What the Iranian regime really wants – and what the West refuses to see

This article of mine appears in the edition of the Jerusalem Report dated 8 June 2020

                        

          With the best of intentions world leaders have been pursuing a policy in respect of Iran that leads nowhere. The original goals of the Islamic Revolution of 1979 were quite clearly stated at the time by the first Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini – the destruction of Western-style democracy and its way of life, and the imposition of Shia Islam on the world. An analysis of Iranian policy over the past 41 years reveals a stark truth. The regime has never abrogated those objectives, and they remain the fundamental principles motivating the regime today. This is a truth the West has refused to acknowledge.

          “We have to wage war,” wrote Khomeini, “until all corruption, all disobedience of Islamic law ceases.”

          Despite the worldwide coronavirus pandemic and its effect within Iran – bad enough as reported, but probably far worse in reality – the hardline elements within the regime, in line with their true purpose, have maintained their pressure. On April 14, armed men boarded and briefly held a Hong Kong-flagged tanker and its Chinese crew in the Straits of Hormuz before releasing the ship. The next day eleven vessels from Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Navy approached six US military ships while they were conducting integration operations with Army helicopters in international waters. The US ships issued several warnings through bridge-to-bridge radio, blasts from the ships' horns and long-range acoustic noise-making devices. The Iranian vessels left after about an hour.

          Ever since 1979 the world has grappled with problems emanating from the Iranian regime. Consistently over the past 41 years Iran has either carried out, or initiated through its proxy militias like Hezbollah or the Houthis, a series of bombings, rocket attacks, assassinations and terrorist actions in the Middle East and across the world. For decades Iran also made determined efforts to develop nuclear power, with the aim – never openly acknowledged – of producing nuclear weapons. It is unlikely that the present regime has abandoned that objective.

          In 2015, in an attempt to cripple its nuclear programme, the permanent members of the UN Security Council together with Germany concluded an agreement with Iran. No doubt all those involved, including then-US President Barak Obama, had the very best of intentions. With that deal – which incorporated a substantial financial boost to Iran – they believed they had put the regime’s nuclear ambitions on hold for at least 15 years, making the world a safer place. Moreover they believed that they had taken an important step toward normalizing relations and bringing Iran back within the comity of nations.

          They were mistaken. To quote President Donald Trump, speaking on January 8, 2020:

          “Iran’s hostilities substantially increased after the foolish Iran nuclear deal was signed in 2015, and they were given $150 billion, not to mention $1.8 billion in cash. Instead of saying "thank you" to the United States, they chanted "death to America." In fact, they chanted "death to America" the day the agreement was signed. Then, Iran went on a terror spree, funded by the money from the deal, and created hell in Yemen, Syria, Lebanon, Afghanistan, and Iraq. The missiles fired last night at us and our allies were paid for with the funds made available by the last administration.”

          Where did the civilized world go wrong? The mistake was the same mistake the world made in the case of Adolf Hitler. Nobody read Mein Kamf, first published in 1925 – or, if they did, no-one thought he meant what he said. But the philosophy underlying Hitler’s political beliefs was there, in black and white, for years before he was in a position to implement it. If politicians, or opinion formers, had taken it seriously, his rise to supreme power could have been thwarted. He could never have manoeuvered his way into becoming Germany’s Chancellor.

          The problem that Iran poses to the civilized world stems entirely from the Islamic revolutionary regime that the nation wished on itself back in 1979. Ayatollah Khomeini, the figurehead for Iran’s new direction, became Supreme Leader in December 1979. His philosophy, which he made no secret of, and wrote about nearly 40 years before, required the immediate imposition of strict Sharia law domestically, and a foreign policy aimed at spreading the Shi’ite interpretation of Islam across the globe by whatever means were deemed expedient.

          “We shall export our revolution to the whole world,” he declared. “Until the cry 'There is no god but Allah' resounds over the whole world, there will be struggle.” Or again: “Establishing the Islamic state world-wide belongs to the great goals of the revolution.”

          Pursuit of this fundamental objective of the Islamic Revolution has involved the state – acting either directly or through proxy militant bodies enabling it to deny responsibility – in a succession of acts of terror, mayhem and murder directed not only against Western targets, but against non-Shia Muslims as well. “To kill the infidels,” declared Khomeini, “is one of the noblest missions Allah has reserved for mankind.”

          He was unequivocal about the basic purpose of his regime. “We have set as our goal the worldwide spread of the influence of Islam and the suppression of the rule of the world conquerors.”

          This partly explains Iran’s unremitting hostility to Sunni Saudi Arabia. With Islam’s two holiest cities, Mecca and Medina, within its borders, the Saudi kingdom sees itself as the leader of the Muslim world – a claim hotly contested by Iran. The regime sees Saudi Arabia as its great rival for political, as well as religious, hegemony in the region. In 1987 Ayatollah Khomeini declared that Mecca was in the hands of “a band of heretics”.

          Saudi Arabia gives as good as it takes. In 2018 the Saudi crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman, declared that Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Khamenei, “makes Hitler look good…Hitler tried to conquer Europe. The supreme leader is trying to conquer the world.”

          Trump has repeatedly denied that he seeks regime change in Iran – he says he wants no more than a cessation of Iran’s terrorist activities and a renegotiation of the nuclear deal. These, if finally achieved through the tough sanctions imposed by the US, would indeed be welcome. But a clear-eyed look at the facts shows that a genuine accommodation with this regime is simply not possible. Western leaders want to believe in it, but they cannot, or will not, see that it would be a negation of the fundamental purposes underlying the revolutionary Iranian regime – its very raison d’être. 

          These are the words of the regime’s founder, its first Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Khomeini: “We wish to cause the corrupt roots of Zionism, Capitalism and Communism to wither throughout the world. We wish, as does God almighty, to destroy the systems which are based on these three foundations, and to promote the Islamic order of the Prophet.”

Published in the Jerusalem Post on-line, 19 May 2020:
https://www.jpost.com/Jerusalem-Report/What-the-Iranian-regime-really-wants-and-what-the-West-refuses-to-see-628585

Published  in The Times of Israel, 21 May 2020:
https://blogs.timesofisrael.com/what-the-iranian-regime-really-wants-and-what-the-west-refuses-to-see/

What kind of man is Iraq's new prime minister?

          It was on 6 May 2020, following nearly six months of political wrangling, that Iraq's new prime minister, Mustafa al-Kadhimi, took office, following parliamentary approval of most of his proposed ministerial appointments.

