Q: are we not MENA? A: we are the rolling middle east, north africa and other geopolitical hot spots thread 2016!

this confrontation was apparently outside of erdogan's hotel two days ago

https://twitter.com/MahirZeynalov/status/714943551671570432

https://theintercept.com/2016/03/30/turkey-wants-ban-on-mocking-its-leader-enforced-abroad-too/

After the president arrived in Washington on Tuesday night, his security team got right to work, harassing protesters and journalists outside his hotel, as writers for one of the papers recently shuttered by Erdogan’s government noted.

...That display of intolerance for dissent followed reports this week that Turkey’s foreign ministry had summoned Germany’s ambassador to complain about a satirical music video mocking Erdogan that was broadcast recently on German television. “We demanded,” a Turkish diplomat told Agence France-Presse, that the show “be removed from the air.”

http://foreignpolicy.com/2016/03/30/erdogan-uses-closed-door-meeting-to-blast-white-house/

Erdogan courted Washington’s top think tank luminaries on Tuesday night in an effort to rehabilitate his image and criticize the Obama administration’s policies in Syria.

During an off-the-record dinner at Washington’s high-end St. Regis Hotel, a defiant Erdogan ripped the American media’s coverage of his administration’s policies and bashed the White House’s support for Kurdish fighters in Syria

Erdogan is in Washington to meet Vice President Joe Biden and attend the administration’s 2016 Nuclear Security Summit. But he is not expected to enjoy a formal meeting with President Barack Obama — a slight the White House explained away as scheduling issue but which has been widely perceived as sign of Obama’s frustration with Erdogan’s increasingly authoritarian actions.

wasn't sure what thread to post this in but it's imo a powerful piece about american parents w/ radicalizing children & cooperation w/ the gov:
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/10/us/parents-face-limited-options-to-keep-children-from-terrorism.html

as a parent i can't even imagine - you don't want to send your child to prison for decades but more you don't want them dying on a battlefield in syria or killing ppl domestically. i feel like there's a place for a non-govt interventionist org within the muslim community who parents can reach out to and they take dramatic deprogramming measures.

Do you guys think there's any sense in thinking about the Syrian civil war in terms of violent/nonviolent resistance? Seems like perhaps a lot of Syrians would have been less worse off suffering the injustice of Assad's regime than a civil war with no positive outcome in sight...

(this may be an offensively stupid question coming from a Scandinavian with no understanding of authoritarian regimes, ethnic groups in Syria etc etc, if so I'd like to apologize in advance)

Well, they tried non-violent resistance at first, but Assad responded by killing them.

Saying that a dictatorial regime is better than civil war doesn't make sense when it's the behaviour of the regime that leads to the war.

I suppose surrender was an option?

What does that have to do with violent/non-violent resistance?

hmm maybe not much, I'm having a hard time phrasing my question proper (which makes me suspect it's maybe not a good question)

but maybe violent resistance isn't the only alternative to non-violent resistance?

there's not really a single actor with the authority & power to make a decision. there's been a lot of snowballing to get to this point and so many factions are involved now it's the wrong way to look at it imo

yes I guess it's a very abstract, counterfactual/hypothetical way of thinking abt it - but not uncommon!

there's perhaps something intuitive about thinking in terms of whether a given dictatorship was better/worse than situation following war/revolution/... (I remember clearly how Saddam's oppressive regime was supposed to be good reason for invading Iraq)

There's a giant difference between those two, in that in Syria the people rose up themselves.

totally agree, my idea was just to give another example of this type of thinking (a terrible one!)

So on another idea--I read a moderate suggest that when Obama says he did not want to bomb Assad after O's own red line threat because it would escalate a war with Iran and Russia on 1 side, various weaker rebel groups on the other side, plus ISIS and other terrorists around; and would be done with the knowledge of how poorly Iraq and Afghanistan have been going for years...that he was getting the wrong message. The moderate suggested that the US success bombing in the Balkans in the 90s, and Russia's success so far in Syria, show that a big power can use force successfully without worsening things.

