In a major breakthrough, Syrian army frees Aleppo air base from ISIS control

The National reports: Syria’s army broke ISIL’s siege on a military air base in northern Aleppo province on Tuesday, scoring its first major breakthrough since Russia’s air campaign began.

Troops, backed by pro-government militia, broke through the extremist group’s more than year-long siege of the Kweyris military airport in the country’s north.

A group of soldiers penetrated ISIL lines west of the airport and reached government troops inside the base, firing into the air in celebration.

Experts said the base could be used by Russian planes in their air war against rebels fighting the regime of president Bashar al-Assad, aiding their efforts to retake Syria’s second city of Aleppo. [Continue reading…]

Aron Lund writes: Assad has long claimed that he is an indispensible ally for any state seeking to contain international terrorism. The growth of Sunni-sectarian radicalism within the Syrian opposition and the Islamic State’s near-destruction of the Iraqi state in 2014 have been of great help to him. For the first time in years, there now exists a sizeable Western political constituency advocating resumed cooperation with Assad. Not only on the hard-right and hard-left fringes of politics, these whispers are increasingly heard among security officials and diplomats too. There’s a long way to go still, but that sort of international shift represents the Assad regime’s only real chance of longtime survival, if not exactly victory.

By helping Assad score points against the Islamic State in places like Kweiris, the Russian government hasachieved a dual goal: it makes Assad’s government appear more viable and useful as an ally, and it lets Russia boast of progress against the Islamic State after weeks of having to explain its choice to bomb other groups instead. [Continue reading…]

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Is the Iraqi army a lost cause?

By Jon Moran, University of Leicester

Building an army in a short space of time is a very difficult task. To be sure, there are some impressive examples. Cromwell’s republican New Model Army was put together while the English Civil War was already underway; Washington’s army of US Independence quickly wore down and beat the British in the 18th century; Napoleon’s revolutionary army was born from the French Revolution and swept all Europe before it; the Red Army of the Soviet Union was forged from the chaos of its defeat in World War I.

But the list of failures is just as spectacular. The South Vietnamese Army boasted billions of dollars, up-to-date equipment and state-of-the-art training, but couldn’t control even South Vietnam itself. It ultimately surprised observers only by holding on as long as it did after the Americans left.

The Soviet Union similarly built up the communist army in Afghanistan but always distrusted it as a fighting force; it ultimately suffered mass desertions.

And the latest ignominious addition to the list seems to be the Iraqi Army. Despite being nourished, trained and supplied by the US, it seems to be perpetually in trouble, whether failing to fend off terrorist groups or all but collapsing in the face of a stunning advance by Islamic State (IS).

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Iran has stopped dismantling nuclear centrifuges, state media reports

Reuters reports: Iran has stopped dismantling centrifuges in two uranium enrichment plants, state media reported on Tuesday, days after conservative lawmakers complained to President Hassan Rouhani that the process was too rushed.

Last week, Iran announced it had begun shutting down inactive centrifuges at the Natanz and Fordow plants under the terms of a deal struck with world powers in July that limits its nuclear program in exchange for easing sanctions.

Iran’s hardliners continue to resist and undermine the nuclear deal, which was forged by moderates they oppose and which they see as a capitulation to the West.

“The (dismantling) process stopped with a warning,” Ali Shamkhani, Secretary of the National Security Council, was quoted as saying by the ISNA student news agency. [Continue reading…]

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Calls for investigation into Saudi Arabia’s actions in Yemen

The Guardian reports: There must be “proper investigations” to ensure that Saudi Arabia has not breached international humanitarian law in the war in Yemen, according to Britain’s foreign secretary, who said that shipments of UK-supplied weapons would be halted if the Saudis fell foul of those probes.

Philip Hammond’s comments came as Britain is being urged to halt the supply of weapons to Riyadh in the light of evidence that civilians are being killed in Saudi-led attacks on rebel forces in Yemen.

Amnesty International has warned that “damning evidence of war crimes” highlights the urgent need for an independent investigation of violations and for the suspension of transfer of arms used in the attacks.

Speaking during a visit to the US, Hammond told BBC’s Newsnight on Tuesday that he had discussed the use of the weapons in Yemen when he visited Saudi Arabia recently.