          Two previous presidential nominees for prime minister had failed to secure sufficient support over a period of increasingly violent public protest. The protests began in October 2019, when thousands of Iraqis took to the streets, accusing the political class of incompetence and corruption. The heavy-handed attempts by the government to quash the riots, undertaken with the help of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps, led also to widespread objection to excessive Iranian influence within Iraq.

          The death of hundreds of protesters on the streets only served to exacerbate the febrile situation, and finally led to the resignation of then prime minister Adel Abdul Mahdi. What followed was a long search by President Barham Salih for a prime minister that would be acceptable domestically and also to the two major external states most involved in shaping Iraq’s future – the US and Iran.
        
          Mustafa al-Kadhimi, Iraq’s intelligence chief, but with a long career as journalist and peace activist behind him, proved an inspired choice. No professional politician, he was not tarred in the public mind with the brush of incompetence and corruption. Unallied to any political party, he had made few enemies among the political class. Having spent many years as an exile in the West, he was well-known and liked in Washington and London. And his four years embedded in Iraq’s security service while Iran strengthened its grip on the country’s governance, made his appointment acceptable to the Iranian regime.

          Born Mustafa Abdul-Latif Mishatat in 1967, he adopted the name al-Kadhimi (taken from his birthplace, Kadhimiya) for his career as a working journalist and peace and humanitarian activist. Strongly opposed to the dictatorial regime of Saddam Hussein, he left Iraq in 1985 for Iran, before moving to Germany, the UK and the US, and he remained in exile until the overthrow of Saddam Hussein, After that, although he continued to be based in London for the next seven years, he returned to Iraq from time to time. 

          ​For much of his time in Britain Kadhimi became involved with the work of the Humanitarian Dialogue Foundation (not to be confused with the Centre for Humanitarian Dialogue, a Swiss-based organization concerned with fostering the non-violent resolution of armed conflict). The Foundation was a body registered in Britain as a charity specifically concerned with Iraq. Kadhimi was working for it when it opened Salam House in north-west London as a cultural centre that hosted weekly talks, discussions and exhibitions by notable Iraqi and international speakers, and by bodies concerned with Iraq, British society and the Middle East.

          When it registered as a charity in 2009, the Foundation listed as its objectives the promotion of conflict resolution and reconciliation, with a view to relieving suffering, poverty and distress. In addition its purpose was to promote human rights, equality and diversity, with specific mention made of racial harmony, the education and welfare of children, women’s rights and gender equality. Later it expanded its purposes to encompass the promotion of peace and tolerance through an understanding of Iraq’s history, contemporary society, arts, culture and governance.

          It was with this organization and its unquestionable humanitarian values, that Kadhimi associated himself for many years while residing in Britain. The only conclusion to be drawn is that the values embraced by the Humanitarian Dialogue Foundation are values endorsed by Kadhimi, and that in Iraq’s new prime minister the world has found a leader motivated by integrity, dedicated to peace, and with the highest regard for a humane approach to conflict resolution. 

          Following the invasion of Iraq in 2003 and the overthrow of Saddam Hussein, Kadhimi joined a group of Iraqi activists in the US to help Iraqis come to terms with their past. Using the already well-established Iraq Research and Documentation Project , founded in 1992 at Harvard University, they established a new body which they called the Iraq Memory Foundation. 

          The three founders – one of whom was Kadhimi – believed that justice in the future required the people of Iraq to come to terms with the atrocities perpetrated in their name during the 24 years of Saddam’s rule. The ultimate rationale behind the Iraq Memory Foundation was that only the truth could help heal a society that had been politically and physically brutalized on a large scale.

          Between 2003 and 2010 Kadhimi ran the London end of the organization, also commuting to Baghdad from time to time to help document not only the crimes of Saddam Hussain's regime, but all facets of the Iraqi experience of dictatorship. Managing a team spread across various countries, Kadhimi oversaw the documenting of testimonies and the collation of footage from victims.

          During this period Kadhimi worked as a columnist and managing editor of the Iraq section of the US-based international Al-Monitor news website. He also served as editor-in-chief and columnist of Iraq's Newsweek magazine for three years from 2010, and his articles are noteworthy for attempting to foster the spirit of social peace within Iraq.

          This, then, is Iraq’s new prime minister, a figure – if his past affiliations and activities are anything to go by – unusual to a degree in today’s Middle East. Everything about Kadhimi’s past suggests a man imbued with generous humanitarian instincts, an upholder of social justice, utterly opposed to the repressive dictatorship under which his country suffered for so long, and fired with the desire to help his nation come to terms with its past and move forward into a brighter future. If Kadhimi remains faithful to the principles and beliefs that have marked his past, then Iraq is fortunate indeed in the man selected by fate to lead his country forward.

Published in The Times of Israel, 12 May 2020:

https://blogs.timesofisrael.com/what-kind-of-man-is-iraqs-new-prime-minister/

Published in the MPC Journal, 15 May 2020:
https://mpc-journal.org/blog/2020/05/15/what-kind-of-man-is-iraqs-new-prime-minister/

Published in the Eurasia Review, 16 May 2020:
https://www.eurasiareview.com/16052020-what-kind-of-man-is-iraqs-new-prime-minister-analysis/

Yemen's dead end

          Yemen, a country spread across the base of the Arabian peninsula, was described by the Romans as “Arabia Felix” – happy, fortunate Arabia – an epithet that would certainly not apply in more modern times. Its recent history has been convoluted and bloody. The latest episode came on April 26, 2020, when the STC (the Southern Transitional Council) declared that south Yemen would break away from the national government and henceforth rule itself. 

          This unilateral declaration did not come out of the blue. Back in 1967, just after the British departed from Aden and its South Arabia protectorate, South Yemen became an independent communist state backed by the USSR. It was only in 1990, with the imminent collapse of the Soviet Union and after years of military and political in-fighting, that South Yemen agreed to unite with the north to form the Unified Republic of Yemen.

          The glue binding the two quickly became unstuck. It took only four years for the south to try to break away again. A short civil war ended with the south being overrun by northern troops and the national government back firmly in control.

          Now comes the latest bid to restore an independent South Yemen. Perhaps the instigators calculated that the current state of utter chaos within the country provided them with a golden opportunity. For more than a decade Yemen has been at war with itself, the two main parties backed by outside forces. The results reduced the country to what has been termed “the world’s worst humanitarian disaster.” Disease and starvation decimated the population.

         It all started in the sadly misnamed “Arab spring” uprisings of 2011. Inside Yemen mass protests, a near-assassination of the then president, Ali Abdullah Saleh, and pressure from neighbouring states forced Saleh to step down in favor of his vice-president, Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi. Hadi sponsored a draft constitution in 2015 proposing a federal system split between northerners and southerners, but the Iran-backed Houthi rebels rejected it.

