West Asia News and Discussions (YEMEN, gulf)

[kenop]

It might as well be some shadow-group's conspiracy to keep everyone confused while they go about their aim of world domination. My 7.86% understanding of the ME goes down the drain.

[UlanBatori]

Oh! Very simple. US freezes accounts of Saudi financiers - US man loses head. See that the ransom demand was for $132M. Even ISIS knows that no aam Amrikee has that kind of $$. So the demand was for money held in an account, that COULD be released quickly.

Now see that the second Amreeki has been released with head still attached. Your guess on the ransom is as good as mine.

[Philip]

Somali pirates,ISIS,could they be related?

[RoyG]

Apparently this is "Jihad John" that beheaded James Foley. If it is, he wont last for too long.

http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=78e_1408 ... ent_page=2

[anmol]

OBAMA'S IRAQI MISSION IMPOSSIBLE

Hostage rescue raid came too late. The president waited nearly a month before giving the go-ahead for a daring bid to free western hostages including James Foley, writes Toby Harnden in Washington

The Sunday Times (London)

August 24, 2014 Sunday

BYLINE: Toby Harnden

It was shortly after midnight on the Fourth of July when the specially modified Black Hawk helicopters fitted with radar evading equipment swooped down over Ukayrishah, a small town next to the Euphrates River, close to the northern Syrian city of Raqqa.

Flown by pilots from the US 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment - known as the "Night Stalkers" - the Black Hawks' first job was to destroy a jihadist anti-aircraft battery three miles away.
But their main role was to drop several dozen elite troops from Delta Force and Seal Team 6, the unit that killed the al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden in 2011, into the heart of territory controlled by Isis, or the Islamic State.

Syrian radar had been jammed and fighter jets were patrolling overhead as the commandos blocked access roads. The troops moved swiftly towards their objective: an abandoned oil refinery used as a military post and known as the Akershi base.

The CIA had concluded that the base contained a secret prison in which a number of western hostages were languishing.
James Foley, 40, an idealistic freelance journalist from New Hampshire who had once been kidnapped in Libya and held for 44 days, was thought to be among them.

When the commandos reached the base, scores of Isis fighters swarmed out. A US air force AC-130 gunship laid down a wall of fire, killing up to 15 of the jihadists.

According to locals, some of the commandos were wearing Jordanian insignia, perhaps to mask their nationality. They entered the buildings and found the prison. But the hostages were not there. The special forces troops had found what they term a "dry hole".

The operation was reminiscent of the 1970 mission to free American prisoners of war from North Vietnam's Son Tay prison camp. It was flawlessly executed but the North Vietnamese had moved the prisoners a day earlier.

For President Barack Obama the decision to send in the Night Stalkers was an agonising one. The audacious bin Laden raid in Pakistan had been a success but also preying on his mind was the failed 1980 Delta Force operation to rescue American hostages in Tehran. Sandstorms and mechanical troubles led the mission to be abandoned and eight American troops were killed when two aircraft collided. The debacle cast a shadow over Jimmy Carter's presidency.

Pentagon sources said Foley and the others might well have been rescued but Obama, concerned about the ramifica-tions of US troops being killed or captured in Syria, took too long to authorise the mission.

Anthony Shaffer, a former lieutenant-colonel in US military intelligence who worked on covert operations, said: "I'm told it was almost a 30-day delay from when they said they wanted to go to when he finally gave the green light. They were ready to go in June to grab the guy [Foley] and they weren't permitted."

On the evening of August 13 - five days after American airstrikes on Isis targets began - Foley's parents John and Diane received an email from their son's captors addressed to "the American government and their sheep-like citizens".

America, it said, "will pay the price" for the bombings. "The first of which being the blood of the American citizen, James Foley! He will be executed as a direct result of your transgressions towards us!" Last Tuesday a video lasting almost five minutes was uploaded to YouTube. It started with a clip of Obama announcing airstrikes to stop the slaugh-ter of Yazidis in Iraq.

It then cut to a desert scene in which a masked jihadist swathed in black stood beside a kneeling Foley, who was pallid, his head shaved and dressed in an orange jumpsuit similar to those worn by Guantanamo Bay detainees.
The journalist, grimacing, recited a memorised anti-American propaganda message, part of it directed to his brother John, a US air force officer. "I call on you, John. Think about who made the decision to bomb Iraq recently and kill those people, whoever they may have been."

Then the terrorist standing over him - who has since become known as "Jihadi John" - spoke in a London accent, con-cluding: "Any attempt by you, Obama, to deny the Muslims their rights of living in safety under the Islamic caliphate will result in the bloodshed of your people."

He pulled the prisoner's head back and began slitting his throat using a 6in knife before the video shifted to Foley's body, his bloodied head resting on his back.

Obama, whose aides said had not viewed the video, was briefed on its contents on Air Force One as he flew to resume his holiday on Martha's Vineyard in Massachusetts. ON Thanksgiving Day in November 2012, Foley, another western journalist and their Syrian fixer were planning to head for the border with Turkey, driving along narrow lanes to avoid the checkpoints of President Bashar al-Assad's regime on the main highways.

A dashing and charismatic man, Foley carried himself with an air of self-confidence. In what would be his last inter-view, he had spoken to a Syrian video journalist, talking about how the regime was "trying to terrorise the people". He was tanned and wearing aviator sunglasses.

The area was rebel-controlled and perhaps Foley's open sympathy for their cause made him feel safer. He was known to be fearless and at ease with taking great risks. As a freelancer writing for the Boston-based website GlobalPost and shooting video for the Agence France-Presse news agency, his livelihood depended to a degree on how intrepid he was.

But Foley was wellacquainted with danger and how badly things could go wrong. He had been captured in Libya by forces loyal to Colonel Muammar Gadaffi in April 2011 along with two others after an ambush in which a South Afri-can photojournalist was shot dead.

In captivity in Libya, Foley had been even-tempered and upbeat. His cellmate Clare Morgana Gillis recounted how, when she was in tears after an interrogation, Foley had told her calmly: "It's their job to break you. They did it to you today, and they'll do it to me tomorrow. Get some sleep."

He also had a strong Roman Catholic faith. He said the rosary in captivity and for a period he would listen each day to the muffled voice of a detained US contractor reading him the Book of Matthew through the cell wall.
Foley returned to America after his release and briefly took an editing job at Global-Post. He reflected on the risks he had been taking the day he had been abducted in Libya.

"My decision-making that day was clouded by an adrenaline-influenced desire to be there first, to push the limits fur-ther," he wrote.

But he was like a caged animal in an office in Boston. There were arguments with his family when he told them he was going back to Libya and his boss, Philip Balboni, joked about taking his passport.

He had been late to journalism, spending his twenties teaching underprivileged children in Phoenix, Arizona, and in Chicago and there was a sense he was making up for lost time. In a talk to students - he had gained some celebrity as a freed hostage - he said: "It was a kind of siren song that called me out to the front lines."

Gillis has described Foley, the eldest of five children, as a magnetic figure. "Men like him for his good humour and ten-dency to address everyone as 'bro' or 'homie' or 'dude' after the first handshake," she wrote for the Syria Deeply news site last year. "Women like him for his broad smile, broad shoulders, and because, well, women just like him."
Before setting off for the Turkish border in 2012, Foley and his colleague went to an internet cafe in the village of Binnish in the province of Idlib, spending an hour online filing stories and chatting with friends before hailing a taxi.
They went just four miles before a van sped up behind their taxi, forcing the driver to pull over near Taftanaz. Three men jumped out, firing into the air and screaming in Arabic.

It was to be a year before the Foley family had any contact with those holding their son and brother. They received an anonymous email from an untraceable address that demanded (EURO)100m (£80m).

AT the end of the Foley beheading video Jihadi John is shown holding another shaven-headed prisoner in an orange jumpsuit and address- ing the American president: "The life of this American citizen, Obama, depends on your next decision."

That captive was Steven Sotloff, 31, another US freelance journalist, who had reported from Egypt, Libya and Yemen for Time and Foreign Policy magazines. He had been kidnapped minutes after crossing the Turkish border into Syria in August last year.

Sotloff, who describes himself in his Twitter biography as a "stand-up philosopher from Miami", had not previously been publicly identified as a hostage. His family, like those of most captives, had chosen to keep his abduction a secret in the belief that publicity might be counter-productive.

At least two other Americans, one of them Austin Tice, a former US Marine Corps officer and veteran of tours in Iraq and Afghanistan, and a number of other westerners are believed to be being held by Isis.

Foley's family has complained that the US government did not do enough to try to save his life. American and British foreign policy is not to pay ransoms. It is an open secret that European countries are more flexible, though they always deny buying their citizens' freedom.

Dan O'Shea, a former US Navy Seal who served in Iraq as a co-ordinator for hostage tracking and rescue, said that hos-tages had been a huge source of revenue for Isis and that paying ransoms had driven up the price.
"It used to be $1m or $2m for a westerner. Now the market has gone to westerners being $5m, $10m or $20m. So it's just driven the business."

The Foley family was working to raise $5m and hoping that would be enough.

The quality of the beheading video was striking, with an almost cinematic desert backdrop, a high-definition camera and a lapel microphone on Foley's jumpsuit. The fact that the actual decapitation was not shown suggested that Isis was aware that excessive savagery might alienate supporters.

O'Shea said: "These videos used to be choppy, chintzy and cheap-looking products. The James Foley video was scary in the way it was so professional."

Foley's murder was a return to the tactics of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the former leader of al-Qaeda in Iraq, a decade ago when he personally beheaded the American businessman Nick Berg on video. Al-Zarqawi was killed by US forces in 2006.
Despite attempts by Twitter and Facebook to block the video being distributed, it has spread virally, a recruiting and terror tool perfectly crafted for the social media age.

David Rohde, an American journalist who escaped from captivity in Afghanistan in 2009 after being held for seven months, has called for an open debate about ransoms. In a Reuters article he noted that Foley's last words in the video were: "I guess, all in all, I wish I wasn't American." Rohde commented: "Foley clearly spoke under duress. But his regret at being an American captive, real or not, reflected grim fact."

Several French and Spanish hostages held with Foley and Sotloff were freed after ransoms were paid. The journalist Didier FranÁois, 53, who was released with three other Frenchmen for a reported $18m, told the Europe 1 website Fo-ley was a leader in captivity who was "extremely strong, who never cracked despite extremely difficult conditions".
Foley's family believes he may have volunteered to be the first one killed. FranÁois said Isis had discovered photos of Foley's air force brother on his laptop and singled him out for additional brutality.

Pentagon officials have been aghast at the White House release of news of the July 4 raid, which had been kept secret until Foley's murder, and at Obama, who in January mocked Isis as "a JV team" - a junior varsity outfit not ready for the big leagues.

Kevin Carroll, a former CIA officer, claimed Obama had jeopardised the lives of the remaining hostages by revealing that the freed Europeans had been "debriefed" by American intelligence and compromised the chances of a successful rescue by describing exactly how the July 4 mission was conducted.