“The Saudis deny that there have been any breaches of international humanitarian law,” he said. “Obviously that denial alone is not enough. We need to see proper investigations. We need to work with the Saudis to establish that international humanitarian law has been complied with. We have an export licensing system that responds if we find that it is not. We will then find that we cannot licence additional shipments of weapons.” [Continue reading…]

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Why we think the very first farmers were small groups with property rights

By Elizabeth Gallagher, UCL

For 95% of the history of modern humans we were exclusively hunter gatherers. Then suddenly about 12,000 years ago, something happened that revolutionised the way humans lived and enabled the complex societies we have today: farming.

But what triggered this revolution? Understanding this is incredibly challenging – because this occurred so far in the past, there are many factors to consider. However, by simulating the past using a complex computational model, we found that the switch from foraging to farming most likely began with very small groups of people that were using the concept of property rights.

Farming: an unlikely choice

It may seem obvious why we switched from foraging to farming: it made it possible to stay in one place, feed larger populations, have greater food security and build increasingly complex societies, political structures, economies and technologies. However, these advantages took time to develop and our early farmer ancestors would not have seen these coming.

Indeed, archaeological research suggests that when farming began it was not a particularly attractive lifestyle. It involved more work, a decrease in the quality of nutrition and health, an increase in disease and infection, and greater challenges in defending resources. For a hunter-gatherer at the cusp of the “agricultural revolution”, a switch to farming wasn’t the obvious choice.

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Assad’s lifeline: The authoritarian stabilization pact in Syria

Steven Heydemann writes: The Syrian conflict has become a testing ground for techniques of authoritarian stabilization — the coordinated efforts of an interconnected network of authoritarian governments to prop up a like-minded regime threatened by a popular insurgency. Syria today stands out as a case of how developed global authoritarian networks have become. It sheds important light on the growing capacity of authoritarian actors to mobilize for the collective defense of regimes that are seen as central to the stability of such networks.

The authoritarian stabilization pact between Russia, Iran, and Syria that has kept Bashar al-Assad in power offers a stark example of an emerging international landscape in which democracies will find their room for maneuver increasingly constrained. Existing international institutions, notably the UN Security Council, have proven inadequate to respond to the challenges posed by the rise of such transnational authoritarian networks. Without a coordinated effort among democracies to overcome the institutional paralysis that has prevented decisive international action in cases like Syria, including formal legal standing for norms such as the Responsibility to Protect, democracies will find themselves at a significant disadvantage in resolving major regional and international conflicts, even as they — along with millions of Syrians — are compelled to bear the growing adjustment costs imposed by an increasingly polarized international order.

Russian President Vladimir Putin’s decision in late September to escalate Russia’s military support for the Assad regime, in close cooperation with Iran and its proxy, Hezbollah, provides a troubling but important case of authoritarian collective action to prevent the collapse of a strategically important ally. Syria’s experience underscores the growing scope of strategic and military cooperation among leading authoritarian regimes, as well as their increasingly sophisticated integration of military, political, economic, and diplomatic instruments — all buttressed by the effective use of conventional and social media to influence public opinion and create alternate realities justifying their actions. The pragmatic, non-ideological nature of this emerging authoritarian mutual defense pact permits alliances of convenience among both state and non-state actors (including Hezbollah forces, pro-Assad militias, and a range of Shi’a mercenaries from Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan) and between authoritarian regimes that might otherwise be ideologically irreconcilable. In this ecumenical spirit, the leader of Hezbollah, Hassan Nasrallah, and the Primate of the Russian Orthodox Church have both endorsed Putin’s intervention in Syria, while Russian priests bless the missiles being loaded aboard Russian fighter jets. The Syrian case thus highlights the deepening cooperation among the Assad regime’s authoritarian allies, which now includes joint combat operations, intelligence sharing, and more tightly-linked diplomatic efforts. Russia has presented these new forms of cooperation as an alternative, authoritarian version of a “coalition of the willing,” drawing support from Egypt, China, and other authoritarian regimes that endorse the counter-terrorism narrative that Russia has used to justify its expanded intervention. [Continue reading…]

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The riddle of ISIS leader, Haji Bakr

Kyle Orton writes: Al-Khlifawi [better-known by his pseudonym Haji Bakr and as the architect of ISIS’s expansion in Syria] was one of several military-intelligence officers who joined JTJ/AQI [Jamaat at-Tawhid wal-Jihad/al-Qaeda in Iraq] in the immediate aftermath of Saddam’s downfall. The changes to the Saddam regime in its last fifteen years, notably the Islamic Faith Campaign, which created a religious movement I have taken to calling “Ba’athi-Salafism” under Saddam’s leadership, had transformed a hard-secular regime into an Islamist State, and transformed Iraqi society, leaving a much more Salafized and sectarian population. The Iraqi security forces were deeply affected by the Islamization of Saddam’s regime. Ba’athism was a spent force; religion had filled the void. There is every indication that al-Khlifawi was among those who had taken to a variant of Salafism long before the Saddam regime’s deposition.

