Rolling MENA 2014 (Middle East)

thx (ha i share yr feelings re vox)

There's been demagoguery and sophistry by both sides, of course there has, there always is, and I'm sure the pro-deal side has been peppered with anti-semism as well. But let's not kid ourselves that it has been equal, the anti-deal side has acted like the anti-obamacare side, it's been an endless flood of lies and dishonesty (and a sprinkling of islamophobia). This AP thing joins the lie about '24 Days', which Schumer even repeated, as one of the bigger ones. The anti-deal side has been so allied with the republican right, that it hasn't been able to escape the torrent of dishonesty that goes along with them.

Fadel Abdullah al-Hiyali, so bad they had to kill him twice:

December 2014

http://english.alarabiya.net/en/perspective/profiles/2014/12/19/Abu-Muslim-al-Turkmani-From-Iraqi-officer-to-slain-ISIS-deputy.html

August 2015

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/11817711/Islamic-States-deputy-leader-killed-in-US-airstrike-White-House-says.html

sad lol

was he in the process of raping someone when he was droned to death? I hear ISIS is all about that shit.

frederik, agree there are some analogies to debate over aca, quality of claims & arguments made for & against (both in the abstract, and qua particular document with particular design), but fleshing out analogy wd lead too off topic

perhaps you’re right, but tbh the correctness of yr characterization of anti-deal side isn’t obv to me
& this style of ad hom argument (anti-deal critics are ‘allied’ with ‘republican right,’ who are lying liars, thus critics of deal are obv lying liars), i don’t find ultimately helps that much in making judgments about really difficult, genuinely controversial matters, like iran deal

if only it were so simple! if it were so simple, i cd just read vox & know exactly what to think
anyway i sure as hell don’t know (i don’t know); fortunately it’s not up to me; hope gamble proves to be wise one

anyway, here’s article/interview with retired saudi general eshki, discussing among other things apparent israel-saudi rapprochement in light of deal: http://www.wsj.com/articles/the-saudis-reply-to-irans-rising-danger-1440197120
(may require wsj subscription)

I honestly think the Iran deal is complex the way Global Warming is. Yeah, it's complex, but come on! The vast majority of experts in the field say that this is a good enough deal - though their arguments are indeed complex, and I'm not certain I understand it all - and a bunch of non-experts keep thinking up lies.

Stumbled upon this article from 2012:

Aymenn Jawad Al-Tamimi and Oskar Svadkovsky - Demography Is Destiny in Syria (yeah, I'm aware of some of American Spectator's biases)

The escalation in Syria took by surprise only the people who never bothered to examine Syria's population pyramid. It was no "out of the blue" to anybody even slightly familiar with the basic facts on demography and climate in the region. In the Middle East's long list of hopeless basket cases Yemen is surely beyond competition. However, for quite a while Syria has positioned herself as a formidable contender for respectable second place.
In some respects, the seeds of the current disaster were planted as far back as 1956, when Youssef Helbaoui -- head of economic analysis in Syria's Planning Department -- famously declared: "A birth control policy has no reason for being in this country. Malthus could not find any followers among us." Since then Syria has been living in a state of one uninterrupted demographic cataclysm. The regime was so obsessively pro-natalist that in the early 1970s, the trade and use of contraceptives in Syria were officially banned. By 1975, the birth rate reached 50 live births per 1,000 people, with Hafez al-Assad asserting that a "high population growth rate and internal migration" were responsible for stimulating "proper socio-economic improvements" within the development framework.
Even when other nations in the Middle East began to take measures to curb their population growth as the danger of demographic collapse started to loom over the region, the regime in Syria was struggling to make up its mind on the issue. Only in recent years has the regime introduced some measure of family planning, but by now the sheer amount of population momentum accumulated in previous decades has kept the population swelling to new highs.

the fertility rate doesn't seem so crazy https://www.google.co.uk/publicdata/explore?ds=d5bncppjof8f9_&met_y=sp_dyn_tfrt_in&idim=country:SYR:IRQ:EGY&hl=en&dl=en#!ctype=l&strail=false&bcs=d&nselm=h&met_y=sp_dyn_tfrt_in&scale_y=lin&ind_y=false&rdim=region&idim=country:SYR:IRQ:EGY:JOR&ifdim=region&hl=en_US&dl=en&ind=false

The problem now is the demographic "inertia" of the last part of the 1950-2000 baby boom coming of age (and finding no jobs and little food).

Before synthetic fertilizers and water mining, Syria had a population of just 2.4 million in 1937. That might not be too far from the carrying capacity without finite resource chemical inputs.

And, yes, Yemen's situation is much more severe, as they had fertility rates as higher than 8 from 1975-1993, and very little renewable water. The aquifers have been almost sucked dry to grow kat.

