Category Archives: Analysis

Stranded on the platform, refugees feel the force of hostility in Hungary

By Umut Korkut, Glasgow Caledonian University

After being blockaded for days, Budapest’s main rail terminal has been reopened to migrants and refugees desperate to settle in the EU.

An estimated 3,000 people had been camped outside the station, and once it was reopened at least 1,000 rushed in to try and board trains – although there were none to board since departures to Western Europe had been cancelled for “security reasons”. The Hungarian authorities reinstated the policy of registering all migrants before allowing them to leave the country, a demand issued by various European leaders including Angela Merkel.

This remarkable series of events highlights the extreme intolerance that has characterised Hungarian politics for some time. But it must also serve as a warning to the rest of Europe. Hungarian xenophobia is becoming a template for rightist movements across the continent.

In 2014, I conducted research on anti-immigrant feelings in Hungary and Turkey, and it was clear to me that fear of migrants was far outpacing the reality of the “threat”.

While there were already signs that Turkey was becoming a major destination for refugees leaving Syria, there was little indication that Hungary would also feel the brunt of the refugee crisis caused by wars in the Middle East. Given its position in central Europe, you might think Hungary would have little to fear from prospective refugees. But the number of immigrants rarely bears any relationship to the fear of them.

Right after the EU accession, a 2007 opinion survey saw 80% of Hungarians say they would not welcome ethnic groups such as Arabs, Chinese and Russians into their country. The same refusal rate applied for the Pirez – a completely fictitious group added into the survey.

So it is perhaps not surprising that the actual arrival of migrants and refugees in Hungary this summer has caused such a stir.

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Yemen’s hidden war: How the Saudi-led coalition is killing civilians

Iona Craig writes: In the Islamic concept of qadar, your divine destiny is inescapable. If you try to cheat death it will find you. For two women on a dusty road in mid-June on the southwest corner of the Arabian Peninsula, their repeated attempts to dodge fate ended in tragic failure.

Leaving the war zone of Yemen’s southern port city of Aden on June 10, the women headed north in a Toyota Cressida driven by a male relative. The pair were escaping the violence that had already turned entire streets in Aden to rubble, left hundreds dead and thousands of civilians under siege, struggling to find food, water and medical care.

Driving ahead of them was a family of four in a Hilux pick-up truck, slowing at the numerous checkpoints along the road and weaving around potholes in the asphalt. Between 4:30 and 5 p.m., seemingly from nowhere, the first missile struck. The Hilux flipped into a cartwheeling fireball, killing the two children and their parents inside.

Before the women in the Toyota had a chance to compose themselves an ominous whistle preceded a second missile, which smashed into the ground beside them and sent their car careering off the road into the dusty scrubland. Twice in the space of just a few minutes the women had stared death in the face.[Continue reading…]

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Obama’s real achievement with the Iran deal

Trita Parsi and Reza Marashi write: One cannot help but feel sorry for President Barack Obama. After twenty months of painstaking negotiations with Iran and America’s coalition partners, hours of hearings on Capitol Hill, countless closed briefings for lawmakers, and scores of articles and opinion pieces about the nuclear deal, few if any have taken note of the President’s real achievement: Yes, he has blocked all of Iran’s pathways to a bomb. But more importantly, he has proven to America that security is better achieved through diplomacy than through militarism.

This may sound obvious and redundant, but the very debate around the nuclear deal reveals how deeply rooted the mindset of militarism is in American political culture, despite its moral bankruptcy and questionable security utility.

In his speech at American University on August 5, Obama made clear that the Iran nuclear deal is a product of him leading America away from the damaging over-militarization of America’s foreign and national security policies following the September 11th attacks. “When I ran for President eight years ago as a candidate who had opposed the decision to go to war in Iraq, I said that America didn’t just have to end that war – we had to end the mindset that got us there in the first place,” Obama said. “It was a mindset characterized by a preference for military action over diplomacy.”

But a single foreign-policy achievement, however historic and momentous, a mindset does not change. [Continue reading…]

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Britain takes in so few refugees from Syria they would fit on a subway train

The Washington Post reports: Of the 4 million Syrians who have fled their country since the war began, including hundreds of thousands who have poured into Europe, the number who have been resettled in Britain could fit on a single London Underground train — with plenty of seats to spare.

Just 216 Syrian refugees have qualified for the government’s official relocation program, according to data released last week. (Tube trains seat about 300.) British Prime Minister David Cameron has reassured his anxious public that the total number won’t rise above 1,000.

