to accomplish such a colossal task. Iran can rely on the 120,000 PMF soldiers in Iraq and the majority of Iraq’s political elite to sustain its dominance over the country.
As for the Saudis, they are uneasy about Iran’s regional influence and its dominance over Iraqi politics. However, one could argue that, for Riyadh, having Iran in control of Iraq is a lesser evil than allowing the Iraqis to rebuild their country and possibly threaten Saudi stability, if not its existence, in the future. Moreover, al-Kadhimi’s pan-Arab orientation assures the GCC, Egypt and Jordan that, despite Iran’s control over Iraq, there is a man in Baghdad with whom they can communicate when the need arises.
-
ASSESSMENTS
What to Make of Jordan, Egypt and Iraq’s New Alliance
undefined and Middle East and North Africa Analyst
Emily Hawthorne
Middle East and North Africa Analyst, Stratfor
6 MIN READJul 6, 2021 | 18:00 GMT
An emerging partnership between Jordan, Egypt and Iraq will yield security and commercial gains for each country, as well as provide an alternative Arab voice in the wider region. On June 27, the leaders of Iraq, Jordan and Egypt met in Baghdad for high-level talks on commercial, strategic and security matters. These three Arab middle powers’ dependence on external support will constrain the rapid formation of their new tripartite alliance. But shared economic and political interests will still fuel the pact's incremental creation, especially if the threat of Turkish and Iranian regional influence grows.
The talks followed months of preparations and a meeting between the countries’ foreign ministers in Baghdad in March, and also marked a historic return of an Egyptian head of state to Iraq after 30 years.
Iraq’s prime minister, the host of the June 27 meeting, specifically cited the existence of a “critical historic turning point” in both the global fight against COVID-19, as well as in the regional fight against terrorism, in allowing the creation of a new regional alliance, which seeks to achieve stronger ties in three areas: economic partnership, political cooperation, and security and intelligence coordination.
Iraq, for its part, is trying to broker better relationships with other Arab majority countries to bolster its ability to withstand growing pressure from Iran and, to a lesser extent, Turkey. Iraq’s government was the primary instigator in forming the new Arab alliance. Fortifying relations with other Arab nations is part of an effort by Sunni politicians to reduce Iraq’s heavy economic and energy dependence on Iran, which can be a liability due to sanctions and Western opposition to Tehran. The United States, for example, has repeatedly demanded that Iraq weaken its ties with neighboring Iran. Iraq is also dependent on Turkey for some of its water supply, as well as trade — especially in resource-rich northern Iraq, where the Kurdistan Regional Government works closely with Ankara to export oil.
Iraqi Prime Minister Mustafa al-Kadhimi invited Jordan and Egypt’s leaders to the June 27 meeting.
Iraq is dependent on Iran for roughly a third of its energy and electricity supply, which has led to both disruptions in electricity service and tensions between Baghdad and Washington.
Less cooperation against common enemies like the Islamic State could enable Turkey and Iran to gain greater influence in the region, which some Arab states will view as a threat. The chaos of the 2011 Arab Spring and the militancy that reared its head in the following years brought a number of regional rivals together, including Iran and Turkey, as well as Jordan, Egypt and Iraq. The Islamic State threat also led to a deeper U.S. military presence in the region. While the global jihadist group is far from defeated, the Islamic State has lost its ability to rapidly grow and gain territory as Iraqi security forces and other regional military forces have better developed their counterterrorism abilities.
Egyptian, Jordanian and Iraqi leaders have all recently acknowledged a strong desire to reduce their focus on the Islamic State and the militancy that sprung from events like the Syrian civil war, which have characterized the last decade following the Arab Spring with instability.
Turkey and Iran’s governments, meanwhile, are both seeking to deepen their Middle Eastern partnerships. Closer Turkish and Iranian ties could work in Egypt, Jordan and Iraq’s economic favor, but at the risk of eroding broader Arab regional influence.
The United States has been clear about its desire to draw down some of the military presence in the region that increased due to the Islamic State threat, and is currently negotiating a withdrawal timeline with the Iraqi government.
Jordan, Egypt and Iraq’s dependence on external powers for some of their economic and security interests will not only slow the formation of their alliance, but limit its ultimate scope. These three Arab states are all reliant on foreign aid in some way and cannot afford to burn bridges with their wealthier patrons. For this reason, their new alliance is aimed at only diversifying their tie while still maintaining their existing aid and commercial relationships. Egypt and Jordan are just behind Israel in terms of receiving the most security aid from the United States, and there is no indication that that will change even as Washington tries to draw down its military presence in the region. Egypt, Jordan and Iraq share concerns about the regional dominance of Arab Gulf powers like the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia seeking to cajole the Arab world to support their politics and priorities. But Cairo, Amman and Baghdad are also unlikely to turn down Arab Gulf investment money, giving Riyadh and Abu Dhabi some political influence in their respective governments. Oil-dependent and debt-ridden Iraq, in particular, is in no position to turn down foreign funding, as the country faces a deepening financial crisis.
An emerging middle-power alliance between the less wealthy Arab Gulf states will provide some pushback against the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia, who have channeled their wealth into efforts to become leaders of the broader Arab world. Abu Dhabi and Riyadh will likely try to co-opt or at the least draw some benefit from any growing ties from some of their key Arab partners in the region, regardless of whether or not they are in control of the burgeoning relationships.
Better coordination between Jordan, Egypt and Iraq’s intelligence services could help circumvent the development of another transnational threat in the region like that once posed by the Islamic State. All three countries have capable intelligence and security forces that have undergone a significant amount of Western and U.S. training. Stronger ties between three of the United States’ closest security and diplomatic partners will also reassure Washington that a further withdrawal of U.S. forces in the future won’t greatly disrupt regional stability in line with U.S. goals.
There are some potential untapped commercial benefits in terms of energy and trade ties that could be mutually beneficial for all three countries as well. Jordan is eager to restore trade to neighboring Iraq that evaporated during the Islamic State fight. Egypt is also hoping to broker deeper ties between Egyptian energy companies and their Iraqi counterparts — especially with Egypt on the cusp of developing more Mediterranean oil and gas reserves, and Iraq eager to court regional investors into its own oil and gas assets.
-
A series of clashes with Iran-backed militias in Syria and Iraq is increasing pressure on the United States to draw down from both countries, while raising the risk of a greater military escalation with Tehran. Iranian-backed militia launched a series of attacks on U.S. targets in Syria and Iraq on July 7, with at least 14 rockets striking the Ain al-Asad airbase in Western Iraq and lightly wounding two U.S. troops. Militia also fired two rockets at the U.S. embassy in Baghdad, causing no damage. In neighboring Syria, a drone attacked near the U.S.-protected Al Omar oil field on the northern side of the Euphrates River. The day before, on July 6, a drone attacked the Erbil airport in Iraqi Kurdistan, which houses U.S. troops, causing no damage. These attacks come as Iranian-backed militias in Kataib Hezbollah and Kataib Sayyid al Shuhada swore retaliation after the United States launched airstrikes near the Iraq-Syria border against infrastructure and storage facilities, killing four militiamen.
The exchanges are likely to continue as Iran-backed militias attempt to pressure the United States to draw down or withdraw, and as the White House attempts to establish a stronger deterrence against their attacks. The administration of U.S. President Joe Biden signaled it will launch airstrikes in reaction to harassment that doesn’t necessarily result in U.S. casualties by striking targets after relatively harmless militia strikes. This is a shift from its predecessor’s posture, which tended to focus on retaliating against actions that caused harm to U.S. personnel. The Biden administration, however, will still seek to avoid a major military escalation by striking a limited set of targets in Iraq and/or eastern Syria. Meanwhile, Iranian-linked militias will likely continue their attacks on U.S. forces, as indicated on June 14 when the leader of Asaib Ahl al Haq said the militias had resumed their resistance against U.S. forces after a pause from April. These attacks, however, will be metered as well to avoid a major military escalation.
Continued fighting will produce criticism of the U.S. military presence in Iraq and Syria in both Washington and Baghdad, while also leaving open the potential for an unintentional major escalation spurred by significant casualties on either side. The June 27 U.S. airstrikes attacks produced criticism from U.S. politicians over America’s long military presence in both countries. They also angered Iraqi politicians, who argued the attacks violated Iraqi sovereignty. Additionally, if the United States or militias cause substantial harm to one another, either by killing large numbers of opposing forces or by harming more senior officials, the two sides could be pulled into a more significant military escalation as they seek to enact revenge and establish deterrence.
The Biden administration is under public pressure to refrain from military involvement and even withdraw U.S. forces from the Middle East. During his 2020 presidential campaign, Biden pledged to reduce forces to a small number of troops in the region largely to focus on the Islamic State in Syria and Iraq and to monitor the Persian Gulf.
-
ASSESSMENTS
Qatar Grapples With a U.S. That Needs It Less and Less
5 MIN READSep 15, 2021 | 21:23 GMT
U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken speaks with Qatari government officials before boarding an aircraft in Doha on Sept. 8, 2021.
U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken speaks with Qatari government officials before boarding an aircraft in Doha on Sept. 8, 2021.
(OLIVIER DOULIERY/POOL/AFP via Getty Images)
Qatar’s recent diplomatic maneuvers in Gaza and Afghanistan are designed to maintain close ties with the United States. But with Washington now working to reduce its presence in the Middle East, Qatar’s regional security will be anchored instead by how it manages its relationships with allies like Turkey, as well as rivals like Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. Qatar’s diplomats have been at the center of several regional crises. After playing a key role in securing the Hamas-Israel truce in May 2021, the Arab Gulf country has also been facilitating evacuations and negotiations with the Taliban following the recent collapse of the U.S.-backed government in Afghanistan. These displays of Qatari soft power have been designed to both boost Doha’s regional role as a diplomatic facilitator and, more importantly, display the country’s value to the United States, its key strategic ally.
Qatari cash aid has long been a staple of Hamas-Israeli relations, with Doha offering Hamas financial support (through Israel) in exchange for the Palestinian militant group agreeing to hold off on rocket attacks. During the most recent war in May, Qatari aid and diplomatic influence once again played a major role in helping de-escalate the conflict.
Qatar hosted the negotiations that led to the U.S.-Taliban agreement in February 2020. In the wake of the Taliban’s Aug. 15 capture of Kabul, Doha also offered to host Afghan refugees fleeing to the United States. In addition, Qatar has continued to use its national carrier, Qatar Airways, to bring other refugees out of the country following the full withdrawal of U.S. troops and formal evacuations from Afghanistan.
Eroding U.S.-Qatar Relations
The United States and Qatar have had a close relationship for decades. Qatar was a major base for U.S. troops during the Gulf War in 1991. Then in 1996, Qatar and the United States opened the Al-Udeid Air Base that hosted U.S. forces involved in years of different operations, including those in Somalia, Iraq, Afghanistan and Yemen. However, Qatari-U.S. relations were tested during the Arab Gulf blockade of Qatar from 2017-21. While Washington initially appeared to back the blockade, deeper strategic interests quickly reasserted themselves, with the United States stepping in to prevent a potential military intervention in Doha in 2017. The election of a U.S. presidential administration helped bring an end to the blockade earlier this year.
Washington’s overarching interest in Qatar’s security, however, is poised to diminish as the U.S. military pivots out of the region and the U.S. government’s economic stake in hydrocarbons declines.
The steady U.S. retrenchment from the Middle East will give Qatar fewer opportunities to convince Washington of its strategic value. In Taliban-ruled Afghanistan, Qatar will play a smaller role now that the United States has fully withdrawn from the country. Although Qatar can still facilitate U.S. humanitarian goals in Afghanistan, Doha will lack the deep diplomatic and political leverage with the Taliban the United States may later need to keep al Qaeda from resuming terrorist operations. The United States no longer needs Qatar’s basing for major military operations in Afghanistan. The value of Qatari military bases could also be further diminished as Washington negotiates its exit from Iraq and considers a future one from Syria. Finally, Qatar’s value to the U.S. in helping preserve Israel’s security also could diminish, if U.S. political opinion continues to shift against Israel.
Qatari-Taliban relations are likely to remain shallow, as Afghanistan is not yet developed enough to be a major Qatari trade partner. Doha is also wary of the Taliban’s potential influence on extremist groups like al Qaeda, which has previously targeted Qatar.
Critics of Qatar’s role in Israeli-Palestinian relations see Doha as enabling Israel’s intransigence against negotiating for a Palestinian state. This criticism was furthered during the May Gaza War.
To offset this diminished U.S. interest in Qatar, Doha’s security will be increasingly defined by its regional relationships. This will involve maintaining its close relationship with Turkey to avoiding antagonizing bigger rivals like Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, and potentially even pursuing deeper ties with Israel. To offset its diminished U.S. partnership, Qatar will be unable to bring in major powers like France, the United Kingdom, Russia or China, as these countries all largely lack the strategic interest to take on Washington’s security responsibilities in the Persian Gulf. Instead, Qatar’s external security will be increasingly guaranteed by how close it is with Turkey, a capable regional military power with aspirations to play a bigger role in the Arab world. Just how much Qatar’s external security is challenged will be defined by how Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates view Qatar’s foreign policies. If Doha returns to a more ideological and activist foreign policy, as it did after the Arab Spring in 2011, Riyadh and Abu Dhabi are likely to once again impose pressure, including potential military action. But if Doha maintains its current pragmatic diplomatic approach to the region, the Saudis and Emiratis are likely to focus instead on their economic rather than strategic competition with Doha. Finally, closer cooperation with Israel could give Doha access to cutting-edge Israeli military and cyber warfare technologies. It could also help convince Washington to sell Qatar advanced U.S. military equipment, like the F-35 stealth fighter as evidenced by the U.S. arms deals signed after the United Arab Emirates moved to normalize ties with Israel last year.
Turkey has kept active troops in Qatar since the beginning of the blockade in 2017. Turkey’s ruling pro-Islamist Justice and Development Party (AKP) also maintains that the country should have a more prominent military role in the Muslim world.
Since the end of the Arab Spring and the blockade, Qatar has largely stepped back from supporting Islamist parties like the Muslim Brotherhood regionally, as both existing opportunities diminished in the wake of the political revolution. Blowback from the Saudis and Emiratis also made it riskier to back such parties.
-
October 28, 2021
View On Website
Open as PDF
Why Uprisings in the Middle East Fail
Governments in the region have devised a system to crush any serious calls for change.
By: Hilal Khashan
The uprisings in 2010-11 against autocratic Arab regimes stunned the world. The region’s ruling oligarchs were known for systematically suppressing even the slightest manifestations of public discontent. When the uprising in Tunisia occurred in December 2010, it spread almost instantaneously, from Morocco on the Atlantic Ocean to Bahrain on the Persian Gulf. Amazed political commentators talked about the rise of the dormant Sunni tiger and the dawn of democracy throughout the region. But the euphoria didn’t last long. The Arab deep state, with its machinery of coercion and network of local allies, cracked down on the protests and crushed any attempts to overthrow the regimes. Foreign meddling and a lack of shared vision from Arab activists also helped guarantee that the public unrest would not threaten regime survival.
Arab Spring
(click to enlarge)
Machinery of Coercion
Between the 1930s and 1960s, staging a successful coup in the Middle East was relatively easy. Even a small group of army officers could topple a regime; they just needed to command enough troops to seize the presidential or royal palace, ministry of defense and ministry of communication to control the joints of the political system. In Iraq, there were six coups in the 1930s, one (a failed pro-Nazi putsch) in 1941, and several more in the 1950s and 1960s. Syria saw three coups in 1949 and more in the 1950s through 1970. Egypt and Libya each had one coup in 1952 and 1969, respectively.
But in 1970, the era of government subversion came to an end – except in Sudan, which experienced a coup in 1989. Arab military rulers had finally learned how to prevent attempted overthrows by tightening their grip over the military and society. In Egypt, the officers who staged the 1952 coup established the Revolutionary Command Council under the leadership of Gamal Abdel Nasser. In subsequent years, it grew more sophisticated, adopting the title of the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces. In Syria, President Hafez Assad purged the military and placed in commanding positions fellow Alawite officers, who controlled the armed forces and appointed loyal officials to control the political system. In Iraq, Saddam Hussein, who came to power in a 1968 coup, brutally eliminated all opposition within the ruling Baath Party by the late 1970s and relied exclusively on the support of Sunni Arabs from his hometown of Tikrit to maintain control. Like other Arab rulers, Saddam created a special force, called the Republican Guard, that became the most potent and trusted component of the military. In Libya, Moammar Gadhafi, who toppled the monarchy in 1969, created the Gadhafi regiments to prevent countercoups and militant religious uprisings.
In Iran, after inspiring the Islamic Revolution in 1979, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini did not trust the military and ordered its top commanders executed and many others dismissed. Khomeini questioned the loyalty of the army, which had abandoned the shah after killing thousands of demonstrators in what became known as Black Friday in September 1978. Khomeini thus focused his attention on forming an elite unit of the armed forces called the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps as well as the Basij militia, a branch of the IRGC – both of which are responsible for defending the regime from foreign and internal threats.
The region’s rulers had struck a bargain with their people: The government would provide basic needs for the public in exchange for their willingness to stay out of political life. Citizens were essentially promised low-cost housing, subsidized staple food items, free medical care and education through college. Those who didn’t agree to the arrangement, however, faced severe punishment. In this way, they were coerced into allowing regimes to maintain ultimate power virtually unchallenged.
Arab republican regimes also established solid domestic alliances to help contain any potential unrest. In Syria, Hafez Assad coopted the Sunni business class in Damascus and Aleppo and gave them a free hand in running the economy. He placed Sunnis in prominent government positions, albeit under the watchful eye of Alawite loyalists. His son Bashar carried on his legacy, coopting the Sunni Arab tribes in the Jazeera region to keep the Kurds at bay and lend legitimacy to his regime. He also liberalized the Syrian economy and partnered with the Sunni business class. In Egypt, President Hosni Mubarak allowed the armed forces to get involved in the economy. The signing of the Camp David Accords in 1978, the end of the war with Israel and President Anwar Sadat’s assassination by renegade army troops convinced Mubarak to preoccupy the army with economic matters to prevent it from scheming to overthrow him. Even in Saudi Arabia, the regime turned a blind eye to officers undertaking business opportunities and earning commissions. In Iran, the ayatollahs competed with the bazaar business class without evicting them from the market. They also introduced food subsidies, even as the economy suffered under U.S. sanctions.
Over the past few years, however, the region’s economic stagnation has reduced the range of government welfare systems for most Middle Eastern countries, often leading to public unrest. The regimes compensated for their reduced capacity to provide for their populations by increasing their use of coercion tactics to unprecedented levels.
Potentially Unstable Countries
(click to enlarge)
Divided Opposition
The region’s authoritarian leaders – be they republican, monarchical or Islamic revolutionaries – destroyed their countries’ civil societies, finding various justifications for their repression of the opposition. Arab and Iranian leaders accused dissenting voices of acting on behalf of Western imperialism and Zionism. After Egypt’s crushing defeat in 1967, Nasser clamped down on all criticism, saying that no individuals should distract from efforts to liberate occupied territory. In Iraq, Saddam portrayed Shiite dissenters as Iranian agents. Then, when pro-Iranian militias seized power following the U.S. invasion in 2003, they dismissed Sunnis’ demands for an equitable power-sharing arrangement, calling them agents of the U.S., Zionism and radical Islamic movements.
At the same time, the forces of opposition failed to present themselves as a united bloc. In Iran, reformists articulate different agendas. In Iraq, those calling for change cut across the political spectrum to include communists, nationalists, mainstream Sunni Arab groups and Sadrists, supporters of Iraq’s maverick Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr. Sadr takes issue with the pro-Iranian militias but is also careful not to antagonize Tehran – suggesting that many Shiite movements are being supported by Iran.
Shortly after the beginning of the Syrian uprising, groups opposed to the regime began organizing in Europe and Turkey, holding numerous meetings there to try to agree on a new form of government to replace Assad’s regime, if it collapsed. In the end, they failed to agree on anything. In Egypt, the movements that participated in the uprising to overthrow Mubarak had little in common. This paved the way for the military to facilitate Muslim Brotherhood candidate Mohammad Morsi’s election, so that it could expedite his eventual ouster. The army was intent on getting rid of him, believing that his worldview was inconsistent with its vision for Egypt. The Supreme Council of the Armed Forces rallied all civil society movements against Morsi in July 2013 and overthrew him. It then silenced these movements, turning against the liberals and secularists.
Initially, it seemed that the uprising in Tunisia was the only successful one in the Arab states. In due time, however, it too failed to spark any real change. The political forces that emerged in the country after the fall of President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali’s government gained strength, taking political space away from Ennahda, the first party to form a government after the protests. Eventually, Tunisian politics hit an impasse, and the public grew disenchanted with party politics. Even the politically independent president, Kais Saied, pursued a path that resembled those of previous autocratic rulers.
Foreign Intervention
The final factor that led to the demise of the Arab uprisings was foreign meddling. In Egypt, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates were alarmed by the fall of Mubarak and the rise of the Brotherhood. After Morsi was toppled, they gave Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi billions of dollars to shore up his regime. In Syria, the U.S., Israel and the UAE did not want to see the collapse of the Assad regime. In fact, their Syria policies differed little from those of Russia and Iran, whose support ensured that Assad’s government remained in power. In Libya, NATO airstrikes destroyed Gadhafi’s military machine, but foreign meddling by Russia, Egypt, the UAE and Turkey kept the country divided and in turmoil. In Yemen, Saudi Arabia and the UAE helped defeat an uprising and then waged a war against the Houthi rebels, whom they initially enabled before turning against them. Odds are that Yemen would have slipped into anarchy even without foreign intervention, but its Arab neighbors certainly added fuel to the fire. In Bahrain, the oppressed Shiite majority led an uprising in February 2011, which was quelled by the Saudis. They distorted Bahrainis’ demands for fairness and justice by presenting them as part of an Iranian ploy to destabilize the country.
The region is far from ready for successful uprisings, and political communities with a sense of national vision have yet to emerge. Resolution of the region’s outstanding interstate problems, such as the Kurdish and Palestinian questions, must precede any domestic change. Understandably, countries aspire to use their economic and technological capabilities to wield influence. However, political ideology draped in religious determinism is a recipe for perpetuating conflict and stalling the prospects for economic and political development.
-
Israel Is at the Center of a New International Security Order
An alliance that spans from the U.S. through Europe to India is emerging to combat belligerent actors in the Middle East.
By Seth J. Frantzman
Nov. 15, 2021 6:47 pm ET
Jerusalem
Iran couldn’t have been happy to see forces from Bahrain, Israel, the United Arab Emirates and the U.S. Navy training together for the first time in history. Last week’s five-day drill in the Red Sea was intended to enhance interoperability among the countries, but also sent a strong message to Tehran: There’s now a large, organized bloc of countries opposed to its ambitions of regional hegemony. The bloc’s nexus is Israel.
The Abraham Accords—which Israel, the U.A.E. and Bahrain signed in September 2020—smoothed the way for last week’s joint exercise. Since the Cold War, Israel has been a part of the U.S. European Command’s area of responsibility rather than that of Central Command, which stretches from Egypt to Kazakhstan. Though it makes more geographic sense for Israel to be included in Centcom, doing so would have upset the many countries in that area of responsibility that until recently didn’t recognize Israel. If the Centcom forces trained with Israel, many other regional allies would have refused to conduct joint exercises. The Abraham Accords altered the geopolitical landscape. In January the U.S. announced Israel would become a part of Centcom’s area of responsibility, making it easier for the U.S. to organize joint military drills in Israel.
Last week I spoke with Maj. Shai Shachar, 33, commander in charge of the warfare branch of Israel’s elite counterterror school. He was part of another recent joint training with roughly 500 U.S. Marines. After arriving in early November in Eilat, a southern Israeli city on the Red Sea, the American forces traveled to a place called “little Gaza” in the Negev Desert to train with Israel commandos. They practiced urban battlefield tactics and even underground combat—in which Israelis are experts, having fought Hamas terrorists in Gaza’s cities and tunnels.
For the Israelis who participated, swapping knowledge with U.S. Marines was a unique experience. Mr. Shachar said the American soldiers had a remarkably similar war-fighting methodology and problem-solving approach to Israel’s commandos. He expects to see more training in the future.
Troops from around the world have come to Israel this year to train. Last month, air force units from France, Germany, Greece, India, Italy, the U.K. and the U.S. flew in the biennial Blue Flag drill over Israel. This year’s exercise included the largest number of countries since it began in 2013. In July Israel hosted American, British and German drone operators. The month before, Israel, the U.K. and the U.S. flew F-35s together as part of the Tri-Lightning exercise. In March, Cyprus and France joined the Israel-led Noble Dina naval drill for the first time off Cyprus’s west coast.
These exercises aren’t only to strengthen each country’s military expertise, but to build a new alliance system that stretches from India to Europe, with Israel as its linchpin. Israel faces daily threats from terrorists, from the fighting in Gaza in May to its frequent airstrikes in Syria against Iranian arms shipments to Hezbollah. Military units that practice with Israeli forces gain real combat expertise and signal that Jerusalem has allies increasingly working to confront potential threats in the region. This military diplomacy is knitting together an alliance that connects further-flung countries like India or Germany through regional partners like the U.A.E. and Bahrain or Cyprus and Greece.
It’s also bridging a variety of foreign-policy controversies. This includes recent spats such as France’s frustration with its exclusion from a new submarine deal signed by Australia, the U.K. and the U.S., as well as Middle Eastern countries’ longstanding diplomatic distance from Israel. Even a few years ago, it would have been unthinkable for the U.A.E. air chief to visit Israel or Israeli companies to showcase new cooperation and technologies at the Dubai Air Show. The Abraham Accords changed all that.
These new collaborations have many potential uses, from fighting terrorist groups to checking Iran’s attempts at controlling the region. Where belligerent actors once faced a series of isolated countries, they’ll now have to tangle with an organized alliance that is intent on opposing them—even on the battlefield.
Mr. Frantzman is Middle East correspondent for the Jerusalem Post and author of “Drone Wars: Pioneers, Killing Machines, Artificial Intelligence and the Battle for the Future” (Bombardier 2021).
-
November 29, 2021
View On Website
Open as PDF
For the UAE, Change Is an Existential Threat
Abu Dhabi doesn’t tolerate challenges to its agenda.
