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Ed Webb

Secretary Pompeo's Speech in Cairo: POMED Experts Respond - POMED - 0 views

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Egypt US USA Trump politics policy foreignpolicy Sisi authoritarianism analysis

shared by Ed Webb on 14 Jan 19 - Cached
  • Pompeo delivered a speech that lacked any overarching policy message. Pompeo did spell out what this administration sees as the main problems in the region: the Islamic Republic of Iran, radical Islamist terrorism, and even the policies of the Obama administration. But he failed to outline a coherent vision, strategy, or policy approach for addressing these problems
  • To many, Pompeo confirmed widespread fears that the Trump administration simply lacks seriousness of purpose in the Middle East. The speech strongly resembled the rhetoric of many of the region’s own authoritarian regimes—full of bluster, hyperbolic language, attacks on political rivals, and boasts of the administration’s tremendous policy successes that felt divorced from reality
  • The Trump administration played up Pompeo’s remarks as a big deal, but a clear policy roadmap and announcements of any new initiatives were missing. The language on Syria, the most newsworthy topic, did little to end confusion over U.S. policy. The speech’s vacuity likely is because President Trump is simply not interested in the Middle East, and is known to make sudden foreign policy declarations on Twitter. Pompeo seemingly had little policy substance to work with and probably didn’t want to get out ahead of his boss
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  • Pompeo’s speech was not a statement of foreign policy strategy, but rather a rambling screed dominated by distortions, falsehoods, and outright lies. His claims fall into three categories: (1) gratuitous potshots at former President Barack Obama; (2) dubious defenses of the Trump administration’s reckless foreign policy decisions, such as withdrawing from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) with Iran; and (3) misrepresentations of the administration’s policies. Let’s be clear: this was a political stump speech, not a statesman’s address
  • aside from several authoritarian regimes who profess unbridled support for Trump but do little to advance U.S. interests, the United States has never before been more alone
  • Pompeo’s small and homogenous audience of elites reflects the very limited and narrow relationship the United States has chosen to have with the societies in the region
  • rather than speak sternly and honestly to the Egyptian regime, for all of the Egyptian people to hear, he praised al-Sisi for his tolerance and progress despite the totalitarian direction the Egyptian president has taken the country since he led the coup in 2013
Ed Webb

Club Med: Israel, Egypt, and Others Form New Natural Gas Group - Foreign Policy - 0 views

foreignpolicy.com/...ers-form-new-natural-gas-group

mediterranean gas energy regionalism exports pipelines Egypt Israel Turkey Lebanon Syria Cyprus Russia EU

shared by Ed Webb on 19 Jan 19 - No Cached
  • a forum joining Israel, Egypt, Cyprus, and other neighbors to develop their new natural gas discoveries. The Eastern Mediterranean Gas Forum, announced Monday in Cairo, formalizes growing energy ties among recent rivals and could spur much-needed development of energy infrastructure required to tap the region’s potential as a source of energy for Europe and beyond. The forum in particular cements the growing commercial links between Israel and Egypt; Israel expects to start shipping natural gas to Egypt in the next few months as part of a landmark, $15 billion deal between the two countries.
  • a few notable absences, including Syria and Lebanon—both of which are trying to develop potential offshore gas fields—and especially Turkey
  • The new body will promote “discussions among countries that already have cooperation with each other,” said Brenda Shaffer, an energy expert at Georgetown University. “Hopefully, in the next round of the forum, Turkey will be involved, and that would make it much more significant and not just include the happy campers.”
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  • even with the creation of the new organization and increased energy exploration, the Eastern Mediterranean has a long way to go to truly become the kind of energy hub that many in the region and even in Brussels hope to see. The European Union’s top energy official, for instance, has repeatedly pointed to the Eastern Mediterranean’s potential as an alternative source of energy to importing gas from Russia, and Egypt dreams of again becoming an exporter of natural gas to Europe, as it was until 2012
  • grandiose plans, such as a pipeline snaking across to southern Europe via Crete, keep colliding with political and economic realities. Deep waters and high costs make building a pipeline to Europe an expensive proposition
  • Another option to market the gas would be to build liquefied natural gas (LNG) terminals; liquefied gas can be shipped on tankers around the world. But the problem, aside from the upfront cost of building the expensive infrastructure needed to superchill natural gas, is the economics of the gas trade, especially when it comes to competing with Russian energy supplies to Europe. LNG costs a lot more than natural gas shipped through a pipeline, and Russian gas is especially cheap.
  • Europe’s dependence on Russian energy is growing,
  • Tapping its own natural gas fields would enable Cyprus to replace costly energy imports and power its economy. Israel has already turned its first offshore gas discoveries into a new, cleaner source of electricity, and the country hopes to phase out coal entirely over the next decade. Egypt, too, is using domestic natural gas resources to keep the lights on and factories running, and natural gas demand there is expected to keep growing and potentially gobble up whatever is produced by additional offshore discoveries.
Ed Webb

