Afghanistan - whose responsibility?

This letter appeared in the Jerusalem Post on 18 August.

          Some media commentators are trying to lay the blame for the Afghanistan debacle on Donald Trump and Joe Biden equally, claiming Biden mistakenly pursued a flawed Trump policy. It is certainly true that from the moment Trump took office in 2017, he pledged to put an end to the conflict and bring the American forces back home. It took two years of secret back-channel negotiations before US-Taliban peace talks began on February 25, 2019. Abdul Ghani Barada, the co-founder of the Taliban, was at the table.

          They appeared successful. Agreement was quickly reached on a draft peace deal involving the withdrawal of US and international troops from Afghanistan, matched by an undertaking by the Taliban to prohibit other jihadist groups operating within the country. This extraordinary arrangement between the world’s leading power and a hardline extremist Islamist movement was headed: “Agreement for Bringing Peace to Afghanistan between the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan which is not recognized by the United States as a state and is known as the Taliban, and the United States of America.”

          This Doha deal (it was concluded in Qatar) was greeted with optimism by Trump. “I really believe the Taliban wants to do something to show we’re not all wasting time,” he said.

          Further negotiations followed, and with less than a week remaining of the Trump presidency, the US military met its goal of reducing the number of soldiers in Afghanistan to about 2,500. The deal that Trump reached with the Taliban included, as the quid pro quo for the US final withdrawal, an agreement by the Taliban to enter serious peace negotiations with the Afghan government.

          If Biden had indeed followed through, US troops would have left Afghanistan by the end of May, the Afghan government would still be in power, and the Taliban would either have negotiated some form of joint stable administration, or be in the process of doing so.

          I am afraid that responsibility for the current situation rests fairly and squarely on the Biden administration.

Iraq in turmoil

 This article appears in the Jerusalem Post of 17 August 2021

         Iraq’s next parliamentary elections are scheduled for October 10, 2021.  The Iraqi people will vote into office the 328 members of the Council of Representatives who, in turn, will elect Iraq’s president and prime minister.  The present PM, Mustafa al-Kadhimi, was confirmed in post in May 2020, aware that elections would be called reasonably soon.  He has struggled hard to keep control of a turbulent situation, no doubt hoping that in the forthcoming elections he would be confirmed in office. So far, balanced on the high wire of Iraqi politics, he has survived..

On July 28 Kadhimi met US President Joe Biden in the White House.  They agreed that direct US military involvement in Iraq will end on or before December 31.  Taken together with Biden’s withdrawal of American forces in Afghanistan, this means the two Middle East invasions that then-President George W Bush initiated will have been wound up.

   “Our role in Iraq,” Biden told reporters, “will be… to train, to assist, to help and to deal with ISIS as it arises, but we’re not going to be, by the end of the year, in a combat mission.”

Some cynical observers maintain that, since US troops will be remaining in Iraq, this announcement will actually change little and is merely a smoke screen allowing Kadhimi to claim that he has met the demands of his extremists and removed US combat forces from the scene.  The Arab Weekly claims that the deal actually has Iran’s blessing, since apparently Iraq’s current anarchic situation, presided over by Kadhimi, suits its book.  Back in 2020 the Iranian leadership approved Kadhimi’s nomination as prime minister, and this deal could be enough to placate Iraq’s hardliners until the October elections, which could bring him back to power.  The Biden-Kadhimi announcement is probably seen by the Iranian leadership as an opportunity to entrench itself still further within the Iraqi state.

In retrospect it becomes apparent that the overthrow of Saddam Hussein, no friend of Iran, removed the most effective obstacle to Iranian expansion in the region.  Since then pro-Iranian politicians have become a powerful presence in the Iraqi parliament, and Iran has successfully inserted its Shia militias deep into the Iraqi armed forces by way of the Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF). 

The PMF is an umbrella organization composed of a variety of Iraqi paramilitary factions, originally formed to fight ISIS.  A 2016 law, followed by a decree in 2018, incorporated the body – consisting of some 40 militias, the most powerful backed by Iran – into the Iraqi armed forces. The purpose was to provide a powerful and united armed opposition to ISIS in its efforts to regain control of parts of Iraq.

            The threat remains.  In its quarterly report to Congress published on August 3, the US Defense Department said: “ISIS continued operating as a low level and well entrenched insurgency in rural areas of Iraq and Syria.”  In a June briefing, the State Department said: “ISIS remains a determined enemy.  There is still much work to do in Iraq and Syria, where ISIS continues to conduct attacks and sow fear among local populations.”  This applies also to Iraqi Kurdistan, the semi-autonomous region under Kurdish control in the north of Iraq.

Merged into the Iraqi military machine, the PMF is technically part of the state defence forces, but its Iranian-backed militias often act outside the chain of command and in conformity with Iranian priorities. Their official status has given these paramilitary factions access to weaponry and public funds. In 2021 the government’s budget allocation for the PMF was $2.5 billion, an increase of 46% compared to 2019. 

These militias were severely weakened in January 2020 when Qassem Soleimani, Iran’s most powerful general, and the PMF’s deputy commander, Abu Mahdi al-Mohandis, were both killed by a US drone strike.  The militias have retrenched since then, and now present the same armed threat to the US military presence and to the integrity of the Iraqi state as they did before.  The Biden administration has twice ordered strikes on Iran-backed militias in retaliation for attacks on American forces.

Analysts note that these attacks have been increasing recently both in numbers and in scope.  They have extended beyond US military and security targets to encompass Iraqi activists, protest leaders and security officials. The Iraqi Human Rights Commission has documented 81 assassination attempts since October 2019, 34 of which were successful; the UN has published reports detailing these political actions.  This renewed activity appears to be an Iranian-inspired effort aimed at subverting the state and its governance.  Media reports speak of the militias overtly displaying their strength in the streets, including newly-formed vigilante groups.  Public confidence in the ability of the government to uphold the rule of law has been shaken.

