Category Archives: Lands

A finance minister who doesn’t serve the banks

Simon Jenkins writes: A yawning gulf has opened in the world of financial diplomacy. It is not whether to bail out Greece yet again. It is how a Greek finance minister should dress when visiting a chancellor of the exchequer. Yanis Varoufakis arrived in Downing Street yesterday in black jeans, a mauve open-necked shirt that was not tucked in, and the sort of leather coat Putin might wear on a bear hunt. If George Osborne still didn’t get the point, Varoufakis had a No 1 haircut. What was going on?

What was going on was real life. If I were a banker and had seen Varoufakis arrive in the same dark suit as Osborne was wearing, what would I think? I would think here was a man eager to be accepted into the club. He dresses like a banker, therefore he thinks like a banker, which is how today’s finance ministers are supposed to think. I would be reassured.

We don’t want bankers to be reassured by Varoufakis just now. We want them to be terrified. Don’t mess with me, he is saying. I have a sovereign electorate behind me, and I have a bankrupt country. When your banks go bankrupt you bail them out. When your businesses go bankrupt you write off their debts and let them start again. Do the same to me. Your banks have lent my country crazy sums of money, way beyond the bounds of caution or common sense. Now you honestly think you will get it back. You can’t. Read my lips, look at my jeans, feel my stubble. You can’t. Get real. [Continue reading…]

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Hezbollah’s sectarian loyalties outweigh its commitment to the Palestinian cause

The Associated Press reports: Hezbollah’s ambitions are spreading far beyond its Lebanon home as the militant Shiite movement appears increasingly bent on taking on Sunni foes across the Middle East. It has sent thousands of its fighters into Syria and senior military advisers to Iraq, helped Shiite rebels rise to power in Yemen and threatened Bahrain over its abuse of the Shiite majority.

But the regional aspirations also are taking a heavy toll and threatening to undermine Hezbollah’s support at home. The group has suffered significant casualties, there is talk of becoming overstretched, and judging by the events of recent days, even a vague sense that the appetite for fighting the Israelis is waning.

In the recent confrontation, Israel struck first, purportedly destroying a Hezbollah unit near the front line of the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights. Among the seven dead on Jan. 18 were an Iranian general, a top Hezbollah commander and the son of another former commander in chief. A heavy Hezbollah retaliation appeared inevitable.

Yet when it came last Wednesday, Hezbollah’s revenge was relatively modest: two Israeli soldiers dead, seven wounded. The choice of location — a disputed piece of land excluded from a U.N. resolution that ended the 2006 war between Hezbollah and Israel — suggested to some that Hezbollah’s mind remains focused on more distant fronts. [Continue reading…]

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What turned Erdogan against the West?

Mustafa Akyol writes: As any Turkey watcher would easily confirm, hostility to the West has increasingly marked the rhetoric of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, his ruling Justice and Development (AKP) and pro-government media in the past two years. Especially since the Gezi Park protests in June 2013, the narrative of Erdogan and his entourage has revolved around Western “conspiracies” and a “national will” that is bravely fighting them.

Yet for those familiar with the AKP’s 14-year history, this may have come as a surprising turn. When the AKP was created in 2001, hostility to the West was not something with which it identified itself. On the contrary, party founders claimed to have disowned the Islamist, anti-Western “National View” tradition from which they came. Likewise, in the first years after the AKP came to power in 2002, Westernization (i.e., integration with the European Union) was the party’s prime objective. Back then, Europe was the source not of treacherous conspiracies that had to be thwarted, but of democratic criteria that had to be embraced.

Not surprisingly, the fiercest opposition to the AKP during that period from 2002 to 2010 was mounted by the anti-Western breed of Turkish secularists, known as neonationalists. This quarter — whose slogan is “Neither the US nor the EU, but a fully independent Turkey” — accused Erdogan’s government of “selling Turkey out to imperialism.” In 2007, one of Turkey’s best-selling books was nonsense titled “Moses’ Children,” which declared Erdogan to be a “crypto-Jew” colluding with the Elders of Zion. In the same era, the argument that Turkey should move closer to Russia instead of the EU was promoted by neonationalist generals, who would be implicated in the alleged Ergenekon coup plot to overthrow the AKP. [Continue reading…]

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Peter Greste is free but Egypt’s journalists remain muzzled

Wadah Khanfar writes: Peter Greste, of the al-Jazeera English television network, has been released after 400 days of detention in Egyptian prisons. I am delighted. The detention of the three al-Jazeera journalists is a blatant example of the deterioration of press freedom in the country.

