A cyclone brews over Saudi Arabia

David Ignatius writes: An internal political storm is roiling Saudi Arabia, as the crown prince and his deputy jockey for power under an aging King Salman — while some other members of the royal family agitate on behalf of a third senior prince who they claim would have wider family support.

For the secretive oil kingdom, whose internal debates are usually opaque to outsiders, the recent strife has been unusually open. The tension between Crown Prince Mohammed bin Nayef and his deputy, Mohammed bin Salman (the king’s son), is gossiped about across the Arab world. Dissenters from the royal family have begun circulating open letters that have drawn tens of thousands of readers online.

Succession worries were in the background in early September when Salman, 79, visited Washington, accompanied by son Mohammed bin Salman, 30. U.S. officials were eager to meet the young deputy crown prince. But they were concerned that “MBS,” as he’s known, might be challenging Mohammed bin Nayef, who is viewed in Washington as a reliable ally against al-Qaeda. [Continue reading…]

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What are Russia’s grand designs in Central Asia?

By David Lewis, University of Exeter

While international attention has focused on Russian military operations in Ukraine and Syria, Moscow has also been involved in a flurry of diplomatic and security initiatives to address the growing instability in northern Afghanistan.

But its moves to bolster regional security are more than just a response to local security concerns. Russia has a broader strategy that could leave it as the dominant security actor across much of Eurasia.

Even before the shock of the Taliban occupation of Kunduz in late September, Russian officials were concerned about the fragile security situation in northern Afghanistan, including the rise of Islamic State in northern Afghanistan and its potential spread to Central Asia and thence to Russia’s large Muslim community. As if to emphasise the domestic threat, on October 12 Russian police announced that they had uncovered a terrorist plot in Moscow apparently involving a group of Central Asian militants.

Insecurity in Afghanistan may pose a potential security threat for Moscow, but it is being seized upon as a major geopolitical opportunity. Against a backdrop of failed Western policies across much of Russia’s southern flank, Moscow is moving quickly to fill a security vacuum in the region. It is strengthening existing alliances to consolidate its hold over former Soviet republics in Central Asia and reshaping the security dynamics of the region around its own favoured security groupings – the Collective Security Treaty Organisation (CSTO) and the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO).

The first step has been a series of meeting with Central Asian leaders, all on the front line in case of renewed Afghan insecurity. A meeting between Russian president Vladimir Putin and Emomali Rakhmon, the president of Tajikistan, led to promises of more attack helicopters to bolster the existing Russian military based in the country, which has become the hub of a well-developed defence system against cross-border infiltration.

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ISIS is making these Afghans long for the Taliban

The Washington Post reports: When the Islamic State fighters seized the Mahmand Valley, they poured pepper into the wounds of their enemies, said villagers. Then, they seared their hands in vats of boiling oil. A group of villagers was blindfolded, tortured and blown apart with explosives buried underneath them.

“They pulled out my brother’s teeth before they forced him to sit on the bombs,” recalled Malik Namos, a tribal elder who escaped the valley along with thousands of other villagers. “They are more vicious than the Taliban, than any group we have seen.”

At war for more than three decades, Afghans are familiar with violence perpetrated by a raft of armies and militias. But even by their jaded standards, the emergence here of the Islamic State — the extremist organization that arose in the Middle East — has ushered in a new age of brutality. [Continue reading…]

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Too soon to claim ‘third intifada,’ Palestinian thinkers say

Al Jazeera reports: Protests in the last few weeks are a clear sign that a new generation of Palestinians is rising up against Israel’s occupation, Palestinian activists, politicians and scholars said this week — but they added that it’s too early to tell if the movement can be sustained.

“This phase of popular resistance broke out spontaneously, in reaction to months of fascist-leaning policies of the most racist, settler-dominated and far-right government in Israel’s history,” Omar Barghouti, a founder of the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement, told Al Jazeera in an email.

