MENA, MENA, Tekel, Parsin (Middle East, North Africa & other Geopolitical Hotspots) 2018

Jim, I can only applaud you for taking the time to reply to the, quite frankly, insane accusations hurled at you here. Bamcquern idgafa but Fred (I care about him a little, I suppose) incessant "islamophobe!" Nelson-finger-pointing is fucking nagl.

it's interesting to me that lbi + fred - two normally reliable right-on politically correct dudes - are not taking a hardline anti-interventionist approach tbh and i wonder what i should make of it. is it bc of different country context (anglo vs other maybe? US + UK most deeply implicated recently in Iraq) or just that the left is not as unison on fp as maybe it sometimes seems from range of left-wing opinion on fp which seems to me to be regularly reflexively anti-US intervention in anything anywhere?

― Mordy, Friday, April 13, 2018 12:36 AM (fifteen hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Don't know why you lumped me in with Fred while I had no part in the recent discussion, but to answer your question for me personally: of course it's because of a different context. I protested the west's intervention in Iraq in 2003 (for all the obvious reasons). And boy did the west mess up. Some years down the line I got a Kurdish gf. I knew *nothing* about the Kurds until that time. They celebrated the intervention, which lead to an autonomous region for them. It didn't make me turn around 180 degrees but context? Def.
I don't know why you'd pigeonhole me as "reliable right-on politically correct dude": it's different per situation. I think both the west *cannot* let Assad's crimes go unpunished *and* at the same time, it will only end in more misery. The ME more than ever - or rather, once again - is a battlefield the west and Russia are playing a chess game over.

I don't know which of the two wrongs to choose. Though I will say, Mordy, I haven't agreed with you as much as I have on this thread probably since I started posting here.

Meanwhile another depressing crisis with plenty of blame to go around continues nearby:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/middle_east/1000s-of-palestinians-demonstrate-at-gaza-border-for-a-3rd-week-hundreds-injured/2018/04/13/04bfa6d8-3db3-11e8-955b-7d2e19b79966_story.html?utm_term=.7b900d9ef220

???
http://time.com/5237922/mike-pompeo-russia-confirmation/

The upper estimates at the time were around 200 iirc but it’s not clear. Most estimates were around 80-120.

They were working for Wagner, Russia’s answer to Blackwater.

Huge news in Libya. Haftar has apparently died. Significantly weakens Russia’s position there.

Though the Libyan National Army has denied it and says he’s fine.

Coalition striking Damascus, no statement from the U.S. gov yet but May says targeted strikes that won't escalate things.

Cruise missiles again, no doubt. When a president wants to make a demonstration of power that changes nothing of importance, they order up a few dozen cruise missiles and let fly, because they blow things up real good. It will be reported as an awesome piece of pinpoint accuracy and the mission as a complete success. But unless they blow up Assad, by next week it will be forgotten.

Yeah, what are they even aiming for?

Probably government buildings of some sort. I'd hate to be the janitor or security guard.

i don't know if our military or commander in chief are capable of using retaliatory strikes effectively but there are military targets that would be legit [but not existentially] painful for assad to bear. if you can change the calculus so that if he knows that if he uses chemical weapons he won't be able to escape some kind of targeted strike (like what you'd imagine if the israelis launched - actual weapon depots, factories, nuclear sites, compounds packed w/ iranian military advisors), and he knows that we'll basically tolerate anything else, it could get him to hold back on using chemical weapons or at least think twice.

Seems to just be chemical weapons facilities, a "one time shot" according to Mattis, strikes are over. Rumblings that Bolton was pushing for more but Mattis won the day. Only retaliation was some Syrian anti aircraft fire. Seems to have gone as well as it could've, not that I'd imagine it'll have much positive effect, but who knows?

Lebanese #Hezbollah HQ has been hit by several cruise missiles in the town of Qusayr in northern #Homs. -Local sources
ضرب مقر حزب الله اللبناني عدة صواريخ كروز في بلدة القصير في شمال #حمص. مصادر محلية #سورية

— Hadi Albahra (@hadialbahra) April 14, 2018

Sanpaku’s RT makes the point. Now we get to hear about all the collateral, intended or not, real or not, from “sources” - any action becomes another tool for info psyops grayspace bla bla current-term-of-art bullshit

Joint Chiefs Chairman Joseph Dunford said the Syrian targets struck were selected, in part, to minimize risks that any Russians would be killed in the attacks. -NY Post

The French missile frigate Aquitaine was also believed to have fired cruise missiles at Syria from off the coast of Lebanon. -- tweet

https://www.cnn.com/2018/04/13/politics/trump-us-syria/index.html

The targets included a scientific research center located in the greater Damascus area.
Mattis said, "This military facility was a Syrian center for the research, development, production, and testing of chemical and biological warfare technology."

The second target was a chemical weapons storage facility west of Homs, which Mattis said "was the primary location of Syrian Sarin and precursor production equipment."
Mattis said the third target "was in the vicinity of the second target" and "contained both a chemical weapons equipment storage facility and an important command post."