He believes the jihadist group is now preparing to attack America. "I'm very seriously afraid there's a coming Isis attack on the homeland. There's 100 American passport holders in Isis and they have $2bn cash in hand. Estimates vary but you've got between 200 and 2,000 European passport holders as well."

The Obama administration now states that Isis poses a greater threat than al-Qaeda ever did. Chuck Hagel, the US sec-retary of defence, said last week that Isis was "beyond anything we've ever seen".

With airstrikes on Iraq continuing, and Pentagon officials arguing that attacks have to be extended to Syria if Isis is to be stopped, the prospects for Sotloff, Tice and the other western hostages are dire.

Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the Isis leader behind the ransom fundraising strategy and the man who ordered Foley's murder, appears determined not just to establish an Islamic caliphate in Iraq and Syria but also to make his bloody mark on the world.

"Isis is al-Qaeda metastasised into the anti-Christ," said O'Shea. "Its message is: forget bin Laden, forget al-Zarqawi. Al-Baghdadi is the new chosen one."

Obama's decision, against the advice of the Pentagon and Joe Biden, his vice-president, to launch the bin Laden raid helped secure his re-election. But this time, sadly, his penchant for prevarication appears to have allowed time for the hostages to be spirited away.

Additional reporting: Miles Amoore

[Jarita]

Any truth to this


http://www.globalresearch.ca/isis-leade ... al/5391593

ISIS Leader Abu Bakr Al Baghdadi Trained by Israeli Mossad, NSA Documents Reveal
By Gulf Daily News
Global Research, July 16, 2014
Gulf Daily News
Region: Middle East & North Africa
Theme: Intelligence, US NATO War Agenda
131K
11K 249

188K
abu bakr al baghdadi

The former employee at US National Security Agency (NSA), Edward Snowden, has revealed that the British and American intelligence and the Mossad worked together to create the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS).

Snowden said intelligence services of three countries created a terrorist organisation that is able to attract all extremists of the world to one place, using a strategy called “the hornet’s nest”.

NSA documents refer to recent implementation of the hornet’s nest to protect the Zionist entity by creating religious and Islamic slogans.

According to documents released by Snowden, “The only solution for the protection of the Jewish state “is to create an enemy near its borders”.

Leaks revealed that ISIS leader and cleric Abu Bakr Al Baghdadi took intensive military training for a whole year in the hands of Mossad, besides courses in theology and the art of speech.

[anmol]

No:

Sunny Hundal @sunny_hundal
@ggreenwald Just to confirm, did Snowden ever say the ISIS chief al-Baghdadi was trained by Mossad? Hearing it all over FB

Glenn Greenwald @ggreenwald

@sunny_hundal I've never heard him say any such thing, nor have I ever heard any credible source quoting him saying anything like that.

https://twitter.com/ggreenwald/statuses ... 7026429953

[Singha]

generally when someone rises too fast, it is due to backing from outside. how this nonentity become a prince and caliph ahead of more established warlords with ample street muscle is a mystery, just as the meteoric rise of mullah omar was a mystery too. islam is not known for peaceful power transfers at the best of times

probably such guys are groomed and propped up for a purpose but went feral.

[JE Menon]

Globalresearch.ca and Gulf Daily News are both paragons of truth in reporting. So are the New York Times and Washington Post.

Singha: going feral is what is required. Please read my post somewhere, maybe the Pak thread or Islam thread, giving a description of what is happening in the Middle East. Would like to see a more reliable model if anyone has one.

Wait, let me try to find it myself.

[chetak]

ISIS forcefully circumcised Assyrian Christian men & women in Mosul without anesthesia. Women are sold for $150 each

[Philip]

Simply appalling.They deserve to be nuked.

It doesn't surprise me that ISIS has a Mossad/CIA origin.They Yanquis did the same with the Taliban too.Osama was Washington's blue-eyed boy in Afghanistan until he saw the Yanquis for what they were doing to his country.They funded Zia and the ISI to the hilt,the creators and handlers of the Taliban resulting in OBL creating Al Q,simply typical of Western double-speak."The white man speaks with a forked tongue";ancient native American "Indian"saying,which holds good today.

[habal]

this is like watching a Sacha Baron Cohen middle-east parody movie, but only the victims are for real and not set props.

[chetak]

They have apparently homed in on or are close to homing in on to jihhadi john who was the gent who beheaded James Foley


Photos and Videos of Jihadi John (he participate at the James Foley execution) + links

[Singha]

suppose they get him..what will it solve or prove? a few self-pats on the back and then business as usual probably.

amirkhans have to eat crow soup and do a 180' turnaround on syria and iran policy if they want ISIS finished. thats because only syria and iran(and iranian proxies in iraq) can deploy the manpower needed to flood the place and destroy the ISIS. american surveillance and airpower can help but not conclude this issue.

[Singha]

ISIS takes over the last major govt stronghold in NE Syria - Tabqa airbase

http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/mid ... l?hpid=z10

[KLNMurthy]

Oh! Very simple. US freezes accounts of Saudi financiers - US man loses head. See that the ransom demand was for $132M. Even ISIS knows that no aam Amrikee has that kind of $$. So the demand was for money held in an account, that COULD be released quickly.

Now see that the second Amreeki has been released with head still attached. Your guess on the ransom is as good as mine.

This is not the guy who is widely thought to be next in line for head-- that would be one Sotoloff IIRC , this released guy is a new name altogether and the captors are al-nusra, not IS.

[Philip]

Habal,speak to him.He might make "Dictator-2"!

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/a ... s-war-isis
Iraq: on the frontline with the Shia fighters taking the war to Isis
Special report In the first of a two-part series on the forces ranged against Isis in Iraq, meet the controversial Shia militia keeping the Islamists from moving on Baghdad

Ghaith Abdul-Ahad in Diyala province, Iraq
The Guardian, Sunday 24 August 2014 19.08 BST
On the frontline with the Shia fighters taking the war to Isis
Diyala, Iraq: Shia fighters on a mission to guard the berm which separates the Iraqi state from the new Islamic caliphate. Photograph: Ghaith Abdul-Ahad

The new Iraqi "border" is marked by a two-metre-high wall of earth. The berm, as it is known, cuts through farmland and orchards, separating the shrinking lands of the Iraqi state as it has existed for 95 years from the expanding territory of the new Islamic caliphate.

On the northern side, the black flags of Islamic State (Isis) shimmer in the afternoon haze. But on the Iraqi side it is not a national flag that flutters but a black Shia banner.

"This land is what separates good from evil," says a Shia fighter, pointing at the no man's land between the two forces. "Here you see the flag of Imam Hussein and there you see the black flags of Isis. This is the same history repeating itself," he says, referring to ancient Sunni-Shia enmities that played out on these plains centuries ago.

When the Iraqi army capitulated in the face of the Isis onslaught earlier this summer, it was left to Shia militias to fill the void and check the Islamist progress towards Baghdad. Like the Kurds in the north, the Shias are emerging as a far more effective fighting unit to confront the Islamists, whose murderous recent activities have elevated them to global public enemy number one.

But relying on the Shias brings problems of its own. On Friday, Shia militiamen were blamed for killing 70 people at a Sunni mosque in Diyala. It is attacks like these that have persuaded large numbers of ordinary Sunnis who live in the vast spaces between Baghdad and Damascus to side with Isis. In the Middle East, as the British foreign secretary, Philip Hammond, said last week, my enemy's enemy is not always my friend.

On the ground, Shia militiamen are eager to stress their passionate dedication to the fight, but deny that they are just as bad as Isis.

"Our name brings terror and they fear us. They think we are like Isis but we are not like them," the militiaman adds. "We don't kill families and we don't attack women or children or elderly people."

The route to the frontline leaves the visitor in no doubt: this is a war. Military debris lies scattered along the two sides of the highway. An occasional military truck or a Humvee speeds in the opposite direction, ferrying the injured and dead, passing the wreckage of an artillery piece, a blown-up turret from a Humvee and a great multitude of mangled metal objects.

Fertile fields famed for their melons, wheat and barley are now parched wastelands after irrigation canals were destroyed by shelling. Hamlets lie deserted or destroyed and the remaining mud houses have been taken over by military and militia units after their Sunni inhabitants fled further north.

In these almost medieval settings, modern intrusions can seem absurd. A road sign on the nearby highway, the main artery connecting Baghdad to Kirkuk in the north, declares, with misplaced confidence, distances that cannot be measured in kilometres any more, but instead by how many men will die trying to traverse them.

"See the electricity towers in front of us? That's the town of Udhaim. It's under Isis control," said Mujtaba, another young Shia militiaman, as he sped towards the frontline. He nodded with his floppy hat to the left and added: "They are also parallel to us now – only the Tigris river separates us."
On the frontline with the Shia fighers taking the war to Isis Shia fighters waiting to ambush Sunni militants in the countryside of Diyala province. Photograph: Ghaith Abdul-Ahad

Mujtaba is a good example of the new breed of Shia fighter, hellbent on confronting what they see as an existential threat against them, battle-hardened by more than a decade of conflict in Iraq and Syria and, in some cases, trained in Iran and Lebanon under the unrelenting attention of Hezbollah.

Mujtaba is in his mid-20s, has fought in Syria, and has little faith in the Iraqi army's capability to fight this war. "You can't depend on the army – even if they put 2,000 soldiers in this village I won't take them seriously or count on them," he said. "We are a resistance faction that have been fighting for 11 years. Each one of us has been sent to at least three outside training camps in Iran and Lebanon under supervision of Hezbollah. Each lasted for two months. Do you know what it means to go for 60 days under constant gruelling by Hezbollah? You come back as a new person. You can't compare us with those soldiers who joined the army for money."

He was so impressed by his experiences that he named his first son after Imad Mughniya, the legendary Hezbollah military commander.

At the frontline, it is clear who the poor relations are. At one corner of the berm, a group of Iraqi army soldiers in boxer shorts and T-shirts caked with dust and sweat stood dazed under a scorching sun. Instead of foxholes or shelters, they had spread coloured mattresses and blankets on the berm, giving it the look of a giant laundry line.

The soldiers are dependent on the militias to hold the line and on civilian volunteers and villagers to feed and water them. The government has given up trying to supply them.

"They say the Iraqi soldier is a coward but where is the government?" said one middle-aged soldier. The troops had only a few hours' worth of ammunition and of the two ancient Russian armoured vehicles positioned nearby, only one could fire. The other had broken down and was there for decoration only.

"Where are the parliamentarians who are bickering back in Baghdad? Why don't they visit the front, give us a box of machine gun ammunition?" the disgruntled soldier asked.

Further along, in a small concrete room, a group of middle-aged militiamen with salt and pepper beards were huddled half-naked in the sweltering heat trying to get some sleep. Brand new machine guns, rocket launchers and Kalashnikovs were lined neatly against the wall on one side.

The men had just returned from fighting in Syria to take charge of a sector of the front in their home province of Diyala. There were no complaints about weaponry. Instead, there was just impatience for the battle. "Why are we not attacking them?" asked a one-eyed policeman who doubled as a militia fighter. "Our enemy in Syria was much stronger and there we were foreigners fighting in a strange land. Now we are home, I know every village and pathway."