          The Houthis are a fundamentalist Shia group supported by Iran, but Saleh, although a Sunni Muslim, seemed intent on maneuvering a return to power in collaboration with them. It was through Saleh that the Houthis were able to gain control of most of the Yemeni military, including its air force. As a result, and supported with military hardware from Iran’s Revolutionary Guards, they overran large tracts of the country, including the capital city, Sana’a.

          Saudi Arabia, determined to prevent Iran from consolidating a strong presence in the Arabian peninsula, intervened in March 2015 to beat back the Houthis. The fighting has continued ever since, with neither party able to gain a clear advantage. The efforts of the UN special envoy to Yemen, Martin Griffiths, have so far proved largely ineffective.

          To the mass misery caused so far to the population must now be added the deadly coronavirus (the first case was reported on April 10), and the danger, in the absence of effective central government control, of its rapid spread.

          This is the moment chosen by the STC to strike at the concept of a united Yemen. On April 26 it declared a state of emergency and announced self-rule for regions under its control, including Aden which it seized from government forces in August 2019 and has been holding ever since. Actual fighting in the Aden region stopped last November, following an agreement signed in the Saudi capital, Riyadh.

          So far the STC coup cannot be counted a great success.

          The Saudi-led military coalition – including the United Arab Emirates, once firm supporters of the STC – immediately rejected the group's declaration of self-rule in the south, demanding "an end to escalatory actions" and return to a peace deal signed in November last year. Meanwhile Saudi began a unilateral ceasefire with the Houthis that it said would continue throughout the Muslim fasting month of Ramadan.

          The United Nations also would have no truck with the STC’s demands. It called for a ceasefire, referring to the effect of torrential rains and flash floods that hit the country in March,

          "Countless families have lost everything," said Lise Grande, the UN's Humanitarian Coordinator for Yemen. "This tragedy comes on top of the COVID-19 crisis, which comes on top of the famine last year, which came on top of the worst cholera outbreak in modern history. The solution is clear. The parties to the conflict need to find the courage to stop fighting and start negotiating."

         But, much to the disappointment – perhaps even dismay – of the STC, within hours of its declaration no less than five of the eight southern Yemeni governorates refused to endorse it, confirming their adherence and loyalty to Yemeni President Hadi.

          Moreover the attempt by the separatists to take over the Yemeni island of Socotra was thwarted by government forces, which foiled an attempt by armed units of the STC to take over the capital, Hadibo. Socotra’s governor, Ramzi Mahrous, was another of south Yemen’s leaders refusing to back the STC. He announced on national television that his forces had confronted the separatist militia and "managed to stop their advance".

          And so Yemen staggers on, much of its people subsisting in abject poverty and misery – the victims both of natural disasters such as unprecedented floods and coronavirus, and the man-made calamity of civil war. It is difficult to see where an impetus to break the political impasse might come from.

Published in The Times of Israel, 7 May 2020:
https://blogs.timesofisrael.com/yemens-dead-end/

Published in the MPC Journal, 8 May 2020:
https://mpc-journal.org/blog/2020/05/08/yemens-dead-end/

Published in the Eurasia Review, 9 May 2020:
https://www.eurasiareview.com/09052020-yemens-dead-end-oped/

Dreams Never Dreamed

My review of Kalman Samuels's inspiring memoir: "Dreams Never Dreamed" appears in the edition of Jerusalem Report dated May 18, 2020

        This is a true story that both tears at the heartstrings and fills one with wonder at what human beings are capable of achieving. The first part of Kalman Samuels’s memoir takes us on his personal journey from secular to orthodox Judaism, then the early days of his marriage to Malki and, after a while, their first baby – a girl they named Nechama Leah. The real burden of his story begins in October 1977 when Malki takes their second baby – one-year-old Shalom Yoseph, known as Yossi – to the well-baby clinic to receive the routine triple immunization, DPT, against diphtheria, pertussis and tetanus.

        What followed is the stuff of nightmares. It quickly became apparent that something terrible had happened to their child. Specialists in Israel and America confirmed that baby Yossi had been rendered blind and deaf. Eventually Samuels proved to judicial satisfaction that by the time his son was injected with the vaccine, Israel’s health authorities had known for almost five months that the batch they were using was dangerously flawed.

        The family’s journey to the courtroom, involving medical tests and the gathering of written testimony from a succession of specialists, took six long years, and it was only in September 1983 that the Samuels family was in a position to file their suit. The case itself, contested by the authorities every inch of the way, dragged on for another seven years, and it was not until 1990 that a court-brokered settlement was agreed by both sides.

        But what had happened to Yossi over that period was little short of a miracle. When the time came for him to start formal education, he was assigned to a special school and provided with his own teacher and a personalized programme. Through the school, the Samuels came to know a special education teacher called Shoshana Weinstock, herself rendered deaf at the age of five following meningitis. Yossi was eight years old, unable to speak and with no knowledge of sign language, when she agreed to give him private tuition. This she combined with teaching the family sign language, so that they could communicate with him.

        One day, when Shoshana brought Yossi home, she was in a state of wild excitement.

        “He got it!” she cried. ”His life has changed forever.”

        Kalman and Malki had no idea what she meant.

        “He understands that I’m signing letters in his palm. His entire world has just opened.”

        Shoshana had been finger spelling on his hand the five symbols that spell the word “shulchan” (table) in Hebrew – something she had been trying for some time, but with no response from Yossi. Suddenly a smile had lit up his face, and he began touching the table top with his other hand. The penny had dropped. Shoshana had opened his door to language.

        From that moment Yossi advanced with astonishing speed. He learned braille – letters consisting of raised dots which the blind read with their fingertips. Soon he was not only reading braille, but writing it on the special six-key braille machine. Then a gifted speech therapist at his school undertook the apparently impossible task of teaching Yossi to speak Hebrew. To a child who could neither see nor hear she had to convey what sound is, and how to vocalise letters and words.

        As Samuels puts it: “She all but crawled with her fingers into Yossi’s mouth to teach him each consonant and vowel….Yossi placed his hands on her face and neck, fingering her lips and the vibrations around her mouth and throat, as he struggled to pronounce the symbols and sounds finger-spelled into his palm.”

        The almost incredible outcome was Yossi’s bar-mitzvah, when he was called up to the Torah and, Samuels tells us, “boomed out the blessings, deliberately and precisely, each word loud and clear.”

