WHEN the British and Swedish ambassadors to Somalia recently queued up to meet a new member of the government appointed by the third prime minister in 18 months, the man they met was so new to Somali politics that a government adviser was unsure of his name. But it was not long before Mohamed Omar Arte, the incoming deputy prime minister, found himself in the midst of the bloody turmoil that remains a grim hallmark of politics in Somalia. On February 20th, two days after he met the Western envoys, he narrowly escaped with his life when suicide-bombers from the Shabab, Somalia’s extreme Islamist group linked to al-Qaeda, attacked a hotel in Mogadishu, the capital, during Friday prayers, killing 25 people (plus both bombers). On March 27th gunmen hit another Mogadishu hotel popular with politicians, killing at least 17 people.
Meanwhile, strife within the government continues to damage President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud. After his election in 2012 he was greeted as a breath of fresh air. Respected for his record as a human-rights enthusiast, he was free of the blood and murk that stained so many of Somalia’s more seasoned politicians. He was chosen by a 275-strong parliament whose members were nominated by elders from a cross-section of clans. Though it was a flawed method, with plenty of vote-buying and little direct say for ordinary Somalis, it was better than what had gone before.
But Mr Mohamud has since squandered much of the goodwill of war-weary Somalis and vexed foreigners alike. Corruption remains rife. Political progress is glacial. Since late last year the president and prime minister have been locked in an argument over who has the right to hire and fire ministers. The president won, a new prime minister was named, and in February his cabinet was approved at the parliament’s third attempt.
The political crisis has been “devastating”, says Abdirashid Hashi of the Heritage Institute for Policy Studies, based in Mogadishu.“It has ruined the leaders’ reputation,” he says. In theory there will be a new constitution and fresh elections by September next year. But despite the constant chivvying of Western governments and international agencies, few think that deadline will now be met.
Nonetheless, diplomats refuse to discuss an alternative plan for fear that Somalia’s politicians may ditch the present one forthwith. “The election should not be clan elders in a conference room selecting MPs, who then select a president,” says Michele Cervone d’Urso, the European Union’s ambassador, recalling Mr Mohamud’s advent to power in 2012. “We should aim for one person, one vote across Somalia,” says Neil Wigan, Britain’s ambassador. “But exactly what’s going to be possible, we’ll have to see.” Ken Menkhaus, a Somalia expert from Davidson College in North Carolina, says some kind of “appointocracy” is once again inevitable.
Mr Mohamud’s biggest success so far has been to bring in an element of federalism without worsening the strife. Two new regional states are in their infancy. Devolving a measure of power to such newly created states may prove a good idea only so long as it is not seen as another stitch-up by the old guard in Mogadishu. “It’s not enough to come up with a process designed in Mogadishu and agreed between the government and parliament,” says Matt Bryden, a Canadian expert who runs Sahan Research, a think-tank in Kenya’s capital Nairobi. “It’s got to have federal administration buy-in.”
Western governments seem bent on getting Mr Mohamud to move towards some kind of election, however circumscribed. “This top-down, legalistic form of state-building focused on federalism, constitution-writing and elections has pushed Somali politicians to face the thorniest issues first,” says Dominik Balthasar, another Somalia watcher, based in Ethiopia. He argues for a slower, grassroots approach. “The idea of elections is mad,” says Cedric Barnes of the International Crisis Group, a Brussels-based think-tank. “They simply buy into the kind of elite politics that has been so detrimental to Somalia.”
You have elections when you need to have elections. Build the federal system first. Figure out how things are going to be run. Only then have an election to put in place the people who will run the system.
Will Mr Mohamud have the nerve to brake a rushed process that may make things worse? “It’s very difficult for us to talk about alternatives, at least until the Somalis do,” says a Western diplomat.
Posted by: Steve White ||
04/05/2015 00:00 ||
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#1
Somehow we just knew it wouldn't bloody work. Kenyan 'Deja Vu' I'd call it. Once the KAR came home and the koffee plantations folded, they were back to their brutal old habits.
[DAWN] GOING by the recent Al Qaeda attack on a jail in Al Mukalla, a major city in the Hadramaut coastal region in Yemen, it is amply clear who will be the main beneficiary of a protracted crisis in the country. The Al Qaeda gunnies freed hundreds of inmates including scrores of forces of Evil as well as one of their main leaders.