The years between 2004 and 2012 are murky for al-Khlifawi, but two things are known for certain. One is al-Khlifawi lived; the other is that he was expanding his power within AQI/ISI.

Al-Khlifawi’s longevity can partly be ascribed to the fact that military professionals like him moved into the insurgency “not necessarily as its foot soldiers but more as its planners and logistical experts,” as Ali Allawi explains in The Occupation of Iraq: Winning the War, Losing the Peace, meaning these men were away from the frontlines where casualties among the insurgents were inevitably highest.

Two American actions then accidentally helped al-Khlifawi to live and to rise through ISI’s ranks.

First, al-Khlifawi was arrested in 2006 and held between Camp Bucca — now notorious as “little more than social-networking furloughs for jihadists“ — and Abu Ghraib until 2008, according to [Der Spiegel reporter, Christoph] Reuter, which would have kept him out of harm’s way during ISI’s darkest days. (There is a claim in ISIS’s eulogy that al-Khlifawi was imprisoned twice, on one occasion for four years. No further details are available at present.)

Second, the Coalition took apart ISI’s leadership structure, including essentially decapitating it by capturing or killing eighty percent of its top forty-two leaders between April and June 2010. The survivors of this cull were largely FREs [former (Saddam) regime elements]. [Continue reading…]

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Senior U.S. intelligence official says escalation of Russian bombing in Syria ‘should be fun’

When journalists grant government sources anonymity, the proforma explanation for doing so is the following line (or one of its common variants): officials spoke on the condition of anonymity because they’re not authorized to comment publicly.

That claim is almost always false. Authorization is besides the point. The primary reason for an official wanting anonymity is so that his or her remarks will have no return address. No one other than the journalist offering their source camouflage will be in a position to come back with a follow-up question. When there is no risk of any comeback, assertions can be made and opinions expressed in the knowledge that they will escape critical scrutiny. Likewise, propositions can be floated and later easily abandoned.

Another reason sources want anonymity is for the same reason that internet trolls conceal their identities: they don’t want to be held responsible for the language they use. They imagine that invisibility creates space for unvarnished honesty — even though the evidence more often shows that this kind of freedom from social inhibitions has a habit of releasing the inner jerk.

The Daily Beast reports: [S]ix U.S. intelligence and military officials told The Daily Beast that they hoped an ISIS attack on Russian civilians would force Putin to finally take the gloves off and attack the group, which the U.S. has been trying to dislodge from Iraq and Syria for more than a year, without success.

“Now maybe they will start attacking [ISIS],” one senior defense official smugly wondered last week. “And stop helping them,” referring to ISIS gains in Aleppo that came, in part, because the group took advantage of Russian strikes on other rebels and militant outfits.

Since the plane crashed, Russia has struck two ISIS-controlled areas in Syria: Raqqa and Palmyra.

“I suppose now he’ll really let ISIS have it. This should be fun,” one senior intelligence official told The Daily Beast. [Continue reading…]

Fun, perhaps, if you’re an intelligence analyst with a 9-5 job in Langley, Virginia, or the Pentagon. But although Raqqa and Palmyra are under the control of ISIS, they still have civilian populations. And bombing isn’t fun for anyone on the receiving end.

It is already clear that in its bombing operations in Syria, Russia is not greatly concerned about the precision of its targeting. It’s definition of inefficiency is for a jet to return to its base without releasing its bombs.

Those U.S. officials who now relish the prospect of Russia “finally take the gloves off” against ISIS are conjuring images of what are euphemistically described as “robust kinetic operations” — the type that ISIS apparently deserves. Implicit in this characterization is the assumption that restraint is an expression of timidity, the antidote to which is unrestrained force.

In reality, the effect of indiscriminate bombing will be to tell local populations that there are no outside forces working for their liberation.

If the enemies of ISIS pose a greater threat than ISIS itself, the logic for joining ISIS only becomes more compelling.

