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irede123

Analysis: West, Regional Allies Paint Hezbollah as Major Threat while It Fighting ISIS ... - 0 views

en.abna24.com/...story.html

hezbollah west Israel

shared by irede123 on 08 May 16 - No Cached
  • irede123 on 08 May 16
     
    "Lebanese Hezbollah is fighting the ISIS terrorist group, but the West and Saudi Arabia apparently consider Hezbollah, not the ISIS, to be the major menace to their geopolitical interests."
wmulnea

Libya's civil war: That it should come to this | The Economist - 3 views

www.economist.com/...factional-chaos-it-should-come

shared by wmulnea on 11 Apr 15 - No Cached
  • It is split between a government in Beida, in the east of the country, which is aligned with the military; and another in Tripoli, in the west, which is dominated by Islamists and militias from western coastal cities
  • Benghazi is again a battlefield.
  • The black plumes of burning oil terminals stretch out over the Mediterranean.
  • ...69 more annotations...
  • Libya looked like the latest fragile blossoming of the Arab spring
  • Army commanders, mostly of Arab Bedouin origin, refused orders to shoot the protesters
  • the revolutionaries cobbled together a National Transitional Council (NTC) claiming to represent all of Libya
  • Volunteers from students to bank managers took up arms, joining popular militias and only sometimes obeying the orders of defecting army commanders trying to take control
  • In August Western bombing of government bases surrounding Tripoli cleared an avenue for the revolutionaries to take the capital.
  • Recognised abroad, popular at home and enjoying the benefits of healthy oil revenues—97% of the government’s income—the NTC was well placed to lay the foundations for a new Libya
  • he judges, academics and lawyers who filled its ranks worried about their own legitimacy and feared confrontation with the militias which, in toppling Qaddafi, had taken his arsenals for their own.
  • militia leaders were already ensconced in the capital’s prime properties
  • The NTC presided over Libya’s first democratic elections in July 2012, and the smooth subsequent handover of power to the General National Congress (GNC) revived popular support for the revolution.
  • Islamist parties won only 19 of 80 seats assigned to parties in the new legislature, and the process left the militias on the outside
  • The Homeland party, founded by Abdel Hakim Belhad
  • tried to advertise its moderation by putting an unveiled woman at the head of its party list in Benghazi
  • The incumbent prime minister, Abdurrahim al-Keib, a university professor who had spent decades in exile, fretted and dithered
  • He bowed to militia demands for their leaders to be appointed to senior ministries, and failed to revive public-works programmes
  • which might have given militiamen jobs
  • Many received handouts without being required to hand in weapons or disband, an incentive which served to swell their ranks
  • the number of revolutionaries registered with the Warriors Affairs Commission set up by the NTC was about 60,000; a year later there were over 200,000. Of some 500 registered militias, almost half came from one city, Misrata.
  • In May 2013 the militias forced parliament to pass a law barring from office anyone who had held a senior position in Qaddafi’s regime after laying siege to government ministries.
  • In the spring of 2014, Khalifa Haftar, a retired general who had earlier returned from two decades of exile in America, forcibly tried to dissolve the GNC and re-establish himself as the armed forces’ commander-in-chief in an operation he called Dignity
  • The elections which followed were a far cry from the happy experience of 2012. In some parts of the country it was too dangerous to go out and vote
  • Such retrenchment has been particularly noticeable among women. In 2011 they created a flurry of new civil associations; now many are back indoors.
  • Turnout in the June 2014 elections was 18%, down from 60% in 2012, and the Islamists fared even worse than before
  • Dismissing the results, an alliance of Islamist, Misratan and Berber militias called Libya Dawn launched a six-week assault on Tripoli. The newly elected parliament decamped to Tobruk, some 1,300km east
  • Grasping for a figleaf of legitimacy, Libya Dawn reconstituted the pre-election GNC and appointed a new government
  • So today Libya is split between two parliaments—both boycotted by their own oppositions and inquorate—two governments, and two central-bank governors.
  • The army—which has two chiefs of staff—is largely split along ethnic lines, with Arab soldiers in Arab tribes rallying around Dignity and the far fewer Misratan and Berber ones around Libya Dawn.
  • Libya Dawn controls the bulk of the territory and probably has more fighters at its disposal.