            The equivocal position of the PMF within the structure of the state is a major cause of Kadhimi’s failure to get a firm grip on the chaotic situation.  The sad truth is that, given the strength of pro-Iranian voices within Iraq’s parliament and in the establishment generally, the PMF has become too powerful for Prime Minister Kadhimi to control fully. He must maintain his precarious balancing act between securing the militias’ cooperation and keeping them in check.  He also needs to preserve broad support in parliament if he is to secure a second term.  So he has to tread very carefully for the time being.  The big question is what Kadhimi’s real priorities are, and what path he is likely to take if he does indeed win a second term as prime minister of today’s chaotic Iraq.

Published in the Jerusalem Post and the Jerusalem Post on-line, 17 August 2021

https://www.jpost.com/opinion/iraq-is-in-turmoil-opinion-676889

Published in the Eurasia Review

https://www.eurasiareview.com/13082021-iraq-in-turmoil-oped-2/

Published in the MPC Journal:
https://mpc-journal.org/iraq-in-turmoil-2/

Published in the Jewish Business News:
https://jewishbusinessnews.com/2021/08/13/iraq-in-turmoil/

Lebanon in Hezbollah's clutches

        This article appears in the Jerusalem Post, 10 August 2021

Lebanon has been without a government since the massive explosion of August 4, 2020 blew Port Beirut apart and, with it, Lebanon’s administrative machine.   In the aftermath of the blast President Michel Aoun promised a swift and transparent investigation.  A year later no one has been held responsible, while the inquiry itself has been subject to continuous obstruction, evasion, and delay.

Judge Fadi Sawan was appointed to conduct the investigation.  On December 10 he formally charged caretaker prime minister, Hassan Diab, and three former ministers, with negligence in connection with the blast. But Diab, who had been supported by the Hezbollah parliamentary bloc in his bid to become the designated prime minister, refused to appear for questioning.  So did two of the other former ministers.  They were supported by caretaker interior minister, Mohammed Fahmi, described by the Abu Dhabi-based The National as “staunchly pro-Hezbollah”. Fahmi declared publicly that even if the judiciary issued arrest warrants, he would not ask the security forces to detain them.

  President Aoun, a strong supporter of Hezbollah – which reciprocates the favour – made no comment at the time, but in February Judge Fadi Sawan was removed from the inquiry.

He was replaced by Judge Tarek Bitar, who is known to have no strong political affiliations.  On July 9, 2021 Judge Bitar applied to question Major General Abbas Ibrahim, head of the powerful General Security agency.  Fahmi refused the request.  

It seems clear that the caretaker government is deliberately thwarting the investigation, and the suspicion must arise that prominent figures were involved in the circumstances leading to the explosion and are being shielded.  Indeed, in a report issued on August 3, Human Rights Watch declares: “The very design of the port’s management structure was developed to share power between political elites. It maximized opacity, and allowed corruption and mismanagement to flourish.”

Questions waiting to be answered include who authorized the detention of the Moldovan-flagged cargo ship, the Rhosus, in November 2013; under whose authority was its load of 2,754 tonnes of ammonium nitrate – which no party has subsequently claimed – off-loaded and stored in unsafe conditions on October 23 and 24; and what has happened to some 2,200 tonnes of that shipment, since – according to a report by the FBI – the blast, massive as it was, involved only around 550 tonnes. 

Amnesty International criticized Lebanon’s judicial process from the start.  “Every step, measure or statement taken thus far,” it declared in September 2020, “particularly by the highest-ranking officials in the country, have made it clear that the authorities have no intention whatsoever of fulfilling their responsibilities of conducting an effective, transparent and impartial investigation…  An international fact-finding mechanism is the only way to guarantee the rights of victims to truth, justice and remedy.” 

Human Rights Watch concurred.  Taking into account the undue influence exercised by Hezbollah, the “state within a state”, as well as the widespread graft and venality within ruling circles, HRW believes that Lebanon‘s domestic investigation is incapable of credibly delivering justice, and has called for an international, independent probe. It believes that the blast — which killed more than 200 people, wounded thousands and inflicted billions of dollars in damage — was the starkest example yet of the chronic corruption and mismanagement that have left the Lebanese with a dysfunctional state and a collapsing economy. 

In October 2020 Saad Hariri was named by the Lebanese parliament as prime minister designate, and charged with forming a new government.

          For nine long months he was at loggerheads with President Aoun, who wanted to pack any new government with Hezbollah supporting ministers. Hariri flatly refused to give way. He wanted to assemble a technocrat cabinet dedicated to enacting the reforms long demanded by the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund and donor countries such as the US and France. Finally, on July 15, Hariri resigned.

          Shortly afterwards a compromise candidate as prime minister designate emerged in the shape of one of the richest men in Lebanon, Najib Mikati.

          Mikati, who has served twice before as prime minister, found himself endorsed by most of Lebanon's political parties, including Hezbollah and the other major Shi’ite party, Amal, and also by former Sunni prime ministers, including Hariri.  Nevertheless, critics have called Mikati “a Hezbollah puppet,” while objecting to once again having a prime minister drawn from what they term the “corrupt political elite.”  International media have cited corruption charges brought against Mikati by a judge in 2019, in a case involving accusations of illicit gains related to subsidized housing loans — charges that he terms politically motivated.  The case has not yet come to trial.                                                                                                                                                                       

          On July 28 Mikati announced that he had submitted to the president his list of candidates for government posts. “President Aoun approved most of them,” he announced, “and he made some remarks which are acceptable.  God willing ... we will be able to form a government soon."  In light of the Hariri-Aoun standoff, few guesses are needed as to the general shape of the future Mikati Cabinet.

Doubts must persist as to whether it will have the ability, let alone the will, to undertake the root and branch reforms essential to restoring Lebanon‘s economic health. The World Bank pulls no punches in its criticism of Lebanon’s political elite in which Hezbollah features so strongly.  It accuses them of deliberately failing to tackle the country’s many problems, which include the economic and financial crisis, the Covid pandemic and the Beirut Port explosion.  In a recent report it identifies the inaction as due to a continuing political consensus that defends “a bankrupt economic system, which benefited a few for so long”.