Whether this new uprising will be sustained or fizzle out depends on whether the various groups involved can develop a unifying vision and political leadership, said Khaled Elgindy, a fellow at the Center for Middle East Policy at the Brookings Institution, a think tank based in Washington, D.C. [Continue reading…]

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Education under occupation: everyday disruption at a Palestinian university

By Brendan Browne, Queen’s University Belfast

As the clock moves towards 12.45pm I begin to anxiously await the flurry of emails that I’ve come to expect in advance of my 2pm class. The class is on law and human rights. Students email to say that a deterioration in the security situation means they must stay within the relative safety of their own area, their parents naturally apprehensive that travel across the West Bank could potentially be dangerous.

This has become the everyday reality this semester for students attending Al Quds University, and Al Quds (Bard) University – a partnership with the American liberal arts institution.

The university soon gives the call for all staff and students to evacuate. In an entirely depressing but ultimately predictable scenario, Palestinian students will not be able to take their classes in literature, law, biology or media. Those on site make their way to the agreed “safe” area with alcohol-drenched cotton balls handed out by the ever vigilant staff of the Palestinian Red Crescent to ward off the effects of the inevitable deluge of tear gas.

The university has tried to continue life as normal. On October 13, Al Quds university welcomed the president of India, Pranab Mukherjee on campus with great pomp and splendour to receive an honorary degree. Indian flags adorned the beautiful campus grounds and academics dressed in ceremonial gowns to applaud the visit of the world leader.

Welcoming the Indian president on campus.
Brendan Browne., Author provided

But there were also protests from students angry at recent violence against them in Jerusalem, using this platform to draw attention to their ongoing suffering. Within 45 minutes of the Indian contingent leaving, Israeli forces stormed the campus and violently arrested eight students while simultaneously causing significant damage to property, according to the student group Mojama’a Alanshita which posted a video of some of the arrests on Facebook.

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Why Egypt’s new parliament will be born broken

Nathan J. Brown writes: Over the coming weeks, Egyptians will vote in parliamentary elections in which nobody knows who will win yet everybody knows the result. The regime will then claim (inaccurately) that the “road map” — announced when former president Mohamed Morsi was deposed in July 2013 — has been completed. Few observers have high hopes for the new parliament, but its lackluster future has roots in the state’s complicated past.

Regardless of the results of individual races, the parliament will play the same role: the body will be weak but not toothless; it will be less a rubber stamp than an annoying speed bump for Egypt’s rulers. Virtually everyone is likely to come away disappointed: Egypt’s leaders who show no interest in politics will find a parliament that must be massaged; the opposition will find few points of entry; deputies will enjoy little authority; and voters will find little choice. Egypt’s parliamentary system seems to serve no purpose but appears to have been built on purpose. What is the secret behind the apparently planned obsolescence of the parliament?

This is not a Stalinist election. Multiple candidates and party slates are competing. With a new set of rules, some redrawn boundaries, untested electoral actors and influential local bigwigs jockeying in new alliances, it is difficult to forecast individual races. But the expected outcome — a motley group of politicians, pundits and patrons (but not strong parties) seeking access to resources, platforms for posturing and prestige — remains the same. [Continue reading…]

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KRG ruling party ejects rivals, escalating political crisis in Iraqi Kurdistan

Iraq Oil Report: The Kurdistan Regional Government’s (KRG) ruling party has begun using its control of security forces to unilaterally expel its most potent political rivals from government – dramatically destabilizing a region already roiled by war, economic crisis, and popular discontent.

Security forces answering to the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) of Massoud Barzani, who continues acting as president after the expiration of his term on Aug. 19, prevented KRG Parliament Speaker Yousif Mohammed, a member of the rival Gorran party, from passing a checkpoint into the Kurdish capital of Erbil on Monday. KDP-aligned forces also barred Gorran ministers from entering government offices.