By: Hilal Khashan
The United Arab Emirates presents itself to the outside world as a liberal and tolerant Muslim country. This isn’t far from the truth. The Maliki doctrine, Sunni Islam’s most tolerant school of jurisprudence, is the UAE’s official religious denomination. And in terms of its economic structure and social discipline, it resembles many advanced countries of the world. But politically, the UAE is an incredibly repressive country, making moves to stamp out any movements, particularly Islamist ones, calling for change at home and abroad – which it considers an existential threat to its regime.
Since the 1960s, the country has had a particularly turbulent relationship with the Muslim Brotherhood. Banned in 1994, the Brotherhood vehemently opposed modernization, equating it with Western decadence. But the rise of the Arab uprisings a decade ago empowered Islamic political movements throughout the region, compelling the UAE to aggressively suppress those who challenge its agenda.
Muslim Brotherhood Links
The UAE’s battle against Islamist forces at home actually began in Egypt. In the 1950s and 1960s, Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser outlawed the Muslim Brotherhood, jailed thousands of its members and executed its ranking leaders, including ideologue Sayyid Qutb. But eradicating Islamist movements like the Brotherhood proved more difficult than leaders like Nasser thought, as they simply went underground or migrated when challenged by governments of the region. Many Brotherhood members sought refuge in Saudi Arabia and other Gulf countries, including the seven trucial emirates that established the UAE in 1971.
(click to enlarge)
Three years after the UAE’s founding, a group of Egyptian-educated men with pan-Arab worldviews formed the Reform and Social Guidance Association, also known as al-Islah, which had links to the Brotherhood. The UAE’s first leader, Sheikh Zayed bin Sultan al-Nahyan, gave them jurisdiction over different Cabinet portfolios, including most importantly the education portfolio, in the late 1970s. During that period, al-Islah managed the school curriculum, focusing on Islamic teaching, gender segregation, and banning music learning and teaching English. Al-Islah’s popularity soared in the UAE’s conservative society, threatening Zayed’s ambitious modernization plan. Then, in 1994, he dissolved al-Islah’s executive committee ahead of launching economic projects that would change the shape of the country for decades to come.
These projects were funded in large part by Abu Dhabi, which financially supported the development of the entire country, especially the Emirate of Dubai. Abu Dhabi is the largest and wealthiest of the seven emirates, accounting for 80 percent of the UAE’s area and 60 percent of its gross domestic product. By comparison, Dubai’s service-oriented economy contributes 25 percent of the UAE’s GDP, while the five smaller emirates contribute only 15 percent.
Abu Dhabi is also an ultramodern city with many costly megaprojects. It recently launched al-Reem, the world’s first omnichannel retail mall, and an atmospheric water generation project to meet its increasing freshwater needs. Over the past half-century, Dubai has also made impressive advances as an international tourist and business destination. Its World Trade Center is a massive events venue, and Dubai Mall is one of the world’s best shopping centers. Jebel Ali is now the Middle East’s most prominent port and the world’s ninth-largest container port, providing goods and services to more than 2 billion people. Dubai’s airport is one of the world’s busiest, used by more than 140 carriers.
However, the UAE fears that the turbulence of the region could jeopardize these achievements. Fearing a domino effect, it rejects, often aggressively, any moves toward democratic transition in the Middle East and North Africa. The UAE’s political system gives absolute power to its monarchial rulers, and though they’ve been eager to modernize the country’s economy, they object to any calls for political modernization – which explains the UAE’s aggressive response to the Arab uprisings that began 10 years ago. Those uprisings coincided with the rise of Islamic political movements, which gave hope to people who felt demoralized by the destruction of civil society at the hands of the region’s authoritarian leaders. This pattern of suppression was evident throughout the region, from Morocco in the west to Iraq in the east and from Syria in the north to Yemen in the south.
Suppression
The UAE thus actively supported efforts to suppress the uprisings. In Yemen, it formed secessionist militias in the southern provinces, built several secret prisons and consolidated its military presence in strategically located islands, especially Socotra. It also assassinated numerous members of Yemen’s Brotherhood-affiliated al-Islah Party. In Tunisia, former President Moncef Marzouki and Speaker of the Parliament Rached Ghannouchi accused Abu Dhabi Crown Prince Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed, commonly known as MBZ, of masterminding the coup led by President Kais Saied, who suspended parliament and most of the constitution last July. In 2013, the UAE backed protests against the Islamist Ennahda Party, and in 2014, it tried without success to sabotage a coalition government between Ennahda and the Nidaa Tounes secularist party. The UAE committed significant financial resources to support members of the old regime and their media network to demonize Ennahda and derail Tunisia’s democratic transition. In Syria, the UAE covered the expenses of Russia’s military intervention in Syria and used agents to kill many rebel leaders. It opposed Bashar Assad’s regime politically but maintained economic ties with Damascus and provided shelter for Assad’s family members and close associates.
Domestically, the UAE has also cracked down on those calling for reform. The mass trial of 94 activists in 2013 stands out as an example of gross injustice against peaceful dissidents who called for political changes, including the introduction of general elections. Of the 94 defendants, 69 were sentenced to years in prison for conspiracy to overthrow the government. The UAE is a police state driven by an overriding concern for security, order and maintaining the status quo. Political prisoners are held under gruesome conditions in distant desert prisons, including al-Razin, often referred to as the UAE’s Guantanamo.
The country is intensifying its efforts to construct a new regional order that prevents the rise of democracy and denies people freedom of expression. It views its peace treaty with Israel as not just a normalization deal but also a step toward establishing strong economic, cultural and military ties. MBZ is also open to restoring relations with Turkey as a countervail to Iran – after failing to dislodge the Turks in Libya despite providing massive military aid to rebel leader Khalifa Haftar. Abu Dhabi is also strengthening ties with the U.S., Russia, China and India to present itself as a credible regional power affiliated with the world’s most prominent countries.
But MBZ’s ambitious foreign policy pursuits exceed the UAE’s military and financial capabilities. From Yemen to Libya and beyond, Abu Dhabi has been working to counter any forces that oppose its agenda – namely, to topple political movements, whether reformist or Islamist-leaning, that call for change, which it sees as a potential existential threat. It views itself as the future leader of the region, and these movements are merely obstacles in its path.
-
December 2, 2021
View On Website
Open as PDF
In the Middle East, a New Era of Alliances Emerges
Pragmatism is increasingly more important than ideology.
By: Hilal Khashan
Middle Eastern relations as we’ve known them for decades are over. As ambitious states try to expand their influence throughout the region, interests, not ideology, are driving the creation of new alliances. Even ultra-religious movements are showing signs of pragmatism. In Israel, a tiny Islamist faction in the Knesset called the United Arab List joined a coalition led by ultra-nationalist Naftali Bennett, helping him secure the position of prime minister. Despite receiving criticism for cooperating with a politician who advocated annexing most of the West Bank, the United Arab List’s leader insisted that the move would improve the social conditions of Israeli Arabs. Indeed, Arabs in other parts of the region are also increasingly finding it easier to collaborate with Israel and Turkey than with other Arab countries. In setting aside ideologically based hostilities, they see an opportunity to advance their own interests.
Regional Rivalries
Throughout the Middle East, there is increasing apprehension about deteriorating relations between formerly close allies. Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, for example, are in a deep rivalry over who will be the leader of the Middle East. Riyadh has already made moves to try to limit Abu Dhabi’s influence. In July, it changed its rules on imports from other Gulf Cooperation Council member states, excluding goods manufactured in free trade zones or with Israeli components from its preferential tariffs list – a move that specially targeted the UAE. Last week, Saudi Arabia tried (and failed) to block an energy agreement involving Jordan, Israel and the UAE. The plan calls for an Emirati company to construct a solar power facility in Jordan, which would provide Israel with 2 percent of its power needs. Riyadh fears that Abu Dhabi’s clean energy venture could undermine its own Middle East Green Initiative.
Middle East
(click to enlarge)
Egypt also has a contentious relationship with both Saudi Arabia and the UAE. In 2017, Egypt joined the Saudi-led blockade on Qatar, believing its goals – including closing down the al-Jazeera news network and stopping funding of the Muslim Brotherhood – would benefit Egypt. But in January 2021, Saudi King Salman lifted the blockade despite Qatar failing to meet any of the various preconditions. In 2020, Abu Dhabi signed a peace treaty with Israel without giving prior warning to Egypt, which was the first Arab country to make peace with Israel. The UAE also did not side with Egypt in its conflict with Ethiopia over the Great Ethiopian Renaissance Dam, refused to fund the building of Egypt’s new administrative capital and displaced Cairo as the dominant foreign power in Sudanese politics.
Egypt and Turkey, meanwhile, are also at odds. Though Turkey is considering selling drones to Ethiopia, it’s willing to terminate the deal if Egypt distances itself from Greece, with which Ankara has an ongoing dispute over resource rights in the Eastern Mediterranean. Cairo, however, seems unwilling to negotiate. It also refused to agree with Turkey to delineate their maritime exclusive economic zones. For Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi, regime security is the priority, and he refuses to enable Turkey to expand its role in the region.
New Alliances
At the same time that relations between these countries are deteriorating, new alliances are beginning to form. For example, the UAE’s relations with Turkey are warming after years of hostility. The two countries had cordial relations until the outbreak of the Arab uprisings, which Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan supported and Abu Dhabi Crown Prince Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed (commonly known as MBZ) sought to defeat. Though they have no underlying political problems blocking cooperation, third parties like Libya, Syria and Egypt helped create tensions between them, especially since the ouster of Egyptian President Mohammed Morsi in 2013. The successful defeat of the uprisings dashed Erdogan’s hopes of becoming the leader of the Sunni world, though Ankara remained a critical regional power with a strong military and a sizable economy. Erdogan now wants to restore Turkey’s relationships in the region to where they were prior to the uprisings.
For the UAE, Turkey is potentially a solid political and business partner. Though they emphasize the economic dimension of their relationship, it is at its core a strategic partnership. The decline in their political ties over the past few years had no tangible impact on their economic ties. Erdogan wants Abu Dhabi to become a principal partner in the Istanbul Canal connecting the Sea of Marmara to the Black Sea. Last month, the UAE donated $10 million to help Turkey rehabilitate areas damaged by wildfires and floods. Last week, MBZ visited Ankara to meet with Erdogan, pledging to invest $10 billion in joint projects with Turkish firms. The volume of non-oil trade between the UAE and Turkey grew steadily during the past decade. In 2020, it reached $8.9 billion, compared to $7.3 billion in 2019, a 21 percent increase. Turkey is a key avenue for shipping UAE goods to Europe, and similarly, Dubai is an important location through which Turkish products are delivered to the Middle East, South Asia and Africa.
As for its relations with Israel, the UAE had high hopes that the peace deal would pay dividends. So far, however, the reality has fallen short. One year after the signing of the deal, their trade reached just $600 million. The UAE hopes to increase this figure to $1 trillion over the next decade, and the two countries have already signed 60 memorandums of understanding. Still, UAE citizens and private companies are reluctant to visit Israel or do business with Israeli firms. In addition, the market for Israel’s high-tech products is small in the geographic areas where the UAE is active. Ultimately, the UAE pushed too far and too fast in normalizing relations with Israel without heeding the complex reality of Middle Eastern politics in order to curry favor with the Trump administration.
Riyadh, meanwhile, is also open to closer relations with Ankara. Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman is preparing to succeed his ailing 86-year-old father, King Salman, and needs to defuse the conflicts involving Saudi Arabia in the larger Middle East, including Turkey. Turkish officials recently met with the Saudi commerce minister to explore cooperation possibilities in the growing halal food market, currently worth about $1 trillion. Last year, Saudi Arabia signed a $200 million contract with Turkish Vestel Savunma to manufacture Karayel-SU drones locally.
Riyadh would have also wanted Ankara’s help in defeating the Houthi rebels in Yemen. Though it sent several hundred Syrian militants to participate in the fighting there, Turkey is unlikely to get involved in any meaningful way, seeing it as an unwinnable war where Turkish troops could easily get bogged down.
Future Partnerships
Believing that the Saudis are more important allies than the UAE, Israel will be careful about further deepening relations with Abu Dhabi. In fact, many Israelis still believe that Turkey is the linchpin in Israel’s Middle Eastern relations. Eran Etzion, a former Israeli deputy national security adviser, argued that Israel’s interests in the Gulf countries are temporary and that Israel should instead focus on establishing an alliance with Iran and Turkey.
The Middle East’s history of short-term, ad hoc alliances has long kept the region unstable. Most countries in the region are new formations and lack the historical depth to appreciate the meaning of strategic relationships. Israel is the region’s most modern state, and Turkey has the largest economy. While Arabs increasingly value economic and security cooperation with Israel, they find it easier to communicate with Turkey because it is a Muslim country with which they identify culturally and share a common history. This will likely represent the future course of alliances in the region.
-
December 29, 2021
View On Website
Open as PDF
The Limits of Abu Dhabi’s Relations With the United States
The UAE’s flexible loyalties stem from its constant insecurity.
By: Hilal Khashan
The UAE maintained a low profile after its establishment in 1971. As the United Kingdom retreated as a world power, Abu Dhabi turned to the U.S. for protection and political affiliation. For nearly two decades, the UAE has emphasized its relations with the United States. Many politicians in Washington viewed Abu Dhabi as the most reliable Arab ally, citing its unwavering support for the war on global terrorism.
Groveling for recognition, the UAE ambassador in Washington, Yousef Al Otaiba, once told U.S. officials that "we are your best friends in this part of the world [the Middle East]." He proudly reminded them that of all Arab countries, the UAE took part in all U.S. military coalitions since the 1991 Gulf War to liberate Kuwait. He never missed an opportunity to impress the U.S. government with his philanthropy and lavish spending on promoting community development. Abu Dhabi convinced itself of the uniqueness of its ties with the United States. The U.S. media contributed to the Emiratis' false consciousness by praising the UAE ambassador as Washington's most charming man. Time magazine named him as one of the 100 most influential people in 2020.
Throwing splendid parties and spending lots of money to gain acceptance can easily attract media attention. However, it has little impact on formulating America's foreign policy, a complex and plural political system. There is increasing evidence to suggest that relations between the U.S. and the UAE are not as strong as observers might have thought a few years ago. In fact, the two countries are drifting apart.
Fast Emerging Rift
After the UAE signed its peace accord with Israel in August 2020, U.S. President Donald Trump agreed to sell Abu Dhabi 50 F-35 jets and 18 drones. While expressing a commitment to proceed with the deal, the Biden administration last April required the Emirates to abide by specific obligations about deploying the jets and drones. Angered by what Abu Dhabi deemed unacceptable preconditions impinging on its national sovereignty, it suspended the discussions regarding the $23 billion arms deal a few weeks ago.
The U.S. opposed the UAE's close economic ties with China, mainly its deals on the Belt and Road Initiative and Huawei’s 5G technology. The Biden administration raised several other issues with Abu Dhabi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Zayed. Chief among its concerns is the Emirates' poor human rights record, which Dubai's and Abu Dhabi's extravagance and ostentatious way of life cannot hide. Also annoying for Washington is Abu Dhabi's collaboration with Russian mercenaries from the Wagner Group in Libya and its normalizing relations with Syria's Assad regime.
The U.S. supplied the F-35 to seven NATO states and trusted allies such as Japan, Israel, South Korea, Singapore and Australia. Still, it raised a red flag concerning Abu Dhabi's human rights abuses, especially in Yemen. The U.S. Congress demanded scrutiny of the arms deal to the UAE. During the past five years, the UAE, whose policy in Yemen is directed at partitioning the country, assassinated at least 100 members of the Yemeni national army who fought the Houthis and tried to assert the central government's authority over the south. The UAE hired a U.S. security company to assassinate 23 Al-Islah Party members in Yemen, mostly religious preachers associated with the Muslim Brotherhood. Human rights groups accuse the UAE of administering secret prisons in Aden in close coordination with south Yemen's separatist movement.
Opportunistic Foreign Policy
Abu Dhabi pursues an unprincipled foreign policy. It invited foreign countries to establish bases in the UAE, giving them greater ability to project power quickly while also providing for the security and territorial integrity of the UAE. It gave the U.S. Air Force access to the Al Dhafra Air Base and a naval base on the Gulf of Oman. In 2009, the French opened Camp de la Paix, a military base in Abu Dhabi. Italy had its own presence in the Emirates until a few months ago, when Abu Dhabi told Italy to withdraw its jets and military personnel after Rome refused to supply the UAE with military hardware because of its military activities in Yemen. However, it is unlikely that Abu Dhabi would tell the U.S. to vacate its naval and air units just because Washington makes it difficult for the UAE to receive state-of-the-art military hardware.
Abu Dhabi backed Egypt's 2013 coup, which overthrew President Mohamed Morsi and installed the commander-in-chief of the Egyptian armed forces in his stead, pumping billions of dollars to stabilize the new regime. Once it ensured that the Brotherhood threat in Cairo was over, Abu Dhabi terminated its financial aid, did not support Egypt against Ethiopia over the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam and excluded Cairo from the UAE’s own negotiations over a peace treaty with Israel.
The Belt and Road Initiative will make the UAE the gateway for China's exports to the Middle East, Africa and possibly Europe. The increase in the UAE’s trade with China and India coincides with the U.S. exit from the Middle East. The U.S. decision to pull out from Iraq and Afghanistan and its general loss of interest in the Middle East date back to Barack Obama's presidency. With a trade volume of $25 billion, the U.S. is an important partner for the UAE. Still, it trails India and China. Last year, UAE-Indian trade exceeded $59 billion, and UAE-Chinese trade was worth $50 billion. In 2003, Abu Dhabi and New Delhi signed an agreement to coordinate security efforts in the Gulf-Indian Ocean region, and in 2015, they signed a strategic partnership deal. The UAE peace treaty with Israel, signed during the last month of Trump’s presidency, crowns 15 years of informal cooperation and did not happen simply because of U.S. pressure on Abu Dhabi's rulers. The UAE wants to secure its economic and security future with countries that matter. The U.S. does not feature prominently in Abu Dhabi's strategic thinking.
UAE Trade Trends With Select Countries
(click to enlarge)
The UAE did not condemn the Chinese detention of 1 million Uyghur Muslims in China’s western Xinjiang region. At the 2019 Organization of Islamic Cooperation meeting held in Abu Dhabi, the participants – influenced by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Zayed – thanked China for "providing care to its Muslim citizens." To the astonishment of Pakistan, the UAE also failed to criticize India over its Kashmir policy, calling it a domestic issue.
In 2015, the UAE joined the Saudi-led Operation Firmness Storm against Yemen's Houthis. A few years later, Abu Dhabi switched sides. Its primary interest was to support south Yemen's irredentist movement to control its strategic Socotra Island and Bab el-Mandeb. In 2019, the UAE air force strafed Saudi-backed Yemeni forces in the south. It announced its intention to withdraw its troops from south Yemen, ostensibly complying with the 2018 Stockholm Agreement that deescalated the conflict.
Politics of Survival
The Gulf's tribal societies share a history of deeply ingrained distrust of one another. They have also endured invasion and control by superior foreign powers – the Portuguese, Ottomans, Persians and British – and had to manage their internal affairs under those powers’ grip. In the late 1970s, the UAE feared the rise of Iran's Islamic Revolution and Baathist Iraq's desire to fill the vacuum of Arab politics caused by Egypt's isolation after it signed the Camp David peace accord with Israel in 1978. The seven emirates of the UAE have deep-seated existential dilemmas. In the 19th century, they fought among themselves and sought British protection before London normalized their relations in 1952. Their greatest external threat came from the ambitious Saudi state from the 18th century onward. Tensions with Saudi Arabia did not cease even after forming the Gulf Cooperation Council. Often subtle and subdued, UAE-Saudi conflicts occasionally surface, attracting media attention before their rulers temporarily contain them.
United Arab Emirates
(click to enlarge)
A perennial fear of foreign conquests to seize the Persian Gulf's sea lanes shaped the UAE's worldview – especially Abu Dhabi, its most prominent and wealthiest emirate. The UAE’s vulnerability contributed to developing its leaders' flexible loyalties, as they constantly searched for allies to offset their insecurity. Ideology and blood ties do not feature significantly in their pursuit of security and trade partners. U.S.-UAE relations will continue. However, Abu Dhabi will not convince anyone that it is still a close strategic ally of Washington, especially if it fails to acquire the F-35s
-
Syria’s Normalization Risks Continuing the Cycle of Conflict and Authoritarianism in the Middle East
A growing number of Arab countries have recently begun rekindling relations with the Syrian government after a decade of civil conflict and failed attempts to oust President Bashar al Assad’s regime. As Damascus slowly emerges from isolation, other undemocratic regimes and actors in the Middle East and North Africa risk seeing al Assad’s success as proof that force is a very valid option to quell threats to their control — and while it may spur a bloody and destructive war, it’s a war that can, with the right allies, be won. Indeed, in a region plagued with long-standing economic inequality, sectarian conflict, authoritarian regimes, deep corruption and ineffective governance, it’s only a matter of time before another state or actor uses the Syrian civil war not as a warning but as a model for when facing the next inevitable public rebellion.
-
January 20, 2022
View On Website
Open as PDF
The Middle East, a Vicious Cycle
There’s no end in sight to the region’s long-standing problems.
By: Hilal Khashan
The Middle East and North Africa is a region haunted by its past. Like many other places around the world, it was subjected to imperial rule under successive regimes and dynastic states, and saw more conflict than peace. But unlike other regions, it’s still waiting for its renaissance. For centuries, sedition, mutiny and poverty were commonplace, while industrialization and modernization were elusive. When Arab and Muslim intellectuals in the 19th century aspired for reform, European colonialism blocked any efforts at change. It forced them to retrench and adopt a pristine form of Islam as a vehicle to stop European intrusion into their lives. Islam thus became incompatible with the requirements of modernity. The following analysis will consider the origins of the region’s long-standing disorder and the failures that have led to its current state.
Underdevelopment
The 1967 Six-Day War was a major catalyst for change in the Middle East, altering power relations and introducing Israel as the region’s military tiger. Prior to the conflict, historic Arab cultural and political centers in Cairo, Baghdad and Damascus had begun to lose their significance when army officers staged military coups and displaced the ruling aristocracies. The officers destroyed their countries’ civil societies and economies and reverted to authoritarianism. They promised economic development but brought more poverty instead. They built large militaries ostensibly to fight Israel but lost every war with the Israelis. The Six-Day War revealed the extent of their weakness. Arab cultural and political hubs gradually shifted to Gulf cities – namely Dubai, Abu Dhabi, Doha, Riyadh and Kuwait City. As the thinly populated Gulf countries rose in wealth and significance, they schemed to keep other Arab states weak. Emerging as the counterrevolutionaries, their policy was to prevent political change throughout the region.
The Middle East’s major powers today – Israel, Turkey and Iran – are not equally powerful. Whereas Israel’s position as the region’s military and high-tech leader is secure, Turkey and Iran have serious problems relating to their economies, domestic unrest and foreign relations. Iran’s 1979 Islamic Revolution did not bring prosperity to the people. Instead, it provoked Iraq and precipitated an eight-year war that left Iran economically devastated and internationally isolated. Unimpeded by the war’s consequences, Iran’s ayatollahs tried to spread their revolution throughout the region and established regional proxies in vulnerable countries such as Lebanon, Iraq, Syria and Yemen. Iran’s Islamic leaders revived the shah’s derelict nuclear program with the goal of winning international prestige and regional prominence. The country’s regional ambitions threatened its Arab neighbors, which saw Tehran expanding its influence in Iraq, Syria, Lebanon and Yemen. This compelled Saudi Arabia to launch a massive arms procurement program and establish an indigenous arms industry.
Iran's Sphere of Influence
(click to enlarge)
Turkey, meanwhile, was rocked by three military coups between 1960 and 1971. The 1960 coup was a stark reminder of the Middle East’s fragile democracy. The army toppled the government of Prime Minister Adnan Menderes, a cofounder of the Islamist-leaning Democratic Party, and executed him in 1961. But the Democratic Party’s demise did not lead to political stability. In fact, each time the military banned one Islamist party, a new one emerged. After the DP collapsed, the Justice Party became increasingly prominent in the 1960s and 1970s, and the Welfare Party emerged in the 1980s and 1990s. In 1997, the military forced Prime Minister Necmettin Erbakan to resign, and in 1998, it banned the Welfare Party. In 2001, Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Abdullah Gul established the Justice and Development Party (AKP). It dominated Turkish politics until 2015, when it lost the parliamentary majority and was forced to build a coalition government. The fact remains, however, that Islamist parties are a permanent presence in Turkish politics as most Turks still object to Mustafa Kemal Ataturk’s strict secularist and republican values. The future of Turkish politics remains uncertain as Erdogan faces increasing opposition. Even though he survived the protests that began in 2013 and allegations of corruption against his family members and senior government officials, the economic crisis could bring down his presidency and the AKP unless his controversial financial policies succeed.
Turkey's Falling Currency Value and Rising Inflation
(click to enlarge)
Politically, the Middle East has yet to come of age. The countries of the region are victims of their pasts and remain preoccupied with security, both internal and external. Despite its military superiority and nuclear arsenal, Israel has deep-seated security concerns that emanate from the Jewish people’s tragic history in Eastern and Central Europe. Its democratic political system has difficulty acting on important issues because of the divisiveness in Israeli politics. In Iran, the supreme leader presides over an anachronistic political system reminiscent of medieval Europe. Turkey is mired in an identity crisis over whether it’s a secular, European-oriented nation or an Islamic society rooted in the Middle East.
Democratic Failings
The 20th century saw the creation of new states in the Middle East and North Africa and the resurgence of the historical entities of Turkey, Iran, Egypt and Morocco. The demise of the Ottoman and Safavid empires ushered in the colonial era, which gradually led to the rise of political independence but failed to inspire democratization or economic development. Iran’s 1906 constitutional revolution failed, paving the way for the inauguration of the Pahlavi dynasty in 1925. The army’s abandonment of the shah and his escape from the country marked the triumph of the Islamic Revolution and the return of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini to create a medieval-type theocracy, which did not sit well with secular-orientated Iranians. Meanwhile, Ataturk’s vision for Turkish society created a perennial state of political division and an inconclusive clash between secularism and religion.