The bad boy organization calling itself the Islamic State ...formerly ISIS or ISIL, depending on your preference. Before that al-Qaeda in Iraq, as shaped by Abu Musab Zarqawi. They're very devout, committing every atrocity they can find in the Koran and inventing a few more. They fling Allah around with every other sentence, but to hear the pols talk they're not really Moslems.... (IS) had already registered its presence in the capital of Yemen ...an area of the Arabian Peninsula sometimes mistaken for a country. It is populated by more antagonistic tribes and factions than you can keep track of. Except for a tiny handfull of Jews everthing there is very Islamic... by orchestrating large-scale suicide kabooms on Shia mosques in Sana'a last month.
Once regarded as a successful counterterrorism model, Yemen has been transformed into a crisis state in no time. The situation has activated diverse destabilising factors which will certainly wipe out all that has been invested in countering terrorism in the country. Against this background, some may argue that the state's socio-political stability is more important as compared to ideological balancing. However, a lie repeated often enough remains a lie... in case of failure to achieve either, non-state actors are the main beneficiaries, whether they are religiously, ethnically or politically motivated. And a range of non-state actors exist in Yemen.
The religiously motivated non-state actors, including Al Qaeda and the IS, have not yet displayed their full potential in the rapidly deteriorating situation. But experts believe that these actors had been waiting for this moment of Sunni-Shia confrontation in the country for a long time. They knew that sectarian tensions would open up space for them to flourish and operate. Now they will be more than ready to encroach upon the space that the ongoing war in Yemen will create. Yemen's case could be even worse than that of Syria where Bashir al-Assad's forces are still offering resistance to non-state actors.
It is a valid argument that the US-led invasion of Iraq and intervention in Syria created situations of chaos which non-state actors such as Al Qaeda and IS have effectively exploited. These violent actors have attracted Islamist turbans from across the world. Through playing the sectarian card, such groups create strategic space for themselves. Arab analysts had already predicted that terrorist groups in Yemen would exploit the Saudi-led intervention as an excuse to go after the Shia Houthis.
A major advantage that non-state actors have over external forces and their militaries is the former's presence on the ground and an extensive outreach in conflict zones. To exploit this advantage, intervening forces sometimes try to reconcile with certain non-state actors. This helps the former build a ground response against their main adversary. The interventionists choose their allies among non-state actors on the basis of the latter's religious, ethnic and political affinities, but focus on their strategic purpose.
The heads of the Arab League ...an organization of Arabic-speaking states with 22 member countries and four observers. The League tries to achieve Arab consensus on issues, which usually leaves them doing nothing but a bit of grimacing and mustache cursing... countries have agreed to establish a joint Arab military force to counter terrorism and conventional security threats. This goal will certainly take some time to achieve. and there is the likelihood that the Saudi-led coalition might want to use certain non-state actors against their adversaries in Yemen. If that happens, it will not only hurt that country but also trigger a tide of unrest across the Moslem world. A strategic use of sectarianism by states or non-state actors not only deepens but prolongs the conflict.
After engaging non-state actors, intervening states usually fall victim to the fallacy that the former have become their proxies and will obey their orders. When non-state actors are perceived as proxies, it becomes difficult to treat them as rational actors. That means they are seen as only following others' plans and do not enjoy the freedom to pursue their own objectives.
At a certain point, the interventionists' dependence on non-state actors or forces of Evil increases to such an extent that even when the latter are no more willing to serve as proxies, the former continue to treat them as if they are. While there may be instances where non-state actors follow others' plans, at other times they can even influence their partnering states and force the latter to amend their strategic designs.
The forces of Evil have already made a few gains in the current Yemeni crisis. The focus of Moslem societies is shifting from issues of extremism to more conventional threats, which has eased pressure on the religious bully boy forces.
Non-violent forces of Evil and conventional bad boy groups such as Jamaat-ud-Dawa ...the front organization of Lashkar-e-Taiba... and the banned Sipah-e-Sahaba etc are major beneficiaries of the debate and are aligning themselves with the Saudi position and trying to influence policymakers. The Shia parties are doing the same in favour of Iran and the Houthi ...a Zaidi Shia insurgent group operating in Yemen. They have also been referred to as the Believing Youth. Hussein Badreddin al-Houthi is said to be the spiritual leader of the group and most of the military leaders are his relatives. The Yemeni government has accused the Houthis of having ties to the Iranian government, which wouldn't suprise most of us. The group has managed to gain control over all of Saada Governorate and parts of Amran, Al Jawf and Hajjah Governorates. Its slogan is God is Great, Death to America™, Death to Israel, a curse on the Jews ... forces in Yemen.