They were arrested while conducting their professional duties, but the court imprisoned them for allegedly spreading lies and distorted the image of Egypt.

Our happiness following the news of Greste’s release, however, remains incomplete. The other two journalists are still in detention. It has been reported that Mohamed Fahmy, who has dual nationality, has been asked to denounce his Egyptian citizenship so he may be deported to Canada; the third journalist, Baher Mohamed, has no foreign nationality and has still been given no prospect of release.

The court’s discrimination in dealing with him was evident from the very beginning. While his two colleagues were sentenced to seven years’ imprisonment each, the court singled Mohamed out for 10 years. In fact, the detention of Egyptian journalists has now become customary – in a climate of repression and restrictions that did not exist even during the era of the former dictator Hosni Mubarak. [Continue reading…]

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U.S. military aid to Ukraine dangerous move, experts warn

AFP reports: Washington is once again mulling military support to Ukraine after fierce offensives by Kremlin-backed rebels, but experts fear it will only justify Russian conspiracy theories and drive East and West closer to full-blown war.

The recent rebel attacks across key parts of the frontline in eastern Ukraine may have been timed precisely out of fear the United States could soon get involved.

“One reason the rebels have intensified their offensive now is to make gains before potential US arms arrive,” said Andrew Wilson, author of “Ukraine Crisis: What it means for the West.”

“The US faces a moral dilemma: if it does not act now, the conflict could worsen. But there are big risks to getting involved.”

The White House is once again under pressure to up its involvement in the 10-month-old Ukraine conflict as ceasefire talks collapse and casualties soar.

The UN says 278 people were killed in the 12 days to January 21 alone as Russian-backed rebels sought to capture key transport and communication hubs.

An independent report released Monday by eight former senior American officials said it was time for Washington to provide $3 billion (2.7 billion euros) in military assistance to Ukraine.

“The West needs to bolster deterrence in Ukraine by raising the risks and costs to Russia of any renewed major offensive,” the report said. [Continue reading..]

Simon Tisdall writes: Washington’s threat risks turning what is currently a largely contained, internal insurrection into an international proxy war, pitting the US and Nato against Russia. In prospect now is the killing or maiming of Russians by American anti-tank missiles, a scenario not seen since the cold war-era occupation of Afghanistan by Soviet forces. The impact on wider European security could be deeply destabilising.

Tensions are already running high, not least with the increase in air and sea incidents involving the Russian military, such as last week’s provocative over-flight of the English channel. Nato’s decision to set up permanent military command centres in Poland, Romania, Bulgaria, Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia and its creation of a 5,000-strong rapid response force are characterised by Putin as an attempt by the west to contain Russia.Last week, he ridiculed Ukraine’s army as Nato’s “foreign legion”.

Such an American escalation would probably deepen European divisions over Ukraine. Greece, heavily indebted, and Hungary, which has close economic links to Russia, take a very different line, for example, from that of the UK, which American reports suggest could follow any US lead in supplying weapons.

Uncertainty about Russian intentions has already caused a bad case of the jitters in Finland, Sweden and the Baltic republics. In the Czech Republic, the army chief of staff, General Petr Pavel, was quoted last week as predicting that an escalation in Ukraine would lead to the biggest military manoeuvres since 9/11, with troops being posted to the borders and to guard strategic plants. There are also wider European fears of mass refugee movements and manufactured unrest among expatriate ethnic Russian and Ukrainian minorities.

Judging by past performance, Putin is more likely to up the ante than back down if the US goes ahead.

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A Labor win in Israel will only entrench the occupation

Gideon Levy writes: Only one scenario is worse than the reelection on March 17 of Benjamin Netanyahu as prime minister, and that’s the election of Labor Party leader Isaac Herzog (and his political partner Tzipi Livni). Another term for Netanyahu would be a disaster, but a victory for Zionist Camp could be a worse disaster.

Yes, it’s true there’s no comparison between Herzog and Netanyahu — or between their parties. Herzog is a moderate, modest, fair person who’s much more liked than Netanyahu; the same can be said for Livni.

And Zionist Camp’s Knesset slate is of much higher quality than Likud’s. Not only does Zionist Camp not have thugs like Likud, it doesn’t have people with nationalist and racist views inciting and agitating. The CVs of most Zionist Camp candidates are much more impressive.

Now let’s assume Zionist Camp wins. Jubilation; Netanyahu will be ousted and a new day will dawn in Israel with a Herzog-Livni government. Actually, the first and most dramatic change will come from abroad — a global sigh of relief. [Continue reading…]

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Egypt court bans Hamas’ armed wing, designates as ‘terrorist organisation’

Middle East Eye: Palestinian faction Hamas on Saturday slammed a decision by an Egyptian court to designate its military arm, the Ezzedine al-Qassam Brigades, a “terrorist organisation”.

