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Contents contributed and discussions participated by Ed Webb

Ed Webb

How the Chuck Hagel Fight Changed the American Jewish Landscape in Washington - The Dai... - 0 views

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    Interesting account of "second image" effects, how domestic politics can drive international relations and, to an extent, "second image reversed": international relations driving aspects of domestic politics.
Ed Webb

New Saudi-supplied missiles boost rebels in south Syria | Reuters - 0 views

  • Rebels in southern Syria have fired newly acquired anti-tank guided missiles supplied by Saudi Arabia in a significant boost to their battle against President Bashar al-Assad, rebel, intelligence and diplomatic sources say.
  • The Saudi-financed missile shipments arrived in the last few weeks through Jordan after months of quiet Saudi pressure to prod Amman to open a supply route.Jordanian officials privately say they are caught between appeasing the Saudis and the danger of reprisals by Assad, who earlier this year warned Amman it "would be playing with fire" if it supported rebels.
  • Rebels in Deraa, the cradle of the 2011 uprising against Assad, have long complained that unlike their comrades in the north, they have been choked of significant arms, with both the West and Jordan wary of arming insurgents so close to Israel.
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  • Middle Eastern security, rebel and diplomatic sources cite the hands-on role of Prince Salman bin Sultan, a nephew of Saudi King Abdullah and senior security official. Salman heads an operations room in Amman with allies, regularly meeting and instructing top Syrian operatives.
  • Saudi Arabia's drive to arm rebels with advanced weapons and break the stalemate on the ground was prompted by fear of a Jihadist enclave emerging unless more effective aid was given to bolster the moderate armed opposition who so far still dominate in southern Syria.Riyadh's deeper concern stems from the impact an al Qaeda enclave just 100 km (60 miles) from its own border with Jordan could have on thousands of young disaffected Saudis, according to a Western intelligence operative who monitors Syria.
Ed Webb

Simon Dalby, 400ppm: Anthropocene Geopolitics | Society and Space - Environment and Pla... - 1 views

  • Humanity is remaking the biosphere; producing the new natures in which the human future will play out. Hence the now widespread use of the term Anthropocene for the period of planetary history in which the dominant ecological force is humanity, or more precisely, fossil fueled industrial capitalist humanity.
  • Natural environments are no longer in any meaningful sense the given context for human existence; they are being remade by land use changes, urbanization and by both technologies and species moved and recombined in numerous artificial assemblages. Atlases with their designations of planetary biomes frequently need replacement with a dynamic cartography charting the changing “anthromes” that are the new terrestrial ecological patterns that matter.
  • Globalization now has to be understood as a process of material transformation quite as much as a matter of trade, culture and politics crossing frontiers. The processes whereby business decisions are made to produce particular products by using certain technologies is key to understanding the future of the planet; economic geography has become essential to geomorphology.
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  • The Westphalian political imaginary of separate competing territorial states is a spatial arrangement singularly unsuited to the collective tasks ahead, but it is the institutional context within which we have to act.
Ed Webb

Egypt's New Rulers Face Crisis With Ethiopia Over Nile - Al-Monitor: the Pulse of the M... - 0 views

