http://original.antiwar.com/porter/2012/10/09/how-the-us-quietly-lost-the-ied-war-in-afghanistan/
Russia bridges Middle Eastern divides
By M K Bhadrakumar
A multi-billion dollar arms deal with Iraq, a summit meeting with Turkey, a fence-mending exercise with Saudi Arabia, a debut with Egypt's Sphinx-like Muslim Brothers - all this is slated to happen within the period of a turbulent month in the Middle East. And all this is to happen when the United States' "return" to the region after the hurly-burly of the November election still seems a distant dream. Simply put, Russia is suddenly all over the Middle East.
Moscow announced on Tuesday that Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki was in town and the two countries signed contracts worth "more than" US$4.2 billion in an arms deal that includes Iraq's purchase of 30 Mi-28 attack helicopters and 42 Pantsir-S1 surface-to-air missile systems that can also be used to defendagainst attack jets.
The joint Russian-Iraqi statement issued in Moscow revealed that discussions had beem going on for the past five months over the arms deal and that further talks are under way for Iraq's purchase of MiG-29 jets, heavy-armored vehicles and other weaponry. A Kremlin announcement said Maliki is due to meet President Vladimir Putin on Wednesday and the focus of the discussions will be energy cooperation between Russia and Iraq.
The stunning news will send US politicians into a tizzy. Reports say the phone kept ringing in Maliki's office in Baghdad as soon as it transpired that he was to travel to Moscow and something big could be in the works. Queries were coming in from the US State Department and the National Security Council as to what warranted such a trip at this point in time.
The point is, Maliki still remains an enigma for Washington. He is no doubt a friend of the US, but he is also possibly more than a friend of Iran. Now, it seems, he is also fond of Russia - as Saddam Hussein used to be.
Washington and Ankara have annoyed him repeatedly, taking him for granted, even writing off his political future, by consorting with the northern Kurdistan over lucrative oil deals, ignoring his protests that Iraq is a sovereign state and Baghdad is its capital and that the country has a constitution under which foreign countries should not have direct dealings with its regions bypassing the capital and the central government.
Booting out Big Oil
They not only ignored Maliki's protests but also chastised him for opposing the plan for "regime change" in Syria and for robustly supporting President Bashar al-Assad. Lately, they even started needling him on providing facilities for Iran to send supplies to the embattled regime in Syria. They then exceeded all proprieties and gave asylum to an Iraqi Sunni leader who is a fugitive under Iraqi law.
Indeed, much depends on the composure with which the US is able to adapt itself to the new realities in the Middle East. As things stand, the US has succeeded in selling $6 billion worth of arms to Iraq. It is indeed comfortably placed. The US State Department's initial reaction exuded confidence. Spokesperson Victoria Nuland said the Russian deal doesn't signify any scaling down of Iraq's "mil-to-mil" ties with the US, which are "very broad and very deep".
She revealed that discussions are going on for "some 467 foreign military sales cases" with Iraq worth more than $12 billion "if all of those go forward." Nuland said, "We're doing some $12.3 billion worth of military business with Iraq, so I don't think one needs to be concerned about that relationship being anything but the strongest."
New, untried alchemy
But the touch of anxiety in Nuland's words cannot be glossed over, either. The plain truth is, the "Russians are coming" and this time they are capitalists and globalists; they also know the Iraqi market, while the Iraqi soldier is familiar with the Russian weapon. During the Saddam era, Iraq was a major buyer of Russian weaponry and Moscow is estimated to have lost contracts worth about $8 billion due to the US-sponsored "regime change" in Baghdad in 2003.
Russia's ties with Turkey and Saudi Arabia, for instance, were going strong during the phase of the pre-crisis period in Syria. While the ties with Turkey lately have somewhat stagnated, Russian-Saudi ties have run into serious difficulty. Evidently, Moscow is keen to restore the status quo ante. The interesting part is the Russian diplomacy's assessment that the present juncture provides a window of opportunity to make overtures to Ankara and Riyadh, no matter the incessant blood-letting in Syria.
The backdrop to which this is happening is significant. In Moscow's assessment, evidently, there could be hopeful signs for a renewed approach to seeking a political solution to the Syrian crisis even though the skies look heavily overcast. There may be merit in making such a shrewd assessment.
As things stand, Turkey and Saudi Arabia are facing an acute predicament over the Syrian situation. Neither thought that the Syrian regime would have such a social base and political will to hang on; both are frustrated that any "regime change" in Syria is going to be a long haul fraught with uncertain consequences not only for the Syrian nation but also for the region as a whole and even for themselves.
Again, while there is no let-up in the dogged opposition to outside intervention in Syria, which Moscow and Beijing have amply displayed, a UN Security Council mandate for intervention is to be ruled out. Without a UN mandate, on the other hand, a Western intervention is unlikely, and in any case, the US remains disinterested while the European attitudes will be guided by their priorities over their economies, which, according to the latest Inernational Monetary Fund estimation, are sliding into a prolonged recession from which a near-term recovery seems highly improbable.
