Category Archives: Lands

Fort McMurray and the fires of climate change

Elizabeth Kolbert writes: No one knows exactly how the fire began — whether it was started by a lightning strike or by a spark provided by a person — but it’s clear why the blaze, once under way, raged out of control so quickly. Alberta experienced an unusually dry and warm winter. Precipitation was low, about half of the norm, and what snow there was melted early. April was exceptionally mild, with temperatures regularly in the seventies; two days ago, the thermometer hit ninety, which is about thirty degrees higher than the region’s normal May maximum. “You hate to use the ​cliché, but it really was kind of a perfect storm,” Mike Wotton, a research scientist with the Canadian Forest Service, told the CBC.

Though it’s tough to pin any particular disaster on climate change, in the case of Fort McMurray the link is pretty compelling. In Canada, and also in the United States and much of the rest of the world, higher temperatures have been extending the wildfire season. Last year, wildfires consumed ten million acres in the U.S., which was the largest area of any year on record. All of the top five years occurred in the past decade. In some areas, “we now have year-round fire seasons,” Matt Jolly, a research ecologist for the United States Forest Service, recently told the Times.

“You can say it couldn’t get worse,” Jolly added, but based on its own projections, the forest service expects that it will get worse. According to a Forest Service report published last April, “Climate change has led to fire seasons that are now on average 78 days longer than in 1970.” Over the past three decades, the area destroyed each year by forest fires has doubled, and the service’s scientists project that it’s likely to “double again by midcentury.” A group of scientists who analyzed lake cores from Alaska to obtain a record of forest fires over the past ten thousand years found that, in recent decades, blazes were both unusually frequent and unusually severe. “This extreme combination suggests a transition to a unique regime of unprecedented fire activity,” they concluded.

All of this brings us to what one commentator referred to as “the black irony” of the fire that has destroyed most of Fort McMurray.

The town exists to get at the tar sands, and the tar sands produce a particularly carbon-intensive form of fuel. (The fight over the Keystone XL pipeline is, at its heart, a fight over whether the U.S. should be encouraging — or, if you prefer, profiting from — the exploitation of the tar sands.) The more carbon that goes into the atmosphere, the warmer the world will get, and the more likely we are to see devastating fires like the one now raging. [Continue reading…]

Bloomberg reports: Wildfires raging through Alberta have spread to the main oil-sands facilities north of Fort McMurray, knocking out an estimated 1 million barrels of production from Canada’s energy hub. Fire officials say the out-of-control inferno may keep burning for months without significant rainfall.

The blaze, forecast to expand to more than 2,500 square kilometers (965 square miles) in the next few days, made an “unexpected” move to the north Saturday, rapidly encroaching bitumen mining operations run by Suncor Energy Inc. and Syncrude Canada Ltd. The fires may soon cover an area the size of Luxembourg.

“It is a dangerous and unpredictable and vicious fire that is feeding off an extremely dry Boreal forest,” federal Public Safety Minister Ralph Goodale told reporters Saturday in Regina, Saskatchewan. He said the swirling fire is not yet a threat to any additional communities.

The wildfires have led to combined productions cuts of more than 1 million barrels of oil a day, or about 40 percent of the region’s output of 2.5 million barrels, based on IHS Energy estimates. The cuts, and the mass exodus of more than 80,000 people from the fires raging in Fort McMurray, represent another blow to an economy already mired in recession from the oil price collapse. [Continue reading…]

The Los Angeles Times reports: Though the cause of the fire has not been determined, the inferno has become symbolic of the tension within Canada over its role in climate change.

Some Canadians see the fire as nature lashing back at those who mistreat it in the name of profit.

Others see the hard science: a wildfire formed in conditions consistent with climate change striking with academic irony, not vengeance, in a place that helps supply the world with a fossil fuel. The evacuees were really climate refugees, they say.

Still others view it as just very bad luck, a setback the oil industry will find a way to overcome.

The debate reflects a country wrestling within itself at a difficult moment — and it is testing that famous Canadian civility.

A provincial politician who called the fire “karmic” was quickly castigated and later apologized. When Canadian Green Party leader Elizabeth May said the fire was “very related to the global climate crisis,” Prime Minister Justin Trudeau suggested she was making “a political argument.”

Some environmentalists have been accused of lecturing to or, worse, condemning people who have lost everything. In Fort McMurray, more than 2,000 structures were consumed by the flames.

