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Ed Webb

Erdogan, Sultan of Jerusalem? - 0 views

www.al-monitor.com/...st-jerusalem-erdogan-katz.html

Jerusalem Jordan Israel Palestine Turkey Erdogan Ottomans neo-ottomanism opinion analysis

shared by Ed Webb on 17 Oct 19 - No Cached
  • No one who has visited Jerusalem over the past few years will be surprised by the preponderance of red Turkish flags with their crescent and star, fluttering over the city’s eastern Palestinian neighborhoods. These flags are just one visible manifestation of a major effort by the Turkish government to establish a presence in the Israeli capital. Investigative reports in the press, conducted over the last few years, have revealed the scope of Turkish activity in Jerusalem, which includes the renovation of homes, restoration of mosques and efforts to expose the residents of East Jerusalem to Turkish culture, including cooking workshops and Turkish-language classes. These efforts also include increasing involvement in the affairs of Al-Aqsa Mosque, as described by Ben Caspit in July 2018.
  • Turks have renovated Mamluk buildings, which they then pass off as Ottoman. “Apart from the city walls, built by Sultan Suleiman the Magnificent, there aren’t many Ottoman sites in Jerusalem. In contrast, the Mamluks invested quite a bit on construction in Jerusalem, and that’s good enough for Erdogan,” he told Al-Monitor. “It demonstrates his desire to flood Jerusalem with ties to the Ottoman Empire.”
  • Israel intends to revoke the head of TIKA’s diplomatic status in Jerusalem, effectively making his presence in Israel illegal. “The era of the Ottoman Empire is over. Turkey has no reason to be in Jerusalem,” said the Foreign Ministry in an especially bellicose statement. “[Turkish President Recep Tayyip] Erdogan’s declarations that Jerusalem belongs to all Muslims are absolutely baseless and ridiculous. Israel maintains sovereignty in Jerusalem, while ensuring freedom of worship for all religions. We will not allow anyone to interrupt this sovereignty.”
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  • “People wandering around East Jerusalem might think that they are visiting a Turkish city. There are voluminous amounts of flags, stickers and signage, and the Turkish presence is very obvious. This includes charitable activity. In winter, they distribute heaters, warm clothing and food stamps. Last Ramadan, they handed out $100 to all businesses in the Old City. They are involved in the educational system, they renovate buildings and they organize heavily subsidized and even free trips [from Turkey to Al-Aqsa Mosque]. As someone on the ground here, I am constantly surprised by the scope of this activity."
  • a neo-Ottoman policy that Erdogan has been promoting over the past few years. Its goal is to bolster Turkish control in Jerusalem
  • “As far as he is concerned, the fact that the Ottomans once ruled here means that he is no stranger to Jerusalem. He is also challenging Israeli sovereignty in the city. Turkish activity in Jerusalem is his way of engaging in the soft conquest of al-Quds [Jerusalem].”
  • Israel has decided to put an end to this Turkish involvement in Jerusalem affairs
  • Israeli experts estimate that another person particularly concerned about the situation is King Abdullah of Jordan, who has a special status in Jerusalem as “Protector of the Holy Sites.” The Foreign Ministry’s statement refers to these Jordanian concerns. “In accordance with the peace treaty with Jordan, the Jordanians have a special status at the Islamic holy sites in Jerusalem. As such, we will not allow Erdogan to interfere with this special status, as they are doing now,” reads the statement.
  • the growing presence of Turkey’s Directorate of Religious Affairs in the Temple Mount compound. They come with lots of money, and their efforts are already bearing fruit. Erdogan’s popularity among the Palestinians is skyrocketing, and the main person to suffer for that is Jordan’s King Abdullah. He cannot compete with the funds that the Turks are pouring in, while his rhetoric on behalf of the Palestinians pales in comparison to Erdogan’s stinging attacks.”
  • “Erdogan’s ultimate goal is Erdogan himself. He wants to become 'Sultan of all Muslims.' Unlike Iran, for example, which has no access to Jerusalem, Turkey does have access to the city. Israel allows him to operate on the ground and emblazon Jerusalem prominently on his personal banner. This positions him as the greatest Muslim leader in the world.”
  • “He wants to return to rule over all those lands that were once controlled by the Ottoman Empire. We are witnessing Turkish activity of this kind not only in the Middle East but in the Balkans and Caucasus too
  • Mordechai Goldman has served for the past few years as the diplomatic and military analyst of the ultra-Orthodox daily Hamevaser. He attended ultra-Orthodox rabbinical colleges and studied psychology at the Israeli Open University. He also participated in the national civil service program. Goldman lectures to ultra-Orthodox audiences on the diplomatic process and on the Israel Defense Forces and consults with companies in regard to the ultra-Orthodox sector.
Ed Webb