        The story of Yossi’s victory over the disabilities inflicted on him is uplifting in itself, but Dreams Never Dreamed has even more to reveal – its inspirational result. Way back, in the time the Samuels were first trying to understand what had happened to their son, Malki had made a pledge to the Almighty: “If You ever decide to help my Yossi, I will dedicate my life to helping so many other mothers of children with disabilities whom I know are crying with me for their children.”

        By way of utter determination on Malki’s part to hold fast to her intention, and through a series of events, some almost miraculous, in 1990 an afternoon programme for eight disabled children was established in a local apartment. Malki called the program Shalva, which translates as “serenity” or “peace of mind”.

        It proved to be only a beginning. The enterprise developed, funding was forthcoming, planning permission was granted, construction was undertaken, and what emerged in Jerusalem was a splendid, purpose-built structure, now one of the world’s largest centers for disability care and inclusion which hosts some 100,000 visitors each year.

        Dreams Never Dreamed is an inspiring and heartwarming story – an object lesson in how much can be achieved by determination and faith.

The Jewish Chronicle rescued

          What can one say about the directors of a Jewish organization – a charity, no less – who choose a few hours before the Seder to inform their 54 staff that the business is folding and they are to be made redundant? This is precisely what happened this year, on Wednesday, April 8. Shocked and distressed as the journalists and support staff of Britain’s two leading Jewish newspapers – the Jewish Chronicle and the Jewish News – must certainly have been, the news hit Anglo-Jewry like a hammer blow. 

          Founded as far back as 1841, the Jewish Chronicle, long known affectionately as the JC, has been a pillar of stability of the UK Jewish community. Generation after generation of English speaking Jews from all over the world have recorded their births, marriages and deaths in its “hatch, match and dispatch” columns. A world without the JC seemed well-nigh unimaginable.

          The Kessler Foundation, a charitable trust, had owned the old-established Jewish Chronicle for 36 years, but financial difficulties had been dogging the publication for years. A shrinking UK Jewish population and the consequent loss of circulation and of advertising revenue led to a loss of £1.5m in 2018. Last year, it was saved from closure only after a financial appeal to private individuals led to an injection of working capital.

          The Jewish News is a johnny-come-lately on the scene, but a very successful one. Established in 1997, Jewish News started as a free newspaper serving the Jewish communities of Greater London. A few years later it launched on-line, and it was soon attracting growing internet traffic. Its success in this did not, unfortunately, translate into profitable income. On February 12, 2020, a merger between the two papers was negotiated, and the Jewish News also came under the control of the Kessler Foundation.

          The merger seemed to make sense. With the JC strong in the print field, and the Jewish News in digital, the aim was to create a modern print, digital and events brand. "The community would be better served,” read the statement issued jointly by the two publications, “by bringing the two operations together to ensure that the high level of independent quality journalism and community news that the UK Jewish community has come to expect from these cherished newspapers has a sustainable future.”

          Alas, it was not to be. Two months of effort left the Foundation unable to secure the solid financial backing necessary to take the merger forward. Having hung on for so long, one might have expected sufficient human feeling in the directors to have allowed their staff to celebrate the Passover, before announcing the liquidation of their company and the loss of their jobs.

          What was to follow proved equally distressing. The Foundation’s plan seems to have been to go bankrupt (“seek a creditor’s voluntary liquidation” is the technical term), and to start up again by submitting an offer to the proposed liquidators which would, in the words of the Financial Times, “have seen them acquire the assets of both publications and run them as a merged publication.”

          If they had thought this tactic would be a walkover, they must have been thoroughly shaken when a consortium of eminent figures drawn from the worlds of banking, politics and the media submitted a last-minute rival bid to acquire the liquidated assets of the Jewish Chronicle.

          The move was immediately condemned by Alan Jacobs, the then chairman of the JC, as “a shameful attempt to hijack the world’s oldest Jewish newspaper.” He attacked the rival bid for not making clear the source of its finance, and because it had not announced its plans regarding the future structure it proposed for the JC.

          The latter discrepancy was soon made good. In a tit-for-tat gesture made just before Shabbat, on Friday April 17, Stephen Pollard, the respected editor of the JC for 15 years, issued a statement resigning his post and explaining why he was supporting the rival bid.

          “I cannot in good faith lend my support to the Kessler Foundation’s bid to take the paper out of liquidation,” wrote Pollard, “while there is such a compelling alternative on the table.” Endorsing from personal experience the integrity of the individuals who comprise the rival consortium. Pollard compares their intention to make the JC’s creditors whole and retain many of the current team, with the fact that the Kessler Foundation has made no such offer.

          Even more to the point, perhaps, is the one intention that the Foundation did make clear. It announced that the post of editor of their proposed combined publication would go, not to Pollard, but to the current editor of the Jewish News, Richard Ferrer. It proposed according Pollard the title of “editor at large”.

          “If the [rival consortium’s] bid for the JC prevails,” said Pollard, “I will consider entering into discussion about the possibility of staying on as editor.”

          And so it has turned out. On April 23 Pollard tweeted the good news. The consortium’s bid had been accepted, the JC’s future was assured, and the editor will remain the editor. All’s well that ends well. 

Published in The Times of Israel, 5 May 2020:
https://blogs.timesofisrael.com/the-jewish-chronicle-rescued/

Yemen's double civil war

        The unhappy war-torn state of Yemen is now split four ways. Not only are rival governments – one backed by a Saudi-UAE (United Arab Emirates) coalition, the other by the Iranian-supported Houthis – fighting for control of the country as a whole, but South Yemen has seceded from the north and declared self-rule.

        To further complicate the situation, the south Yemen separatists are supported by the UAE. Which is odd, because the UAE is also battling the Houthis on behalf of Yemen’s government led by President Abdrabbu Mansur Hadi, which has condemned the separatist move as "catastrophic and dangerous".

        South Yemen’s unilateral declaration of independence does not come out of the blue. For more than 20 years South Yemen (or the People's Republic of Southern Yemen), was an independent Marxist–Leninist one-party state, supported by the Soviet Union. It was the only communist state to be established in the Arab world.

        Relations between the two Yemens deteriorated, and in 1972 they took up arms against each other. A ceasefire, brokered by the Arab League, included the aspiration of unification in due course. It took a further 18 years of military and political in-fighting before that aspiration was realized, but in 1990, with the collapse of the Soviet Union imminent, South Yemen united with the north to form the Unified Republic of Yemen. Ali Abdallah Saleh, who had been president of North Yemen since 1978, was proclaimed president of the newly united state.

        It was an uneasy marriage. After only four years, the south tried to break away again. A short civil war ended with the south being overrun by northern troops.