“I wish I could kick every person posting ‘That’s what you get for living by the oil sands’ comments,” a young Edmonton woman tweeted Tuesday evening at the peak of the evacuation, when flames were whipping across Highway 63, the only road out of Fort McMurray. “You’re terrible people.”

Janet Keeping, the Green Party leader within Alberta, was among several people who invoked climate change early in the week — and did so without clearly expressing support for fire victims. She soon tried to strike a new chord.

“Caring about people means caring about #climatechange,” Keeping wrote Thursday on Twitter.

Alberta’s oil sands are said to hold the third largest reserves in the world, after Saudi Arabia and Venezuela. They made Alberta rich even as they have made Canada uneasy.

Conservation groups have long despised the intensive extraction process involved in gleaning crude from the sands — Alberta would have been the source for the Keystone XL oil pipeline that President Obama rejected last year — and many Canadians loathe what they view as an excessively capitalist culture in Fort McMurray. [Continue reading…]

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Sadiq Khan: British dream now a reality for London’s first Muslim mayor

By Parveen Akhtar, University of Bradford

In Pakistan, the chances that the son of a bus or rickshaw driver could secure a high-ranking political position in the country’s capital city are minuscule. But now, the people of London have elected Sadiq Khan – the son of an immigrant Pakistani bus driver – to be their first Muslim mayor.

While unable to influence the nation’s foreign or economic policy, Khan will have responsibility for key areas in London, such as transport, housing, policing and the environment. And being directly elected gives the London mayor a personal mandate which no other parliamentarian in Westminster – including those in the cabinet – enjoy.

Khan’s father was one of hundreds of Pakistani men who migrated to Britain in the 1950’s and 1960’s, seeking the UK’s version of the American dream: stable employment, social mobility and opportunities for a better future for themselves and their families. One of eight children, Khan grew up on a council estate in the capital. He went to university to study law and practised as a solicitor in human rights cases before becoming a member of parliament.

Now, at the age of 45, he is mayor of London: the economic and cultural heart of the UK, the largest city in western Europe and one of the most important cities in the world. He is the immigrant success story – for him, the British dream has become a reality.

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U.S.-funded Somali intelligence agency has been using kids as spies

The Washington Post reports: For years they were children at war, boys given rifles and training by al-Qaeda-backed militants and sent to the front lines of this country’s bloody conflict. Many had been kidnapped from schools and soccer fields and forced to fight.

The United Nations pleaded for them to be removed from the battlefield. The United States denounced the Islamist militants for using children to plant bombs and carry out assassinations.

But when the boys were finally disarmed — some defecting and others apprehended — what awaited them was yet another dangerous role in the war. This time, the children say, they were forced to work for the Somali government.

The boys were used for years as informants by the country’s National Intelligence and Security Agency (NISA), according to interviews with the children and Somali and U.N. officials. They were marched through neighborhoods where al-Shabab insurgents were hiding and told to point out their former comrades. The faces of intelligence agents were covered, but the boys — some as young as 10 — were rarely concealed, according to the children. Several of them were killed. One tried to hang himself while in custody.

The Somali agency’s widespread use of child informants, which has not been previously documented, appears to be a flagrant violation of international law. It raises difficult questions for the U.S. government, which for years has provided substantial funding and training to the Somali agency through the CIA, according to current and former U.S. officials.

A CIA spokesman declined to comment on the issue. But in the past the U.S. government has supported Somali security institutions — despite well-known human rights violations — citing the urgent need to combat terrorist groups such as al-Shabab. [Continue reading…]

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Al-Qaeda leader says Syria’s Nusra free to go its own way

Al Jazeera reports: Al-Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri has released an audio recording, hinting that his organisation has no objection to if its Syrian affiliate, al-Nusra Front went its own way.

In the audio statement posted online, Zawahiri said many people talked and fought about the issue of al-Nusra and its al-Qaeda link.

He said if the people choose their own leadership, the organisational affiliation will not be an obstacle to what he described as “the great hopes of the Islamic nation”.

Al-Nusra, one of Syria’s main armed groups, has been excluded from peace talks between the country’s government and opposition in Geneva because of its affiliation with al-Qaeda and it remains on UN and US terror lists.

Al Jazeera’s Zeina Khodr, reporting from Gaziantep near the Turkey-Syria border, said Zawahiri’s message could be interpreted as a split between al-Qaeda and al-Nusra.