Forgot where I read this...Might have just been a Washington Post columnist

people rose up in iraq, but they were put down. syria has been very delicately positioned wrt regional and other powers for a long time so a straightforward purely domestic/internal revolution was never really on the cards, although thigs have been chaotic and unpredictable. with hindsight i think it's easy to say it would have been better if there was no attempt to overthrow assad but it's not necessarily instructive for other cases. there was a sobering survey of young arab opinion in the news today which indicated a huge shift in priorities from democracy to stability.

a good lesson for all of us

The first lesson is probably to avoid situations like this: 'Syria has been very delicately positioned wrt regional and other powers for a long time so a straightforward purely domestic/internal revolution was never really on the cards' Though that's obviously not particularly easy to dismantle.

I think this is always the case; the geopolitical conditions have to be favourable in order for a revolution to be a success

http://www.brookings.edu/blogs/markaz/posts/2016/04/12-libya-intervention-hamid

Here’s what we know: By March 19, 2011, when the NATO operation began, the death toll in Libya had risen rapidly to more than 1,000 in a relatively short amount of time, confirming Qaddafi’s longstanding reputation as someone who was willing to kill his countrymen (as well as others) in large numbers if that’s what his survival required.

There was no end in sight. After early rebel gains, Qaddafi had seized the advantage. Still, he was not in a position to deal a decisive blow to the opposition. (Nowhere in the Arab Spring era has one side in a military conflict been able to claim a clear victory, even with massive advantages in manpower, equipment, and regional backing.)

Any Libyan who had opted to take up arms was liable to be captured, arrested, or killed if Qaddafi "won," so the incentives to accept defeat were nonexistent, to say nothing of the understandable desire to not live under the rule of a brutal and maniacal strongman.

The most likely outcome, then, was a Syria-like situation of indefinite, intensifying violence. Even President Obama, who today seems unsure about the decision to intervene, acknowledged in an August 2014 interview with Thomas Friedman that "had we not intervened, it’s likely that Libya would be Syria...And so there would be more death, more disruption, more destruction."

Now, rather than merely having avoided the wholesale massacre of civilian protestors in Libya, which was the justification at the time, our intervention has now graduated to having avoided another Syria?

Syria = wholesale massacre of civilians iirc

The very fact that the Libya intervention and its legacy have been either distorted or misunderstood is itself evidence of a warped foreign policy discourse in the U.S., where anything short of success—in this case, Libya quickly becoming a stable, relatively democratic country—is viewed as a failure.

come on man

he makes i think a very good pt - there were more ppl killed in the eight months of revolution against Gaddafi than all deaths in the 4.5 years since his death. this is not a minor point.

Guess what, it's not only in the US that this intervention is not viewed as a roaring success.

Syria = wholesale massacre of civilians iirc

there seems to be more going on there than that, tbf

a friend linked me to this: http://www.libyabodycount.org/date

not sure why it stops in feb but i assume that's just bc it hasn't been updated yet

there seems to be more going on there than that, tbf

sure, my point was only that your two scenarios weren't really mutually exclusive, the latter has incorporated the former in a significant way

my point was only that 'the thing that didn't happen' has now undergone a significant inflation, allowing us to claim even more credit for what never happened.

right and maybe if we hadn't intervened gaddafi and the rebels would've agreed to sit down to talks and work out a power-sharing democratic government w/ a slow peaceful transition out of power for gaddafi

There was a time when the United States seemed to have a perpetual bias toward action. The instinct of leaders, more often than not, was to act militarily even in relatively small conflicts that were remote from American national security interests. Our country’s tragic experience in Iraq changed that. Inaction came to be seen as a virtue.

this is stupid neocon nonsense btw

sounds like a value judgement free description of reality to me unless you don't think inaction has come to be seen as a virtue which i think in the case at least of the obama administration and a large % of the population it has

Just to play devil's advocate: I've been reading Black Earth of late, where Tim Snyder looks at the bloodlands of Eastern Europe during and in the aftermath of WWII, and makes a strong case against disrupting regimes that provide local stability. In this place and era, genocidal anger seethed from the grassroots, much different from Western Europe where Hitler's solutions were imposed against local resistance. The Middle East looks a lot more like Snyder's Eastern Europe than the Western Europe that informs too many policy advisors. In this environment, disrupting nation states through uprising or aggressive war predictably brings widespread terror.