  • General Haftar’s Dignity, which has based its government in Beida, has air power and, probably, better weaponry
  • the Dignity movement proclaims itself America’s natural ally in the war on terror and the scourge of jihadist Islam
  • Libya Dawn’s commanders present themselves as standard-bearers of the revolution against Qaddafi now continuing the struggle against his former officers
  • Ministers in the east vow to liberate Tripoli from its “occupation” by Islamists, all of whom they denounce as terrorists
  • threatens to take the war to Egypt if Mr Sisi continues to arm the east. Sleeping cells could strike, he warns, drawn from the 2m tribesmen of Libyan origin in Egypt.
  • Yusuf Dawar
  • The struggle over the Gulf of Sirte area, which holds Libya’s main oil terminals and most of its oil reserves, threatens to devastate the country’s primary asset
  • And in the Sahara, where the largest oilfields are, both sides have enlisted ethnic minorities as proxies
  • ibya Dawn has drafted in the brown-skinned Tuareg, southern cousins of the Berbers; Dignity has recruited the black-skinned Toubou. As a result a fresh brawl is brewing in the Saharan oasis of Ubari, which sits at the gates of the al-Sharara oilfield, largest of them all.
  • Oil production has fallen and become much more volatile
  • oil is worth half as much as it was a year ago
  • The Central Bank is now spending at three times the rate that it is taking in oil money
  • The bank is committed to neutrality, but is based in Tripoli
  • Tripoli may have a little more access to cash, but is in bad shape in other ways
  • Fuel supplies and electricity are petering out
  • Crime is rising; carjacking street gangs post their ransom demands on Twitter
  • In Fashloum
  • residents briefly erected barricades to keep out a brigade of Islamists, the Nuwassi
  • “No to Islamists and the al-Qaeda gang” reads the roadside graffiti
  • Libya’s ungoverned spaces are growing,
  • Each month 10,000 migrants set sail for Europe
  • On January 3rd, IS claimed to have extended its reach to Libya’s Sahara too, killing a dozen soldiers at a checkpoint
  • The conflict is as likely to spread as to burn itself out.
  • the Western powers
  • have since been conspicuous by their absence. Chastened by failure in Afghanistan and Iraq, they have watched from the sidelines
  • Obama washed his hands of Libya after Islamists killed his ambassador
  • Italy, the former colonial power, is the last country to have a functioning embassy in Tripoli.
  • Even under Qaddafi the country did not feel so cut off
  • Dignity is supported not just by Mr Sisi but also by the United Arab Emirates, which has sent its own fighter jets into the fray as well as providing arms
  • The UAE’s Gulf rival, Qatar, and Turkey have backed the Islamists and Misratans in the west
  • If oil revenues were to be put into an escrow account, overseas assets frozen and the arms embargo honoured he thinks it might be possible to deprive fighters of the finance that keeps them fighting and force them to the table
  • Until 1963 Libya was governed as three federal provinces—Cyrenaica in the east, Fezzan in the south and Tripolitania in the west
  • The old divisions still matter
  • the marginalised Cyrenaicans harked back to the time when their king split his time between the courts of Tobruk and Beida and when Arabs from the Bedouin tribes of the Green Mountains ran his army
  • Tensions between those tribes and Islamist militias ran high from the start.
  • July 2011 jihadists keen to settle scores with officers who had crushed their revolt in the late 1990s killed the NTC’s commander-in-chief, Abdel Fattah Younis, who came from a powerful Arab tribe in the Green Mountains. In June 2013 the Transitional Council of Barqa (the Arab name for Cyrenaica), a body primarily comprised of Arab tribes, declared the east a separate federal region, and soon after allied tribal militias around the Gulf of Sirte took control of the oilfields.
  • In the west, indigenous Berbers, who make up about a tenth of the population, formed a council of their own and called on larger Berber communities in the Maghreb and Europe for support
  • Port cities started to claim self-government and set up their own border controls.
  • Derna—a small port in the east famed for having sent more jihadists per person to fight in Iraq than anywhere else in the world
  • opposed NATO intervention and insisted that the NTC was a pagan (wadani) not national (watani) council
  • Some in Derna have now declared their allegiance to Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the caliph of the so-called Islamic State (IS) in Syria and Iraq.
  • In December the head of America’s Africa command told reporters that IS was training some 200 fighters in the town.
fcastro2