Palestinian in Israel - Foreign Policy - 0 views

foreignpolicy.com/...palestinian-in-israel

identities Arabs Palestinians Palestine Israel israelpalestine

shared by Ed Webb on 22 Jan 19 - Cached
  • “I don’t use the term Arab-Israeli,” said the 30-year-old journalist, who was born in the Galilee and now lives in the northern city of Haifa. “We are Palestinians with Israeli citizenship. It’s very important for us, the terms and the terminology we use.”
  • Arab-Israeli—the official media and Israeli government term for the 20 percent of Israel’s almost 9 million citizens who are Arab-Palestinian—is increasingly unpopular among the people it’s meant to describe. Only 16 percent of this population wants to be called Arab-Israeli, according to a 2017 survey by the University of Haifa professor Sammy Smooha provided to Foreign Policy.
  • Last summer’s adoption of the new nation-state law, which demoted the status of both the Arabic language and non-Jewish minorities in Israel, accelerated an ongoing shift in the public identity of the Palestinian population in Israel. It is a political statement to use Palestinian as a modifier—a link to cousins in the West Bank and Gaza and an identity distinct from fellow Jewish Israeli citizens.
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  • the increasingly assertive identity of Palestinians in Israel runs parallel to an ongoing reframing of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as a civil rights struggle, both in Israel and the occupied territories
  • Palestinian citizens of Israel—also now referred to as Palestinians inside Israel, ’48 Arabs, Palestinian Arabs, Palestinian Israelis, Arab-Israelis—are part of the communities that remained inside the so-called Green Line drawn between Israel and Jordan after the 1948 war. They include Druze (a religious minority), Bedouins, Christians, and Muslims. This group, in theory, has the same rights as Jewish Israelis. In practice, though, they’ve long faced institutional discrimination, and about half of the population lives in poverty, the highest rate in Israel. Even the Druze, who have historically been the most integrated into Israeli society, including serving in the Israel Defense Forces, are furious that the new nation-state law targets them, too. (Among the different Druze communities, a minority is located in the occupied Golan Heights and still rejects Israeli citizenship and identifies as Syrian.)
  • with talk in Israel and the Palestinian territories of a two-state solution shifting now toward a one-state reality—be it either one binational state or one Jewish state where not all Palestinians have equal rights—some Palestinians inside Israel are asserting these two parts of their identity as the core of a more rights-based discourse
  • one significant finding of Smooha’s data is not simply that Arab-Israeli is an unpopular option but rather that more people are rejecting the Israeli part of the identity all together. Since 2003, about 30 percent of respondents have reported that they prefer the term “Palestinian Arab in Israel.” But while in 2003 just 3.7 percent said they prefer the term “Palestinian Arab” (which doesn’t reference their Israeli component at all), in 2017 that number rose to 17 percent
  • “We are not here nor there,” she said. “They [outsiders] think the ’48 [Arabs] live so well. We are poor! In the West Bank, they think that we ’48 Arabs are like Jews. … And here the Jews say we are Arabs.”
Ed Webb

Iran's Cleric Spymaster Is Caught in the Middle | Provocateurs | OZY - 0 views

www.ozy.com/...95144

Iran intelligence authoritarianism IRGC US USA

shared by Ed Webb on 25 Jun 19 - No Cached
  • the 65-year-old cleric, Alavi. An unlikely spy chief, he is emblematic of the multiple power centers vying for control within Iran. He is widely seen as close to Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran’s supreme leader. Yet at the same time, as a minister, he is the sword arm of reformist President Hassan Rouhani’s turf war with Tehran’s hardliners. And there’s a third ball he needs to juggle: the IRGC
  • When threats against Iran mount, the IRGC’s influence grows: It has virtually taken control of large parts of the country’s domestic and foreign policy in recent years
  • Alavi is the point man to watch on Iran’s restless youth who seek more political openness. His agents also recently came down heavily on Christians after he controversially claimed that Christianity was gaining popularity in Iran. The cross from a 100-year-old Assyrian Presbyterian church was taken away and the building padlocked.The move was a sign of how Alavi’s religious background influences his intelligence work. Even Alavi had expressed surprise when Rouhani appointed him as the intelligence minister in 2013. Due to his proximity with Khamenei, he was expecting some other assignment that would fit his experience as a religious teacher. Just before his present job as spy-in-chief of the Iranian government, Khamenei had designated Alavi as the head of the political conscience of the army — making sure its religious commitment remained steadfast.
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  • With the IRGC’s profile expected to rise amid the tensions with the U.S., Alavi’s role as a principal troubleshooter for Khamenei and Rouhani — who have their own significant differences — is only expected to grow. The best way to check the IRGC’s legitimacy? Demonstrate that the government intelligence forces are adept at tackling the U.S.
  • Some professionals in the intelligence business who have scrutinized Alavi closely find him “an ordinary cleric.” “Either he conceals his smarts associated with a professional intelligence boss or he is a simple religious preacher in the wrong job,” says a diplomat who met him years ago and asked not to be identified for fear of reprisals.
  • Contrary to the common view in the West, Iran is a noisy democracy where Rouhani can be chased by aggressive reporters during press conferences in Tehran. Normally, the criticism against government ministers is sharp, but much has changed since the U.S. withdrew from the nuclear deal Tehran negotiated with global powers, which had promised sanctions relief in return for curbs on Iran’s nuclear program. Now dissent is seen as subversion
  • Rouhani, who came in on the platform plank of signing the nuclear deal and reviving the battered economy, suddenly has to compete with fundamentalists, and that means turning Iran into a police state. “Iranian intelligence is very good. No intrusion by a foreign agency lasts beyond 24 hours,” claims an intelligence source who requested anonymity for fear of retaliation.
Ed Webb