“This is being interpreted as a blessing from the central leadership of al-Qaeda to its branch in Syria, to dissociate itself from the group,” she said.

In recent months there have been several reports suggesting al-Nusra is trying to “rebrand” and present itself to the Syrian people, as well as outside powers such as the US, as a more moderate, purely Syrian force not linked to al-Qaeda.

But the group’s leadership was reportedly unsure about breaking the organisational bond with al-Qaeda. [Continue reading…]

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‘The Morning They Came for Us,’ by Janine di Giovanni

In a review of The Morning They Came for Us, by Janine di Giovanni, Anand Gopal writes: These days, when politicians bring up the Middle East, they collapse a decade’s worth of occupation, civil war and revolution into a single, ineffable horror: the Islamic State. The idea is that we’ve never seen a group so horrific, so threatening to global stability — which is fueling calls for world powers to ally with, or acquiesce to, Syria’s Bashar al-Assad as a lesser evil in the war against ISIS.

But look beyond this narrow counterterrorism prism and you see the devastating truth: a regime that is willing to rape, torture, starve and gas as many of its citizens as necessary to secure its rule — and in the process, sow such apocalyptic chaos as to help spawn a global refugee crisis and the rise of ISIS. This is the searing lesson of Janine di Giovanni’s heartbreaking “The Morning They Came for Us: ­Dispatches From Syria.” Di Giovanni, a veteran foreign correspondent, visited Syria repeatedly in 2012, meeting with civilian activists and doctors, regime soldiers and pro-Assad nuns, and has written a moving portrait of a country divided by and under siege from its own president.

We meet Nada, a young woman who grew up near Qardaha, the hometown of the Assad family, and joined the revolution because she “wanted the chance to live in a democracy,” she tells the author. “As you do.” She was soon arrested by the secret police and thrown into prison, where she was beaten and whipped. Sometimes, when she asked for water, authorities would order a male prisoner to urinate in a bottle and try to force her to drink. In the end, she was raped. It’s just one example of the regime’s use of sexual violence as a tool of interrogation and punishment that di Giovanni documents in a series of harrowing passages. She describes the case of a young woman arrested for putting up revolutionary posters, who was blind­folded, tied to a chair and told she would be passed from man to man. She ­reproduces the transcript of a captured shabiha, a regime mercenary, whose stated aim was to “quash the revolution” and who admits to breaking into a school and raping women “for six continuous hours.” And later, his men discovered a woman in a house. “We were four to rape her,” he said, “and she committed suicide following her rape.” [Continue reading…]

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Egyptian court seeks death penalty against three journalists

Reuters reports: An Egyptian court has recommended the death penalty for three journalists and three others charged with endangering national security by leaking state secrets to Qatar, in a ruling condemned by the Doha-based al-Jazeera channel as shocking.

Jordanian national Alaa Omar Sablan and Ibrahim Mohammed Helal, who both work for al-Jazeera, and Asmaa al-Khateeb, a reporter for Rassd – a pro-Muslim Brotherhood news network, were sentenced in absentia. They can appeal.

The sentence is the latest since a crackdown on the Muslim Brotherhood after an army takeover stripped former president Mohamed Morsi of power in 2013 following mass protests against his rule.

Al-Jazeera said the ruling provoked “shock and anger” and called for international action to safeguard journalists’ rights to report news freely.

“The death sentence against journalists is unprecedented in the history of world media and amounts to a real stab against freedom of expression around the world,” the satellite channel said in a statement posted on its website. [Continue reading…]

In an editorial, the New York Times says: In addition to leading a repressive and abusive regime, President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi of Egypt also appears to be running an increasingly incompetent one. On Tuesday, the Interior Ministry accidentally released confidential guidelines to stop critical reporting by the news media, including instructions not to admit mistakes and a proposed rule to stop all coverage related to the torture and murder of an Italian student.

The leak, which the ministry explained as a “technical malfunction,” offered evidence, if more was needed, of the military government’s brutal and destructive approach to the wave of discontent sweeping Egypt.

Mr. Sisi, the former chief of the Egyptian armed forces, came to power in the political struggle that followed the Arab Spring protests of 2011. The Muslim Brotherhood government of Mohamed Morsi, elected after the ouster of the dictatorial former president, Hosni Mubarak, was overthrown by the military in 2013, and in short order Mr. Sisi began a crackdown on the Brotherhood as well as any form of criticism, including that of human rights activists and independent journalists.