In front of him sat the commander of the unit, a quiet former school clerk who said the berms were bad for advancing the cause.

"Before, targeting them was easier. Now we have walls between the two communities and they have settled behind them."
On the frontline with the Shia fighters taking the war to Isis Shia fighters waiting to ambush Sunni militants. Photograph: Ghaith Abdul-Ahad

For these men, the Sunnis as a whole are the enemy, regardless of whether they are Isis supporters or not. For them, western strategies of trying to defeat Isis by depriving it of mass Sunni support are nonsense.

"When I withdraw my forces now the Sunnis will come back and they will become an incubator for Isis again," said one fighter. "When I liberate an area from Isis why do I have to give it back to them? Either I erase it or settle Shia in it."

"If it's for me I will start cleansing Baghdad from today," added another fighter. "We have not started sectarian war, we are just trying to secure our areas, but if the sectarian days come back then I am sure it will be won by us."

The war resumes every night. Soldiers and militiamen open fire at will, shooting into the darkness until the early hours.

"If they don't see us firing they will presume we have abandoned the positions and they start moving against us," said a young soldier. "We fire at everything, anything beyond the ridge, even if it's a dog."

There are signs that the Shia-inspired fightback is having results. Here in Diyala they have managed to push 50 kilometres into Sunni territory, taking over a series of villages and solidifying their lines. Corpses of dead Isis fighters have been taken back by the commanders and displayed like trophies in the provincial capital.

A Sunni village near the frontline was deserted, doors and windows smashed and many houses burned, the walls scribbled with pro-army slogans. A lone mortar shell fell in a small garden and started a fire. Palm trees burned slowly, their fronds crackling and moaning while a heavy stench of dead bodies wrapped the village.

"This is a village of rich farmers," said Mujtaba. "They brought destruction on themselves just because they hated the Shia and supported Isis."

He looked at the small mosque, which stood intact. "Its a shame the mosque is still standing – we should have burned it."

In the provincial capital, Baquba, two corpses have been hung from a lamppost, one upside-down. The Shia militiaman said they were Isis fighters brought from the front. But for the Sunnis of Diyala, the corpses were locals kidnapped by the militias and killed in retaliation for militiamen killed at the front.

"If they lose men at the front, they come raiding our villages and snatching men in retaliation," said a terrified Sunni farmer who lived nearby. "Nine men have been kidnapped in the last month. We found the bodies of three. The rest are still missing."

Across the street from the corpses, men and women waited silently for a bus with their plastic shopping bags and children in hand, keeping their gaze away from the dead bodies.

By noon another group of militiamen arrived at the frontline. They wore identical black T-shirts and brand new combat trousers. They posed with the soldiers, filming themselves as they fired a volley of precious bullets.

Mujtaba walked away in disgust and said it was time to leave. "We have a tense relationship with them."

Back in his pick-up truck, he said the young men belonged to one of the new battalions formed recently which were competing with his militia over funding and ammunition. "We suffer from the problem of the new factions that are appearing now every week," he said. "They are disastrous. Every 20 guys are forming a battalion or a brigade. They receive support from the mobilisation office and from the state and they haven't delivered anything in return.
On the frontline with the Shia fighters taking the war to Isis A Shia banner planted at the top of the berm. Photograph: Ghaith Abdul-Ahad

"We used to get a lot of Iranian support but now Diyala is under the control of Hadi al-Amiri [commander of the Badr brigade and a longterm ally of Iran]. All the support of the Iraqi state and the [Iranian] republic is channelled through him. Iran says you get your share from Hadi al-Amiri."

In Baghdad a senior Shia politician, whose own party has started arming and equipping a militia force of its own, said that he feared the Shia were becoming as radical as the enemy they were fighting. "We are in the process of creating Shia al-Qaida radical groups equal in their radicalisation to the Sunni Qaida.

"By arming the community and creating all these regiments of militias, I am scared that my sect and community will burn. Our Shia project was building a modern, just state but now it's all been taken by the radicals. Think of 20 years ahead – these are all schools graduating militias, creating a mutant that is killing people, that is amassing weapons. Where will they go when the fight is over here? They will take their wars and go to Saudi and Yemen. Just like the Sunni jihadis migrated, so will the Shia militias."

This reminds me of Goebbels famous call for "total war".Total war between Sunni and Shia.Exactly how the West wants it!

http://rt.com/news/182472-israel-holocaust-gaza-war/
Holocaust survivors pen open letter condemning Israel’s Gaza war
Xcpt:

Over 300 survivors and descendants of the Holocaust have published an open letter condemning what they call Israel's "genocide" in Gaza.

The letter slamming the “massacre of Palestinians in Gaza and the ongoing occupation and colonization of historic Palestine” was signed by 327 descendants and survivors of the Nazi genocide and placed by the International Jewish Anti-Zionist Network as an advertisement in the New York Times.

The letter also condemns politicians and opinion writers who have, the signatories say, openly called for the “genocide of Palestinians” in what they say is an “extreme, racist dehumanization of Palestinians in Israeli society.”

The survivors point to the death of more than 2,100 Palestinians in Israel’s campaign, many of whom are children and the bombing of UN shelters, homes, hospitals and universities. On the Israeli side, 68 people have been killed, mainly soldiers.

The letter concludes by calling the Gaza campaign “genocide of Palestinian people” and demands an end to the Israeli blockade of the tiny strip of land.

Published time: August 24, 2014

[JE Menon]

GD, following from earlier post... the one below I made a few days ago in connection with LET-ISIS links, but it contains a view (from third para onwards) on why entities like ISIS are part of the unfolding situation:

______________________
There is no question that LeT is involved with ISIS, in terms of personnel support and quite a number of mid-level operators, including plenty ex-Pak army types. It is just an example of LeT gaining international exposure and experience before it moves steadily further west. It already has moved into the core areas, but it is still I think nascent and finding its level... these chaps will move back home and bring in field experience as well.

Apart from the Aafia Siddiqui issue, look at the video from Vice News (the first one about IS posted on page 3 in the Islamophobia thread). Towards the end of it, a kid of about 11 starts out about the places to liberate, the second one to be mentioned is "Kashmir" and then he stops, and looks at his prompter briefly before continuing... It is clear that no 11-year-old in northern Iraq is going to get into his head that J&K is to be liberated without some Pak directly or indirectly putting it there. If you have ever been to northern Iraq, or even the 2nd tier cities of Syria like Homs, Aleppo and so on, you will instinctively know that Kashmir is very close to non-existent in their frames of reference on just about anything. It has to be put there.

This is happening now, not just by Pak influence as mentioned above, but also as a quid pro quo by the Gulfies for the provision of what is, essentially, Paki cannon fodder. The trouble for the Euro-American bunch is, not all will die. The returnees represent the spill-over that must be controlled, and it can be ultimately - because in the final analysis, such a spillover is part of the cost of keeping the region from Morocco to Afghanistan off-balance (probably an understatement).

This is in all our interests (non-Muslim), and the Turks and Gulfies, as well as the Paks, must be regarded as de facto allies in this endeavour even though, and in fact helpfully because, they are themselves factionalised and bat for different sides. The Turks & Gulfies are big trading partners that provide great financial benefit to non-Muslims around them, while at the same time being at the blade edge of the unfolding unstable situation that is yet to reach any equilibrium of instability if we can call it that. Islam is the tool that will help with this, and it is the greatest weapon that non-Muslims have. Never lose sight of this. It is Islam, real Islam of the LET-ISIS type, that enables us to even consider generating and maintaining this equilibrium of instability; and enables us, more rationally, to engage in the classic realpolitic of power based on territory, wealth, intellectual capital, etc.

And in a general sense the unfolding instability is probably also what is best for the Muslim zone between Afghanistan and Morocco. Because if they did get their act together and behave even remotely rationally, within the Islamic construct, they would probably have to be nuked.

We, i.e. India and each of the other countries directly or indirectly benefiting from this situation, only need to ensure that the spillover (and there always is spillover) is minimised, containable and explainable.

As for the Muslim Zone, they can always think their way out of this - that is to say, become less Muslim by reimagining and reinterpreting the tenets of the silly faith system they cling to because of fear of open thought and clear reason. For the foreseeable future, I doubt they will. They will feel a need to kill a lot more of each other, and some non-Muslims as well, before that might possibly happen. But if they do make that change, then they will become more like the non-Muslims - and there are many many individual examples of this already.

Regrettably, in fact, Mohammed's Islam is doomed over the long-term. Regrettable because there are few tools as useful to a practical person with reason, power and the scientific method on his side than an absolute, immutable ideology which is an unchangeable birth identity based on faith, and which seeks to rule the world. Still, it will be around for a couple of centuries yet, I bet.
___________________________________________

There is a more detailed presentation of this view I made in another post about a month or so ago, but I'll be damned if I can find it ...

[anmol]

Assad Policies Aided Rise of Islamic State Militant Group
Islamic State, or ISIS, Gained Momentum Early On From Calculated Decision by Syrian President Bashar al-Assad to Go Easy on It

by MARIA ABI-HABIB, online.wsj.com
August 22nd 2014 4:35 AM

The Islamic State, which metastasized from a group of militants seeking to overthrow the Syrian government into a marauding army gobbling up chunks of the Middle East, gained momentum early on from a calculated decision by Syrian President Bashar al-Assad to go easy on it, according to people close to the regime.

Earlier in the three-year-old Syrian uprising, Mr. Assad decided to mostly avoid fighting the Islamic State...

An American-Led Coalition Can Defeat ISIS
U.S. air power and special forces are essential, but so is a political and economic strategy. It's also time to give Qatar an ultimatum.

by Jack Keane And, online.wsj.com
August 24th 2014 6:27 AM

Two months ago we laid out a plan on these pages to bring Iraq back from the abyss of terrorist domination, turn the tide in the Syria conflict, and crush the advance of the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham. The need for such a plan is now more urgent as ISIS has since advanced dramatically, the Iraqi army and Kurdish militia initially performed poorly, and the terror group has threatened to kill more Americans as it did James Foley last week.

President Obama has so far ordered some 1,100 troops into Iraq and conducted close to 100 airstrikes. While it is important that the president has recognized the growing threat to U.S. security, these limited tactical measures will neither permanently reverse ISIS gains nor address the maelstrom in the Middle East. A combined political, economic and military strategy is needed, and one element without the others will likely doom the effort.

First, the political challenge: The Islamic State, like its predecessor al Qaeda in Iraq and al Qaeda itself, has its roots in the swamp of Arab political life. Extremists gain purchase because the region's leaders have delivered so little to the hundreds of millions over whom they rule. The Obama administration appeared to recognize this problem when it demanded the ouster of former Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, who had estranged the nation's Sunni tribes, leading some to welcome ISIS from Syria.

Regional leaders are aware of these problems and exploit them through proxy wars in Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Libya and the Palestinian territories. This is a recipe for endless conflict, and those leaders should be forced into a dialogue to resolve grievances and develop a regional strategy to defeat ISIS, al Qaeda and their ideological brethren.

Only the United States has the clout to convene such a summit. Only the U.S. can demand real change, and only the U.S can offer security reassurances to turn the political tide in the Middle East.