Given the likely composition of the new administration, there seems no chance of Lebanon freeing itself any time soon from the dominance that Hezbollah has managed to acquire in the nation’s political life, and the consequent malign influence on Lebanese affairs that Iran is able to exercise through its puppet. For example, Hezbollah directly claimed responsibility for a barrage of rockets fired on August 6 toward Israel – an action coinciding with Iranian aggression off the Gulf of Hormuz and the accession of Iran’s new hardline president, Ebrahim Raisi. It is no wonder that some commentators, like the UK’s policy institute Chatham House, are coming to regard Lebanon as a state controlled by Hezbollah.

Published in the Jerusalem Post and the Jerusalem Post on-line, 10 August 2021
https://www.jpost.com/opinion/lebanon-in-hezbollahs-clutches-opinion-676270

Published in the Eurasia Review:
https://www.eurasiareview.com/06082021-lebanon-remains-in-hezbollahs-clutches-oped/

Published in the MPC Journal:
https://mpc-journal.org/lebanon-remains-in-hezbollahs-clutches/

Published in the Jewish Business News:

https://jewishbusinessnews.com/2021/08/06/lebanon-remains-in-hezbollahs-clutches/

 

 

 

 

"Drone Wars" by Seth J Frantzman

 I review Seth Frantzman's new book in the Jerusalem Post Magazine, 6 August 2021

          Drones are unmanned aerial vehicles, often referred to simply as UAVs. In the last twenty years they have become an essential element within the military capabilities of nations and other organizations engaged in conflict. In “Drone Wars” Seth Frantzman, senior Middle East correspondent and Middle East affairs analyst at the Jerusalem Post, has delved deep into the origins, the development and the current deployment of drones. In the course of a fascinating account he also offers pointers and predictions about their possible future.

 “Everyone who has worked with drones sees them as revolutionary,” he writes, and the story he tells, and the pioneers, politicians and military leaders he has spoken to, substantiate this. 

The drone saga started in the 1970s with Remote Pilotless Vehicles, designed by the US to evade detection by radar in their surveillance operations.  Frantzman leads us through their subsequent history, as their role expanded from mere intelligence-gathering to weapons capable of striking their targets with pinpoint accuracy.  He charts the further rapid expansion of drone capability to the present stage, where drone units consisting of fleets of sophisticated UAVs equipped with AI (artificial intelligence) have become an integral component of the fighting capabilities of a large and growing number of nations, and of combative organizations like ISIS, al-Qaeda and Hezbollah.

Israel has been involved in drone development from the very beginning.  Back in 1974, when the country was still recovering from the trauma of the Yom Kippur war, a young Israeli engineer, Yair Dubester, was employed by IAI – Israel Aerospace Industries – where the first UAV was being built.  Established in 1953 as a government institute for aviation, IAI has grown over the years to become a world leader in developing, producing and delivering state-of-the-art technologies and systems. 

Dubester worked on an early UAV called the Scout, designed to fly slowly and bring back video.  Although not highly regarded by the military at first, the system proved to be a trail-blazer.  In 1982 northern Israel came under rocket bombardment.  The onslaught from within Lebanon was coordinated between the PLO (Palestine Liberation Organisation), Hezbollah, elements of the Lebanese military, and Syrian armed forces which were ensconced within Lebanon.

When Israel launched its Peace for Galilee operation to stop the rocket attacks, the video sent back by UAVs of the exact location of Syrian surface-to-air missiles and their radar deployments proved to be a moment of truth for Israel’s military establishment.  The real-time surveillance provided by the drones enabled the Israeli air force to strike a devastating blow against the enemy’s air defense system.

Side by side with the drone story, Frantzman catalogues the development of anti-drone capabilities such as Iron Dome, David’s Sling and Arrow-3, among others – systems devised under pressure in order to counter continuous rocket attacks from Gaza and the threat of further onslaughts from Lebanon.  Although not originally designed to be used against drones, tests towards the end of 2020 showed them to be very effective for that purpose and for taking out cruise missiles.

From the state of drone evolution by 2021, Frantzman can see the direction future development is headed, and maintains that “somewhere in a hangar” super-secret experimental and classified drones are already in existence, and may be operational.  In addition he asserts that US and Israeli defense companies are racing to develop the lasers, microwave weapons, and technology necessary for confronting the next drone threat, which he sees emanating from some, not all, of those entities intent on developing their drone capacities – China, Iran. Russia, Turkey, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, among others, together with the jihadist organizations like ISIS that are intent on waging their Islamist war against the civilized world.

“Drone Wars” is more than an absorbing chronicle of a key development in modern warfare. During the course of his journalistic career Franztman has had a number of encounters with drones, and his account is enriched with personal experience.

            For example, in 2017 he found himself in Mosul in northern Iraq.  He had entered the city embedded in the US forces intent on expelling ISIS, which was hell-bent on retaining control of the city it had captured in 2014, and was fighting a rearguard action street by street.  Beginning as the hunter, Frantzman quickly found himself the hunted.

            Evading the booby-traps left by the retreating fighters was bad enough, “but,” he writes, “it’s the buzzing of an ISIS drone that I still can hear, years later.”  Since 2017, he tells us, “ISIS had increasingly been using drones to attack the Iraqi army…there was no way to fight the drone threat…it was always there.”

            “Drone Wars”, he tells us, is based on years of working in the field under the threat of ISIS drones.  It is also the result of months of interviews with, as he puts it, “the most knowledgeable individuals across the spectrum, from critics of armed drones to prophets of how they will change the world as we know it.” 

            Frantzman is a conscientious journalist who commits nothing unsubstantiated to paper.  The source for every fact he provides and every opinion he quotes is provided in the rear of the book.  A 67-page section titled “Endnotes” contains no less than 646 footnotes.  The conscientious reader is given every opportunity to check any questionable fact or controversial statement.

            “Drone Wars” is an absorbing account of cutting-edge military technology.  What drones are already capable of doing is as nothing compared to what they might yet bring to the art of war.  Some futurologists, says Frantzman, believe that war itself will become unmanned and turn into a battle between artificial intelligences;  others hold that there must always be human control of the machine. These, together with other possible futures for drones and drone warfare, open up fascinating possibilities and stretch the mind.

