François Hollande became the first Socialist president of France since 1995, but his victory over Nicolas Sarkozy will also be seen as a challenge to the policy of austerity in the euro zone.
May 7, 2012
Hollande Ousts Sarkozy in French Presidential Election
April 30, 2012
Experts Believe Iran Conflict Is Less Likely
WASHINGTON — After a winter of alarm over the possibility that a military conflict over the Iranian nuclear program might be imminent, American officials and outside analysts now believe that the chances of war in the near future have significantly decreased.
They cite a series of factors that, for now, argue against a conflict. The threat of tighter economic sanctions has prompted the Iranians to try more flexible tactics in their dealings with the United States and other powers, while the revival of direct negotiations has tempered the most inflammatory talk on all sides.
A growing divide in Israel between political leaders and military and intelligence officials over the wisdom of attacking Iran has begun to surface. And the White House appears determined to prevent any confrontation that could disrupt world oil markets in an election year.
“I do think the temperature has cooled,” an Obama administration official said this week.
At the same time, no one is discounting the possibility that the current optimism could fade. “While there isn’t an agreement between the U.S. and Israel on how much time, there is an agreement that there is some time to give diplomacy a chance,” said Dennis B. Ross, who previously handled Iran policy for the Obama administration.
“So I think right now you have a focus on the negotiations,” he added. “It doesn’t mean the threat of using force goes away, but it lies behind the diplomacy.”
The talks two weeks ago in Istanbul between Iran and the United States and other world powers were something of a turning point in the current American thinking about Iran. In the days leading up to the talks, there had been little optimism in Washington, but Iranian negotiators appeared more flexible and open to resolving the crisis than expected, even though no agreement was reached other than to talk again, in Baghdad next month. American officials believe the looming threat of tighter economic sanctions to take effect on July 1 convinced the Iranians to take the negotiations more seriously, and that in turn has reduced the threat of war.
“There is a combination of factors coming on line, including the talks and the sanctions, and so now I think people realize it has to be given time to play out,” one administration official said, who, like the other official, spoke without attribution in order to discuss sensitive matters. “We are in a period now where the combination of diplomacy and pressure is giving us a window.”
In a television appearance on Wednesday, Senator John Kerry, the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said, “I have confidence that there is a way forward.”
Senior Iranian leaders have sought to portray the Istanbul round of negotiations as successful, which might be a sign, American officials and outside analysts said, that the Iranian government is preparing the public for a deal with the West that could be portrayed as a win for Iran.
“I see that we are at the beginning of the end of what I call the ‘manufactured Iran file,’ ” the Iranian foreign minister, Ali Akbar Salehi, said after the talks. “At the Baghdad meeting, I see more progress,” he predicted.
IRNA, the Iranian state-controlled news service, reported last week that a leading Iranian cleric, Ayatollah Kazem Seddiqi, had made positive statements about the negotiations. The news service said that the cleric, in his Friday sermon to thousands of worshipers in Tehran, said that if the United States and other nations negotiating with Iran show “logical behavior in nuclear talks, the outcome will be good for all.”
According to IRNA, Ayatollah Seddiqi said the Istanbul meeting showed “the power and dignity of the Iranian nation and was the outcome of people’s resistance and following the supreme leader’s guidelines.”
At the same time in Israel, the conservative government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has been rocked by a series of public comments from current and former Israeli military and intelligence officials questioning the wisdom of attacking Iran.
The latest comments came from Yuval Diskin, the former chief of Shin Bet, Israel’s domestic security service, who on Friday said Mr. Netanyahu and Defense Minister Ehud Barak should not be trusted to determine policy on Iran. He said the judgments of both men have been clouded by “messianic feelings.” Mr. Diskin, who was chief of Shin Bet until last year, said an attack against Iran might cause it to speed up its nuclear program.
Just days before, Israel’s army chief of staff suggested in an interview with the Israeli newspaper Haaretz that the Iranian nuclear threat was not quite as imminent as Mr. Netanyahu has portrayed it. In his comments, Lt. Gen. Benny Gantz suggested that he agreed with the intelligence assessments of the United States that Iran has not yet decided whether to build a nuclear bomb.
