Category Archives: Arsenal Pulse

Brief thoughts and mini-analyses on stories in the news.

Jordan to re-enter the ISIS war, now in Iraq

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The Jordanian government was not messing around with its “Earth-Shattering” Response line to the execution of their pilot by ISIS. In addition to rejoining the reduced Syria coalition, huge air formations of Jordanian fighter-bombers will target ISIS positions inside Iraq, according to the Wall Street Journal:

The Royal Jordanian Air Force in recent days has begun rehearsals for a large-scale attack on Islamic State forces. But the initial wave of reprisal strikes, which will include Jordanian and U.S. warplanes, is being focused on targets in Syria, coalition officials said. Any strikes in Iraq would come later.
[…]
Jordan’s airstrikes have typically involved small formations of planes, while the reprisal for the killing of the pilot will involve as many as two dozen warplanes, officials said. In recent days, the U.S. has helped develop potential targets in Syria for Jordanian warplanes, coalition officials said.

Expanding into Iraq would allow the Jordanians to strike at more targets, coalition officials said. Iraqi officials weren’t available to comment, but the Shiite-led government so far has balked at allowing Sunni Arab nations such as Jordan to conduct operations.

 
It should be noted that a Jordanian air campaign in Iraq would probably be highly illegal under the current arrangement, because the government of Iraq explicitly opposes any Arab state bombing targets in Iraq (while it has invited Iran, US, Australia, Canada, and Europe to do so).

Of course, past Jordanian operations in Syria are also essentially illegal, since the government of Syria opposes non-cooperative air raids on its territory, even in reaction to attacks against Iraq (or Jordanians) staged on or from that Syrian territory. But there will probably be a good deal more controversy if Iraq rejects Jordanian bombing in Iraqi territory and then Jordan does it anyway.

Map of estimated ISIS control in western Iraq and eastern Syria on February 3, 2015, relative to Jordan and Saudi Arabia borders. Adapted by ArsenalForDemocracy.com from Wikimedia.

Map of estimated ISIS control in western Iraq and eastern Syria on February 3, 2015, relative to Jordan and Saudi Arabia borders. Adapted by ArsenalForDemocracy.com from Wikimedia.

Launch failure: The rapid sputter of Alarab News Channel

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There is something darkly humorous about this. They spent years putting Alarab News Channel together, staffing people all over the world, getting ten years of funding lined up (from a Saudi prince with close ties to Bahrain’s monarchy), and hyping it. It went off the air in less than a day.

In an interview before the debut of Al Arab, the general manager [and veteran reporter], Jamal Khashoggi, said the channel would seek to steer a middle path.

“We are going to be neutral; we are not going to take sides,” he said. “We are going to bring in all sides in any conflict because right now we have a conflict in almost every Arab country.”

 
Oops.

Bahrain may not have been the best choice for a “middle path” free speech channel.

After the Battle of Kobani

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On January 25, John McCain attacked President Obama’s air campaign at Kobani as pointless and ineffective. A day later and some 700 airstrikes in, we got the news: “Kurds push Islamic State out of Kobani after four-month battle” (Reuters).

A week later, journalists were able to access the city at ground level and interview or photograph those re-entering and those who had remained the whole time. Here are two such feature articles I want to highlight…

“In Liberated Kobani, Kurds Take Pride Despite the Devastation” — The New York Times

Standing just inside the gate that separates Kobani from Turkey, Mohammed Jarada, a fighter guarding the post, savored the recent victory and shrugged off the costs. “This means that the Kurds exist,” he said. “We exist.”

 
See also: “Inside Kobani: Bodies of Isis militants lie in rubble on shattered streets [Graphic images]” — International Business Times / AFP Photos. The graphic images are blurred and you can skip past them. The rest of the photos are eerie but worth examining to see the catastrophic destruction of an obliterative siege. It’s a wasteland inside the city. Even World War II photos of bombed out cities don’t look this bad. People won’t be able to return for a long time (even if ISIS weren’t still right nearby in the outlying suburbs and villages) because of how much rubble there is and how many buildings have been destroyed.

A low-res close crop of the destruction inside Kobani, stretching toward the horizon, captured by AFP's Bulent Kilic. Full image at IB Times.

A low-res close crop of the destruction inside Kobani, stretching toward the horizon, captured by AFP’s Bulent Kilic. Full image at IB Times.

Flash back to September 18, 2014, when our blog began coverage before most outlets realized it was going to become a decisive stand that could break the momentum of ISIS: “ISIS tanks move on Kurdish enclave in Syria”

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.
[…]
ISIS tank units attacking Kurdish areas in northern, central Syria seem like a pretty tempting target for American-led coalition airstrikes on ISIS forces in Syria, once those begin in the coming weeks.

