NWS Nieuws & Achtergronden
Discussieer hier diepgaander over de actualiteiten.
Zo grappig is het allemaal niet anders. Dat "jaarverslag" is gewoon geschift. Straks komen ze nog aanzetten met rendements quotintenquote:Op dinsdag 1 juli 2014 21:19 schreef Blue_Panther_Ninja het volgende:
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Gek genoeg geeft S-A nog steeds geld aan ISIS.
Er is wel gewoon cordinatie tussen Peshmerga en het Irakese leger. Dat mensen in het parlement een zooitje van maken klopt, maar dat zijn dan ook geen militairen. Zo gebeurt het regelmatig dat ze bewegingen van troepen cordineren en zo. Dat is ook wel nodig als je het over zo'n groot land als Irak hebt.
Kurdish fighters battle to keep up morale
By Erika Solomon in Kirkuk
Peeping through sandbags piled on to dirt berms, Kurdish fighters on the borders of oil-rich Kirkuk province watch an enemy hiding in the dry grass just a few hundred metres away, wondering how close they are to an all-out war.
“These guys have started a psychological battle. They hide out there with their faces covered just to scare us,” says Abu Bakri Ali, one of a group of fighters in camouflage cowboy hats, crouched down in the dirt watching. “They fire at us every now and then, but they’re just trying to figure what our weak spots are. They want to exploit them.”
Ever since militants led by the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (known as Isis) seized swaths of territories in a lightning two-week offensive south of their autonomous region in northern Iraq, Kurdish fighters have made clear they will not be as easy a target as the Iraqi state forces that fled the onslaught.
Local channels blare patriotic tunes and seasoned “peshmerga” fighters boast the insurgents do not stand a chance against battle-hardened Kurds. But ambulances that drop off wounded fighters tell a different story.
“There’s a war starting out there – the wounded show it is true,” said one doctor last week, as fighters from the province were rushed in to his Erbil hospital on stretchers.
While the Kurdish forces are unlikely to lose a war to Isis should it choose to launch a full-scale attack, the fight could be costlier than leaders let on.
“If Isis were to attack the Kurdistan region in force, it would not be easily repelled,” says Gareth Stansfield, a researcher for the military think-tank RUSI in London. “Isis has very strong and professional fighting forces. And they have good weapons – probably better than the Kurds. So it would be difficult, and there would be significant losses.”
Isis seized US-made tanks, surface-to-air missiles and even helicopters as Iraqi forces fled their bases. They are well funded through racketeering outfits in Iraq and oil wells captured over the border in eastern Syria.
The peshmerga seized the bulk of their weapons from Saddam Hussein’s bases during the US invasion of 2003.
They may have bolstered their armoury, however, after the militant onslaught caused Iraqi forces to flee their bases in nearby areas like Kirkuk. Iraqi soldiers left behind machine guns, tanks, anti-aircraft missiles and stockpiles of bullets. Peshmerga forces say they joined in a looting spree that emptied the bases of billions in US-made equipment, even though Kurdish officials deny it.
“We got most of our arms from the Iraqi army in 2003 – and we got more from them now. The Americans gave them to the Iraq army, and now we have them,” said Burhan Said Soufi, a former commander who has been touring peshmerga front lines.
But the peshmerga are still suffering financially – disputes with the central government caused Baghdad to cut the regional Kurdistan administration’s budget this year, leaving it squeezed for funds to pay civil servants and fighters alike.
Local rank-and-file peshmerga complain they are still underarmed and underpaid, and say there are more casualties than reported in the skirmishes with Isis, with whom they share a 1,000km frontline from the northwestern to eastern borders of Iraq.
Sheer numbers and willpower point to a Kurdish victory. The Kurds have almost 200,000 fighters compared with a core Isis force of about 3,000 that relies on thousands more in sleeper cells and local militant groups.
Today’s peshmerga forces – whose name means “those who face death” – grew from mountain guerrillas who fought for decades until they gained autonomy in the 1990s, and would fight to the death to preserve it. But Mr Soufi worries the transition to standing army is incomplete.
“They are not that competent . . . In my day we fought for our nation. Today’s peshmerga fight for their livelihoods,” said Mr Soufi, who joined the peshmerga in 1981 and has been touring today’s front line.
“They’re trained 15 days a month to get their 500,000 dinars so they can pay rent and then do other monthly jobs. They are not the same as us, and it has affected their behaviour and discipline.”
Weary, impoverished fighters hardly deny it.
“I have to buy my bullets. I love my country but I don’t know what to do if there’s a real war. How would I make enough to take care of my family?” asks a tall lanky fighter, filling his car with petrol to return to the front after using a leave of absence to drive his taxi.
Of 48 peshmerga divisions, only eight are controlled by the Kurdistan regional government’s peshmerga ministry. The rest are split between the region’s dominant rival parties, the Kurdish Democratic Party and the Patriot Union of Kurdistan, which fought a bloody war after securing semi-autonomy.
“All of the heavy weapons are in the hands of the KDP and PUK forces, and even now they’re still wary of each other,” says Mr Soufi, who used to lead the PUK divisions.
Kurdish commanders say Isis is still reluctant to fight them for now. But there are signs militants may be warming up for a fight – especially in Kirkuk province, where a trail of mortar bombs has scorched the yellow fields near the front line. There has also been a fresh round of roadside bombs and suicide blasts.
Kirkuk, home to some of Iraq’s largest oilfields, has been contested by Iraq’s Kurdish and Arab populations. Unlike other territories that Kurdish forces seized during the Iraqi army’s flight, there is a minority Sunni Arab population that could co-operate with Isis.
On the Kirkuk front, fighter Karokh Manderi drives in the shadow of the berms that stretch as far as the flat horizon, using binoculars to point out Isis positions.
“If they threw a stone from there, it would reach us,” he jokes. When they see an opportunity, they attack. But we are stronger – if they had the power, they wouldn’t let us stay here a minute.”
* * *
Kurdish peshmerga divisions
The 40 units outside Peshmerga Ministry control are evenly split between the Kurdistan region’s two biggest parties – the KDP and the PUK.
The KDP is the region’s most powerful party and its top leaders, such as KRG president Masoud Barzani, have few ties to Baghdad. They are more interested in a completely independent Kurdistan separate from Iraq.
The PUK and its leaders, by comparison, have historically been more interested in a federalist system in Iraq. Some of their top leaders, such as the current Iraqi president Jalal Talabani, have closer ties with Baghdad and many of them spent time or studied there.
Today, the KDP has fostered close ties with Turkey while the PUK has better relations with Iran.
Iraq’s three provinces that officially make up the autonomous Kurdistan region are commonly referred to as the “yellow” or “green” zones that denote the region’s division into two spheres of political control. The KDP controls the yellow zone, or the western part of the region that stretches toward the Syrian border, while the eastern part of the region is the green zone of PUK dominance, toward the Iranian border.
The KDP and PUK fought a civil war over power in the 1990s but have a power-sharing agreement today. Nonetheless, the regions remain distinctly divided and deep bitterness remains between all but the top leaders.
http://m.ft.com/cms/s/0/b12a0ca4-fe0d-11e3-bd0e-00144feab7de.html
By Erika Solomon in Kirkuk
Peeping through sandbags piled on to dirt berms, Kurdish fighters on the borders of oil-rich Kirkuk province watch an enemy hiding in the dry grass just a few hundred metres away, wondering how close they are to an all-out war.
