TRNN: Turkey, Israel and the Wider Middle East

‘Col. Lawrence Wilkerson: Israel needed Obama to broker Turkey deal as Netanyahu’s policies and unstable region put Israel in a precarious position (25 March 2013)’.

Afghanistan 2013 Update

‘U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry is in Afghanistan where he and President Hamid Karzai discussed efforts to bring the Taliban into reconciliation talks. VOA State Department Correspondent Scott Stearns reports from Kabul that the previously unannounced visit follows agreement on the U.S. handover of its last Afghan prisoners.Karzai discussed efforts to bring the Taliban into reconciliation talks. The previously unannounced visit follows agreement on the U.S. handover of its last Afghan prisoners. Scott Stearns reports from Kabul (25 March 2013)’ .

Wilkerson Attacks Senate Resolution on Iran

‘Col. Lawrence Wilkerson: Resolution S.RES.65 sends the message to Iran that the US objective is regime change, not a negotiated settlement to nuclear question (13 March 2013)’.

Empire: Iraq to Mali: The changing calculus of war (24 Feb 2013)

‘It has been 10 years since the US-led invasion of Iraq, which marked a turning point in the West’s so-called war on terror. The pretext of the Iraq war was security and freedom, but the bombastic and openly pronounced objective was no less than remaking the greater Middle East region. For the US, Iraq became a quagmire and a humiliation – a strategic and moral failure that the country has spent the last four years trying to forget. But how much has America’s calculus of war really changed? And as Africa becomes the new frontline in the ‘war on terror’, have the Europeans learnt from America’s mistakes? Empire explores the merits, objectives, costs and morality of these wars with our guests: John Nagl, a retired Lieutenant Colonel who co-authored the US army and Marine Corps Counterinsurgency Field Manual; Jean Marie Guehenno, the director of the Center of International Conflict Resolution at Columbia University, and former United Nations under secretary general for Peacekeeping Operations; Barbara Bodine, a professor at Princeton University and a former US Ambassador to the Republic of Yemen who also served with the Office of Reconstruction and Humanitarian Assistance in Iraq; and Christopher Hedges, a senior fellow at The Nation Institute, former New York Times Middle East bureau chief, and author of several books, including War is a Force That Gives us Meaning and Empire of Illusion’ .

Secretary Kerry Delivers Remarks on Investing in a Strong Foreign Policy

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry delivers his first major public address on investing in a strong foreign policy at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville, VA on February 20, 2013.

Israel Election 2013: Bibi FTW???

RT’s correspondent Paula Slier tweeted the following election results: ‘With 99.5% of the vote in, Likud 31, Yesh Atid 19, Labor 15, Shas 11, Bayit Yehudi 11, Yahadut Hatorah 7, Movement 6, Meretz 6’.[1]  And what this means is that Bibi is still in power and that he has to build another coalition of the willing to pursue his outlandish policy goals. And now for some informed comment that is always well worth quoting in full, here is Professor Juan Cole: “Early returns for the Israeli elections suggest that turnout was high in secular areas like Tel Aviv and in some Palestinian-Israeli districts, whereas it was low in conservative strongholds. As a result the combined Likud coalition with Yisrael Beitenu only got about 31 seats (the Israeli parliament has 120). Likud is a far rightwing party based on the Fascist political philosophy of Vladimir Jabotinsky in the 1930s, while Yisrael Beitenu (Israel Our Home) is a far right nationalist party based on Russian, Ukrainian and other former Soviet Bloc populations, many of them only nominally Jewish or not actually Jewish at all, who were economic emigrants to Israel. There is likely no government in Europe as far right wing as Israel’s, and if there were it would be a scandal that attracted boycotts. Netanyahu is convinced that he will still be able to cobble together the 61 seats needed, at a bare minimum, for a majority in the Knesset. This outcome, however, is by no means a sure thing. Even if he can win a third term, his government will be fragile and deeply divided. One of his likely coalition partners, a centrist newcomer, wants to end the exemption from conscription into the military granted Haredim or ultra-Orthodox Jews, who have grown to 8% of the population and may well, because of large families, become an even larger percentage of Israelis in the coming two decades. The Haredim, most of them backers of Netanyahu, really, really don’t want to serve in the army. So Netanyahu’s cabinet could be quite fractious this time. The Israeli Left was given a boost in the summer of 2011, when youth demonstrated against the Neoliberal economic policies of the Likud government, which is market-oriented even if that means young people cannot afford to rent an apartment anywhere near their work in e.g. Tel Aviv. Many of the youth mobilized for those demonstrations appear to have come out to vote for centrist parties on Tuesday [, 22 January 2013]. It should be noted that the Israeli right wing plays dirty tricks on the Israeli left and liberals, smearing them as traitors and harassing them (many of the nearly 1 million Israelis living outside Israel were leftists unwilling to live under Likud harassment. Such treatment of these Israelis acts as a form of voter suppression. The 20% of Israelis of Palestinian heritage do not usually vote in larger numbers. They face so much discrimination that it is hard to convince them that anything good can come from an Israeli election. Moreover, the Israeli Right keeps trying to throw elected Arab parliament members out of parliament, sending a signal that even when Palestinian-Israelis do join in the process, attempts will be made to blunt their influence. But the scandal, and one that Freedom House just ignored (detracting from its credibility) is that 4 million Palestinians living under Israeli control could not vote in these elections. They could not vote because they are stateless. They are not citizens of any state. And Netanyahu is committed, despite occasional whitewashing of his position in public, to keeping the Palestinians without a state. But Israel controls the air, water and land of Palestine, and dictates Palestinian lives”.[2]