Arab Regimes Are the World's Most Powerful Islamophobes - Foreign Policy - 0 views

foreignpolicy.com/...lds-most-powerful-islamophobes

GCC UAE KSA Saudi lobbying propaganda Islam Islamists Islamism diaspora

shared by Ed Webb on 28 Jun 19 - No Cached
  • an often-overlooked trend: the culpability of Arab and Muslim governments in fueling anti-Muslim hate as part of their campaigns to fight dissent at home and abroad. By trying to justify repression and appease Western audiences, some of these regimes and their supporters have forged an informal alliance with conservative and right-wing groups and figures in the West dedicated to advancing anti-Islamic bigotry
  • Arab regimes spend millions of dollars on think tanks, academic institutions, and lobbying firms in part to shape the thinking in Western capitals about domestic political activists opposed to their rule, many of whom happen to be religious. The field of counterextremism has been the ideal front for the regional governments’ preferred narrative: They elicit sympathy from the West by claiming to also suffer from the perfidies of radical jihadis and offer to work together to stem the ideological roots of the Islamist threat.
  • scare tactics to play up the threat and create an atmosphere in which an alternative to these regimes becomes unthinkable from a Western policy standpoint
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  • Such an environment also enables these regimes to clamp down on dissent at home with impunity. Terrorism becomes a catchall term to justify repression. In Saudi Arabia, even atheists are defined as terrorists under existing anti-terrorism laws
  • David Duke, the former Ku Klux Klan leader who visited Damascus in 2005 to show solidarity with the Syrian regime against Zionism and imperialism, frequently expressed support for Syrian President Bashar al-Assad despite the dictator’s vicious campaign against his own people. In a 2017 tweet, he wrote, “Assad is a modern day hero standing up to demonic forces seeking to destroy his people and nation – GOD BLESS ASSAD!” Similar Assad-friendly sentiments have been expressed by far-right figures in Europe
  • as European countries increasingly became critical of Saudi Arabia last year after the growing casualties in the Yemen war, the imprisonment of women activists, and the murder of the Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi, Riyadh turned to the right wing for support. Among other efforts, a delegation of Saudi women was dispatched to meet with the far-right bloc of the European Parliament. According to Eldar Mamedov, an advisor to the European Parliament’s social democrats, Saudi Arabia subsequently became a divisive issue in Brussels, as left-of-center forces pushed for resolutions against the kingdom while right-wing forces opposed them
  • These regimes intentionally push propaganda about political and religious activists from their countries now living in the West to marginalize and silence them in their new homes. Many of these individuals fled repression and sought protection in democracies; labeling them as religious or stealth jihadis makes it easier to discredit their anti-regime activism. The rise of powerful Western Muslim activists and politicians adds to these regimes’ anxiety about their own domestic stability.
Ed Webb

The Fight Against Terror Needs Better Data - Foreign Policy - 0 views

foreignpolicy.com/...terrorism-relative-deprivation

youth politics economy Tunisia terror data policy terrorism CT analysis recruitment

shared by Ed Webb on 17 Jul 19 - No Cached
  • Using a leaked database from 2016 on Islamic State recruits, we were able to geographically locate where almost 600 recruits originated from in Tunisia—one of the highest exporters of foreign fighters to Syria. We then used socio-economic data from Tunisian delegations (the equivalent of a district or a county—the smallest geographic unit that could be measured) to try to find what was driving foreign fighters to go to Syria. Surprisingly, our research suggests that absolute indicators of well-being, which are intuitively linked to terrorism by many policymakers, are not related to a higher probability of joining a violent extremist group.
  • higher rates of radicalization seem to be linked to relative deprivation—the perception of being disadvantaged or not achieving the expectations one feels entitled to. This builds on previous research including Ted Robert Gurr’s seminal book, Why Men Rebel, and supports the conclusions of recent work such as Kartika Bhatia and Hafez Ghanem’s study on the linkage between economic development and violent extremism across the Middle East
  • districts with high levels of unemployment among university-educated men produced higher numbers of men joining violent extremist groups
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  • districts with high inflows of domestic migrants in search of better living conditions exported more foreign fighters
  • the problem is not one of poverty or unemployment per se but rather the unmet expectations of highly educated youth who feel the country’s social contract has failed them
  • even policies that advance the right agenda items—such as increasing employment for well-educated youths—may not make any impact in addressing radicalization if they are too broadly based or target districts with low numbers of foreign fighters
Ed Webb