US has admitted only 11 refugees this year. US spent approximately 225 million on the Tomahawk Cruise missles used in the attacks on chemical weapons related facilities in Syria last night

i've seen a lot of those kinds of comparisons and it's prob worth mentioning that the taboo against chemical weapons is unrelated to empathy for civilian victims

Is that because the taboo is there to protect each taboo-following country's military from chemical weapons in case of war against each other?

yes i think so

Based on the past few decades, using chemical weapons against your own citizens is the only relatively safe choice of opponent to use them against.

This was posted in the British politics thread, but belong here as well: https://leilashami.wordpress.com/2018/04/14/the-anti-imperialism-of-idiots/

Yet in opposing foreign intervention, one needs to come up with an alternative to protect Syrians from slaughter. It’s morally objectionable to say the least to expect Syrians to just shut up and die to protect the higher principle of ‘anti-imperialism’. Many alternatives to foreign military intervention have been proposed by Syrians time and again and have been ignored. And so the question remains, when diplomatic options have failed, when a genocidal regime is protected from censure by powerful international backers, when no progress is made in stopping daily bombing, ending starvation sieges or releasing prisoners who are being tortured on an industrial scale, what can be done.

I no longer have an answer.

So it continues..

There are reports from Douma of a number of doctors (ie fewer than 10) who are being held by Russian troops demanding they publically deny that the chemical attack took place.

i see this 400k deaths in syria number around a lot but without important context that the NYT devoted an article to this weekend:

Even the United Nations, which released regular reports on the death toll during the first years of the war, gave its last estimate in 2016 — when it relied on 2014 data, in part — and said that it was virtually impossible to verify how many had died.

At that time, a United Nations official said 400,000 people had been killed.

So it's probably a lot more?

i don't have any special insider information but the number has been the same for two years so unless you think no one has died over the last two years

Despite war losses and emigration, the already unsustainable Syrian population has increased since 2011.

Stalin was right about "tragedies" and "statistics". Only a few who aren't there particularly care about the statistics. Still unknown actors make chemical attacks, but the numbers of victims don't matter, only pictures of victims do.

The most recent cruise missile attack benefited all political parties. Trump can claim humanitarian and anti-Russian motives. Assad and Putin can claim victimhood. It accomplished nothing on the ground.

This calls attention to the weakness in U.S. approaches to the ex-Israel Mideast. The sacrifice of Americans to support an outsized military gives them the ability to destroy grid coordinates throughout the world, but no ability to change minds.

I think the proper approach post-2011 should have been a consistent Wilsonian one, towards self-determination of all peoples. Colonial Europe made huge mistakes in the early 20th century, in creating nations with no consideration of nationality. There's no reason why Euphrates valley Kurds should owe allegiance to Damascus. As Americans, we should advocate that the dominant nationalities of regions throughout the world have their own polities, whether they be Kurds or Tibetans. This argument hasn't been made, for the obvious reason that it offends nominal U.S. allies like Turkey. So long as Israel, and its associations with the Holocaust; and Turkey, with its role in NATO, dominate U.S. thinking on the Mideast, the U.S. will choose to perpetuate historical injustices.

Personally, I'd love to see a plebecite throughout the region as to what polity (either existing or proposed) the Levant and old "Fertile Crecent" wants for themselves. Some may be tiny, but given that there are 14 UN members with less than 30k, that's okay. Let the Alawites and their allies have a nation where they don't have existential fears. Let desert Sunnis have a nation where they can do whatever desert Sunnis do. So much blood could have been saved in Iraq had the occupying powers been willing to draw new borders.

So much blood could have been saved in Iraq had the occupying powers been willing to draw new borders.

Possibly. But post-Versailles-Treaty in 1919, international treaties tend to emphasize the inviolability of national borders. The occupying powers are signatories of these treaties. These treaties also form the basis for UN resolutions condemning Israel for de facto expanding its own territory after the 1967 War.

Aside from these legalistic reasons, there are several practical reasons not to endorse the ability of whoever has the largest military from redrawing borders to suit itself.

https://www.timesofisrael.com/idf-official-confirms-attack-in-syria-first-strike-on-live-iranian-targets/

new (possible Israeli) missile strikes on Homs and Damascus

https://www.express.co.uk/news/world/947044/Syria-airstrike-Damascus-Homs-attack-anti-aircraft-Israel-Assad-Putin-USA-UK-France

uh oh

ynetnews.com: Israeli intelligence: Objectives of Western strike in Syria not achieved

The fact there were no reports of chemicals leaking following the strikes only serves to bolster assessments that the major stockpiles haven't been hit.

Israeli officials believe the United States has been intentionally underplaying its ability to operate against Syria, so it doesn't have to do so. On several occasions, Israeli officials have pointed to their American counterparts that the United States has the ability to do more for the Syrian people and were met with shrugs and bizarre assertions that this was not possible operationally.

