Category: Middle East

I Think That the Fat Lady Is Tuning Up In the Green Room

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The rats are leaving the sinking ship that is Syria, case in point Hamas is beginning to remove its staff from Syria, despite the fact that their patron, Iran is threatening to cut them off if they do so:

Iran had applied intense pressure to Hamas in an effort to persuade it not to leave Damascus, threatening even to cut off funds to the organization if it did so, Palestinian sources have told Haaretz.

The Iranian pressure also included an unprecedented ultimatum – namely, an explicit threat to stop supplying Hamas with arms and suspend the training of its military activists.

According to the sources, Hamas is abandoning its headquarters in Syria and looking at other Arab states as an alternative location for its political command center. Hamas’ move comes despite intense Iranian pressure on the organization to refrain from relocating.

A Syrian opposition spokesman said recently that once Assad is toppled, his successors will have no intention of preserving the strategic alliance between Damascus, Tehran and Hezbollah.

According to the Palestinian sources, only “second and third-ranking” Hamas activists are leaving Damascus, while senior members of the organization’s political wing, headed by Khaled Meshal, are remaining in the Syrian capital.

I really don’t think that there are a whole bunch of Arab nations out there that are chomping at the bit to paint a target on their back to ally themselves with Hamas, particularly since they are joined at the hip with Syria.

The fact that Hamas is getting the hell out of dodge indicates that the longevity of the Assad regime is problematic.

Rachel is Right, Cain Has Punk’d Us All

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Because, as entertaining as the Republican presidential primary, aka “the Clown Show,” is, our man Herman takes this to a whole new level of assholitude:

Republican presidential candidate Herman Cain has suggested that the Taliban are playing a role in Libya’s new government, adding another foreign policy misstep to his stumbling campaign.

The week opened with Cain struggling to answer whether he supported US president Barack Obama’s foreign policy in Libya. He ended it trying to blame reporters for the moment, which was captured on video and quickly spread around the internet.

Cain’s critics seized on Monday’s incoherent answer as the latest evidence that he is unprepared to be the party’s nominee. On Friday, Cain gave his critics more grist for their increasingly substantial mill.

“Do I agree with siding with the opposition? Do I agree with saying that Gaddafi should go? Do I agree that they now have a country where you’ve got Taliban and al-Qaida that’s going to be part of the government?” Cain asked reporters in Orlando, Florida. “Do I agree with not knowing the government was going to – which part was he asking me about? I was trying to get him to be specific and he wouldn’t be specific.”

(emphasis mine)

Seriously, the Taliban?  The Taliban is inflitrating the government of Libya?

I guess that must be because Afghanistan is located right next to Libya.

Jeebus, they are 2½ hours apart.  That’s two and one half freaking time zones apart!

They don’t even border on the same freaking time zone.

I’m with Rachel Maddow. This is not primarily a Presidential campaign, it is performance art:

It Sucks to be Dassault Right Now

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It looks like United Arab Emirates has reopened its fighter competition, meaning that the “done deal” to be the first export customer for the Rafale is now in doubt:

France’s long-running campaign to sell up to 60 Dassault Rafales to the United Arab Emirates faces a shock last-minute challenge, with the Eurofighter consortium having been asked to submit a proposal based on its Typhoon combat aircraft.

News of the development broke on the eve of the Dubai air show, where both types are scheduled to take part in the daily flying display.

Sources have confirmed that the UK provided a formal briefing about the Typhoon to UAE officials on 17 October, after being asked to explore how it might meet future fast jet requirements.

The same thing happened with Morocco, when what appeared to be a done deal fell through.

The Wiki says that the F/A-18 is still in the mix, but I think that it would be a long shot, since the primary driver for going with the Rafale in the first place was to have part of their inventory be non-US built.

