Category Archives: Lands

Saudi Arabia is reeling from falling oil prices — and it could get much worse

The Washington Post reports: Stung by falling oil prices, Saudi Arabia has cut spending and subsidies as part of harsh austerity measures that threaten the lavish welfare programs underpinning its stability.

The oil-exporting giant’s economy has gone from producing windfalls to deficits, and Saudi rulers increasingly struggle to provide the cushy government jobs, expensive state handouts and tax-free living that have long bought them domestic obedience.

The pivot to austerity — which also has been imposed by neighboring Gulf Arab oil monarchies — risks triggering unrest in a Saudi society that is conservative and particularly resistant to change, analysts and diplomats warn.

The cutbacks are seen as necessary by King Salman’s son, defense minister and head of economic planning, Mohammed bin Salman. The 30-year-old prince has raised eyebrows for overseeing leadership shake-ups at home and two wars abroad. Advisers say he also intends to wean the country off its overwhelming dependence on oil sales and reform a bloated and opaque public sector. [Continue reading…]

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How arms sales to Saudi Arabia are promoting instability

William D. Hartung writes: According to a report released this week by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), arms deliveries to Saudi Arabia have increased by an astonishing 279% between 2011 and 2015, compared with the prior five-year period. More then three quarters of the weaponry came from the U.S. and the United Kingdom.

There was a time when sales to the Saudis were more about money and politics than fighting actual conflicts. Multi-billion dollar sales from the Nixon administration onward were seen as a way to bolster U.S. weapons contractors and “recycle petrodollars” — earn back some of the funds that flowed out of the U.S. to purchase Saudi oil. It didn’t hurt that Saudi officials frequently skimmed off funds for their own use as part of these mega-deals.

Until recently, the military relevance of sending weapons to Saudi Arabia had less to do with the Saudis using U.S.-supplied arms than it did with cementing ties with Washington. The implicit understanding was that the purchase of large quantities of U.S. armaments was a form of payback for Washington’s commitment to come to the rescue of the Saudi regime in a crisis. [Continue reading…]

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States must stop selling weapons to Saudi Arabia for use in Yemen conflict

Amnesty: Campaigners are today calling on governments due to attend the latest round of discussions on the implementation of the Arms Trade Treaty (ATT) in Geneva on 29 February to set their hypocrisy aside and stop selling billions of dollars worth of deadly weapons to Saudi Arabia being used to attack Yemeni civilians.

In a new report released today, the Control Arms Coalition names France, Germany, Italy, Montenegro, the Netherlands, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Turkey, the UK, and the US as having reported licenses and sales to Saudi Arabia worth more than $25bn in 2015 including drones, bombs, torpedoes, rockets and missiles. These are the types of arms currently being used by Saudi Arabia and its allies for gross violations of human rights and possible war crimes during aerial and ground attacks in Yemen. [Continue reading…]

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The carve-up of Syria is already happening under Obama’s Plan A

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Michael Weiss writes: “Syria,” properly speaking, no longer exists. The nation-state cobbled together a hundred years ago by the great powers, albeit with borders periodically rejiggered since, is FUBAR and will henceforward remain a balkanized set of cantons or fiefs ruled by a panoply of antagonistic sectarian insurgencies, proxies, and terrorist organizations — some elements, including the one residing in the presidential palace in Damascus, adequately meeting the definitions for all three categories. And it really doesn’t matter if every last Sukhoi fighter jet, Scud missile, and barrel bomb gets put away on Saturday, when the truce is set to commence.

I say that because the best-case scenario for Kerry’s last-ditch, now-don’t-hold-me-to-this prescription for ending a modern and globally transformative holocaust is that war actually continues, only against the “right” targets, namely al Qaeda and ISIS. These are the two U.N.-designated terrorist organizations not party to or expected to abide by the ceasefire. Their spoiler potential for provoking others to violate the terms of the agreement is enormous, as both militancies collectively boast an order of battle greater than that of the mobilized Syrian Arab Army.

As Andrew Tabler, a Syria specialist at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, puts it, the central dilemma is gauging what constitutes success for Kerry’s quixotic program: “Is the bar that fewer people are dying or is the bar that more people are fighting terrorism?”

If the latter, then how do you accomplish that when every security agency of the executive branch believes that Russia is not going to stop bombing the anti-Assad opposition so as long as it can claim it is only hitting terrorists, the Kremlin’s abiding lie since September 30, when it started bombing?