“These guys have started a psychological battle. They hide out there with their faces covered just to scare us,” says Abu Bakri Ali, one of a group of fighters in camouflage cowboy hats, crouched down in the dirt watching. “They fire at us every now and then, but they’re just trying to figure what our weak spots are. They want to exploit them.”
Ever since militants led by the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (known as Isis) seized swaths of territories in a lightning two-week offensive south of their autonomous region in northern Iraq, Kurdish fighters have made clear they will not be as easy a target as the Iraqi state forces that fled the onslaught.
Local channels blare patriotic tunes and seasoned “peshmerga” fighters boast the insurgents do not stand a chance against battle-hardened Kurds. But ambulances that drop off wounded fighters tell a different story.
“There’s a war starting out there – the wounded show it is true,” said one doctor last week, as fighters from the province were rushed in to his Erbil hospital on stretchers.
While the Kurdish forces are unlikely to lose a war to Isis should it choose to launch a full-scale attack, the fight could be costlier than leaders let on.
“If Isis were to attack the Kurdistan region in force, it would not be easily repelled,” says Gareth Stansfield, a researcher for the military think-tank RUSI in London. “Isis has very strong and professional fighting forces. And they have good weapons – probably better than the Kurds. So it would be difficult, and there would be significant losses.”
Isis seized US-made tanks, surface-to-air missiles and even helicopters as Iraqi forces fled their bases. They are well funded through racketeering outfits in Iraq and oil wells captured over the border in eastern Syria.
The peshmerga seized the bulk of their weapons from Saddam Hussein’s bases during the US invasion of 2003.
They may have bolstered their armoury, however, after the militant onslaught caused Iraqi forces to flee their bases in nearby areas like Kirkuk. Iraqi soldiers left behind machine guns, tanks, anti-aircraft missiles and stockpiles of bullets. Peshmerga forces say they joined in a looting spree that emptied the bases of billions in US-made equipment, even though Kurdish officials deny it.
“We got most of our arms from the Iraqi army in 2003 – and we got more from them now. The Americans gave them to the Iraq army, and now we have them,” said Burhan Said Soufi, a former commander who has been touring peshmerga front lines.
But the peshmerga are still suffering financially – disputes with the central government caused Baghdad to cut the regional Kurdistan administration’s budget this year, leaving it squeezed for funds to pay civil servants and fighters alike.
Local rank-and-file peshmerga complain they are still underarmed and underpaid, and say there are more casualties than reported in the skirmishes with Isis, with whom they share a 1,000km frontline from the northwestern to eastern borders of Iraq.
Sheer numbers and willpower point to a Kurdish victory. The Kurds have almost 200,000 fighters compared with a core Isis force of about 3,000 that relies on thousands more in sleeper cells and local militant groups.
Today’s peshmerga forces – whose name means “those who face death” – grew from mountain guerrillas who fought for decades until they gained autonomy in the 1990s, and would fight to the death to preserve it. But Mr Soufi worries the transition to standing army is incomplete.
“They are not that competent . . . In my day we fought for our nation. Today’s peshmerga fight for their livelihoods,” said Mr Soufi, who joined the peshmerga in 1981 and has been touring today’s front line.
“They’re trained 15 days a month to get their 500,000 dinars so they can pay rent and then do other monthly jobs. They are not the same as us, and it has affected their behaviour and discipline.”
Weary, impoverished fighters hardly deny it.
“I have to buy my bullets. I love my country but I don’t know what to do if there’s a real war. How would I make enough to take care of my family?” asks a tall lanky fighter, filling his car with petrol to return to the front after using a leave of absence to drive his taxi.
Of 48 peshmerga divisions, only eight are controlled by the Kurdistan regional government’s peshmerga ministry. The rest are split between the region’s dominant rival parties, the Kurdish Democratic Party and the Patriot Union of Kurdistan, which fought a bloody war after securing semi-autonomy.
“All of the heavy weapons are in the hands of the KDP and PUK forces, and even now they’re still wary of each other,” says Mr Soufi, who used to lead the PUK divisions.
Kurdish commanders say Isis is still reluctant to fight them for now. But there are signs militants may be warming up for a fight – especially in Kirkuk province, where a trail of mortar bombs has scorched the yellow fields near the front line. There has also been a fresh round of roadside bombs and suicide blasts.
Kirkuk, home to some of Iraq’s largest oilfields, has been contested by Iraq’s Kurdish and Arab populations. Unlike other territories that Kurdish forces seized during the Iraqi army’s flight, there is a minority Sunni Arab population that could co-operate with Isis.
On the Kirkuk front, fighter Karokh Manderi drives in the shadow of the berms that stretch as far as the flat horizon, using binoculars to point out Isis positions.
“If they threw a stone from there, it would reach us,” he jokes. When they see an opportunity, they attack. But we are stronger – if they had the power, they wouldn’t let us stay here a minute.”
* * *
Kurdish peshmerga divisions
The 40 units outside Peshmerga Ministry control are evenly split between the Kurdistan region’s two biggest parties – the KDP and the PUK.
The KDP is the region’s most powerful party and its top leaders, such as KRG president Masoud Barzani, have few ties to Baghdad. They are more interested in a completely independent Kurdistan separate from Iraq.
The PUK and its leaders, by comparison, have historically been more interested in a federalist system in Iraq. Some of their top leaders, such as the current Iraqi president Jalal Talabani, have closer ties with Baghdad and many of them spent time or studied there.
Today, the KDP has fostered close ties with Turkey while the PUK has better relations with Iran.
Iraq’s three provinces that officially make up the autonomous Kurdistan region are commonly referred to as the “yellow” or “green” zones that denote the region’s division into two spheres of political control. The KDP controls the yellow zone, or the western part of the region that stretches toward the Syrian border, while the eastern part of the region is the green zone of PUK dominance, toward the Iranian border.
The KDP and PUK fought a civil war over power in the 1990s but have a power-sharing agreement today. Nonetheless, the regions remain distinctly divided and deep bitterness remains between all but the top leaders.
http://m.ft.com/cms/s/0/b12a0ca4-fe0d-11e3-bd0e-00144feab7de.html
Ik denk dat Erdogan in ieder geval tot na zijn verkiezing gaat wachten met sterkere bewoordingen. ij heeft toch ook de steun van de rechtse Turken nodig. Hij kan nu nog niet eenduidig zijn.quote:
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En toch hebben ook de Koerden in Irak erkenning nodig van in ieder geval een paar regionale grootmachten....anders ga je het heel moeilijk krijgen. Gewoon puur tegenstrijdige belangen. Amerika ziet de bui al hangen, onafhankelijk Koerdistan betekent nieuwe grenzen in de regio en daarmee meer ruimte voor ISIS. Zij willen een sterkere Iraakse overheid om ISIS buitenspel te zetten en aan te pakken. De Koerden willen gewoon een eigen land, zeker nu Irak helemaal in puin ligt. Sowieso hebben ze er geen binding mee.
De Turken zijn (na Amerikaanse druk) snel bijgedraaid als je de laatste berichten mag geloven. Het oude en eerder verwoordde standpunt was weldegelijk dat men Koerdische onafhankelijkheid zou accepteren als de Koerden daarvoor stemmen. Nu zegt men dat de oplossing binnen de Iraakse staat en eenheid gezocht moet worden.
