Q: are we not MENA? A: we are the rolling middle east, north africa and other geopolitical hot spots thread 2016!

thread to chat about, but not limited to: Algeria, Bahrain, Egypt, Iran, Iraq, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Yemen, UAE, Libya, Morocco, Oman, Palestine, Israel, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Tunisia and sometimes Afghanistan, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Cyprus, Djibouti, Georgia, Mauritania, Somalia, Sudan and Turkey.

some new years weekend updates:

Iranian Protesters Ransack Saudi Embassy After Execution of Shiite Cleric

Gunman Kills 2 in Tel Aviv in Attack on a Busy Street

link to last year's two year ago's thread:
Rolling MENA 2014 (Middle East)

He stated that "people must rejoice at [Nayef's] death" and that "he will be eaten by worms and will suffer the torments of Hell in his grave"

i get the feeling that ppl in the middle east are much cooler w/ celebrating the death of their enemies than us in the anglo west

I wonder how much the execution of Sheikh Nimr al-Nimr is going to reverberate in non-Muslim-majority states

And if the move to permit oil exports from the US is going to coincide with the "getting worse before it gets better" nadir of antidemocratic governance in MENA states - like, superpower(s) getting less and less dependent on these joints is definitely not going to improve the situation of the middle and working class in the near term

i think that makes sense. one element of foreign policy that i think gets forgotten when ppl call for breaking relations w/ an 'ostensible' ally (whether israel, turkey, saudi arabia, other) is the leverage the west can apply to states through continued support. the united states spent a lot of money during the cold war to bring a number of these nations over to the western orbit and even though there's not really the specter of international communism to push back there are still v good reasons to have countries at least beholden on some level to western ideals + human rights aspirations (even as the west itself often does not live up to them - still it's better to have the ideal and fall short than to say fuck it i don't care).

though he is among some a controversial figure i found this bernard lewis piece on islam + the state from 1976 to be v interesting (though i'm sure not without problems) and worth reading:
https://www.commentarymagazine.com/articles/the-return-of-islam/

one of the 4 ppl just convicted for the duma arson; looks like he just got out of a phish show

http://www.jpost.com/HttpHandlers/ShowImage.ashx?id=323316&h=530&w=758

BBC says Saudis break off diplomatic ties with Iran.

Some takes on the Saudi executions:

Saudi execution of Nimr al-Nimr along w/ al Qaeda members is straight from Assad's playbook – lumping nonviolent activists with terrorists.

Saudi Grand Mufti tells state TV that the death sentences carried out today are “just.”

— Ahmed Al Omran (@ahmed) January 2, 2016

Nimr, from the Awamiya area, in the Eastern province of Saudi Arabia caught the Saudi regime's wrath after giving sermons calling for reforms in the conservative kingdom where women are not even allowed to drive cars and for “taking the lead” in anti-government protests in 2011-2012. In July 2012, he was arrested by police after being shot in the leg and in October 2014 sentenced to death for “disobeying the ruler” among other charges.

http://www.juancole.com/2016/01/saudi-arabia-executes-top-shia-cleric-nimr-al-nimr-under-terrorism-charges.html

The execution was in keeping with a newly aggressive stance adopted by King Salman, who has worn the crown for a little less than a year since the death of his half-brother, Abdullah. It sent a powerful message that Saudi Arabia is intent on standing up to its regional rival, said Theodore Karasik of Gulf State Analytics, a consulting group.

“The Saudis hope to demonstrate that they are on the offensive in terms of the Sunni-Shiite divide, and they have just upped the ante on that significantly,” he said.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/bahrain-cuts-ties-with-tehran-as-crisis-widens-in-saudi-iran-split/2016/01/04/145c8824-b271-11e5-8abc-d09392edc612_story.html?tid=pm_pop_b

bahrain, UAE, + sudan also reducing diplo ties w/ Iran. should i feel surprised pakistan hasn't yet?

no

say more please

Pakistan has excellent relations with Iran and always has done.

Pakistan and Russia are positioning themselves as potential intermediaries for discussion.

my impression was that they had significant ties to saudi arabia - am i overstating those ties or have they just diversified well enough that they can claim to be a neutral party?

The ties with Iran are stronger but they have a decent relationship with both.

wow i had no idea! they're a sunni majority country, right? also am i remembering correctly that saudi arabia was heavily involved in developing their nuclear program?

Historically Pakistan didn't make a distinction between sects in official data. It's a Sunni majority country but has a large Shia minority.

Jinnah and possibly Benazir Bhutto were Shia and Bhutto's mother was from Iran.

ok lol: Militant in Islamic State video believed to be British bouncy castle salesman

If only sales of inflatable bouncy castles had been better he might not have become an extremist

Dhar, who is also known as Abu Rumaysah, is one of Britain's most high-profile Islamists and an associate of Anjem Choudary, Britain's best-known Islamist preacher who is due to go on trial next week accused of terrorism offences.

A convert from Hinduism who lived in east London, Dhar regularly attended protests staged by the now banned organization al-Muhajiroun

http://www.mediafire.com/convkey/04ed/dpwvmuqv8aa7qsqzg.jpg

i feel like getting all of these guys together in one place to form a coherent political entity would be like the bronx scene in the warriors

Lol u know what that scene is based on right

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anabasis_(Xenophon)

Shouldve said film there - that particular scene also specifically based on the bronx gang peace treaty mtg iirc

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hoe_Avenue_peace_meeting

Not a good development

US and UK military sales to Saudia Arabia will never stop, I guess

No.

This is interesting in Saudi news:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/energy/oilandgas/12087397/Saudi-Arabia-looks-at-listing-worlds-largest-oil-producer.html

Suspect I might finally run out of excuses to go next month.

'UK military personnel are not directly involved in Saudi-led Coalition operations, we are offering Saudi Arabia advice and training on best practice targeting techniques,' says Ministry of Defence

http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2016/01/we-caved-obama-foreign-policy-legacy-213495

US/Egypt policy

Obama was appalled. “We can’t return to business as usual,” he declared after the slaughter. “We have to be very careful about being seen as aiding and abetting actions that we think run contrary to our values and ideals.”

Several weeks later, Obama halted the planned delivery of U.S. military hardware to Cairo, including attack helicopters, Harpoon missiles and several F-16 fighter jets, as well as $260 million in cash transfers. He also cast doubt on the future of America’s $1.3 billion in annual military aid to Egypt—a subsidy on which Cairo depends heavily, and much more than the United States sends to any country in the world aside from Israel.

But a fierce internal debate soon broke out over whether and how to sanction Egypt further, a fight that many officials told me was one of the most agonizing of the Obama administration’s seven years, as the president’s most powerful advisers spent months engaged in what one called “trench warfare” against each other. It was an excruciating test of how to balance American values with its cold-blooded security interests in an age of terrorism. Some of Obama’s top White House aides, including his deputy national security adviser, Ben Rhodes, and the celebrated human rights champion Samantha Power, now U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, urged the president to link further military aid to clear progress by Sisi on human rights and democracy. But Secretary of State John Kerry, then-Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel and Hagel’s successor, Ash Carter, argued for restoring the aid. Trying to punish Sisi would have little effect on his behavior, they said, while alienating a bulwark against Islamic radicalism in an imploding Middle East. “Egypt was one of the most significant policy divides between the White House and the State Department and the Department of Defense,” says Matthew Spence, a former deputy assistant secretary of defense for Middle East policy.

For months, Obama tried to split the difference. In meetings and phone calls with the Egyptian ruler, by now paranoid and resentful about America’s intentions, Obama and Kerry urged Sisi to respect human rights, while also seeking his help in countering the the metastisizing Islamic State in nearby Syria and Iraq. Sisi did little of either.

In the end, Obama folded. This past March, he called Sisi once again, this time to explain that he would release the cash transfers and delayed hardware—including the F-16s—and end the administration’s threats to block the larger $1.3 billion annual aid package.

“We caved,” says a former senior administration official who participated in the debates.

http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2016/01/we-caved-obama-foreign-policy-legacy-213495#ixzz3wh2Hgap4

same ol, same ol

Iran Accuses Saudi Arabia of Attacking Embassy in Yemen

xp thx for sharing that article curmudgeon - it's nice to read about the reasons behind US support for various human rights abusing countries without the claim that it's a bribe to keep them acting nicely towards israel

same Politico writer on Obama and Saudia Arabia

For his part, Obama continues to pursue policies meant to reassure the Saudi royals that the U.S. is on their side. Obama has assisted the Saudi military campaign against Iranian-backed rebels in Yemen, despite qualms within the administration about civilian casualties and questions about whether the Saudis have a clear endgame. He has also supported efforts to depose Assad, an Iranian ally whom the Saudis despise, although the Saudi regime complains that Obama has not opposed Assad vigorously enough.

And while Obama occasionally urges the Saudis to liberalize their repressive political and legal system, he is careful about criticizing the kingdom's dismal human rights record. Neither the White House nor the State Department has specifically condemned the execution of Nimr and his 46 fellow alleged terrorists. White House press secretary Josh Earnest said little more than that the U.S. has "raised significant concerns about the human rights environment in Saudi Arabia."

http://www.politico.com/story/2016/01/obama-saudi-arabia-iran-royal-family-217385#ixzz3wlcnYKzx

CNN)—At least five people were killed and 10 others were injured when a "projectile" hit a hospital supported by Medecins Sans Frontieres in northern Yemen on Sunday, the group said.

Three of the injured were members of MSF, and two are in critical condition, the group said.

Several buildings collapsed and people may still be trapped in the rubble, according to MSF, also known as Doctors Without Borders.

http://www.cnn.com/2016/01/10/world/yemen-hospital-hit/index.html

is it weird that so many MSF institutions keep getting hit? are they operating in more dangerous locations (in yemen, syria, afghanistan, etc) than they normally do? or is this just terrible luck?

c. they are being repeatedly targeted

but each event has been a different group bombing them - the US (with Afghanistan intelligence) in Afghanistan, airstrikes in Syria presumably either Russia or SAF, Yemen either rebels or Saudis.

MSF was hit in Syria?

a few different times

DUBAI/NEW YORK—Airstrikes in Syria have killed at least 35 Syrian patients and medical staff in 12 hospitals in northern Syria since an escalation in bombings began in late September, the international medical humanitarian organization Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) said today.

According to staff at the hospitals, the attacks, which have also wounded 72 people, targeted medical facilities in Idlib, Aleppo, and Hama governorates, including six supported by MSF. Overall, six hospitals have been forced to close, including three supported by MSF, and four ambulances were destroyed. One hospital has since reopened, yet access to emergency, maternity, pediatric, and primary health care services remains severely disrupted.

http://www.msf.org/article/syria-barrage-barrel-bombs-destroys-msf-health-facility

(sorry, quote isn't from the link - quote is from one article and the link is a particular example)

this one is from Nov:
http://www.businessinsider.com/doctors-without-borders-say-one-of-their-hospitals-in-syria-bombed-in-air-strike-2015-11

Looks like there could have been a bombing in Sultanahmet.

At least nine reported dead.

Erdogan: “Pick a side. You are either on the side of the Turkish government, or you’re on the side of the terrorists.”

i'm reading that nine out of the ten victims were germans

can't shake the tasteless thought that this happened right by where arius spontaneously shat his guts out ~1700 years ago

i don't totally disagree w/ obama here (about fears being a bit overblown) but something about this juxtaposition i find kinda tasteless + i'd think that obama would be sensitive to coming off like he doesn't care enough about terrorism:

http://i.imgur.com/pasxD0o.png

AP NewsAlert: Pentagon: 2 Navy boats in Iranian custody but Iran tells US that crew will be returned 'promptly'

'promptly' = after sanctions are lifted do you think, or too dangerous to hold onto US "hostages" at this moment what w/ syria, saudi + nuclear deals situations ongoing

All ten killed in Istanbul were German. Nine people have been arrested, including three Russians. The bomber apparently entered Turkey via Syria with refugees.

Released (xp)

Release was done at daylight, they said

bomb near pakistan polio center this morning killed at least 16 ppl - pakistani taliban took responsibility

Republicans will solve all of this by putting US troops in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Turkey, Syria, Iraq, and Yemen.

Not making light of deaths. Its frustrating that Pakistan has enabled the Taliban all of these years.

@tinyrevolution
Really the main question is what Iran is doing in the Persian Gulf in the first place

Its frustrating that Pakistan has enabled the Taliban all of these years.

The West's interest in the Hindu Kush has waxed and waned for millenia. The long game for ISI includes maintaining influence over some 44 million Peshtuns indefinitely.

Turkey police HQ 'hit by bomb blast' - gov says it's PKK

File under 'other geopolitical hotspots' but there are coordinated attacks currently happening in Jakarta.

http://www.theguardian.com/world/live/2016/jan/14/multiple-explosions-gunshots-reported-in-jakarta-rolling-report

it's a perverse thing to think but maybe it's a good thing that the West doesn't care about what happens in places like Jakarta, Ankara and Beirut bc can u imagine if the population moved right whenever an attack happened anywhere and not just in Paris or San Bernardino?

Out of curiosity I checked out the wiki pages for terrorist attacks in 2015. I arbitrarily cut this list off at 50+ deaths which means that the Beirut bombings, Bamako attack, numerous attacks in Nigeria, Pakistan, Syria, attacks in Israel are not included. A few things jumped out to me from this exercise. Despite following these kinds of international stories closely, there were numerous attacks here (even in the 50+ range) that I had never heard about, or didn’t remember. Also, that alongside ISIL, Boko Haram were the most prolific terrorists last year (I had before read that they were the most deadly terrorist group in operation but it was sobering to see exactly what that meant). The only month last year without an attack of 50+ deaths was May.

June 25-29 - Barkh Butan, Kobanî, Syria - 223-233 dead, 300+ injured (ISIL)

Oct 31 - Sinai, Egypt - 224 dead (Wilayah Sayna - Islamic State)

April 1 - Garissa, Kenya - 147+ dead, 79 injured (Al-Shabaab)

Sept 20 - Maiduguri, Nigeria - 145 dead, 97-150+ injured (Boko Haram)

July 1-2 - Kukawa, Nigeria - 145 dead, 17 injured (Boko Haram)

Mar 20 - Sana'a, Yemen - 142 dead, 351 injured (ISIL Yemen branch)

Nov 13 - Paris, France - 130 dead, 368 injured (Islamic State)

July 17 - Khan Bani Saad, Iraq - 130 dead, 130 injured (Islamic State)

Oct 10 - Ankara, Turkey - 102 dead, 508 injured (Islamic State)

Feb 4-5 - Fotokol, Cameroon - 91+ dead (Boko Haram)

August 13 - Baghdad, Iraq - 76+ dead, 212 injured (Islamic State)

June 26 - Leego, Somalia - 70 dead, 27 injured (Al Shabaab)

July 5 - Jos and Potiskum, Nigeria - 69 dead, 67+ injured (Boko Haram)

Jan 25 - Mamasapano, Philippines - 67+ dead (Bangsamoro Islamic Freedom Fighters + Moro Islamic Liberation Front)

July 17 - Damaturu, Nigeria - 64 dead (Unknown/Boko Haram Insurgency)

June 17 - Monguno, Nigeria - 63 dead (Boko Haram)

Dec 11 - Tell Tamer, Syria - 60 dead, 80 injured (Islamic State)

Jan 30 - Shikarpur, Pakistan - 60 dead (Jundullah)

Mar 7 - Maiduguri, Nigeria - 58 dead, 139 injured (Boko Haram)

Oct 5 - Baghdad, Iraq - 57 dead, unknown number of injuries (Islamic State)

August 7 - Kabul, Afghanistan - 50+ dead, 500+ injured (Taliban - suspected)

August 10 - Diyala Province, Iraq - 50+ dead, 80+ injured (Islamic State)

Dec 8 - Kandahar, Afghanistan - 50 dead, 35 injured

Still seems completely nuts that someone can blow up a plane at a major airport in a manner that implies they had inside help and four months on nobody has been charged / dismissed.

http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_slatest/2016/01/14/starvation_tactics_prove_horrifyingly_effective_in_syria.html

A second aid convoy reached the recently besieged city of Madaya today. Madaya, controlled by rebels but surrounded by pro-government forces, including Hezbollah, had been under siege for five months until the Syrian government agreed to allow food aid into the city on Monday. Images of emaciated children and stories of residents forced to survive on cooked tree leaves and scouring minefields for grass to eat quickly emerged from the city that one aid worker called “effectively an open-air prison.” At least 28 people, including six babies, died of hunger-related causes at a Doctors Without Borders-supported clinic in the city. This has sparked international condemnation.

[...]

Unfortunately, as Aron Lund of the Carnegie Endowment has written, starvation, “like most war crimes it is also very effective.” Or as a resident of the Yarmouk refugee camp, which was besieged by the government for three years, told the Guardian, “Through the sieges, they are pressuring the civilians so they in turn pressure the rebels and blame them for the siege.” Siege tactics allowed the government to bring several rebel-held suburbs of Damascus to their knees two years ago.

Terrible

big news: http://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/17/world/middleeast/iran-releases-washington-post-reporter-jason-rezaian.html

And now this: https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/world-leaders-gathered-in-anticipation-of-iran-sanctions-being-lifted/2016/01/16/72b8295e-babf-11e5-99f3-184bc379b12d_story.html?tid=sm_tw

5 Iranian prisoners freed to US. the United States, which released seven Iranians who had been held on sanctions violations

Not seeing much about the 7 the US released

The US rescinded international arrest warrants on 14 others.

Obama also noted the new sanctions on those involved with Iran’s recent ballistic missile tests conducted in violation of United Nations restrictions, but he did not elaborate or dwell on that dispute.

In a statement, the Treasury Department said it was targeting for sanctions “11 entities and individuals involved in procurement on behalf of Iran’s ballistic missile program” and “five Iranian individuals who have worked to procure ballistic missile components for Iran.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/18/world/middleeast/three-freed-americans-depart-iran-one-remains-us-officials-say.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=story-heading&module=a-lede-package-region®ion=top-news&WT.nav=top-news

We live in interesting times. Some early indications that the Iran deal is having positive results but obv still v early to tell how things ultimately shake out. I hope Iran ends up using the released funds for improving domestic conditions, infrastructure for their people, etc, and not just writing a blank check to assad/hezbollah or building an undisclosed reactor. i don't know if we'll ever know where it ends up going.

i don't know if we'll ever know where it ends up going.

much like the secret chunk of the federal budget, amounting to tens of billions

Estimates of the sum of unfrozen assets range from $30 billion to $180 billion.

A lot of that is apparently debt, that will never be released to Iran.

Turkey police HQ 'hit by bomb blast' - gov says it's PKK

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CXlZssWU0AAl1Ss.jpg

The PKK admitted it and apologised for killing the three children.

http://english.alarabiya.net/en/News/middle-east/2016/01/16/PKK-apologises-for-killing-children-in-Turkey-car-bombing.html

herzog's unilateral withdrawal from Wb plan: http://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/.premium-1.698391

That quote from him about completing a West Bank wall and separating from as many Palestinians as possible...

Meanwhile elsewhere

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/russian-airstrikes-are-working-in-syria--enough-to-put-peace-talks-in-doubt/2016/01/19/64127084-beb2-11e5-98c8-7fab78677d51_story.html?hpid=hp_rhp-top-table-main_syriarussia-655pm%3Ahomepage%2Fstory

At least 30 dead in an attack on the University of Charsadda in Pakistan, with some reports that could double.

xp, idk whether a negotiated peace is any more or less likely than it was at the start of the Russian campaign. The opposition forces sweeping Damascus and the Alawite hubs was never guaranteed and became nearly unthinkable the moment Russia confirmed it would back the government militarily. The only question is whether it would be enough to allow the army to spring back and take lots of territory it had previously lost - and the article is very light on evidence that's considered realistic by any of the main players. Stalling and disagreement over who should (and is willing to) participate in talks was always going to happen either way.

