One of my quibbles with this analysis is the contention by the author that the militia were on the verge of defeat, when in fact the Ukrainians got their asses handed to them by late August near Ilovaisk by pro Russian militia.
No question if oil prices really crater, Putin may put his plans on hold.
Even as fighting in eastern Ukraine continues between forces loyal to Kyiv and pro-Russian separatists aided by Russian regular forces, we still don't know President Vladimir Putin's real goal. Does Putin simply want to destabilize the southeast to weaken Kyiv? Is he more ambitious and trying to create a quasi-independent statelet there? Or is his ultimate goal to control a swath of land from the Russian-Ukrainian border through Odessa to TransDniestr "so-called "Novorossiya"? ("Novorossiya" is a term coined by Catherine the Great for lands wrested from the Ottoman Empire.) Regardless of what Putin really wants, or whether he has even made up his own mind, Russia is already paying a high price "both economic and political" for Putin's Ukrainian adventurism.
Western sanctions have damaged Russia's already slowing economy, reducing the growth rate to "zero, with a minus sign," while precipitating capital flight through August 2014 in amounts surpassing all of 2013. Additionally, the reverse sanctions imposed by Moscow have already led to significant increases in the price of food, ranging from 6 percent in the western parts of Russia to 26 percent in the Far East. For the rest of 2014, the overall inflation rate will be between 7-7.5 percent. Russian companies, now cut off from Western financial markets, are facing difficulties refinancing their debts. For example, Sibur, partially owned by Gennady Timchenko (who is on the sanctions list), borrowed $780 million from Sberbank and Rosneft asked for $42 billion from the state.
#1
"One of my quibbles with this analysis is the contention by the author that the militia were on the verge of defeat, when in fact the Ukrainians got their asses handed to them by late August near Ilovaisk by pro Russian militia."
Actually that was the time when Russia openly intervened by sending tanks and heavy machinery plus Russian troops into the Donbas.
Posted by: European Conservative ||
10/02/2014 10:19 Comments ||
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[DAWN] THE history is so long and fraught and the problems so complex that the start of the Ashraf Ghani ...former chancellor of Kabul University. Before returning to Afghanistan in 2002 he was a scholar of political science and anthropology. He worked at the World Bank working on international development assistance. As Finance Minister of Afghanistan between July 2002 and December 2004, he led Afghanistan's attempted economic recovery until the Karzais stole all the money. .. presidency in Afghanistan cannot immediately be seen as a new beginning in ties between Islamabad and Kabul.
There are though fresh possibilities now that the Hamid Maybe I'll join the Taliban Karzai ... A former Baltimore restaurateur, now 12th and current President of Afghanistan, displacing the legitimate president Rabbani in December 2004. He was installed as the dominant political figure after the removal of the Taliban regime in late 2001 in a vain attempt to put a Pashtun face on the successor state to the Taliban. After the 2004 presidential election, he was declared president regardless of what the actual vote count was. He won a second, even more dubious, five-year-term after the 2009 presidential election. His grip on reality has been slipping steadily since around 2007, probably from heavy drug use... era is over. Mr Karzai in his final speech in office exemplified quite how impossible it had become to hope for major breakthroughs in ties while he was still around: the rancour and vitriol Mr Karzai directed at Pakistain was neither new nor surprising and had thoroughly poisoned all facets of the relationship.
President Ghani, meanwhile, is seen as a pragmatist who is aware that peace and stability in the region will depend on Pak-Afghan relations. Of course, with a power-sharing agreement in place in Afghanistan, it remains to be seen to what extent the Abdullah Abdullah ... the former foreign minister of the Northern Alliance government, advisor to Masood, and candidate for president against Karzai. Dr. Abdullah was born in Kabul and is half Tadjik and half Pashtun... camp -- especially the hawks in the erstwhile Northern Alliance -- impacts foreign policy and the national security choices of Afghanistan.
Despite Pakistain's reaching out several years ago, the remnants of the Northern Alliance, so influential in Kabul during the Karzai era, never really warmed to the idea. Much then could depend on how domestic politics between the Ghani and Abdullah camps shape Afghan policy towards Pakistain.
