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Ed Webb

Italy Caused Chaos in Libya by Mismanaging Migration Policy - 0 views

foreignpolicy.com/...entiloni-mogherini-chaos-libya

Africa Europe Italy Libya migration sahel policy EU

shared by Ed Webb on 30 May 21 - No Cached
  • Over three days in May 2017, the Italian secret service—masquerading as a humanitarian nongovernmental organization—summoned to Rome two dozen delegates from the southern edge of the Sahara desert. The pretext was to promote a peace deal for their war-torn region; the real goal was to bring them on board with an Italian plan to curb migration.
  • the pitfalls of a foreign policy that conflates peace and development with migration control
  • The International Organization for Migration manages one key pillar of the EU’s migration policy in Libya, namely the so-called voluntary repatriation of stranded migrants.
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  • Migration, however, was never much of a concern for the inhabitants of the Sahara. For the most part, they move freely across borders, and their economies depend heavily on the transit of people and goods.
  • What was meant to be “A dialogue on peace, development, security and human rights in the trans-border regions of Libya, Chad, and Niger,” according to the government’s agenda, became a failed attempt to co-opt some of the poorest people on the planet in a fight against migration from which they had little to gain.
  • The interior ministers of the three countries attended the gathering, as well as one vice president of the GNA—hardly a typical NGO summit. The summit was ostensibly organized by the Ara Pacis Initiative, a group that claims to be an “international not for profit organization based in Rome, dedicated to the human dimension of peace.” Its peculiar inspiration, according to its website, is the altar of peace built in Rome by emperor Augustus. The founder and sole active member of Ara Pacis is Maria Nicoletta Gaida, an Italian American former actress with little background in the humanitarian sector
  • The mysterious man with the ponytail started off with an offer meant to capture the goodwill of his audience: “We will ask for Italy’s commitment to immediately establish cultural identity centers for the trans-border tribes,” he said. Italy would staff these centers with teachers “that will keep alive the history and the culture of these great people.” He also promised health clinics connected via webcam to Italian hospitals. “These are small things,” he said, “for the seed from which the plant grows is always small.”
  • “After peace,” he said, “comes security and development.” The delegates should “deal with the issue of immigration and terrorism through border control mechanisms based on the optimization of reception centers that already exist in your countries.”
  • “My minister is ready to support any of your requests,” he said at one point. In return, he asked for the tribes’ backing in curbing migration: That would “give him the strength to go to Europe and defeat our enemies,” he said, without clarifying who those enemies might be.
  • At roughly the same time as the meeting near Rome, the Italian intelligence services reportedly brokered a multimillion-euro payment to Libyan militias involved in trafficking to enlist them as a coast guard force, a claim that Italy denies.
  • The Tuareg, the Tebu, and the Awlad Suleiman—the groups represented at the summit—are the gatekeepers of the desert crossed by those hoping to reach the Libyan coast to embark on a sea journey to Europe.
  • these agencies have repeatedly proved useless when it comes to defending the human rights of migrants in Libya. Indeed, the Associated Press revealed last month that the EU’s humanitarian spending has often been diverted to militias and traffickers—sometimes with the knowledge of U.N. officials.
  • Sergio De Caprio, known by the public as Capitano Ultimo, became a legend in Italy after arresting the godfather of the Sicilian mafia Totò Riina in 1993. His exploits inspired novels and a TV series. In 2016 and 2017, he was transferred to the secret service. While his anti-mafia record is legendary, his foreign-policy credentials are unknown. His appointment affirmed the Italian government’s belief that migration is essentially a criminal problem, and that smuggling rings can be fought in the same way as mafia organizations.
  • The parties in the Libyan conflict store weapons “in close proximity” to migrant detention centers, according to the Office of the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights, so these become a target of the bombing
  • “Rather than cultural centers,” he said, “let’s open factories, so that the youth can have a hope, an alternative to joining criminal gangs.”
  • Although the south of the Sahara is rich in oil, gold, and uranium, local populations suffer abject poverty. The Saharan delegates laid out their priorities: Negotiating peace was their main aim—and supposedly the reason they had flown all the way to Rome. They saw Italy as having a European mandate to mediate peace in Libya by virtue of its old colonial ties. But still the war raged on
  • if a border force was what Europe really wanted, the tribes could welcome military equipment. The United Arab Emirates, the Tuareg leader reminded De Caprio, had lent their helicopters and pilots for border patrol after just one meeting, and this was already their fifth visit to Italy.
  • There is no accountability for Europe’s multibillion-euro spending spree on projects to curb migration. In vast regions such as southern Libya that are inaccessible to diplomatic missions, let alone humanitarian agencies, officials are able to pocket the money for themselves. Migration spending thus ends up fostering corruption, rather than development.
  • when the Libyans sought ambitious development projects they were offered handicraft workshops instead
  • Humanitarian catastrophe looms over the wider Sahara region as Islamist insurgencies in the bordering Sahel region displace 4.2 million people. The Libyan war has escalated into an international conflict
  • “The social components of southern Libya are many more than just Awlad Suleiman, Tebu, and Tuaregs,” he argued. Moreover, he said, “their representatives know their identity and history well and are perfectly able to preserve their traditions.”
  • Italy and Europe’s credibility has been severely undermined by their single-minded pursuit of migration control when dealing with Libya and other African countries
  • At least 36,000 people have been returned to Libya as they attempted to leave the country since 2017 by a Libyan coast guard that Europe funded and equipped. Unsurprisingly, given the way they were recruited, coast guard officers have been found to be involved in such crimes as detaining and extorting ransoms from migrants, whipping shipwreck survivors, shooting migrants, sinking their dinghies, and ignoring distress calls
  • For several years the Community of Sant’Egidio, a Catholic organization of which Giro is a prominent member, had been mediating peace among the Saharan peoples. The association is involved in several conflict resolution initiatives around the world and has been credited with ending a bloody civil war in Mozambique in 1992.
  • Europe’s “migration obsession … a sickness that has infected all 28 EU countries
  • Mogherini’s tenure as EU foreign-policy chief will be remembered for its unprecedented callousness toward the plight of migrants and refugees; she now co-chairs a newly formed U.N. High-Level Panel on Internal Displacement
  • “Do you realize what it would mean if Libya fell into Turkish and Russian hands, at the expense of Europe? We would lose everything.” What would we lose? I asked him. “Everything! Control over migration, political control, economic control, the oil. … Eventually, we would lose it all.”
Ed Webb

