Soccer Dad's Middle East Media Sampler
Here's Soccer Dad's Middle East Media Sampler for Tuesday, August 7.
1) "Victim of this, Victim of that"
Mitt Romney's comments about the role culture plays in economic success has led to counterclaims that it is Israel's occupation, not Palestinian culture that is responsible for the Palestinians' economic problems. We saw it in the Washington Post editorial Mitt Romney's less than successful trip abroad:
His comparison left out restrictions on Palestinian trade, workers and goods imposed by Israel over many years, and, more to the point, he reflected an alarmingly simplistic view of complex questions.
In a New York Times op-ed, Palestinian tycoon Munib Masri wrote:
As one of the most successful businessmen and industrialists in Palestine today (there are many of us), I can tell Mr. Romney without doubt or hesitation that our economy has two arms and one foot tied behind us not by culture but by occupation.
It’s hard to succeed, Mr. Romney, when roadblocks, checkpoints and draconian restrictions on the movement of goods and people suffocate our business environment. It is a tribute to the indomitable spirit of our Palestinian culture that we have managed to do so well despite such onerous constraints.
From comments like these one might get the impression that Israeli arbitrarily set up checkpoints for the sole purpose of making life miserable for the Palestinians.
In November, 1998, towards the end of his first term as Prime Minister, Binyamin Netanyahu's government issued a report about Israeli-Palestinian economic relations. One paragraph read:
The number of Palestinians working in Israel is steadily growing. Lawfully employed Palestinians in Israel today number about 60,000, of whom some 13,000 work in industrial zones and in the settlements. All told, more than 100,000 Palestinians are estimated to be employed in Israel approaching the record number employed in 1992.
Since the benchmark was 1992, it has to be asked why was this number not steadily increasing since Oslo Accords were signed in 1993. The answer is that after the increase in terror, especially in early 1996, Israel imposed restrictions on Palestinian travel. After Netanyahu's election in 1996, terror decreased and consequently so did Israeli restrictions.
Similarly, after Arafat launched the so called Aqsa intifada in September, 2000 and claimed hundreds of Israeli lives, Israel imposed many restrictions anew. There was nothing "draconian" about these restrictions; they were necessary elements of self-defense. It's also worth observing that the post-Oslo security measures implemented by Israel showed that one of the fundamental premises of the peace process was overly optimistic. Israel assumed that with the peace process the Palestinians would fight or, at least, discourage terror.
2) The Kurdish Way
In an analysis for the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, Kurdistan: The Next Flashpoint Between Turkey, Iraq, and the Syrian Revolt, Jacques Neriah writes:
In the wake of the steady disintegration of the Assad regime, Syrian opposition activists reported that several towns, such as Amouda and Qabani in Syria’s Kurdish northeast, had passed in mid-July 2012 without a fight into the local hands of a group called the Free Kurdish Army. Thus emerged for the first time in modern Kurdish history the nucleus of an exclusively Kurdish-controlled enclave bordering the predominantly Kurdish areas of Turkey. After largely sitting on the sidelines of the Syrian revolution, political groups from Syria’s Kurdish minority in the northeastern region appear to have moved decisively to claim control of the Kurdish-populated towns.
The Free Kurdish Army was formed from the Democratic Union Party (PYD), a group with historical links to the Kurdistan Workers’ Party or PKK. The PKK, it should be remembered, is regarded by both Turkey and the United States as a terrorist organization fighting the Turkish government for Kurdish autonomy. The Kurds are reportedly concentrating their efforts on wresting control of Qamishli, the largest of the Kurdish cities, from the Syrian government. Kurdish forces have already captured the city of Ayn al-Arab in the Aleppo Governorate, where they are flying the Kurdish flag.
...
Turkish observers have commented that the geopolitics of the Middle East are now being reshaped as the emergence of a “Greater Kurdistan” is no longer a remote possibility, posing enormous challenges for all the states hosting large Kurdish populations: Turkey, Iraq, Syria, and Iran.4 Kurdistan is a potential land bridge for many of the conflicts erupting in this part of the region. It provides a ground route for Iraqi Kurdistan to supply the Syrian Kurds as they seek greater autonomy from Damascus. But its use will depend on which power dominates the tri-border area between Iraq, Syria, and Turkey. This area could equally provide Iran with a corridor for moving supplies to its Syrian surrogates and even to Hizbullah in Lebanon. Perhaps this is why some commentators see Kurdistan as the new regional flashpoint in the Middle East.
