a thread about the civil unrest in egypt (& elsewhere in 'the region' if necessary)

Saudi Arabia has apparently sent 1000 soldiers in to Bahrain to shut down protests. Al Jazeera will be reporting on it shortly.

http://www.france24.com/en/20110314-saudi-troops-have-entered-bahrain-saudi-official

http://www.tradearabia.com/news/LAW_195141.html

I've read (I believe it was Stratfor in mid-February) that the main reason the Egyptian protest succeeded is that there was a silent coup in the Egyptian military in later 2010 against the 80 year old Pres. Hosni Mubarek handing over the reins of power to his son Gamal, who they despised. Sorry to be so cynical, but it seems popular dissent can achieve more than bread and circuses only with the intercession of power.

Maybe if the Libyan rebels offered the prospect of better oil royalty terms to those who aid them.

I love the way the Saudis are basically applying the Brezhnev doctrine to their neighbours.

I think you're right, Sanpaku. It's pretty obvious that the fighting in Zawiya, Brega, Benghazi, Ras Lanuf (does that one sound like Star Wars, or what?) is being done by a lot of people who had nothing to do with the peaceful protests that ignited all this, and I'm kind of shocked at how little the different agendas have been explained in the press.

The pity is the rebels (in Benghazi, at least) are conscripting 15 year olds for the fight. They get a week of training, but there aren't enough guns to let all of them fire one before being trucked to the front. All this acc'd to the Economist from Mar 15.

Cowboys and Indians is much easier to explain.

xpost

and I'm kind of shocked at how little the different agendas have been explained in the press.

― 40% chill and 100% negative (Tracer Hand), Monday, March 14, 2011

If you know that the agendas are different please enlighten me on how you know and how they are different. Not trying to be snarky, just curious and admit that I don't know much about Libya.

so this isn't going so well is it

From what I can tell there are lots of groups and tribes who have pretty disparate grievances with the Ghadafi regime and some of the more, uh, shooty ones saw an opening and seized it. That's not a value judgement at all - I'm just saying it would be helpful if this were fleshed out a bit more than just calling everybody "the opposition".

Am I right in thinking that one of Ghadafi's "smart" moves has been to make sure there isn't a single, monolithic Libyan army that could turn against him?

looking like it

So basically we're going to wait until Qaddafi has totally crushed the rebellion before we OK the no-fly zone, right? In essence committing to another uneasy detente a la Iraq, flying about, patrolling the skies to prevent something that already happened, while the bad guys goes about his nefarious business and our airborne presence foment further anti-US resentment in the US?

(I apologize for poor subject-verb agreements)

looking like it.

Saudi moves in Bahrain are depressing as well.

yeah Japan disaster diverting attention totally favors the despots unfortunately

in libya, bahrain & wisconsin

no false equivalencies, obv nobody gettin carpet bombed in madison, i'm just sayin

Using tanks, heavy artillery and airstrikes, forces loyal to Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi began a sustained assault here on Tuesday, seeking to rout a ragtag army of insurgents and would-be revolutionaries holding the last defensive line before the rebel capital of Benghazi. New York Times

It's not looking good

MANAMA, Bahrain — Hours after the king of Bahrain declared a three-month state of emergency, doctors at a central hospital on Tuesday said two protesters had been killed and some 200 wounded and injured in clashes with riot police in the suburban village of Sitra

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/16/world/middleeast/16bahrain.html?hp

Saudi Arabia has been watching uneasily as Bahrain’s Shiite majority has staged weeks of protests against a Sunni monarchy, fearing that if the protesters prevailed, Iran, Saudi Arabia’s bitter regional rival, could expand its influence and inspire unrest elsewhere.

I'm following a few Bahraini tweeters and let's just say it sounds pretty fucking awful on the ground there.

hey some good news

Good news in Egypt and Tunisia, but not so good news in Libya and Bahrain.

I heard a cable tv news guest suggest this morning that AL Jazeera was not covering Bahrain with the same intensity it had covered previous protests.

The Doha, Qatar-based Al Jazeera news network has been credited with helping to sustain protest movements across the region with its wall-to-wall coverage, but will its editorial line change now that Qatar has voiced support for Saudi intervention in Bahrain?

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/babylonbeyond/2011/03/qatar-bahrain-saudi-arabia-protests-troops-security.html?cid=6a00d8341c630a53ef0147e33ec55e970b

Al Jazeera is considered among the most credible Arabic news sources, but it has been accused at certain times of allowing its royal backer's political affiliations to skew its coverage. Al Jazeera Arabic, in particular, has recently been criticized for what some see as its overly careful handling of violent clashes between Bahraini protesters and government forces.

-- Meris Lutz in Beirut

for shame. you'd never catch a US news network displaying a national bias.

Although even if they tried to cover Bahrain in more depth, the Bahrain and Saudi forces would likely come down on them

people hold Al-Jazeera to a higher standard than Fox!

Sarkozy election campaign was funded by Libya, says Saif Gaddafi

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/mar/16/sarkozy-election-campaign-libya-claim?CMP=twt_gu

Probably just trolling though? At this point, all Gaddafi can get from relations with the West is lolz.

