Syria - preparing the end game

          On January 11, 2016 you could scour the internet to your heart’s content, but nowhere would you find a single reference to the start of ceasefire talks between the regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and the forces rebelling against him.

          Yet on December 11, 2015, after nearly five years of war that had killed more than 250,000 people and displaced millions, the UN Security Council unanimously adopted Resolution 2254, in which the Secretary General was asked to convene formal negotiations “on an urgent basis” between representatives of the Syrian government and the opposition on a political transition process. He was given a target of “early January” – taken by most media to mean one month – to have the talks up and running.

          That the timetable for this first stage of the international agreement has slipped does not augur well for the other two, namely the establishment of a “credible, inclusive and non-sectarian” government in Damascus within six months, and free and fair elections and a new constitution within eighteen.

          Yet the fact that the Security Council agreed on an international road map for a peace process in Syria is by no means insignificant – it demonstrated a rare, but welcome, unanimity among Council members on a political strategy to end the Syrian conflict, and it saw both the US and Russia endorsing the resolution.

          “This council,” said US Secretary of State John Kerry, ”is sending a clear message to all concerned that the time is now to stop the killing in Syria and lay the groundwork for a government that the long-suffering people of that battered land can support.”

          Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov added: “This is a clear response to attempts to impose a solution from the outside on Syrians on any issues, including those regarding its president.” His reference to the president is significant. The future of President Assad was, and remains, a bone of contention. It is the one major issue conspicuous by its absence from Resolution 2254. The result is rather like mounting a production of Hamlet without the prince.

          As far back as September 2015, Mark Galeotti, a professor at the Center for Global Affairs at New York University, was speculating that, despite the longstanding relationship between the Syrian regime and Russia, Moscow was envisioning a future without the Assad regime in power.

          "Russians are already thinking about post-Assad Damascus,” said Galeotti. ”The Russians have a tradition of offering sanctuary to dictators who flee their country. So, I'm sure there's some cosy dacha outside of Moscow, if Assad does need to flee."

          He may be correct, although at present Russia’s President Vladimir Putin is keeping his cards close to his chest on the issue, ruling nothing in and nothing out. When asked outright during an interview with the German daily Bild, published on January 12, if he would shelter Assad, Putin said it was premature to discuss the issue but threw in, as an aside, that Russia had granted asylum to US whistleblower Edward Snowden, "which was far more difficult than to do the same for Mr Assad.”

          Having said that, Putin backtracked somewhat. Moscow, he said, was advocating a constitutional reform in Syria, to be followed by presidential and parliamentary elections. And if those elections were democratic, "Assad won't have to go anywhere, no matter if he is elected president or not."

         Russia, and perhaps the US, appears to envisage presidential elections in Syria in which Assad could be a candidate. Such a scenario is flatly opposed by France and the UK. French foreign minister Laurent Fabius maintains that the negotiations would succeed only with credible guarantees about Assad’s departure. “How could this man unite a people that he has in part massacred?” said Fabius. “The idea that he could once again stand for election is unacceptable to us.”

          Britain’s prime minister, David Cameron, has been equally unambiguous – Assad can have no future in a post-civil war Syria. “It’s not just my view that you can’t end up with Assad having a role in Syria. The Syrian people wouldn’t accept it. What you need to do is find a government that can appeal to Alawites, Kurds, Sunnis and Christians, and if you don’t have someone who can do that you won’t have a Syria that works.”

          Russia’s rather equivocal approach to the issue, especially as it appears to have the backing of US Secretary of State John Kerry, is infuriating Syria's opposition coordinator Riad Hijab. Hijab, a former Syrian prime minister, was chosen in December as co-ordinator of the opposition negotiating body to lead future Syria talks. He believes the US has reneged on its anti-Assad position, softening its stance to accommodate Russia. This, he maintained, would make it difficult for the opposition to attend the delayed peace talks, which had by then been re-scheduled for January 25 in Geneva.