Iran “is going step by step to the place where it will be able to decide whether to manufacture a nuclear bomb. It hasn’t yet decided whether to go the extra mile,” General Gantz told Haaretz. He suggested that the crisis may not come to a head this year. But he said, “Clearly, the more the Iranians progress, the worse the situation is.”
Last month, Meir Dagan, the former chief of the Israeli spy agency Mossad, said he did not advocate a pre-emptive Israeli strike against Iran’s nuclear program anytime soon. In an interview with CBS’s “60 Minutes,” Mr. Dagan said the Iranian government was “a very rational one,” and that Iranian officials were “considering all the implications of their actions.”
Mr. Netanyahu is dealing with the criticisms at the same time as he faces, for domestic political reasons, the prospect of an election this year, rather than next.
The divide within the Israeli establishment is significant because Israel has been threatening to launch a unilateral strike against Iran’s nuclear facilities if the United States is unwilling to do so. Washington has feared that if Israel were to do so, the United States could get dragged into the fight, which could result in a widening war in the region.
The crisis atmosphere seemed most pronounced in March, when Mr. Netanyahu visited Washington. Mr. Obama, fearful of antagonizing American Jewish voters during an election year, tried to strike a balance, appearing supportive of Israel but still stopping short of endorsing military action anytime soon. He said at the time that he “had Israel’s back,” and strongly suggested that the United States would take military action to prevent Iran from ever acquiring a nuclear bomb.
Mr. Obama made it clear that he would not be willing to pursue a policy of “containment” on Iran, in which the United States would accept an Iranian nuclear weapon while seeking to prevent a further nuclear arms race in the Middle East.
Abandoning containment as a policy option was the result of an intense debate within the administration, and moved Washington a bit closer to the Israeli position, and it was considered by the White House to be the biggest reward they were willing to give Mr. Netanyahu during his visit. Yet Mr. Obama also made it clear that he believes now is the time to give diplomacy a chance.
But some analysts warned that the Iran crisis could heat up again if there was not much progress at the Baghdad talks. The Istanbul meetings were designed simply to determine whether Iran was serious about beginning a new round of negotiations, but in the Baghdad sessions, the United States and other countries are expected to demand that Iran begin to discuss the details of a possible deal. That would require that Iran show a willingness to compromise on its uranium enrichment program, perhaps by agreeing to halt its efforts to enrich at 20 percent, a level that is higher than is needed for civilian nuclear power.
Iran has said that its 20 percent enrichment effort is for use in a research reactor, but the United States and Israel suspect that it is actually an interim step in efforts to reach 90 percent enrichment, considered weapons-grade. If Iran does not engage in a substantive discussion of the details of its program in Baghdad, the crisis atmosphere may return.
“I think this could be a temporary lull,” said Paul R. Pillar, a former C.I.A. analyst on the Middle East. “My own expectation is that even after Baghdad, we will only see the most preliminary understandings, and we will hear again people saying we are giving up too much. And the lull right now could just be a lull between the diplomatic meetings.” The NYT
April 30, 2012
ILO warns global employment situation is 'alarming'
The International Labour Organization (ILO) has warned that the global employment situation is “alarming” and unlikely to improve soon. The agency said that austerity measures, especially in advanced economies, were hurting job creation. The ILO said the situation was likely to get worse amid slowing global growth and more people entering the workforce. High unemployment has been a concern in the US and other major economies and has hurt the global economic recovery. “It is unlikely that the world economy will grow at a sufficient pace over the next couple of years to both close the existing jobs deficit and provide employment for the more than 80 million people expected to enter the labour market during this period,” the agency said in its latest report.
Eurozone warning: The ILO report comes at a time when some of the biggest economies in the eurozone are having to cut government spending in wake of the region’s ongoing debt crisis. The agency was critical of the austerity measures taken by Europe’s economies, saying not only had they failed to bring down deficits but they had hurt economic growth and as a result impacted the jobs market. Data out last week showed that the unemployment rate in Spain hit a new record high of 24.4% at the end of March. Unemployment in France also rose for the 11th straight month during March. The ILO warned that unless there was a change in policy direction, the job market would remain subdued until the end of 2016 and economic growth in the region may slow further. “The narrow focus of many eurozone countries on fiscal austerity is deepening the jobs crisis and could even lead to another recession in Europe”, said Raymond Torres, the lead author of the ILO report. However, the agency said that employment rates in developing economies had recovered much faster and had surpassed pre-financial crisis levels.