The ISIS Beat - The Drift - 1 views

www.thedriftmag.com/the-isis-beat

US USA military politics gwot CT terrorism analysis opinion Iraq Syria Afghanistan

shared by Ed Webb on 02 May 21 - Cached
  • even as the new Biden Administration announced the withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan, to “end” the twenty-year war, it will continue airstrikes and raids to tackle the ever-looming threat of terrorism.
  • As the persistence of far-right nationalism suggests, ideologies cannot so easily be destroyed — even those we thought we had bombed out of existence seventy years ago. Yet, the world refracted through this war (the “only one” of the 21st century, Bush hoped) has left us not just morally inept, but also woefully misguided about what is to come next
  • The S.D.F. offers a remarkable vision to counter ISIS’s draconian rule — local councils, farmers’ cooperatives, and committees that promote the rights of oppressed minority groups. In the village of Jinwar, a female-controlled town, the S.D.F. has built a commune for women and their children, both Kurdish and Arab, seeking to escape oppressive families and realize a community without patriarchy. According to the constitution of the so-called Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria, the S.D.F.-linked ruling authority in the region, a post-ISIS Syria will be “a society free from authoritarianism, militarism, centralism and the intervention of religious authority in public affairs.” In order to realize this vision, part of the S.D.F.’s mandate is not just to govern, but also to annihilate ISIS. Several soldiers and S.D.F. spokesmen told me that the war against ISIS isn’t over — its aim now, with the support of the U.S., is to destroy sleeper cells and root out the ideology.
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  • ISIS has taken control over parts of regime territory in the deserts of central Syria, and slices of S.D.F.-controlled Deir ez-Zor province are witnessing a full-blown ISIS insurgency, underscoring just how central the question of governance is to the group’s appeal. But the U.S. and its allies’ focus on ideology risks ignoring why ISIS gained support in the first place. Raids and detentions, torture and execution, and governance that politically marginalizes certain groups and offers few options for justice or accountability will only build anger. It is these layers of political and social contexts that are lost in most coverage, even if they will shape Iraq and Syria for a long time to come. 
  • If we portray certain enemies solely as existential threats, we sweep over the political conflicts unfolding in places like Iraq and Syria, and the political violence wrought upon these communities, even by those who claim to be fighting a just war.
  • If our enemy is everywhere, we will seek allies in even the most oppressive of regimes (like Egypt and Saudi Arabia) to hunt down “terrorists,” no matter if they are gun-wielding militants or political dissidents who believe that the current state of affairs does not serve them.
  • If a war is a “good war,” or merely conceived of as a necessary one, it matters little why a terrorist group gained support, or how we may be inadvertently contributing to the group’s appeal. Yet, while the current approach to terrorism has been wildly successful in building a cottage industry of extremism and deradicalization experts, it has failed to rid the world of terrorists.
  • Massacres of Iraqi civilians, deaths of Afghan civilians by airstrikes, and indiscriminate detention and torture and rape have all happened at the hands of state security forces, including those allied with the U.S.
  • The Manichean framework helps absolve the West of its role and its responsibility in ending an endless conflict. “Terrorism” has become so synonymous with horrific violence that most Americans are likely unaware that the vast majority of civilian deaths in global conflicts today are caused by states, not non-state actors.
  • As with other battles against evil, the “killers and fanatics” necessitated the dropping of bombs, an operation that Obama’s successor continued.
  • a core argument for the war depended on the idea that terrorism was, in essence, a form of religious violence
  • What the Bush administration argued, and what the media accepted, was that terrorism is not a mere tactic, but a full-blown ideology — what Bush called “the heirs of all the murderous ideologies of the 20th century,” including “fascism, Nazism and totalitarianism.” In practice, this means non-state armed groups not allied with the U.S. should be understood as terrorist organizations — no matter if, like the Taliban, Hezbollah, Al Qaeda, and Hamas, they have little else in common
  • By and large, the media accepted the Bush administration’s framing. By 2006, public criticism of the handling of the Iraq War was mounting, but even then, few questioned the legitimacy of the war itself. In a 2009 study of media coverage after 9/11, two scholars from the University of Texas found that journalists “helped brand the policy, [then] labeled the frame as public opinion,” ultimately contributing to the acceptance of that frame as a “fact of life,” and a “larger narrative of struggle and heroism.” Journalists did not treat the War on Terror as a policy decision made by the Bush administration, but as the natural and inevitable order of things. 
  • mainstream media coverage of ISIS receives almost no scrutiny. But many other publications and reporters have operated on the same flawed assumptions and premises as Caliphate, ones that animated the West’s understanding of the Middle East long before ISIS gained its first foothold
  • The political scientist Austin Doctor recently conducted a study of sexual assault by 143 rebel groups around the world, from 1989 to 2011, and separately applied the results of his analysis to ISIS.  He found a correlation between the presence of foreign fighters and increased incidence of sexual violence, which suggests that the Islamic State functioned much like other rebel groups — that ISIS is not so singular as it may seem.
  • the issue here isn’t just the violence — after all, Assad has also relished the torture, starvation, and murder of his citizens. Since 2011, his regime has used chemical weapons repeatedly, more than three hundred times according to one study. The critical difference is that while Assad depends on the international system for legitimacy (Russia and Iran are key supporters, and Syria remains part of the global financial system), ISIS rejects it. While Assad would prefer that the world looks away, ISIS practically begs us to stare. It aims to demoralize Western audiences, while projecting to potential recruits its vision of a new world order
  • In parts of the Caliphate, ISIS did promise a different model, at least nominally. In one piece of propaganda, the group declared, “The people are as equal as the teeth of a comb. There is no difference between the rich and the poor and the strong and the weak. The holder of a right has redress, and the grievance of an injured party will be answered.” In appealing to residents and new recruits, ISIS touched upon something familiar: the desire for justice, equality, and law and order in a world that has manifestly failed to deliver any. Women, too, found opportunities under ISIS. In Fallujah, they used the regime’s justice system to secure divorces, which had been more difficult under the Iraqi government.
  • civilians were likely to stay in ISIS-controlled territory because, among various reasons, the “quality of governance,” including “availability of electricity, cleanliness of streets, and crime rates,” was better compared to services provided by the Iraqi government
  • “All the locals here wonder why the U.S. coalition never came to rescue them from Assad’s machine guns, but run to fight ISIS when it took a few pieces of land,” one rebel told the Guardian. 
  • the current global order has left many people behind
  • decades of imperialism, like the U.S. invasion of Iraq, and Russia and Iran’s interventions, have irrevocably transformed communities in the Middle East. Similarly, though ISIS opposes the Saudi government, the Salafi-Jihadi underpinnings of the group could not have gained traction without the Kingdom’s years of effort of exporting and standardizing a particular form of Islam across the Middle East. 
  • devoid of any political context, terms like “radicalization” and “ideology” lose meaning
  • how ISIS appeared in the public imagination: as a movement beyond human understanding. The only sensible answer to so inscrutable and atavistic an adversary was total war.
  • This frenzied interest in the U.S.’s darkly powerful new enemy lured some journalists and analysts to focus on the group full-time. It emerged as a distinct topic from the Syrian civil war, whose crowded theater was becoming difficult to explain, or the Iraq War, now a nearly-adolescent 11 years old. Soon, writers covering ISIS, what Wired called “the world’s most important beat,” developed a signature flourish, describing it not just as a terrorist organization, but as an almost supernatural threat. “It is not clear,” argued a New York Review of Books piece in 2015, “whether our culture can ever develop sufficient knowledge, rigor, imagination, and humility to grasp the phenomenon of ISIS. But for now, we should admit that we are not only horrified but baffled.”
  • Stories of the group’s atrocities emerged in quick succession, echoing the parade of violence ISIS was proudly broadcasting on its own channels: public executions, conscription of child soldiers, disappearances and murders of thousands, Yazidi girls sold into slavery.
  • by narrowly focusing on the savagery of ISIS fighters, we miss the deeper and more important story of how ISIS grew into a political force, and of how it moved not just the hearts and minds, but the physical bodies, of tens of thousands
  • the core issue with Caliphate isn’t just that a lying source may have misled overeager journalists. Rather, the controversy, and indeed even the proposition that a “terrorism editor” would have resolved the problem, points to a deeper flaw in the way media has long covered extremism: divorced from the local and historical contexts that have fueled its rise
  • After a decade of the War on Terror and chaos in the Middle East, ISIS seemed to be the ultimate testament to an enduring clash of civilizations. It is not that surprising that ISIS itself encouraged this fantastical narrative — but it is striking that our media took their word for it.
Ed Webb

