Bharat Rakshak

Philip wrote:The intense competition for global leadership of the "Arab Spring" between the Saudis for long held to be the "king of the coop" and the arriviste pretender to the throne,pinprick Qatar, is going to be the downfall of the oil-rich potentates.Instead of letting water and blood find their own levels,they are rushing headlong into nations where angels fear to tread.Long may their stupidity last!

abhishek_sharma wrote:Europe's New 'Time Bomb' Is Ticking in Syria: Hundreds are joining the fight against Assad. Will they return as terrorists?

On the mainland we must focus on Institutions and the quality of people manning them - NaMo if he comes to power must constitute some form of Indian Intelligence Service (IIS) under able hands and address the much depleted strength in our agencies. There is no dearth of talent in our country who can match the west in HUMInt even with its overarching technological advantage in SIGInt.

Apart from actively monitoring Indian origin/destination communications through google , blackberry etc (as we might be doing already) with servers physically located in India, govt should encourage and incentivise Indian alternatives to Google Search , Twitter , Yahoo mail as China does. This can be the only long term solution to get rid of the prying eyes of the West on our internet communications.

Two years of war have quintupled unemployment, reduced the Syrian currency to one-sixth of its prewar value, cost the public sector $15 billion in losses and damage to public buildings, slashed personal savings, and shrunk the economy 35 percent, according to government and United Nations officials.

The pillars of Syria’s economy have crumbled as the war has destroyed factories, disrupted agriculture, vaporized tourism and slashed oil revenues, with America and Europe imposing sanctions and rebels taking over oil fields.

Increasingly isolated in the face of a growing economic crisis that has reduced foreign currency reserves to about $2 billion to $5 billion from $18 billion, a government that long prided itself on its low national debt and relative self-sufficiency has now been forced to rely on new credit lines from its main remaining allies — Iran, Russia and China — to buy food and fuel.

The government has a $1 billion credit line with Iran, and borrows $500 million a month to import oil products delivered on Russian ships, a government consultant, Mudar Barakat, said in a recent interview in Beirut. Some analysts believe the government will need even more aid from those countries to keep paying government workers and a growing roster of security forces.

Now, some officials hope to push through measures to tighten state control of the economy, rolling back some of the modest economic liberalization and support for private business that President Bashar al-Assad introduced early on, in a departure from his party’s socialist roots.

“We’re thinking of going back to the way it was in the 1980s, when the government was buying the main necessities of daily life,” Mr. Barakat said. “We, as a government, must cover the daily needs of the people, no matter how much the cost is, and keep the prices low.”

Syria’s economic problems, in Mr. Barakat’s view, are rooted in the loosening of state control by reformers favored early in Mr. Assad’s tenure, who he said “vandalized” the economy “into this liberalized sort of chaos.”

A faction that includes Kadri Jamil, a Russian-educated, socialist former professor who was appointed deputy prime minister in charge of the economy in a shake-up last year, hopes Syria can weather the storm by raising wages, tightening price controls on subsidized goods like bread, cracking down on black-market currency traders and even ceasing government trade in dollars and euros.

The government, Mr. Barakat said, now signs new foreign trade deals only in the currencies of friendly countries to insulate itself from what it sees as an economic conspiracy orchestrated by its international enemies.

But such measures — met with ridicule and even defiance by some Syrian businesspeople — will provide at best short-term relief, economists say.

Even the free-flowing aid from Iran and other allies inspires little confidence among Syrians, said an economist in Damascus who asked not to be identified publicly as criticizing government policies, because it shows the government “has no means and depends on others to save it.”

A Damascus businessman derided the new policy of doing business in Iranian, Russian and Chinese currencies.

“These countries themselves do business in dollars and euros,” he said, adding: “Syria today is not Syria in the 1980s. It is easy to keep the door closed, but it is hard to close it after it has been open 13 years and people are used to breathing the fresh air.”

This month, the government banned food exports and announced a crackdown on black-market money traders. The value of the Syrian pound plunged to 330 to the dollar, down from 47 before the war.

On Wednesday, amid a flurry of panicked dealing, the Central Bank tried and failed to strong-arm traders into selling the Syrian pound at a higher, preset price. Dealers said Central Bank officials had offered to guarantee a tiny profit if they would sell the pound at a rate of 250.

