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in title, tags, annotations or urlIssues plus Kashmir and Siachen Glacier could be Determined by Mutual Consent - 0 views
BBC News - Lebanon sucked in Syria crisis - 2 views
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Lebanon risks being plunged into sectarian strife, possibly even civil war, by the strains inflicted on its own delicate internal situation by the Syrian crisis
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The main Lebanese Alawite faction, the Arab Democratic Party led by Rifaat Eid, is strongly linked to Damascus and is widely believed to receive arms and even instructions from the regime.
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Most parts of Tripoli are clearly badged with the symbols of the struggle. In many areas, the black-white-and-green banner of the Syrian revolution flutters, in places more prominently than Lebanon's own flag. But in Jebel Mohsen, the posters are of Mr Assad and his father, the regime founder Hafez al-Assad, some of them featuring Rifaat Eid.
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Turkey and Iran seek workaround on Syria - Al-Monitor: the Pulse of the Middle East - 1 views
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In Tehran, Erdogan stated, “The terrorist groups that are operating under the cover of Islam are in no way related to Islam. We will widen our cooperation shoulder-to-shoulder with Iran in combating terrorist groups.” Rouhani, for his part, spoke of “common views about … terrorism and extremism.” What the two sides disagree on is the source of terrorism. According to Turkish officials, the Iranians maintain that “Assad’s departure would make no sense without the elimination of terrorist groups, the prevention of their entry [to Syria] and cutting the financial and other support they receive.” In response, Erdogan said: “The terrorist groups emerged under Assad. A government change is a pressing necessity. We disagree with the argument that ‘this cannot happen as long as terrorist groups are there.’ Measures could be equally taken through the formation of an interim government in Syria. The interim government could combat terrorism by means of the Free Syrian Army and at the same time lead the country to elections.”
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Asked about any compromise with Iran on Syria, Erdogan said, “I cannot say we have reached an agreement.” He added, though, that the two sides had instructed their foreign ministers and intelligence chiefs to work on the issue. This proposal reportedly came from Iran and the Turkish side accepted. So, here begins the path to compromise. The common discourse of threat regarding the situation in Syria lays the ground for cooperation.
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Turkey has fallen into the situation of Pakistan, which serves as a springboard for the Afghan jihad. Like a boomerang, al-Qaeda has turned on Turkey. On Jan. 28, the Turkish army shelled positions of the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS) as the group attacked the Syrian Turkmen village of Al-Rai near the border. Even though ISIS spokesman Abu Layth said it would not strike back because “Muslims will take Turkey without arms,” security and intelligence authorities remain on alert against possible al-Qaeda attacks
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Petro-aggression: How Russia's oil makes war more likely - 0 views
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A Russian natural gas embargo is a trick that can probably only be pulled once (not unlike the 1973 oil embargo). So in a sense, European dependence on Russian energy does not imply short-term vulnerability – except that European policymakers’ perceptions of vulnerability can become its own reality.
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Russia’s resource curse. Russia’s energy revenues (from both oil and gas) have ensconced Vladimir Putin as an autocrat and given him a free hand in foreign policy. Russia is so heavily dependent on its energy revenues that it is a classic petrostate, making it more susceptible to corruption, autocracy and violent conflict.
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Russia’s incursion into Crimea can be seen as a close cousin of petro-aggression. A state is more likely to instigate international conflict when it has a combination of (a) oil income and (b) a leader with aggressive preferences. A lot more likely: 250 percent more military conflict than a typical non-petrostate, on average. Oil income means more military spending, increasing the state’s scope for potential conflicts. Even more importantly, it distorts the domestic politics of the state, reducing the leader’s domestic political risk from military adventurism and aggressive foreign policy.
