Tag Archives: Middle East

Russia & UAE: A big week for women in air and space

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This week saw the 4th ever female cosmonaut go into space and the first ever United Arab Emirates female combat pilot go into action in Syria.

Russia’s Yelena Serova launched into space yesterday aboard a Soyuz flight from Kazakhstan and arrived overnight at the International Space Station. She is the first woman in Russia’s space program to go to space since Yelena V. Kondakova‘s space shuttle flight (STS-84, Atlantis) in May 1997, which went to the Mir station.

Kondakova, now a member of the Russian Duma (parliament) for the ruling party, went to space twice during her career as a cosmonaut, but was actually only the 3rd ever Soviet or Russian female cosmonaut — making Serova the 4th in the entire program’s history. The Soviet Union, notably, sent a woman into space two decades before the U.S. did the same, but failed to capitalize on that milestone (not even sending its second until 19 years later). This stands in contrast with the opportunities opened to many women in NASA and space programs around the world since then.

In another part of the world, the United Arab Emirates announced on U.S. television that their pioneering female combat pilot, Major Mariam Al Mansouri, led the UAE’s airstrikes on ISIS positions in Syria, as part of the US-led coalition:

[UAE Ambassador to the US] Al Otaiba also confirmed that Major Mariam Al Mansouri, 35, an F-16 pilot, will lead the air strike missions on ISIL.

“I can officially confirm that the UAE strike mission on Monday night was led by female fighter pilot Mariam Al Mansouri,” he said.

“She is a fully qualified, highly trained, combat-ready pilot and she is on a mission.”
[…]
Maj Al Mansouri has an undergraduate degree in English literature and is the first woman to join the Khalifa bin Zayed Air College, graduating in 2008.

 
She is expected to continue commanding the UAE’s missions in Syria in the coming days and weeks.

Ambassador Al Otaiba cited her as a positive example of how Arab states and Muslim societies can be more moderate and open than the stereotype, while retaining their identities. The example was offered in contrast to both ISIS and some of the Emirates’ neighboring countries. You can read more about Major Al Mansouri and her path to the skies here.

Cosmonaut Yelena Serova (via NASA/Wikimedia) and Maj. Mariam al-Mansouri (via WAM/The National)

Cosmonaut Yelena Serova (via NASA/Wikimedia) and Maj. Mariam al-Mansouri (via WAM/The National)

Is the US-led Syria operation vs ISIS legal under international law?

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The BBC published a huge, multi-angle international law analysis by Marc Weller, Professor of International Law at University of Cambridge, on whether and to what extent the US-led operations against ISIS are legal under international law without United Nations approval. It’s a very well-balanced examination, with various arguments raised both ways for each specific element (such as operations inside Syria versus inside Iraq, or the legitimacy/sovereignty questions surrounding the governments of both Syria and Iraq).

Below is an excerpt specifically regarding the legal case for narrow military operations against ISIS, within Syria, without UN approval, on behalf of Iraq — the position that I find most plausible if any case can be made at all:

According to a ruling of the International Court of Justice in the 1986 Nicaragua case, where the US was found guilty of violating international law by supporting armed Contra rebels, self-defence could only be invoked by Iraq against Syria if IS acts as a direct agent of Damascus and under its operational control.

This is not the case. Instead, the Syrian government has lost all control over the parts of Syria held by IS.

Indeed, until very recently, it has made no attempt to dislodge it, leaving this task instead to the armed opposition groups. Damascus is manifestly unable or unwilling to discharge its obligation to prevent IS operations against Iraq from its own soil. Syria cannot impose the costs of its inaction or incapacity in relation to IS on neighbouring Iraq.

Hence, under the doctrine of self-defence, the zone of operations of the campaign to defeat IS in Iraq can be extended to cover portions of Syria beyond the control of the Syrian government.

[…] short of forming an unsavoury alliance with the Assad government, the strongest legal basis for action against IS in Syria is ancillary to the campaign now being conducted in Iraq. This may also extend to other affected states, such as Jordan. The theatre of operations may extend to parts of Syria as may be strictly necessary to conclude that campaign successfully.

 
If they want to shake off the comparison to George W. Bush’s 2003 invasion of Iraq and want to make this Syrian operation have a veneer of legality, the Obama Administration should say over and over again something along these lines:
We have been requested by the sovereign government of Iraq to halt and destroy a non-state combatant force attacking them from across the Syrian border. The government of Syria has not only failed to prevent the establishment of and cross-border attacks by this non-state actor, but they have actively allowed them to flourish within their own borders. Therefore, we are acting to halt attacks against Iraq from inside Syria, on behalf of the government of Iraq, which lacks the capacity to defend itself from the origin point of these attacks, located within its neighbor’s territory.

