Category Archives: Lands

Al Qaeda plays a long game in Syria

Charles Lister writes: Al-Qa`ida’s role in Syria has evolved considerably since its humble beginnings as a wing of the Islamic State in Iraq (ISI) in mid-to-late 2011. Formally established by seven prominent Islamists in October 2011 after four months of secret meetings, Jabhat al-Nusra did not publicly emerge until January 23, 2012. In its first six months of publicly acknowledged operations, Jabhat al-Nusra was deeply unpopular within Syria’s rapidly expanding insurgency. Although it had not admitted its links to the ISI or al-Qa`ida, its rhetoric, imagery, and tactics made its international jihadist links clear. A revolutionary opposition, still clinging to nationalist ideals, feared what appeared to be ISI-like terrorist cells emerging within its midst.

By fall 2012, however, Jabhat al-Nusra had evolved from a terrorist organization into an expanding insurgent movement. Its forces had begun integrating into the broader armed opposition, especially in Syria’s largest city, Aleppo. By December 11, 2012, when the U.S. government designated it an alias of al-Qa`ida in Iraq, and a terrorist organization, Jabhat al-Nusra was operating as a fully fledged, de facto opposition actor, albeit on an extreme end of the ideological spectrum.

Two-and-a-half years later, aided in particular by the protracted Syrian conflict and the brutal rise of the Islamic State, Jabhat al-Nusra is one of the most powerful armed groups in Syria. Its consistent balancing of ideologically driven jihadist objectives with local sensitivities and revolutionary ideals has placed Jabhat al-Nusra in an advantageous position. Rarely will any Syrian opposition group commit genuinely to both denouncing the role of Jabhat al-Nusra in the conflict and permanently ceasing battlefield cooperation with it.

Jabhat al-Nusra remains an al-Qa`ida affiliate, however, and it has occasionally displayed the fundamentalist behavior one would ordinarily expect. From sectarian killings to harsh legal restrictions and executions, the true and extremist nature of Jabhat al-Nusra has periodically been revealed.

Throughout its existence, Jabhat al-Nusra and its leader, Abu Mohammed al-Julani, have generally maintained the group’s jihadist credibility while making its stance within the complex conflict as accommodating as possible. In so doing, al-Qa`ida has played a strategic long game in Syria, which has allowed it to establish a new stronghold on Israel’s border and in sight of Europe. [Continue reading…]

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Saudi-led coalition accused of collectively punishing civilians in Yemen war

The New York Times reports: The airstrike slammed into Al-Sham water-bottling plant at the end of the night shift, killing 13 workers who were minutes away from heading home.

Standing among the strewn bottles, smoldering boxes and pulverized machines a few days after the airstrike here, the owner, Ibrahim al-Razoom, searched in vain for any possible reason that warplanes from a Saudi-led military coalition would have attacked the place.

Nothing in the ruins suggested the factory was used for making bombs, as a coalition spokesman had claimed. And it was far from any military facility that would explain the strike as a tragic mistake: For miles around, there was nothing but desert scrub.

“It never occurred to me that this would be hit,” Mr. Razoom said.

Of the many perils Yemen’s civilians have faced during the last six months of war, with starvation looming and their cities crumbling under heavy weapons, none have been as deadly as the coalition airstrikes. What began as a Saudi-led aerial campaign against the Houthis, the rebel militia movement that forced Yemen’s government from power, has become so broad and vicious that critics accuse the coalition of collectively punishing people living in areas under Houthi control. [Continue reading…]

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Former Russian rebels trade war in Ukraine for posh life in Moscow

The Washington Post reports: There was a time when the arrival of Alexander Borodai and his posse of camouflaged gunmen could clear out a restaurant in just minutes.

But that was in Donetsk, Ukraine, in 2014, where Borodai was prime minister of a pro­Russian separatist government. Now, he is back in his native Moscow and, as he tells it, back to his old day job as a public relations consultant.

“When you are not on television, people start to forget what you look like,” he said, sinking into a cream­colored sofa in a tony Moscow restaurant for an interview. “And thank God for that. It was hard to go out on the street at first.”

