Rolling MENA 2014 (Middle East)

Ha, that's right

"poof"

https://news.vice.com/videos/syria-wolves-of-the-valley

http://prospect.org/article/us-israel-and-palestine-whats-plan-b

pretty much all the solutions offered in that article sound better to me than the current situation

good post-mortum here:
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/29/world/middleeast/arc-of-a-failed-deal-how-nine-months-of-mideast-talks-ended-in-dissarray.html

anyone who hasn't seen that vice vid i linked to a few posts ago should. it's really amazing.

Iran and the P5+1 group of nations will start hammering out a draft accord Tuesday aimed at ending a decade-long standoff over suspicions that the Islamic republic is concealing military objectives.
"We have nothing to put on the table and offer to them but transparency. That's it. Our nuclear technology is not up for negotiation," Rouhani, referring to the West, said in remarks broadcast on state television.
"Iran will not retreat one step in the field of nuclear technology... we will not accept nuclear apartheid," he said.

I guess everything is apartheid.

http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2014/jun/05/pakistan-worse-than-we-knew/

Interesting take. Hope the below is correct:

Since the mid-1970s the ISI has supported extremist Islamic groups in Afghanistan including the Taliban, but that policy may now be changing. Contrary to many predictions, the situation in Afghanistan may be taking a turn for the better

And hope the military and ISI are changing in Pakistan

really fantastic longform piece:

https://tabletmag.creatavist.com/tantura#chapter-99641

i normally don't like 972 but i thought this was pretty sharp:
http://972mag.com/unilateral-withdrawal-makes-a-comeback-in-israeli-politics/91287/

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/27/world/africa/us-trains-african-commandos-to-fight-terrorism.html?hp&_r=0

WASHINGTON — United States Special Operations troops are forming elite counterterrorism units in four countries in North and West Africa that American officials say are pivotal in the widening war against Al Qaeda’s affiliates and associates on the continent, even as they acknowledge the difficulties of working with weak allies.

The secretive program, financed in part with millions of dollars in classified Pentagon spending and carried out by trainers, including members of the Army’s Green Berets and Delta Force, was begun last year to instruct and equip hundreds of handpicked commandos in Libya, Niger, Mauritania and Mali.

The goal over the next few years is to build homegrown African counterterrorism teams capable of combating fighters like those in Boko Haram, the Islamist extremist group that abducted nearly 300 Nigerian schoolgirls last month. American military specialists are helping Nigerian officers in their efforts to rescue the girls.

i wonder if the french are involved or if this is a solo american venture.

US helping France in Niger:

http://www.stripes.com/news/report-us-commandos-training-counterterror-teams-in-africa-1.285630

the U.S. has been bolstering its network of surveillance aircraft on the continent, which includes a facility in Niger aimed at assisting French forces operating against militants in Mali as well as a more recent drone site in Chad, which supports international efforts to locate more than 200 girls kidnapped by extremists in Nigeria.

what an egyptian ballot looks like

http://doctorzamalek2.files.wordpress.com/2014/05/booz6wnccaaibo0.jpg?w=418

http://forward.com/articles/199179/netanyahu-settlement-freeze-in-west-bank-due-to-a/?

So US pressure is accomplishing that?

that's what bibi says

http://forward.com/articles/199257/the-inconvenient-truth-about-jews-from-arab-lands/?p=all

According to Weinstock, underlying the growing hostility toward the Jewish population in Palestine was the realization that the dhimmi Jews were shaking off their traditional legal status of humiliation and submission. In retrospect, the writer maintains, dhimmi status, on the one hand, and the declared attempt by the Zionist movement to be free of it, on the other, led ultimately to the Arabs’ rejection of the United Nations partition plan in 1947 and to the War of Independence the following year.

Local Palestinians and the Arab world refused to grant the Jews of the country a status different from dhimmi, and they were even less likely to recognize the Jews’ national rights. Zionism, for its part, could not accept Arab sovereignty over all of Palestine, a situation in which the Jewish minority would again find itself under dhimmi status. “Historically, then,” Weinstock says, “dhimmi status is the root of the conflict.”