En je hebt gelijk over de Amerikanen en dat hun steun nodig is, maar het is niet zo dat zij alles bepalen. Ook zij moeten uiteindelijk roeien met de riemen die ze hebben en mocht Koerdistan onafhankelijk worden, gaan ook zij daarin mee. Zeker als zowel Ankara als Tel Aviv erachter gaan staan. Ik zet in op 2015 en tot dan kan veel veranderen.
lolquote:
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Zo grappig is het allemaal niet anders. Dat "jaarverslag" is gewoon geschift. Straks komen ze nog aanzetten met rendements quotinten
Denk dat juist een onafhankelijke regio in Irak isis nog meer buitenspel zet, want Koerden kunnen hun grenzen wel goed bewaken zoals we afgelopen jaren hebben gezien. Grootste dreiging komt niet van hard-core moslims extremisten van buiten Koerdistan maar vooral van binnen Koerdistan. Daar is ook een groep bezig die contacten heeft met isis.quote:
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En toch hebben ook de Koerden in Irak erkenning nodig van in ieder geval een paar regionale grootmachten....anders ga je het heel moeilijk krijgen. Gewoon puur tegenstrijdige belangen. Amerika ziet de bui al hangen, onafhankelijk Koerdistan betekent nieuwe grenzen in de regio en daarmee meer ruimte voor ISIS. Zij willen een sterkere Iraakse overheid om ISIS buitenspel te zetten en aan te pakken. De Koerden willen gewoon een eigen land, zeker nu Irak helemaal in puin ligt. Sowieso hebben ze er geen binding mee.
De Turken zijn (na Amerikaanse druk) snel bijgedraaid als je de laatste berichten mag geloven. Het oude en eerder verwoordde standpunt was weldegelijk dat men Koerdische onafhankelijkheid zou accepteren als de Koerden daarvoor stemmen. Nu zegt men dat de oplossing binnen de Iraakse staat en eenheid gezocht moet worden.
Een sterkere Iraakse overheid ga je gewoon niet krijgen, daar is de haat gewoon te diep voor. Soenietten willen liever geregeerd worden door isis dan door sijiten. Daarnaast zijn er heel veel plekken in West-Irak helemaal niet in de handen van isis maar wordt het geregeerd door Soenitische stamhoofden. Die hebben ervoor gevochten en willen dit niet kwijt raken aan sijieten. Zitten veel Baathisten tussen.
Sijieten in het Zuiden willen zeker geen herhaling van een baath regime en ze zien elk soenitische leider als een toekomstige saddam hussein.
Koerden hebben hun onafhankelijkheid in de praktijk alleen nog niet op papier. Die willen niks terug geven.
Zolang Koerdistan niet officieel op papier bestaat zullen Amerika en Turkije het goed vinden. Israel zal het niet veel uitmaken of het op papier of in praktijk bestaat, zij zullen Koerdistan zien als nieuwe uitval basis om Iran te treiteren. Zeker gezien dat Turkije gevoelige informatie over mossad agenten door had gespeeld aan Iran in het verleden.
Kuweit zal een onafhankelijke Koerdistan steunen ga ik van uit aangezien er al contact is geweest tussen Koerdistan en Kuweit. Kuweit wil ook gewoon dat Irak uit elkaar valt. Daarnaast is UAE een grote investeerder in Koerdistan en zullen ook zij niet weg kijken van een Koerdistan.
Qatar kan met zijn oliebedrijf ook investeren in een Koerdistan en wil juist ook dat er geen sterk Iraaks overheid bestaat aangezien zij dan minder macht zullen hebben in de regio.
KSA zal het niet veel brommen zolang het koningshuis maar geen gevaar loopt. Ze zullen wel islamitische partijen steunen zodat de saudische jeugd daar met zijn woede richting the koningshuis kan zijn.
Jordanie idem als KSA, zolang Koerdistan geen gevaar is voor het koningshuis zal het hun niet veel boeien.
Syrie zal natuurlijk sterk tegen zijn. Net zoals Iran. Redenen daarvoor zijn bekend, ga ik ook niet op in.
Turkije is alleen tegen een onafhankelijk Koerdistan op papier.
Er zijn blijkbaar gevechten in Kerbala tussen shia mensen. Zie het langskomen op twitter.
[ Bericht 100% gewijzigd door Djibril op 02-07-2014 12:24:52 ]
[ Bericht 100% gewijzigd door Djibril op 02-07-2014 12:24:52 ]
Een kleine groepje aanhangers van Sarkhi (ghulat sekteleider), die meent dat hij de nieuwe mahdi is, vecht tegen regeringstroepen.quote:
Er zijn blijkbaar gevechten in Kerbala tussen shia mensen. Zie het langskomen op twitter.
Gevechten zouden al voorbij zijn. Ze hebben een pak slaag gekregen.quote:
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Een kleine groepje aanhangers van Sarkhi (ghulat sekteleider), die meent dat hij de nieuwe mahdi is, vecht tegen regeringstroepen.
Volgens mij valt dat "ghulat" wel mee als je daarmee doelt op religieuze opvattingen die hij verkondigt, gewoon sterke politieke meningsverschillen met de andere ayatollahs. Het is een student van Muhammed Baqir al-Sadr overigens, wel opvallend en niet de minste was dat. Nergens lees ik ook dat hij zelf claimt de Mehdi te zijn, hij heeft slechts "thee met hem gedronken" (vrij onschuldig lijkt mequote:
Een kleine groepje aanhangers van Sarkhi (ghulat sekteleider), die meent dat hij de nieuwe mahdi is, vecht tegen regeringstroepen.
). Pro wilayat al-faqih systeem en daarmee theocratie in Irak, maar expliciet tegen Iraanse invloed in Irak. En volgens mij meent hij dat het religieuze shia establishment "zwaar verdwaald" is.
Oorlog is de verderzetting van de politiek maar met andere middelen - Clausewitz
Ben je gek? Of ben je gek? Wat is dit voor wens? Weet je wat voor catastrofe dat is voor de complete regio?quote:Op dinsdag 1 juli 2014 23:58 schreef SadPanda het volgende:
Het zou mooi zijn als KSA destabiliseert vanwege hun steun voor terrorisme en het gif (wahabisme) dat ze verspreid.
Ghulat verwijst naar (voor de orthodoxie) extreme religieuze opvattingen, zoals dat Ali ook God is bijv. Wat ik zoal lees over die Sarkhi heeft hij niet zulke opvattingen en gaat het vooral om politieke meningsverschillen, kan mij ook niet voorstellen dat een student van Muhammed Baqir al-Sadr een ghulati is in theologische zin, dat zou betekenen dat hij de lessen van zijn leraar-ayatollah compleet naast zich heeft neergelegd.quote:
kijk eens, onze Aloulou praat zelfs extreme Ghulat-sektes goed.
Ik ken de geschiedenis van Ismail niet voordat hij een extremistische sjiet werd die duizenden over de kling jaagde omdat ze niet tot zijn geloof wilden overgaan.quote:Shah Ismail (de Sjiitische ISIS-leider) was ook een Ghulat overigens. Praat je dat ook goed.__
Oorlog is de verderzetting van de politiek maar met andere middelen - Clausewitz
Dan zou er een opstand in KSA kunnen komen, en dat is uiteindelijk positief.quote:
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Ben je gek? Of ben je gek? Wat is dit voor wens? Weet je wat voor catastrofe dat is voor de complete regio?