Pakistain's ongoing military offensive has successfully scattered the terrorist networks, but the psychological impact of the Yemen crisis can provide relief to the hard boyz and ease the pressure of military operations. New bad boy forces like IS can also get a chance to expand their influence in Pakistain and Afghanistan. Any gains by IS and Al Qaeda in Yemen will boost the confidence of the bad boy forces in our region. The grinding of the peace processor between the Afghan Taliban and Kabul, which has already been slow, can suffer further. The changing situation will compound the problems on Pakistain's internal security front where sectarian bad boy groups could intensify their operations.
In the aftermath of the Yemen crisis, sectarian tensions can emerge as a real challenge for Moslem countries, most of which are not good at managing such problems. Countries such as Pakistain where violent sectarian groups are a significant part of the bad boy landscape would be more vulnerable to the dangers. Pakistain's clergy is already divided over the issue on sectarian lines. Moderate scholars will have little space available to intervene.
Posted by: Fred ||
04/05/2015 00:00 ||
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[IsraelTimes] Isis is surrounded by a series of mysteries without apparent explanation. What enabled Isis to conquer a large part of Syria and Iraq with such stunning rapidity? How does a collection of untrained fanatics rapidly integrate sophisticated U.S. weapons systems captured during this conquest, and command far-flung battlefronts? Where does the Islamic State ...formerly ISIS or ISIL, depending on your preference. Before that al-Qaeda in Iraq, as shaped by Abu Musab Zarqawi. They're very devout, committing every atrocity they can find in the Koran and inventing a few more. They fling Allah around with every other sentence, but to hear the pols talk they're not really Moslems.... , bordered by hostile and warring powers, obtain food for the millions under its control? There is increasing evidence that the explanation for all these anomalies can be found in The Sick Man of Europe Turkey ...the only place on the face of the earth that misses the Ottoman Empire.... 's secret backing of ISIS.
One example of how Turkey supports ISIS is through its oil sales. ISIS now controls oil fields in Iraq and Syria capable of producing a total of 120,000 barrels a day. The oil is transported into Turkey, where it is sold at a 70% discount, primarily to Asian markets. According to Dr. Issam Al-Chalabi, Iraq's former oil minister, ISIS earned between $100 and $150 million dollars in 2014 from its oil sales, which take place exclusively through Turkey.
A nexus between ISIS and Turkey would explain Turkey's seemingly irrational behavior in allowing ISIS to pump and sell oil, bring in supplies, and move an estimated 8,000 European recruits through its territory.
Despite serious U.S. pressure, including a personal visit by U.S. Secretary of State John F. I was in Vietnam, you know Kerry Former Senator-for-Life from Massachussetts, self-defined war hero, speaker of French, owner of a lucky hat, conqueror of Cambodia, and current Secretary of State... , Turkey has resisted all requests to stop the flow of men and material to and from ISIS. The German television broadcaster ARD recently reported that ISIS has an unofficial recruiting office in Istanbul's heavily Islamist Fatih neighborhood. European recruits pass through the office and are given money and supplies before being sent on to ISIS in Syria. According to Skeikh Nabil Naiim, a former Jihadist with unique sources in the movement, there are ISIS training camps and hospitals in Turkey along the Syrian border.
Further evidence that the Turkish government is aiding ISIS was sent to the EU ambassador to Turkey in a June 2014 report by the Mayor of Mardin on the Syrian border in southeast Turkey. According to the report, ISIS members are brought to the border in Turkish Army uniforms and allowed to cross into Syria to join the battle. The report also states that a representative of Turkey's ruling party has met with ISIS representatives at the border.
More recently Newsweek Magazine published an article quoting a former ISIS communication technician detailing Turkish cooperation with ISIS. On "innumerable occasions" he reported hearing communications between the Turkish Army and ISIS field commanders coordinating attacks on Kurdish forces. These communications occurred while he was posted to ISIS headquarters in Raqqa Syria and on the Turkish border where he witnessed the Turkish Army allowing ISIS to cross freely on their way to and from battles with the Kurds.