What impact does this relationship have today?

“It continues to affect Israeli-Arab relations even today, because in Arab eyes the Jew who now lives in Israel is the same Jew whom they customarily saw as humiliated – and who is now taking his revenge. The Arabs experience Israel’s establishment and existence to this day as very painful revenge and as the reversal of dhimmitude. This is a very meaningful and deep aspect of the current political problem, which we cannot allow ourselves to ignore. Without understanding this, it is impossible to understand the conflict.”
Then why is it not dealt with more by academics and the press?

“For the Jewish world, the reason is that Ashkenazi Jews, in Israel and elsewhere, continue to be indifferent to and even disdainful of the Mizrahi Jews. For the Arab world, this should come as no surprise, as self-criticism is not popular among Arab journalists, intellectuals and public-opinion leaders. With the exception of a very short incidental note by [the late Prof.] Edward Said in one of his books, it is hard to find serious references to the massive emigration of Jews from the Arab countries and its causes.

“The left tends to avoid the subject, because they don’t consider it ‘kosher.’ The left has become extraordinarily dogmatic and lacks the ability of self-criticism today. People define themselves as identifying with ‘the Palestinian cause,’ and that’s all: There is no thought behind it. This subject might upset their one-sided worldview, so they simply avoid it.”

I had never heard the term "dhimmi" before. Interesting and complex stuff.

Turkey Shuts Off Water Supply to Syria

In the last few weeks, according to Al-Akhbar, the Turkish government completely stopped Euphrates waters from leaving Turkey and flowing into Syria, something made possible by the enormous reservoir behind its Atatürk Dam.

This action threatens water crises in Syria and Iraq . As one indication, the water level in Lake Assad, Syria's largest body of water, has gone down by about 20 feet, according to the paper. Within days, some 7 million Syrians could be left without water as well as electricity. Al-Akhbar says that "a halt to the water supply is now inevitable and can't be resolved unless the Turkish government takes the decision to resume pumping Euphrates water." To make matters yet more worrisome, the fanatic Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) group controls the Tishrin Dam, one of Syria's three dams on the Euphrates.

Assad will simply blame Turkey

http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/insurgents-seize-iraqi-city-of-mosul-as-troops-flee/2014/06/10/21061e87-8fcd-4ed3-bc94-0e309af0a674_story.html

The neo-con editorial page editor at the W. Post, Fred Hyatt, wrote before this incident that Obama was pulling US troops out of Iraq and Afghanistan too soon. Watch him insist now that if US troops were there this would have been prevented...

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/06/11/world/middleeast/mosul-iraq-militants-seize-us-weapons.html

The insurgent fighters who routed the Iraqi army out of Mosul on Tuesday did not just capture much of Iraq’s second-largest city. They also gained a windfall of arms, munitions and equipment abandoned by the soldiers as they fled — arms that were supplied by the United States and intended to give the troops an edge over the insurgents.

The problem is not a new one...

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Bpxn40DCAAAN3eC.png:large

Jason Ukman @JasonUkman
WaPo front page -- Feb. 2008 -- US bets Iraqi forces can take lead. #Mosul @partlowj
10:26 AM - 10 Jun 2014

A colleague who does a lot of work in the area reckons Kirkuk will be next. Erbil is too well defended by local militias to risk attacking at the moment.

http://i.imgur.com/MJ1CPuy.jpg

John Schindler (@20committee) tweeted at 9:38 AM on Wed, Jun 11, 2014:
Tehran won't let ISIS take over much more of Iraq without Iranians entering the fray to resist...gonna get interesting, folks #JihadWorldCup
(https://twitter.com/20committee/status/476720138046414848)

several reports Tuesday suggested insurgents had surrounded Tikrit, which is more than halfway to Baghdad from Mosul. The question becomes when and where Iraqi forces are able to stand their ground against the insurgent advance.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/checkpoint/wp/2014/06/10/mosul-is-burning-and-iraq-could-still-get-worse-here-are-5-reasons-why/

man i thought the kurds were unfuckwithable

There's a suggestion that ISIS may have captured nearly half a billion dollars in cash when they took Mosul's central bank.

http://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/originals/2014/06/iran-officials-call-action-isis-mosul.html

Ali Shamkhani, the secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council, addressed the victories of the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS) against a fleeing Iraqi military in a meeting with Syria’s ambassador to Iran. “The expansion of terrorist elements of [ISIS] and their violent acts in Iraq was a warning for the region,” Shamkhani said. “There is a need for attention and action from governments and the international community.”