The rest of the article provides extensive historical and social background of the Kurds.
Michael Rubin writes about other implications of the recent Kurdish assertiveness with regards to Turkey.
3) Ozy-Annan-Dis
Jonathan Schanzer catalogues the many failures of Kofi Annan, in The Cost of Kofi.
That Annan failed should not come as a surprise. His default is failure: Whether it was Annan's professed failure to notice that his own son was profiting from the Oil for Food scandal in Iraq, the failure to prevent a genocide in Rwanda, or the failure to prevent mass murder in Srebrenica.
Of course, Annan did not start the war in Syria, but perhaps he made things worse by legitimizing Bashar al-Assad as an equal partner in his peace plan, despite Assad's direct role in the slaughter of thousands. Annan made things messier still by bringing in Iran as an interlocutor, even as the world sought to isolate the Mullahs for their nuclear program, not to mention their deadly support for the regime in Damascus.
In the end, Annan's blunders contributed significantly to a prolonged and deadly stalemate from February 23 to July 31, the length of his tenure.
Schanzer concedes that the violence in Syria is not Annan's fault, but under his watch the killing has continued. Annan is a product of the UN. It was his job as head of UN peacekeeping forces that provided the exposure that allowed him to be elected Secretary General, even though he failed miserably in the former capacity. At the UN nothing succeeds like failure.
In reporting Annan's resignation, the VOA provided this headline: As Annan Resigns, UN Condemns Violence in Syria. I'm sure that condemnation will be as effective as Annan was.
(Ironically, Annan married the niece of Raoul Wallenberg, a man who actually saved lives at great risk in the face of murderous tyranny.)
Barry Rubin interviewed Ammar Abdulhamid, a pro-democracy Syrian activists currently living abroad, about the current situation and hopes for the future of Syria.
Question: What do you see emerging in a post-Assad Syria?
The activist in me wants to see a democratic decentralized entity emerge that is capable of responding to the developmental needs and aspirations of the people, irrespective of their religious, national, or political background, in each province, region, and district. The analyst in me has to grapple with the possibility of inheriting a failed state composed of warring fiefdoms, and of the need to find ways to put the pieces back together again, a process that would take years. It was from the beginning clear to me that the transformation of Syria will prove a much longer process than most of us have expected or wanted. But our dream for a democratic state will guide us through the thin and thick of it all.
Labels: Arab democracy, Kofi Annan, Kurdistan, Middle East Media Sampler, Palestinian culture, Palestinian economy, Palestinian terrorism, Soccer Dad, Syrian uprising
Will the Obama administration discover the truth about the UN?
Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me. Will the duplicitous behavior of former Secretary General of the United Nations Kofi Annan begin to open the eyes of the Obama administration to the true nature of the evil of Turtle Bay?
Annan has been suggesting for weeks that Iran (Iran!) has a constructive role to play in
brokering a cease fire between dictator Bashar al-Assad and his subjects. Finally, on Tuesday, the US State Department decided that enough is enough.
“I don’t think anybody with a straight face could argue that Iran has had a positive impact on developments in Syria,” White House spokesman Jay Carney said Tuesday.
But somebody did argue it with a straight face, Mr. Carney. His name is Kofi Annan and he has the title of - no less - former Secretary General of the United Nations. What do you say to that?
“Broadly, on the Annan plan, we believe that it is essential that the international community come together behind the plan, that the plan be implemented,” Carney said.
He added, “We remain highly skeptical about Assad’s willingness to meet his commitments, which is another reason why Syria's future cannot plausibly have Bashar Assad in the government. He’s long since lost his credibility.”
Carney also urged a change of course in countries like Iran that have supported the Syrian leader.
“We also call on other nations to recognize the obvious, which is that allying with Bashar Assad is allying with a tyrant and putting your nation on the wrong side of the Syrian people,” he said.
And what is allying with Ahmadinejad, whom the Obama administration refused to help depose three years ago? And by the way, what does it say about the United Nations that it treats dictators like Assad and Ahmadinejad the same way it treats democratically elected officials like Hussein Obama, and that it regards countries like Iran as positive actors? Hmmm?
No, don't get your hopes up. Obama won't change. But we might
change get rid of him.