Stephen Trimble seems to think that this might be an effort to make Dassault more flexible on price:

Riad Kahwaji, chief executive officer of the Institute for Near East and Gulf Military Analysis (INEGMA), told The DEW Line that latest manoeuvres are a clear signal: the UAE air force thinks France’s price for the Rafale is too high. Major fighter deals are never immune from politics, but this deal is purely political. The UAE is buying the Rafale to balance its reliance on US-made weapons, including its fleet of 80 Lockheed F-16 Block 60s. Perhaps thinking the UAE has no other options, Dassault may have submitted a monopolistic price, Kahwaji said.

Even after negotiating exclusively with France for more than three years, the UAE has just re-opened the competition. The DEW Line’s colleague, Craig Hoyle, broke the story on Flightglobal yesterday that the UAE issued a request for proposals to the Typhoon, setting up a second competition between the same pair of fighters vying for India’s medium multi-role aircraft (MMRCA).

I’d love to have the antacid concession to Dassault’s corporate offices right now.

Another Inspector Renault Moment

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I’m shocked, shocked to find that gambling is going on here!

So, now that we are looking into the corruption and cronyism in Mubarak’s Egypt, and it turns out that it has its roots in the American led privatization of the Egyptian economy, just like the rampant corruption in post-Soviet Russia:

Beginning two decades ago, the United States government bankrolled an Egyptian think tank dedicated to economic reform. A different outcome is only now becoming visible in the fallout from Egypt’s Arab Spring.

Formed with a $10 million endowment from the U.S. Agency for International Development, the Egyptian Center for Economic Studies gathered captains of industry in a small circle — with the president’s son Gamal Mubarak at the center. Over time, members of the group would assume top roles in Egypt’s ruling party and government.

Today, Gamal Mubarak and four of those think tank members are in jail, charged with squandering public funds in the sale of public resources, lands and government-run companies as part of a dramatic restructuring. Some have fled the country, pilloried amid the public outrage over insider deals and corruption that toppled President Hosni Mubarak.

“It became a crony capitalism,” Magda Kandil, the think tank’s new executive director, said of the privatization program advocated by its founders. Because of the corruption, the center now estimates, the assets that Egypt has sold off since 1991 have netted only about $10 billion, $90 billion less than their estimated worth.

The privatization saga is a cautionary tale about the power and perils of U.S. foreign aid — most notably the nearly $8 billion that the United States has provided to Egypt since the 1990s to push the country toward economic reforms.

This is not a bug, it’s a feature. This sort of economic liberalization is all about creating a few corrupt individuals, because it’s cheaper to allow cronies to get siphon off a billion or two while our banksters steal the rest than it is to allow those resources to accrue legally to the workers and the country.

I may seem cynical about this, but the corruption in Egypt, or Russia, or pretty much all of other privatization schemes outside of the Scandinavian countries run this way, so I’ve come to the conclusion that this is the actual goal of these policies.

Bug Hunt Accomplished…

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So Qaddafi is dead:

Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi, the former Libyan strongman who fled into hiding after an armed uprising toppled his regime two months ago, met a violent and vengeful death Thursday in the hands of rebel fighters who stormed his final stronghold in his Mediterranean hometown Surt. At least one of his sons was also killed.

Al Jazeera television showed footage of Colonel Qaddafi, alive but bloody, as he was dragged around by armed men in Surt. The television also broadcast a separate clip of his half-naked torso, with eyes staring vacantly and an apparent gunshot wound to the head, as jubilant fighters fired automatic weapons in the air. A third video, posted on Youtube, showed excited fighters hovering around his lifeless-looking body, posing for photographs and yanking his limp head up and down by the hair.

Conflicting accounts quickly emerged about whether Colonel Qaddafi was executed by his captors, died from gunshot wounds sustained in a firefight, was mortally wounded in a NATO air strike on his escaping convoy or bled to death in an ambulance. But the images broadcast by Al Jazeera punctuated an emphatic and gruesome ending to his four decades as a ruthless and bombastic autocrat who had basked in his reputation as the self-styled king of kings of Africa.

So all that remains for NATO’s little colonial enterprise is the looting by multinational oil companies and ………… What else is there in Libya?