Dan voelen ze zelf wat hun terrorisme veroorzaakt in andere landen.
Dan kunnen ze geen terrorisme steunen.
Anti-Turkije
De regio is nu al 1 grote puinhoop dankzij de Saudi's en Qataris. Ze mogen ook wel een keer 'hun' share krijgen.quote:
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Ben je gek? Of ben je gek? Wat is dit voor wens? Weet je wat voor catastrofe dat is voor de complete regio?
Dat is uiteindelijk negatief, tenzij je een natte droom krijgt van chaos, verval en het onstaan van een kalifaat.quote:
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Dan zou er een opstand in KSA kunnen komen, en dat is uiteindelijk positief.
Dan voelen ze zelf wat hun terrorisme veroorzaakt in andere landen.
Dan kunnen ze geen terrorisme steunen.
Want de bevolking van S-A wil een kalifaat a la ISIS?quote:
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Dat is uiteindelijk negatief, tenzij je een natte droom krijgt van chaos, verval en het onstaan van een kalifaat.
Anti-Turkije
Want de bevolking van Irak en Syrie wil dat? Het gaat niet om willen, het gaat om wat er uiteindelijk van terecht komt.quote:
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Want de bevolking van S-A wil een kalifaat a la ISIS?
[ Bericht 6% gewijzigd door #ANONIEM op 02-07-2014 15:02:38 ]
Nee, maar die ISIS terroristen zullen verslagen worden in Syri en Irak. Je denkt toch niet dat het er over 5 jaar nog is?quote:
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Want de bevolking van Irak en Syrie wil dat? Het gaat niet om willen, het gaat om wat er uiteindelijk van terecht komt.
Anti-Turkije
Dat is niet mijn punt.quote:
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Nee, maar die ISIS terroristen zullen verslagen worden in Syri en Irak. Je denkt toch niet dat het er over 5 jaar nog is?
twitter:KeepingtheLeith twitterde op woensdag 02-07-2014 om 13:51:53 A 9 year #IS fighter. His parents should be ashamed of themselves. #Syria http://t.co/fXK5biWJya reageer retweet
A 9 year
Anti-Turkije
De Safaviden waren van origine een soefistisch broederschap.quote:
Ik ken de geschiedenis van Ismail niet voordat hij een extremistische sjiet werd die duizenden over de kling jaagde omdat ze niet tot zijn geloof wilden overgaan.
En de Safaviden verdienen een pluim. Stel je voor dat Iran Soennitisch was geweest.
Het beeld dat wij hebben van SA is net zo correct als ons beeld van N. Korea. KSA is een brute autoritaire dictatuur die dankzij westerse spindoctors een totaal ander beeld van zichzelf naar buiten weet te brengen. De bevolking van KSA heeft nog minder inspraak in het buitenland beleid van het land wij in onze 'westerse democratieen'quote:
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Want de bevolking van S-A wil een kalifaat a la ISIS?
.[ Bericht 0% gewijzigd door Autodefensa op 02-07-2014 16:31:56 ]
Goed om te horen. De twee partijen hebben elkaar nu meer dan ooit nodig.quote:
Er is wel gewoon cordinatie tussen Peshmerga en het Irakese leger. Dat mensen in het parlement een zooitje van maken klopt, maar dat zijn dan ook geen militairen. Zo gebeurt het regelmatig dat ze bewegingen van troepen cordineren en zo. Dat is ook wel nodig als je het over zo'n groot land als Irak hebt.
Een onafhankelijk, assertief Kurdistan maakt nu geen schijn van kans... Het land zal de-facto een verlengstuk zijn van een van de regionale krachten. Een niet zo'n doordachte zet van Barzani. In huidig Irak kan Kurdistan zichzelf beter consolideren dan erbuiten.quote:
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Saudie Arabia heeft al een x-aantal jaren hun binnenlandse veiligheid vrij goed op orde. Was slechts paar jaar na 9/11 dat er afentoe aanslagen waren. Maar daarna hebben ze dat vrij strak in de kiem gesmoord.
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De meeste sjia politici in Bagdad zijn voor een verenigd Irak (tot op heden) en zien Koerdische afscheiding als zeer ongewenst. Zodoende dat ze dus trippen nu ook Barzani aangaf over paar maanden een referendum te houden en indien men voor stemt onafhankelijkheid uit te roepen. Ik verwacht dus weinig coordinatie tussen het Iraakse leger en de peshmerga's, minimaal eigenlijk. Elk leger dopt zijn eigen boontjes gewoon, ook tegen ISIS als dat nodig is.
Ik vind het toch wel gedurfd van Barzani zo'n referendum aan te kondigen. Het lijkt erop dat Turkije na Amerikaanse druk toch niet zo uitgesproken voor Koerdische onafhankelijkheid is. Amerika is er sterk tegen en wil dat Irak een blijft en zoekt daar de oplossing in. Mochten de Koerden daadwerkelijk de onafhankelijkheid uitroepen dan is Irak einde verhaal en wie weet welke gevolgen dat dan heeft in de bredere regio...de Iraakse soennie's en sjia kunnen never nooit door een deur en dan roept het de vraag op waar de grenzen van die (nieuwe) staten eindigen (Bagdad hoort dat bij soennitische of sjitische staat bijv).
Ik denk dat Amerika vooral heel erg nerveus is nu Barzani openlijk heeft aangekondigd zsm referendum te houden over onafhankelijkhed. Dit zien de Yanks als een rampscenario.
Nazemroaya: I think that’s an excellent question and let me be clear about this and very categorical. What is called DAISH [Arabic: Al-Dawlah Al-Islamiyah fe Al-Iraq wa Al-Sham] or the ISIL (the so-called Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant) is not the manifestation of the failure of US policy that the United States is trying to present; it is actually the manifestation of US policy.
This is the clear manifestation of what the United States and its allies. including Israel to the south of Syria, have been trying to do in this region for over a decade. For many years now, this is a manifestation of that. The ISIL in Syria want to integrate Syria with Iraq and basically the objective, is to divide both countries and to create sectarian states that are homogenous and only reserved for Sunnis while other groups such as Shiites, Christians, Druze are all expelled.
This is why you have people in the Syrian anti-government forces – the insurgency – for several years now, since the insurgency started in 2011, saying “Alawites to the ground and Christians to Lebanon.” Because what they’re trying to do is and what they’ve been working to do is what some would call ethnic cleansing. I think that term is an oxymoron and actually camouflages genocide.
The Christians in Iraq are almost extinct and that’s because of the United States and Britain. During their occupation the Christians were persecuted.
And now in Syria this fighting is going because the ISIL wants to integrate this area with Iraq. It calls this an Islamic Caliphate, but I want to be categorical; this has nothing to do with Islam. The idea of an Islamic Emirate now is something that the United States has been pushing. The Islamic Emirate when it was disbanded, the last Caliphate under the Ottomans, wasn’t even the authentic Caliphate. Anybody who talks about that isn’t aware of history or has no understanding of Islam.