“An effort has been orchestrated as a military coup d’état against the Parliament, a legitimate institution,” Mohammed said. [Continue reading…]

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GCHQ’s surveillance hasn’t proved itself to be worth the cost to human rights

By Fiona de Londras, University of Birmingham

The release of yet more of Edward Snowden’s leaked files reveals the still-astonishing scale and breadth of government surveillance after more than a year of revelations. These recent papers revealed to The Intercept website discuss a programme within Britain’s GCHQ known as “Karma Police”, in which the intelligence agency gathered more than 1.1 trillion pieces of information on UK citizens between August 2007 and March 2009.

Spurred on by the expansion of intercept warrants under the Terrorism Act 2006, this information is users’ internet metadata – details of phone calls, email messages and browser connections that includes passwords, contacts, phone numbers, email addresses, and folders used to organise emails, but not the actual content of messages or emails.

Metadata can help identify people of interest, build profiles, and assist with decisions to start or escalate surveillance of individuals. All this information can be collected often at a fraction of the cost of doing this through traditional methods. In other words, metadata is not insignificant – and this is precisely why governments are so committed to collecting and processing it. However, bulk metadata collection – where information is collected from everyone whether a “person of interest” or not – is rightly a source of deep anxiety from both security and human rights perspectives.

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Deforestation is altering the world’s climate

The New York Times reports: Like California, much of Brazil is gripped by one of the worst droughts in its history. Huge reservoirs are bone dry and water has been rationed in São Paulo, a megacity of 20 million people; in Rio; and in many other places.

Drought is usually thought of as a natural disaster beyond human control. But as researchers peer deeper into the Earth’s changing bioclimate — the vastly complex global interplay between living organisms and climatic forces — they are better appreciating the crucial role that deforestation plays.

Cutting down forests releases stored carbon dioxide, which traps heat and contributes to atmospheric warming. But forests also affect climate in other ways, by absorbing more solar energy than grasslands, for example, or releasing vast amounts of water vapor. Many experts believe that deforestation is taking place on such a large scale, especially in South America, that it has already significantly altered the world’s climate — even though its dynamics are not well understood.

“A lot of people are scrambling to make observations in the Amazon this year, with the expected big El Niño coming,” said Abigail L. S. Swann, an eco-climatologist at the University of Washington. “It’s expected to drive significant drought over the Amazon, which will change how much water trees have available.”

Humans have long settled in places where there is adequate and predictable precipitation, and large forests play a crucial role in generating dependable amounts of rainfall. Trees take up moisture from the soil and transpire it, lifting it into the atmosphere. A fully grown tree releases 1,000 liters of water vapor a day into the atmosphere: The entire Amazon rain forest sends up 20 billion tons a day. [Continue reading…]

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Our moral identity makes us who we are

Nina Strohminger writes: e morning after her accident, a woman I’ll call Kate awoke in a daze. She looked at the man next to her in bed. He resembled her husband, with the same coppery beard and freckles dusted across his shoulders. But this man was definitely not her husband.

Panicked, she packed a small bag and headed to her psychiatrist’s office. On the bus, there was a man she had been encountering with increasing frequency over the past several weeks. The man was clever, he was a spy. He always appeared in a different form: one day as a little girl in a sundress, another time as a bike courier who smirked at her knowingly. She explained these bizarre developments to her doctor, who was quickly becoming one of the last voices in this world she could trust. But as he spoke, her stomach sank with a dreaded realisation: this man, too, was an impostor.

Kate has Capgras syndrome, the unshakeable belief that someone – often a loved one, sometimes oneself – has been replaced with an exact replica. She also has Fregoli syndrome, the delusion that the same person is taking on a variety of shapes, like an actor donning an expert disguise. Capgras and Fregoli delusions offer hints about an extraordinary cognitive mechanism active in the healthy mind, a mechanism so exquisitely tuned that we are hardly ever aware of it. This mechanism ascribes to each person a unique identity, and then meticulously tracks and updates it. This mechanism is crucial to virtually every human interaction, from navigating a party to navigating a marriage. Without it, we quickly fall apart. [Continue reading…]

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Russia’s intervention in Syria may help ISIS advance in Iraq

Hassan Hassan writes: Nearly two weeks after the Russian intervention began in Syria, one could say it has not got off to a good start. Last week, the Syrian regime launched its first ground offensive against the rebels under Russian air support.

