A clash of civilizations on a train to Paris?

Following an attack in which a gunman, Ayoub El Khazzani, was successfully tackled and disarmed by three Americans, Spencer Stone, Alek Skarlatos and Anthony Sadler, a Briton, Chris Norman, and a Frenchman who chose to remain anonymous, Time’s Mark Thompson writes:

Friday’s fight on the high-speed Amsterdam-to-Paris train can be viewed a miniature version of the clash of civilizations that some fear may now be unfolding. If so, Sadler, Skarlatos and Stone stepped up to the plate. “He seemed like he was ready to fight to the end,” Stone said of Khazzani. “So were we.”

Among the lessons Thompson draws is this:

If Islamic militants are determined to launch lone wolf attacks that threaten everyone in the West, everyone in the West is on the front lines. The solution isn’t to put undercover soldiers wherever the public gathers, or to arm every civilian. Instead, it simply requires donning a new mindset. Ever since the 9/11 attacks, airline passengers have no longer been willing to give strangers the benefit of the doubt if they appear threatening. Such an attitude will become more common, in more places, so long as such attacks persist. Importantly, as Friday’s outcome shows, attackers are not invincible. “Basically, in times of crisis…do something,” Sadler, 22, said.

No doubt the men who thwarted this attack, deserve all the praise they have received.

The wheels of French bureaucracy move impressively swiftly when it comes to dishing out medals. And politicians and government representatives have been just as swift in snatching photo opportunities.

Anyone witnessing the news conference for the three Americans could be forgiven for thinking that the grinning women next to Stone was his mom — it wasn’t, it was U.S. Ambassador Jane Hartley.

As for Thompson’s conclusion that we’re now all on the front lines of a clash of civilizations, that seems to me like the worst way of spinning what happened.

When the young Americans took action, they weren’t just being heroic — they were also very lucky not to get cut down in a hail of bullets.

As Americans, having grown up in a society that commonly prizes action more than deliberation, at that moment they arguably had a cultural advantage. The military experience that Stone and Skarlatos possessed must also have been a great asset.

But whether in a time of crisis people do something or not, will have as much to do with circumstances as it may with any mindset they have previously cultivated.

Just like any other animal, we’re hard-wired for fight or flight, yet the so-called fight-flight response is somewhat of a misnomer. The choices are actually three: fight, flight, or freeze.

The freeze response is almost a will to become invisible — a goal that many animals can effectively accomplish simply by remaining motionless.

People can have the same instinctive response yet will be at a distinct disadvantage compared with a rabbit that can hide in long grass.

How each passenger on the train responded to an immediate threat must to some extent have been the result of proximity, but when it comes to the question of what constitutes the best mindset, I would argue vehemently against those who believe we should now all be primed to tackle lone wolf terrorists.

Indeed, the mindset of most relevance here is one that has nothing to do with how we view the threat of terrorism.

The mindset that makes people in the modern world individually and collectively most vulnerable is one that has become almost universal: the desire to remain inside a private bubble within a public space.

Thanks to the ubiquity of mobile devices everyone now has the means to be physically present and mentally absent.

It’s quite likely that a significant number of passengers on the train to Paris were oblivious to what was unfolding as they remained entranced by their own soundtrack on life.

When Justin Valdez was murdered on a Muni train in San Francisco two years ago, his death could have easily been prevented had the passengers around him simply been paying attention.

The Muni camera revealed a gunman raising and lower his pistol several times — even using the gun to wipe his nose — yet no one saw what he was doing until it was too late.

“These weren’t concealed movements – the gun is very clear,” said District Attorney George Gascón. “These people are in very close proximity with him, and nobody sees this. They’re just so engrossed, texting and reading and whatnot. They’re completely oblivious of their surroundings.”

The scene is emblematic of the world in which we now live and the least of our fears should be the relatively small risk we face from terrorists or random gun violence.

Our real fear should be that we are creating societies in which we regard most strangers as people who can be ignored — people who don’t matter.

Such a society is one that is losing its humanity and losing its sense that life, if not shared here and now, is really no life at all.

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Talk of lone wolves misunderstands how Islamic militancy works

Jason Burke writes: A new attack, a young man who would be a killer and a tragedy narrowly averted. The media attention is currently on the identity of the have-a-go heroes who prevented carnage in France. It will shift eventually to the man who tried to open fire with an automatic weapon in a crowded European train.