The immediate priority for both the Pak and Afghan sides should be to reduce the acute tensions along the border between eastern Afghanistan and Fata. Where security forces on both sides have targeted sites across the border, there needs to be an immediate cessation. But the problem is really one of sanctuaries and cross-border attacks -- so long as faceless myrmidons on both sides of the border are present and active, the risk of an escalation between Pak and Afghan cops remains very real.
Eventually, the two countries, if they are ever to deal with the problem on a long-term basis, will need to move towards better border management in a way that makes it less porous but still accessible for legitimate people traffic. Yet, that surely does not mean putting everything else on hold, especially intelligence cooperation and re-energising military-to-military contacts across the border to make festivities less likely.
Posted by: Fred ||
10/02/2014 00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[11129 views]
Top|| File under: Govt of Pakistan
#5
From what I've read of their history the title of the article should be " Betrays the Kurds". Anybody would think they're Jews given the crap they've been handed....
#7
made the mistake of putting "fill-in-the-blank" in carets before "Betrays the Kurds" - damn that HTML anyway....
And you didn't close the command, Hupavish Clock2537. However, the internet still seems to be working, so presumable Fred's computer didn't recognize the command and then try to execute it. ;-) Next time just use an underline or several to visibly create a fillable blank: __fill in the blank___
#10
The Kurds saw this. Believe me, this was definitely on their spectrum of possibilities. This is why the very FIRST thing they asked for was heavy weaponry and ammunition for it. A year ago.
The US, to keep Erdogan happy and not scare the Iranians, has steadfastly refused to deliver more than token amounts which is being hoarded for last-ditch defense of their core "homeland" territories in Iraq. The French initially arranged some 122 HE shells, but not much since then - "airstrikes" are preferred by the western powers because they control those completely, and can hold them off. Plentiful artillery provides true independence for a small nation-state like that.
Posted by: frozen al ||
10/02/2014 00:00 ||
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Link ||
[11128 views]
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#1
Great post forzen al - haven't seen that site before.
A couple days ago I explained how a terrorist group in Turkey called Tawhid-Salam, which is behind several attacks and assassinations in recent years, is really a wholly owned subsidiary of Iranian intelligence. It serves as a cut-out for the notorious Pasdaran, Iran’s Revolutionary Guards Corps, which is recognized by the U.S. Government as a terrorist group.
Would revolutionary Shia Iran really support Sunni terrorists? Yes, Tehran certainly would — and does. The Pasdaran has been backing Sunni jihadists, including Al-Qa’ida (AQ), since at least the beginning of the 1990’s
Certainly there has been a detectable relationship between Tehran and “AQ Central” since 1996 at least, a fact which is well known to intelligence services worldwide.
Godfather: "It wasn't until today that I realized that it was Barzini all along."
#4
They are inadvertent 'key word' cyber coding cues. Fred permits them to remain as reminders to us that this site is constantly being surveilled. Don't be alarmed Chuck, we take them as high praise.
#5
As a rule of thumb, if somebody tells you that everything you know about a subject is wrong, he's probably wrong.
Posted by: Fred ||
10/02/2014 19:14 Comments ||
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#6
In the above post the apostrophes are replaced by ��tm�, yet in the preview the apostrophes displayed properly. Does anyone know why?
It's a recent problem, Chuck, related to single and double quotation marks, apostrophes, and some commas. We get more than just that squares-and-TM thingy in some cases. Fred's been trying to track it down. Were I feeling paranoid I'd wonder if it was something the major news sites do to annoy us small fry, but perhaps it's only an incompatibility of upgrades somehow.
Bright Pebbles and I clean 'em up as we see them and have the time, which isn't nearly as often as we'd like.
Yeah, all part of an international conspiracy to sap and impurify our precious interwebs.
Would revolutionary Shia Iran really support Sunni terrorists?
Oh, hell yes. Alliances are much more fluid in the Arab world. Sure the Shias and the Sunnis hate each other and would happily fight to the death. But they hate infidels, Jews and Crusaders (that would be you and me) even more. I against my brother. My brother and I against the family. My family against the clan...
#9
As a rule of thumb, if somebody tells you that everything you know about a subject is wrong, he's probably wrong. Posted by The Bard of the Rantburg.
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