In the Russian assessment, Erdogan's underlying ideology in terms of pursuing an independent foreign policy needs to be encouraged, despite the recent deviations such as the decision to deploy the US missile defence system on Turkish soil.
Putin's expectation will be that within the framework of a revival of the Russian-Turkish bonhomie and taking advantage of Erdogan's travails and dilemma over Syria, a meaningful conversation between Moscow and Ankara might be possible leading to a purposive search for a political solution to the crisis in Syria.
This is the season of Nobel, after all. If Erdogan could be persuaded that he could be the first ever sultan - and probably the last, too, in Ottoman history - to win a Nobel prize for peace, Putin would have made a huge contribution himself to world peace.
Predicted “defeated” more times than we can count over the course of the eight year US occupation, AQI is once again on the rise, with projections that the group, which had gotten down to about 1,000 fighters last year, is now about 2,500-strong.
How the US Quietly Lost the IED War in Afghanistan
by Gareth Porter, October 10, 2012
Although the surge of “insider attacks” on U.S.-NATO forces has dominated coverage of the war in Afghanistan in 2012, an even more important story has been quietly unfolding: the U.S. loss of the pivotal war of improvised explosive devices (IEDs) to the Taliban.
Some news outlets have published stories this year suggesting that the U.S. military was making “progress” against the Taliban IED war, but those stories failed to provide the broader context for seasonal trends or had a narrow focus on U.S. fatalities. The bigger reality is that the U.S. troop surge could not reverse the very steep increase in IED attacks and attendant casualties that the Taliban began in 2009 and which continued through 2011.
Over the 2009-11 period, the U.S. military suffered a total of 14,627 casualties, according to the Pentagon’s Defense Casualty Analysis System and iCasualties, a non-governmental organization tracking Iraq and Afghanistan war casualties from published sources.
Of that total, 8,680, or 59 percent, were from IED explosions, based on data provided by the Pentagon’s Joint IED Defeat Organization (JIEDDO). And the proportion of all U.S. casualties caused by IEDs continued to increase from 56 percent in 2009 to 63 percent in 2011.
The Taliban IED war was the central element of its counter-strategy against the U.S. escalation of the war. It absorbed an enormous amount of the time and energy of U.S. troops, and demonstrated that the counterinsurgency campaign was not effective in reducing the size or power of the insurgency. It also provided constant evidence to the Afghan population that Taliban had a continued presence even where U.S. troops had occupied former Taliban districts.
U.S. Pentagon and military leaders sought to gain control over the Taliban’s IED campaign with two contradictory approaches, both of which failed because they did not reflect the social and political realities in Afghanistan.
JIEDDO spent more than 18 billion dollars on high-tech solutions aimed at detecting IEDs before they went off, including robots, and blimps with spy cameras. But as the technology helped the U.S.-NATO command discover more IEDs, the Taliban simply produced and planted even larger numbers of bombs to continue to increase the pressure of the IED war.
The counterinsurgency strategy devised by Gen. David Petraeus and implemented by Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, on the other hand, held that the IED networks could be destroyed once the people turned away from the Taliban. They pushed thousands of U.S. troops out of their armored vehicles into patrols on foot in order to establish relationships with the local population.
The main effect of the strategy, however, was a major jump in the number of “catastrophic” injuries to U.S. troops from IEDs.
In his Aug. 30, 2009 “initial assessment,” McChrystal said the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) “cannot succeed if it is unwilling to share risk at least equally with the people.”
In an interview with USA Today in July 2009, he argued that “the best way to defeat IEDs will be to defeat the Taliban’s hold on the people.” Once the people’s trust had been gained, he suggested, they would inform ISAF of the location of IEDs.
McChrystal argued that the Taliban were using “the psychological effects of IEDs and the coalition force’s preoccupation with force protection” to get the U.S.-NATO command to reinforce a “garrison posture and mentality.”
McChrystal ordered much more emphasis on more dismounted patrols by U.S. forces in fall 2009. The Taliban responded by increasing the number of IEDs targeting dismounted patrols from 71 in September 2009 to 228 by January 2010, according data compiled by JIEDDO.
That meant that the population had more knowledge of the location of IEDs, which should have resulted in a major increase in IEDs turned in by the population, according to the Petraeus counterinsurgency theory.
But the data on IEDs shows that the opposite happened. In the first eight months of 2009, the average rate of turn-ins had been three percent, but from September 2009 to June 2010, the rate averaged 2.7 percent.
After Petraeus replaced McChrystal as ISAF commander in June 2010, he issued a directive calling for more dismounted patrols, especially in Helmand and Kandahar, where U.S. troops were trying to hold territory that the Taliban had controlled in previous years.
In the next five months, the turn-in rate fell to less than one percent.