Recognizing Israeli settlements is about sovereignty, and that's a game-changer - 0 views

www.brookings.edu/...ignty-and-thats-a-game-changer

Israel US USA Palestine israelpalestine MEPP settlements law sovereignty

shared by Ed Webb on 02 Dec 19 - Cached
  • If the Trump administration endorses annexation, a position in line with recognizing the legality of settlements, then the framework of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict changes and the issues of sovereignty and political rights will become front and center.
  • Without question, the new U.S. stance on settlements undermines international law, which is clear on the illegality of an occupying power transferring its population into occupied territory. The applicability of this tenet of the Fourth Geneva Convention to Israel-Palestine has been upheld by near-universal international consensus since the occupation began in 1967, including by the U.N. Security Council and the International Court of Justice.
  • the opinion of a single state — even the most powerful one — does not alter the law itself. As Rupert Colville, the spokesman for the U.N. Commissioner on Human Rights, responded to the Trump administration announcement, “a change in the policy of one state does not modify existing international law nor its interpretation by the International Court of Justice and Security Council.” If the rest of the world continues to adhere to the principle that the settlements are illegal, the decision will likely do more to undermine U.S. standing and leadership than the Geneva Convention or the law itself.
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  • while settlements certainly represent the largest physical obstacle to the establishment of a Palestinian state, the Trump decision hardly changes anything on this front. The U.S. has consistently failed to take action against settlements in order to protect the prospect for the establishment of a Palestinian state. Even at the height of the peace process in the 1990s, the Clinton administration permitted continued settlement-building to the point that the settler population tripled despite ongoing negotiations. While various administrations, such as those of George H.W. Bush and Barack Obama, pushed back against settlements, their efforts were never sustained and settlement-building ultimately carried on.
  • if Israeli settlements are not illegal, and Israelis are able to rightfully settle the land under Israel’s political and military control, then what does that mean for the stateless Palestinians who also live there and for Israel’s 52-year rule over them? In other words, if it is not military occupation, which undoubtedly prohibits the type of settlement that Israel has engaged in, then it is something else and the world should demand that Israel clarify its position and intentions over the territory.
  • It is, in part, the limbo of endless occupation that has doomed the Palestinians to political purgatory, without a state of their own but without citizenship in any other state. It is what differentiates Palestinians from so many other ethnic groups that live as minorities in the ethnic-national states of others. Take the Kurds, for example, who lack a state of their own but who are at the very least citizens of Turkey, Syria, Iraq, Iran, and elsewhere.
  • This murkiness has also allowed Israel to gradually take physical possession of the land through a colonial process under the cover of temporary occupation, without having to offer political rights to the native inhabitants of the land who live side by side with Israeli settlers. Yet if Israel is the recognized sovereign, then it can’t take legal possession of the land without all of the inhabitants. If it doesn’t want the Palestinians, then the land needed to create a viable alternative political entity for them to fulfill their rights is needed. Israel simply cannot have it both ways.
  • While the Palestinian political leadership still fully embraces a two-state solution, the majority of public opinion has shifted away from it. That could be a game changer, especially as the Netanyahu-led government in Israel looks ready to begin annexing the settlements, at the very minimum.
Ed Webb

