Rolling MENA 2014 (Middle East)

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

can i ask a dumb question?

why in fuck's name did turkey do this?

Because Russia was attacking the Turkmen rebels in Syria? Right on the Turkish border?

but what purpose does this escalation serve? do they think Russia will stop bombing?

I suppose we'll see in the next few weeks.

it is even conceivable that turkey would be kicked out of NATO?

would be funny, but not gonna happen

Sounds like NATO did little more than tell Turkey to chill.

And I'm not saying Obama high-fived them but...

it just seems like turkey is shifting into a very different sort of country (or more precisely, government) that it was when they joined NATO

on the other hand, plenty of autocratic nations have belonged to NATO (greece and portugal were under dictatorship for long stretches)

lol Obama def high fived them he was like sternly: Russia, stop flying your jets into the trajectory of Turkish missiles.

NATO won't cut Turkey loose bc they'd lose the influence they currently exert over it

Turkey has been a member since 1951 and under several dictatorships since.

The Turkmen issue has been a bit of a nationalist flashpoint recently - hardliners in Turkey had been pushing for action to stop Russia attacking what they see as their kinfolk (in the same way as Russian nationalists would push for intervention if ethnic Russians were being threatened in Turkmenistan, or wherever). Killing three servicemen is highly unlikely to get them to stop bombing and they don't even need to use planes - they could fire cruise missiles from the Med. I can't see any upside for Turkey and they've massively increased the chances of their own planes getting shot down if they enter Syria - which they apparently did this morning when attacking the Russian jet. The Turkish ambassador to the UN claimed the plane was in Turkish airspace for a total of seventeen seconds.

Unless there's a very clever game being played, it looks unfathomably stupid.

Erdogen does not necessarily seem like a level headed strategist tbh

agree that Erdogan seems like a boor, even so I doubt he ordered them to shoot that plane down

otoh neither NATO or Putin want some kind of Cold War escalation. By indicating that he's willing to shoot down Russian planes he might keep Putin away from the border with little cost ultimately

Kind of crazy to consider just how many long simmering ethnic divisions exist in that general region, even before you toss Russia (or France, or the US) into the mix.

I almost feel like shooting down a Russian plane was an immature reaction, kind of like giving a kid doing something dangerous so many warnings that you eventually have to let them find out the cost of carelessness themselves. Isn't this exactly what people feared/predicted as soon as Russia started flying there?

There were reports that Davutoğlu ordered the plane to be shot down personally and there's no way that he wouldn't have had prior authorisation from Erdogan to take that action in those circumstances.

By indicating that he's willing to shoot down Russian planes he might keep Putin away from the border with little cost ultimately

The cost will be huge! And it's also unlikely to keep them away.

Missing Russian jet pilot 'alive and well' in Syria

http://www.juancole.com/2015/11/turkey-russian-plane.html

The Davutoglu government risks substantial economic harm. Russian tourism has boosted the Turkish economy, and Russia was planning an important gas pipeline through Turkey as well as the building for Ankara of a nuclear power reactor. All those activities have just been cancelled, and tour operators in Russia are looking for other tourist markets after pressure from the Putin government. Russia is attributing the attack to an attempt by Turkish officials to protect gasoline smuggling routes from Daesh (ISIL, ISIS) to Turkey, but the geography of the shoot-down tells against this interpretation. This was near al-Qaeda territory in the northwest, not Daesh territory in the northeast, and the issue is arms smuggling, not oil smuggling.

Turkey has backed a range of Muslim fundamentalist groups in northern Syria in hopes of eventually overthrowing the Baath government of Bashar al-Assad. Turkey is also afraid of the leftist Kurds of northern Syria, which are accused of attempting to ethnically cleanse Arab and Turkmen villages that stand in the way of their establishing land bridges between the three major Kurdish cantons of northern Syria. The People’s Protection Unites (YPG) or leftist Kurdish militias have already linked two of these cantons, defeating Daesh in order to do so. The third, Afrin, is separated from Kobane by a set of Arab and Turkmen villages north of Aleppo
...

One of Russia’s current strategic goals is to keep Latakia Province from falling to the rebels. Latakia contains a crucial port of the same name, as well as the Tartous naval facility leased to the Russians. Latakia is heavily Alawite, the Shiite group that is a mainstay of the al-Assad government.