Meanwhile, the number of IED attacks on foot patrols causing casualties increased from 21 in October 2009 to an average of 40 in the March-December 2010 period, according to JIEDDO records. U.S. troops wounded by IEDs spiked to an average of 316 per month during that period, 2.5 times more than the average for the previous 10-month period.
The Taliban success in targeting troops on foot was the main reason U.S. casualties from IEDs increased from 1,211 wounded and 159 dead in 2009 to 3,366 wounded and 259 dead in 2010.
The damage from IEDs was far more serious, however, than even those figures suggest, because the injuries to dismounted patrols included far more “traumatic amputation” of limbs — arms and legs blown off by bombs — and other more severe wounds than had been seen in attacks on armored vehicles.
A June 2011 Army task force report described a new type of battle injury — “Dismount Complex Blast Injury”— defined as a combination of “traumatic amputation of at least one leg, a minimum of severe injury to another extremity, and pelvic, abdominal, or urogenital wounding.”
The report confirmed that the number of triple limb amputations in 2010 alone had been twice the total in the previous eight years of war.
A study of 194 amputations in 2010 and the first three months of 2011 showed that most were suffered by Marine Corps troops, who were concentrated in Helmand province, and that 88 percent were the result of IED attacks on dismounted patrols, according to the report. In January 2011, the director of JIEDDO, Gen. John L. Oates, acknowledged that U.S. troops in Helmand and Kandahar had seen “an alarming increase in the number of troops losing one or two legs to IEDs.”
Much larger numbers of U.S. troops have suffered moderate to severe traumatic brain injuries from IED blasts — mostly against armored vehicles.
Statistics on the total number of limb amputations and traumatic brain injuries in Afghanistan were excised from the task force report.
In 2011, U.S. fatalities from IEDs fell to 204 from 259 in 2010, and overall fatalities fell from 499 to 418. But the number of IED injuries actually increased by 10 percent from 3,339 to 3,530, and the overall total of wounded in action was almost the same as in 2010, according to data from iCasualties.
The total for wounded in the first eight months of 2012 are 10 percent less than the same period in 2011, whereas the number of dead is 29 percent below the previous year’s pace.
The reduction in wounded appears to reflect in part the transfer of thousands of U.S. troops from Kandahar and Helmand provinces, where a large proportion of the casualties have occurred, to eastern Afghanistan. The number of IED attacks on dismounted patrols in the mid-July 2011 to mid-July 2012 period was 25 percent less than the number in the same period a year earlier, according to JIEDDO.
The Pentagon was well aware by early 2011 that it wasn’t going to be able to accomplish what it had planned before and during the troop surge. In a telling comment to the Washington Post in January 2011, JIEDDO head Gen. Oates insisted that the idea that “we’re losing the IED fight in Afghanistan” was “not accurate,” because, “The whole idea isn’t to destroy the network. That’s maybe impossible.”
The aim, he explained, was now to “disrupt them” — a move of the goalposts that avoided having to admit defeat in the IED war.
And in an implicit admission that Petraeus’s push for even more dismounted patrols is no longer treated with reverence in the ISAF command, the August 2010 directive has been taken down from its website.
and the view from Iraq......
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Central_Asia/NJ11Ag01.htmlRussia bridges Middle Eastern divides
By M K Bhadrakumar
A multi-billion dollar arms deal with Iraq, a summit meeting with Turkey, a fence-mending exercise with Saudi Arabia, a debut with Egypt's Sphinx-like Muslim Brothers - all this is slated to happen within the period of a turbulent month in the Middle East. And all this is to happen when the United States' "return" to the region after the hurly-burly of the November election still seems a distant dream. Simply put, Russia is suddenly all over the Middle East.
Moscow announced on Tuesday that Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki was in town and the two countries signed contracts worth "more than" US$4.2 billion in an arms deal that includes Iraq's purchase of 30 Mi-28 attack helicopters and 42 Pantsir-S1 surface-to-air missile systems that can also be used to defendagainst attack jets.
The joint Russian-Iraqi statement issued in Moscow revealed that discussions had beem going on for the past five months over the arms deal and that further talks are under way for Iraq's purchase of MiG-29 jets, heavy-armored vehicles and other weaponry. A Kremlin announcement said Maliki is due to meet President Vladimir Putin on Wednesday and the focus of the discussions will be energy cooperation between Russia and Iraq.
The stunning news will send US politicians into a tizzy. Reports say the phone kept ringing in Maliki's office in Baghdad as soon as it transpired that he was to travel to Moscow and something big could be in the works. Queries were coming in from the US State Department and the National Security Council as to what warranted such a trip at this point in time.
The point is, Maliki still remains an enigma for Washington. He is no doubt a friend of the US, but he is also possibly more than a friend of Iran. Now, it seems, he is also fond of Russia - as Saddam Hussein used to be.
