Monthly Archives: July 2012

Israel stunned by wave of self-immolations

GlobalPost reports: The second half of July has exposed Israelis to a new and horrifying phenomenon: desperate but mainstream citizens choosing, again and again, to end it all through fire.

So far, there have been seven attempts in the last two weeks, and numerous threats. One man is dead, another clings to life.

The first one came on July 14 at a large Tel Aviv rally commemorating the first anniversary of the Israeli Occupy movement. Moshe Silman, a badly indebted Haifa resident entangled in what the daily newspaper Ha’aretz called “a bureaucratic nightmare,” distributed flyers to a few people around him, doused himself with lighter fluid and struck a match.

He was burned over 90 percent of his body. The social justice movement, of which he was a part, waited out the eight-day vigil in shocked silence until he died.

The idea of a man ostentatiously setting himself aflame is so alien here that many Israelis, and it would appear their entire government, have found themselves helpless and unsure how to react. [Continue reading…]

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Syrian rebels survive regime onslaught in Aleppo

The Associated Press reports: The Syrian government launched an offensive Saturday to retake rebel-held neighborhoods in the nation’s commercial hub of Aleppo, unleashing artillery, tanks and helicopter gunships against poorly armed opposition fighters.

Yet after a day of fighting, the rag-tag rebel forces remained in control of their neighborhoods in Syria’s largest city, said activists, suggesting they had successfully fought off the government’s initial assault.

The international community has raised an outcry about a possible massacre in this city of 3 million but acknowledged there was little they could do to stop the bloodshed. The foreign minister of Russia, a powerful ally of Syria, said it was “simply unrealistic” for the Syrian regime to cede control.

The state-controlled al-Watan newspaper celebrated the assault with a banner headline proclaiming the fight for Aleppo “the mother of all battles.”

The rebels are estimated to control between a third and a half of the neighborhoods in this sprawling city, especially a cluster in the northeast around Sakhour neighborhood and in the southwest.

They began their attempt to wrest this key city from the government’s control a week ago. About 162 people have been killed, mostly civilians, according to the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which does not include soldiers in its toll. Some 19,000 people have been killed since the uprising began in March 2011, estimated the group.

For Saturday, activists estimate that at least two dozen have died so far in the day’s fighting.

Local activist Mohammed Saeed said the rebels have managed to keep the regime’s tanks at bay so far with rocket-propelled grenades.

“The army hasn’t been able to take any neighborhoods yet, there are too many from the Free Syrian Army,” Saeed said, referring to the rebels.

He estimated that about 1,000 fighters had poured into the city in the past few days to take on the Syrian army, which had been massing forces around the city ahead of its attack.

By the end of Saturday, according to the Observatory, the government appeared to have pulled back from its ground offensive and was resuming its bombardment of various neighborhoods with artillery. Attack helicopters pounded rebel positions.

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Mitt’s mission in Israel: optics, Christian Zionists and absentee ballots

Karl Vick writes: There are a number of ways to understand Mitt Romney’s visit to Israel, where he pitches up Saturday night from London.

One is optics, as they like to say in Washington. The presumptive Republican nominee clearly wants to occupy the chilly space visible between President Obama and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, whose tense personal relationship feeds the impression that Obama is cool toward not only Bibi, as Netanyahu is universally known, but also toward Israel itself. What supposed evidence of which might exist – the Cairo speech, Obama’s insisting on a settlement freeze as a pre-condition to peace talks with the Palestinians – is both receding in time and being pushed into the background by the keen, almost obsessive attention the White House has paid Israel in the last two years, in official visits, security coordination and, yes, dollars.

The latest arrived Saturday, when Obama signed a bill sending $70 million to Israel to pay for more of the anti-missile batteries called Iron Dome, the wonder technology that’s been knocking down 80 percent of the missiles fired toward Israeli cities from the Gaza Strip. Defense minister Ehud Barak promptly issued a statement of thanks, pointedly calling the aid “yet another expression of the consistent support of the Obama administration, and indeed of the U.S. congress, to the security of the State of Israel.” Such is the power of the incumbency. There will be more. Coming in October, as the fall campaign crests: The largest US-Israel joint military operation in history.