How Biden Kept Screwing Up Iraq, Over and Over and Over Again - 0 views

www.thedailybeast.com/q-over-and-over-and-over-again

USA US diplomacy military politics analysis opinion Iraq Afghanistan

shared by Ed Webb on 15 Dec 19 - No Cached
  • Reviewing Biden’s record on Iraq is like rewinding footage of a car crash to identify the fateful decisions that arrayed people at the bloody intersection. He was not just another Democratic hawk navigating the trauma of 9/11 in a misguided way. He didn’t merely call his vote for a disastrous war part of “a march to peace and security.” Biden got the Iraq war wrong before and throughout invasion, occupation, and withdrawal. Convenient as it is to blame Bush—who, to be clear, bears primary and eternal responsibility for the disaster—Biden embraced the Iraq war for what he portrayed as the result of his foreign policy principles and persisted, most often in error, for the same reasons. 
  • “I think the vast majority of the foreign policy community thinks [my record has] been very good.” That will be important context should Biden become president. He’s the favorite of many in Democratic foreign policy circles who believe in resetting the American geopolitical position to what it was the day before Trump was elected, rather than considering it critical context for why Trump was elected. 
  • National Democrats embraced the war on terrorism with enthusiasm and, with few exceptions, were disinclined to challenge Bush on foreign policy even as that foreign policy became more militant and extreme
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  • Biden’s hearings highlighted the dangers of occupation, such as the basic uncertainty around what would replace Saddam Hussein, as well as the bloody, long, and expensive commitment required to midwife a democratic Iraq. “In many ways, those hearings were remarkably prescient about what was to happen,” said Tony Blinken, Biden’s longtime aide on the committee and a deputy secretary of state in the Obama administration. “He and [GOP Sen. Richard] Lugar talked about not the day after but the decade after. If we did go in, they talked about the lack of a plan to secure any peace that followed the intervention.”
  • But the balance of expert testimony concerned guessing at Saddam’s weapons program, the pragmatic questions of invading, and the diplomatic legwork of an action whose justice—if not necessarily its wisdom—was presumed
  • the regnant foreign policy consensus in America: Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction and had sealed his fate by doing so. It was an enormous factual mistake born out of an inability to see that Saddam believed that transparent disarmament would spell his doom at the hands of Iran. This misapprehension led advocates to accept that the U.S.—preferably with others, but alone if necessary—was justified or even obligated to get rid of Saddam
  • Bush’s secretary of state, Colin Powell, convinced the White House to attempt securing United Nations support for the war. It was a cynical maneuver: the Security Council could accept additional weapons inspections but not war; Bush could claim he tried for an internationalist solution before invading unilaterally. Its primary effect was to legitimize the war in the eyes of uncomfortable congressional Democrats who had made the tactical error of disputing the war for insufficient multilateralism rather than arguing it was wrong
  • For Biden, the critical point, “what this is about,” was America daring to “enforce” U.N. Security Council disarmament resolutions that the U.N. was saying did not justify war. When the world stood against America, in the forum Biden considered critical and Bush considered pretextual, America would simply act in the world’s name. He approvingly quoted the infamous Henry Kissinger: “As the most powerful nation in the world, the United States has a special, unilateral capacity, and indeed obligation, to lead in implementing its convictions, but it also has a special obligation to justify its actions by principles that transcend the assertions of preponderance of power.” America’s confidence in its nobility was, in the end, all the justification it required. 
  • Biden acknowledged that the “imminence and inevitability” of the threat Iraq posed was “exaggerated,” although that recognition was irrelevant to both his reasoning and his vote. He performed an end-zone dance over Bush advisers who favored what he called the doctrine of preemption—a euphemism for wars of aggression—as if his vote did not authorize exactly the preemptive war those advisers wanted. The trouble Biden saw was that elevating preemption to a foreign policy “doctrine” would grant “every nation an unfettered right of preemption.” Left unsaid was that it would be better for America to keep that unfettered right for itself.
  • Biden was unprepared to break from prevention, which is always the prerogative of hegemonic powers. Boxed in, he continued to argue that the trouble was Bush elevating preemption to centrality in foreign policy, and fretted that predatory states would cite that “doctrine” to prey on weaker ones. He neglected to see that all those states needed was the example of the Iraq war itself. Eleven years later, when Biden was vice president, Vladimir Putin cited Iraq as a reason the U.S. had no standing to criticize him for invading Ukraine. 
  • Iraq was an abstraction to Biden—as it was, ironically, to the neoconservatives Biden had criticized—a canvas on which to project theories of American power
  • Nothing that followed went the way Biden expected. Bush did not share Biden’s distinction between the U.N. weapons-inspection process and the invasion. Iraq did not passively accept its occupation. And Biden did not reap the political benefit of endorsing the war that seemed so obvious to the Democratic consultant class in the autumn of 2002. 
  • Biden praised the leadership of the Coalition Provisional Authority, a shockingly corrupt and incompetent organization. Its chief, Jerry Bremer, was “first-rate,” Biden said mere months after Bremer disbanded the Iraqi army, the greatest gift America could have given the insurgency
  • Rebuilding Iraq’s police force was left to former NYPD Commissioner Bernard Kerik, whom Biden called “a serious guy with a serious team.” Iraq’s police would soon become indistinguishable from sectarian death squads; Kerik would soon plead guilty to tax fraud and other federal corruption charges
  • By the next summer, with Iraq in flames, Biden continued his misdiagnosis. The original sin wasn’t the war itself, it was Bush’s stewardship—the same stewardship Biden praised in 2002. “Because we waged a war in Iraq virtually alone, we are responsible for the aftermath virtually alone,” he thundered at the 2004 Democratic convention. The intelligence “was hyped to justify going to war,” Biden continued, causing “America’s credibility and security [to] have suffered a terrible blow.” Yet Biden made no call for withdrawal. It was easier to pretend that Bush was waging a different war than the one he empowered Bush to wage. 
  • The U.S., unable to win the war it chose, would be better off reshaping the map of Iraq into something that better suited it. The proposal was a natural outgrowth of viewing Iraq as an abstraction. Now that Iraq had undermined American power, Iraq would be subject to a kind of dismemberment, a theoretically cleaner problem to solve than a civil war or a weak client state. In September 2007, Biden prevailed upon his fellow senators to endorse his proposal on a staggering 75-23 vote. There was no support for the idea among actual Iraqis outside Kurdistan, but they were beside the imperial point.
  • 2007 saw Biden’s most valorous act on Iraq. With the war a morass, Biden secured $23 billion, far more than the Pentagon requested, to buy Mine Resistant Ambush Protected (MRAP) vehicles, whose hull design proved more survivable against the insurgency’s improvised bombs. Replacing insufficiently armored Humvees with MRAPs was “a passion,” he said. While the number of lives MRAPs saved over the course of the program’s $45 billion lifespan has been disputed, the Pentagon estimated in 2012 that over 2,000 service members are alive today because of the vehicle. Biden counted securing the funding for the MRAP among his greatest congressional achievements.
  • Barack Obama had opposed the Iraq war, but was hardly afflicted with the “distrust of the use of American power” that Biden feared in 2004. Selecting Biden as his vice president laundered Biden’s reputation. No longer was Biden the man whose faith in American exceptionalism had driven the U.S. into a morass. He was the lovable uncle in aviators who washed his metaphorical Trans Am on the White House lawn. Obama gave him responsibility for a three-year project of U.S. withdrawal, one that Biden considers an accomplishment. 
  • Biden and other U.S. officials appeared at times dangerously unconcerned about Maliki’s consolidation of power that once again marginalized Sunni Iraq, which the war had already proven would give jihadis the opportunity they needed
  • Biden reflected America’s schizophrenic attitude toward ending post-9/11 wars, in which leaving a residual force amidst an unsettled conflict does not count as continuing a war.
  • “I’ll bet you my vice presidency Maliki will extend the SOFA,” the Times quoted him. Instead, the following year, the Iraqi parliament did no such thing
  • Biden is the last of the pre-Obama generation of Democratic foreign policy grandees who enabled the Iraq war. John Kerry and Hillary Clinton both lost their presidential bids, saddled in both cases with the legacy of the war they supported
  • A President Biden is likely to find himself a man out of time. Writing in The Guardian, David Adler and Ben Judah recently described Biden as a “restorationist” in foreign policy, aiming at setting the American geopolitical clock back to what it was before Trump took office. Yet now an emergent China, a resurgent Russia, and the ascent of nationalism and oligarchy across Europe, India, and South America have fragmented the America-centric internationalist order that Biden represents. While Trump has accelerated these dynamics, he is far less responsible for them than is the martial post-9/11 course of U.S. foreign policy that wrecked itself, most prominently in Iraq.
Ed Webb