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/jan/20/isis-has-destroyed-iraqs-oldest-christian-monastery-satellite-images-confirm

http://www.aljazeera.com/news/2016/01/kurds-accused-razing-arab-villages-northern-iraq-160120041948445.html

i have controversial feelings about this

Are your "controversial" feelings that you feel fine with the Kurds displacing civilian Arabs?

Do you justify it, by agreeing with this argument: This is part of a drive to reverse past abuses by the Saddam Hussein regime, which forcibly displaced Kurds and settled Arabs in these regions," the report alleged

Yes, essentially. I think the Kurdish need for a State takes precedence over civilian Arabs getting to stay in their homes (as they have a number of other States they can take residence in). Also I think Amnesty International carries water for Arab Muslims and, as Seth Frantzman lays out here, is whitewashing ISIS crimes (and taking shortcuts to make Kurds look bad). I think we've seen this "nakba" story play out when another Middle Eastern minority tried to build a State against the wishes of Arab Muslims, and it's only too convenient that the same political tropes are being brought out to delegitimize the Kurds.

holy shit

I wish you'd carry water, on foot, across the desert of your choice.

Please spend the next 9 months trying to come up with substantial differences between this pig and her potential November opponents, warwise.

http://thehill.com/policy/national-security/266622-clinton-goes-on-offense-against-sanders-on-iran

warwise gamgee

Clinton's stance is not in the least surprising.

lol what a dumbfuck http://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/22/world/middleeast/saudi-arabias-top-cleric-forbids-chess-but-players-maneuver.html?_r=0

May be his most controversial clerical opinion since the '09 Pokemon fatwa.

The more silly edicts they proffer that people just ignore, the better though.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/us-backed-rebels-lose-a-key-town-to-russian-airstrikes-in-syria/2016/01/26/8c577ed8-c455-11e5-b933-31c93021392a_story.html

After a month-long offensive backed by Russian warplanes, government forces and allied ­militias reclaimed control of the town of Sheikh Miskeen, strategically located at a crossroads commanding a southern supply route between the Jordanian border and the Syrian capital, Damascus.

....

“By continuing to support the regime in its bombardment of the moderate opposition, Russia risks damaging the already fragile process of intra-Syrian negotiations,” Gareth Bayley, the British special representative for Syria, said in a statement.

News of the fall of the town cast a cloud over a meeting of the Syrian opposition in the Saudi capital, Riyadh, to decide on whether to participate in the peace talks, scheduled to begin Friday in Geneva. The United Nations issued invitations to the talks Tuesday, after days of squabbling over the guest list between Washington and Moscow had delayed the original start date of Jan. 25.

i thought this was an interesting story from last Nov about how the Kurds bypassed their oil agreements w/ Baghdad to sell their oil on the open market:
http://www.reuters.com/article/us-iraq-kurdistan-oil-idUSKCN0T61HH20151117

Savage Mules, as Perrin puts it

from the New York Times:

Worried about a growing threat from the Islamic State in Libya, the United States and its allies are increasing reconnaissance flights and intelligence collecting there and preparing for possible airstrikes and commando raids, senior American policy makers, commanders and intelligence officials said this week. … “It’s fair to say that we’re looking to take decisive military action against ISIL in conjunction with the political process” in Libya, [Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman General Joseph] Dunford said. “The president has made clear that we have the authority to use military force.”

Greenwald:

Just as there was no al Qaeda or ISIS to attack in Iraq until the U.S. bombed its government, there was no ISIS in Libya until NATO bombed it. Now the U.S. is about to seize on the effects of its own bombing campaign in Libya to justify an entirely new bombing campaign in that same country. The New York Times editorial page, which supported the original bombing of Libya, yesterday labeled plans for the new bombing campaign “deeply troubling,” explaining: “A new military intervention in Libya would represent a significant progression of a war that could easily spread to other countries on the continent.” In particular, “this significant escalation is being planned without a meaningful debate in Congress about the merits and risks of a military campaign that is expected to include airstrikes and raids by elite American troops” (the original Libya bombing not only took place without Congressional approval, but was ordered by Obama after Congress rejected such authorization).

https://theintercept.com/2016/01/27/the-u-s-intervention-in-libya-was-such-a-smashing-success-that-a-sequel-is-coming/

there hasn't been significant debate in congress about a war in 100 years why start now

or anywhere else, except TV and the internetz

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-01-24/saudi-aramco-may-open-ipo-to-foreigners-as-it-keeps-output-high

valued at at least $1 trillion dollars acc to NPR

https://sensday.wordpress.com/2016/01/26/24-bahais-in-gorgan-sentenced-to-a-total-of-193-years-in-prison/

+ more holocaust denial from khameini

i'll be pretty happy when that shitlord dies. shouldn't be too much longer i think.

fun fact most ppl don't know: abbas's CandSC dissertation was comprised of holocaust denial too

In his 1983 book The Other Side: the Secret Relationship Between Nazism and Zionism based on the dissertation, Abbas denied that six million Jews had died in the Holocaust; dismissing it as a "myth" and a "fantastic lie".[81] At most, he wrote, "890,000" Jews were killed by the Germans. Abbas claimed that the number of deaths has been exaggerated for political purposes. "It seems that the interest of the Zionist movement, however, is to inflate this figure [of Holocaust deaths] so that their gains will be greater. This led them to emphasize this figure [six million] in order to gain the solidarity of international public opinion with Zionism. Many scholars have debated the figure of six million and reached stunning conclusions—fixing the number of Jewish victims at only a few hundred thousand."

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/29/world/middleeast/more-is-needed-to-beat-isis-us-military-concludes.html?rref=politics&module=Ribbon&version=context®ion=Header&action=click&contentCollection=Politics&pgtype=Blogs

800 more US advisory military personnel to be gradually deployed in Iraq and Syria....

The United States already has about 3,700 troops in Iraq, counting a small handful of Special Operations forces on the ground in Syria. One official said that he did not anticipate that number increasing to more than 4,500 over time, and even that increase, the official said, could come incrementally, much as the deployment of the 3,700 American troops occurred over the period of a year and a half. During that time, the White House and the Pentagon have taken pains to avoid describing the deployments as combat troops, instead calling them special operators, trainers and advisers.

Defense Secretary Ashton B. Carter, in an interview last week with CNN in Davos, Switzerland, emphasized the limited role he anticipated American forces to play. “We’re looking for opportunities to do more,” Mr. Carter said, but added, “We’re not looking to substitute for local forces in terms of governing the place and policing the place.”

....
With the liberation of the Iraqi city of Ramadi last month, coupled with recent gains in northern Syria, senior military leaders say that the war effort can now focus on isolating — and then liberating — the Islamic State-held cities of Mosul in Iraq, and Raqqa in Syria. “The reason we need new trainers or additional trainers is because that’s really the next step in generating the amount of combat power needed to liberate Mosul,” Col. Steve Warren, the spokesman for the American military in Baghdad, said last week. “We know we will need more brigades to be trained, we’ll need more troops trained in more specialties.”

Meanwhile, as Kerry tries to get negotiations in Geneva going...

https://www.rt.com/news/330764-damascus-bomb-attack-isis/

A series of blasts have struck the outskirts of Syria's capital, Damascus. At least 45 people were killed in the mainly Shiite neighbourhood, Syria's Interior Ministry reported. The Islamic State terrorist group has taken responsibility for the attacks.
According to the ministry, “more than 45 people were killed and dozens were injured.” Police say that the death toll is set to rise because “some of those injured are in a critical condition.”

More than 20 militia fighters, who have been fighting alongside government forces in Syria, are among those killed, TASS reported.

According to the television station of Lebanon's militant Shiite Hezbollah group, the attacks took place in the Sayeda Zeinab district, where Syria's major Shiite shrine is located.

Haaretz posits that the fact that there was no embarrassing or surprising information in the Snowden US spy leak was because Russia has control of the files and is protecting Israel's reputation. The evidence? Mostly that it hasn't appeared until now and only 3 weeks ago did it become disclosed that the Israeli Heron TP drone carried missiles (one of the few 'revelations' from the leak).

Russia appears to have agreed to Jaish Al-Islam being included in the Syrian peace talks, despite their designated status as a terrorist organisation, under pressure from KSA and Qatar. I don't know how much impact that's likely to have though.

Yeah, I'm very cynical about these peace talks. I was pretty cynical about the Iran deal too and it seems to have gone off, but that was negotiations between 2 parties. I don't see how they can possibly reconcile all of the impacted interests satisfactorily.

wait you're okay with the iran deal now?

maybe I missed something

I have problems/concerns with it but in addition to those I was v skeptical that they would even come to an agreement. I thought that Khamenei was not going to be willing to make the concessions the US would need to sell the deal to Congress.

who thinks israel solved the tunnel question? that's 4 in 8 days.

http://www.atlanticcouncil.org/blogs/syriasource/syria-what-next#.VrUEg9JLAch.twitter

http://www.interpretermag.com/as-pressure-mounts-on-aleppo-russia-conducts-air-strikes-across-syria/#12328 also worth reading imo.

the idea is that if the russian airstrike backed assad military is able to retake aleppo this weekend that'll break the non-ISIS revolution

and then what

the world isn't going to ask for a diplomatic solution if the only parties left are assad and ISIS. idk what the long, long term plan is tho - occupy the country indefinitely? the US in Iraq demonstrated that you can win all the cities and the situation just turns into an insurgency and once you leave these groups reconstitute in new ways.

maybe putin and assad think there just hasn't been enough force yet. putin does have some history w/ successfully suppressing separatists w/ overwhelming violence

Samantha Power: Russian bombardment arnd Aleppo has plainly undermined Geneva talks & dealt a significant setback to UN Syria peace efforts

have to say I'm kind of okay with Putin+Assad and ISIS all trying to kill each other, save us the trouble of getting involved.

also now KSA is offering to send troops to Iraq ostensibly to help fight ISIS

http://foreignpolicy.com/2016/02/05/obamas-disastrous-betrayal-of-the-syrian-rebels/

The encirclement of Aleppo would also create a humanitarian disaster of such magnitude that it would eclipse the horrific sieges of Madaya and other stricken regions that have received the world’s (short-lived) attention. Tens of thousands of Aleppo residents are already fleeing toward Kilis, the Turkish town that sits across the border from Azaz. The humanitarian crisis, lest anyone still had any doubt, is a deliberate regime and Russian strategy to clear important areas of problematic residents — while paralyzing rebels, neighboring countries, Western states, and the United Nations.

Assad all along pursued a strategy of gradual escalation and desensitization that, sadly, worked well. Syrians already compare the international outcry and response to the IS’ siege of Kobane in 2014 to the world’s indifference to the current tragedy.

To complicate the situation even more, the regime’s advances could allow the Kurdish-dominated, American-favored Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) to conquer the area currently held by the Free Syrian Army and Islamist militias between the Turkish border and the new regime front line north of the Shiite towns of Nubl and Zahra. This would pit the SDF against IS on two fronts: from the west, if the Kurds of Afrin canton seize Tal Rifaat, Azaz and surrounding areas, and from the east, where the YPG is toying with the idea of crossing the Euphrates River. An IS defeat there would seal the border with Turkey, meeting an important American objective.

Another MSF bombing:

BREAKING: Airstrikes have hit an MSF-supported hospital in Dara’a, southern Syria, killing 3 people & wounding at least 6 including a nurse

holy shit

about the ceasefire that is

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/kerry-searches-for-common-ground-on-the-syrian-conflict/2016/02/11/1bc6482c-d042-11e5-90d3-34c2c42653ac_story.html?hpid=hp_hp-banner-main_ussyria-505pm%3Ahomepage%2Fstory

er "cessation of hostilities"

“I can’t stop Putin,” he said of Russian President Vladimir Putin. “Can you say no to Putin?” he said, referring to the United States and its allies.

looooooool

I know rite. Def seems like Assad/Russia are holding all the cards - achieved enough recent victories that negotiating a deal looks like an acceptable outcome. Humanitarian aid being opened up is definitely a plus though, come on.

No, for sure. But I don't get if this is just a glorified surrender of moderate rebel groups to Assad, or just a temporary humanitarian ceasefire and they'll start again afterward.

The goal is to ensure that charges of violations would be directed to the committee, rather than responded to in kind. Any fighting group that signed on to and complied with a cease-fire would be exempt from airstrikes. It presumes that the Islamic State and Jabhat al-Nusra, considered by all parties to be terrorist groups, would not participate. Opposition groups embedded with al-Nusra in the anti-Assad fight would have to decide whether to sever those links and separate themselves geographically from the militants.

it seems like a good idea but only makes sense if you think this is just FSA giving up, right?

kerry says despite assad gains near aleppo in recent weeks, that difference does not end the war, does not mean assad secure in long run - so temporary. it'll be interesting to see if this lasts.

Have we mentioned that Saudi Arabia committed to sending troops (to fight ISIS, of course!).

Seems proxy wasn't enough.

i've been thinking a lot recently about how there hadn't been revised numbers for syria casualties in quite a while - i kept only seeing ones from 2014. Syrian Center for Policy Research says the toll is now 470,000.

http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/war_stories/2016/02/john_kerry_s_syria_deal_may_only_lock_in_gains_for_bashar_al_assad_and_russia.html

Secretary of State John Kerry said at a press conference in Munich that the “cessation of hostilities,” which will begin in a week, does not apply to the fight against ISIS and the other main jihadist group, al-Nusra Front. But that is not quite what the document says. The document says that the pause in fighting—and the signatories’ support for “the agreement and implementation of a nationwide ceasefire”—does not apply to ISIS, al-Nusra Front, "or other groups designated as terrorist organizations by the United Nations Security Council.” (Italics added.)

Here’s the thing: The Security Council’s members are still divided on which groups in Syria to tag as “terrorist.” In line with Kerry’s remarks, the United States defines the term to include ISIS and Jabhat al-Nusra. But Russia broadens its coverage to any group fighting on the ground in Syria, other than the Syrian army and its allies.

In other words, Russia (and Iran and Syria, among others) could properly read the document as allowing the fight to continue not only against ISIS and al-Nusra Front, but also against the Kurds, the various U.S.-supported rebels—any armed group that opposes the Syrian military or threatens Bashar al-Assad’s regime.

That is the same wording as the resolution against ISIS, Al-Nusra, etc the UN brought in after the Paris attacks. The ISSG designates the groups and the SC ratifies that designation. It looks like Kaplan thinks that means any group a member of the SC thinks is a terror organisation but it doesn't.

Egypt apparently feeling bold enough to extend state murder to Italians:

http://www.cbsnews.com/news/italy-mourns-premier-matteo-renzi-demands-truth-from-egypt-in-slaying-of-italian-student-giulio/

The car accident theory might have been more convincing had they not burned him with cigarettes and pulled his fingernails out first.

If this Iraqi dam collapses, half a million people could die

second MSF hospital bombed this week

When Russia bombs an MSF hospital, it's a war crime, but when the U.S. does, it's the fog of war.

otoh no one seems to care about russia bombing MSF hospitals repeatedly and there was a huge outcry when the US did it, and i haven't seen a lot of screaming about war crimes from the state dept so ya know

The UK, France and Turkey have all called it a war crime. Not massively surprising the state department is keeping quiet beyond condemning it "in the strongest possible terms". It isn't entirely clear whether it was Russia or Syria that did it though.

Anyway, big explosion in Ankara this evening.

Car bomb less than 1km from Parliament. Seems to have been mainly targeting a military vehicle. At least five dead and that is expected to rise.

Death toll now 18.

EXPERIENCE

Bombs dropped by fighter jets are pulverizing Yemen’s architectural history, possibly in violation of international humanitarian law.

A few years earlier, as secretary of state, Hillary Clinton made weapons transfer to the Saudi government a “top priority,” according to her closest military aide.

And now, newly released emails show that her aides kept her well-informed of the approval process for a 2011 sale worth $29.4 billion to Boeing of up to 84 advanced F-15SA fighters, along with upgrades to the Saudi’s pre-existing fleet of 70 F-15 aircraft, and munitions, spare parts, training, maintenance, and logistics.

The deal was finalized on Christmas Eve 2011. Afterwards, Jake Sullivan, then Clinton’s deputy chief of staff and now a senior policy adviser on her presidential campaign, sent her a celebratory e-mail string topped with the chipper message: “FYI – good news.”

The email string was part of a new batch of emails from Clinton’s private server, made public on Friday evening as the result of a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit.

One American official, whose name is redacted in the emails, said he had just received confirmation that Prince Salman, now the King of Saudi Arabia but at the time the senior Saudi liaison approving weapons deal, had “signed the F-15SA LOA today” and would send scanned documents the following day.

“Not a bad Christmas present,” he added.

https://theintercept.com/2016/02/22/saudi-christmas-present/

Brits selling to Saudi Arabia too, but not as much as the US is.

Britain sold more weapons to Saudi Arabia than to any other country. Saudi Arabia is also the biggest US arms market and buys more American arms than British, the report shows.

...

“A coalition of Arab states is putting mainly US- and European-sourced advanced arms into use in Yemen,” said Pieter Wezeman, senior researcher with Sipri’s arms and military expenditure programme. “Despite low oil prices, large deliveries of arms to the Middle East are scheduled to continue as part of contracts signed in the past five years.”

The report says Saudi Arabia is the world’s second largest weapons importer after India.

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/feb/22/saudi-arabia-surge-arms-imports-middle-east

Brits selling to Saudi Arabia too, but not as much as the US is.

If they had as many weapons to sell as the US they would be.

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/23/world/middleeast/un-finds-deliberate-destruction-of-hospitals-in-syria.html

Horrible, and sadly, not surprising

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5AqeqAQ1ILI

this is incredible to me in the worst way http://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/feb/26/all-adult-males-in-one-iranian-village-executed-for-drug-offences-official-says

Iran remains a prolific executioner, second only to China.

China has fewer executions per capita.

Iran is widely suspected of using drugs convictions to punish people associated or thought to be associated with the Baloch insurgency so it's probably as least as likely that would have been the motivation behind executing large numbers of people from certain villages. It is also possible that it's hyperbole designed to reinforce the public perception of links between Baloch separatists and the smuggling of drugs from Afghanistan / Pakistan.

Iran apparently uses the same grounds with homosexuality convictions

Clinton and Libya

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/28/us/politics/hillary-clinton-libya.html

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/as-two-week-truce-in-syria-goes-into-effect-guns-fall-silent/2016/02/27/1adccaaa-dc16-11e5-8210-f0bd8de915f6_story.html

Its mostly worked for one day so far!

There were no planes in the skies of the much-bombed city of Aleppo for the first time in days, and residents there ventured into the streets with newfound confidence, said Ameen al-
Halabi, an activist living in a rebel-held neighborhood.

Iran election: Reformists win all 30 Tehran seats

That's the good news.

Meanwhile in Syria, after one day of the truce, Russian planes began bombing again.

Truce is in the eye of the bombardier.

Condemning an apparent airstrike in Yemen that reportedly killed at least 32 civilians in a market northeast of Sana'a on Saturday, United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has called for a prompt and impartial investigation into the incident, which saw a death toll that was among the highest from a single bombing in recent months.