“This is a dangerous decision that only serves the best interests of Israel,” Hamas spokesman Sami Abu Zuhri told the Anadolu Agency.

He described the court verdict as “politically motivated”, reiterating that his movement does not interfere in Egypt’s internal affairs.

Earlier on Saturday, an Egyptian court declared the Ezzedine al-Qassam Brigades a “terrorist organization”.

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America’s Constitutional paralysis

Daniel Lazare writes: Americans have succeeded in modifying the Constitution only 17 times since ratification of the Bill of Rights in 1791. Since amendments tend to come in clumps during periods of exceptional turmoil, this means that decades can race by without any change at all. For instance, the US was constitutionally frozen for nearly 60 years prior to the Civil War, and then spent another 40 years in a constitutional deep-freeze during the Gilded Age that followed. Only one amendment, the 27th, concerning the scheduling of Congressional pay raises, has been approved since the civil-rights revolution of the 1960s and early ’70s, and that one was drafted in 1789 and then gathered dust in various state legislatures for more than two centuries. Excepting this unusual amendment, the present constitutional ice age could wind up outlasting the first.

Arguably, this Constitutional paralysis is the real source of American exceptionalism – not America’s military or economic clout, but its basic political structure, so unlike that of just about any other country on Earth. It’s certainly the source of its exceptional political psychology. One might think that Americans would be impatient with a Constitution that frustrates any and all efforts at reform, yet the response has been the opposite: instead of growing angry, people have reassured themselves over the years that immobility is all to the good because anything they do to change things can only make them worse. In effect, they’ve taken the old adage, ‘If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it,’ and turned it around. Since a fix is impossible due to the system’s deep-seated resistance to change, then it must not be broken at all. In fact, it must be perfect and therefore divinely inspired. And if the Constitution is divinely inspired, can the US be anything other than divinely inspired as well? [Continue reading…]

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How Assad’s hackers penetrate the Syrian opposition

FireEye reports: Cyber espionage is traditionally understood as a method aimed at achieving an information edge or a strategic goal. However, our research on malware activity related to the ongoing conflict in Syria indicates that such operations can provide actionable military intelligence for an immediate battlefield advantage. Today we release a new report “Behind the Syrian Conflict’s Digital Frontlines,” that documents a well-executed hacking operation that successfully breached the Syrian opposition.

Between at least November 2013 and January 2014, the hackers stole a cache of critical documents and Skype conversations revealing the Syrian opposition’s strategy, tactical battle plans, supply needs, and troves of personal information and chat sessions. This data belonged to the men fighting against Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s forces, as well as media activists, humanitarian aid workers, and others within the opposition located in Syria, the region and beyond.

To undertake this operation, the threat group employed a familiar tactic: ensnaring its victims through conversations with seemingly sympathetic and attractive women. A female avatar would strike up a conversation on Skype and share a personal photo with her target. The photo was not only malware-laden but likely tailored to the victim’s device—an Android phone or a computer. Once the target downloaded the malware, the threat group accessed his device, rifled through files and selected and stole data identifying opposition members, their Skype chat logs and contacts, and scores of documents that shed valuable insight into the opposition. [Continue reading…]

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Under-reported conflicts seen affecting millions in 2015

Reuters reports: While wars in Syria, Iraq and Ukraine make headlines in the West, around 30 other conflicts receive little press coverage, and the resulting lack of pressure for change could have serious implications for millions of people, experts say.

Civil wars in Sudan’s western Darfur region and its southern states have almost disappeared from the media despite affecting huge numbers and displacing 2.4 million people in Darfur alone.

Neighbouring South Sudan is also an overlooked crisis that urgently needs attention, said Jean-Marie Guehenno, president of Brussels-based think tank International Crisis Group, which is currently tracking more than 30 conflicts globally.

South Sudan ranked alongside Afghanistan and Syria last year as the three least peaceful countries in the world in an annual index compiled by the Institute for Economics and Peace.

“The horrific violence you still see in South Sudan is because there is no pressure from public opinion,” Guehenno told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.

The civil war there is entering its second year, bringing the world’s newest country to the brink of bankruptcy and famine as violence has displaced at least 1.9 million of the nation’s 11 million people and killed more than 10,000. [Continue reading…]

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Dutch journalist to be tried in Turkey on ‘terror propaganda’ charges

Reuters: A Turkish prosecutor formally accused a Dutch journalist of ‘terrorist propaganda’ on Monday, and asked she be jailed for up to five years, local media reported on Monday, a move that will deepen fears over press freedom in the NATO member state.