Ten Years After the Arab Spring, Tyranny Lingers On | Newlines Magazine - 0 views

newlinesmag.com/...the-tyranny-lingers-on

uprisings opinion analysis Tunisia Egypt Bahrain Syria Yemen Iran KSA Saudi Iraq Sudan Algeria Lebanon politics authoritarianism

shared by Ed Webb on 02 May 21 - No Cached
  • The initial impulse behind the uprisings, the very impulse that led Bouazizi to self-immolation, lay in the fact that humiliated peoples, suffering from economic dislocation, political repression, and denial of basic human rights had grown impatient with their status as subjects and had risen, demanding their rights as citizens. Wealth redistribution, social justice, and good governance were as equal for those demonstrating en masse as regaining their lost karama — their dignity
  • Most of the political and intellectual debates that animated the early stages of the uprisings had their roots in the reformist movements and the intellectual ferments and the drive to modernize Arab societies that began in the first half of the 19th century
  • The Arab uprisings began as spontaneous protest movements led first by middle-class students and professionals who were then joined by workers and other social groups. The Islamists, skeptical at first, joined later. In a political landscape bereft of organized liberal and secular mass movements or political parties, with only defunct old Arab nationalists and leftists, it was a question of time before the Islamists would control the political square and hijack the uprisings.
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  • the repressive regimes shared one thing in common: All reacted with brute force to peaceful calls for empowerment and accountability.
  • Some of them, particularly those ruling heterogeneous states, brazenly weaponized religion, regionalism, sectarianism, and tribal and ethnic cleavages in their societies to divide and crush the uprisings
  • a stagnant economy remains the greatest threat to Tunisia’s stability and a major source of Tunisians’ discontent. Tunisia’s robust civil society made it possible, even during periods of political and security tensions, to conduct executive, legislative, and municipal elections democratically, although elected officials still display some of the discredited habits of the ancien régime. Ennahda, the main Islamist movement, proved adept at political transformation when its founder Rachid Ghannouchi declared the moderate Islamist party was abandoning political Islam. Ten years on, Tunisians are openly critical of their government’s failure to address their economic needs, forcing the youth either to immigrate to Europe or to join radical Islamists abroad. Ten years after Mohamed Bouazizi’s fiery end, disillusionment is the national mood.
  • The political, social, and cultural maladies afflicting Arab societies that were supposed to be swept away by the young activists have proven to be immovable
  • That does not mean that the spirit and the yearning for empowerment that animated the early phase of the uprisings have been irrevocably defeated. In recent years we have seen the populations in majority Arab states like Sudan, Algeria, Iraq, and Lebanon erupt in fury over their ossified, repressive, and venal regimes. In Sudan, the protests forced the military to oust Omar al-Bashir, their tormentor for 30 years. In Algeria, the mass protest forced the stagnant regime to end the 20-year reign of the ailing president, Abdelaziz Bouteflika. In both countries we have seen a glimpse of the hope and enthusiasm that animated those who went to the streets in 2011. So far the positive changes in Sudan and Algeria are not fundamental, but at least the protests have shaken two stagnant and moribund regimes.
  • The protests that rocked Iraq and Lebanon in 2019 also brought to the fore a new, emergent reality. Despite or partly because of the uprisings, the Middle East is less Arab today than at any time in a century. Iran is the dominant force in Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, and Yemen. Israel owns the skies over Syria, while Iran, Turkey, and Russia carve up zones of control and influence on the ground. In Iraq, Turkey has established military bases, and Iran pulls the strings of many militias. In Libya, Russia and Turkey continue to play their cynical proxy wars. In this “wounded time” many Arabs are living in the shadows of their more powerful neighbors.
  • The uprisings faced not only entrenched ruling classes but also deep-rooted patriarchy and religious and cultural traditions that are not amenable to swift and significant social and cultural change.
Ed Webb