It is an unlikely, perhaps unbelievable, transformation for the most prominent Russian citizen in the war in Ukraine and the possible target of a Dutch investigation into the missile attack on a Malaysian airliner in July last year that killed 298 people. [Continue reading…]

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Obama will be judged as an accomplice in the historic betrayal of the Syrian people

Hisham Melhem writes: Former President George W. Bush bequeathed to Barack Obama a precarious and partially broken Arab World. A spectacularly ambitious imperial attempt at remaking the region, beginning in Mesopotamia, crumbled mightily in the inhospitable desert of Iraq.

The dream of planting a Jeffersonian democracy in the land of the two rivers, metamorphosed into an unprecedented sectarian bloodletting. Bush’s freedom agenda, coming after he admitted – correctly – that for more than fifty years U.S. administrations neglected human rights in the Middle East in the name of maintaining stability, the free flow of oil, and striking alliances against the Soviet Union, was ill-conceived, naively pursued, and badly executed.

Bush’s ‘War on Terrorism’ was equally flawed; Al-Qaeda was cut to pieces, but like the mythical Hydra it metastasized and produced the monstrous ‘Islamic State’ (ISIS). But hard as it is to conceive, President Obama will bequeath to his successor a breathtakingly pulverized – figuratively and, yes, physically – region, where in some states like Syria and Iraq whole communities have been uprooted and once great ancient cities have been ransacked, and precious cultural and religious jewels have been destroyed.

There are no more streets in some Syrian cities; The Assad regime turned them into shallow valleys of broken concrete, twisted metal and shattered personal artifacts indicating that they were once full of life. If hell has streets, they will surely look like the streets of Syria’s cities today. It shall be written, that the words of a sitting American President in the second decade of the 21st century justifying his inaction and his inane silence in the face of the staggering savagery of the Syrian regime – which repeatedly used chemical weapons, barrel bombs, medieval sieges and starvation against his own people – were stunning in their moral vacuity. The President of the United States will be judged as an accomplice in the historic betrayal of the Syrian people – and, to a lesser extent, the Iraqi and Libyan peoples – and in the creation of the worst refugee problem in the Middle East in a century.

Surely, the primary responsibility for the agonies of the peoples of the Middle East lies in the hands of the political and cultural classes that inherited the new political structures erected in modern times by the colonial powers over the remnants of old civilizations.

True, European powers drew artificial boundaries – most countries have such borders – not taking into consideration the wishes of the affected peoples, whose promises were rarely honored. This left behind wounds that have yet to heal. But in subsequent years, the ideologues of Arab Nationalism and Political Islam, the military strongmen who perfected military coups along with some atavistic hereditary rulers maintained the ossified status quo or destroyed nascent and relatively open, diverse societies and representative forms of governance in countries like Egypt, Syria, Iraq and Tunisia.

However, Western meddling and military intervention contributed to the rise of Arab autocracy and despotism. The American invasion of Iraq did not cause sectarianism in that tortured land; that dormant scourge was awakened by years of Ba’athist despotism and Saddam Hussein’s decision to invade Iran in 1980.

But the way the American invasion was conceived and executed accelerated Iraq’s descent into the abyss. Hence America’s partial political and moral responsibility for Iraq’s current torment. President Obama’s eagerness to disengage himself and his administration from Bush’s Iraq burden explains his reticence to push for a residual force after 2011, or to seriously and personally continue to engage Iraqis and help those forces willing to live in a unitary civil state, his deafness to repeated warnings that former Prime Minister Nuri al Maliki’s sectarian policies were deepening the sectarian fissures, makes him a partial owner of Iraq’s chaos. [Continue reading…]

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Syria exposed the selective anti-imperialism of the anti-war movement

Mark Boothroyd writes: The Syrian revolt against the Assad regime is now in its fifth year, the death toll from the conflict has surpassed 330,000 with over 1 million wounded, 215,000 are still detained in regime prisons, 200,000 are missing, and between 650,000 and 1,000,000 people are under starvation siege by the regime in rebel towns and cities. Bombings of civilian areas by the regime are a daily occurrence, 4.5 million Syrians are refugees, and 8 million, almost half the remaining population, are internally displaced.