Syria crisis: Russia and China step up warning over strike - BBC News - 0 views

www.bbc.com/...world-us-canada-23845800

syria russia china politics US

shared by fcastro2 on 08 Apr 15 - No Cached
  • Russia and China have stepped up their warnings against military intervention in Syria, with Moscow saying any such action would have "catastrophic consequences" for the region
  • The US and its allies are considering launching strikes on Syria in response to deadly attacks
  • The US said there was "undeniable" proof of a chemical attack
  • ...23 more annotations...
  • UN chemical weapons inspectors are due to start a second day of investigations in the suburbs of Damascus
  • UN team came under sniper fire as they tried to visit an area west of the city
  • US officials said there was "little doubt" that President Bashar al-Assad's government was to blame
  • Russian foreign ministry spokesman Alexander Lukashevich has called on the international community to show "prudence" over the crisis and observe international law.
  • Attempts to bypass the Security Council, once again to create artificial groundless excuses for a military intervention in the region are fraught with new suffering in Syria and catastrophic consequences for other countries of the Middle East and North Africa
  • US said it was postponing a meeting on Syria with Russian diplomats, citing "ongoing consultations" about alleged use of chemical weapons in Syria
  • The two sides had been due to meet in The Hague on Wednesday to discuss setting up an international conference on finding a political solution to the crisis
  • Western powers were rushing to conclusions about who may have used chemical weapons in Syria before UN inspectors had completed their investigation
  • Both the Syrian government and rebels have blamed each other for last Wednesday's attacks
  • Medical charity Medecins Sans Frontieres said three hospitals it supported in the Damascus area had treated about 3,600 patients with "neurotoxic symptoms", of whom 355 had died
  • UK is making contingency plans for military action in Syri
  • Earlier in the day, the UN convoy came under fire from unidentified snipers and was forced to turn back before resuming its journey
  • In the most forceful US reaction yet, US Secretary of State John Kerry on Monday described the recent attacks in the Damascus area as a "moral obscenity
  • Syrian government had something to hide
  • What we saw in Syria last week should shock the conscience of the world. It defies any code of moralit
  • President Obama believes there must be accountability for those who would use the world's most heinous weapons against the world's most vulnerable peopl
  • Analysts believe the most likely US action would be sea-launched cruise missiles targeting Syrian military installations.
  • the West had not produced any proof that President Assad's forces had used chemical weapons
  • some Western countries that military action against the Syrian government could be taken without a UN mandate
  • Mr Lavrov said the use of force without Security Council backing would be "a crude violation of international law
  • an international military response to the suspected use of chemical weapons would be possible without the backing of the UN
  • The UN Security Council is divided, with Russia and China opposing military intervention and the UK and France warning that the UN could be bypassed if there was "great humanitarian need".
  • if the West does not intervene to support freedom and democracy in Egypt and Syria, the Middle East will face catastrophe
  • fcastro2 on 08 Apr 15
     
    After Western powers suspected that the Syrian government used chemical weapons against the Syrian people, tensions grew against them and Russia, China, and Syria. The Eastern Powers believe that Western powers are overstepping their bounds for their need of power but the Western powers think that they need to interfere to help the people. 
fcastro2

Syria allies: Why Russia, Iran and China are standing by the regime - CNN.com - 1 views

www.cnn.com/...a-iran-china-russia-supporters

syria allies russia iran china middle east politics

shared by fcastro2 on 28 Jan 15 - No Cached
  • One has to do with economics; the other with ideology.
  • Russia is one of Syria's biggest arms suppliers
  • Syrian contracts with the Russian defense industry have likely exceeded $4 billion
  • ...29 more annotations...
  • Russia also leases a naval facility at the Syrian port of Tartu
  • Moscow also signed a $550 million deal with Syria for combat training jets
  • value of Russian arms sales to Syria at $162 million per year in both 2009 and 2010
  • Russia's key policy goal is blocking American efforts to shape the regio
  • Russia doesn't believe revolutions, wars and regime change bring stability and democracy
  • It believes humanitarian concerns are often used an excuse for pursuing America's own political and economic interests.
  • Putin's existential fear for his own survival and the survival of the repressive system that he and al-Assad represent
    • fcastro2
      fcastro2 on 28 Jan 15
       