Seems like Assad has decided to address the demographic imbalance by killing hundreds and thousands of Syrians

I wish I understood better what's at stake in the Lebanon "you stink" protests

I think a really interesting question would be how the fertility rates differed between Alawites and Sunni Muslims in Syria (for which I can't find much data). As Alawites dominated the political elite and presumably were disproportionately represented in the economic elites and middle class, its reasonable that they went through the demographic transition to lower fertility rates decades before the Sunnis did. What might have been onerous oppression by 30% of the population became intolerable oppression by 11%. A similar progression has gone on in Bahrain.

x-post

http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/lebanon-you-stink-protests-we-are-not-egypt-claims-activist-michel-elefteriades-1517010

The government's failure to solve a garbage disposal crisis, as well as chronic shortages of electricity and water, sparked the You Stink campaign in the capital Beirut after the Environment Ministry closed the controversial Naameh landfill on 17 July. Initially a non-political people's movement, the movement gathered supporters and expanded its demands beyond just the waste crisis, calling for the resignation of the entire government.

...."So, there are intellectuals and opinion leaders who are monitoring (the protests). We are there to oversee that there are no slips, nor any intruders taking the demonstrations in another direction. We denounce any slips immediately."

Demonstrations in Beirut are expected to resume on 27 August, after two days of what the activist described as "a warrior's rest".

hmmmm. Interesting

i think this is the best thread for this

https://www.nslj.org/a-message-to-our-readers/

spencer ackerman has a couple grabs:

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CNgpz3SWoAE31I_.jpg

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CNgtYY5XAAA1ui4.png

scott lemieux has a writeup

http://www.lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com/2015/08/today-in-campus-political-correctness-and-the-progressive-war-on-free-speech

funny shit

Spartanization of the West? Does this author have any clues how Spartan society was structured? It was built on a foundation of brutal slavery, where the military prowess of young Spartan gentlemen was honed by setting them loose to wage a war of terror on the very slaves whose labors fed them. Fucking fuck anyone who holds up Sparta as a model for emulation. They were ancient Nazis.

nice. West Point cadets are learning from that guy. great.

Meanwhile, US whack-a-mole drone strikes continue in the slow effort to contain and rollback ISIS...

http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/defence/isis-top-hacking-expert-killed-in-us-drone-strike-report/articleshow/48696548.cms

There are countries with social infrastructure at breaking point because of the refugee crisis – but they aren’t in Europe. The most obvious example is Lebanon, which houses 1.2 million Syrian refugees within a total population of roughly 4.5 million. To put that in context, a country that is more than 100 times smaller than the EU has already taken in more than 50 times as many refugees as the EU will even consider resettling in the future. Lebanon has a refugee crisis. Europe – and, in particular, Britain – does not.

http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2015/aug/10/10-truths-about-europes-refugee-crisis

Greste et al given three years in jail. Killing independent news coverage clearly overrides degree to which locking up Aussie journalist for doing his job plays badly in West.

More on William Bradford, the piece of work West Point hired on 1 August. (Guardian)

My spidey sense is that he's not going to get tenure.

UN: Gaza could be ‘uninhabitable’ by 2020 if trends continue (WaPo)

http://www.thenation.com/article/us-special-forces-are-operating-more-countries-you-can-imagine/

hot look for 2015: MENA is everywhere!

The Nation's not happy with US special troops everywhere, while on the right, numerous Republican candidates and others are saying that the Syrian refugee crisis is happening (and that 3 year old boy died)because Obama would not challenge Assad in Syria directly years ago...

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/03/science/earth/study-links-syria-conflict-to-drought-caused-by-climate-change.html?_r=0

climate change exacerbated the drought in Syria

Orthodox tourists take a wrong turn in Hebron, their car gets attacked by teenagers with flaming bottles, a Palestinian man takes them in, calls the (Israeli) police and keeps the tourists safe until the cops arrive. I need this, to be reminded once a month or so that most people, Jews and Arabs, are just really not into killing people, they are more into having a job and hanging with their kids and living in some kind of ordered society where they can have a life.

Gaza would be uninhabitable by 2025 or so anyway due to overdrawing their aquifer, seawater ingress and agricultural chemical pollution. It's not a great place to crowd 1.8 million people.

Seawater desalination plants are planned for 2016. Wouldn't be surprised if these became targets.

The 54 Syrian fighters supplied by the Syrian opposition group Division 30 were the first group of rebels deployed under a $500 million train-and-equip program authorized by Congress last year. It is an overt program run by United States Special Forces, with help from other allied military trainers, and is separate from a parallel covert program run by the C.I.A.