  • the Nile has returned to the government’s agenda as an external challenge threatening national security. A delegation of senior Egyptian diplomats, including Africa expert Ambassador Mona Omar, traveled to a number of African states, starting with Ethiopia, to explain Egypt’s position and improve its image following the recent coup and overthrow of deposed president Mohammed Morsi. Coordination meetings were also held between the ministers of foreign affairs and irrigation to make progress on the political and technical levels toward a solution to the problem.
  • A diplomatic source told Al-Monitor that in regional negotiations with the upstream countries, the Egyptian attempts to reach a solution over the Entebbe agreement or to convince the countries involved to renegotiate the points of contention were an exercise in futility. The source affirmed that Egypt still has some negotiating cards to play. Despite Egyptian endeavors to re-launch negotiations over the Entebbe agreement, the Ethiopian and Ugandan parliaments have ratified it and refuse to return to the negotiation phase. Instead, they called on Egypt and Sudan to join the agreement.
  • The Nile issue was one of the first files to be addressed by Mohamed ElBaradei, interim deputy president for international affairs. ElBaradei held an “unannounced” meeting to discuss the crisis of the Nile waters, the mechanisms to be adopted and the steps that would be taken in regard to this issue. A diplomatic source who took part in the meeting told Al-Monitor, “The necessity of completing the data of the Renaissance Dam and conducting accurate studies was agreed upon. The meeting came up with three conclusions: first, the impossibility of resorting to international arbitration; second, the non-compliance ... of the past regimes, represented by arrogance and condescending attitudes toward the upstream countries in addition to acknowledging the fact that some policies were wrong; [and] third, the acceptance of the option of cooperating on the basis of building new power-generating dams according to international high-tech standards and making sure that there will be no damage. Additionally, Egypt will call on halting the construction of the dam for the time being until a mutual solution is reached.”
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  • Egypt gets an annual quota estimated at 55.5 billion cubic meters of water from the Nile in accordance with the 1959 agreement signed with Sudan, whereby Sudan gets 18.5 billion cubic meters. This distribution is rejected by the rest of the Nile's headwater states, which believe that Egypt gets the lion's share of the water, despite the allegations of Egyptian officials and experts who complain that this share is insufficient for Egypt's internal needs, as the country depends on the Nile waters for 90% of its water needs.
Ed Webb

Erdogan Is Right on Egypt - Al-Monitor: the Pulse of the Middle East - 0 views

  • The reason for such passionate focus on Egypt is not a deep knowledge about this large Arab country. In fact, only a handful of Turks can speak Arabic well, something actively discouraged by Ataturk's education system, and most of those who comment on Egypt wouldn't even be able to name the main political actors. Rather, Turks are interested in Egypt because when they look at what's happening there, they see themselves.
  • Even in the secular camp, however, there have been only a few endorsements of the coup, while the main opposition leader, Kemal Kilicdaroglu, openly opposed it. After experiencing four coups in the past half century, Turks' support for civilian rule seems to have become the norm.
  • While the AKP only condemns the coup and its supporters, the secularists blame Morsi for bringing it on himself. Moreover, when the latter criticize Morsi’s “majoritarianism,” “power grab” or “Islamic agenda,” they are actually talking about Erdogan and warning him of similar tendencies.
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  • the AKP and its supporters use the coup in Egypt to defend their view that the Gezi Park protests that shook Turkey in June were in fact a similar “coup scheme.” They view the entire Gezi Park story as a made-in-the-West plot to topple Erdogan. So, when the same West exhibits a double standard regarding Egypt, shying away from calling the coup a coup, it becomes proof of the conspiracy. They see the West, through its secular puppets, as attacking elected Islamists on both sides of the Mediterranean.
  • when one goes to such Twitter hashtags as #stoplyingCNN or #CNN_STOP_Lying_About_Egypt, one finds both Islamist Turks and secular Egyptians angry at CNN for opposite reasons.
Ed Webb

What Does Morsi's Ouster Mean for Turkey? - Al-Monitor: the Pulse of the Middle East - 0 views