The assault, in Hama’s northern countryside, failed spectacularly – rebels affiliated to the Free Syrian Army destroyed at least 18 tanks and held their ground. The anti-government forces had advanced last month towards Al Masasnah, where the battles took place on Monday, and one of the villages that would lead the rebels further into the regime’s heartlands. The offensive was thus an important operation for the government and at the heart of the Russian forces’ role in Syria.

The following day, US officials claimed cruise missiles fired by Russian warships in the Caspian Sea crashed in Iran. And over the weekend, the Syrian army also lost control of “the UN hill” in Quneitra.

But the most significant development happened on Wednesday, when ISIL swept through several rebel-held villages and reached the doorsteps of Aleppo. The advances, made possible by the disruptive targeting of opposition forces committed to fighting ISIL, were the most important gains for the organisation in Aleppo since the rebels expelled it from much of the north in early 2014.

Of course, it is hard to judge the Russian intervention based on last week’s performance. But the developments so far serve as a reality check for early speculation about the scope of the Russian role, such as a ground offensive to expel ISIL from Palmyra. Moscow will be forced to focus its mission on the daunting task of securing the regime’s vital areas. [Continue reading…]

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Russia airstrikes help push Syria rebels closer, for now

The Wall Street Journal reports: Moscow’s intervention in Syria’s multisided civil war has spurred some of the country’s fractious rebels to fight together, offering another shot at a more unified front against the Assad regime and its Russian and Iranian allies.

Since Russian warplanes entered the conflict two weeks ago, three local rebel alliances have emerged across the provinces where President Bashar al-Assad aims to regain ground and consolidate control. Although such alliances have been short-lived in the past, rebels said more were expected in the coming weeks.

Opposition factions including U.S.-backed rebels and Nusra Front, al Qaeda’s affiliate in Syria, have come together to counter a regime offensive across several fronts in the northwest, while others continue to fight Islamic State militants.

On Monday, regime forces briefly retook part of Kafar Nabouda, a rebel-held town in Hama province, which it has been attacking for a week. More than 700 rockets were fired on rebels and Russian planes launched numerous airstrikes, said Abu al-Majid al-Homsi, a commander in Hama with Suqoor al-Ghab, a rebel group that has received training by the Central Intelligence Agency.

But hours later, rebels were able to push them back as a result of tight coordination through a joint command post they established last week, he said.

“Any coalition will benefit the rebels,” said Maj. Yasser Abdolraheem, a commander with Faylaq al-Sham, a moderate group that has fighters in several provinces. “But time and time again problems and differences emerge and they don’t survive.”

Rebel coalitions have formed and disbanded regularly over the 4½-year war, and their ideological and strategic differences remain profound. Rivalries among rebel leaders have also endured, and scores are sometimes settled violently among the rank-and-file.

“You have those kinds of local-unity projects and ad hoc alliances forming all the time, and it’s usually in preparation for when they are going to attack something or for a certain goal or a certain offensive,” said Aron Lund, editor of Syria in Crisis, a website run by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, a Washington-based think tank. “Most of these unity experiments tend to either fade away after that goal is achieved or they fade away without that goal being achieved.”

Amid the latest fighting, Islamic State militants also have seized the opportunity to advance against the rebels in some areas. [Continue reading…]

Aymenn al-Tamimi writes: In a joint statement released on 5 October, 41 Syrian rebel factions condemned the “Russian military aggression against the Syrian people,” describing it as a “genuine occupation of the land even if some sides claim that it was done on official request from the Assad regime.” The statement added that the Russian airstrikes in Homs province, which left “approximately 50 martyrs from the civilians,” should be considered Russia’s first war crime in Syria. The statement went on to describe “any forces occupying the land of our beloved homeland” as “legitimate targets,” and repeated the standard mantra of commitment to Syria’s territorial unity, opposing any sort of “partition project,” while concluding with a call on “all armed revolutionary factions” to “unite ranks” and put aside differences.

