Tag Archives: Middle East

FIFA World Cup Qatar: Ghost of Christmas Future

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You’ve probably heard of the FIFA World Cup in Qatar (which never should have been awarded to Qatar) being moved to the winter to avoid scorching stadium temperatures. You might also have heard of the devastating heat waves this past summer from Lebanon to Iran.

Will the Persian Gulf region and Arabian Peninsula be uninhabitably hot later this century (without significant action on climate change soon)? A new study published in Nature Climate Change journal argues so.

Satellite photograph of the Arabian Desert from NASA World Wind 1.4.

Satellite photograph of the Arabian Desert from NASA World Wind 1.4.

“Extreme heatwaves could push Gulf climate beyond human endurance, study shows” – The Guardian:

The study shows the extreme heatwaves, more intense than anything ever experienced on Earth, would kick in after 2070 and that the hottest days of today would by then be a near-daily occurrence.
[…]
They said the future climate for many locations in the Gulf would be like today’s extreme climate in the desert of Northern Afar, on the African side of the Red Sea, where there are no permanent human settlements at all. But the research also showed that cutting greenhouse gas emissions now could avoid this fate.
[…]
The new research examined how a combined measure of temperature and humidity, called wet bulb temperature (WBT), would increase if carbon emissions continue on current trends and the world warms by 4C this century.

At WBTs above 35C, the high heat and humidity make it physically impossible for even the fittest human body to cool itself by sweating, with fatal consequences after six hours. For less fit people, the fatal WBT is below 35C. A WBT temperature of 35C – the combination of 46C heat and 50% humidity – was almost reached in Bandar Mahshahr in Iran in July 2015.
[…]
Air conditioning might be able to protect people indoors and those in wealthy Gulf oil states might be able to afford it, said the scientists, but less wealthy nations would suffer. In Yemen, for example, the WBT would reach 33C.

 

Stop the (US-backed) Saudi carnage in Yemen

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Arsenal Bolt: Quick updates on the news stories we’re following.

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Journalist Gareth Porter for Truthout: “The US Could End Saudi War Crimes in Yemen – It Just Doesn’t Want To”

The Amnesty report notes that the United States is also providing logistical and intelligence support to the Saudi-led coalition. This logistical assistance is particularly important because the Saudis and their Gulf allies need the assistance of US mechanics to keep their aircraft running. That fact gives the Obama administration a major source of leverage on Saudi policy.

Furthermore, last summer the Saudis began to run low on the laser-guided bombs sold to them by the United States and requested to be resupplied. As a result, the Saudi decision to continue the war is dependent on a policy decision by Washington.

 

Previously from AFD on this topic:

– Op-Ed | “Saudi Arabia and the US: More military misfires”
– “Egypt, Qatar, others add ground troops to Yemen mess”
– “Yemen: Saudis ‘liberate’ Aden; Qaeda waltzes in immediately”

Half a billion dollars of US spending evaporated in Syria

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There’s one important fact to know in light of recent headlines about Russia’s Air Force bombing US-trained fighters in Syria, which I have pulled from the news from about two weeks ago…

AFP:

Only four or five U.S-trained Syrian fighters remain on the battlefield against ISIS militants, the top U.S. commander in the Middle East acknowledged Wednesday in the face of withering criticism from senators who dismissed the training program as a “total failure” and demanded a change of strategy.

Gen. Lloyd Austin told the Senate Armed Services Committee that the U.S. is looking at better ways to deploy the Syrian forces, but he agreed that the U.S. will not reach its goal of training 5,000 in the near term.

Wall Street Journal:

If the Pentagon shifts course to focus on training small numbers of fighters, it would represent a reversal. The military has criticized the Central Intelligence Agency’s lackluster covert effort to train Syrian rebels as ineffective because it produced too few fighters.

When the Obama administration shifted the main training program to the Pentagon, the military sought to train 5,000 Syrian rebels by year’s end. But the program has been slow to get off the ground and the first group of 54 fighters to enter Syria this summer was quickly routed by rival fighters.

 
There’s a second important fact. Here’s the Wall Street Journal on the cost of the failed program:

Under one proposal being crafted at the Pentagon, the $500 million train-and-equip program—a core component of the U.S. Syria strategy—would be supplanted by a more modest effort focused on creating specially trained militants empowered to call in U.S. airstrikes, defense officials said.

 
But at least we had wasted it *before* the Russians bombed the last few guys. Al Qaeda’s Nusra Front took care of that.

The foreign policy community, united for a common error

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A brief reflection on 14 years of continuous US misadventures in the Middle East North Africa region and the mainstream foreign policy community’s exclusion of alternative perspectives.

In its cross-partisan drive for a new style of foreign policy after the Cold War, the DC crowd seems to have converged upon the worst-of-all-possible-worlds solution to the world’s problems.

From the left, the military-internationalists without a balancing dose of any hardheaded, restraining realism. From the right, the neocons and literal “crusaders,” whose force-based adventurism is sure to end about as dismally as their medieval forerunners.