With the rise of European influence, the region became torn between Islam, nationalism and secularism. The ruling elite and the intellectual class failed to win the people’s approval for their new political arrangements. Claims of rigged presidential elections triggered massive protests in Iran in 2009, demonstrating the unpopularity of the ruling conservatives’ stringent methods. The Revolutionary Guard’s Basij forces quickly subdued the demonstrations and restored calm.
Crises in the Middle East
(click to enlarge)
The 2010-11 Arab uprisings gave people hope that they could uproot the region’s endemic despotism and erect democratic political systems, but they soon confronted the dark reality of the well-entrenched deep state. None of the Arab uprisings led to a viable democracy. Even Tunisia’s once promising democratic reforms proved deceptive. The deep state, backed by generous Saudi and Emirati financial contributions, destroyed Egypt’s and Tunisia’s brief democratic interlude. In late 2018, the Sudanese people took to the streets to voice their opposition to President Omar al-Bashir’s three-decade rule. Eight months into the uprising, the army ousted al-Bashir, promising democratic reform. But fearing the ascendancy of civilian leadership, it staged another coup in November 2021 to reassert its political dominance, again with the prodding of Abu Dhabi. Even Lebanon’s confessional political system, erroneously labeled a democracy, crumbled due to widespread corruption.
The war in Yemen continues to rage as the Saudis fail to extricate themselves from the conflict. Saudi Arabia, which had interfered in Yemen’s internal affairs for decades, tolerated the Houthi rebels when they fought against the Muslim Brotherhood-affiliated al-Islah Party but then turned against them when they seized the capital city, Sanaa. In North Africa, Libya is disintegrating with little hope of bringing its warring factions together. Meanwhile, Morocco’s king remains in complete control of the country’s political system, and Algeria’s military continues to impose its will on the country and its resources.
Turkey and Iran ponder their future amid domestic uncertainty and tense relations with the West and their regional neighbors. Arab countries are in turmoil, having neither recovered from the consequences of the failed uprisings nor reformed their political systems. They seem to have accepted their weakness as many Arab heads of state welcome foreign intervention to shore up their regimes and prevent political change. The vicious cycle of authoritarianism and bogged down economic development afflict most, if not all, Middle Eastern countries, and there is no end in sight to end their travails
-
What to Make of Qatar’s Designation as a U.S. Non-NATO Ally
6 MIN READFeb 8, 2022 | 21:32 GMT
U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken (left) and Qatari Foreign Minister Mohammad bin Abdulrahman Al Thani hold a joint press conference on the Afghanistan crisis in the Qatari capital of Doha on Sept. 7, 2021.
U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken (left) and Qatari Foreign Minister Mohammad bin Abdulrahman Al Thani discuss the Afghanistan crisis during a joint press conference in Doha on Sept. 7, 2021.
(OLIVIER DOULIERY/POOL/AFP via Getty Images)
Qatar’s new designation as a U.S. non-NATO ally will help shield it from Saudi or Emirati pressure, as well as incentivize Riyadh and Abu Dhabi to adjust their own policies to earn the same designation. However, a new U.S. president could reverse this decision and make Doha vulnerable again. During a Jan. 31 state visit with Qatar’s emir, U.S. President Joe Biden announced that he would soon notify Congress that the United States would designate the Arab Gulf state as a major non-NATO ally (MNNA), a diplomatic and legal classification that offers enhanced training, defense cooperation and military research. Biden said the announcement was long overdue following decades of U.S.-Qatari coordination and Qatar’s hosting of the region’s largest U.S. military base. But despite also being major U.S. defense partners and purchasers of U.S. military equipment, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates are not designated MNNAs due to both countries’ controversial human rights records and foreign policies in war-torn Yemen and Libya.
Beyond hosting troops, the United States has relied on Qatar for evacuations from Afghanistan, hosting negotiations with the Taliban, aiding Israeli security by providing aid to the Gaza Strip, and facilitating U.S.-Iran talks.
The other MNNA-designated countries in the Middle East include Kuwait, Bahrain, Israel, Jordan, Egypt, Tunisia, and Morocco.
With the MNNA designation, Qatar has an extra layer of diplomatic protection from the United States should the United Arab Emirates and/or Saudi Arabia resume pressure campaigns against Doha. The Qatar blockade ended in January 2021 just as the Biden administration took office, but none of the drivers of the blockade were resolved as Qatar held out rather than changed policies. While a full resumption of the blockade appears unlikely in the near term, Riyadh and Abu Dhabi might resort to disinformation campaigns, tariffs, boycotts or visa processing slowdowns, as they did before the blockade, to try to rattle Qatar’s reputation and economy — particularly during the high profile World Cup games, which will be hosted in Doha at the end of this year. But if these pressure campaigns emerge, they will likely be modest following the U.S. move to upgrade its strategic view of Qatar. Neither Saudi Arabia nor the United Arab Emirates want to alienate the United States as they still seek its protection against Iran and cooperation against threats like Houthi rebels in Yemen.
Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates demanded Qatar break ties with the Muslim Brotherhood, close or control the coverage of its state-backed Al Jazeera media organization, expel Turkish troops in Qatar, reduce ties with Iran, align its strategic priorities with those of Riyadh and Abu Dhabi, and take other broad measures to prevent the country from hosting media or individuals critical of Saudi and Emirati policies. None of these demands were met, though Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates still seek to prevent Qatari influence from undermining their political stability and contain Iranian influence in the Arab Gulf.
The blockade ended in part because of the election of a new administration in the United States. Former President Donald Trump tacitly backed the blockade initially and did not apply pressure to end it. But on the campaign trail, Biden was more broadly critical of Saudi and Emirati behavior and implied he would reframe relations with both countries upon taking office.
To earn the same designation, the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia will be incentivized to further adjust their policies to meet U.S. expectations, such as keeping tensions with Qatar low, publicly supporting U.S. efforts to renegotiate the Iran nuclear deal, avoiding deepening ties with Washington’s rival China, avoiding human rights outrages at both home and abroad, and supporting U.S. goals to de-escalate the civil war in Yemen. Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates are likely to seek their own MNNA designation to both maintain diplomatic parity with rival Qatar, as well as strengthen their own security relationships with the United States (which is still their primary security guarantor). But both Riyadh and Abu Dhabi’s policies have come under sustained criticism from lawmakers in the U.S. Congress, which will need to be alleviated before the Arab Gulf states can nudge the Biden administration to consider them as MMNA designees. Both countries have already begun altering some of their more controversial policies and behaviors, in part as they try to avoid a major diplomatic split with the United States under Biden. But the desire to be seen as the same kind of reliable ally as Qatar will incentivize the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia to make further concessions to appease U.S. politicians, especially those in Congress.
Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates lobbied against the original Iran nuclear deal signed in 2015, helping fuel the arguments that ultimately led to the United States withdrawing from the agreement in 2019. After suffering attacks by Iran, both countries are now more amenable to a new nuclear deal and favor de-escalation with Tehran.
Both Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates are actively pursuing new relations with China, even on the defense level, which has fed into U.S. concerns about Beijing’s growing global influence.
To ease these concerns, Riyadh and Abu Dhabi could either slow their outreach to China, or shift their relationships with Beijing to focus more on the economic rather than military sphere. In November 2021, the United Arab Emirates reportedly shut down a site the United States claimed was a secret Chinese naval base.
Saudi Arabia and/or the United Arab Emirates could release some of the numerous detained activists and dissidents in each country to curry favor with the United States. Saudi Arabia has already freed at least one prominent women’s rights activist, Loujain al-Hathloul, who was released from prison in February 2021 but remains under supervision.
A future U.S. president, especially if Trump returns for a second term, might be tempted to reverse Qatar’s designation, politicizing the MNNA category. Some U.S. politicians have criticized Qatar for its ties to Iran, Turkey and the Palestinian militant group Hamas. These same politicians pushed the Trump administration to support the Qatar blockade in 2017-21. And they could remain a force if Trump returns to the White House in 2024 or if another Republican president with a similar political base takes power.
Trump withdrew from the Iran nuclear deal in 2019 in part because some of his supporters wanted to see the United States increase pressure on Tehran and its allies. Many of these Iran hawks argue Qatar enables Iranian behavior by maintaining economic and diplomatic ties with Tehran.
-
ISIS Resurrection a Cause for Alarm
by Hany Ghoraba
IPT News
February 24, 2022
https://www.investigativeproject.org/9146/isis-resurrection-a-cause-for-alarm
-
https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/18350/america-terrorist-allies
-
June 9, 2022
View On Website
Open as PDF
The Roots of Arab Turmoil
Modern nation-states have failed to develop as tribalism and poor governance have prevailed.
By: Hilal Khashan
The rise of the modern nation-state and established universal values has led to a reduction in political violence in many places across the globe. The Arab region, however, has failed to make this transition and to redefine the role of religion in politics. The region still lacks critical thinking and utilitarian nationalism that can help unify a population, while outdated modes of interaction and cultural stagnation persist, dooming Arab attempts to navigate economic and political challenges. The use of political violence as a means of gaining and keeping power continues as regimes apply excessive coercion to eliminate the opposition and intimidate their people into submission.
Persistent Tribalism
Massive tribal migrations accompanied the emergence of Islam in the Middle East and North Africa from the 7th century onward. These tribes maintained their own social structures and resisted interaction with the state beyond paying taxes and providing recruits for the military. Violence frequently broke out in pre-Islamic Arabia, wreaking havoc on social relations and pausing only briefly while the Prophet Muhammad was still alive. Arabs prohibited fighting during the four sacred months on the religious calendar, a practice that persisted under Islam.
Collective interests did not develop beyond the family, clan or tribe. Life in the desert gave rise to a narrow definition of identity rather than a nationalistic one. Arab tribes shunned intertribal marriages, relegating the descendants of mixed marriages to a lower social status. Those born to non-Arab women often ranked at the bottom of the social order. Seeking to safeguard tribal ethnic purity prevented national unification and the rise of political community.
Arab Christians particularly suffered. Their vassal states in Iraq and Syria came under the influence of the two dominant regional powers, the Byzantines and the Sassanians. The Lakhmid dynasty in southern Iraq fought with the Persians against the Ghassanids and their Byzantine feudal overlords. However, the Lakhmids fought against the Muslim army in the battle of Qadisiyya in 636. Similarly, the Ghassanids sided with the Byzantines against the Muslims in the Battle of Yarmouk that same year. The Umayyads and Abbasids depended heavily on Arab Christian tribespeople to run the administration and did not impose Islam on them. Even though Syria’s Christians joined the Muslim conquest of North Africa that started in 647, the lines of religious and tribal divisions became permanent, triggering spates of religious persecution in subsequent eras.
Tribal sheiks reigned supreme in their closed communities, without worrying about dissent. Leadership was usually passed down based on heredity, but when there was no eligible next of kin, violence could tarnish the transfer of power. Once the sheik title was secured, the tribe’s council gave him an irrevocable endorsement for life by acclamation. Revoking acceptance was comparable to sedition, which is punishable by death in Islam. Arab monarchies still practice this type of political leadership, while republican systems disguise their tribal leadership style with a thin democratic veneer.
History of Political Repression
The gruesome murder of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi in 2018 gave the world a glimpse into how the Saudi political system works, but other Arab countries have shown similar tendencies. For example, in 1965, Morocco’s King Hassan II ordered his intelligence apparatus to abduct opposition leader Mehdi Ben Barka. They killed him and dissolved his body in acid. It was part of the king’s Years of the Lead campaign, which lasted from the 1960s to the 1980s, to eliminate all democratic opposition and purge the army in an unprecedented wave of terror.
Arab societies have a long history of political repression. While Islam condemned tribal fanaticism, it failed to stop tribal infighting. Tribal wars in pre-Islamic Arabia were a way of life, totaling some 1,700 conflicts. Conventional wisdom has it that Islam unified the tribes and ended their hostilities, but the fact remains that immediately after the Prophet Muhammad’s death, the rejection of Islam by many Arab tribes led to the two-year Ridda War (or war of apostasy) in 632, in which the caliphal state prevailed. After three more brutal wars over the prophet’s successors, Muslims were split into Sunnis and Shiites. Political rivals assassinated three of the four Rashidun caliphs who succeeded the prophet between 632-661 while in office.
In 695, Umayyad Caliph Abd al-Malak appointed al-Hajjaj bin Yusuf – who previously defeated the anti-government insurgency in Hejaz – as the governor of Iraq’s restive Kufa district near Najaf, the most important Shiite city. A ruthless and fearsome enforcer of order, al-Hajjaj became known as "The Exterminator." Upon assuming office in Kufa, he addressed Iraqi notables by saying, “I see heads that are ripe, and I am ready for the picking.” He mercilessly delivered on his threat, killing at least 130,000 Iraqis.
In 680, the first Umayyad caliph, Muawiya, passed away and was succeeded by his son, Yazid. As is common in Arab tradition, Yazid sought the support of a descendent of the prophet, Imam Husayn bin Ali, who felt the caliphate belonged to him instead. Fearing for his life, Husayn left Mecca for Karbala in Iraq. On his way, he met a sympathizer returning from Iraq who urged Husayn against going there, saying, “their hearts are with you, but their swords are against you.”
The Umayyad Empire (661-750) had 14 caliphs, four of whom were killed by rivals. The Abbasid Empire (750 to 1258) had 12 out of 57 caliphs killed while in office. Most of the others lacked real power; slave soldiers controlled the state, and many regions established separate dynasties, namely the Mamelukes in Egypt and Syria. The Mamelukes’ rule (1250 to 1517) saw 140 military coups and the assassination of 20 sultans as brazen power determined who would claim the throne.
In 711, the Umayyads conquered the Iberian Peninsula, and in 756, they established the Andalusian Umayyad dynasty, which dissolved in 1031. Tribal factions fought among themselves, dividing the Muslim-dominated areas of Spain and Portugal into 22 petty kingdoms. They paid tribute money to King Alfonso VI of Leon and Castile and sought his help against rival Muslim kings. Granada, the last Muslim kingdom, fell to the Aragon and Castile alliance in 1492.
In 1933, the pan-Arab Iraqi government ordered the army to attack the Assyrian Christians in northern Iraq, who were accused of affiliating with the British and harboring irredentist tendencies. The Simele massacre killed 3,000 Assyrians and destroyed more than 60 villages. In 1939, pro-British Prime Minister Nuri al-Said reputedly ordered the assassination of 27-year-old King Ghazi, who planned on annexing Kuwait, then a British protectorate. In 1958, a military coup in Baghdad ended the monarchy and brutally killed 23-year-old King Faisal II, along with the crown prince, the prime minister and scores of their entourage. In 1980, Syrian President Hafez Assad responded to an attempt on his life by ordering the killing of 1,000 members of the Muslim Brotherhood held in Palmyra’s notorious military prison. In 1982, in retaliation to the anti-Alawite Sunni insurgency in Hama, the army’s Defense Battalions laid siege to Hama before destroying the city center and killing more than 20,000 residents.
In 1991, Algerian Islamists seemed on the verge of dominating the Algerian parliament. A few days before the decisive second round of elections in January 1992, the army staged a coup that precipitated an 11-year civil war. More than 200,000 people lost their lives as the crackdown defeated the radical Islamists but failed to address the root causes of Algeria’s political crisis.
In Egypt, King Farouk could have stopped the 1952 junior officers’ coup with the help of the powerful Royal Guard, but he instead abdicated the throne to avoid bloodshed. His republican successors showed much less regard for human life and political freedom, locking up thousands of pro-democracy activists and failing to address basic needs. Current President Abdel Fattah el-Sissi took repression to new heights, imprisoning or marginalizing army officers and politicians who supported his 2013 military coup.
The violent fallout of the 2011 uprisings in Libya and Yemen and the rejection of public demands for political reform and democracy are more indications of the disintegration of the Arab regional order. These types of Arab divisions run so deep that they cannot be resolved on their own and present a real risk of protracted conflict.
Failure to Govern
Tribalism prevented the Arab state from establishing roots and fostering a strong sense of national identity. Arab regimes made no effort to involve the local populations in political affairs, not even to draft and implement public policy. States commissioned local functionaries to levy taxes and recruit conscripts, but average people feared the state and the succession of sprawling empires that dominated the region. Arab societies did not develop because of government repression, intimidation and exclusion from the market economy, into which they only recently entered as consumers, not producers.
In modern times, the Arab region has witnessed numerous regime changes, ostensibly aimed at eliminating corruption, ending repression, spreading freedom and bringing about prosperity. Incompetent and self-serving regimes were overthrown, but their successors fared no better, proving themselves morally deficient and equally detached from the people.
The West imposed the concept of the centralized nation-state on Arab societies, but it failed to take hold because it did not connect with the region’s cultural and social realities. Arab societies remain fragmented and bound by local bonds of association. For most Arabs, the nation-state is a vague idealization that does not relate to how they interact with their fellow citizens, let alone the political system. Poor governance has prevailed, undeterred by what goes on in politically developed countries.
-
U.S. Lawmakers Unveil a Plan to Shield Middle East Allies From Iranian Aggression
7 MIN READJun 15, 2022 | 21:29 GMT
Iranian-made satellite carriers (left) and missiles (right) are displayed in front of the Holy Defense Museum in Tehran, Iran, on Sept. 20, 2020.
Iranian-made satellite carriers (left) and missiles (right) are displayed in front of the Holy Defense Museum in Tehran, Iran, on Sept. 20, 2020.
(Kaveh Kazemi/Getty Images)
A U.S. plan for integrated air and missile defenses across the Middle East could eventually help countries in the region deter and intercept attacks by Iran and its proxies — a prospect that might entice Saudi Arabia to deepen ties with Israel. On June 9, a bipartisan group of U.S. lawmakers introduced the Deterring Enemy Forces and Enabling National Defenses (DEFEND) Act. The DEFEND Act aims to create an integrated air and missile defense (IAMD) system across U.S. allies and partners in the Middle East, covering Israel, Egypt, Jordan, Iraq and the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC). The legislation would require the U.S. Department of Defense to lead the effort to establish an IAMD system to defend against Iranian and Iranian-backed militia missile, rocket and drone attacks.
Many of the countries the legislation aims to integrate already have U.S. defense systems deployed. The United Arab Emirates owns an advanced THAAD system. Saudi Arabia, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Egypt, Jordan, Iraq and Kuwait also all either own or host U.S.-run Patriot missile batteries, with other countries in the region still using the older U.S.-built HAWK surface-to-air missile system.
The legislation comes as the prospects of a U.S.-Iran nuclear deal dim, possibly portending more Iranian missile, rocket and drone attacks across the region. Iran’s ballistic missile, rocket and drone strike capabilities extend out of Iran to Lebanon through Syria, Iraq and Yemen, giving Tehran the ability to target U.S., Israeli, and Arab Gulf forces from several sources.
The United States already takes part in NATO’s Integrated Air Defense System (NATINADS), which was established in the 1950s. NATINADS aims to create another integrated air defense system in Asia-Pacific by 2028 among U.S. allies and partners there.
Though existing systems are already in place in most countries, local politics will prevent the full implementation of a regional air and missile defense system — especially in Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Oman, Kuwait, and Iraq — because Israel would be part of the network. Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Oman have covert security, economic, or diplomatic relations with Israel, but are not yet willing to embrace full normalization with the country for varying domestic and ideological reasons. Iraq and Kuwait, which have elected legislatures and populations that are overwhelmingly opposed to relations with Israel, are even further from normalization. In part because of Iranian influence in Iraq, Baghdad is also far from owning an advanced U.S. air or missile defense system; the Patriot batteries in the country are under U.S. control at the Ain al-Asad airbase in Iraq’s Anbar province. Despite these challenges, covert integration is possible for countries like Saudi Arabia and Qatar, which have more advanced ties with Israel as well as deep defense ties with the United States. Saudi Arabia and Qatar’s centralized political systems also grant both kingdoms more room to implement the systems compared with countries like Iraq and Kuwait, where elected parliaments are more able to check executive power.
Officially, Saudi Arabia remains opposed to formally normalizing with Israel until there is a Palestinian state. But Riyadh’s normalization path is nonetheless relatively advanced. Last month, reports emerged that the United States had helped mediate the transfer of the Tiran and Sanafir islands from Egypt to Saudi Arabia by convincing Israel to drop its objections (the strategic islands sit along the Strait of Aqaba, which Israel needs to access the Red Sea; Israel previously was able to block Tiran and Sanafir’s transfer to Saudi Arabia by pointing to stipulations in the 1979 Israeli-Egyptian peace treaty that the islands remain demilitarized). The recent breakthrough on the Tiran and Sanafir dispute also comes amid reports of Israeli businesses cutting deals in Saudi Arabia, as well as rumored meetings between Saudi and Israeli officials designed to boost trade ties.
Both Oman and Qatar officially oppose normalizing relations with Israel before the establishment of a Palestinian state. But they are also both eager to maintain their regional neutrality between the United States, Israel and Iran.
Anti-Israel sentiment remains high in Iraq, where an Israeli airstrike on Iranian-linked targets killed up to 47 people in 2019. Just last month, Iraq’s parliament strengthened the country’s anti-normalization laws.
Kuwait has also had its own anti-normalization law since 1964, which the country’s parliament expanded in 2018 to also include barring ties between Kuwaitis and Israelis online.
Even a partially implemented IAMD system would boost Israel and (to a lesser extent) other nearby countries’ ability to deter and intercept some Iranian and proxy attacks. But geographic distance and the point of origin of attacks will at least partially determine the effectiveness of such a system. Early warning systems that inform even a partial regional IAMD system would increase the likelihood that Iranian or proxy attacks are detected sooner and that air and missile defense systems are activated faster to block such strikes. Even if the DEFEND Act only covered Israel, Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates, Egypt and Jordan, it would still give Israel more advanced warning of some incoming Iranian strikes from Iraq and Iran. However, without Saudi Arabia as an IAMD system participant, Iran-backed Houthis in Yemen would exploit the intelligence gap over the kingdom. An IAMD system would also do little to reduce the effectiveness of shorter-range missile attacks, as well as rocket and drone attacks, against regional targets. This is especially true when it comes to protecting Israel and Saudi Arabia from attacks launched from neighboring countries like Lebanon and Syria (in Israel’s case) and Yemen (in Saudi Arabia's case), as assailants may rely more often on short-range swarm attacks and shorter flight times to strike targets before air defenses could intercept them.
Israel has various anti-missile radar systems that are land, air and sea deployed. But until recently, the range of these systems has been limited to Israel’s own borders and bases. Israel’s EL/M-2080 Green Pine, the country’s primary anti-missile radar system, has a range of around 360-500 miles, making parts of Iraq, and all of Iran and Yemen, outside of its ability to detect. It’s not clear if the DEFEND Act would encourage Israel to send its systems to participant countries.
With the DEFEND Act, the United States could also use the benefit of closer integration with U.S.-led air defenses and possible access to Israeli military technologies to further incentivize Saudi Arabia — a frequent target of Houthi and Iranian attacks — to deepen normalization with Israel. U.S. legislators openly stated that the DEFEND Act was aimed at progressing the Arab-Israeli normalization push laid out in the 2020 Abraham Accords — a goal that would explain Israel’s inclusion. Saudi Arabia is rumored to be interested in Israel’s Iron Dome to help protect the kingdom’s southern border and oil infrastructure from attacks launched by Iran and Iran-backed Yemeni Houthis. The increasing pace of these Houthi and Iranian attacks could make Riyadh more interested in a U.S.-led IAMD program if it includes Israeli technologies, like the Iron Dome and Israel’s future Iron Beam laser defense system. In order to prevent domestic public opposition, Saudi Arabia could have the option to covertly participate in the program, similar to how the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain quietly held military drills alongside Israeli forces at U.S.-and NATO-led exercises shortly before both countries normalized ties with Israel in 2020.
Saudi Arabia has already developed other covert ties with Israel, including business connections and a rumored meeting between Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman and former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in 2019. These ties are reflective of the Saudi crown prince’s desire to build connections with Israel even without progress on the Palestinian issue, though it’s widely assumed the Saudi public would oppose normalization.
-
uly 7, 2022
View On Website
Open as PDF
Why a Middle Eastern NATO Won’t Work
The lack of trust and agreement on security threats precludes the formation of an Arab military pact.
By: Hilal Khashan
Last month, Jordan’s King Abdullah II announced his support for forming a Middle Eastern military alliance similar to NATO. Interest in establishing a regional military pact goes back to the Cold War years when the United Kingdom helped create the Baghdad Pact in 1955, though the alliance collapsed three years later after an Iraqi coup toppled the monarchy. This is just one example of the numerous attempts at regional military cooperation that have foundered over the years. One of the most recent was U.S. President Donald Trump’s proposal in 2017 to establish a Middle East Strategic Alliance, also modeled after NATO.
Even though MESA did not take off, efforts to prod the region’s leaders to agree on a cooperative security arrangement have continued. Last March, a meeting in Egypt’s Sharm el-Sheikh resort brought together military officers from the U.S., Israel, Jordan, Egypt and the UAE to evaluate Iran’s ballistic missile and drone threat. More recently, Secretary of State Antony Blinken held a meeting with counterparts from the same countries and Morocco to discuss security issues ahead of President Joe Biden’s visit to the region in mid-July. But Biden is unlikely to fare any better than his predecessors. Deep-seated animosity, perpetual distrust of one another and disagreement on the perception of foreign threats preclude low-level cooperation, let alone the formation of a military pact.
History of Failed Partnerships
Arab countries have repeatedly failed to coordinate during key moments of regional conflict. In the 1948 war against Israel, for example, Arab armies failed to coordinate their plans, leading to a decisive Israeli victory. In 1950, Arab countries adopted the Treaty of Joint Defense and Economic Cooperation. They established a unified Arab military command, which remained inactive until 1964, when they decided at an Arab summit to divert the tributaries of the Jordan River and send Syrian and Iraqi troops to Lebanon and Jordan to protect the diversion sites. Both countries subsequently refused to accept Arab military units on their territories.
(click to enlarge)
On the eve of the 1967 Six-Day War, however, King Hussein of Jordan signed a defense agreement with Egypt and appointed an Egyptian officer to lead the Jordanian army. He allowed an Iraqi army division to enter Jordan and ordered the Jordanian army to shell Israeli positions in west Jerusalem. He did so despite assurances by Israeli Prime Minister Levi Eshkol that Israel would not seize the West Bank if the Jordanian army did not initiate hostilities. Hussein had concluded that his kingdom would be easier to govern without the West Bank, considering that the Palestinian people had rejected the Hashemites and assassinated his grandfather, King Abdullah I, in 1951.