Washington and Ankara have annoyed him repeatedly, taking him for granted, even writing off his political future, by consorting with the northern Kurdistan over lucrative oil deals, ignoring his protests that Iraq is a sovereign state and Baghdad is its capital and that the country has a constitution under which foreign countries should not have direct dealings with its regions bypassing the capital and the central government.
Booting out Big Oil
They not only ignored Maliki's protests but also chastised him for opposing the plan for "regime change" in Syria and for robustly supporting President Bashar al-Assad. Lately, they even started needling him on providing facilities for Iran to send supplies to the embattled regime in Syria. They then exceeded all proprieties and gave asylum to an Iraqi Sunni leader who is a fugitive under Iraqi law.
They are currently endeavoring to bring together the disparate Sunni groups in Iraq in an ominous move that could lead to the balkanization of Iraq.
Kurdistan is already a de facto independent region, thanks to US and Turkish interference. The game plan is to further weaken Iraq by sponsoring the creation of a Sunni entity in central Iraq similar to Kurdistan in the north, thus confining the Iraqi Shi'ites to a moth-eaten southern region.
The Russia visit shows that Maliki is signaling he has had enough and won't take this affront to Iraqi sovereignty anymore. What is almost certain is that he will propose to Putin on Wednesday that Russian oil companies should return to Iraq in full battle cry with investment and technology and pick up the threads from where they left at the time of the US invasion in 2003.
Maliki can be expected to boot out Big Oil and the Turkish companies from Iraq's oil sector. The implications are profound for the world oil market since Iraq's fabulous oil reserves match Saudi Arabia's.
Clearly, Maliki intends to assert Iraqi sovereignty. Recently, he decided to terminate the Saddam-era agreement with Turkey, which allowed a Turkish military presence in northern Iraq to monitor the PKK separatists' activities. But Ankara balked, telling off Maliki. The Russian deal enables him now to rebuild the Iraqi armed forces and make the Turks think twice before they violate Iraqi air space or conclude that their military presence in northern Iraq could continue unchallenged.
Does this mean Iraq is on a course of strategic defiance of the US? What needs to be factored in is that the US still remains Iraq's number one arms supplier. Iraq is expecting the delivery of 30 F-16 aircraft. A strategic defiance of the US is far from Maliki's thoughts - at least, for now. Maliki's message needs to be taken more as one of assertively stating that Iraq is an independent country. Arguably, it is not very different from the thrust of Egypt's policies under President Mohammed Morsi. Simply put, the US needs to come to terms with such happenings as Maliki's decision to revive the military ties with Russia or Morsi's decision to pay his first state visit to China. Conceivably, it could be Egypt's turn next to revive the ties with Russia. As a matter of fact, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov is scheduled to visit Cairo in early November in the first high-level exchange with Morsi's leadership.
Kurdistan is already a de facto independent region, thanks to US and Turkish interference. The game plan is to further weaken Iraq by sponsoring the creation of a Sunni entity in central Iraq similar to Kurdistan in the north, thus confining the Iraqi Shi'ites to a moth-eaten southern region.
The Russia visit shows that Maliki is signaling he has had enough and won't take this affront to Iraqi sovereignty anymore. What is almost certain is that he will propose to Putin on Wednesday that Russian oil companies should return to Iraq in full battle cry with investment and technology and pick up the threads from where they left at the time of the US invasion in 2003.
Maliki can be expected to boot out Big Oil and the Turkish companies from Iraq's oil sector. The implications are profound for the world oil market since Iraq's fabulous oil reserves match Saudi Arabia's.
Clearly, Maliki intends to assert Iraqi sovereignty. Recently, he decided to terminate the Saddam-era agreement with Turkey, which allowed a Turkish military presence in northern Iraq to monitor the PKK separatists' activities. But Ankara balked, telling off Maliki. The Russian deal enables him now to rebuild the Iraqi armed forces and make the Turks think twice before they violate Iraqi air space or conclude that their military presence in northern Iraq could continue unchallenged.
Does this mean Iraq is on a course of strategic defiance of the US? What needs to be factored in is that the US still remains Iraq's number one arms supplier. Iraq is expecting the delivery of 30 F-16 aircraft. A strategic defiance of the US is far from Maliki's thoughts - at least, for now. Maliki's message needs to be taken more as one of assertively stating that Iraq is an independent country. Arguably, it is not very different from the thrust of Egypt's policies under President Mohammed Morsi. Simply put, the US needs to come to terms with such happenings as Maliki's decision to revive the military ties with Russia or Morsi's decision to pay his first state visit to China. Conceivably, it could be Egypt's turn next to revive the ties with Russia. As a matter of fact, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov is scheduled to visit Cairo in early November in the first high-level exchange with Morsi's leadership.