      Putin is scared that the "west" will defeat Russia if Syria is defeated
  • not only driven by the need to preserve its naval presence in the Mediterranean, secure its energy contracts, or counter the West on 'regime change
  • al-Assad cannot lose because it means that one day he, Putin, might as well
  • The West handles the Islamic world the way a monkey handles a grenade," Russian Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin tweeted
  • Russia is a permanent member of the U.N. Security Council. It has the power to veto Security Council resolutions against the Syrian regime and has done so repeatedly over the past two years
  • religion and strategy.
  • Islamic Republic has provided technical help such as intelligence, communications and advice on crowd control and weapons as protests in Syria morphed into resistance
  • The last thing Iran wants now is a Sunni-dominated Syria -- especially as the rebels' main supporters are Iran's Persian Gulf rivals: Qatar and Saudi Arabi
  • proxy through which Iran can threaten Israel with an arsenal of short-range missiles
  • Iran counted on Syria as its only Arab ally during its eight-year war with Iraq. Iraq was Sunni-dominate
  • war between the front of hegemony and the front of resistance
  • Syrian government is a victim of international plots
  • Iran says the main objective of this plot is to make the region safer for Israe
  • Many believe Iran is Washington's greatest threat in the region, especially with its nuclear potential
  • the Americans will sustain damage like when they interfered in Iraq and Afghanistan
  • Syria's third-largest importer in 2010, according to data from the European Commission
  • maintain its financial tie
  • indicates that China sees Syria as an important trading hub
  • China has said foreign countries shouldn't meddle in Syria's internal affairs
  • Rather than siding with either Assad or the opposition and standing aside to 'wait and see,' Beijing is actively betting on both
  • China said it is firmly opposed to the use of chemical weapons and supports the U.N.'s chemical weapons inspectors.
  • It also said it wants a political solution for Syri
  • China is a permanent member of the U.N. Security Council. And like Russia, China has repeatedly blocked sanctions attempts against the Syrian regime
  • fcastro2 on 28 Jan 15
     
    Syria's allies, Russia, Iran, and China, all stand by them despite western powers opposing the Syrian government. There are different reasons to why these powers seem to stay with Syria such as Russia's ideologies, Iran's strategy, or China's trading. Either way, these government will stand by them until there is nothing left to lose. 
fcastro2

Syria's Assad says West wants to weaken Russia | Reuters - 0 views

www.reuters.com/...d-russia-idUSKBN0MN0GQ20150327

syria russia the west politics

shared by fcastro2 on 30 Mar 15 - No Cached
  • Syrian President Bashar al-Assad has accused the West of trying to weaken Russia by turning Ukraine into a puppet state, a tactic he said had also been used against his own country.
  • keep coming back to the fact that there is a connection between the Syrian crisis and what is happening in Ukraine
  • "Firstly because both countries are important for Russia, and secondly because the goal in both cases is to weaken Russia
  • ...4 more annotations...
  • The United States and the European Union have imposed economic sanctions on Russia over its role in the crisis in Ukraine.
  • Russia, a long-standing ally of Assad, denies sending troops and weapons to support separatists fighting government forces in east Ukraine
  • Assad will not attend, the president said those taking part should not lose sight of the main goal, clearly meaning restoring peace
  • Many Syrian opposition figures shunned the January talks, saying they would appear only at meetings that led to Assad's removal from power.
  • fcastro2 on 30 Mar 15
     
    Syria's President Assad claims that Western powers are trying to "weaken" Russia. Russia and Syria have been long time allies and so it is unclear what Russia will say to this. 
atownen

Israeli Soldiers Accidentally Kill Army Officer While Trying to Stop Attack - The New Y... - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...ile-trying-to-stop-attack.html