            “Drone Wars” is an eminently readable survey of the past, present and future of what has become an integral element of modern life. 

Published in the Jerusalem Post and the Jerusalem Post on-line, 6 August 2021
https://www.jpost.com/middle-east/war-by-remote-control-drone-wars-book-review-675927

Iran's water crisis threatens the regime

 

          Despite more than forty years of living under a rigid and repressive theocratic regime, Iranians are not people to take government failure or flagrant abuse of power lying down.  Time and again they have demonstrated a willingness to stand up and be counted, defying the determined efforts of the state’s security forces to suppress any show of dissent.

At the moment Iran is suffering the effects of a drought described as the worst in 50 years.  According to the Iranian Department of Water and Sewerage, at least 110 Iranian cities have been struggling with cuts in water supplies during the summer of 2021.  The crisis has devastated agriculture and livestock farming, and led to electricity blackouts.  The root cause of the water and power failures, according to protesters, is long-standing government inefficiency and corruption rather than the drought.

They point to the worst-affected area – the oil-rich province of Khuzestan in the south-west of the country. Here the drought has only exacerbated problems faced by Khuzestan for decades. The province is home to a large Arab minority who have repeatedly complained of being left behind by the Iranian regime.  Khuzestan residents maintain on social media that the province has never truly had drinkable tap water, and that they have had to buy their water or take it from the rivers, many of which have now dried up.  Lawyers have said that Khuzestan’s problem stems from the illegal theft of water from river forks in the region.  Power outages have exacerbated the crisis, since many people use electricity-powered pumps to get water inside their homes.

Khuzestan is where most of the public outbursts of anger have occurred, but protests at the government’s apparent inability to deal with the situation have broken out across the nation including the capital, Tehran.  The heavy-handed action of the security forces has often converted these demonstrations into riots resulting in at least eight deaths, according to Amnesty International..

“Video footage verified by Amnesty,” the organization reports, “… and consistent accounts from the ground, indicate security forces used deadly automatic weapons, shotguns with inherently indiscriminate ammunition, and tear gas to disperse protesters.”

Despite state-imposed internet restrictions, numerous videos have come out of Khuzestan in which gunshots can be heard and tear gas seen in use. In some videos protesters are shouting at baton-wielding security forces clad in black, riding motorcycles. 

          There are many occasions in the recent past when public protest in Iran has moved past the immediate cause of complaint into a general attack on the government.  In 2009 the patently manipulated re-election of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as Iranian president gave rise to an upsurge of popular anger.  Iranians took to the streets in their millions in what came to be known as the "Green Movement" condemning the government for election fraud, and demanding the removal of Ahmadinejad and the holding of new elections.

          Iran was in turmoil again in January 2018.  At first the nationwide rallies centered on the ever-rising food and commodity prices. This soon morphed into opposition to the regime in general and the Supreme Leader in particular.  Especial dissent was voiced against the vast sums expended in the Syrian civil conflict, and Iran’s military and logistical support for Hezbollah in Syria, for the Houthis in Yemen and for Hamas in Gaza.  The cost of these foreign adventures was seen as being at the direct expense of the Iranian population. 

In 2019, nationwide anti-government demonstrations followed an abrupt tripling of petrol prices. Amnesty International said at least 208 people were killed during those protests

The effect of then-President Trump’s withdrawal from the Iranian nuclear deal in May 2020, and further US sanctions, was a further blow to the economy. The effect on normal household budgets was catastrophic. On June 25 Tehran’s grand bazaar was shut down as merchants joined street protests, and thousands defied the riot police trying to quell the rebellion. Other big cities joined Tehran.  Protesters carried all manner of slogans. Some called for the Supreme Leader to resign, some chanted "Death to the liars" and some called for the IRGC, the all-powerful Guard Corps, to leave the country.  The worst, from the Supreme Leader’s point of view, were the prominently displayed signs: “Death to the dictator.”

Opposition to the government has hardened during the current water crisis.  Nostalgic chants of support for the previous Shah, on the lines of “Reza Shah, bless his soul” have been reported from a variety of public protests.  Camera-caught videos, by their nature unverifiable, have been making their appearance on social media.  One is said to show demonstrators in the town of Aligudarz chanting slogans against Khamenei.  A short video posted on Twitter by New York Times journalist Farnaz Fassihi showed people at a Tehran metro station chanting "Death to the Islamic Republic"; another showed women chanting "Down with the Islamic Republic". 

This evidence of a popular groundswell of anti-regime sentiment seems to have shaken the leadership.  They must have decided to try to placate the populace. On July 22, outgoing President Hassan Rouhani went on television not to condemn the protests, but to assert that Iranians have “the right to speak, express themselves, protest and even take to the streets, within the framework of the regulations”.

The next day Supreme Leader Khamenei reiterated that message.

“The people showed their displeasure,” said Khamenei to state media, “but we cannot really blame the people, and their issues must be taken care of.” He assured the nation that: “Now, thank God, all the various agencies, governmental and non-governmental, are working [to resolve the water crisis]”.

Both messages must have been delivered through gritted teeth.

The Iranian regime has been severely shaken by a combination of adverse circumstances including economic breakdown resulting from the US sanctions, mounting popular dissatisfaction with the government’s foreign and domestic policies, the Covid pandemic, and now water shortages exacerbated by severe drought.  Popular sentiment in favour of an end to the regime and even a restoration of the monarchy is growing.  Where will it all end?

Published in the Jerusalem Post and the Jerusalem Post on-line, 5 August 2021:

https://www.jpost.com/opinion/irans-water-crisis-threatens-the-regime-opinion-675852

Published in Eurasia Review:

https://www.eurasiareview.com/30072021-irans-water-crisis-threatens-the-regime-oped/

Published in the MPC Journal:

https://mpc-journal.org/irans-water-crisis-threatens-the-regime/

Published in the Jewish Business News:
https://jewishbusinessnews.com/2021/07/30/irans-water-crisis-threatens-the-regime/

Turkey and Israel - are they to be friends?