After a year of trying, however, the Pentagon is still struggling to find recruits to fight the Islamic State without also battling the forces of President Bashar al-Assad of Syria, their original adversary.

The willing few face screening, but it is so stringent that only dozens have been approved from among the thousands who have applied, and they are bit players in the rebellion. The program has not engaged with the biggest, most powerful groups, Islamist factions that are better funded, better equipped and more motivated. Even the program’s largest supporters now concede that the goal of generating more than 5,000 trained fighters in the first year of the program is unrealistic.

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/07/world/middleeast/us-to-revamp-training-program-to-fight-isis.html

via Greenwald

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SG3j8OYKgn4&t=8m48s

More on the worrying trend of magically regenerating ISIS fighters:

https://twitter.com/TheMediaTweets/status/641150874354610176

I don't usually read Kristoff in the NY Times but just did--

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/10/opinion/nicholas-kristof-compassion-for-refugees-isnt-enough.html?emc=edit_th_20150910&nl=todaysheadlines&nlid=37355772&_r=0

the U.S. has admitted only 1,500 since the war started four years ago,

...

The least bad option today is to create a no-fly zone in the south of Syria. This could be done on a shoestring, enforced by U.S. Navy ships in the Mediterranean firing missiles, without ground troops.

That would end barrel bombings. Just as important, the no-fly zone would create leverage to pressure the Syrian regime — and its Russian and Iranian backers — to negotiate.

“If they can’t use their aircraft, the day after they will know they can’t survive, and that will bring them to the table,” said Reza Afshar, a former British diplomat who now advises the Syrian opposition through his group, Independent Diplomat.

The aim of the talks, with no preconditions on either side, would be a cease-fire with a tweaking of boundary lines.

Look, this would be ugly. It would amount to a de facto partition of Syria and the partial survival of the regime, perhaps with a new Alawite general replacing President Bashar al-Assad. Yet otherwise we may be standing by as the slaughter spirals toward genocide.

Robert Ford, a former American ambassador to Syria who resigned because he found the Obama administration’s Syria policy indefensible, says a negotiation, even if successful, might drag on for two years as the carnage continued. Still, that’s better than the alternatives.

“It’s irresponsible to throw up our hands and say there’s nothing that can be done,” he added. “Then, almost certainly things will get worse.”

earlier discussion of this in July

http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2015-07-28/u-s-shoots-down-idea-of-syria-safe-zone

The White House is wary of any plan that could put it in military conflict with the Assad regime, and has made no decision to protect opposition forces or civilians from its air assaults.

Former officials and Mideast experts noted this week that protecting the area from Assad's bombs was key to whether or not a safe zone would actually work. Frederic Hof, a former State Department Syria official, pointed out some of the holes in the still-murky U.S.-Turkey plan. "A marginal ground combat component is one problem faced by the coalition. Another is Assad regime aerial operations. They are major arrows in the quiver of ISIL," wrote Hof. "So although recent developments are positive, they can be potentially decisive only to the extent they transcend what's being reported: specifically in the category of protecting civilians."

There's no chance of getting a broad no-fly-zone through the Security Council and talking up a humanitarian one while also clearly backing regime change isn't likely to be a winner with Russia or China either.

We had that Benjamin Netanyahu in our place of work today... not that I actually saw him.

a report on npr this morning made it sound like russia is about to open up a base in syria to defend the regime with airstrikes, etc.

=(

Russia is unlikely to attack the Free Syrian Army but there's talk of them possibly using it as a base against ISIS in the future. It's speculation at this stage.

like that time turkey was beginning to launch airstrikes against isis but blew up a bunch of pkk positions instead

Attacks on the Free Syrian Army would escalate Russia's underlying issues with the EU / US and might even lead to stronger sanctions, which they would want to avoid. If the base did go ahead, it would definitely be seen as a renewed vote of confidence in Assad but the long game might be more subtle than just blowing up its enemies. There was an air defence show in Russia two weeks ago that drew high-level representatives from Syria, Iran and Saudi which has widely been seen as cover for a diplomatic conference between Putin and the latter two. Putin seems to want to position himself as the only person who can build trust on both sides and an increased Russian presence in Syria (which would not mean Russian troops fighting alongside Assad) could be a way of strengthening their own position at the negotiating table.

There are lots of strange little games being played with this that are difficult to unpick. There doesn't seem to be any evidence that Russia has substantially increased arms sales or technical support to Syria but they have apparently been making sure that the weapons they're selling are visible on the top decks of the boats sailing across (shipping them uncovered so they show up on satellite imagery). Russia has always been very open about how much they're doing to support Assad's government but they seem to be making it even more explicit following media reports that they were on the verge of abandoning him.