Palestine israel West Bank shooting

shared by atownen on 24 Feb 16 - No Cached
  • atownen on 24 Feb 16
     
    Here is another perspective issued today from the New York Times; stating an Israeli soldier accidentally shot an army officer on the West Bank while they were aiming at a "Palestinian assailant trying to attack the officer." This author quotes the strife on the border as a "scene of numerous Palestinian attacks against Israelis."
diamond03

This film will battle a global epidemic prevalent in Egypt: sexual harassment | Egyptia... - 0 views

egyptianstreets.com/...ent-in-egypt-sexual-harassment

film egyptian harassment women

shared by diamond03 on 01 Oct 14 - No Cached
micklethwait liked it
  • Egypt:
  • sexual harassment
  • ‘Creepers on the Bridge’,
  • ...46 more annotations...
  • feeling of intimidation
  • Cairo
  • experience whe
  • n walking down Egyptian streets,
  • , The People’s Girls
  • issue of sexual harassment
  • perfect time to create a documentary that will analyze the causes, provide alternatives to traditional thought and document women fighting back in creative ways,” explained 22-year-old Colette Ghu
  • “Because we’re both frequently in the street alone, we both experience high levels of stares daily, as well as verbal harassment,
  • sexual harassment is still taboo in Cairo
  • to walk outside or take public transportation,
  • don’t want to deal with the intimidation and anxiety.
  • the United States, Latin America, Europe, South Asia- we’ve experienced various levels of sexual harassment.
  • three people with different views of sexual harassment and their daily lives surrounding the issue,
  • three Egyptians to reveal the extent of sexual harassment in Egypt and to get a better understanding of the issue,
  • Esraa is a 25-year-old Egyptian woman
  • challenges social norms by performing in storytelling theater pieces about sexual harassment
  • participating in anti-sexual harassment protests and events.”
  • 8 out of 10 women experience sexual harassment in public transportation,
  • deters us
  • members of society open up about their own experiences and perspectives.”
  • 99 percent of women in Egypt have faced sexual harassment.
  • 2011 revolution had a big impact on the issue of sexual harassment,
  • positive and negative ways
  • unfortunately become more widespread,
  • lack of police
  • gives harassers a sense of immunity
  • more commonplace and accepted.
  • President Sisi
  • police presence in the streets has increased, and more harassers have been brought to justice
  • Egyptian women have reached their boiling point in recent years, and inspired by the revolution, they have become a lot more outspoken
  • critics of Islam often end up blaming misogyny on religion.
  • sexual harassment is not specific to one religion.
  • here remains a common misbelief in the West that Egyptian, as well as all Arab women, are oppressed.
  • women in Egypt have been able to do basically anything a man can do
  • work and have a career
  • degrees in higher education,
  • high leadership roles
  • product of the news cycle following the US invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan
  • societal pressures for women to focus on getting married and starting a family.
  • very similar to the ones women in the West
  • no way means that all Egyptian men are harassers,
  • Arab or Muslim-specific issue.
  • a worldwide problem.”
  • two meanings that it has in Arabic
  • well-mannered, cultured, respectable girl,
  • “When people blame victims of sexual harassment, they often argue that if only the girl was a ‘people’s girl’ then she wouldn’t get harassed. The name is also an ode to all the girls and women of Egypt.”
  • diamond03 on 01 Oct 14
     
    Filmmakers are filming a film that talks about the sexual harassment issue that occurring in Egypt. Ninety-nine percent of women in Egypt have faced sexual harassment. It also shares the common misbeliefs that people believe due to American news. 
allieggg