Yes, the Russian Air Force does go after Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi’s minions on occasion, whenever they dare to interdict Russian- and Iranian-abetted regime advances against other rebel groups, as they are currently doing in Aleppo. On the whole, however, Putin’s air war, as the US-led coalition now concludes, has allowed ISIS to acquire terrain where the opposition had previously prevented it from doing so. The best the U.S. has done by way of deterrence is a ceasefire the U.S. thinks is a dud. [Continue reading…]

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Obama’s cruelly pragmatic strategy in the Middle East

Gary Sick writes: [The current] violent chaos and unpredictability have prompted comparisons between this moment in the Middle East and the Thirty Years War in Europe (1618-1648). That terrible time, which started as a religious war but which was actually a restructuring of the power relationships in the center of Europe, destroyed entire regions and killed or displaced so many people that it took many generations to recover. In that case, the warring parties fought themselves to exhaustion and then settled their disputes in a series of agreements that defined a new rule-based political order — the Westphalian system — that is widely regarded as the essential underpinning of modern Europe and the West.

The Middle East could follow such a trajectory out of the current chaos. Certainly the process of peace-making after all other avenues have been exhausted — the so-called Lebanonization of the crisis — seems to be the way events are presently moving. But the timing and nature of the end game are impossible to know.

Under these circumstances, the Obama Doctrine, in which the United States will intervene only in the event of an external attack against one of its allies or to prevent a threat to the U.S. homeland, appears to be the least worst of the available options. It is a cruelly pragmatic strategy. It starts with the assumption that the United States cannot solve all the problems of the region — even those for which the United States bears a considerable degree of responsibility — and is unwilling to act as a surrogate for our friends in the region. This is a huge change from the unilateral containment doctrine adopted during the Clinton administration, and it is a total reversal of the Bush Doctrine of actively reshaping the Middle East. It is perhaps a distant relative of the Nixon Doctrine of the early 1970s when the United States relied primarily on local allies to protect U.S. interests in the region, while providing them with military training and support. [Continue reading…]

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France’s state of emergency

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Didier Fassin writes: The state of emergency that François Hollande declared on 14 November, the day after 130 people were killed and more than 300 wounded by the attackers in Paris, is still in force. It’s worth noting how exceptional this situation is. Neither José María Aznar after the 2004 Madrid bombings that killed 191 people and injured 1800 nor Tony Blair after the 2005 London bombings in which 52 people were killed and 700 injured invoked any such measures. In France, it was only the second time under the Fifth Republic that a state of emergency had been applied to the entire country (the first was in April 1961, after the Algiers putsch, the generals’ failed coup against Charles de Gaulle). ‘France is at war,’ Hollande announced on 16 November, having convened a special congress at the Palace of Versailles to argue that the state of emergency should in due course be written into the constitution and, in the meantime, extended for three months; two days after his speech, 551 of 558 National Assembly representatives voted in favour of the extension. A poll indicated that 91 per cent of the public supported it, the approval rate showing little variation across party lines: 93 per cent among Socialists and 98 per cent among Republicans. Since then, support has remained very high. Why are these measures, which other heads of state, confronted with similar events, did not deem necessary, so popular at large?

The state of emergency, in general terms, gives the executive branch of government extraordinary powers over the mobilisation of the army, control of the borders, limitation of movement and setting of curfews. But in practice it has four main concrete consequences. The police can conduct searches in private and public spaces at any time without judicial warrant. The minister of the interior can put anyone considered a threat to public security under house arrest. State authorities can ban demonstrations and gatherings on the same grounds. Law enforcement officers can stop and search anyone without specific justification. Anticipating appeals to the European Court of Human Rights against the measures, the French government pre-emptively informed the Council of Europe on 27 November of ‘its decision to contravene the European Convention on Human Rights’.

You would think that these restrictions on public liberties and fundamental rights would be unpopular, and might even lead to public protest. In fact, the reverse has happened. In poll after poll, a large majority continues to support the emergency measures. There are two reasons: first, they are widely thought to be effective in countering terrorism; second, most of the population never gets to see the negative consequences. [Continue reading…]

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The risk in Putin’s skill for projecting menacing ambiguity

Maxim Trudolyubov writes: Mr. Putin’s talent for disruption amounts to a kind of “Midas touch.” It has made him a formidable adversary in Russia’s hybrid war of force and manipulation, where anything can be a target and everything can be a weapon. It has also given him what he has long coveted: Western acknowledgment that Russia is a force to be reckoned with.