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Suspects in jet bombing expose their ISIS allies in Syria to a backlash from Russia

The New York Times reports from Cairo: Within months of the military takeover here two years ago, a little-known group calling itself Ansar Beit al-Maqdis managed to penetrate rings of checkpoints and heavy security to carry out a string of startling attacks, assassinating a senior police official at his home near here and blowing up a security headquarters here and in Mansoura, Egypt.

They were inside jobs. The Egyptian authorities concluded that the group had received crucial advice from two policemen, Lt. Mohamed Eweis and Col. Sameh el-Azizi, who were among a series of military and security officers the group eventually recruited.

Now the same group, operating as the Sinai Province of the Islamic State, is the prime suspect in yet another inside job: The bombing of the Russian charter jet that exploded last week in midair over the desert north of Sharm el Sheikh, Egypt, which killed all 224 people aboard. British and American officials say they believe it increasingly likely that the group planted the bomb before takeoff.

No government has confirmed that the Sinai Province has taken responsibility. But the group has eagerly claimed it and others in the Islamic State, also known as ISIS or ISIL, have celebrated — positions that reflect drastic changes in both the Islamic State and the Sinai Province since the Egyptian unit first pledged its allegiance one year ago. Attacks by the Sinai Province, previously a mostly Bedouin group that focused mainly on fighting the Egyptian security forces, have quickly grown in sophistication and bloodshed. If its role in bringing down the plane is confirmed, the Sinai Province may have even momentarily surprised and surpassed its vicious parent, and, some analysts said, risked a broad backlash against the Islamic State itself.

If the militants in the Sinai found an inside man who could help bring down a Russia-bound jet, “did the ISIS guys in Syria say, ‘Sure, why not? The more enemies the merrier?’ ” asked William McCants, a researcher at the Brookings Institution and the author of “The ISIS Apocalypse,” a study of the group. “Or are they just celebrating it after the fact, so they don’t look out of the loop on such a major attack?”

The parent group, based in Raqqa, Syria, has much to lose by approving or even embracing the apparent bombing, he argued. Although supporters of the Islamic State are calling the jet’s crash retribution against Russia for its intervention in Syria to prop up President Bashar al-Assad, Mr. McCants noted that the Russians had mostly attacked Western-backed rebel groups that were foes of the Islamic State.

“Russia has been hitting their enemies for them,” Mr. McCants argued. “I can’t imagine the guys in Raqqa want Russia to go all in against them.” [Continue reading…]

TASS reports: Russian Aerospace Forces have made 137 sorties over last three days and delivered airstrikes at 448 infrastructure facilities of terrorists in Syria, Russian Defense Ministry official spokesman Igor Konashenkov told journalists on Monday.

“Over the last three days, Russian jets made 137 sorties in the Syrian Arab Republic and destroyed 448 facilities of terrorist infrastructure in the provinces of Aleppo, Damascus, Idlib, Latakia, Raqqa, Hama and Homs,” Konashenkov said. [Continue reading…]

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‘High probability’ Russian flight was bombed, says UK foreign secretary

The Guardian reports: There is a “high probability” that a bomb planted by an Islamic State supporter brought down the Russian airliner which crashed over Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula just over a week ago, according to Britain’s foreign secretary.

Drawing one of the most explicit links yet between Isis and the incident, Philip Hammond said that this did not necessarily mean that the attack was directed from the group’s headquarters in Syria.

Rather, he said: “It may have been an individual who was inspired by Isis who was self-radicalised by looking at Isis propaganda and was acting in the name of Isis without necessarily being directed.” [Continue reading…]

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Russia says bomb may have caused plane crash in Egypt

The Wall Street Journal reports: Russia’s prime minister said Monday that a bomb may have downed the passenger jet that crashed in Egypt, Moscow’s strongest acknowledgment yet that it may have been a terrorist attack.

Russia’s shift in tone followed assertions by British and American officials that terrorism was the likely cause of the Oct. 31 crash of a Russian-operated Airbus A321 in Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula. All 224 people on board died.

“The probability of a terrorist act, of course, is held as a cause of what happened,” Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev said in an excerpt of a forthcoming interview with Rossiiskaya Gazeta, according to state news agency TASS.