But as the Romney campaign appears to know well, body language is a lot more fun to read than official statements. Of six public events on Sunday, five are “photo sprays,” grip and grins with Israeli politicians, plus Palestinian Authority prime minister Salam Fayyad. The candidate is seeing Netanyahu twice, in the morning for a meeting, and later for dinner with their wives. The husbands already know each other, and even worked together briefly long ago at Bain Capital. Though Netanyahu told TIME Managing Editor Rick Stengel that they weren’t exactly pals – “He was the whiz kid; I was just in the back of the room” — Romney boasts of the shared history. The men also share a professed esteem for capital markets (much to the chagrin of progressives), and of course antipathy to Obama. Romney refuses to criticize the president while traveling overseas, but his entire visit to Israel is framed by his famous accusation, during the GOP primary, that Obama is “throwing Israel under the bus.” [Continue reading…]

The Associated Press reports: Mitt Romney tried to pull back Sunday from an adviser’s suggestion that he favored new American aggression on Iran, distancing himself from comments that the U.S. presidential candidate would “respect” an Israeli decision for unilateral military action to prevent Tehran from gaining nuclear capability.

Hours after the aide previewed Romney’s upcoming foreign policy speech in Jerusalem, Romney backpedaled and said, “I’ll use my own words and that is I respect the right of Israel to defend itself and we stand with Israel. We’re two nations that come together in peace and that want to see Iran being dissuaded from its nuclear folly.”

The address by the Republican challenger to President Barack Obama was promoted as the centerpiece of a weeklong trip abroad designed to burnish his foreign policy credentials and highlight his ability to lead on the world stage. But the mixed signals on Iran could undermine that goal.

“Because I’m on foreign soil, I don’t want to be creating new foreign policy for my country or in any way to distance myself from the foreign policy of our nation, but we respect the right of a nation to defend itself,” the former Massachusetts governor told CBS’ “Face the Nation” a few hours before the speech and a day before a major fundraiser in the city.

Obama has affirmed the right of Israel to defend itself, while also warning of the consequences of an Israeli strike on Iran.

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Obama puts Israel’s interests above all others

In the Oval Office on Friday, President Obama said: “This week we are going to be able to announce 70 million dollars in additional spending — 70 billion dollars, excuse me — in additional spending for [Israel’s] Iron Dome [missile defense shield].”

He got the number right the first time but Obama’s “correction” was perhaps of way of saying there need be no dollar limit on any military aid for Israel he is willing to support. AIPAC can draft the bills and he’ll sign them — whatever the cost.

The Wall Street Journal reports: With a stroke of a pen on Friday, President Barack Obama gave Israel a long-distance embrace ahead of Republican presidential hopeful Mitt Romney’s trip to the Jewish state this weekend.

Mr. Obama held an Oval Office photo-op for his signing of legislation that enhances U.S.-Israel security cooperation, saying the move underscores “our unshakeable commitment to Israel security.”

“I have made it a top priority for my administration to deepen cooperation with Israel across the whole spectrum of security issues,” Mr. Obama said. “I hope that, as I sign as this bill, once again everybody understands how committed all of us are – Republicans and Democrats – as Americans to our friends in making sure that Israel is safe and secure.”

Mr. Obama also noted the U.S.’s funding this week of an additional $70 million for Israel’s missile defense system, which the administration had announced months ago.

The moment comes amid a flurry of attention Obama administration officials have been showering on Israel ahead of Mr. Romney’s meeting with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Sunday. Over the past two weeks, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Undersecretary of State Wendy Sherman, National Security Adviser Tom Donilon, and the White House’s counter-terrorism adviser John Brennan have visited Israel.