Both believe unlimited force applied everywhere can remake the world in their vision, yet the vision is as clouded by legacy alliances and enmities as any prior world power’s vision has been. They cannot even plausibly claim to have transcended the obvious immorality of the frequent pacts-with-devils made by Cold War realpolitik advocates.

Witness the negligible self-reflection on ill-conceived partnerships with Saudi Arabia’s regional wrecking-ball (or other similarly damaging alliances). Witness the beliefs in “good guys” and “bad guys” and meaningful change through isolation, bombardment, and speeches.

It is a foreign policy worldview as averse to compromises for the sake of reality as the members of Congress. Yet it already so pre-compromised and impure as to render the ideals behind it a hollow joke.

Sept 16, 2015 – Arsenal For Democracy 143

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Posted by Bill on behalf of the team.

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Topics: How to redirect hundreds of billions of dollars in subsidies for the wealthy toward low-income programs; the low-wage service economy recovery; should the US accept more Syrian refugees? People: Bill, Kelley, Nate. Produced: September 13th, 2015.

Episode 143 (55 min):
AFD 143

Discussion Points:

– CFED.org: “Redeploying $540 Billion in Federal Spending to Help All Families Save, Invest, and Build Wealth”
– Why it doesn’t feel like a recovery: So many new jobs in retail services get paid less now than before the recession’s peak.
– Should the U.S. accept more than just 10,000 Syrian refugees in the coming year?

Related Links

– Corporation for Enterprise Development (CFED): “Redeploying $540 Billion in Federal Spending to Help All Families Save, Invest, and Build Wealth”
– NYT: “Low-Income Workers See Biggest Drop in Paychecks”
– AFD by Kelley: “United States to accept (a few) more Syrian refugees”

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Egypt, Qatar, others add ground troops to Yemen mess

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Arsenal Bolt: Quick updates on the news stories we’re following.

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The Economist – “A downward spiral”:

More troops have poured in since the [Sept. 4 2015] attack [on coalition troops]. Saudi Arabia dispatched more elite forces to join the 3,000-strong coalition force already on the ground, while Qatar, hitherto only participating in air operations, has sent 1,000 soldiers. Egypt, which has long warned of the folly of putting boots on the ground given its disastrous intervention in the 1960s, this week sent in 800 men. Sudanese troops are reportedly waiting to be shipped out of Khartoum. Bahrain’s King Hamad bin Isa al-Khalifa said his two sons will join the battle.
[…]
Quashing the Shia Houthis is nigh on impossible. Gulf officials and media talk bombastically of preparations to take back Sana’a from them and reinstall Abd Rabbo Mansour Hadi as president (the Houthis drove him out of the country in March). But Yemen has long been treacherous territory for foreign invaders, and Gulf armies are relatively inexperienced.

Since committing ground troops in August, the coalition has taken control of Aden, the southern port city, and is advancing on Taiz. But it is struggling in Maarib, the gateway to Sana’a, where the extra troops, backed by armoured vehicles and missile launchers, are said to be massing. The fighting will only get harder since the Houthis’ remaining strongholds are in mountainous redoubts.

[…] a rising generation of young, ambitious Gulf royals appears unwilling to pare back their newfound military adventurism.

 
Related Reading: “Saudi Arabia and the US: More military misfires” — my August 13, 2015 op-ed with Stephan Richter for Al Jazeera English.

United States to accept (a few) more Syrian refugees

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On Thursday, September 10th, President Obama announced that his administration was preparing to accept at least 10,000 Syrian refugees into the United States in Fiscal Year 2016 (October 1, 2016 – September 31, 2016). This number represents a five-fold increase from the fewer than 2,000 refugees accepted into the United States in the past year.

While these numbers sound impressive, the truth is that they do not go far enough in aiding the 4 million refugees who have fled the Syrian Civil War. Countries closest to Syria have absorbed the most refugees; Turkey has accepted over 2 million alone and Lebanon has accepted well over 1 million.

Of course, accepting millions of refugees has taken a toll on these countries, themselves developing nations, and as resources diminish, refugees have begun to look for what’s next. Many refugees have set their sights on Europe, where many empathetic citizens have welcomed them but where leaders have remained startlingly silent on the emerging humanitarian crisis. More than 2,400 refugees have died trying to cross the Mediterranean Sea into Europe.

In the face of such an alarming need, this is no time for small actions. Yet, the 10,000 immigrants President Obama is prepared to accept represents way less than what America can and should do to help alleviate the suffering of Syrian refugees.

In May of 2015, a group of fourteen Democratic Senators asked President Obama to allow 65,000 Syrians to settle within the United States in each of the next two years, following a recommendation from the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). However, of the 16,000 refugees that have recommended for resettlement in the US by UNHCR, the US has only taken about 10%.

The Republican party also finds itself divided between their moral responsibility to aid refugees and their concerns over national security, a divide sure to make itself known at next week’s GOP primary debate.

While accepting 10,000 Syrian refugees into the US is significant, and especially significant to those individuals and families who build a life in here under this initiative, it is also insufficient and should not be the end of our country’s discussion on how to provide aid to Syrians amidst this unspeakable humanitarian crisis.