From what we know already, he fits a classic type: young, of north African origins, with a possible recent visit to Syria and known to security services. This profile is very similar to that of the men who attacked satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo in January this year, to Mohamed Merah, a 23-year-old who killed 12 in a shooting spree in south-west France in 2012, and to that of Mehdi Nemmouche, who shot at a Jewish Museum in Brussels last year.

The two shocking French attacks underlined the nature of the wave of violence emerging in the country.

This latest attacker too is now being described as a lone wolf, with people asking how he was radicalised. Both terms, however, are deeply misleading. Few lone wolves exist, certainly in the recent history of Islamic militancy, and to insist that they do is to fail to understand how Islamic militancy works.

Furthermore the idea of radicalisation is not particularly useful either.

Of the hundreds of Islamic militants who have been involved in attacks in Europe over recent years, only a tiny minority have acted alone. Most have been involved in broader networks of activism, some violent, some less so.

Many have travelled overseas and spent time with major militant groups. A high proportion – possibly two-thirds, recent research tells us – have told others of their plans to commit violence.

Most importantly perhaps, a very large number of them have been in prison with others who are steeped in extremist thinking, have peer groups who share much of their extremist worldview, know other people who have travelled to Iraq, Syria or Afghanistan, or even grew up in families where casual prejudice against non-believers, Jews or the west in general was part of everyday conversation. [Continue reading…]

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Europe’s insane plan to destroy migrant boats

Barbie Latza Nadeau writes: Human smugglers in Libya have moved more than 38,000 people across the Mediterranean Sea since the beginning of 2015, killing as many as 2,000 along the way. But a new plan by the European Union to target smugglers’ vessels may soon make the journey even deadlier.

Desperate times may call for desperate measures, and the EU’s plan to systematically “identify, capture and destroy vessels before they are used by traffickers” is case in point. The plan was hatched in emergency talks after as many as 950 migrants died on April 18, fueling promises by EU leaders to “smash the gangs” of traffickers that operate unchecked in Libya.

The plan was presented to the United Nations Security Council in New York on Monday by Federica Mogherini, an Italian who is the high representative of the European Union for foreign affairs and security policy. In asking the U.N. Security Council to bless military action against the Libyan-based smuggler rings, she promised that the EU would take full responsibility for “identifying trafficking vessels for destruction before they are filled with migrants.”

But the reality is that such a tactic could become a deadly game of Russian roulette, since the traffickers don’t exactly play by the rules.

At face value, the idea itself could be considered noble—stop the merchants of death by destroying their lethal weapons, in this case unsafe fishing vessels that are packed over capacity with desperate migrants. But everyone from the head of the United Nations to those welcoming migrants on the shores of Italy warn that just one mistake will stain Europe’s hands with the blood of every dead migrant officials say they are trying to save.

In a far-reaching exposé from the epicenter of the trafficking ring in Zuwara, Libya, the Guardian pinpointed the biggest problem with destroying smuggler vessels. “Smuggling boats start life as fishing trawlers. The moment of transition from the latter to the former is informal and almost imperceptible to outsiders,” the author writes after interviewing several smugglers. [Continue reading…]

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How Russia is exporting jihadists to Syria

Michael Weiss writes: Based on extensive fieldwork in one village in the North Caucasus, [Novaya Gazeta] reporter Elena Milashina has concluded that the “Russian special services have controlled” the flow of jihadists into Syria, where they have lately joined up not only with ISIS but other radical Islamist factions. In other words, Russian officials are added to the ranks of terrorists which the Russian government has deemed a collective threat to the security and longevity of its dictatorial ally on the Mediterranean, Bashar al-Assad.

It may sound paradoxical — helping the enemy of your friend — but the logic is actually straightforward: Better the terrorists go abroad and fight in Syria than blow things up in Russia. Penetrating and co-opting terrorism also has a long, well-attested history in the annals of Chekist tradecraft.

Milashina makes her case study the village of Novosasitili in Dagestan’s Khasavyurt district. Since 2011, nearly 1 percent of the total population of Novosasitili has gone to Syria — 22 out of 2,500 residents. Of that figure, five were killed and five have returned home. But they didn’t leave Russia, a country notoriously difficult to enter and exit, without outside help. The FSB [Federal Security Service] established a “green corridor” to allow them to migrate first to Turkey, and then to Syria. (Russians, including those living in the North Caucasus, can catch any of the daily non-stop flights to Istanbul and visit Turkey without a visa.)

