Category Archives: Commentary

All written commentary.

Derna: “Islamic State” proclaims 2nd “province” … in Libya

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Up to 300 Libyan ISIS combat veterans from the Mosul campaign with 500 backing fighters and official recognition from Abu Bakr al Baghdadi, officially just captured the Libyan city of Derna. This final action apparently followed a two-month stealth maneuver inside the city to pave the way — targeting various rival Islamist leaders and anti-Islamist authorities — which was led by a senior Iraqi ISIS officer. The #Barqa tag on Twitter has a flood of photos showing the ISIS-led troops parading into the city in a large convoy of pickup trucks that have become so synonymous with both Libyan militias and the ISIS brigades in Iraq.

The group is proclaiming Derna the new local capital of the “Barqa Province” of the Islamic State, in emulation of the so-called “Forat Province” in eastern Syria and western Iraq. (As I noted in an earlier post on anti-Islamist secessionists in the same region, Barqa is the Arabic name for the eastern Libyan region usually known in Europe and America as “Cyrenaica.”) The city of Derna was a notorious contributor of foreign Islamic fighters to the Middle East during the Qaddafi years, so these ISIS fighters are mostly all locals coming back home.

Strategically, ISIS-Libya believes that control of Derna will cut off or reduce major highway access between the Tobruk government and the Islamist-besieged city of Benghazi, Cyrenaica’s largest city.

Road map showing ISIS-Libya positions (in Derna) relative to Tobruk and Benghazi within the greater Cyrenaica (Barqa) region of eastern Libya.

Road map showing ISIS-Libya positions (in Derna) relative to Tobruk and Benghazi within the greater Cyrenaica (Barqa) region of eastern Libya.

A statement issued by ISIS-Libya (not central command in Syria) indicates this intent and a wider intent to vigorously counter the anti-Islamist Operation Dignity forces of General Hifter. From analyst Aymenn Jawad Al-Tamimi’s translation of the statement:

The sons of the Islamic State in Derna resolved to take revenge on all who participated with, supported or aided Heftar in his war on our mujahideen brothers in Benghazi […] In support of our mujahideen brothers in Benghazi, a great convoy of the lions of the Caliphate came out to cut off the path and resist a great convoy coming out from Tobruq with 15 tanks headed towards Benghazi. On the arrival of the Dawla’s vanguards to cut off the reinforcements, the apostates heard of the arrival of the Islamic State’s convoy, so they sent in their aircraft and returned to Tobruq. And the Islamic State’s convoy returned safely, having accomplished its mission.

 
Hifter’s personal army and the Libyan military, as I noted in my earlier post, are being more or less crushed in Benghazi, representing eighty percent of all deaths (military, Islamist, and civilians) in Benghazi from mid-October to mid-November alone.

A third putative “Islamic State province” is also emerging in the Sinai Peninsula of Egypt, as Ansar Beit al-Maqdiss — Egypt’s most prolific terrorist organization since the fall of Mubarak in early 2011 — joins the ISIS fold (France24 video news report), but they are (to my knowledge) all local Egyptians and not veterans of the ISIS campaigns in Syria and Iraq. For the moment, I would not consider them to be fully integrated with the so-called “Islamic State.”

Libya: Will Cyrenaica (or what’s left of it) secede?

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If the world switches its recognition from the newly-unconstitutional but 2014-elected and eastern-based House of Representatives (HOR) government to the rump, western-based, Islamist-aligned, 2012-elected transitional “General National Congress” (the GNC, which should have ended already), tribal authorities in the vast, eastern Cyrenaica territory say they will secede from Libya.

I doubt the international community at large is likely to make such a switch, but if things keep deteriorating that might not be needed to trigger the threatened separation…

A council representing the tribes of the eastern coastal region of Barqa [the Arabic name for Cyrenaica] said that it would be obliged to declare the independence of the region in case the international community and the residents of the Libyan capital Tripoli had recognised the congress, instead of the recently-elected House of Representatives.

“We will have to return to the 1949 constitution,” the council added in a statement. Before 1949, Libya was divided into three autonomous regions, including the eastern region of Barqa [Cyrenaica].

 
Although Tobruk, the current refuge of the “House of Representatives” government, was previously outfitted (decades ago) the royal capital of Libya and could probably stand in again in a pinch if necessary, it’s pretty hard for me to imagine an independent Cyrenaica that doesn’t include Benghazi, its biggest city.