In 1973, Egypt and Syria went to war against Israel without articulating a war strategy. Egyptian President Anwar Sadat wanted a limited conflict to convince the U.S. to enforce a U.N. resolution that called on Israel to withdraw from lands occupied in 1967. In contrast, Syrian President Hafez Assad believed he could recover the Golan Heights. Their lack of coordination and different war objectives enabled the Israelis to advance to 40 kilometers (25 miles) from Damascus.
Fearing Iranian and Iraqi hegemony, the GCC – consisting of Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Oman, Qatar, Bahrain and Kuwait – sought to create a military force to defend its members against the winner of the Iran-Iraq War. In 1984, it formed the Peninsula Shield Force based near the Saudi-Iraqi border. However, disagreements within the group, especially over troop deployment, meant the force never exceeded 4,000 troops and failed to prevent Iraq from invading Kuwait in 1990. In the Damascus Declaration, issued soon after the U.S.-led coalition expelled Iraq from Kuwait, Egypt and Syria pledged to provide military forces to defend the GCC countries against foreign threats. Distrusting their intentions, Saudi Arabia and the UAE did not honor the declaration, embarking on separate plans to build up their own armies with Western assistance.
In December 2013, GCC members announced the establishment of a unified armed forces command consisting of 100,000 troops, half of whom were provided by Saudi Arabia. Three months later, Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Bahrain recalled their ambassadors from Qatar to protest its foreign policy, shelving the proposed military command.
In 2015, Saudi Arabia and the UAE launched Operation Decisive Storm against the Houthi rebels in Yemen. Seven Arab countries offered to participate in the war effort but quickly disengaged. In 2019, the UAE, which was focused on securing South Yemen, also withdrew from the war, choosing instead to rely on its local affiliates to pursue its objectives. Saudi Arabia continued to wage war alone, using mostly Yemeni army troops, African mercenaries and its own air power.
In 2016, Saudi Arabia invited 20 Muslim countries to participate in an ostentatious military exercise codenamed Northern Thunder and held near the Kuwaiti border, less than 400 kilometers from the Iranian city of Abadan. The symbolic drills lasted almost one month and included countries irrelevant to Middle East politics, such as Malaysia, Senegal, the Maldives and Mauritius. Another participant, Qatar, became the subject of a three-year blockade led by Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Bahrain just one year later.
Barriers to Cooperation
For Arab countries in West Asia, one of the barriers to cooperation is fear of antagonizing Iran. The GCC countries and Jordan understand that Tehran can destabilize their regimes. Iran is driven by a desire to dominate the Persian Gulf, though it has shown a willingness to cooperate with certain regimes regardless of their ideological orientation. Faced with this reality, some countries in the region, including Oman, Qatar, Kuwait and the UAE, have maintained varying degrees of partnership with Iran. Every time the UAE draws closer to Israel, it sends a high-level official to Tehran to assure the Iranian leadership that it would not allow foreign powers to stage attacks on Iran from its territory. The ruler of Dubai has often called for easing sanctions on Tehran. Meanwhile, Egypt and North African countries, which boast the most powerful Arab militaries, do not perceive Iran as an enemy and are unlikely to join an alliance that considers it a threat.
Other countries, however, do consider Iran a major security threat. This explains why Jordan viewed Russia’s military presence in Syria as a stabilizing force against both radical Islamic movements and Iranian proxies near its northern borders. Notably, however, the war in Ukraine resulted in the withdrawal of Russian troops from Syria’s southwest and their replacement with pro-Iranian militias. In addition to posing a security risk, they became active in smuggling narcotics to the Gulf region via Jordan, precipitating frequent border clashes with the Jordanian army. Still, Jordan avoided criticizing Iran, only referring to rogue armed groups active in illicit activities across its borders. King Abdullah II’s unwillingness to name Iran as a threat casts doubt on his support for a NATO-type regional alliance. Though he did not specify the rationale for the project, he seemed worried about the resurgence of the Islamic State in Syria due to Russia’s preoccupation with the war in Ukraine and the possibility of a second wave of Arab uprisings.
Another barrier to a regional security alliance is the fact that Arab countries have long depended on external security guarantors. From the 19th century until their independence between 1961 and 1971, five GCC countries were reliant on London for their defense as British protectorates. The Saudis, meanwhile, came to an agreement on a security arrangement in 1945 with U.S. President Franklin Roosevelt. Since 2015, the U.S. has proposed integrating the GCC’s ballistic missile systems, modernizing its security apparatuses, conducting more frequent military exercises, and upgrading its counterterrorism capabilities. But the Gulf countries want direct Western involvement in their defense. In recent years, they granted several countries, especially the United States, the right to establish military bases on their territories.
The Saudi royals do not trust their armed forces’ ability to defend the country against foreign threats, even militias such as the Houthis or Iraq’s pro-Iranian Popular Mobilization Forces. Riyadh has spent hundreds of billions of dollars on military procurement over the past four decades, and it still does not have a fighting army. In 2015, it demanded from the Obama administration a formal commitment to defend it against Iran, which it did not receive. Though the U.S. often expresses unwavering determination to defend the Saudis and other GCC countries, it ultimately wants to maintain a regional balance in the Gulf, not to defeat Iran. In addition, senior U.S. officials don’t hold the Saudi leadership in high regard. The last three U.S. presidents issued negative remarks about the kingdom. Obama described the Saudis as “free riders,” Trump told King Salman that he would not last in office for two weeks without U.S. support, and Biden said the Saudi government has “very little social redeeming value.”
As for Israel, there is no evidence to suggest that it is interested in anything more than transactional relations with the UAE and Saudi Arabia, despite the fanfare over the dawn of a new era in Arab-Israeli cooperation. Israel might be eager to sell GCC countries advanced anti-missile systems and to promote trade relations, but it’s wishful thinking for Arabs to expect Israel to fight Iran on their behalf.
The Saudis understand that securing a more significant U.S. commitment to protect them is not a substitute for improving relations with Iran. Despite ongoing talks in Baghdad between Riyadh and Tehran, a lack of trust will block any workable agreement between them. In addition, Saudi Arabia will not normalize its ties with Israel until Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman succeeds his father. Even then, the Saudis have no delusions about Israel giving them security assurances beyond what Washington’s offering. Military alliances are formed to address specific security concerns that are clear to all participating countries. In the Arab region, frequent policy shifts will not allow for the establishment of a stable and enduring security coalition
-
https://www.foxnews.com/media/bidens-fist-bump-saudi-arabias-mohammed-bin-salman-shocks-twitter
used by both sides as political football
frankly my dear I don't care
worst crime in humanity is to harm a jurnolister :|
-
Can Biden Correct Obama’s Mistakes in the Middle East?
The opening to Iran, and the fiascoes in Libya and Syria, were devastating to U.S. credibility. But they brought Israel and its Arab neighbors closer together.
By Walter Russell MeadFollow
July 15, 2022 6:39 pm ET
As President Biden traveled through the Middle East this week, he was caught between the demands of human-rights activists and pro-Palestinian campaigners and the hard realities of the U.S. national interests. His administration had hoped to revive the Iran nuclear deal while pressuring Israel over its treatment of the Palestinians and reducing American commitments to and engagement with the Gulf Arab states. That policy mix thrills Democratic Party liberal internationalists but ignores reality.
It collapsed under the weight of Iran’s using Mr. Biden’s commitment to re-enter the nuclear deal as cover for a massive buildup of weapons-grade uranium while strengthening its relations with Russia and China, and of the failure of Mr. Biden’s green-energy agenda in the face of spiking oil and gas prices. The president now seeks to strengthen old American alliances with countries like Israel and Saudi Arabia.
This won’t be easy. Arabs and Israelis alike remember the serial failures of the Obama administration: the disaster of its pro-democracy policy in Egypt, its misguided embrace of Turkey’s Recep Tayyip Erdogan as a leader of “democratic Islamism,” its failure to establish order in Libya after helping engineer the overthrow of Moammar Gadhafi, its dithering over the “red line” in Syria, its feckless acquiescence in Vladimir Putin’s reassertion of a Russian role in Syria. All eroded regional confidence in the wisdom and even the competence of America’s senior political leadership.
Unconscious of their diminished prestige, senior Obama administration officials alienated Israeli and Palestinian negotiators by attempting to dictate the terms of peace. Secretary of State John Kerry lectured his Israeli and Palestinian interlocutors tirelessly about their true interests. “You Palestinians can never get the f— big picture,” White House national security adviser Susan Rice admonished the chief Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat. At a White House meeting on March 17, 2014, Mr. Obama tried to persuade Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas to sign on the dotted line, telling him: “Don’t quibble with this detail or that detail. The occupation will end. You will get a Palestinian state. You will never have an administration as committed to that as this one.”
Mr. Abbas was unimpressed. He and Erekat, to say nothing of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, saw the big picture much more clearly than the Americans did. U.S. officials had failed to grasp not only their own drastically diminished authority and prestige but the changing nature of Israeli society and the implications for American diplomacy in the pursuit of peace.
The more liberal wing of the Israeli political establishment was rooted in the “Ashkenazi ascendancy” that dominated Israel in the early decades of independence as thoroughly as WASPs once dominated American life. But over time a mix of Sephardic and Russian immigrants, along with the rapidly growing ultra-Orthodox and Hasidic populations, began to challenge the old, largely secular and Western-minded elite. The old establishment held on in the judiciary, the universities and certain institutions in the security field. But its members were increasingly alienated from the less polished, less Western, less liberal, more religious and more Middle Eastern country Israel was becoming.
In an Israeli form of identity politics, right-leaning voters, resenting what they saw as discrimination and contempt from the establishment, banded together behind leaders like Menachem Begin (prime minister from 1977 through 1983) and Mr. Netanyahu (1996-99, 2009-21). These leaders were less open to American ideas and less vulnerable to pressure from Washington than their predecessors had been. The Russian, Sephardic and ultra-Orthodox voters who supported them mostly didn’t share the feeling of guilt about the Palestinians that haunted the old Israeli establishment. Their knowledge of Arab culture, language and attitudes left them contemptuous of what they saw as fuzzy-minded Americans spouting foolish platitudes about the Arab world.
They had even less respect for the opinions of American Jews. These Israelis or their parents were often refugees from Arab countries, where they had suffered discrimination and persecution. They felt they owed the world and the Palestinians no apologies. As they saw it, pampered and affluent American Jews who had never held a gun, patrolled a Palestinian street or crouched in the basement with their families as Palestinian missiles soared overhead had no business lecturing Israelis on where their boundaries should be.
Neither Mr. Kerry nor Mr. Obama seems to have understood how their own personal unpopularity in Israel changed the politics of peace among Israelis. As Jews from the former Soviet Union watched Mr. Putin run rings around Mr. Obama on the international stage, as Mizrahi Jews from Muslim countries heard Americans echo the flabby liberal rhetoric of a condescending Israeli establishment that despised them, association with those Americans became toxic. Right-wing politicians saw no reason to conceal their disdain for the Americans and their process; attacking Mr. Kerry in particular brought political dividends. Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon (2013-16), in conversations with journalists, would mock what he saw as American naiveté, messianic delusions and arrogance. The only thing that will save Israel, he was quoted as saying in 2014, “is for John Kerry to win his Nobel Prize and go home.”
Some of the key arguments the Americans used to convince Israelis to move toward a two-state solution lost traction. Unless a Palestinian state could be established, Americans often argued, Israelis would face the choice between becoming an undemocratic “apartheid” state ruling over an Arab majority and watching the Jewish character of the state disappear as Arabs took over the Knesset.
This demographic argument plays poorly among serious Zionists. In the 1930s and ’40s, Arabs heavily outnumbered Jews. The Jewish minority faced constant pressure from both the Arab majority and Britain, which administered Palestine under a mandate from the League of Nations, to accept minority status in a single state. If the tiny, impoverished and almost friendless Jewish community could reject a one-state solution then, surely a nuclear-armed regional superpower whose technological capabilities the world envied could define its frontiers and chart its political course.
When U.S. negotiators warned that failure to fall in line with Mr. Kerry’s peace initiative would isolate the Jewish state, Israeli officials felt that the Americans had again lost touch with key regional dynamics. Even as Jewish settlements on the West Bank grew, Arab governments drew closer to Israel and openly impatient with the Palestinians. As the Obama administration shifted from a policy of reconciliation with the Arab world to one of bridge-building with Iran, many Arabs interpreted the seeming inaction, along with U.S. passivity in Syria, as a historic betrayal.
Public opinion in the Arab world, appalled at the bloodletting in Libya and Syria and shocked by America’s lack of any positive agenda for these critical regional problems, became more tolerant of their own rulers’ faults and less willing to support dangerous movements for political change. The Arab Spring never turned into summer. Nobody wanted to end up like Syria or Libya, and everyone could see how worthless American support had been to the Egyptian democracy movement.
In a world where Russia and Iran were prepared to brutalize Syria back into obedience to the Assad dynasty, the fate of the West Bank seemed less significant than ever. And Israel and its Arab neighbors alike increasingly saw America’s new Iran policy as their gravest security threat.
The new constellation of forces debuted during the Gaza War in the summer of 2014, just after the last flames of the Kerry process had flickered out. Following a series of mutual provocations and retaliations, the Israel Defense Forces launched massive airstrikes and missile launches into Gaza. Ten days later, Israeli ground forces moved into the strip.
As cease-fire negotiations dragged, it became clear that Egypt, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Fatah (the Palestinian Authority’s ruling party in the West Bank) were quietly supporting the Israeli position in hope that Hamas would be hit as hard as possible. American negotiators sided with Turkey and Qatar, which pushed to end the fighting more quickly to reduce the death toll, a result that would come at the cost of offering Hamas a result it could spin as a victory.
For Israelis, one lesson seemed obvious. In a shooting conflict that saw Israelis firing on Palestinian cities, the heavyweight powers of the Arab world were backing Israel—against the U.S. Unintentionally and unwittingly, the Obama administration had achieved a goal that had eluded generations of American diplomats: It had laid the foundation for the integration of Israel into the Middle East.
Mr. Biden’s attempt to revive the core features of Mr. Obama’s Middle East policies left Arabs and Israelis wondering if the days of condescension and arrogance had returned. One hopes they haven’t, and that the president and his team succeed in regaining the respect of important leaders and power brokers across the Middle East.
Mr. Mead is the Journal’s Global View columnist. This is adapted from his new book, “The Arc of a Covenant: The United States, Israel and the Fate of the Jewish People.”
-
February 20, 2023
View On Website
Open as PDF
The Bigger Picture Around Juniper Oak
Though the military exercise was geared toward Iran, it suggests much more strategic calculations.
By: Caroline D. Rose
In late January, U.S. and Israeli forces staged a military exercise called Juniper Oak, their largest, most complex exercise to date. Planned in just 90 days, the U.S. and Israel sent nearly 150 aircraft, a dozen warships, advanced artillery systems, and just shy of 8,000 soldiers, including infantry and special operations forces, to simulate a large-scale attack by land, air, sea, space and cyberspace. An exercise of that magnitude – assembled that quickly – drew the attention of pretty much every country in the world, many of which couldn’t help but see it as a simulated attack against Iran’s nuclear facilities. After all, tensions are rising, nuclear negotiations are dead in the water, and the U.S. and Israel are likely considering every option.
Several U.S. military and defense officials denied that Juniper Oak had anything to do with Iran, but the scope, scale and complexity of the exercise suggested otherwise. It incorporated combatant command elements, executing missions on command and control, maritime surface warfare, air operations, combat search and rescue, cyber and electronic attacks, and strike coordination, reconnaissance and air interdiction. Live-fire exercises were conducted in waves to simulate repeated missile, bomb and HIMARS attacks. The U.S. deployed KC-46 air refueling tankers – an aircraft that would absolutely be involved in an attack on Iran – allowing Israeli pilots to familiarize themselves with the planes before they receive their own. Other aircraft that would be used to penetrate Iranian air defenses were notably absent, but all told Juniper Oak checked a lot of the boxes, including support assets, mechanics and logistics, that would be vital in any large-scale assault against Iran.
Though Iran was an important element of the exercise, it wasn’t the only one, and perhaps not even the most important one. As the exercise concluded, CENTCOM officials promised to build upon Juniper Oak, accelerate regional interoperability, expand to include more participants, and eventually institutionalize the combined exercise. From this there is only one conclusion: that the U.S. has every intention to follow through with its drawdown in the Middle East, and that it hopes to steadily build a security architecture where regional partners assume more responsibility.
To that end, Washington sees bilateral cooperation with Israel as the first step toward much grander designs. Israel is a natural partner given its armed forces’ advanced readiness, modernization, and sophisticated combined arms capabilities, which allow the Israel Defense Forces to punch above its weight. Israel actively participates in bilateral and multilateral exercises with countries such as Greece and Italy that it hopes will eventually be part of a regional anti-Iranian coalition.
The timing of Juniper Oak is also telling, coming as it did at an unusually accommodative time in the Middle East. The U.S.-led Abraham Accords have paved the way for Israel to mend ties with certain Arab countries and, perhaps someday, launch overt security cooperation. Turkey, meanwhile, has warmed ties with regional adversaries such as the United Arab Emirates and has dialed down its aggressive posturing against traditional rivals in the eastern Mediterranean. More, the ice from the 2017 diplomatic crisis between Qatar and other Arab countries has begun to melt, facilitating cooperation and cohesion in the Gulf Cooperation Council. Looming over all of this – and, in fact, spurring much of it – is Iran. As the U.S. retreats, there is greater demand for a formal security mechanism to counter Tehran, especially as nuclear talks fail and as covert Iranian operations rise. Put simply, the conditions for a regional security mechanism to collectively counter Iran have never been this ripe.
That’s not to say it’s destined to happen or, if it happens, that it will succeed. But all the signs are there. Washington is clearly laying the groundwork for greater regional security cooperation, the ultimate objective of which is to allow trusted partners to handle their own affairs as it pivots to Europe and the Indo-Pacific.
In the coming months, the U.S. will probably try to bring new participants into the fold, enticing countries that don’t need much encouragement anyway (Egypt, Greece and the UAE) with equipment deals, capacity-building exercises or other incentives. It’s also likely that the U.S. will seek to play a greater role in regional normalization efforts – not out of the kindness of its heart but because it believes it could yield even greater defense cooperation. That’s no small thing for a power that is at once arming Ukraine, shifting assets to the Indo-Pacific and maintaining capacity in the Middle East.
-
https://www.cnbc.com/2023/03/10/arch-rivals-iran-and-saudi-arabia-agree-to-revive-ties-reopen-embassies.html
a lot of implications and questions here
interesting the AP goes to Anna Jacobs of the LEFT wing Soros funded
"International Crises Group" for comment
:roll:
lets see what the Netanyahu crowd is thinking
we will have to wait for one of our few networks to discuss views from conservatives
-
By: Geopolitical Futures
Russia and the Middle East. Syrian President Bashar Assad is on the second day of a visit to Moscow, where he is meeting with President Vladimir Putin to discuss cooperation and prospects for resolving Syria’s crisis. On Thursday, delegations from Syria, Turkey, Iran and Russia will meet in the Russian capital. The Kremlin needs friends, and the Middle East is changing rapidly amid the United States’ gradual disengagement and China’s moves to fill the vacuum.
-
By: Geopolitical Futures
Naval exercises. China’s Defense Ministry announced that its navy will conduct exercises with Russia, Iran and others in the Gulf of Oman from March 15-19. The exercises, dubbed Marine Security Belt 2023, have been held twice before – in December 2019 and January 2022. The drills are largely symbolic: Iran and Russia get to counter Western claims that they are isolated, while China demonstrates its growing reach. Relatedly, Iran is continuing to make up with its neighbors. Iranian lawmakers met with Bahrain’s parliament speaker, and on Thursday, Iranian security chief Ali Shamkhani will visit the United Arab Emirates.
-
"Iran is continuing to make up with its neighbors"
except one of course
-
Syria, Saudi Arabia, Russia: Moscow Mediating Talks to Restore Saudi-Syria Ties
2 MIN READMar 24, 2023 | 19:52 GMT
What Happened: Russia is mediating talks to restore Saudi Arabia's diplomatic ties with Syria after over a decade of strained relations between the two Middle Eastern countries, The Wall Street Journal reported March 23, citing Saudi and Syrian officials ''familiar with the discussions.'' Saudi state TV has since confirmed the talks, which are reportedly focused on trying to reopen the Saudi embassy in Damascus by the end of Ramadan.
Why It Matters: Saudi Arabia is considering resuming diplomatic ties with Syria as Riyadh looks for alternative partners to secure its interests in the wake of the United States' growing disinterest in the region. The kingdom is also laying the groundwork for a vote on restoring Syria's membership in the Arab League during the regional bloc's meeting in May, which Saudi Arabia is hosting. Russia's push to facilitate Saudi-Syria normalization, meanwhile, follows China's recent success in brokering the March 10 Saudi-Iran normalization deal that ended the Persian Gulf neighbors' seven-year rift — further highlighting both Moscow and Beijing's growing ability to mediate global conflicts where Washington is either unwilling or unable to do so.
Background: Relations between Saudi Arabia and Syria have been severed since the early years of the latter's civil war due to the former's support for the rebels fighting against the Syrian regime. But with the defeat of these rebels, Saudi Arabia has begun to shift its view of Syria, while other Arab states — led by Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates, and Egypt — began to reopen embassies and/or push for Syria to be brought back into the Arab League, from which it was suspended in 2011.
-
April 13, 2023
View On Website
Open as PDF
Saudi Arabia and Iran’s Reputed Rapprochement
The two countries have a long way to go before achieving genuine reconciliation.
By: Hilal Khashan
Last month, Iran and Saudi Arabia signed a landmark agreement brokered by China to restore their diplomatic ties and usher in a new era of regional cooperation and non-intervention in domestic affairs. The deal will launch discussions on building a new regional security framework under China’s supervision. It also calls for strengthening Iran’s economic and diplomatic relations with the Gulf Cooperation Council. The Saudi finance minister said the kingdom, which is working to diversify its economy away from fossil fuels, is ready to invest in Iran’s economy if all goes to plan. The agreement should create an economic outlet for sanctions-ridden Iran, which has long pressed Saudi Arabia to make a deal that guarantees their interests and frees the Saudis from American pressure. However, the two countries have a long way to go before achieving genuine reconciliation.
Saudi Shift
For the Saudis, one of the main motivations for making peace with Iran is to move toward extricating themselves from the quagmire in Yemen. On Sunday, a Saudi delegation went to Sanaa to discuss renewing a cease-fire that has been in place since April 2022, in preparation for a two-year transitional period to resolve the crisis. The Saudis are eager to end their involvement in the war against the Houthi rebels to focus instead on domestic development projects, which require peace and stability in the Arabian Peninsula. To achieve this stability, however, the Saudis have no option but to accede to the demands of the Houthis, who control northern Yemen. These demands include lifting the Saudi-imposed blockade, obtaining a fair share of Yemen’s oil wealth and, most critically, the adoption of a federalist system.
The detente between Riyadh and Tehran is part of a broader shift in the Saudis’ domestic and foreign policies that has been ongoing for years. Under the reign of King Salman and Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, Riyadh’s approach to governance has evolved beyond recognition from what Ibn Saud envisioned when he founded the Third Saudi State in 1932. The king and crown prince have transformed the Saudi political system dramatically, concentrating authority in their hands while undermining the clerical establishment’s traditional role as overseers of government policies. The kingdom has also set new criteria for conducting its foreign affairs, aspiring to become the leader of the Gulf region and redrawing its relations with major powers, particularly the United States.
Saudi Arabia began to express dissatisfaction with the U.S.’ Middle East policy two decades ago, though its concerns became public only when President Joe Biden entered the White House. Saudi Arabia was disappointed with the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003 and the dismantling of Saddam Hussein’s regime, which led to Iran’s hegemony over Iraq. It was also frustrated with Washington’s lack of support for Saudi interests in Syria and Yemen and its reluctance to defend the kingdom when Iran targeted its oil facilities in 2019. It also objected to the Iranian nuclear agreement in 2015.
Riyadh moved to curtail its close relations with the U.S. beginning in 2012 during the rule of King Abdullah, who had developed the impression that U.S. President Barack Obama lacked energy and sophistication in confronting Iran, their common adversary. The Saudis were annoyed with Obama after he reneged on his promise to intervene militarily in the Syrian war if the Assad regime crossed a “red line” and used chemical weapons against the opposition. The Saudis were also afraid of the American president’s desire to draw closer to Iran and urge the kingdom to resolve its problems with Tehran directly, without U.S. intervention. The head of Saudi intelligence at the time, Prince Bandar bin Sultan, told European diplomats that Riyadh was considering a radical change in its relations with the U.S. in protest of its abandonment of the Middle East and pivot to Asia. The Saudi king and crown prince also distrust the current administration and have emphasized that they have strong cards to play both internationally and economically.
China’s Role
The Middle East has become essential to China due to Beijing's level of trade with the countries of the region and its desire to find an alternative trade route to the Strait of Malacca, which the U.S. Navy controls. The move toward China is part of MBS’ Vision 2030, a massive development project that requires forging strategic and industrial cooperation with multiple countries. Last month, the Saudi Council of Ministers approved a memorandum recognizing the kingdom as a “dialogue partner” in the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, an eight-member security grouping and counterweight to U.S.-led initiatives. Riyadh hopes its accession to the group will enable it to reach new markets in the East through its investments. The move confirms the depth of the Saudi economy’s focus on Asia since Chinese President Xi Jinping visited the kingdom last year.
Saudi Arabia’s joining of the SCO, as well as its rapprochement with Iran, further undermines Riyadh’s relationship with Washington. Riyadh understands the intentions of the Iranians and the Chinese in the rapprochement deal. The supreme commander of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps called it a setback for the United States. But MBS’ primary concern remains building Saudi Arabia’s economy, regardless of the long-term repercussions of its cooperation with Iran or China. MBS has come to the conclusion that Saudi Arabia can achieve economic development only if it is part of a global financial system.