In particular, the time has come to confront the government of Qatar, which funds and arms ISIS and other Islamist terrorist groups such as Hamas. The tiny Gulf potentate has never had to choose between membership in the civilized world or continuing its sponsorship of regional killers. The U.S. has the most leverage. We have alternatives to our Combined Air and Operations Center in Doha, the al Udeid air base, other bases and prepositioned materiel. We should tell Qatar to end its support for terrorism or we leave.

Second, the economic challenge: ISIS may now be the richest terror group in the world. Through hostage taking, criminality, conquest and outside financial support, ISIS is building a war chest measuring in the hundreds of millions of dollars. It has portfolio managers, bankers and other accouterments of a proto-Treasury.

These facilitators have not come under pressure in the way the West has challenged al Qaeda and Iran's bankers. The intelligence is available to exert this pressure, but the U.S., Europe and the rest of the world are moving at a glacial pace.

Third, the military component: ISIS is at war and wants to control as much territory as possible. Jordan, Kuwait and Lebanon are in the group's sights. The Islamic State wants to control oil fields, financial and political centers and create a quasi-state with self-proclaimed emir Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi in charge.

President Obama has "limited" action to protect American personnel and selected refugees, but even his tactical air strikes to help reclaim the Mosul Dam and the slow ramp-up of advisers are inadequate to meet the threat. A military campaign is needed to defeat ISIS, not merely stop or contain it.

Contrary to some claims, this is not a plan for a new American ground war in Iraq seeking to reconstitute a failed state. It is a mission to help Iraqis and Syrians on the ground help themselves. A U.S.-led international coalition can provide the military capability, including air interdiction to deny ISIS freedom of movement, take away its initiative to attack at will in Iraq, and dramatically reduce its sanctuary in Syria.

Political and military leaders must recognize that Iraq and Syria are indivisible in this conflict. The group must be defeated in both places.

Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Martin Dempsey has said ISIS cannot be defeated "without addressing that part of the organization that resides in Syria." Like the Kurdish Peshmerga in Iraq, the Free Syrian Army needs heavy weapons, ammunition and supplies. And Washington is also blocking the delivery of much-needed weapons and equipment already purchased by the Iraqi military. Arming allies to fight a common enemy cannot be an afterthought.

U.S. military support will be key: The U.S. Central Command has a list of ISIS targets in Syria and Iraq, including staging bases for equipment and troops, supply bases, training areas for foreign fighters, command and control and frontline troop positions. Advisers and trainers are also needed by the thousands, not hundreds, to assist the Peshmerga, reconstitute the Iraqi army, and assist Sunni tribes now opposing ISIS who must join this fight. Close air support will also be vital.

Baghdadi and his senior leaders aren't invulnerable, and U.S. special operations forces should be given the mission to target, kill and capture ISIS leaders. We targeted senior terrorist leaders once in Iraq and still do in Afghanistan and elsewhere. ISIS should be no different, particularly after its brutal murder of Foley.

None of these steps are sufficient by themselves to defeat a capable, motivated and well-armed terrorist group. Much will depend on the effectiveness of the combined ground force backed by consistent air power. But failure means the destabilization of the Middle East, terrible bloodshed and, ultimately, the murder of more Americans. A comprehensive strategy is the only realistic choice to defeat ISIS, and the time is long past to get serious.

Gen. Keane, a retired four-star general and former vice chief of staff of the U.S. Army, is the chairman of the Institute for the Study of War. Ms. Pletka is the senior vice president for foreign and defense policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute.

[Multatuli]

I want you to see these pictures. Not suitable for the workplace or with children around.

http://tangsir2569.wordpress.com/2014/0 ... mes-foley/

http://giavellireport.files.wordpress.c ... aded-3.jpg

Some asked what India should do *when* these malsI monsters arrive at India's borders. But they are already there! Haven't the Packees beheaded and mutilated the bodies of Indian Army jawans? It's a powerful meme under malsI followers.

WATCH – WARNING, HORRENDOUSLY GRAPHIC: ISIS Forces Christian To Convert To Islam, Then Beheads Him Anyway

http://patdollard.com/2014/03/warning-h ... ed-anyway/

[RoyG]

ISIS forcefully circumcised Assyrian Christian men & women in Mosul without anesthesia. Women are sold for $150 each

This is Islam.

[Philip]

The Crusaders weren't any better! The Portugese came to our shores with "the Cross and Sword".However,there is a level of inhuman bestiality that ISIS has displayed for which equivalents in recent times are hard to find.One has to go back into the pages of history to search for such abominable acts of slaughter,more satanic than anything religious.

What's stopping the US from sending over its B-52s and waves of strike aircraft to decimate the bases and centres of ISIS domination ? Worried about "collateral damage"? They never bothered at all in Af-Pak! Or is there another agenda where it wants the Sunnis and Shiites to slog at each other till they exhaust themselves and leave the entire Middle East (barring Israel and some oily allies) in ruins? The foll. piece is enlightening.

http://rt.com/op-edge/181364-russia-iran-energy-ballet/
Energy ballet: Iran, Russia and 'Pipelineistan'

A fascinating nuclear/energy ballet involving Iran, Russia, the US and the EU is bound to determine much of what happens next in the new great game in Eurasia.

Let’s start with what’s going on with the Iranian nuclear dossier.

Iranian Foreign Ministry legal adviser Jamshid Momtaz has been forced to clarify that the interim nuclear deal signed by Iran and the P-5+1 nations on November 2013 is not an international treaty – yet.

As we stand, the gap between the US, Russia, China, Britain, France and Germany on one side, and Iran on the other side, remains very wide. Essentially, the gap that really matters is between Washington and Tehran. And that, unfortunately, translates as a few more months for the vast sabotage brigade – from US neo-cons and assorted warmongers to Israel and the House of Saud – to force the deal to collapse.

One of Washington’s sabotage mantras is “breakout capability”; a dodgy concept which boils down to total centrifuge capacity/capability to produce enough enriched uranium for a single nuclear bomb. This implies an arbitrary limit on Iran’s capacity to enrich uranium.

The other sabotage mantra forces Iran to shut down the whole of its uranium enrichment program, and on top of it negotiate on its missiles. That’s preposterous; missiles are part of conventional armed forces. Washington in this instance is changing the subject to missiles that might carry the nuclear warheads that Iran does not have. So they should also be banned.

Moscow and Beijing see “breakout capability” for what it is; a manufactured issue. While Washington says it wants a deal, Moscow and Beijing do want a deal – stressing it can be respected via strict monitoring.

(L to R) Russia's President Vladimir Putin, India's Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff, China's President Xi Jinping join their hands during the official photograph of the 6th BRICS summit in Fortaleza, Brazil, on July 15, 2014. (AFP Photo / Nelson Almeida)

(L to R) Russia's President Vladimir Putin, India's Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff, China's President Xi Jinping join their hands during the official photograph of the 6th BRICS summit in Fortaleza, Brazil, on July 15, 2014. (AFP Photo / Nelson Almeida)

Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei has established his red line on the record, so there should be no misunderstanding; the final nuclear deal must preserve Tehran’s legitimate right to enrich uranium - on an industrial scale – as part of a long-term energy policy. This is what Iranian negotiators have been saying from the beginning. So shutting down uranium enrichment is a non-starter.
Sanction me baby one more time

Uranium enrichment, predictably, is the key to the riddle. As it stands, Tehran now has more than 19,000 installed enrichment centrifuges. Washington wants it reduced to a few thousand. Needless to add, Israel – which has over 200 nuclear warheads and the missiles to bomb Iran, the whole thing acquired through espionage and illegal arms deals – presses for zero enrichment.

In parallel undercurrents, we still have the usual US/Israeli “experts” predicting that Iran can produce a bomb in two to three months while blasting Tehran for “roadblocks” defending its “illicit” nuclear program. At least US National Security Adviser Susan Rice has momentarily shut up.

Another key contention point is the Arak heavy-water research reactor. Washington wants it scrapped – or converted into a light-water plant. Tehran refuses, arguing the reactor would only produce isotopes for medicine and agriculture.

And then there’s the sanctions hysteria. The UN and the US have been surfing a sanction tidal wave since 2006. Tehran initially wanted those heavy sanctions which amount to economic war lifted as soon as possible; then it settled for a progressive approach. Obama might be able to lift some sanctions – but a US Congress remote-controlled by Tel Aviv will try to keep others for eternity.

Here, with plenty of caveats is a somewhat detailed defense of a good deal compared to what may lead towards an apocalyptic road to war.

Assuming there is a deal, a crucial point is how long it will last. Washington wants it to be two decades. Tehran wants five years – and then it should be treated like any other signatory to the 189-nation Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) - which allows non-nuclear weapons states to develop nuclear energy for civilian purposes. For an enlightened Iranian perspective, see here.

It’s a tragicomedy, really. Washington plays The Great Pretender, faking it full-time that Israel is not a nuclear-armed power while trying to convince the whole planet Israel is entitled to amass as many weapons as it wants while Iran is not allowed to even have conventional means to defend itself. Not to mention that nuclear-armed Israel has threatened and invaded virtually all of its neighbors, while Iran has invaded nothing.

Dance to the energy ballet

As harsh as they really are, sanctions did not force Tehran to kneel and submit. Khamenei has repeatedly said he’s not optimistic about a nuclear deal. What he really wants, much more than a deal, is an improved economy. Now, with the sanctions cracking after the initial Geneva agreement, there is light at the end of the tunnel.

Enter turbo-charged Russia-Iran negotiations. They include a power deal worth up to $10 billion, including new thermal and hydroelectric plants and a transmission network.

And of course the oil-for-goods swap according to which Russia may buy 500,000 barrels of Iranian oil a day. Details are to be finalized in early September. No wonder Washington is fuming; this deal should propel Iran’s oil exports over one million barrels a day, something that was initially agreed upon in Geneva.

With Russia now also under US and EU sanctions, predictably Tehran had to start openly courting Europe as the ideal alternative source of natural gas. I have been writing about this for years now. Europe is desperate to diversify from Gazprom. Iran has all it takes to sell gas to Europe transiting especially via Turkey. Yet there are so many political and logistical roadblocks – starting with the necessity of a final nuclear deal – which this is an extremely long-term scenario at best.

AFP Photo / Alexander Zobin

The energy ballet involving Iran, Russia, the EU and the US is worthy of a geopolitical neo-Stravinsky. Tehran is careful not to antagonize Moscow – the largest supplier of natural gas to Europe. But Tehran also knows that with US-Iran possibly entering a détente, the EU will go for broke to seduce and invest in Iran.

Iranian Deputy Oil Minister for International and Trade Affairs Ali Majedi definitely has seen which way the wind is blowing. He is already talking about three different routes Tehran could use for its energy exports to the West.

According to the BP Statistical Review of World Energy, Iran’s proven natural gas reserves are at a whopping 33.6 trillion cubic meters, while Russia's are at 32.9 trillion cubic meters. Talk about two powerhouses.