Security forces briefly detained freelance journalist Frederike Geerdink last month and raided her home in Diyarbakir, the largest city in Turkey’s predominantly Kurdish south-east.

The indictment, accepted by a Diyarbakir court, accuses Geerdink of posting messages on social media in favor of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), including a display of the group’s flag, according to Hurriyet Daily News (HDNER).

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ISIS affiliate takes root amid Libya’s chaos

The Wall Street Journal reports: Islamic State’s affiliate in Libya has capitalized on the battlefield failures and disillusionment among better-established, more moderate Islamist groups in the country, following the same formula that brought the radical movement success in Syria and Iraq, Western counterterrorism officials said.

A group calling itself Islamic State’s Tripoli Province claimed responsibility for an attack on Tuesday on a hotel that killed nine people, including an American. It was the first time the group came to prominence in Libya, raising concerns that the reach of the extremists is spreading beyond Syria and Iraq.

But the attacks also underlined the threat Islamic State poses to more entrenched Islamist groups such as Libya Dawn, a more moderate Islamist militia that is ideologically close to Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood and now fights secular insurgents in eastern Libya.

Oil-rich Libya has gradually slipped into chaos since rebels toppled strongman Moammar Gadhafi three years ago, with two rival governments now claiming to run the country and myriad competing local militias effectively in control on the ground.

In an example of the anarchy creeping into the country, the head of planning at the National Oil Co., Samir Kamal, was kidnapped two weeks ago before being released Sunday. The identity and motives of his kidnappers remain unknown.

The threat to Libya represented by Islamic State is on an altogether different scale. The North African nation’s experience with local militants pledging allegiance to Islamic State follows a pattern in which the group gains a foothold by seizing on the vulnerabilities of countries embroiled in chaos and war or with weak central governments. [Continue reading…]

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ISIS’s South Asia branch threatens Pakistan

Tom Hussain reports: The recently formed South Asian chapter of ISIL has made a military alliance with the Pakistani Taliban and other militants to resist advancing security forces in the Khyber tribal area bordering Afghanistan, militants and security analysts said.

The alliance has been formed to marshal scattered manpower and weapons, and deploy them under a unified military command supervised by a committee of representatives of the four member factions: Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan, the Khyber-based Lashkar-i-Islam, Jamaat-ul-Ahrar and ISIL “Khorasan”.

Khorasan is a historic term used by militants to describe a region including Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan and northern India.

The involvement of ISIL Khorasan in the alliance represents the group’s first political and military activity in the region after announcing its formation in a video posted on militant websites on January 10.

In the video, a collection of former Pakistani and Afghan Taliban faction commanders swore an oath of allegiance to ISIL chief Abu Bakr Al Baghdadi, and named a Pakistani militant, Hafiz Saeed Orakzai, as head of the South Asia chapter. Other commanders were introduced in person and by rank — a risky, defiant move, according to security analysts based in Islamabad.

ISIL Khorasan has a force of fighters numbering in the hundreds, all of them Pakistani tribesmen. [Continue reading…]

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ISIS fighters kill Taliban commander

Pajhwok: The administrative chief for Charkh district in central Logar province on Monday said Islamic State (IS) militants had killed a Taliban commander and ordered residents to stop watching TV programmes.

Khalilullah Kamal told Pajhwok Afghan News the Taliban commander was killed in an early morning clash between the two groups in the main district bazaar.

He said the masked gunmen, wearing black clothes, gunned down Abdul Ghani and wounded his three bodyguards. The Taliban have not yet spoken about the incident.

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After revelation about CIA-Mossad assassination, shadow war with Hezbollah may intensify

The Washington Post reports: The revelation that the CIA cooperated with Israel’s Mossad spy agency in the assassination of a top Hezbollah military commander in 2008 is poised to intensify a shadow war with the militant Lebanese group that could involve retaliation against U.S. interests around the world, analysts said.

In an exclusive story published online Friday night, The Washington Post reported that the U.S. intelligence agency coordinated with Mossad in carrying out a February 2008 car bombing in the Syrian capital, Damascus, that killed Imad Mughniyah.

The militant commander was implicated in killing hundreds of Americans in attacks that included the U.S. Embassy bombing in Beirut in 1983 and assaults on American forces in Iraq by Iranian-backed militias, according to the Post’s report, which cited multiple former U.S. officials. The killing of Mughniyah, a key figure behind attacks on scores of Israelis, was approved by officials in the George W. Bush administration, according to the report.