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Why the U.S. (still) can't train the Iraqi military - The Washington Post - 1 views
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Research on military effectiveness suggests that even very brave, highly motivated soldiers won't be successful in their efforts to take territory if they fail to master these key skills. It also suggests that these skills are particularly unlikely to develop in regimes that are more concerned with maintaining power, especially in the face of political threats from their own military organizations, than combating conventionally powerful adversaries. This problem has historically plagued most Iraqi efforts to generate effective military forces, dating to the time of Saddam Hussein.
IS: the rentier caliphate with no new ideas - 0 views
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It is clear from this trajectory that for all its denunciation of the territorial nation state, IS has followed its pattern faithfully.
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As with any rentier state, IS has zealously acquired and guarded the assets that generate money. Most obviously this has been from oil extracted in Syria and in Iraq and sold to areas controlled by the Assad government, across the Turkish border or through middlemen in the Kurdish region of Iraq.
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As with any rentier state, IS has zealously acquired and guarded the assets that generate money. Most obviously this has been from oil extracted in Syria and in Iraq and sold to areas controlled by the Assad government, across the Turkish border or through middlemen in the Kurdish region of Iraq.
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For a Bounced Check in Dubai, the Penalty Can Be Years in Jail - NYTimes.com - 0 views
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For more than a year, prosecutors have been cracking down on the corruption and kickbacks that thrived during the boom years in this Persian Gulf city-state
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But alongside the con artists and crooks, a rising number of businesspeople have been sent to jail for going into debt. Bouncing a check is a criminal offense here. That fact has begun raising questions about the fairness of Dubai’s laws, especially among the foreigners who make up about 90 percent of the population.
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he criminalization of debt has put a formidable weapon in the hands of landlords, banks and other creditors, who can send someone to jail with a single document showing a check has been returned for insufficient funds. It has also complicated Dubai’s efforts to recover from the financial crisis by sending many legitimate but struggling businesspeople to jail, where they find it even harder to repay their debts.
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It's alarming how easy it is to commit a criminal offense. It is not hard to get debt or accumulate it in the business world, especially when the economy is not as good, so it's really not surprising that this could collapse Dubai's economy with the now minimal inclinations for businesses to take risks and low incentives for foreign investment.
Blackwater Founder Implicated in Murder - 0 views
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the company's owner, Erik Prince, may have murdered or facilitated the murder of individuals who were cooperating with federal authorities investigating the company. The former employee also alleges that Prince "views himself as a Christian crusader tasked with eliminating Muslims and the Islamic faith from the globe," and that Prince's companies "encouraged and rewarded the destruction of Iraqi life."
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Blackwater was smuggling weapons into Iraq
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intentionally deceived the US State Department and other federal agencies.
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Pakistan's Army Said to Be Linked to Many Killings - NYTimes.com - 0 views
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The army has acknowledged that bodies have turned up, but its spokesmen assert that the killings are the result of civilians settling scores.
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Now, concerns over the army’s methods in the area threaten to further taint Washington’s association with the military, cooperation that has been questioned in Congress and has been politically unpopular in Pakistan.
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The Human Rights Commission, a nongovernmental organization, disputed that all the victims had been killed by civilians, saying last month that there were credible reports of retaliatory killings by the military. It said that witnesses had seen mass graves and that in some cases, the bodies appeared to be those of militants.
Secret Assault on Terrorism Widens on Two Continents - NYTimes.com - 0 views
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accelerated a transformation of the C.I.A. into a paramilitary organization as much as a spying agency, which some critics worry could lower the threshold for future quasi-military operations. In Pakistan’s mountains, the agency had broadened its drone campaign beyond selective strikes against Qaeda leaders and now regularly obliterates suspected enemy compounds and logistics convoys, just as the military would grind down an enemy force. For its part, the Pentagon is becoming more like the C.I.A. Across the Middle East and elsewhere, Special Operations troops under secret “Execute Orders” have conducted spying missions that were once the preserve of civilian intelligence agencies. With code names like Eager Pawn and Indigo Spade, such programs typically operate with even less transparency and Congressional oversight than traditional covert actions by the C.I.A. And, as American counterterrorism operations spread beyond war zones into territory hostile to the military, private contractors have taken on a prominent role, raising concerns that the United States has outsourced some of its most important missions to a sometimes unaccountable private army.