The problem is Iran is way behind Russia in investment and production. A few years ago, in Tehran, energy experts measured it for me at $200 billion needed to upgrade the industry and invest in domestic transport and export infrastructure.

So, realistically, Russia will remain the key gas supplier to the EU in the foreseeable future, predominating over the strategic value of Iranian and Central Asian gas. And that includes the fact that plenty of EU nations, despite non-stop political shenanigans in Brussels, support the construction of the Russia-favored South Stream pipeline.

Tehran, though, is now in the game - already attracting a host of prospective, powerful foreign investors from Europe and Asia. A recent international oil, gas, refining and petrochemicals exhibition in Tehran attracted no less than 600 foreign companies from 32 countries.
We got it all covered

Iranian Deputy Foreign Minister Majid Takht Ravanchi – part of the nuclear negotiating team – has been positively ecstatic lately; “Naturally Iran and Europe could have much better cooperation on the economy, trade, and energy. We believe there is much room for improvement.”

But it was Iran’s Deputy Oil Minister Ali Mejidi who went a colossal step further – resuscitating the moribund Nabucco pipeline; “With Nabucco, Iran can provide Europe with gas. We are the best alternative to Russia.”

Nabucco, a “Pipelineistan” saga I have followed in detail, was all about a pipeline to Europe via Turkey, Bulgaria, Romania, Hungary and Austria filled with sometimes Azerbaijani, sometimes Iraqi gas, before it spectacularly floundered for lack of investment.

Does that mean Iran is picking an energy war with Russia? Not really. Nabucco is a major, expensive “if”, and extremely long-term. South Stream, although momentarily stalled, is ready to go.

This picture taken on October 31, 2013, shows a worker welding pipes during the symbolic start of the construction of the Bulgarian section of Russian gas giant Gazprom's South Stream pipeline near the village of Rasovo. (AFP Photo)

What happened in the shadows is that Washington let it be known to Tehran that if the $10 billion Iran-Iraq-Syria gas pipeline was dropped, the sanctions would be somewhat relaxed, and Iran could have the go-ahead to revive Nabucco, a US-supported European obsession and formerly fierce rival of South Stream.

Yet talk is cheap. As it stands, there is a larger probability of Iran-Iraq-Syria finding financing within the next two to three years than Nabucco.

In parallel, as much as the US and EU sanctions on Russia are strengthening Iran in the nuclear talks, especially towards the Europeans, this does not mean Tehran will overplay the Russia card. As much as Iranian negotiators are relishing the new plot twist, the overall Iranian policy is in fact closer bilateral ties with Moscow to crack those sanctions on Iran for good.

And if Washington decides to keep the sanctions forever, Plan B is at hand: even closer Iranian cooperation with both Russia and China. Not accidently Iranian President Rouhani has dismissed any alarm about Iran-Russia relations; “Strong political ties in bilateral, regional and international domains, along with vast economic relations between the two countries, set the stage for the promotion of peace and stability.” This includes everything from the Bank of China’s parallel system to pay for Iranian energy to Iran-Russia barter deals.

In many overlapping ways, the Iranian nuclear dossier now is like a hall of mirrors. It reflects an unstated Washington dream; unfettered access for US corporations to a virgin market of 77 million, including a well- educated young urban population, plus an energy bonanza for US Big Oil.

But in the hall of mirrors there’s also the Iranian projection – as in fulfilling its destiny as the top geopolitical power in Southwest Asia, the ultimate crossroads between East and West.

So in a sense the Supreme Leader has it all covered. If Rouhani shines and there is a final nuclear deal, the economic scenario will vastly improve, especially via massive European investment. If Washington scotches the deal over pressure from the usual lobbies, Tehran can always say it exercised all of its “heroic flexibility,” and move on – as in closer and closer integration with both Russia and China.

[Philip]

ISIS in top form with this latest massacre.

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/a ... iraq-mosul
Isis accused of ethnic cleansing as story of Shia prison massacre emerges
As many as 670 prisoners thought killed in Mosul with other abuses reported in Iraq amounting to 'crimes against humanity'

[RamaY]

NightWatch For the night of 24 August 2014

Iraq-Iran: Al Jazeera reported Iranian soldiers executed a joint operation with the Kurdish peshmerga militia in Diyala Governate and succeeded in retaking the town of Jalawla from fighters of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL). Iran denied the report. and that any Iranian soldiers operated in Iraq. Comment: This action took place close to the Iranian border in Diyala. The Iranian soldiers returned to Iran after helping recover the town. Despite official denials, the Kurds have not shown the capability to retake any towns without outside support, air or infantry. Iranians have been reported to serve as senior advisors, as tactical advisors and as providers of air support on occasion. This appears to be the first time Iranian soldiers have participated in ground fighting. This most likely was an operation that involved the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps.

Syria: Syrian state television confirmed that government troops had lost control of Tabqa air force base near Raqqa. "After heavy fighting by the forces defending the Tabqa airbase, our forces implemented a regrouping operation after the evacuation of the airbase." Government forces were conducting airstrikes on the base after the troops evacuated, state television reported. Comment: The most significant point is that such a base survived for three years in the heartland of ISIL, not that it fell. The story of Tabqa base is worth retelling. It means that ISIL's control is overstated and the area it claims is riddled with armed opposition. The Caliphate is far from cohesive or consolidated. That explains its appetite for savagery. The weaker its control, the more it resorts to barbarism. Loss of Tabqa base deprives the government of a secure base from which it could stage a counter-offensive against the ISIL headquarters at Raqqa. It is a setback. On the other hand, the loss makes operational planning easier. The Syrian air force can now bomb Raqqa to rubble with no qualms or concerns about loyalists in the region. Moreover, the logisticians in Damascus have one less base to try to resupply. Recovering eastern Syria becomes marginally more difficult, but as long as the Syrian Kurds continue to hold their ground in the northeast, the government will have a base area from which to operate.


Israel-Gaza Strip: Israeli officials reported that Palestinian mortar fire killed a four year old boy in a kibbutz near the Gaza Strip on Friday. Israel said the mortar round was back-tracked to a UN compound in Gaza. That is now a target. The death of the child has prompted another escalation of Operation Protective Edge and more operational changes. As of Friday Operation Protective Edge has lasted 46 days. During that period, the Palestinians have fired 4,000 rockets, which represent 40% of their estimated missile inventory. Usually conventional forces fight to 50% of ammunition stocks, which would translate into another ten days of rocket attacks. The Palestinians will run out of rockets long before Israel runs out of ways to kill Palestinians. Israeli military sources reported that the Palestinians launched 82 rockets on Saturday. Israeli combat aircraft attacked 55 targets. Israeli military sources reported that the Palestinians launched 118 rockets on Sunday. Israeli combat aircraft attacked 50 targets. Israeli attacks have destroyed at least two high- rise buildings in Gaza that were used by Hamas. Palestinian casualties are more than 2,090 killed. The Israelis have sustained 68 killed, of which only four were civilians. Comment: Israeli targeting practices have changed. Israel continues to target and kill Hamas leaders with precision attacks on persons. Since Friday, it has added precision attacks on buildings used by Hamas. Israel is slowly reducing Gaza to rubble, a place that is unlivable. Since Friday, Foreign Minister Lieberman has said that the new goal of Israeli operations is to force Hamas to surrender. If so, there will be many more attacks. One Israeli target was Mohamed al-Oul, a terrorist who handled Hamas' financial transactions. The armed forces confirmed a direct hit.

Comment: This attack is significant because finance agents are more vulnerable than decision makers. They have less security and are less well known. However, their elimination is a permanent termination of a key node that always depends on personal recognizance. Military leaders are always expendable and replaceable. Finance men in the grey money market are neither expendable nor easily replaced. Talks. Palestinian sources said today there is progress in ceasefire talks in Cairo. They said "zero hour" will occur shortly. The Israelis have no commented.

Comment: The Palestinians are playing the same old propaganda games with Israel. Their territory is being reduced to rubble, but their negotiators seem unaware that no one is coming to their aid. For one thing, the Palestinians have shown the world that they do not keep their promises and cannot enforce a ceasefire. Hamas has no credibility as a negotiating entity. Internal affairs. Israel closed a border crossing into Gaza that has been used to move the injured out because Palestinians attacked it with mortar fire, injuring three people. The Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee authorized the government's request call up of 10,000 reservists. It also extended the "special situation on the home front" until 2 September.

Ukraine: The Russian aid convoy delivered its cargo and returned to Russia today. Ukraine could not stop it from entering or leaving the rebel territory.

Comment: Western media coverage suggests that the eastern Ukrainian rebellion has nearly collapsed. However, the Russians moved 130 or so large trucks in convoy into eastern Ukraine with impunity. That is not consistent with the pro-Kyiv narrative. The pro-Russian narrative is that the eastern Ukrainian rebels have mounted an offensive southward to link up with Crimea. That narrative also claims that Luhansk is still in rebel hands, that the rebels have surrounded 4,000 Ukrainian army soldiers and that Ukraine has no more soldiers. If forces committed to battle fail to break the rebellion, the fight is over because there are none left. What the conflicting narratives mean for analyst is that the Russian narrative must be carefully considered. The Russians only move when they are certain of winning. The dispatch of the aid convoy was a move to win.

[kmkraoind]

UAE secretly bombed Islamist militias in Libya say US officials

The first air strikes took place a week ago, focusing on targets in Tripoli held by the militias including a small weapons depot, according to the Times. Six people were killed in the bombing.

A second round was conducted south of the city early on Saturday targeting rocket launchers, military vehicles and a warehouse, according to the newspaper.

Thee strikes may have represented a bid to prevent the imminent capture of Tripoli airport, but the militia forces later prevailed and seized control of it.
.............
Saudi and UAE leaders in particular have expressed concern that Washington can no longer be counted on, citing US diplomatic overtures to Iran and a cautious approach to the Syrian conflict.

The strikes in and around Tripoli demonstrated the UAE’s readiness to employ its air power, as the Emirates have built up one of the region’s most proficient air forces with American gear and training. UAE pilots flew combat missions in the NATO-led air war in Libya in 2011.

Means, KSA and Egypt gave permission for UAE flights to use their airspace. Israel must have monitored all these things very carefully.

[Singha]

Libya needs 'foreign help' to defeat Islamists
gulfnews.com - ‎44 minutes ago‎
London: Libya needs foreign help to defeat an alliance of Islamist militias who seized Tripoli on Sunday, announcing a breakaway regime, and who are “now stronger than the government itself”, the country's foreign minister has told the Guardian.
----------
US officials have claimed the United Arab Emirates and Egypt were behind several air strikes on Islamist militias in Libya last week, in what would be an escalation of a regional power-play between Islamists and opposing governments across the Middle East.

UAE pilots flying out of Egyptian airbases allegedly twice targeted Islamist fighters vying to take control of the Libyan capital, Tripoli, last week, several US officials claimed to the New York Times, and later to the AFP news agency. Speaking to the Guardian, a US official confirmed the reports were plausible.

The air strikes failed to stop Islamist militias from capturing Tripoli later in the week, announcing a new breakaway regime and forcing Libya's elected government to flee to the eastern city of Tobruk.