The Kurds Are Officially Ready to Partner With Assad and Putin - 0 views

foreignpolicy.com/...a-russia-putin-turkey-genocide

Syria Turkey war opinion Kurds US USA Russia Iran diplomacy civil_war

shared by Ed Webb on 15 Oct 19 - Cached
  • The SDF has 70,000 soldiers who have fought against jihadi extremism, ethnic hatred, and the oppression of women since 2015. They have become a very disciplined, professional fighting force. They never fired a single bullet toward Turkey. U.S. soldiers and officers now know us well and always praise our effectiveness and skill.
  • The jihadi terrorists of the Islamic State came to Syria from all over the world. We are the ones who should fight them, because they have occupied our lands, looted our villages, killed our children, and enslaved our women.
  • Amid the lawlessness of war, we always stuck with our ethics and discipline, unlike many other nonstate actors. We defeated al Qaeda, we eradicated the Islamic State, and, at the same time, we built a system of good governance based on small government, pluralism, and diversity. We provided services through local governing authorities for Arabs, Kurds, and Syriac Christians. We called on a pluralistic Syrian national identity that is inclusive for all. This is our vision for Syria’s political future: decentralized federalism, with religious freedom and respect for mutual differences.
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  • We guard more than 12,000 Islamic State terrorist prisoners and bear the burden of their radicalized wives and children. We also protect this part of Syria from Iranian militias.
  • At Washington’s request, we agreed to withdraw our heavy weapons from the border area with Turkey, destroy our defensive fortifications, and pull back our most seasoned fighters. Turkey would never attack us so long as the U.S. government was true to its word with us.
  • We, however, are not asking for American soldiers to be in combat. We know that the United States is not the world police. But we do want the United States to acknowledge its important role in achieving a political solution for Syria. We are sure that Washington has sufficient leverage to mediate a sustainable peace between us and Turkey.
  • light of the invasion by Turkey and the existential threat its attack poses for our people, we may have to reconsider our alliances. The Russians and the Syrian regime have made proposals that could save the lives of millions of people who live under our protection. We do not trust their promises. To be honest, it is hard to know whom to trust.
  • We know that we would have to make painful compromises with Moscow and Bashar al-Assad if we go down the road of working with them. But if we have to choose between compromises and the genocide of our people, we will surely choose life for our people.
  • The reason we allied ourselves with the United States is our core belief in democracy. We are disappointed and frustrated by the current crisis. Our people are under attack, and their safety is our paramount concern. Two questions remain: How can we best protect our people? And is the United States still our ally?
Ed Webb

Turkey lobbies Congress against lifting Cyprus arms embargo as tensions mount - 0 views

www.al-monitor.com/...-lift-cyprus-arms-embargo.html

lobbying military arms weapons Turkey Cyprus TRNC US USA energy territory

shared by Ed Webb on 18 Oct 19 - No Cached
  • Turkey, which occupies Northern Cyprus, has launched a last-ditch attempt to convince lawmakers to drop a provision in the annual defense authorization bill that would lift the United States’ three-decade arms embargo on Cyprus.
  • Congressional efforts to lift the embargo first originated in the Eastern Mediterranean Security and Partnership Act, introduced by Sen. Bob Menendez, D-N.J., the top Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. The committee advanced the bill in June as an effort to deepen energy cooperation with Cyprus, Greece and Israel while rebuking Turkey for its natural gas drilling activity off the Cypriot coast.
  • Turkey recently expanded its drilling activities to areas where Cyprus has already awarded licenses for European companies to drill earlier this month, prompting the European Union to draw up sanctions earlier this week. Cyprus has also dispatched drones to surveil the Turkish drill ships.
Ed Webb

Whistle-blower hopes new film will redress Bush-Blair legacy | News | Al Jazeera - 0 views

www.aljazeera.com/...ir-legacy-191012142539284.html

US USA UK Britain Iraq war intelligence film

shared by Ed Webb on 12 Oct 19 - No Cached
  • A British woman responsible for a dramatic intelligence leak in the run-up to the 2003 invasion of Iraq has said she hopes a new film about her efforts will refocus attention on the flawed evidence that led to war.
  • Katharine Gun, a former employee of the United Kingdom intelligence agency GCHQ, believes that the film, called Official Secrets, could cause a reassessment of the partially-repaired reputations of the UK and US leaders behind the military action
  • She and some of the film's creators hope it will highlight once again that the invasion of Iraq was carried out on the false premise that the country had illegal weapons of mass destruction (WMDs). "There's no rehabilitating two leaders who have had to admit that the whole WMD thing was an absolute fabrication and a manipulation and a lie," director Gavin Hood told AFP. 
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  • The UK government eventually opted not to prosecute Gun after she pleaded not guilty as it would have been forced to disclose key documents and decision-making related to the war.
  • Gun said she was initially hesitant to get involved in the film after numerous attempts to make a movie about the events had failed. But after spending several days recounting it all to Hood, a South African-born director known for politically-driven films Tsotsi and Eye in the Sky, both were convinced of the importance of telling the story. "I think it raises interesting questions about loyalty ... to what and to whom do we owe our loyalty?," Hood said
  • sees a link between this and the prevailing political culture in the UK and US, whose leaders are frequently accused of dishonesty. "If they see that other people haven't been held to account, it sets an extremely bad example,"
Ed Webb

Congress aims to keep spotlight on Saudi Arabia one year after Khashoggi murder - 0 views

www.al-monitor.com/...al-khashoggi-saudi-arabia.html

USA US KSA Saudi journalist media rights sanctions diplomacy Congress

shared by Ed Webb on 13 Oct 19 - Cached
  • “Sadly, we have an administration here in the United States that’s decided that a political and military relationship with Saudi Arabia trumps the murder of a legal resident, a member of the press who was simply doing his job,” Connolly said at a Capitol Hill event commemorating Khashoggi’s death last week. “We will not stop. It may make time, but we will get justice for Jamal Khashoggi and we will insist on accountability from the Saudi government no matter how high up it goes.”
  • While previous legislation to restrict Saudi arms sales have centered on Riyadh’s role in Yemen’s civil war, Connolly’s bill is the first to curb weapons transfers over the Khashoggi murder.
Ed Webb