The traders refused, several said. The government, they said, lacks the power to impose its will, in part because a few wealthy businessmen influence the dollar rate and corrupt officials profit from the trade.

The next day, currency exchange shops in the Damascus districts of Hariqa and Marjah were bustling. Customers clamored to change their savings into foreign currency — Saudi riyals, Emirati dirhams, anything — and traders shouted into phones, asking of the dollar, “How much is the green?”

Ammar, 35, a trader who gave only his first name for safety purposes, said the week’s events showed the government had no clearer plan for the economic crisis than it did for the political or military ones. “The government doesn’t understand the main problem or doesn’t want to understand,” he said. “Syrians no longer trust the Syrian pound.”

Last week’s currency crash deepened a steady decline that has helped send prices soaring even for basic foodstuffs and reduced most Syrians’ buying power to a fraction of prewar levels, making it hard even for once-well-off families to afford meat and fish.

The economic crisis threatens one of the government’s most crucial selling points. Syrians have long been envied in neighboring countries — even by the Lebanese, with far more political freedom — for the nation’s social safety net and affordable goods.

On paper, Syria still provides free education and medical care and heavily subsidized fuel and food staples. But scores of hospitals have been destroyed or damaged, medical supplies are scarce, and bread and diesel sell for many times the official price.

Yet in a polarized country, it is unclear if economic troubles will turn more citizens against the government, which blames foreign-backed terrorists and profiteering merchants and bakers, who, Mr. Barakat said, “are playing a very dirty role.”

“You could decide that you don’t want to support the regime,” said Jihad Yazigi, the editor of Syria Report, a Beirut-based economic journal. “But you can also blame the situation on other factors, like the sanctions and the opposition.”

And economists said the inflation was likely to harm the population more than it hampers the war effort. The fall of the pound means it costs the government less to pay salaries.

The government recently raised government salaries by 40 percent. But in real terms that does not cover the loss in buying power. And at the same time, the Damascus economist noted, the government raised the official price of diesel, adding to the inflationary cycle.

The government still manages to pay salaries across the country — even communicating by fax and messenger with rebel groups to arrange for them to rendezvous with trucks delivering cash, Mr. Barakat said. “The government employees come with the terrorists to pick them up,” he said.

The government has a harder time with subsidies, spending far more to make bread than it charges, Mr. Barakat said, while shops and bakeries take advantage of subsidized diesel and then sell bread at market prices. “Basically,” he said, “they are stealing the diesel.”

Residents and bakers in opposition areas say that the government favors loyalist areas with supplies and that they have to buy diesel on the black market.

Reporting was contributed by an employee of The New York Times from Damascus, Syria; Hala Droubi from Dubai, United Arab Emirates; Hania Mourtada and Hwaida Saad from Beirut; and Ben Hubbard from Cairo.

Lilo wrote: any better, it now looks like the West is using the Middle East as an enormous training ground for blooding the next crop of Jihadis.
The current sectarian chaos in Iraq as a logical outcome to the US invasion looks to be its real goal. Even a novice to geopolitics could have sensed the inevitability of that outcome back in 2003. Yet many were taken in by the peddling of the relatively benign "Oil angle" to the Iraqi invasion (involving in hindsight relatively large leaps of logic) and which now looks more like a conspiracy to cover a conspiracy.

brihaspati wrote:Lilo ji,

..Do you think the Indian state is prepared to use the tech and human resource in the same way that "west" does?

There is a fundamental difference between the two : that of agenda, mindset and doctrine. The west has held on to its agenda of global domination, continued imperialism, control over the "neighbourhood" to ensure "prosperity" and "safety" at home. It always wants to expand its power and reach around from homebase, and control the basic ingredients of sustaining that power - wherever that resource exists in the world. Both to use it themselves, as well as block it from being used by others.