I’ve made clear on this blog that I think this operation in Syria is deeply misguided and a big mistake, but I figured I’d at least look into the possible case for why this is legal, since even that has been unclear to me. The above is the best I’ve been able to piece together so far.

File photo of the United Nations Security Council.

File photo of the United Nations Security Council.

Destined to fail? The hardline-Sharia breakaway states of history

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Since the 19th century, various leaders and groups across North Africa, East Africa, and the Middle East have attempted to establish brand new states with Islamist theocratic and expansionist governments. This tradition merely continues today with organizations acting in the vein of ISIS and several others today as well as a few rapidly derailed others in recent years. These efforts have fallen apart pretty easily every time, as discussed in a New York Times op-ed by David Motadel, a University of Cambridge historian, who has studied these movements.

They are formed in response to crisis, civil war, state failure, anti-colonialism, or some combination. They progress from rebel force seizing territory to seeking to establish states to expand their military capacities (via revenue collection and such), but then they make themselves into highly visible (and attackable) fixed targets, and they inevitably prove inept at governance, resulting in a rapid loss of popular support. Here’s one of several examples provided:

Equally short lived was the Mahdist state in Sudan, lasting from the early 1880s to the late 1890s. Led by the self-proclaimed Mahdi (“redeemer”) Muhammad Ahmad, the movement called for jihad against their Egyptian-Ottoman rulers and their British overlords, and it established state structures, including a telegraph network, weapon factories and a propaganda apparatus. The rebels banned smoking, alcohol and dancing and persecuted religious minorities.

But the state was unable to provide stable institutions, and the economy collapsed; half of the population died from famine, disease and violence before the British Army, supported by Egyptians, crushed the regime in a bloody campaign, events chronicled in “The River War” by the young Winston Churchill, who served as an officer in Sudan.

 
I think probably the only example of a surviving anti-colonial Islamist theocracy is Iran after 1979, which isn’t discussed in the article. But that’s because there’s not much similarity, despite the apparent end game. The Iranian radicals seized complete political power in a defined, pre-existing country with an existing and functioning state. There wasn’t a huge external crisis or war happening at the time, and they didn’t have to fight their way into power with a full-scale rebellion or insurgency. Moreover, the Iranian revolutionaries immediately turned the engine of the state (albeit with heavy purging of old regime loyalists) toward populist provision of services. And then they were soon invaded by Saddam Hussein, which helped mobilize the population for a patriotic defense against him, thus further securing the continuance of the new government in the state. In other words, the Iranians came to power very differently from how groups in the mold ISIS have tried to establish state authority, and they did everything they needed to so that they would be on a durable footing.

ISIS may be more tech-savvy and one of the best armed of these groups over the course of more than a century — though they’re also facing modern armed forces and not 19th century French infantry — but they have already shown themselves to be repeating the same patterns that led to the collapse of the prior efforts. You can alienate the people some of the time, if you provide food and services, but you can’t provide that without risking external attacks (like we’ve been seeing) or else a demonstration of gross incompetence in governing…and you can’t stop providing those things and continue alienating the people, without falling from power.

As Motadel observes near the end of his column: Read more

Pro-American Kosovo’s Syrian Jihad

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15 years after a US-led NATO bombing campaign freed the predominantly Muslim province of Kosovo from Serbia, youth unemployment stands at 70%. Now more than a hundred young residents, from a country with a huge statue of Bill Clinton in the capital (photo below), have gone off to join anti-American terrorist groups in Syria and Iraq.

Balkan fighters have participated in Islamist insurgencies elsewhere in the past, but more often against Russia — which, unlike the US, supported Serbia against its Muslim neighbors in the former Yugoslavia. This time, would-be combatants from places like Kosovo are joining ISIS, a group that has moved beyond attacking places in Syria and is now staging suicide attacks in Iraq’s capital against the US-supported government — using at least one Kosovar recruit so far — and has called for attacks on U.S. and British citizens everywhere.

The talk and stories of people disappearing to the Syrian conflict from Kosovo, a country of 1.8 million people, now abound. This is especially true after Kosovar fighters began propagandizing from Syria to folks back home over social media. Even some former NATO assets have reportedly joined up to become jihadists in Syria. In another case, a man kidnapped his 8-year-old son away from his wife and went to Syria with him. Senior religious officials in Kosovo have been arrested for allegedly preaching recruitment on behalf of extremist religious groups in Syria, including ISIS.