How Dangerous Are U.S.-Iran Tensions? - Foreign Policy - 0 views

foreignpolicy.com/...angerous-are-u-s-iran-tensions

Iran US USA analysis foreignpolicy military navy gulf

shared by Ed Webb on 28 Jun 19 - Cached
  • The Strait of Hormuz is one of the most critical chokepoints in the world. Nearly one-third of all seaborne crude oil (more than 18 million barrels a day) passes through the 21-mile-wide opening between Oman and Iran, as well as about 30 percent of all natural gas shipped on tankers. The strait is even narrower than it looks, since the deep-water shipping channel used by oil tankers is only two miles wide. Iran, with military presence on a number of islands near the strait and along the northern coastline, dominates that critical body of water.
  • While Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates have some overland pipelines that can ship oil toward the Red Sea, thus bypassing Hormuz and any Iranian threat, those pipelines can only carry a fraction of what currently travels by ship
  • the U.S. Navy is trying to overhaul its minesweeping capability by relying less on dedicated minesweepers and more on underwater drones, helicopters, and more than a dozen mine-capable littoral combat ships.
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  • In the Iran-Iraq War in the 1980s, both sides targeted each others’ oil exports, leading to the so-called “tanker war,” which over nearly a decade saw more than 200 oil tankers attacked and more than 50 sunk or seriously damaged. By the waning years of the conflict, U.S. forces began escorting oil tankers through the Persian Gulf to ensure the free flow of oil. There, the risk of Iranian mines was made apparent, with a mine severely damaging a U.S. frigate. And as the British Navy learned in the 1915 Gallipoli campaign, in restricted waters, mines can hammer capital ships, and mine clearance can take an agonizingly long time.
  • “While Iran’s asymmetric assets do not provide it with the ability to win a major direct conflict with US forces, the coordinated, simultaneous use of Iran’s submarines, anti-ship cruise missiles (ASCMs), fast-attack craft, and swarm tactics in a first strike could inflict costly losses on US naval forces and commercial shipping in the Strait,” concluded Anthony Cordesman of the Center for Strategic and International Studies in an exhaustive study. “These assets and tactics, in combination with Iran’s large arsenal of naval mines, likely render Iran capable of closing the Gulf for a short while.”
Ed Webb

If Nobody Knows Your Iran Policy, Does It Even Exist? - Foreign Policy - 0 views

foreignpolicy.com/...oes-it-even-exist-bolton-trump

IR analysis opinion US USA Trump foreignpolicy Iran

shared by Ed Webb on 28 Jun 19 - Cached
  • It’s possible that the broader drama about Iran is mostly posturing designed to keep the Saudis, Israelis, Gulf states, and wealthy Republican donors like Sheldon Adelson happy. Maybe Trump, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, and National Security Advisor John Bolton know deep down that the regime isn’t going to fall and isn’t going to renegotiate a better deal than the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA). But having criticized former President Barack Obama’s handling of Iran, and under pressure from allies and domestic lobbies alike, it was inevitable that Trump, Pompeo, and Bolton would revert back to coercive pressure, even though that approach never worked in the past (at least, not on its own)
  • Tighter sanctions on Iran are unlikely to convince it to accept all of America’s demands, especially when the United States no longer has the multilateral backing it enjoyed while negotiating the JCPOA. Even much weaker states don’t like giving in to blackmail, because doing so just invites new demands. External sanctions are painful, but they often strengthen authoritarian regimes in the short to medium term. More than a decade of tough sanctions didn’t convince Tehran to give up all its enrichment capacity before, and it’s not likely to do so now
  • Instead of a new and better deal, Trump, Pompeo, and Bolton may well be genuinely interested in toppling the clerical regime, and they may have convinced themselves that inflicting ever increasing amounts of pain on the Iranian people will finally lead them to rise up and overthrow the mullahs. Bolton and Pompeo have said as much on various occasions, and Bolton’s close (and reportedly lucrative) association with Iranian exile groups is consistent with that objective as well.
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  • There may be plenty of Iranians who don’t like the clerical regime, but most of the population is also intensely patriotic and likely to harbor even greater resentment toward the distant superpower that is working overtime to cripple their economy
  • If we’ve learned anything from Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Yemen, and Syria, it is that removing an unsavory regime often makes things worse, not better
  • Another possibility is that the administration is trying to use maximum pressure to goad Iran into restarting its nuclear program. Once it does, so the argument runs, Europe, Russia, and China would line up behind the United States and support (or at least tolerate) a military attack on Iran’s nuclear infrastructure.
  • it would be another one of those giant roll-of-the-dice bets that the United States keeps making (and losing) in the Middle East
  • Qaddafi was overthrown and killed after giving up all his WMD, Iran could get bombed because it doesn’t have nuclear weapons yet, but a murderous tyrant like North Korean leader Kim Jong Un gets repeated one-on-one meetings with Trump, who claims that the two of them have fallen “in love.” If you were a senior Iranian strategist, what lesson would you draw from this pattern of behavior?
  • There’s a final option, however, and I think it’s actually the most likely. The maximum pressure campaign—including the threat of secondary sanctions against U.S. allies and partners—is intended simply to weaken Iran and reduce its influence within the region. In this scenario, all the talk of regime change and hints that “all options are on the table” are just palaver—or the kind of boastful swaggering that Pompeo seems to enjoy. One could acknowledge that pressure won’t alter Iran’s overall policies, won’t lead to regime change, won’t produce a better deal, and may not even push Tehran into leaving the NPT and opening the door to preventive war. All it might do is force Iran to cut back on its support for some of its local partners and thus crimp (though not eliminate) Iran’s regional influence.
  • There’s only two problems with it: It does heighten the risk of war, and it doesn’t point the way toward any long-term solution to regional instability
  • Despite the threat inflation that pervades the U.S. national security discourse, the current situation in the Middle East has at most a small direct effect on the security of Americans at home. (To the extent that it does, it is more likely to be the relatively modest danger posed by Sunni extremists like the Islamic State, and even that danger is far from existential.) In other words, it is hard to see how continuing to whack Iran at every turn does anything to make Americans safer or more prosperous
  • Given that America’s core interests are to help maintain a stable balance of power (so that no local or external power can control the region), discourage proliferation, and tamp down violent extremism, a more evenhanded policy would make sense. But I wouldn’t hold my breath waiting for it
Ed Webb