“It is much safer to be feared than to be loved” Machiavelli wrote, an observation that the Russian leader and generations of his predecessors have taken to heart. As one high-ranking Russian official told me: “We are not known for being particularly nice or elegant. But that is fine with us as long as our interests are taken seriously.”

And so Moscow is not loved but feared. But snatching land from other nations, scaring your neighbors and destabilizing your business and political rivals are not policies you can maintain forever. They will return to haunt Moscow.

Historically, the Kremlin’s rulers have always considered their country’s first line of defense against what they perceive as Western mischief to lie well beyond Russia’s borders. But Moscow has made people in the West think that its policies are motivated by aggressive revisionism, not defense. Their success is full of ironies.

It may not be true that Mr. Putin is purposefully exacerbating the refugee crisis, or that there is no sound economic logic behind Nord Stream 2. But if you have the reputation of turning everything you touch into a weapon, everything you say and do might be construed as an attack. You become everyone’s enemy. Russia’s leaders have become so adept at their game of projecting menacing ambiguity that it is now impossible for them to persuade anyone that sometimes the Russians might just simply want to do business. [Continue reading…]

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ISIS attacks spike in Syria with help from Russian air cover, report says

The Washington Post reports: The Islamic State has been taking advantage of Russian airstrikes in Syria, using the newfound air cover to maneuver and reposition fighters, according to a report released by IHS Janes’ Terrorism and Insurgency Center on Wednesday.

Despite losing ground in Iraq and being targeted by U.S.-led coalition airstrikes in both Iraq and Syria, the extremist group managed to carry out 935 attacks between Oct. 1 and Dec. 31 2015. Russian warplanes began flying their first sorties in the country during the last week of September. According to the report, the spike in attacks equates to a five percent increase from the prior quarter.

Despite the increase in attacks, the average fatalities per attack–approximately–three remained consistent with the past year. Additionally, the Islamic State’s attacks also “continued to track above the average recorded over the preceding 12 months.” Number of attacks, however, does not equate to the group’s ability to hold territory. The extremist group has lost ground in both northern Syria and Iraq, though it has retained the ability to mount effective counter-attacks and raids in both areas. [Continue reading…]

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ISIS in Iraq: A shadow of its former self

Rudaw reports: A picture of a diminished Islamic State (ISIS) in Iraq is emerging from recent reports and statistics.

As Peshmerga and Iraqi troops prepare for a major offensive to retake Mosul and loosen ISIS’ grip in Iraq, indications are that the terrorist group have all but conceded defeat.

In the last week alone, ISIS has suffered mass desertion and executed dissenters while a captured militant described the group as “weakened.” Experts believe that many of the leadership have relocated to Libya, leaving dwindling numbers in Iraq and Syria.

United States defense statistics released earlier this month indicate that the number of ISIS militants in Iraq and Syria had fallen to between 19,000 and 25,000, down from earlier estimates of up to more than 30,000 fighters.

It is suspected that ISIS, commanders especially, are seeking safety in Libya. [Continue reading…]

Rudaw also reports: Members of the Islamic State (ISIS) have started moving their families out of Mosul in anticipation of an Iraqi, Kurdish and coalition attack on the city, said a local official.

Member of the Nineveh provincial council Khalaf al-Hadidi told Rudaw that the group has begun sending families and children out of Iraq and to other Arab countries in the region.

Al-Hadidi who maintains contacts inside the city said that many ISIS families have gone to Libya and the Egyptian Sinai. [Continue reading…]

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Syria Kurds say they will respect ceasefire

AFP reports: Kurdish forces in Syria, where they have been targeted by Turkish artillery, said Thursday they would respect a ceasefire due to start this weekend but retain the right to “retaliate” if attacked.

“We, the People’s Protection Units (YPG), give great importance to the process of cessation of hostilities announced by the United States and Russia and we will respect it, while retaining the right to retaliate… if we are attacked,” YPG spokesman Redur Xelil said on his Facebook page.

A Russian and US-brokered ceasefire between President Bashar al-Assad’s regime and non-jihadist rebels is due to go into effect at 2200 GMT on Friday, as part of efforts to resume peace talks to end five years of war.

The YPG leads the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), a coalition of Kurdish and Arab fighters that on Thursday welcomed the truce on the same terms. [Continue reading…]

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‘It’s easier to live in Iran without thinking about politics’

Ian Black reports: Even the most optimistic estimates say that reformists and moderates – once distinct terms that are now blurred – are unlikely to take more than 80 seats [in Friday’s parliamentary elections]. “We are not going to have a carnival,” concedes Mohammed Ali Vakil, a leading reformist candidate. “But a lot of people will vote for us. They will be calm, but they will surprise us.”