 

Queen Elizabeth II, Absolute Monarch

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Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has a fuzzy grasp of British government, it turns out:

When taking up office he vowed to be an active president who would use his mandate to strengthen what had until then been a largely ceremonial post and to push for the necessary constitutional change that would turn Turkey’s parliamentary system into a presidential one.

On Thursday night, he looked to London for justification, arguing that Britain, a constitutional monarchy in which the Queen is head of state but where the power to make and pass legislation lies with an elected parliament, had much in common with the system he was looking to establish.

“Even England has a semi-presidential system,” Erdogan claimed during a live broadcast on Turkish state television. “The person in charge there is the Queen.”

He went on to slam increasingly widespread criticism of undermining checks and balances in Turkey: “When it comes to the US, to Brazil, South Korea or Mexico, nobody says they are a monarchy. So when Turkey follows a similar idea, why does [a presidential system] here suddenly become a monarchy?”

 
I don’t why you’re suddenly accused to trying to establish a monarchy. Maybe because of weird statements about how QE2 is “in charge” of “England”?

Recep-Tayyip-ErdoganOr, I suppose, authoritarian crackdowns on the opposition, the media, ethnic minorities; holding power for over a decade and repeatedly trying to amend the constitution to become more powerful; proposing the restoration of the imperial Ottoman alphabet nearly a century after its replacement; insisting that Muslims discovered and colonized the Americas before Columbus landed; and just generally other bizarre and disturbing actions that validate accusations of a “cult of personality” project and that undermine any legitimately impressive domestic policy accomplishments over the years? That might have something to do with the monarchy talk.

The West German debt writeoff

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France24 — “Lessons from 1953: The debt write-off behind Germany’s ‘economic miracle'”:

West Germany’s debt at the time was well below the levels seen in Greece today. But German negotiators successfully argued that it would hinder efforts to rebuild the country’s economy – much as Greek governments have in recent years, in vain. Under a crucial term of the London Agreement, repayments of the remaining debt were made conditional on West Germany running a trade surplus. In other words, the German government would only pay back its creditors when it could afford to – and not by borrowing even more money. Reimbursements were also limited to 3% of export earnings. This gave Germany’s creditors an incentive to import German goods so they would later get their money back, thereby laying the foundations of the country’s powerful export sector and fostering its so-called “economic miracle”.
[…]
Back in 1953, the money Greece gave up included a loan extorted during the gruesome Nazi occupation of the country, when thousands of resistance fighters and civilians were murdered and hundreds of thousands starved to death. Even before Syriza’s electoral triumph, Greek newspapers were awash with calls for Germany to repay the loan, the exact amount of which is a matter of historical dispute. Estimates range from $24 billion to five times the amount. While few Greeks expect Berlin to pay up, many believe that Germany was let off the hook after the war and should now be more generous in Greece’s hour of need.

 
See also: A Brief History of the Greek Debt Coverup – Arsenal For Democracy
And: Greece’s Syriza, Germany, and the Gordian Knot – Arsenal For Democracy

US reports death of ISIS chemical weapons expert

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A former Iraqi chemical weapons engineer from the Saddam Hussein era — later a veteran insurgent styling himself as “Abu Malik” — has been killed in a coalition airstrike near Mosul, according to the United States. He was believed to be advising ISIS personnel on handling and use of chlorine weapons (which are not, incidentally, banned under the Chemical Weapons Convention).

By most accounts, both ISIS and the Syrian Armed Forces are using makeshift chlorine weapons for dramatic effect — though not necessarily for battlefield utility, as they are difficult to use effectively in improvised explosive devices.

ISIS combatants are believed to have used chemical IEDs in Iraq (New York Times, October 23, 2014):

Unconfirmed reports of improvised bombs made with chlorine gas and used by militants have arisen from time to time since the Islamic State began seizing territory in Iraq at the beginning of the year, raising concerns that Iraq’s old chemical weapons stores had fallen into the militants’ hands.

 
The weapons referred to above, as summarized here, are the really old rusty ones from before the first Gulf War. However, while largely unusable as intended, some of the ingredients in them can be re-purposed into IED additives. Additionally, chlorine (which was not discussed in the major Times investigation) is not just used in weapons and is thus far more readily available as an ingredient than other chemical weapons agents.