‘Problematic phase’: The ILO warned that a “new and more problematic phase” was emerging in the global labour market. It said that more than 40% of jobseekers in advanced economies had been without work for over a year, indicating that it was taking much longer for people to find jobs. At the same time, the agency noted that youth unemployment had been rising in both developed as well as developing economies, a trend which it warned could have far reaching implications. “This has huge economic costs in terms of loss of skills and motivation, and could lead to human capital depreciation,” the ILO said in its report. “There may also be accompanying social implications in terms of increased social strife, riots, illness, and so forth.” The BBC
April 12, 2012
The Liberalism of Fear
American liberalism has two faces. One is the face that Democratic politicians wear when they’re on a political upswing, laying out big plans and sketching grand ambitions, with the wind in their sails and the country behind them. It’s an optimist’s face, a dreamer’s visage – think F.D.R. beaming with the cigarette holder between his teeth, Bobby Kennedy in shirtsleeves on the ’68 campaign trail. It’s a face that’s “in favor of a lot of things” and “against mighty few,” as Lyndon Johnson put it while coasting to re-election in 1964. It’s a face with nothing to fear but fear itself.
There’s another face, though, that comes out when the debate turns to the difficulty of paying for the “lot of things” that F.D.R. and L.B.J. committed the government to doing. This liberalism fears a lot of things – Republicans, austerity, hard choices and change of almost any sort. It’s the liberalism that cries “Social Darwinism!” when conservatives suggest any alteration to the existing welfare state, that paints even modest reductions in government spending (or, indeed, reductions in the rate of increase in government spending) as the first step toward a Dickensian dystopia of “prisons and workhouses,” and that portrays the Democratic Party as the only thing standing between Americans and a Hobbesian war of all against all.
Barack Obama wore the first face during his campaign for the presidency in 2008. He ran on hope and change, not fear and loathing. He attacked cynicism more vigorously than he attacked conservatism (he even had kind words for Ronald Reagan), and painted special interests rather than Republicans as the main obstacle to the common good. He promised a chicken in every pot, an electric car in every driveway, the same health care plan for anyone who was happy with the status quo and a new plan for anyone who wasn’t. He didn’t just look to liberalism’s past accomplishments and promise to preserve them; he looked to the future and said “yes, we can.”
Three bruising years later, though, the president will be running for re-election on the liberalism of fear. Whether in his slashing attack last week on the “radical vision” of the House Republican budget, his finger-wagging at the Supreme Court over health care reform, or his administration’s transparently calculated outrage over the supposed Republican “war on women,” the incumbent is building a case for re-election that rests almost exclusively on the evils of the opposition. His campaign is likely to be a monument to what George Will has dubbed a “reactionary liberalism,” which defends the design of existing programs and the privileges of Democratic interest groups as doggedly as any monarchist defended the ancien régime.
In parts of the conservative press, the president’s increasingly scorched-earth rhetoric is being treated as a sign of his desperation. By resorting so quickly to partisan demagoguery, this argument goes, Obama is effectively conceding that he has nothing else to run on – that his policies are unpopular, that his agenda has largely been rejected, and there is no positive case for a second term that any swing voter is likely to be persuaded by.
There is truth to this: Obama’s legislative achievements are strikingly unpopular. His second-term agenda is vague to the point of nonexistent. And he no doubt would have preferred to run a re-election campaign on a more uplifting theme than the promise to stand athwart the Republicans yelling “stop” – especially given that his general-election opponent is now guaranteed to be Mitt Romney rather than the more easily demonizable Rick Santorum.
But elections won on fear count just as much as elections won on hope. It was fear that gave George W. Bush the edge over John Kerry in 2004, and it was fear that saved the Bill Clinton from political extinction. (Clinton’s rightward pivot helped him win re-election, but his willingness to savage the Dole-Gingrich Republicans on Medicare was just as crucial to his victory.)
What’s more, the politics of fear offers particular benefits for left-of-center politicians, because its inherent small-c conservatism – vote for me if you want to Keep Things As They Are, a message with particular appeal – provides a way to overcome the built-in disadvantage of running for office as a Democrat in a country where more voters identify as conservatives then liberals.