Confusion reigns over US plan to 'secure the oil' in Syria as commanders await orders -... - 0 views

www.cnn.com/...index.html

Syria US USA military Trump oil

shared by Ed Webb on 04 Nov 19 - Cached
  • US military commanders overseeing Syria operations are still waiting for precise battlefield orders from the White House and Pentagon on their exact mission to protect oilfields in eastern Syria
  • US commanders lack clarity on the most basic aspects of their mission, including how and when troops can fire their weapons and what, exactly, that mission is
  • Perhaps most crucially, there is no clarity about exactly who they are operating against in the oilfields.
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  • The precision that's lacking is vital for military commanders, who need specific, legal orders that are not subject to interpretation in moments of crisis.
  • There is no approved military task for specifically how US troops will take "control" of the oil and no decision whether the US should also protect other oil fields in northeast Syria beyond Deir Ezzor area, where they're currently present.
  • military officials say there is nothing in place to address the possibility that Syrian or Russian tanks or aircraft might approach the oil fields. The plan for now, officials say, is to declare the US presence and warn other players not to get close
  • "It's the only argument that resonates with the President and thus becomes the excuse that we need to keep forces there to protect other interests," Wechsler said. While the oil justification seems to have worked, "using it as an excuse opens up a whole series of other questions,"
  • what the legal basis for the US presence is, especially since the Assad government hasn't asked for it?
  • "we're keeping the oil. Remember that. I've always said that. Keep the oil. We want to keep the oil."
  • The statement won praise from Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, who told state TV on Thursday that Trump is the best of the US presidents because he is "the most transparent."
  • "All the US Presidents commit crimes, but get Nobel prizes, and act like defenders of human rights and the noble unique US values -- or Western values -- but they are a group of criminals who act on behalf of lobbies," Assad said. Trump's declaration that "'we want the oil' -- at least that's honest," the Syrian dictator said.
  • It remains unclear what legal basis the US government would have for controlling or taking the oil in Syria.
  • For now, the military sees its mission as "defending against any incursions," to be able to "enable the Syrian Democratic Forces to prevent ISIS from gaining access to the oilfields,"
  • When asked if that means the US will "take" the oil fields, as Trump has said, Esper responded with somewhat unusual wording. "I interpret that as deny ISIS access to the oil fields," he said.
  • Currently, there are still about 900 troops in Syria, just under the 1,000 estimated force level when the withdrawal began last month, because of the additional forces going in
Ed Webb

Is Saudi Arabia finally seeking peace with Houthis? - 0 views

www.al-monitor.com/...a-talks-houthis-war-peace.html

Yemen KSA Saudi Oman US USA diplomacy war

shared by Ed Webb on 26 Nov 19 - Cached
  • Nearly five years into the fierce war in Yemen, signs of an end to the fighting have emerged.
  • the Houthi movement’s weapons have enabled it to achieve deterrence; the Houthis claimed responsibility for the bombing of Aramco Oil Co. in September in Saudi Arabia and has claimed to have downed drones, including US ones.
  • Riyadh has been unable to achieve any of its stated objectives, such as overthrowing the Houthis and restoring the legitimate government
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  • On Nov. 11, Saudi Vice Minister of Defense Prince Khalid bin Salman visited Oman; this overshadowed ongoing consultations between Washington and Riyadh with the Houthis in Muscat, especially after the vice minister was assigned to manage the Yemeni dossier
  • “Direct US-Saudi negotiations with the Houthis are very possible, especially in Muscat, since some Houthi leaders are there,”
  • “The war has exhausted Saudi Arabia financially and the worsening military situation in its south is not in its best interest. The fact that Prince Khalid has been assigned the Yemeni dossier is positive because it is a complicated issue and it needs a full-time decision-maker who [Crown Prince] Mohammed bin Salman trusts.” The two are brothers.
  • “The biggest motivation for Riyadh entering in direct dialogue with Ansar Allah [the Houthis] came after the attack on the Aramco facility. It was also due to Riyadh's disappointment with [US President Donald] Trump's apathetic reaction after the attack,”
  • Riyadh fears that the Houthis will expand their influence in Yemen if a peace agreement is signed, especially near Saudi Arabia's southern border, as the Saudis consider the Houthis to be an extension of Iranian influence in the region
Ed Webb

Pentagon rethinks how to protect diplomats, aid workers in Mideast war zones - 0 views

www.al-monitor.com/...iplomats-mideast-warzones.html

USA US diplomacy military politics war Yemen aid USAID

shared by Ed Webb on 28 Nov 19 - Cached
  • The Pentagon is pushing Congress for more authority to provide security to diplomats and aid workers in conflict zones, a move that could allow US aid to penetrate deeper into war zones in the Middle East such as Yemen.
  • Undersecretary for Defense John Rood, the Pentagon’s number three official, submitted the proposal that would allow the agency to provide as much as $25 million in logistical support and services to support the State Department and USAID’s stabilization efforts
  • The Pentagon proposal could potentially set up the United States to have a larger role if negotiations succeed to end Yemen’s five-year war. Since the summer, the State Department scurried to help the country’s warring factions, including the exiled Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi government, the Iran-supported Houthi movement, the Saudi-led coalition and the United Arab Emirates-backed Southern Transitional Council, come to the bargaining table.
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  • The Pentagon's reexamination of the agency’s role in protecting diplomats in war zones has come as top members of Congress are also looking at options to give the hollowed-out State Department more firepower, such as the Provincial Reconstruction Teams used in the 2007 Iraq troop surge led by Gen. David Petraeus.
  • terror groups such as al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula and the Islamic State — the main focus of American strategy in the war-torn country — as well as Iran could exploit power vacuums in the country.
  • The proposal would specifically allow State Department and USAID staffers to be detailed to Pentagon forces, allowing the Defense Department to maintain legal authority to protect American diplomats or aid workers. It would also allow the Defense Department to assume the authority to conduct stabilization operations if State personnel are unwilling to go. The defense spokesperson said though the Pentagon often has access to conflict zones, the agency “has extremely limited authority to conduct stabilization activities” or to support the State Department or USAID.
  • Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Ct., has called on the Donald Trump administration to create a hybrid class of so called “warrior-diplomats” who have the ability to protect themselves and provide conflict resolution support.
Ed Webb

Un accord politique entre Trump et Mohammed VI serait derrière le rapprocheme... - 0 views

www.middleeasteye.net/...erriere-le-rapprochement-maroc

Morocco GCC UAE KSA Saudi Qatar Yemen WesternSahara US USA diplomacy arms weapons FDI

shared by Ed Webb on 02 Dec 19 - Cached
  • Le blocus imposé en juin 2017 au Qatar par les EAU, l’Arabie saoudite, Bahreïn, et l’Égypte a provoqué une « crise politique » entre le Maroc et les Émirats.
  • Le déploiement de la diplomatie marocaine s’est traduit, d’abord, par la décision de Mohammed VI de se retirer, début février dernier, de la coalition arabe au Yémen.
  • son rapprochement tactique avec l’émirat de Qatar n’était qu’une manœuvre visant à mettre la pression sur les EAU et l’Arabie saoudite. L’objectif non déclaré étant d’inciter ces deux monarchies à convaincre Trump de soutenir la position marocaine sur le dossier épineux du Sahara occidental.
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  • le président américain tente de rallier le Maroc et les pays du Golfe autour de la question de la lutte contre le terrorisme et la radicalisation en Afrique du nord. Pour se faire, Trump tente une réconciliation entre le Maroc et les EAU par le biais de la relance de la coopération bilatérale.
  • Sur le plan diplomatique, la visite d’Ivanka Trump, fille et conseillère du président américain, début novembre, traduit aussi la volonté américaine de consolider l’alliance stratégique avec le Maroc.
  • Ce qui en dit long sur le laxisme de Trump envers un pouvoir qui régresse en matière de démocratie et de droits de l’homme, mais qui se permet, malgré tout, d’augmenter son budget militaire.
Ed Webb