Indeed, much depends on the composure with which the US is able to adapt itself to the new realities in the Middle East. As things stand, the US has succeeded in selling $6 billion worth of arms to Iraq. It is indeed comfortably placed. The US State Department's initial reaction exuded confidence. Spokesperson Victoria Nuland said the Russian deal doesn't signify any scaling down of Iraq's "mil-to-mil" ties with the US, which are "very broad and very deep".
She revealed that discussions are going on for "some 467 foreign military sales cases" with Iraq worth more than $12 billion "if all of those go forward." Nuland said, "We're doing some $12.3 billion worth of military business with Iraq, so I don't think one needs to be concerned about that relationship being anything but the strongest."
New, untried alchemy
But the touch of anxiety in Nuland's words cannot be glossed over, either. The plain truth is, the "Russians are coming" and this time they are capitalists and globalists; they also know the Iraqi market, while the Iraqi soldier is familiar with the Russian weapon. During the Saddam era, Iraq was a major buyer of Russian weaponry and Moscow is estimated to have lost contracts worth about $8 billion due to the US-sponsored "regime change" in Baghdad in 2003.
Conceivably, Russia will do its utmost to claw its way back to the top spot in the Iraqi market and to make up for lost time. But then, arms deals invariably have political and strategic content as well. In the near term, the "unknown unknown" is going to be whether Maliki might choose to share the Iraqi capabilities with his close Iranian and Syrian allies.
Significantly, high-level Syrian and Iranian delegations have also visited Moscow in recent months. Eyebrows will be raised that Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmedinejad is scheduling a visit to Baghdad shortly. In fact, even as the Russian-Iraqi arms deal was signed in Moscow, the commander of the navy of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards arrived on a visit to Iraq, signifying the close ties between Baghdad and Tehran. No doubt, Washington will remain on its toes on this front.
Equally, Russian experts have written in the past about the emergence of a new "bloc" in the heart of the Middle East comprising Iran, Iraq, Syria and Lebanon with which Moscow can hope to have special ties.
However, the incipient signs as of now are that Moscow's regional diplomacy in the Middle East is shifting gear, determined to bridge the regional divide that the Syrian crisis has brought about.
Of course, the enterprise seems awesome in its sheer audacity. But then, Putin is scheduled to travel to Turkey next week; Lavrov hopes to travel to Riyadh in early November to attend the second session of Russia's Strategic Dialogue with the Gulf Cooperation Council states (which was once abruptly postponed by the Saudi regime as a snub to Moscow for its dogged support for the Assad regime in Syria); Lavrov will also make a "synchronized visit" to Cairo for meeting with the new Egyptian leadership and Arab League officials.
Disclosing Lavrov's scheduled diplomatic missions, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Mikhail Bogdanov added, "We [Russia] are interested in the dialogue and open partnership discussion with our Arab colleagues from the Gulf, which, in particular Saudi Arabia, Qatar and others, play a rather active and not one-meaning role in Syrian affairs. We always favor discussion of these issues, even disagreements, at the negotiating table, especially since we have the Strategic Dialogue mechanism." Without doubt, Russian alchemists are experimenting with new, untried formulations that may help heal the Syrian wounds. But, as Bogdanov sought to explain, these formulations are also broad spectrum medications that will help induce the overall metabolism of Russia's regional ties with recaltricant partners who are upset for the present over Syria. Ideally, Moscow would like to see that healing process is embedded within an overall enhancement of mutually beneficial economic ties.
Significantly, high-level Syrian and Iranian delegations have also visited Moscow in recent months. Eyebrows will be raised that Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmedinejad is scheduling a visit to Baghdad shortly. In fact, even as the Russian-Iraqi arms deal was signed in Moscow, the commander of the navy of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards arrived on a visit to Iraq, signifying the close ties between Baghdad and Tehran. No doubt, Washington will remain on its toes on this front.
Equally, Russian experts have written in the past about the emergence of a new "bloc" in the heart of the Middle East comprising Iran, Iraq, Syria and Lebanon with which Moscow can hope to have special ties.
However, the incipient signs as of now are that Moscow's regional diplomacy in the Middle East is shifting gear, determined to bridge the regional divide that the Syrian crisis has brought about.
Of course, the enterprise seems awesome in its sheer audacity. But then, Putin is scheduled to travel to Turkey next week; Lavrov hopes to travel to Riyadh in early November to attend the second session of Russia's Strategic Dialogue with the Gulf Cooperation Council states (which was once abruptly postponed by the Saudi regime as a snub to Moscow for its dogged support for the Assad regime in Syria); Lavrov will also make a "synchronized visit" to Cairo for meeting with the new Egyptian leadership and Arab League officials.