On the military side, the three biggest cities in Libya as a whole — Tripoli, Benghazi, and Misrata respectively — are under full or partial control of the pro-GNC faction and their various aligned Islamist-leaning militias. And the pro-HOR/Hifter forces in Benghazi are reportedly being utterly wrecked by the pro-GNC forces, even while armed with fighter jets and supported by the Egyptian military: In the past month, eighty percent of all deaths (military, Islamist, and civilians) in Benghazi have been from the military or Hifterite militias, according to Agence France Presse, based on Red Crescent and hospital accounts.

Even Tobruk’s calm has been punctured by bombing attacks on temporary government facilities, which began on October 29. (And nearby Derna has reportedly officially fallen this week to a newly recognized ISIS affiliate led by several hundred Libyan combat veterans of ISIS’s Syria/Iraq war.) Perhaps they want to secede, but the pro-HOR tribal authorities of Cyrenaica might not have much territorial control left soon, without a full-scale foreign intervention. And nobody really has the energy or time for that at the moment, including the governments strongly opposed to the GNC backers.

Map of the three pre-1963 Libyan provinces approximated over a map of present-day subdivisions. (Credit: Spesh531 - Wikimedia)

Map of the three pre-1963 Libyan provinces approximated over a map of present-day subdivisions. (Credit: Spesh531 – Wikimedia)

No Myanmar constitution revisions until after 2015 vote

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Reuters: “Myanmar won’t amend constitution until after 2015 election: parliament speaker”

A referendum on amending the military-drafted 2008 constitution could be held in May, but no changes would be introduced until after a new parliament was elected, lower house speaker Shwe Mann said.
[…]
Suu Kyi’s party compiled a petition with nearly five million signatures in July calling for changes in a constitutional clause that would essentially weaken the military’s legislative powers and allow amendments to be made easier.

Among the controversial clauses is one that bars Suu Kyi from the presidency because her children hold British citizenship, which U.S. President Barack Obama last week said “doesn’t make much sense”.

 
This development — along with recent speculation that Myanmar’s military may be planning to stage a coup against its own pseudo-civilian transitional government entirely staffed by ex-military officers — makes it difficult to give the transition team the benefit of the doubt and extra time they claim to need.

Cameroon forces hold the borders against Boko Haram

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Boko Haram has spent much of the second half of 2014 attempting to breach the Nigerian-Cameroonian border permanently, to spread the war and their territory to a wider sphere of control — much like ISIS crossing from Syria back into Iraq and breaking up the colonial borders. Boko Haram kidnapped the Cameroonian Deputy Prime Minister’s wife from her home (she was eventually released under undisclosed terms) and staged dozens of major attacks on border villages in the country’s less populous and less hospitable northern regions.

AFD Background Briefing: The country, which is located next to Nigeria, Boko Haram’s home base, said it was going to war with Boko Haram back in May of this year when hundreds of Nigerian schoolgirls were kidnapped in a raid. The girls are believed to have been taken to the forests near the border with northern Cameroon.

At great cost, Cameroon has held the line so far:

The strain is tangible. Cameroon’s elite Rapid Intervention Battalion, commonly known by its French acronym BIR, has lost dozens of men since the beginning of the year in the fight against Boko Haram.

About 1,000 men from BIR, trained by US and Israeli forces, have been deployed along a 500-km (300- mile) stretch of porous border with Nigeria. Boko Haram is advancing and Cameroon’s military fight daily battles to keep the boundary with Nigeria – Africa’s most populous state – intact.

Cameroon’s military recently dispatched another 2,000 soldiers to the border region to reinforce troops.
Last month, Boko Haram attacked the military post at Amchide with a tank.

 
They are certainly a more competent military force than Nigeria’s. But troops on the ground are already starting to wonder why France has not sent help from their base not so far away in the capital of Chad.
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Langley Papers: Will Udall leak the CIA torture report?