        Saleh became a victim of the so-called Arab Spring of 2011. He gave up the keys of office to Hadi with a very bad grace, and was quite prepared to ally himself with his erstwhile enemies, the Houthis, in an attempt to manoeuvre his way back to power. The Yemeni military, including its air force, had remained largely loyal to Saleh. As a result, and supported with military hardware from Iran’s Revolutionary Guards, the Houthis overran large tracts of the country, including the capital city, Sana’a.

        The subsequent turn of events seems depressingly familiar in the context of Yemen’s long history. Saudi Arabia, determined to prevent Iran from extending its footprint into the Arabian peninsula, intervened in March 2015 to beat back the Houthis. Saudi’s Crown Prince, Mohammed bin Salman, assembled a coalition of Arab states, obtained the diplomatic backing of the US, UK, Turkey and Pakistan, and launched a series of air strikes against the rebels.

        The unconventional Saleh-Houthi partnership came to an abrupt end on December 2, 2017, when Saleh went on television to declare that he was splitting from the Houthis and was ready to enter into dialogue with the Saudi-led coalition. This volte-face was to end in tragedy. On December 4, Saleh's house in Sana'a was besieged by Houthi fighters. Attempting to escape, he was killed.

        Once ignited, the yearning for self-determination is not easily extinguished. South Yemen’s aspirations for a return to autonomy remained strong. In 2017-18 south Yemen leaders tried again. Hadi had re-located his internationally recognized government to Aden, the focal point of south Yemen. It chanced that Aden’s governor was a strong supporter of the southern separatists. In due course Hadi sacked him, and he promptly joined the rebels and helped set up the Southern Transitional Council (STC), a body designed to administer Yemen’s southern provinces.

        Clashes in January 2018 resulted in the death of 38 people. Another outbreak of violence in August 2019 caused 40 dead. The UAE could not continue to run with the fox while hunting with the hounds – supposedly supporting Hadi in re-establishing the national government of Yemen, while at the same time supported the STC in seeking to establish South Yemen as a separate state.

        What followed was bizarre. In September 2019, following substantial military gains by the southern separatists with UAE support, Saudi Arabia put its foot down. Saudi demanded that the UAE return captured military and civilian facilities to the Hadi administration, warning that otherwise their UAE allies would be "dealt with firmly". Insisting that there is "no alternative to the legitimate government", Saudi called for dialogue.

        The two sides held indirect negotiations under Saudi mediation. On October 14, in a bid to defuse tensions between separatists and the government, the UAE handed over to Saudi forces key positions in Aden, including an airbase and the international airport,

        On October 25, the two sides announced a power-sharing agreement, which was signed in Riyadh on November 5. The details are unclear, but it was reported that, as part of the arrangement, the STC had been accorded a number of government ministries.

        The deal quickly unraveled. The attempt to construct a cabinet with fair southern representation foundered, and efforts to reorganize military forces were abortive. When it was clear that the agreement was dead in the water, on April 26, 2020, the STC declared self-rule for the south. "A self-governing committee,” it announced, “will start its work in line with a list of tasks assigned by the council's presidency,"

        The glue binding the two geographical areas of Yemens has come unstuck. Meanwhile the two administrations – one based in Sana’a, the other in Aden – are nowhere near an understanding. Now the situation in that unhappy country is further complicated by the coronavirus pandemic.

        As yet unaware of the impending southern breakaway, UN special envoy Martin Griffiths said on April 16: “Yemen cannot face two fronts at the same time – a war and a pandemic. And the new battle that Yemen faces in confronting the virus will be all-consuming. We can do no less than stop this war and turn all our attention to this new threat.”

        His peacekeeping task now has not one, but two added complications

Published in The Times of Israel, 30 April 2020:
https://blogs.timesofisrael.com/yemens-double-civil-war/

Published in Eurasia Review, 2 May 2020:

https://www.eurasiareview.com/02052020-yemens-double-civil-war-oped/


Published in the MPC Journal, 3 May 2020:
https://mpc-journal.org/blog/2020/05/03/yemens-double-civil-war/

What Iran really wants

        On April 14, Iranian troops boarded and briefly held a Hong Kong-flagged tanker and its Chinese crew in the Straits of Hormuz. The next day eleven vessels from Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Navy approached six US military ships while they were conducting integration operations with Army helicopters in international waters. The US ships issued several warnings through bridge-to-bridge radio and blasts from the ships' horns and the Iranian vessels left after about an hour.

        These are only the most recent, and comparatively mild, harassments the Iranian regime has been indulging in ever since its founding in 1979, For the past 41 years the world has grappled with problems emanating from the Iranian regime either directly or initiated through its proxy militias like Hezbollah or the Houthis. Bombings, rocket attacks, assassinations and terrorist actions in the Middle East and across the world has been the pattern. For decades Iran also made determined efforts to develop nuclear power, with the aim – never openly acknowledged – of producing nuclear weapons. The present regime is almost certainly still set on achieving that objective.

        In 2015, in an attempt to cripple its nuclear programme, the permanent members of the UN Security Council together with Germany concluded an agreement with Iran. No doubt all those involved, including then-US President Barak Obama, had the best of intentions. With that deal – which incorporated a substantial financial boost to Iran – they believed they had put the regime’s nuclear ambitions on hold for at least 15 years, making the world a safer place. Moreover they believed that they had taken an important step toward bringing Iran back within the comity of nations.

        They were mistaken. “Iran’s hostilities substantially increased after the foolish Iran nuclear deal was signed in 2015,” said President Donald Trump, speaking on January 8, 2020, “and they were given $150 billion, not to mention $1.8 billion in cash. Instead of saying "thank you" to the United States, they chanted "death to America." In fact, they chanted "death to America" the day the agreement was signed. Then, Iran went on a terror spree, funded by the money from the deal, and created hell in Yemen, Syria, Lebanon, Afghanistan, and Iraq. The missiles fired last night at us and our allies were paid for with the funds made available by the last administration.”

        The problem that Iran poses to the civilized world stems entirely from the Islamic revolutionary regime that the nation wished on itself back in 1979. Ayatollah Khomeini, the figurehead for Iran’s new direction, became Supreme Leader in December 1979. His philosophy, which he wrote about nearly 40 years before, required the immediate imposition of strict Sharia law domestically, and a foreign policy aimed at spreading the Shi’ite interpretation of Islam across the globe by whatever means were deemed expedient.

        “We shall export our revolution to the whole world,” he declared. “Until the cry 'There is no god but Allah' resounds over the whole world, there will be struggle.” 