The intensification of political repression has been accompanied by one crisis after another, including an outcry in Italy over the torture and murder of an Italian graduate student, which the Italians believe was carried out by Egyptian security services. The unlikely trigger for the current spate of protests was the transfer of two uninhabited Egyptian islands to Saudi Arabia. With political passions running high, the transfer provoked a furious reaction from Egyptians who believed the government was peddling Egyptian land for Saudi dollars. The ensuing demonstrations led to mass arrests and confrontation with journalists, who rallied again in Cairo on Wednesday, demanding the dismissal of the interior minister.

With the government largely hidden from public view, it is not even clear whether Mr. Sisi has full control over the political repression, abductions, torture and other human-rights violations ascribed to the security services. President Obama has not concealed his frustration with Middle Eastern allies like Saudi Arabia. It’s time for him to make clear to Egypt’s rulers that the United States will not continue pumping military aid into a regime at war with its own people. [Continue reading…]

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Why Sadiq Khan’s victory matters

Muddassar Ahmed writes: the type of aggressive, populist campaign that has so far been successful for Donald Trump in the United States will not necessarily be a blueprint for success elsewhere. Although many on the right in Britain apparently believed that capitalizing on anti-Muslim sentiment is not just acceptable, but a sure ticket to victory, the strategy was found wanting. In short, there is a limit to the ability of bigotry to capture elections.

And it is not just Britain that has demonstrated that resorting to anti-Muslim language can backfire. Take the example of former Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper. Last year, he resorted to crude anti-Muslim language as he sought re-election. In contrast, Harper’s opponent, Justin Trudeau, went out of his way to embrace Muslims (and other minorities). Harper didn’t just lose — he was trounced.

Why?

Many non-Muslim Canadians were repelled by seeing this faith-based bigotry in their secular politics. Just as importantly, the Muslim-bashing had another effect that Harper apparently did not seem to see coming — it prompted Canadian Muslims to vote in record numbers. You can bet that these new voters will continue and extend their political involvement, meaning that in a well deserved bit of irony, Harper’s Islamophobic campaign may have created a Canadian Muslim political consciousness where none existed before.

With this in mind, it is likely for good reason that in the United Kingdom, the Conservative group leader of the Greater London assembly, Andrew Boff, criticized Goldsmith’s divisive campaign for damaging his party’s relations with the Muslim community, something that could further hurt it down the road.

In fact, the same thing could happen in America. After all, not only is Donald Trump now a widely detested politician (polls suggest that more Americans disapprove of him than are worried about Muslims), but American Muslims are becoming more politically engaged. And although the American Muslim population is relatively small, it may hold the key to swing states like Virginia, Florida and Ohio. [Continue reading…]

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Sadiq Khan’s victory: A triumph for a tolerant, open and diverse world city

In an editorial, The Independent says: It is customary to deride gesture politics, but there are some symbolic gestures that are well worthwhile. Not that the election of Sadiq Khan by the emphatic margin of 57 to 43 per cent is purely symbolic. The powers of the London Mayor may be limited, but his is still the most powerful directly elected office in the country. Yet it is for the symbolism of electing the Muslim son of an immigrant bus driver that Mr Khan’s victory is most striking.

It is significant because Londoners so resoundingly rejected a campaign that seemed designed to appeal to anti-Muslim prejudice. Democracy does not always eschew the baser motives, but this time Zac Goldsmith tried to make a coded connection between “Muslim” and “terrorist” and the voters of London told him to get lost.

Not only that, but they did so on a turnout sharply higher than four years ago – a welcome rebuttal of pre-election gloom about voter apathy and a promising indicator for the EU referendum vote next month.

Now that the election is over, Michael Fallon, the Defence Secretary, has come out to say that he thinks London is “safe” under Mr Khan as Mayor, and that we should not take too seriously things that might have been said in the “rough and tumble” of the campaign. This confirms that Mr Goldsmith’s campaign was not only disreputable but that most decent Conservatives knew it. [Continue reading…]

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Zac Goldsmith’s ‘smear’ campaign against Sadiq Khan could increase ‘risk of terrorism and radicalisation’, says prominent Muslim Tory

The Independent reports: An attempt by the Conservatives to “smear” Sadiq Khan during the London mayoral election campaign has increased the chance of terrrorist attacks on the UK and could radicalise more young British Muslims, one of the UK’s most prominent Tory Muslims has said.