Disclosing Lavrov's scheduled diplomatic missions, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Mikhail Bogdanov added, "We [Russia] are interested in the dialogue and open partnership discussion with our Arab colleagues from the Gulf, which, in particular Saudi Arabia, Qatar and others, play a rather active and not one-meaning role in Syrian affairs. We always favor discussion of these issues, even disagreements, at the negotiating table, especially since we have the Strategic Dialogue mechanism." Without doubt, Russian alchemists are experimenting with new, untried formulations that may help heal the Syrian wounds. But, as Bogdanov sought to explain, these formulations are also broad spectrum medications that will help induce the overall metabolism of Russia's regional ties with recaltricant partners who are upset for the present over Syria. Ideally, Moscow would like to see that healing process is embedded within an overall enhancement of mutually beneficial economic ties.
Russia's ties with Turkey and Saudi Arabia, for instance, were going strong during the phase of the pre-crisis period in Syria. While the ties with Turkey lately have somewhat stagnated, Russian-Saudi ties have run into serious difficulty. Evidently, Moscow is keen to restore the status quo ante. The interesting part is the Russian diplomacy's assessment that the present juncture provides a window of opportunity to make overtures to Ankara and Riyadh, no matter the incessant blood-letting in Syria.
The backdrop to which this is happening is significant. In Moscow's assessment, evidently, there could be hopeful signs for a renewed approach to seeking a political solution to the Syrian crisis even though the skies look heavily overcast. There may be merit in making such a shrewd assessment.
As things stand, Turkey and Saudi Arabia are facing an acute predicament over the Syrian situation. Neither thought that the Syrian regime would have such a social base and political will to hang on; both are frustrated that any "regime change" in Syria is going to be a long haul fraught with uncertain consequences not only for the Syrian nation but also for the region as a whole and even for themselves.
Again, while there is no let-up in the dogged opposition to outside intervention in Syria, which Moscow and Beijing have amply displayed, a UN Security Council mandate for intervention is to be ruled out. Without a UN mandate, on the other hand, a Western intervention is unlikely, and in any case, the US remains disinterested while the European attitudes will be guided by their priorities over their economies, which, according to the latest Inernational Monetary Fund estimation, are sliding into a prolonged recession from which a near-term recovery seems highly improbable.
Sultan with a Nobel
In short, Turkey and Saudi Arabia are holding a can of worms containing the Syrian rebel elements that are not only disparate but also could prove troublesome in future. As for Turkey, with or without a UN mandate, the popular opinion is overwhelmingly against an intervention in Syria.
The Turkish people remain far from convinced that their vital national interests are at stake in Syria. Besides, the Turkish economy is also slowing, and a deep recession in Europe can play havoc with Turkey's economic fortunes. The ruling AKP's trump card so far has been that it steered Turkey to a period of unprecedented economic prosperity.
Increasingly, therefore, all this proactivism on Syria looks more like the hare-brained idea of the academic-turned Foreign Minister Ahmet Davitoglu and Prime Minister Recep Erdogan than a well-thought out foreign policy initiative. But even here, Erdogan's political priorities are going to change as he prepares for his bid to become the executive president of Turkey under a new constitution in 2014.
A Syrian quagmire can threaten his political ambitions, and already he senses rivalry from the incumbent President Abdullah Gul, whose popular ratings are manifestly far better than his own.
In sum, Erdogan wants regime change in Syria and he is still pushing for it, but he wants it now. He can't wait indefinitely, since that will upset his own political calendar. He is upset, on the other hand, that US President Barack Obama is not a man in a hurry and the Europeans are distracted by ailments.
All factors taken into consideration, therefore, it should come as no surprise that Putin has made a visit to Turkey such an urgent priority - although Erdogan visited Russia hardly two months ago. Putin has excellent personal equations with Erdogan. They were instrumental in taking Russian-Turkish relationship to such qualitatively new level in recent years. Putin is a very focused statesman. He wants to revive the verve of the Russian-Turkish tango. In the process, the contract for building a $25 billion nuclear power plant in Turkey could be advanced to the implementation stage, and Russia may also secure contracts to sell weaponry to Turkey.
In short, Turkey and Saudi Arabia are holding a can of worms containing the Syrian rebel elements that are not only disparate but also could prove troublesome in future. As for Turkey, with or without a UN mandate, the popular opinion is overwhelmingly against an intervention in Syria.
The Turkish people remain far from convinced that their vital national interests are at stake in Syria. Besides, the Turkish economy is also slowing, and a deep recession in Europe can play havoc with Turkey's economic fortunes. The ruling AKP's trump card so far has been that it steered Turkey to a period of unprecedented economic prosperity.
Increasingly, therefore, all this proactivism on Syria looks more like the hare-brained idea of the academic-turned Foreign Minister Ahmet Davitoglu and Prime Minister Recep Erdogan than a well-thought out foreign policy initiative. But even here, Erdogan's political priorities are going to change as he prepares for his bid to become the executive president of Turkey under a new constitution in 2014.
A Syrian quagmire can threaten his political ambitions, and already he senses rivalry from the incumbent President Abdullah Gul, whose popular ratings are manifestly far better than his own.