The Iranians, meanwhile, see their relationship with China through a different prism. Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s perspective of the world converges with that of Chinese President Xi Jinping and Russian President Vladimir Putin, as they all view themselves as being at war with Western civilization. Khamenei aspires to establish an Islamic community led by Iran, while Putin desires a Slavic bloc controlled by Russia, and Xi strives for a Confucian-communist renaissance dominated by China. His desire for closer ties with Russia and China was revealed by his statement from a few months ago that the new world order he wishes to create aims to isolate the U.S., transfer power to Asia and weaken Western international influence. (Given the deep divisions among its members, the SCO must support the existing balance of power in international relations. It has therefore shifted its emphasis from security and politics to the economy.)
Expectations Versus Reality
The full fallout from the Saudi-Iran agreement remains unpredictable, despite some describing it as a historical event. Like every agreement between nations, it is liable to fail, especially given the absence of a rapport between the elites of the two countries. It will not lead to the immediate end of tensions, though it can help defuse the long-standing hostility between them. For Iran, one of the most important goals of the deal was to develop economic and trade cooperation with the Gulf states as it tries to overcome its economic stagnation and contain discontent with rising inflation, which exceeded 40 percent last year. Saudi Arabia’s hostility toward Iran was a result of Tehran’s interference in its allies’ affairs and its efforts to acquire a nuclear bomb. Despite Chinese assurances that it will ensure compliance with the terms of the agreement, the Saudis are fully aware that they cannot rely on the Iranian regime’s commitments to stick to the terms of the deal.
Iran is facing enormous internal and external pressures, and its agreement to stop arming its regional militias is nothing more than a tactical retreat, a product of its political and religious doctrine based on the concept of strategic patience. The preamble to the Iranian constitution speaks of exporting the Islamic revolution and calls for interference in the internal affairs of Iran’s neighbors. The U.S. has expressed annoyance with China’s mediation of the Saudi-Iran rapprochement, which, in its opinion, goes beyond normalizing relations or promoting security in the Middle East. The Biden administration views the deal as a nucleus for a new world order that works in the interests of Moscow, Beijing and Tehran.
Iran hopes to reap diplomatic, security and economic benefits from the agreement. It will improve Iran’s relations with other Arab countries such as Egypt, Bahrain and the UAE, though its implications for Iraq, Syria and Lebanon remain to be seen. Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi recently called his Syrian counterpart, Bashar Assad, to assure him that the changes taking place will benefit the so-called “axis of resistance.” He declared that the U.S.’ deployment of a nuclear submarine to the region was a sign of weakness. Assad, in turn, spoke of signs of collapse in Israeli society, attributing them to the resistance. When the Houthis took control of the Yemeni capital of Sanaa, the Iranians said it was the fourth Arab capital to fall to them. During Ayatollah Rullollah Khomeini’s return from France in February 1979, he said that the Islamic community was ruled for several centuries by the Arabs, and then by the Turks, and that now it was the Persians’ turn. Reconciliation with the Saudis, Tehran would argue, is a step in that direction.
-
https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/19578/biden-middle-east-china
-
"In the absence of any desire on the part of the Biden administration to support the Saudis -- for decades one of Washington's most important allies in the region -- China has moved quickly to fill the diplomatic vacuum to launch its own initiative to restore ties with Iran."
Also Biden team (not him as he has no idea what he is doing) have meddles quite significantly is Israeli affairs
and hurting security there
turning SA away from better relations with Israel and interfering in judicial reform,
and providing aid to Palenstinians.
watch this PBS' Amna Nawaz on sided interview Israel previous Prime Minister Naftali Bennett:
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/former-israeli-prime-minister-on-the-escalating-violence-in-his-country
One can only think this is the Biden / Rice administrations (obama people) contempt for. Israel conservatives - same as here .
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amna_Nawaz
-
May 17, 2023
View On Website
Open as PDF
The New Middle East Order
A tripolar system has emerged with Israel, Turkey and Iran at the helm.
By: Hilal Khashan
A new Middle East order is emerging that will soon supplant pan-Arabism as the dominant regional force after decades of failure by Arab states to resolve long-running disputes and pursue shared interests. The new order – a tripolar system with Israel, Turkey and Iran at the helm – is also ushering in a new era in regional politics, evident through the shifting relations between states. Last week, for example, Saudi Arabia and Syria resumed full diplomatic relations, and Saudi King Salman invited Syrian President Bashar Assad to the upcoming Arab summit in Jeddah. This comes as several Middle Eastern governments work toward normalization with the Syrian regime, which was readmitted this week to the Arab League after 12 years of isolation.
Lack of Arab Cooperation
The emergence of this new order followed years of dysfunction among the Arab establishment. In the 1950s, a sort of Arab cold war erupted between radical pan-Arab regimes and conservative monarchies, dampening cooperation among countries of the region. It subsided after the 1967 Six-Day War, as Israel’s Arab neighbors became preoccupied with their loss of territory in the conflict. In 1970, Hafez Assad led a coup to overthrow the government in Damascus, following Syria’s losing bid to rescue the Palestine Liberation Organization from full-scale war launched by Jordanian King Hussein, leading to the PLO’s expulsion to Lebanon. Assad won the presidency in an uncontested election, eliminated the radical elements in the government and embarked on a domestic and regional policy of pragmatism, predicated on the principle of nonintervention in Arab countries’ affairs.
The death of Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser a few weeks before the coup facilitated the transition to an Arab political order, which promoted stability and security cooperation. In 1978, Egyptian President Anwar Sadat reached a peace treaty with Israel in violation of an agreement among Arab states that any comprehensive peace deal would be negotiated by a united Arab bloc. The move led to the suspension of Egypt’s membership in the Arab League and the resumption of the Arab cold war, which continued, to varying degrees, until now. Arab countries, along with Turkey and Iran, are putting their differences aside and focusing again on their economic and security imperatives.
Syria at the Center
Former U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger once said, “The Arabs can’t make war without Egypt, and they can’t make peace without Syria.” This maxim is true now more than ever. Syria is a fulcrum of Middle East power politics. The Arab rapprochement with the Syrian regime is aimed not at ending the conflict there but at making sure Syria will remain an arena for settling international and regional issues without directly affecting external parties. In the 1970s and 1980s, Arab countries engaged in the Lebanese civil war for similar reasons. That conflict didn’t end until 1989, when Arab countries realized they couldn’t settle their differences by waging war in Lebanon. Today, Middle Eastern states have a keen interest in keeping the Syrian conflict a controlled battleground through which Israel can vent its anger without it leading to a general war against Iran, which would threaten the security of the Gulf states. Thus, the changing Arab regional outlook coincides with the resumption of Saudi-Iranian relations, reflecting the desire to confine the Israeli-Iranian conflict to Syria without negatively impacting other countries.
Middle East and West Asia
(click to enlarge)
However, the recent wave of reconciliation does not reflect what’s happening on the ground in Syria. Turkey will keep its current positions in the north under the pretext of securing its national interests, and the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces will maintain their control in the east, protected by U.S. troops. Russia and Iran, meanwhile, will continue to prop up the Assad regime, which has neither the will nor the ability to curtail Iranian influence – though it doesn’t seem that the Arab countries are asking Assad to do so anyway. Arab governments want to achieve fruitful cooperation with Iran in Syria to protect their future investments in Syria’s reconstruction from government corruption. Iran and Arab countries also have a shared interest in restoring security in the war-torn country. As for Russia, it can benefit from the Arab-Syrian rapprochement by using it to bolster relations with Arab states at a time when it is increasingly isolated.
Investors will still be wary about investing in Syria, even if the U.S. turns a blind eye to attempts to circumvent sanctions under cover of humanitarian aid. Nevertheless, the Gulf countries believe committing financial resources to Syria’s reconstruction will have stabilizing effects. Tehran is also looking to benefit economically from Syria’s recovery. On a recent trip to Damascus, Iranian President Ibrahim Raisi wanted to focus on their economic relations, characterized by complete Iranian control over real estate, electricity and milling sectors.
The push to restore Arab countries’ embassies in Damascus hasn’t translated beyond a diplomatic level. One day before announcing Damascus’ return to the Arab League, Jordan launched a military operation inside Syrian territory to combat drug smuggling. The move sent a message to Assad that his return to the grouping does not give him free rein. Oman, which played an essential role in mediating the rapprochement, added figures close to the Syrian regime to its terrorism watch list the same day that the Arab League announced it was restoring Syria’s membership.
Syria’s rehabilitation also means little in terms of the integrity of the Arab League, a grouping made up of countries with their own questionable human rights records. Many Arab governments did not intervene in the Syrian conflict to support the uprising and even disrupted opposition forces by using them to pursue their own agendas at the expense of the Syrian people.
Iran, for its part, considers the war in Syria over. It’s now focused on a strategy, known as frontal defense, aimed at constructing sectarian military barriers as its first line of defense in any future war. The strategy also aims to ensure that the Iranian regime can maintain supplies to and communications with Iran-linked militias. Tehran must therefore secure safe transportation routes by purchasing land in Greater Damascus to build a buffer and establish reliable and permanent access to its most prominent ally, Hezbollah. The Arab openness to the government in Damascus has no effect on this plan.
Saudi and Emirati Defensive Posture
Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates have been gradually developing a new regional policy to ease tensions in the Middle East, starting by improving relations with Turkey and Qatar and developing dialogue with Iran and the Assad regime. Abu Dhabi has adopted a more aggressive regional policy predicated militarily and economically on the peace agreement with Israel. Its rulers understand that the Biden administration’s Middle East policy does not hinge on the Gulf countries or Egypt, in part because of their dismal human rights records. Instead, the U.S. bases its vision for the Middle East on Israel, which it views as a reliable ally.
The UAE thus reformulated its regional policy in line with this vision and withdrew from the costly conflicts in Yemen and Libya. Saudi Arabia belatedly followed suit, pulling out of the conflict in Yemen, a costly affair that exposed Saudi military weakness. It didn’t take long for the kingdom to realize that the only way out of its miscalculated military adventure was a rapprochement with Tehran. The UAE and Saudi Arabia are now increasingly focused on economic development, as they transition away from oil dependence and costly foreign misadventures.
The Middle East is witnessing an awakening under a new regional order that will combine cultures, nationalities, religions and ideologies. This could lead to separatist conflicts in the future and will alter the cultural and intellectual fabric of Arab society. Regardless of Turkey’s domestic political polarization, it will emerge as an active partner in the Gulf region and among the Arab Sunnis in Iraq, Syria and Lebanon. Iranian influence will also hold more weight because of Tehran’s close relations with Shiites in the countries of the Arab world. Israel will hold significant sway as a pivotal regional state, serving as a role model for modernization and an effective liaison with the West. Egypt, meanwhile, will continue to coordinate among Arab countries, calming conflicts as they arise – which they inevitably will.
-
I see someone's flag missing ?
(https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FyPrQloWAAAOWcc?format=jpg&name=small)
-
I see someone's flag missing ?
(https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FyPrQloWAAAOWcc?format=jpg&name=small)
They refuse to put up the FUSA's skittles flag.
-
June 22, 2023
Open as PDF
The Drumbeat of War in the Middle East
By: Hilal Khashan
Threats of impending war have permeated the Middle East since Israel’s establishment in 1948. Though Egypt made peace with Israel in 1978 and Jordan followed suit in 1994, Iran’s rise as a player in the Arab-Israeli conflict has elevated the violent rhetoric to new heights. Iran’s strategic patience and establishment of assets across the region have raised its status, forcing the U.S. to reckon with Tehran’s central regional role.
Israel is predictably unhappy about Iran’s rise. It now faces the burden of making a consequential decision in an attempt to restore the balance of power in the Middle East and reclaim its regional preeminence. Though Israel doesn’t want to engage in battle directly with Iran, it does have the capability and the will to strike Iranian assets in Lebanon and Syria, despite international pressure not to do so. Notably, Israeli Army Chief of Staff Herzi Halevi recently warned that Hezbollah was “about to make a mistake that could plunge the region into a major war.”
Hezbollah’s Threat
Israel’s spectacular victory in the 1967 Six-Day War altered the pattern of military confrontation in the Middle East. The conflict convinced Arab countries that they could not win a conventional war against their technologically superior and ideologically driven rival. Palestinian guerrilla warfare spearheaded by Fatah subsequently escalated, though Israel’s invasion of Lebanon in 1982 effectively ended the anti-Israel attacks of the Palestine Liberation Organization, the umbrella group in which Fatah is the largest faction. Meanwhile, the triumph of Iran’s Islamic Revolution in 1979 and Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini’s decision to export its principles throughout the Middle East drove Tehran to become an active Middle Eastern player, including by promoting the Palestinian cause after the Arabs abandoned it. During Israel’s 1982 invasion of Lebanon, Iran created Hezbollah as a resistance movement. It carried out shadowy functions, mainly kidnapping Westerners in Lebanon under the pseudonym Islamic Jihad. In 1985, after the Israeli army withdrew from Sidon in south Lebanon, Hezbollah officially announced its formation.
Backed by religious dogma and Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, Hezbollah retained an aura of military success. It survived Israel’s withering firepower in the 2006 Lebanon War and described the U.N.-brokered cease-fire as a divine victory. Despite subscribing to a different variation of religious doctrine, Hezbollah emerged as a role model for Palestinian factions, especially Palestinian Islamic Jihad and Hamas. Though Fatah’s guerrilla attacks against Israel began in 1965, the Iranian revolution gave the group hope that military action could help the Palestinians achieve statehood. Thus, many have grown to believe that destroying Hezbollah’s military capabilities would decimate Iran’s regional ambitions, dissuade the Palestinians from armed resistance and mitigate the consequences of a nuclear deal between the United States and Iran.
There have been recent reports that the U.S. and Iran are close to reaching an interim agreement under which Tehran would limit its nuclear program in return for the U.S. lifting some sanctions. Despite U.S. and Iranian denials of an impending deal, the Iranian foreign minister confirmed that dialogue was ongoing, arousing concerns in Israel that it will be excluded from U.S. plans to work with Iran on the nuclear issue.
The Israelis believe that the U.S. wants to avoid a visit by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to Washington to discuss Iran. The leaks about secret U.S.-Iran negotiations preceded a statement from Ayatollah Ali Khamenei earlier this month that it was possible to reach an agreement with the West on Tehran’s nuclear activities if Iran’s nuclear infrastructure could remain intact. Khamenei added that Iran’s Atomic Energy Organization should continue to work with the International Atomic Energy Agency to agree on a framework for mutual guarantees. The IAEA confirmed last month that it made limited progress on outstanding issues with Iran, including reinstalling some monitoring equipment initially put in place under the 2015 nuclear deal, which was suspended by the Trump administration in 2018.
Unprecedented Military Exercises
In recent years, the holding of military exercises in the region has been used as a deterrence tactic rather than a prelude to war. The U.S. conducts military exercises in the Middle East to support Israel and its Arab partners in the Gulf, assuring them that it will help defend them against Iran and its proxies. Tehran, meanwhile, frequently holds drills and parades its weapons to show its enemies that it’s ready for war. Israel also routinely launches military maneuvers to maintain its deterrent power and prepare the home front for a possible conflict.
Since 2022, however, Israeli drills, especially those involving its air force, have increased significantly. Exercises often simulate a war against Iran, especially after talks on a new nuclear deal stalled. Other drills simulated a conflict against Hezbollah.
Last year, the Israeli air force and navy conducted large-scale maneuvers in Cyprus called Chariots of Fire simulating a war with Hezbollah, as well as air and naval attacks against Iranian nuclear facilities. Last August, Israel launched its Lightning Shield drills, in cooperation with the Italian air force, at the Nevatim air base in southeastern Israel. In late 2022, the Israeli army conducted a heavy armor maneuver near the Lebanese border. A few weeks later, it carried out air drills with the French air force. 2023 began with large-scale drills dubbed Juniper Oak, which included simulations of air, land, sea and electronic warfare. They aimed to send a powerful message to Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates to halt their political and economic shift toward China and Russia. In this context, CENTCOM commander Gen. Michael Kurilla announced that massive joint exercises with Israel had renewed U.S. commitment to the Middle East.
Political disagreements between the Biden administration and the Israeli government don’t affect the U.S.’ commitment to Israel. Many joint exercises attest to American determination to ensure Israeli military superiority and integration in the Middle East’s regional system. Earlier this month, the U.S. Air Force launched B-1 Lancer bombers from Britain’s Royal Air Force Fairford base to carry out a live-fire exercise over Saudi Arabia and Jordan in which the Israeli air force also participated. Many military officers described the maneuvers as a demonstration of overwhelming American power. U.S. analysts also noted that the drills were part of an escalation of U.S. air and naval operations in the region in a show of force against Iran at a time when Saudi-Iranian relations saw a remarkable improvement after years of animosity.
The exercises coincided with U.S.-Saudi joint drills dubbed Eagle Resolve, which included simulations of cyberattacks. Around the same time, Israel, with limited American participation, carried out massive military maneuvers simulating raids on Iranian territory and ground incursions into Lebanon, Syria and the Palestinian territories. They aimed in part to avoid Russia’s mistakes in Ukraine and prepare for military naval operations to secure sea lanes and Israel’s exclusive economic zone. The maneuvers involved the Home Front Command, which rehearsed civilian operational plans, including maintaining functional continuity and evacuating citizens from their homes.
This followed Hezbollah’s offensive exercises last month ostensibly aimed to deter Israel from launching military operations in Lebanon. Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah often claims that in the event of war, his troops will occupy Israeli settlements in the Upper Galilee. The drills, which seemed more flashy than serious, included a simulation of occupying military sites in northern Israel and capturing soldiers. Hezbollah allowed more than 700 correspondents to observe the drills. Nasrallah seems convinced that the Israeli government, which is currently mired in internal crises, wouldn’t start another war with Lebanon, so the drills were mostly for domestic consumption.
Drumbeat of War
Still, there are mounting indications that tensions are rising to the point of a possible confrontation. There are voices in Israel calling for a preemptive strike against Hezbollah, even if it risks the eruption of a regional war. Palestinian human rights and religious activists have warned of the repercussions of an Israeli bill that would divide Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem between Muslims and Jews. They say it would usher in a religious war, noting that international law prohibits any changes to the status of holy places in Jerusalem. And Hamas says it’s working to integrate 40 militant groups in Gaza to develop a joint operations room as part of its insistence that all Palestinian factions participate in an upcoming confrontation with Israel.
It’s unlikely that Hamas, or even Palestinian Islamic Jihad, would take part in a coordinated war effort with Hezbollah. Still, the region’s dissent into full-scale conflict seems inevitable. One of the clear indicators is Hezbollah’s failure to elect its presidential candidate to replace former President Michel Aoun, whose term ended last October. Under normal conditions, Hezbollah would easily install its candidate of choice. Daring to veto Hezbollah’s nominee suggests that local forces opposed to Hezbollah have indications that the group’s grip on Lebanese politics could soon end.
-
August 10, 2023
View On Website
Open as PDF
Israel, Saudi Arabia and the Art of Managing Expectations
The Palestinian issue and Riyadh’s parallel talks with Iran are major obstacles.
By: Caroline D. Rose
Last month, Israeli spy chief David Barnea quietly met with Biden administration officials at the White House. The brief meeting reportedly centered on Israeli-Saudi relations – specifically, how the two traditional rivals, with U.S. support, could proceed toward normalization. Soon after Barnea’s rendezvous in Washington, U.S. National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan and White House Coordinator for the Middle East Brett McGurk traveled to Riyadh for talks.
It’s clear that serious efforts are underway for a U.S.-brokered normalization between Israel and Saudi Arabia. The incentives for all parties are clear. Rapprochement would present a unique opportunity to counterbalance Saudi-Iranian normalization in the region, hedge against Iranian nuclear ambitions and escalation through proxy militias, and exact political or security concessions from each party to achieve their respective goals. However, there are strict limits to just how far rapprochement can go.
Arduous Path to a Deal
Relations between Israel and Saudi Arabia have always been fraught. In fact, the countries never established diplomatic relations. From the start, Saudi Arabia was a vocal opponent of the United Nation’s 1947 proposal to partition British Palestine into an Arab and a Jewish state. Following Israel’s creation in 1948, the kingdom supported Arab Palestinian aspirations for statehood and continually called for Israel’s withdrawal. It also opposed Arab neighbors’ engagement in direct negotiations with the Israelis. For instance, it criticized Egypt and suspended ties over Cairo’s role in the 1978 Camp David Accords.
But over time, Israel developed into a formidable security actor in the region, Israeli-Palestinian peace talks continued to fail, and Iran doubled down on its forward-leaning militant posture after the 1979 Islamic Revolution – focusing on Israel and Saudi Arabia as potential targets. As a result, the Israelis and the Saudis adjusted their positions, entertaining backdoor discussions and even engaging in limited cooperation over shared interests. Iran’s escalation through its extensive proxy network, stretching from the Zagros Mountains to the Mediterranean Sea, and its expanding nuclear program became a shared concern. And as Saudi Arabia seeks to diversify its economy away from oil and promote regional infrastructural and commercial integration, Israel – a rising hub for energy connectivity projects and high technology – is a potential partner, capable of offering lucrative commercial, infrastructural and financial opportunities.
Iran's Path to the Mediterranean
(click to enlarge)
However, Saudi Arabia did not want to be the first Gulf country to take the dive with Israel. Though it behaves as the de facto leader of the region via the Gulf Cooperation Council, Riyadh has a habit of leading from behind. The first to take the plunge were instead the Arab signatories to the U.S.-brokered 2020 Abraham Accords. In a series of pathbreaking agreements, the United Arab Emirates, Morocco, Bahrain and Sudan reached agreements with Israel concerning banking, infrastructure, the environment, tourism and security.
Arab Countries that Recognize Israel
(click to enlarge)
Enter Saudi Arabia. Although the details of a tentative Israeli-Saudi normalization deal are murky, the broad demands are clear. Having kept its distance from Israel for decades over the Palestinian issue, Saudi Arabia has demanded Israeli concessions regarding settlements as well as the ability to offer aid packages in the West Bank. Saudi Arabia also seeks Israeli and U.S. approval to build a civilian nuclear program, which Israel has long opposed but which could help counterbalance Iran’s uranium enrichment. Finally, Riyadh wants a defense and security pact with Washington that would enable it to purchase advanced U.S. weapons, such as the THAAD ballistic missile defense system, and would assure U.S. protection in the event of an attack on Saudi territory. This last element reflects Saudi Arabia’s continued distrust of Iran despite their ongoing normalization discussions and gives the U.S. and Israel an opportunity to drive a wedge into China-brokered talks.
For its part, Israel has had a strong imperative to normalize with Saudi Arabia for years. Rapprochement would present a chance to build a regional coalition that could coordinate against Iranian activity in the region. The Saudi-Iranian normalization deal announced in March gave Israel a renewed sense of urgency, even if it has yielded limited results.
Overwhelming Complexity
Despite the fresh momentum for normalization, several factors could limit just how far the two sides can go. One constraint is the Israeli-Palestinian issue. Any potential step by Israel – freezing the construction of Israeli settlements, pledging never to annex the occupied West Bank, or hinting at revived Israeli-Palestinian peace negotiations – would be a major political concession for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government. Having just enacted a controversial judicial reform that sparked nationwide protests, boycotts and even backlash from military reserve units, Netanyahu and his ministers are wary of doing anything that could aggravate their base or that domestic critics might interpret as weakness. If a deal means concessions on the Palestinian issue, the government may put its political survival over the country’s broader aim of achieving an anti-Iran coalition.
Another constraint – the elephant in the room – is the parallel Saudi-Iranian normalization discussions brokered by China. Riyadh will find it extremely difficult to balance simultaneous diplomatic tracks with two regional rivals. If one track drifts into a lane that Iran or Israel is uncomfortable with – for example, a military cooperation agreement – then it could derail both discussions. Saudi Arabia contends that the parallel dialogues reflect its diversifying foreign policy agenda, but the complexity could slow the pace of progress or even backfire.
This summer’s shuttle diplomacy among U.S., Saudi and Israeli officials would have been unthinkable not so long ago. Nevertheless, even if the Saudi-Israeli backdoor talks lead to direct negotiations, a complete breakthrough on normalization is unlikely. With Israel unable to make significant political concessions and Saudi Arabia juggling simultaneous talks with Iran, any agreement between them could lack the teeth to fully counter Iranian activity in the region.
-
Netanyahu and MBS Make a Play for Mideast Peace
Diplomatic ties are in the interests of Israel, Saudi Arabia and the U.S., but security threats could impede their efforts.
By Karen Elliott House
Sept. 14, 2023 1:48 pm ET
Political normalization between Saudi Arabia and Israel is an idea whose time has come. At least that’s the increasingly optimistic view of Saudi and Israeli officials working to make it happen with the Biden administration’s support. But how realistic is it?
There’s little doubt Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, 38, and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, 73, want to reach a deal. They’ve met at least twice in secret since November 2020, and both have serious reasons for doing so.
Mr. Netanyahu seeks to secure the survival of the Jewish state. Diplomatic relations with Saudi Arabia—the wealthiest, most dynamic Arab nation—would be as significant for Israel as its 1979 peace with Egypt, which ended the threat of an Arab-Israeli war. Such recognition would encourage much of the Islamic world to engage with Israel and establish a new home for Saudi investment. A deal would also deepen already substantial Israeli-Saudi intelligence and military cooperation.
Crown Prince Mohammed knows he can’t create a modern high-tech economy without close links to Israeli technology and business. MBS envisions himself as the leader of a strong, economically integrated Mideast that serves as a bridge between Asia and Europe. Diplomatic relations with Israel would aid those goals, allowing the kingdom to lure much-needed Western investment and expertise and cementing MBS as the head of the second tier of world leaders.
For his part, Mr. Biden wants a splashy signing ceremony at the White House that would give him the ability to boast of historic success in the region. The president who once labeled Saudi Arabia a pariah now seems eager to make it a pillar of U.S. strategy in the Gulf.
Yet simply because three powerful men want the deal to happen doesn’t mean it will. There are many moving parts, including what the Israelis will offer the Palestinians. Do concessions exist that would satisfy the crown prince without irreparably dividing Mr. Netanyahu’s governing coalition? Will Congress accede to Saudi Arabia’s security demands? Will Iran stay on the sidelines or send its proxies to ruin efforts at peace?