As Germany prepares for an expected onslaught of 800,000 asylum applications just this year, the contrast between the two biggest powers in Europe couldn’t be sharper. On a continent that is supposed to be bound together by a common set of rules and values, the impact of this summer’s migrant crisis is being felt disproportionately by a handful of countries while others, such as Britain, have resisted efforts to more equitably share the burden. [Continue reading…]

The Guardian reports: David Miliband has called on the British government to take in its fair share of refugees fleeing the war in Syria and other conflicts, and said continued failure to do so would represent an abandonment of the UK’s legal and humanitarian traditions.

The former foreign secretary, who now heads the International Rescue Committee (IRC) aid agency, has told the Guardian that the strict limits Britain has placed on the acceptance of refugees represented a double standard that would ultimately undermine Britain’s influence abroad.

“When I hear people say we’ve got to firm up our borders, it makes me think of the message we’re sending to Jordan, Lebanon, Turkey and Iraq, which is to keep their borders open for Syrians,” Miliband said in an interview in New York.

“People in Britain have got to understand that these countries notice the difference between what we’re saying and what we’re doing.” [Continue reading…]

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Russia puts boots on the ground in Syria

Micahel Weiss writes: The end of summer. It means back-to-school shopping, tearfully ended beach-borne romances, Labor Day barbecues — and, it would seem, the increased likelihood of new Russian adventurism. As if Moscow weren’t satisfied with the game in Ukraine, the last month has seen a flurry of reports about its ever-expanding military involvement in Syria.

One report has even alleged that Russian pilots are gearing up to fly missions alongside the Syrian air force, dropping bombs not just on ISIS but on anti-Assad rebels who may or may not be aligned with the United States or its regional allies.

Several sources consulted for this story said the Pentagon is being unusually cagey about Russia’s reinvigorated role in Syria. A former U.S. military officer told The Daily Beast, “I’m being told things like, ‘We really can’t talk about this.’ That indicates to me that there’s some truth to these allegations.” [Continue reading…]

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U.S. launches secret drone campaign to hunt ISIS leaders in Syria

The Washington Post reports: The CIA and U.S. Special Operations forces have launched a secret campaign to hunt terrorism suspects in Syria as part of a targeted killing program that is run separately from the broader U.S. military offensive against the Islamic State, U.S. officials said.

The CIA and the Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) are flying drones over Syria in a collaboration responsible for several recent strikes against senior Islamic State operatives, the officials said. Among those killed was a British militant thought to be an architect of the terrorist group’s effort to use social media to incite attacks in the United States, the officials said.

The clandestine program represents a significant escalation of the CIA’s involvement in the war in Syria, enlisting the agency’s Counterterrorism Center (CTC) against a militant group that many officials believe has eclipsed al-Qaeda as a threat. [Continue reading…]

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The ISIS economy: Crushing taxes and high unemployment

The Atlantic reports: Before Islamic State militants overran her hometown of Mosul in June 2014, Fahima Omar ran a hairdressing salon. But ISIS gunmen made Omar close her business—and lose her only source of income. Salons like hers encouraged “debauchery,” the militants said.

Omar is one of many business owners — male and female — who say ISIS has forced them to shut up shop and lose their livelihoods in the process. The extremist group has also prevented those who refuse to join it from finding jobs, and has imposed heavy taxes on civilians.

“ISIS controls every detail of the economy,” says Abu Mujahed, who fled with his family from ISIS-controlled Deir al-Zor in eastern Syria. “Only their people or those who swear allegiance to them have a good life.” When they took over Deir al-Zor, ISIS gunmen systematically took control of the local economy, looting factories and confiscating properties, says Mujahed. Then they moved in, taking over local business networks.

In Raqqa, the Islamic State’s de facto capital, a group of traders loyal to the gunmen have imposed a stranglehold over the local economy, locals and activists say.

Together with the ISIS-controlled Syrian provinces of Deir al-Zor and Hasakeh, Raqqa has been described as a “breadbasket” for Syria. But it is now traders loyal to ISIS who control all transportation of agricultural goods from Raqqa to other areas under Islamic State control — including places in Iraq.

And it is ISIS traders, not local merchants, who control the prices of goods in the markets, activists say. [Continue reading…]

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What Israel owes the U.S. for improving its security

A headline in the JTA reads: “What America will offer Israel after the nuclear deal.”

It’s long been understood that the Obama administration, if successful in sealing the Iran nuclear deal, would then offer additional military support to Israel to sooth Netanyahu’s continuing Iranophobia.

But given that every proponent of the deal has argued vigorously that it will result in improved regional security and improved security for Israel, it would seem to make more sense that instead of increasing aid, the U.S. should now be cutting it.