Mohammed Amin, chair of the Conservative Muslim Forum – an organisation established to attract more Muslims to the party – wrote on the Conservative Home website that he was “disgusted” by Zac Goldsmith’s “risible” campaign, which repeatedly tried to paint Mr Khan as a security risk and even a friend of terrorist sympathisers.

One such alleged ‘sympathiser’ was Suliman Gani, an imam, who was accused by David Cameron of being a supporter of Isis, comments later reinforced by Defence Secretary Michael Fallon. Mr Gani has now said he is planning to take legal action against Mr Fallon and is seeking a “public retraction” of his comments.

Speaking as he celebrated becoming the new Mayor of London, Mr Khan said he had met many people from ethnic minorities who had told him they were discouraging their children from going into politics because of the tenor of the Tory campaign.

But Mr Amin went much further.

“Zac’s attempts to smear Khan have probably increased our risks of suffering terrorism. Isis are perpetually seeking to radicalise and recruit young British Muslims to their cause,” he said.

“At the margin, I believe there is a risk that young impressionable British Muslims who witnessed Khan being smeared in this manner will thereby be made more vulnerable to radicalisation than they were before.” [Continue reading…]

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The agonies of Aleppo

In an editorial, The Guardian says: Aleppo was once Syria’s second largest city, with 2 million inhabitants and a vibrant tourist industry around its 13th-century citadel, its Umayyad mosque, its ancient souk. After nearly five years of civil war, the city is an open wound, the bleeding symbol of a country’s descent into hell. It has been cleaved by a frontline, endured barrel bombs and artillery fire, and in many places been reduced to a landscape of ruins. Its estimated 300,000 remaining inhabitants struggle daily for bare necessities. And their nightmare has recently got worse. Fighting has again flared up in the past few weeks, destroying two medical facilities that offered rare relief, especially to children. The ceasefire brokered from Wednesday morning promised a mere 48 hours of relief even if it were honoured, and in practice observance has been patchy.

The backdrop is the near collapse of Syria’s two-month-old partial truce, negotiated by Russia and the US. At one level, Aleppo is one battleground of many, in a seemingly endless war of attrition; and yet the fate of a nation could hinge on this city. For Aleppo is a centre for the anti-Assad groups that are meant to be part of the UN-negotiated settlement, if it ever materialises. It is also because of Aleppo’s strategic location, close to the border with Turkey, which has acted as a lifeline for supply lines and refugee movements. If Aleppo falls, all hopes for a genuine peace negotiation will be crushed. Diplomatic efforts in Geneva and elsewhere have never seemed quite so divorced from realities on the ground as they are now. [Continue reading…]

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Mainstream Syrian rebels torn between giving up or joining extremists

The Wall Street Journal reports: Ali Othman is among a shrinking band of Syrian rebels in the mountains across from this border town who face an agonizing choice: accept a settlement with a regime they revile or fight alongside al Qaeda’s Islamist allies.

The Syrian army defector and his fellow fighters say they are weakened and cornered after enduring months of bombardment from Russian forces buttressing President Bashar al-Assad’s regime. Peace talks ended last month without progress amid a major escalation in violence in the northern city of Aleppo. On Thursday, a day after the U.S. announced a deal with Russia on a fresh cease-fire in Aleppo, Islamist groups targeted regime-held areas of the city with rocket, mortar and sniper fire, according to Syrian state media and U.K.-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.

“My wife begs me almost each day to leave the mountains,” Mr. Othman, 26 years old, said during a recent visit with his family in Turkey. “She keeps asking me: `Why are you still fighting?’”

The fate of Syria’s moderate rebels is critical to American efforts in the region. If rebels quit the fight or join forces with Islamist extremist groups fighting the regime, the U.S. will lose leverage to shape the war’s outcome — and potential allies against Islamic State.

Some rebel commanders close to the U.S. warn that the diplomatic deadlock and renewed airstrikes against rebel-held areas would push people into the arms of the extremists, including Nusra Front, an al Qaeda affiliate that, like Islamic State, is designated a terrorist organization by the United Nations Security Council and excluded from any potential settlement with the regime. [Continue reading…]

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As jets kill at least 30 civilians at Syrian refugee camp, Russia hosts propaganda concert in Palmyra

The Interpreter reports: The Kremlin and Assad regimes staged a propaganda spectacular last night in the recently recaptured ruins of Aleppo, throwing a concert by the Mariinsky Theater Orchestra while, to the north, dozens of civilians were killed at a refugee camp by Syrian or Russian jets.