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Sen. Mark Udall (D-CO) is an outgoing member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, which has prepared a 6,300 page study on CIA torture. The CIA has blocked it from publication. Should he follow the Vietnam-era lead of then Sen. Mike Gravel (D-AK) — who famously read the suppressed “Pentagon Papers” on the Vietnam War into the Senate’s public record to force their release — and (legally) leak the torture report, perhaps along with other state secrets on surveillance abuses that he has access to? Conor Friedersdorf (among others) definitely thinks Udall should:

Using the speech or debate privilege to reveal abuses could be costly for a sitting Senator, who’d risk being stripped of his or her clearance to see classified information or even expelled from the Senate for violating the legislative chamber’s rules. Udall is a lame duck anyway, so his calculus is simpler. He need only ask himself what is right: What fulfills his obligations to his constituents, his country, and the oath of office he took to support and defend the Constitution? Preserving his ability to fight for civil liberties another day is no longer an option.

 

Diplomat Michel Kafando named interim Burkina Faso president

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Michel Kafando, a longtime high-level Burkinabé diplomat, has been picked as the “consensus” interim president of Burkina Faso by the selection committee. The 72-year-old will fill the role of Acting President, appointing a prime minister to lead a 25-member cabinet, until the regularly scheduled November 2015 elections are held. He is expected to take office Friday, November 21, exactly three weeks after President Compaoré’s resignation.

From the France24 news report:

“The committee has just designated me to guide temporarily the destiny of our country. This is more than an honour. It’s a true mission which I will take with the utmost seriousness,” Kafando told journalists after his appointment.

Kafando served as the country’s ambassador to the United Nations from 1998 to 2011. Previously he was Burkina Faso’s foreign affairs minister […]

A committee of 23 officials chose him over other top candidates […] His candidacy was proposed by the army.

 
I’m a little troubled that the Army’s nominee — who was also a 13-year Compaoré appointee as UN ambassador — was chosen as interim president by the selection committee.

Additionally, a French-language news report by Burkina24 suggested that the entire “short list” of five names had been submitted to the selection committee by the military, contrary to Sunday’s reports that a number of interest groups would be submitting candidates. Perhaps the military narrowed that list down to something more manageable, but it would constitute interference all the same. According to the Burkina24 report, the religious and traditional groups did not make any nominations (indeed the Roman Catholic Church repudiated the nomination of Archbishop Paul Ouédraogo to the short list).

Of the remaining three, the selection committee also passed over two news media publishers and a widely-mentioned frontrunner, Joséphine Ouédraogo, a cabinet minister in the revolutionary Sankara government of 1983-1987. The latter was the final runner-up against Kafando, according to Burkina24.

Former Ambassador Kafando has the unusual credential of being a high-ranking appointee under at least three governments, theoretically at odds with each other. In 1981 and 1982, he served as Upper Volta’s Ambassador to the United Nations (pre-name change), as an appointee of the Colonel Zerbo military government of 1980-1982. (Zerbo, in addition to various criminal actions and anti-leftist policies, supposedly later became a Compaoré adviser following the latter’s 1987 coup that displaced the leftist Sankara government, which initially was very anti-Zerbo.) From September 1982 to August 1983, and as the only continuing member from the previous administration, Kafando served as Foreign Minister in the short-lived military government of Major Jean-Baptiste Ouédraogo that had overthrown Zerbo. That government was overthrown in turn by Captain Sankara in August 1983. Kafando then appears to have left government for over a decade, spending at least part of the late 1980s in France obtaining his PhD at Paris-Sorbonne University, before returning to the UN posting in 1998 under Compaoré.

Perhaps this eclectic resume of administrations served under actually demonstrates an ability to work easily with a range of competing factions. Certainly, he is relatively well known by the international community due to these diplomatic postings (including to the UN Security Council), which is probably a plus for an impoverished country reliant on foreign assistance and involved in various security agreements.

Oped | U.S. Double Standards: ISIS and Murders in Mexico

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An excerpt from my new op-ed in The Globalist on the US non-response to the Mexican cartels compared with the response to ISIS:

Or is Mexico “one of us” – a fellow North American civilization of suit-wearing businessmen and politicians who are good Christians? Whereas, perhaps ISIS is an “orientalist” archetypal threat led by people who “dress funny” and claim to be Muslims, who were supposed to be the big cultural threat to “the West” before “the West” tore itself apart over Martin Luther’s ideas?

 
Particularly relevant today in light of the President feeling compelled again to speak on an ISIS beheading despite the hundreds of such incidents passing without comment just across our border.