So much for the popularity contest which is the democratic process, as practised in Israel. Taking a broader view, the somewhat unfortunately named Dr Ismail Salami, who happens to be a lexicographer, Iranologist, Shakespearean and political analyst, opines on the Press TV website that “four US nuclear experts have called upon the Obama administration to impose tougher economic sanctions against Iran and resort to overt operations through using warplanes and missiles on Iranian nuclear sites [(in) a 155-page report]”.[3]

Dr Salami continues that the report was “[c]o-authored by Mark Dubowitz, who runs the Zionist Foundation for the Defense of Democracies (FDD) and David Albright, a physicist who heads the Institute for Science and International Security (ISIS) and who was responsible for concocting lies and myths about Iraq having weapons of mass destruction and drawing the country into an abysmal vortex of destruction and devastation, the report can be but seen in the light of yet another overtly brash attempt by the US to push ahead with further militarism in the Middle East. Dubbed as U.S. Nonproliferation Strategy for the Changing Middle East, the report falls short of mentioning any other Middle Eastern countries, which may be seeking a nuclear weapons program, and instead focuses heavily on the Islamic Republic of Iran. The authors of the conspiratorial report urge Washington to ‘undertake additional overt preparations for the use of warplanes and/or missiles to destroy Iran’s nuclear capabilities with high explosives’ and ‘increase Iranian isolation, including through regime change in Syria and deepening Iran’s diplomatic isolation’. Naturally, the words have been deliberately and carefully chosen in the report. By ‘overt preparations’, the authors explicitly admit that the US government has in the past used ‘covert operations’ as well i.e. assassinating Iranian nuclear scientists and infiltrating and disrupting the computer systems. Somewhere in the report, the authors unambiguously refer to Washington’s sabotage activities in Iran. They say, ‘Press reports indicate that sabotage has been used to slow the Iranian nuclear program, including through infiltration and disruption of procurement networks and cyberattacks designed to inflict physical damage to the program. Judicious use of this tool should be included in continued U.S. efforts to constrain the Iranian nuclear program’”.[4]

Salami cautions that the reports reeks “of a Zionist influence contaminating the already decomposing American policy. On May 9, 2012, just ahead of the May 23 talks in Baghdad, where six world powers were slated to sit down with Iranian officials and resolve the so-called nuclear issue, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the talks will be successful only if Iran agrees to ‘halt all uranium enrichment, ship its current stockpile of enriched uranium out of the country and dismantle an underground enrichment facility near the city of Qom (Fordow)’. Interestingly, when the IAEA-Iran meeting took place in May, these three demands were exactly (but not coincidently) put on [the] IAEA’s agenda and the Iranian side was demanded to abide by these if it sought any resolution of the issue. What strikes the mind as reasonably acceptable is that the authors are no political well-wishers; rather, they are indeed so morbidly obsessed with paving the way for another ravaging war in the Middle East that they are cooking up another fairy tale as David Albright and his ‘company’ did in Iraq”.[5]  And now, the Israeli election results seem to have paved the way for the implementation of such a scenario . . .

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[1] “‏@PaulaSlier_RT”, (11:36 PM – 22 Jan 13). https://twitter.com/PaulaSlier_RT/status/293985508005122049.

[2] Juan Cole, “Netanyahu Emerges Weakened, But Most under Israeli Apartheid were Disenfranchised” Informed Comment (23 Jan 2013). http://www.juancole.com/2013/01/netanyahu-apartheid-disenfranchised.html?utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+juancole%2Fymbn+%28Informed+Comment%29.