According to the Syrian Local Coordination Committees (LCC), more than 30 civilians were killed and dozens wounded in the attack on the Kamouna camp, outside the town of Samard, west of Aleppo city near the Turkish border.

The camp lies next to the Bab al-Hawa border crossing to the Turkish town of Reyhanli. This is the only route left out of rebel-held Aleppo to the Turkish border since regime-allied forces cut off the route to the north through Azaz earlier this year.

It is still uncertain whether it was the Russian or Syrian Arab Air Force that carried out the attack, though the LCC reports that the aircraft were believed at the time to be Russian. [Continue reading…]

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Sadiq Khan defies ‘smear campaign’ to become London’s first Muslim mayor

Middle East Eye reports: The Labour Party’s Sadiq Khan is set to be elected as London’s mayor, according to unconfirmed results on Friday, following one of the most bitterly fought and divisive campaigns in recent British political history.

With almost 99 percent of votes counted, Khan had 44 percent of first-preference votes while his nearest opponent, Zac Goldsmith of the Conservative Party, was on 35 percent.

The result will not be announced until a count of second-preference votes have been taken into account.

But polling expert Peter Kellner said: “Sadiq has won without question. He is well ahead on the first count and that’s not going to change radically.”

Khan is the first Muslim to be the elected leader of the British capital, considered one of the country’s most influential political posts outside of central government, and replaces Boris Johnson, the outgoing Conservative mayor who had been in office since 2008.

Khan’s victory came despite repeated efforts by Goldsmith, his Conservative Party opponent, to suggest that Khan, a human rights lawyer, was soft on extremism, resulting in complaints that he had run a smear campaign based on “out and out lies”. [Continue reading…]

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The only way to solve Iraq’s political crisis

Zaid al-Ali writes: With the Islamic State still in control of large parts of the country and oil prices depressed, Iraq is on the verge of a meltdown. But instead of working to solve the country’s problems, Iraq’s political class has been consumed by a power struggle. Last weekend, protesters in Baghdad lost their patience and stormed the Parliament building, threatening further action if serious reform is not enacted soon.

This eruption was a long time coming. Last August, Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi promised to improve government services and eliminate corruption. Unsurprisingly, he has failed to deliver. In response, protesters have demanded a new government and the abandonment of the sectarian quota system that has underpinned Iraqi governments since 2003. Mr. Abadi has tried to respond by putting forward a “technocratic” cabinet, but he hasn’t been able to get it approved by Parliament.

Ordinary Iraqis are furious. Moktada al-Sadr, the Shiite cleric who has long acted as a leader of Iraq’s underclass, has tried to capitalize on this by leading the protest movement. But even he cannot control the anger Iraqis feel toward their leaders.

The cause of Iraq’s political paralysis is neither ideological nor sectarian. In fact, most of the main actors in the continuing dispute are Shiite Islamists. The disagreement is instead based on mutual distrust, which is fueled by the incompetence and corruption that have formed the basis of Iraq’s political system since 2003. That dynamic has made it impossible for state institutions to present any viable solutions to the crisis.

Some Iraqi and American officials, including Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr., have expressed hope that Mr. Abadi, at the head of a new government, can turn the situation around. They are missing the point. Even if a new government is formed, new ministers have to be approved by the Parliament, which insists on nominating the same crop of ineffectual, corrupt former exiles who have been running the country into the ground. More important, a new government would be beholden to the corrupt, sectarian Parliament. Making the argument that a new government can design, pass and carry out comprehensive governance reform is either delusional or an attempt to punt.

The only way out of the current stalemate is to inject new blood into the country’s political class. [Continue reading…]

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Whatever happened to the ‘Turkish model’?

Mustafa Akyol writes: About five years ago, everyone was talking about the “Turkish model.” People in the West and in the Muslim world held up Turkey as a shining example of the compatibility of Islam and democracy. Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who was then prime minister and is now president, was praised as a reformist who was making his country freer, wealthier and more peaceful.

These days, I think back on those times with nostalgia and regret. The rhetoric of liberal opening has given way to authoritarianism, the peace process with the Kurdish nationalists has fallen apart, press freedoms are diminishing and terrorist attacks are on the rise.