The general population disapproves very strongly of the one or two hundred citizens who have gone to join extremist groups in Syria. But Kosovo has no jobs for the vast majority of young men. In contrast, ISIS can offer excitement and a sense of purpose, along with food provisions and payroll funds from the millions of dollars added daily to its cash reserves. And the situation is not unique. Nearby Bosnia, which also has been experiencing very high unemployment and has an even more extensive prior history of contributing recruits to Islamic extremist insurgencies all over, has seen some of its citizens be similarly lured to the civil war in Syria.

The lessons, as always, are that you can’t fix every problem with airstrikes and you can’t fight extremism without fighting poverty and joblessness. A multi-million dollar Western grant for jobs training and creation in the Balkans wouldn’t go amiss right now. Too bad they’re cutting such programs in their own countries already.

Statue of Bill Clinton in Pristina, Kosovo, November 2009. (Credit: Arian Selmani via Wikimedia)

Statue of Bill Clinton in Pristina, Kosovo, November 2009. (Credit: Arian Selmani via Wikimedia)

3 things US-led airstrikes probably won’t stop

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1. Complex networks of small-volume oil smuggling arising from Iraqi under-funding of Kurdish authorities, which have allowed ISIS to build cash reserves expected to last two years or so, as reported on by the Financial Times:

Black market oil is often refined at plants in Iraqi Kurdistan that are partly the byproduct of the tensions between Kurdish leaders and Baghdad. In recent years the Kurdistan Regional Government looked the other way as homegrown refineries popped up to supply the local market after Baghdad banned the export of petroleum products without its consent.

This means that the Kurds are potentially helping put money in the coffers of the jihadi group that its own peshmerga forces are fighting. “It’s now possible that Isis could be selling crude [via middlemen] to these knock-off refineries,” says Bilal Wahab, an energy expert at the American University of Sulaymaniyah. “The KRG is unwilling to shut them down because it would have to raise the price of gasoline. It can’t raise the price of gasoline because it can’t pay salaries, and it can’t pay salaries because the central government hasn’t given the KRG its budget in eight months. Yes, it’s illegal. Yes, it’s bad. But it is what greases the wheels of the economy.”

 
2. State-mimicking administrative operations by ISIS: Read more

With airstrike allies like Bahrain…

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Retired U.S. General Jack Keane, notorious paid hype-man for war, was doing international interviews overnight bragging about the participation of five Arab, “Sunni-based” air forces in US-led “coalition” airstrikes in Syria against the Arab, “Sunni-based” ISIS organization:

“We have five Arab Muslim Sunni-based nations attacking a Sunni-based terrorist organisation and that is … something we have not seen in the past. That is really quite an accomplishment.”

 
According to Reuters the five were:

A U.S. official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said that Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Jordan and Bahrain were all involved, although their exact roles in the military action were unclear. Qatar played a supporting role in the airstrikes, the official said.

 
We’re all familiar with the record in Saudi Arabia and recent activities by Qatar and by the United Arab Emirates. But Bahrain stands out on that list as particularly problematic to be celebrating militarily, especially as an “Arab Muslim Sunni-based nation,” in the words of former General Keane.

For one thing, Bahrain actually has a repressive Sunni monarchy ruling over a Shia majority. During the Arab Spring in 2011, the government of that small Gulf state violently suppressed democratic protests in the capital, with the help of the armed forces of Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (both of which, as noted above, also participated in the airstrikes in Syria on Tuesday).

For another thing, maybe nobody was paying attention to what was going on literally just 4 days ago in Bahrain:

Activists in Bahrain said thousands of pro-democracy protesters took to the streets on Friday, rejecting a proposal made by the Gulf State’s monarchy on reforming the legislative, security and judicial sectors.

The rally was organised by the island’s opposition and came a day after Crown Prince Sheikh Salman bin Hamad al-Khalifa issued a statement detailing proposed reforms with the aim of accelerating “the resumption of dialogue” with opposition groups.

A national dialogue process has been stalled since January due to sharp differences of opinion over Bahrain’s three yearlong uprising and a failure to agree on a format and agenda for the talks.
[…]
Opposition leaders have criticised the crown prince for not consulting them on the initiative and said it does not go far enough to meet their demands – authorities have been previously accused of failing to follow through on promises of reform by activists and human rights groups.

Protesters on Friday rejected this offer en masse with banners showing their steadfastness in holding out for full democratic reform of the governance system.