Tourism maybe? 

And, of course, money to gotten by looting privatizing state industry, the healthcare system, and education.

On Gilad Shalit

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From a purely tactical perspective, the idea that a thousand-to-one prisoner swap makes sense before final status negotiations is stupid.

I’m don’t begrudge the actions of his family, and their obvious happiness over the release of Gilad Shalit after 5 years, but I think that this will, in the long run, make things worse, not better.

It strengthens the role of hostage taking, as Hamas has explicitly stated.

I’m not a fan of Benyamin Netanyahu, and perhaps this colors my assessment of these developments, but I see this as a political hail Mary pass* by the Israeli PM.

Recently, Netanyahu’s political popularity has been scraping the bottom of the barrel for some time, witness the tent demonstrations in Israel, and my expectation is that he will call for new elections while whatever popularity boost he had gotten remains.

*Pun not intended.

In the Latest Episode of “The Forever War”………

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Obama has signed of on building an archipelago of secret drone bases in Africa and the Arabian Peninsula:

The Obama administration is assembling a constellation of secret drone bases for counterterrorism operations in the Horn of Africa and the Arabian Peninsula as part of a newly aggressive campaign to attack al-Qaeda affiliates in Somalia and Yemen, U.S. officials said.

One of the installations is being established in Ethi­o­pia, a U.S. ally in the fight against al-Shabab, the Somali militant group that controls much of that country. Another base is in the Seychelles, an archipelago in the Indian Ocean, where a small fleet of “hunter-killer” drones resumed operations this month after an experimental mission demonstrated that the unmanned aircraft could effectively patrol Somalia from there.

The U.S. military also has flown drones over Somalia and Yemen from bases in Djibouti, a tiny African nation at the junction of the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden. In addition, the CIA is building a secret airstrip in the Arabian Peninsula so it can deploy armed drones over Yemen.

The rapid expansion of the undeclared drone wars is a reflection of the growing alarm with which U.S. officials view the activities of al-Qaeda affiliates in Yemen and Somalia, even as al-Qaeda’s core leadership in Pakistan has been weakened by U.S. counterterrorism operations.

This is completely nuts, the Pentagon is going to bankrupt us by placing a constellation of bases around the world that:

  • We cannot afford.
  • Creates terrorists by placing a foreign military presence in other sovereign nations.

This sh%$ simply has to stop.

McCain Lobbied to Arm Qaddafi

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So says the gift that keeps on giving, the Wikileaks cables.

Julian Assange should be up for a Nobel:

For all the braying by the Senate’s top three hawks about how the U.S. wasn’t doing enough to oust Libyan dictator Col. Muammar Qaddafi from power, one might be surprised to learn that exactly two years ago, Sens. John McCain (R-AZ), Joe Lieberman (I-CT) and Lindsey Graham (R-SC) were in Tripoli meeting with the erratic leader and giving him assurances that relations between the nations were on the mend.

According to a leaked August 2009 U.S. diplomatic cable released by WikiLeaks recounting the Senators’ junket, the neoconservative Connecticut Senator captured the dynamic of aligning with a brutal dictator:

Lieberman called Libya an important ally in the war on terrorism, noting that common enemies sometimes make better friends.

Qaddafi’s history as a top enemy of the U.S. stretched back decades, but his change of heart came quickly after the U.S. invaded Iraq under the pretense of Saddam Hussein’s development of weapons of mass destruction. Hawks seized on Libya’s détente with the West as a sign that Bush’s tough actions in Iraq were having a ripple effect, though patently not, as Iraq War boosters had predicted, with regard to democratic reforms. “We never would have guessed ten years ago that we would be sitting in Tripoli, being welcomed by a son of Muammar al-Qaddafi,” said Lieberman, according to the leaked cable.