          Diplomats the world over blinked in disbelief on Tuesday, July 13 when the news broke that the previous evening Turkey’s president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, had phoned Israel’s newly elected president, Isaac Herzog, to offer his congratulations.  The surprise was all the greater when it emerged that the call between the two presidents had lasted 40 minutes.

For the past thirteen years relations between Turkey and Israel have been – to say the least – rancorous.  As self-proclaimed champion of the Sunni Muslim world in general, and the Palestinian cause in particular, Erdogan has lost no opportunity to castigate, censure and berate Israel.  His ire was especially roused by Israel’s incursion into Gaza in 2008 in its effort to stop Hamas firing rockets indiscriminately into the country.  It culminated in his venomous attack on Israel’s then-president, Shimon Peres, at the Davos conference in January 2009.  The Mavi Marmara affair in 2010 – categorized by Erdogan as an armed Israeli attack on a humanitarian convoy, but about which much remains to be explained – soured relations between Turkey and Israel for six years.  Diplomatic ties were restored only in 2016.  Two years later, in 2018, when the US recognized Jerusalem as Israel’s capital and moved its embassy there from Tel Aviv, Turkey recalled its ambassador to Israel, and Israel followed suit.

   The landmark Abraham Accords were perceived by Turkey as an overwhelmingly negative development.  Erdogan condemned the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain for abandoning the Palestinian cause, and threatened to suspend diplomatic ties although he never quite got round to doing so. 

            Thirteen years of sour Turco-Israeli relations – and yet trade between the two nations  grew exponentially over the period, quite regardless of the political dissensions. In 2008 bilateral trade between Turkey and Israel stood at $3.4bn.  Year-on-year expansion followed, and by 2020 it had doubled to a record $6.8 bn.

            Moreover the thirteen lean years arose on the foundation of 50 years of friendship, cooperation and flourishing trade.  In March 1949 Turkey was the first Muslim country to recognize the State of Israel. Cooperation grew between the two nations.  Over the years trade and tourism boomed.  Before the end of the century the Israel Air Force was practising manoeuvres in Turkish airspace and Israeli technicians were modernizing Turkish combat jets. Projects involving collaboration in high-tech and in water sharing were developed. In May 2005 Turkey’s prime minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan paid an official visit to Israel.  In November 2007, four months after being elected President of Israel, Shimon Peres visited Turkey for three days and addressed its Grand National Assembly – perhaps the high point in Turco-Israeli relations.  They then unravelled pretty swiftly.

By the fall of 2020 Turkey’s international standing was in the doldrums.  The US presidential election was in full swing.  Trump may have turned a blind eye to Erdogan’s anti-Kurd land grab in northern Syria, but Biden had expressed his sympathy for the Kurds.  Even Trump had drawn the line at Turkey, a member of NATO, acquiring the US’s state-of-the-art multi-purpose F-35 fighter aircraft, while already purchasing the Russian S-400 anti-aircraft system designed specifically to destroy aircraft like the F-35. Trump ejected him from the F-35 programme and imposed sanctions. Biden, long opposed to Erdogan’s power-grabbing activities in Syria, would certainly not reverse that.

Neither Trump nor Biden favoured Erdogan’s military interventions in Libya or in the Nagorno-Karabakh dispute, both pretty obviously designed to extend Turkish influence in the region.  Erdogan had also attracted the displeasure of the EU by continuing to explore for gas in what is internationally recognized as Cypriot waters.  After months of acrimonious exchanges, in December 2020 the EU actually imposed targeted sanctions on Turkey.

Turkey’s relations with Egypt had been frozen solid ever since 2013, when Muslim Brotherhood President Mohamed Morsi was ousted by Abdel Fattah al-Sisi.  Erdogan, a life-long adherent of the Brotherhood, expelled Egypt’s ambassador, and Sisi reciprocated. 

Erdogan and his advisers must have realized that a reassessment of tactics was called for, if he was to achieve his strategic objective of extending and stabilizing Turkey’s power base across the Middle East.  Out of what must have been a root and branch analysis came a plan to address the problem – Turkey would embark on a charm offensive, involving an apparent “rebooting” of relationships with one-time enemies, opponents or unfriendly states, including Israel. 

On December 9, 2020, after a gap of two years, Turkey appointed a new ambassador to Israel, albeit one with a track record of anti-Israel sentiment.  Then in a press conference on Christmas Day, December 25, Erdogan declared that Turkey’s intelligence relations with Israel had “not stopped; they continue”, and that “our heart desires that we can move our relations with them to a better point.”

Israel treated the developments warily. The media reported that at a meeting held on December 30, Israel’s then-foreign minister Gabi Ashkenazi decided to send “quiet feelers” to Ankara to assess how much weight to attach to them.  It is difficult also to determine whether there is any truth in media rumours that the Turkish intelligence service had been holding secret talks with Israeli officials about normalizing relations. 

Then came the Erdogan-Herzog phone conversation.  It occurred, commented the Atlantic Council, against a backdrop of a notable decrease in Turkey of the anti-Israel rhetoric usually spouted by the state’s elites, feeding conspiracy theories and antisemitism. Additionally, the Atlantic Council has noted the recent appearance of many news articles supporting the need for reconciliation. “These are important signs,” it comments, “that create a positive atmosphere, similar to the one that existed around the time of the 2016 normalization deal” [following the Mavi Marmara affair].

Official accounts of the presidential conversation report the leaders agreeing on the importance of ties between Israel and Turkey, and the great potential for cooperation in many fields, in particular energy, tourism and technology.  They agreed also to maintain contact and ongoing dialogue despite differences of opinion, “with the goal of making positive steps toward a solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, which will also contribute to the improvement of Israeli-Turkish relations.”

Is this the renewal of a beautiful Turco-Israeli friendship, or an astute move by Erdogan to further his political ambitions?  It could be both.  To reap the potential benefits and sidestep the potential hazards, Israel will need to proceed with caution. 