        Pursuit of this fundamental objective of the Islamic Revolution has involved the state in undertaking or sponsoring acts of terror, mayhem and murder directed not only against Western targets, but against non-Shia Muslims as well. 

        Khomeini was unequivocal about the basic purpose of his regime. “We have set as our goal the worldwide spread of the influence of Islam and the suppression of the rule of the world conquerors.”

        This partly explains Iran’s unremitting hostility to Sunni Saudi Arabia. With Islam’s two holiest cities, Mecca and Medina, within its borders, the Saudi kingdom sees itself as the leader of the Muslim world – a claim hotly contested by Iran. The regime sees Saudi Arabia as its great rival for political, as well as religious, hegemony in the region. In 1987 the regime’s founder, its first Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Khomeini, declared that Mecca was in the hands of “a band of heretics”.

        About the basic purpose of the regime, this is what Khomeini declared: “We wish to cause the corrupt roots of Zionism, Capitalism and Communism to wither throughout the world. We wish, as does God almighty, to destroy the systems which are based on these three foundations, and to promote the Islamic order of the Prophet.”

        In short, a clear-eyed look at the facts shows that a genuine accommodation with revolutionary Iran is simply not possible. From their point of view it would be a negation of the fundamental purposes underlying the regime – its very raison d’être. 

Published in The Times of Israel, 23 April 2020:

https://blogs.timesofisrael.com/the-hard-truth-about-iran/

Published in the Eurasia Review, 25 April 2020:
https://www.eurasiareview.com/25042020-the-hard-truth-about-iran-oped/

Corbyn's successor

This article of mine appears in the edition of The Jerusalem Report dated 4 May 2020

          The long-drawn-out process of electing a new leader for Britain’s Labour party reached its climax on April 4, when the result of the membership ballot was announced. Sir Keir Starmer won on the first count, with well over 50% of the vote, and is now Leader of Her Majesty’s Loyal Opposition.

          The contest had been triggered by the resignation of Jeremy Corbyn who, in December 2019, had led his party to its worst general election defeat since 1935. By the time the membership vote for leader was held, the original five contestants had been whittled down to three, and in a curious way they represented – in much of the public’s mind, at least – the three strands that made up the post-Corbyn Labour party.

          Rebecca Long-Bailey was widely seen as the hard-left “Corbyn continuity” candidate. She made no secret of the fact that she was the main author of the Labour manifesto that had led to the party’s disastrous general election result, but stoutly maintained throughout her campaign that she stood by its policies which, she declared, were popular with a large sector of the public, maintaining that the Labour rout had been due to a variety of other factors. If elected leader, she vowed to continue to promote them.

          Defending what might be called the centre ground during the leadership campaign was Lisa Nandy. She could best be described as a principled left-leaning social democrat, who became so disenchanted with Corbyn’s leadership that she resigned from his shadow Cabinet in 2016, and supported a rival in the subsequent leadership contest. Later she became Chair of the Labour Friends of Palestine and the Middle East, a parliamentary organization supporting Palestinian rights and lobbying for the UK to recognize a State of Palestine. In her bid for the votes of the party membership, which is strongly pro-Corbyn, Nandy – like her two rivals – had to stand by most of the policies contained in the Labour manifesto. Nandy gave the impression that she would actually seek to implement many of them.

          Sir Keir Starmer, who has emerged as the winner of the contest, while never disowning the batch of policies which had so failed to impress the British electorate, never denied that he would seek to lead Labour in a new direction. He insisted throughout that if elected he would seek to leave his own stamp on the party. While Starmer never uttered a word against the hard-left clique known as Momentum – the group that had projected Corbyn into the leadership and then seized the reins of power within the party – there was a widespread belief that he would seek to loosen their grip, and eventually replace them.

          The one matter on which all three candidates agreed was the urgent need to tighten the party’s handling of antisemitism within its ranks. Nandy waxed truly eloquent during the campaign on her solidarity with Britain’s Jewish community, and the need to cleanse Labour’s Augean stable of its antisemitism. Her most powerful speech, perhaps, was made to the Jewish Labour Movement, which went on to endorse her candidacy. She had already unveiled her own strategy for dealing with the problem – a document titled 'Tackling Antisemitism: An action plan for our party'. The Equality and Human Rights Commission is currently conducting a prolonged investigation into antisemitism within the Labour party, and Nandy said that as leader she would accept any recommendations it made. She would also set up a new, independent process for handling antisemitism complaints. In a direct swipe at Corbyn and those around him, Nandy said there had been a "failure or refusal to grapple with this at the highest levels in the party over the last four years.”

          Sir Keir Starmer’s affiliations with Britain’s Jewish community are close. He married into a Jewish family and has a son and a daughter who may therefore be halachically Jewish. Whenever possible he participates in Friday-night dinners at which his Jewish father-in-law recites the blessings. Family relationships are close. He participates in barmitzvahs, weddings and funerals, and attends synagogue for family occasions.

          When asked point-blank at one hustings if he was a Zionist, Starmer demurred, but said: “I believe in the state of Israel, and as a secure homeland for its people. If the definition of Zionist is someone who believes in the state of Israel, in that sense I’m a Zionist.” He has a number of extended family members living in Tel Aviv.

          Starmer has vowed to restore what he describes as Labour’s “important relationship” with the UK’s Chief Rabbi, Ephraim Mirvis. Just ahead of the general election ballot last December, Mirvis issued an unprecedented statement on behalf of Britain’s Jews, asserting that “a new poison” had taken hold in Labour, “sanctioned from the very top”, and that Jeremy Corbyn was “unfit for public office”. He virtually urged the Jewish community not to vote Labour.

          “I certainly would not want that to happen ever again,” said Starmer.

          Starmer believes there is still a massive problem with antisemites within Labour. “They have to be dealt with robustly and swiftly,” he has said, “and there’s no reason they can’t be.” He advocates removing anyone swiftly from the Labour Party ”for being clearly antisemitic.” 

          He has said that one giant test of his ability to lead Labour will be how he goes about rebuilding trust with Britain’s Jewish community. He promised to be “on the front foot” over the issue from the very start.

          “I will be wanting those reports on my desk regularly,” he said. “And by that I don’t mean every six months, I mean every week. My experience leading the Crown Prosecution Service and as Director of Public Prosecutions is if you want to demonstrate your values and cultural change within the organization, you have to model it. And I think the leader of the Labour party has a personal duty to rebuild that faith, that trust with the Jewish community.”

          As an earnest of the importance he places on the issue, he made a point of mentioning it in the first speech he gave after his election as leader.