U.S. bars former Saudi diplomat in Turkey from entering U.S. over Khashoggi murder - Re... - 0 views

www.reuters.com/...khashoggi-murder-idUSKBN1YE20Y

USA US diplomacy KSA Saudi Yemen politics journalist

shared by Ed Webb on 11 Dec 19 - Cached
  • The United States on Tuesday barred from entering the country Mohammed al Otaibi, the former Saudi consul general in Istanbul in October 2018, when Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi was killed there, the U.S. State Department said.
  • The United States has deployed additional American military forces to the kingdom to bolster its defenses after the Sept. 14 attack on its oil facilities, which Washington and Riyadh have blamed on Iran. Many members of the U.S. Congress, however, have questioned the longstanding U.S.-Saudi security alliance and backed several efforts - which have failed so far - to stop Trump from selling arms to the kingdom without congressional approval or providing support to the Saudi-led military coalition fighting in Yemen.
  • Otaibi previously was the subject of a U.S. asset freeze for his alleged role in Khashoggi’s death. The designation also bars his family members from entering the United States.
Ed Webb

Turkish troops in Syria threatened at Idlib outposts - 0 views

www.al-monitor.com/...utposts-came-under-threat.html

Turkey Syria Russia Iran war military

shared by Ed Webb on 30 Dec 19 - Cached
  • The Syrian army began to advance south of Idlib on Nov. 14 without announcing any official operation. Assad's forces took the villages of Garibe, Luveybide, Tel Kineze, Musherife, Um al-Khalil and Zarzur from Nov. 14-23. Although it is a small area, it was vital in paving the way for the current operation. In this second wave, Russia employed a method it had not previously used: Airplanes and missiles attacked refugee camps inhabited only by civilians who had not even been involved in the conflict zone and had fled.
  • On Dec. 19, Syrian authorities announced the start of the operation called “Dawn of Idlib 2.” This operation has several linked strategies. The first is to control the critical M5 and then the M4 highway to isolate Idlib's city center, currently held by Hayat Tahrir al-Sham and some Turkish-backed armed groups. The second goal is to expel Sunni armed groups, their families and civilians from the Idlib region to Turkish-controlled areas in the north. The next move will be to eradicate Sunni opposition in the region
  • Assad’s forces could capture almost 20% of opposition-controlled areas in northwest Syria in very short order
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  • when Ankara changed its center of gravity from northwest to northeast with Operation Peace Spring, it caused significant operational, intelligence and logistic setbacks for the opposition. Local sources note the opposition did not resist strongly along the front line because Ankara didn't support it.
  • Ankara is determined to keep Turkish soldiers in northwest Syria to remain in the game. With the current pace of operations, besieged Turkish soldiers could be used as bargaining chips against Ankara, though Turkish officials don’t believe this is likely.
  • “No matter what the risks may be, we cannot withdraw our soldiers before a political compromise is reached,” a security official with close knowledge of the matter told Al-Monitor when asked why vulnerable Turkish outposts haven't been evacuated
  • Russian and Syrian air forces have combined their attempts to strike civilian settlements. This situation increases civilian movement, which in turn leads to a large wave of internal migration
  • a high risk that tens of thousands of refugees will flee to the Turkish-controlled northern areas and into Turkey.
Ed Webb

Washington on the spot as its Syrian Kurd allies are drawn into PKK-KDP fight - Al-Moni... - 0 views