The strikes' alleged origins suggest a block of Middle Eastern countries led by the UAE are seeking to escalate their opposition to the Islamist movements that have sought to undermine the region's old order since the start of the Arab spring in 2011.

Last summer, Egypt's military ousted the Muslim Brotherhood – a major Islamist group – and has since waged an internal crackdown on their activities, a tactic pursued for years in the UAE.

If the US allegations are true, both countries now want to expand their campaign beyond their borders, seeking to curb the rise of Brotherhood-affiliated militias threatening to take over Libya. The move could turn Libya into a proxy war between the country's elected government, backed by UAE and Egypt, and Islamists backed by Qatar, another Gulf state.

On Tuesday, the US would not confirm the reports on the record. But Jen Psaki, a state department spokesman, criticised any external military intervention. "We believe outside interference exacerbates current divisions and undermines Libya's democratic transition," said Psaki.

[Singha]

these new rulers of tripoli must be the same crowd sped in western naval ships from benghazi to launch the surprise attack on tripoli that finally ended the Qadhafi govt.

another set of cats just went feral...meow!

[Rony]

George Friedman Uvacha

Iraq and Syria Follow Lebanon's Precedent

Lebanon was created out of the Sykes-Picot Agreement. This agreement between Britain and France reshaped the collapsed Ottoman Empire south of Turkey into the states we know today -- Lebanon, Syria and Iraq, and to some extent the Arabian Peninsula as well. For nearly 100 years, Sykes-Picot defined the region. A strong case can be made that the nation-states Sykes-Picot created are now defunct, and that what is occurring in Syria and Iraq represents the emergence of those post-British/French maps that the United States has been trying to maintain since the collapse of Franco-British power.

The Invention of Middle East Nation-States

Sykes-Picot, named for French diplomat Francois Georges-Picot and his British counterpart, Sir Mark Sykes, did two things. First, it created a British-dominated Iraq. Second, it divided the Ottoman province of Syria on a line from the Mediterranean Sea east through Mount Hermon. Everything north of this line was French. Everything south of this line was British. The French, who had been involved in the Levant since the 19th century, had allies among the region's Christians. They carved out part of Syria and created a country for them. Lacking a better name, they called it Lebanon, after the nearby mountain of the same name.

The British named the area to the west of the Jordan River after the Ottoman administrative district of Filistina, which turned into Palestine on the English tongue. However, the British had a problem. During World War I, while the British were fighting the Ottoman Turks, they had allied with a number of Arabian tribes seeking to expel the Turks. Two major tribes, hostile to each other, were the major British allies. The British had promised postwar power to both. It gave the victorious Sauds the right to rule Arabia -- hence Saudi Arabia. The other tribe, the Hashemites, had already been given the newly invented Iraqi monarchy and, outside of Arabia, a narrow strip of arable ground to the east of the Jordan River. For lack of a better name, it was called Trans-Jordan, or the other side of the Jordan. In due course the "trans" was dropped and it became Jordan.

And thus, along with Syria, five entities were created between the Mediterranean and Tigris, and between Turkey and the new nation of Saudi Arabia. This five became six after the United Nations voted to create Israel in 1947. The Sykes-Picot agreement suited European models and gave the Europeans a framework for managing the region that conformed to European administrative principles. The most important interest, the oil in Iraq and the Arabian Peninsula, was protected from the upheaval in their periphery as Turkey and Persia were undergoing upheaval. This gave the Europeans what they wanted.

What it did not do was create a framework that made a great deal of sense of the Arabs living in this region. The European model of individual rights expressed to the nation-states did not fit their cultural model. For the Arabs, the family -- not the individual -- was the fundamental unit of society. Families belonged to clans and clans to tribes, not nations. The Europeans used the concept of the nation-state to express divisions between "us" and "them." To the Arabs, this was an alien framework, which to this day still competes with religious and tribal identities.

The states the Europeans created were arbitrary, the inhabitants did not give their primary loyalty to them, and the tensions within states always went over the border to neighboring states. The British and French imposed ruling structures before the war, and then a wave of coups overthrew them after World War II. Syria and Iraq became pro-Soviet states while Israel, Jordan and the Arabians became pro-American, and monarchies and dictatorships ruled over most of the Arab countries. These authoritarian regimes held the countries together.

Reality Overcomes Cartography

It was Lebanon that came apart first. Lebanon was a pure invention carved out of Syria. As long as the Christians for whom Paris created Lebanon remained the dominant group, it worked, although the Christians themselves were divided into warring clans. But after World War II, the demographics changed, and the Shiite population increased. Compounding this was the movement of Palestinians into Lebanon in 1948. Lebanon thus became a container for competing clans. Although the clans were of different religions, this did not define the situation. Multiple clans in many of these religious groupings fought each other and allied with other religions.

Moreover, Lebanon's issues were not confined to Lebanon. The line dividing Lebanon from Syria was an arbitrary boundary drawn by the French. Syria and Lebanon were not one country, but the newly created Lebanon was not one country, either. In 1976 Syria -- or more precisely, the Alawite dictatorship in Damascus -- invaded Lebanon. Its intent was to destroy the Palestinians, and their main ally was a Christian clan. The Syrian invasion set off a civil war that was already flaring up and that lasted until 1990.

Lebanon was divided into various areas controlled by various clans. The clans evolved. The dominant Shiite clan was built around Nabi Berri. Later, Iran sponsored another faction, Hezbollah. Each religious faction had multiple clans, and within the clans there were multiple competitors for power. From the outside it appeared to be strictly a religious war, but that was an incomplete view. It was a competition among clans for money, security, revenge and power. And religion played a role, but alliances crossed religious lines frequently.

The state became far less powerful than the clans. Beirut, the capital, became a battleground for the clans. The Israelis invaded in order to crush the Palestinian Liberation Organization, with Syria's blessing, and at one point the United States intervened, partly to block the Israelis. When Hezbollah blew up the Marine barracks in Beirut in 1983, killing hundreds of Marines, U.S. President Ronald Reagan, realizing the amount of power it would take to even try to stabilize Lebanon, withdrew all troops. He determined that the fate of Lebanon was not a fundamental U.S. interest, even if there was a Cold War underway.

The complexity of Lebanon goes far beyond this description, and the external meddling from Israel, Syria, Iran and the United States is even more complicated. The point is that the clans became the reality of Lebanon, and the Lebanese government became irrelevant. An agreement was reached between the factions and their patrons in 1989 that ended the internal fighting -- for the most part -- and strengthened the state. But in the end, the state existed at the forbearance of the clans. The map may show a nation, but it is really a country of microscopic clans engaged in a microscopic geopolitical struggle for security and power. Lebanon remains a country in which the warlords have become national politicians, but there is little doubt that their power comes from being warlords and that, under pressure, the clans will reassert themselves.

Repeats in Syria and Iraq

A similar process has taken place in Syria. The arbitrary nation-state has become a region of competing clans. The Alawite clan, led by Bashar al Assad (who has played the roles of warlord and president), had ruled the country. An uprising supported by various countries threw the Alawites into retreat. The insurgents were also divided along multiple lines. Now, Syria resembles Lebanon. There is one large clan, but it cannot destroy the smaller ones, and the smaller ones cannot destroy the large clan. There is a permanent stalemate, and even if the Alawites are destroyed, their enemies are so divided that it is difficult to see how Syria can go back to being a country, except as a historical curiosity. Countries like Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Israel and the United States might support various clans, but in the end, the clans survive.

Something very similar happened in Iraq. As the Americans departed, the government that was created was dominated by Shia, who were fragmented. To a great degree, the government excluded the Sunnis, who saw themselves in danger of marginalization. The Sunnis consisted of various tribes and clans (some containing Shiites) and politico-religious movements like the Islamic State. They rose up in alliance and have now left Baghdad floundering, the Iraqi army seeking balance and the Kurds scrambling to secure their territory.

It is a three-way war, but in some ways it is a three-way war with more than 20 clans involved in temporary alliances. No one group is strong enough to destroy the others on the broader level. Sunni, Shiite and Kurd have their own territories. On the level of the tribes and clans, some could be destroyed, but the most likely outcome is what happened in Lebanon: the permanent power of the sub-national groups, with perhaps some agreement later on that creates a state in which power stays with the smaller groups, because that is where loyalty lies.

The boundary between Lebanon and Syria was always uncertain. The border between Syria and Iraq is now equally uncertain. But then these borders were never native to the region. The Europeans imposed them for European reasons. Therefore, the idea of maintaining a united Iraq misses the point. There was never a united Iraq -- only the illusion of one created by invented kings and self-appointed dictators. The war does not have to continue, but as in Lebanon, it will take the exhaustion of the clans and factions to negotiate an end.

The idea that Shia, Sunnis and Kurds can live together is not a fantasy. The fantasy is that the United States has the power or interest to re-create a Franco-British invention crafted out of the debris of the Ottoman Empire. Moreover, even if it had an interest, it is doubtful that the United States has the power to pacify Iraq and Syria. It could not impose calm in Lebanon. The triumph of the Islamic State would represent a serious problem for the United States, but no more than it would for the Shia, Kurds and other Sunnis. As in Lebanon, the multiplicity of factions creates a countervailing force that cripples those who reach too far.

There are two issues here. The first is how far the disintegration of nation-states will go in the Arab world. It seems to be underway in Libya, but it has not yet taken root elsewhere. It may be a political formation in the Sykes-Picot areas. Watching the Saudi peninsula will be most interesting. But the second issue is what regional powers will do about this process. Turkey, Iran, Israel and the Saudis cannot be comfortable with either this degree of fragmentation or the spread of more exotic groups. The rise of a Kurdish clan in Iraq would send tremors to the Turks and Iranians.

The historical precedent, of course, would be the rise of a new Ottoman attitude in Turkey that would inspire the Turks to move south and impose an acceptable order on the region. It is hard to see how Turkey would have the power to do this, plus if it created unity among the Arabs it would likely be because the memories of Turkish occupation still sting the Arab mind.

All of this aside, the point is that it is time to stop thinking about stabilizing Syria and Iraq and start thinking of a new dynamic outside of the artificial states that no longer function. To do this, we need to go back to Lebanon, the first state that disintegrated and the first place where clans took control of their own destiny because they had to. We are seeing the Lebanese model spread eastward. It will be interesting to see where else its spreads.

[deejay]

^^^ The above article is insightful in some dimensions but it is limited by the usual problems of the western world view. The author conspicuously misses the radicalization of Islam and the fall outs of this on the already unstable clan relationships. The author also fails to show or discuss how the group ISIS / IS is a clan or grouping of clans and that the Sunni support to ISIS is clan based and not large scale.

My question then: Will the problem the also affect Saudi Arabia as this nation is also a result of the Colonial arbitrariness as is the case with the nations mentioned in the article?

[Singha]

the ISIS if it ever conquers a large enough area and establishes uncontested hegemony as a state apparatus will inevitably split along the lines of competing caliphs or local vs expats....and the race to decide who is the next iteration of the purer than pure will restart again.

saudi arabia has a shia population in the eastern provinces(oil rich), but I guess the army is staunchly sunni and al-saud loyalists so they keep dissent under the boot. the saudi state would have to wither a bit for fractures to happen. without the huge american driven wars, saddam would surely be in power today and crushed formations like the ISIS if they ever raised their heads.