Sources in each nation are confident their diplomats will crack the code. Their shared goal is to conclude a tripartite agreement by January, before the U.S. presidential election gets under way or terrorists disrupt the talks.
The trio’s efforts got a boost on Saturday when Group of 20 leaders agreed on a plan to build a shipping and rail corridor linking India to Europe through the Middle East. The railway would run through the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Israel, allowing goods to transit across the continents three weeks faster than by ship, according to a Saudi official. The kingdom already is building its section of the rail line. In addition to boosting trade, the corridor would include pipelines to deliver energy and fiber-optic cable for digital communication links. “This is a really big deal,” Mr. Biden said in New Delhi.
It isn’t as groundbreaking as it sounds. Israel already has a pipeline that runs from Eilat on the Red Sea to the Mediterranean at Ashkelon. It was built in 1968 as a joint venture with Iran; Israel nationalized it in 1979 after the shah fell. After signing a peace agreement with the U.A.E. in 2020, Israel agreed to transport Emirati oil through the pipeline, and in June the managing company, Eilat-Ashkelon Pipeline Co., agreed to add fiber-optic cables along its route to enhance digital communication from Asia to Europe.
Yet a Saudi-Israeli peace deal would let the pipeline expand—potentially linking it with the Petroline, a Saudi pipeline that runs from the Persian Gulf to the Red Sea at Yanbu. These efforts are meant to enhance global energy security, and financial security for Riyadh, by creating multiple ways to export oil while avoiding three choke points for ship transit at the Strait of Hormuz, Bab-el-Mandeb and the Suez Canal, each of which is vulnerable to attack by Iran.
As incremental normalization proceeds, two obstacles to formal diplomatic relations remain: the Palestinians, and Riyadh’s demand for security guarantees from Washington.
Palestinian leadership under Mahmoud Abbas, 87, is mired in corruption and paralyzed by its maximalist negotiating posture. In April Mr. Abbas met with the crown prince to deliver a long list of Palestinian demands, which the Saudis and Israelis alike have described as “unrealistic.” MBS, who cut funding to the Palestinian Authority over its corrupt affairs several years ago, now offers the prospect of renewed assistance to entice them to bargain seriously. He has also named his ambassador to Jordan as his representative to the Palestinians.
Mr. Abbas seems to be engaging with Riyadh, if only to seek money and avoid blame for any failure at peace. His past efforts, however, have spoiled domestic support. According to a source in the kingdom, a recent Saudi government-sponsored poll found that only 16% of Palestinians supported the Palestinian Authority. Many young Palestinians are eager for economic opportunity, not continued intransigence.
Almost any consequential concessions would bring down Israel’s right-wing government. But Israeli and American sources believe that opposition leaders Benny Gantz and Yair Lapid could be persuaded to join a unity coalition to approve a peace deal with the Saudis if it included genuine progress on the Palestinian question. Such harmony is a tall order, but still a possibility, in a fractious democracy like Israel.
The biggest threat to the crown prince’s regional ambition is Iran. Normalization with Israel would heighten that vulnerability. Religious and royal opponents at home would accuse MBS of selling out the Palestinians, and Tehran would feel jilted. “Our dilemma is this: Do we open ourselves to terrorist attacks to secure Saudi-Israeli peace?” a Saudi official says.
MBS is therefore demanding that the U.S. offer the kingdom security guarantees, backed by Congress. Extending protection to Saudi Arabia—as America does with North Atlantic Treaty Organization members and Japan—isn’t as controversial as it seems. NATO’s Article 5 provision asserts that an armed attack against one is an attack against all. It doesn’t necessarily trigger war, but rather requires a party to take “such action as it deems necessary, including the use of armed force.” Several U.S. congressmen will meet with the crown prince to discuss these issues next month, according to a Saudi source.
Whatever guarantees the U.S. gives, the real boost to Saudi Arabia’s safety and prosperity would be diplomatic relations with Israel. Open partnership with Jerusalem on defense, economic development, technology and investment is a security guarantee that a future U.S. president or Congress can’t take away.
If all this comes together, the Western world wins. That’s still a big if—and even if the plan succeeds, challenges will remain. Peace wouldn’t erase Palestinian opposition to Israel’s existence or end Iran’s determination to destroy Israel and remove the Al Saud monarchy’s control of the kingdom’s oil and Islam’s holy sites.
Ms. House, a former publisher of The Wall Street Journal, is author of “On Saudi Arabia: Its People, Past, Religion, Fault Lines—and Future.”
-
I find the analysis here a bit narcissistic, but post it anyway:
==============================================
Would Israeli-Saudi Normalization Bring the Regional Order the U.S. Wants?
undefined and Senior Middle East and North Africa Analyst at RANE
Ryan Bohl
Senior Middle East and North Africa Analyst at RANE, Stratfor
Sep 28, 2023 | 19:32 GMT
U.S. President Joe Biden makes his way to board Air Force One at Israel's Ben Gurion Airport on July 15, 2022, as he departs for Saudi Arabia after a two-day visit to Israel.
U.S. President Joe Biden makes his way to board Air Force One at Israel's Ben Gurion Airport on July 15, 2022, as he departs for Saudi Arabia after a two-day visit to Israel.
(MANDEL NGAN/AFP via Getty Images)
The United States seems to be going the extra mile for Saudi-Israeli normalization, despite the fact that both Israel and Saudi Arabia are becoming increasingly nationalistic — and increasingly disinterested in fully aligning themselves with the United States in its rivalries with Russia and China. In Washington, Saudi-Israeli normalization may look like a step toward what many analysts and journalists have dubbed a ''Middle Eastern NATO,'' a network of friends and allies the United States can rely on to police the region — thus enabling it to draw down its own military presence there — while also keeping rival influence from Moscow and Beijing at bay. But in practice, Saudi Arabia and Israel's rising tide of nationalism seems unlikely to cooperate with such aspirations.
The U.S. Search for Order in the Middle East
The United States is leading a major diplomatic push to bring about normalization between Saudi Arabia and Israel, and one of its latest considerations is tying the three nations together with separate U.S. defense pacts for each country. This isn't the only offer the White House is floating; it's also reportedly mulling ways to allow Saudi Arabia to enrich uranium on Saudi soil, but with some kind of appropriate safeguards to reassure Israel, which has long opposed a Saudi nuclear program. The administration of U.S. President Joe Biden seems to be calculating that such a diplomatic breakthrough ahead of the 2024 election would be a boon to its electoral prospect (though former President Donald Trump also had major breakthroughs for Israeli normalization during his term and lost the 2020 election anyway). The White House's push to formalize Saudi-Israeli ties is probably also a reaction to China's mediation of the recent diplomatic breakthrough between Iran and Saudi Arabia. But in the bigger picture, Biden is following in the footsteps of many of his predecessors.
In 1955, with U.S. help, Great Britain established METO, the Middle Eastern Treaty Organization, (commonly known as the Baghdad Pact), which they hoped would become a bulwark against Soviet influence as NATO was in Western Europe. However, coups, revolutions and internal divisions hampered METO, which eventually dissolved in 1979. More recently, under the Trump administration, the United States pushed for another pan-regional alliance — a Middle East Strategic Alliance (MESA) that never found its footing.
Again and again, the same dynamics undermine unity: the Middle East, unlike Western Europe in the 1940s and 1950s, is not united against an existential superpower threat, but rather exists in a complicated web of competition, cooperation and conflict. The Middle East is riven with differences, even between nominal friends like the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia, whose relationship has cooled in recent years. And their political systems in the region are often unstable and/or are so centralized as to make personal whims the strategic goals of a nation. To find an order that the United States can rely on in this environment, where interests rarely overlap, is a struggle indeed. Saudi-Israeli normalization will improve some aspects of regional security, but it will do little to address the contentious ways Middle Eastern countries are asserting themselves in this era of great power rivalry.
What Normalization Would (and Wouldn't) Change
It will remain to be seen just how far the United States will be able to advance a framework of nuclear and defense pact concessions through its Congress (though the odds of such pacts passing improve so long as Israel buys into them, given the still high levels of pro-Israel sentiment among U.S. lawmakers). But for the sake of argument, let's assume the final normalization deal does include security pacts for Israel and Saudi Arabia, as well as some kind of restrained civilian Saudi nuclear program that meets Israel's satisfaction. This would certainly open up commercial, infrastructure, technological, touristic and military opportunities for Saudi Arabia, Israel and the United States. With the geography of Saudi Arabia included, Washington's new plan to link India to Europe through the Middle East via the India-Middle East-Europe Economic Corridor — which Biden and his allies unveiled on Sept. 10 at the Group of 20 (G20) summit — would theoretically become more viable. A Saudi-Israeli normalization deal would also formalize the already existing anti-Iran pact between Israel and the Arab Gulf states, and, should defense pacts get through the U.S. Congress, might provide a new level of deterrence to Iranian harassment and encroachment against Israel and/or Saudi Arabia. And both Israel and Saudi Arabia would remain focused on suppressing militant Islam, at least as it affects their interests.
But in many ways, normalization would simply put an overt label over an already-existing covert one. It's long been assumed Israel would have access to Saudi air space should the day ever come that the United States and Israel decide to strike Iran's nuclear program. The new India-Middle East-Europe Economic Corridor will likely also use railroads and ports that either already exist or are being built, rather than constructing new regional infrastructure from scratch (and normalization plays a minor role in whether such infrastructure is built). And Iran must already calculate a U.S. response when it harasses Israel and/or Saudi Arabia, though, with Riyadh, Tehran has recently been leaning into detente through Chinese mediation.
Indeed, that final part may help explain the United States' urgency to broker a Saudi-Israeli normalization deal, and its willingness to provide such expansive guarantees to do so. China's mediation of Iranian-Saudi detente was received with alarm in Washington, as proof of China's encroachment on what has for decades been the purview of the United States. But Saudi-Israeli normalization would not reverse that trend, as it would do little to reshape the Middle Eastern countries' relations with Russia — another goal of U.S. policy in the region. Both Israel and Saudi Arabia are becoming more nationalist, and their national interests will sometimes lie with U.S. rivals.
Saudi Arabia would still need to sell energy to China, its biggest customer, regardless of whether it signs a normalization deal with Israel that includes formal security guarantees from the United States. The kingdom will continue its defense diversification plans, moving away from U.S. arms, both by developing its own weapons and by purchasing equipment from NATO countries like France and Turkey. Riyadh will continue to flirt with Chinese and Russian military suppliers, aiming to keep all options on the table. Saudi Arabia will take Chinese investment into its economy as it seeks the fulfillment of its post-oil economic diversification strategy, and it will host non-sanctioned Russian trade and investment for the same reason. And when China can offer a diplomatic breakthrough in Riyadh's interest, like improved ties with Iran, no defense pact with Washington will stop Saudi Arabia from taking it.
For Israel, normalized ties with Saudi Arabia or a new defense pact with Washington would similarly do little to alter its behavior with Russia and China. Israel will remain focused on combating Iranian influence, and it will cooperate with Russia in the skies over Syria to do so, which will continue to limit its willingness to join the West's isolation and military pushback campaign against Moscow. It will need international investment into its ports, infrastructure and technology sector, and so long as China has money to invest, it will welcome ties with Beijing. And Israel will continue to drift toward a one-state solution with the Palestinians, regardless of the violence that might engender or the risks that might entail to Israel's democratic institutions.
Future Risks
And these imperatives that are currently keeping Saudi Arabia and Israel from further aligning with U.S. interests will only become stronger in the future, as younger, more nationalist citizens come of age in both Middle Eastern countries — and as Israeli politicians and Saudi royals look to meet their aspirations and ideologies. Against this backdrop, any nuclear and defense concessions that the United States grants Saudi Arabia and Israel in order to ink a normalization deal could backfire by emboldening even riskier behaviors down the line.
Say, for example, that Washington approves a Saudi civilian nuclear program. A surge of Saudi nationalism might one day prompt Riyadh to remove safeguards on that nuclear program if Iran ever develops a nuclear weapon, and/or if Saudi-U.S. ties sour again. In addition, Saudi nationalism may not always be under the crown prince's control, and may evolve into something more aggressive, even anti-royal — in which case, the history of the Baghdad Pact may repeat itself, with internal political upheaval hampering Riyadh's ability to maintain cooperation with Israel and/or the United States. And what side would the U.S. take if Saudi and Turkish nationalists once more drew their ire on one another, as they did after the Arab Spring, in some civil war or ideological struggle?
Meanwhile, as Israel's national identity shifts to become more religious and nationalist, a defense pact with the United States would also risk emboldening its most hawkish elements. With the assurance that the United States would come to its defense in a conflict, Israel may calculate that Iran would be even less likely to retaliate for covert action. Israel's tolerance of Iranian enrichment may become weaker, and Israel, under a radical right-wing government, may become more likely to carry out its long-warned direct strike on Tehran as well. In regards to the Palestinian conflict, there remain some in Israel who regret the withdrawal from Gaza, and even a few who lament the loss of the Sinai. But there are many who think the one-state solution, in which Palestinians have little to no rights in an expanded Israel, is the only path forward. In the more distant future, these elements might one day win elections to form a government that formally annexes the West Bank and even re-occupies Gaza, which would again push Palestinians out into Egypt and Jordan, possibly destabilizing those two countries and souring relations between Israel on one side and Cairo and Amman on the other. Such a scenario once looked like the propaganda of anti-Zionists, but with elements like Religious Zionism now in government, it is now a less far-fetched prospect.
When it comes to developments beyond the Middle East, Israel or Saudi Arabia remain similarly unlikely to align with U.S. interests, regardless of what comes of Washington's normalization push. In particular, neither country would likely take a strong stance should China invade Taiwan; after all, what do they care about who controls the Taiwan Strait, so long as they can still trade through those waters? Instead, Saudi Arabia and Israel would probably react as they did to Russia's invasion of Ukraine by seeking to navigate neutrality while preserving their still-considerable ties with the West, with both countries resisting any pressure to cut off their trade and investment ties with China.
If anything, in the event the United States does want to bring Israel and Saudi Arabia deeper into its orbit against its great power competitors, Washington may have to repeat what it is currently doing: offer more concessions to them. If defense pacts are already in place, that may mean becoming more confrontational with Saudi Arabia and Israel's rivals, like Iran, Houthi militants in Yemen, or Palestinian militants. Paradoxically, a normalization process designed to enable the United States to draw down from the Middle East could end up pulling it back in
-
October 11, 2023
View On Website
Open as PDF
Another Close Call for the US and Turkey in Syria
With conflicting interests, the NATO allies are bound to get in each other’s way.
By: Caroline D. Rose
The U.S. and Turkish militaries experienced another close call in northeastern Syria last Thursday, when U.S. ground forces stationed at the Hasakah military base detected a Turkish unmanned aerial vehicle conducting strikes less than half a mile away. While U.S. defense officials have said American commanders made countless calls to Turkish military leaders to notify them of the U.S. presence in the area and warn against further encroachment, Turkish officials reportedly didn’t pick up. The U.S. then used an F-16 fighter jet to shoot down the Turkish drone.
The NATO allies had another near clash last November, when Turkey launched airstrikes on a Kurdish base used by U.S. forces in northeastern Syria. But last week’s incident was the first time the U.S. shot down an aircraft from one of its allies in the war-torn country. Washington and Ankara have indicated that the incident could have been a result of mechanical failure and miscommunication, rather than intentional targeting, and have issued statements characterizing it as a “regrettable incident.” However, it indicates the continued risks of accidental escalation between U.S. and Turkish forces as they pursue different objectives in Syria.
Territorial Control in Syria | October 2023
(click to enlarge)
Conflicting Interests
Despite being NATO allies and wanting to see more stability in the Middle East, the U.S. and Turkey have different interests in Syria, specifically when it comes to the country’s northeast region and the status of the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces. Turkey believes the SDF and the Syria-based People’s Protection Units (YPG) are indistinguishable from the Turkey-based Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), which Ankara designates as a terrorist organization and has been fighting since the mid-1980s. However, the U.S.-led coalition in Syria, called the Combined Joint Task Force – Operation Inherent Resolve, has been coordinating, training and advising SDF fighters as part of their efforts to stomp out the Islamic State group in the country.
Though Turkey has launched repeated airstrikes and raids against Kurdish targets in Iraq and Syria since 2019 under Operation Claw, a PKK suicide bombing outside the Ministry of Interior in Ankara convinced Turkish officials to double down on their military campaign. Since then, Turkey has carried out a string of raids and arrests against suspected PKK members across the country. It has also carried out strikes on over 22 suspected PKK targets in northern Iraq (including caves, military headquarters, depots and warehouses) and at least 18 targets in northeastern Syria (including civilian infrastructure). Turkish authorities have focused on the Syrian part of the retaliation after concluding that the two attackers in Ankara originally came from Syria, a claim Kurdish officials have denied.
Accidental or Strategic?
Shortly after the Ankara attack, Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan issued a statement giving a heads-up not only to Kurdish militants operating in Iraq and Syria but also to allies like the United States. Fidan said all Kurdish facilities were “legitimate targets” and warned “third parties” to steer clear. The Turkish drone spotted near U.S. forces last week was likely not intentionally targeting them. Still, Turkish forces were pushing the envelope, probably to gauge how many Kurdish targets they could strike outside of deconfliction protocols with the United States.
U.S. forces drew the line at threats to their own safety, rather than the safety of their SDF partners. Years of Turkish strikes on the SDF have frustrated the U.S.-led coalition for damaging the group’s operational capabilities, causing setbacks in the coalition’s mission to destroy Islamic State. But the U.S. has stopped short of blocking or responding to Turkish strikes directly, preferring to rely on back-channel diplomacy to discourage ground offensives and encroachment into coalition areas of operation. The recent drone downing is no different, demonstrating to Turkish forces – as well as other actors operating in the area like Iran-backed militias, Russian forces and the Assad regime – that if they mess with U.S. operations, U.S. forces will defend themselves.
Following the incident, the Pentagon announced that U.S. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin spoke directly with his Turkish counterpart, Yasar Guler, about better coordinating deconfliction protocols. The chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs, Gen. Charles Q. Brown, followed suit with a phone call to Turkish Chief of General Staff Gen. Metin Gurak about how to improve safety procedures in northeastern Syria. And while Turkey issued a statement affirming that this incident has not affected operations against Kurdish militants, its Ministry of Foreign Affairs said that escalation was not Turkey’s intent and that it was taking steps to improve deconfliction protocols.
With divergent goals, partners and operations, however, the U.S. and Turkey are likely to have more run-ins – some that may be costlier than a downed drone. With the Turks ramping up strikes against some of Washington's key partners in the region, the NATO allies are locked in a dangerous diplomatic and military dance, where communication is more important than ever.
-
https://www.foreignaffairs.com/middle-east/israel-hamas-end-americas-exit-strategy-suzanne-maloney?utm_medium=newsletters&utm_source=fatoday&utm_campaign=The%20End%20of%20America%E2%80%99s%20Exit%20Strategy%20in%20the%20Middle%20East&utm_content=20231011&utm_term=FA%20Today%20-%20112017
The End of America’s Exit Strategy in the Middle East
Hamas’s Assault—and Iran’s Role in It—Lays Bare Washington’s Illusions
By Suzanne Maloney
October 10, 2023
An Israeli soldier in Sderot, Israel, October 2023
An Israeli soldier in Sderot, Israel, October 2023
Ronen Zvulun / Reuters
Sign in and save to read later
Print this article
Send by email
Share on Twitter
Share on Facebook
Share on LinkedIn
Get a link
Page url
https://www.foreignaffairs.com/middle-east/israel-hamas-end-americas-exit-strategy-suzanne-maloney
Get Citation
Request Reprint Permissions
Download Article
The shocking Hamas assault on Israel has precipitated a beginning and an end for the Middle East. What has begun, almost inexorably, is the next war—one that will be bloody, costly, and agonizingly unpredictable in its course and outcome. What has ended, for anyone who cares to admit it, is the illusion that the United States can extricate itself from a region that has dominated the American national security agenda for the past half century.
One can hardly blame the Biden administration for trying to do just that. Twenty years of fighting terrorists, along with failed nation building in Afghanistan and Iraq, took a terrible toll on American society and politics and drained the U.S. budget. Having inherited the messy fallout from the Trump administration’s erratic approach to the region, President Joe Biden recognized that U.S. entanglements in the Middle East distracted from more urgent challenges posed by the rising great power of China and the recalcitrant fading power of Russia.
The White House devised a creative exit strategy, attempting to broker a new balance of power in the Middle East that would allow Washington to downsize its presence and attention while also ensuring that Beijing did not fill the void. A historic bid to normalize relations between Israel and Saudi Arabia promised to formally align Washington’s two most important regional partners against their common foe, Iran, and anchor the Saudis beyond the perimeter of China’s strategic orbit.
Stay informed.
In-depth analysis delivered weekly.
In tandem with this effort, the administration also sought to ease tensions with Iran, the most dangerous adversary the United States faces in the Middle East. Having tried and failed to resuscitate the 2015 nuclear deal with its elaborate web of restrictions and oversight of Iran’s nuclear program, Washington embraced a Plan B of payoffs and informal understandings. The hope was that, in exchange for modest economic rewards, Tehran could be persuaded to slow down its work on its nuclear programs and step back from its provocations around the region. Stage one came in September, with a deal that freed five unjustly detained Americans from Iranian prisons and gave Tehran access to $6 billion in previously frozen oil revenues. Both sides were poised for follow-on talks in Oman, with the wheels of diplomacy greased by record-level Iranian oil exports, made possible by Washington’s averting its gaze instead of enforcing its own sanctions.
As ambitious policy gambits go, this one had a lot to recommend it—in particular, the genuine confluence of interests among Israeli and Saudi leaders that has already generated tangible momentum toward more public-facing bilateral cooperation on security and economic matters. Had it succeeded, a new alignment among two of the region’s major players might have had a truly transformative impact on the security and economic environment in the broader Middle East.
WHAT WENT WRONG?
Unfortunately, that promise may have been its undoing. Biden’s attempt at a quick getaway from the Middle East had one fatal flaw: it wildly misperceived the incentives for Iran, the most disruptive actor on the stage. It was never plausible that informal understandings and a dribble of sanctions relief would be sufficient to pacify the Islamic Republic and its proxies, who have a keen and time-tested appreciation for the utility of escalation in advancing their strategic and economic interests. Iranian leaders had every incentive to try to block an Israeli-Saudi breakthrough, particularly one that would have extended American security guarantees to Riyadh and allowed the Saudis to develop a civilian nuclear energy program.
At this time, it is not known whether Iran had any specific role in the carnage in Israel. Earlier this week, The Wall Street Journal reported that Tehran was directly involved in planning the assault, citing unnamed senior members of Hamas and Hezbollah, the Lebanese militant group. That report has not been confirmed by Israeli or U.S. officials, who have only gone so far as to suggest that Iran was “broadly complicit,” in the words of Jon Finer, the deputy national security adviser. At the very least, the operation “bore hallmarks of Iranian support,” as a report in The Washington Post put it, citing former and current senior Israeli and U.S. officials. And even if the Islamic Republic did not pull the trigger, its hands are hardly clean. Iran has funded, trained, and equipped Hamas and other Palestinian militant groups and has coordinated closely on strategy, as well as operations—especially during the past decade. It is inconceivable that Hamas undertook an attack of this magnitude and complexity without some foreknowledge and affirmative support from Iran’s leadership. And now Iranian officials and media are exulting in the brutality unleashed on Israeli civilians and embracing the expectation that the Hamas offensive will bring about Israel’s demise.
WHAT’S IN IT FOR TEHRAN?
At first glance, Iran’s posture might appear paradoxical. After all, with the Biden administration proffering economic incentives for cooperation, it might seem unwise for Iran to incite an eruption between the Israelis and the Palestinians that will no doubt scuttle any possibility of a thaw between Washington and Tehran. Since the Iranian Revolution in 1979, however, the Islamic Republic has used escalation as a policy tool of choice. When the regime is under pressure, the revolutionary playbook calls for a counterattack to unnerve its adversaries and achieve a tactical advantage. And the war in Gaza advances the long-cherished goal of the Islamic Republic’s leadership to cripple its most formidable regional foe. Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, has never wavered in his feverish antagonism toward Israel and the United States. He and those around him are profoundly convinced of American immorality, greed, and wickedness; they revile Israel and clamor for its destruction, as part of the ultimate triumph of the Islamic world over what they see as a declining West and an illegitimate “Zionist entity.”
In addition, in the Biden administration’s entreaties and conciliation, Tehran smelled weakness—Washington’s desperation to shed its 9/11-era baggage, even if the price was high. Domestic turmoil in both the United States and Israel likely also whet the appetites of Iranian leaders, who have long been convinced that the West was decaying from within. For this reason, Tehran has been committing more strongly to its relationships with China and Russia. Those links are primarily driven by opportunism and a shared resentment of Washington. But for Iran, there is a domestic political element as well: as more moderate segments of the Iranian elite have been pushed to the sidelines, the regime’s economic and diplomatic orientation has shifted to the East, as its power brokers no longer see the West as a preferable or even a viable source of economic and diplomatic opportunities. Closer bonds among China, Iran, and Russia have encouraged a more aggressive Iranian posture, since a crisis in the Middle East that distracts Washington and European capitals will produce some strategic and economic benefits for Moscow and Beijing.
Finally, the prospect of a public Israeli-Saudi entente surely provided an additional accelerant to Iran, as it would have shifted the regional balance firmly back in Washington’s favor. In a speech he delivered just days before the Hamas attack, Khamenei warned that “the firm view of the Islamic Republic is that the governments that are gambling on normalizing relations with the Zionist regime will suffer losses. Defeat awaits them. They are making a mistake.”
WHERE DOES IT GO FROM HERE?
As the Israeli ground campaign in Gaza gets underway, it is highly unlikely that the conflict will stay there; the only question is the scope and speed of the war’s expansion. For now, the Israelis are focused on the immediate threat and are disinclined to widen the conflict. But the choice may not be theirs. Hezbollah, Iran’s most important ally, has already taken part in an exchange of fire on Israel’s northern border, in which at least four of the group’s fighters died. For Hezbollah, the temptation to follow the shock of Hamas’s success by opening a second front will be high. But Hezbollah’s leaders have acknowledged that they failed to anticipate the heavy toll of their 2006 war with Israel, which left the group intact but also severely eroded its capabilities. They may be more circumspect this time around. Tehran also has an interest in keeping Hezbollah whole, as insurance against a potential future Israeli strike on the Iranian nuclear program.