The report said the operation required extensive planning and cooperation between the two agencies. One of official is quoted as saying that operatives detonated some 25 practice bombs at a CIA facility in North Carolina “to make sure we got it right,” killing Mughniyah while avoiding civilian causalities. The real bomb was triggered remotely in Tel Aviv by Mossad agents, according to the report, but CIA operatives in Damascus acted as spotters and could have called off the attack.

Samar Hajj, a Lebanese analyst who is close to Hezbollah, said the report reinforced the impression — true or not — among officials in the Iranian-backed group that covert Israeli operations are signed off in Washington. [Continue reading…]

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Are Israel and Hezbollah about to go to war?

Paul Pillar writes: An exchange of lethal attacks during the past fortnight between Israel and Hezbollah has raised the risk that escalation of fighting between these old antagonists might be added to the intractable mess that Syria already is. Israel and Hezbollah have a long history of tit-for-tat reprisals, with the most conspicuous examples involving Hezbollah titting in response to Israeli tatting. The two major car bomb attacks by Hezbollah in Buenos Aires in the early 1990s, for example, were each a direct response to deadly actions that Israel had taken back in the Middle East a month or six weeks earlier. The bombing of the Israeli embassy in 1992 followed an Israeli airstrike that killed Hezbollah leader Abbas Moussawi and his five-year-old son. The attack in 1994 on a Jewish community center—recently back in the news as the Argentine government tries to dance around the mysterious death of a prosecutor who had been investigating how the original investigation of the attack had been handled—was a response to two Israeli actions in rapid succession. One was Israel’s kidnapping of Mustafa Ali Dirani, leader of the Hezbollah-associated Amal movement. The other — possibly facilitated by information the Israelis extracted from Dirani — was an aerial attack on a Hezbollah facility that killed dozens of the group’s members.

The pattern resembles some of the tit-for-tat that also has taken place between Israel and Hezbollah’s ally Iran. Some not-very-successful attacks against Israeli diplomatic personnel a couple of years ago were clearly intended as retaliation — right down to mimicking the method of attack — for the assassinations of several Iranian scientists.

The most recent Israel-Hezbollah exchange began with an Israeli attack from the air on cars traveling within Syria, close to but wholly beyond the armistice line that separates the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights from the rest of Syria. A half dozen people were killed, including the 25-year-old son of former Hezbollah security chief Imad Mughniyah (who himself was killed several years ago by a car bomb in Syria—an attack that many assume also to have been the work of Israel). Hezbollah’s retaliation came this week with a carefully executed attack on an Israeli convoy in the disputed Shebaa Farms area, reportedly killing two Israeli soldiers and wounding several others. Hezbollah made it abundantly clear that its action was retaliation for the previous week’s attack by Israel, even giving the unit that carried out the attack the claim name of the Quneitra Martyrs Brigade, a reference to the location of the Israeli attack.

Even when neither party in this kind of vicious dyad wants escalation, it sometimes nevertheless occurs. [Continue reading…]

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U.S., allies plan tough battle to retake Mosul from ISIS

The Los Angeles Times reports: Working from this sun-scorched desert base, U.S. and allied commanders are beginning perhaps the most perilous phase of their fight against Islamic State: an attempt to recapture Mosul, Iraq’s second-largest city, from the entrenched militant forces.

Military officers here say a barrage of airstrikes over the last two weeks helped sever two crucial routes that the extremist militants used to funnel fighters and supplies from the Syrian border to Mosul, their self-declared capital in Iraq and most significant battlefield prize.

U.S. commanders who help oversee the air war say the joint offensive with Iraqi Kurdish ground forces pushed back the Sunni Islamists’ defensive line west of Mosul, recapturing territory and removing a key obstacle, at least for now, as military planners consider tactics for retaking the congested city as early as this summer. [Continue reading…]

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Kenji Goto’s apparent ISIS beheading condemned by Japan, world leaders

The Associated Press reports: Appalled and saddened by news Sunday of journalist Kenji Goto’s beheading, apparently by Islamic State extremists, Japan ordered heightened security precautions, but vowed not to give in to terrorism.

The failure to save Goto raised fears for the life of a Jordanian fighter pilot also held hostage. Unlike some earlier messages, there was no mention of the pilot in an online video purporting to show an Islamic State group militant beheading Goto, circulated via social media late Saturday by militant sympathizers.

The slaying of Goto, a freelancer whose work focused on refugees, children and other victims of war, shocked this country, which until now had not become directly embroiled in the fight against the militants. [Continue reading…]

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