“I know someone who has been at war for 15 years,” Akhyad Abdullaev, head of the village, tells Milashina. “He fought in Chechnya, Afghanistan, Iraq, and now in Syria. He surely cannot live peacefully. If such people go off to war, it’s no loss. In our village there is a person, a negotiator. He, together with the FSB, brought several leaders out of the underground and sent them off abroad on jihad. The underground resistance has been weakened, we’re well off. They want to fight—let them fight, just not here.” [Continue reading…]

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Assad is more than happy to play a waiting game

Hassan Hassan writes: During this month, a military escalation by both sides of the Syrian conflict has led to a dramatic increase in bloodshed. For weeks, the Assad regime has been pounding Zabadani, a city near the Lebanese border, and Douma, near Damascus. The rebels have shelled the Shia villages of Foua and Kafraya in Idlib.

The regime’s offensive this year has probably been the worst in terms of human casualties and devastation. An air raid on a marketplace in Douma left more than 100 civilians dead and hundreds injured. The humanitarian situation in Zabadani was similarly catastrophic: Staffan de Mistura, the UN envoy for Syria, described “unprecedented levels of destruction” in the city, the last of the rebels’ strongholds in the Qalamoun region.

The escalation prompted speculations that the two sides may be trying to prop up their bargaining positions after Iran and Russia initiated a flurry of diplomatic activities. On Thursday, Reuters quoted a western diplomat as saying that the increased hostilities were the warring sides’ way of preparing for a political solution: “It is still fragile, but it is the most concerted move yet to find a political solution. Everyone needs a political solution. Everyone is exhausted.”

But the statement appears to echo the hopes of the backers of the opposition rather than the thinking inside and outside Syria. [Continue reading…]

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Beheading of Khaled al-Asaad, keeper of Palmyra, unites Syria in condemnation; ISIS blows up temple

The Guardian reports: Islamic State’s execution of Khaled al-Asaad, the keeper of Palmyra’s extraordinary cultural artefacts, has inspired a rare consensus among Syria’s other political factions.

The archaeologist and historian reportedly opposed the 2011 uprising against the country’s president, Bashar al-Assad, but his murder has provoked grief and condemnation from regime loyalists and opposition activists. [Continue reading…]

The New York Times reports: Militants from the Islamic State set off explosions at a temple in the ancient ruins of Palmyra in Syria, activists and government officials said on Sunday, continuing a pattern of destruction that they have visited upon historical sites across the territory they control there and in Iraq.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, an activist and monitoring group based in Britain, said Sunday in a statement that Islamic State fighters detonated “a large quantity of explosives” that they had arranged around the Temple of Baalshamin, one of the most grand and well-preserved structures in the sprawling complex of ruins. A government official told reporters that it was heavily damaged by the blast.

The temple stood “dozens of meters” away from a Roman amphitheater where the Islamic State held a mass execution, killing 25 prisoners, in a video released last month, the activist group said. The entire ancient city of Palmyra is a Unesco World Heritage site. [Continue reading…]

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British embassy in Iran reopens

The Guardian reports: The UK’s foreign secretary, Philip Hammond, has reopened the British embassy in Iran, declaring that there was no limit to what the two countries could achieve, as mutual trust is restored.

Hammond watched the union flag being raised in the embassy compound in central Tehran for the first time since it was stormed and ransacked by protesters in 2011.

Reflecting the cautious nature of the relationship with a long, troubled history, the Iranian government sent a relatively junior official, Abolghasem Delphi, the head of the western European department at the foreign ministry. He made no public comments. [Continue reading…]

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Ehud Barak’s Iran bombshell could shake up Israeli politics

The Associated Press reports: Former Defense Minister Ehud Barak’s comments that Israel nearly attacked Iran’s nuclear facilities but the plan was scuttled by military men and cowardly politicians could shake up Israeli politics.

The leaked interview, in which Barak also described Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as indecisive and obsessively pessimistic, was the talk of the town Sunday in an Israel obsessed about Iran. But beyond the hand-wringing, the always calculating Barak may have been focused on the future, perhaps for a final run at the country’s leadership.