UN expert report unmasks Libya arms embargo violations - 0 views

news.yahoo.com/argo-violations-022120320.html

Libya Turkey UAE Jordan arms weapons UN

shared by Ed Webb on 15 Dec 19 - Cached
  • Libya's warring parties are running rings around a UN arms embargo
  • transfers have been "repeated and sometimes blatant, with scant regard paid to compliance with the sanctions measures"
  • the opaque process surrounding the transfer of an Irish navy patrol boat to Haftar's forces.Sold for 110,000 euros ($122,000) in March 2017 by the Irish government to a Dutch company, it was then bought for $525,000 by an Emirati firm and re-registered in Panama as a "pleasure yacht".- 'External parties' -The ship was subsequently bought by Haftar's forces for $1.5 million.
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  • UN report highlights Jordan, the United Arab Emirates and Turkey as regular embargo violators, with Amman and Abu Dhabi allegedly funnelling arms to Haftar, while Ankara equips the GNA
  • UN experts say that the Sudanese fighters were sent to Libya under a contract signed in Khartoum on May 7 between Canadian firm Dickens & Madson and Daglo, in the name of Sudan's military council
  • The report says foreign combatants have been recruited by both sides, including from Sudan and Chad, but makes no mention of Russian mercenaries who -- according to media reports denied by Moscow -- have fought alongside Haftar's forces.
  • report accuses the UAE of delivering a Russian aerial defence system (Pantsir-S1) to Haftar's forces
  • Ankara even promised to send troops to Libya to support the GNA, if required, further exacerbating tensions.
Ed Webb

What Can We Learn from the Escalating Israeli Raids in Syria? - Lawfare - 0 views

www.lawfareblog.com/escalating-israeli-raids-syria

Israel Syria Iran Iraq analysis opinion military diplomacy

shared by Ed Webb on 17 Dec 19 - Cached
  • Eyal Tsir Cohen is a visiting fellow in the Center for Middle East Policy at Brookings. Tsir is currently on leave from the Israeli prime minister’s office, where he has served for the last 30 years in various senior positions. His career has focused on security and intelligence issues, and shaping policies and strategies on global terrorism.
  • While Israel has reportedly carried out thousands of strikes in Syria and neighboring Iraq in recent years, the frequency, intensity, and toll of these recent attacks are unprecedented.
  • Israel has come to see that Iran is not forsaking its project in Syria, and further may be pursuing more sophisticated means of threatening Israel’s northern border. This week’s report that Iran is moving missiles into Iraq only reinforces this perception
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  • To diminish Iranian capabilities being shipped to Hezbollah and other Iranian militias working to open a low-intensity military front threatening Israel’s northern border; To maintain Israel’s freedom of action and air supremacy in its neighborhood and the Middle East in general by minimizing Syrian military capabilities, more specifically anti-aircraft missile sites and their support systems; and To send a message of deterrence to three main actors in the region: Assad’s regime, Iran and its emissaries, and Russia.
  • air raids weaken the Syrian army’s capabilities; distract Assad’s capabilities from coping with opposition forces, ISIS, and al-Qaida in the north and east of Syria; and keep this war-ridden country in grave economic instability.
  • Israel also reportedly targeted significant air defense capabilities, especially surface-to-air missiles, that threaten Israel’s strategic dominance over Lebanese and Syrian airspace
  • Israel hopes its strikes will push Tehran to abandon its project in Syria. But Iran has shown no willingness so far to consider this. Instead, it has simply worked to make its arms shipments more difficult to detect. The search-and-destroy campaign demands excellent intelligence capabilities on Israel’s part to uncover clandestine shipments sent by air or land to Syria through Iraq. Fine-grained intelligence is also necessary to allow the airstrike to be effective and to minimize collateral damage and casualties. This poses a great challenge to Israel because, in time, Iran and its Syrian counterparts can find new, creative ways to mask their supply chain to Syria and avoid detection
  • Israeli raids in November sent a clear message to Moscow that unless the Iranian element is taken out of the equation, Syria will remain an unstable battleground. The raids are also a reminder of Russia’s commitment to Israel to keep the Iranian Quds Forces outside of the 50-mile radius from Israel’s border. These raids underscore that, if the Russians cannot uphold their side of this understanding, then Israel will wreak havoc in Syria. Putin seeks a political resolution and stability in Syria, and the Russians understand that Syria has no prospect of recovery from its civil war amid the constant friction between Israel and Iran.
  • As Iran faces unrest at home—and amid major popular demonstrations in Iraq—Israel is willing to match or even exceed Iran’s aggressive moves. For Khamenei, the prospect of large investments repeatedly being destroyed in Syria may be a difficult one, politically, as his domestic economy plummets. The contrast between these recent raids, which reportedly killed 16 Iranians, and the relative lack of an Iranian reaction highlights that it is difficult for Iran to respond in kind to Israeli escalations.
  • as Israel works to diminish the Syrian state’s military capabilities, it risks merely pushing the Assad regime deeper into its dependency on Iran
  • while Russia has been fast to criticize Israel for its strikes in Syria, it may quietly prefer to see Israel doing the dirty work of lessening Iranian power there. While they are partners in upholding the Assad regime, in some ways the Russians and Iranians are competitors in Syria, especially when looking toward state-rebuilding. Should Israeli strikes push the Iranians to play less of a role, the Russians would be the first to fill the void they would leave. Further, Israeli strikes in Syrian military facilities create business opportunities for the Russian arms industry. The Syrian regime will need to replace its destroyed weapons systems, and Russian manufacturers stand ready to supply new ones. Russia, while publicly opposed to Israeli strikes, might actually benefit from a laissez-faire policy toward these attacks.
  • While previous raids mostly damaged buildings and infrastructure, Israel probably expected this raid to inflict Iranian casualties, thus raising the stakes of the conflict.
  • When the fight between Iran and Israel in Syria moves closer to the Iraqi border, Israeli airstrikes become riskier, Iranian intelligence capabilities become stronger, and Iran’s ability to deny responsibility for missile launches becomes greater.
  • Iran cannot really be deterred by threats to the integrity of the Syrian state because it views the Assad regime only as a useful path by which it can increase its regional power
  • Given the gaps in its strategic messaging, Israeli deterrence, in and of itself, will likely not produce the total Iranian withdrawal for which Israel is hoping. The pressures Iran faces by demonstrations at home and in Iraq are perhaps the likelier trigger for Tehran to reconsider its strategy
Ed Webb