In all this time there was no direct western intervention in Syria against Assad. No bombs were dropped on Syria by Western powers until mid-2014, the fourth year of the revolution, and these were targeted at ISIS, not the regime. Not a single bomb has been dropped on regime military installations by the Coalition air force.

All the hype and warnings notwithstanding, Western aid to the rebels has been very limited. By mid-2013 the Free Syrian Army had received only $12 million of a promised $60 million of aid from the US , and been denied access to weaponry by the EU. The aid they did receive was only non-lethal aid consisting of food, medicine and vehicles. From 2012 onwards the CIA was involved in monitoring weapons shipments to Syria; its role was to stop them receiving the anti-air missiles and heavy weaponry that could have neutralised Assad’s airforce and armour and hastened the downfall of the regime.

When the US did finally begin to arm and train rebels in 2014, it was tightly controlled to a ridiculous extent. In contrast the regime has $3.5 billion worth of contracts for arms from Russia, and loans to pay for it. With Syria’s domestic weapons industry too small to produce enough arms to sustain a protracted conflict, the imperialist intervention which has kept the conflict going and maintains it to this day is from Russia.

The revolutions exposed that for many in the anti-war movement, opposition to imperialist intervention only extended to opposition to imperialist intervention by the UK, US, EU, and their allies. There was no opposition to the imperialist actions of the Russian government, or the crucial support given by the Iranian government to the Assad regime. [Continue reading…]

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Islamists in Germany trying to recruit young refugees

AFP reports: Muslim radicals in Germany are trying to recruit some of the growing numbers of asylum seekers reaching the country, according to intelligence services quoted by the German news agency DPA.

The Islamic extremists “are trying to approach the young unaccompanied refugees, who arrive in our country without their families and are particularly looking for contacts and support,” a spokesman for the intelligence service in the southern state of Bavaria told DPA.

He said many of the youths are approached around reception centres but also at Munich railway station where many of the asylum seekers have arrived from Hungary and Austria in recent days.

The Islamic extremists “want to take advantage of the insecurity and distress of the refugees,” he said. [Continue reading…]

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In shadow of Erdogan, Turkey’s AKP re-elects Davutoglu leader

Reuters reports: Turkey’s ruling AK Party re-elected Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu as its chairman at a congress on Saturday where the longest shadow was cast by a politician who, officially at least, is no longer a member: President Tayyip Erdogan.

Although Erdogan did not appear in person – as president he is supposed to refrain from party politics – many of his loyalists were named to executive committees, something Davutoglu had hoped to avoid, according to some party officials.

Turkey’s most popular and divisive politician in recent memory, Erdogan faces budding discontent from inside the movement he founded, officials say. His drive to secure an absolute majority for the AKP has pushed it toward a November snap election that could again leave the party in stalemate. [Continue reading…]

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Turkey hits 64 PKK targets in new Iraq air strikes

AFP reports: Turkish warplanes struck 64 outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) targets in overnight raids on northern Iraq, dropping 80 bombs, according to reports on Sept. 11.

At least 60 PKK militants were killed in the strikes, carried out by 21 Turkish F-16 and F-4 warplanes, the state-run Anadolu Agency reported, quoting security sources.

The toll could not be verified independently. The strikes, which ran from late Sept. 10 to dawn Sept. 11, are the latest in a relentless air campaign aimed at crippling the PKK, which has staged a string of attacks in Turkey in recent weeks. [Continue reading…]

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Kurdish militants promise Erdogan ‘payback in blood’

The National reports: As the sun drops in this town on Turkey’s border with Syria, young Kurdish men pull black balaclavas over their faces, load their Kalashnikovs with a click and leave the courtyards and homes they were resting in for the streets.

At the entrances of residential neighbourhoods here, roads are cut with sandbagged barricades and trenches filled with dirty, stagnant water. Sheets, blankets and tarps are strung up overhead to protect against Turkish government snipers.