Davutoglu: Failure to support democracy led to ISIL Anadolu Agency - 0 views

www.aa.com.tr/...-support-democracy-led-to-isil

Davutoglu Turkey democracy middle east ISIL

shared by allieggg on 10 Oct 14 - No Cached
micklethwait liked it
  • The rise of the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant is caused by the world's failure to support democracy in the Middle East,
  • " ISIL now exists because we did not properly support the democratic transition processes in 2012, not becauseISIL is so strong or the Syrian and Iraqi people are aligned to ISIL-like radical acts."
  • "We welcomed the Arab Spring when it first began to flourish as we thought the EU and the U.S. would support and finance the Middle East just as they did for the wind of democracy in the Balkans,"
  • ...3 more annotations...
  • Davutoglu said countries like Poland and Romania now enjoy democracy due to finance from the EU but, he added, "no state came up to finance democracy in the Middle East."
  • Syria faces a terrorist threat instead of  democracy is because the world abandonedSyria.
  • "Islamic communities that have a deep-rooted culture of politics have the capacity, like any other nation and religion, to both keep democracy alive and improve it,” he added. “Neither Islam nor the world of Islam can be correlated with entities like ISIL."
  • allieggg on 10 Oct 14
     
    Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu spoke at the World Economic Forum about the world's lack of assistance in the transition to democracy in the Middle East and how that ultimately facilitated the birth of ISIL. He explains how a number of EU states were able to maneuver into the democratic realm with the assistance and guidance of the EU, illuminating the idea that the Middle East should be no different. Davutoglu condemns the west for abandoning Middle Eastern states in their dire time of need. While countries around the world supported the Arab Spring, they did nothing to support or finance it to success. He says it would be wrong to correlate the birth of ISIL with Islam, explaining how Islamic communities are perfectly capable of embracing democratic systems. However, assistance in its implementation is vital.
alarsso

To end Syria civil war, West must guarantee minorities' safety with peacekeeping force ... - 0 views

www.csmonitor.com/...safety-with-peacekeeping-force

civil war Syria religion minorities middle east revolution

shared by alarsso on 21 Apr 15 - No Cached
  • alarsso on 21 Apr 15
     
    If Western powers gaurantee support for minorites, they will no longer feel the necessity to support the Assad regime. Furthermore, if opposition agrees to allow exception to minorities supporting Assad and simply attack Assad, this could also have significant effects on the war development
mjumaia

The facts - and a few myths - about Saudi Arabia and human rights - 0 views

www.washingtonpost.com/...-saudi-arabia-and-human-rights

Saudi politics west misconceptions facts myths human rights Saudi Arabia

shared by mjumaia on 21 Apr 15 - No Cached
  • mjumaia on 21 Apr 15
     
    This article talks about what does the West get right about human rights in Saudi Arabia -- and what does it get wrong? Here's an outline of the facts, as well as the misconceptions in more details
allieggg

Egypt's Sissi Urges West to Support Libya - 0 views

www.voanews.com/...2528417.html

libya civil war US Intervention egypt ISIS politics war Sissi

shared by allieggg on 21 Nov 14 - No Cached
  • Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sissi called on the United States and Europe Thursday to help the Libyan army in its fight against Islamist militants now to save the country from requiring intervention on the scale of Iraq and Syria.
  • "When we deal with terrorism only in Iraq and Syria, Libya will begin to be an attractive region affecting the stability of ... Libya and its neighbors. We will need the same measures happening in Iraq and Syria to be taken in Libya," Sissi said in an interview with France 24.
  • "The international community -- Europe and the Americans -- must help the Libyan national army regain its position and combat terrorism in Libya to restore security and stability," he said.
  • ...3 more annotations...
  • "If we intervened directly, I would not hesitate to announce that. But all we have done so far is to help the Libyan national army, the Libyan parliament, and the Libyan government," he said.
  • Egypt is training anti-Islamist Libyan forces on its soil and sharing intelligence in a bid to stamp out militancy next door.
  • "There are no Egyptian armed forces in Libya," Sissi said. "We protect our borders from inside our borders."
  • andrea_hoertz on 21 Nov 14
     
    Sissi calls for internationals support on fighting Islamic power in Libya.
  • allieggg on 23 Nov 14
     
    The Voice of America reported President Sissi's call to the US and Europe to aid the Libyan army in their fight against ISIS, saving the country from requiring intervention on the scale of Iraq and Syria. Egypt has been training anti-Islamist forced on its own soil and sending them out to fight in Libya, but they have yet to intervene directly. He calls on the international community to help prevent further Islamic insurgency for the sake of stability throughout the region as a whole. 
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