At the same time, the recent rash of articles and commentary in the West about a dramatic escalation (which, again, seem completely unsubstantiated and in some cases fabricated) is being seen in Russia as an attempt to torpedo the apparent warming of relations between Russia and Saudi Arabia and the idea that a negotiated settlement, which seems the only way out, might be run on Russian lines (to keep the Ba'ath party in power - if not Assad) rather than based on US assumptions (with Khoja ultimately stepping in).

idk, none of it is easy to interpret.

that's interesting, sharivari

cf this excerpt from interview with retired saudi general eshki (which i linked upthread like 2 weeks ago, http://www.wsj.com/articles/the-saudis-reply-to-irans-rising-danger-1440197120):

Riyadh isn’t limiting itself to Jerusalem in courting potential new friends. He suggests that a thaw in the kingdom’s relations with Vladimir Putin’s Russia is under way following the rupture caused by Moscow’s sharp support for its clients, Tehran and the Assad regime, in the Syrian civil war. Riyadh and the Kremlin may now work together to stabilize Syria.

“We have to concentrate to solve the problem” in Syria, the general says. “But we don’t like Assad to stay. Because the people in Syria don’t want him to stay.” He notes that Saudi King Abdullah, who died in January, “at the beginning of the revolution called on Assad six times to solve the problem quickly: ‘Don’t kill your people. Don’t ally yourself with Iran. We need Syria united and independent.’ At the end of that, President Assad said: ‘The situation is not under my control.’ That means: Iran has much influence over him.”

Now the Kremlin is gradually coming around to Riyadh’s view of the conflict. “Russia is a great country,” he says, “but they don’t like to change their promises” to allies—in contrast to you-know-who. “Russia supported by weapons Iran and Assad in the civil war in Syria. But now Russia believes, has been convinced, that they are not in the right path. Saudi Arabia needs Russia in the Middle East, not to destabilize countries but to be a friend.”

A political solution would preserve the Syrian state apparatus while replacing the regime sitting atop it. “We don’t like that regime,” Gen. Eshki says. “There’s difference between the system and the regime. When the United States came to Iraq, they destroyed the system, and the problems ensued. We have to maintain the system but remove the regime.” He believes stabilizing the region will require a “Marshall-style project to rebuild” Syria and Yemen, a cause he personally promotes.

Such a project is the only permanent antidote to the Islamist extremism of groups like Islamic State. Using the Arabic term for the group, Daesh, the general says that its terrorism wouldn’t be possible in a country “if that country is not destabilized, if it has equity. When Syria became destabilized, Daesh came to Syria. When the government in Iraq had so much corruption and pushed the Sunni out, Daesh came to Iraq quickly. If Iraq became stabilized and strong, Daesh wouldn’t be in Iraq or in Syria.”

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-09-10/major-humiliation-obama-iran-has-sent-soldiers-support-russian-troops-syria

Haven't read this guy before. Link is to his take on Russia and Iran backing Syria, with some asides on Yemen as well where things are also a mess.

zerohedge guy is kind of a douche, seems libertarianish, though I've never read him on foreign policy

He is mostly known in finance circles. I read him once in a while -- he is good at seeing through wall street bullshit/Kool-Aid but not always so good on the details.

its too bad nobody wants to throw in with the US backed unicorn brigade of secular anti baath anti isis rebels

https://www.rt.com/usa/314766-pentagon-syria-isis-training/

The first group of 54 US-trained fighters was ambushed and scattered in late July by Jabhat Al-Nusra, an Al-Qaeda group fighting against the government in Damascus. They never saw combat against Islamic State.

It was the first group of 'moderate rebels' to be trained as part of the $500 million US program, run by the Pentagon and separate from the covert CIA operation. Using training camps in Turkey, Jordan, Saudi Arabia and Qatar, the program’s aim was to create a 15,000-strong force by the end of 2017. In early July, Defense Secretary Ash Carter admitted that the goal of training 3,000 fighters by the end of 2015 did not seem very realistic.

NY Times editorial

The United States has asked countries on the flight path between Russia and Syria to close their airspace to Russian flights, unless Moscow can prove they aren’t being used to militarily resupply the Assad regime. Bulgaria has done so, but Greece, another NATO ally, and Iraq, which is depending on America to save it from the Islamic State, so far have not. World leaders should use the United Nations General Assembly meeting this month to make clear the dangers a Russian buildup would pose for efforts to end the fighting.

http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/09/12/us-yemen-security-idUSKCN0RC07920150912

Saudi bombing of Yemen with civilian casualties. UN-brokered peace talks are supposed to happen shortly

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-34241680

12 people, including several Mexican tourists, killed by the Egyptian military.