On quiet days, children play on the barricades with simple toy guns fashioned out of plastic pipes. But at night, these barriers become the domain of the young fighters of the YDG-H, a local militia affiliated with Turkey’s main Kurdish nationalist guerrilla group, the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK).

Towns like Cizre, Silopi and Sirnak in Turkey’s Kurdish-majority south-east are in open revolt today, with militants fighting against a government they say has oppressed the country’s Kurds for too long. [Continue reading…]

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After winning a sweeping victory, how unelectable is Jeremy Corbyn?

Andrew McFadyen writes: Jeremy Corbyn winning the Labour leadership is like Aberdeen beating Real Madrid in a European final. It really happened, but you have to pinch yourself to believe it is true.

The 66-year-old, bearded left-winger was a 200/1 outsider when the contest began.

He scraped onto the ballot paper with just minutes to spare, only thanks to the charity nominations of MPs who leant him their signatures to “broaden the debate”.

Corbyn is everything that a modern professional politician shouldn’t be: crumpled, scruffy and principled.

He swept to victory promising to end austerity, abolish student tuition fees and scrap nuclear
weapons.

His first act as leader was to attend a rally in support of refugees, at which he implored the government to support people who are desperate and need somewhere safe to live.

Corbyn’s critics deride him as a Trotskyite tribute act and utterly unelectable.

If this is true, they should be asking why he has just trounced his opponents.

The North London MP ran by far the most effective campaign, combining smart use of social media with old-fashioned public meetings and street-corner politics. [Continue reading…]

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Compassion for refugees isn’t enough

Nicholas Kristof writes: As things stand, we’re on a trajectory for Syria to become even more horrific than it is now. Many experts expect the war to drag on for years, kill hundreds of thousands more people, and lead to an exodus of millions more refugees. We’re likely to see street-to-street fighting soon in Damascus, lifting the suffering and emigration to a new level.

I’m shaken by pleas I’ve seen from women in the besieged Syrian city of Zabadani, which for months has been surrounded by forces supporting the government. They fear that if the government forces take Zabadani, there will be massacres.

So hundreds of women in Zabadani have signed a statement calling for a cease-fire, international protection and evacuation of the wounded. They bravely use their names, despite the risk that they will be murdered or raped if the city falls.

“I’ve never been so depressed,” said Emile Hokayem, a Middle East analyst and author of a book on Syria. “There were options early on. But the options today are all costlier, riskier and come with lower returns.”

Yet as long as we’re talking about Syrian dysfunction, let’s also note European and American dysfunction. The Obama administration has repeatedly miscalculated on Syria and underestimated the problem, even as the crisis has steadily worsened. And some leading Republicans want to send in troops to confront the Islamic State (think Iraq redux).

The least bad option today is to create a no-fly zone in the south of Syria. This could be done on a shoestring, enforced by U.S. Navy ships in the Mediterranean firing missiles, without ground troops.

That would end barrel bombings. Just as important, the no-fly zone would create leverage to pressure the Syrian regime — and its Russian and Iranian backers — to negotiate. [Continue reading…]

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Obama’s Syrian nightmare

Roger Cohen writes: Syria will be the biggest blot on the Obama presidency, a debacle of staggering proportions. For more than four years now, the war has festered. A country has been destroyed, four million Syrians are refugees, Islamic State has moved into the vacuum and President Bashar al-Assad still drops barrel bombs whose shrapnel and chlorine rip women and children to shreds.

For a long time, those who fled waited in the neighborhood. They wanted to go home. They filled camps in Turkey and Jordan and Lebanon. When it became clear even to them that “home” no longer existed, nothing could stop them in their desperate flight toward the perceived security of Europe. The refugee crisis is the chronicle of a disaster foretold.

The refugees do not care what “Christian” Europe thinks. They are beyond caring about Europe’s hang-ups or illusions. They want their children to live. In their homeland, more than 200,000 people have been killed. Statistics numb, but less so when you know the dead. This evisceration of a state is a consequence of many things, among them Western inaction.

