Indonesia’s largest Muslim group calls for welcoming President Obama and condemns hardline protests.
(Via an emailer.)
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Remember this next time you see a British politician stand up and declare that some other country is flouting international law, or a threat to world peace:
Of course, whenever the misdeeds, crimes and muderous behaviour one of our dubious chums (Saudi Arabia, Israel) is brought up for questioning, it becomes “politically motivated”. But when we need to invade other countries, whether it is to grab resources or continue promoting our delusional sense of self-importance, we will dress it up with all the appeals to international law, peace and security.
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FACT: There has never been an Israeli peace camp.
In response to this story, Aziz tweeted:
In other words, such an opinion could not be expressed in an open and frank manner in an American newspaper, whereas it can in a major Israeli newspaper.
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Turkey has recalled its ambassador from the US after the House of Representatives voted in favour of recognising the massacre of Armenians as genocide despite opposition from the Obama administration.
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Pakistan-India meeting a ‘total sell out’.
(Hockey, rather than this.)
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The collapse of the Dutch government over The Netherlands’ role in Afghanistan is being seen by some pundits as a chance for Geert Wilders to enter a future coalition government.
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This is Tony Blair:
And there should never be any doubt that he is a warmongering bastard:
It is doubtful whether this criminal will ever be brought to justice in this world, but it is worth supporting efforts to have Blair harassed wherever he goes for the rest of his life.
And on the topic of Blair, I am not at all surprised to see Martin Bright agreeing with Mad Mel.
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I could have told you this 12 months ago for no cost (and I am not even an ‘expert’):
In a report issued by the Center for New American Security think tank, Major General Michael Flynn, deputy chief of staff for intelligence in Afghanistan for the U.S. military and its NATO allies, offered a bleak assessment of the intelligence community’s role in the 8-year-old war.
He described U.S. intelligence officials there as “ignorant of local economics and landowners, hazy about who the powerbrokers are and how they might be influenced … and disengaged from people in the best position to find answers.”
An operations officer was quoted in the report as calling the United States “clueless” because of a lack of needed intelligence about the country.
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A Guardian investigation finds Iran may have been behind the kidnapping of five Britons. Four of them, ‘bodyguards’, were killed by the captors and only one survived — Peter Moore, who was released last week after over two years in captivity:
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“State-sponsored incitement”? Is that when a state steals a people’s land, destroys their livelihoods, jails their children, razes their homes, bombs them indiscriminately, and tries to starve them to death?
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Nuclear power law signed:
Washington has promoted its plan to help the Emirates’ develop peaceful nuclear power as a model of the kind of cooperation it would like to achieve with Iran, which the U.S. and its allies suspect is using a civilian program as a cover to develop an atomic weapons capability.
The United Arab Emirates, which is just across the Persian Gulf from Iran, is among those Arab nations wary of Iran’s nuclear work.
Keefie Boy, a former Dubai-based blogger, says of this story:
I can understand his concerns, and, as a commentator at his blog notes, I half expect them to plonk the nuclear reactor on a man-made island!
I am also wondering how closely regulation of the UAE’s nuclear industry will resemble the way its hydrocarbon industry is run…
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An interesting argument for why Muslim nations should take up the task of helping Afghanistan:
The solution? Muslim and regional states must fill the void.
Emirati, Jordanian and Turkish troops have been in Afghanistan, though in small numbers and doing very limited roles.
The author, Arif Rafiq, continues to the meat of his argument:
The Organization of the Islamic Conference, the association of more than four dozen Muslim states, should set up an Afghanistan contact group, led by Iran, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, and Turkey. The group would lead a coalition of Muslim states responsible for political reconciliation, peacekeeping, economic development, and governmental capacity building in Afghanistan.
I like the idea of the Organization of the Islamic Conference do something other than bleating about ‘Islamophobia in Europe’, though it is unlikely to happen.
And just as some would like the US to admit to its mistakes in Muslim countries, it would be good if Muslim countries which have a dubious foreign policy of their own could admit to some of their mistakes; especially Pakistan and Saudi Arabia with respect to Afghanistan. Though, again, I wouldn’t advise holding my breath waiting for that to occur.
It’s a nice idea by Rafiq. On paper at least.
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‘Worsening relations’ between Turkey and Israel:
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Turkey and Armenia sign ‘historic accord’:
Ahmet Davutoglu, Turkey’s foreign minister, and Edward Nalbandian, his Armenian counterpart signed the Swiss-mediated deal in Zurich on Saturday, after last-minute disagreements delayed the ceremony for three hours.
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The Special Relationship has to be one of the most hyped-up international/geopolitical relationships today. At least in our press, because it seems only British journalists and political pundits, and our political classes, seem to obsesses over it. This is most definitely an imperial hangover; a desire to still be seen as a great world power on the coattails of a genuine global superpower.
The UK needs to realise its place in the world has changed significantly since the end of WWII and the end of its Empire. In the 1950s it launched an invasion of Egypt, and helped topple a democratically-elected government in Iran. This sort of foreign policy needs to be consigned to the history books, though sadly this isn’t the case as yet.
This doesn’t mean the nation has to decline and become poor. It might be possible to become a ‘good global citizen’ by advocating more equitable and fair international cooperation or participating as a genuine neutral observer in conflicts. But to do this the nation, and especially our political classes and bureaucracy have to get over the self-obsessed preoccupation with our ’standing’ in the world, ditch the “global deputy sheriff” role our governments seem keen to play, and become realise we are a ’smaller’ nation. Not doing so seems to harm not only other people, but the nation too.