www.al-monitor.com/...es-sdf-pkk-kdp-fight-iraq.html

Kurds Iraq Syria Turkey PKK KDP SDF YPG military

shared by Ed Webb on 26 Dec 20 - Cached
  • Tensions between the Kurdistan Democratic Party of Iraq (KDP) and the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) have sharply escalated amid claims that a PKK-linked Syrian militia that is backed by the United States attacked Iraqi Kurdish peshmerga forces
  • The PKK-affiliated Kurdistan Communities Union countered by issuing a statement accusing the KDP of spreading “dirty propaganda.”   “Such a misleading propaganda legitimizes policies adopted by the Turkish State, that aims at extermination of the Kurdish people, and poses grave dangers to the future of our people,''
  • two days after a peshmerga fighter was killed in a separate clash between PKK and KDP fighters in the mountainous Amedi region of Dahuk province, which borders Turkey and Syria
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  • Tensions between the KDP and the PKK have been rising since the summer, when KDP forces deployed in Zine Warte, a strategic mountain pass linking the PKK’s main bases in the Qandil mountains along the Iran-Iraq border to valleys accessing the north and south. The move came as Turkey, which has thousands of forces deployed across Iraqi Kurdistan, launched a large-scale land and air offensive against the PKK. The operations, now slowed down by unfavorable winter weather, are part of a broader campaign to encircle and cut off the PKK’s strongholds in Amedi, Qandil and Yazidi-dominated Sinjar near the Syria border from one another.
  • The KDP has repeatedly called on both Turkey and the PKK to carry their fight elsewhere as Kurdish civilians continue to get killed in Turkish drone strikes, but to no effect.
  • An SDF source who declined to be identified by name denied KRG allegations that the Syrian Kurdish force was facilitating the passage of YPG and PKK fighters into Sinjar. “These claims aren’t true and the Iraqis know that,”
  • Iraqi Kurdistan’s Fish Khabur border crossing to northeast Syria is the main supply line for incoming humanitarian aid and for military and logistical supplies for coalition forces based in an area run by Syrian Kurds. The KDP is the dominant force on the Iraqi side of the frontier. Should relations between the KDP and the SDF deteriorate, that access might be compromised for the 700 to 1,000 mainly American forces deployed across the border in Syria.
  • An Iraqi analyst who closely monitors the Kurdish region said in emailed comments to Al-Monitor that the KDP sees Kobane “as an extension of the PKK in some way. At the same time [Kobane] has with the support of the Americans been able to establish control over the Syrian side [of the common border] and reduce the influence of the KDP in that area, which is something [the KDP] doesn’t like.”
  • PKK source in the Iraqi Kurdistan region argued, however, that the root of the current tensions was Turkey, whose continued repression of its own large Kurdish minority is bloodily spilling over its borders into Syria and Iraq. “The KDP is not exercising its own will, but that of Turkey, because of its [economic] dependency on Turkey,” he said. Kurdistan’s oil, a main source of income, flows through a pipeline to Turkish export terminals on the Mediterranean Sea.
Ed Webb

Turkey aims to rid itself of the shackles imposed by energy imports - Middle East Monitor - 0 views

www.middleeastmonitor.com/kles-imposed-by-energy-imports

Turkey energy gas mediterranean BlackSea economy

shared by Ed Webb on 19 Sep 20 - No Cached
  • Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan announced in Istanbul that the Fatih drilling ship has discovered reserves of 320 billion cubic metres of natural gas in the Black Sea, and that Turkey will start using this in 2023
  • Turkey depends on imports for its oil and gas requirements. Last year, consumption of natural gas in the country was 44.9 billion cubic metres, and 99 per cent of this came from countries such as Russia, Iran and Azerbaijan. The gas discovered by the Fatih will reduce this total dependence on foreign energy supplies and strengthen Ankara’s position in energy deals
  • Turkish research and exploration vessels are confident that new fields will be discovered, helping Turkey to move from being an energy importer to an exporter.
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  • In 2011, Turkey only had the dated Piri Reis seismic survey vessel; today it has five large and advanced ships working in the Black and Mediterranean Seas. Two are seismic survey ships — the Oruc Reis and the RV Barbaros — with three drilling ships: Fatih, Yavuz and Kanuni. While the Fatih is operating in the Black Sea, the others are in the Mediterranean
  • Turkey’s lack of energy resources has been a weak point for the economy
Ed Webb

Warming Temperatures & Decades of Oil Spills Cause Irreversible Damage to the Persian G... - 0 views

www.ipsnews.net/...reversible-damage-persian-gulf

gulf pollution sustainability environment extinction water

shared by Ed Webb on 19 Sep 20 - Cached
  • According to estimates by experts, pollution levels in the Persian Gulf are 47 times higher than the world’s average and are steadily increasing. The 600-mile body of water that is also known as the Arabian Gulf currently has 34 oilfields with more than 800 wells. In addition, roughly 85% of the oil extracted in the Gulf countries is exported – 40% of the world export of crude oil and around 15% of the world’s total export of refined products come from the region – and more than half of all the oil is carried by ships. It is estimated that approximately 25,000 tanker movements sail in and out of the Strait of Hormuz, the only sea passage that connects the Persian Gulf to the open sea. Accidental spilling is unavoidable and, on average, 100–160 thousand tons of oil and oil products end up in the Gulf every year.
  • In 2017, ScanEx and the Institute of Oceanology of the Russian Academy of Sciences began conducting the pilot project on the satellite monitoring of the state of the water of the Persian Gulf. The results of the research confirmed the severe levels of oil pollution in the gulf waters and the damage, some of it which have been irreversible, on its marine life. “In addition to military-led pollution, other issues such as warming waters due to climate change and the increasing saline levels due to desalination efforts by countries in the Gulf area aggressively worsening marine productivity and habitats,” says George Stacey, an analyst working with Norvergence, an environmental advocacy NGO.
  • a combination of human activities was pushing at least 35 per cent of the fauna in the Gulf waters to extinction in the next 60 years.
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  • Fisheries of Bahrain, with a relatively large fishing industry, and Iran, with the highest catch and fewer employment alternatives due to sanctions, are pointed out to be particularly vulnerable
  • A lot of the damage done in the past few decades cannot be reversed completely but it is not too late to prioritize the sustainability of the marine ecosystems of the gulf waters right now because any damages to it will trickle down to impact the communities living on its coasts and reverse years of development and advancements.”
Ed Webb

