Rolling MENA 2014 (Middle East)

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/04/world/isis-making-political-gains.html?ref=middleeast

But little has been done to give Sunnis a greater role in their own governance. Mr. Assad remains in power, backed by Iran and the militant group Hezbollah. And American officials are fighting an uphill battle to persuade Sunnis in Iraq to fight ISIS alongside the Shiite-led central government and Iranian-backed militias.

That, Mr. Hamidi and other analysts said, has left some Sunnis willing to tolerate the Islamic State in areas where they lack another defender, especially in conservative communities like the ones in western Iraq and eastern Syria, where the group is strongest. The analysts emphasized that most Sunnis do not support the Islamic State’s harsh interpretation of Islam, or its brutality, but that some were becoming more susceptible to its political talk about protecting oppressed Sunnis.

“Now, with the sectarian polarization of the region, under the skin of every single Sunni there is a tiny Daesh,” Mr. Hamidi, a Sunni, said, using the Arabic acronym for the Islamic State.

By attacking ISIS in Syria while doing nothing to stop Mr. Assad from bombing Sunni areas that have rebelled, he added, the United States-led campaign was driving some Syrians into the Islamic State camp. “The coalition is scratching the skin and making this Daesh come out.”

Americans should consider working more directly with the Sunni tribes if Baghdad continues to refuse.

Sure. Why not? Violating Iraqi sovereignty has become the calling card of US foreign policy in the 21st century.

http://0334a46.netsolhost.com/WordPress/wp-content/uploads/2011/05/spinning-plates.gif

A slang word has even emerged, aid workers in Palestinian refugee camps in Lebanon say, for someone who supports ISIS just a little bit. Some people say, with a hint of sheepishness, “I’m a Dawoosh,” using an Arabic diminutive that suggests “a cute little Daesh.”

ISIS playing v sophisticated & surprisingly (depressingly) effective political game

With the recent gains by the Islamic State, Washington is tinkering with tactics and weapons. Anti-tank missiles are on their way to Iraq, to destroy American tanks that the group took from fleeing Iraqi soldiers.

yeah, it’s a serious arsenal:

https://news.vice.com/article/iraq-might-have-lost-2300-armored-us-humvees-to-the-islamic-state-in-mosul

dawoosh

nazilein
fascistellino
klanling
khmer rougekins
maoette

http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2015-06-04/israelis-and-saudis-reveal-secret-talks-to-thwart-iran

i doubt this outcome was an n-th dimensional chess plan of obama's but if his iran negotiations force israel + sunni nations to have better relations (read this alongside bibi warming up to the arab peace initiative), that would be a pretty great result

Israel has established itself as a leading hub for weapons makers, capitalizing on the constant state of conflict the country is in and the close coordination between the military and the weapons industry. At the ISDEF opening ceremony, Ziva Eger, the Israeli Ministry of Economy’s director of the division for foreign investment and industrial cooperation, boasted about how Israel takes “technology from the defense sector and just implements it to the civilian sector.”

In Israel, nearly 6,800 individuals deal in weapons exports at over 1,000 companies, according to Defense Ministry data from 2013. The country’s weapons industry brought in about $5.6 billion last year, making Israel the eighth largest weapons exporter globally, according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute. Former Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak has said that 150,000 Israeli households rely on the weapons industry for income. While last year’s earnings were actually a drop from a high of $7.5 billion in revenue in 2012, a decrease attributed by Israel’s Defense Ministry to budget cuts in the U.S. and Europe, Israel is among the world’s top arms exporters per capita. In fact, the U.S. effectively provides a subsidy to the Israeli weapons business: While about 75 percent of the $3.1 billion in U.S. military aid to Israel must be spent on American weapons, 25 percent can be spent on domestic Israeli arms makers — a situation unique to Israel. Even when Israel buys U.S. arms, it sometimes requests that those weapons be built with Israeli components.

https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2015/06/05/war-israel-booming-business/

who are the top 7

i'm gonna guess... US, Russia, China, Germany, France... UK maybe? Not sure who else.

UK definitely.

http://static1.businessinsider.com/image/548ed53cecad042f205c33db-393-454/screenshot%202014-12-15%2007.33.25.png
Chinese companies are excluded because of "the methodological difficulties posed by the lack of transparency about China's arms sales."

Italy! would not have guessed.

Israel is among the world’s top arms exporters per capita

sounds like even not per capita? The country’s weapons industry brought in about $5.6 billion last year, making Israel the eighth largest weapons exporter globally, according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute.

Ukraine was top five or six last time I checked.

surely must've changed over the last year tho?