To Reduce Migration, Trump Might Be Right About Cutting Foreign Aid | Acumen | OZY - 0 views

www.ozy.com/...95564

development aid migration

shared by Ed Webb on 31 Jul 19 - No Cached
  • The paper, published last year by the Center for Global Development, found that while it’s difficult to compare the various existing studies as they examine different countries and correct for different variables, some found that foreign aid actually raises emigration. And the reason isn’t that people in those countries don’t need help. It’s that below a certain gross domestic product per capita threshold, people simply don’t have the resources to migrate. According to a recent study by Germany’s Berlin Institute for Population and Development, migration numbers to Europe are lowest in countries where the GDP per capita is below $2,000. The highest levels of migration to Europe are seen from countries with a GDP of $8,000 to $13,000, such as Tunisia and Jordan.
  • Some of the factors shaping migration potential are economic, political — like oppression or conflict in the home country — or environmental, like climate change
  • “Foreign aid for development is not huge,” explains Francesco Castelli, a professor of infectious diseases at the University of Brescia. “OECD countries have pledged to invest 0.7 percent of their GDP for development activities, but most of them are far from reaching this level of aid.” Even what is given is often made less effective by corruption, poor management and following the priorities of the donors rather than the people in the affected countries. “Pumping money in a given country is not at all the best way to prevent migration,” he says. “Development needs decades to happen, not yearly projects.”
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  • Last year, a Gallup poll found that 15 percent of the world’s population — about 750 million people — would like to migrate. But only about 3.3 percent of the world’s population actually does, according to the latest U.N. International Migration Report.
  • Some European Union member states, Carrasco Heiermann says, are already dependent on immigration. Last year, the EU’s “old-age dependency ratio” — the number of people over 65 compared to the number of people in the working-age population — hit record highs, with only three working-age people for every elderly person. In order to maintain their economies and support systems, the EU may have to rely on outside migration.
Ed Webb

Egypt offers patriotism courses to expats - 0 views

www.al-monitor.com/...ourses-patriotism-history.html

Egypt propaganda expats migrants education

shared by Ed Webb on 12 Aug 19 - Cached
  • Egypt’s Immigration Minister Nabila Makram said Aug. 1 that she seeks to help young Egyptians living abroad not to be intellectually influenced by thoughts against their homeland
  • the ministry will be offering free courses on national security for Egyptian academics and students at Egyptian embassies abroad. These courses aim to introduce young Egyptians to the development projects the Egyptian state is undertaking as part of its 2030 vision and to improve the image they have of their homeland.
  • She said that the ministry is focusing on and interested in young Egyptians ages between 20 and late 30s as well as students abroad. She noted that these young Egyptians play a major role in refuting false news and rumors about the Egyptian state, and added that they play a role in raising awareness among their peers about the achievements and national projects of the Egyptian state.
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  • the objective is to introduce concepts of national security and protect young people abroad from the dangers of being intellectually influenced
Ed Webb