American interventionism can have terrible consequences, as the Iraq war has demonstrated. But American non-interventionism can be equally devastating, as Syria illustrates. Not doing something is no less of a decision than doing it. [Continue reading…]

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Who’s responsible for the refugees?

Steve Hilton writes: While we can argue forever about the causes of conflict in the Middle East, it is impossible to ignore the impact of American foreign policy on what’s happening in Europe. It was shocking to see an “expert” from the Council on Foreign Relations quoted on Saturday saying that the situation is “largely Europe’s responsibility.” How, exactly? The Iraq invasion (which could reasonably be described as “largely America’s responsibility”) unleashed a period of instability and competition in the region that is collapsing states and fueling sectarian conflict.

European leaders wanted, years ago, to intervene directly in Syria in order to check President Bashar al-Assad’s cruelty; the United States didn’t. You can understand why — I wouldn’t for one second question the judgment of American political leaders that their country was reluctant to participate in another military conflict. But at least acknowledge the consequences of nonintervention: the protracted Syrian civil war, the emergence of a lawless territory ripe for exploitation by the sick zealots of the Islamic State, and the resulting flood of millions of displaced people.

So it’s a bit rich for American commentators to lecture Europeans when part of the reason the refugees are arriving on Europe’s doorstep is American foreign policy. It’s great that the United States is by far the largest provider of humanitarian assistance to Syrians, but America is bigger than Europe, and wealthier. Why should Europe be expected to take around a million refugees practically overnight and the United States, hardly any? [Continue reading…]

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The implications of PKK-Turkish state violence

Aaron Stein writes: Members of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) executed two police officers in Urfa on July 22, purportedly in retaliation for an Islamic State (ISIS or ISIL) inspired suicide bombing of a leftist meeting in the border town of Suruç. In response, Turkey struck PKK bases in Iraqi Kurdistan and southeastern Turkey. This prompted a sharp increase in PKK-Turkish state violence, which has resulted in at least 113 Turkish security personnel deaths and hundreds of PKK fighters killed since July 20. The conflict has escalated in the past week, with the PKK killing thirty-nine Turkish soldiers and police and Ankara sanctioning a cross-border raid into Iraqi Kurdistan.

This violence marks the end of a two-year ceasefire between the PKK and Turkey, prompting both sides to use violence to force the other to return to peace talks. The PKK says it will return to the talks only after the government meets its demands to formalize the negotiations, including political autonomy inside Turkey and freedom for the group’s imprisoned leader, Abdullah Öcalan. Ankara has said that it will continue striking PKK targets until the group withdraws from Turkish territory.

These events resemble PKK-Turkish clashes between 2009 and 2012, when the breakdown of peace talks resulted in at least 920 casualties, according to the International Crisis Group. However, the spillover from the Syrian conflict has altered the political dynamics that previously pushed the two parties to begin peace negotiations. [Continue reading…]

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Russian troops said to join combat in Syria

Reuters reports: Russian forces have begun participating in military operations in Syria in support of government troops, three Lebanese sources familiar with the political and military situation there said on Wednesday.

The sources, speaking to Reuters on condition they not be identified, gave the most forthright account yet from the region of what the United States fears is a deepening Russian military role in Syria’s civil war, though one of the Lebanese sources said the number of Russians involved so far was small.

U.S. officials said Russia sent two tank landing ships and additional cargo aircraft to Syria in the past day or so and deployed a small number of naval infantry forces.

The U.S. officials, who also spoke on condition of anonymity, said the intent of Russia’s military moves in Syria was unclear. One suggested the focus may be on preparing an airfield near the port city of Latakia, a stronghold of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. [Continue reading…]

Josh Rogin writes: The State Department had already begun pushing back against the Russian moves, for example by asking Bulgaria and Greece to deny overflight permissions to Syria-bound Russian transport planes. But the president didn’t know about these moves in advance, two officials said, and when he found out, he was upset with the department for not having a more complete and vetted process to respond to the crisis. A senior administration official said Tuesday evening that the White House, the State Department and other departments had coordinated to oppose actions that would add to Assad’s leverage.