The three Senate hawks discussed in detail the Qaddafi regime’s security needs with Libyas National Security Adviser, Qaddafi’s son Muatassim. According to the cable:

5.(C) Senator McCain assured Muatassim that the United States wanted to provide Libya with the equipment it needs for its [a Libyan security program]. He stated that he understood Libya’s requests regarding the rehabilitation of its eight C130s [a transport plane] and pledged to see what he could do to move things forward in Congress. He encouraged Muatassim to keep in mind the long-term perspective of bilateral security engagement and to remember that small obstacles will emerge from time to time that can be overcome.

And these are the wankers that are considered to be serious about foreign policy and national security by the very serious people in Washington, DC.

And no one will ever challenge them on this.

We are so doomed.

It Looks Like Gaddafi is Out

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Or will be in a matter of hours.

I was listening to NPR, and they were hoping that the rebels would not go medieval on former Gaddafi loyalists, but that is a pipe dream.

They have no credibility, because they were installed largely as the result of direct military action by NATO, which requires the widespread application of violence against any potential opposition.

Additionally, because they are effectively clients of big oil and finance NATO, they will have to aggressively implement “free market reforms”, which means the end of their publicly financed healthcare and education systems, as well as signing sweetheart deals with big oil, which will not be supported by the general populace.

It’s good that Gaddafi is gone, but because he was removed through what was essentially a colonial intervention, the new regime will for the foreseeable future be a colonial administration, which may in the long run prove worse for the average Libyan.

And the Clusterf%$3 in Libya Goes Into High Gear

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Normally, this would not start happening until after a successful foreign backed revolution, but with a stalemate on the ground, I guess it’s time that the various factions of the Libyan rebels have decided to start killing each other to determine who gets the spoils.

The first head on a stake is that of their chief of staff Gen. Abdul Fatah Younis:

The chief of staff for rebel forces fighting to overthrow Libyan leader Moammar Kadafi was attacked and killed Thursday, according to the rebels’ leadership council.

In a terse announcement that left many questions unanswered, the president of the council said Gen. Abdul Fatah Younis and two other commanders were killed as they returned from the eastern front near Port Brega to Benghazi, the de facto rebel capital.

Reading haltingly from a brief communique, Mustafa Abdul Jalil, president of the Transitional National Council, said pro-Kadafi gunmen had infiltrated rebel-held areas, but he did not specifically blame them for the killings. Abdul Jalil refused to take questions from reporters.

In response, the council has ordered all militias to stand down, and to integrate into the formal security forces.

This was foreseeable. This is a group with no real leader, and no credibility beyond the support that it receives from NATO, so it was inevitable that we would see this.

Of course, this means that NATO will feel compelled to escalate in order to show their credibility, so I expect to see British and French troops on the ground as “advisers” in the not too distant future.

It’s kind of like Vietnam writ small.

Things are About to Get Interesting in Lebanon

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The UN Tribunal investigating the assassination of Rafik Hariri in 2005 has indicted 4 people, including 2 senior Hezbollah members:

A United Nations-backed tribunal investigating the assassination of a former Lebanese prime minister delivered indictments to prosecutors here on Thursday, naming four men, including two suspected members of Hezbollah, in a six-year-old case that remade the country’s politics and unleashed years of discord.

The naming of members of Hezbollah, the Shiite Muslim movement that is the most powerful actor here, was expected for months. But the indictments marked the beginning of a judicial process that could bring unprecedented pressure on the group and its ally Syria, which faces growing isolation over its crackdown on a nearly four-month uprising.

Although the statements of Lebanese leaders were restrained, details of the indictment could prove inflammatory in a country still deeply divided between Hezbollah and its allies, on the one hand, and a disparate group of its critics and opponents. Only the names were leaked; the details of the indictment, so far, remain secret.

“It’s the beginning of something big, not small,” said Paul Salem, the director of the Carnegie Middle East Center in Beirut. But, he added: “Names without a story doesn’t have much impact. If the public comes to see there’s massive evidence of a terrible story, that will have a big public impact by itself, but that hasn’t happened yet.”

According to legal experts, Lebanon has 30 days to serve the arrest warrants. If the suspects are not arrested in that time, the tribunal will make the indictments public and summon the suspects to court.