 
Sounds like that “Arab Muslim Sunni-based” leadership is still not going over so well with the democratic activists who continue to mobilize, more than three years later, under threat of death.

Then again, those detail ares probably not what people like Keane care much about:

Left unsaid during his media appearances (and left unmentioned on his congressional witness disclosure form) are Keane’s other gigs: as special adviser to Academi, the contractor formerly known as Blackwater; as a board member to tank and aircraft manufacturer General Dynamics; a “venture partner” to SCP Partners, an investment firm that partners with defense contractors, including XVionics, an “operations management decision support system” company used in Air Force drone training; and as president of his own consulting firm, GSI LLC.

To portray Keane as simply a think tank leader and a former military official, as the media have done, obscures a fairly lucrative career in the contracting world. For the General Dynamics role alone, Keane has been paid a six-figure salary in cash and stock options since he joined the firm in 2004; last year, General Dynamics paid him $258,006.

 

Map of Bahrain (Credit: CIA World Factbook)

Map of Bahrain (Credit: CIA World Factbook)

Bahrain, a small island nation in the Persian Gulf with a little over twice the area of the City of Las Vegas, is the permanent home of the U.S. Navy’s 5th Fleet and U.S. Naval Forces Central Command.

Chaos at Turkish border as ISIS presses in on Syrian Kurdish enclave

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Although Turkey has already absorbed hundreds of thousands of Syrian refugees since the start of the civil war in 2011, one of the government’s big fears has been that the situation directly adjacent to the border, in northern Syria and northern Iraq, will deteriorate significantly and overwhelm the stability and crisis capacity of the lengthy southern border.

This fear has been so powerful in recent months that Turkey recently suspended its longstanding (albeit already somewhat relaxed by improved relations) policy of trying to keep Kurdish militant groups weak and contained, because they decided it would be better to allow Kurdish fighters from Turkey to go to Iraq and fight ISIS than to allow the refugee safe-haven of the Kurdish Regional Government to collapse and flood Turkey with up to a million more refugees.

Although the situation in northern Iraq, after the start of US airstrikes in early August, seems to be stabilizing somewhat in comparison to the earlier months of continuous advances by ISIS across the north, things in northern Syria have been getting worse. Earlier this week, I wrote about an ISIS unit supported by tanks that began attacking villages in an isolated, historically-Kurdish area right along the Turkish-Syrian border:

An armor-supported ISIS division in northern, central Syria has launched an offensive to seize territory from one of the three major Kurdish enclaves in Syria, which have been largely separate from the primary civil war for the past couple years.

[…] the north-central Kurdish enclave where Kobani/Ayn Arab is located is surrounded by ISIS and “moderate rebel” positions on three sides and a largely unsympathetic Turkey with border controls on the fourth. They are mostly cut off from other Syrian Kurds, unless they can cross through Turkey or manage to get through areas now held by ISIS.

 
Over a span of just three days, this nearly encircled area shrank considerably, as 16 captured villages became 60 and thousands of Syrian Kurdish villagers raced out of the countryside toward the border town of Kobani, ahead of advancing ISIS tanks and heavy artillery. YPK defenders were forced to fall back very quickly as well. Now, the only way out for the civilians (and possibly the fighters) is through Turkey.

Map: Ethnically Kurdish zones of Turkey, Iraq, Syria, and Iran -- circa 1992. (Credit: CIA)

Map: Ethnically Kurdish zones of Turkey, Iraq, Syria, and Iran — circa 1992. Small, southwestern corner of the yellow area is the Kobani region in Syria. (Credit: CIA)

Although it’s a relatively small number of people in this situation compared to the vast northern Iraq crisis, this is precisely what Turkey’s government was afraid might happen. A chaotic border crisis and humanitarian emergency played out live on national television in Turkey, as CNN reported:

An estimated 3,000 to 4,000 Kurds fleeing the violence walked right up to the wire border fence with Turkey, where they initially were not allowed in. They just sat at the border as Turkish Kurds on the other side of the fence tried to persuade the Turkish guards to let them in. The situation on the border could be observed on a live feed from the border and from video footage aired on Turkish news outlets. The refugees also tried to force their way into Turkey, creating chaos as one woman stepped on a landmine. Turkey finally opened the border, relieving some of the mounting pressure in Kobani and allowing refugees to enter Sanliurfa province.

 
Edit: Overnight and into Saturday this number rose from 4,000 to 60,000 refugees as Turkey continued to allow Syrian civilians into the country. Several hundred Kurdish PKK fighters from Turkey were also reported to have crossed from Turkey into the besieged Syrian area to help relieve local resistance.
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