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Former head of the British Army says the government turned down a request for more soldiers:
General Sir Richard Dannatt said that a call for 2,000 extra troops was rejected earlier this year, since when the Taleban have stepped up attacks in Helmand province, where another British soldiers was killed yesterday, the 220th since the US-led invasion of 2001.
I’m sure Dannatt is relishing the chance to make Labour look stupid, given reports that the government tried to ’smear’ in the past.
Meanwhile, the current head of the army (also backing calls for more troops) issued an alarmist warning about Pakistan being taken over by al-Qaida and the Taliban if the West ‘loses’ in Afghanistan.
I don’t think NATO will end up ‘losing’ in Afghanistan, anymore than it will end up ‘winning’. There’s going to be a lot of ‘muddling along‘ for years to come. Perhaps all Barack Obama and his allies can do is satisfice.
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Four Gulf Arab states, alongside Russia, China, Japan and France, plan to ’stop using the US currency for oil trading’.
(Also, if the report is out, and the US knows about these plans too, the meetings between these nations are no longer ’secret’. So let’s stop calling them ’secret’.)
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Turks and Armenians in the US disagree on the ongoing rapprochement between Turkey and Armenia:
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Surprised this didn’t get linked to before on Talk Islam: Wajahat Ali’s article on the ’say-do’ divide in American foreign policy, including comments from some familiar names.
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Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence ‘insists’ it backs the US efforts to work with Afghan president.
You can take that with whatever amount of salt you require. Especially, if you consider Ahmed Rashid’s claim in The New York Review of Books:
In short, the strategy of the Pakistani military to selectively use Islamic extremists both as a tool in its foreign policy arsenal against India and to gain influence in Afghanistan is not going to change in a hurry. The Obama administration’s main strategy for the moment is hand-holding—it wants to keep engaging with the Pakistani leaders to try to get them to change course. At least one senior US official arrives in Islamabad every other week to argue the American case.
Rashid’s claim of an attack on Waziristan taking months may not be true, if these reports are true:
It quotes senior military and security officials as saying that the army would launch what it called “the mother of all battles” in the coming days.
“If we don’t take the battle to them, they will bring the battle to us,” it quotes a senior military official as saying of the militants. “The epicentre of the behemoth called the Taliban lies in South Waziristan, and this is where we will be fighting the toughest of all battles.”
Which I suppose means, the Pakistanis, having suffered at the hands of the Pakistani Taliban groups and their allies (it has lost around 2,000 men chasing al-Qaida et al) has decided it needs to be rid of these groups — or perhaps bring them back under control?
Other, more ’specialised’ jihadi groups like Lashkar-e-Taiba, meanwhile, remain under complete control…
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This might be another sign that Qatar wants to offer an alternative to Saudi Arabia as a ‘big player’ in the region: Qatar signs a deal with Turkey.
Turkey has the same energy concerns as the EU: Russia’s virtual monopoly over gas into Europe. Of course, Turkey realises it is a geopolitical-energy hub, and alongside deals with Qatar, the EU, talk of one with Iraq, it has signed one with Russia too.
I’d expect any EU-Turkey-Iran deal on Nabucco, an anti-Russian pipeline project and an effort the US supports at the present time, to upset the anti-Iran hawks. India’s stalling on a pipeline from Iran through Pakistan suggests some pressure from the US. But India (and China, which is busy signing deals in Central Asia) would still have energy needs. Expect the conspiracy theorists to be given more grist for their mills, as the Trans-Afghanistan pipeline is resurrected (at least in the media — the engineering of such a pipeline is another story altogether).
Steve LeVine, however, says this sorts of pipeline politics is no longer valuable to the US; events, such as the Russia-Georgia War, China’s aggressive emergence in Central Asia and developments in technology, having overtaken their policy.
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Aerial bombardment is an indiscriminate form of violence:
At least 87 refugees have been killed in an army air raid on a makeshift camp in north Yemen.
The camp at Adi in Harf Sufyan has been at the centre of fighting between government forces and Zaidi Shia fighters, which erupted in early August.
News Yemen, an independent website, aid on Thursday the raid hit the refugees while “they were sleeping under trees and plastic awnings.”
There’s talk of a proxy war between Iran and Saudi Arabia, although one informed commentator says viewing this conflict in this way “does not help”.
(Side note: I was interested to discover Saudi had been at loggerheads with Oman and pre-UAE Abu Dhabi in the 1950s. Over oil, of course.)
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As a rule, anything that makes Mad Mel even madder than she already is has to be a good thing:
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Fareed Zakaria, the desi Tom Friedman.
Is that an insult to Zakaria or Friedman?
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Not particularly good news from Afghanistan over the last few days….
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For better discussion, I recommend reading Registan and Abu Muqawama (who I was pleasantly surprised to read spent sometime living up the road from me in London). They’re two of the better ‘pro-interventionist’ blogs in the context of Western involvement in Afghanistan.
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Gordon Brown comes up with an old new Afghan strategy, although I don’t see why we bother with the fiction of ‘our’ Afghan strategy since we just do what the US does anyway (as explained by Gideon Rachman).
Rachman also notes an odd but interesting fact:
I visited Kabul in 2008, the head of ISAF was an American general called Dan McNeill. He wanted more troops as well. McNeill, McKiernan, McChrystal. Plus ca change…
Hattrick.
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Turkey and Armenia try to normalise ties (much to the annoyance of Turkish opposition groups).
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