For now, therefore, although the threat of a wider war remains real, that outcome is hardly inevitable. The Iranian government has made an art of avoiding direct conflict with Israel, and it suits Tehran’s purposes, as well as those of its regional proxies and patrons in Moscow, to light the fire but stand back from the flames. Some in Israel may advocate for hitting Iranian targets, if only to send a signal, but the country’s security forces have their hands full now, and senior officials seem determined to stay focused on the fight at hand. Most likely, as the conflict evolves, Israel will at some point hit Iranian assets in Syria, but not in Iran itself. To date, Tehran has absorbed such strikes in Syria without feeling the need to retaliate directly.
As oil markets react to the return of a Middle East risk premium, Tehran may be tempted to resume its attacks and harassment of shipping vessels in the Persian Gulf. U.S. General C. Q. Brown, the newly confirmed chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, was right to warn Tehran to stay on the sidelines and “not to get involved.” But his choice of words unfortunately suggests a failure to appreciate that the Iranians are already deeply, inextricably involved.
For the Biden administration, it is long past time to shed the mindset that shaped prior diplomacy toward Iran: a conviction that the Islamic Republic could be persuaded to accept pragmatic compromises that served its country’s interests. Once upon a time, that may have been credible. But the Iranian regime has reverted to its foundational premise: a determination to upend the regional order by any means necessary. Washington should dispense with the illusions of a truce with Iran’s theocratic oligarchs.
On every other geopolitical challenge, Biden’s position has evolved considerably from the Obama-era approach. Only U.S. policy toward Iran remains mired in the outdated assumptions of a decade ago. In the current environment, American diplomatic engagement with Iranian officials in Gulf capitals will not produce durable restraint on Tehran’s part. Washington needs to deploy the same tough-minded realism toward Iran that has informed recent U.S. policy on Russia and China: building coalitions of the willing to ratchet up pressure and cripple Iran’s transnational terror network; reinstating meaningful enforcement of U.S. sanctions on the Iranian economy; and conveying clearly—through diplomacy, force posture, and actions to preempt or respond to Iranian provocations—that the United States is prepared to deter Iran’s regional aggression and nuclear advances. The Middle East has a way of forcing itself to the top of every president’s agenda; in the aftermath of this devastating attack, the White House must rise to the challenge.
-
https://www.reuters.com/world/russia-says-israels-air-strikes-syria-violate-international-law-2023-10-12/
Violates another country's sovereignty.
Reuters? With a straight face? I thought the link would be Babylon Bee.
Chutzpah? Projection?
From the article : "they could provoke an armed escalation throughout the region. That must never be allowed to happen," the ministry said."
I wonder if Reuters or tourists for that matter have visited Kiev or Donbas lately.
-
Not a Reuters fan, but in fairness reporting that the Russians said this seems like , , , reporting.
-
Fair enough but some journalists might find and report an opposing view for balance. The irony is left for the reader to figure out as the spew of propaganda goes unchallenged.
They didn't even add, 'those airstrips were allegedly used to launch those attacks on Israel.
Which airstrips (civilian neighborhoods) in Kiev were used to launch attacks on Russia. The irony, criminal hypocrisy, deserves pointing out. It Is part of the story (in my view) .
I wonder if they ever reported a Trump position on election issues without adding "baseless accusations" to the "report" .
Wow, an example of that was easy to find:
https://www.reuters.com/legal/trump-asks-court-dismiss-federal-2020-election-subversion-case-filing-2023-10-05/
"... meetings where Trump allegedly urged the Justice Department to investigate baseless claims of voter fraud"
"Baseless" is not even attributed to a source. This was not an opinion piece, it is "news reporting".
Advancing an agenda is all they know.
-
And that would be an example of why I am not a fan of Reuters!
-
Hamas should perhaps be careful what they wish for.
https://unherd.com/2023/10/gaza-hamas-wants-israel-to-invade/?=frlh&fbclid=IwAR1sfUSH-URntSg89qBH-ZC1vOec4qg3XGw8Z6BVar2Xpp_Kjg3UK0Bv08U
-
2nd post:
https://intellectualtakeout.org/2023/10/questions-israeli-palestinian-conflict/?fbclid=IwAR2co_fVdnSUU3clKsWyGW0jaEpJGpnL3h9PeFCgtxebqMJ02NXhbT_3kOg
-
Not for the faint of heart or those with high blood pressure:
https://twitter.com/FunkerActual/status/1713960841702203691?fbclid=IwAR29dkX7k7EPTr1MHlL7DLXUu4SxMrDKT3GHtyNbb45kVAIwIH3btPmX-4M
-
I don't understand how to use Twitter/X at all, but I am not seeing anything when I click on that link.
-
I don't understand how to use Twitter/X at all, but I am not seeing anything when I click on that link.
Hmm, opens in a browser for me. Anyone else?
-
Per the NY Post:
https://nypost.com/2023/10/20/israeli-fighter-jets-hit-over-100-hamas-targets-in-gaza/?utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=nypost&utm_source=twitter
And this is said to be video thereof. Note the secondary explosions, indicative of some other sort of explosive being in the target building, though I suppose it could be a double tap, too.
https://x.com/TheMossadIL/status/1715260643949818240?s=20
-
amazing technology
how they can zero in on single buildings
and do their best NOT to hit mosques hospitals schools
I wonder if they have robots that can scour the tunnels
this one too big for tunnels
https://www.timesofisrael.com/israel-unveils-armed-robotic-vehicle-for-forward-reconnaissance-missions/
these could fit:
https://www.bing.com/images/search?view=detailV2&ccid=W0JdIpzW&id=3449E751C16D8E1FC759CFA4B416975E48DAC797&thid=OIP.W0JdIpzWwXjkg6wt-qGPTwHaE8&mediaurl=https%3A%2F%2Fth.bing.com%2Fth%2Fid%2FR.5b425d229cd6c178e483ac2dfaa18f4f%3Frik%3Dl8faSF6XFrSkzw%26riu%3Dhttp%253a%252f%252fwww.technocrazed.com%252fwp-content%252fuploads%252f2014%252f08%252fMicro-Tactical-Ground-Robots-Of-Israeli-Army-Explore-Tunnels-In-Gaza-14.jpg%26ehk%3DGoM8B4kPL2b41%252bejBS3x5uRmk7N6MrRNt4GXic%252bGLHA%253d%26risl%3D%26pid%3DImgRaw%26r%3D0%26sres%3D1%26sresct%3D1&exph=407&expw=610&q=israel+military+robots&simid=608011634196567309&form=IRPRST&ck=C175D1A1D324EC2409D07E2C4406FB92&selectedindex=25&ajaxhist=0&ajaxserp=0&vt=0&sim=11
Israeli tunnel warefare capability:
https://mwi.westpoint.edu/underground-nightmare-hamas-tunnels-and-the-wicked-problem-facing-the-idf/
-
Good content, better for the Israel thread.
-
In view of Crafty’s Twitter/X issues, I’m posting both the content and the URL:
Hussain Abdul-Hussain
@hahussain
Nothing gets under my skin more than identity politics. It puts people in boxes, and assumes that their thoughts, stances, and behavior should fit their box.
Since October 7, many Arabs and Muslims have been behaving as if they are one monolithic bloc with one opinion. Some of them, like French soccer player Karim Benzema, enjoys such identification and was quick to take an anti #Israel stance. Others, such as Egyptian player Mo Salah, dragged his feet and was anathematized for betraying the tribe. He circulated a video that showed him regretting loss of all human life, which was interpreted like he was also regretting Israeli deaths (imagine! the horror!). He’s still taking heat despite his video.
Arabs and Muslims only expect Arab and Muslim players to protest Israel. A player whose name is Antoine Griezmann or Gianluigi Donurama is not expected to take a stance. If he does, he’ll be praised for “seeing the truth.”
Rumors had it that 35 civil servants with the Biden admin were planning to resign to protest Biden’s policy on Israel. In Lebanon, a BBC reporter of 27 years presumably resigned to protest her organization's supposed bias.
With this tribal behavior, Arabs and Muslims self-profile, setting themselves apart as a cross national community whose members do no assimilate in their respective countries but rather share one single supranational opinion.
As a Muslim-born Arab, I know that the Arabs and Muslims are not a monolithic bloc. My inbox is jammed with those who share my dissenting voice but are too scared to speak out.
It is imperative that Arabs and Muslims tell the world that they are not a monolithic bloc, that they come in all shapes, sizes and opinions, that they are not a cult but a dynamic community with different opinions, tastes and patriotic loyalties. What Arabs and Muslims proudly share and celebrate is heritage, but this has no relevance to their opinions or political stances. Like everybody else, they use their commonality (language or faith) to debate, not act like one fascist cult.
https://x.com/hahussain/status/1715376159486017612?s=20
-
" My inbox is jammed with those who share my dissenting voice but are too scared to speak out. "
freedom of speech
But we need more like him to have courage to speak out.
https://www.fdd.org/team/hussain-abdul-hussain/
-
"In view of Crafty’s Twitter/X issues, I’m posting both the content and the URL:"
Thank you.
Please note the exitence of these threads
https://firehydrantoffreedom.com/index.php?topic=778.350
1
Politics & Religion / Free Speech vs. Islamic Fascism (formerly Buy DANISH!!!)
« by Crafty_Dog on February 09, 2006, 12:56:47 PM »
http://michellemalkin.com/archives/004455.htm
2
Politics & Religion / Islam, theocratic politics, & political freedom
« by Crafty_Dog on October 14, 2006, 12:12:32 PM »
...... Hamid Dr. Tawfik Hamid, an Egyptian physician, Islamic scholar and former extremist, is the author of ............ announced that Americans must choose: Convert to Islam or continue to receive acts of terror. Al- ............ was reiterating a fundamental concept of Salafi Islamic teaching, the fountainhead of extremist ............ in Sahih Al-Buchary, a central book of Salafi Islamic teaching. This hadith, or fundamental concept, ............ hadith, early Muslims used the sword to spread Islam throughout the world. The same hadith inspires ............ Islamic terror including this summer's thwarted London ............ leaders must recognize the powerful role of the Islamic religious principle of jihad, Islam's belief ............ . Similarly, the cancerous teachings of Salafi Islam could become insignificant if the majority of ............ , however, the vast majority of Muslims, Islamic organizations and Islamic scholars have not ............ Osama bin Laden and not a single fatwa by top Islamic scholars or organizations to consider bin ............ with their purses enable terrorism's spread. If Islamic scholars and organizations in America ............ should consider Muslims to be moderates, and Islam a peaceful faith, only if, in English and in ............ . To conquer the metastases of extremist Islam, however, words may be the most potent weapons. ............ . Addressing the theological wellsprings of Islamic terrorist motivation is essential if America ............ talk about the religious underpinnings of Islamic violence. Otherwise Islamic teaching will ......
3
Politics & Religion / Islam in China
« by G M on July 09, 2008, 11:11:48 AM »
4
Politics & Religion / Articulating our cause/strategy against Islamic Fascism
« by HUSS on July 29, 2008, 10:34:57 PM »
...... avoid terms such as "jihad," "jihadist," "Islamist," "mujahideen," and "caliphate" when ............ use of the words or phrases 'jihadist', 'jihad', 'Islamo-fascism', 'caliphate', 'Islamist', or 'Islamic ............ is precisely the goal of groups that support Islamist doctrine. Not surprisingly, Islamist groups ............ have long considered the words ["jihadist" and "Islamist"] as slurs," and "those who embrace jihad ............ , executive director of the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR) Michigan. Walid argues that ............ such as Hizballah (Party of God) or any number of Islamic Jihads in the world. Parts of the Detroit ............ regularly reports on Detroit and Dearborn-area Islamic community news and related world events of ............ often are reprinted on CAIR's web site and other Islamic web sites. His articles include a report ............ a CAIR "public outreach campaign about Islam and the prophet Muhammad," and a glowing report ............ Imam Hassan Al-Qazwini (Islamic Center of America). The Detroit Times regularly ............ commentary titled "Obama, McCain should condemn Islamophobia." The Detroit Free Press reports that ............ is an associate imam... was the first Nation of Islam temple in the country ever built, according to ............ ," and which has a portrait of the Nation of Islam's former Supreme Minister, Elijah Muhammad. Yet ............ he speaks at this Nation of Islam-supporting mosque and attends speeches by Louis ............ the DHS/NCTC terror lexicon efforts are other Islamist organizations, such as: fellow HLF trial ............ co-conspirator Islamic Society of North America (ISNA) - whose 2007 ............ included individuals who have called for an Islamic caliphate in the United States and other ............ ) - that has lobbied to remove Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad and Hizballah from U.S. terrorist group ............ it defended Osama Bin Laden. CAIR and other such Islamist organizations have a vested interest in ............ an open and honest discussion regarding the Islamist ideology that provides the basis for Jihadist ............ the real problem in fighting a war of ideas with Islamists. But to address this strategic war of ideas, ......
5
Politics & Religion / Islam in Europe and pre-emptive dhimmitude
« by Crafty_Dog on October 14, 2006, 12:10:59 PM »
6
Politics & Religion / Islam in America (and pre-emptive dhimmitude)
« by Crafty_Dog on October 14, 2006, 12:11:54 PM »
Establishing this thread:
7
Politics & Religion / Legal Issues in the War w Islamic Fascism, Epidemic, Quarantine, and Doxxing
« by Crafty_Dog on July 09, 2007, 09:53:06 AM »
8
Politics & Religion / Islam in Arabic/Islamic Countries:
« by Crafty_Dog on October 13, 2006, 07:34:48 PM »
...... , the campus erupted in protest. "Pakistan is an Islamic country, and our institutions must reflect that, ............ master's degree student and secretary-general of Islami Jamiat-e-Talaba ( I.J.T.), the biggest student ............ formation of these departments is an attack on Islam and a betrayal of Pakistan. They should not be ............ who aim to turn the country into an Islamic state. As the hard-line demands intensify, ............ of "training the young generation according to Islam so they can play a role in Pakistan's social and ............ of the P.U. staff association and a professor of Islamic studies. "When a national political party ............ politics after graduation go on to join Jamaat-e-Islami or other fundamentalist political groups. Some ......
9
Politics & Religion / Islam/Jihadis vs. Airplanes
« by Crafty_Dog on May 22, 2016, 02:41:44 PM »
10
Politics & Religion / Islam - Education, Rebuttals and Counter-Terror
« by Lloyd De Jongh on September 09, 2016, 02:03:00 PM »
...... . Need I say it's terribly PC, and with regards to Islamic terror the general consensus ranges from " ............ and come up short, want to know more about Islam, its political aims, its ideology and common ............ , I know more about the doctrine and history of Islam than they do, and every other Muslim I have ( ......
11
Politics & Religion / Islam in Asia & Africa
« by Crafty_Dog on March 14, 2007, 12:14:36 PM »
12
Politics & Religion / Islam in Australia & SE Asia
« by G M on October 25, 2006, 06:41:58 PM »
...... blamed immodestly dressed women who don't wear Islamic headdress for being preyed on by men and ............ Hage-Ali - who does not wear a hijab - said the Islamic headdress was not a "tool" worn to prevent rape ............ or add to a person's moral standards", while Islamic Council of Victoria spokesman Waleed Ali said ......
13
Politics & Religion / Islam in North Africa, Mali, the Magreb, the Sahel
« by Crafty_Dog on February 20, 2007, 10:27:27 AM »
...... came from across the border in Algeria, where an Islamic terrorist organization has vowed to unite ............ Islamic groups across North Africa. Counterterrorism ............ officials and a Tunisian attorney working with Islamists charged with terrorist activities. They say ............ by switching its name to Al Qaeda of the Islamic Maghreb, claiming that the Qaeda leader, Osama ............ . was created in 1998 as an offshoot of the Armed Islamic Group, which along with other Islamist ............ canceled elections in early 1992 because an Islamist party was poised to win. In 2003, a G.S.P.C. ............ his teeth in the 1990s as a member of the Armed Islamic Group’s feared Ahoual or “horror” company, ............ intelligence authorities found messages sent by Islamic militants to Osama bin Laden, according to ............ . Moroccan police officers raiding suspected Islamic militant cells last summer also found documents ............ a union between the G.S.P.C. and the Islamic Combatant Group in Morocco, the Islamic ............ when Tunisia announced that it had killed 12 Islamic extremists and captured 15 of them. Officials ............ Tunisian attorney who defends many young Tunisian Islamists, more than 600 young Tunisian Islamists have ............ countries, because its rigid repression of Islam has created a well of resentment among religious ......
14
Politics & Religion / The Pope's Engagement with Islam and other religions
« by Crafty_Dog on December 04, 2006, 02:11:57 AM »
...... fresh from his own "engagement" with contemporary Islam at Regensburg, should come to Turkey, which has ............ -Zawahiri, believe that coupling their ideology to Islamic suicide bombers--in New York, London or Baghdad- ............ and the classically liberal idea, which radical Islam wants to blow up. Just as John Paul championed ............ minorities--indeed all minorities--across the Islamic world. Starting in Turkey. Arriving in Ankara, ............ One might say the pope's counteroffensive--in the Islamic world and in the West--is overdue. One might ............ : The Church at the End of the Millennium"). It is Islamic belief, Cardinal Ratzinger said, that "the ............ . The Christian religion has abdicated." Militant Islam is on the march, literally, with enormous moral ............ are feared by many as a threat equal to Islamic extremists, and unfit to participate in our ............ competition with the ideas of radical Islam. This won't end with the battle for Baghdad. Will ............ agnosticism defend the West against militant Islam? With what? In Europe, its intellectuals can ............ Benedict XVI's evident intention is to engage the Islamic world, particularly its religious and political ............ achieving an acceptable modus vivendi with global Islam. How many divisions does this pope have? Good ......
-
"How can you tell it was a Palestinian hospital?"
"Well, there was this enormous secondary explosion."
-----------------------------------------------------
To clear up any moral confusion, who would Hitler be rooting for right now?
----------------------------------------------------
Biden: "Who in God's name needs a weapon with 100 rounds in the chamber?"
Jews?
https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2023/10/the-week-in-pictures-insurrection-manque-edition.php
-
https://nypost.com/2023/10/23/news/iranian-terrorist-proxies-increase-attacks-on-us-forces-as-war-rages-in-israel/
-
https://www.wsj.com/world/middle-east/hamas-fighters-trained-in-iran-before-oct-7-attacks-e2a8dbb9
Iran is our enemy, not friend. Is that so complicated?
-
The Iran thread would be better for this.
-
Doling out retribution: On Thursday, the Israel Defense Forces announced that it had killed Hamas's head of intelligence, Shadi Barud, in a targeted airstrike. Barud was said to have planned and orchestrated Hamas's murderous attack on innocent Israelis. Three other Hamas military leaders were also killed in targeted strikes. Meanwhile, the U.S. military conducted airstrikes in eastern Syria, targeting Iranian weapons depots and ammo storage facilities in response to 19 attacks leveled against American military personnel in Iraq and Syria. It's a needed shot across the bow after Team Biden's red line.
-
Just in case you needed reminding of how batshit crazy some of these people are:
https://www.memri.org/reports/gaza-islamic-scholar-ahmad-khadoura-virgins-paradise-will-have-no-menstruation-saliva-mucus
-
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/us-airbase-in-iraq-attacked-multiple-times-overnight-with-armed-drones/vi-AA1j8LDY?ocid=msedgdhp&pc=DCTS&cvid=d1e19b68f2dc43c784e5cb1b34981f27&ei=70
-
America Can’t Afford to Alienate Its Undemocratic Allies
The leaders of Egypt and Saudi Arabia are far from perfect. The alternatives would be much worse.
By Robert D. Kaplan
Nov. 3, 2023 2:08 pm ET
After spending years criticizing Egypt’s President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi and Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, the Biden administration is coming to realize that the U.S. needs those Arab leaders.
Secretary of State Antony Blinken traveled to Cairo soon after Hamas’s Oct. 7 attack on Israel. He asked Mr. Sisi to open Gaza’s southern border at Rafah so that trapped American citizens and other foreign nationals could get out and humanitarian aid could get in. Mr. Sisi has now obliged him. Mr. Blinken, as well as President Biden, has asked MBS, as the Saudi crown prince is known, to keep the door open to a security and diplomatic pact among Saudi Arabia, Israel and the U.S. Indications are that MBS remains open to an eventual rapprochement with Israel.
Neither Mr. Sisi nor MBS seemed especially happy to meet Mr. Blinken. The crown prince reportedly kept him waiting for hours, and Mr. Sisi weirdly criticized the secretary of state for emphasizing his Jewish background in remarks about the Hamas attacks. Both leaders were sidelined for years by the Biden administration’s push for an alliance of democracies, which Egypt and Saudi Arabia clearly aren’t and may never be.
Given the practical alternatives, the U.S. is lucky to have Mr. Sisi and MBS leading their respective countries at this terrifying juncture in history. Mr. Sisi came to power almost a decade ago after the Islamist-inspired chaos of the Arab Spring. As well-placed Egyptians explained to me, had the Iranian military had a leader like Mr. Sisi in 1979, there might not have been an Islamic revolution. He is about to enter his second decade in power on a downward trajectory, as poverty intensifies and many Egyptians find his regime’s human-rights violations intolerable.
Still, as Henry Kissinger wrote in 1957, statesmen have to combine “what is considered just with what is considered possible.” And what is possible in Egypt now isn’t a highly imperfect experiment with democracy that again unleashes the Islamic genie, but a hard, secular-spirited ruler with whom the U.S. might be able to do business. The Egyptian-Israeli security relationship has been active and intense under Mr. Sisi. You couldn’t ask for a better behind-the-scenes relationship: For 44 years, Egypt has proved that peace with Israel is sustainable, however fraught it is at the moment.
Mr. Sisi’s present truculence stems from his fears that Islamists in Egypt will react violently to Palestinian deaths. That, again, is the democratic dilemma, since elections would mean ceding considerable power to the sector of society that the coming weeks of combat are likely to enrage. Egypt isn’t a middle-class society but a proletarian one, which produced the Muslim Brotherhood in the 1920s. The country surely needs to evolve politically beyond the Nasserite pharaohs of whom Mr. Sisi is only the most recent. But the U.S. should be careful what it wishes for in Egypt, especially now.
As for MBS, we can’t ignore that any plausible alternative to his rule would be far worse. The Islamists are the only organized force of any note in Saudi Arabia beyond the extended royal family. Any successor government to the al-Sauds would be an “Islamist populist regime,” writes David Rundell, an Oxford-educated Arabist who has spent his professional life in the Arabian Peninsula.
MBS has moved closer to Israel than any Arab leader since Anwar Sadat. Mohammad al Issa, the MBS-supported Saudi general secretary of the Muslim World League in Riyadh, related to me in 2022 his experience visiting Auschwitz. “Whatever you read about Auschwitz and the Holocaust,” he said, “is not equal to the emotional experience of actually being there. . . . The experience of coming face-to-face with Nazi bestiality and brutality cannot be imagined.” Clearly, a sea change among the ruling elite of the Saudi Kingdom regarding Israel has taken place under MBS—even if it will be severely strained in the coming weeks.
The Hamas attacks on Israeli civilians and soldiers caught MBS off guard, as they did Mr. Sisi. Even a ruthless dictator has to be wary of his own population. MBS can’t go forward with peace negotiations with Israel until a new chapter begins in the Middle East. But that doesn’t mean he can’t be helpful in many ways behind the scenes, especially regarding aid to a post-Hamas government in Gaza City.
Israel has only ever made peace with Arab autocrats: Egypt’s Sadat, King Hussein of Jordan, and the signatories to the Abraham Accords. Any new Middle Eastern democracy is likely to be a weak, multiparty bouillabaisse with extremists who hold veto power. An autocrat can simply fire those who don’t go along with his policies. Dark days lie immediately ahead for Israel and the U.S. in the Middle East. Now is the time to cut Arab allies some democratic slack. This also includes Mohamed bin Zayed of the United Arab Emirates, the architect of the Abraham Accords, another dictator under populist pressures.
Democracy around the world is America’s spiritual grand strategy. Like all grand strategies, it requires constant bending and adjustment, which is what the present circumstances demand.
Mr. Kaplan holds a chair in geopolitics at the Foreign Policy Research Institute and is author of “The Loom of Time: Between Empire and Anarchy, from the Mediterranean to China.”
-
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_q9gkrkPTes
At first, I hesitated with this concept, but now I am more inclined to agree.
-
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_q9gkrkPTes
At first, I hesitated with this concept, but now I am more inclined to agree.
Played tennis this am with my Dem friends, a couple of them Jewish. Very nice to see people universally up in arms about this, anti the so called cease fire and outraged by what's happening on the campuses, one of them a Harvard grad, as disgusted as we are about what's tolerated, what's taught and what's encouraged there. And statements made by certain politicians, I called it the Hamas wing of the Democratic Party, got a chuckle out of that and admission of truth.
Too bad it took atrocities like these but it's a nice feeling to be on the same page about something.
-
Marc Denny
5h
·
Shared with Public
As usual, some perceptive analysis from Walter Russell Mead:
=======================
Iran Might Have Miscalculated in Gaza
It had an interest in dividing Israel from Arab states. So far that hasn’t happened.
Walter Russell Mead
By Walter Russell Mead
Nov. 6, 2023 5:47 pm ET
Journal Editorial Report: Pressure mounts on the Jewish state to 'pause.' Images: AP/Getty Images Composite: Mark Kelly
Most news and commentary describes the war in Gaza as the latest brutal episode in the conflict between Israelis and Arabs. That is one dimension, but from the perspective of world-power politics, it isn’t the most important. What really matters in the Middle East is the battle between Iran, increasingly backed by Russia and China, and the loose and uneasy group of anti-Iranian powers that includes Israel and the American-backed Arab states.
There is much about the Gaza war that we still don’t know: how long it will last, what the death toll will be, how many hostages can be rescued or returned, and how successful Israel will be in its declared objective of destroying Hamas.
But so far, from a global perspective, the most important fact is that Iran isn’t getting what it wanted from the war. Iran’s objective in arming, training and encouraging Hamas wasn’t solely to cause Israel pain. The real goal was to disrupt the gradual deepening of the strategic ties between Israel and its most important Arab neighbors.