Labels: Bashar al-Assad, Iran, Kofi Annan, Syrian uprising, United Nations
Soccer Dad's Middle East Media Sampler
Here's Soccer Dad's Middle East Media Sampler for Wednesday, May 30.
1) Stupid headline of the day
If it weren't so tragic, the headline Supporters and Critics of Annan See Crisis in Syria as a Threat to His Legacy would be hilarious. Look at how his career is summarized:
His diplomatic successes included the effort to repatriate hundreds of international staff and citizens of Western countries from Iraq after its 1990 invasion of Kuwait. From 1995 to 1996, as under secretary for peacekeeping, he oversaw a difficult transition of that responsibility in Bosnia and Herzegovina from the United Nations to NATO. He is considered responsible for defusing a number of conflicts in Africa, notably a 2008 agreement that halted a civil war in Kenya.
But Mr. Annan also is known for having weathered some spectacular lapses. He led the United Nations peacekeeping operation when it failed to halt the Rwanda genocide in 1994 — for which he personally accepted some blame — and the Srebrenica massacre and the collapse of Somalia in 1995. The Darfur genocide in Sudan, which began in 2003, occurred on his watch as secretary general.
His career as secretary general was also marred by a corruption investigation into an oil-for-food program in Iraq administered by the United Nations. Although a panel of inquiry found that Mr. Annan had not influenced the awarding of a contract to the company that employed his son, Kojo, it criticized him for not looking more aggressively into that company’s United Nations ties.
"[D]iplomatic successes" on one hand; "spectacular lapses" on the other. Other would call those lapses, "failures."
Instapundit preserved a few key paragraphs from an expose of Annan that appeared in London's Sunday Times in October, 2006:
Srebrenica is rarely mentioned nowadays in Annan’s offices on the 38th floor of the UN secretariat building in New York. He steps down in December after a decade as secretary-general. His retirement will be marked by plaudits. But behind the honorifics and the accolades lies a darker story: of incompetence, mismanagement and worse. Annan was the head of the Department of Peacekeeping Operations (DPKO) between March 1993 and December 1996. The Srebrenica massacre of up to 8,000 men and boys and the slaughter of 800,000 people in Rwanda happened on his watch. In Bosnia and Rwanda, UN officials directed peacekeepers to stand back from the killing, their concern apparently to guard the UN’s status as a neutral observer. This was a shock to those who believed the UN was there to help them.
Annan’s term has also been marked by scandal: from the sexual abuse of women and children in the Congo by UN peacekeepers to the greatest financial scam in history, the UN-administered oil-for-food programme. Arguably, a trial of the UN would be more apt than a leaving party.
It's remarkable that Annan's failures as head of DPKO somehow qualified him to serve two terms as Secretary General. At the UN, apparently, nothing succeeds like failure.
The only way that his failure in Syria hurts his reputation is that the numbers of dead don't quite match the totals that his dereliction of duty caused in the 1990's. Yet.
Ehud Barak had a good line yesterday about Assad:
“I don’t think that Assad lost an hour of sleep last night because of those people leaving,” Mr. Barak said of the Syrian president, Bashar al-Assad. “More concrete action is required,” he added. “These are crimes against humanity and it’s impossible that the international community is going to stand aside.”
2) Stupid headline of the day II
The threat to global health from the hunt for bin Laden by David Ignatius
As an intelligence operation, it must have seemed like pure genius: Recruit a Pakistani doctor to collect blood samples that could identify Osama bin Laden’s family, under cover of an ongoing vaccination program. But as an ethical matter, it was something else.
The CIA’s vaccination gambit put at risk something very precious — the integrity of public health programs in Pakistan and around the globe. It also added to the dangers facing nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) in a world that’s increasingly hostile to U.S. aid organizations.
I might be sympathetic to this argument if the countries where American NGO's were endangered weren't actively spreading hatred of America and helping America's enemies. There are plenty of imagined conspiracy theories out there alleging America's evil intent. This is simply an effort to obscure Pakistan's role as America's enemy.
3) The tunnels of Gaza
A new New York Times correspondent tells of her tour of a tunnel going into Gaza:
As I stepped onto three wobbly bricks leading into the tunnel, the first thing I heard was “Watch your head.” This phrase would be repeated many times during the 1,000-foot walk to the Gaza side. After about the 10th warning, I yelled up the tunnel, “I’m much more worried about being bombed than grazing my head!” My guide, who, like the others I spoke with here, refused to give his name for fear of the authorities, guffawed. It took him half a minute to recover from the “ridiculousness” of my concern.