Published in the Jerusalem Post and the Jerusalem Post on-line, 27 July 2021:

https://www.jpost.com/opinion/turkey-and-israel-are-we-to-be-friends-opinion-674980

Published in Eurasia Review:

https://www.eurasiareview.com/23072021-turkey-and-israel-are-they-to-be-friends-oped/

Published in the MPC Journal:

https://mpc-journal.org/turkey-and-israel-are-they-to-be-friends/

Published in the Jewish Business News:

https://jewishbusinessnews.com/2021/07/23/turkey-and-israel-are-they-to-be-friends/

The Nile - a source of constant conflict. Can Israel help?

 

                                         The Nile in Egypt

On July 8, 2021 a disagreement that has been simmering for more than a decade between three African nations reached the floor of the UN Security Council.  The altercation concerns the vast dam being built by Ethiopia to create the largest hydroelectric generating plant in Africa.

The long-running dispute is between Egypt, Sudan and Ethiopia.  It all revolves around the waters of the Nile.

Egypt’s social and economic dependence on the Nile has been well attested from ancient times.  It remains true today.  Fly over the country and, amid vast deserts, the river and its cultivated banks appear as a narrow green ribbon snaking its way to the north, where it widens into a delta before reaching the Mediterranean. The vast majority of Egypt’s 94 million people live adjacent to this fertile belt, along which its main cities from Aswan to Cairo to Alexandria cluster.  

The Nile that enters Egypt is fed from two sources down in the south which meet at Khartoum, Sudan’s capital.  The White Nile, which rises in the Great Lakes region of central Africa and flows through Tanzania, Lake Victoria, Uganda and the two Sudans, supplies Egypt with 15 percent of its water.  The Blue Nile, whose basin is in Ethiopia, provides 85 percent. 

It was in April 2011 that Ethiopia’s prime minister, Meles Zenawi, laid the foundation stone of the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (or GERD as it is generally known).  With a planned capacity of 6.45 gigawatts (that is, the maximum power output it can achieve at any point in time), the dam will be the seventh largest hydroelectric power plant in the world.  Intended to relieve Ethiopia’s acute energy shortage, it will also allow for the export of electricity to neighboring countries, and some experts suggest the future involves integrating hydro, solar and wind power with the GERD operation in an East Africa-wide Green power strategy.  Almost incredibly, GERD’s reservoir is estimated to take up to 8 years to fill with water. In fact, with the dam now nearing completion, the reservoir began filling in 2020, and it is continuing to do so this year. 

Just before the Security Council considered the issue, Egypt and Sudan issued a statement accusing Ethiopia of acting unilaterally, and suggesting the dam was being filled deliberately.  But experts point out that filling up the GERD reservoir is not like filling up a bath. Ethiopia is not able to turn a tap on and off at will.  The reservoir behind the dam fills naturally during the Blue Nile's rainy season, which usually lasts from June until September, because more water is entering the dam site than the volume of water that can physically pass through the two open outlets in the dam wall.

Ethiopia says it will take up to six more years for the reservoir to fill to its maximum flood season capacity. At that point, the lake created will stretch back some 250km (155 miles) upstream.  The intention is that subsequently, between each flood season, the reservoir level will be lowered and the flow of the Blue Nile downstream enhanced.

                                   The Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD)

Egypt’s near-total reliance on the Nile for water means it sees the GERD as potentially a threat to its very existence.  While the GERD reservoir is in the filling process, Egypt can compensate for any loss of water by releasing more from its own High Aswan Dam.  Its concern is about guaranteeing its supply once the GERD is fully operational.  Ethiopia is reluctant to be tied to an amount that it must release, especially in periods of drought.  Its priority is making sure there is enough water to operate what will become Africa’s  largest hydroelectric plant. 

At the Security Council on July 8 Egypt and Sudan urged the Council to approve a Tunisian-drafted resolution.  It required Egypt, Sudan and Ethiopia to negotiate, under African Union auspices, a legally binding agreement that ensures Ethiopia’s ability to generate hydropower, “while preventing the inflicting of significant harm on the water security of downstream states.”

But the Council rejected the idea of involving itself in the dispute to that extent.  It supported mediation by the African Union, and urged Egypt, Sudan and Ethiopia to resume earlier negotiations which had foundered. 

This whole dispute is bedevilled by the fact that Egypt, together with Sudan and Congo, has been at odds with ten other African countries over the issue of the Nile since 2010.  Back in 1929, in the colonial heyday, Britain signed a treaty which gave Egypt a virtual monopoly over the Nile waters, with veto rights over all upstream projects. Under the provisions of this treaty, Egypt later signed a deal with Sudan which guaranteed the two countries use of 90 percent of the Nile waters.

But the eight other nations that shared the basins of the two Niles at that time viewed Egypt’s historic dominance of the river as increasingly untenable.  All Egypt’s upstream neighbors were undergoing rapid socio-economic development, and these emerging regional powers began to challenge Egypt’s control of what each regarded as its river. 

The affected countries eventually got together, and after a decade of negotiations finally, in 2010, six of the Nile Basin countries signed the Cooperative Framework Agreement (CFA) –  Ethiopia, Kenya, Rwanda, Tanzania, Uganda and Burundi, to be joined in June 2012 by the newly-created South Sudan.  The CFA was meant to replace the 1929 colonial agreement that gave Egypt absolute rights over all the waters of the Nile, and provide a mechanism for cooperation among all ten member countries in managing the Nile basin water resources. However Egypt and Sudan rejected its reallocation of Nile water quotas, and Congo also refused to sign.  The impasse persists.

Whatever sort of arrangement is finally agreed about the GERD dispute, therefore, a large number of African nations through which the White or Blue Nile flows remain dissatisfied with the monopoly on their waters exercised by Egypt and Sudan.  This dispute, too, awaits resolution. 

Israel has so far avoided becoming involved in either altercation.  But Egypt has acted as honest broker in the Israel-Hamas conflict.  Perhaps there is a case for Israel offering to fulfil a similar role over the Nile.