Is This Saudi Arabia's Laboratory for Religious Influence in Europe? | Fast Forward | OZY - 0 views

www.ozy.com/...96210

KSA Saudi Bosnia Balkans Islam Muslims softpower

shared by Ed Webb on 26 Aug 19 - No Cached
  • Saudi Arabia’s increasing influence in the southeastern European nation that’s sparking a debate over whether Riyadh is attempting to reshape the country’s traditionally liberal Islam with its own ultraconservative Wahhabi version. It’s a charge Saudi Arabia has faced in the past in Asia and Africa. Is Bosnia and Herzegovina, beset by weak state institutions, a struggling economy and a history of foreign influence, now emerging as Saudi Arabia’s laboratory for religious influence in Europe?
  • In just 2017, Riyadh invested $22 million in Bosnia — a significant figure in a country with a GDP of $20 billion. From Sarajevo’s two biggest shopping malls — the Sarajevo City Center and BBI — to Poljine Hills, a luxury apartment complex on the outskirts of the capital where house prices go up to $555,000, Saudi Arabia is behind some of the biggest infrastructure projects today dotting the Bosnian landscape. Both malls come with strict rules about not serving alcohol or pork products.
  • Bosnia, which has the world’s highest youth unemployment rate — 55.5 percent, according to the World Bank
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  • 27 percent of Bosnian respondents said they had a “mostly negative” opinion of the Saudi role in their nation. Only 10 percent had a “mostly positive” view of Riyadh’s influence. The numbers for Saudi Arabia are worse than Bosnian perceptions of influence from the U.S., Russia and Turkey — the other foreign countries respondents were asked about.
  • the growing flow of tourists to Bosnia suggests an increasingly organic interest from Saudi Arabian citizens — and not a state-sponsored plan. In Europe, only Albania and Kosovo have a higher percentage of Muslims in their population — 50 percent of Bosnians are Muslim. “The Saudis find Bosnia cheap, culturally close and not too far to the sea,” says Sarajevo-based researcher and writer Harun Karčić. “The idea that they spread radical Islam between sightseeing, shopping and partying is ridiculous.”
  • During the war in the 1990s, thousands of foreign mujahedeen came to Bosnia to fight (and some stayed) against Croatia- and Serbia-backed rebels. Several Bosnian Muslims went to study in Saudi Arabia. Even then, though, Bosnia took steps to shield itself from extremist influences — including from supposed friends in the war, such as Saudi Arabia. It banned a Saudi charity organization accused of spreading terrorist propaganda.
  • Around 300 Bosnians had joined the ranks of foreign fighters for ISIS in Iraq and Syria, among the highest per capita rates from any nation. Now, many of them have indicated they want to return, and Bosnia is grappling with the question of what to do with those former fighters.
  • “There has clearly been a conservative turn among Bosnian Muslims,” says Jasmin Mujanović, a Bosnian political scientist. “But it is rather connected to the country’s poor economic situation and postwar trauma from the genocide than to the Middle East.”
  • A 2018 report by the Sarajevo-based research organization Atlantic Initiative found that only 2.5 percent of Bosnian Muslims supported their compatriots traveling to the Middle East to fight there — five times less than the number of Bosnian Serbs who support Bosnians fighting in Ukraine.
  • the nation hasn’t seen a single major terrorist attack
  • some experts caution that fears of a perceived Islamic threat could be used by Serb and Croat nationalists in Bosnia and politicians in Serbia and Croatia to interfere in Bosnian affairs again. “The 1990s are not a remote past,” says Bećirević. “I remember well how a similar narrative of ’defense against the Islamic threat’ served to justify genocide.”
Ed Webb

Syria's Next Big Export: Illegal Pills | Fast Forward | OZY - 0 views

www.ozy.com/...95965

Syria war narcotics drugs

shared by Ed Webb on 12 Aug 19 - Cached
  • containers filled with 33 million pills of the banned psychostimulant fenethylline, commonly known as Captagon. Hidden inside pallets of lumber, the $660 million haul amounts to the biggest confiscation of the pill ever recorded. And where was the lumber loaded? Latakia, Syria.
  • The value of the recovered stash was worth more than all of Syria’s 2017 exports put together.
  • the Maryland-based National Center for Biotechnology Information now describes Syria as the “premier producer and exporter of counterfeit forms of Captagon.”
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  • The drug, which gives a faster high than traditional amphetamine, has for years been a favorite among ISIS fighters. But its export from the country, through ports like Latakia that are controlled by the Bashar Assad government, suggests that the Syrian regime might now be turning to fenethylline sales internationally to bolster its treasury. At the very least, suggest experts, it might be allowing corrupt officials to carry out trade in the illegal substance to keep them loyal.
  • Captagon, Biocapton and Fitton were the brand names for drugs whose main active ingredient is fenethylline, which was legal in the U.S. until 1981, when its addictive properties saw it categorized as a Schedule 1 drug alongside heroin and cocaine. When legal in the 1960s and ’70s, it was used to calm hyperactive children and for patients suffering from narcolepsy and depression. By 1986, it was banned in most countries. Yet as with most narcotics, the ban only drove production underground, with southeastern Europe emerging as the manufacturing hub. Faced with increasing international pressure, production shifted to the Middle East after 2011. Until then, Syria had no history as a manufacturer or exporter of the drug
  • Before the 2011 uprising, Syria’s robust pharmaceutical industry meant that almost all medicinal drugs consumed in Syria were produced in-country. Despite the war, Syria still maintains significant pharma infrastructure capable of producing vast quantities of legal medicines, and therefore illegal drugs such as Captagon. In 2017, the country’s health minister Nizar Yazayi told a pharmaceutical conference in Damascus that 40 of Syria’s 62 drug plants were still safe. State media in Syria also occasionally reports forces capturing Captagon pills worth millions on the international market from rebels. But the government hasn’t made clear what it does with all those pills.
  • In Saudi Arabia, the pill, which contains caffeine and quinine, a painkiller, is more popular than cocaine, weed, heroin or ecstasy. According to a 2016 study published in the journal Basic & Clinical Pharmacology & Toxicology, three-quarters of people treated for drug addiction in Saudi Arabia are addicted to amphetamines, and almost all of those are Captagon users.
  • Captagon is also becoming increasingly popular in the United Arab Emirates, Qatar and North Africa. While a batch of 200 sells for about $70 in Lebanon, in wealthy Gulf states a single pill can fetch between $10 and $20
Ed Webb