On Monday, Defense Secretary Leon Panetta will make a two-day stop in Israel to discuss Iran’s nuclear program, Egypt and Syria’s political unrest, according to officials involved in the planning. Mr. Obama said Friday that the goal of Mr. Panetta’s trip is “to further consult and find additional ways that we can ensure such cooperation at a time when, frankly, the region is experiencing heightened tensions.”

The president’s team has also been reaching out to American Jewish leaders in recent days to shore up support in advance of Mr. Romney’s trip, a White House official said.

Both Messrs. Obama and Romney are vying for Jewish voters in the November election. Mr. Romney accused Mr. Obama of straining U.S.-Israel relations, and Republicans have criticized the president for not visiting Israel during his first term.

Ynet reports: “This was a historical landmark in the defense relations between the US and Israel,” said Amos Gilad, the director of policy and political-military affairs at the Defense Ministry.

The legislation, knowns as the “United States-Israel Enhanced Security Cooperation Act of 2012,” allows Israel to purchase American KC-135 aerial refueling aircraft for the first time. Thus far, the Bush and Obama administrations refused to sell planes of this kind to the Jewish state, primarily in order to bar it from launching a massive aerial strike on Iran.

In all likelihood, such a military operation would involve F-15I and F-16I fighter jets, as well as helicopters, all of which will have to refuel on their way to the Islamic Republic, and on the return trip. Mid-air refueling capabilities are therefore essential for the mission.

So far, Israel has had to buy used commercial Boeing 707 airliners and convert them into tanker jets, a far from ideal solution considering the planes were originally designed for passenger flights. Just last week an accident occurred during an exercise involving such aircraft.

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For Israelis, watching Syrians suffer has become a tourist attraction

Is there a difference between Israeli tourists viewing the conflict in Syria through binoculars and Americans following the same events on the internet? Sometimes maybe not, but largely I would say there is a significant difference.

For Israelis the spectacle of regional violence is self-affirming.

It reinforces the idea that Israel is justifiably obsessed with its own security because it is surrounded by a ‘dangerous neighborhood.’

It confirms Ehud Barak’s racist notion that Israel is a villa in a jungle and that tranquility inside this villa can only be afforded by high walls.

It defines neighbors on the basis of their otherness and legitimizes indifference in preference to empathy.

It denies the common ground of human existence and suggests that the miserable plight of those who live literally a stone’s throw outside Israel need not impinge on the good life inside the Jewish state.

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U.S. presents Netanyahu with plans for war against Iran

Haaretz reports: The U.S. national security adviser has shared with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu the United States’ contingency plans for a possible attack on Iran.

According to a senior American official, National Security Advisor Tom Donilon briefed Netanyahu on the plans during Donilon’s visit to Israel two weeks ago. According to the official, who requested anonymity, Netanyahu hosted Donilon at a three-hour dinner. For part of the time, Israel’s national security adviser, Yaakov Amidror, was on hand.

Donilon sought to make clear that the United States is seriously preparing for the possibility that negotiations will reach a dead end and military action will become necessary. He said reports of such preparations were not just a way to assuage Israel’s concerns.

Donilon’s talks in Jerusalem were the most significant so far between American and Israeli officials here in recent weeks. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Deputy Secretary of State William Burns have been in Israel as well.

Reuters reports: A senior Israeli official denied on Sunday a newspaper report that President Barack Obama’s national security adviser had briefed Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on a U.S. contingency plan to attack Iran should diplomacy fail to curb its nuclear programme.
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“Nothing in the article is correct. Donilon did not meet the prime minister for dinner, he did not meet him one-on-one, nor did he present operational plans to attack Iran,” the senior official, who declined to be named given the sensitivity of the issue, told Reuters.

Note: the Haaretz report does not claim this was a one-on-one meeting. Perhaps Donilon did not meet Netanyahu for dinner — maybe it was brunch. And Donilon wasn’t, according to Haaretz, presenting operational plans — he was presenting contingency plans.

While the Israelis present this non-denial denial, more significantly the White House is saying nothing. Why would Obama want to offer any revisions to this self-serving narrative while his competitor is in Israel?