Published in the Jerusalem Post and the Jerusalem Post on-line, 25 July 2021:

https://www.jpost.com/opinion/can-israel-help-tensions-surrounding-the-nile-opinion-674786

Published in the Eurasia Review:
https://www.eurasiareview.com/16072021-the-nile-a-source-of-constant-conflict-can-israel-help-oped/

Published in the Jewish Business News:

https://jewishbusinessnews.com/2021/07/16/the-nile-a-source-of-constant-conflict-can-israel-help/

Published in the MPC Journal:

https://mpc-journal.org/the-nile-a-source-of-constant-conflict-can-israel-help/

Afghanistan – graveyard for invaders. What happens when the US leaves?

This article appeared in the Jerusalem Post on 15 July 2021

 

          Afghanistan has once again lived up to its reputation as a political minefield and a military quagmire. In the last two hundred years Britain, the Soviet Union, and most recently the US (allied to NATO and a Western coalition) have all invaded. All have been forced to retire with little to show for their efforts.

          When US ground troops entered the country in October 2001, the Taliban controlled some 90 percent of Afghanistan. President George W Bush was determined to remove them and hunt down the al-Qaeda perpetrators of the 9/11 attacks on the States. By July 3, 2021, when the US military handed over their main Bagram airbase to Afghan government forces, the Taliban still controlled some 40 percent of the country, and was on the offensive. It had withstood the worst that the world’s greatest military power had been able to throw at it, and had emerged bloodied, but unbowed.

          Early in the campaign, former coalition commander US general Dan McNeill is reported to have said: “To do this properly, I need 500,000 men.” Coalition forces never numbered more than 130,000.

          So two decades spent by the coalition in intensive military action against the Taliban, in converting Afghan government forces into a disciplined and well-trained militia, and in establishing and supporting a democratic form of government based on free and fair elections – all have gone for nothing. It seems likely that a civil war will follow the final departure of the US military, a war that the Taliban stands every chance of winning.

          The last few weeks have seen the Taliban sweep across northern districts, leaving it in control of much of the border with Tajikistan. It has seized dozens of rural district centers. Down in the south, most of Helmand province is in its hands, and by early July it was at the gates of the provincial capital, Lashkar Gah. Capturing a US base in Wardak province, an hour from the nation’s capital, Kabul, it amassed large quantities of weapons and military vehicles, many labelled “Property of USA government”.

          Back in 2001 it was Bush and his Secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld, who masterminded the US invasion of Afghanistan. Rumsfeld passed away on June 29, 2021. In writing about him John Bolton, the former US national policy adviser, maintains that Rumsfeld believed that it is never American strength that is provocative, but American weakness. Bolton holds that total US military withdrawal from Afghanistan is just such a weakness.

          No one in the Pentagon, he asserts, seriously contends that Afghanistan’s civilian government will long survive the departure of the last allied forces. “A worse fate will come,” he writes “if, after the Taliban resumes control across Afghanistan, al Qaeda, ISIS and other terrorist groups again take sanctuary there, threatening the resumption of significant, anti-Western terrorist operations.”

          In fact ISIS, which emerged in Afghanistan in 2015, has maintained its presence in the country, even though the caliphate it proclaimed in Iraq and Syria has been swept away. It has built a stronghold in the north-eastern provinces. The local populations have been beaten into cowed submission. Beheadings and public executions have become commonplace. On July 1 John T Godfrey, the acting US special envoy, told reporters that the ISIS presence in Afghanistan remained a “serious threat”.

          Biden met Afghan president Ashraf Ghani on June 25 at the White House, where he asserted that, despite the pullout, US support for Afghanistan would be sustained. Accounts of the meeting do not specify the nature of the continued support envisaged by Biden, but reports in the media have suggested that an internal debate is under way in the Pentagon over what level of Taliban resurgence would amount to a national security threat to the US, and therefore justify military action – and, indeed, what sort of action would be possible. Airstrikes involving US aircraft or armed drones, may be justified, launched from bases outside the country.

          From the moment President Donald Trump took office in 2017, he pledged to put an end to the conflict and achieve ex-President Barack Obama’s aim of bringing the American forces back home. It took two years of secret back-channel negotiations before peace talks began in February 2019. Abdul Ghani Barada, the co-founder of the Taliban, was at the table.
                       

          This extraordinary arrangement between the world’s leading power and a hardline extremist Islamist movement was greeted with optimism by President Trump. "I really believe the Taliban wants to do something to show we're not all wasting time," he said.

          The deal that Trump eventually reached with the Taliban included, as the quid pro quo for the US withdrawal, an agreement by the Taliban to enter serious peace negotiations with the Afghan government, and also a pledge that it would never allow the regions it controlled to be used as a refuge by extremist groups like al-Qaeda or ISIS.

          Evacuating all US forces from Afghanistan was one of the few policies of his predecessor that Biden adopted, albeit with an extended deadline. Now the US element of the Trump-Taliban deal is close to realisation. Will the Taliban adhere to its part? That depends entirely on the Taliban’s end game.

          A possible scenario would see the Taliban continue its victorious campaign, regaining control of at least the 90 percent of the country it once held and dubbed the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan, and then seeking talks with the Afghan government aimed at stabilizing the situation.

          On July 5 a spokesman for the Taliban, Zabihullah Mujahid, is reported as saying: "The peace talks and process will be accelerated in the coming days, and they are expected to enter an important stage. Naturally it will be about peace plans. Although we have the upper hand on the battlefield, we are very serious about talks and dialogue."

          On July 7 another Taliban spokesman, Suhail Shaheen, is reported to have said the Taliban plans to present a written peace proposal to the Afghan government very soon, possibly as early as August. On 10 July the London Daily Telegraph quotes him as saying: "We don't want to fight. We want a political resolution through political negotiations."

          "The peace talks and process will be accelerated in the coming days,” said Zabihullah Mujahid, a Taliban spokesperson, “and they are expected to enter an important stage. Naturally it will be about peace plans. Although we have the upper hand on the battlefield, we are very serious about talks and dialogue."