The Kremlin’s spokesman added that the U.K. shared some intelligence with Russia regarding the crash, but didn’t comment on the nature of that information. [Continue reading…]

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How those who cling to ‘stability’ end up fueling terrorism

Mohamad Bazzi writes: In Sisi, the House of Saud found a new strongman for Egypt. Sisi had served as an Egyptian military attaché to Saudi Arabia, and as he led the crackdown against the Brotherhood, the kingdom became his most important sponsor. The Sauds provided more than $12 billion to keep the Egyptian economy afloat, and they pressed two other Gulf monarchies, the United Arab Emirates and Kuwait, to pledge more aid. Since the coup, Sisi’s regime has received over $30 billion in support from the three Gulf monarchies.

A series of leaked audio recordings of Sisi and other top generals showed that the Emirates had provided funds to the Egyptian military to finance the protest campaign against Morsi. “Sir, we will need 200 tomorrow from Tamarod’s account—you know, the part from the UAE, which they transferred,” Sisi’s chief of staff, General Abbas Kamel, tells another general, later clarifying that he means 200,000 Egyptian pounds — about $30,000. At the time, the group that led the popular protests, Tamarod (Arabic for “Rebellion”), was portrayed in much of the Arab and Western press as a grassroots campaign that emerged spontaneously to agitate against Morsi’s misrule. After the coup, one recording captured Sisi instructing Kamel to keep billions of dollars in Saudi and other Gulf aid in accounts controlled by the defense ministry, rather than the civilian government. On other recordings, Sisi and his fellow generals can be heard snickering at their Gulf patrons and how easy it is to demand large sums from them. “Why are you laughing?” Sisi asks his chief of staff. “They have money like rice, man!”

In another recording, Sisi sounds incredulous of the sums he and the generals have received from their Gulf allies. “No, no, no! It’s not $8 billion in six months, no!” he says, before one of his deputies convinces him they have received a total of over $30 billion. “May God continue providing!” Sisi responds.

Today, Sisi’s regime can continue its crackdown with impunity partly because the United States and other world powers made clear that they favor stability over democracy. Much of the West accepted the coup and has remained largely silent about the sham trials and mass death sentences being handed down by the Egyptian judiciary. The United States provides Egypt with $1.3 billion in military aid each year, but it has been reluctant to use that as leverage against the Egyptian regime. Neither President Barack Obama nor Secretary of State John Kerry has substantively criticized Sisi’s dictatorship. [Continue reading…]

An editorial in the New York Times says: Viewing its alliance with Egypt as too crucial to fail, the Obama administration has done too little to confront the Sisi government’s expanding authoritarianism. Congress has continued to award Egypt $1.3 billion in military aid each year, despite ample evidence that its armed forces commit human rights abuses with impunity. The Obama administration and other Western governments have sought to nudge the Egyptian government to protect civil liberties with gentle public admonishments.

That approach is clearly not working. Egypt desperately needs international investment and deeply values its military relationship with the United States. Trade and military aid should be conditioned on clear signs that the government will respect freedom of expression and what’s left of the country’s civil society. [Continue reading…]

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Hossam Bahgat, journalist and advocate, is released by Egypt’s military

The New York Times reports: The Egyptian military on Tuesday released the journalist Hossam Bahgat, hours before planned demonstrations in Cairo, London and other cities to call for his freedom.

Mr. Bahgat, 36, founded a highly respected human rights advocacy group, the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights, in 2002. Over the last two years, he has become a leading investigative journalist in Egypt, writing in English and Arabic for the online news organization Mada Masr. [Continue reading…]

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Hillary Clinton is an enemy of Israel

Gideon Levy writes: Hillary Clinton’s election as U.S. president would ensure Israel’s continued decline and degeneration. And so she is not a friend, but an enemy. She must not be allowed to deceive and present herself as a friend of Israel, as she tried so ingratiatingly to do in an article published in The Forward (“How I would reaffirm unbreakable bond with Israel — and Benjamin Netanyahu”) last week. The tear ducts were targeted as she wrote of how she assisted Magen David Adom in being accepted to the International Red Cross. But she and those like her – false friends of Israel – have been one of the curses on this country for years. Because of them, Israel can continue to act as wildly as it likes, thumbing its nose at the world and paying no price. Because of them, it can destroy itself unhindered.

Whether Clinton believes what she wrote or simply wanted once again to sell her soul for a fistful of dollars from Haim Saban and other Jewish donors, the result is extremely embarrassing. A love letter to Israel, the likes of which no U.S. statesman would ever write to another country. Americans believe “Israel is more than a country – it’s a dream,” she states. Most of the world calls it a nightmare, yet Clinton says a dream. What dream exactly? The dream of tyrannical control over another people? Racism? Nationalism? The killing of women and children in Gaza?