Meanwhile Turkey refuses to participate in or support the U.S. bombing campaign, and has rejected urgent requests to aid the Kurds desperately fighting ISIS on its border. Why did ISIS lose months of effort and over 1,000 men in its recent failed attempt Curses! Foiled again! to take Kobane, a small Kurdish town? Kobane directly abuts Turkey and contains a border crossing that would have offered unfettered access to that nation. A connection with ISIS explains why Turkey never brought significant forces to that border when a large ISIS force approached to within a few hundred yards.
Assistance from Turkey's large, modern army would also explain how ISIS has been able to simultaneously coordinate wide-ranging battlefronts against the Kurds in the north, the Iraqi army in the east, and Assad's forces in the west from its distant headquarters in Raqqa, Syria.
Similarly, it is otherwise impossible to explain how ISIS has been able to quickly integrate large amounts of sophisticated U.S. weaponry captured from the Iraqi army. These weapons reportedly include Black Hawk UH60 and Bell-IA-407 helicopters, the M1 Abrams tank, M79 rockets, 155mm GPS guided artillery and the FIM92 Stringer MANPAD air defense system. It has been postulated that integrating these weapons may have been enabled by Baathist officers expelled from the Iraqi army eleven years ago after Sadaam's fall. Sadaam's army, however, was armed and trained with Soviet weapons, as are the Syrian and Iranian armies. In contrast, NATO ...the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. A collection of multinational and multilingual and multicultural armed forces, all of differing capabilities, working toward a common goal by pulling in different directions... member Turkey possesses an army familiar with the latest U.S. weapons systems.
Why would Turkey support ISIS? After many decades as a secular democratic state, Turkey is now ruled by an Islamist government with ambitions to unite the Sunni Arab world and restore, in a sense, the Turkish hegemony of the Ottoman era. All the forces attacked by ISIS to date oppose, or are rivals to, Turkish hegemony, and are groups to which the current government of Turkey has demonstrated hostility. This includes the Kurds, and especially Turkey's rival for regional hegemony -- Iran and its proxies Assad's forces in Syria, Hezbollah, and the Shiite dominated Iraqi government. Meanwhile, ...back at the pound, the little lost dog had finished eating the rat terrier... ISIS inexplicably ignores softer Sunni targets such as oil-rich Soddy Arabia ...a kingdom taking up the bulk of the Arabian peninsula. Its primary economic activity involves exporting oil and soaking Islamic rubes on the annual hajj pilgrimage. The country supports a large number of princes in whatcha might call princely splendor. When the oil runs out the rest of the world is going to kick sand in the Soddy national face... and other Gulf states.
As part of this effort to gain favor with the Sunni Arabs, the Islamist government has dramatically reversed Turkey's long-standing friendship with Israel. Turkish Prime Minister Erdogan publically supported the IHH terror organization's flotilla attack on the Jewish State. He demanded that Israel apologize for defending her territorial waters, although even the UN has declared her actions justified. Erdogan has blamed Israel and the Jews for everything from strife in Egypt to anti-government demonstrations by Turkish citizens. He has characterized Israel's war of defense against Hamas, always the voice of sweet reason, as "barbarism that surpasses Hitler." Erdogan's vitriolic attacks on Israel are so utterly irrational that there are some who question his sanity.
Anyone who knows Turkish history can believe that Turkey could support a group as brutal as ISIS. ISIS' attempted genocide against the Yazidi people has as its precedent the Ottoman genocide of over one million Armenians, which Turkey denies to this day. The methods used by ISIS are eerily similar to those used by the Turks in 1915, up to and including besieging the final survivors on a mountaintop.
The exact nature of the relationship between Turkey and ISIS, is not clear. Perhaps ISIS is a creation of Turkish intelligence (or rogue elements therein). This proved to be the case with the Afghani Taliban, which were ultimately found to be a creature of the Pak ISI. More likely, ISIS is Turkey's proxy, indirectly allowing it to gain control of territory and battle Iran for regional ascendancy.
For the record, I am privy to no inside information on Turkey's relationship with ISIS. The facts I've related above were garnered from the U.S. and Israeli press. Increasing evidence of Turkey's secret support for ISIS makes sense of otherwise inexplicable and seemingly irrational events. Turkey can easily disprove this supposition by reversing policy and cooperating in the United States' war against ISIS. If she persists in her refusal to do so, it is in the U.S. interest to investigate the exact nature of Turkey's relationship with ISIS.