The west uses the tech you refer to, to both control its own populations, as well as every other nation - as much as feasible. Indian state - in its current phase - was derived entirely from the previous colonial state and infrastructure, with no significant rupture in continuity in its organizational and human components. Therefore, more likely or possibility for elements of contact and continuity between the old and the new power - directly or indirectly, or perhaps a convergence of "interests" maintained under various pretexts of "common interests". Therefore, this state is more likely to use the tech

(1) to control Indian populations for its own internal political purposes
(2) to control Indian populations on behalf of or without-being-aware-of western interests

Until the very nature of the state changes that makes sure of having eliminated all possible entry-points of "western" or even "eastern" or "northern" elements into the state structure, intro of such surveillance is going to be used against Indians and not for them.

Johann wrote: This is kind of retroactive logic translates every outcome into a prior intention, which in turn implies some sort of masterly control of human destiny. If you actually saw the way that Western governments operate up close you couldn't believe this for a second.

The Bush administration invaded Iraq in the face of professional opinion in the same way Brezhnev's politburo invaded Afghanistan in the face of Soviet professional opinion. The politicians in both cases were convinced they had the power to quickly set up friendly, stable governments and turn those countries into allies, remaking the geopolitics of the region and the world. They were both tragically wrong.

The Saudis certainly didn't want to see Saddam Hussein gone in 2003 - they helped convince Bush 41 not to overthrow him back in 1991, because they knew that the Shi'ites would come to power. Ever since 1979 they have depended on Sunni control in Iraq to act as a buffer against Iran. When they lost Iraq thanks to the Americans they reacted by massively pumping up anti-Shi'ite rhetoric and funding globally. If you think the Bush administration at the decision-making level actually thought through all of this, then you have no idea why there was such antagonism between the White House and State Department.

Similarly with Egypt, the Saudis were absolutely against the overthrow of Mubarak, in whom they had invested heavily, and who was becoming something of a monarchy himself. The Saudis have been unhappy with the Muslim Brotherhood ever since the 1990 Gulf War when they took an anti-Saudi position. On the other hand the Qataris have been happy to upset every applecart in the region. The Americans under Obama have essentially abandoned leadership in the region for fear of being sucked into more quagmires.

History will ultimately judge the decisions that were made for Iraq and I'm just not going to be around to see the final verdict...

habal wrote:Lilo saar, thus I scoff at people who say about Syria, 'what goes our father' ??

India needs interventionist policies in whole of Asia, especially Islamist Asia. The more that India shall intervene, the more the yanks and oiros shall feel helpless and thus the attempt to control levers of foreign policy through monetary control and internal upheavel/dissent.

We have learnt enough from IPKF intervention not to sent any troop abroad except under UN mandate.

By Richard Spencer, Cairo

8:00PM

It may be the least revolutionary country in the world, but this week Saudi Arabia won the full support of the world's greatest insurrectionists.

Sayed Sami Hassan has been in Cairo's Tahrir Square since January 25, 2011, and in that time has seen off an American-backed dictator, a military junta, and an elected Muslim Brotherhood president. He is the sort of street rebel whom, at home, Saudi Arabia's autocracy most fears.

But this week he gave the absolute monarchs from across the Red Sea his absolute backing. "The Saudis are our brothers," he said, from his tent in Tahrir's continuous encampment.

"They are Muslims, they believe in God. President Morsi, now he was an agent of America and Qatar, but the Saudis are helping us."

The shifts of allegiance in the Middle East in the last three years have been as startling as the convulsions of the Arab Spring itself. But the latest has caught diplomats, analysts and, to the extent they notice the relationships their masters quietly foster, Egypt's ordinary people by surprise.
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Saudi Arabia, not long ago written off as a gerontocracy whose oil billions could not prevent it being outmanoeuvred by a host of rivals in the power struggles of the Middle East, has suddenly re-emerged as the region's most powerful influence-peddler.

It announced its backing for the military's swift disposal of President Mohammed Morsi and his Muslim Brotherhood government within two hours.

Then on Tuesday it opened its wallet, offering $5 billion in aid. Saudi Arabia's neighbour and ally, the United Arab Emirates, added $3 billion more, while Kuwait offered $4 billion. In his year in office, Mr Morsi's government was bailed out to the tune of $8 billion by Qatar - but its Gulf neighbours had beaten that easily in just a week.

There is no evidence that Saudi Arabia was involved in the plot, well-executed and clearly planned in advance though it was.