All of which is to say that Obama’s strategy may be cynical, but it isn’t necessarily desperate. (Indeed, it’s hard to call a politician desperate when he’s leading in the polls.) And it won’t be enough for Romney to point out that his opponent is running as a divider, not a uniter. In presidential politics, division often works, and it may well work again — unless the Republican nominee can present himself as something other than the liberal caricature of a heartless conservative, and ease the fears that this White House is determined to exploit. The NYT
April 11, 2012
Syria to end military operations on Thursday - state TV
Syria will end military operations on Thursday, state TV has said, the day a ceasefire brokered by the UN-Arab League envoy to Syria is scheduled to come into effect.
Envoy Kofi Annan said the Syrian authorities had told him they would “cease all military fighting throughout Syrian territory” by 06:00 (03:00 GMT). However, the rebels said they doubted the government side would stop.
Violence continued on Wednesday, in Homs particularly. Activists said at least 11 people had been killed across the country. “After our armed forces completed successful operations in combating the criminal acts of the armed terrorist groups and enforced the state’s rule over its territory, it has been decided to stop these operations from Thursday morning,” state TV quoted a ministry official as saying. The announcement made no mention of Mr Annan’s ceasefire plan.
A spokesman for the main rebel force, the Free Syrian Army (FSA), said the ceasefire was unlikely to take effect. “I don’t believe our forces will stop shooting because the other side won’t stop,” Captain Ayham al-Kurdi said in a BBC interview on the Turkey-Syria border. “If the other side stopped, the Syrian people would march on the president’s palace on the same day. This means the regime won’t stop.”
The Syrian government failed to withdraw its troops and weaponry from population centres on Tuesday as agreed under the Annan plan.
US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said on Wednesday she was alarmed about the “ongoing violence” in Syria as the ceasefire deadline approaches. Meanwhile, the number of refugees sheltering in neighbouring Jordan has reached 95,000, a Jordanian government official has told the BBC. Jordan follows an unannounced policy of offering refuge to all Syrians entering the country, legally or illegally.
Earlier this month, Turkey said it was accommodating 24,000 Syrian refugees. There are no figures available for Lebanon.
‘Unimaginable consequences’
Mr Annan received a letter from the Syrian foreign ministry agreeing to cease fighting but reserving the right to respond “proportionately to any attacks carried out by armed terrorist groups against civilians, government forces or public and private property”, his spokesman Ahmad Fawzi said. Earlier, speaking on a visit to Iran, Mr Annan told reporters he had received “further clarifications” from the government of President Bashar al-Assad on how it intended to suspend hostilities.
“If everyone respects it, I think by six in the morning on Thursday we shall see improved conditions on the ground.” But he said the government was still seeking assurances that opposition forces would also stop the fighting “so that we could see cessation of all the violence”.
Mr Annan was speaking after talks with Iranian Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Salehi, during which he appealed for Tehran’s support. He said the region “cannot afford another shock” and warned that any miscalculation or mistakes in Syria could have “unimaginable consequences”.
Iran has been a key ally of Damascus, but Mr Salehi said that “as long as the peace plan continues its approach, Iran will support it”.
China, which has blocked - with Russia - two UN Security Council resolutions condemning the crackdown on dissent, also called on the Syrian government to “respond” to Mr Annan’s peace initiative and “fully implement the commitment of the ceasefire and withdrawal of troops”. Russia said it was now up to the opposition to respond with its own ceasefire.
Border shootings
Under Mr Annan’s six-point peace plan, sponsored by the UN and the Arab League, the Syrian military was to have completed its withdrawal from population centres and stopped the use of heavy weaponry by Tuesday, ahead of a full ceasefire coming into place on Thursday. After initial agreement, the plan foundered when Syria said it wanted written guarantees from the rebels that they would end all violence.
The Free Syrian Army has said that while its fighters are “committed” to Mr Annan’s ceasefire, they do not recognise the Assad government “and for that reason we will not give guarantees”. The FSA has also warned that it will resume attacks on government forces if they do not fully comply with the Annan plan. Damascus also insisted that UN observers had to arrive in Syria for the ceasefire to begin, reversing - and effectively rejecting - Mr Annan’s timeline.