The local despots in the mid-East aren't so much mini-Hitlers imposing ideologically motivated violence, but are/were informed pragmatists motivated by legitimate fears of what would occur with the collapse of central authority. Saddam Hussein and Bashar al-Assad did what was historically necessary to prevent domestic uprisings, and even atrocities like the Hawizeh marshes (1991) or Hama (1982) arguably saved lives by forstalling uprisings for a generation. Exemplary punishment works.

In Assad's case, there was never a plausible alternative Syrian power that wouldn't massacre his Alawite minority, given the opportunity. There were only his own Alawites, his allies among the equally hated Damascus mercantile class, and slums teeming with underemployed Sunni Arabs resulting from Syria's population explosion. Moderate educated/expat elites (such as the FSA) never commanded many boots or much loyalty. For U.S. policy, this means that aside from satisfying AIPAC's calls for payback, there was never a positive, Jordan-like outcome that could be reached by supporting the opposition. The best we could have done is issue stern denounciations without giving any opposition succor.

and makes a strong case against disrupting regimes that provide local stability

tbf a. the disruption of the regime in the cases of libya and syria were going to happen, and primarily because of internal division not because of a major power invading and deposing the govt. (unless you believe the arab spring in general is an entente western plot.) b. exemplary punishment itself has been an excuse for massacres and genocide - stalin commanded a huge empire but he had to kill 30-50 million people to keep it running / point taken that alawites were never going to let sunnis rule them (though i imagine the risk of massacre went way up after years of assad's indiscriminate bombing) but sometimes the cure is just as bad. especially when it wasn't particularly stable to begin w/.

Times of Israel reporting a Turkey official said that Israel has agreed to lift the blockade on Gaza. Big grains of salt obv needed but if true it's a big deal.

Countdown till something happens that convinces Israel to reimpose the blockade before it's even lifted, 10, 9, 8 ...

hey maybe hamas will decide this time that it's better to lift the blockade than score another pyrrhic questionable PR victory against the zionist entity!

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/saudi-arabia-the-devil-we-know/2016/04/21/2109ecf6-07fd-11e6-b283-e79d81c63c1b_story.html?hpid=hp_no-name_opinion-card-a%3Ahomepage%2Fstory

Mostly the same ol, same ol but slightly interesting

The Aramco story is probably more significant than any other piece of news out of Saudi in a long time. As the guy being interviewed on Bloomberg mentions, the idea is to continue the shift away from oil and create the world's largest sovereign wealth fund. They also want to make Riyadh a genuine business hub. You can't really accomplish the latter without the kind of cultural reforms that might make people want to come and do business in Saudi Arabia.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-04-25/saudi-prince-says-aramco-valuation-seen-at-above-2-trillion

haven't they been saying something like that for like 30 years

But only now are slightly younger folks having an influence in their economic planning

another msf bombing
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/airstrike-destroys-doctors-without-borders-hospital-in-aleppo-killing-staff-and-patients/2016/04/28/e1377bf5-30dc-4474-842e-559b10e014d8_story.html

terrible. No comment from Syria.

MSF says they had given coordinates of their Afghan hospital to US, as the story re that incident continues to trickle out

State Dept. spokesperson: “I’m not disputing the fact that we have troops on the ground, and they’re wearing boots.”

https://theintercept.com/2016/04/29/as-more-american-boots-hit-the-ground-in-syria-u-s-parses-boots-and-ground/

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/01/world/middleeast/syrian-city-torn-by-war-shows-jarring-resolve-to-try-to-live-normally.html?_r=0

What Assad has been up to with Russian assistance --

Four years of war has hardened hearts in Aleppo, a divided city and, for the past week, the scene of merciless fighting.

A fragile truce, brokered by the United States and Russia, has crumbled in Syria, leading to the worst violence in months. Russian fighter jets roar through the sky, pounding targets in rebel-held areas. The rebels send barrages of mortar rounds and homemade missiles that land in crowded neighborhoods. The war has stoked sectarian tensions and become a proxy battle for regional and global interests.

