Rolling MENA 2014 (Middle East)

fight against?

For Kurdish forces I would assume.

unrelated interesting read here:
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/22/magazine/the-doomsday-scam.html

xp, yep.

And yet I saw some City of London banker type being interviewed recently having come back from fighting for the Kurds... he wasn't a Kurd though.

I would guess that she tried to join a group aligned with the PKK rather than the YPG but they work together and there's not much difference on the ground.

https://theintercept.com/2015/11/19/as-france-bombs-isis-civilians-are-caught-in-the-middle/

The U.S. military also claimed a new first in its war on ISIS this week, employing warplanes to attack hundreds of trucks smuggling crude oil on behalf of the terrorist organization on Monday. According to the New York Times, the campaign, dubbed Tidal Wave II, was planned before the attacks in Paris as part of an escalating effort to disrupt the flow of tens of millions of dollars ISIS generates monthly through the production and sale of oil. To avoid killing civilians, the Times reported, U.S. forces had previously held off on directly targeting tanker trucks involved in the Islamic State’s illicit oil trade.

“To reduce the risk of harming civilians, two F-15 warplanes dropped leaflets about an hour before the attack warning drivers to abandon their vehicles, and strafing runs were conducted to reinforce the message,” the paper noted in its description of Monday’s strikes, adding that a U.S. official said “there were no immediate reports of civilian casualties.”

The UN Security Council has unanimously voted to fuck up ISIS. What difference this will make is open to question as I can't really see a ground invasion happening any time soon but it does at least offer some legal cover and make it harder for opponents of bombing to argue on that front.

Doug Henwood had a good guest on ISIS:
http://www.leftbusinessobserver.com/Radio.html

Some of what he said was surprising to me, both for a Doug Henwood guest and just inasmuch as I haven't heard anyone else make some of these points about ISIS.

from curmudgeon’s post above,

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/18/world/middleeast/envisioning-how-global-powers-can-smash-isis.html?action=click&contentCollection=Middle%20East&module=RelatedCoverage®ion=Marginalia&pgtype=article

“The answer is simple: To beat ISIS, you need the enlistment of the Sunni forces that won’t happen as long as Assad remains in power in Damascus,” said Ehud Yaari, an Israel-based fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. “The shortest and most effective way to deal with ISIS is for the United States and Russia to come to an agreement about the removal of Assad, and they will get support from others. Then the Sunni forces, the rebels, can deal with ISIS on the ground.”

on the other hand, according to emile simpson, http://foreignpolicy.com/2015/11/20/syria-assad-isis-paris-russia/

The fate of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad is the litmus test of this proposition: He’s a murderous butcher, but only his ground forces can realistically retake much of the ISIS-controlled territory. They haven’t been able to until now, because Western and Gulf states have backed a kaleidoscopic variety of rebels seeking to oust Assad, tying down much of the Syrian military. The fact that much of the territory lost by the Assad regime has wound up in the hands of ISIS and hard-line Islamists has created a climate of moral relativism, where neither Assad nor ISIS make for an attractive option. But this moral relativism has led to inaction and tragedy. Call it the Hamlet non-strategy.

But the Paris attacks will impose a cold strategic clarity. Whatever the objective threat, the West cannot tolerate the humiliation of terrorist attacks from an enemy that, so far, it has merely sought (and failed) to contain. For all the self-congratulatory talk of “historic” progress at the recent diplomatic talks in Vienna, a “political solution” cannot fix the problem of ISIS and hard-line Islamists — for neither Washington nor Moscow would ever accept a negotiated peace with them. The territory they hold must be cleared and held by infantry. But whose infantry? The Kurds can retake only so much ground, given their limited resources and lack of desire to expand substantially beyond ethnically Kurdish areas. Non-Kurdish rebels are small in number and fragmented. And in many cases their “moderate” credentials are dubious, at best.