On Wednesday, activists reported that the Khalidya district of the central city of Homs was again being shelled by government forces. Troops backed by tanks also carried out a series of raids in the southern city of Deraa and several surrounding towns. Restrictions on reporting in Syria mean such reports are impossible to independently verify. The UN says more than 9,000 people have been killed in the uprising, which began more than a year ago. In February, the government put the death toll at 3,838 - 2,493 civilians and 1,345 security forces personnel. The BBC
April 1, 2012
Pakistan President Asif Ali Zardari to visit India
Pakistan’s President Asif Ali Zardari will travel to India later this month, officials say, as tensions ease between the nuclear-armed neighbours. Mr Zardari will visit, in a private capacity, the shrine of a famous Sufi Muslim saint, in north-west Rajasthan state, his spokesman said. He held out the possibility that it could turn into an official visit. This will be the first visit to India by a Pakistani head of state for seven years, the BBC’s Jill McGivering says. Tensions between the two countries have eased in the last year, and there have been notable efforts to improve mutual trade, she adds. Mr Zardari will travel to the Ajmer Sharif shrine in Rajasthan “very soon”, presidential spokesman Farhatullah Babar said, adding that the exact dates had not yet been worked out. “It has been on the cards, and now it is confirmed,” he told Reuters news agency. “It was supposed to be a private visit. But what it turns out (to be) finally, whether private, official, or private (and) official, has yet to be confirmed.” Dialogue between India and Pakistan is being strongly encouraged by the United States in particular, as it is keen to promote regional stability ahead of the withdrawal of Nato-led forces in Afghanistan, our correspondent says. The BBC
March 29, 2012
The Never-Ending Cold War
Two decades after the end of the cold war, Mitt Romney still considers Russia to be America’s “No. 1 geopolitical foe.” His comments display either a shocking lack of knowledge about international affairs or just craven politics. Either way, they are reckless and unworthy of a major presidential contender.
Mr. Romney couldn’t wait to pounce when President Obama told President Dmitri Medvedev of Russia — in a conversation at a nuclear arms summit meeting picked up by a microphone — that he would have more flexibility on missile defense and other arms issues after the election.
First, this is an honest statement of fact, as Mr. Romney’s reaction clearly demonstrated. The political atmosphere in Washington is so poisonous that cooperation on any issue right now is near impossible. Mr. Romney accused Mr. Obama of signaling that, postelection, he would “cave” on missile defense. In Foreign Policy Magazine on Tuesday, Mr. Romney accused him of bowing to Russia on nuclear arms cuts and Iran. That is not true.
Two years ago, President Obama signed a treaty with Russia that makes modest cuts in each side’s nuclear weapons, and he has promised to pursue more reductions. Although Mr. Romney opposed the treaty, 13 Republican senators joined all the Democrats to ratify it. Every president since Ronald Reagan has reduced the nuclear arsenal significantly. We simply don’t need — and cannot afford — the thousands of weapons still on hand.
Saying he will have flexibility on missile defense doesn’t mean Mr. Obama will “cave.” Two years ago, he made a sound strategic decision, scrapping former President George W. Bush’s dubious plan to build a long-range missile defense system in Poland and the Czech Republic. The Pentagon is deploying a less-ambitious — but-more-feasible — system of interceptors and sensors, first on ships and later on land. Russia objects to a system in Europe, saying it will put their long-range missiles at risk. That is not America’s intent — the real target is Iran — and Mr. Obama is right to work to find a compromise.
As for Iran, President Obama and his diplomats have managed to persuade Russia to go along with limited but important sanctions at the United Nations Security Council. They also have rightly gone around Moscow — imposing their own sanctions on Tehran that are tougher than President Bush ever achieved. Russia has worked productively with the United States on Libya and Afghanistan.
Russia is an unsavory player. In December, Vladimir Putin’s party tried to steal a parliamentary election; this month, he faced fraud charges from international observers after his own re-election as president. He has cracked down on critics and restricted democracy. His support for President Bashar al-Assad of Syria is unconscionable.
But Russia can’t be wished away or denounced away. It has to be challenged and the relationship managed with vigilance and skepticism. The administration was right to express concerns about the stolen parliamentary election — drawing verbal attacks on Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton — and to try to publicly shame the Kremlin on Syria. Mr. Obama also needs to more firmly support democracy in Russia and remind Mr. Putin that many obstacles to cooperation are of his own making.