Posted by: trailing wife ||
04/05/2015 00:00 ||
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[DAWN] IT speaks volumes for our regressive social fabric that humane points of view that come naturally to so many other countries, and are too obvious to be uttered, must here be held up for appreciation. Into this category falls, for instance, the few voices that speak up in favour of vaccination against polio ...Poliomyelitis is a disease caused by infection with the poliovirus. Between 1840 and the 1950s, polio was a worldwide epidemic. Since the development of polio vaccines the disease has been largely wiped out in the civilized world. However, since the vaccine is known to make Moslem pee-pees shrink and renders females sterile, bookish, and unsubmissive it is not widely used by the turban and automatic weapons set... , and girls' education. Another example of this was provided by the director general of the Council of Islamic Ideology on Thursday when, in an interaction with the media in Islamabad, he voiced the opinion that children should not be married until they reach "mental maturity". On an earlier occasion, this public servant surprised many by presenting relatively reasonable views on topics that the CII in general tends to see in a very conservative light. Let it not be forgotten, after all, that in 2013, the CII left many astonished when it said that DNA testing could not be used as primary evidence to establish rape. That pronouncement led many to challenge the very raison d'être of the CII. It was pointed out that the social and political fabric of the country has changed in fundamental ways since the body was first formed in the 1960s. It then went through a change of nomenclature in the 1973 Constitution where it was tasked with advising legislatures on whether or not a law runs contrary to Islamic ideals.
This argument deserves to be highlighted again. The CII has only an advisory role, but the nature of its constitution, as well as its input in earlier decades, means that its pronouncements attain a degree of moral authority that really should not be required in a country where hundreds of elected politicians are available in the federal and provincial legislatures. The latter are perfectly capable of deciding on any issue. In terms of the marriage of minors, for instance, the Sindh Assembly passed the Sindh Child Marriage Restraint Bill, 2013, which makes it illegal for anyone under 18 to marry, and also provides for the penalising of parents and controllers of such unions. Earlier this month, the Punjab 1.) Little Orphan Annie's bodyguard
2.) A province of Pakistain ruled by one of the Sharif brothers
3.) A province of India. It is majority (60 percent) Sikh and Hindoo (37 percent), which means it has relatively few Moslem riots.... Assembly approved a bill proposing amendments to the Child Marriage Restraint Act 1929, which provides stricter penalties for parents and holy mans facilitating underage marriages. Such are the legislative successes that need to be built upon, and for which strict implementing mechanisms need to be devised. The views of the CII should not be required at all.
Posted by: Fred ||
04/05/2015 00:00 ||
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[DAWN] DECISIONS, decision-makers and deciders -- there's so much going on, it's hard to remember who's supposed to be doing what. Or why.
Nawaz is supposed to be the chap who asks 'how high' when the Saudis ask us to jump, but there he is heading a government that keeps talking about peaceful solutions in Yemen ...an area of the Arabian Peninsula sometimes mistaken for a country. It is populated by more antagonistic tribes and factions than you can keep track of. Except for a tiny handfull of Jews everthing there is very Islamic... while the Saudis are pounding on his door demanding their due.
That's some sterling stuff. You'd expect Nawaz to just capitulate: he's surrendered everything national security and foreign policy-ish to the boys, so why not side with an external benefactor in its self-created hour of need and throw that grenade into the boys' camp, letting them deal with the fallout of having to say no.
A perfect faecal storm, as it were, with Nawaz grinning from the sidelines. Comeuppance, Pak-style.
Ah, but Nawaz has been restrained by the army. If it weren't for Raheel and his boys, we'd already be pounding Yemen and preparing to receive body bags from the vanguard of a ground invasion.
Which is interesting because, if you think about it, the boys surely understand the need for protecting the army's institutional relationship with the Saudis.
After all, what are a few planes and a handful of boots as marginal contributions to a mission that means so much to the Saudis? And so what if the boys are busy in Fata? It's not as if Black September and the East Pakistain crisis didn't clash.
Besides, what are those Houthis going to do anyway? Send boatloads of forces of Evil to Pakistain in retaliation? Or is Iran going to start a sectarian war inside Pakistain, for the sake of a bunch of Houthis Iran isn't particularly close to and when Iran already has a volatile border with us?