Russia appears to have been attempting to cut off a smuggling route for CIA weapons such as T.O.W. anti-tank missiles through Jabal Turkmen by attacking the Turkmen militias of northern Latakia Province, in the interests of shoring up the al-Assad government there. This attack may also have been intended to panic Turkmen populations into fleeing over the border into Turkey, thus removing a power base for Turkey on the Syrian side of the border and removing a group that would aid al-Qaeda and its allies in Jisr al-Shughour to move west.

Turkey's intelligence agency, MIT, has definitely been smuggling arms via that route. They have been caught doing so, rather embarrassingly, by the Turkish police - which didn't go down well with Davutoğlu .

Whether the weapons came from the CIA or went to the Turkmen, which had been hinted at but not proven, remains open to question though.

Fascinating NYT story about the anarchist/feminist/environmentalist/personality-cult/militarist Kurdish enclave in Northern Syria:

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/29/magazine/a-dream-of-utopia-in-hell.html

"Xwinda" is an awesome real name

ocalan is pretty interesting + has a lot to say about ziggurats

NY Times also with coverage on ISIS movement to Libya

“A great exodus of the Islamic State leadership in Syria and Iraq is now establishing itself in Libya,” said Omar Adam, 34, the commander of a prominent militia based in Misurata.

The group in Surt has also begun imposing the parent organization’s harsh version of Islamic law on the city, enforcing veils for all women, banning music and cigarettes, and closing shops during prayers, residents and recent visitors said. The group carried out at least four crucifixions in August.

...But this summer the Iraqi government stopped paying salaries in Mosul and Anbar Province, and shifts on the battlefield have prevented public employees in Islamic State territory from reaching banks on the outside to cash their paychecks.

“ISIS is still strong,” said the manager of an electronics store who lives in Raqqa. “But it has lost popularity among ordinary, uneducated people because it has lost its brilliant victories.”

Perhaps hoping to sustain its image of invincibility, the Islamic State’s propaganda has increasingly promoted the operations of its foreign affiliates. Western intelligence agencies say it is devoting more resources to them as well.

Most remain largely autonomous. The Egyptian branch of the Islamic State, deemed second after Libya’s in the scale of its threat, had a long record as a domestic insurgency before pledging its allegiance. The branch appears to have acted on its own initiative to carry out the bombing of the Russian charter jet on Oct. 31, say Western officials familiar with the intelligence reports. But the objective, those officials say, was to impress the group’s central leadership in order to win financial support
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/29/world/middleeast/isis-grip-on-libyan-city-gives-it-a-fallback-option.html?mabReward=CTM&action=click&pgtype=Homepage®ion=CColumn&module=Recommendation&src=rechp&WT.nav=RecEngine

More possible casussen belli (though the source is questionable): Turkey blockading Russia from Dardanelles

amazing photobomb at the paris talks

http://www.jpost.com/HttpHandlers/ShowImage.ashx?id=319793&h=530&w=758

Kurdish fighters say US special forces have been fighting Isis for months

Good essay:
http://www.lrb.co.uk/v37/n23/adam-shatz/magical-thinking-about-isis

And for IS, an offshoot of al-Qaida in Iraq, the distinction between near and far enemies is porous: all apostates are enemies. Although it has conquered a significant piece of territory – something bin Laden and Zawahiri never dared attempt – its power is only partly rooted in the caliphate. It is as keen to conquer virtual as actual territory. It draws on a growing pool of recruits who discovered not only IS but Islam itself online, in chatrooms and through messaging services where distance vanishes at the tap of a keyboard. Indeed, the genius of IS has been to overcome the distance between two very different crises of citizenship, and weave them into a single narrative of Sunni Muslim disempowerment: the exclusion of young Muslims in Europe, and the exclusion of Sunnis in Syria and Iraq.

Soon after launching a brutal air and ground assault in Yemen, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia began devoting significant resources to a sophisticated public relations blitz in Washington, D.C.

The PR campaign is designed to maintain close ties with the U.S. even as the Saudi-led military incursion into the poorest Arab nation in the Middle East has killed nearly 6,000 people, almost half of them civilians.

Elements of the charm offensive include the launch of a pro-Saudi Arabia media portal operated by high-profile Republican campaign consultants; a special English-language website devoted to putting a positive spin on the latest developments in the Yemen war; glitzy dinners with American political and business elites; and a non-stop push to sway reporters and policymakers.

https://theintercept.com/2015/12/01/inside-saudi-charm-campaign/