The picture has been clear for some time to those not hypnotized by the condescending Iran apologists who lulled a generation of credulous Democratic foreign-policy officials into seeing Tehran as a possible American partner. Iran’s rulers, believing that controlling the Middle East’s energy resources and religious sites would make the country a world power, want to establish themselves as the dominant force in the region.
Sunni Arabs have long viewed Iran as a religious rival and a security threat. More recently, as Iran’s march to hegemony left a trail of ruined countries and bloody corpses, suspicion solidified into terror and loathing. Tehran’s support for Bashar al-Assad in Syria is responsible for many times more deaths and refugees than all the Israeli-Palestinian wars combined. Iran’s support for Hezbollah converted once-prosperous Lebanon into a poverty-stricken Iranian satellite. Tehran’s allies keep Iraq in a state of miserable unrest while Iranian support for Houthi forces in Yemen drove one of the greatest humanitarian disasters of our time.
We don’t yet know how closely Iran was involved in the planning and timing of last month’s attacks, but it’s clearer what the mullahs hoped the attacks would accomplish. At one level, Iran wanted to remind everyone how savage and powerful the country and its proxies have become. Terror serves Iranian state interests.
Beyond that, Tehran hoped to disrupt the emerging anti-Iran bloc in the Middle East. The idea was that Hamas’s dramatic attacks would electrify public opinion in the region against Israel, the U.S. and the Arab rulers willing to work with them. This, Tehran hoped, would drive a wedge between the Arabs and Israelis as Arab rulers sought to placate their angry publics by abandoning any plans to work closely with Israel.
So far, this plan has failed. Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia and Egypt have all signaled that they intend, once the storm has passed, to go on working with Jerusalem for a safer, more stable Middle East. Worse from Iran’s point of view, the Arabs are committing to a revived form of Palestinian governance that can exclude Iran’s proxies from both the West Bank and Gaza.
This isn’t because the conservative Arab states love Israel or the U.S. It is because their survival requires checking Tehran.
This isn’t only about deterring Iranian aggression. It is about building a regional environment in which their countries can flourish. Arab leaders may not care for Western-style democracy, but they need to develop their economies. With populations and expectations rising, and with the long-term future of fossil fuels uncertain, the Gulf states need to do more than pump oil out of the ground.
Instead of dividing Israel from the Arab states, the Hamas attacks reminded sensible people across the Middle East how important it is to hold Iran in check. The Gulf states need stability, and Iran and its murderous proxies are mortal threats to the economic future that Arab rulers want and their people need.
The real question in the Middle East these days isn’t what Israel or Hamas will do next. It is whether Team Biden has finally awakened from its enchanted sleep. Does the White House understand that the Israeli-Palestinian problem, while real and consequential, pales before Iran’s unappeasable drive for power as the region’s leading cause of war and unrest? Has it learned that every penny that goes to the mullahs feeds their ambitions?
If so, better days are coming for a region that could use some hope. If not, the insane ambitions of a brutal regime will produce more horrors in years to come
-
second
Meeting in Syria. Senior members of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and Lebanese militant group Hezbollah held a meeting in the Syrian city of Abu Kamal, according to a report from opposition war monitor the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights. They reportedly discussed support for an umbrella group of Iran-backed militias called the Islamic Resistance in Iraq, as well as Hamas’ fight in Gaza.
-
Iraq's plan. Iraq will trade crude oil for Iranian gas in order to settle long-standing payment problems, Iraqi Prime Minister Mohammed Shia al-Sudani said. Iraq has been unable to make payments on its outstanding debt to Iran due to U.S. sanctions against Tehran, which reportedly slashed its gas deliveries to Iraq by more than half beginning in July. According to al-Sudani, Tehran is willing to resume gas exports in exchange for crude.
-
Arab Strategic Miscalculations
Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack on Israel is the latest in a long line of strategic blunders.
By Hilal Khashan -December 5, 2023Open as PDF
Countries of all stripes – whether developed or underdeveloped, democratic or authoritarian – have been known to commit strategic military miscalculations. The U.S., for example, won decisive wars against developed countries such as Germany and Japan, but blundered in wars against much lesser powers like Vietnam in the 1970s and Iraq and Afghanistan after the 9/11 attacks.
Strategic military miscalculation usually results in the collapse of authoritarian regimes. The decision of Argentina’s military junta to invade the Falkland Islands in 1982 led to its defeat in the war against Britain and the fall of Gen. Leopoldo Galtieri’s regime. Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait in 1990 led to a military disaster for the Iraqi army following Operation Desert Storm, paving the way for the 2003 U.S. invasion of the country and the fall of Saddam Hussein’s regime. Successful countries eventually accept the need to revamp their political systems, initiate democratic reforms and champion world peace. It took Germany, whose army fought exceptionally well operationally and tactically, two world wars to metamorphose. It took Japan’s disastrous defeat precipitated by the Pearl Harbor attack to convince Tokyo to change. Under U.S. direction, the two countries transformed into full-fledged democracies.
Since the turn of the 20th century, political leaders, heads of state and political movements in the Arab world have also shown a propensity for massive miscalculation. Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack is a prime example, but it was precipitated by several other cases that have shaped the region since World War I.
Hamas’ Miscalculation
Hamas’ rationale for last month’s attack stemmed from its conviction that Israel, with U.S. backing and Arab acquiescence, intended to eliminate any possibility of Palestinian statehood. By taking Israeli hostages, it also intended to secure the release of thousands of Palestinian prisoners being held in Israeli jails, knowing that Israel has in the past been willing to conduct prisoner swaps. (In 2011, Israel released more than 1,000 Palestinian prisoners to secure the release of Gilad Shalit, an Israeli soldier detained by Hamas for more than five years.) However, Hamas failed to consider the likelihood that Israel’s war Cabinet would launch an unprecedented air and ground campaign following its attack, the scale of which recalled the genocidal horrors ingrained in Israel’s collective consciousness.
Gaza-Israel in the Middle East
(click to enlarge)
Hamas expected Israel to plead for negotiations to secure the freedom of some 240 Israeli captives. Images from Gaza on Oct. 7 showed Hamas guerrillas ecstatic about the possibility of a massive prisoner swap. But Israel instead unleashed a withering military campaign. Moreover, Hamas did not inform Iran and its regional allies in advance about its plans. It assumed Hezbollah would join the fighting from southern Lebanon and that Iraqi militias in Syria would engage Israel from the Golan Heights. Hezbollah’s unenthusiastic involvement in the war has cost it far more casualties than Israel and did not relieve even the slightest pressure on embattled Hamas. Hamas was left stunned by its allies’ tepid response, having previously believed its attack would transform the Middle East and pave the path toward establishing a Palestinian state. An extraordinary summit of Arab and Islamic countries held last month in Saudi Arabia resulted only in generic statements of support for the Palestinians and demands for the immediate cessation of hostilities. Hamas counted on the outbreak of a third intifada, but Israel’s preemptive raids against West Bank activists ruled out this possibility as well.
Arab Revolt in 1916
Hamas’ deadly miscalculation wasn’t unprecedented. The 20th century is rife with episodes of poor decision-making by Arab leaders, beginning with the anti-Ottoman Arab Revolt in 1916. The British feared that Ottoman Sultan Mehmed V’s declaration of jihad in November 1914 against Great Britain, France and Russia (the so-called Triple Entente) would dissuade Indian Muslims from fighting against the Central powers – which included, in addition to the Ottoman Empire, Germany, Austria-Hungary and Bulgaria. The British high commissioner in Egypt, Henry McMahon, tried to convince the emir of Mecca, Sharif Hussein bin Ali, to declare jihad on the Ottoman Empire in exchange for creating an Arab Kingdom in West Asia. In June 1916, Hussein launched the Arab Revolt, unaware that Britain and France had already signed five months earlier the Sykes-Picot agreement, which gave administration over Iraq and Palestine to London and over Syria and Lebanon to Paris. The British also promised the emir of Najd, Ibn Saud, to include Hejaz in his rapidly expanding emirate.
McMahon clarified to Hussein that the Arab kingdom would not include Palestine. Hussein’s son, Faisal, who was proclaimed king of Syria in 1920, had communicated with the president of the Zionist Organization, Chaim Weizmann, and accepted the Balfour Declaration, which promised to establish a Jewish homeland in Palestine. He later rescinded this agreement due to Arab opposition. Faisal also heeded the recommendation of the U.S.-sponsored King-Crane Commission, which called for autonomy of mainly Christian Mount Lebanon.
Despite Sharif Hussein’s concessions, the interests of Britain and France prevailed against those of the Hashemites. Nevertheless, in partial fulfillment of their promise to them, Winston Churchill, then secretary of state for the colonies, declared Faisal king of Iraq in 1921 and his brother, Abdullah I, emir of Transjordan. However, Britain found working with Ibn Saud in Arabia more practical. The British allowed Ibn Saud to extend his territorial authority to Hejaz, provided he did not impinge on Britain’s sphere of influence in the Persian Gulf emirates, Transjordan and Iraq.
1948 Blunder
The Arab summits over the Palestine issue in 1946 in Egypt and Syria did not refer to military intervention in Palestine. They primarily rejected the recommendations of the Anglo-American Commission, which called for creating two states in Palestine, one Jewish and another Arab. They also promised to provide Palestinians with financial aid. Even the Egyptian secretary-general of the Arab League, Abd al-Rahman Azzam, totally opposed the war and advocated negotiations with the Zionist movement. Prominent politician Sidqi Pasha told Egypt’s Senate that the army was unfit for war and would lose if it took on the Haganah, a Zionist military organization that represented the Jews before Israel’s establishment.
King Farouk made the surprise decision to invade Palestine in 1948 against the recommendation of the Egyptian army and Cabinet – despite Prime Minister Mahmud Nuqrashi Pasha’s belief that the Palestine question was not a matter of vital national interest, and the Cabinet’s vote against committing the military to war. The army’s chief of staff did not believe the troops could go to war, let alone win, in part because the army deemed more than 80 percent of military-age Egyptians unfit for military service due to rampant hepatitis, schistosomiasis, malnutrition and illiteracy.
In the first communique broadcasted by the coup plotters on July 23, 1952, Anwar Sadat claimed that bribable officials in the defunct regime had purchased defective weapons, including artillery that exploded when firing during the 1948 Arab-Israeli war, leading to the defeat of the Egyptian army. However, investigations after the fall of the monarchy concluded that three artillery units exploded during loading due to poor training, not malfunctioning.
Egypt lost the war due in part to the lack of coordination with the Iraqi army and Jordan’s Arab Legion, the best-trained and most efficient army during the war, and in part to militarily unfit Egyptian troops, the absence of a war strategy and low morale. Farouk was determined to prevent the Hashemites in Iraq and Jordan from becoming the most significant royal power in the Middle East. At the same time, the Hashemites hoped to blunt Farouk’s ambition, especially since he entertained the idea of resurrecting the Islamic caliphate, which was disbanded in 1924 by Turkey’s Kemal Ataturk, and declaring Cairo its capital city. The Hashemites had achievable objectives, while Farouk had visions of grandeur.
Suez and the Straits of Tiran
Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser made a grave mistake when he nationalized the Suez Canal in 1956. His decision led three months later to the outbreak of the Suez War, which saw Britain, France and Israel declare war on Egypt, resulting in a disastrous military defeat for Cairo.
At the time of the canal’s nationalization, just 12 years remained of the original 99-year Anglo-French concession. Yet, the material losses that resulted from its nationalization, such as the seizure of Egyptian assets in European banks and the compensation paid to foreign shareholders, far exceeded the proceeds of nationalization. At the same time, the war and sanctions precipitated the beginning of the collapse of the Egyptian currency. Thousands of Egyptian soldiers and civilians were killed, and most of the hardware that Nasser had procured from former Czechoslovakia was destroyed. The war also destroyed modern European-style cities built by the British and French along the Suez Canal, such as Port Said, Port Fouad and Ismailia, and displaced hundreds of thousands of Egyptians. Furthermore, the U.N. General Assembly established the United Nations Emergency Force to patrol the border with Israel, stationed in the Sinai Peninsula, the Gaza Strip and Sharm el-Sheikh, allowing Israeli ships to cross the Straits of Tiran to the Red Sea for the first time since King Farouk banned them in 1950. Nasser’s reversion to the status quo ante in 1967 triggered the Six-Day War.
Egypt’s military was defeated, but diplomatically the war was a success. U.S. President Dwight Eisenhower coerced the tripartite alliance to pull out of Egypt, and Nasser’s prestige as the champion of Arab nationalism soared. During the interwar period leading to the 1967 war, Nasser bragged about building the most potent armed forces in the eastern Mediterranean. However, his Arab critics ridiculed him for allowing Israeli shipping through the Straits of Tiran. Over time this issue soured Nasser’s image, and he waited for an opportunity to undo it.
His chance came in May 1967. The Soviet Union warned Nasser about an Israeli military buildup near the Golan Heights in preparation for invading Syria. It was a false alarm, but even after discovering this, Nasser sent his army to Sinai in a spectacular military parade without intending to go to war. He also decided to block Israeli shipping from the Gulf of Aqaba into the Red Sea. Israel considered Nasser’s action as a casus belli and decided to complete the unfinished 1948 war.
The operational problems that plagued the Egyptian military in the 1948 and 1956 wars were still apparent in 1967. The Egyptian armed forces were unprepared for war, given their poor and politicized leadership and insufficient training. Moreover, Nasser assumed that the U.S. would resort to secret diplomacy to defuse the crisis. In 1960, during the union years between Egypt and Syria, Nasser sent his army to Sinai to relieve the pressure on the Syrian army after a major confrontation in the Golan Heights. Eisenhower used his leverage with Israel to restore quiet along the northern armistice line. But in 1967, President Lyndon Johnson’s administration, fed up with Nasser’s anti-American rhetoric, gave Israel the green light to launch the war. Israeli forces swept to victory against Egypt, Syria and Jordan. The political mood in Washington had changed, and Nasser’s failure to understand it caused a geopolitical earthquake that is still reverberating throughout the region.
Iraq’s Invasion of Kuwait
Iraq won the 1980-88 war with Iran but emerged economically battered from it. To cover the cost of the war, Iraq had borrowed billions of dollars from Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Kuwait. Unlike the Saudis and Emiratis, who wrote off Iraqi debt, Kuwait insisted that Saddam Hussein repay the $14 billion that Iraq owed. Iraq accused Kuwait of exceeding its oil production quota to lower crude oil prices, an untenable situation for Iraq, whose oil revenues were insufficient to cover the salaries of the bureaucracy and the large standing army. Baghdad also accused Kuwait of stealing Iraqi oil from the Rumaila oil field through slant drilling.
Saddam did not comprehend the complexity of international relations. He had spent years in prison and had not completed his college education. The only non-Arab capitals he had visited were Moscow and Paris. He did not grasp that Iraq, a country carved out by Britain in 1921, could not erase Kuwait, another country created by the British. Saddam based his decision to invade Kuwait on a cursory conversation with April Glaspie, then U.S. ambassador to Iraq, who told him that the U.S. had no policy on intra-Arab relations, which he understood to mean that the U.S. would only verbally condemn the invasion of Kuwait. He believed that invading Kuwait before the impending collapse of the Soviet Union would spare him the wrath of the U.S., unaware that the bipolar international system that shielded Third World countries already had ceased to exist.
Saddam’s reckless decision to invade Kuwait decimated the Iraqi army. A multinational military coalition intervened to reinstate Kuwait’s independence, and Iraq was subjected to severe sanctions, marking the end of its status as a rising regional power. In 2003, the U.S. invaded Iraq and toppled Saddam’s regime, enabling Iran to creep in and dominate the country.
Misunderstanding How the World Works
Arab leaders, engrossed in a distorted worldview, tend to see the world through the prism of their domestic politics, often failing to comprehend the complexity of international relations. Arabs in high office are autocrats who do not answer to anybody else, driving them to make fateful decisions. Many Arab leaders live in echo chambers, making decisions premised on faulty assumptions, inattentive to how their antagonists might respond. The consequences have played out time and again, including today in Gaza.
TAGSArabsEgyptIraqIsraelMiddle EastPalestinian Territories
FacebookTwitterLinkedinEmail
Hilal Khashan
https://geopoliticalfutures.com/author/hkhashan/
Hilal Khashan is a Professor of political science at the American University of Beirut. He is a respected author and analyst of Middle Eastern affairs. He is the author of six books, including Hizbullah: A Mission to Nowhere. (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2019.) He is currently writing a book titled Saudi Arabia: The Dilemma of Political Reform and the Illusion of Economic Development. He is also the author of more than 110 articles that appeared in journals such as Orbis, The Journal of Conflict Resolution, The Brown Journal of World Affairs, Middle East Quarterly, Third World Quarterly, Israel Affairs, Journal of Religion and Society, Nationalism and Ethnic Politics, and The British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies.
-
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/us-must-pay-50-billion-for-soleimani-s-killing-iranian-court-demands/ar-AA1lguHX?ocid=msedgntp&pc=DCTS&cvid=43dd7c92f5164b9cb4bc6038165cff9c&ei=15
Because,
I know Blinks is working very hard behind the scenes to negotiate this down to ~ $20 billion.
-
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/iran-stations-warship-in-red-sea-as-us-aircraft-carrier-leaves-middle-east-analysis/ar-AA1mj3b4?ocid=msedgntp&pc=DCTS&cvid=b8d013128ecb487992cb081219f3e129&ei=40
-
https://simplicius76.substack.com/p/iranian-axis-grinds-down-us-will?publication_id=1351274&post_id=141005286&isFreemail=true&r=379fkp&fbclid=IwAR0Q8arru1tQF1s8xECAws_tBzBhC2Fnh-zVwyOYBh91mR990iMBftfluuw
-
January 28, 2024
View On Website
Open as PDF
U.S. and Iranian Intentions
By: George Friedman
Three U.S. servicemen were killed during a drone attack last night on a military base in Jordan, located near the Syrian border. President Joe Biden has blamed Iran-backed militias, who have engaged in tit-for-tat strikes on U.S. forces for months but until today had been careful not to escalate too dramatically.
To understand how this plays out, we need to understand the respective imperatives and motivations of the U.S. and Iran.
The U.S. has been interested in the Middle East for some time, of course, and has been more or less actively deployed there since Operation Desert Storm, the goal of which was to prevent Iraq from attacking its neighbors and thus taking control of the area’s oil supply. Iraq is no longer the threat it once was, but it is very much in Iran’s sphere of influence. More recently, Washington has been focused on subnational movements that could destabilize the region. Put simply, the U.S. position in the Middle East is the same it has been since the 1950s: to maintain the flow of oil and to minimize violence by blocking countries and movements deemed hostile to U.S. interests. Thus, U.S. forces and allies are scattered throughout the region.
Much of Iran’s recent activity runs counter to that position. Nearly two weeks ago, Iran fired missiles at targets in northwestern Syria, Iraqi Kurdistan and southwestern Pakistan ostensibly in response to a terrorist attack in the Iranian city of Kerman. Tehran is also supporting Yemen’s Houthi rebels, who are using Iranian-supplied weapons and intelligence to attack oil tankers and other vessels in the Red Sea and nearby waterways. For the past few weeks, the U.S. and certain allies have been fighting a naval war against Houthis.
The U.S. goal, then, is to make sure its allies are not overthrown or destabilized – which requires supporting strategic forces. Iran’s goal is to undermine the U.S. position and become the most powerful force in the region – which requires a U.S. withdrawal. It is not enough that the U.S. withdraw from the region; Iran must be seen as driving them out. Secondarily, it needs to be seen as the leader of the fight against Israel through its mostly Shia proxies forces and thereby demonstrate the weakness of Sunni actors.
If the U.S. is forced out, then Iran is in a position to impose power on the Suez Canal and possibly further. If Iran is broken, the U.S. will dominate the region. Iran has the weaker military and is far less influential, and it seems to have determined that striking the U.S. with what power it has will cause the U.S. to eventually leave. But the stakes are different. The U.S. will survive if it “loses.” Iran’s very future is at risk.
The U.S. must attack Iranian targets of note if it wants to show it is prepared to fight – and win. Iran will have to counter similarly. If executed, the conflict will feature missile and air power to minimize casualties. Iran will use ground forces along with its drones, and the U.S. will try to destroy drone factories and storage areas. Tehran will attempt a short but very intense campaign to discourage U.S. allies from joining the fray.
If the United States must engage in a high intensity war against Iran, then it will be less able to supply Ukraine with needed support. We should therefore watch for possible Russian involvement because it will give Moscow an opportunity to become more effective than it has been.
-
Biden, Iran and Three Dead Americans
The Commander in Chief’s weak response to attacks puts his Presidency at risk.
By The Editorial Board
Updated Jan. 28, 2024 5:39 pm ET
It was bound to happen eventually, as President Biden was warned repeatedly. A drone or missile launched by Iran’s militia proxies would elude U.S. defenses and kill American soldiers. That’s what happened Sunday as three Americans were killed and 25 wounded at a U.S. base in Jordan near the Syrian border. The question now is what will the Commander in Chief do about it?
Mr. Biden issued a statement Sunday that “America’s heart is heavy” at the death of patriots who are the “best of our nation.” That sentiment is nice, and no doubt sincere, but at this point it is inadequate and infuriating.
The sorry truth is that these casualties are the result of the President’s policy choices. Mr. Biden has tolerated more than 150 Iranian proxy attacks on U.S. forces in the Middle East since October. Only occasionally has he or the Administration registered more than rhetorical displeasure by retaliating militarily, and only then with limited airstrikes.
The President refused to change course even after U.S. troops suffered traumatic brain injuries. A Christmas Day proxy attack in Iraq left a U.S. Army pilot in a coma. Last week, more than a month later, Chief Warrant Officer 4 Garrett Illerbrunn was finally “sitting up in the chair for the first time for most of the day,” and “alert with both eyes opened and following,” his family’s medical blog says.
Mr. Biden vowed Sunday to “hold all those responsible to account at a time and in a manner our choosing,” though that stock line rings increasingly hollow. He has no choice now other than to approve strikes in retaliation, but targeting the responsible militia is insufficient. Mr. Biden and the Pentagon are playing Mideast Whac-a-Mole.
Everyone knows that the real orchestrator of these attacks is Iran. But the President has put his anxieties about upsetting Iran and risking escalation above his duty to defend U.S. soldiers abroad. It would have been more honest (if a sign of weakness) to withdraw American troops from the region, rather than consign them to catching Iranian drones for months.
The irony of Mr. Biden’s strategy—avoid escalation with Iran above all else—is that he’ll now have to strike back harder than if he had responded with devastating force the first time U.S. forces were hit, and every time since.
That probably includes hitting Iranian military or commercial assets. There are certainly risks of escalation from doing so. But Iran and its proxies are already escalating, and they have no incentive to stop unless they know their own forces are at risk. Here’s one idea: Put the Iranian spy ship that has been prowling the Red Sea on the ocean floor.
The alternative is a growing American body count. Iran’s clients in Yemen are continuing to fire at U.S. warships in the Red Sea while holding a vital shipping lane hostage. U.S. destroyers have managed to intercept Houthi volleys in a testament to American weapons technology and military professionalism. But eventually a drone or missile could elude U.S. defenses and sink a U.S. warship.
One thing to watch is whether the Administration will react to this attack by putting more pressure on Israel to stop its campaign against Hamas. This would validate the claim of the militias that they are merely targeting the U.S. because it supports Israel. And it would tell Iran that its militia drone and missile campaign has succeeded in easing pressure on Hamas. But it is how this Administration thinks.
***
Mr. Biden has spent months fretting about a broader regional war without confronting the reality that the U.S. is already in one. The result is that U.S. deterrence has collapsed in the region, and Americans are dying. Mr. Biden’s repeated displays of weakness are inviting more attacks. In the 1970s, Iran helped to ruin Jimmy Carter’s Presidency by seizing hostages. Mr. Biden should worry that it will also take down his Presidency if he won’t respond with enough force that the mullahs get the message.
-
The reason Beijing seems so relaxed about the crisis is obvious: this is a situation in which China wins either way. Either the threat continues but shipping is safer for Chinese vessels than for others, in which case sailing under the protection of the red and gold flag may become a coveted competitive advantage, or Beijing finally tells Iran to knock it off, in which case China becomes the de facto go-to security provider in the Middle East. Both outcomes would be geopolitical coups. No wonder China is willing to accept a little short-term economic pain as the situation plays out.
– Nathan Levine
https://www.samizdata.net/2024/02/samizdata-quote-of-the-day-either-way-china-wins/
-
Haven't seen anything about this in the MSM--mayhaps 'cause it underlines the feckless impotence of a certain doddering chief exec--but if so this is a big deal on several fronts: it throttles data exchange in an area with huge, critical commodities and markets and bodes what future assymetric warfare may entail, to name two:
https://www.jpost.com/middle-east/article-788888
-
Good work spotting this!
IMO this is a very BFD, not only in its own right, but for the meme of it. Lots of serious players are going to seriously game concept out in the minds now.
-
Biden’s handlers want to share Hillary’s reset button with Hamas:
https://freebeacon.com/israel/total-betrayal-gop-slams-biden-admin-bid-to-force-ceasefire-on-israel/?fbclid=IwAR3Y9ijG_LEVohg4dVlXnrgCemk20dQoFhwhaHRCtK9XJimXDdDXd0YeDps
-
And of course Lurch will never see the inside of a courtroom for this, or all his other, betrayals:
https://www.foxnews.com/politics/iran-foreign-minister-john-kerry-javad-zarif-israel?fbclid=IwAR2FyZhEOyzxNh_y2LVC-R8dVJZJdgmMBCLN6RpP4_bEXCquMEujn8lQvMA
-
To be noted is that this article is from 2021.
Kerry is a treasonous fukk.
-
To be noted is that this article is from 2021.
Kerry is a treasonous fukk.
Missed that. I’ll have to see if I can find it in my feed and figure why it got reposted today.
-
https://www.dailywire.com/news/saudi-arabia-publicly-acknowledges-defending-israel-from-iranian-attacks-reports?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=benshapiro&fbclid=IwAR1ra5h-fBJ7tq8gNYhgWhQXtZYfgtJJnQqy8U6lrWKdXiJ8KAGwE4qqmK0