The strangest thing about the Yemen crisis so far is this: slice through the spin and you're left with the puzzle of Pakistain behaving sensibly when the situation suggests it need not.
The basic facts about Yemen that matter here: it's not a sectarian conflict; Iran isn't that involved; the Saudis are being paranoid; the intra-Yemen conflict is only a small part of a wider Saudi-Iran power struggle; and it's hard to see Yemen -- this conflict at this time with so many others proliferating -- as a trigger for some imminent regional catastrophe.
If we provisionally -- provisionally -- accept that, then we're left with two of the Saudis closest allies here -- Nawaz and the boys -- resisting the fiercest of Saudi demands when acquiescing would be so much easier.
The Saudis have a new king. They have an inter-generational heir to the throne for the first time. They have a new defence minister. New leader, new team, new generation -- all just months old.
If the Saudis aren't exactly renowned for forgetting a slight, what's the incentive for Pakistain to resist a new Saudi leadership so publicly so early into the new leadership's life?
There are also, unusually, a surfeit of options for Pakistain. If we were to contribute to the aerial bombardment, it would be at the margins anyway. Nobody, not even the Saudis, expects Pakistain to lead when there're all those rich Arab countries with their squadrons of imported jets.
Or if Pakistain wants to contribute but doesn't want to bomb, there're all kinds of non-combat roles for planes in an aerial campaign -- Pakistain could be on site without doing any fighting.
Or if Pakistain doesn't want to get involved in the aerial fight, it could promise to send troops -- if an invasion were to materialise.
Of if Pakistain wants to send troops, but not wage aggression, it could pledge to send a few troops to the Saudi-Yemen border, driving up the cost of invasion for the Houthis.
Or if Pakistain wants to send troops, but not get into a firefight -- it could send troops to the capital, maybe a big military base, as a symbolic show of support.
Yet -- so far nothing but sensible talk of diplomatic solutions and political support.
What gives? Since when has Pakistain started doing the sensible thing in the face of a raging ally who it ordinarily dare not disappoint? The system seems to be winning -- so far.
Nawaz or the boys, it's still Pakistain, where a defensive doctrine reigns supreme. The framework for assessing and projecting power is essentially about the physical terrain of Pakistain and two of its borders.
Straying from that framework requires a colossal incentive, a geopolitical earthquake and a transcendental leadership willing to risk change -- none of which are present at the moment.
Sure, Pakistain may once have had kooky ideas about Central Asia and still fiddles around in Bangladesh, but for the most part it's all about Pakistain, East of Pakistain (India) and West of Pakistain (Afghanistan).
To change that, everything would have to change: the world outside, the system inside and the men who lead it. Like a Bhutto inspired by and responding to the dramatic changes of the late 1960s and early 1970s. Like a Zia taking advantage of a superpower invasion in our backyard under the umbrella of the Cold War.
Posted by: Fred ||
04/05/2015 00:00 ||
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In a process of profound importance, five Arab states in the Middle East have effectively ceased to exist over the last decade. The five states in question are Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Yemen and Libya. It is possible that more will follow.
The causes of their disappearance are not all the same. In two cases (Iraq, Libya) it was western military intervention which began the process of collapse. In another case (Lebanon) it is intervention from a Middle Eastern state (Iran) which is at the root of the definitive hollowing out of the state.
But in all these cases, the result has been remarkably similar -- it is the ceding of power from strong central authorities to a variety of political-military organizations, usually but not always organized around a shared sectarian or ethnic origin. The Middle East today is overshadowed by this process. We are living in the time of the militias.
Observe: in Syria, the clearest-cut case, the country is now effectively separated into separated ethnic and sectarian enclaves -- an area dominated by Bashar Assad in the south and west, an area dominated by the Sunni jihadi Islamic State group in the east, three non-contiguous Kurdish enclaves across the north, an area under the domination of al-Qaeda and its allies in the northwest and a small area in the southwest held jointly by al-Qaeda and a variety of other Sunni Arab militias supported by the west.
The important point to note here is that the area controlled by Assad (around 40% of the total area of Syria) does not essentially differ in its militia-nature from the other areas.
On the contrary, Assad has been able to survive because he is aligned with the force best designed to successfully exploit the fragmentation of Arab states and the emergence of militias seeking to impose their authority on the ruins of the state.
