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

The issue for Trump is that the Senate call for an investigation of Kashoggi's disappearance was made to invoke Magnitsky_Act provisions. They're will of course be foot dragging (I'm not sure if the 2017 sanctions on Russia have been enforced yet).

Lots of foot dragging

Was reading crazy right-wing nut tweets about their view that Kashoggi was associated with Bin Laden, and even if he wasn't -- the real enemy is Iran not Saudi Arabia...

Did the Saudis not realize that Turkey would probably have the consulate bugged? Or did they think Erdogan wouldn’t seize the opportunity to drive a wedge into the Jared-MBS bromance? Seems like total amateur hour. The Russians would never be this clumsy.

https://www.nbclosangeles.com/news/national-international/Afghan-Security-Meeting-Shooting-US-Troops-Hurt-497914931.html

Three top officials in the Afghan province of Kandahar were killed by their own guards in an attack at a security meeting that also wounded two U.S. troops, Afghan officials said Thursday.

A Taliban spokesman who claimed responsibility for the attack tells The Associated Press that U.S. Gen. Scott Miller, commander of U.S. and NATO troops in Afghanistan, was the target. NATO officials say Miller escaped unharmed.

Kandahar's deputy provincial governor Agha Lala Dastageri said powerful provincial police chief Abdul Razik and the province's intelligence chief Abdul Mohmin died immediately in the attack and provincial governor Zalmay Wesa died of his injuries at a hospital.

Abdul Raziq, the head of the Kandahar police, had been accused of systematic human rights violations. He was killed by the Taliban who are pretty brutal themselves. Afghanistan, what a mess.

I'm not sure much of the world would object to a Wall surrounding the Graveyard of Empires.

what fresh hell would have been unleashed if a goddamn US general was killed in that op? when your 17 year old war is going great!

The Russians would never be this clumsy.

The Skripal debacle suggests otherwise.

... not to mention Litvinenko's assassins leaving a trail of radiocative polonium throughout London from their hotel room to the place they poisoned him and the two clowns who were recently thrown out of the Netherlands for trying to hack into the lab that was carrying out analysis on Novichok samples left behind by the two geniuses who went after the Skripals

I think that the Litvinenko case and maybe the Skripal case as well were intended to be obviously Russian handiwork. I mean you don't poison someone with a rare radioactive isotope that only a government could get a hold of if you don't intend to leave a calling card. I think Putin got about the level of deniability that he intended to get in that case. And if it weren't for some lucky breaks in the Skripal case, it's likely there never would have been an identification of the suspects, and even then it took months. I don't think these cases are really comparable to the total shitshow that the Khashoggi case has been for the Saudis.

The Skripal case was a shitshow as well. The targets survived, and two other people died. That is not how assassinations are supposed to go.

Fair point. The attempted cover up with the tv interview of those 2 guys was pretty amateurish as well.

What do you do after the young prince you helped install has a Washington-based journalist murdered and dismembered? You throw a dinner party for the chair of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace https://t.co/LvDJD2MOFq

— Ryan Grim (@ryangrim) October 23, 2018

Oh Saudi Arabia...

Oh United Arab Emirates Kingdom...

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-tyne-46300609

How is our glorious country sown?

No good news here it seems

Yemeni prisoner exchange seems like good news, even if it only helps out the prisoners and leads no further.

Re: the Friday call between Trump and Ergodan that lead to 1) Trump's decision to evacuate US troops from Syria in 60-100 days, 2) US go-ahead for Turkish military to move into areas held by US Kurdish allies (YPG, etc), 3) a $3.5 B order for Patriot missiles, and 4) consideration to extradite opposition cleric Gulen from US to Turkey, Ragıp Soylu's twitter is a pretty interesting source.

But money can't buy love or happiness. But, it can buy US foreign policy.

this is obviously not good for the kurd proxies, but I'm not entirely sure what the end game was going to be here after the "defeat of isis" in terms of US support for irregular forces who are enemies of a NATO ally (no matter how poor a NATO ally Turkey is)

there will be countries providing aid (covert + overt) to the kurds; they have a real opportunity imo tho the risks are also enormous. i can't help but think about 1948. obv the world is much more different today but building a state is a treacherous enterprise.

can't someone just assassinate Erdogan already

talking to my Turkish friends about the country's political situation is depressing

psyched for the coming genocide.

As Syria’s government consolidates control after years of civil war, President Bashar al-Assad’s army is doubling down on executions of political prisoners, with military judges accelerating the pace they issue death sentences, according to survivors of the country’s most notorious prison.

In interviews, more than two dozen Syrians recently released from the Sednaya military prison in Damascus described a government campaign to clear the decks of political detainees. The former inmates said prisoners are being transferred from jails across Syria to join death-row detainees in Sednaya’s basement and then be executed in pre-dawn hangings.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2018/world/syria-bodies/

https://i.imgur.com/HMQuKOW.png

Erdogan called the Kurds "terrorists" too.

So should we do a 2019 thread?

psyched, I tell you.

There was a time decades ago when Kurdish nationalists followed a path that included sporadic acts of political violence against Turkish civilians. They have long since abandoned that strategy as unproductive, but the Turkish authorities will never abandon their insistence on calling them terrorists for as long as they can gain any political advantage by doing so. Don't expect that to change.

Hey, at least once Assad and Erdogan have finished going door to door wiping out their 'enemies' I can point to these posts and say that i knew it was coming. sigh.

There has been some co-operation between SAA and YPG wrt Turkey as of late

SAA going into Manbij after YPG asked them to.

There was a time decades ago when Kurdish nationalists followed a path that included sporadic acts of political violence against Turkish civilians. They have long since abandoned that strategy as unproductive, but the Turkish authorities will never abandon their insistence on calling them terrorists for as long as they can gain any political advantage by doing so. Don't expect that to change.

― A is for (Aimless), Saturday, January 12, 2019 6:18 PM(two hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

There's been civilian deaths in pkk attacks in Turkey in the 2010s

Isis not decimated yet

Not extinguished, yet, by any means. But decimated literally means 'reduced by 10%' and that seems well within plausibility.

that's the historic definition which has evolved into "remove a large percentage or part of."

Not sure removing ISIS from Syria would really amount to eliminating them.

What I find really amazing is their distributed network of propagandists and recruiters throughout Europe persists. Surely the intelligence agencies have identified major nodes in this network, but we've yet to see major co-ordinated arrests, and Dabiq/Rumiyah is still being published. I've wondered whether intel agencies are working at cross-purposes to foreign policy agencies in this, as useful fools may have future uses.

New thread time:

What Do You MENA (Middle East, North Africa and other nearby Political Hotspots) 2019