          The path leading towards them is rocky. Syrian rebel groups had declared that they would not take part unless humanitarian provision in the latest UN resolution on Syria were implemented. These call for humanitarian access to all in need and the cessation of attacks on civilians. In order to facilitate the Geneva talks, the UN Special Envoy for Syria, Staffan de Mistura, met representatives of the US, Russia and other major powers and, on January 11, Assad granted access to the government-besieged town of Madaya, and food and first aid was delivered to its starving civilians.

          This is not the only obstacle being placed in the way of the talks by the opposition council. They have told de Mistura that the Assad regime would have to take goodwill steps, including a prisoner release, before they would go to negotiations. It is not clear, however, whether this is a “make or break” pre-condition.

          Nor are the opposition the only party voicing objections. Assad has long labelled as “terrorists” all the various groups opposing him. Russia is not going as far, but is insisting that the international powers produce an agreed list of terrorist groups, presumably so that they can be excluded from the approved opposition council. Assistant US Secretary of State Anne Patterson has said the United States and Russia were working "very assiduously" on the question of defining terrorist groups.

 
             With all these hurdles to overcome, it would have been a minor triumph in itself if the peace talks scheduled for January 25 had gone ahead on time.  But the scheduled start date could not be met because of international disagreement over who should be invited from the opposition, while rebel group stuck to their demands for an end to air strikes and government sieges of territory they hold, and the release of detainees.

           Nevertheless, the international desire to end the horror in Syria is real enough and, as the old saying has it, where there’s a will, there’s a way.

Published in the Jerusalem Post on-line, 26 January 2016:
http://www.jpost.com/Blogs/A-Mid-East-Journal/Syria-preparing-the-end-game-442745

Published in the Eurasia Review, 27 January 2016:
http://www.eurasiareview.com/27012016-syria-preparing-the-end-game-oped/

Published in the MPC Journal, 26 January 2016
in English :
http://mpc-journal.org/blog/2016/01/26/syria-preparing-the-end-game/
in Arabic:
http://mpc-journal.org/arabic/blog/2016/01/31/سوريا-التحضير-لنهاية-اللعبة/

Saudi Arabia or Iran - a choice must be made

          Some would claim that there is nothing to choose between Saudi Arabia and Iran, that they are Tweedledum and Tweedledee. Both, it is argued, are authoritarian, dictatorial regimes, espousing their own extreme interpretation of sharia law – albeit one from a Sunni and the other from a Shi’ite perspective. Both persist in judicial beheadings, amputations, and whippings, while persecuting gays, imposing restrictions on women, and bearing down heavily on any dissenting voices. Now that the two rival bastions of Islamism are at daggers drawn, some might say a plague on both their houses.

          Such an argument is simplistic. For whereas the Saudis over many years proved themselves staunch supporters of US policies. and are today still cooperating closely with the West on security and intelligence issues while maintaining the flow of vital oil supplies, Iran has consistently denounced America and Western democracies, pursued policies aimed at disrupting their governments, and sponsored numerous, and often horrific, terror attacks against the US and the West.

          The Saudis’ decision at the start of 2016 to execute the Shia cleric Sheikh Nimr al-Nimr, as well as 46 other prisoners convicted on terrorism charges, has provoked a major crisis between Saudi Arabia and Iran. The schism has long been brewing. In Yemen, the Saudis and their Gulf allies have spent most of the past year fighting attempts by Iranian-backed Houthis to seize control of the country. In Syria, while Iran’s Revolutionary Guards and its puppet organization, Hezbollah, are fighting to support the regime of Bashar al-Assad, Saudis are backing groups committed to overthrowing him – in line with the policy of the US and the West, who are convinced that there is no future for Syria while Assad remains in power.

          So as between Saudi Arabia and Iran it should be a clear-cut no-option choice, but a major complicating factor is the long-term strategic objective of the Obama administration in the Middle East. President Obama came into office feeling guilty about America’s strength. He began his presidency by declaring as often as he could that he believed much was wrong with America. His apology tour began on April 3, 2009 in Strasbourg. Throughout the nation’s existence, he said, “America has shown arrogance and been dismissive even derisive” of others. If the power of the US could be reduced, then America would have the “moral authority” to bring murderous regimes such as Iran into the “community of nations”. So, claim some, he set about reducing America’s strength and authority in the world.