There are real threats out there: Al Qaeda and its imitators, Iran, North Korea, economic stresses. Mr. Romney owes Americans a discussion of the real challenges facing this country and his solutions to them. The NYT
March 29, 2012
Syrian opposition unites under SNC banner
Opposition groups in Syria have agreed to be represented as a single group by the Syrian National Council at this weekend’s Friends of Syria conference to be held in Istanbul.
Syria’s opposition factions agreed on Tuesday to name the Syrian National Council as their representative. The SNC immediately called on President Bashar al-Assad to pull out tanks to show he was serious about a peace plan crafted by UN-Arab League envoy Kofi Annan.
“The Syrian government has written to the Joint Special Envoy Kofi Annan accepting his six-point plan, endorsed by the United Nations Security Council,” Ahmad Fawzi, Annan’s spokesman, said in a statement.
The SNC remains sceptical that Assad will keep his word.
Annan had written to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad asking Damascus to “put its commitments into immediate effect,” he added.
Annan’s plan calls for a ceasefire by Syrian troops, to be supervised by the UN, a daily two-hour humanitarian halt to fighting to be able to evacuate the wounded as well as inclusive talks to find a solution to the crisis.
Annan to brief UN on Monday
The former UN secretary general is scheduled to brief the UN Security Council next Monday. The announcement came during Annan’s visit to China, where he was meeting President Wen Jiabao to drum up support for his plan.
Despite the announcement, the US remains cautious in completely buying Assad’s commitment to the plan.
“Given Assad’s history of over-promising and under-delivering, that commitment (to Annan) must now be matched by immediate actions,” US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton told reporters in Washington. “We will judge Assad’s sincerity and seriousness by what he does, not by what he says.”
Britain’s Foreign Secretary William Hague echoed Clinton’s sentiment, saying “we will continue to judge the Syrian regime by its practical actions, not by its often empty words.”
mz/ipj (Reuters, AP, AFP)
March 27, 2012
Japan left with one nuclear reactor after shutdown
Japan has shut down another nuclear power station, bringing it a step closer to suspending atomic energy, following the Fukushima disaster.
Only one of the 54 nuclear reactors remains in operation, and it is due to be switched off in May. Residents have demanded reactors not be turned back on after routine maintenance due to safety fears.
A tsunami in March 2011 triggered the Fukushima nuclear plant meltdowns.
The No 6 unit at the Kashiwazaki-Kariwa power station in Niigata prefecture has been taken offline by the Tokyo Electric Power Co for maintenance. This leaves just the nuclear reactor on the island of Hokkaido in operation.
It is unclear when the reactors that have been turned off might be restarted. Before the Fukushima disaster, nearly a third of Japan’s electricity was generated with nuclear power. But the six-reactor Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant was badly damaged by the earthquake and tsunami, with explosions and partial meltdowns in several of the reactors.
The government has been carrying out stress tests on nuclear power stations to try to persuade people living nearby that they can resist strong earthquakes. But since the Fukushima disaster, local communities have been refusing to allow reactors to be restarted after routine maintenance, which has to take place every 13 months. In the meantime, Japan has increased its fossil fuel imports, with electricity companies pressing old power plants into service.
But there could still be a shortfall of electricity in the summer, reports the BBC’s Roland Buerk. Last year, big companies ran factories at night and at weekends after the government ordered them to cut their electricity consumption by 15%. Manufacturers have also warned that more production may have to be moved abroad if the situation persists, which would damage Japan’s economy. … The BBC
March 24, 2012
TFI Daily News: Damaging coup rumours ricochet across China
BBC, March 22, 2012
Have you heard? There’s been a coup in China! Tanks have been spotted on the streets of Beijing and other cities! Shots were fired near the Communist Party’s leadership compound!OK, before you get too agitated, there is no coup. To be more exact, as far as we know there has…
March 24, 2012
TFI Daily News: U.S. Intelligence Report Warns of Global Water Tensions
By Steven Lee Myers, NY Times, March 22, 2012
WASHINGTON—The American intelligence community warned in a report released Thursday that problems with water could destabilize countries in North Africa, the Middle East and South Asia over the next decade.Increasing demand and competition caused by…
March 19, 2012
Does America and Iran's mutual mistrust mean war is inevitable?