Mitt Romney is shut behind closed doors hustling up donations from casino boss Sheldon Adelson and his buddies while Obama is pledging billions in aid, access to military technology previously withheld and the promise of a long-threatened war — all music to the ears of Netanyahu and the Israel lobby.

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The breakup of Syria poses a greater threat than Iran’s nuclear program

Vali Nasr writes: The conflict in Syria has reached a tipping point, but not one that promises a quick end to the fighting. With or without Bashar al-Assad as its leader, Syria now has all the makings of a grim and drawn-out civil war: evenly matched protagonists who are not ready for a cease-fire, and outside powers preoccupied with their own agendas and unable to find common ground.

There is no easy way out of such a stalemated struggle, and this one threatens the stability of the whole Middle East. So the United States and its allies must enlist the cooperation of Mr. Assad’s allies — Russia and, especially, Iran — to find a power-sharing arrangement for a post-Assad Syria that all sides can support, however difficult that may be to achieve.

Until now, Washington has seen the developments in Syria as a humiliating strategic defeat for Iran, and it has largely sat on the sidelines, trying to draw diplomatic cooperation from Russia. The administration and its critics alike may think that involving Iran in any resolution to the conflict would throw Tehran a lifeline and set back talks on Iran’s nuclear program. But a breakup of Syria — and the chain of events that such a breakup would inevitably set in motion — poses a graver threat to the Middle East and to America’s long-run interests in the region than does Iran’s nuclear program. And Iran has much more influence with the Assad leadership than does Russia.

If the Syrian conflict explodes outward, everyone will lose: it will spill into neighboring Lebanon, Jordan, Iraq and Turkey. Lebanon and Iraq in particular are vulnerable; they, too, have sectarian and communal rivalries tied to the Sunni-Alawite struggle for power next door.

In the past week, Mr. Assad has lost control of important parts of the country, and the opposition, buoyed by outside sympathy and support, has built on the momentum of a bombing in Damascus that killed key security aides to the president. The shift in balance is significant, but it is not decisive. Rather, it sets the stage for a protracted conflict that would divide Syria into warring opposition and pro-Assad enclaves. For now, the Assad government has enough support and firepower to keep fighting, and it shows no sign of giving up. Most members of Syria’s Alawite, Christian and Kurdish minorities, along with a slice of its Sunni Arab population, still prefer Mr. Assad to what they fear will follow his fall; together, those groups make up perhaps half of Syria’s population, the rest of which is largely Sunni Muslim.

The opposition, meanwhile, is winning territory, but its ranks are divided among some 100 groups with no clear political leadership. Even if Mr. Assad were to step down voluntarily, his Alawite military machine and its sectarian allies are likely to fight on, holding large chunks of territory.

Syria would then fracture, with the fighting deciding who controls what area — a larger version of Lebanon in the 1970s. There would be ethnic cleansing, refugee floods, humanitarian disasters and opportunities for Al Qaeda. [Continue reading…]

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The ruins of empire: Asia’s emergence from western imperialism

Pankaj Mishra writes: The British empire, George Orwell wrote, was “despotism with theft as its final object”. So what has made imperialism an intellectual fashion in our own time, reopening hoary disputes about whether it was good or bad? After five years as a colonial policeman in Burma, where he found himself shooting an elephant to affirm the white man’s right to rule, Orwell was convinced that the imperial relationship was that of “slave and master”. Was the master good or bad? “Let us simply say,” Orwell wrote, “that this control is despotic and, to put it plainly, self-interested.” And “if Burma derives some incidental benefit from the English, she must pay dearly for it.”

Orwell’s hard-won insights were commonplace truisms for millions of Asians and Africans struggling to end western control of their lands. Their descendants can only be bewildered by the righteous nostalgia for imperialism that has recently seized many prominent Anglo-American politicians and opinion-makers, who continue to see Asia through the narrow perspective of western interests, leaving unexamined and unimagined the collective experiences of Asian peoples.