The facts of the case are no surprise, Hezbollah, and Syria’s, finger prints are all over this, but the formal indictment certainly complicates things.

Normally, I Find This to Be a Typically Meaningless Gesture…

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But Dennis Kucinich and the other house members who are suing Barack Obama for violating the War Powers Act in Libya are doing the right thing:

Ten House members led by Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-Ohio) are filing a complaint in federal court against President Obama for taking military action in Libya without first seeking congressional approval.

Kucinich and Reps. Walter Jones (R-N.C.), Howard Coble (R-N.C.), John Duncan (R-Tenn.), Roscoe Bartlett (R-Md.), John Conyers (D-Mich.) Ron Paul (R-Texas), Michael Capuano (D-Mass.), Tim Johnson (R-Ill.) and Dan Burton (R-Ind.) filed the complaint Wednesday at the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia.

“With regard to the war in Libya, we believe that the law was violated,” Kucinich said in a statement. “We have asked the courts to move to protect the American people from the results of these illegal policies.”

The House members argue that the Obama administration overstepped its constitutional authority by authorizing the use of U.S. military force abroad without first receiving approval from Congress. U.S. forces have been involved in the campaign against Libyan leader Moammar Gaddafi for 88 days.

Critics argue that Obama violated the 1973 War Powers Resolution by failing to seek congressional approval for the mission.

It would be interesting to see how the Supreme Court might handle this.

I’ve always felt that the requirement for Senate to declare war implies that there should be a legislative requirement for the approval of war, but these days, no one seems to take this particularly seriously.

I would note that Libya appears to be a particularly cut and dried case though, there is no security threat to the US, and the primary reason that we are involved seems to be that the US Military didn’t want to be left out of the party started by French and British neo-Colonial political calculus.

Germany F%$#s Up Again

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While I believe that the dissolution of Yugoslavia was inevitable once Milosevic took control of the executive council, the German decision post unification to feel their diplomatic oats to recognize the independence of Slovenia set in motion a cascade of events that led to the orgy of violence and Genocide in the former Yugoslavia.

Well, the just did it again, by recognizing the rebels in Benghazi as the government of Libya :

Germany, which declined to participate in the NATO air campaign against Libya, on Monday recognized the opposition National Transitional Council as the legitimate representative of Libya, Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle said during a visit to the rebel capital of Benghazi.

The announcement by Mr. Westerwelle comes after weeks of hesitation by Germany over which rebel leaders or movements, if any, it would recognize as an alternative to the government of Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi.

“The Transitional Council is the legitimate representation of the Libyan people,” Mr. Westerwelle said after arriving in Benghazi. “With this council, we want to support the building of a democratic and law-abiding Libya.”

Germany will open a small mission in Benghazi, joining the United States, the European Union, the United Nations, Britain, France, Spain, Malta and Qatar, which have established a presence there in the past several weeks. Washington, however, has not extended diplomatic recognition to the council.

This has fiasco written all over it.

It’s Official, Libya is a Bug Hunt

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So a NATO Spokesman has just admitted that NATO is attempting to assassinate Muammar Gaddafi:

A U.N. resolution justifies the targeting of Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi, a senior NATO military official with operational knowledge of the Libya mission told CNN Thursday.

Asked by CNN whether Gadhafi was being targeted, the NATO official declined to give a direct answer. The resolution applies to Gadhafi because, as head of the military, he is part of the control and command structure and therefore a legitimate target, the official said.

NATO has been ramping up pressure on the regime, employing helicopters last weekend for the first time against Gadhafi’s forces. Explosions are heard often in Tripoli, evidence of allied air strikes.

NATO began bombing Libya on March 31, under a U.N. mandate to protect civilians who have been targeted by Gadhafi’s military.

Unsurprising. Since Gadhafi’s forces are not folding up under the air assault, the French and the British are desperate to avoid defeat, or worse, the need to send in ground troops, either of which will sink both UK PM Cameron and French President Sarkosy.