Blast From the Past - Foreign Policy - 0 views

foreignpolicy.com/...bt-south-atlantic-south-africa

Israel US USSR ColdWar nukes nuclear testing politics history

shared by Ed Webb on 27 Sep 19 - Cached
  • Nuclear proliferation was just one of the Carter administration’s headaches in late 1979. The president was dealing with a slew of foreign-policy dilemmas, including the build-up to what would become the Iran hostage crisis. Carter was also preparing for a reelection campaign in which he had hoped to showcase his foreign-policy successes, from brokering Israeli-Egyptian peace to successful arms control talks with Moscow. The possibility that Israel or South Africa, which had deep clandestine defense ties at the time, had tested a nuclear weapon threatened to tarnish that legacy. And the fact that South Africa’s own nuclear weapons program, which the Carter administration was seeking to stop, was not yet sufficiently advanced to test such a weapon left just one prime suspect: Israel. Leading figures within the administration were therefore keen to bury the story and put forward alternative explanations. Those alternative explanations were widely dismissed by many members of the scientific and intelligence community at the time; four decades years later, they look even more questionable.
Ed Webb

Saudi Arabia Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman denies ordering Jamal Khashoggi murder, but says he takes responsibility for it - 60 Minutes - CBS News - 0 views

www.cbsnews.com/...y-for-it-60-minutes-2019-09-29

KSA Saudi Iran Yemen houthis journalist torture murder rights MBS interview

shared by Ed Webb on 30 Sep 19 - No Cached
  • Norah O'Donnell: Did you order the murder of Jamal Khashoggi?Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman (Translation): Absolutely not. This was a heinous crime. But I take full responsibility as a leader in Saudi Arabia, especially since it was committed by individuals working for the Saudi government.Norah O'Donnell: What does that mean that you take responsibility?Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman (Translation): When a crime is committed against a Saudi citizen by officials, working for the Saudi government, as a leader I must take responsibility. This was a mistake. And I must take all actions to avoid such a thing in the future.
  • Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman (Translation): If the world does not take a strong and firm action to deter Iran, we will see further escalations that will threaten world interests. Oil supplies will be disrupted and oil prices will jump to unimaginably high numbers that we haven't seen in our lifetimes.Norah O'Donnell: Does it have to be a military response?Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman (Translation): I hope not.Norah O'Donnell: Why not?Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman (Translation): Because the political and peaceful solution is much better than the military one.
  • One of the most prominent female activists who fought for the right to drive is Loujain al-Hathloul. She has been held in a Saudi prison for over a year.Norah O'Donnell: Is it time to let her go?Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman (Translation): This decision is not up to me. It's up to the public prosecutor, and it's an independent public prosecutor.Norah O'Donnell: Her family says that she has been tortured in prison. Is that right?Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman (Translation): If this is correct, it is very heinous. Islam forbids torture. The Saudi laws forbid torture. Human conscience forbids torture. And I will personally follow up on this matter.Norah O'Donnell: You will personally follow up on it?Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman (Translation): Without a doubt.
Ed Webb

Dismal failure of Saudi defences may entangle US just where Iran wants it | openDemocracy - 0 views

www.opendemocracy.net/...le-us-just-where-iran-wants-it

KSA Saudi US USA UK Britain Germany France Kuwait Iran Yemen Houthis Qaeda alQaeda military arms weapons