Peter Schwartzstein | Climate Change and Water Woes Drove ISIS Recruiting in Iraq - 2 views

pschwartzstein.com/...-drove-isis-recruiting-in-iraq

Iraq Syria Turkey water agriculture economy ISIS extremists recruitment

shared by Ed Webb on 14 Nov 17 - No Cached
  • With every flood or bout of extreme heat or cold, the jihadists would reappear, often supplementing their sales pitches with gifts. When a particularly vicious drought struck in 2010, the fifth in seven years, they doled out food baskets. When fierce winds eviscerated hundreds of eggplant fields near Kirkuk in the spring of 2012, they distributed cash. As farming communities limped from one debilitating crisis to another, the recruiters—all members of what soon became the Islamic State—began to see a return on their investment.
  • By the time the Islamic State (also known as ISIS) seized this swath of Iraq—along with most of the country’s west and north—in a brutal summer-long blitzkrieg in 2014, few locals were surprised to see dozens of former fertilizer market regulars among its ranks.
  • Across rural Iraq and Syria, farmers, officials, and village elders tell similar stories of desperate farmhands swapping backhoes for assault rifles. Already battered by decades of shoddy environmental policies, which had hobbled agriculture and impoverished its dependents, these men were in no state to navigate the extra challenges of climate change. And so when ISIS came along, propelled in large part by sectarian grievances and religious fanaticism, many of the most environmentally damaged Sunni Arab villages quickly emerged as some of the deep-pocketed jihadists’ foremost recruiting grounds.
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  • ISIS appears to have attracted much more support from water-deprived communities than from their better-resourced peers
  • Hussein torched some of southern Iraq’s most bountiful date plantations for fear that Iranian saboteurs might use them as cover to attack oil facilities around Basra. Where once 12 million palm trees stood, there’s now just miles of dusty scrubland laced with oil spills
  • Years of below average rains in the Kurdish region and Nineveh governorate, the only parts of Iraq where rain-fed agriculture was historically possible, had increased the country’s dependence on the Euphrates and Tigris, the Fertile Crescent’s two great rivers. At the same time, upstream Turkey and Iran were relentlessly damming them and their tributaries. Turkey has built over 600 large dams, including dozens of major ones near the Iraqi and Syrian borders. The Tigris and Euphrates’ combined flow in southern Iraq has subsequently shrunk so much that the Persian Gulf now barrels up to 45 miles upriver at high tide (the rivers used to project freshwater up to 3 miles out to sea).
  • the jihadists expertly exploited the desperation in Iraq’s agricultural heartland by rationalizing its inhabitants’ woes. They spread rumors that the Shia-dominated government was delaying crop payments and cutting off water to Sunni farmers. In fact, the lack of rain wasn’t due to climate change, but really a man-made ploy designed to drive Sunni landowners from their rich fertile fields, their emissaries suggested. Broke and unable to deal with their fast changing environment, many farmers ate it up.
  • By 2011, much of the Iraqi countryside was in desperate financial straits. Some 39 percent of people in rural areas were living in poverty, according to the World Bank. That’s two and a half times the country’s urban rate. Almost half lacked safe drinking water. The problems were so devastating in 2012-13 that tens of thousands of villagers ditched their fields altogether, preferring to try their luck in the slum districts of nearby cities instead.
  • water was becoming a resource that in some parts of Iraq only wealthier landowners could afford
  • When severe water shortages killed off countless livestock in 2011-12, jihadists descended on the animal markets to size up the frantic farmers, many of whom were trying to sell off their remaining cows and sheep before they too succumbed to drought. “They just watched us. We were like food on the table to them,”
  • After several years of energetic groundwater extraction near the oil refining town of Baiji, Samir Saed’s two wells ran dry in early 2014, forcing him to lay off the two young men he employed as farm laborers. Jobless and angry, he suspects they soon joined ISIS
  • Some 39 percent of those polled in Salahaddin cited drought as a reason for their displacement. Studies from neighboring Syria, large parts of which enjoy similar conditions to northern and western Iraq, suggest that anthropogenic climate change has tripled the probability of long, debilitating droughts.
  • The jihadists adopted scorched earth tactics as they were beaten back, laying waste to hundreds of thousands of acres of prime farmland. And so for returning farmers, climate change and shoddy governance are now among the least of their worries. ISIS fighters ripped up buried irrigation pipes to mold makeshift mortars. They poisoned wells, blew up water canals, and carted off everything that was of any value, notably generators, tractors, and water pump parts.
  • More or less broke after the oil price crash, the Iraqi state can’t afford to pay farmers for crops they’ve delivered to state silos, let alone cover the multi-billion dollar agricultural clean up bill
  • Turkey has almost finished building the Ilisu Dam, which threatens to further cut the Tigris’ flow when it comes online, probably next year. Hotter temperatures are evaporating more and more surface water—up to six feet worth in Iraq’s lakes every year, according to Nature Iraq, a local NGO. As Baghdad’s relations with the upstream Kurdish region deteriorate, farmers might once more bear the brunt of the dispute. Kurdish authorities have cut off water to mostly Arab areas on several occasions in the past
  • If Iraq can’t get a grip on its crumbling environment, the next war might not be far off.
Ed Webb