Certainly, as Joseph Conrad wrote in 1902, “the conquest of the earth, which mostly means the taking it away from those who have a different complexion or slightly flatter noses than ourselves, is not a pretty thing when you look into it too much.” Two years after Conrad published Heart of Darkness, Roger Casement, then a British diplomat, revealed in a report that half of the population of Belgian-ruled Congo – nearly 10 million people – had perished under a brutal regime where beheadings, rape and genital mutilation of African labourers had become the norm. Such overt violence and terror is only a small part of the story of European domination of Asia and Africa, which includes the slow-motion slaughter of tens of million in famines caused by unfettered experiments in free trade – and plain callousness (Indians, after all, would go on breeding “like rabbits”, Winston Churchill argued when asked to send relief during the Bengal famine of 1943-44).

The unctuous belief that British imperialists, compared to their Belgian and French counterparts, were exponents of fair play has been dented most recently by revelations about mass murder and torture during the British suppression of the Mau Mau uprising in Kenya in the 1950s. Nevertheless, in one of the weirdest episodes of recent history, a Kipling-esque rhetoric about bringing free trade and humane governance to “lesser breeds outside the law” has resonated again in the Anglo-American public sphere. Even before 9/11, Tony Blair was ready to tend, with military means if necessary, to, as he put it, “the starving, the wretched, the dispossessed, the ignorant” around the world. His apparently more intellectual rival Gordon Brown urged his compatriots to be “proud” of their imperial past. Sensing a sharper rightward shift after 9/11, many pith-helmet-and-jodhpurs fetishists boisterously outed themselves, exhorting politicians to recreate a new western imperium through old-style military conquest and occupation of native lands. [Continue reading…]

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WikiLeaks: The Latin America files

Peter Kornbluh writes: On June 19, WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange slipped into the Ecuadorean Embassy in London, seeking sanctuary and asylum from extradition to Sweden for questioning on alleged sexual misconduct. If and when the government of Rafael Correa grants his request—a decision that had yet to be made as The Nation went to press — Assange will become a resident of Latin America, where the trove of US State Department cables he strategically disseminated has generated hundreds of headlines, from Mexico to the Southern Cone.

“Cablegate,” as the revelations have come to be known, has had a different degree of impact in each Latin American nation — on politics, the media, and the public debate over transparency and government accountability. In two countries it led to the forced departure of the US ambassador; in another it helped change the course of a presidential election. In some countries, the documents revealed the level of US influence in domestic affairs; in others they detailed criminal activities and corruption within a number of host governments. In many nations, the cables disclosed the parade of local political, cultural and even media elites who lined up to divulge information — or gossip — to US Embassy officers, never suspecting that their discussions would become front-page news.

Collectively, the Americas have been treated to a mega– civics lesson in globalized whistleblowing. And US citizens have also peered into the foreign policy abyss of our bilateral and regional ties. A year after the diplomatic dust has settled on the WikiLeaks phenomenon in Latin America, it seems appropriate to assess — drawing attention to the experiences of Brazil, Mexico and Colombia — what the biggest leak of US documents in history has left in its wake. [Continue reading…]

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The battle for Aleppo

As a major battle is being faught between regime forces and rebels over Syria’s largest city, Aleppo, GlobalPost reports: Travelling the road into Aleppo from Idlib, GlobalPost saw dozens of burned out tanks and armored vehicles, suggesting rebel fighters were attempting to target the government troops before they entered the city.

But for every crippled tank or Armored Personnel Carrier, another one rumbled by, carried by a convoy of military trucks heading to Aleppo from Homs, Hama and Idlib, as the regime masses its forces for its looming assault on the ancient city.

Today, Aleppo’s labyrinth of cobbled markets, scented with cardamom and coffee, where pearls and gold and woodwork have been bought and sold since the history books began, stand shuttered and silent. The 13th-century citadel — a UNESCO world heritage site — awaits its likely fate as a barracks against the bombs.