This was intended to be a neat neo-colonial adventure with the attendant electoral boost,  killing a few “wogs” for a few votes, but now its looking like a complete clusterf%$#.

Nope, No Escalation Here

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It looks like the Frogs and the Limeys will be deploying attack helicopters to Libya:

Britain and France are to deploy attack helicopters against Libya in an attempt to break the military stalemate, particularly in the important coastal city of Misrata, security sources have told the Guardian.

In a significant escalation of the conflict, the Apaches – based on HMS Ocean – will join French helicopters in risky operations which reflect deepening frustration among British and French defence chiefs about their continuing inability to protect civilians in Libya.

If I were a cynic, I would think that the goal is to get one of these choppers shot down, so that they have an excuse for an invasion when the captured crew are treated as unlawful enemy combatants.

If Your Allies are People Who Are Bigots

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And  you engage in neocolonialism masquerading as protecting dark people, in this case, the citizens of Libya, your allies will not support you, because bigots are stupid, so unless you say, “We are bombing Libya to give their oil to our energy conglomerates,” explicitly, they will not support you.

Case in point, Silvio Berlusconi and his racist buddies in the Northern League:

Italy’s belated decision to join the military campaign against Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi has brought fresh political woes for Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, with opposition to the bombing threatening to sink his fragile coalition.

Senior figures in the Northern League want an end to Italian air strikes only a week after they began following a personal plea by US President Barack Obama to Mr Berlusconi. Parliament will vote on the Northern League motion to this effect later today.

The xenophobic coalition partner says the bombing will provoke a wave of illegal immigration from Libya to Italy’s southern coast, and is demanding Mr Berlusconi set a date to end the raids. Umberto Bossi, the pugnacious Northern League leader, had threatened to bring down the government if parliament was not allowed to vote on the issue. Interior Minister Roberto Maroni, another Northern League figure, predicted the government would fall if the bombing was not stopped.

Considering his road to power, I find that is one of the most schadenfreude rich stories I’ve heard in a while.

The phrase, “Hoist with his own petard,” comes to mind.

And the Escalation into an Attempt at Regime Change Continues

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Both the French and the British intend to send troops in to, “Protect aid deliveries,” despite the fact that Valerie Amos, the Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief, has said that this is not necessary, and may risk conflating the aid program with military action.

The problem here is that there have been explicit calls for regime change since the UN resolution had passed, and because the Qaddafi regime has refused to collapse like a bunch of wet broccoli, the French and the British have felt the need to escalate in order to save face.

Not like Vietnam at all.

Sarkosy is trying to save his ass in the next elections, and Cameron is trying to distract the British public from the failure of his full throated embrace of Hoovernomics, and they thought that a “Private Little War” would be good for politics, and it allowed them to get their colonialist rocks off as a bonus.

Unfortunately, wars are never a certainty.

The Ongoing Libyan Clusterf%$#

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First, it appears that since the US has dropped its lead position, NATO does not have enough attack aircraft, and now the British are talking about sending in trainers and advisers to help the rebels:

Britain is to urge Arab countries to train the disorganised Libyan rebels, and so strengthen their position on the battlefield before negotiations on a ceasefire, senior British defence sources have indicated.

The sources said they were also looking at hiring private security companies, some of which draw on former SAS members, to aid the rebels. These private soldiers could be paid by Arab countries to train the unstructured rebel army.

So, we are talking about a major escalation of involvement, one, by the way, which is not called for in the UN Security Council resolution, including the use of mercenaries.

This is not going to end well.

The Obama Doctrine…

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Courtesy of Dan Nexon:

Humanitarian-intervention-against-militarily-weak-fossil-fuel-producing-countries-in-strategically-important-regions-that-are-also-located-near-many-large-NATO-military-bases-and-are-run-by-dictators-who-kind-of-piss-us-off-and-have-no-powerful-allies Doctrine

And he is right: This is not the stuff of grand strategy.