FDD Aligned with State Department to Attack Supporters of Iran Diplomacy - LobeLog - 0 views

lobelog.com/k-supporters-of-iran-diplomacy

US USA Iran propaganda statedepartment Trump

shared by Ed Webb on 02 Jun 19 - No Cached
  • the State Department suspended its funding for a mysterious website and Twitter account, IranDisInfo.org and @IranDisInfo, after the project attacked human rights workers, journalists and academics, many of whom are based inside the U.S. But the role of the U.S. government in financing IranDisInfo’s criticisms of Human Rights Watch and the National Iranian American Council (NIAC), a group that has been outspoken in warning about the Trump administration’s increasingly aggressive military posture towards Iran, appears to have been in collaboration with the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD). FDD pushes for military confrontation with Iran and has received funding from some of Trump and the GOP’s biggest campaign megadonors. While simultaneously denying their support for a war with Iran, FDD’s scholars have repeatedly urged U.S. military action against the Islamic Republic.
  • Dubowitz and his FDD colleagues have been advising the Trump White House on their regime change strategy in Iran.
  • FDD’s involvement with IranDisInfo was thinly concealed.  The website and Twitter account heavily promoted Mark Dubowitz and FDD advisor Saeed Ghasseminejad. Buried on FDD’s website is an “Iran Disinformation Project” that publishes the identical content from Ghasseminejad that was cross-posted on IranDisInfo’s website. And on at least five occasions FDD’s Twitter account promoted articles by Ghasseminejad “in @IranDisInfo.” Except the links didn’t send users to IranDisInfo’s website. Instead, the links were to FDD’s own “Iran Disinformation Project,” hosted on FDD’s website.
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  • In 2017, FDD received $3.63 million from billionaire Bernard Marcus, which constituted over a quarter of FDD’s contributions that year. Marcus, the co-founder of Home Depot, is outspoken about his hatred of Iran, which he characterized as “the devil” in a 2015 Fox Business interview. Marcus is Trump’s second biggest campaign supporter, contributing $7 million to pro-Trump super PACs before the 2016 election.
  • by the end of the 2011 tax year, Sheldon Adelson, who went on to become Trump’s single biggest campaign funder, the GOP’s biggest funder in the 2018 midterms, and personal advocate for Trump to take Bolton as his national security adviser, was FDD’s third biggest donor, contributing at least $1.5 million. (Dubowitz says Adelson no longer contributes to FDD.) In 2013, Adelson publicly proposed the U.S. launch a preventive nuclear attack on Iran, targeting the desert, and threaten to launch a second nuclear weapon at Tehran if Iran didn’t abandon its nuclear program.
  • the Trump administration’s decision to seemingly enter into a collaborative arrangement with FDD or Ghasseminejad, an FDD “adviser,” points to the State Department, under Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s leadership, moving to increasingly align itself with organizations and individuals pushing the U.S. towards another war in the Middle East.
  • Marcus and Adelson publicly endorse a militarist posture towards Iran and aren’t shy about writing big checks to politicians and organizations that share that mission. With Adelson and Marcus’s preferred national security adviser, John Bolton, evidently pushing the U.S. towards a military confrontation with Iran, it’s no wonder that FDD, possibly (until Friday) with the support of U.S.-taxpayer funding, is engaged in a public-diplomacy campaign against critics of Trump and Bolton’s Iran policy.
Ed Webb

How Trump and Netanyahu made American antisemitism come alive - 0 views

www.972mag.com/erican-antisemitism-come-alive

Israel US USA antisemitism Trump white supremacy opinion analysis Netanyahu

shared by Ed Webb on 26 Dec 20 - Cached
  • For four years, Netanyahu has equated Jews with the Israeli government, while Trump has made common cause with white nationalists. I wish more Israelis understood why this was so terrifying.
  • Growing up as a Jewish Israeli-American, antisemitism carried two connotations for me. One was a relic of the past: the stories my grandparents told about the events leading up to the Holocaust back in the old country. The second was the deliberate strategy by hasbara activists to label every criticism of Israeli policy as antisemitism — a toxic smear that I understood as manipulation.
  • My first experience of antisemitism was by proxy — antisemitism as metaphor. I was working as a human rights advocate in Israel when Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his cronies launched an attack on left-wing NGOs and human rights defenders that used the tactics, imagery, and language from classic European antisemitism, the kind that killed my ancestors.
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  • The Israeli right needed to divide the public against one another, blame someone for problems and sow fear, and they used antisemitism to generate it. This felt uncomfortable and urgent at the time, but I also knew that Israel had a long way to go before it was truly unsafe for Jews, even the most left-wing of us.
  • Obama had received the vast majority of American Jewish votes both in 2008 and 2012, but when Netanyahu came to Congress, he deliberately positioned himself not only as the chief representative of a foreign country, but also as the spokesperson for the Jewish people worldwide.
  • Implicit in Netanyahu’s attempt to equate all Jews with the Israeli government is the antisemitic “dual loyalty” trope: the idea that Jewish people are less loyal to our home countries than our neighbors, and that our real place is in Israel — not in the countries where we live, hold citizenship, and raise our families. For Netanyahu to make explicit this this trope made American Jews less safe.
  • Eighteen months later, Donald Trump was elected president and filled the White House with bona fide white nationalists. While Netanyahu and his right-wing supporters celebrated, my understanding of antisemitism shifted from a theoretical or metaphorical one into a real panicked feeling of threat in my body.
  • It didn’t take long for Trump to start echoing Netanyahu’s dual loyalty smear as part of his strategy to activate white nationalists as his ideological base. At a White House Hanukkah party, in front of a room full of Jewish Americans, Trump spoke about support for “your country” — meaning Israel. He has repeated this claim to American Jews several times throughout his presidency.
  • The narrative of “replacement” is not a metaphor. It is a conspiracy theory, widely believed by white nationalists, that Jews are attempting to literally replace the supposedly “real” Americans — white Christians — with immigrants and people of color. In Trump’s America, Jews are the evil globalists, seen as the secret masterminds behind movements like Dream Defenders and Black Lives Matter. It is this theory of replacement that Robert Bowers, who carried out the mass shooting in Pittsburgh just a little over a year later, cited as the reason Jews should be killed.
  • I am an outspoken left-wing Israeli-American Jew living in the United States and I am not safe. When Netanyahu and his ilk confidently speak for all Jews, when they use antisemitism themselves and provide cover for white nationalists to do the same, they are putting my life at risk
  • When more airtime is given at the AIPAC conference to the threat posed by Minnesota Congresswoman Ilhan Omar’s sympathies to the Palestinian cause than to growing numbers of white nationalists with automatic weapons in America, I am less safe
  • we must recognize that equating all Jews with the state and government of Israel is antisemitism, and it has to stop. American Jews are not Israelis, they are American. Period. Some support Israel, some loath Israel, some could not point to Israel on a map. Netanyahu makes all of us less safe when he claims to represent a people who have and want nothing to do with him or the state he represents.
  • The second thing that needs to happen is for new Israeli leaders to be seen and heard on the world stage, making it clear that far-right politicians are not the true representatives of the Israeli people. Not all Israelis are ethnic supremacists. Not all Israelis are Trump supporters. Not all Israelis are white. Not all Israelis are Jews.
Ed Webb