According to a statement issued by his spokesperson, the Secretary-General is concerned about the continuing intense airstrikes and ground fighting in Yemen despite his repeated calls for a cessation of hostilities.

To that end, he strongly condemned the apparent airstrike on 27 February that hit Khaleq market, in Nahem District in the Yemeni capita, Sana'a, killing at least 32 civilians and injuring at least 41 civilians. The death toll is among the highest from a single bombing since September 2015...

http://www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?NewsId=53331#.VtSOevkrJhF

A rather critical take on US policy in Syria by Jeff Sachs:

http://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/ending-syrian-civil-war-by-jeffrey-d-sachs-2016-02

Sachs asserts: It is sometimes claimed that the US did not act vigorously at this point. Obama’s political foes generally attack him for having taken too little action, not too much. But the US did in fact act to topple Assad, albeit mostly covertly and through allies, especially Saudi Arabia and Turkey (though neither country needed much prodding to intervene). The CIA and Saudi Arabia covertly coordinated their actions.

...The public should appreciate the dirty nature of the CIA-led fight. The US and its allies flooded Syria with Sunni jihadists, just as the US had flooded Afghanistan in the 1980s with Sunni jihadists (the Mujahideen) that later became Al Qaeda. Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Qatar, and the US have regularly backed some of the most violent jihadist groups in a cynical miscalculation that these proxies would do their dirty work and then somehow be pushed aside.

Was the CIA really that actively involved? I know what they have done over the years in the past, but they seem more bumbling these days

The Saudis also seemed more preoccupied with Yemen

that's Seymour Hersch's claim. i don't think it's well substantiated

The U.S. is apparently going to release the government estimates of the number of people killed in drone strikes since 2009, though it will exclude Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan. They can add at least 150 today.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-35748986

Some of those 150 the other day were hit by manned aircraft

Mr Davis said the strike, by both drones and manned aircraft, took place on Saturday and targeted Raso Camp, a training facility about 120 miles (195km) north of the capital, Mogadishu.

wonder if the estimated number of civilians killed will still amount to "single digits", as brennan and feinstein have said?

xp: they seem more bumbling these days

The CIA have bumbled since the very beginning. My sense from reading Tim Weiner's Legacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA (2008) is that the inexperienced ideologues with limited language skills that occupy lower rungs of the covert ops division have always been the organization's Achilles heel. One reason there's a now national "division of labor" between the U.S., which does satellite reconnaissance, signals intelligence, and provides money, and regional proxies, which use U.S. resources to their own ends.

But don't the lower ring employees act at the direction of those on top?

so this is the big read of the day:
http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2016/04/the-obama-doctrine/471525/

only read a little bit but already interesting stuff so far:

The current U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, Samantha Power, who is the most dispositionally interventionist among Obama’s senior advisers, had argued early for arming Syria’s rebels. Power, who during this period served on the National Security Council staff, is the author of a celebrated book excoriating a succession of U.S. presidents for their failures to prevent genocide. The book, A Problem From Hell, published in 2002, drew Obama to Power while he was in the U.S. Senate, though the two were not an obvious ideological match. Power is a partisan of the doctrine known as “responsibility to protect,” which holds that sovereignty should not be considered inviolate when a country is slaughtering its own citizens. She lobbied him to endorse this doctrine in the speech he delivered when he accepted the Nobel Peace Prize in 2009, but he declined. Obama generally does not believe a president should place American soldiers at great risk in order to prevent humanitarian disasters, unless those disasters pose a direct security threat to the United States.

Power sometimes argued with Obama in front of other National Security Council officials, to the point where he could no longer conceal his frustration. “Samantha, enough, I’ve already read your book,” he once snapped.

But what sealed Obama’s fatalistic view was the failure of his administration’s intervention in Libya, in 2011. That intervention was meant to prevent the country’s then-dictator, Muammar Qaddafi, from slaughtering the people of Benghazi, as he was threatening to do. Obama did not want to join the fight; he was counseled by Joe Biden and his first-term secretary of defense Robert Gates, among others, to steer clear. But a strong faction within the national-security team—Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Susan Rice, who was then the ambassador to the United Nations, along with Samantha Power, Ben Rhodes, and Antony Blinken, who was then Biden’s national-security adviser—lobbied hard to protect Benghazi, and prevailed. (Biden, who is acerbic about Clinton’s foreign-policy judgment, has said privately, “Hillary just wants to be Golda Meir.”) American bombs fell, the people of Benghazi were spared from what may or may not have been a massacre, and Qaddafi was captured and executed.

omg that golda line

This posted already?
http://www.haaretz.com/middle-east-news/1.708132

Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas turned down a U.S. peace initiative presented to him during a West Bank meeting with Vice President Joe Biden, a Palestinian newspaper reported on Thursday.

The report in the Jerusalem-based Al-Quds cited a “source familiar with the details” from Wednesday’s meeting in Ramallah, the seat of the PA.
The new American initiative to restart peace talks included designating East Jerusalem as the capital of the future Palestinian state, halting settlement construction in the West Bank and eastern Jerusalem, Palestinian recognition of Israel as a Jewish nation-state and giving up the demand for a Palestinian right of return.

As our rabbi posted, "If this is not an acceptable point to begin negotiations then what is?"

well hello there
http://www.timesofisrael.com/arab-league-declares-hezbollah-a-terrorist-organization/

Hillary ( ...) lobbied hard to protect Benghazi, and prevailed. (...) American bombs fell, the people of Benghazi were spared from what may or may not have been a massacre, and Qaddafi was captured and executed.

These may be facts and in the correct chronological order, but this gives them the appearance of post hoc, ergo propter hoc.

which part is not related? as i remember it gaddafi made his comments about killing the rebels in benghazi like rats, which prompted parts of the administration (including hillary + samantha powers) to advocate for a no-fly zone, there was not massacre but we don't know if there would've been one without the no-fly zone, and gaddafi was captured and executed probably due to the fact that the rebels no longer had to worry about being aerially bombed.

As chains of causation go that one is as reliable as, for example:

"Goring lobbied hard to allow the Luftwaffe to accomplish the conquest of Britain. The German bombs fell but London did not. Britain became the staging area for D Day and Hitler died in his bunker in Berlin."

iow, it is too reductive and implies a straight line, where in fact there were thousands of intervening factors between the 'cause' and the outcome.

ok i understand why yr example is too reductive to explain the relationship between goring lobbying for the luftwaffe to attack britian and hitler dying in a bunker bc it ignores the red army. but the no-fly zone certainly made it possible for the rebels to kill gaddafi so is there a specific step or point you feel they're leaving out here? like i understand the general critique but i don't understand the specific detail that requires it.

what do you feel that chronology is missing that without which it is a flawed description of the sequence of events? what is the important information or context that it's leaving out?

heavy bombardment of qdf's military by US/euro navies iirc. i mean a "no-fly zone" is never just that. i remember some quibbling leftists pointing out that the targets weren't just air and anti-air forces but really anything they could reach

Gave David Cameron his (Tony Blair) moment in the sun though, strutting around Benghazi like the conquering hero.

i don't know what that means to the argument you are having, just saying

xp

yeah, i mean the quote says explicitly "American bombs fell" so they included that bit

It appears I have failed to make my point clear. I'll try again, but I must use more words. The reductive narrative of events in chronological order quoted above implies the following:

A) Because Hillary lobbied for intervention, we intervened.
B) Because we intervened bombs fell
C) Because bombs fell Benghazi was spared AND Qaddafi was captured and executed.
C) Therefore, because Hillary lobbied for intervention Qaddafi was captured and executed.

My point is that the relationship between Hillary lobbying and Qaddafi's capture is far too tenuous to be causal and a far more accurate formulation would be that Hillary lobbied and as it happened to fall out Qaddafi was captured and executed. This is more accurate, because literally tens of thousands of individuals taking several million directly contributory actions intervened between Hillary's actions and Qaddafi's capture. Most importantly, Obama was the actor whose action was crucial, not Hillary, and we do not know how Hillary's lobbying affected his decision other than by observing that the action he took aligned with the action she advocated.

we know that obama was resistant to doing it and clinton/powers had to convince him. you're correct in your assertion that many things could have resulted out of the engagement besides gaddafi's capture. i am surprised at the suggestion that the article's author thought that once clinton intervened gaddafi's fall was inevitable. only in hindsight do we see that among other things, hillary's lobbying helped set into motion a chain of events that culminated [not inevitably] in gaddafi's death.

i mean the whole point of that section iirc is that despite a carefully planned libya intervention obama was still completely caught off-guard by the chaos that engulfed the country. i remember that among other things they said that they didn't realize tribal identities were as plentiful + strong as they turned out to be. so i don't think the author trying to argue that we can easily predict future events from current actions.

Interesting comment from Lavrov today that Russian negotiation means Assad now formally recognises legitimacy of US air strikes, effectively making them legal.

Jesus. Another car bomb in Ankara, another 27 dead.

The Turkish press has a gagging order on reporting it but there are rumours the death toll could be over 100.

AQIM kill 16+ in attack on beach resort in Ivory Coast.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-35798502

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/putin-announces-russia-will-pull-most-of-its-military-from-syria/2016/03/14/abd2a9d9-5e8c-4521-8b4b-960a8e6c96d4_story.html?hpid=hp_rhp-top-table-high_syria%3Ahomepage%2Fstory

President Vladimir Putin announced Monday that Russia would begin withdrawing its military from Syria, potentially winding down nearly six months of airstrikes that have bolstered Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and dealt a grave blow to Syrian rebels.

Putin said late Monday that Russia would withdraw the “main part” of the military deployment to Syria, starting Tuesday.

From the Guardian:

Given that Russia-backed separatists launched one of their biggest offensives in Ukraine in February 2015, just as Putin joined other world leaders in negotiating a ceasefire, there will undoubtedly be scepticism over whether the announcement of the end of the Syrian mission can be taken at face value. However, Russia’s overarching goal of securing a lead seat at the table over the fate of Syria has clearly been achieved, and a withdrawal will prevent the inevitable “mission creep” that appeared to be on the cards.

“Essentially, they’ve achieved their goals: they’ve stabilised the regime, turned momentum round on the battlefield so the regime has the upper hand, and now we’ve got a ceasefire and political talks,” said Mark Galeotti, professor of global affairs at New York University and currently based in Moscow.

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/mar/14/vladimir-putin-orders-withdrawal-russian-troops-syria

leaving after military deployment? as an american I don't understand this concept.

xp

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/16/world/africa/al-qaedas-african-offshoot-makes-a-lethal-comeback.html?ribbon-ad-idx=11&rref=homepage&module=Ribbon&version=origin®ion=Header&action=click&contentCollection=Home%20Page&pgtype=article

The violence by an array of terrorist groups in Africa may itself be indicative of growing competition. One American military counterterrorism official said that Boko Haram, the extremist group that has terrorized northern Nigeria for years, might be trying to increase its body count to uphold the bloody standard of the Islamic State, to which it has pledged allegiance. Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, in turn, seems to be trying to keep up with the bloodshed.

Each of the militant groups competes for essentially the same things: recruits, credibility and cash, all of which are scarce.

Strikes on soft targets such as hotels are not particularly complicated operations, and are far easier and cheaper to pull off than controlling large swaths of land.

Even so, terrorist groups still need a source of money to help them hide out. The status of Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb’s finances is unclear. While it has reaped sizable ransoms for the release of hostages, its kidnappings of a Swiss missionary and an Australian doctor and his wife, who were taken the same day as the Splendid Hotel attack, could indicate a need for more cash.

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/mar/17/ankara-car-bomb-kurdish-militants-claim-responsibility-attacks

TAK have claimed responsibility for the recent Ankara bombing, which probably won't stop repercussions against the PKK.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-35850625

Another suicide bombing aimed at civilians and tourists in Istanbul. Germany had closed its embassy and told staff to stay at home after either reviving intel or some kind of notification.

on İstiklâl Caddesi, eek, that's the Champs-Élysées of Istanbul, as I guess everyone here knows. Sultanahmet was hit a few months ago too. horrible.

it's a wall

http://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/.premium-1.709035

Thought this account of the Egyptian revolution was interesting, but I'm curious if anyone can recommend any alternative accounts. the 'serious debate' he wants to have about the relationship between the left and Islamist movements is I suppose all you can prescribe when the situation is such a mess

https://www.jacobinmag.com/2016/03/egypt-revolution-sisi-mubarak-muslim-brotherhood/

Neo-con Jackson Diehl (deputy editorial page editor of The Washington Post and editorial writer specializing in foreign affairs) blames Obama's failure to bomb Assad and Syria after red line was drawn for well, everything that has happened worldwide since...

I changed my mind after I heard from dozens of foreign ministers and other senior officials of U.S. allies as they visited Washington in the months and years that followed. Japanese, South Koreans, Singaporeans and even Indians confided that they were convinced that Obama’s failure to use force against the regime of Bashar al-Assad was directly responsible for China’s subsequent burst of aggression in territorial disputes in the East China Sea and South China Sea.

Poles, Lithuanians and French drew a line between the backdown and Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine. As for the Sunni Arabs, Turks and Israelis, it is an article of faith that Obama’s decision accelerated the catastrophe that Syria, and much of the rest of the Middle East, has become. They have an obvious point: Hundreds of thousands are dead, the European Union is in danger of crumbling under an onslaught of refugees, and the Islamic State and Assad remain unvanquished. Who would not call this a bad outcome?

No discussion of whether a subsequent war between Russia and Iran vs the US could have been a possible result of US bombing; or that the US supported rebels would still have failed or joined up with other factions the US doesn't like

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/the-costs-of-obamas-2013-syria-decision-are-apparent-to-everyone-but-him/2016/03/20/e526f614-ec56-11e5-a6f3-21ccdbc5f74e_story.html

I blame HRC for the "red line" talk. It makes it too easy for everyone from Turkish intelligence to jihadists to manipulate US policy. I really hate that the choice in the general election will be between a hawk/AIPAC tool and a demagogue who denies AGW.

Benyaich pointed to the arrival of funding from Saudi Arabia and other wealthy Persian Gulf states in the 1970s that was used to set up conservative religious schools in the area. A decade ago, Belgian journalist Hind Fraihi went undercover in Molenbeek and wrote a popular newspaper series that showed that disillusioned young Muslims were being influenced by radical preachers.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2016/03/22/why-is-brussels-under-attack/?tid=pm_world_pop_b

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/middle_east/in-syria-and-iraq-the-islamic-state-is-in-retreat-on-multiple-fronts/2016/03/24/a0e33774-f101-11e5-a2a3-d4e9697917d1_story.html?tid=pm_world_pop_b&wpmm=1&wpisrc=nl_daily202

The U.S. military estimated earlier this year that the Islamic State had lost 40 percent of the territory it controlled at its peak in 2014, a figure that excludes the most recent advances.

Plans for an operation to capture Raqqa, the de facto capital of the Islamic State’s self-styled ­caliphate, are on hold because of tensions between Kurds and ­Arabs over who would participate and how to govern the city after it has been taken. The YPG has declared a breakaway federal region that does not include Raqqa, while U.S. plans to train and equip an Arab force to fight for the town are lagging.

Likewise, preparations for an offensive for Mosul, the biggest city under Islamic State control, are being held up by disputes over who should take part and how to govern the northern Iraqi city after it falls. The powerful Shiite militias, credited with making many of the earliest gains, are insisting they be given a role, over objections from the U.S. military and the Iraqi Kurdish peshmerga.

“We could probably liberate Mosul tomorrow, but we would have a real mess on our hands if we did,” said Michael Knights of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. “A lot of work needs to be done to ensure an orderly transition of power in Mosul.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/23/world/middleeast/bashar-al-assad-syria-russia-west.html?action=click&contentCollection=Middle%20East&module=Trending&version=Full®ion=Marginalia&pgtype=article

Mr. Assad’s advisers believe not only that he has passed “the risky period” and will remain the president of Syria, she said in a recent interview, but also that his ability to “stand up to the whole world” will make him more prominent than ever as “a leader in the region.”

They insist that Russia is steadfast, she added, but they also hold an insurance card: their even closer relationship with Iran and their ability to juggle two very different allies.

Mr. Assad excels at running the clock. His officials show up at peace talks but essentially refuse to negotiate. They broadly promise humanitarian aid access while denying the vast majority of specific requests. Mr. Assad agreed in 2013, under threat of United States military action, to destroy Syria’s arsenal of chemical weapons, yet conventional attacks on civilian areas, and accusations of chlorine gas use, remain routine.

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/mar/25/turkish-officials-europe-wanted-to-export-extremists-to-syria

Turkey, of course, has been doing the same thing by the truckload but this doesn't seem implausible. They list several cases of people travelling through domestic airports with military gear and passports known to be either stolen or on the Interpol watch list. In one case, Turkey deported a Danish guy who was caught trying to cross the border with Syria to join ISIS, he was deported but given another passport and allowed to travel to try again.

The failures were outlined by Turkish officials to the Guardian through several documented instances of foreign fighters leaving Europe while travelling on passports registered on Interpol watchlists, arriving from European airports with luggage containing weapons and ammunition, and being freed after being deported from Turkey despite warnings that they have links to foreign fighter networks.

“We were suspicious that the reason they want these people to come is because they don’t want them in their own countries,” a senior Turkish security official told the Guardian. “I think they were so lazy and so unprepared and they kept postponing looking into this until it became chronic.”

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-35904430

On Thursday, Egypt's interior ministry said police had found a bag belonging to the student during a raid on a flat linked to the gang. All its four members were said to had been killed in a shoot-out.

No comment required, I think.

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/mar/27/syrian-regime-forces-retake-all-of-palmyra-from-isis

The Syrian government, with the help of Russia, has driven ISIS out of Palmyra.

http://www.vox.com/2016/3/26/11309708/abu-alaa-al-afri

But what's actually going on here? Why is the US killing so many ISIS deputies, while somehow failing to hit leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi? And it does it even matter when you kill top-level ISIS officials?

Why the US keeps killing number twos

Analysts have developed a few theories as to why the US keeps hitting second-in-commands, but not the leader. One of the most plausible is that Baghdadi is a much harder target, whereas the nature of the number-two job involves exposing oneself to greater risk of being targeted.

Death toll rises in Lahore, Pakistan, while In Islamabad on Monday, thousands of Muslim demonstrators protesting the execution of Islamist assassin Mumtaz Qadri staged a sit-in inside the city’s “Red Zone,” which is home to a number of vital government institutions, including parliament and the prime minister’s house.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/death-toll-in-pakistan-easter-suicide-attack-rises-to-72-authorities-vow-to-hunt-down-perpetrators/2016/03/28/037a2e18-f46a-11e5-958d-d038dac6e718_story.html?hpid=hp_rhp-top-table-main_pakbomb-355am%3Ahomepage%2Fstory

Pakistan always manages to look like pure chaos.

Someone has hijacked an Egypt Air flight and made them divert to Cyprus. Not much detail of what is going on yet.

The Egyptian Foreign Ministry has helpfully clarified that the hijacker is "not a terrorist, he's an idiot".

It is being reported that his wife left him and moved to Cyprus and this is an unorthodox attempt to get her to talk to him.

Flowers not working?

some kind of street fight happening in front of brookings inst during erdogan's visit there

https://twitter.com/paulmcleary/status/715566699836256256

https://twitter.com/will_mccants/status/715562665293324292

this confrontation was apparently outside of erdogan's hotel two days ago

https://twitter.com/MahirZeynalov/status/714943551671570432

https://theintercept.com/2016/03/30/turkey-wants-ban-on-mocking-its-leader-enforced-abroad-too/

After the president arrived in Washington on Tuesday night, his security team got right to work, harassing protesters and journalists outside his hotel, as writers for one of the papers recently shuttered by Erdogan’s government noted.