I know — that’s too rational — but I’m just saying…

JTA reports: The moment the Iran nuclear deal becomes law, as seems increasingly likely given growing congressional support for the agreement, the focus of the U.S.-Israel conversation will shift to the question of what’s next.

What more will Washington do to mitigate the Iranian threat and reassure Israel and other regional allies?

For starters, President Barack Obama seems ready to offer an array of security enhancements. Among them are accelerating and increasing defense assistance to Israel over the next decade; increasing the U.S. military presence in the Middle East; stepping up the enforcement of non-nuclear related Iran sanctions; enhancing U.S. interdiction against disruptive Iranian activity in the region; and increasing cooperation on missile defense. [Continue reading…]

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Blair, Gaza and all that gas

David Hearst writes: Of all the bizarre encounters the Palestinian conflict has generated, Tony Blair’s four meetings in Doha with Khaled Meshaal, the Hamas leader must surely rank as one of the oddest.

Here was the Quartet’s Middle East envoy breaking the Quartet’s own rules about talking to Hamas until it recognises Israel – rules that Blair and Jack Straw , enforced as prime minister and foreign secretary by pressing the EU to declare Hamas a terrorist organisation. Two of the four meetings were held before Blair resigned as envoy.

Here was Blair, the man linked in mind, body, and soul to the military coup in Egypt (he said the army intervened ” at the will of the people” to bring democracy to Egypt) attempting to mediate between Hamas, Israel and Egypt – the two countries that have kept a stranglehold around Gaza’s neck. The Egyptian leader has been an even more zealous enforcer of the blockade than Netanyahu is.

In a British context, Blair’s dialogue with Hamas took place as his supporters accused the far left candidate in the Labour leadership race Jeremy Corbyn of making Labour unelectable if he became leader. Corbyn had advocated talks with Hamas and Hezbollah – a crime of which the man who won power three times was a repeat offender.

Blair did not just talk to Meshaal. He invited him to London, offering him a specific date in June, on which the current prime minister David Cameron must have agreed. This is the same prime minister who has strived and failed, so far, to publish a report branding the Muslim Brotherhood presence in Britain as extremist. Bizarre.

And yet Blair kept going, even after the existence of the talks was revealed by the Middle East Eye, In the last few days he has still been pushing the deal in Cairo. Why?

His motivation is not obvious. It is surely not out any belated humanitarian concern for 1.8m Gazans. As prime minister and peace envoy, Blair has provided Israel with valuable international cover for one operation in Gaza after another. [Continue reading…]

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UN: Gaza could be ‘uninhabitable’ by 2020 if trends continue

The Associated Press reports: A new United Nations report says Gaza could be “uninhabitable” in less than five years if current economic trends continue.

The report released Tuesday by the U.N. Conference on Trade and Development points to the eight years of economic blockade of Gaza as well as the three wars between Israel and the Palestinians there over the past six years.

Last year’s war displaced half a million people and left parts of Gaza destroyed.

The war “has effectively eliminated what was left of the middle class, sending almost all of the population into destitution and dependence on international humanitarian aid,” the new report says. [Continue reading…]

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Even as it worked for peace, the PKK prepared for war with Turkey

Aliza Marcus writes: In February, Kurdish politicians held a joint press conference with Deputy Prime Minister Yalcin Akdogan to announce a new plan for the rebel group to renounce its armed struggle while the government made democratic reforms. Erdogan quickly disavowed any deal.

“The cease-fire didn’t end in July; Turkey ended it long before,” [Cemil] Bayik [the de facto commander of PKK forces] said. “We are in favor of negotiations, but until that happens, we will continue the war if that’s what Turkey wants.”

Bayik’s reputation wasn’t built in combat — in the past, he was primarily responsible for running the group’s training academy in Lebanon’s Bekaa Valley and then its rearguard bases in northern Iraq — but he has a reputation for having a keen grasp of what it takes to maintain the group’s unity and focus on its twin goals of freedom for [PKK leader, Abdullah] Ocalan and self-rule for the Kurds. As his armed guards patrolled just out of sight, he laid out PKK demands for resuming the cease-fire.

“A cease-fire needs to be agreed on by both sides, and we need a public statement from Turkey that they are ready for dialogue,” added Bayik.

In other words, there won’t be any more unilateral cease-fires — even with de facto government agreement, as was the case in 2013. The PKK also wants a monitoring committee to ensure both sides are doing what they need to under any new cease-fire plan, and the group wants to be able to meet with Ocalan, who is held on Imrali island prison, in the Sea of Marmara, with access tightly controlled by the state.