Sadegh Zibakalam, a political scientist who is campaigning for the reformist alliance, agrees. “I am excited,” he told the Guardian by phone while getting the vote out in Khuzestan in the south-west. “If we can persuade 10%-20% of undecided voters to overcome their indifference and go to the polling stations then there could be a historic outcome. Conservative voters are determined and will definitely vote. It’s the reformists who are undecided.”

Apathy is a huge problem, however. “I voted for the revolution when I was a young man, and that was it,” shrugged Hassan, a burly 60 something driver stuck in the traffic around the capital’s Ferdowsi Square. “Why should I bother now?”

The cynicism is just as strong in the leafy north Tehran suburb of Jamaran, where Ayatollah Khomeini lived. “If you are educated you never vote because you would just make a fool of yourself,” said Negin, a young dentist smoking shisha with four friends – their loose headscarves, makeup and fashionable clothes and boots a reminder of far-reaching social changes of recent years. “It’s easier to live in Iran without thinking about politics,” sighed Melina, a designer. [Continue reading…]

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EU parliament votes for embargo on arms sales to Saudi Arabia

The Guardian reports: MEPs have voted for a European Union-wide arms embargo against Saudi Arabia to protest against the Gulf state’s heavy bombing campaign in Yemen.

The European parliament voted by a large majority for an EU-wide ban on arms sales to the kingdom, citing the “disastrous humanitarian situation” as a result of “Saudi-led military intervention in Yemen”.

The vote does not compel EU member states to act but it does increase pressure on Riyadh, in the wake of criticism from the UN and growing international alarm over civilian casualties in Yemen.

The resolution also turns up the heat on the British government, which has supplied export licences for up to £3bn worth of arms to Saudi Arabia in the last year. The UK has been accused of direct involvement in the bombing campaign through the deployment of UK military personnel to the kingdom. [Continue reading…]

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John Kerry says partition of Syria could be part of ‘plan B’ if peace talks fail

The Guardian reports: John Kerry, the US secretary of state, has said he will move towards a plan B that could involve a partition of Syria if a planned ceasefire due to start in the next few days does not materialise, or if a genuine shift to a transitional government does not take place in the coming months.

“It may be too late to keep it as a whole Syria if we wait much longer,” he told the US Senate foreign relations committee on Tuesday.

Kerry did not advocate partition as a solution and refused to specify details of a plan B, such as increased military involvement, beyond insisting it would be wrong to assume that Barack Obama would not countenance further action.

He also admitted it was possible Russian-backed forces could capture Aleppo, but pointed out that it has been very hard to retain territory in the five-year civil war. [Continue reading…]

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Russia’s indiscriminate bombing campaign is tilting the balance of the war in Assad’s favor

David Axe reports: Russia has ramped up its air war in Syria — big time. And it’s starting to show. Relentless and indiscriminate, Moscow’s bombing runs have devastated military and civilian strongholds and cleared a path for Syrian regime forces to counterattack against ISIS militants and rebels.

Five months after the first Russian warplanes slipped into Syria to reinforce the embattled regime of President Bashar al-Assad, the Kremlin’s air wing near Latakia — on Syria’s Mediterranean coast in the heart of regime territory — has found its rhythm, launching roughly one air strike every 20 minutes targeting Islamic State militants, U.S.-backed rebels and civilians in rebel-controlled areas.

“From Feb. 10 to 16, aircraft of the Russian aviation group in the Syrian Arab Republic have performed 444 combat sorties engaging 1,593 terrorist objects in the provinces of Deir Ez Zor, Daraa, Homs, Hama, Latakia and Aleppo,” the Russian defense ministry claimed in a statement.

That’s double the rate of air strikes that the much larger U.S.-led coalition has managed to sustain in its own, much older campaign against ISIS in Syria and Iraq. Leave out the coalition airstrikes in Iraq, where there are no Russian forces, and the disparity appears even greater. While lately Russia has launched around 60 air raids every day in Syria, the U.S. and its allies have pulled off just seven, on average, since launching their first attacks in Syria in September 2014. [Continue reading…]

Syria Direct reports: Regime forces are battling to reopen their only supply route into Aleppo city and the surrounding countryside, the Ithriya-Khnaser road, after the Islamic State cut if off entirely on Tuesday, local journalists and a rebel commander tell Syria Direct.

The supply road originates in Hama city, runs approximately 100km northeast to Ithriya in the south Aleppo countryside, and continues 110km northwest through Khnaser and into Aleppo city.