...That display of intolerance for dissent followed reports this week that Turkey’s foreign ministry had summoned Germany’s ambassador to complain about a satirical music video mocking Erdogan that was broadcast recently on German television. “We demanded,” a Turkish diplomat told Agence France-Presse, that the show “be removed from the air.”

http://foreignpolicy.com/2016/03/30/erdogan-uses-closed-door-meeting-to-blast-white-house/

Erdogan courted Washington’s top think tank luminaries on Tuesday night in an effort to rehabilitate his image and criticize the Obama administration’s policies in Syria.

During an off-the-record dinner at Washington’s high-end St. Regis Hotel, a defiant Erdogan ripped the American media’s coverage of his administration’s policies and bashed the White House’s support for Kurdish fighters in Syria

Erdogan is in Washington to meet Vice President Joe Biden and attend the administration’s 2016 Nuclear Security Summit. But he is not expected to enjoy a formal meeting with President Barack Obama — a slight the White House explained away as scheduling issue but which has been widely perceived as sign of Obama’s frustration with Erdogan’s increasingly authoritarian actions.

wasn't sure what thread to post this in but it's imo a powerful piece about american parents w/ radicalizing children & cooperation w/ the gov:
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/10/us/parents-face-limited-options-to-keep-children-from-terrorism.html

as a parent i can't even imagine - you don't want to send your child to prison for decades but more you don't want them dying on a battlefield in syria or killing ppl domestically. i feel like there's a place for a non-govt interventionist org within the muslim community who parents can reach out to and they take dramatic deprogramming measures.

Do you guys think there's any sense in thinking about the Syrian civil war in terms of violent/nonviolent resistance? Seems like perhaps a lot of Syrians would have been less worse off suffering the injustice of Assad's regime than a civil war with no positive outcome in sight...

(this may be an offensively stupid question coming from a Scandinavian with no understanding of authoritarian regimes, ethnic groups in Syria etc etc, if so I'd like to apologize in advance)

Well, they tried non-violent resistance at first, but Assad responded by killing them.

Saying that a dictatorial regime is better than civil war doesn't make sense when it's the behaviour of the regime that leads to the war.

I suppose surrender was an option?

What does that have to do with violent/non-violent resistance?

hmm maybe not much, I'm having a hard time phrasing my question proper (which makes me suspect it's maybe not a good question)

but maybe violent resistance isn't the only alternative to non-violent resistance?

there's not really a single actor with the authority & power to make a decision. there's been a lot of snowballing to get to this point and so many factions are involved now it's the wrong way to look at it imo

yes I guess it's a very abstract, counterfactual/hypothetical way of thinking abt it - but not uncommon!

there's perhaps something intuitive about thinking in terms of whether a given dictatorship was better/worse than situation following war/revolution/... (I remember clearly how Saddam's oppressive regime was supposed to be good reason for invading Iraq)

There's a giant difference between those two, in that in Syria the people rose up themselves.

totally agree, my idea was just to give another example of this type of thinking (a terrible one!)

So on another idea--I read a moderate suggest that when Obama says he did not want to bomb Assad after O's own red line threat because it would escalate a war with Iran and Russia on 1 side, various weaker rebel groups on the other side, plus ISIS and other terrorists around; and would be done with the knowledge of how poorly Iraq and Afghanistan have been going for years...that he was getting the wrong message. The moderate suggested that the US success bombing in the Balkans in the 90s, and Russia's success so far in Syria, show that a big power can use force successfully without worsening things.

Forgot where I read this...Might have just been a Washington Post columnist

people rose up in iraq, but they were put down. syria has been very delicately positioned wrt regional and other powers for a long time so a straightforward purely domestic/internal revolution was never really on the cards, although thigs have been chaotic and unpredictable. with hindsight i think it's easy to say it would have been better if there was no attempt to overthrow assad but it's not necessarily instructive for other cases. there was a sobering survey of young arab opinion in the news today which indicated a huge shift in priorities from democracy to stability.

a good lesson for all of us

The first lesson is probably to avoid situations like this: 'Syria has been very delicately positioned wrt regional and other powers for a long time so a straightforward purely domestic/internal revolution was never really on the cards' Though that's obviously not particularly easy to dismantle.

I think this is always the case; the geopolitical conditions have to be favourable in order for a revolution to be a success

http://www.brookings.edu/blogs/markaz/posts/2016/04/12-libya-intervention-hamid

Here’s what we know: By March 19, 2011, when the NATO operation began, the death toll in Libya had risen rapidly to more than 1,000 in a relatively short amount of time, confirming Qaddafi’s longstanding reputation as someone who was willing to kill his countrymen (as well as others) in large numbers if that’s what his survival required.

There was no end in sight. After early rebel gains, Qaddafi had seized the advantage. Still, he was not in a position to deal a decisive blow to the opposition. (Nowhere in the Arab Spring era has one side in a military conflict been able to claim a clear victory, even with massive advantages in manpower, equipment, and regional backing.)

Any Libyan who had opted to take up arms was liable to be captured, arrested, or killed if Qaddafi "won," so the incentives to accept defeat were nonexistent, to say nothing of the understandable desire to not live under the rule of a brutal and maniacal strongman.

The most likely outcome, then, was a Syria-like situation of indefinite, intensifying violence. Even President Obama, who today seems unsure about the decision to intervene, acknowledged in an August 2014 interview with Thomas Friedman that "had we not intervened, it’s likely that Libya would be Syria...And so there would be more death, more disruption, more destruction."

Now, rather than merely having avoided the wholesale massacre of civilian protestors in Libya, which was the justification at the time, our intervention has now graduated to having avoided another Syria?

Syria = wholesale massacre of civilians iirc

The very fact that the Libya intervention and its legacy have been either distorted or misunderstood is itself evidence of a warped foreign policy discourse in the U.S., where anything short of success—in this case, Libya quickly becoming a stable, relatively democratic country—is viewed as a failure.

come on man

he makes i think a very good pt - there were more ppl killed in the eight months of revolution against Gaddafi than all deaths in the 4.5 years since his death. this is not a minor point.

Guess what, it's not only in the US that this intervention is not viewed as a roaring success.

Syria = wholesale massacre of civilians iirc

there seems to be more going on there than that, tbf

a friend linked me to this: http://www.libyabodycount.org/date

not sure why it stops in feb but i assume that's just bc it hasn't been updated yet

there seems to be more going on there than that, tbf

sure, my point was only that your two scenarios weren't really mutually exclusive, the latter has incorporated the former in a significant way

my point was only that 'the thing that didn't happen' has now undergone a significant inflation, allowing us to claim even more credit for what never happened.

right and maybe if we hadn't intervened gaddafi and the rebels would've agreed to sit down to talks and work out a power-sharing democratic government w/ a slow peaceful transition out of power for gaddafi

There was a time when the United States seemed to have a perpetual bias toward action. The instinct of leaders, more often than not, was to act militarily even in relatively small conflicts that were remote from American national security interests. Our country’s tragic experience in Iraq changed that. Inaction came to be seen as a virtue.

this is stupid neocon nonsense btw

sounds like a value judgement free description of reality to me unless you don't think inaction has come to be seen as a virtue which i think in the case at least of the obama administration and a large % of the population it has

Just to play devil's advocate: I've been reading Black Earth of late, where Tim Snyder looks at the bloodlands of Eastern Europe during and in the aftermath of WWII, and makes a strong case against disrupting regimes that provide local stability. In this place and era, genocidal anger seethed from the grassroots, much different from Western Europe where Hitler's solutions were imposed against local resistance. The Middle East looks a lot more like Snyder's Eastern Europe than the Western Europe that informs too many policy advisors. In this environment, disrupting nation states through uprising or aggressive war predictably brings widespread terror.

The local despots in the mid-East aren't so much mini-Hitlers imposing ideologically motivated violence, but are/were informed pragmatists motivated by legitimate fears of what would occur with the collapse of central authority. Saddam Hussein and Bashar al-Assad did what was historically necessary to prevent domestic uprisings, and even atrocities like the Hawizeh marshes (1991) or Hama (1982) arguably saved lives by forstalling uprisings for a generation. Exemplary punishment works.

In Assad's case, there was never a plausible alternative Syrian power that wouldn't massacre his Alawite minority, given the opportunity. There were only his own Alawites, his allies among the equally hated Damascus mercantile class, and slums teeming with underemployed Sunni Arabs resulting from Syria's population explosion. Moderate educated/expat elites (such as the FSA) never commanded many boots or much loyalty. For U.S. policy, this means that aside from satisfying AIPAC's calls for payback, there was never a positive, Jordan-like outcome that could be reached by supporting the opposition. The best we could have done is issue stern denounciations without giving any opposition succor.

and makes a strong case against disrupting regimes that provide local stability

tbf a. the disruption of the regime in the cases of libya and syria were going to happen, and primarily because of internal division not because of a major power invading and deposing the govt. (unless you believe the arab spring in general is an entente western plot.) b. exemplary punishment itself has been an excuse for massacres and genocide - stalin commanded a huge empire but he had to kill 30-50 million people to keep it running / point taken that alawites were never going to let sunnis rule them (though i imagine the risk of massacre went way up after years of assad's indiscriminate bombing) but sometimes the cure is just as bad. especially when it wasn't particularly stable to begin w/.

Times of Israel reporting a Turkey official said that Israel has agreed to lift the blockade on Gaza. Big grains of salt obv needed but if true it's a big deal.

Countdown till something happens that convinces Israel to reimpose the blockade before it's even lifted, 10, 9, 8 ...

hey maybe hamas will decide this time that it's better to lift the blockade than score another pyrrhic questionable PR victory against the zionist entity!

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/saudi-arabia-the-devil-we-know/2016/04/21/2109ecf6-07fd-11e6-b283-e79d81c63c1b_story.html?hpid=hp_no-name_opinion-card-a%3Ahomepage%2Fstory

Mostly the same ol, same ol but slightly interesting

The Aramco story is probably more significant than any other piece of news out of Saudi in a long time. As the guy being interviewed on Bloomberg mentions, the idea is to continue the shift away from oil and create the world's largest sovereign wealth fund. They also want to make Riyadh a genuine business hub. You can't really accomplish the latter without the kind of cultural reforms that might make people want to come and do business in Saudi Arabia.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-04-25/saudi-prince-says-aramco-valuation-seen-at-above-2-trillion

haven't they been saying something like that for like 30 years

But only now are slightly younger folks having an influence in their economic planning

another msf bombing
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/airstrike-destroys-doctors-without-borders-hospital-in-aleppo-killing-staff-and-patients/2016/04/28/e1377bf5-30dc-4474-842e-559b10e014d8_story.html

terrible. No comment from Syria.

MSF says they had given coordinates of their Afghan hospital to US, as the story re that incident continues to trickle out

State Dept. spokesperson: “I’m not disputing the fact that we have troops on the ground, and they’re wearing boots.”

https://theintercept.com/2016/04/29/as-more-american-boots-hit-the-ground-in-syria-u-s-parses-boots-and-ground/

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/01/world/middleeast/syrian-city-torn-by-war-shows-jarring-resolve-to-try-to-live-normally.html?_r=0

What Assad has been up to with Russian assistance --

Four years of war has hardened hearts in Aleppo, a divided city and, for the past week, the scene of merciless fighting.

A fragile truce, brokered by the United States and Russia, has crumbled in Syria, leading to the worst violence in months. Russian fighter jets roar through the sky, pounding targets in rebel-held areas. The rebels send barrages of mortar rounds and homemade missiles that land in crowded neighborhoods. The war has stoked sectarian tensions and become a proxy battle for regional and global interests.

Most fatalities are civilians — at least 202 in the past week, about two-thirds in rebel-controlled eastern areas and the remainder in the government-held west side, according to groups that monitor casualties. The violence shows a “monstrous disregard for civilian lives,” the United Nations’ human rights chief, Zeid Ra’ad al-Hussein, said Friday.

One of the world’s oldest inhabited cities, Aleppo has for centuries been known as the crossroads of empires, with Ottoman, Armenian, Jewish and French influences. Today the only way in, on the government side, is via a lonely road that cuts through hostile territory: a bumpy tarmac strip lined with deserted villages and isolated government outposts.

US Secretary of State John Kerry says envoys meeting in Geneva are getting closer to an understanding on salvaging the cessation of hostilities in Syria.

He told reporters progress was being made on a plan to reduce the violence in the second city of Aleppo, which has threatened to sink the nine-week truce.

But he accused the Syrian government of "blatantly violating" the agreement to halt hostilities and allow aid in.

About 250 people have reportedly been killed in Aleppo in the past nine days.

...

The Syrian government and Russia have said the Aleppo air strikes are targeting only al-Nusra, which is affiliated to al-Qaeda and is excluded from the cessation of hostilities along with the rival Islamic State group.

However, the opposition and the US have dismissed the claim, and accused the government of targeting civilians and rebels abiding by the cessation of hostilities. ....

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-36183569

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/may/02/moqtada-al-sadr-who-is-the-cleric-directing-iraqs-protests

From a US and British perspective, the most pressing issue in Iraq is defeating Islamic State. For Iraqi citizens, however, it is the ongoing abject failure of the prime minister, Haider al-Abadi, and his government to provide basic public services, create jobs, and root out corruption among the country’s kleptocratic political class.

Into this gap between external strategic perception and domestic political reality has stepped Moqtada al-Sadr, the charismatic Shia cleric and former Mahdi army leader whose virulent sectarianism and violent resistance to the US occupation earned him notoriety in the west and hero status among many Iraqi Shias between 2004 and 2008.

The street protest movement that has rocked Baghdad in recent weeks, culminating in the weekend invasion of the walled government, parliament and embassy enclave known as the green zone, is largely directed by Sadr, who has moved his centre of operations from the holy city of Najaf to the capital. Some demonstrations have drawn up to 200,000 people.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/the-white-houses-iraq-delusion/2016/05/03/4d94a94c-108f-11e6-81b4-581a5c4c42df_story.html

The neo-con W. Post editorial Board is never happy with Obama's handling of foreign policy. Here they are on Iraq now:

In its zeal to withdraw all U.S. troops in time for President Obama’s reelection campaign in 2012, the administration threw its weight behind then-Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, with disastrous consequences. Mr. Maliki’s Shiite sectarianism fractured the fragile political system and opened the way for the Islamic State. In 2014, having pushed for Mr. Maliki’s removal, the administration bet on Haider al-Abadi; now, in its impatience to reduce the Islamic State before Mr. Obama leaves office, it clings to a prime minister who has proved unable to govern the country or reconcile its warring factions.

...

Whether Mr. Abadi survives the present crisis will likely depend on whether Shiite parties, with help from Iran, can patch up their differences. But already he has proved incapable of addressing Iraq’s fundamental political problem, which is the schism among the Shiite, Sunni and Kurdish communities. That brings us to the Obama administration’s second error: an unwillingness to accept that Iraq cannot survive under its present system of governance, which centralizes power in Baghdad

...The latest crisis should prompt a reconsideration. Kurdish leaders are now openly saying that Iraq’s post-2003 political structure has collapsed; the United States should be forging closer ties to their regional government. It should also be working to encourage a similar federal state in Sunni areas of Iraq. If Iraq survives as a nation-state, it will be because power, and oil revenues, are radically decentralized from Baghdad. Continuing to center U.S. support on a single Iraqi leader, whether it is Mr. Abadi or someone else, is a recipe for more failure.

But already he has proved incapable of addressing Iraq’s fundamental political problem, which is the schism among the Shiite, Sunni and Kurdish communities.

yeah geez get it together already, it's not like this has proven to be an intractable problem for 100s of years or anything

lol exactly

fwiw I predicted partition as the eventual outcome as soon as the ramp up to the war began

without an empire or a fascist, there's no way (or reason either) to hold such an artificial construct of a country like that together

Partition is the worst solution except for all the other ones.

well yeah. Iran would basically annex as much shi'ite dominated territory as it could, Turks would immediately declare open war on Kurdistan, Sunnis left weak and beleaguered, a broken nation

or something like that

Iran isn't interested in annexing lower Mesopotamia. Different cultures/languages and Iran has enough domestic problems already. But they would like a proxy/buffer state between them and the Gulf state Arabs who are constantly threatening to bomb them. The best case scenario for Iran is basically the current one: a fractious, weakened nation next-door, politically dominated by their proxies. An independent Kurdistan would be a thorn given their own Kurd population. And Iran is certainly least objectionable neighbor for autonomous but not independent Kurds.

Iran's indirect approach has worked remarkably well for the past 15 years, even their allies who have been torn asunder owe them more loyalty/favors than ever before. When the Sauds realize bombing won't change the humanitarian crisis of Yemen, and Bahrain collapses, Iran's influence in a bad neighborhood will be further strengthened.

erdogan and barzani are pals now there's no way turkey would invade atm

this eli lake article gave me a grim chuckle:

http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2016-05-04/can-a-demagogue-help-save-iraq-s-democracy

it's a p good rundown of events *afaict, but lake's framing (on twitter) was like "this man has killed americans, can he save iraqi democracy?" idk buddy is killing americans all that unpopular generally?

also shows that the relationship between the iranian gov't and iraqi shiites isn't so simple i guess

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/08/magazine/the-aspiring-novelist-who-became-obamas-foreign-policy-guru.html?_r=0

Big NY Times mag story on Obama advisor Ben Rhodes, the 38 year-old deputy national security adviser for strategic communications, ...He is, according to the consensus of the two dozen current and former White House insiders I talked to, the single most influential voice shaping American foreign policy aside from Potus himself.

What has interested me most about watching him and his cohort in the White House over the past seven years, I tell him, is the evolution of their ability to get comfortable with tragedy. I am thinking specifically about Syria, I add, where more than 450,000 people have been slaughtered.

“Yeah, I admit very much to that reality,” he says. “There’s a numbing element to Syria in particular. But I will tell you this,” he continues. “I profoundly do not believe that the United States could make things better in Syria by being there. And we have an evidentiary record of what happens when we’re there — nearly a decade in Iraq.”

Iraq is his one-word answer to any and all criticism. I was against the Iraq war from the beginning, I tell Rhodes, so I understand why he perpetually returns to it. I also understand why Obama pulled the plug on America’s engagement with the Middle East, I say, but it was also true as a result that more people are dying there on his watch than died during the Bush presidency, even if very few of them are Americans. What I don’t understand is why, if America is getting out of the Middle East, we are apparently spending so much time and energy trying to strong-arm Syrian rebels into surrendering to the dictator who murdered their families, or why it is so important for Iran to maintain its supply lines to Hezbollah. He mutters something about John Kerry, and then goes off the record, to suggest, in effect, that the world of the Sunni Arabs that the American establishment built has collapsed. The buck stops with the establishment, not with Obama, who was left to clean up their mess.

the clearest mandate obama had was no more foreign entanglements, no more interventions, no more wars. it's hard to fault him for following said mandate even if rhodes is wrong and we could've prevented some of the syrian catastrophe.

it was also true as a result that more people are dying there on his watch than died during the Bush presidency, even if very few of them are Americans.

eeehh I dunno about this, laying that at Obama's feet doesn't seem particularly accurate or helpful

maybe more people are dying in syria but its not because of direct us intervention, like what happened with the 400k+ civilian deaths post iraq war 2.

well his position hinges on the assumption that *less* people would have died if the US had intervened and frankly our track record in the middle east doesn't really support that imo

Rhodes singled out a key example to me one day, laced with the brutal contempt that is a hallmark of his private utterances. “All these newspapers used to have foreign bureaus,” he said. “Now they don’t. They call us to explain to them what’s happening in Moscow and Cairo. Most of the outlets are reporting on world events from Washington. The average reporter we talk to is 27 years old, and their only reporting experience consists of being around political campaigns. That’s a sea change. They literally know nothing.”