What would be the consequences of an Israeli or American military strike on Iran and could the conflict yet be avoided, asks Radio 4 Analysis presenter Edward Stourton.
In late 2004, in an atmosphere of frenzied speculation about war with Iran, Jack Straw - then Britain’s Foreign Secretary - told the BBC that military action was “inconceivable.”
“If I’d not done so, in my view we would have been involved in a firestorm inside the Labour government.” ”It was impossible for any British government, but particularly a Labour government given what had happened in Iraq, to contemplate or have any dalliance with the idea of military action in Iran,” he now recalls.
For the United States and Britain had recently invaded Iraq. Today - with near civil war in Syria and the Middle East arguably more unstable than ever - military action is very much back on the agenda because of the belief in Washington and Jerusalem that Iran is closer to getting the bomb.
“I very consciously decided to close that issue down.”
Now even Jack Straw thinks Western military action is possible - so much so, indeed, that he is issuing dire warnings against it.
“It could lead to a major realignment in international relations of a kind that we have not seen up to now,” he says.
“You’d get huge divisions in the international community between the US and maybe the United Kingdom, on the one hand; other European countries somewhere in the middle; Russia and China, Brazil, India on the other.”… The BBC
March 1, 2012
Syrian Rebels Say They Are Withdrawing From Enclave
“BEIRUT, Lebanon — After a bruising, 27-day siege under intensifying bombardment, rebels holed up in the shattered Baba Amr neighborhood of the central Syrian city of Homs announced a “tactical withdrawal” on Thursday, apparently handing victory to forces loyal to President Bashar al-Assad but raising concerns about the plight of civilians there.
A campaign of raids and arrests began almost immediately in the area, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, based in Britain, which said 17 people had died in Baba Amr on Thursday. Later, the International Committee of the Red Cross said that Syrian authorities had granted it a “green light” to enter the neighborhood on Friday in order to bring humanitarian aid and attempt to evacuate as many people as possible. “If the journalists are there then this applies to them as well,” said Hicham Hassan, a Red Cross spokesman, in reference to two Western journalists had been trapped there since last week.” The NYT
February 28, 2012
If Afghans Want to Reject the U.S. and Embrace Theocracy, That's Their Right
There are 90,000 American troops in Afghanistan to fight the Taliban, but it looks more and more like it’s Afghanistan itself, as well as the Taliban, that’s fighting them back. A week ago, two unthinking NATO troops drove some trash from an old library to an incinerator near Bagram Air Force Base. Among the trash were books, and among the books, a couple of nearby Afghan workers noticed after it was too late to save them, were Korans. Within hours, the incident became international news, and angry protesters beganburning tires outside Bagram. Though senior NATO and U.S. officials immediately televised their profuse and apparently sincere apologies, the protests have become steadily more violent. Some Afghan police have turned on their Western sponsors. On Saturday, an Afghan employee of the Interior Ministry shot two U.S. officers inside the ministry’s Kabul headquarters, then walked out unmolested. On Sunday, a protester threw a grenade at a group of American troops, injuring six.
The Taliban is trying to claim these protests and shooters as part of their own movement, and maybe someday they’ll be able to, but the Taliban is still so unpopular in Afghanistan that there’s probably no direct connection. And that’s exactly what should make this violence so worrying. The U.S.-led force in Afghanistan, caught up in fighting the Taliban and its offshoots, may have made an enemy of the Afghan people themselves. President Obama is already planning to speed the U.S. withdrawal, but it might not be up to him anymore. If Afghans reject the international force then the most basic conceit of this decade-long war — Westerners partnering with Afghans to rebuild their country — will have collapsed, and the U.S.-led mission along with it. These angry young men rioting in the streets and murdering Americans aren’t the Taliban, but they appear organized and passionate and numerous enough to take over once we leave, or at least to exert serious influence, and it’s not hard to foresee the theocratic government they’d likely introduce.