And the United States has been pushing this as a camouflage. Many in the West believe the ISIL represents Muslims; it doesn’t represent Muslims or Sunnis at all.
http://www.globalresearch(...)a-us-project/5389399
[ Bericht 1% gewijzigd door Autodefensa op 02-07-2014 17:07:36 ]
Dat maakt weinig verschil, onafhankelijk of niet. Ze functioneren nu al praktisch onafhankelijk en hebben weinig aan de rest van Irak. Ze zullen ook niets meer toegeven aan Bagdad, beide partijen hebben weinig toegevoegde waarde aan elkaar en zullen ruzie blijven maken. Tevens bepalen ze zelf in hoeverre ze een verlengstuk willen zijn van buurstaten, ik kan me voorstellen dat ze handel en samenwerking met bijvoorbeeld Turkije wel zien zitten.quote:
[..]
Een onafhankelijk, assertief Kurdistan maakt nu geen schijn van kans... Het land zal de-facto een verlengstuk zijn van een van de regionale krachten. Een niet zo'n doordachte zet van Barzani. In huidig Irak kan Kurdistan zichzelf beter consolideren dan erbuiten.
Say what?
Dat de Koerden onafhankelijk van de rest functioneren betekent niet automatisch dat ze niet van Irak profiteren of er niks aan hebben. Naast de overheidssubsidies hebben zij ook baat bij de politieke paraplu die de staat van Irak biedt. De soevereiniteit en de onaantastbaarheid van de grenzen zullen in het geding komen als Koerdistan zich de jura afscheidt.quote:Op woensdag 2 juli 2014 17:27 schreef UpsideDown het volgende:
[..]
Dat maakt weinig verschil, onafhankelijk of niet. Ze functioneren nu al praktisch onafhankelijk en hebben weinig aan de rest van Irak. Ze zullen ook niets meer toegeven aan Bagdad, beide partijen hebben weinig toegevoegde waarde aan elkaar en zullen ruzie blijven maken. Tevens bepalen ze zelf in hoeverre ze een verlengstuk willen zijn van buurstaten, ik kan me voorstellen dat ze handel en samenwerking met bijvoorbeeld Turkije wel zien zitten.
Aan bondgenoten als Turkije heb je ook niks. Eergisteren steunden zij de Koerden, gisteren weer niet en vandaag annexeren zij half Kurdistan onder de mom van humanitaire interventie / historische aanspraak en niemand die hen tegenhoudt. Dit geldt niet alleen voor Turkije maar ook voor Iran of zelfs Jordani of KSA.
Landsgrenzen zijn niet statisch en zeker niet in een koloniaal ingerichte regio als het MO waar elke speler de mogelijkheid zal aangrijpen om zich uit te breiden. En als de soldaten eenmaal ter plaatse zijn is er niets of niemand die hen kan dwingen te vertrekken.
De politieke ramificaties die zo'n zet kan hebben zijn eindeloos. Het volk in het MO blijft al deccenialang maar bloeden en bloeden door toedoen zijn of andermans politieke leiders. Meer veranderingen en borderdrawings helpt niet bij het stoppen van bloedvergieten.
Ik moet het voor deze keer eens zijn met trekpop Kerry. Voorlopig geen de jura onafhankelijk Koerdistan.
[ Bericht 5% gewijzigd door Autodefensa op 02-07-2014 17:48:38 ]
Die politieke paraplu waar je het over hebt is nu compleet weg en zal vermoedelijk niet meer terug komen, Irak en Syri zullen beide in hun huidige vorm niet meer terug komen en voorgoed uiteenvallen.quote:
[..]
Dat de Koerden onafhankelijk van de rest functioneren betekent niet automatisch dat ze niet van Irak profiteren of er niks aan hebben. Naast de overheidssubsidies hebben zij ook baat bij de politieke paraplu die de staat van Irak biedt. De soevereiniteit en de onaantastbaarheid van de grenzen zullen in het geding komen als Koerdistan zich de jura afscheidt.
Aan bondgenoten als Turkije heb je ook niks. Eergisteren steunden zij de Koerden, gisteren weer niet en vandaag annexeren zij half Kurdistan onder de mom van humanitaire interventie / historische aanspraak en niemand die hen tegenhoudt. Dit geldt niet alleen voor Turkije maar ook voor Iran of zelfs Jordani of KSA.
Landsgrenzen zijn niet statisch en zeker niet in een koloniaal ingerichte regio als het MO waar elke speler de mogelijkheid zal aangrijpen om zich uit te breiden. En als de soldaten eenmaal ter plaatse zijn is er niets of niemand die hen kan dwingen te vertrekken.
Turkije zal niet zomaar grond annexeren van buurlanden, daarvoor is de internationale druk op het land veel te groot. Iran zal ook geen grond annexeren, die heeft al zwaar te lijden onder internationale sancties. Turken zijn niet dom, het beste wat ze kunnen doen is Koerdistan als bontgenoot zien zodat ze en volop van elkaar kunnen profiteren.
Het is valse hoop om te denken dat het de komende jaren nog goed gaat komen met Irak, daarvoor is er teveel gebeurd. Het beste voor de Koerden is afscheiden, een eigen staat opbouwen en handelsrelaties met buurlanden aangaan.
Say what?
Let's agree to disagree.quote:
[..]
Die politieke paraplu waar je het over hebt is nu compleet weg en zal vermoedelijk niet meer terug komen, Irak en Syri zullen beide in hun huidige vorm niet meer terug komen en voorgoed uiteenvallen.
Turkije zal niet zomaar grond annexeren van buurlanden, daarvoor is de internationale druk op het land veel te groot. Iran zal ook geen grond annexeren, die heeft al zwaar te lijden onder internationale sancties. Turken zijn niet dom, het beste wat ze kunnen doen is Koerdistan als bontgenoot zien zodat ze en volop van elkaar kunnen profiteren.
Het is valse hoop om te denken dat het de komende jaren nog goed gaat komen met Irak, daarvoor is er teveel gebeurd. Het beste voor de Koerden is afscheiden, een eigen staat opbouwen en handelsrelaties met buurlanden aangaan.
(En de dingen die Kurdistan zou moeten doen volgens jou, zijn al jaren aan de gang.
)
Ok, eens.quote:
[..]
Let's agree to disagree.
(En de dingen die Kurdistan zou moeten doen volgens jou, zijn al jaren aan de gang.
Say what?
Bron?quote:
En nog steeds worden 180 Koerdische studenten door isis vastgehouden in syrie. Velen worden gemarteld en dit wordt gefilmd. Vervolgens laten ze dit aan YPG zien om zo de YPG te dwingen zich uit plekken terug te trekken.
En hoe gaat YPG hiermee om denk je?
Ze moeten kiezen voor de Koerdische studenten, dat is helemaal niet moeilijk.quote:
[..]
Dat zijn van die nare dingen waar je als leider dan beslissingen over moet nemen.
Maar ze laten ze toch nooit vrij...quote:
[..]
Ze moeten kiezen voor de Koerdische studenten, dat is helemaal niet moeilijk.
"But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded, and the glory of Europe is extinguished forever."- Edmund Burke
Dan?quote:
[..]
De Safaviden waren van origine een soefistisch broederschap.
En de Safaviden verdienen een pluim. Stel je voor dat Iran Soennitisch was geweest.
Dat weet toch juist iedereen?quote:
[..]