He had also developed a healthy contempt for the American foreign-policy establishment, including editors and reporters at The New York Times, The Washington Post, The New Yorker and elsewhere, who at first applauded the Iraq war and then sought to pin all the blame on Bush and his merry band of neocons when it quickly turned sour. If anything, that anger has grown fiercer during Rhodes’s time in the White House. He referred to the American foreign-policy establishment as the Blob. According to Rhodes, the Blob includes Hillary Clinton, Robert Gates and other Iraq-war promoters from both parties who now whine incessantly about the collapse of the American security order in Europe and the Middle East.

But has his contempt succeeded, other than keeping thousands of American ground troops out of Syria? Or is that enough. Also, the new response I am seeing to his "Iraq failed", is but the Balkans was a success, how about looking at that too...

I don't remember or know enough about the Balkans to decide whether that response has any merit, or if its mixing apples and oranges ...

http://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2016/05/let-us-now-psychoanalyze-young-ben-rhodes

Kevin Drum defends Rhodes against critics who say he was arrogantly boasting about conning reporters.

I think Drum's characterization of Lozada's response is overly dismissive. The piece is gross and Samuels is an asshole, pandering to his subject the whole way through while he laughs at Rhodes' disdain for his colleagues. Rhodes has apparently been having to live a lot of this down over the phone since the piece came out.

Rhodes is about to become Another Former Speechwriter so he gets to try to make it up to anybody he respects or cares about with his inevitable book. Samuels OTOH sounds like he's just a bit of good timing away from being nearly another Judith Miller himself.

Also, the new response I am seeing to his "Iraq failed", is but the Balkans was a success, how about looking at that too...

I don't remember or know enough about the Balkans to decide whether that response has any merit, or if its mixing apples and oranges ...

The Republic of Kosovo has always been considered a puppet state by its own people and is effectively ruled by the construction mafia today, resulting in fascinating zoning issues in Pristina iirc.

Kosovo will probably be absorbed into Greater Albania at some point. As far as i can tell, Kosovo was set to be the UN's most expensive mission ten years ago and is still draining money now, to the extent that it's seen as a racket by a lot of Kosovars. There's not a huge amount of point in having highly paid and lavishly accommodated UN workers or soldier there, particularly as they're turning a blind eye to corruption, but it's too lucrative for them to withdraw. This is all slightly tangential to the main thrust of the thread but calling the Balkans a success ignores how badly post-war governance structures were set up in Kosovo and Bosnia.

don't quite follow that last post; if UN/EU/other foreign officials are haemorrhaging money then surely they would want to withdraw, and however much money local elites might be making out of it, surely they don't have much of a say in how long those programs continue?

That assumes the UN cares about how much it is spending there. The perception, correct or otherwise, is that it is a cushy number for so many people they find ways to string it out indefinitely.

I didn't think the parameters and length of the UN mission in Kosovo was ultimately determined by those on the ground. my impression was that although very much a mixed bag, that some of the more successful institutions have been ones shaped by the UN, with a big emphasis on meritocratic recruitment and striving towards the ideal of a weberian impersonal bureaucracy, which compared favourably to less coordinated efforts from the EU or the UK. there wasn't really a precedent for the sort of top down creation of political institutions and shift in political culture attempted in Kosovo, so it's hard to know what the reasonable expectations are that we can judge the international efforts against

Idk, the feedback that I get from the NGOs I work with is that KFOR is still there in large numbers to give NATO soldiers something to do and the bulk of the UN mission has turned into a self-perpetuating bureaucracy that focuses more time on justifying its presence than monitoring the implantation of strong governing structures. The direct investment with strong oversight of spending that Germany has been doing is much more warmly welcomed. The government is still a complete mess and, though it hasn't traditionally been welcomed internationally, there seems to be an internal push to resolve some of the structural issues with a much closer economic, political and cultural union with Albania, which they should arguably have been encouraged to do much earlier.

Structurally, Bosnia is even worse though, and probably a textbook example of how not to set up a government.

I do wonder how long the UN was envisaging they would be involved for when they signed onto this, pushing 20 years doesn't make this case much of a model for future situations

US export rules that rely on weapon reliability standards have not prevented the sale of cluster munitions to Saudi Arabia, putting civilians at long-term risk, Human Rights Watch said. Cluster munitions are prohibited by a 2008 treaty signed by 119 countries, though not Saudi Arabia, Yemen, or the US.

“The US has sold Saudi Arabia cluster munitions, a weapon most countries have rejected due to the harm they cause civilians,” said Steve Goose, arms director at Human Rights Watch and chair of the Cluster Munition Coalition, the international coalition of groups working to eradicate cluster munitions. “Saudi Arabia should stop using cluster munitions in Yemen or anywhere else, and the US should stop producing and exporting them.”

http://www.juancole.com/2016/05/saudis-cluster-munitions.html

map porn here:
http://publicdomainreview.org/collections/the-map-that-changed-the-middle-east-1916/

lots of good skeptical questions about how a iraq partition would work:
http://warontherocks.com/2016/05/partitioning-iraq-make-a-detailed-case-or-cease-and-desist/

Did rebels kill longtime Hezbollah military leader in Syria or did the Israelis?

http://www.reuters.com/article/us-mideast-crisis-hezbollah-blast-idUSKCN0Y506R

Hezbollah said on Saturday its top military commander, whose death it announced on Friday, was killed in Syria by Sunni Islamist artillery fire and not by an Israeli air strike as one member of the Lebanese Shi'ite movement had said.

"Investigations have showed that the explosion, which targeted one of our bases near Damascus International Airport, and which led to the martyrdom of commander Mustafa Badreddine, was the result of artillery bombardment carried out by takfiri (hardline Sunni) groups in the area," Hezbollah said in a statement.

versus this

http://english.alarabiya.net/en/views/news/middle-east/2016/05/15/Killing-of-Hezbollah-s-Badreddine-points-to-open-score-settling-in-Syria-.html

x-post-- yep, some good questions raised in the post re Iraq

yeah it's weird bc when i first heard about badreddine's death all the context i heard suggested that it was KIA in the course of ground battles. but then i started hearing ppl speculating all over the place that no actually the israelis did it. but i didn't see any evidence to that effect and i wonder if it's more just that any time a hezbollah commander dies ppl just immediately assume israel did it absent any good reason.

There is a hypothesis circulating that it was Israel but Hezbollah won't admit it because they are too preoccupied to retaliate at the moment but I don't think anyone is likely to find out soon.

Al Arabiya should be taken with a massive pinch of salt on Syria and Iran.

but is there any actual reason to believe israel did it besides the fact that he was a hezbollah commander and israel has assassinated hezbollah commanders before? bc he was operating in a warzone so occum's razor might suggest that?

My first thought was, lol this lot blame Israel for everything.

The Syrian Observatory (another huge pinch of salt) claims there was no shelling in the area and there is no obvious reason why it would be an inside job so an air strike is plausible, though clearly not proven.

Kerry trying to salvage Syria truce and peace settlement negotiations

http://www.aljazeera.com/news/2016/05/world-powers-gather-vienna-resume-syria-talks-160517081357389.html

While in Iraq, jihadists set off bombs

http://www.usnews.com/news/world/articles/2016-05-17/three-bombs-kill-at-least-63-people-in-iraq

From the interesting piece Mordy linked upthread:

<q>Why is it time to give up on the idea of an Iraqi state, and why do Westerners get to foist weak ethno-sectarian federalism or dissolution upon them? Iraq’s difficult experiment with democracy — thrust upon them by the United States and its allies — has been running for about 13 years. Iraqi democracy is in its infancy. While the violence there is terrible, why is now the time to give up and try something new? Why not three years, five years, or perhaps 10 years from now?</q>

While this is a valid question, it should pose more as a mirror to the West, instead of troubling 'Iraq' with this. Good luck telling the Kurds in Iraq threat the West is done tinkering about for a while and will let things be as be for ten years...
Iraqi-Kurdistan is closer than ever to establishing their own state. The Barzani's, in control, have moderately close and ok relations with both Turkey and Baghdad. The former heavily investing in the region, and seeing Iraqi-Kurdistan in a very different light as Eastern Kurdistan (the Kurds in Turkey. Diyarbakir etc). The latter, Baghdad, is failing to support the Kurds and Peshmerga in the North on a daily basis.
Giving the Kurds their own state isn't "giving up". For them, this isn't the time for the west to say: let's take a break and see how democracy in Iraq evolves. They are on the brink of finally having their own state (which in theory they already have, being the autonomous region they are).

Regardless, the Kurds in Iraq will call their own autonomy anyway, probably very soon, through the long-awaited referendum. Neither the West nor Turkey, nor Iran, would oppose. Which is quite unique in and of itself.

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/22/magazine/doctors-with-enemies-did-afghan-forces-target-the-msf-hospital.html

it's a long piece but here's a particularly dramatic part:

In 2011, M.S.F. opened the hospital in Kunduz, a location it chose because it believed, presciently, that the province’s bloody past presaged a violent future. But some members of the Afghan government and security forces there had little respect for M.S.F.’s neutrality and resented its treatment of wounded Taliban. When I visited Kunduz in November, their anger was still surprisingly raw, despite the recent destruction of the hospital. “They give them medicine; they transport and treat their injured,” Gard, the commander of the quick-­reaction force, told me. “Their existence is a big problem for us.” And though the hospital treated many more wounded for the government, there were rumors that M.S.F. had carried out unnecessary amputations on them, according to Fawzia Yaftali, a member of the provincial council. “The general perception was that M.S.F. supported the Taliban,” she said.

On July 1, an episode occurred that should have been, in retrospect, a warning sign for all involved. A team of Afghan police commandos from elite units mentored by United States and NATO special forces — the 222 and 333 Battalions, which were later part of the Afghan forces sent to Kunduz with the Green Berets — had arrived in Kunduz Province to track a high-­value target, a militant commander named Abu Huzaifa. After targeting Huzaifa in an airstrike, the commandos believed that he had been wounded and taken to the M.S.F. hospital in Kunduz City. They drove there and forced their way inside, where they physically assaulted the staff members and fired their weapons into the air, according to M.S.F. Huzaifa was nowhere to be found.

“It was a kind of wild intrusion,” Molinie said. After M.S.F. phoned the governor and the police chief, the commandos were called off. Furious that the sanctity of the hospital had been violated, M.S.F. closed it to new admissions for five days, until officials received guarantees from Kabul that it would be respected. Huzaifa would be killed seven weeks later — by an American drone, according to a senior Afghan special forces commander — but bitterness about the hospital raid lingered among the Kunduz security forces. “They hid him,” Gard told me, without offering any evidence. His men had accompanied the police commandos to the hospital. “The people who work there are traitors, all of them.”

apparently lieberman joining the Bibi coalition - word is that Odeh will become head of opposition?

ok apparently odeh was only going to become opposition head if bougie joined the coalition which i guess w/ lieberman now is not gonna happen. too bad - that would've been an interesting change of pace.

Oh, Avigdor Lieberman.

SO Bibi went to the right rather than center-left.

It had appeared for the past several days that a course had been set for Isaac Herzog's center-left Zionist Union party, which has 24 lawmakers, to agree on an alliance with Netanyahu's right-wing Likud.

But in a surprise move, Lieberman, who heads the far-right Yisrael Beitenu party and previously served as foreign minister, convened a news conference on Wednesday to say he was ready to negotiate a pact with Netanyahu.

Lieberman, whose party has six Knesset seats, demanded the defense portfolio as well as new legislation that would impose capital punishment on Palestinians carrying out fatal attacks.

...

Lieberman, who twice served as foreign minister in previous Netanyahu-led governments and has had testy relationship with the prime minister, has drawn headlines by repeatedly questioning the loyalty of Israel's Arab minority.

http://www.reuters.com/article/us-israel-government-idUSKCN0Y91S7

Laying out the welcome mat, Justice Minister Ayelet Shaked of Jewish Home, said: "Avigdor Lieberman is part of the nationalist camp, and I think the coalition, together with him, with 67 legislators will hold together until 2019," when Israel's next election is due.

If Netanyahu remains in office until the end of July 2019, he will be Israel's longest serving prime minister.

http://www.reuters.com/article/us-israel-netanyahu-politics-idUSKCN0YA1DA

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/checkpoint/wp/2016/05/19/top-general-agreement-to-send-u-s-troops-to-libya-could-be-reached-any-day/?hpid=hp_rhp-top-table-main_checkpoint-libya-820pm-top%3Ahomepage%2Fstory

Hopefully training of Libyan troops will go better than such training has gone elsewhere in the region

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/middle_east/israels-defense-minister-abruptly-resigns-in-protest-of-growing-extremism/2016/05/20/c5a3d99b-bc00-4143-a4e7-15c17c9ae05d_story.html?hpid=hp_rhp-top-table-main_israel-935a-top%3Ahomepage%2Fstory

In a press conference Friday, Yaalon, a fellow member of Netanyahu’s Likud party, warned that Israel was drifting dangerously toward extremism.

“I fought with all my might against manifestations of extremism, violence and racism in Israeli society, which are threatening its sturdiness and trickling into the armed forces, hurting it already,” he said.

Yaalon appeared to be referring to widespread support by Israeli leaders for a combat medic who shot to death a wounded Palestinian attacker as he lay on a street in Hebron in the occupied West Bank.

Thousands of Israelis rallied in Tel Aviv and proclaimed the soldier a hero. Israeli human-rights activists called it a cold-blooded execution. The killing was captured on video.

I think this is a disastrous move for Bibi politically and could potentially cost him w/ voters. Replacing a popular pro-IDF general w/ a nut like Lieberman w/ no defense experience will be seen v poorly I think. And it's hard to understand what real benefit Bibi got from this - he increases his seat margin slightly but not dramatically, he still has a few years till next election... I don't know if I believe this is true but I think it's possible that he is planning on upending the status quo in the territories and that he is trying to make the broadest (and most right-wing) government possible as cover for something like ending the occupation (presumably through withdrawal not annexation). It might seem implausible but he is supposedly negotiating with Sisi about the Arab League initiative and Lieberman has expressed more pragmatic pro-negotiation opinions in the past. Again, v hard for me to imagine Bibi doing anything politically brave esp as it regards the territories but despite that it might explain why he'd make such an otherwise incomprehensible move.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/airstrike-on-taliban-leader-escalates-us-involvement-in-afghan-war/2016/05/22/f26ced5a-2014-11e6-aa84-42391ba52c91_story.html?hpid=hp_rhp-more-top-stories_no-name%3Ahomepage%2Fstory

Back in Pakistan again

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/22/world/europe/how-the-saudis-turned-kosovo-into-fertile-ground-for-isis.html?_r=0

Every Friday, just yards from a statue of Bill Clinton with arm aloft in a cheery wave, hundreds of young bearded men make a show of kneeling to pray on the sidewalk outside an improvised mosque in a former furniture store.

The mosque is one of scores built here with Saudi government money and blamed for spreading Wahhabism — the conservative ideology dominant in Saudi Arabia — in the 17 years since an American-led intervention wrested tiny Kosovo from Serbian oppression.

Since then — much of that time under the watch of American officials — Saudi money and influence have transformed this once-tolerant Muslim society at the hem of Europe into a font of Islamic extremism and a pipeline for jihadists.

Kosovo now finds itself, like the rest of Europe, fending off the threat of radical Islam. Over the last two years, the police have identified 314 Kosovars — including two suicide bombers, 44 women and 28 children — who have gone abroad to join the Islamic State, the highest number per capita in Europe.

with friends like these...

Again, v hard for me to imagine Bibi doing anything politically brave esp as it regards the territories but despite that it might explain why he'd make such an otherwise incomprehensible move.

interesting interpretation, I certainly can't unravel what he's up to

Saudi, Qatari, etc, funding is a problem in Bosnia too. Again, it's a symptom of the failure to build a viable post-intervention economy. Kosovo has a youth unemployment rate of over 60%.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/middle_east/ground-offensive-in-syria-seeks-to-squeeze-islamic-state-stronghold-raqqa/2016/05/24/68035454-21b0-11e6-b944-52f7b1793dae_story.html?hpid=hp_rhp-top-table-main_syria-1050a-top%3Ahomepage%2Fstory

Although the operation around Raqqa appears to have relatively limited goals, it will provide an early test of a coalition being built in the desert between local Arab fighters and the Kurdish People’s Protection Units, or YPG.

But the umbrella force remains overwhelmingly dominated by the Kurds, and efforts to recruit Arab fighters have been plagued by disputes and mistrust.

The U.S. military in April dispatched 250 U.S. Special Operations forces to northern Syria, to join the 50 who were already there, with the goal of helping recruit and train more Arab fighters.

The YPG has expressed little interest in fighting for Raqqa, which is a predominantly Arab town, and U.S. officials say a significant Arab force is needed before an assault directly on the city. But the officials would not put a time frame on how long it could take to assemble enough Arab fighters.

still skeptical of my theory above however possibly some more evidence:
http://www.timesofisrael.com/netanyahu-signs-coalition-deal-with-liberman-pledges-to-pursue-peace-deal/

So, Avigdor Lieberman was appointed minister of defense of Israel the other day.

I tried to put a news link underneath that ^^, but couldn't find any (via Google news) simply stating the fact and not "choosing sides". Personally I think nothing good can come from this appointment, but would like to hear your thoughts. Especially as to: Netanyahu, why?

I speculated a bit above

Missed that Mordy, sorry. In full agreement though.

more possible evidence:
In surprise move, Netanyahu says he’s ready to negotiate based on Saudi peace initiative

https://ottomansandzionists.com/2016/06/02/two-state-security/
http://www.twostatesecurity.org/

lot of stuff in the second link to sort through but some interesting ppl are involved in the project including koplow whose introduction is in the first link

Interesting, thanks for sharing.

How influential is the Israel Policy Forum in America? Not heard of the institute before (in EU here).

afaik not particularly but idk these think tanky / lobbying groups sometimes punch above their weight class

the interactive map in particular is pretty cool

Interactive map is crashing my old iPad but will read tomorrow.

what do we think about this? http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-36431160

khamenei obv denies it

http://ichef-1.bbci.co.uk/news/660/cpsprodpb/5E02/production/_89866042_wedonotsaytreated.jpg

Entirely believable if you ask me. Makes sense he sought at least some support from his biggest enemy to be able to grab the power. And I could see Carter agreeing on this. Also means he got all the more screwed over by Iran, with a kick in the boot of them releasing the American hostages the day he left office.

interesting counter-intuitive argument here about israel + long term status quo that i more-or-less agree w/ (w/ caveat that israel's ability to maintain longterm status quo should not make them blasé about the costs of doing so):
https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/united-states/2016-06-08/israel-and-post-american-middle-east

for ultimate counter intuitive:
http://english.alarabiya.net/en/views/news/middle-east/2016/06/07/What-a-Hillary-Clinton-nomination-means-for-the-Middle-East-.html

Tired of these faux conclusive 'here's what this means' articles tbh, when it's all speculative anyway. But I doubt Israel has a lot to fear from Clinton.