That these Afghans have come out so quickly and violently against the Americans, and over such a minor incident, suggests they are angry about much more than just the Koran-burning itself. When the U.S. led the Taliban-toppling invasion almost 11 years ago, we may have started a war of liberation, but more Afghans seem to see it as a war of occupation. They’re wrong — NATO’s goals are to make Afghans as free and secure as possible, and then to leave forever — but that doesn’t matter. The more that Afghans perceive us as occupiers, the more they will treat us as such, and the more we will have to assert our authority and force our agenda, thus making the Americans and Europeans into exactly the occupation force that nobody wants them to be.
Many Westerners seem to perceive these Afghans’ violent response to a mere book-burning as backwards, even paleolithic. It’s more complicated than that, of course: Afghans are reacting against centuries of invasion and oppression by non-Muslims, from the outwardly Christian British to the oppressively atheist Soviets, and may see this latest attack on Islam as another threat to Afghan national sovereignty by unwelcome outsiders. For many Afghans, the Koran-burning may be a reminder that even their most sacred national ideals — in this case, the sanctity of their religion — are outside Afghan control and in the hands of ignorant foreigners.
Maybe Afghans are angry for religious reasons, maybe for more nationalist causes, or simply because they’re not crazy about having thousands of heavily armed foreigners stomping around their country and (they perceive) telling them what to do. But it doesn’t really matter why they’re angry. National self-determination — a people’s will to determine how their country is run — is a force stronger than bombs or bullets or blast walls, as Arab leaders have learned in the past year, and as America may soon learn in Afghanistan. What Afghans want is more important than why they want it, and the past week of violence suggests that Afghans are rejecting the American-dominated foreign force.
For the U.S. counterinsurgency strategy to work, we need Afghans to work with us and against the Taliban. That requires Afghans to dislike the Taliban, which they do (the group’s approval rating in Afghanistan has been dropping for years), but it also requires them to trust us, and they don’t.
A recent poll by the Asia Foundation asked Afghans where they go for help with problems in their communities, such as land disputes, terrorism, broken infrastructure, or family issues. Only 2% said they approached “foreign forces” for help, making us by far the least attractive of 14 different options included in the survey. Though Afghanistan’s institutions and agencies are deeply corrupt and often badly broken, from local officials and police right up to the national army and parliament, Afghans still trust them far more than they trust us. When the poll-takers asked Afghans to gauge their level of fear when doing eight of Afghanistan’s most dangerous activities — voting, protesting, running for office, traveling long distances, resolving a local problem, encountering Afghan police, encountering Afghan soldiers, and encountering “international forces” — the last activity rated as the scariest, with 76% of Afghans saying they were afraid to encounter the foreign troops.
The international mission in Afghanistan has done some terrible things — locking up innocent peoplewithout due process, accidentally bombing civilians, humiliating families by invading their homes — but it’s also pushed back the Taliban, built a weak but better-than-nothing system of police and army, funded a government that would have otherwise collapsed long ago, and provided extensive humanitarian aid. Afghans would almost certainly be better off embracing the foreign presence, working with the Americans and Europeans, rather than rejecting it. They would also probably be better off living in a tolerant society that did not respond to every Koran-burning with violence and murder. But that’s not our choice to make, it’s theirs. The Afghans have the right and the power to choose their own future, and it looks like their chosen future doesn’t include us. The Atlantic
February 26, 2012
Syrian Conflict Poses the Risk of Wider Strife
Unlike the revolts in Libya and other Arab nations, the Syrian conflict has the potential to draw in other countries in the region and beyond. “PARIS — More than a year after it began, the Arab awakening has had its seasons. After a world-shaking spring, then on through summer, autumn and winter, one country after another — Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, Yemen — has toppled autocrats, with varying amounts of blood. Some governments have stamped out revolts, like Bahrain. Others have tried modest reforms, like Morocco, or idled on the sidelines (think Algeria and Saudi Arabia).
Now it is nearly spring again, and there is Syria.
As the dead pile up and diplomacy fails to stem the violence, it is clear that this conflict is unique in significant ways, difficult to predict and far riskier to the world. Unlike Libya, Syria is of strategic importance, sitting at the center of ethnic, religious and regional rivalries that give it the potential to become a whirlpool that draws in powers, great and small, in the region and beyond.” … The NYT
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Middleburg, Virginia; 2010
Photo: Michael Barolet
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