[3] Ismail Salami, “US cooks up nuclear fairy tale on Iran” Press TV (21 Jan 2013). http://www.presstv.ir/detail/2013/01/21/284780/us-cooks-up-nuclear-fairy-tale-on-iran/.

[4] Ismail Salami, “US cooks up nuclear fairy tale on Iran”.

[5] Ismail Salami, “US cooks up nuclear fairy tale on Iran”.

Obama 2.0 or Bush, Jr. 4.0???

‘Barack Obama has officially begun his second Presidential term, after being sworn in at the White House. Later, on Monday, he will spell out his vision for the next four years in his inaugural address. But as RT’s Gayane Chichakyan reports many are still waiting for him to tackle some of his broken promises (21 Jan 2013)’.

Africa Update: Mali, Algeria & Libya or Al Qaeda All Around

‘The hostage crisis in Algeria appears to be over. Algeria’s special forces stormed the gas plant in the middle of the Sahara desert, to end the four day standoff. Local media say seven hostages and 11 gunmen were killed in the latest operation. Britain’s defense minister says he’s appalled at the loss of life. Al Jazeera‘s Paul Brennan has this report on how this hostage crisis unfolded. (19 Jan 2013)’.

‘The Algerian army raided the remote gas plant where Al Qaeda-backed militants had taken hostages. (20 Jan 2013)’.

The mere phrase “Al Qaeda-backed” nowadays seems sufficient to inspire global interest and generate media attention. On this blog I posted the following in 2011: “As I wrote some time ago in Today’s Zaman: ‘In the absence of a Soviet threat, the Obama administration has now declared al-Qaeda and its, by now more than legendary and . . . defunct, leader bin Laden to be the US’s main military adversary. While making sure not to declare an outright crusade against Islam and Muslims worldwide, President Obama continues Cold War policies that ensure that the “military-industrial complex,” to use President Eisenhower’s famous 1961 phrase, is kept busy, happy and well fed. Quite some time ago, the independent journalist Pepe Escobar declared that “Osama bin Laden may be dead or not. Al-Qaeda remains a catch-all ghost entity.” In other words, his contention is that the name al-Qaeda is used by the US to suggest the presence of a threat that is then employed to justify military intervention. The flipside of that stance is now that terrorists and like-minded individuals opposing US dominance and interventionism equally cite the name al-Qaeda to gain credibility, notoriety and media exposure’”.[1]  As a result, the fact that mainstream broadcasters like the BBC and Al Jazeera freely use the phrase in their reporting should not detract from the fact that the brand Al Qaeda is nothing but a fabricated fiction, as convincingly argued for by Adam Curtis’ documentary The Power of Nightmares (2004).[2]

What is happening in Mali, which just happens to be south of Libya where Colonel Gadhafi’s regime was so unceremoniously done away with by an “Assisted Rebellion”[3] recently???  Then Sarko was one of the prime-movers of the alliance backing the “Assisted Rebellion” and for good reason, as he was keen to secure access to Libyan oil and gas. At the moment, President Hollande seems to be at pains to secure his predecessor’s gains in the Maghreb, while equally also attempting to safeguard French access to Mali’s uranium reserves, one could argue.

Whereas the Al Qaeda is equally being used by both sides in the conflict today: ‘Back in the days prior to 9/11, Abu Musaab Abdulwadood used to head an organisation called Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat [‘al-Jamā‘ah as-Salafiyyah lid-Da‘wah wal-Qiṭāl’], which now carries the much more media-friendly name Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb [‘Tanẓīm al-Qā‘idah fī Bilād al-Maghrib al-Islāmī’]’.[4]  The outspoken critic of U.S. foreign policy William Engdahl recently spoke to broadcaster RT: “Well, I think the intervention in Mali is another follow-up to the French role in other destabilizations that we’ve seen, especially in Libya last year with the toppling of the Gadhafi regime. In a sense this is French neocolonialism in action. But, interestingly enough, I think behind the French intervention is the very strong hand of the US Pentagon which has been preparing this partitioning of Mali, which it is now looming to be, between northern Mali, where al-Qaeda and other terrorists are supposedly the cause for French military intervention, and southern Mali, which is a more agricultural region. Because in northern Mali recently there have been huge finds of oil discovered, so that leads one to think that it’s very convenient that these armed rebels spill over the border from Libya last year and just at the same time a US-trained military captain creates a coup d’état in the Southern capital of Mali and installs a dictatorial regime against one of Africa’s few democratically elected presidents. So this whole thing bears the imprint of US Africom [US Africa Command] and an attempt to militarize the whole region and its resources. Mali is a strategic lynchpin in that. It borders Algeria which is one of the top goals of these various NATO interventions from France, the US and other sides. Mauritania, the Ivory Coast, Guinea, Burkina Faso. All of this area is just swimming in untapped resources, whether it be gold, manganese, copper”.[5]