...
“This is our life,” said one of the workers, his face iced in a layer of white dust. “Life is expensive, and Rafah is even more high-priced than Cairo. So we are forced to work and live underground.”
Despite her regularly expressed fear of being bombed, according to an earlier account from the Times, there is evidence, that Israel knew which tunnels aren't used for munitions:
But with the Israeli bombing, and, unspoken, the heavy Egyptian police and military presence that the crisis has meant for the town, the tunnel trade has stopped for now, the residents said. “Nothing is going in now,” said Nader Sayed, 28. “It’s impossible now.”
Hamas, the residents said, controls other tunnels, conduits for guns, cement, explosives and fertilizers for explosives.
Muhammad al-Zarb said that the Israelis somehow seemed to know which tunnels were commercial and which were run by Hamas, and that they seemed to be selective in their bombing. “If someone has a tunnel for Chipsy, it seems O.K.,” he said. “When a Hamas guy has a tunnel for weapons, they bomb it.”
If the new correspondent seems to have a flair for the dramatic, it could be that she's had a previous career as an activist, as CIF Watch documents: (h/t Daled Amos)
When Ruqaya Izzidien is not minimizing the threats posed by radical Islam, or decrying European Islamophobia, for the English website of the Muslim Brotherhood, blogging for the extreme anti-Israel site Mondoweiss, or contributing to Al Jazeera, she serves as the UK correspondent for Bikyamasr, an online magazine which focuses on “Egypt and the region” – a site which has, on the sidebar of their home page , a “resistance to occupation” video ...
4) Oh! To be a ZOG!
Barry Rubin recommends this interview with Edward Luttwak. There's a lot to read and learn, but I loved this exchange:
There have been many different explanations given over the past 10 years for the strength of the American-Israeli relationship, ranging from the idea that Israel has the best and most immediately deployable army in the Middle East, to the idea that a small cabal of wealthy and influential Jews has hijacked American foreign policy.
You mean the Z.O.G.? The Zionist Occupied Government?
Yes.
Personally, from an emotional point of view, myself, as me, I prefer the Z.O.G. explanation above all others. I love the idea that the Zionists have sufficient power to actually occupy America, and through America to basically run the world. I love the idea of being a member of a secretive and powerful cabal. If you put my name Luttwak together with Perle and Wolfowitz and you search the Internet, you will get this little list of people who run the American government and the world, and I’m on it. I love that.
Labels: Bashar al-Assad, Ehud Barak, Gaza, Jodi Rudoren, Kofi Annan, Middle East Media Sampler, Osama Bin Laden, Pakistan, smuggling tunnels, Soccer Dad, Syrian uprising
Iran admits that it's helping 'defend' Assad
Iran confirmed on Sunday that
it has troops in Syria helping embattled dictator Bashar al-Assad. The admission came a day after Assad's troops killed over 100 people in the town of Hula, including 'tens' of children.
"If the Islamic Republic was not present in Syria, the massacre of civilians would have been twice as bad," General Ismail Qa'ani, deputy-commander of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards' Qods Force, told Tehran's ISNA news agency.
Iran, he added, "Had physically and non-physically stopped the rebels from killing many more among the Syrian people."
This was a rare admission by an Iranian official that Tehran was truly aiding the Damascus regime.
The quote was later removed from ISNA's website.
Sunday's statement was particularly strident, as it followed the brutal killing of 92 people, including 32 children, in Houla, in the embattled province of Homs, by Damascus' forces.
Syria has denied that its troops were behind the massacre.
Meanwhile, Syria has denied permission for former 'Palestinian' foreign minister Nasser al-Kidwa to accompany former UN Secretary General Kofi Annan on a mission to Damascus. Annan is the Arab League's envoy to Syria and al-Kidwa is his deputy. I wonder how much Arabic Annan speaks....
In any event, it appears to me that Ahmadinejad is worried that Hamas and Hezbullah are not going to take the hit for him in the event that he attacks Israel, and that they will try to stay out of the retaliation. Assad is much more reliable. Iran's support for Assad is the quid pro quo for participating in any retaliation against Israel, delivered in advance.
What could go wrong?
Labels: Arab League, Bashar al-Assad, Kofi Annan, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Nasser al-Qudwa, Syrian uprising