That leaves the West, Russia, or the Assad regime and its Iranian proxies. There’s no chance the United States, France, or NATO wants to hold ground on its own, or back Assad. So scratch the first option from that shortlist. Handing the moral and military quagmire over to the Russians — who will, in turn, back the Syrian Army — begins to seem like the only option.

dunno

It's Sunni areas, so giving it over to Assad or Iran...

i know :/
extremely barbed (& ugly) problem/dilemma
would much prefer experts quoted in nytimes article to be correct, for multiple reasons (& multiple consequences down the line)-- & for that to be feasible strategy (politically, militarily, etc)
find view #1 persuasive, yet find view #2 plausible too
(what do i know)
& things may have devolved to the point that the better strategy is not really an option at this time (or there's no longer time)
since russia is major player now, don't know who decides anyway
other than events

cf which way hollande moves on question of assad

http://www.politico.eu/article/france-russia-at-odds-over-assad-role-isil-syria/

Hollande earlier this week signaled a shift in his long-standing position that Assad should go before any solution could be found to the Syrian crisis.

While the Syrian president’s ouster is still the ultimate goal, he said Monday, France’s top priority is now the fight against ISIL. The next day the Russian president agreed to intensify his air force’s strikes against ISIL positions, and instructed his generals to consider the French as “allies” in the fight against the Islamic State.

Turkey just shot down a jet that was flying near its border with Syria. The plane crashed on the Syrian side.

This is going to get ugly whoever it belonged to, but the assumption people seem to be going with at the moment is Russia.

Unless it was Syrian in which case ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Guardian live-blogging it:

http://www.theguardian.com/world/live/2015/nov/24/russian-jet-downed-by-turkish-planes-near-syrian-border-live-updates

Plane was Russian and the decision to shoot it down was made personally by the Turkish PM. It looks like the pilots ejected.

Russia says the plane was in Syrian airspace for the duration of the flight.

Uh oh.

You can say that again.

According to CNNTurk reporting from the border town of Yayladagi, one of the Russian pilots is in the hands of Turkmen opposition fighters, while they are still looking for the second pilot on the ground, writes Constanze Letsch.

Local media also say that Russian helicopters are searching for the two fighter jet pilots, but that Turkmen forces prevent them from landing.

CNN Turk later reported one of the pilots was found dead.

Unverified footage claimed to show the pilots body, according to analyst Eliot Higgins who monitors the conflict in Syria on social media.

this'll be bad

now it may be OK for teachers to start talking to kids about WW3

Both pilots are dead. Even if the jets were briefly in Turkish territory, the decision to shoot them down is incomprehensible in terms of Turkish-Russian relations. Putin has called Turkey an "accomplice to terrorism".

Nato are calling an Extraordinary Meeting at 5pm Brussels time. Could this really escalate into a war?

No NATO plane had shot down a Russian jet in 63 years before today.

I don't think it'll escalate beyond diplomatic repercussions, though.

this makes me realise how little i know about nato. are there mechanics in place whereby nato can reprimand turkey? is it likely? i can imagine the rest of nato might be tempted to put some distance between themselves and their increasingly terrible ally

idk. Technically if the plane violated Turkish airspace they have a right to shoot it down and NATO had previously criticised Russian when similar allegations of briefly crossing the border happened before. That said, as a Greek journalist pointed out on Twitter, if Greece shot Turkish planes down for that kind of minor infraction, they'd only have kites left.

So weird. I'd expect this from North Korea, but not from Turkey. Then again, with so many different countries flying around bombing things willy-nilly, I imagine this will happen again.

get turkey out of NATO imo

Putin, via the guardian liveblog:

We have long been recording the movement of a large amount of oil and petroleum products to Turkey from Isis-occupied territories. This explains the significant funding the terrorists are receiving. Now they are stabbing us in the back by hitting our planes that are fighting terrorism. This is happening despite the agreement we have signed with our American partners to prevent air incidents, and, as you know, Turkey is among those who are supposed to be fighting terrorism within the American coalition.

If Isis is making so much money – we are talking about tens or maybe even hundreds of millions, possibly billions of dollars – in oil trade and they are supported by the armed forces of an entire state, it is clear why they are being so daring and impudent, why they are killing people in such gruesome ways, why they are committing terrorist attacks all over the world, including in the heart of Europe.

srsly it's like ISIS is in NATO.

A bit of an exaggeration there, I'd say

Is one of the pilots still alive? This only went up in the Telegraph 20 mins ago.

".. Turkmen militias have formed, some directly supported by the Turkish government. It is one of these, Alwiya al-Ashar, that is reportedly holding one of Russia's downed pilots."