What happened to the Hillary Rodham Clinton who in her youth fought for civil rights and against the Vietnam War, and as a lawyer specialized in children’s rights? Did she not hear what her dream state is doing to Palestinian children? What happened to the glorious career woman who was considered liberal and justice-seeking on her way up? Did she forget it all? Does money buy everything? Or, when it comes to Israel, do all principles suddenly change?

Did the former secretary of state not hear about the Israeli occupation? After all, she didn’t mention it once in her article. This is not the time or place to anger Saban. To Clinton, Israel is a “thriving democracy” and to hell with the violent and totalitarian regime in its backyard. And so Clinton is also an enemy of peace and justice. She doesn’t believe there has been the slightest damage to Palestinian rights. Israelis being stabbed in Jerusalem “appalls” Clinton. Palestinians being unjustifiably shot to death, meanwhile, fails to register with her. They will love her for that on Fifth Avenue. Religious figures who encourage killing are, of course, only Muslim; only Israeli security must be vouchsafed. The synagogues of Manhattan will love that, too. [Continue reading…]

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Divide in Tehran grows over crackdown by Revolutionary Guards

EA Worldview reports: Tension is continuing to build within Iran’s regime over the crackdown by the Revolutionary Guards, with arrests of journalists and businessmen, following President Rouhani’s criticism of hardliners on Sunday.

Rouhani said at the Tehran Press Fair:

It is not tolerable that some media are permanently immune from the threat of closure and banning and enjoy permanent security [services] support. So they not only write whatever they please, but also play the role of the secret police in such a way that by reading certain newspapers, one finds out who will be arrested tomorrow, which [newspaper] will be banned and whose honor will be done away with.

Alaeddin Boroujerdi, the chair of Parliament’s National Security Commission, defended the Guards by saying that “one of [its] missions and responsibilities is to protect the country’s security”. He said the arrests of journalists, including five in the past two weeks, was “not without reason”: “The speculations being uttered that these arrests are political and connected to the JCPOA [the July 14 nuclear deal with the 5+1 Powers] are not fair and realistic.”

Others hit back at the President. Head of judiciary Sadegh Larijani accused Rouhani of “insulting” the judicial authorities by claiming that some media enjoy “immunity” against bans and closure. [Continue reading…]

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How will Erdogan solve ‘terror problem’ that brought him a victory?

Kadri Gursel writes: The 49.4% of the vote the Justice and Development Party (AKP) got in the Nov. 1 elections beat all forecasts, astonishing not only Turkey and the world but the party’s own quarters as well. How the AKP was able to boost its vote by a fifth in only five months after losing its parliamentary majority with 40.8% in June is now an imperative question.

With an outcome of such an extraordinary nature, the AKP — a party supposed to have fatigued and lost some appeal after 13 years in power — must have resolved some major problem in Turkey in five months’ time or convinced part of the electorate that only the AKP could resolve that problem.

And what is this problem? For an accurate diagnosis, one needs to compare the two different Turkeys that existed ahead of the June 7 and Nov. 1 elections. There was only one new problem that emerged after June 7: the resumption of bloody clashes with the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) and suicide bombings blamed on the Islamic State (IS). [Continue reading…]

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Classified report on the CIA’s secret prisons is caught in limbo

The New York Times reports: A Senate security officer stepped out of the December chill last year and delivered envelopes marked “Top Secret” to the Pentagon, the C.I.A., the State Department and the Justice Department. Inside each packet was a disc containing a 6,700-page classified report on the C.I.A.’s secret prison program and a letter from Senator Dianne Feinstein, urging officials to read the report to ensure that the lessons were not lost to time.

Today, those discs sit untouched in vaults across Washington, still in their original envelopes. The F.B.I. has not retrieved a copy held for it in the Justice Department’s safe. State Department officials, who locked up their copy and marked it “Congressional Record — Do Not Open, Do Not Access” as soon as it arrived, have not read it either.

Nearly a year after the Senate released a declassified 500-page summary of the report, the fate of the entire document remains in limbo, the subject of battles in the courts and in Congress. Until those disputes are resolved, the Justice Department has prohibited officials from the government agencies that possess it from even opening the report, effectively keeping the people in charge of America’s counterterrorism future from reading about its past. There is also the possibility that the documents could remain locked in a Senate vault for good. [Continue reading…]

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