          It is significant that he mentioned Iran at that early stage in his presidency. A widely-held view among political analysts is that the “signature issue of Obama’s diplomacy”, as political scientist Amiel Unghar puts it, has been transforming US-Iranian relations.

          Ungar traces this policy back to the 2006 Iraq Study Group headed by former US Secretary of State, James Baker, and former Democratic representative Lee Hamilton. The great struggle of the time was against al-Qaeda, the Sunni Islamist terror organization that had been responsible for the 9/11 attacks, and was then totally disrupting American attempts to reconstruct Iraq. Baker and Hamilton dreamed up the clever-clever notion that a working relationship between America and the two major Shia powers, Iran and Syria, would encourage them to fight Sunni al-Qaeda for their own sake, thus incidentally assisting America’s struggle. Additionally, the group expected Iran ‘to use its influence, especially over Shia groups in Iraq, to encourage national reconciliation’.

          Ungar believes that this recklessly flawed analysis is what has been behind Obama’s willingness to accommodate Iran on the political front, and to offer it major concessions on the nuclear issue. When the Obama administration came into office, its overt aim seemed to be to eliminate Iran’s potential to produce nuclear weapons. But was it in fact working to a different and secret agenda?

          During 2014 it emerged that in secret correspondence with Iran’s Supreme Leader, Obama actually attempted to engage Iran in the anti-Islamic State conflict. In November the Wall Street Journal reported that Obama had written to Ayatollah Khamanei concerning the shared interest of the US and Iran in fighting IS militants.

          “The October letter,” asserted the Wall Street Journal, “marked at least the fourth time Mr Obama has written Iran’s most powerful political and religious leader since taking office in 2009, and pledging to engage with Tehran’s Islamist government.”

           By 2016 it had become clear that in the process of facilitating Iran’s journey out of the cold and into the comity of nations, the Obama administration had boosted Iran’s efforts to extend its influence across the Middle East, and in consequence had lost the confidence, and much of the respect, of its erstwhile allies such as Saudi Arabia, the Gulf States and Egypt, all of whom had good reason to regard Iran as their prime antagonist.

          Did Obama’s placatory approach result in any softening of Iran’s visceral hatred of the “Great Satan”? Not one jot. “The slogans ‘Death to Israel’ and ‘Death to America’, “ proclaimed Ayatollah Khamenei just after the nuclear deal was announced, “have resounded throughout the country.... Even after this deal, our policy towards the arrogant US will not change.”

          So much for the assumptions and vain hopes of the 2006 Iraq Study Group, and for the policy of appeasement. Taking every concession offered in the nuclear deal talks, and subsequently reneging in several vital respects on the final agreement, Iran’s leaders have not budged an inch on their ultimate ambitions, namely to become the dominant political and religious power in the Middle East, to sweep aside all Western-style democracies, and to impose their own Shi’ite version of Islam on the whole world.

          And yet, while the Saudis have time and again demonstrated the value of their alliance with the West, influential voices in the US and the UK are still arguing that since Iran has agreed a deal over its nuclear programme, the West’s long-term interests may be better served by building closer relations with Tehran.

          Iran’s revolutionary regime is not, and never could be, an ally of the West. Its aim, like that of Islamic State, is to disrupt and eventually to dominate the democratic world. It has established a firm grip on the Iranian people and ruthlessly crushes all opposition – though the opposition exists, and one day may succeed in genuinely restoring Iran and its people to the community of nations. But as matters stand, between a staunch ally and a declared enemy, one might well wonder why there is any question of which to support. That the question even arises speaks volumes about the misconceived policies that have dominated Washington’s thinking for the past seven years.

Published in the Jerusalem Post, 18 January 2016:
http://www.jpost.com/Blogs/A-Mid-East-Journal/Saudi-Arabia-or-Iran-a-choice-must-be-made-441759

Published in the Eurasia Review, 19 January 2016:
http://www.eurasiareview.com/19012016-saudi-arabia-or-iran-a-choice-must-be-made-oped/

Is Islamic State in retreat?