Not just uranium, but now there has also been found oil in Mali, as indicated by Engdahl. But there is really so much more at stake with regard to France’s nuclear energy needs, as demonstrated by the writer, activist, and subversive Doctoral researcher at the University of Oxford Adam Elliott-Cooper: “Like its neighbour, Niger, Mali is rich in a number of resources, including uranium. Following the ‘oil shock’ of 1973 in which the oil producing nations sharply increased the price of oil, the French decided an alternative route was needed. This alternative was nuclear energy, and over the 15 years following the shock, France built 56 nuclear reactors, more than any other country in the world. France now has 59 nuclear reactors, generating nearly 80% of its electricity, making it the world’s largest net electricity exporter. In 1999, the French parliament confirmed three objectives in relation to this newly found wealth, the first: security of supply”.[6]  Elliot-Cooper has this warning and note of hope: “The echoes of the scramble for Iraq’s resources, and the humanitarian catastrophe which followed are stark. The curbs on civil liberties in the West which the so-called War on Terror forces upon citizens is part of the same struggle that activists in West Africa are fighting against uranium mining corporations. Only by building links of solidarity between our continents can people begin to resist the disastrous intersection of the energy industries and state militarism both at home, and abroad”.[7]

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[1] Cfr. “SPECTRE Speaks: Al Qaeda Issues a Statement”A Pseudo-Ottoman Blog (07 May 2011). http://sitanbul.wordpress.com/2011/05/07/spectre-speaks-al-qaeda-issues-a-statement/ and C. Erimtan, “A frontline in the war against Islamic Extremism or A Crucial Part of the Eurasian chessboard?” Today’s Zaman (25 January 2011) — http://tiny.cc/h3b5g.

[2] Cfr. “Killing a Monster: OBL and the War on Terror” A Pseudo-Ottoman Blog (15 May 2011). http://sitanbul.wordpress.com/2011/05/15/killing-a-monster-obl-and-the-war-on-terror/.

[3] Cfr. “Libya: Assisted Rebellion or Humanitarian Intervention???” A Pseudo-Ottoman Blog (07 April 2011). http://sitanbul.wordpress.com/2011/04/07/libya-assisted-rebellion-or-humanitarian-intervention/.

[4] Cfr. “Propaganda: Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb and Mali” A Pseudo-Ottoman Blog (29 November 2012). http://sitanbul.wordpress.com/2012/11/29/propaganda-al-qaeda-in-the-islamic-maghreb-and-mali/.

[5] “‘Pentagon’s hand behind French intervention in Mali’” RT (19 January 2013). http://rt.com/news/mali-intervention-pentagon-conflict-303/.

[6] Adam Elliott-Cooper, “Blood for Uranium: France’s Mali intervention has little to do with terrorism” Ceasefire (17 January 2013). http://ceasefiremagazine.co.uk/blood-uranium-frances-mali-intervention-terrorism/.

[7] Adam Elliott-Cooper, “Blood for Uranium: France’s Mali intervention has little to do with terrorism”.

The War in Syria: Foreign Fighters and Sectarian Divisions

Over the past months, I have oftentimes spoken about the numerous foreign fighters active in Syria. Now, Jason Ditz details on the website AntiWar that a “report by the UN says that rebel fighters have come from 29 countries, and are overwhelmingly Sunnis flocking to the nation to fight against the Alawite President Bashar Assad”.[1]  The Turco-U.S. and Saudi-Qatari axis has been providing support for activists bent on turning the conflict into sectarian battle between Sunni Muslim opposed to the Alawite rulers of the Syrian Republic. Ditz, in turn, relies on Reuter’s appropriately titled piece ‘Foreign fighters fuel the sectarian flames in Syria’. The authors, Justyna Pawlak and Stephanie Nebehay state that the “deepened sectarian divisions in Syria may diminish prospects for post-conflict reconciliation even if President Bashar al-Assad is toppled. And the influx of foreign fighters raises the risk of the war spilling into neighbouring countries”.[2]  Turkey, Iraq and Lebanon now do really appear to be in the firing line. Turkey’s long-standing conflict with the PKK could get a shot in the arm by the Kurdish fighters in Syria and the stance taken by the neighbouring KRG. Iraq, on the other hand, is experiencing its own tensions between Shi’ite and Sunni elements, Arab and Kurdish leaders against the backdrop of the unevenly divided oil wealth underground. Lebanon has been a powder keg for years and any spark could trigger a new civil war or power struggle. And then there is Israel and the Palestinians who are also being sucked into the fight.