“All Aleppo’s businessmen want a solution and today we see this solution without President Assad,” said Abu Omar, a local factory-owner, a member of the Sunni merchant class who for so long kept Aleppo quiet, hoping their long alliance with the regime would keep them open for business.

Today, with Turkey closing its border to all trade and the roads to Iraq and Damascus too dangerous to transport goods along, Abu Omar said he knew of “dozens” of industrialists who had once paid the regime’s militias to attack protesters, but who were now paying the armed rebels of the Free Syria Army.

“They want to speed up the collapse of the regime. Sooner or later Assad is finished, but sooner is better,” he said. The switch in allegiances also followed a series of kidnappings by rebels of wealthy Aleppan businessmen and their relatives and the torching of several large factories, he said.

As regime forces begin launching bombardments on Aleppo from above, injuries from the attacks are already overwhelming city hospitals.

“We are taking in four times our capacity of patients, but what else can we do?” said a doctor at the state-run Al Razi Hospital, Aleppo’s largest. “We have hundreds of seriously wounded residents, old people, women and children.”

As in Damascus, much of the hospital staff was unable to reach work due to the attacks and the absence of public transport, said the doctor, who added that he was fast running out of blood bags.

“We asked the government to send more help but got no answer. On the contrary, the Ministry of Health has increased the price of a bag of blood from 1,200 Syrian Pound ($17) to 3,500 ($50),” he said. “I am calling all people of Aleppo to come and donate blood to help injured civilians.” [Continue reading…]

The Independent reports: Fighting centred around the south-western neighbourhood of Salaheddine [on Saturday], one of the first areas seized by the rebels after they were routed from the capital, Damascus. Activists said helicopters strafed the area and rebels faced artillery barrages and tanks.

Mohammed Saeed, an Aleppo-based activist, said the government counterattack had begun and rebels were fighting back. “Thanks be to God, they haven’t succeeded in entering any of the neighbourhoods yet,” he said.

Though Western media is largely unable to gain access to the areas held by rebels, the BBC reported a heavily artillery bombardment could be heard throughout Aleppo, and there were reports of heavy casualties.

An emergency call went out to doctors to help. It said there had been constant shelling and mortar rounds all day, together with weapons fire from helicopters. A steady stream of vehicles has been heading out of the city carrying hundreds of families trying to escape the violence and deteriorating conditions.

President Bashar al-Assad’s forces are massed outside the city. Mr Saeed said rebels from around the country have also been pouring in to help defend the areas under their control. “About 1,000 fighters have come from the Free Syrian Army from outside the province to help,” he said.

State television reported that government forces had inflicted heavy losses on groups of terrorists, the term the regime uses for the rebels. The pro-government daily newspaper Al-Watan called it “the mother of all battles”.

The UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR) said the government attack started before dawn with the bombardment of several areas, followed by the movement of armoured vehicles backed by attack helicopters. Based on reports from contacts on the ground, SOHR reported attacks in the north-eastern area of Sakhour as well as other areas, and said the rebels had disabled a number of the regime’s armoured vehicles. [Continue reading…]

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CIA knows Israel can’t be trusted — viewed as primary counterintelligence threat in the region

The Associated Press reports: The CIA station chief opened the locked box containing the sensitive equipment he used from his home in Tel Aviv, Israel, to communicate with CIA headquarters in Virginia, only to find that someone had tampered with it. He sent word to his superiors about the break-in.

The incident, described by three former senior U.S. intelligence officials, might have been dismissed as just another cloak-and-dagger incident in the world of international espionage, except that the same thing had happened to the previous station chief in Israel.

It was a not-so-subtle reminder that, even in a country friendly to the United States, the CIA was itself being watched.

In a separate episode, according to another two former U.S. officials, a CIA officer in Israel came home to find the food in the refrigerator had been rearranged. In all the cases, the U.S. government believes Israel’s security services were responsible.