Also, "Middle East" is the new "Africa is a country". The "Middle East" is a hollow, lazy formulation of a complex array of countries, tribes, coalitions, rebels.. That is something H. Clinton will find out the coming four years iirc.

tbf she was the SOS i'm sure she knows :p

One can but hope ;)

i was curious and looked up which potus were sos first, interesting list, no one from modern era: jefferson, madison, monroe, jq adams, van buren and buchanan

Van Buren! Now I want to google and find out if he even knew about/did something for, say, the Kurds.

More casualties of war:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2016/06/10/in-about-two-weeks-the-lions-and-leopards-at-this-zoo-in-yemen-may-be-out-of-food/?hpid=hp_no-name_hp-in-the-news%3Apage%2Fin-the-news

Discussion of the phrase "radical Islam"

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-politics/wp/2016/06/14/obama-lashes-out-on-loose-talk-on-terrorism-islam/?tid=pm_politics_pop_b

“That’s the key, they tell us. We can’t get ISIL unless we call them ‘radical Islamists,’ ” Obama said, referring to the Islamic State militant group after meeting with his National Security Council at the Treasury Department to discuss the administration's counterterrorism strategy. “What exactly would using this label accomplish? What exactly would it change? Would it make ISIL less committed to trying to kill Americans? Would it bring in more allies? Is there a military strategy that is served by this? The answer is, none of the above. Calling a threat by a different name does not make it go away. This is a political distraction.”

The president added: “There’s no magic to the phrase, ‘radical Islam.’ It’s a political talking point; it’s not a strategy.”

by the same token there's no reason not to say it. i don't think moderate muslims are impressed by our refusing to call it radical islam when that is clearly what it is and does not tarnish all muslims everywhere just like fundamentalist christians does not tarnish all christians everywhere. to play the devil's advocate a little bit - i'm not sure entirely how much i believe this but i think there is an argument to be made as well that obama has concentrated primarily on the military/assassination part of fighting worldwide radical islam and not enough on the ideological side. this doesn't necessarily mean making the argument that islam is somehow uniquely or inherently given towards radicalism but that at least in most personifications is not as great as american capitalism (or whatever exceptionalism argument he wants to make but that he makes some argument about why our life + freedoms + etc are better than the governments of saudi arabia, iran, iraq, egypt, increasingly turkey, most islamic run states even ones that are not officially 'radical'). idk maybe he's right that such an argument would indeed have a deleterious impact on moderates and obv you don't want to alienate sisi or erdogan no matter how much you might like to (tho probably ilx consensus is we could hold ksa's feet to the fire better). hillary is a much better advocate for america on exceptionalism/ideological grounds probably bc of their differing backgrounds + identities. obama much better at articulating the nuances + problems in the system but idk when you're a world superpower and so much depends on signaling things it matters if you give off the impression that you think the US is a force for good in the world or one w/ a mixed record. i love obama btw and this is one of the things i love about him and like i said this is all more devil's advocate. i suspect that when neocons take this tact they are stuck in a cold war mindset where communism + capitalism were having an actual war of the ideas. in the ideological fields the war between islam and the west is as asymmetrical as the war between isis and the west.

While I agree with you on the whole Mordy, this

i don't think moderate muslims are impressed by our refusing to call it radical islam when that is clearly what it is and does not tarnish all muslims everywhere just like fundamentalist christians does not tarnish all christians everywhere.

does not ring true. It's certainly not the experience of my Muslim friends. For a lot of people a Muslim equates to being radical, at least in Western Europe. Every incident like what happened in Colorado definitely puts moderate Islam in a bind. Moderates will be called upon to denounce an act done by radicals because they share the same religion, even though they have a very different interpretation of said religion, and radical Islam being very far from moderate (moderate means non-violent, non-batshit, in essence, no?) Islam. Fundamental (and batshit insane) Christians don't tarnish moderate Christian. But fundamental/radical Islam definitely tarnishes all Muslims, at least from a western pov.

"For a lot of people Islam equates to being radical", I meant to say

colorado?

Orlando soz

xxp right but i mean they have legitimate things to worry about (islamophobic backlashes, their kids becoming radicalized) but i don't think obama taking care not to say 'radical islam' sets them at ease in any way. they know who isis is - they're not confused that actually maybe they aren't an islamic organization. not calling it radical islam just seems like playing stupid for no conceivable gain. idk i would be interested in hear a muslim weigh in on this - maybe it is a small comfort, idk.

they're not confused that actually maybe they aren't an islamic organization

They're denounced as un-Islamic by moderate Muslims all the time. How right or wrong that is another matter.

ppl are whatever they say they are, is how I look at it.

Listen, the BBC call them the So-Called Islamic State, that's their policy, that's how they are referred to ALL the time, what would the Trumpingtons make of that? It does get on your nerves admittedly.

calling them un-islamic is a way to try and capture the legitimacy + meaning of the religion and setting terror outside the parameters of mainstream islamic discourse but it's not that they don't know that isis is islamic when they say this. they know they aren't communists, or nationalists, or shock capitalists. they're not fascists - al-baghdadi is barely a charismatic figure - and they aren't white supremacists. this is obv a radical + literalist reading of islam. so who is fooled by not referring to them in any way as islamic?

i know isis isn't grinding their teeth that some kafir president is calling them un-islamic. what do stupid westerners know about what islam is?

ISIS models itself after the practices of medieval caliphates, and many of their modern horrors aren't too far removed from bloody episodes of that era. Modern weaponry, sympathizers among poorly integrated immigrants to the West, and a remarkably effective internet propaganda arm are the innovations. Our disgust at stoning adultresses, amputating hands of thieves, beheading suspected spies and burning bomber pilots alive reflects just how far the global standards have advanced. Like other Islamic organizations like the Muslim Brotherhood or Hezbollah, I wouldn't be surprised if they also did charity work and contract for trash disposal in the areas they control.

To call them un-Islamic would be like calling Appalachian snake-handling congregations un-Christian, when the later may be the truest modern reflection of what early Pauline Christianity was like.

the thing is, politicians calling them islamic or not is an instrumental decision, not one that is (or should necessarily be) grounded in history of theology.

er i mean, history OR theology

^ otm. The target of the message isn't ISIS or 'moderate Muslims' - it's a handful of angry losers in the west who, for the most part, aren't conventionally religious and don't have a strong grip on theology, but are looking to fit into a grand clash of civilisations narrative to boost their own self-worth. If politicians and other Muslims believe it is useful to undermine that narrative by placing it outside of Islam, whether they have the standing or not is not particularly important.

right-wing American hack Ed Rogers:

The difference is that calling these terrorists what they are — radical Islamists — would be reassuring to those Americans who have doubts about Obama’s proficiency as commander in chief. By using the phrase, it would help build confidence that he actually understands the problem and therefore has a viable plan to defeat the enemy. After all, he is the one who used the term “jayvee team” to describe the Islamic State. He is the one who declared Iraq “sovereign, stable and self-reliant.” He is the one who announced an absurd withdrawal date from Afghanistan. He is the one who took six years to declare the Ft. Hood shooting a terrorist attack and not an incident of “workplace violence.”

So to be clear, using the phrase “radical Islam” isn’t about trying to make the Islamic State “less committed to trying to kill Americans.” Mr. President, it is not about the Islamic State, it’s about you. Your specific refusal to use the term rattles Americans and increases doubts about your grasp of the threat that the Islamic State presents. Islam has a problem, and Obama needs to say so. He needs to help the world come together and work this out — and admitting the problem out loud is an essential step.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/post-partisan/wp/2016/06/15/its-important-the-president-says-radical-islam-heres-why/

It's clear - if I create doubt it's your failure if you don't dispel it.

Yeah it's basically one of those moves I feel like is ok for rhetorical purposes even though it feels incorrect on a more nuanced level.

Saying that they're "unislamic" I mean, sorry, xp, not in response to that op Ed.

http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2016/06/obama-radical-islam/487079/

51 US Diplomatics Urge Strikes Against Assad in Syria
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/17/world/middleeast/syria-assad-obama-airstrikes-diplomats-memo.html

While there are no widely recognized names, higher-level State Department officials are known to share their concerns. Mr. Kerry himself has pushed for stronger American action against Syria, in part to force a diplomatic solution on Mr. Assad. The president has resisted such pressure, and has been backed up by his military commanders, who have raised questions about what would happen in the event that Mr. Assad was forced from power — a scenario that the draft memo does not address.

The State Department spokesman, John Kirby, declined to comment on the memo, which top officials had just received. But he said Mr. Kerry respected the process as a way for employees “to express policy views candidly and privately to senior leadership.”

Tehy are calling for bombing of Assad's government but not US troops on the ground

It calls for “a judicious use of stand-off and air weapons, which would undergird and drive a more focused and hard-nosed U.S.-led diplomatic process.”

Such a step would represent a radical shift in the administration’s approach to the civil war in Syria, and there is little evidence that President Obama has plans to change course. Mr. Obama has emphasized the military campaign against the Islamic State over efforts to dislodge Mr. Assad. Diplomatic efforts to end the conflict, led by Secretary of State John Kerry, have all but collapsed.

meanwhile: [/I] according to a senior Pentagon official, Russia conducted airstrikes in southern Syria against American-backed forces fighting the Islamic State.[/I]

what a shmuck:
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/24/world/middleeast/mahmoud-abbas-claims-rabbis-urged-israel-to-poison-palestinians-water.html

https://twitter.com/BarakRavid/status/747075591522893826

A joint statement by Turkish and Israeli negotiators announcing a reconciliation deal to be published within hours, Israeli official says

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-36639834

The reconciliation deal between Israel and Turkey will see a return to normal diplomatic relations, but ties are unlikely to have the warmth that they did in the past.

It is Turkey's growing diplomatic problems - strategic tensions with Russia; difficulties with Europe due to the growing authoritarianism of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan; and above all the failure of Turkey's Syria policy (which has also soured ties with Washington) - that have prompted this move

And in other news: Erdogan 'sorry' for downing of Russian jet

difficulties with Europe due to the growing authoritarianism of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan

is this really why Europe has "difficulties" with Turkey? They seem mostly okay with growing authorianism of various Euro gov'ts (Poland, Hungary, etc.)

authoritarianism, I should say

The President of the European Parliament said the recent Polish constitutional reforms "had the characteristics of a coup" and the European Commission is currently deciding whether it's such a breach of the rule of law Poland should lose all voting rights, so it's not as if they're clapping them on.

I did not know that thx

Opposition leader MK Isaac Herzog accused Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Monday of groveling before Turkey, by agreeing to pay out compensation to families of 10 Turkish citizens killed in confrontations with IDF soldier aboard a Gaza-destined flotilla in 2010 as part of a reconciliation deal with Ankara.
"The agreement with Turkey is a part of the pattern of the prime minister's activities. He starts with big declarations, moves on to promises, and winds up groveling," Herzog wrote in a post on his Facebook page.
"Restoring relations with Turkey is an important diplomatic goal but compensating the attackers of IDF troops is inconceivable, especially when those signing onto the deal are the Netanyahu-Lieberman-Bennett trio."

gmafb w/ this guy is he for real? he's trying to outflank bibi on the right by deriding a diplomatic achievement? what a fuckin stooge

Two explosions and gun fire at Istanbul Ataturk airport.

10 dead

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/29/world/middleeast/israel-hannibal-procedure.html

this is imo actually v good + unexpected news. have no idea if lieberman has anything to do w/ it but still a v promising shift in policy.

10 dead

At least 28 now. This is a concerted attempt to destroy the Turkish tourist industry and seems to be working. Much wider economic damage though, as companies refuse to let employees visit.

50+ fatalities being reported now

It is most definitely working. See the numbers released earlier today by Turkey (screens in this tweet, last column indicates percentage change in tourists compared to last year). Russia obv down -90%, but nearly all over, people aren't coming any more.

Turkey says it was an IS attack, though it's not been claimed yet. Xp

Oh man (xp)

CNN rolling back that report of 50 now. Nevertheless a horrible scene with all the videos popping up

http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/islamic-state-prime-suspect-after-suicide-bombers-kill-41-at-istanbul-airport/ar-AAhJukV?li=BBnb7Kz&ocid=ansmsnnews11

Now they're saying 41, and suggesting it was ISIS

They've always said it was ISIS. The government suggestion seems to be that 35 people flew in to conduct attacks and there are 33 of them left.

32, rather.

And they lost track of them?

— The three suicide bombers who killed 44 people at Istanbul’s main international airport this week have been identified as citizens of Russia, Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan, Turkish officials said Thursday.

Turkey, which has blamed the Islamic State for the attack, carried out raids across the country on Thursday, detaining 13 people, including three foreigners, in connection with the attack at Istanbul Ataturk Airport on Tuesday night.

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/01/world/europe/istanbul-airport-attack-turkey.html?ref=world

Italy has suspended all arms sales, including important jet repair components, to Egypt following the murder of Giulio Regeni. Would be good to see other countries following that lead.

http://www.middleeasteye.net/news/italys-regeni-amendment-cancels-sales-military-goods-egypt-over-students-killing-1492370765

Conflicting reports but it looks like there may have been a bombing in Medina, of all places, half an hour ago.

The Saudis have plenty of enemies who'd like to embarrass them.

Most of them would think twice about bombing the holiest or second holiest site in Islam though.

Once you've talked yourself into bombing hundreds of places and killing a few thousand of your fellow religionists, it is not such a huge step to convince yourself that bombing pilgrims at Medina could be a good plan.

getting a bit four lions

Sad how inevitable this feels

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2016/07/03/the-worst-alleged-isis-attack-in-days-is-the-one-the-world-probably-cares-least-about/?tid=pm_world_pop_b

Written before the Medina bombing I think. This is about the Baghdad ones.

Public anger in the Iraqi capital, as my colleague Loveday Morris reports, is not being directed at foreign conspirators or even — first and foremost — at the militants, but at a much-maligned government that is failing to keep the country safe.

"The street was full of life last night," one Karrada resident told The Washington Post, "and now the smell of death is all over the place."

been surprised/bummed that the Medina attack has been buried in the US press, I know it's not the first time terrorists have attacked one of the holy cities but still

Something I've been thinking about lately, how a lot of terrorism or suicide bombings and other mass violent acts are taking place or originate in places that had previously seen long stretches of relative stability at the expense of freedom or democracy. That is, lots of places where strong-arm dictators or clans with terrible rights records successfully (?) suppressed bloody factionalism. Iraq, Egypt, Syria, Libya, Afghanistan, Pakistan, etc. Just locked up (or killed) whomever they deemed troublemakers. Is it the sloppy nature of their so-called liberation that has more recently opened/reopened the flood gates, or simply the loosening of the lid?

Anyway,I doubt I expressed it well - rushing our the door - but can there be any solution to this kind of sort of pure, apolitical terrorism - that is, no clear, achievable goal - beside violent suppression, the way it used to be? How come a democracy like India, with a huge poverty problem and plenty of religious conflicts, generally avoids this kind of stuff? How about Iran, which fuels and embraces extremism but has somehow kept things (relatively) stable, and huge mass violent events minimal?

iirc from the Lawrence Wright book, an attack on Mecca was sort of a foundational moment for what became Al Qaeda

1000 Saddams

imperfect (as bissell stuff often is) but some interesting stuff and v. readable:
http://harpers.org/archive/2016/07/my-holy-land-vacation/?single=1`

xp Josh: Westerners often forget that our own transition from repressive states/lords and tribal/sectarian animosities to tolerant democracies took centuries of bloodshed, (hopefully) exhausting itself only in the 20th century. We still have pogroms at the fringes. That others would embrace our own End of History in scant generations, especially where it conflicts with tribal/pastoral traditions, was wildly ambitious.

President Obama will deploy 560 troops to Iraq to help retake Mosul, the largest city controlled by the Islamic State, Defense Secretary Ashton B. Carter announced on Monday. It is the latest escalation of the United States’ role in the war here by Mr. Obama, who ran for office on a pledge to end America’s involvement in the conflict.

The additional troops will bring the official number of American service members deployed in Iraq to 4,647. Many will be based at an airfield about 40 miles south of Mosul that was seized by the Iraqis on Saturday.

...American commanders plan to use the base, Qayyarah West Airfield, as a staging area to provide logistical support to Iraqi forces as they move toward Mosul. Some of the troops specialize in infrastructure support like building bridges, which the Iraqis will need for the assault on Mosul because the Islamic State has destroyed many around the city. The Islamic State seized Mosul in June 2014.

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/12/world/middleeast/us-iraq-mosul.html?&moduleDetail=section-news-1&action=click&contentCollection=Middle%20East®ion=Footer&module=MoreInSection&version=WhatsNext&contentID=WhatsNext&pgtype=article

Rumblings from analysts on Twitter that there might be a coup taking place in Istanbul. The army has closed the Bosphorus bridge in both directions and there are fighter jets flying over the city. Something's going on but nobody really knows what.

whoah

Tanks on the streets of Istanbul and Ankara according to some people watching Turkish TV. Still speculation at this point but pretty odd even under the current circumstances.

This is another case in which Twitter is actively unhelpful in working out what's going on. There are reports that journalists have been told they're locking down both cities in response to a potential terrorist attack and that the military police is disarming the civilian police. It's either a huge anti-terrorist mobilisation or a coup.

A coup is surely not very likely?

Not being reported on BBC or Sky yet.

lol, it's Turkey. How many do they need to have before it becomes likely?

i'm reading that it's a terrorist attack not a coup

https://twitter.com/AkyolinEnglish/status/754040782819061760

lol, it's Turkey. How many do they need to have before it becomes likely?

They haven't had one in a while!

i'm seeing on twitter reports of gunfire? who knows..

Cmon people, coup is highly unlikely. Surprised ppl are so willing to spread rumors like that.

Reading reports on Turkey going into lockdown due to terror threat.

Shots heard in Ankara xp

A coup is not impossible. The last one was in 1997, effectively, and the Turkish military has a clear dedication to remove governments that are considered to be violating the spirit of the Ataturk secularism policy. If a coup was unlikely, Erdogan wouldn't have spent the last six or seven years trying to replace most of the top military commanders in the country.

i think the question re a coup would be why now and not in 2013.

According to a pro Erdogan paper Gulenists are trying to occupy the army HQ https://twitter.com/sendika_org/status/754041560652779520

I could just walk down to any one of a dozen local shops, they're bound to be watching it on TV there.

... ask them to tell me what's going on.

One of the main Turkish papers is reporting a helicopter gunship has opened fire on something, though nobody knows what.

Gulenists get blamed for everything so take that with a pinch of salt.

Shi... Turkey's PM is calling it a coup, on NTV...

Xp that's why I added 'pro Erdogan paper' ShariVari

PM Yikdirim says the attempt doesn't amount a military coup but that there are some groups in military "behaving irresponsibly"

Oh, Sky has it.

... BBC lagging behind as usual.

"Action being taken without chain of command"

The UN internal messaging is that the Air Force and Military Police are attempting a coup.

State broadcaster TNT taken over by military. Dang.

TRT, soz

crazy

If it actually is the Gulenists this time, we'll never hear the end of it...

Still nothing on BBC, they are useless. Sky on the story.

Television absolutely useless. Beeb not live yet, CNN immediately talking about "how this affects US foreign policy"...

Ataturk Airport supposedly under control of army faction.

Erdogan is not in Turkey btw, but in Mongolia on some business trip.

what will putin be making of this?

Breaking: Armed forces just broadcasted they have "taken control of the country"

Holy fucking shit.