ISIS allegedly detonated a chlorine-filled IED in September against Iraqi police officers (Washington Post, October 23, 2014):

The police officers, all members of the Sunni Jabbour tribe, which has turned against the Islamic State, were guarding a line in the town’s north. After an exchange of fire, they said, they were surprised to see Islamic State fighters retreating from their position about 150 yards away.

Suddenly there was a boom in the area the extremists had just vacated, said Lt. Khairalla al-Jabbouri, 31, one of the survivors. “It was a strange explosion. We saw a yellow smoke in the sky,” he said. The wind carried the fog toward their lines. The men say it hung close to the ground, consistent with the properties of chlorine gas, which is heavier than air.

“I felt suffocated,” Jabbouri recalled. “I was throwing up and couldn’t breathe.”

Another officer, Ammer Jassim Mohammed, 31, who suffers from asthma, said he passed out within minutes.

 
Other minor ISIS chemical IED attacks in Iraq have also been reported. There are also allegations that ISIS used some other type of chemical agent in Kobani.

Aircraft participating in U.S.-led coalition airstrike missions in Operation Inherent Resolve against ISIS. (Credit: Dept. of Defense via Wikimedia)

Aircraft participating in U.S.-led coalition airstrike missions in Operation Inherent Resolve against ISIS. (Credit: Dept. of Defense via Wikimedia)

Yemen: How we got here, from there

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I have written more or less nothing on this site, since its launch in December 2013, about Yemen, and my previous site (some content of which is now available in the archives of this site) featured a fair amount on al Qaeda in Yemen but ended coverage in February 2011 as the Arab Spring was beginning ( — we shut down right around then by unlucky coincidence).

The reason I’ve said so little about Yemen, in contrast to say Syria (which actually has a smaller population despite its higher intensity conflict) — even as the capital has fallen, a coup has occurred, and the country has begun to fracture back into its constituent statelets — is because Yemen is extraordinarily complex, news there develops sluggishly from initial spark to result, and media coverage is often sketchy or unreliable (even wildly inaccurate). I like to talk about and learn about many issues and countries in the news, but Yemen so thoroughly stumps me so frequently I have generally opted to stay in my many other lanes and leave it for other, more knowledgeable people to analyze.

It’s also very hard to break down for casual readers. In the incisive words of someone I know, “Yemen has a coup every day. At some point you can’t tell who’s couping who.”

So, when I ran across Adam Baron’s new “Who is in charge of Yemen?” article for Al Jazeera America — an article which offers the single clearest and most concise guide I’ve yet seen on how we got here from there — I had to mention it.

Two paragraphs in particular stand out for their effective summary of the background events that led, in typically Yemeni slow-moving fashion, toward the present emergency. I’m quoting it here with only a few minor bracketed insertions for clarity of points elided or mentioned elsewhere:

The roots of the current crisis date back more than a decade before last week’s events. In June 2004 then-President Ali Abdullah Saleh dispatched government forces to arrest Hussein al-Houthi, a charismatic [Zaidi-Shia] cleric and former member of parliament. Saleh felt increasingly threatened by Houthi’s soaring popularity, due in large part to his sharp critiques of the Yemeni government’s alliance with the United States [nominally against al Qaeda], the marginalization of the his native province of Saada and the capital’s rampant corruption. He was killed along with more than a dozen followers in the rugged mountains of Marran, according to a statement the government released on Sept. 10, 2004. But his Ansar Allah movement — better known as the Houthis — soldiered on under the leadership of his younger brother, Abdul Malek al-Houthi, as Saleh’s regime waged a series of brutal wars that devastated much of northern Yemen over the past decade. The military campaign further intensified the feelings of marginalization and resentment that laid the seeds for the Houthi rebellion.

During Yemen’s Arab Spring–inspired uprising in 2011, the Houthis took advantage of the power vacuum and expanded their control over Saada. Emboldened by the lack of resistance, they soon began to face off against the Islamist Islah party, their former allies against Saleh. Islah is an opposition faction that incorporates the bulk of the Yemeni branch of the [Sunni] Muslim Brotherhood — in tribal areas between Saada and the capital. After fallout with the Houthis and as the country’s internationally mediated transition sputtered on, Islah eventually forged a new alliance with Saleh and his backers [who left the government due to the Arab Spring]. The Houthis’ success on the battlefield and astute political messaging eventually paid off big last September, when they took control of Sanaa and forced their Islah-allied adversaries to flee.

 
For the descent from the capital’s fall, several months later, into a botched coup d’état and this month’s political chaos, keep reading the full “Who is in charge of Yemen?” article.

Flag of Yemen

Flag of Yemen