Hamas Disavows FBI Sting Against Right-Wing Boogaloo Boys - 0 views

theintercept.com/...fbi-sting-boogaloo-hamas

USA US Hamas extremism FBI weapons arms entrapment

shared by Ed Webb on 19 Sep 20 - Cached
  • Hamas, the group FBI agents were pretending to represent, is publicly denouncing the prosecution and its supposed connection to the two Boogaloo members. “When we read about this, it was really shocking to connect our movement with such extremists,”
  • the first time that a designated terrorist group that the FBI pretended to be has come out publicly to denounce a sting case
  • “First of all, Hamas is a Palestinian national movement, and we have limited our struggle for freedom and independence within the boundaries of Palestine, and we have nothing to do outside these geographical territories,” Naim said. “The second thing, we have nothing planned and we are not intending to plan anything against the United States.”
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  • Since the September 11 attacks, the FBI has arrested more than 340 defendants who were caught up in counterterrorism stings in which they believed they were supporting the Islamic State, Al Qaeda, or another foreign terrorist organization
  • in the Boojahideen case, the FBI linked up domestic extremists with a foreign terror group. Under the Justice Department’s normal modus operandi — using something of a double standard — right-wing domestic terrorists do not face terrorism charges
  • Solomon and Teeter apparently had big plans. They wanted to raise money to purchase a compound where Boogaloo and Boojahideen members could train. They saw Hamas as a possible solution, and the pair allegedly suggested to the FBI informant that they could become mercenaries for the Palestinian organization, earning money from the group by blowing up government monuments and courthouses.
  • “I fear that the bureau is throwing a lot of effort into resource-intensive sting operations that target only the most gullible individuals in the movement,” German said, “rather than investigating the multiple examples of far-right violence that are happening in plain sight.”
  • Solomon told the FBI’s witness that he was with Boojahideen, and he was there to protect others from the police, white supremacists, and looters. Solomon and Teeter told the witness that their group’s goal was to overthrow the government and the police.
  • Boogaloo movement’s aims are difficult to pin down, since its ideology can vary greatly from adherent to adherent and group to group. Some are white supremacists who view the current unrest as a prelude to a race war. Others, like Solomon and Teeter, do not appear to be racist but are virulently pro-gun and anti-police
  • Human Rights Watch has critized these stings for often targeting “those with intellectual and mental disabilities and the indigent.”
  • One of the many problems with the fantasy that the FBI constructed for Solomon and Teeter is that Hamas says it’s not interested in any such plots. “Maybe this is for internal domestic reasons — to create such connections and to attract more voters from the right and the Zionist lobbyist to support the current administration,” Naim, the Hamas member, said. “But this should not come at the expense of our just struggle against oppression, apartheid, and occupation.”
Ed Webb

Huge Sudanese losses in Yemen highlight fighters' role in the conflict | Middle East Eye - 1 views

www.middleeasteye.net/...ercenaries-die-frontline-yemen

Sudan Yemen KSA UAE military war soldiers

shared by Ed Webb on 15 Nov 19 - Cached
  • While Saudi and Emirati troops backing the government of Abd Rabbuh Mansour Hadi have been most prominent in the fight against the rebel Houthi movement, another country's fighters can be seen more readily on the frontline: those from Sudan.
  • Yemeni fighters say the Sudanese they fight alongside are some of the toughest troops in the Saudi-led coalition battling the Houthis.
  • Houthis themselves claimed last weekend that Saudi and Emirati forces are willing to push the Sudanese to the frontline while remaining in relative safety themselves.
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  • Some 4,000 Sudanese have been killed in Yemen since 2015, Sariea said, adding that the pro-Hadi coalition has shown little appetite to see the return of captured fighters in prisoner-swap deals.
  • Sudanese have been deployed in key areas and along hot front lines, such as Taiz, Hajjah and Hodeidah.
  • The Sudanese fighters have been drawn principally from the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), a tribal paramilitary group aligned with Sudan's government and previously known as the Janjaweed.
  • Majed Ghurbani, a 43-year-old Yemeni fighter on the western coast, told MEE that since he began fighting with pro-Hadi forces in 2015, he "has not seen any Saudi or Emirati fighter on the frontline". "The Sudanese are brave fighters, and they have more experience in fighting than Saudis, Emiratis or Yemenis," he said.
  • Now Sudan is ruled a military-civilian administration, raising questions about the Sudanese forces' continued presence in Yemen.
  • the spokesperson of the Sudanese armed forces, Brigadier General Amer Mohammed al-Hasan, dismissed Sariea's statement as "psychological warfare". "That was a kind of psychological warfare and exaggeration against the truth," Hasan told Al Jazeera TV, declining to give any figures for casualties or detainees.
  • For the Houthis and many supporters of Hadi, the Sudanese are fighting in Yemen as mercenaries, rather than because they want to prop up the Yemeni government. "The Sudanese fighting under the leadership of the coalition implement the agenda of the UAE and not Hadi, because they are mercenaries fighting for the sake of money," Khaldoon, a pro-Hadi military leader in Taiz, told MEE.
  • "There are around 30,000 Sudanese fighters in Yemen, and Sudan sees them as a resource to bring foreign currency into the country, so it is normal that Sudan does not talk about its loss in Yemen,"
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