          "The dawn of 2016," wrote veteran Middle East observer, Con Coughlin, on December 30, 2015, “finds Islamic State (IS) very much on the defensive in both Iraq and Syria.” A good rule of thumb is not to count your chickens before they are hatched, but Coughlin produces evidence to justify his assessment. Does it stand up to close scrutiny?

          In May 2015, when IS fighters overwhelmed a far stronger and better equipped Iraqi army to capture Ramadi, the capital of Iraq's western province of Anbar, the jihadi organization seemed unstoppable. IS’s progress towards a complete takeover of Iraq, and after it Syria, appeared almost inevitable. After all, Ramadi was only 60 miles from Iraq’s capital, Baghdad, and it seemed but a matter of time before Baghdad, too, would be in IS hands. But at the end of December, after days of fierce fighting, Iraqi security forces had gained control of central Ramadi. By the last day of 2015, a mop-up operation seemed all that was needed to recapture the city. IS resistance was stubborn, however, and pockets of fighters continued to hold out, frustrating coalition attempts to restore Ramadi to normality.

          The defeat back in May of the Iraqi Security Forces (ISF) defending Ramadi, and its capture by IS, seems to have acted as a wake-up call to the US-led coalition. Indeed after the Ramadi loss US Defense Secretary, Ash Carter, is on the record as saying, rather hurtfully, that the Iraqi army had “no will to fight.” Clearly an essential preliminary to future successful operations against IS was to revitalize and re-energize the ISF.

          This realization gave birth to what has been dubbed the coalition’s “Iraq First” policy. American and British military advisers concentrated on rebuilding the strength of the ISF to the point where it could provide the capable ground component, to be backed by coalition air cover, recognized by all as essential to reclaiming control of the country from Islamist extremists. The success at Ramadi seemed to demonstrate its effectiveness.

          The government has designated the mostly Sunni city of Mosul, Iraq’s second city some 250 miles north of Baghdad, as the next target for Iraq's armed forces. But with a population of around 1.5 million, Mosul presents a far more challenging target than Ramadi. Coalition commanders fear that the battle to recapture the city will involve intense street-to-street fighting. In any case, field commanders wonder whether it is worth attempting that operation before Falluja, lying between Ramadi and Baghdad, has been wrested from IS’s hands.

          Falluja presents problems of its own. It is a religious and spiritual centre of Sunni Islam in Iraq, and the discrimination against Sunni Muslims exercised by former prime minister, Nuri al-Maliki, has left a bitter anti-government taste in some mouths. During the Maliki years some sort of deal was struck between Sunni militants in the city and IS, and in assaulting Falluja coalition forces might find themselves fighting not only IS, but local militants.

          So the way forward is far from clear. In fact, the recapture of Ramadi may have raised expectations unrealistically. Iraq’s prime minister, Haider al-Abadi, speaking shortly after Ramadi had largely fallen into coalition hands, promised that by the end of 2016 all of Iraq would have been brought under the control of the country’s democratically elected government. A tall order, but doing just that – even if it cannot be achieved within a twelvemonth – is deemed essential if the US-led coalition is to stand any chance of defeating IS on the ground in neighbouring Syria, where the situation is immensely more complex.

          A good start has been made. On Christmas Day 2015, as one stage in the coalition's march on IS-held areas in northern Syria, the US-backed coalition of rebels, the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), captured the key Tishrin dam on the Euphrates River from IS. The Tishrin supplies much of northern Syria with electricity. The SDF’s plan of campaign is to cut supply lines between IS strongholds in the north, in particular those between IS's main city of Raqqa and its stronghold of Manbij.

          The US military estimates that in the last six weeks of 2015 the SDF, bolstered by coalition air strikes, captured around 1,000 square kilometers of terrain from IS. In addition, coalition air strikes on the IS leadership had notched up a number of successes. One notable achievement was the strike that killed Charaffe al-Mouadan, a Syria-based IS member directly linked to Abdelhamid Abaaoud, believed to be the mastermind behind the coordinated bombings and shootings in Paris on November 13 which killed 130 people.