Most fatalities are civilians — at least 202 in the past week, about two-thirds in rebel-controlled eastern areas and the remainder in the government-held west side, according to groups that monitor casualties. The violence shows a “monstrous disregard for civilian lives,” the United Nations’ human rights chief, Zeid Ra’ad al-Hussein, said Friday.

One of the world’s oldest inhabited cities, Aleppo has for centuries been known as the crossroads of empires, with Ottoman, Armenian, Jewish and French influences. Today the only way in, on the government side, is via a lonely road that cuts through hostile territory: a bumpy tarmac strip lined with deserted villages and isolated government outposts.

US Secretary of State John Kerry says envoys meeting in Geneva are getting closer to an understanding on salvaging the cessation of hostilities in Syria.

He told reporters progress was being made on a plan to reduce the violence in the second city of Aleppo, which has threatened to sink the nine-week truce.

But he accused the Syrian government of "blatantly violating" the agreement to halt hostilities and allow aid in.

About 250 people have reportedly been killed in Aleppo in the past nine days.

...

The Syrian government and Russia have said the Aleppo air strikes are targeting only al-Nusra, which is affiliated to al-Qaeda and is excluded from the cessation of hostilities along with the rival Islamic State group.

However, the opposition and the US have dismissed the claim, and accused the government of targeting civilians and rebels abiding by the cessation of hostilities. ....

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-36183569

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/may/02/moqtada-al-sadr-who-is-the-cleric-directing-iraqs-protests

From a US and British perspective, the most pressing issue in Iraq is defeating Islamic State. For Iraqi citizens, however, it is the ongoing abject failure of the prime minister, Haider al-Abadi, and his government to provide basic public services, create jobs, and root out corruption among the country’s kleptocratic political class.

Into this gap between external strategic perception and domestic political reality has stepped Moqtada al-Sadr, the charismatic Shia cleric and former Mahdi army leader whose virulent sectarianism and violent resistance to the US occupation earned him notoriety in the west and hero status among many Iraqi Shias between 2004 and 2008.

The street protest movement that has rocked Baghdad in recent weeks, culminating in the weekend invasion of the walled government, parliament and embassy enclave known as the green zone, is largely directed by Sadr, who has moved his centre of operations from the holy city of Najaf to the capital. Some demonstrations have drawn up to 200,000 people.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/the-white-houses-iraq-delusion/2016/05/03/4d94a94c-108f-11e6-81b4-581a5c4c42df_story.html

The neo-con W. Post editorial Board is never happy with Obama's handling of foreign policy. Here they are on Iraq now:

In its zeal to withdraw all U.S. troops in time for President Obama’s reelection campaign in 2012, the administration threw its weight behind then-Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, with disastrous consequences. Mr. Maliki’s Shiite sectarianism fractured the fragile political system and opened the way for the Islamic State. In 2014, having pushed for Mr. Maliki’s removal, the administration bet on Haider al-Abadi; now, in its impatience to reduce the Islamic State before Mr. Obama leaves office, it clings to a prime minister who has proved unable to govern the country or reconcile its warring factions.

...

Whether Mr. Abadi survives the present crisis will likely depend on whether Shiite parties, with help from Iran, can patch up their differences. But already he has proved incapable of addressing Iraq’s fundamental political problem, which is the schism among the Shiite, Sunni and Kurdish communities. That brings us to the Obama administration’s second error: an unwillingness to accept that Iraq cannot survive under its present system of governance, which centralizes power in Baghdad

...The latest crisis should prompt a reconsideration. Kurdish leaders are now openly saying that Iraq’s post-2003 political structure has collapsed; the United States should be forging closer ties to their regional government. It should also be working to encourage a similar federal state in Sunni areas of Iraq. If Iraq survives as a nation-state, it will be because power, and oil revenues, are radically decentralized from Baghdad. Continuing to center U.S. support on a single Iraqi leader, whether it is Mr. Abadi or someone else, is a recipe for more failure.

But already he has proved incapable of addressing Iraq’s fundamental political problem, which is the schism among the Shiite, Sunni and Kurdish communities.

yeah geez get it together already, it's not like this has proven to be an intractable problem for 100s of years or anything