What went wrong? Erdoganists — yes, some of them call themselves that — have a simple answer: a conspiracy. When Mr. Erdogan made Turkey too powerful and independent, nefarious cabals in the West and their treacherous “agents” at home started a campaign to tarnish Turkey’s democracy. Little do they realize, of course, that this conspiracy-obsessed propaganda, the self-righteousness it reflects and the hatred it fuels are part of the problem.

To understand why the Turkish model has let us all down, we have to go back to the 2001 founding of Mr. Erdogan’s Justice and Development Party, or A.K.P. At that time, Turkey was under the thumb of secularist generals who would overthrow any government they couldn’t control. In 1997 they ousted the A.K.P.’s Islamist predecessor, so the founders of the new party put forward a post-Islamist vision. They had abandoned their old ideology, they declared. Their only priorities now were bringing Turkey into the European Union and moving the country toward liberal democracy. [Continue reading…]

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Turkey PM to quit as Erdogan consolidates power

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The Wall Street Journal reports: Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu was expected to announce Thursday that he is stepping down as premier, amid a power struggle with President Recep Tayyip Erdogan that complicates Ankara’s efforts to forge deeper ties with Europe and the U.S.

The decision, which followed a nearly two-hour meeting between the two leaders, signaled the likely dissolution of Turkey’s most important political partnership. It also created new concerns for European leaders about Turkey’s commitment to implementing its side of a migration deal that would secure visa-free travel to the European Union for Turkish citizens.

Earlier Wednesday, the bloc’s executive arm endorsed the deal—a measure Mr. Davotoglu sought in exchange for stemming Europe’s refugee crisis.

In the West, the Turkish premier is widely seen as a reformer who was interested in deepening long-term cooperation with Europe, and one who had emerged as a principal interlocutor between Washington and Ankara in recent years. Mr. Erdogan, by contrast, is viewed with skepticism, if not open derision, by European leaders critical of the president’s crackdowns on domestic dissent.

Mr. Davutoglu’s decision to step aside could worsen relations between Ankara and Washington, which is relying on Turkey in its deepening fight against Islamic State.

Tensions between Messrs. Erdogan and Davutoglu have been building for weeks as each man sought to demonstrate his influence over negotiations with Western leaders working to solidify a tenuous deal that has curbed the flow of migrants and refugees seeking sanctuary in Europe, Western officials and political allies of the two men said.

On Wednesday night, the two men met at Mr. Erdogan’s palace in the Turkish capital for a closely watched meeting to try to hammer out their differences.

After the meeting, Turkish officials said Mr. Davutoglu would stand down as leader of the ruling Justice and Development Party in a special convention to be held in the next few weeks, an unprecedented move in more than half a century of parliamentary democracy in the country. That will in effect end his tenure as prime minister and pave the way for Mr. Erdogan to choose a new ally to serve in the post.

The president’s office said it wouldn’t comment on Mr. Erdogan’s regular weekly meeting with Mr. Davutoglu, and referred questions regarding the ruling party to the prime minister’s office. A spokesman for the prime minister didn’t respond to requests for comment.

Critics of Mr. Erdogan cast the meeting as a palace coup by a man intent on consolidating power.

“Erdogan needs a 100% ‘yes man,’ ” said Aykan Erdemir, a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies and a former opposition lawmaker in Turkey. “He doesn’t want any dissent.” [Continue reading…]

Reuters reports: Davutoglu had offered only lukewarm support for Erdogan’s vision of a stronger presidency and the decision to remove him follows weeks of tensions. His successor is likely to be more willing to back Erdogan’s aim of changing the constitution to create a presidential system, a move that opponents say will bring growing authoritarianism.

“Palace Coup!” said the headline in the secularist opposition Cumhuriyet newspaper.

“From now on, Turkey’s sole agenda is the presidential system and an early election,” said Mehmet Ali Kulat, head of the pollster Mak Danismanlik, which is seen as close to Erdogan. He forecast an election in October or November.

Erdogan wants Turkey to be ruled by the head of state, a system he sees as a guarantee against the fractious coalition politics that hampered the government in the 1990s. His opponents say this is merely a vehicle for his own ambition.

“These are critical developments in my mind in Turkey – likely setting the long-term direction of the country, both in terms of democracy, but (also) economic and social policy and geopolitical orientation,” said Timothy Ash, strategist at Nomura and a veteran Turkey watcher. [Continue reading…]

Mustafa Akyol writes: On the night of May 1, in just a few hours, a brand-new political blog became a national hit in Turkey. Titled Pelican Brief — apparently a pun on the 1993 Hollywood thriller — the site presented a single entry, which was a long diatribe against Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu. Its significance lay in not just whom it attacked, but also on whose behalf it appeared: Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Turkey’s all-powerful president.