Bayik, who wore a small pin with Ocalan’s image on his shirt, insisted that the PKK leader’s imprisonment shouldn’t be a barrier to direct talks with senior PKK officials. “These are technical issues,” Bayik said, “let them first accept that Ocalan can meet with the PKK’s leadership and then we can work out how.”

Bayik has reason to be confident. The PKK spent the past two years preparing for war, even as it was working for peace.The PKK spent the past two years preparing for war, even as it was working for peace. The group’s planned withdrawal from Turkey, which was promised by Ocalan as part of the 2013 cease-fire, was halted when rebels saw that Turkish soldiers were taking over the abandoned positions and building new, heavily fortified mountain outposts. The PKK sent its forces and weapons back in, and worked to expand its political dominance over the region through local, pro-PKK institutions. A quasi-civilian youth militia was organized and armed.

The PKK’s situation has also improved internationally, despite being labeled by the United States as a foreign terrorist organization. Its Syrian affiliate, known as the YPG, is working closely with the U.S. military in the battle against the so-called Islamic State in northern Syria. In northern Iraq, Kurdistan government officials say they want the PKK to leave their mountain camps, but rebels were key in helping Iraqi Kurds push back the jihadi assaults last year in Makhmour and around Mount Sinjar. In some areas, like Kirkuk, PKK rebels are still stationed in case of attacks by the Islamic State. [Continue reading…]

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Turkey arrests 3 Vice News journalists on terrorism charges

The New York Times reports: Three journalists for Vice News have been formally arrested in southeast Turkey and charged with aiding a terrorist organization, four days after they were detained while covering the conflict between Kurdish separatists and the Turkish state.

News media rights groups denounced a ruling on Monday by a Turkish court, which said that Jake Hanrahan and Philip Pendlebury, both British citizens, and their Iraqi news assistant had “knowingly and willingly helped an armed terrorist organization” without being a part of its “hierarchical structure,” the semiofficial Anadolu News Agency reported.

Although the court did not name the terrorist organization, Tahir Elci, the head of the Diyarbakir Bar Association in southeast Turkey, who is representing the journalists, said that the three had been accused of having links to the Islamic State and the YDG-H, a group affiliated with the Kurdistan Workers’ Party. The Kurdish group, which is often referred to by its Turkish initials, P.K.K., is considered a terrorist organization by Turkey, the United States and the European Union.

“They were accused of meeting and siding with both the Islamic State and the P.K.K.-affiliated group,” Mr. Elci said in a telephone interview from Diyarbakir. “The accusations are based on video footage, documents and photographs seized from the journalists.”

Turkey’s broad antiterror laws have created an increasingly difficult environment for journalists, according to news media advocates. For several years, Turkey had jailed more journalists than any other country, and this year, it ranked 149th out of 180 countries on the Reporters Without Borders news media freedom index. [Continue reading…]

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How Ibrahim Awwad Ibrahim al-Badri became the leader of ISIS

William McCants writes: Ibrahim Awwad Ibrahim al-Badri was born in 1971 in Samarra, an ancient Iraqi city on the eastern edge of the Sunni Triangle north of Baghdad. The son of a pious man who taught Quranic recitation in a local mosque, Ibrahim himself was withdrawn, taciturn, and, when he spoke, barely audible. Neighbors who knew him as a teenager remember him as shy and retiring. Even when people crashed into him during friendly soccer matches, his favorite sport, he remained stoic. But photos of him from those years capture another quality: a glowering intensity in the dark eyes beneath his thick, furrowed brow.

Early on, Ibrahim’s nickname was “The Believer.” When he wasn’t in school, he spent much of his time at the local mosque, immersed in his religious studies; and when he came home at the end of the day, according to one of his brothers, Shamsi, he was quick to admonish anyone who strayed from the strictures of Islamic law.

Now Ibrahim al-Badri is known to the world as Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the ruler of the Islamic State or ISIS, and he has the power not just to admonish but to punish and even execute anyone within his territories whose faith is not absolute. His followers call him “Commander of the Believers,” a title reserved for caliphs, the supreme spiritual and temporal rulers of the vast Muslim empire of the Middle Ages. Though his own realm is much smaller, he rules millions of subjects. Some are fanatically loyal to him; many others cower in fear of the bloody consequences for defying his brutal version of Islam. [Continue reading…]

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Under the strain of refugees, which Germany will prevail? The dark or the bright?

Der Spiegel reports: Anger is in the air. Angela Merkel has come to Heidenau and the locals are lined up to see her. But it is anything but a friendly welcome: It is a crowd full of hate. Some call out: “Traitor to Your People!” Others yell “We Are the Pack,” a reference to Deputy Chancellor Sigmar Gabriel’s strong condemnation of right-wing, anti-refugee demonstrators.