shared by Ed Webb on 28 Sep 19 - Cached
  • drone attack on Saudi Arabia’s Abqaiq oil processing plant was a surprise – and that was itself surprising in view of all the Western defensive hardware, let alone the major US and British naval presence, very close by. The Saudis were initially reluctant to give many details, save blaming the Iranians rather than the Yemenis. Quite a lot more information has now seeped out, however: it suggests that the political consequences of the Abqaiq attack may last long after the oil plant is repaired.
  • It appears that Saudi air defences failed to intercept any missile or drone: the intruders may not even have been tracked en route to their targets, according to Jane’s Defence Weekly.
  • US officials say that all the drones and missiles were launched from south-western Iran on a flight path that would have taken them across the tip of Kuwait. In response the Kuwaiti authorities have launched an inquiry into the possible violation of airspace – which suggests that they did not detect the missiles either.
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  • none of this should have happened, given the extensive and hugely expensive air defences that the Saudis have installed to safeguard Abqaiq and other facilities from Iranian and Houthi missiles
  • US troops left the kingdom in 2004 after the start of the 2003 Iraq war, even if many Americans stayed on in civilian guise. With that withdrawal, one of the biggest US bases, a large part of the Royal Saudi Air Force’s Prince Sultan Air Force Base, was closed down, leaving the Saudis as the sole occupants. That was until July this year when, according to Military.com: Air Force Col. David Jackson, commander of the 621st Contingency Response Wing, told Military.com last week that teams from his wing were sent to Prince Sultan, about 50 miles southeast of the capital of Riyadh, to prepare the airfield for renewed operations.
  • Iranian cruise missiles have a range of about 700 km, armed drones of 1,200 km, and the nearest Iranian territory to Abqaiq is far less than that
  • an apparently minor decision taken three months ago that scarcely registered with Western politicians: the return of uniformed US troops to the kingdom
  • The Iranian success was a disaster for Saudi Arabia and an embarrassment for US, French, German and Swiss arms suppliers. Given that Saudi Arabia has many oil and gas fields and processing plants, not to mention a series of huge desalination plants on which the kingdom depends for half of its drinking water, it is easy to see the extreme concern behind the scenes in Riyadh.
  • Prince Sultan base now looks highly likely to be the main staging post for around 500 uniformed US military to be deployed to the kingdom to boost its own inadequate air defences. Given the state of tension with Iran it is safe to assume that this initial deployment will be the start of something substantially bigger.
  • a perfect gift for extreme Islamist movements who can point once again to the weakness of the House of Saud: in their view the Guardian of the Two Holy Cities is anything but
  • wise to assume that, all along, one of Iran’s aims has been to draw Saudi Arabia and the Pentagon closer and closer together, causing dissent in the kingdom and continuing embarrassment for the royal house
Ed Webb

The Emiratis Bit Off More Than They Could Chew - Foreign Policy - 0 views

foreignpolicy.com/...-off-more-than-they-could-chew

UAE KSA Saudi Yemen MB ikhwan diplomacy foreignpolicy military

shared by Ed Webb on 09 Sep 19 - Cached
  • The successful coup against the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt in July 2013 provided an opening for the UAE to take a decisive lead in shaping events throughout the region—an opening it was happy to use
  • The UAE has not offered a clear explanation for its surprising geopolitical U-turns, but they likely stem from an assessment of its strategy over the past six years. First, the UAE’s assertiveness had the effect of diminishing its political standing and reputation in the United States. Second, even on its own terms, the strategy has been far harder to carry out than the Emiratis imagined.
  • the reason for the UAE’s formal abandonment of its backing for Syrian rebels in the fall of 2016 was a congressional bill that permitted U.S. citizens to sue foreign governments for acts of terrorism, known as the Justice Against Sponsors of Terrorism Act. According to a top Emirati official involved in the pullout, the fear was that the UAE could be held accountable by U.S. courts for potential acts of terrorism carried out by allied rebels.
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  • The UAE was reluctant to abandon the Saudis, for fear they would pursue their national interests in ways averse to the Emiratis, including mending ties with adversaries such as Turkey and Qatar. That remains the single worst-case diplomatic scenario from the perspective of the UAE.
  • For the UAE, the toppling of the Muslim Brotherhood president and the subsequent crackdown on the Islamist organization was a sweeping success. It was the beginning of a downhill slide for Islamists throughout the region, a reversal of their rise after the Arab uprisings in 2011. But the UAE had limited success elsewhere since then, particularly in Libya, Yemen, and Tunisia.
  • The UAE is now trying to restore its reputation in Washington and other Western capitals by portraying itself as a small country seeking stability and prosperity through soft power and economic engagement, which is thus opposed to wars of all kinds in the Middle East. This narrative is contradicted by its actions over the past six years as the Emiratis tried—and failed—to reverse the effects of the Arab Spring by any means necessary.
  • Abu Dhabi and Riyadh maintained a close relationship, worked together to redraw the political and military map of the region, and avoided any public display of friction.
  • Post-coup Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi has proved to be excessively dependent on Gulf funds without any ability to reciprocate. He opposed contributing forces to the Yemen war and later refused to sign up for the “Arab NATO,” the proposal for military cooperation that would be most likely led by either Saudi Arabia or the UAE
  • Saudi Arabia’s de facto ruler, Mohammed bin Salman, failed to sell himself as a reformer in the West, and the killing of Khashoggi proved to be debilitating for the reputation of anybody associated with him
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