Het beeld dat wij hebben van SA is net zo correct als ons beeld van N. Korea. KSA is een brute autoritaire dictatuur die dankzij westerse spindoctors een totaal ander beeld van zichzelf naar buiten weet te brengen. De bevolking van KSA heeft nog minder inspraak in het buitenland beleid van het land wij in onze 'westerse democratieen'
Mwau, zelfs ISIS doet zaken met een bepaalt doel he.quote:
Ik denk niet dat ISIS die jongeren aan het martelen is om het martelen. Maar echt zodat YPG zich terugtrekt.
En zolang dat werkt zullen ze ze niet vrijlaten. Uiteindelijk moet je dan beslissen dat 180 levens meer of minder het verliezen van een oorlog met nog veel meer doden als gevolg niet waard is. Dat is wat het verstand zegt. Alleen qua emoties/gevoel is het erg lastig om die keuze te maken.quote:
[..]
Mwau, zelfs ISIS doet zaken met een bepaalt doel he.
Ik denk niet dat ISIS die jongeren aan het martelen is om het martelen. Maar echt zodat YPG zich terugtrekt.
"But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded, and the glory of Europe is extinguished forever."- Edmund Burke
Ik reageerde op zijn post dat 'de bevolking van KSA' medeverantwoordelijk is voor de export van terrorisme. Ik weet niet of iedereen dat weet.quote:
Ah, op die manier.quote:
[..]
Ik reageerde op zijn post dat 'de bevolking van KSA' medeverantwoordelijk is voor de export van terrorisme. Ik weet niet of iedereen dat weet.
Jij weet helemaal niet of ISIS die jongeren nooit vrij zal laten.quote:
[..]
En zolang dat werkt zullen ze ze niet vrijlaten. Uiteindelijk moet je dan beslissen dat 180 levens meer of minder het verliezen van een oorlog met nog veel meer doden als gevolg niet waard is. Dat is wat het verstand zegt. Alleen qua emoties/gevoel is het erg lastig om die keuze te maken.
quote:
KSA is een brute autoritaire dictatuur die dankzij westerse spindoctors een totaal ander beeld van zichzelf naar buiten weet te brengen. De bevolking van KSA heeft nog minder inspraak in het buitenland beleid van het land wij in onze 'westerse democratieen' .
Dat zei ik niet.quote:
Ik reageerde op zijn post dat 'de bevolking van KSA' medeverantwoordelijk is voor de export van terrorisme.
Anti-Turkije
twitter:KeepingtheLeith twitterde op woensdag 02-07-2014 om 17:19:54 Iranian officials have announced that they will not send arms to #Iraq reageer retweet
twitter:KeepingtheLeith twitterde op woensdag 02-07-2014 om 19:41:37 Iraqi Prime Minister, Nouri al-Maliki, has stated that Iraq will not recognize Iraqi Kurdistan's right to self-rule. #Iraq #Kurds reageer retweet
twitter:KeepingtheLeith twitterde op woensdag 02-07-2014 om 19:31:16 Over 60+ IS terrorists were killed at the Al-Abd Wa'is area of the Jurf al-Sakhar District. #Babel #Iraq reageer retweet
Anti-Turkije
Het leger bij Tikrit
quote:Iraq: This morning fierce battle on Jaloula and Tikrit mainly, but also in other fronts as well, including clashes on Baghdad belt.
Clashed all night & this morning in Karbalaa where a curfew is imposed today. ground troops & air force were used. ISF attacked gathering groups belonging to Mahmoud al-sarkhi, a Shia group based in Karbalaa,. Same group was attacked in Najaf in 2004. Al-Sarkhic considers himself a kind of Illuminated Mahdi, spreading teaching of his " travelling to the sky & returning to followers"
quote:Iraq-i officials confirmed overtly this morning "Military command have received 10 Russian Su25 and said more would come".
Erbil/Hawlerquote:And "Mi -28 n j" (Night hunter). Transport helicopters were on a plane that "-124" "Ruslan".
A diplomatic source said military had been delivered four helicopters "Mi -35 m" and 3 of the model "Mi -28 n j." Iraq had happened at the end of last year to 4 helicopters "Mi -35 m." The composition of combat helicopters delivered complete and equipped with night vision.
It was reported earlier that Baghdad will receive 24 helicopter "Mi -35 m" and 19 helicopters, "Mi -28 n j" until 2016. Plans to use helicopters in the fight against terrorists in Iraq.
It should be noted signing a contract worth 4.2 billion dollars to get Iraq on military products from Russia in 2012. According to experts, the cost of the purchase of military helicopters, equipment and means of infection targets exceed one billion dollars.
More ...: http://arabic.ruvr.ru/news/2014_07_01/274154569/
Kurdish fighters battle to keep up morale
Control of the tribal rebels on the headquarters of the regiment 1 16 Army Brigade and the Safavid sheep weapons and ammunition burning mechanisms near the Great
Review of the Islamic Caliphate soldiers in the streets of tendernessquote:eeping through sandbags piled on to dirt berms, Kurdish fighters on the borders of oil-rich Kirkuk province watch an enemy hiding in the dry grass just a few hundred metres away, wondering how close they are to an all-out war.
“These guys have started a psychological battle. They hide out there with their faces covered just to scare us,” says Abu Bakri Ali, one of a group of fighters in camouflage cowboy hats, crouched down in the dirt watching. “They fire at us every now and then, but they’re just trying to figure what our weak spots are. They want to exploit them.”
Ever since militants led by the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (known as Isis) seized swaths of territories in a lightning two-week offensive south of their autonomous region in northern Iraq, Kurdish fighters have made clear they will not be as easy a target as the Iraqi state forces that fled the onslaught.
Local channels blare patriotic tunes and seasoned “peshmerga” fighters boast the insurgents do not stand a chance against battle-hardened Kurds. But ambulances that drop off wounded fighters tell a different story.
“There’s a war starting out there – the wounded show it is true,” said one doctor last week, as fighters from the province were rushed in to his Erbil hospital on stretchers.
While the Kurdish forces are unlikely to lose a war to Isis should it choose to launch a full-scale attack, the fight could be costlier than leaders let on.
“If Isis were to attack the Kurdistan region in force, it would not be easily repelled,” says Gareth Stansfield, a researcher for the military think-tank RUSI in London. “Isis has very strong and professional fighting forces. And they have good weapons – probably better than the Kurds. So it would be difficult, and there would be significant losses.” .... lees hier verder: http://www.ft.com/intl/cm(...)age286#axzz36J1aHtK5
Control of the tribal rebels on the headquarters of the regiment 1 16 Army Brigade and the Safavid sheep weapons and ammunition burning mechanisms near the Great
http://basnews.com/en/New(...)op-daydreaming/25415quote:During a meeting in Moscow on Tuesday, the Iranian deputy foreign minister, Hossein Amir-Abdollahiyan, mentioned that Kurds need to stop daydreaming about independence.
Massoud Barzani , president of Iraq’s autonomous Kurdish Region, told the BBC he intends to hold a referendum on Kurdish independence.
But the Iranian diplomat strongly disapproved of Barzani’s plan. He said it was now 'vital to take measures to prevent the break-up of the country,' reported to AFP.
'Instead of daydreaming, the leaders of Iraqi Kurdistan should take a look at reality,' he stated.
Air Force directed air strikes painful operations in Anbar cutters and operations of Babylonquote:
Waar zijn de beelden van die gevechten?