Iraq Asked U.S. for Strikes, Officials Say
Prime Minister’s Secret Request Last Month Was Rebuffed
By MICHAEL R. GORDON and ERIC SCHMITT 7:14 PM ET
The Obama administration declined the request by Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki, because it was reluctant to open a new chapter in a conflict that the White House has insisted was closed.

Wow. I guess not so surprising but I wonder if that means we're not going to do anything when ISIS marches on Baghdad.

apparently half a million refugees from mosul

Iraqi officials told the Guardian that two divisions of Iraqi soldiers - roughly 30,000 men - simply turned and ran in the face of the assault by an insurgent force of just 800 fighters.

jesus

The Peshmerga have taken over Kirkuk as they don't think the Iraqi army can / will defend it - with some justification.

it's hard to believe that ISIS doesn't have any state sponsors. i don't buy conspiracy theories that they're funded by Assad, but is it possible that all their funding comes from foreign fighters, local support and captured equipment?

Don't the Gulf States fund the Syrian rebels (which ISIS was a part of at one time?)

Syrian rebels dislike ISIS and have been in conflict with them for a bit now. Saudi Arabia has been accused of funding them, but they recently dismantled an ISIS cell domestically (nb they have a history of repressing rebel groups domestically and promoting them internationally, but this suggests that they're not on great terms w/ the group).

I didn't realize this institute existed:
http://icsr.info

but a guy from it was on BBC this morning claiming that all funding was pretty much coming from foreign fighters which i found hard to believe (nb i had to stop listening for a minute to order my coffee this morning so i may have missed a claim that gulf states are involved)

They're unlikely to need to worry about money if the rumours about Mosul bank are true. There have been a couple of cases where foreigners have been caught trying to smuggle tens of thousands of dollars into Syria to aid them and i wouldn't be surprised if they had a few wealthy patrons in the gulf but i've not heard anything compelling about state funding.

it's just kinda crazy to me that there's this huge army able to takeover Mosul in an afternoon and seize half a bil in assets -- and they're independent actors w/out state support. how often does that happen? i'm struggling to think of a recent example...

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/06/12/world/middleeast/the-militants-moving-in-on-syria-and-iraq.html?emc=edit_th_20140612&nl=todaysheadlines&nlid=31119931

The group is a magnet for militants from around the world. On videos, Twitter and other media, the group showcases fighters from Chechnya, Germany, Britain and the United States.

Its members are better paid, better trained and better armed than even the national armies of Syria and Iraq, Sheikh Hassan said.
Many of the recruits are drawn by its extreme ideology. But others are lured by the high salaries, as well as the group’s ability to consolidate power, according to former members, civilians who have lived under its rule in northern Syria and moderate rebels.

...It has taken over oil fields in eastern Syria, for example, and according to several rebel commanders and aid workers, has resumed pumping. It has also secured revenue by selling electricity to the government from captured power plants. In Iraq on Wednesday, the militants seized control of Baiji, the site of Iraq’s largest oil refinery and power plant.

...
“Wherever we took territory, we would declare people apostates and confiscate their property,” Mustafa said. “We took cars and money from Christians, and from Muslims we didn’t like.”

oh right, now i remember, the interviewee did mention that they've been doing some quick turnarounds on seizing natural resources and then pumping them out for cash infusions on the black market

Yes, they are supposedly getting several hundred thousand dollars a week in natural gas from one site alone.

so is china going to send troops to protect their investments in iraqi oil?