Statement by military read out on Turkish tv: to again obtain constitutional democratic hum rights we are officially managing the country."

yay another night of not going to bed and watching the news

I wonder if Boris regretting accepting that Foreign Secretary role.

lol

The military announcement was apparently unsigned, which some are taking to mean it's a coup of lower-ranking officers.

Erdogan has been preparing for this for years and i'd expect him to still have some of the military and the majority of the security forces onside. He also has a huge chunk of the country backing him. This is not a good combination.

AKP mayors and senior MPs are calling people out on to the streets.

out *on* to the streets? as in the opposite of curfew?

party

To protest (xp) Not me, brother.

xp, yes, they want a popular uprising against the military uprising, probably calculating that Kemalist rebels won't fight civilians.

Army Chief Of Staff has been taken hostage, so it's a coup against the top brass as well as the government.

Most of the senior officers are loyal to Erdogan, having replaced the ones he kicked out in anticipation of a coup. If he hangs on, i can't see him not doubling down on the centralisation of power and purging of military / Gulenist influences. He's going to come out of it looking justified.

he kinda is tho right? i don't like him at all but he was elected legitimately and the army should be subservient to the civilian government even if they think they have a really really good reason for deposing the leader.

man this is crazy

cautiously optimistic but idk

https://twitter.com/ragipsoylu/status/754051565695238146

#BREAKING TURKISH JUSTICE MINISTER SAYS US-BASED IMAM FETHULLAH GULEN'S FOLLOWERS IN MILITARY ATTEMPTING TO SEIZE POWER

One of the Turkish news agencies is reporting that Erdogan is on his way to Ataturk airport, which would be a twist.

Coup statement just read aloud on TRT: curfew in place and "new constitution"

did you expect him to just hang out in Mongolia

xp

Ataturk Airport is reportedly under occupation.

If he hangs on, i can't see him not doubling down on the centralisation of power and purging of military / Gulenist influences. He's going to come out of it looking justified.

I just heard a suggestion that this might be a faux coup to create exactly this effect

lol this would be a pretty extreme false flag operation

xp false flag operation, eh? I'd be skeptical

i feel like he'd much prefer to centralize slowly + deliberately like has been the ongoing process rather than create all these conditions for instability to the regime

That wouldn't be extreme at all for someone like Erdogan tbh

I know Turkey is pretty o_0 at the best of time but that seems a bit too farfetched.

Not that I think it is a false flag coup, but cmon, it's Erdogan

Where I said "new constitution" I probably meant martial law. Curfew is nationwide.

a false flag coup attempt also seems crazily short-sighted in light of his recently moderated foreign policy stance and the whole trying to join the EU thing, and would require a shitload of conspirators all in on it

Yeah, I think EU accession is on the back burner for a while.

Turkey needs to demonstrate some level of stability at the moment for business / investment reasons. A coup attempt torpedoes that. I can't see Erdogan pulling it.

doesnt this need its own thread?

a distant cousin lives in istanbul

https://www.reddit.com/live/x9gf3donjlkq

bridges are closed

Some bloke on Sky talking this up as proper countrywide coup not just some junior officers acting up in Istanbul and Ankara. Sounds like he's enjoying it all a bit too much though.

ime many journalists get a huge thrill from big stories even when tragic and often strike a pose of somberness when in front of cameras. when i worked in newsrooms i heard the darkest most disturbing humor probably ever.

and it was always "too soon" bc it was always while it was happening

Apparently they're out celebrating in the streets in Damascus.

Erdogan statement live on Periscope/FaceTime now (what a time to be alive etc). Says they will be punished etc, calls for his supporters to take to the streets

to... fight the army? that seems like a recipe for success

Insane:

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Cnb6IhmXgAELqW9.jpg

Xp to protest

If they're genuinely Kemalists, they're not going to open fire on large groups of civilians. It's what residents of Eastern Ukraine did when the army tried to take back places that were not accepting the central government as legitimate - get in the way of soldiers, slow them down, make your presence felt and there's not a huge amount they can do about it unless they're willing to massacre thousands of people, which would sink the legitimacy of the coup.

NBC is reporting a US military source saying Erdogan isn't being allowed / isn't able to land in Istanbul and is now heading to Berlin.

Think for the first time ever I've just seen Erdogan panicking. Using FaceTime like that, sending his people out on the streets? Nagl.

Nagl is an understatement.

Xp for real? Berlin?

Well yeah

Some female reporter holding up a phone with Erdogan on it addressing the nation o_0

sending his people out on the streets

agree this is generally not a tactic that indicates he's operating from a position of strength

WarGames' two Turkish doomsday scenarios were TURKISH DECOY and TURKISH HEAVY btw :)

Apparently heavy bombing of security police HQ.

Footage of protesters blocking a tank on its way to the presidential palace and forcing it to turn back.

https://twitter.com/agirecudi/status/754072281069056001

Def. not safe but, in sufficient numbers, is pretty effective.

Turkish MIT in Ankara on fire, tanks opening fire at parliament now, gunshots at Taksim. Insane.

Erdogan's got so much supporters, but the army (faction) seems really well prepared. This can only end in tears, can't it?

It's difficult to see how it won't, unless it's put down pretty sharpish. All the opposition parties have condemned the coup attempt as well and there's clearly a split within the military. There's huge tracts of Turkey that are devoutly pro-AKP, even if Ankara and Istanbul are often more ambivalent.

so rival security factions are bombing/shooting one another?

i suspect this coup won't work, but it will create a power vacuum -- erdogan's authority will be punctured. bad news.

The army / air force are bombing the security services and the police, afaict.

Or a group within the army / air force, at least.

Personally I'd vote for a new thread for this, only just noticed that this was likely where the talk was happening. Not that I have anything to add aside from my increasing fear of the world at large.

wasn't the original MENA thread prompted by the coup in Egypt

Military coup in Turkey July 2016

engrossed by this attempted thread coup and response

Was the last military coup in Turkey the infamous and genocidal Young Turk Revolution? I can't remember.

it was this https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1997_Turkish_military_memorandum

I wasn't saying you *had to* start a new thread, I just think it would be better to have a clear title for people searching.

Seems to be going towards a failed attempt at a coup already? Masses in the streets demonstrations it, footage on Twitter of police arresting soldiers. Calls through mosque's speakers to hit the streets. Hell, even police have called upon people to take it to the streets.

Useful:

https://twitter.com/zeynep/status/754084697467158530

MENA is where I went looking right away. The other thread I barely noticed. Same thing with Nice

ISIS is apparently claiming to have shot down an American jet in Iraq, though no official confirmation yet. They've shot down Syrian jets in the last couple of weeks.

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/26/world/europe/turkey-cracks-down-on-journalists-its-next-target-after-failed-coup.html?_r=0

Good investigative reporting on why arms from Eastern Europe keep turning up on both sides in Syria:

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/jul/27/weapons-flowing-eastern-europe-middle-east-revealed-arms-trade-syria

Anyone read that Joby Warrick book on Isis ? I'm thinking of checking it out.

Any reason to doubt the authenticity of this? Because if not, it's fairly shocking and angering to me:

https://wikileaks.org/clinton-emails/emailid/18328#efmADMAFf

can't access wikileaks at work. What is it?

Supposedly an email from December 2012 in which Clinton expresses strong support for overthrowing the Assad regime in order to strengthen Israel's interests. Seems like a pretty shortsighted policy in retrospect.

UNCLASSIFIED U.S. Department of State Case No. F-2014-20439 Doc No. C05794498 Date: 11/30/2015 RELEASE IN FULL The best way to help Israel deal with Iran's growing nuclear capability is to help the people of Syria overthrow the regime of Bashar Assad. Negotiations to limit Iran's nuclear program will not solve Israel's security dilemma. Nor will they stop Iran from improving the crucial part of any nuclear weapons program — the capability to enrich uranium. At best, the talks between the world's major powers and Iran that began in Istanbul this April and will continue in Baghdad in May will enable Israel to postpone by a few months a decision whether to launch an attack on Iran that could provoke a major Mideast war. Iran's nuclear program and Syria's civil war may seem unconnected, but they are. For Israeli leaders, the real threat from a nuclear-armed Iran is not the prospect of an insane Iranian leader launching an unprovoked Iranian nuclear attack on Israel that would lead to the annihilation of both countries. What Israeli military leaders really worry about -- but cannot talk about -- is losing their nuclear monopoly. An Iranian nuclear weapons capability would not only end that nuclear monopoly but could also prompt other adversaries, like Saudi Arabia and Egypt, to go nuclear as well. The result would be a precarious nuclear balance in which Israel could not respond to provocations with conventional military strikes on Syria and Lebanon, as it can today. If Iran were to reach the threshold of a nuclear weapons state, Tehran would find it much easier to call on its allies in Syria and Hezbollah to strike Israel, knowing that its nuclear weapons would serve as a deterrent to Israel responding against Iran itself. Back to Syria. It is the strategic relationship between Iran and the regime of Bashar Assad in Syria that makes it possible for Iran to undermine Israel's security — not through a direct attack, which in the thirty years of hostility between Iran and Israel has never occurred, but through its proxies in Lebanon, like Hezbollah, that are sustained, armed and trained by Iran via Syria. The end of the Assad regime would end this dangerous alliance. Israel's leadership understands well why defeating Assad is now in its interests. Speaking on CNN's Amanpour show last week, Defense Minister Ehud Barak argued that "the toppling down of Assad will be a major blow to the radical axis, major blow to Iran.... It's the only kind of outpost of the Iranian influence in the Arab world...and it will weaken dramatically both Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas and Islamic Jihad in Gaza." Bringing down Assad would not only be a massive boon to Israel's security, it would also ease Israel's understandable fear of losing its nuclear monopoly. Then, Israel and the United States might be able to develop a common view of when the Iranian program is so dangerous that military action could be warranted. Right now, it is the combination of Iran's strategic alliance with Syria and the steady progress in Iran's nuclear enrichment program that has led Israeli leaders to contemplate a surprise attack — if necessary over the objections of Washington. With Assad gone, and Iran no longer able to threaten Israel through its, proxies, it is possible that the United States and Israel can agree on red lines for when Iran's program has crossed an unacceptable threshold. In short, the White House can ease the tension that has developed with Israel over Iran by doing the right thing in Syria. The rebellion in Syria has now lasted more than a year. The opposition is not going away, nor is the regime going to accept a diplomatic solution from the outside. With his life and his family at risk, only the threat or use of force will change the Syrian dictator Bashar Assad's mind. UNCLASSIFIED U.S. Department of State Case No. F-2014-20439 Doc No. C05794498 Date: 11/30/2015 The Obama administration has been understandably wary of engaging in an air operation in Syria like the one conducted in Libya for three main reasons. Unlike the Libyan opposition forces, the Syrian rebels are not unified and do not hold territory. The Arab League has not called for outside military intervention as it did in Libya. And the Russians are opposed. Libya was an easier case. But other than the laudable purpose of saving Libyan civilians from likely attacks by Qaddafi's regime, the Libyan operation had no long-lasting consequences for the region. Syria is harder. But success in Syria would be a transformative event for the Middle East. Not only would another ruthless dictator succumb to mass opposition on the streets, but the region would be changed for the better as Iran would no longer have a foothold in the Middle East from which to threaten Israel and undermine stability in the region. Unlike in Libya, a successful intervention in Syria would require substantial diplomatic and military leadership from the United States. Washington should start by expressing its willingness to work with regional allies like Turkey, Saudi Arabia, and Qatar to organize, train and arm Syrian rebel forces. The announcement of such a decision would, by itself, likely cause substantial defections from the Syrian military. Then, using territory in Turkey and possibly Jordan, U.S. diplomats and Pentagon officials can start strengthening the opposition. It will take time. But the rebellion is going to go on for a long time, with or without U.S. involvement. The second step is to develop international support for a coalition air operation. Russia will never support such a mission, so there is no point operating through the UN Security Council. Some argue that U.S. involvement risks a wider war with Russia. But the Kosovo example shows otherwise. In that case, Russia had genuine ethnic and political ties to the Serbs, which don't exist between Russia and Syria, and even then Russia did little more than complain. Russian officials have already acknowledged they won't stand in the way if intervention comes. Arming the Syrian rebels and using western air power to ground Syrian helicopters and airplanes is a low-cost high payoff approach. As long as Washington's political leaders stay firm that no U.S. ground troops will be deployed, as they did in both Kosovo and Libya, the costs to the United States will be limited. Victory may not come quickly or easily, but it will come. And the payoff will be substantial. Iran would be strategically isolated, unable to exert its influence in the Middle East. The resulting regime in Syria will see the United States as a friend, not an enemy. Washington would gain substantial recognition as fighting for the people in the Arab world, not the corrupt regimes. For Israel, the rationale for a bolt from the blue attack on Iran's nuclear facilities would be eased. And a new Syrian regime might well be open to early action on the frozen peace talks with Israel. Hezbollah in Lebanon would be cut off from its Iranian sponsor since Syria would no longer be a transit point for Iranian training, assistance and missiles. All these strategic benefits and the prospect of saving thousands of civilians from murder at the hands of the Assad regime (10,000 have already been killed in this first year of civil war). With the veil of fear lifted from the Syrian people, they seem determine to fight for their freedom. America can and should help them — and by doing so help Israel and help reduce the risk of a wider war.

Sorry that pasted as such a ridiculous block o' text

Idg what's damning about that.

The article that linked to it claimed that it was dated December 2012, but I'm not linking to that link because it's from a racist website. I'm also not clear on who the recipient was, or, for that matter, how we know this was written by Clinton, since the to/from lines are blank. I'm a little unclear on how to use the wikileaks site as I haven't spent much time on it.

Idg what's damning about that.

― Οὖτις, Friday, July 29, 2016 10:18 AM (50 seconds ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

It suggests really terrible judgment on her part imo. The Syrian civil war is an epic disaster.

Not to mention she states intent to eventually take military action against Iran.

I realize that the US did not cause the war, but our Syria policy has been disastrous -- neither backing Assad nor committing enough support to overthrow him, but instead just widening the conflict while shipping arms that wind up in ISIS's hands.

How did I hear it posed the other day, as learning the lessons of the Iraq war too well?

But OTOH marred by the same kind of American over-optimism that led to the Iraq war -- that whole way of thinking like "Look, it's a win win! It checks all the boxes!"

"Take out the bad guy, support the freedom-loving people, and there are all these side benefits too, can't go wrong!"

it was a situation with no good options. That being said, getting rid of Assad was obviously attractive for all kinds of reasons - in general it seems like a rational assessment of the situation at the time that turned out to be over-optimistic - who would've guessed Assad would manage to cling to power, and the lengths he would go to do so? Should we just have stepped back altogether and let him crush the opposition? I don't see how that would've been a better outcome.

Assad had a guaranteed power base in Alawites and Damascus middle/upper class, that was based on fear of the Sunni slum, rather than fear of Assad himself. Hussein's hold on Iraq was never as deep. Some Iraqi Sunni tribes benefited a lot from Baath largess, but the Iraqi Sunnis never feared extermination as the Alawites did and do. A few exemplary executions sufficed to keep the Shia uprising at bay.

In a situation with no good options, the most pragmatic option is isolate and contain, as practiced with Iraq from 1991, seems the prudent one. Push the endgame into the future and keep options open. Unfortunately, Hillary follows the lead of Samantha Powers, who hasn't seen a humanitarian intervention that wasn't worth doing.

She repeatedly seems to think you can just "find the right people on the ground" and then clear the path for them to depose the regime and forge democracy. Same shit in Libya.

Libya wasn't really our (the US) fault. Sarkozy and Cameron had bombers in the air, and the US was forced to provide support for the sake of the preserving NATO preeminence. The US in fact did very little "intervening" Libya, our role was air-traffic control, electronic warfare and pilot rescue from the LHD Kearsage. We didn't even bother sending one of our carriers.

Unfortunately, Hillary follows the lead of Samantha Powers, who hasn't seen a humanitarian intervention that wasn't worth doing.

I agree that her judgment's not good on this count, I just don't see this position as particularly damaging or surprising or controversial. we knew she held this position, other people held it as well, and it's not really news.

The fact that she saw it as paving the way to future military action against Iran is news to me.

Anyway, with hindsight, allowing Assad to crush the opposition early actually does seem like the better option. Hard to say whether that was apparent in late 2012.

better in that it means fewer people would be dead? would still be a lot of dead people

A lot fewer dead and displaced most likely, not to mention spillover effects into Iraq.

How exactly did anyone manage to stop Assad from crushing the opposition? He tried. He failed. It wasn't because of the west.

You don't think our arming them had anything to do with it?

They quite clearly would have gotten a lot of arms without the west. And did so. It's not as if it was a non-violent uprising, but then the west intervened.

yeah I'm not really convinced we affected much of anything tbh - surely arms coming in from Iraq and elsewhere were a bigger source of support than whatever ragtag bands the US propped up

i think this is close enough to legit vaccine skepticism to earn her the reputation: http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/289797-green-party-candidate-people-have-real-questions-about-vaccines

oops wrong window sorry!

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/checkpoint/wp/2016/08/01/united-states-strikes-islamic-state-stronghold-in-libya-expands-campaign-against-militant-group/

http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2016/08/iraq-offensive-2016-mosul-islamic-state-isis-isil-obama-foreign-policy-kurdish-214121

...the Mosul fight could follow the model provided by the Battle for Fallujah, which the Iraqis reconquered from ISIS back in June. In that case, according to Joel Wing who charts events in the country and writes the “Musings on Iraq” blog, “there were tougher outer defenses and then little in the interior.” Mosul, he says, could be “even more like that.” Then too, he adds, the fight for Mosul has become so important that “everyone wants in on it.”
That’s the good news. The bad news is that while the broad U.S.-led coalition to fight ISIS remains unified, the same cannot be said for the forces on the ground. The only thing that unites them, it seems, is that they hate ISIS more than they hate each other. So while senior U.S. military officers are confident that a final assault on Mosul will succeed, they also know that the offensive could break apart even before it is launched.
Which means that while Obama would welcome an October surprise, he continues to caution that the fight against ISIS could take years.

So this WSJ story reports that the United States sent cash to Iran at the same time the hostages were freed a few months ago. But...I'm not seeing what our rightist friends are yelling about?

The money represented the first installment of a $1.7 billion settlement the Obama administration reached with Iran to resolve a decades-old dispute over a failed arms deal signed just before the 1979 fall of Iran’s last monarch, Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi.

The settlement, which resolved claims before an international tribunal in The Hague, also coincided with the formal implementation that same weekend of the landmark nuclear agreement reached between Tehran, the U.S. and other global powers the summer before. Who cares if it is or isn't a quid pro quo?

oops: http://www.wsj.com/articles/u-s-sent-cash-to-iran-as-americans-were-freed-1470181874

400 million of it was allegedly transferred in cash on a plane at the exact time the hostages were released, and allegedly 2 more hostages have been taken since, they say all over twitter and conservative media.

See if Reagan gave Iran weapons that's ok, but other than that US never makes quid pro quo deals.

Mark Toner on the possibility of ongoing support of Zenki and other groups in Syria:

https://mobile.twitter.com/nour_samaha/status/760963104125640704

Not a particularly good look if you're referencing the admitted decapitation of a twelve year old boy as something that gives 'cause for concern' and the very next words out of your mouth are "That said...".

http://www.aljazeera.com/news/2016/08/government-forces-gains-syria-aleppo-160803184640971.html

Syrian government forces backed by Russian air strikes have recaptured hills and villages from rebel groups on the outskirts of south-western Aleppo, a monitoring group and state-run media have said.