Gulf crisis sees new 'fake news' flurry online - 0 views

news.yahoo.com/s-flurry-online-070222817.html

Qatar KSA Saudi UAE socialmedia intermediate propaganda disinformation

shared by Ed Webb on 02 Jun 20 - Cached
  • In recent weeks, pro-Saudi Twitter accounts have been systematically spreading rumours of unrest in Qatar, AFP analysis of hundreds of tweets and twitter interactions shows.Many of the accounts amplifying the rumours had profile images of the Saudi leadership, mentioned them in their handles and retweeted or liked material featuring the royal family or gave their location as inside the kingdom.
  • "Anyone spreading this news is technically breaking Saudi law, it's illegal to spread rumours," Owen Jones of Qatar's Hamad bin Khalifa University told AFP."In order to be high-profile and get away with it, then it has to have the tacit approval of the regime."
  • Saudi observers say the kingdom itself is a victim of fake news alleged to originate from Qatar and its allies Turkey and Iran.The UAE, Saudi's principal ally, has also been the target of online disinformation campaigns, including one claiming Abu Dhabi's Foreign Minister Abdullah bin Zayed had been assassinated, which Abu Dhabi blamed on Qatar.
Ed Webb

UN warns of 'ecological disaster' in Houthi-controlled Red Sea area | Arab News - 0 views

www.arabnews.com/...middle-east

Yemen oil environment disaster UN humanrights water RedSea

shared by Ed Webb on 15 Nov 20 - Cached
  • UN human rights experts have demanded access to an abandoned oil tanker off the coast of Yemen that say poses a risk of causing an “ecological catastrophe” in the Red Sea. The tanker, FSO Safer, lies in waters controlled by the Iran-backed Houthis near the port of Hodeidah, where it currently holds an estimated 1.1 million barrels of oil. The ship, launched in 1976, is decaying rapidly after being abandoned in 2015 when its engine room flooded with seawater.
  • relevant permits from local authorities in the Houthi-controlled area have not been granted
  • “It is vital that a UN technical team be permitted to board the FSO Safer if we are to have any hope of preventing the threat of a spill that could be four times worse than the historic Exxon Valdez spill in Alaska in 1989,” said Marcos Orellana, UN special rapporteur on toxics and human rights.
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  • “If this ship were to break up, a spill could decimate livelihoods of local coastal communities, biodiversity in the region, and heavily impact shipping routes in the Red Sea,”
  • David Boyd, special rapporteur for human rights and environment, said: “An oil spill would harm the rights to life, health and a healthy environment for some 1.6 million Yemenis.”
Ed Webb

The 'peace deal' will not break Bahraini-Palestinian solidarity | Middle East | Al Jazeera - 0 views

www.aljazeera.com/...ahraini-palestinian-solidarity

Bahrain Palestine Israel israelpalestine UAE US USA repression opinion history

shared by Ed Webb on 29 Sep 20 - No Cached
  • On September 11, 2020, the Bahraini regime announced it was normalising relations with the Palestinians’ oppressor – Israel. This brought the people of Bahrain and the people of Palestine ever closer in their experience of subjugation.
  • Gulf countries already had informal exchanges with Israel, including the purchase of military and surveillance technology to suppress local populations. Their friendly relationships were a badly kept secret. Rather it was the audacity of these ruling elites to make public the relations which go against the will of the majority of people in the Gulf that caused so much public anger.
  • there have been protests in Bahrain, and even some supporters of the regime have joined the opposition in denouncing the deal
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  • how can the normalisation of relations between the UAE, Bahrain and Israel be considered a peace deal when the three parties had never been at war? What peace is there in the continuation of an apartheid occupation of the Palestinian lands and the oppression of the Bahraini people?
  • In the Gulf, a new discourse has been promoted in the government-owned media and in political speeches and religious sermons that the biggest threat to the region and the rest of the Arab states is Iran, not Israel, and that Israel is actually an ally against the Iranian threat.
  • This “threat” narrative is used to further certain political interests; in the case of Bahrain, it is used to prop up the ruling regime and its absolute political and economic control over the country.
  • The use of past and present marginalisation and injustices Middle Eastern (Mizrahi) Jews have suffered to counter criticism of Israel’s subjugation of the Palestinians is the latest trend in Israeli hasbara. Of course, this narrative conveniently ignores the relentless oppression of Mizrahi Jews by Israel’s ruling Ashkenazi elite (Israeli Jews originating from Europe).
  • these new economic opportunities will mean more purchases of weaponry and military technology by these regimes and the import of Israeli repression tactics, which will only further entrench their tyranny and authoritarianism
  • another act of oppression against the Bahrainis, reminding them that they have no say, no freedom and no rights in their own country
  • The ruling family, which launched an attack from modern-day Qatar and took over Bahrain by force in 1783, was only able to maintain its rule through the use of force against local resistance movements and the protection of the British empire. More recently, since the 1920s, Bahrainis have had civil rights uprisings almost every decade, also naming them intifadas, in an attempt to bring down the absolute monarchy. The monarchy, in turn, has used naturalisation of foreigners to build a loyal army and police force of non-Bahrainis, while simultaneously stripping the Indigenous population of their citizenship in an attempt to change the demographics of the country.
  • The monarchy in Bahrain also moved Indigenous populations from certain parts of the country, and built either literal or symbolic barriers between Sunni and Shia areas, with the Shia ones being starkly more impoverished, less accessible and with fewer government services. There are far too many similarities in the oppression of the Bahraini and Palestinian people that renders it impossible for the two populations to not recognise themselves in each other.
  • Many Palestinians do realise that these normalisation deals do not reflect the will of the people, but of their ruling elites, which they have not elected. They themselves are oppressed by their leaders – by the authoritarian Palestinian Authority in the West Bank and Hamas authorities in Gaza
  • At the end of the day, it will be up to the Bahrainis and the Palestinians to maintain their struggles, to continue fighting while holding each other’s hands in solidarity. As the Palestinian prisoners of conscience wrote to Bahraini prisoner of conscience Abdul-Hadi al-Khawaja in an exchange of solidarity while on his hunger strike in 2012: “Your freedom is tied to our freedom and our freedom is tied to your freedom.”
Ed Webb