Yes, though I think it's still a major exporting country. I checked and it was 4th two years ago but just for conventional weapons.

http://www.sbnation.com/lookit/2015/6/5/8735325/germany-bought-2006-world-cup-votes-by-sending-saudi-arabia-rocket

Turkey’s Ruling Party Loses Parliamentary Majority

Great news that the HDP looks like it has crossed the 10% threshold for the first time in any of its incarnations. Nearly 60% of postal votes from the UK went to them and i can hear the celebratory car horns going all over the neighbourhood.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/islamic-state/11657918/Why-business-is-booming-under-Islamic-State-one-year-on.html

The ISIS 1 %

The jihadists have mostly eschewed the demand in Islamic law that the zakat be used to sustain the poor, instead using the funds to buy weapons and inflate the salaries and benefits of their own fighters.

A female resident of Minbij recounted to the Telegraph how the restaurants and shops are frequented almost exclusively by Isil fighters, with most of the civilian population unable to afford them.

I see that ISIS is also now selling some artifacts, rather than destroying them

http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/middle_east/islamic-state-isnt-just-destroying-ancient-artifacts--its-selling-them/2015/06/08/ca5ea964-08a2-11e5-951e-8e15090d64ae_story.html?hpid=z5

isis is doing some serious nation-building; starting to think they might pull this off (i.e. establish a relatively "stable" "state”; though that may not be compatible with ideology of relentless expansionism)

meanwhile, maybe near last days for assad, one way or another

http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/syrias-assad-nears-the-tipping-point/2015/06/04/ae9af080-0af4-11e5-95fd-d580f1c5d44e_story.html

http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/06/09/us-mideast-crisis-syria-idUSKBN0OP0Z32015060

corrected link

http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/06/09/us-mideast-crisis-syria-idUSKBN0OP0Z320150609

a lot of this is about missile technology but it's an interesting take on the recent Houthi missile strikes

http://pando.com/2015/06/08/the-war-nerd-scuds-patriots-the-armies-of-this-age-are-weird/

http://www.wsj.com/articles/spy-virus-linked-to-israel-targeted-hotels-used-for-iran-nuclear-talks-1433937601

http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/in-white-houses-iraq-debate-military-brass-pushed-for-doing-less/2015/06/13/8db17e30-1138-11e5-9726-49d6fa26a8c6_story.html

Interesting-

As President Obama was weighing how to halt Islamic State advances in Iraq, some of the strongest resistance to boosting U.S. involvement came from a surprising place: a war-weary military that has grown increasingly skeptical that force can prevail in a conflict fueled by political and religious grievances.

Top military officials, who have typically argued for more combat power to overcome battlefield setbacks over the past decade, emerged in recent White House debates as consistent voices of caution in Iraq. Their shift reflects the paucity of good options and a reluctance to suffer more combat deaths in a war in which America’s political leaders are far from committed and Iraqis have shown limited will to fight.

“After the past 12 years in the Middle East, there is a real focus by senior military leaders on understanding what the endgame is,” said a military official, “and asking the question, ‘To what end are we doing this?’ ”

The military’s reluctance belies a prevalent narrative in Washington of a cautious president holding back his aggressive generals. The Pentagon’s position was most evident in the White House debates after the surprising retreat of Iraqi army and police in Ramadi last month.

http://www.cnn.com/2015/06/14/africa/us-airstrike-libya-mokhtar-belmokhtar/

No US casualties this way

The Libyan government said Belmokhtar was killed in the strike, something that U.S. officials have not confirmed.

Federal prosecutors in New York had charged the one-eyed Belmokhtar in 2013 with crimes related to a brazen attack on a gas facility in Algeria were 37 hostages died. Three Americans were among the dead.

"It was a single strike conducted by a manned aircraft," a Pentagon official with direct knowledge of the operation told CNN. There were no U.S. personnel on the ground, the official said.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-06-15/israel-minister-sees-possible-renewal-of-talks-with-palestinians

Leading members of Gaza-based terrorist group Hamas convened in Qatar over the past several days to discuss a proposal for a long-term ceasefire with Israel, the Palestinian Al-Quds newspaper reported Monday.

According to Palestinian officials quoted by the paper, Hamas representative Moussa Abu Marzouk went to the Qatari capital of Doha on Saturday in the hopes of finalizing a three-to-five year truce with the Jewish state.

The truce proposal, which is backed by both Qatar and Turkey, is based on an outline formulated by UN special envoy to the Middle East Nikolay Mladenov, according to the Israeli NRG news site.

The report added that Abu Marzouk held a series of meetings in Qatar with Hamas leader Khaled Mashaal as well as other senior officials in the organization.