They blame operational deficiency because it is more diplomatic than blaming Trump and his political appointees.

Obama did the same, though. Right?

https://www.mintpressnews.com/famed-war-reporter-robert-fisk-reaches-syrian-chemical-attack-site-concludes-not-gassed/

God, is he still around?

it sounds believable to me. if it's true it's a horrible illustration of the west's mixed reactions to the horrors of war vs particularly chemical horrors. bombings kick up a duststorm that suffocates civilians hiding in their shelters. welll at least he didn't use chemical weapons.

"This is the story of a town called Douma, a ravaged, stinking place of smashed apartment blocks–and of an underground clinic whose images of suffering allowed three of the Western world’s most powerful nations to bomb Syria last week. There’s even a friendly doctor in a green coat who, when I track him down in the very same clinic, cheerfully tells me that the “gas” videotape which horrified the world– despite all the doubters–is perfectly genuine.

War stories, however, have a habit of growing darker. For the same 58-year old senior Syrian doctor then adds something profoundly uncomfortable: the patients, he says, were overcome not by gas but by oxygen starvation in the rubbish-filled tunnels and basements in which they lived, on a night of wind and heavy shelling that stirred up a dust storm."

Fisk goes on to identify the doctor by name – Dr. Assim Rahaibani – which is notable given the fact that all early reporting from Douma typically relied on “unnamed doctors” and anonymous opposition sources for early claims of a chlorine gas attack (lately morphed into an unverified “mixed” chlorine-and-sarin attack).

The doctor’s testimony is consistent with that of the well-known Syrian opposition group Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR), which initially reported based on its own pro-rebel sourcing that heavy government bombardment of Douma city resulted in the collapse of homes and underground shelters, causing civilians in hiding to suffocate.

This looks interesting to me. But in the video (which I haven't watched) don't the victims have a white froth coming out of their mouths? Could that just be from dust?

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk-saudi-arabia-war-crimes-yemen-trade-un-inquiry-united-nations-arms-weapons-a7971516.html

(N.B. am posting these links to see what you lot make of it. Am trying to work out if the narrative of 'why does Britain bomb Syria but let Saudi Arabia get away with things just as bad' is accurate at the moment)

The Douma video I've seen is of a couple dozen bodies scattered over a floor, in poses of sleep under blankets or in sleeping bags. The rescue personnel are not wearing much in the way of protective gear.

while Fisk writes some decent yarns he's a bit of a partial observer at the best of times - also doesn't speak Arabic despite having lived in the arab world for about half a century, which always gives me pause

I've assumed for the 2 and a half years I've been aware of his Beirut-based coverage, and multiple sources online attest, to Fisk's fluency in at least Lebanese, classical or broadcast Arabic.

In college, I took a class in Arab cultural history from a American immigrant from Yemen. The understanding she imparted is that classical and some extent broadcast Arabic is as far removed from the local dialects, and the local dialects further removed from each other, than Old English is from our language. So I wouldn't take the presence of local translators as evidence of non-fluency in "Arabic".

Personally, I've grown to trust Fisk, due to his coverage being so much better than that other Western journalists (from say, the NYT) during the years of the Iraq intervention. He seems far less compromised by ambition or craving for high-level access.

In 'The Great War for Civilisation' he falls out with everyone which inclines me to trust him

JustSecurity: How Jihadist Groups See Western Aggression Toward Iran

Fiqh al-waqia is the name of a 1992 treatise authored by a Sahwa enthusiast, Nasir al-Umar. In it, al-Umar outlined just how current political policy is to be derived from an understanding of scripture by utilizing a series of verses from the 30th chapter of the Quran, Al-Rum, or the Romans. For al-Umar, the Roman-Persian war of 613 AD, which withered each superpower and paved the way for the Islamic conquest of parts of North Africa, Europe and Asia, was akin to the Cold War struggle between America and the Soviet Union. This idea that Islamists could benefit and take advantage of the two superpowers fighting each other laid a basis for the eschatological narrative the Salafi jihadi movement has adopted and advanced.

I don't know, I've read Al-Rum and that's a very, very vague interpretation.

Tried to read the whole thing, but it's cherry-picking to the point of it all becoming nonsense. I don't get anything out of it.

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/syria-yazidis-isis-islam-conversion-afrin-persecution-kurdish-a8310696.html

more patrick cockburn content for the "jim in vancouver is an islamophobe" file

11 days later, investigators finally allowed in

http://www.latimes.com/world/middleeast/la-fg-syria-duma-chemical-20180421-story.html

SANA, Yemen — An airstrike on a wedding party, carried out by the Saudi-led coalition waging war in Yemen, killed more than 20 people and wounded dozens of others, including the groom, Yemeni officials said Monday.

The strike hit an isolated village in northwestern Yemen, where families had gathered to celebrate, late Sunday. After the attack, people posted online what they said were survivors collecting mangled and charred bodies

Tragic. Nothing changing in Yemen.