          “Antisemitism has been a stain on our party,” he said. “I have seen the grief that it's brought to so many Jewish communities. On behalf of the Labour Party, I am sorry. And I will tear out this poison by its roots, and judge success by the return of Jewish members and those who felt that they could no longer support us.”

          Keir Starmer, who is 58, was born in London and was named after the first Labour member of parliament, Keir Hardie. At university he graduated with a first class law degree, and then undertook postgraduate studies at Oxford, graduating in 1986.

          The following year he became a barrister (the US equivalent is attorney or counsel), and worked mainly on human rights issues. In 2002 he was appointed Queen's Counsel (QC), and in 2007 was named "QC of the Year". In July 2008 he was appointed Head of the Crown Prosecution Service and Director of Public Prosecutions, and was awarded a knighthood in 2014 for "services to law and criminal justice".

          Elected to the House of Commons in 2015, Starmer was immediately brought into the shadow Cabinet by Corbyn as shadow Immigration Minister. Like Lisa Nandy, he resigned the following year in protest at Corbyn's leadership, but unlike Nandy, once Corbyn had won his second leadership contest, Starmer agreed to serve under him, and accepted appointment as shadow Brexit Secretary.

          During the course of the campaign Long-Bailey and Nandy indicated that, if asked, they would be happy to serve under the leadership of any of the other candidates. Starmer was more equivocal, though in the event both Long-Bailey and Nandy were offered places in his Shadow Cabinet. One startling possibility did, however, emerge. On 20 February Jeremy Corbyn was reported as saying that he would be happy to serve in any future shadow Cabinet if the new Labour leader asked him to do so.

          The one contender to take up the offer was, unsurprisingly, Rebecca Long-Bailey, who suggested that she would offer Corbyn a post if she became leader. One “Corbynista” contender for deputy leader had already said he would like Corbyn to be shadow foreign secretary. The very idea of Jeremy Corbyn remaining in the shadow cabinet would have been hugely controversial, especially within the Jewish community. It would have incensed those who believed Corbyn was one of the main reasons for the party's shattering defeat. The likelihood of Starmer taking up Corbyn’s offer at any time seems remote in the extreme.

          Now Keir Starmer sets out on the difficult uphill path of reshaping Labour into a political party capable of winning back the trust of the British electorate. Given Boris Johnson’s overwhelming victory at the last general election, and the public confidence he has gained for the way he and his government have been handling the coronavirus emergency, it seems unlikely that Labour will succeed before the next general election, which is less than five years away. Keir Starmer is probably in for a long haul.

Published in the Jerusalem Post on-line, 23 April 2020:
https://www.jpost.com/jerusalem-report/sir-keir-starmer-vows-to-tear-out-antisemitism-that-stained-Labour-Party-625670

Published in The Times of Israel, 28 April 2020:
https://blogs.timesofisrael.com/corbyns-successor/

A glimmer of hope for Iraq

                                                   

                                              
             It was back in September 2019 that anti-government protests began sweeping across Iraq. Eventually many of the nation’s cities were almost in lockdown. The demonstrations were an expression of genuine popular dissatisfaction with the corruption, inefficiency and failure of Iraq’s politicians and ruling class. Popular sentiment was well aware of the stranglehold that Iran had gained over Iraq’s political class. For months, in unprecedented displays of anti-Iran sentiment, demonstrators in the capital had been chanting “Out, out, Iran! Baghdad will stay free!” 

          The vast majority of demonstrators were young, and their lot was bleak. Despite Iraq’s petroleum wealth, young Iraqis have a one-in-five chance of living below the poverty line. One in four young people is unemployed.

          The rallies quickly turned violent as the government – largely by way of Iran-backed groups under the overall command of Qasem Soleimani – responded with attempted assassinations, kidnappings of prominent activists and a ruthless crackdown on protesters. The security forces, or Iran-backed militias in the Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF), killed over 500 protesters, most of them unarmed civilians. Well over 27,000 were wounded.

          A late-comer to Iraq’s chaotic scene was the influential Shia cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, head of Sairoon, the largest coalition bloc in parliament. He seized the opportunity provided by the public reaction to the US assassination of Soleimani on Iraqi soil on 3 January 2020.

          On 5 January, the Iraqi parliament backed a resolution that all foreign troops – including 5,200 US soldiers – leave the country. Al-Sadr called on the nation to participate in a million-man march. People responded, but certainly not to the extent that he had urged.

          Al-Sadr’s efforts to rouse the nation received something of a setback on January 22 when Iraqi President Barham Saleh met US President Donald Trump on the sidelines of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. Much to the dismay of the pro-Sadr protesters, the two leaders agreed on the need to keep US forces in Iraq.

          The chaos and the demonstrations continued, and finally prime minister Adil Abdul Mahdi resigned.

          Months of stalemate ensued. Two nominated prime ministers failed, one after another, to form a government. The leadership vacuum was only exacerbating the country’s severe economic problems and the crisis of the coronavirus epidemic as it hit Iraq.

          Finally on 9 April President Saleh tasked Iraq’s head of Intelligence, Mustafa al-Kadhimi, with becoming head of the government and leading the country forward.

          Unusually, and surprisingly, Kadhimi's appointment was welcomed across the political spectrum, from the UN to Iran and even by the Kurdish political parties. His name had been floated as possible prime minister back in December, but at that time pro-Iranian groups opposed him. Now influential Shia cleric al-Sadr was welcoming, portraying him as a positive and potentially unifying choice. Generally hailed as he has been, a certain amount of speculation persists as to whether Kadhimi is close to Iran, more of an Iraqi nationalist, or something else, not quite specified. Perhaps he is content to leave his exact stance somewhat equivocal. In any event, he now has 30 days to submit his cabinet line-up to the 329-member parliament for a vote of confidence. 

          Mustafa al-Kadhimi was born in 1967 in Kadhimiya in northern Baghdad. He began studying law in Baghdad, but in 1985 fled the country and settled in Britain. Over the next twenty years or so he built a career as a journalist. He moved over to the US for a spell, working at the Iraq Memory Foundation in Washington DC , and then came back to the UK.

          Finally Kadhimi returned to Iraq, where he completed a law degree in 2012. He then worked as a journalist and editor for the website Al Monitor, before being appointed in 2016 by then prime minister Haider al-Abadi as head of the National Intelligence Service (NIS). His tenure was marked by his success in turning around an institution mired in corruption when he took it over.