Putin has called Turkey an "accomplice to terrorism".

to be fair to putin (not something i write very often), this is incontestably true — Turkey has a lot of power in the region and they have pointedly not used it to defeat ISIS; indeed at times their actions have helped to prop ISIS up vis-a-vis the Kurds.

also, these words are a cliché, but have they ever been more apt?: what a mess.

But the Paris attacks will impose a cold strategic clarity. Whatever the objective threat, the West cannot tolerate the humiliation of terrorist attacks from an enemy that, so far, it has merely sought (and failed) to contain

I don't have a policy prescription here, but I do want to point out that actions undertaken because we "cannot tolerate the humiliation" is literally the exact opposite of "cold strategic clarity."

would it really be a great loss if Russia invaded Turkey

(only sort of kidding)

Interesting point I heard made about ISIS's oil trade is that the initial hesitancy to attack it may have been that the oil is often being sold directly or indirectly to Syrians with little other access to fuel due to the war. Basically all possible actions have at least some shitty consequences.

http://www.theguardian.com/world/video/2015/nov/24/turkmen-rebels-say-they-shot-at-russian-pilots-ejected-from-downed-jet-video
"A deputy commander of rebel Turkmen forces in Syria says his men shot at two Russian pilots after they ejected from their jet"

the West cannot tolerate the humiliation of terrorist attacks

This is the kind of stupid chest-beating that frequently ends up causing a million or more deaths.

Pierce: Please Do Not No-Fly-Zone Us Into World War III

​There are something like five different air forces in the skies in and around Syria right now, all of them with essentially different missions, many of which contradict each other in serious ways. Enforcing a no-fly zone requires a lot more clarity than we have now, and anyone who just throws it out there as a policy proposal without taking this into account—or, worse, anyone who proposes one simply as a demonstration of "resolve" or "will—is trying to take the country for a very dangerous ride. And that was true before a NATO ally took down a Russian warplane.

http://www.esquire.com/news-politics/politics/news/a39978/turkey-russian-plane-no-fly-zone/

"A deputy commander of rebel Turkmen forces in Syria says his men shot at two Russian pilots after they ejected from their jet"

that is fucking awful

where are the turkmen in this conflict?

The Turkmen are anti-Assad and supported by Turkey. Their militias fighting the Syrian army have been bombed by Russia so it's not surprising they killed at least one of the pilots (probably both) and another marine who was in a helicopter doing a search and rescue operation.

To put in context how much the PM thought was worth putting at risk, Russia supplies Turkey with something like 60% of its gas, is its second-largest trading partner and i think probably second largest provider of tourists after Germany. These are countries with deep political and economic ties.

xp ah so that's the news flash I saw that mentioned a helicopter, thank you, I was confused

xpost Hasn't it been confirmed pretty much that Turkey is allowing ISIS-harvested fuel across its border to sell, which is at least partly how ISIS is funded? As some dude on the radio pointed out, it's not like there's a pipeline running from Syria. Oil being sold by ISIS is going by truck over cooperative borders.

Claim in this article is that Turkey used to allow it (they thought it would help overthrow Assad), but is now trying to stop it:

http://www.businessinsider.com/links-between-turkey-and-isis-are-now-undeniable-2015-7

Ankara officially ended its loose border policy last year, but not before its southern frontier became a transit point for cheap oil, weapons, foreign fighters, and pillaged antiquities.

...

Western diplomat, speaking to The Wall Street Journal in February, expressed a similar sentiment: "Turkey is trapped now — it created a monster and doesn’t know how to deal with it."

Ankara had begun to address the problem in earnest — arresting 500 suspected extremists over the past six months as they crossed the border and raiding the homes of others — when an ISIS-affiliated suicide bomber killed 32 activists in Turkey's southeast on July 20.

Plus the Turks hate the Kurds

Seems possible their attitude could have shifted from "Oh good, these guys are a check on the Kurds," to "Oh fuck, these guys are the real deal."

You know, sort of like the US with jihadis in Afghanistan.

From most reports it is the Kurds who have been the most effective fighting force against ISIL, this is one complex war zone.

Turkey does not merely "hate" the Kurds, it is semi at war with them.

You know, sort of like the US with jihadis in Afghanistan.

haha I was thinking like the GOP w Trump