The truce proposal reportedly includes a clause regarding the establishment of a seaport in Gaza, NRG reported. The port, according to the proposal, will be subject to Israeli or international supervision.

interesting that these discussions are being broached with/through/under auspices of arab states (egypt, jordan, turkey, gulf states), with (it seems) no US involvement

maybe that's auspicious

according to ex-ambassador Michael B. Oren, http://www.wsj.com/articles/how-obama-abandoned-israel-1434409772

there's this incredibly depressing news as well out of syria:
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/jun/16/syria-assad-regime-is-weaponising-chlorine-us-congress-to-hear

“In separate strikes last week on veteran al-Qaeda leaders, the United States demonstrated again the extent to which it has perfected an almost eerie capability to find the world’s most wanted terrorism suspects in some of the world’s most chaotic environments and deliver lethal blows from above. But the continued spread of al-Qaeda’s ideology and the emergence of brutal new offshoots, including the Islamic State, have underscored the limitations of a U.S. strategy that remains largely reliant on ‘decapitation’ strikes.”

...

But the latest U.S. operations “have little relevance to what ISIS is building and growing in the heart of the Middle East,” Zarate said, using an alternative term for the Islamic State, “and may actually strengthen their hand in Yemen, Saudi Arabia and Libya.”

http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/why-decapitation-strikes-have-killed-terrorist-leaders-but-not-al-qaeda/2015/06/16/560c3c1e-143e-11e5-9ddc-e3353542100c_story.html

^depressing persuasive take.

Many officials and experts in the U.S. counterterrorism community now see the destruction of al-Qaeda and its progeny as a more distant goal than at any time since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

isis mutated into something v different, more formidable than a-q-- taking astute & thorough advantage of power vacuum/chaos, shockingly effective recruitment propaganda, ideology & praxis of actual state formation

"more formidable" = eh idk about that, the ideology just switched tactics/goals

and the goals of "filling a local power vacuum" are way easier to accomplish then "destroying the United States, Israel, etc." which they are nowhere near close to accomplishing, and will never come close to accomplishing.

what did al-q accomplish exactly? they didn't topple the US. they did embroil the US in a longterm war in Iraq but that mostly destroyed Iraq and led to most of Al-Q's senior leaders being hunted down and killed. so they're formidable at symbolic terrorism but not really at anything else of lasting value. by contrast Daesh is running a state and controls vast oil resources.

like ppl who say that OBL's plan was to force the US into a war in Iraq, ok, he was successful but damn what a pyrrhic victory that ultimately did little to forward the destruction of the Great Satan

I think we're in agreement tbh. these clowns were never (and are not) particularly formidable.

well of course idea of global caliphate, conquering great satan = fantasy

but there's quite a lot vastly short of that that's v alarming about establishment & expansion of daesh state in ME, as well as its ideologically seductive propaganda effectiveness in the west and ME alike

yeah i feel like the difference is that Al-Q was totally committed to destroying G.S. (great satan) so anything that fell short was a total failure. Daesh can be committed to destroying GS (and LS) but in the meanwhile they are actually establishing a State along the way.

http://pando.com/2015/06/17/the-war-nerd-a-glorious-victory-for-once/

Al-Q was committed to getting the U.S. out of Saudi Arabia (which they achieved by 2003), and miring it in Mideast insurgencies that bankrupt the government and alienate Muslims worldwide, and provide recruitment to Wahhabi militants. Al-Qaeda achieved those aims, even at the expense of decimation of its mujahideen cadre. Favorable ratings for the U.S.have fallen from 52% to 21% in Turkey, 30% to 16% in Egypt, 25% to 14% in Jordan, with 49%, 26%, and 29% respectively considering the US as more of an enemy than a friend. Turkey and Egypt are the major Muslim regional powers, so its hard to overstate how disastrous the U.S. response to 9/11 was.

I think both things can coexist. US's response to 9/11 was disastrous and Al-Q's strategic goals are quite stupid. Intelligent actors don't bait a superpower into hunting them down in the hopes that they'll secure a PR coup for their cause. (Hamas obv has a similar strategic vision.) You could say that it's the refuge of actors that don't feel they have any other options to address their grievances, but contrast this scorched earth bullshit w/ Daesh who have actually put institutions in place + haven't invested their time + energy into the, really, really ill-considered, 'bait the superpower' MO.

(You could say that the beheadings were intended to bait the West, but it's obviously not the primary plank in their project.)

Also I think it's a bit unfair to link Egypt + Turkish attitudes to the US exclusively to US actions in the region. There are plenty of events, and ideological developments, that have happened in both countries that they own themselves. Maybe you could make a case that the US invasion of Iraq helped validate Erdogan in the eyes of his people and helped him gain the electoral + political dominance he currently has, but it's Western-centric to give all the credit for Turkey's path down religious fanaticism to the US's invasion of Iraq.