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“For the first time in our history, an entity has declared a covert war against us,” Mr. Smith said, referring to Al Qaeda. “And we are using similar elements of American power to respond to that covert war.” Some security experts draw parallels to the cold war, when the United States drew heavily on covert operations as it fought a series of proxy battles with the Soviet Union. And some of the central players of those days have returned to take on supporting roles in the shadow war. Michael G. Vickers, who helped run the C.I.A.’s campaign to funnel guns and money to the Afghanistan mujahedeen in the 1980s and was featured in the book and movie “Charlie Wilson’s War,” is now the top Pentagon official overseeing Special Operations troops around the globe. Duane R. Clarridge, a profane former C.I.A. officer who ran operations in Central America and was indicted in the Iran-contra scandal, turned up this year helping run a Pentagon-financed private spying operation in Pakistan.
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A Navy ship offshore had fired the weapon in the attack, a cruise missile loaded with cluster bombs, according to a report by Amnesty International. Unlike conventional bombs, cluster bombs disperse small munitions, some of which do not immediately explode, increasing the likelihood of civilian causalities. The use of cluster munitions, later documented by Amnesty, was condemned by human rights groups.
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Israeli Ex-Soldier Defends Her Facebook Snapshots - The Lede Blog - NYTimes.com - 0 views
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occupation also corrupts the Israelis
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Ms. Abergil, whose compulsory service ended last year, refused to accept any responsibility for harming Israel’s international reputation, saying: We will always be attacked. Whatever we do, we will always be attacked.
Arab autocracy: Thank you and goodbye | The Economist - 0 views
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Decades of repression have ensured that the opposition is quiescent in Egypt and virtually inaudible in Saudi Arabia. But they have also made these countries vulnerable to violent disruption. Transition in autocracies often means instability.
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the closed political systems of Egypt and Saudi Arabia, the uncertainties of dynastic power-mongering and the corruption inherent in patronage-ridden autocracies still often leads to plotting at the top and frustration that could spill over into anger at the bottom. That becomes more likely as the internet, mobile phones and easier travel make people far less easy to control.
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What the Arabs need most, in a hurry, is the rule of law, independent courts, freeish media, women’s and workers’ rights, a market that is not confined to the ruler’s friends, and a professional civil service and education system that are not in hock to the government, whether under a king or a republic. In other words, they need to nurture civil society and robust institutions.
Liberal Peace is dead? Not so fast | openDemocracy - 0 views
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But the main problem with the functional search for hybridity and exoticizing `indigenous' and `traditional' practices is that it relies on essentializing the Afghan culture. The international community swings from one extreme of trying to redo every institution to uncritically embracing all that is ‘traditional’.
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The abandonment of liberal peace seems to be an exit strategy for the international community. But this is making a grand exit while blaming Afghans as a convenience: the government for corruption, Afghan culture for being fundamentally illiberal, or Afghans’ vision of order and loyalty, for being fragmented. By implication, the modern state which expects to command the full loyalty of its own citizens, becomes too distant from what the Afghans deserve, and culture is essentialised as anti-modern and static. This is to place blame in the wrong place and to ignore any kind of internal dialogue and dynamic that is taking place in Afghanistan.
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Most respondents in our Sciences Po research argued that genuine Islam, where rights and freedoms were limited automatically through akhlag (morality) and iman (faith), was far superior both to the liberal peace model, based on individualism, and to the notion of a traditional peace, based on hierarchy and authority. Yet, it seems that understanding religion as a source for principles of social organization is a step too far for the secularized, rational west which automatically associates the adjective “Islamic” with extremism and fundamentalism. This is sadly a missed opportunity.
US demands Afghan 'bribery court' - 0 views
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