          Afghanistan’s future is truly in the balance. If the Taliban honours its commitment to Trump and negotiates a settlement with the Afghan government, all might not be lost. If not, it looks as if the tragic loss of life over the past twenty years – nearly 7,000 American and NATO troops and contractors, and more than 47,000 civilians – and the vast expenditure by the US, estimated at more than $2 trillion, will have been expended in vain. The quagmire that is Afghanistan will have swallowed another victim.

Published in the Jerusalem Post and the Jerusalem Post online, 15 July 2021:
https://www.jpost.com/opinion/afghanistan-graveyard-for-invaders-what-happens-after-the-us-leaves-673853

Published in the Eurasia Review, 9 July 2012:
https://www.eurasiareview.com/09072021-afghanistan-a-graveyard-for-invaders-but-what-follows-oped/

Published in the Jewish Business News, 9 July 2012:
https://jewishbusinessnews.com/2021/07/09/afghanistan-a-graveyard-for-invaders-but-what-follows/

Published in the MPC Journal, 20 July 2021:

https://mpc-journal.org/afghanistan-a-graveyard-for-invaders-what-happens-when-the-us-leaves/

Lebanon and Iran - breaking the bond

Lebanon is “hurtling toward total collapse”, according to one commentator.  The World Bank believes that the country’s financial and economic crisis is one of the severest the world has witnessed in the past 150 years.  A number of factors have contributed to Lebanon’s disastrous situation, but a major cause of its troubles is the dominant position that Iran has managed to acquire in the nation’s political life, by way of its proxy Hezbollah.  But now that Iran is undergoing a severe economic crisis of its own, a window of opportunity may have opened for its malign influence over Lebanon to be weakened, if not entirely eliminated.

Lebanon is on the verge of a political, economic and social catastrophe.  It has been without a government for eight months. Food and medicines are in short supply, electricity cuts last for much of the day, while people are queuing for hours at gas stations and, as they clash over who gets to fill their tank first, fist fights have turned into shootings.  Now criminal gangs are moving in to exploit the situation. A representative of the union for fuel distributors and gas stations in Lebanon said: “Individuals claiming to be in charge of security at gas stations are using extortion… The owners of over 140 gas stations are refusing to accept deliveries of gasoline because they have been exposed to extortion and beatings.”

On June 22 the acting administration raised the price of bread for the fifth time in a year.  The latest increase — 18 percent from the last raise in February — was the result of the decision to end subsidies on sugar and yeast, which both go up in price in consequence. 

On June 1 the World Bank issued a report on the rapidly deteriorating situation.  It believes that more than half of Lebanon‘s population may have been pushed below the poverty line.  While the official rate of exchange for one US dollar is 1,507 Lebanese pounds, the banks do not permit currency conversion or foreign fund transfers and so dollars are simply not available at the official rate.  On June 25 the rate on the black market was 16,450 Lebanese pounds.  The country’s gross domestic product, close to $55bn in 2018, plummeted to some $33bn last year.  Foreign currency reserves are at an all-time low.

The World Bank pulls no punches in its criticism of Lebanon’s political elite in which Hezbollah features so strongly.  It accuses them of deliberately failing to tackle the country’s many problems, which include the economic and financial crisis, the Covid pandemic and last year’s Port of Beirut explosion.  The inaction, says the report, is due to failure to agree on policy initiatives but also a continuing political consensus that defends “a bankrupt economic system, which benefited a few for so long”.

Following the explosion in Port Beirut in August 2020, Saad Hariri was named by the Lebanese parliament as prime minister designate, and charged with forming a new government.  So far, because of an ongoing dispute between him and President Michel Aoun over the composition of the new administration, he failed to do so.  On 17 July 2021 he stepped down.

Hariri wanted to assemble a technocrat cabinet dedicated to enacting the reforms long demanded by the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund and donor countries such as the US and France. In March he stormed out of a meeting with Aoun, telling reporters that the president had sent him a proposed list of ministers and asked him to sign off on them. Hariri had rejected the request as unconstitutional.  Aoun is a strong supporter of Hezbollah, the Iran-backed Shi’ite group that dominates Lebanese politics and underpins his presidency. According to Hariri, Aoun was pushing for a third of all cabinet seats for his Hezbollah allies and their supporters, which would give them veto power over government decisions.

The shoeing into power in Iran on June 18 of a hard-line extremist, Ebrahim Raisi, as its new president can be seen as a desperate effort by the ruling élite to shore up the power of a regime in economic freefall.  The value of the rial, the national currency, has halved over the past two years, inflation is running at 50 per cent and the country is experiencing mass unemployment. Popular protests are bursting out in major towns and cities all over Iran.

Hezbollah’s popularity among the Shia population owes much to the vast sums it has spent in its social and health programs.  The collapse of the Iranian economy means that the regime is no longer able to pay its Hezbollah proxy in dollars.  Its financial support is now provided in the rapidly depreciating Lebanese currency.

Bahaa Hariri, the brother of Lebanon’s designated prime minister Saad, is a billionaire businessman.  He is reported to believe that if Iran cannot continue with its payments, support for Hezbollah will quickly collapse. “Some die-hard supporters will maintain their allegiance to Hezbollah,” he is reported as saying, “but many others will no longer be prepared to support the movement if the payments stop.”  

One failing economy is attempting to support another while simultaneously trying to maintain the political status quo.  That is scarcely a sustainable situation.  If Iran’s deteriorating economic position results in Hezbollah losing power in Lebanon, this might provide the opportunity for Hariri to resume his effort to assemble his technocrat cabinet and institute the economic reforms necessary to pull the country back from the brink of disaster. 

Published in the Jerusalem Post and the Jerusalem Post on-line, 6 July 2021: 

https://www.jpost.com/opinion/lebanon-and-iran-breaking-the-bond-opinion-672963

Published in the Eurasia Review, 3 July 2021:

https://www.eurasiareview.com/03072021-lebanon-and-iran-breaking-the-bond-oped/

Published in the Jewish Business News, 2 July 2021:Pub
https://jewishbusinessnews.com/2021/07/02/lebanon-and-iran-breaking-the-bond/

Published in the MPC Journal, 20 July 2021:

https://mpc-journal.org/lebanon-and-iran-breaking-the-bond/