As of Tuesday, Islamic State forces control a 35km section of the road between Ithriya and Khnaser, Mujahid Hreitan, a citizen journalist in the southern Aleppo countryside, told Syria Direct Wednesday.

After capturing regime checkpoints along the Khnaser-Ithriya supply route Monday, the Islamic State took full control of Khnaser town on Tuesday, cementing their control over the stretch of road, reported IS’s semi-official news agency Amaq.

IS’s latest campaign is different from previous attempts to cut off the same regime supply route. The Islamic State has now managed to capture the town of Khnaser in its entirety, whereas in the past “IS would take a couple of small areas [along the road] that the regime quickly recaptured,” Ahmed A-Ruwaished, a citizen journalist in the southern Aleppo countryside, told Syria Direct Wednesday. [Continue reading…]

The National reports: The capture of Sheikh Miskeen by president Bashar Al Assad’s forces last month was their most significant victory in years on Syria’s southern front, but for the rebels, the manner of their defeat was more alarming than the loss itself.

Rebel commanders and fighters described a litany of tactical mistakes, logistical confusion and destructive infighting that contributed to the loss of the town in Deraa province. One commander summed up the performance of the rebel alliance as a “major failure”.

The inability of the rebels and their international backers to come up with an answer to Russian air power was a significant factor in the battle, and is likely to prove critical over the coming weeks and months, as the fight for Syria’s south continues. [Continue reading…]

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Questions remain over Russia’s endgame in Syria, Ukraine and Europe

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The New York Times reports: The partial truce that Russia and the United States have thrashed out in Syria capped something of a foreign policy trifecta for President Vladimir V. Putin, with the Kremlin strong-arming itself into a pivotal role in the Middle East, Ukraine floundering and the European Union developing cracks like a badly glazed pot.

Beyond what could well be a high point for Mr. Putin, however, lingering questions about Russia’s endgame arise in all three directions.

In Syria, Russia achieved its main goal of shoring up the government of President Bashar al-Assad, long the Kremlin’s foremost Arab ally. Yet its ultimate objectives remain murky, not least navigating a graceful exit from the messy conflict.

In Ukraine, Russia maintains a public commitment to put in place a year-old peace agreement. Renewed fighting in the Russian-backed breakaway regions, however, suggests that Moscow seeks to further destabilize the Kiev government, already wobbly from internal political brawling.

In Europe, Mr. Putin wants to deepen cracks in the European Union, hoping to break the 28-nation consensus behind the economic sanctions imposed on Russia over its annexation of Crimea in 2014. The Kremlin recently cranked up its propaganda machine to malign the German chancellor, Angela Merkel — viewed here as the central figure in the confrontation against Moscow — portraying her as barren and her country as suffering violent indigestion from too many immigrants.

The target audience for these achievements is the Russian populace, partly to distract people from their deepening economic woes.

“On screen we can see that we are so strong, we are so important, we are so great,” Nikolai Petrov, a professor of political science at the Moscow School for Higher Economics, said sarcastically. [Continue reading…]

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The paradox hindering Syrian peace

The Wall Street Journal reports: As world powers struggle to agree on a solution to Syria’s war, a United Nations report points to a paradox it says is hindering peace plans: the same countries pushing for peace are the ones fueling the war.

This ambiguity has radicalized the conflict, raised the political stakes and contributed to civilian suffering, said Paulo Pinheiro, the chairman of the U.N.-backed Independent Syria Commission group in an interview Monday.

“We have said this to the states themselves. We have said it’s better to be fully committed to the political process instead,” said Mr. Pinheiro. “The airspace [above Syria] is overcrowded and it has humanitarian consequences.”

The 31-page report, which laid out a detailed account of a nation at the brink of collapse, is the 11th produced since the commission was formed in 2011 to investigate and document Syria’s war. The report offers a list of recommendations for a lasting peace to Syria’s government, the opposition and the international and regional powers involved directly or through proxy groups. Most of what it has so far recommended has fallen on deaf ears. [Continue reading…]

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Highly advanced U.S.-made Javelin anti-tank missile could now be on Syria’s frontlines

The Washington Post reports: A picture of a U.S.-made advanced anti-tank missile, apparently in the hands of a group Kurdish forces fighting near the northern Syrian town of Shaddadi, was posted to social media Tuesday.

If confirmed, it would be one of the first documented uses of a FGM-148 Javelin in the war against the Islamic State and a marked escalation in U.S. material being funneled to local groups. [Continue reading…]

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