Also a former prime minister, Barak enjoys respect as the last leader of the moderate Labor Party to win an election, defeating Netanyahu in 1999. But he also is seen by analysts as having squandered his opportunity, lasting just two years in a term that cemented his reputation as brilliant but arrogant, and prone to overcomplicated analysis and nonstop machinations. [Continue reading…]

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The new face of Jewish terror

Shira Rubin writes: “Jewish terror” is not new to Israel. In one of the most infamous incidents, the Irgun, a militant Zionist group, set off a bomb in the King David Hotel in Jerusalem in July 1946, killing 91 people. But, says Shlomo Fischer, a sociology professor and expert on Jewish extremism, the modern incarnation is younger and more religious, uniting an eclectic group of fringe outcasts around an identity of “romantic religious nationalism.”

The movement dates back to 1967, when Israel captured and occupied the West Bank and the Gaza Strip in a six-day war that many saw as imbued with messianic promise. Today, the loosely organized movement appeals to many marginalized youth and yeshiva dropouts by offering an “authentic” countercultural experience, says Fischer, who compares the recruitment strategy and sense of identity to extremist Islamist groups like the Islamic State. “You feel like you are able to connect with some sort of purpose, some sort of ideology that you’d never heard of,” an anonymous former hilltop youth activist told Israel’s Channel 2. He said that hilltop activists recruit at information booths throughout Israeli cities and are usually able to attract teenagers as young as 14, some 80 or 90 percent of whom come from broken homes. [Continue reading…]

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Hamas caught between Tehran and Riyadh

Ali Hashem writes: A senior Hamas official who spoke to Al-Monitor in Beirut on condition of anonymity said, “We’ve never taken sides, but we have our say on what’s happening. Iran is a friend. It was once a very close friend, and we don’t forget that. But today there are efforts to normalize ties once again. This is facing some hurdles from both sides.”

The official, who visits Iran often, told Al-Monitor, “There were plans for Khaled Meshaal to visit Tehran, [but] on several occasions the visits were canceled because of the uncertainty on our side that it would go as planned.”

Meshaal, head of Hamas’ political bureau, is concerned he won’t be allowed to meet the supreme leader of Iran, Al-Monitor learned, as a trip to Tehran would be useless without a meeting with Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. [Continue reading…]

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Ex-intelligence chief: ‘Pakistan is at war against the Afghan people’

Der Spiegel reports: In an interview, former Afghan secret service chief Amrullah Saleh discusses the recent wave of Taliban violence aimed at cementing power for its new leader Mullah Akhtar Mansoor. He says the attacks are backed by Pakistan.

SPIEGEL: More than 100 people have been killed in the recent series of attacks in Afghanistan. What are the perpetrators seeking to achieve with this new wave of violence?

Saleh: The Taliban have a reputation for brutality and mercilessness to defend. Their new leader Mullah Akhtar Mansoor wants to prove that he can maintain these capabilities. All the major attacks require enormous military and financial resources. They are planned and executed with the aid of ISI, Pakistan’s secret service. The aim of the attacks is to establish Mansoor as the new strong man. The violence is intended to show that the Taliban brand still exists, and the message as the same as before — that the Talban is united and powerful.

SPIEGEL: Why was the death of Mullah Omar, his predecessor, kept secret?

Saleh: We don’t know if he died two years ago or five. The only thing that is certain is that Mullah Omar was living under the patronage of the ISI. Pakistan always denied this, just as the leadership in Islamabad denied that Osama bin Laden lived in the country with their protection. But how can we lead a peace process together with Pakistan when everyone lies — from the army chief right up to the president? [Continue reading…]

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Tropical forests will still exist in 2100 – but they will be a sorry sight

By Simon Lewis, UCL

By the end of the century, the world’s remaining tropical forests will be left in a fragmented, simplified, and degraded state. No patch will remain untouched – most remnants will be overrun by species that disperse well, which often means “weedy” plants like fast-growing pioneer trees and small rodents that thrive in disturbed areas. Most of the rest will be “the living dead” – tiny remnant populations of plants and animals hanging on with no future.

There is no cast-iron law that dictates this scenario – but it appears likely unless we see a series of major policy changes. What could unfold? In research published in the journal Science, colleagues and I outline an all too common chain of events.

The first cut of timber from any natural forest is the most lucrative. The most remote places, in the interior of Amazonia, in central Congo and the heart of Borneo are all coveted by industrial loggers. The logging frontier marches relentlessly on. They selectively take the biggest trees and along with them the habitat of species that rely them.