The language of the statement, especially in referring to Syria as watanina al-habib (Arabic for “our beloved homeland”), excludes groups with transnational jihadist agendas. The signatories include familiar mainstream groups whose vision is confined to the national framework, such as Jaish al-Islam (based primarily in Damascus), Ahrar al-Sham (arguably the single most powerful rebel group in Syria), the Saudi-backed quietist Salafi coalition known as the Authenticity and Development Front and the southern FSA Yarmouk Army. But does this statement actually represent greater unity among these factions? Or will the Russian intervention push rebels toward jihadi factions like Syria’s al-Qaida affiliate Jabhat al-Nusra – as is widely feared?

The answer is that the prospect for real mergers among these signatories is marginal. Whatever impressions of political unity dealings in Turkey and joint online statements might convey, groups on the ground are localized and tend to be divided. The case of Jabhat al-Shamiyya, one of the signatories to the statement, is emblematic of the problem. [Continue reading…]

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Ankara suicide bombings cast long shadow over Turkey’s Syria policy

The National reports: The deadly suicide bombings in Ankara have heightened fears that Turkey’s troubled Syria policy may be experiencing blowback.

The twin attacks – Turkey’s most devastating in recent history – killed at least 97 civilians and wounded 246 more on Saturday during a predominantly Kurdish peace rally in the capital.

ISIL is the prime suspect in the suicide bombings, and investigators are close to identifying one of the perpetrators, prime minister Ahmet Davutoglu told Turkish broadcaster NTV on Monday.

Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan has dangerously supported hardline militant groups – such as the Army of Conquest, a coalition that includes Al Qaeda’s Syria branch Jabhat Al Nusra and the Salafist group Ahrar Al Sham – to topple Syrian president Bashar Al Assad.

His contentious policy in Syria was already under strain before this, with Russia directly intervening in the war and the US forging close ties with Turkey’s other nemesis on the ground – the Kurdish Democratic Union Party (PYD).

The growing tussle of superpowers in the Syrian war is edging Turkey out of the equation, according to analysts. [Continue reading…]

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Turkey warns U.S., Russia against backing Kurdish militia in Syria

Reuters reports: Turkey has warned the United States and Russia it will not tolerate Kurdish territorial gains by Kurdish militia close to its frontiers in north-western Syria, two senior officials said.

“This is clear cut for us and there is no joking about it,” one official said of the possibility of Syrian Kurdish militia crossing the Euphrates to extend control along Turkish borders from Iraq’s Kurdistan region towards the Mediterranean coast.

Turkey fears advances by Kurdish YPG militia, backed by its PYD political wing, on the Syrian side of its 900 km (560-mile) border will fuel separatist ambitions among Kurds in its own southeastern territories. But Washington has supported YPG fighters as an effective force in combating Islamic State.

“The PYD has been getting closer with both the United States and Russia of late. We view the PYD as a terrorist group and we want all countries to consider the consequences of their cooperation,” one of the Turkish officials said.

Turkey suspects Russia, which launched air strikes in Syria two weeks ago, has also been lending support to the YPG and PYD.

“With support from Russia, the PYD is trying to capture land between Jarablus and Azaz, going west of the Euphrates. We will never accept this,” the official said. [Continue reading…]

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Amnesty: U.S.-backed Kurdish rebels may have committed war crimes in Syria

The Washington Post reports: A new report from human rights group Amnesty International suggests that Kurdish forces in northern Syria, among the most significant U.S. ground partners in the fight against the Islamic State, may have committed war crimes with a campaign of displacement and home demolitions aimed mostly at the local Arab population.

In the report released on Monday, Amnesty says it has found evidence that the local armed group known as the People’s Protection Units – better known by the acronym “YPG” – forced Arabs and Turkmen in northern Syria from their homes on behalf of the Democratic Union Party (PYD), a Kurdish political organization that has held de facto control of northern Syria’s so-called “Autonomous Administration” since January 2014.