For some in the White House, the priority is to enlist more countries to fight against the Islamic State, and they fear making the relationship with Russia any more heated. They are seriously considering accepting the Russian buildup as a fait accompli, and then working with Moscow to coordinate U.S. and Russian strikes in Northern Syria, where the U.S.-led coalition operates every day.

For many in the Obama administration, especially those who work on Syria, the idea of acquiescing to Russian participation in the fighting is akin to admitting that the drive to oust Assad has failed. Plus, they fear Russia will attack Syrian opposition groups that are fighting against Assad, using the war against the Islamic State as a cover.

“The Russians’ intentions are to keep Assad in power, not to fight ISIL,” one administration official said. “They’ve shown their cards now.” [Continue reading…]

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Syria rejects British proposal for Assad to lead transitional government

The Guardian reports: Syria has rejected Britain’s proposal that Bashar al-Assad could lead a transitional government for up to six months before stepping down, as part of a political solution to the country’s crisis and to end the wave of refugees heading to Europe to escape the war.

“What gives the British foreign secretary the right to decide for Syrians how long their president should stay in power?” Omran al-Zoubi, the Syrian information minister, told the Guardian in an exclusive interview in his Damascus office.

He said Britain was following “irrational and illogical” policies by attacking the only country seriously fighting Isis and other terrorists and urging its leader to step down. [Continue reading…]

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Yemen’s descent into a prolonged and uncontrollable war

The Economist reports: The start of this month may well come to be seen as the moment that Yemen descended into a prolonged and uncontrollable war. The conflict in the desperately poor nation was already going horribly badly. But the Saudi-led coalition fighting the country’s Houthi rebels has now intensified its campaign, after 60 of its soldiers were killed in a single attack in Maarib on September 4th.

More troops have poured in since the attack. Saudi Arabia dispatched more elite forces to join the 3,000-strong coalition force already on the ground, while Qatar, hitherto only participating in air operations, has sent 1,000 soldiers. Egypt, which has long warned of the folly of putting boots on the ground given its disastrous intervention in the 1960s, this week sent in 800 men. Sudanese troops are reportedly waiting to be shipped out of Khartoum. Bahrain’s King Hamad bin Isa al-Khalifa said his two sons will join the battle.

The coalition has since unleashed an unprecedented flurry of air strikes in both the northern governorate of Saada, the stronghold of the Houthi rebels, and the country’s capital, Sana’a. Residents say as many civilian as military targets are being hit, including houses, restaurants and main streets. “The coalition has gone wacko since the attack,” says Hassan Boucenine, who heads the Yemen office of Médicins sans Frontières, a charity. [Continue reading…]

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How my Cairo bookclub changed my view of Islamists

Rabab El-Mahdi writes: In November 2011 during a protest on Mohamed Mahmoud street in downtown Cairo, a friend asked me if I would start a reading group for some politically engaged young people. I answered that I had read and disliked Reading Lolita in Tehran and so had no interest in imitating its protagonist, who had set up a book club in her home and encouraged the members to read and discuss western literature as the means to emancipation. My friend had not understood what I’d meant and so I conceded.

I had expected five people but 15 arrived instead, all in their 20s and early 30s; most of them were what the media and politicians labelled “Islamists”. My label? “Leftist academic and activist.”

We met weekly, reading together Vladimir Lenin, Frantz Fanon, Ali Shariati, Talal Asad, Edward Said and Lila Abu Lughod among others. We talked about Marxism, postcolonial studies, Islam, feminism, resistance and revolution and discussed contemporary politics at length, but as the weeks passed we also cooked together, watched movies, and spoke about their families and love lives.

As a student of postcolonial studies and an Arab woman in western circles, I have often had to confront other people’s assumptions about me, and most of my academic work has been about deconstructing such stereotypes. So I thought myself above labelling, presumptuous conclusions and artificial divisions – until Asmaa, Awatif and Mariam, three stay-at-home mothers, asked to join the group and I was forced to confront my own deeply rooted assumptions. [Continue reading…]

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