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Beware the staying power of ISIS

Rajan Menon writes: Despite its losses, IS’s destruction is scarcely imminent. Though damaged, it retains important sources of strength and resilience, even appeal.

To begin with, unlike al-Qaeda, it has by any reasonable definition established a state. With its capital in Raqqa, Syria, and a population of about eight million, the Caliphate extends from northwestern Syria to the western approaches of Baghdad and protrudes northward toward the boundaries of Iraqi Kurdistan. Estimates of its size range from 11,000 square miles (equivalent to Belgium) to an implausible 81,000 square miles (approximating Britain minus Northern Ireland), the variance depending on what’s counted: populated lands in Syria and Iraq, or those plus uninhabited terrain in these two countries and the dozen or so other places further afield where militant Islamist groups have aligned with IS. But even the smaller approximation is impressive given that IS emerged only in 2013 and Baghdadi proclaimed his Caliphate a little more than a year ago.

IS has also created governing institutions, central and provincial, that run the gamut. Shari’a law is interpreted and enforced (aided by blood-chilling forms of punishment). Taxes are collected. Schooling—based on Wahhabi precepts — is provided, as are various social services. Intelligence is gathered, soldiers recruited and trained. An apparatus of horror is tasked with kidnappings, beheadings and forced amputations, mass atrocities, and sexual slavery — all justified by bizarre theological pronouncements.

But the Caliphate would never have achieved what it has were it led by a small band of sociopaths that relied solely on brutality to extract obedience. There’s more to IS than its horrendous cruelties would suggest. In anarchic, violent Syria and Iraq, it has acquired a social base by providing people—more precisely, those who adhere to its draconian theological rules, don’t rebel, and refrain from aiding and abetting its enemies — security, functional institutions, and basic economic necessities. Many of those living under IS rule doubtless have no choice, but others are drawn to its mission of building an Islamic polity and restoring the pieties and glories of old. [Continue reading…]

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Kurds fighting ISIS enraged at Turkey over brutal killing of female fighter

Vice News reports: As photos of the naked and bloodied corpse of a female Kurdish militant recently trended on Twitter, women’s rights groups in Turkey reeled at an act of sexualized torture allegedly committed by Turkish police, who also allegedly leaked the images.

The pro-Kurdish group Save Kobane identified the body as Kevser Elturk, known by her nom de guerre Ekin Van. Elturk was a commander in the Kurdistan Worker’s Party (PKK), an organization that has fought an armed campaign for a independent Kurdish state since 1984 in the area where Turkey, Syria, and Iraq meet, and which has recently been instrumental in repelling advances in the region by Islamic State (IS) militants. Turkey, NATO, and the United States have classified the PKK a terrorist organization.

Elturk was killed in clashes with Turkish security forces near the town of Varto in eastern Mus Province on August 10. The images of her remains and a description provided by those who later prepared her body for burial indicate that she was stripped of her uniform, dragged by the neck with a rope through town, and abandoned in the town square. [Continue reading…]

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How ISIS is winning the propaganda war

The Economist reports: A study of a single week’s output by IS conducted by Aaron Zelin of the Washington Institute for Near East Studies found 123 media releases in six languages, 24 of them videos. The savage imagery that many contain is calculated to shock and grab mainstream media attention.

Yet violence may not be IS’s most potent visual message. In a detailed analysis of its propaganda, Charlie Winter of the Quilliam Foundation, a think-tank, identifies a range of themes that include mercy, victimhood, belonging and Utopianism in addition to war and murder. Rather than the chopping of heads, it is dreams of Sunni brotherhood and of revived Muslim glory that inspire, says Mr Winter.

Whereas previous jihadist narratives were all about “resistance” to imagined enemies, IS propounds what Mr Winter calls “the propaganda of the winner”. Building on well-worn grievances of political Islam, it does not just talk about creating a caliphate but actually does so (sort of). It doesn’t merely speak of eradicating colonial borders but physically bulldozes them. And it does not merely aspire to reintroduce “full sharia”, but imposes the most starkly unrevised and demonstratively cruel version of Islamic law seen in centuries, if not ever.