Ik ben nog weinig gevechtenvideos tegengekomen... Het zijn voornamelijk parade's, dans-/moraalboostvideos en soms een executie. En natuurlijk vliegtuigsorties.
Irakese MinDef videokanaal Youtube:
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCB3T7NqoFuYSv0NQW83TM9g
http://thehill.com/policy(...)-helicopters-to-iraqquote:Pentagon sends attack helicopters to Iraq
Officials would not say how many of the armed helicopters have been sent to the country, stating only that they will be based in Baghdad and could assist with evacuations of American personnel
"We have seen Iraqi security forces in and around Baghdad begin to reinforce themselves and prepare to defend, and they are taking the offensive. And we saw this over the weekend up near Tikrit. So it's a contested environment right now," Kirby said.
"The situation on the ground continues to change. It's very fluid. It's dynamic. The threat to Baghdad is still very legitimate. And we also want to make sure that we are doing what we can to help our colleagues in the State Department continue to function out of the embassy there and to have the flexibility, if they want to make resource and manning changes there, that we're able — we're in a position to help them do that," Kirby said.
Waarom die 'quote:
[..]
http://thehill.com/policy(...)-helicopters-to-iraq
'?
Anti-Turkije
Die willen natuurlijk garanderen dat hun mensen niet weer dood door de straten gesleept worden, net als in Somali.
Naast de andere agenda die ze natuurlijk ook hebben.
Naast de andere agenda die ze natuurlijk ook hebben.
Dit dus:quote:
+ waar blijven die 400 Hellfire raketten die Irak in Januari nog besteld en betaald heeft? Wanneer komen de al aanbetaalde F-16s aan? In Yemen en Pakistan is de VS vrolijk hele wijken plat aan het leggen as we speak terwijl er bij Irak 'goed overwogen' moet worden om wel of niet in te grijpen. In Irak zijn al rocket capable drones aan het patrouilleren maar ze hebben nog geen enkele ISIS terrorist opgeblazen.quote:Die willen natuurlijk garanderen dat hun mensen niet weer dood door de straten gesleept worden, net als in Somali.
Naast de andere agenda die ze natuurlijk ook hebben.
Die Apaches en militaire adviseurs zijn puur om zich in te dekken en eventueel de gebeurtenissen on the ground by te sturen in Amerikaans voordeel. Ik neig er toch naar om te zeggen dat ISIS slechts een radertje is in grotere Amerikaanse plannen.
Na miljarden aan Irak te hebben uitgegeven werden Amerikaanse bedrijven sinds Amerikaanse militaire terugtrekking steeds meer verdreven door Chinese en Russische bedrijven + Iraanse politieke invloeden. De grootste oliebron van Irak werd vanaf April dit jaar door Lukoil geexploiteerd, terwijl Exxon de biezen kon pakken om maar iets te noemen.
Het is niet meer dan logisch dat die Centraal-Aziatische invloeden daar domineren, dat is de natuurlijke gang van zaken maar het lijkt erop dat Amerikanen daar niet mee akkoord gaan. Hun sterk terughoudende houding ten opzichte van ISIS, gecombineerd met de gebeurtenissen in Syri doet mij het ergste vermoeden over de ISIS - Amerika relatie. Vandaar ook mijn scepsis richting Amerikaanse bemoeienis in Irak, in welke vorm dan ook.
Mocht er concreet bewijs komen voor Amerika-ISIS-as zou dat alle misdaden tegen de menselijkheid tot nu toe overschaduwen.
Het feit dat Amerika afzijdig blijft heeft weinig te maken met het feit of ze wel of niet ISIS steunen (dat doen ze niet). Maar alles met de politiek van Obama en de democraten. Obama wil geen nieuwe Irak-oorlog starten en ook niet ingrijpen in Syrie. ISIS is behoorlijk verspreid, indien je een oorlog tegen hen begint zul je zowel in Irak als Syrie moeten bombarderen. Zodra Amerika dat gaat doen worden ze weer gezien als de grote agressor.
In Libie werd alleen ingegrepen, omdat met name Sarkozy stond te springen en de Europeanen(NAVO) het klusje niet alleen konden klaren. Nu blijven de Europeanen stil en houden de Russen het voor alsnog bij steun in de vorm van wapens en materiaal. Obama gaat niet beslissen om in te grijpen dat laat hij het congres of de senaat doen, maar Irak is zo 'toxic' voor de Amerikaanse politici dat niemand de verantwoordelijkheid wil nemen over een missie.
In Libie werd alleen ingegrepen, omdat met name Sarkozy stond te springen en de Europeanen(NAVO) het klusje niet alleen konden klaren. Nu blijven de Europeanen stil en houden de Russen het voor alsnog bij steun in de vorm van wapens en materiaal. Obama gaat niet beslissen om in te grijpen dat laat hij het congres of de senaat doen, maar Irak is zo 'toxic' voor de Amerikaanse politici dat niemand de verantwoordelijkheid wil nemen over een missie.
En ook al grijpen ze in met zo'n 60.000 rondtroepen of dergelijke, ze kunnen IS nooit verslaan.quote:
Het feit dat Amerika afzijdig blijft heeft weinig te maken met het feit of ze wel of niet ISIS steunen (dat doen ze niet). Maar alles met de politiek van Obama en de democraten. Obama wil geen nieuwe Irak-oorlog starten en ook niet ingrijpen in Syrie. ISIS is behoorlijk verspreid, indien je een oorlog tegen hen begint zul je zowel in Irak als Syrie moeten bombarderen. Zodra Amerika dat gaat doen worden ze weer gezien als de grote agressor.
In Libie werd alleen ingegrepen, omdat met name Sarkozy stond te springen en de Europeanen(NAVO) het klusje niet alleen konden klaren. Nu blijven de Europeanen stil en houden de Russen het voor alsnog bij steun in de vorm van wapens en materiaal. Obama gaat niet beslissen om in te grijpen dat laat hij het congres of de senaat doen, maar Irak is zo 'toxic' voor de Amerikaanse politici dat niemand de verantwoordelijkheid wil nemen over een missie.
Als de NAVO en Rusland willen dan is de IS morgen een grote parkeerplaats, maar het aantal (onschuldige) slachtoffers en de schade is dan buiten proportie.quote:
[..]
En ook al grijpen ze in met zo'n 60.000 rondtroepen of dergelijke, ze kunnen IS nooit verslaan.
Misschien niet verslaan maar wel voor 99% decimeren. Daar teken ik ook voor!quote:
[..]
En ook al grijpen ze in met zo'n 60.000 rondtroepen of dergelijke, ze kunnen IS nooit verslaan.
Sjiitische milities vs ISIS
https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?v=289691074525126
En het leger.
https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?v=687144548038202
[ Bericht 33% gewijzigd door Peunage op 03-07-2014 02:03:50 ]
https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?v=289691074525126
En het leger.
https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?v=687144548038202
[ Bericht 33% gewijzigd door Peunage op 03-07-2014 02:03:50 ]
Whehe. Ik las "Shiitische millities van ISIS", kreeg bijna een hartaanval.quote:Op donderdag 3 juli 2014 01:33 schreef Peunage het volgende:
Sjiitische milities vs ISIS
https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?v=289691074525126
En het leger.
https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?v=687144548038202
Protge moi de mes dsirs.
quote:Saudische militairen trekken op naar Iraakse grens
Saudi-Arabi heeft 30.000 militaire troepen naar de grens met Irak gestuurd. De stap volgt op het terugtrekken van Iraakse soldaten uit het gebied.