But the Egyptian defence minister, Gen Abdulfattah al-Sisi, clearly had an air of confidence in Egypt's future about him when he announced what had happened, despite inheriting an economic black hole, beset by power cuts, fuel shortages, and, it was later revealed, with just two months' supply of wheat remaining.

On Sunday Egypt's prosecutor signalled that there would be no let up against Mr Morsi, who remains in detention. It took the unusual step of announcing a criminal investigation against the the country's democratically elected leader on suspicion of spying, inciting violence and ruining the economy. Several other senior Brotherhood figures already face charges of inciting violence.

The Gulf monarchies are not just being altruistic. While Qatar has emerged in the last few years as the Arab world's most important, and certainly richest, backer of the Muslim Brotherhood, its Gulf neighbours regard the group's reformist, populist brand of political Islam with suspicion and, in the case of the UAE, loathing.

It was no coincidence that the UAE's money was handed over personally by Sheikh Hazza al-Nahyan, the UAE's national security adviser - this was something close to home, not a matter of charity or mere foreign affairs.

Both Saudi Arabia and the UAE were aghast that President Hosni Mubarak was forced to quit two years ago. They were particularly upset that President Barack Obama, who had originally offered what they regarded as a pragmatic view of the Muslim world in place of his predecessor's aggressive "democracy promotion", had not stood behind America's long-term Middle Eastern place-man.

Neither country has been reassured by what has happened since. Mr Morsi infuriated both by appearing to open the door to rapprochement with Iran, which they regard as the region's main source of trouble, while both feared Egypt would send support to Brotherhood cells in the Gulf. The UAE only last week convicted 69 people it said were allied to the Brotherhood for "plotting a coup".

"Saudi and the UAE were very unhappy with Morsi's government and its impact on the region," said Theodore Karasik, research director at the Dubai-based Institute for Near East and Gulf Military Analysis. "They took advantage of Morsi's failures to engineer this change of government and are seeking to shape policy according to their own vision."

He said there was no concrete evidence of prior negotiation between Egypt's military and either country. However, Ahmed Shafiq, Mr Mubarak's last prime minister who lost closely to Mr Morsi in last years' presidential election run-off, has been living in Abu Dhabi, the UAE capital, and acting as an adviser to its rulers.

Mr Shafiq predicted the coup before the military made its final, 48-hour ultimatum to Morsi. "No doubt, even though I've been sitting here [in Abu Dhabi] I've had a role in what's happening," he said.

Both Gen Sisi and Adly Mansour, the chief justice appointed as interim president by the generals, have old ties with Riyadh - Gen Sisi was once military attache there, while Mr Mansour spent seven years as an adviser to the Saudi ministry of commerce.

The sudden resurgence of Saudi influence is not only being felt in Egypt.

There was a far less-noticed coup in the hotel corridors of Istanbul last week, where the Syrian opposition plot and bicker, a process seemingly so irrelevant to the fighting in Aleppo and Homs that it largely passes unnoticed.

But the day before Saudi's money was sent to Egypt, it won another small battle when Ghassan Hitto, who was said to be close to Qatar and the Syrian Muslim Brotherhood, finally resigned as the interim prime minister of the Syrian National Coalition. Two days earlier, Saudi's man, Ahmad Assi Jarba, a tribal sheikh of more traditional bent, became its president.

Meanwhile, American liaison officers to the Syrian rebels, said to be aghast that Qatar-funded arms supplies are ending up in the hands of jihadists, are trying to work with the Saudis to persuade the "West-friendly" factions to take on the al-Qaeda-linked Jabhat al-Nusra even before tackling the Assad regime.

Analysts attempting to decipher the opaque world of the Gulf's royal families say these moves are not just a sign of rising Saudi self-confidence, but a result of a change of leadership within Qatar itself.

The ruler there, Sheikh Hamad al-Thani, one of the world's richest men, recently handed over power to his son, Crown Prince Tamim. Although he himself stressed his age, it was seen locally as less of a sign that Qatar was about to become a North Europe-style "bicycling monarchy" and more that conservative local clan leaders were unhappy with his international image as a sponsor of political Islam.

Crown Prince Tamim, a 33-year-old educated at British public schools and less at ease with the fierce rhetoric of Brotherhood clerics, is said to have withdrawn support from his father's clients. According to one rumour he has even made Sheikh Yusuf Qaradawi, the Brotherhood's spiritual mentor and a long-time Qatar resident, persona non grata.