Rami Abdel Rahman, head of the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, said on Wednesday that the government had been launching a counterattack on areas captured by rebels in the past two days.

"Since the attack began and until Tuesday midnight, 40 civilians have been killed on both sides of Aleppo, among them 22 children," Abdel Rahman said.

About 50 rebels and dozens of regime troops have been killed since the assault kicked off on Sunday, according to the Observatory...

Meanwhile, the New York-based Physicians for Human Rights (PHR) said on Wednesday that over the past week, Syrian government forces launched deadly air strikes against six hospitals in and around Aleppo....

4 days later re Aleppo:

Citing U.N. figures, Power said Syrian government forces were to blame for nearly 80 percent of the besieged areas throughout Syria. Aleppo, Syria's biggest city before the outbreak of the conflict five years ago, has been divided between government forces and rebels since the summer of 2012.

"We once again urge Russia to stop facilitating these sieges and to use its influence to press the regime to end its sieges across Syria once and for all," she said.

http://www.reuters.com/article/us-mideast-crisis-syria-un-idUSKCN10J22Y

sad situation in Aleppo now with little drinking water available due to Syrian/Russian bombing, but what's the answer?

Was listening to doctors from Aleppo this morning on the BBC begging Obama to go to Putin and somehow get him to stop bombing hospitals etc in Syria. Doctor was calling it a war crime

Now allegations of chlorine gas in barrel bomb attacks

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-37049555

The UN is investigating evidence of a toxic gas attack

on a rebel-held area of the Syrian city of Aleppo.

Rebels said the attack - which reportedly left four people dead and many injured - was carried out by government forces using chlorine gas.

The UN special envoy for Syria said a chlorine attack, if confirmed, would amount to a "war crime".

Footage obtained by the BBC shows people with breathing difficulties receiving treatment at a hospital.

Men, women and children are shown being fitted with oxygen masks by medical staff.

The gas is thought to have been chlorine dropped in a barrel bomb, said the Syrian Civil Defence - volunteer emergency response workers who operate in opposition-held areas.

Kristof op-ed in NY Times-- I don't always agree with him...just putting this idea out here

Many experts recommend trying to ground Syria’s Air Force so it can no longer drop barrel bombs on hospitals and civilians. One oft-heard idea is to fire missiles from outside Syria to crater military runways to make them unusable.

One aim of such strategies is to increase the odds of a negotiated end to the war.

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/11/opinion/obamas-worst-mistake.html?action=click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=story-heading&module=opinion-c-col-left-region®ion=opinion-c-col-left-region&WT.nav=opinion-c-col-left-region

whoa

http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/08/11/magazine/isis-middle-east-arab-spring-fractured-lands.html?smid=tw-nytmag&smtyp=cur

This is a story unlike any we have previously published. It is much longer than the typical New York Times Magazine feature story; in print, it occupies an entire issue. The product of some 18 months of reporting, it tells the story of the catastrophe that has fractured the Arab world since the invasion of Iraq 13 years ago, leading to the rise of ISIS and the global refugee crisis. The geography of this catastrophe is broad and its causes are many, but its consequences — war and uncertainty throughout the world — are familiar to us all. Scott Anderson’s story gives the reader a visceral sense of how it all unfolded, through the eyes of six characters in Egypt, Libya, Syria, Iraq and Iraqi Kurdistan. Accompanying Anderson’s text are 10 portfolios by the photographer Paolo Pellegrin, drawn from his extensive travels across the region over the last 14 years, as well as a landmark virtual-reality experience that embeds the viewer with the Iraqi fighting forces during the battle to retake Falluja.

Only partway through part 2, at chapter 8, but this is remarkable. Reading about the blunders in Iraq continues to be infuriating. I looked up the 'Mission Accomplished' speech, and it's such a mindfuck. Bush really seemed to believe that the war on terror was a battle between 'freedom' and 'darkness'.

Impressive indeed.

People need to read the whole thing, but just wanted to post this extract about the beginning of the Syrian uprising, because I've seen quite a few persons put blame on Obama or Clinton for starting it.

The interlude ended abruptly on April 17, 2011. That evening, as reported by Al Jazeera, a small group of demonstrators, maybe 40 in all, were protesting outside a mosque in Homs when several cars stopped alongside them. A number of men clambered out of the cars — presumably either local plainclothes police officers or members of the largely Alawite shabiha — and proceeded to shoot at least 25 protesters at point-blank range.

It was as if gasoline had been thrown on a smoldering fire. That night, tens of thousands of demonstrators gathered at Clock Tower Square downtown, and this time, the police and shabiha took to the roofs and upper floors of the surrounding buildings to shoot down at them. “That is when everything changed,” Majd said. “Where before it was protests, from April 17 it was an uprising.”

As protesters started to be killed almost every day, their funerals the next day became rallying points for more protesters to take to the streets; the evermore brutal response of the security forces at these gatherings then created a new round of shaheeds, or martyrs, ensuring greater crowds — and more killing — at the next funerals. By early May, the cycle of violence had escalated so swiftly that the Syrian Army came into Homs en masse, effectively shutting down the city.

“Nobody trusted the local security forces,” Majd recalled, referring to the vast apparatus of mukhabarat and uniformed police who traditionally held sway in Syrian towns. “But everyone liked the soldiers coming in. Even I did, because we believed they had come to protect the people and stop the killing. And it worked. The army had tanks and everything, but they didn’t use them, and very soon the killing ended.”

After just a short time, however, the regime withdrew the bulk of its military forces from Homs in order to deploy them on “pacification” operations elsewhere — and with the army no longer able to provide order, the mukhabarat began distributing heavier weapons to the semiofficial shabiha. The city swiftly fell back into bloodletting. Around Homs, vigilante forces set up roadblocks and conducted raids into neighborhoods now controlled by the rebels. Throughout the summer the fighting continued, with different factions of pro- and anti-­regime gunmen taking control of ever more sections of the city.

Shoigu has reportedly just claimed that Russia and the US are close to agreeing a plan to combine efforts in Aleppo, which seems remarkable if true.

Reuters is reporting that the Russians are saying that, but meanwhile they keep bombing

http://www.aljazeera.com/news/2016/08/syria-war-scores-killed-idlib-aleppo-violence-160815092725750.html

German Chancellor Angela Merkel's spokesman on Monday called on Russia, which is backing Assad, to exert its "great influence on the Syrian president" to alleviate the suffering in Aleppo.

Spokesman Steffen Seibert also criticized Moscow's offer of a daily three-hour cease-fire in Aleppo.

He said Russia's promise of three-hour cease-fires to allow humanitarian aid into Aleppo "is meant to sound like a concession, but is actually cynicism, since everyone knows that this time is nowhere near enough to really restore supplies to desperate people."
http://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory/syrian-army-recovers-positions-southwest-aleppo-city-41389315

Only partway through part 2, at chapter 8, but this is remarkable. Reading about the blunders in Iraq continues to be infuriating. I looked up the 'Mission Accomplished' speech, and it's such a mindfuck. Bush really seemed to believe that the war on terror was a battle between 'freedom' and 'darkness'.

― Frederik B, Friday, August 12, 2016 5:56 AM (3 days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

What was going on in Bush's tiny mind is almost irrelevant. I think the paranoid Cheney doctrine is more instructive in understanding our foreign policy at the time, i.e. that we should basically swat down with total force anything anywhere on the globe that remotely threatens our interests, because nothing should ever even come close to challenging US dominance. However the freedom vs. darkness stuff does have its origins in more elaborate and better thought out (though probably wrong) theorizing by conservative thinkers like Huntington and Bernard Lewis, and also in the writings of radical islamist thinkers themselves. "Freedom" really meant some combination of American-style pseudo-democracy and openness of markets to the products of western companies, "darkness" meant an anti-globalist view driven by religious fundamentalism, though I think that the religious fundamentalism was only one incarnation of a larger sense that western dominance should be resisted.

Russian planes now flying from Iran (in addition to inside of Syria) to conduct bombing missions

http://www.cnn.com/2016/08/16/middleeast/russia-iran-syria-airstrikes/index.html

These sequellae from the Iraq invasion have been such a windfall for Russia. Syria was always a client state, but now Russia probably has more friends in Iran than at any time since the 19th century.

@ggreenwald
NYT: "America Is Complicit in the Carnage in Yemen" http://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/17/opinion/stop-saudi-arms-sales-until-carnage-in-yemen-ends.html?ref=opinion&_r=0 … - all without a whiff of debate or legal authorization

The United States is complicit in this carnage. It has enabled the coalition in many ways, including selling arms to the Saudis to mollify them after the nuclear deal with Iran. Congress should put the arms sales on hold and President Obama should quietly inform Riyadh that the United States will withdraw crucial assistance if the Saudis do not stop targeting civilians and agree to negotiate peace....

Experts say the coalition would be grounded if Washington withheld its support. Instead, the State Department last week approved the potential sale of $1.15 billion more in tanks and other equipment to Saudi Arabia to replace items destroyed in the war. Congress has the power to block this sale; Senator Chris Murphy, Democrat of Connecticut, says he is discussing that possibility with other lawmakers. But the chances are slim, in part because of the politics.

Given the civilian casualties, further American support for this war is indefensible. As Mr. Murphy told CNN on Tuesday: “There’s an American imprint on every civilian life lost in Yemen.”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7cfBmRW3isc

Gut wrenching. That poor boy....

Yes. The photo is circulating widely, but there's no sign that Syria, Russia, the US and others will change their approaches in Aleppo.

Nope. Not at all. The Syrian army today started bombing the Kurds in Syria today, for the first time. A possible 'gesture' to Turkey.

We've had Alan Kurdi, now we have this boy. This is a different and possibly unrelated question, but do iconic images have a lesser effect nowadays as they did, say, 50 years ago? Because we are bombarded with "iconic images" 24/7 nowadays? I've been thinking about this but not come up with an answer yet.

Re Aleppo, I was kinda leaning towards the view that if Obama changed his approach and the US bombed Syrian military airport runways, that could help force Syria and Russia to the peace table to negotiate. But Russia has shown now that it can also use Iran to fly its planes from, so that serious escalation step might not accomplish anything.

http://www.euronews.com/2016/08/19/russia-signs-on-to-48-hour-aleppo-ceasefire-for-aid-deliveries

Brief break at least

http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2016/08/19/490610954/doctors-without-borders-evacuates-teams-from-hospitals-in-north-yemen

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/20/world/middleeast/russia-syria-mediterranean-missiles.html?_r=0

The Pentagon said it had scrambled aircraft over northeastern Syria in a warning to the government after Syrian warplanes hit areas controlled by Kurdish fighters that are working with the American military to fight the Islamic State. The government and the Kurdish-led forces have had only occasional skirmishes, maintaining a kind of de facto truce, and the government airstrikes came amid their most serious clashes yet.

Scrambling the jets was the most robust American response yet to Syrian government airstrikes, although Syrian and Russian attacks have repeatedly hit predominantly Arab rebel groups backed by the United States, as well as hospitals, schools and civilian areas. The American move prompted grumbling from opponents of Mr. Assad, who said that the United States appeared ready to offer stronger protection to its Kurdish-led allies than to other rebel groups or civilians.

Two SU-24 bombers struck Thursday near the city of Hasakah in north-central Syria, said Captain Davis, the Pentagon spokesman. No members of the American military were harmed in the strikes, he said.

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-37145206

The elder brother of Omran Daqneesh, the Syrian boy whose dazed and bloodied image shocked the world, has died of wounds sustained when the family home in Aleppo was bombed, activists say.

The Syria Solidarity Campaign said 10-year-old Ali "passed away today due to his injuries from the bombing of his house by Russia/Assad".

Russian and Syrian jets have carried out heavy raids on rebel-held areas.

Omran, five, was filmed caked in dust and blood after his home was hit.

We've had Alan Kurdi, now we have this boy. This is a different and possibly unrelated question, but do iconic images have a lesser effect nowadays as they did, say, 50 years ago?

I think the evidence is pretty conclusive that all the most iconic and affecting shots of trauma and violent death you can imagine aren't going to make the plain people of europe give a shit about syrian kids

Sadly very otm.

I think it's unclear what giving a shit does, could or ought to entail

at a minimum, not acting with extreme xenophobic hostility towards ppl fleeing the warzone

right, but there's a sense that the war is intractable and a concomitant despair that extends beyond the extreme xenophobes. I think some of the xenophobia comes from a hard-nosed, look-after-our-own fatalism which is borne from that helplessness

images are effective when they're paired with a clear course of action, some sort of solution. all the memes I've seen surrounding this are sad and hopeless and speak to impotence rather than being righteously angry calls to arms

There's the controversial idea, that since the kid was hit from Syrian government bombing from planes, that the west use planes of their own to bomb the runways that Syrian and Russian planes are using, and then hope that this would help bring the Russians and Syrians back to the peace table since arguably they would not want an even more escalated war. The US, Britain, France, etc do not seem eager to take action though to try to stop Syrian and Russian planes from bombing in Aleppo.

Turkish tanks rolled into North of Syria this morning, to fight IS (and obv the Kurdish YPG, too...)

Get you a man who can do both

The Kurdish YPG, in all their feminist, Marxist–Leninist glory, seems to be the only faction worth rooting for from the bleachers.

Biden has done a huge concession to Turkey by calling upon the YPG/SDF to retreat back to the Euphrate. Groups the US has backed to get where they are in the first place. YPG just said they will comply. Erdogan is calling all the shots, damn.

Turkey appears to have taken a major ISIS stronghold in a matter of hours with support from the FSA and the US and there is a suggestion they will roll all the way on to the Euphrates, which is part of the reason for the YPG pullback.

The Turkish military is a whole 'nother beast than the Iraqi military that ISIS had such success against. Presumably Obama, Erdogan, Assad and Putin have some sort of accommodation in regard to this.

Bet they're rueing the day they chose to bomb Istanbul in Raqqa (or wherever the current ISIS HQ is).

throwing their usual caution 2 the wind

http://www.commondreams.org/views/2016/08/25/pundits-decrying-horrors-war-aleppo-demand-expanded-war

Getting hard to determine which view is more simplistic and kneejerk, the do-something argument, or the don't do something argument because you can't guarantee what will come afterwards one

Do nothing is a strategy with a predictable outcome: future stabilized frontlines with an Alawite dominated rump Syria that controls the vital M5 highway connecting coastal Alawites to Damascus, an autonomous Kurd region in the west, and factional Sunni chaos in between. In some respects, its a best case scenario barring entry of Saudi or other Arab Sunni peacekeepers.

When it comes to imposing your idea of law and order on another society that has not freely chosen your rule, the only way to go about it is to bring overwhelming force to bear upon those who you intend to rule. this requires a willingness to imprison or kill your active opposition with impunity, however numerous or widespread that opposition might be, until your will is supreme. of course, you should use all other forms of persuasion to bring your opponents to reconcile themselves to your rule, but the foundation stone of your governance must be the ability to force compliance whenever necessary.

iow, you have to wage all out war. no western power is willing to go down that road in Syria. even Putin prefers to act mainly through his client Assad. the problem for the USA and NATO states is a lack of viable clients and no appetite for all out war. all the wishing in the world won't cure that.

Kurd region in the east

was gonna say...

Do nothing is a strategy with a predictable outcome....In some respects, its a best case scenario barring entry of Saudi or other Arab Sunni peacekeepers.

For the folks currently suffering in Aleppo, and the Syrian refugees who have fled or are trying to flee, not sure how itws a best-case scenario.

I think Sanpaku believes that those people are fucked no matter what we do. The way to dissuade him from that belief would be to present an alternative scenario that doesn't involve escalating the current violence and detonating even larger amounts of high explosives dropped from more planes in more places and killing even more Syrians in an effort to impose a different course on the war.

The people of Syria were kind of fucked when they grew from 2 million to 25 million on land that would support less in a good year. Without a substantial export economy, scarcity of arable land has terrible social consequences, whether its Rwanda or Syria. Add in a regime representing only a religious minority and the Damascus mercantile class, which had learned the utility of shelling civilians 30 years ago; the spread of Islamist ideology from the Iraqi conflict; and a 4 year drought exacerbated by climate change (the worst recorded), and internal conflict with nearly genocidal intent on several sides was pretty damn likely.

If there was a widely acclaimed individual that could unite the Syrian revolt, they would have organized better and perhaps overwhelmed the regime by sheer numbers and Saudi arms. Neighborhood militias don't cut it against either the Syrian Army or the town by town advance of ISIS. Its mostly static/siege warfare, which means artillery and bombing (if you have them); the regime doesn't have enough sons left to do it any other way. And now they've committed enough atrocities to merit really severe reprisal, the stakes may be existential for the Alawite minority.

Air power has its limitations. The U.S. Air Force has a strong record for dropping bridges and penetrating bunkers, but its record for changing minds may be limited to the Kosovo conflict, where there was strong internal dissent preexisting in Serbia. I haven't seen much evidence of fissures within the regime. Impose a longterm ceasefire, and who controls the Sunni Syrian desert west of the mountains? I'm no expert, but sense the FSA, Syrian Islamic Front, Jaysh al-Islam, Jabhat Fateh al-Sham (ole' Al-Nusra Front), Jabhat Ansar al-Din, etc would be at each others throats in sectarian conflict without the regime and ISIS providing external focus.

And after that, they still would have the problem of millions more than the arable land will support.

^ the population was only 23 million on the eve of the rebellion. Forgot to edit that.

Having Assad in charge doesn't help the people of Syria either.

If destroying Assad government air force runways could bring Russia and Assad back to the negotiating table, and stop the bombing of Aleppo, all sides might have to work on a longterm plan; but yes Obama is not going to do this.

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/11/opinion/what-russia-and-turkey-bring-to-syria.html?_r=0

The Security Council’s goal has been a negotiated political solution that would end the war by putting into place a coalition government of pro-Assad and opposition forces to govern the country as Mr. Assad is eased out of power. But years of talk and failed diplomatic efforts have resulted in no progress in reducing civilian suffering, much less an end to the fighting.

Now, the United States and Russia are again trying to restart negotiations by proposing a deal under which Syria would end its bombing of rebel forces, there would be a cease-fire and the Americans would share intelligence with Russia for targeting airstrikes against the Islamic State as well as the Nusra Front. Some American officials say intelligence sharing, which comes with its own risks, is necessary to prevent the Nusra Front from gaining control over more territory.

There was talk yesterday that the Russian MoFA might announce an agreement along similar lines with the US today - though nothing has turned up yet.

Without US pressure on rebels for a ceasefire, bombing runways (which also runs the dual risk of killing Russian / Iranian / Serbian soldiers and making US assets in Syria a future target) wouldn't give the FSA much of a reason to negotiate and would make it much easier for the rebranded Al Qaeda franchises to operate.

A helicopter dropped two barrel bombs on a funeral wake for children in the Syrian city of Aleppo, killing at least 16 people, Syrian monitoring groups said.

The wake was being held Saturday in the rebel-controlled neighborhood of Bab al-Nayrab, the same area where 15 people were killed in a barrel bombing Thursday, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.

http://www.cnn.com/2016/08/28/middleeast/aleppo-barrel-bomb-wake-bombed/

i thought there was a lot of insight here re syria + the "international left"- plus a decent roundup of folk:
https://sethfrantzman.com/2016/08/30/moral-barometer-how-syria-conflict-divided-the-left-pro-palestinian-voices-and-exposed-a-murderous-support-for-assad/

Interesting