In sum, Erdogan wants regime change in Syria and he is still pushing for it, but he wants it now. He can't wait indefinitely, since that will upset his own political calendar. He is upset, on the other hand, that US President Barack Obama is not a man in a hurry and the Europeans are distracted by ailments.
All factors taken into consideration, therefore, it should come as no surprise that Putin has made a visit to Turkey such an urgent priority - although Erdogan visited Russia hardly two months ago. Putin has excellent personal equations with Erdogan. They were instrumental in taking Russian-Turkish relationship to such qualitatively new level in recent years. Putin is a very focused statesman. He wants to revive the verve of the Russian-Turkish tango. In the process, the contract for building a $25 billion nuclear power plant in Turkey could be advanced to the implementation stage, and Russia may also secure contracts to sell weaponry to Turkey.
In the Russian assessment, Erdogan's underlying ideology in terms of pursuing an independent foreign policy needs to be encouraged, despite the recent deviations such as the decision to deploy the US missile defence system on Turkish soil.
Putin's expectation will be that within the framework of a revival of the Russian-Turkish bonhomie and taking advantage of Erdogan's travails and dilemma over Syria, a meaningful conversation between Moscow and Ankara might be possible leading to a purposive search for a political solution to the crisis in Syria.
This is the season of Nobel, after all. If Erdogan could be persuaded that he could be the first ever sultan - and probably the last, too, in Ottoman history - to win a Nobel prize for peace, Putin would have made a huge contribution himself to world peace.
http://news.antiwar.com/2012/10/09/soaring-violence-signals-al-qaeda-comeback-in-iraq/
Soaring Violence Signals Al-Qaeda Comeback in Iraq
Training Camps Reportedly Established Along Syrian Border
by Jason Ditz, October 09, 2012
Violence has been decisively on the rise over the past few months in Iraq, with death tolls that are multi-year highs. Much of the violence has come from the Sunni west of Iraq, with al-Qaeda in Iraq (AQI) showing surprising staying power.
Predicted “defeated” more times than we can count over the course of the eight year US occupation, AQI is once again on the rise, with projections that the group, which had gotten down to about 1,000 fighters last year, is now about 2,500-strong.
In the US the comeback of AQI is being turned into a political issue, with some hawks claiming their resurgence is a function of the massive US occupation force having left. The history of the occupation suggests the US wasn’t particularly effective at handling AQI either, however.
And indeed, the latest growth of AQI seems to be bolstered by the Western-backed civil war in Syria, with the group setting up training camps along the Syrian border, and AQI, having sent fighters into Syria at the behest of Ayman al-Zawahiri, is taking advantage of a new influx of jihadists into the region and massive amounts of weapons and cash flowing in from around the world.
and...
http://www.upi.com/Top_News/World-News/2012/10/08/Iraq-helps-keep-Syria-fueled/UPI-51801349741938/
BAGHDAD, Oct. 8 (UPI) -- Iraq is providing the embattled Syrian government with fuel oil needed for power generation, the Financial Times reported Monday.
Commercial documents reviewed by the British business newspaper reveal the Baghdad government of Nouri al-Maliki, propped up by the United States, is under a one-year contract to provide the Damascus regime of Bashar Assad, which Washington wants dismantled, with 720,000 tons of fuel oil.
The Iraqi Oil Ministry made deliveries worth $14 million in June and July, cash on the barrel head, the Times said documents show.
An unnamed U.S. State Department official told the newspaper the shipments did not violate U.S. or EU sanctions. Still, the relationship didn't appear to sit well with Washington, the Times said.
"Perceptions matter, so we encourage countries trading with Syria to be open about their legal and non-sanctionable exchanges," a State Department official said. "If this is going to continue, we think the Iraqis should be up front about it."
Word of the fuel shipments comes a month after U.S. officials complained Iraq was allowing aircraft carrying Iranian arms to fly over its territory to get to Syria.
and....
Commercial documents reviewed by the British business newspaper reveal the Baghdad government of Nouri al-Maliki, propped up by the United States, is under a one-year contract to provide the Damascus regime of Bashar Assad, which Washington wants dismantled, with 720,000 tons of fuel oil.
The Iraqi Oil Ministry made deliveries worth $14 million in June and July, cash on the barrel head, the Times said documents show.
An unnamed U.S. State Department official told the newspaper the shipments did not violate U.S. or EU sanctions. Still, the relationship didn't appear to sit well with Washington, the Times said.
"Perceptions matter, so we encourage countries trading with Syria to be open about their legal and non-sanctionable exchanges," a State Department official said. "If this is going to continue, we think the Iraqis should be up front about it."
Word of the fuel shipments comes a month after U.S. officials complained Iraq was allowing aircraft carrying Iranian arms to fly over its territory to get to Syria.
Iraq, which has embraced closer ties with Iran, abstained from last year's Arab League vote to suspend Syria's membership and impose sanctions.