The gilded chandeliers of Gulf palaces are a long way from the painful changes afoot in Egypt and Syria, and certainly from their mass street protests. But it is an irony that leaders of Tamarod, or "Rebellion", the Egyptian youth protest movement that brought millions to the streets on June 30 to call for Mr Morsi to go, now find themselves allied to Saudi Arabia, where such demonstrations would have been snuffed out months before.

"Stability in Egypt and a successful transition are in the interests of all Arab countries, including the Gulf," said Mohammed Abdulaziz, one of Tamarod's three main leaders, words that could have come out of any general or prince's mouth.

He claimed that Egypt was still the "big sister" or natural leader of the Arab world. "For sure, Egypt cannot just be a client state for anybody," he said.

At Sayed Hassan's Tahrir Square tent, an older man backed up his insistence that Egypt had not just replaced America and then Qatar, as sponsors of dictatorship with another - Saudi Arabia. "The Egyptian people will never be tricked again," said Ahmed Mahmoud, 60. Mr Hassan's response suggested his rhetoric outmatched his confidence. "Egyptian people" he said, "are deceived sometimes. Just not every time."

Surya wrote:

We have learnt enough from IPKF intervention not to sent any troop abroad except under UN mandate.

that seems to be the lesson - what should have been learnt (and has been in some circles0 is that we should intervene when have unity across the spectrum to back an intervention

Surya wrote:Austin - all you is true and is possible - and happens everywhere and is worse in our environment full of morons for politicians and regional politics

however there may be strategic reasons we absolutely have to intervene.

so if we do have to intervene it should be backed by a unified approach and explained as such.

Lilo wrote: If really Bush wanted to prosecute some family feud with Saddam as was peddled in some circles he wouldnt have to wage a total war and completely destroy all those institutions which hold Iraq together - just dispatching Saddam through some usual means would have done the trick.

Was Blair really just a poodle who tagged along in what was essentially an american project ?
Back in 2003 i may be taken in by the above assertion that Briturds were just a poodle - but now i think that it could have been the Brits who could have conceived this project in the first place - they were the ex colonial masters of that dump and knowing the people would have actually guffawed if anyone seriously suggested that they were going to Iraq to instill democracy among its people. They have been long enough in that place to know by instinct that nothing apart from dictatorship will work to keep the middle east from imploding. Yet they invaded Iraq to "instill democracy" Why ?

Re: Saudis Qataris - i think they are the weakest agents in the middle east and incomparision even Iranian mullahs have 100 times more power to resist Western diktats .

Philip wrote:Saudi Arabia re-emerges as powerful Middle East player.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldne ... layer.html

Pranav wrote:

Philip wrote:Saudi Arabia re-emerges as powerful Middle East player.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldne ... layer.html

It is curious to see both the Saudis as well as Assad cheer Morsi's departure, at a time when Saudis are backing cannibals in Syria.

Clearly the dust has not settled as yet.

Johann wrote:Hi Pranav,

I don't think the 'axes' are that coherent here - The Obama administration and the Saudis have had a very different positions on the MB in Egypt. If anything Iran and the US have more in common than they do with the Saudis on that issue.

The MB has survived for 85 years through multiple repressions by all sorts of parties by being pragmatic and nimble about its alliances. They've worked with the Islamic Republic of Iran, and they've worked with the Americans, and they've worked with the Saudis. Hamas (the MB in Palestine) had no problem working with the secular Baathists of Syria, and were in fact headquartered in Damascus from 1994 until recently.

CAIRO — As President Mohamed Morsi huddled in his guard’s quarters during his last hours as Egypt’s first elected leader, he received a call from an Arab foreign minister with a final offer to end a standoff with the country’s top generals, senior advisers with the president said.

The foreign minister said he was acting as an emissary of Washington, the advisers said, and he asked if Mr. Morsi would accept the appointment of a new prime minister and cabinet, one that would take over all legislative powers and replace his chosen provincial governors.

The aides said they already knew what Mr. Morsi’s answer would be. He had responded to a similar proposal by pointing at his neck. “This before that,” he had told his aides, repeating a vow to die before accepting what he considered a de facto coup and thus a crippling blow to Egyptian democracy.