In Mr Zelin’s research of a week’s propaganda output, more than a third of IS’s messages were not about war. Instead they extolled the caliphate and its Islamic virtues, showing hospitals opening, schoolchildren smiling and citizens eagerly pledging loyalty to the caliph. Charles Lister, a scholar at Brookings, another think-tank, suggests that such positive images explain IS’s staying power: “In both Syria and Iraq, IS presents itself as both an army and an alternative “state” to defend against and replace repressive or failed political systems perceived as oppressive to Sunni Muslims.” This approach has allowed IS to put down roots that could help it survive for a long time, he says. [Continue reading…]

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The Iranian project of regional expansion was from the start based on shaky ground

Basheer Nafi writes: In spite of mounting evidence that the Iranian influence was in decline, many concluded that the nuclear agreement would provide the Iranian expansionist project with what it needs to become an invincible power. So, where is the fault in the reading of the Iranian expansionist project, or in Tehran’s own assessment of its power?

This, first of all, is the Middle East, the post-World War I Middle East, where power equations do not last for long and where the underpinnings of power keep changing just like quick sand. It is true that the Iranian expansion coincided with American failings in the Middle East, followed by a relative American withdrawal, as well as a decline of the regional Egyptian and Saudi influence; but it has also coincided with an active Turkish return to the neighbouring Middle East.

Additionally, it is true that the fall of the Taliban and Saddam regimes was quite swift, but it is also true that the Iraqi resistance to the occupation did not wait long before emerging, and that the Taliban were soon to regroup and lead the resistance against the occupation and its allies in Kabul. The problem with the Iranian expansionist project, right from the start, was that it did not take into consideration the continuously changing nature of the map of power and influence in the region.

Secondly, the Iranians chose in most of their expansionist steps to stand by the minorities, whether political or sectarian, in the face of the majority, not only the majority in every single country but also the majority at the level of the region as a whole.

The peoples of the region were, for several decades, viewing Iran with admiration and sympathy, especially when Iranian policy was characterised with standing by the people and their aspirations. Yet, Iran was changing rapidly, where nationalistic and sectarian ambitions replaced the policies of pan-Islamic solidarity. Iran encouraged the emergence of a sectarian hegemonic regime in Iraq, and put its entire weight behind the continuation of the hegemony of a sectarian and political minority over Syria and its people.

It also supported the foolish Houthi plot to seize control of Yemen. Without a single exception, Iran’s regional policies were to generate civil wars and ethnic and sectarian cleansing, not to mention the tragic destruction of peoples and their resources. [Continue reading…]

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Most of the drivers of regional destruction have little to do with Iranian-Saudi rivalry

Rami G Khouri writes: [Regional] destruction is painfully visible every day in Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Palestine, Bahrain, and Yemen, at the very least. This spectacle of multiple fragmenting states is bad enough; it is made even worse by the latest troubling development — it is too early to call it a trend — which is the spectacle of repeated bomb attacks and killings of government officials and security forces in three of the most important regional powers that should be stabilizing forces in the Middle East: Turkey, Egypt, and Saudi Arabia. Add to this the ongoing war in Yemen, and the erratic battle against “Islamic State” (ISIS) forces in Syria, Iraq and other tiny pockets of ISIS presence around the region, the massive refugee flows and the stresses they cause, and the dangerous sectarian dimensions of some of the confrontations underway, and we end up with a very complex and violent regional picture that cannot possibly be explained primarily as a consequence of Iranian-Saudi rivalries.

A more complete explanation of the battered Arab region today must include accounting for several other mega-tends: the impact of the last twenty-fix years of non-stop American military attacks, threats and sanctions from Libya to Afghanistan; the radicalizing impact of sixty-seven years of non-stop Zionist colonization and militarism against Palestinians, Lebanese, Syrians and other Arabs; the hollowing out of Arab economic and governance systems by three generations of military-led, amateurish and corruption-riddled mismanaged governance that deprived citizens of their civic and political rights and pushed them to assert instead the primacy of their sectarian and tribal identities; and, the catalytic force of the 2003 Anglo-American led war on Iraq that opened the door for all these forces and others yet — like lack of water, jobs, and electricity that make normal daily life increasingly difficult — to combine into the current situation of widespread national polarization and violence.

Most of these drivers of the current regional condition have little to do with Iranian-Saudi sensitivities, and much more to do with decades of frail statehood, sustained and often violent Arab authoritarianism, denied citizenship, distorted development, and continuous regional and global assaults. [Continue reading…]

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