[govardhanks]

Slowly there is a consensus emerging that James Foley's video was staged and fake or Mr. Foley was already dead a year before.. is it true?

[JE Menon]

^^Consensus? Where is it emerging?

[govardhanks]

I found these two links sir,
http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=097_1408853926
http://www.ibtimes.co.in/6-reasons-why- ... ake-607607

[krishnan]

not a single drop of blood

[JE Menon]

Probably we must allow the consensus to emerge a little more ...

[anmol]

The U.S.-Israel Relationship Arrives at a Moment of Reckoning

An exclusive talk with former U.S. Special Envoy Martin Indyk on Israel’s new allies, the Gaza blowup, and why Washington shrugged when the peace process collapsed.
BY DAVID ROTHKOPF AUGUST 26, 2014

When it comes to U.S. Mideast policy, Martin Indyk is something like a human seismograph. Having spent three and a half decades at the leading edge of U.S. policy in the region, the English-born, Australian-raised Indyk has grown acutely sensitive to the shifts, tremors, and upheavals that have signaled change across the Middle East. Indyk has twice served as America's ambassador to Israel, is a former U.S. assistant secretary of state for Near East affairs, and most recently has played the role of U.S. special envoy for Israeli-Palestinian negotiations. He remains an advisor to U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry on these issues.

Earlier this summer, Indyk stepped down from his negotiator's role when U.S. President Barack Obama decided it was time to declare at least a momentary halt to the spluttering peace process. Given his recent role at the very center of these often fractious exchanges between the Israelis, Palestinians, their neighbors, and Secretary of State John Kerry and the U.S. team, Indyk is as well placed as anyone to identify what's new, what's truly broken, and what still remains possible in the conflict-torn region.

Indyk believes that much has changed but that Israel's leaders and their Palestinian counterparts may be the last to recognize it. He sees a rising generation of Palestinians who simply don't believe a two-state solution is possible and are turning their focus toward winning full rights as Israeli citizens. He sees Israeli leaders who won't acknowledge the irreversible generational shift that is altering U.S.-Israeli relations. Israel, in his view, is also becoming gradually less dependent on the United States and is cultivating a new set of global alliances that may have significant consequences for how it behaves in the years ahead. And there is a growing likelihood that Israel's battle with Hamas may tie its immediate fate more to a once-unimaginable de facto alliance with Arab neighbors seeking to quash militant extremists than to the kind of negotiations, deals, and alliances with which the world is accustomed.

In short, recent events may amount to nothing less than a strategic earthquake. ­FP Group CEO and Editor David Rothkopf talks to Indyk to get an informed perspective few others can offer.

David Rothkopf: How has what happened in Gaza altered the dynamics of the peace process?

Martin Indyk: I think it's made it a lot more difficult -- as if it wasn't difficult enough already -- because it has deepened the antipathy between the two sides. The Israelis look at Gaza and what's happened there and understandably say, "We cannot allow such a thing to happen in the West Bank." And therefore, today there's a lot more credibility to the argument that the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) have to stay in the West Bank, otherwise Israelis fear there will be tunnels into Tel Aviv and there will be rockets on Ben Gurion Airport, and Hamas will take over and they'll face a disaster in the "belly" of Israel.

There are security answers to all of that, but I just think the Israeli public attitude is going to be far more concerned about any kind of Israeli military withdrawal from the West Bank. At the same time, the Palestinian attitude will be even stronger that there has to be an end to the occupation, which means a complete Israeli military withdrawal from the West Bank. And the process of negotiating peace does not have any credibility with them unless they have a date certain for when the occupation is going to end, and basically the Israeli attitude will likely be that the occupation is not going to end if that means a complete withdrawal of the IDF.

On the positive side, I think that Abu Mazen [Mahmoud Abbas], the Palestinian leader, has gained some credibility in some quarters in Israel by the way in which he had his security forces cooperate with Israeli security forces during the Gaza crisis and the way in which he prevented a third intifada from breaking out in the West Bank. But whatever he may have gained on the Israeli side, I fear he's lost on the Palestinian side because they see Hamas resisting Israel and they see ISIS [the Islamic State] using violence to establish its Islamic State over in Iraq, and all Abu Mazen has to offer is negotiations as the way to achieve Palestinian statehood. And negotiations don't have any credibility anymore, 20 years after Oslo and with over 300,000 Israeli settlers in the West Bank and settlement growth continuing and the collapse of the latest effort. So I think that too has also made it more difficult. And now Abu Mazen is responding to his need for "street cred" by threatening to go the international route to unilateral recognition of Palestinian statehood, which will generate an Israeli counter-reaction.

And once the dust settles, we may have a politically weakened [Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu as well. There was already the problem of distrust between the people and the leadership -- I'm afraid that's just going to be compounded by what's happened [in Gaza].

DR: Give me the scenario under which Netanyahu weakens -- given that recent polls showed considerable support for him and his Gaza policy.

MI: The poll that showed strong support -- 82 percent support -- was conducted before the ground operation. But the sentiment in Israel, the popular sentiment, was to go all the way, to topple Hamas, to take over Gaza, and then somehow hand it over to the Palestinian Authority. People wanted a victory, and "quiet for quiet" is not a victory and probably isn't going to be attainable. If [Israelis] end up with a war of attrition, and every time rockets are fired they have to go into the air raid shelters, I'm afraid that they're going to blame their leadership for not achieving their preferred outcome. [An Israeli TV poll revealed Monday of this week that Netanyahu's support had seen a "dramatic decline," falling to 38 percent, bearing out Indyk's prognostication of a few days earlier.]

The fact that such an outcome was not achievable at any reasonable price, and that Netanyahu acted responsibly in the circumstances, may not be convincing to an Israeli public that's left feeling unsatisfied.

That may be compounded by the declining growth in the Israeli economy, to the point that there's now talk about an Israeli recession. Bear in mind that Israel rode out the 2008 Great Recession without any pain, thanks to very good economic management by Netanyahu and [former Israeli central bank governor] Stanley Fisher. And life has been very good for most Israelis since then -- very little terrorism or violence because of security cooperation with Abu Mazen, despite being surrounded by regional turmoil. Life has been "a beach." But the indications of a slowdown in the economy were already starting before the Gaza War and now might be compounded by the drastic reduction in tourism and other negative factors that slow the economy. So that may create a very different circumstance than has been the case for much of Netanyahu's time in office over the last four years. The combination might lead to disaffection.

DR: That's interesting. So effectively, by having a lingering crisis with periodic rocket attacks and periodic responses from the Israelis, Hamas is actually able to in effect impose economic sanctions on Israel. Is that what you're saying?

MI: It might be. It's too soon to tell but if the chronic violence succeeds in significantly reducing tourism to Israel and foreign investment in Israel, you could be right. Israel has ridden out these kinds of crises in the past and bounced back. It's not at all clear whether Hamas is capable of sustaining a war of attrition, but the trend line is negative.

DR: What do you see as the impact of the Gaza conflict on the U.S.-Israel relationship?

MI: It's had a very negative impact. There's a lot of strain in the relationship now. The personal relationship between the president and the prime minister has been fraught for some time and it's become more complicated by recent events.

What people like to say about the American economy is also true of the U.S.-Israel relationship: The fundamentals are strong. Certainly, congressional support is strong and bipartisan. And in the security relationship and the intelligence relationship, those ties have developed over the years to the point that they are now deep and wide. But there are things happening in the relationship that should give people who care about the relationship -- as I do -- anxiety. There was a Pew poll that showed a generational shift, with younger people being less supportive of Israel. It also showed a political shift, with Democrats being less supportive of Israel, [and] Republicans staying the same in terms of their strong support.

If those trends continue -- and I think they are likely to have been exacerbated by the Gaza crisis, with all the ethical questions that has raised -- then over time Israel may find itself in a very different situation than it's gotten used to. If Israel becomes a partisan issue in American politics, the U.S.-Israel relationship will then be weaker as a result. And if the next generation is less supportive than the current generation -- and I fear that that will be true amongst younger American Jews as well as more broadly -- then that will erode the fundamentals of the relationship over time.

So I think there's a warning bell ringing that people need to pay attention to.

DR: The more this happens, the more it seems the reaction of the Israeli government is to be defiant, to stick its thumb in the eye of the relationship -- the attacks on Kerry; the release of phone call transcripts; the harsh language. The message is sent by Israeli leaders periodically that says, we'll go around the White House, and we'll go to the Congress. I've even had some conversations with Israelis where they say, "Americans don't understand the reality; they're naïve." But we do understand the reality. In fact, it's many Israeli leaders who seem to be shrugging off what you're talking about -- a generational, historical shift that could change the very nature of the most important sort of foundation of Israel's support in the world. How do you account for the apparent disparity?

MI: I think that something's changing on the Israeli side too that all the things that you mentioned reflect, which is that Israel is not anymore the weak and small and dependent state that for so long characterized its position in its relationship with the United States. Now it has a strong army. It has a strong economy. And it has developed relations with world powers that it didn't have before.

Few people noticed that the Indian government came out in support of Israel in this war; social media in China was pro-Israel. It has developed strategic relations with both countries, and with Russia as well, that led Israel to absent itself from the vote of the U.N. General Assembly condemning Russia's annexation of Crimea. I think there's a sense in Israel, particularly on the right, that they can afford to be defiant of the United States. Israelis also sense a potential for a new alignment with Gulf Arab states that didn't exist before that is generated by their common interest in curbing Iran's nuclear program and countering Iran's efforts to dominate the region, opposing if not overthrowing Bashar al-Assad in Syria, and combating Hezbollah and the Muslim Brotherhood, with its stepchild Hamas in Gaza. Israel shares this array of enemies with the Sunni Arab monarchs and the Abdel Fattah al-Sisi regime in Egypt. You can see it in this Gaza crisis quite clearly, where the Saudis and the Egyptians in particular wanted Israel to take down Hamas.

So the combination of all of that leads Israelis to feel more independent of the United States, especially in the context of their sense that the United States is withdrawing from the region and therefore may be less reliable for Israel. These Arab states are also concerned about what they see as an American withdrawal and feel a greater need to cooperate under the table with Israel to help deal with the chaos and threats around them.

So I think that the framing for Israel is different now. Now some politicians on the right feel that standing up to the United States is a cheap way to assert their independence and patriotism. I don't remember a situation before where right-wing Israeli politicians could disparage the United States' leadership and yet gain popularity. And maybe it's because they don't seem to pay any price for it. But I suspect that it's something deeper. There's a sense that Israel has become a power in its own right, and it doesn't need the United States as much. It's a kind of hubris.

I saw this once before, before the 1973 war, when Israelis felt they were the superpower in the region and so didn't have to worry about support from the United States. And it turned on a dime once Egypt and Syria attacked Israel by surprise on Yom Kippur in 1973, and suddenly Israel found itself totally dependent on the United States. So it may be that the bubble of illusion will burst here too and Israeli politicians on the right will come to understand that for all their bravado, the United States is not just Israel's most important friend but in a real crunch its only reliable friend.