          Mouadan is one of ten or more leading IS figures killed by targeted air strikes towards the end of 2015, among them so-called “Jihadi John”, the figure with the British accent who featured in the horrific “snuff” videos released by IS of the beheading of a succession of Western hostages.

          On January 4, 2016, IS released a video on social media featuring a new masked gunman with a British accent. He directed the shooting at point-blank range of five men accused of spying for the UK, each shown “confessing”, before being killed. The Daily Telegraph revealed that an internal IS opposition movement – a group called “Raqqa is Being Slaughtered Silently” (RBSS) – had been undermining IS operations and providing information that led to the targeting and death of IS leaders by airstrikes, including Jihadi John. RBSS is an alliance of journalists and activists from Raqqa, the Syrian town that is IS’s de facto capital, and their mere existence demonstrates the internal dissensions that develop when an organization is under pressure or failing.

          So obviously the ratcheting up of the coalition’s military action, its continuous pounding of IS positions from the air, its successes on the battlefield, the targeted assassination of IS’s leadership, the cutting of IS’s vital oil flows and its consequent loss of revenue – all are having an effect on the morale and the appeal of Islamic State. But, as US army Colonel Steve Warren, spokesman for the US-led coalition against the Islamic State, observed about IS: “It still has fangs.”

          Perhaps the most apt assessment of the state of play at the start of 2016 are the words of Winston Churchill, uttered back in 1942, following the British success at El Alamein:

          “This is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is perhaps the end of the beginning.”

Published in the Jerusalem Post on-line, 12 January 2016:
http://www.jpost.com/Blogs/A-Mid-East-Journal/Is-Islamic-State-in-retreat-441037

Published in the Eurasia Review, 12 January 2016:
http://www.eurasiareview.com/12012016-is-islamic-state-in-retreat-oped/

Published in the MPC Journal, 14 January 2016:
http://mpc-journal.org/blog/2016/01/13/is-islamic-state-in-retreat/

India and Israel: strengthening the bonds

          What on earth, one might legitimately wonder, could India have in common with Israel? Wildly at variance in size (India’s population tops 1.25 billion; Israel’s struggles to reach 8 million), they are at least both alumni of Britain’s one-time imperial college, each with somewhat equivocal feelings towards their alma mater, and struggling free of their colonial bonds within a few months of each other in 1947-48. Even so, for a long time the connection between New Delhi and Jerusalem was far from close. It took forty years for India to overcome the fear that close relations with the Jewish State might somehow radicalize its Muslim citizens – who number over 100 million – and hurt its relations with the Arab world.
       

          It was, perhaps, the disintegration in 1991 of the Soviet Union – long a bulwark of the Arab Middle East – that encouraged India to overcome those misgivings. Its main Muslim neighbor on the sub-continent, Pakistan, has never recognized Israel, but India has conducted an on-off armed struggle with Pakistan since its foundation, so any scruples about hurting its feelings probably did not weigh very heavily in India’s consideration. Perhaps both India and Israel saw themselves as isolated democracies threatened by neighbours that train, finance and encourage terrorism. Whatever the rationale, in 1992 India established full diplomatic relations with Israel, and since then economic, social and security collaboration between the two nations has burgeoned, and India has become one of Israel’s largest trading partners.

           In 2014 Indo-Israeli bilateral trade, excluding defence, reached $4.52 billion, a 3.8 percent increase on the previous year. But it is defence and security that lie at the heart of the ever-closer ties between India and Israel, with the effective countering of terrorism as the prime objective. Israel has sold radar and surveillance systems for military aircraft and has provided India with training in counter-terrorism. In November 2011, India's élite Cobra Commando unit bought more than 1,000 Israeli X-95 assault rifles for counter-insurgency operations, and placed orders for four advanced Israeli Phalcon planes equipped with airborne warning and control systems (AWACS). Further orders for advanced counter-terrorism military hardware followed, backed by a joint intelligence-sharing agreement between the two nations aimed at fighting radical Islamic extremism.