Such meddling underscores what is widely known but rarely discussed outside intelligence circles: Despite inarguable ties between the U.S. and its closest ally in the Middle East and despite statements from U.S. politicians trumpeting the friendship, U.S. national security officials consider Israel to be, at times, a frustrating ally and a genuine counterintelligence threat.

In addition to what the former U.S. officials described as intrusions in homes in the past decade, Israel has been implicated in U.S. criminal espionage cases and disciplinary proceedings against CIA officers and blamed in the presumed death of an important spy in Syria for the CIA during the administration of President George W. Bush.

The CIA considers Israel its No. 1 counterintelligence threat in the agency’s Near East Division, the group that oversees spying across the Middle East, according to current and former officials. Counterintelligence is the art of protecting national secrets from spies. This means the CIA believes that U.S. national secrets are safer from other Middle Eastern governments than from Israel. [Continue reading…]

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Obama or Romney? Who’s most likely to start a war against Iran?

Glenn Greenwald writes: When it comes to praising President Obama’s foreign policy skill and Toughness (in the neocon sense of that term: i.e., a willingness to risk other people’s lives with the use of military force against foreigners), The Atlantic‘s Jeffrey Goldberg has been one of the most reliable and vocal voices. Considered by Obama aides “as the ‘official therapist’ of the U.S.-Israel relationship,” Goldberg has been particularly important in vouching for Obama to Israelis and American Jews on the ground that nobody will be Tougher on Iran than Obama (in return for this service, Goldberg — like all helpful journalists are — has been rewarded by the White House with substantial career-boosting access). In his Bloomberg column this morning, Goldberg argues that Israeli officials should pray for Obama’s victory in the November election, and makes this argument in support:

On the matter of Iran, however, Netanyahu would be wrong to root for Romney. Barack Obama is the one who’s more likely to confront Iran militarily, should sanctions and negotiations fail. He has committed himself to stopping Iran by any means necessary, and he has a three-year record as president to back his rhetoric. Romney has only rhetoric, and he would be hamstrung in many ways if he chose military confrontation.

He goes on to argue that despite the GOP challenger’s Tough rhetoric, “Romney would face several critical challenges in a conflict with Iran that Obama would not”; specifically:

Romney, by all accounts, is uninterested in inheriting the mantle of President George W. Bush, who invaded two Muslim countries and lost popularity and credibility as a result. Romney, despite his rhetoric, is more of a pragmatist than Bush, and far more cautious. An attack on Iran is an incautious act, one that even Bush rejected.

The unilateral use of force in the Middle East for a liberal Democrat like Obama is a credential; for a conservative Republican like Romney, it could be an albatross. I argued in a previous column that Romney is more likely than Obama to oversee a revitalized Middle East peace process. That’s because conservatives are better positioned to make peace; liberals are generally better positioned to launch preventive strikes at the nuclear programs of rogue nations. We know that U.S. voters, and world leaders, allow Obama extraordinary leeway when it comes to deadly drone strikes, precisely because of his politics, character and background. (We are talking about a man, after all, who won the Nobel Peace Prize while ordering the automated killing of suspected Muslim terrorists around the world.) Romney will get no comparative slack.

In other words, Obama will be freer to attack Iran than Romney would be because Democrats, progressives, and the “international community” (that’s neocon for: Europeans) passively accept or even cheer for violence, aggression and executive power abuses when ordered by a sophisticated, urbane, Constitutional Law Professor with Good Progressivism in his heart, and only cause a messy ruckus when done by an icky, religious, overtly nationalistic Republican. [Continue reading…]

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Kurds must feel included in the Syrian opposition

Fazel Hawramy writes: Almost unnoticed last week, as attention focused on battles in Damascus, Kurdish activists in north-eastern Syria started taking over control of a few towns without encountering much resistance from the Assad regime’s security forces.

It was a significant development, as Syria’s Kurds number about 2 million people and could potentially tilt the balance of power towards the opposition.