A New 'Quartet' for Israeli-Palestinian Peace | United States Institute of Peace - 1 views

www.usip.org/...rtet-israeli-palestinian-peace

diplomacy MEPP France Germany Jordan Egypt Palestine Israel israelpalestine analysis

shared by Ed Webb on 22 Jul 20 - Cached
  • On July 7, Egypt, France, Germany and Jordan joined to oppose Israel’s declared intent to annex territory that it has occupied since 1967. Vital actors, including Arab states and the European Union, have been unable to stop the march toward annexation and the attendant risks of renewed violence. Yet a partnership of key Arab and European states—the latest in a string of diplomatic “quartets” on the conflict—offers a foothold on which to build.
  • the attributes of this new quartet lend it the potential for some real impact over the issue. Critically, the group combines influence in both Europe and the Arab world, and good relations with Israel and the U.S. administration.
  • The “Middle East Quartet”—combining the United States, Russia, the European Union and the United Nations—has been less active of late than at its inception in 2002. After years in which mediation had been largely a U.S. venture, this quartet aimed to broaden the set of diplomatic brokers, and to balance American positions through inclusion of the other parties. The quartet’s most noted effort was its endorsement of the U.S.-led “roadmap to peace” in 2003—an initiative that at first spurred some optimism, but that fell apart in the mid-2000s.
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  • The second quartet—Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates—was established by the Arab League in 2007 to revive peace efforts. This “Arab Quartet” also was active at first, only to become dormant amid a range of developments. These included Arab and regional instability; Saudi-Emirati preoccupation with Iran, Yemen and other regional conflicts; Egypt’s preoccupation with the Nile River negotiations with Ethiopia and Sudan, the conflict in Libya, and a number of pressing internal challenges; and a general feeling that there is very little hope to advance a solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
  • Israelis generally accord high importance to the relationship with King Abdullah of Jordan and are enthusiastic about steps toward warmer relations with the Arab World
  • The EU has said that annexation “could not pass unchallenged.” But in considering specific actions, the bloc faces difficulties in achieving the required unanimity among its 27 member states.
  • Egypt and Jordan, the only Arab countries with peace treaties with Israel, have significant influence in the Arab quartet and on the Arab position pertaining to this conflict. Similarly, France and Germany play a central role in Europe, and on EU positions within the Middle East Quartet
Ed Webb

Turkey's Erdogan pivots to Africa for trade - 0 views

uk.finance.yahoo.com/...ts-africa-trade-093900916.html

Turkey Africa trade economy development military Erdogan diplomacy

shared by Ed Webb on 28 Oct 21 - No Cached
  • Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan enters this weekend's G20 summit in Rome fresh off an African tour aimed at cementing lucrative partnerships during another spell of tensions with the West.From mining to health, energy to infrastructure, Turkish businesses are popping up across the resource-rich continent and signing deals hailed as a "win-win".
  • This pivot away from traditional European markets has already seen Turkey's trade with Africa balloon from $5.4 billion when Erdogan came to power in 2003 to $25.4 billion last year.
  • Erdogan once described Turkey as an "Afro-Eurasian" nation and has visited the most African countries -- 30 out of 54 -- of any non-African head of state.
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  • The number of Turkish embassies in Africa has grown from 12 to 43 since 2002 while the national flag carrier, Turkish Airlines, flies to over 60 African destinations.
  • the young, fast-growing continent's huge need for infrastructure, from electricity to bridges, drinking water to waste disposal, where Turkish companies excel
  • Algeria, meanwhile, is one of Turkey's main suppliers of liquefied petroleum gas, offering Ankara a chance to "reduce our dependence on Russia and Iran"
  • For African officials, Turkish companies offer jobs and reasonably priced goods the quality of which often compares favourably to those from China -- one of the continent's most aggressive investors.
  • The bid to expand African trade comes with the Turkish lira steadily sinking to new lows, which makes exports even more competitive.
  • "There is a long-term plan, it's not a short-term plan," Bayram said, pointing to investments in healthcare, education, training, and the role of women.
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