UN human rights investigators led by Brazilian expert Paulo Pinheiro have now stated that the “battles between government forces and anti-government armed groups [now] approach the end of their second year, [and currently, ] the conflict has become overtly sectarian in nature”.[3]  According to some, such as the outspoken critic Sibel Edmonds and the investigative Voltaire Network‘s Thierry Meyssan, the whole struggle against Assad has been an orchestrated affair from the very beginning with outside players, like the Sunni states Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Turkey overtly and/or covertly supporting a U.S.-led agenda to effect regime change in Syria. After two years of a primarily undecided armed confrontation, the true colours of the “foreign” forces at work against secular and Alawite-led Baath regime in Syria are beginning to shine through. Karen Abuzayd, a member of the group of UN human rights investigators, characterises the anti-Assad foreign fighters in the following way: “They come from all over, Europe and America, and especially the neighbouring countries”.[4]  Conversely, the Baath regime is also able to count on some supporters: the report notes that ‘the Lebanese Shia group, Hezbollah . . . confirmed that group members were in Syria fighting on behalf of Assad’, while ‘reports of Iraqi Shia coming to fight [in Syria have also been heard, while] . . . Iran, a close ally of Assad, confirmed in September [2012] that its Revolutionary Guards were in Syria providing assistance’.[5]

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[1] Jason Ditz, “UN: Syria’s Rebels Come From 29 Countries” AntiWar (20 Dec 2012). http://news.antiwar.com/2012/12/20/un-syrias-rebels-come-from-29-countries/.

[2] Justyna Pawlak and Stephanie Nebehay, “Foreign fighters fuel the sectarian flames in Syria” The Independent (20 September 2012). http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/foreign-fighters-fuel-the-sectarian-flames-in-syria-8427986.html.

[3] Justyna Pawlak and Stephanie Nebehay, “Foreign fighters fuel the sectarian flames in Syria”.

[4] Justyna Pawlak and Stephanie Nebehay, “Foreign fighters fuel the sectarian flames in Syria”.

[5] Justyna Pawlak and Stephanie Nebehay, “Foreign fighters fuel the sectarian flames in Syria”.

Newtown vs Al-Majala: Drone Strikes in Context

“For more than five years, Brandon Bryant worked in an oblong, windowless container about the size of a trailer, where the air-conditioning was kept at 17 degrees Celsius (63 degrees Fahrenheit) and, for security reasons, the door couldn’t be opened. Bryant and his coworkers sat in front of 14 computer monitors and four keyboards. When Bryant pressed a button in New Mexico, someone died on the other side of the world.

The container is filled with the humming of computers. It’s the brain of a drone, known as a cockpit in Air Force parlance. But the pilots in the container aren’t flying through the air. They’re just sitting at the controls.”

Innocent women and children were killed by drone strikes in the al-Majala region of Yemen. The United States is responsible for a very high number of innocent civilian deaths from drone strikes; a soldier wracked with guilt told his story of dehumanizing rationalization after killing a child. The senseless deaths of innocent children in Newtown, Connecticut devastated the nation, causing President Obama to cry openly for them. Why are children in places like Yemen or Pakistan not mourned? Cenk Uygur discusses the disparity (19 Dec 2012).

The report Living under Drones, quoted by Cenk Uygur, was earlier this year the subject of another post of mine: “Since 2004, up to 884 innocent civilians, including at least 176 children, have died from US drone strikes in the North Waziristan region of Pakistan. A new report from the Stanford and New YorkUniversity law schools finds drone use has caused widespread post-tramatic stress disorder and an overall breakdown of functional society in North Waziristan. In addition, the report finds the use of a “double tap” procedure, in which a drone strikes once and strikes again not long after, has led to deaths of rescuers and medical professionals”.[1]

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[1] “Living under Drones: Stanford-NYU and Brave New Films” A Pseudo-Ottoman Blog (10 October 2012). https://sitanbul.wordpress.com/2012/10/10/living-under-drones-stanford-nyu-and-brave-new-films/.