  • Why is the Turkish government on such high alert? How can the coup in Cairo affect Turkey? Is Turkey fearing the collapse of the “model” that was once seen as a source of inspiration for the region?
  • “The impression I get from the second Tahrir uprising by Arab nationalists and liberals — which toppled the Brotherhood — and the West’s non-committal attitude, is that the global establishment has given up on the moderate Islam project. This will certainly reflect on Turkey. Turkey may easily experience a gradual decrease in the easy credits it was acquiring by saying, ‘I represent moderate Islam. I will rehabilitate the region.’ This loss of stature will not only be seen in economic but also in political, diplomatic and military arenas.
  • “Egypt can’t affect Turkey directly in the short run. But should the AKP exhibit displeasure and fully identify with the Brotherhood, we will be affected. I am afraid such a perception already exists. The AKP has ideological affinity and institutional links with the Brotherhood. But Turkey is not Egypt. They have diverse political processes. If the AKP exaggerates its reactions, all the forces that intend to mobilize against the AKP might take action. “Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu had an ambition to shape an Egypt-Turkey axis. This is now totally off the agenda. This is a serious weakness for Turkey and its political vision for the region. Egypt was the center of gravity for a Sunni bloc based on the Brotherhood. There is now a serious gap.
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  • “Obviously the moderate Islam project has been badly bruised. That is the prevailing perception. The moderate Islam project was an outcome of the Arab Spring. It was a general picture nourished by Tunisia, Egypt and Turkey. Now the pixels of that photo are blurred. It is sad, but it is the reality.
  • You are a political party. You are governing a country. You are not a civil society outfit. If you are going to deal with everything from a morality angle, then go and set up an NGO. Those ruling countries have heavy responsibilities. They have to think of the interests of millions of people. They have to be cool-headed and build their policies on realism and balances of power.
Ed Webb

Saudi Arabia Pleased With Morsi's Fall - Al-Monitor: the Pulse of the Middle East - 0 views

  • Saudi Arabia hosted Arab Muslim Brotherhood exiles during the repression of the 1950 and 1960s. They came not only from Egypt but also from Syria, Iraq and other Arab countries where they had been prosecuted. Brotherhood cadres played a pivotal role in Saudi educational institutions and later the transnational organizations set up by King Faisal to counter the spread of Arab nationalism and leftist movements. Saudis used the exiled Islamists as tools to weaken such movements and undermine their credibility, while emphasizing their un-Islamic character. During the anti-Soviet jihad in the 1980s, Saudis used the worldwide networks established by the Brotherhood to inflame the imagination of its youth and channel aid and weapons. Yet Saudi Arabia never allowed the Brotherhood to establish branches there as they did in other Arab countries and in the West.
  • unlike official Saudi Salafists, who still believe that democracy is a Western import that promises to bring atheists, secularists and leftists to power, the Brotherhood engaged in elections, won seats in parliaments and even came to power in Tunisia and Egypt. Surely, then, Islam and democracy are not so incompatible. This in itself threatens the foundations of Saudi rule, which is still based on absolute kingship, difficult to justify from an Islamic point of view. The Brotherhood therefore exposes Saudi claims to legitimacy and undermines their credibility as lawful Muslim rulers.
  • After 9/11, suspicion of the Brotherhood evolved into outright hostility. Prince Nayif accused the Brotherhood of radicalizing Saudi youth and held it responsible for the terrorism wave that swept the country from 2003 to 2008. Such accusations were unfounded, as most jihadis operating in Saudi Arabia grounded their actions in the teachings of Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab, the 18th-century preacher whose tradition has been dominant in Saudi Arabia up to the present.
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  • Educated urban Saudis were attracted to the Brotherhood discourse and impressed by its ability to form civil society organizations, posing as charitable and welfare services. Individuals frustrated with the Wahhabi-Salafist tradition that forbids political action and unconditionally obeys rulers, found in the Brotherhood an authentic discourse capable of mobilizing society. The ideological vacuum that resulted from the death of Arab nationalism and socialism after 1967 was quickly filled by political Islam. To counter the appeal of the Muslim Brotherhood, the Saudi religious establishment condemned it as a divisive force and accused it of undermining people’s creeds. Saudi Arabia began to curb the activities of the Brotherhood after the latter condemned the Saudis for inviting foreign troops to expel then-Iraqi president Saddam Hussein from Kuwait in 1990.
  • The competition over the hearts and minds of Muslims in the growing global Muslim society worries Saudi Arabia, which seeks to monopolize these platforms.
  • Saudi Arabia feared that Morsi would make Egypt drift toward Iran, with whom Saudi Arabia competes for hegemony at the regional level.
  • The Muslim Brotherhood had already drifted toward Qatar rather than Iran, thus allowing this small but wealthy Gulf country to undermine Saudi designs for the region and split the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries over the desired outcome of the Arab uprisings.
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