President Masoud Barzani of the Kurdistan regional government (KRG) in northern Iraq, who is a fierce opponent of the Assad regime, is credited with bringing together the main Kurdish opposition groups from Syria to form a united front.

A few days before last week’s attack that killed four of Assad’s top aides in Damascus, the main Syrian Kurdish groups – the Kurdish National Councils (KNC) and the Democratic Union party (PYD) – signed an important agreement in Erbil to set up a Supreme Kurdish Council to co-ordinate their efforts.

They agreed to form a popular defence force consisting mainly of Kurdish Syrian soldiers who have defected to Iraqi Kurdistan since the uprising began in March last year. These soldiers are being retrained in military camps funded by the oil-rich KRG and are preparing to enter the Kurdish areas in Syria to defend towns such as Kobani (Ayn al-Arab) that are in the hands of the Kurdish activists.

President Barzani is also developing close political and commercial ties with Turkish prime minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who has considerable influence over the Syrian National Council (SNC). It seems almost inevitable that in the near future the SNC and the Kurdish opposition groups will co-ordinate their efforts to accelerate the downfall of the Assad regime. [Continue reading…]

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By ceding northeastern Syria to the Kurds, Assad puts Turkey in a bind

Piotr Zalewski writes: The retreat of President Bashar al-Assad’s forces from parts of northeastern Syria along the Turkish border might have been welcomed by Turkey, a key supporter of the Syrian rebellion, except for one thing: The region is predominantly Kurdish, and Ankara fears the resulting power vacuum will be a major boon to its number one enemy, the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) whose three-decade separatist insurgency has seen some 40,000 people killed.

Until recently, Syria’s Kurds had been divided. A coalition of roughly a dozen Kurdish parties had tentatively backed the popular uprising against Assad, while the PKK’s Syrian ally, the Democratic Union Party (PYD), appeared to align itself with the Syrian regime, intimidating opposition activists and quashing popular protests. Others sat on the sidelines, wary of closing ranks with a Sunni Arab-dominated opposition that turned a deaf ear to Kurdish demands for new rights in a post-Assad Syria. Two weeks ago – perhaps sensing that the regime’s fall was imminent – the rival Syrian Kurdish political currents put aside their differences, under the coaching of Iraqi Kurdish leader Massoud Barzani. In Irbil, capital of Iraq’s autonomous Kurdish Regional Government, they signed a unity agreement that has allowed them to take control of several northeastern towns, Assad’s forces mostly retreating without a fight.

The news sparked a Turkish media and political clamor about the imminent rise of a “PKK Republic” or a “Western Kurdistan” on Turkey’s southern flank. Commentators fear that the rise of a second Kurdish statelet, following the emergence of the one in neighboring Iraq in 2003, would embolden Turkey’s own 12-15 million Kurds to pursue their own dream of autonomy. Worse still, it could potentially provide the PKK — branded as a terrorist organization by Turkey, the U.S., and the EU — with sanctuaries from which to launch cross-border attacks.

(MORE: Five Syria Nightmares: The Middle East Can’t Live with Assad, but Living Without Him Won’t Be Easy)

Picking up where the media left off, Turkey’s fiery leader, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, banged the war drums. Though he and his government proclaim the Kurds a “brother nation,” Erdogan told a TV interviewer on Wednesday, a Kurdish state in northern Syria would likely become a “terrorist entity”. If need be, he warned, Turkey would not hesitate to hit the PKK inside Syria, as it has done repeatedly in northern Iraq. “If a formation that’s going to be a problem emerges, if there is a terror operation, an irritant, then intervening would be our most natural right.”

It would not be easy. In northern Iraq — where the PKK has come under pressure from a Barzani government that seeks to improve ties with Ankara — the rebels remain ensconced in remote mountain hideouts, making it easier for Turkish forces to target them with relative impunity. In Syria, the PKK-aligned PYD is an urban-based outfit. To bring the fight to them, Turkish troops would have to operate in large population centers, many of them within a stone’s throw of the common border. [Continue reading…]

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