His top foreign policy adviser, Essam el-Haddad, then left the room to call the United States ambassador, Anne W. Patterson, to say that Mr. Morsi refused. When he returned, he said he had spoken to Susan E. Rice, the national security adviser, and that the military takeover was about to begin, senior aides said.

“Mother just told us that we will stop playing in one hour,” an aide texted an associate, playing on a sarcastic Egyptian expression for the country’s Western patron, “Mother America.”

The State Department had no comment Saturday on the details of the American role in Mr. Morsi’s final days.

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/07/world ... ml?hp&_r=1&

Anyone who has ever studied the history of American diplomacy, especially military diplomacy, knows that you might start a war with certain things on your mind as a purpose of what you are doing, but in the end, you found yourself fighting for entirely different things that you had never thought of before ... In other words, war has a momentum of its own and it carries you away from all thoughtful intentions when you get into it. Today, if we went into Iraq, like the president would like us to do, you know where you begin. You never know where you are going to end.

Johann wrote:
Lilo,

George Kennan was the architect of the US strategy of containment towards the Soviet Union and revolutionary communism back in the 1940s which guided the overall Cold War approach. Here is a quote from him in September 2002, warning against the Iraq war;

Anyone who has ever studied the history of American diplomacy, especially military diplomacy, knows that you might start a war with certain things on your mind as a purpose of what you are doing, but in the end, you found yourself fighting for entirely different things that you had never thought of before ... In other words, war has a momentum of its own and it carries you away from all thoughtful intentions when you get into it. Today, if we went into Iraq, like the president would like us to do, you know where you begin. You never know where you are going to end.

Needless to say it was not taken seriously. Kennan had incidentally also warned against expanding the Vietnam war back in 1966.

Pranav wrote:MB should decide who it hates more - the Russia-Iran-Syria axis or the Saudi-US-Israel axis.

Top Syrian Rebel: Israel Attacked Missiles With Submarine
A top Syrian rebel official on Monday said that the IDF had indeed attacked Latakia over the weekend, with a submarine attack
AAFont Size
By David Lev
First Publish: 7/15/2013, 4:27 PM

Israeli navy Dolphin-class submarine
Israeli navy Dolphin-class submarine
Flash 90

A top Syrian rebel official on Monday said that the IDF had indeed attacked Latakia over the weekend – not from the air, as had been reported, but from the sea. “Israel used a submarine to attack the missiles,” Mustafa Abd al-Karim told a Russian news station Monday.

According to weekend reports, Israeli forces on July 5 destroyed a cache of Russian-made Yakhont anti-ship missiles as they were docked at the port of Latakia in Syria. Israel did not confirm or deny the report, first broadcast on CNN, and Syria initially denied that the attack had taken place at all, but Israeli television stations released satellite photos showing that the bombing had taken place.

CNN quoted several U.S. officials as saying that Israeli planes had bombed the missiles, and a report quoted in Ha'aretz said that Israeli fighter planes were seen in the skies of the Syrian city of Al-Haffah, located east of Latakia.

In the interview with Russya al-yum, an Arabic-language Russian satellite broadcaster, Al-Karim said that “the attack was carried out by an Israeli submarine. At least five missile batteries were destroyed.”

A separate report earlier Monday by another Russian satellite broadcaster, Russia Today, said that Israeli planes launched from an air base in Turkey bombed the missiles. Turkey denied the allegation, with Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu saying that Turkey “would not be involved in such a strike, and anyone who says it was is just trying to harm Turkey's reputation.”

Singha wrote:compared to where Egypt was under hosni mubarak, in what way is the situation better for the common man today? has economic growth and tourism been able to revive? is the rural farmer better off?

Austin wrote:David Cameron accused of betraying Syrian rebels

Syria's top rebel commander has accused David Cameron of betrayal after the Prime Minister abandoned plans to arm the Syrian opposition.

The crisis in Egypt has for the moment taken the ehat off Assad and co.,but he has had his eyebrows singed with Israel's daring strike,taking out his deadly Yakhnot (original version of Brahmos) missiles,allegedly by an Israeli sub.

http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/ ... eTCHn9AbB0