The writer merely identified himself as “one of those who would sacrifice his soul for the CHIEF.” The latter word, which was used in the text 73 times and always in caps, was a reference to Erdogan. The writer was intentionally anonymous, but soon people who know Ankara well began to whisper that it was a journalist very close to Erdogan and who could have written this only with a green light from the president’s office.

The blog post began by reiterating the standard Erdoganist narrative: that there are so many conspiracies against Turkey, and the only thing that protects the nation is the wisdom and power of its president. “Ladies and gentlemen, this is an intimidating country in which every superpower is playing chess,” the author argued, only to warn, “Even if you topple one traitor here, [these superpowers] will immediately bring another one. … They will even turn our own people against us. So open your eyes and look around. And see what I see.” [Continue reading…]

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An army captain takes Obama to court over war on ISIS

The New York Times reports: A 28-year-old Army officer on Wednesday sued President Obama over the legality of the war against the Islamic State, setting up a test of Mr. Obama’s disputed claim that he needs no new legal authority from Congress to order the military to wage that deepening mission.

The plaintiff, Capt. Nathan Michael Smith, an intelligence officer stationed in Kuwait, voiced strong support for fighting the Islamic State but, citing his “conscience” and his vow to uphold the Constitution, he said he believed that the mission lacked proper authorization from Congress.

“To honor my oath, I am asking the court to tell the president that he must get proper authority from Congress, under the War Powers Resolution, to wage the war against ISIS in Iraq and Syria,” he wrote.

The legal challenge comes after the death of the third American service member fighting the Islamic State and as Mr. Obama has decided to significantly expand the number of Special Operations ground troops he has deployed to Syria aid rebels there. [Continue reading…]

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How U.S. troops fight ISIS while Obama plays down their role in combat

The New York Times reports: The battle in Teleskof began early Tuesday when volleys of mortar shells and blasts from rocket-propelled grenades disrupted meetings that the SEALs were having in the town with officials from the pesh merga, the Kurdish force battling the Islamic State in northern Iraq. Soon, a force of more than 100 Islamic State fighters punched through Kurdish checkpoints and overwhelmed the defenses on the southern edge of Teleskof, a largely Christian town about 14 miles north of Mosul.

The fighters from the Islamic State, also known as ISIS or ISIL, had taken the town by surprise, forcing many local fighters to retreat north of the town as it was overrun. The attackers “were able to very covertly assemble enough force” to “sprint towards Teleskof,” said Col. Steve Warren, the American military spokesman in Baghdad.

The SEALs were grossly outnumbered, and radioed that they were in a “troops in contact” situation — military jargon for a firefight. Colonel Warren said that American fighter planes, bombers and drones were sent to the town, along with a second group of SEALs. That group included Petty Officer Keating.

Matthew VanDyke, who runs a security firm, Sons of Liberty International, that is training local Iraqi forces — the Nineveh Plain Forces — said that the SEALs arrived in a convoy of sport utility vehicles from the north and drove directly into Teleskof.

“They went directly into combat,” he said.

Mr. VanDyke said that one of the trucks in the SEAL convoy appeared to get hit by a rocket- propelled grenade, and that the SEALs then got out of the S.U.V.s and went further into the town on foot.

A pitched battle continued, with the SEALs moving among buildings in the town and calling in airstrikes. About 9:30 a.m., Colonel Warren said, one of the SEAL team members radioed for medical help. Petty Officer Keating had been shot by an Islamic State sniper in the side, in an area not covered by his bulletproof vest.

Two Black Hawk helicopters arrived, drawing fire from Islamic State fighters, but were able to evacuate Petty Officer Keating to the American military’s medical mission in Erbil. He was pronounced dead shortly afterward.

The SEALs eventually pulled out of the town after they ran out of ammunition, Mr. VanDyke said.

Eventually, several hundred Kurdish pesh merga and other local fighters were able to mass for a counteroffensive. By the end of the day, those militias had managed to expel the Islamic State fighters from Teleskof.

Although American officials have used linguistic contortions for months to present the American military role in Iraq as something other than direct combat, Mr. Carter did not hesitate on Tuesday to call Petty Officer Keating’s death a “combat death.” [Continue reading…]

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