It is the pride of idiots. After the chancellor disappears into the former building supplies store, where 400 refugees have found shelter, the residents of the small Saxony town begin talking about the outsiders who have become their temporary neighbors.

“Did you see the young men? Full of hormones and with nothing sensible to do. They can’t help but get dumb ideas,” says one tanned pensioner wearing a bike helmet. A woman nods and says she no longer allows her granddaughter to walk past the building supplies store alone.

A policeman with foreign features is standing in front of the villagers wearing a firearm and a baton, but his face is friendly. Eventually, he joins the discussion. “I was born in Germany in 1980, but my parents are from Afghanistan,” he says. “They came to escape the war with the Russians.” His German is flawless. The emblem of the Lower Saxony police force is displayed prominently on his breast. The Saxons around him listen closely. And are amazed.

“My father was a teacher in Afghanistan and my mother worked in the technical field,” the policeman says. “But of course they could no longer practice their professions here.” The young man speaks calmly, but insistently, looking at the people behind the police barricade directly in the eyes. He declines to give his name — not out of fear, but because he doesn’t want to speak of his political viewpoints while in uniform. The man with the Afghan parents has completely internalized Germany’s civil servant principles.

The Heidenau residents say nothing; their enmity goes silent for a short moment. For the first time all day. [Continue reading…]

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The refugee crisis requires much more than crisis management

Christopher Dickey writes: Ad hoc measures will be taken here and there, as we have seen, but they will do little more than displace the flood, not stop it:

The boats pushing into the Med from North Africa were never very seaworthy, but now they have to be completely expendable, ready to be seized, and to be written off, or to sink and be written off, by the gangs that launched them leaking and overloaded in the first place.

Close the borders with the Balkan states, and refugees climb into sealed trucks like that putrid 18-wheeler in Austria.

The only medium- and long-term solution for this horrific global problem is to build peace in the war zones of Syria, Afghanistan, and Somalia, — the three countries that account for more than half of the world’s refugees; impose order on the chaos of Libya; deliver some modicum of freedom and prosperity in West and East Africa; and greater social and economic justice in Latin America.

To do that requires reliable long-term policies to promote development and good governance, not just the tossing of a few millions of dollars or euros here or there, or preaching about a system of globalized free trade that has made the rich so much richer and the poor, by comparison, so much poorer. [Continue reading…]

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Khaled al-Asaad, the martyr of Palmyra

By Pierre Leriche, Ecole Normale Supérieure de Paris

A second ancient temple at Palmyra has been razed, with a satellite image appearing to confirm the destruction of the Temple of Bel, previously one of the best-preserved parts of the ancient city.

The revelation follows the release of images by Islamic State last week showing the Baalshamin temple had been blown up.

IS militants seized control of Palmyra in May, sparking fears for the 2,000-year-old World Heritage site. Ancient ruins are not all that has been lost.

Khaled al-Asaad, the 81-year old former director of the world-renowned archaeological site at Palmyra in Syria, was beheaded in August. His body was hung on a street corner by Islamic State for everyone to see.

Prior to his death, al-Asaad and his son Walid, the current director of antiquities, had been detained for a month. They had been tortured as their captors tried to extract information about where treasures were to be found.

Walid’s fate remains unknown.

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Tolerant and multicultural, Palmyra stood for everything ISIS hates

Tim Whitmarsh writes: In May 2015, Islamic State captured the modern city of Palmyra. The adjoining Unesco world heritage site is a breathtaking archaeological complex like no other. In the 2nd century AD this oasis city in the Syrian desert was one of the grandest and wealthiest places in the world, with a total population about the size of modern Cardiff. Much of the ancient civic and sacred architecture still survives. Perhaps most evocative is the colonnaded street more than 1km in length: in antiquity, caravan traders from all over the Middle East would have processed along this road with their spices and silks towards the city’s religious heart, the magnificent temple of Bel, eyed from above by hundreds of statues of Palmyrene benefactors.

The future of this extraordinary site is precarious. At the time of the initial occupation, an anti-Assad Syrian radio station carried an interview with Abu Laith al-Saoudi, an Isis commander, who vouched that only the idolatrous statues would be destroyed; “concerning the historical city we will preserve it and it will not undergo damages inshallah (‘if God wills it’)”. Whatever deity reigns in Isis fantasy firmament, however, must have been in a capricious and malign mood.

On 23 August 2015 it was reported that the temple of Baal Shamin, one of the best-preserved and most unique buildings on the site, had been levelled by explosives. [Continue reading…]

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