          Kadhimi’s greatest strength is, perhaps, that he is not, and never has been, a politician – the class reviled in the public mind for graft, venality and inefficiency, and for being largely puppets of Iran. As a result he has garnered more support from protesters than his predecessors, actual and designated, ever could.

          Of course his non-partisan situation has both pluses and minuses. He comes with fewer strings attached and threatens no group, but were he to become prime minister he would lack a loyal power base. That all Shi’ite political parties have agreed on a prime minister-designate is hopeful. It is the first time they have come to a consensus on a candidate who is non-Islamist and believes in freedom and in rooting out corruption.

          Kadhimi certainly faces formidable challenges. The internal civil and political problems that had led to the mass protests of the past six months or more remain unresolved. The collapse of world oil prices is exacerbating the already massive economic problems faced by the country, and there is the coronavirus crisis to manage. Iraq is on the upward curve of new cases and deaths, and there is a popular demand for both to be tackled effectively. The question of the hour is whether prime minister-designate Kadhimi will be able to get a government approved in the next 30 days.

Published by The Times of Israel, 17 April 2020:
https://blogs.timesofisrael.com/a-glimmer-of-hope-for-iraq/

Published in the Eurasia Review, 21 April 2020:
https://www.eurasiareview.com/21042020-a-glimmer-of-hope-for-iraq-oped/

A future for the Kurds in post-war Syria?

        The Kurdish people – some 35 million strong – are the largest stateless nation in the world. Historically they inhabited a distinct geographical area flanked by mountain ranges, once referred to as Kurdistan. Now it falls within the sovereign space of four separate states: Turkey, Iran, Iraq and Syria. It is there that most Kurds live, the four communities separated from one another, but there is also a Kurdish diaspora spread across Europe, the Trans-Caucasus and central Asia. 

        Around 12 million Kurds live within Turkey’s borders. Another 6 million are trapped inside Iran’s extremist Shi’ite regime. Iraq’s 6 million Kurds, up in the north of the country, have developed the near autonomous state of Kurdistan. The 2 million Kurds in Syria, forming the country’s largest minority, have also established a self-governing area, but a precarious one. Syria’s Kurdish region, known as Rojava, occupies some 20 percent of pre-civil war Syria. It is constantly threatened, or under actual attack, by the Turks; its leaders can no longer rely on the support of their erstwhile US allies; and its overwhelmingly Sunni Muslim people face a hostile Shia Iran seeking to incorporate Syria into its sphere of influence.

        In Syria the civil war, starting in 2011, provided the Kurds – long the victims of discrimination – with an unforeseen opportunity. The internal situation quickly deteriorated, government forces were overwhelmed, and the Kurdish element of the opposition began seizing control of territory in the north of the country. In mid-2012 Syrian government troops withdrew from three mainly Kurdish areas.

        As Syria descended into total chaos, the militant Islamic State (ISIS) overran and captured large areas of the country. Iran backed Syrian president Bashar al-Assad in opposing them. The highly effective Kurdish Peshmerga forces, with the logistical support of a Western coalition led by the US, opposed both ISIS and Assad. As the Kurds slowly pushed ISIS back, Rojava expanded. The Kurdish region reached its apogee in October 2016, by which time the Kurds had conquered a huge area running almost the complete length of the Syrian-Turkish border. What they had failed to do was to link their consolidated area in the north-east with the whole of Afrin province in the north-west, of which they held only part.

        The strengthening Kurdish presence alarmed Turkey’s president Recep Tayyip Erdogan. He consistently maintained that the Kurdish military forces were dominated by the PKK, his political opponents at home who supported Kurdish autonomy, and had occasionally resorted to violence. Erdogan determined to weaken the Kurdish presence along his southern border.

        Accordingly he has launched three military incursions into northern Syria since 2016, and has succeeded in progressively reducing Kurdish control of the region. In 2019 he persuaded President Trump to stand aside as he created what he termed a buffer zone out of part of Rojava, and he has threatened to flood the area with some of the 4 million Syrians who have fled the civil war and sought refuge in Turkey.

        Nevertheless Erdogan’s position is difficult. He has no legal right to be occupying Syrian soil, and the Kurds are determined to defend their hard-won autonomy. Until recently they have depended on their alliance with the US, but Trump’s deal with Erdogan left them feeling betrayed.

        “In light of the invasion by Turkey,” said Mazloum Abdi, commander-in-chief of the Kurds’ Syrian Democratic Forces recently, “and the existential threat its attack poses for our people, we may have to reconsider our alliances.”

        The Kurdish leaders understand that Trump is anxious to withdraw US troops from Syria as soon as possible, but certainly do not want him to do so at the expense of their own people. Knowing that Turkey has subjected its Kurdish minority in the past to treatment amounting to ethnic cleansing, they are determined to resist any further incursion by Erdogan into Kurdish-occupied Syria.

        “We do not trust the Russians and the Syrian regime,” says Abdi, but the Kurds have responded to olive branches held out to their negotiators about a possible post-war accommodation.

       On July 27, 2018, in response to an invitation from the Syrian government, a Kurdish delegation arrived in Damascus to hold direct talks – their first official visit to the Syrian government. The day before the delegation travelled to the Syrian capital, it announced that Kurdish forces were ready to join any military operation by government forces aimed at retaking the Kurdish area of Afrin.

        The Kurdish administration in Rojava – known since 2012 as the Democratic Federation of Northern Syria (DFNS) – are not seeking independence, but a degree of autonomy. Both they and Assad understand that, if it is granted, a huge chunk of what was originally sovereign Syria would be brought within some form of government control. The Kurds hope it would be akin to the arrangement in Iraq where an autonomous Kurdistan operates in alliance with the government. From Assad’s point of view, such a deal would mean that his regime, and he himself as its President, would acquire substantial additional political support − vital if ever events force a presidential election on him as part of a peace deal. In short, both parties stand to gain from an accord.

        This is why the Kurdish military leader, Abdi, has said: “The Russians and the Syrian regime have made proposals that could save the lives of millions of people who live under our protection.,,We know that we would have to make painful compromises with Moscow and Bashar al-Assad if we go down the road of working with them. But if we have to choose between compromises and the genocide of our people, we will surely choose life for our people.”

Published in The Times of Israel, 10 April 2020:
https://blogs.timesofisrael.com/a-future-for-the-kurds-in-post-war-syria/

Published in the Eurasia Review, 11 April 2020:   
https://www.eurasiareview.com/11042020-a-future-for-the-kurds-in-post-war-syria-oped/

Published in the MPC Journal, 14 April 2020:
https://mpc-journal.org/blog/2020/04/14/a-future-for-the-kurds-in-post-war-syria/