          The blossoming collaboration was endorsed when, for the first time in over a decade, the prime ministers of Israel and India met in September 2014 in New York. Extreme cordiality seems to have marked the encounter between Israel’s Benjamin Netanyahu and Indian prime minister Narenda Modi. They met again in November, on the sidelines of the climate change conference in Paris, just as Israel Aerospace Industries successfully tested a jointly developed Indian-Israeli Barak 8 air and naval defense missile system – "an important milestone in the cooperation between India and Israel", according to a top advisor to India's defence minister.

          All of which both provides the background to, and perhaps explains, the first-ever official visit by an Indian head of state to Israel a year later. In October 2015 President Pranab Mukherjee arrived in Jerusalem, to a rumbling background of media reservations, despite the fact that Mukherjee visited both Jordan and the Palestinian territories ahead of his visit to Israel, and expressed India’s solid support for a “sovereign, independent, viable and united State of Palestine, with East Jerusalem as its capital, living within secure and recognized borders, side by side at peace with Israel as endorsed in the Quartet Roadmap and relevant UNSC Resolutions.”

          Hosted by Israel’s President Reuven Rivlin, Mukherjee, in his own words, “reviewed our multidimensional relations and explored ways and means to enhance them for the mutual benefit of our two countries.”

          The fact that mutual benefit is indeed being derived from this ever-closer Indo-Israeli relationship is undisputed. India is one of the world’s two most rapidly developing economies (China is the other), and represents a huge potential market for Israel’s defence, aerospace, and high-tech industries – a market already being exploited, but one with unimaginably vast possibilities still to be explored. “The sky’s the limit”, said Netanyahu recently, referring to the potential for strengthening bilateral Indo-Israel co-operation in a wide variety of fields.

          For India, Israel offers access to the most advanced technologies available in the world, across a range of areas – defense, security, computer science, cyber forensics, agricultural techniques, micro-irrigation, urban water systems. In 2013, Israel announced a scheme to help India diversify and raise the yield of its fruit and vegetable crops. By March 2014, 10 Centres of Excellence were operating throughout India, offering free training sessions for farmers in efficient agricultural techniques using Israeli technology and know-how, including vertical farming, drip irrigation and soil solarisation. A year later, no less than 29 such Centres were in operation.

          As for the field of defence, in 2015 Israel Aerospace Industries and the Indian state-owned Defence Research and Development Organization began collaborating on a jointly developed surface-to-air missile system for the Indian Army. India uses Israel-made unmanned drones for surveilance and military purposes, and during 2015 ordered 16 drones and well as buying 321 launchers and 8,356 missiles from the Israeli military.

          That India’s stance vis-a-vis Israel has shifted became evident when India took to abstaining, rather than vote against Israel in a succession of UN votes. The most notable occasion was in July 2015, when India abstained on the vote to adopt the UN Human Rights Council’s report on Operation Protective Edge, Israel’s action against Hamas’s rocket attacks the previous year. It was the first time in decades that India had abstained from a decision against Israel in an international forum. India has long been a key player in the Non-Aligned Movement - a body of states that would automatically vote for the Palestinians and against Israel.

          It may also explain why India’s foreign minister, Sushma Swaraj, will be visiting Israel from January 16-19. Swaraj, who served from 2006 to 2009 as chair of the Indo-Israeli Parliamentary Friendship Group, last came to the country in 2008. Her forthcoming tour may herald an official visit later in 2016 by Indian prime minister Modi – the first by an Indian prime minister, announced back in June 2015, but which has so far failed to materialize. Given the huge and developing level of cooperation between the two nations, Modi’s trip to Israel cannot be long delayed.

Published in the Jerusalem Post on-line, 4 January 2016:
http://www.jpost.com/Blogs/A-Mid-East-Journal/India-and-Israel-strengthening-the-bonds-439427

Published in the Eurasia Review, 9 January 2016:
http://www.eurasiareview.com/09012016-india-and-israel-strengthening-the-bonds-oped/