The West let him retake his country with force, and the Russians and Chinese may ignore embargos and keep his regime functioning.

Among those options are jamming Libyan government radio signals and financing the rebel forces with $32 billion in Libyan government and Qaddafi family funds frozen by the United States. That money could be used either for weapons or relief. The meeting broke without a decision, the official said. from NY Times

The fact that these are still just "options" and not being done makes clear that Libya is not a US priority

xp - I don't think you'll see any European/American politicians palling around with him for a while. Sure, Russia and China will be happy to make up.

the west's painful dithering over the past few weeks as though they might actually do something useful has been the most pathetic sight

I agree it's been awful to watch, though in retrospect it was always unlikely that there would be any intervention.

http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/175367/tomgram%3A_nick_turse%2C_the_pentagon_and_murder_in_bahrain/#more

How the Pentagon and military contractors and others have worked with Bahrain in recent years

Libya is a HUGE priority for the US. Keeping it "stable" means not opening the can of worms that comprises all these armed opposition groups. I don't think it's any deeper than that.

Moreover, senior officials, notably the national security adviser, Thomas E. Donilon, have made it clear that the United States does not view Libya as a vital strategic interest.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/17/world/africa/17libya.html?hp

The article provides no justification for that claim. It doesn't even mention what Donilon said.

I mean, it's weird working through what the article is trying to suggest - that the United States will not intervene militarily because it does not see Libya as "vital strategic interest".

This depends on the idea that the United States prefers democracy in places where it has a "vital strategic interest", but that's a weird notion, totally undemonstrated by the evidence.

Surely if Libya (specifically, its resources) were a "vital strategic interest", the United States would do anything in its power to stop a truly democratic movement from gaining power. Given that the US's actions (or lack of actions) appear certain to redeliver power to Ghadafi (or one of his cronies) it's at least logical to suppose that Libya really is of strategic interest to the United States.

http://mediadecoder.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/03/16/four-new-york-times-journalists-are-missing-in-libya/?src=tptw

I mean, it's weird working through what the article is trying to suggest - that the United States will not intervene militarily because it does not see Libya as "vital strategic interest".

This depends on the idea that the United States prefers democracy in places where it has a "vital strategic interest", but that's a weird notion, totally undemonstrated by the evidence.

Surely if Libya (specifically, its resources) were a "vital strategic interest", the United States would do anything in its power to stop a truly democratic movement from gaining power. Given that the US's actions (or lack of actions) appear certain to redeliver power to Ghadafi (or one of his cronies) it's at least logical to suppose that Libya really is of strategic interest to the United States.

― 40% chill and 100% negative (Tracer Hand), Wednesday, March 16, 2011 5:05 PM (50 minutes ago) Bookmark

the US isn't that... not sure of the word here. but let's look at it another way. does the US operate in its national interest in pakistan? it's extremely hard to say. it does seem to work partly according to opportunity, inertia, and other things unrelated to a cool appraisal of the facts.

besides, there's no 'truly democratic movement' that can't be channelled -- at any rate, truman knew this.

and i don't think the US has been that keen on gadaffi, historically, as it goes, really, and in the grand scheme it really hasn't been a 'vital' strategic interest, more a pimple to deal with occasionally.

all these armed opposition groups

The New York Times article referred to a "ragtag" rebel group getting routed. I guess they can be armed and ragtag.

The Pentagon and State Department also seem to have slightly different views on this as Hilary Clinton met with representatives of Libya's rebel opposition.

The US does not rely on Libyan oil.

Given that the US's actions (or lack of actions) appear certain to redeliver power to Ghadafi (or one of his cronies) it's at least logical to suppose that Libya really is of strategic interest to the United States.

No, it can mean the Pentagon strategy while the US military is busy struggling in Afghanistan and Iraq is to not have American soldiers injured or killed in a country that is not economically or politically important to the US. The Pentagon has put the bad things Ghadaffi did to Americans in prior years behind them, and does not see him as a current threat.

aspects of this are interesting:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/africaandindianocean/libya/8386511/Libya-Barack-Obama-is-in-no-hurry-to-see-Gaddafi-go.html

The Pentagon has put the bad things Ghadaffi did to Americans in prior years behind them, and does not see him as a current threat.

This is my point exactly.

While the US doesn't rely on Libyan oil, lots of other countries do, and it's in the US interest to make sure that it is supplied in a predictable manner.

im guessing you'd be against the US intervening

I don't think any good could come of it, given the US's priorities in the region. Given the kinds of people they usually support. I'd be in favor of an intervention that was intended to give full power and sovereignty to a democratic Libya though.

i guess part of what im asking is how a libyan economy functions without selling oil...? the flipside of the US 'relying on oil' is oil countries depending on people to buy their oil. given that obama and everyone else has called on gadaffi to go, things aren't predictable even if (well, when, now), he stays in power. but he's not a big enough player to hold anyone to ransom. ie he's not the house of saud.

xpost

i'll take that as a no, i guess