This force is Iran, and more specifically the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps and its Qods Force.
This force is a unique body. It exists for the precise purpose of building proxy paramilitary organizations to serve the Iranian regional interest. At a time like the present, the possession of such a force is an enormous advantage.
#1
So what it the Iranian plan? World domination? Maybe, but where are they planning to be in ten years? Twenty years? Maybe somebody should write a book!
Posted by: Bobby ||
04/05/2015 7:24 Comments ||
Top||
...What prompted this were clashes between two Australian groups, Reclaim Australia and No Room For Racism.
On the face of it it sounds like the nice narrative we are fed every time something like this happens. I haven't been following the international scene, and frankly it wouldn't even surprise me if Europe headed for nativism and blood-related nationality.
...I'll even accept that given that most of the programs of blood-nationality parties are to put it mildly socialism (but with the goodies going to a different group) it is accurate to call them fascists.
...However, Australia is not in Europe. And going on the self definition of the groups -- and only that. (Note to the idiots who are going to dig out quotes by some figure in Reclaim Australia saying that if you have a tan you should be killed -- I'm only going on the group's self-definition as stated in the article I read.)
So, the protests by Reclaim Australia were according to the article I read for: Around the country Reclaim Australia protesters held rallies to oppose "sharia law, halal tax and Islamisation", where they waved Australian flags and carried signs saying "Yes Australia. No Sharia".
Now you can think whatever you want of those goals, but I look at them and think "They want to keep a more adaptable and successful (in raw terms of giving people a better life) culture from being replaced with a medieval nightmare that makes women into slaves, gay people into corpses and denies people the ability to practice other religions/cultures without paying dearly for it, either with money or blood." (And please, don't tell me burkas are freeing, and gay people REALLY want to be thrown from buildings, and that the tax to be a person of the book but non-Muslim is REALLY freedom of religion. And don't try the nonsense that this only happens in rare and isolated places, either. It happens EVERY TIME that Islam gets the upper hand or the numbers.)
...I don't know if that's what Reclaim Australia wants, or if they're the more extreme form of "no mosques in Australia."
I don't care.
I don't care not because I don't see a difference between those positions (I do. I'd oppose the latter on principle) but because the group opposing them is not the "pro-islamicization group" or even the "no discrimination against religions group."
No, the group opposing them is No Room for Racism.
This means that the problem they have isn't even the problem that's actually being fought over.
In other words, this is like if you had a problem because your car blew a tire, and someone pulled over and started arguing what type of seats you should have.
It is also entirely predictable.
The left can't argue the actual problems and their actual causes, so it defaults to insane accusations and running around screaming what are (at least to them, but also to a vast portion of mal-educated young) trigger words: racism! Sexism! White supremacism!
...Anyway, to return to the point of this post -- yes, I have one -- the problem is that a lot of people on the left have evolved this bizarre theory of race/culture.
...[It goes] something like this "Language and costumes are tied to your race. Trying to get an immigrant to learn a new language/integrate in the culture he immigrated to is aggression, since you're supposed to keep your culture, because it's part of your race. To want you to change is racist."
...And that is what caught me about the confrontations in Australia. Not that they're clashing over muslims, no. That half of these people think race equals culture.
And that is the epistemological error that can put paid to Western Civilization unless it's combated every time we meet it. Ok, I begin to understand leftards objections to Zionism---Jews should be noble victims.
#1
...when they became successful, they lost their 'victim' status. Just like White Europeans who were tossed out or chased out of Europe to make their way in the New World from scratch. Not to be confused with Conquistadors out just for gold and glory.
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.
WHEN the British and Swedish ambassadors to Somalia recently queued up to meet a new member of the government appointed by the third prime minister in 18 months, the man they met was so new to Somali politics that a government adviser was unsure of his name. But it was not long before Mohamed Omar Arte, the incoming deputy prime minister, found himself in the midst of the bloody turmoil that remains a grim hallmark of politics in Somalia. On February 20th, two days after he met the Western envoys, he narrowly escaped with his life when suicide-bombers from the Shabab, Somalia’s extreme Islamist group linked to al-Qaeda, attacked a hotel in Mogadishu, the capital, during Friday prayers, killing 25 people (plus both bombers). On March 27th gunmen hit another Mogadishu hotel popular with politicians, killing at least 17 people.