DR: Do you feel that the White House was trying to send a message about Gaza? Do you feel the White House is trying to exert more pressure on the Israelis than the Israelis are used to?

MI: No, I don't think so. I think it was in a very specific context of the president being concerned by the loss of civilian life in Gaza, and making that clear both privately and then in public. The statements out of the White House and the State Department were a reaction to the bombing of U.N. compounds and the loss of innocent lives, particularly of children.

President Obama has been very clear from the beginning of his administration -- something for which he gets practically no credit in Israel or amongst Israel's supporters in the United States -- he's been absolutely clear that whatever the differences he may have with the Israeli prime minister, he's not going to touch the security relationship. And he's been very strongly supportive of Israel's security requirements, notwithstanding the real tension in the personal relationship.

So I don't believe that the White House intended now to withhold weapons or missiles in order to get Israel to stop firing. The fact of the matter is the Israelis wanted to stop the firing. It was a question of how to get Hamas to stop firing the rockets.

DR: To what do you attribute the remarkable outbursts against the secretary of state, who's clearly been devoting himself towards advancing a peace process which, at least in theory, is in the interests of the Israelis?

MI: Well, it started with Defense Minister Moshe Ya'alon attacking [Kerry] publicly during the peace process, which I attribute to two things. One, the defense minister had a very clear sense of what Israel's security needs are and they do not include withdrawing the Israeli army from the Jordan River, which would have to be addressed in the peace negotiations if there was to be a deal. So I think there was a substantive disagreement, but the lack of respect was truly disturbing, specifically given the importance of American security assistance for the well-being of Israel's defense, for which the defense minister is responsible.

But it got completely out of control during the Gaza crisis, where the secretary was assailed for supposedly betraying Israel because he was trying to work with the prime minister on a cease-fire, and he engaged with Qatar and Turkey to test whether they could influence Hamas to stop firing the rockets. And that criticism came not just from the right but from pundits on the left as well -- Haaretz published three articles by their journalists attacking Kerry. I think that's a product of a particular circumstance in which Israelis felt very much isolated, on their own -- that the world didn't understand them. In that defensive crouch, I think they were waiting for a betrayal by the United States even though the secretary and the president repeatedly supported their right to defend themselves. So they interpreted the secretary's actions as being designed to undermine Israel in favor of Hamas and undermine its burgeoning alignment with Egypt and Saudi Arabia.

In fact, nothing could have been further from the truth but that was the perception and, unfortunately, it was a line fed by some unnamed Israeli officials, one of whom described Kerry as launching "a strategic terror attack." That was just outrageous and it enraged the president.

DR: In theory...

MI: The fact of the matter is what Secretary Kerry had produced in terms of the proposal that he had worked on with Prime Minister Netanyahu was actually better than [what] the Egyptian initiative -- which has just now collapsed in Gaza -- produced. Unfortunately, people don't look at the facts in an emotional situation, and turning on the secretary of state was egregious. I don't think I've ever seen anything like it in my over three decades of involvement in the U.S.-Israel relationship.

DR: And yet it seems that the Israelis can do whatever they want with impunity because the security relationship is off the table for the president. So the defense minister, heavily dependent on U.S. defense assistance, can say whatever he wants about the United States and there's no consequence, to speak of. Or is that -- or are they just testing the boundaries of the relationship and we haven't seen the limit?

MI: You know, I think there's a great deal of tolerance and patience in Washington that comes from a basic commitment to the relationship. I think John Kerry has a perfect voting record on Israel -- 30 years in the Senate, 100 percent support -- that comes not because AIPAC told him to do it but because he has a fundamental understanding of the importance of Israel and the U.S.-Israel relationship.

So, you know, there's a tolerance for this kind of static in verbal exchanges because Secretary Kerry knows it's not true. But somebody likened the United States to a dinosaur -- we're so big and so strong that these kinds of slights don't really make much of a difference, until one day the dinosaur awakes wakes up, and it lifts up its tail, and brings it down again, and whomp! So just because there don't seem to be consequences for this, I think it's very unwise for Israeli right-wing politicians to assume that there will never be a consequence because, when push comes to shove, as much as they may think that the United States needs Israel, the bottom line is: Israel needs the United States more. And that is going to be even more the case going forward than it is today. It's not a good idea to leave the reservoir of goodwill empty.

DR: What does all this mean in terms of the future of the peace process? There are several ways you can interpret what you said. One is, for the near term, given the situation in Gaza, given the composition of the Israeli government, given the composition of the U.S. government, progress seems extremely unlikely, particularly if the Palestinian authority and Abu Mazen are at all weakened -- and Hamas is at all strengthened -- by this.

Another way is to say that perhaps the nature of the interaction will change in some fundamental way. Some other issue will supplant the discussion we've been having, you know, over the course of the past couple of decades regarding the peace process. And I can think of two. One is that the Palestinians proceed with statehood on an independent path and the world supports it -- they set up a country and they say, "We'll deal with these other issues as an independent state."

Or, alternatively, the coalescing alliance among the Israelis, the Egyptians, the Gulf states, the Jordanians, the Russians, the Indians, and others -- even the Chinese -- against the spread of militant Islam takes precedence because of the Islamic State and other things, and that it's that alliance that ends up supporting, pushing back on Hamas, and that we focus for the next couple of years on this issue of militant extremism, and just table the other issues until we get there. And in so doing, if there is some success in this, it could end up strengthening a more moderate series of Sunni voices throughout the region, including the Palestinian Authority.

But maybe there's another still. Are we at a phase shift in all of this?

MI: It's obviously very difficult to tell. I'm impressed in my experience over 35 years of close observation of the U.S.-Israeli relationship of its ability to constantly reinvent itself. Think back to the pre-1973 war situation, the height of Cold War competition between the United States and the Soviet Union in the Middle East, and Israel is on the front line shooting down Soviet pilots in Egyptian MiGs over the Suez Canal. Israel becomes an ally in [the] defense of freedom during the Cold War.

After the '73 war, the United States and Israel became allies in the effort to promote peace and American dominance in the region. And since then they have become our ally in the defense of the West against terrorism. And in each case, the relationship has grown deeper and broader on a strategic level.

And now, as you suggest, there may be a new justification for the relationship, in which the United States, as it withdraws from the Middle East, looks to adopt an offshore balancing approach in which Israel, Egypt, and Saudi Arabia become the pillars of an attempt to construct a new order in the region out of the chaos that's engulfing it. At the moment that doesn't seem to be the way it's developing, because the United States seems to be on the other side of this alignment when it comes to the negotiations with Iran or our tension with Egypt or our reluctance to act in Syria. But I think over time it's probable that that realignment will be something that the United States ends up getting behind and that will provide a new justification for the U.S.-Israel relationship.

And so one can, in a sense, look at the long arc of the relationship and say everything's going to be all right. But where it won't be all right is for Israel itself, because as nice as it is to have strategic alignments, none of that solves Israel's existential problem: What is it going to do about the 2.6 million Palestinians it has responsibility for now? And if it doesn't find a way to resolve that issue, that existential dilemma, if Israel continues to control 2.6 million Palestinians in the West Bank, it's going to have to decide sooner rather than later whether it's a democracy or a Jewish state, but it won't be able to be both.

I witnessed it during these negotiations. The younger generation of Palestinians who have grown up knowing nothing but Israeli occupation don't believe in a two-state solution, don't believe there will ever be an independent Palestinian state. They want equal rights in Israel. And that's where this is heading. And then Israel will find itself in a really serious dilemma. It's only a matter of time. And no matter how strong the relationship is between the United States and Israel, it's not going to help solve that dilemma unless Israelis decide that they want to resolve it.

The United States will do fine without a resolution of this particular conflict. As time goes on and other issues come to dominate our agenda and our interests shift, really the only reason we have left to pursue a settlement of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is because of our concern about Israel's future.

It's very hard to make the argument that America now has a strategic interest in resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. It's just one of many conflicts and it's not the most important and it's not the most difficult. We could leave Israel alone to deal with it as best it can, but that's not what a true friend does. So when the Israeli public decides that they have to find a way to confront their dilemma, then the United States will be there to help, and the U.S.-Israeli relationship will be critically important in terms of giving them a safety net to enable them to make the difficult, gut-wrenching compromises necessary to resolve this dilemma.

DR: But it sounds like what you're saying is that this timeout is necessary because it's time for Israel to do some soul-searching about why it's doing this, what its objectives are, what solutions it wants to pursue. But that's complicated by the fact that it doesn't sound like the Israelis have much of an appetite for soul-searching. We could be in a period of sort of protracted stasis on this front, dealing with other issues until this one ripens.

MI: Well, the president certainly felt it necessary to have a timeout. That was driven by the reality that despite a major investment of time and energy by his secretary of state, mobilization of Pentagon resources to try to address Israel's security concerns in the context of the peace agreement, and a major diplomatic effort by the United States to try to achieve a breakthrough, we weren't able to do it. I think it was Einstein who said the definition of insanity is repeating the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result. With so many other priorities for the secretary of state and the president in a world that is presenting huge challenges for American interests, it doesn't make sense at this point to try again unless something has changed in a way that leads us to believe that success becomes possible.

I think that the change will have to come from Israelis and Palestinians knocking on the president's door and saying, "We're ready, we want to resolve this now," rather than the United States knocking again on their door and insisting that they have to do it.

[UlanBatori]

Or, alternatively, the coalescing alliance among the Israelis, the Egyptians, the Gulf states, the Jordanians, the Russians, the Indians, and others -- even the Chinese -- against the spread of militant Islam takes precedence because of the Islamic State and other things, and that it's that alliance that ends up supporting, pushing back on Hamas, and that we focus for the next couple of years on this issue of militant extremism, and just table the other issues until we get there.

Lightbulb just went on So Israel set up and trained and equipped and funded these ISIS sh*ts just so that the whole world would unite against pakism?

[ramana]

Some Prof of Intl relations said on radio last night. "An alliance lasts as long as the purpose of the alliance lasts!' what he ment was that the US by being supercop had united all these folks and now by not wanting to combat ISIS is forcing them to turn on ISIS instead of itself.
If above alliance eliminated Islamist extremism they don't have to thank the US for having nurtured it as part of its Cold War stratergy.

[Singha]

per articles in dailymail.co.uk, it seems jihadi john and his associates are running a kidnapping westerners for money ring for IS and not really trench level fighters. other expats like french are also into it. they are making lot of ransom money.
jihadi john was said by other ransomed hostages to be the most brutal of the lot and for some time even the IS removed him from guard duty to control his savagery. the captives are moved every few days and housed in cellars.

the captors boasted they are making enough money to retire in qatar or kuwait.

pix here http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article ... asers.html

their leader is a academic type zealot named Abu Muhareb('Fighter')

[Vriksh]

Interesting account of how Islamic State (IS) is able to capture and control territory.

http://gohasnail.wordpress.com/2014/08/ ... istration/

Offers an idea of how transfer of power will happen in Islamic countries by upcoming power centers