“By deliberately demolishing civilian homes, in some cases razing and burning entire villages, displacing their inhabitants with no justifiable military grounds, the Autonomous Administration is abusing its authority and brazenly flouting international humanitarian law, in attacks that amount to war crimes,” Lama Fakih, a senior crisis adviser at Amnesty, said in a statement. [Continue reading…]

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Putin’s model of success

Jackson Diehl writes: Western officials who pronounce themselves puzzled about Vladi­mir Putin’s intentions in Syria are missing some big clues. There is a clear model for the campaign Russia is pursuing on behalf of Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad, a legacy that is Putin’s pride: Chechnya.

The Muslim republic in the North Caucasus and the decade-long war that Putin launched there in September 1999 have mostly been forgotten by the outside world since the dictator installed there by Putin, Ramzan Kadyrov, consolidated control in the late 2000s. But the Kremlin regards it as a “good, unique example in history of [the] combat of terrorism,” as Dmitry Medvedev, Putin’s prime minister, put it. Chechnya, Medvedev said last year, is “one of the business cards of Russia.”

What are the components of this winning formula? First, define all opposition to the prevailing regime as terrorist, indistinguishable from the most extreme jihadists. That enables a fundamental political aim: to eliminate alternatives. In Syria today, moderate and secular opposition forces arguably are getting harder to find. That wasn’t the case in Chechnya in 1999. The country’s nationalist president, Aslan Maskhadov, had won a democratic election, defeating an Islamist opponent by 59 to 23 percent. His predecessor, Dzhokhar Dudayev, was so secularized that he was unaware how many times a day Muslims pray. [Continue reading…]

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Russian airstrikes allow ISIS to advance

The Guardian reports: Bunkered down in his base just north of Hama, Captain Mustafa of the Free Syria Army (FSA) is getting used to the Russian airstrikes. And he is growing just as accustomed to the assurances of his American backers: “We can have most of the weapons we want,” he says. “But nothing to shoot down the planes.”

More than a week since the Russian strikes began targeting them, and days after the US announced an end to its efforts to train forces to fight Isis, the original anti-Assad rebels of Syria’s north-west remain entrenched, though battered, in the towns and villages of their heartland.

Nearby, Syrian forces, which had barely moved for the past year, are trying to advance from the south, said Mustafa, the military spokesman of an FSA unit, Tajamul Ala’Azza. Further away in the north-east, Isis has made its strongest gains in many months, advancing across the top of Aleppo, while a mix of opposition groups clash nearby with Russian jets and artillery.

“The Russians have given them a boost, which is what they wanted to do by attacking the Syrian people,” said Mustafa. “The biggest disaster for them would be to acknowledge that a real opposition remains defiant and strong.

“Well, we say to the Russian bear that we will chase you to your grave. You don’t know what you’ve got yourself into.”

Among the rebel groups, of northern and western Syria, a reckoning has been taking place ever since Moscow ramped up its efforts to defend Bashar al-Assad’s regime earlier this month. The opposition has been gaming whether its allies would follow suit, giving them the firepower it had long withheld to combat the threat from the skies.

So far the answer is no. “It’s the same as it’s always been,” said Mustafa. “Our supply lines are still open, but we still can’t get any anti-aircraft missiles. The Americans have never changed their position on that.” he sighed. “That’s politics.”

Rebels in the vicinity of the regime strongholds of Tartous and Latakia, and the nearby Alawite hinterland, have been hit especially hard in the Russian offensive which was touted as a campaign against Isis, but which the US, Nato, and rebel groups claim has almost exclusively targeted non-jihadi opposition groups.

Other rebel groups in Idlib province have also been pounded and fear that Russia’s strategy is to destroy the opposition, leaving only the regime army and Isis standing. The Russian offensive west of Aleppo has stymied an opposition squeeze on the city. Meanwhile, Isis’s moves since Thursday have seen the terror group gain more ground than it had in many months. [Continue reading…]

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