Iraq gave Syria a great deal to boot, contract documents revealed -- 50 percent below market rate plus another $5 off per metric ton, the Times said.
The newspaper said its efforts to obtain comment on the contract from Iraqi and Syrian officials were fruitless.
Iraq gave Syria a great deal to boot, contract documents revealed -- 50 percent below market rate plus another $5 off per metric ton, the Times said.
The newspaper said its efforts to obtain comment on the contract from Iraqi and Syrian officials were fruitless.
and....
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-19881858
Iraq has signed contracts to buy Russian arms worth $4.2bn (£2.6bn; 3.2bn euros) this year, Russian news agencies report.
Moscow, the main supplier of arms to Iraq under Saddam Hussein, thus becomes the country's second-biggest arms supplier after the US.
The new contracts were announced after talks between the two countries' prime ministers near Moscow on Tuesday.
Reports suggest attack helicopters and missiles are included in them.
Iraq has been rebuilding its armed forces since the end of US-led combat operations against insurgents.
Thirty Mi-28 attack helicopters and 42 Pantsir-S1 surface-to-air missile systems are said to be among items being sold.
Further discussions are said to be under way for Iraq eventually to buy MiG-29 jets, heavy armoured vehicles and other weaponry.
The contracts were negotiated during visits to Russia by Iraq's acting Defence Minister, Saadoun al-Dulaimi, in April, July and August.
"The delegation members familiarised themselves with the Russian military production, discussed the technical and commercial options of the offer with Rosoboronexport [state] supplier, and signed contracts worth more than $4.2bn," said a joint statement by Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev and his Iraqi counterpart, Nouri Maliki.
Earlier this week, Mr Maliki explained in a speech that he did not want Iraq to be "part of someone else's [arms export] monopoly."
"We have good relations with the United States and Iran. We do not want to live surrounded by constant conflict. We buy weapons based on the needs that we feel we have," he added.
Iraq clearly wants to diversify its weapons purchases - a step that will only encourage the sense in Washington that the US is somehow "losing Iraq", says the BBC's defence and diplomatic correspondent Jonathan Marcus.
For the Russians these arms sales are a useful foot in the door in Baghdad - a way of bolstering Moscow's position at a time when the future of its close ties with the Assad regime in Syria must be in doubt, our correspondent says.
and from Libya......
Free speech: Jouda threatened
Tripoli, 9 October:
Prominent independent Congressmen Saleh Jouda was threatened last night, Monday, by 11 men from Zintan in front of the Rixos Hotel. It followed a speech he has made criticising former prime minister-elect Mustafa Abushagur’s first choice of ministers which included Omar Aswad as interior minister. Aswad is from Zintan.
Jouda reportedly said that Aswad had had connections with the Qaddafi regime.
Contacted by Libya Herald, Jouda said he would not comment. “I can neither confirm nor deny it”, he added.
The reports have angered people in Benghazi where Jouda topped the poll in July. He won more votes than any other independent candidate in the country.
A three-member Benghazi team has reportedly gone to Zintan to resolve the matter.
On Satruday, the leader of the Taghyeer Party, Juma El-Gamaty, was kidnapped and threatened by a different group from Zintan, the Kaakaa brigade, after he had called for militias to be disbanded.
Congress charts course to next prime minister
Congress has agreed to choose three candidates for prime minister as early as Wednesday. (Photo: George Grant)
Tripoli, 9 October:
At the end of an often-rancorous day’s debating, the National Congress yesterday moved towards consensus on how to select Libya’s next Prime Minister.
An early motion from Benghazi independent Suleiman Zubi proposing that the next prime minister be chosen from inside the Congress was met with heated exchanges that led, at one point, to Misrata’s Union for Homeland chief Abdulrahman Sewehli walking out of the chamber in protest.
The motion was subsequently struck down in comprehensive fashion, with just 18 members voting in favour and 123 against.
Where agreement was reached, however, was on the need for a swift resolution on how to choose the next prime minister and the need, if possible, for a consensus candidate.
What emerged was a proposal that should see three names agreed upon as candidates for the top job as early as Wednesday. Each of the five major blocs in Congress will today nominate two representatives to come together with a handful of non-aligned members to decide who those three names should be.
The blocs in question are the National Forces Alliance and the Justice & Construction party together with three independent coalitions, the National Agreement group, said to have 26 members, the Workers group, said to have 13, and the National Independent group, said to have 35. The NFA and the J&C have 39 and 17 members respectively, along with a number of supporters amongst the independents.
It is understood that the big names from the last prime minister’s election, including the NFA’s Mahmoud Jibril and current Electricity Minister Awad Barasi for the J&C, will not be nominated, consistent with Congress’s desire to choose a compromise candidate who will, to the greatest possible extent, not be aligned to any one group in Congress.
As with the previous election, the winning candidate will need half plus one of the votes in Congress to be selected.
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