Dat meldt Sky News op basis van berichtgeving door al-Arabiya TV.
Volgens de Arabische zender zouden 2.500 Iraakse militairen naar het woestijnachtige gebied ten oosten van de Iraakse stad Karbala zijn vertrokken. Het grensgebied met Saudi-Arabi en Syri zou hierdoor momenteel onbewaakt zijn.
Vervolg op artikel;
quote:Een Iraakse officier spreekt op de Arabische zender zijn verbazing uit over de orders die hij van premier Nuri al-Maliki kreeg om het grensgebied te verlaten, terwijl er geen sprake zou zijn van acuut gevaar.
Kijk, toont direct aan dat de sjiitische milities net zulke primitieve beesten zijn als ISIS.quote:
Sjiitische milities vs ISIS
https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?v=289691074525126
En het leger.
https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?v=687144548038202
Er is dan ook niemand die ISIS wil verslaan.quote:
[..]
En ook al grijpen ze in met zo'n 60.000 rondtroepen of dergelijke, ze kunnen IS nooit verslaan.
Barzani geeft straks een speech in het Koerdische parlement. Een paar honderd demonstranten voor het parlement willen dat hij de onafhankelijkheid uitroept.
Een Koerdische regeringswoordvoerder heeft aangegeven dat Koerdistan zich onafhankelijk verklaart zelfs als de VS tegen is: http://video.pbs.org/video/2365283306/
Een Koerdische regeringswoordvoerder heeft aangegeven dat Koerdistan zich onafhankelijk verklaart zelfs als de VS tegen is: http://video.pbs.org/video/2365283306/
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Vanavond
Hoe de propagandamachine van ISIS Nederland verovert
Sinds de inval in Irak is het internet overstelpt met propaganda van terreurbeweging ISIS. Internationaal draait de PR-campagne van ISIS op volle toeren en ook Nederland wordt niet vergeten.
Steeds meer filmpjes, foto-reportages en artikelen zijn direct gericht op de Nederlandse achterban en de AIVD waarschuwde maandag dat de ISIS-propaganda in Nederland duizenden jongeren bereikt.
Sinds kort betuigen zelfs 14-jarige meisjes op Twitter met zelfgemaakte tekeningen hun steun aan ISIS, tegenwoordig bekend als Islamitische Staat (IS). Wie zitten er in Nederland achter deze campagne? Door wie worden ze aangestuurd? En wat zijn de gevolgen? We spreken hierover met IS-aanhanger Maiwand Al Afghani en islamoloog Halim El Madkouri.
http://www.eenvandaag.nl/(...)s_nederland_verovert
Hoe de propagandamachine van ISIS Nederland verovert
Sinds de inval in Irak is het internet overstelpt met propaganda van terreurbeweging ISIS. Internationaal draait de PR-campagne van ISIS op volle toeren en ook Nederland wordt niet vergeten.
Steeds meer filmpjes, foto-reportages en artikelen zijn direct gericht op de Nederlandse achterban en de AIVD waarschuwde maandag dat de ISIS-propaganda in Nederland duizenden jongeren bereikt.
Sinds kort betuigen zelfs 14-jarige meisjes op Twitter met zelfgemaakte tekeningen hun steun aan ISIS, tegenwoordig bekend als Islamitische Staat (IS). Wie zitten er in Nederland achter deze campagne? Door wie worden ze aangestuurd? En wat zijn de gevolgen? We spreken hierover met IS-aanhanger Maiwand Al Afghani en islamoloog Halim El Madkouri.
http://www.eenvandaag.nl/(...)s_nederland_verovert
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'Iran levert gevechtsvliegtuigen aan Irak'
Iran heeft dinsdag Su-25 Frogfoot grondaanvalsvliegtuigen geleverd aan Irak. Dat beweert het International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS), een Londense denktank. Irak ontving eerder vliegtuigen van hetzelfde type van Rusland.
Volgens de denktank maken de Frogfoots onderdeel uit van een deal over militaire hulp die Irak en Iran onlangs overeenkwamen. Het IISS merkt op dat het ironisch genoeg waarschijnlijk van oorsprong Iraakse kisten zijn, die tijdens de eerste Golfoorlog in 1991 naar Iran zijn gevlogen. Desondanks zijn ze beter onderhouden dan de Russische Frogfoots die Irak onlangs ontving, stelt de denktank. Het is onbekend of de Iraanse vliegtuigen door Iraakse piloten worden bemand. Het IISS sluit niet uit dat ze door Iranirs worden gevlogen.
http://www.telegraaf.nl/b(...)ts_naar_Irak___.html
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Dat die ''mensen'' maar snel optieven naar dat uitgeroepen kalifaatquote:
Vanavond
Hoe de propagandamachine van ISIS Nederland verovert
Sinds de inval in Irak is het internet overstelpt met propaganda van terreurbeweging ISIS. Internationaal draait de PR-campagne van ISIS op volle toeren en ook Nederland wordt niet vergeten.
Steeds meer filmpjes, foto-reportages en artikelen zijn direct gericht op de Nederlandse achterban en de AIVD waarschuwde maandag dat de ISIS-propaganda in Nederland duizenden jongeren bereikt.
Sinds kort betuigen zelfs 14-jarige meisjes op Twitter met zelfgemaakte tekeningen hun steun aan ISIS, tegenwoordig bekend als Islamitische Staat (IS). Wie zitten er in Nederland achter deze campagne? Door wie worden ze aangestuurd? En wat zijn de gevolgen? We spreken hierover met IS-aanhanger Maiwand Al Afghani en islamoloog Halim El Madkouri.
http://www.eenvandaag.nl/(...)s_nederland_verovert
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Zonder wrijving geen glans
Maar volgens mij waren de grootste oliedeals na de inval in 03 sowieso niet met Amerikaanse bedrijven maar met Europese en China.quote:
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Dit dus:
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+ waar blijven die 400 Hellfire raketten die Irak in Januari nog besteld en betaald heeft? Wanneer komen de al aanbetaalde F-16s aan? In Yemen en Pakistan is de VS vrolijk hele wijken plat aan het leggen as we speak terwijl er bij Irak 'goed overwogen' moet worden om wel of niet in te grijpen. In Irak zijn al rocket capable drones aan het patrouilleren maar ze hebben nog geen enkele ISIS terrorist opgeblazen.
Die Apaches en militaire adviseurs zijn puur om zich in te dekken en eventueel de gebeurtenissen on the ground by te sturen in Amerikaans voordeel. Ik neig er toch naar om te zeggen dat ISIS slechts een radertje is in grotere Amerikaanse plannen.
Na miljarden aan Irak te hebben uitgegeven werden Amerikaanse bedrijven sinds Amerikaanse militaire terugtrekking steeds meer verdreven door Chinese en Russische bedrijven + Iraanse politieke invloeden. De grootste oliebron van Irak werd vanaf April dit jaar door Lukoil geexploiteerd, terwijl Exxon de biezen kon pakken om maar iets te noemen.
Het is niet meer dan logisch dat die Centraal-Aziatische invloeden daar domineren, dat is de natuurlijke gang van zaken maar het lijkt erop dat Amerikanen daar niet mee akkoord gaan. Hun sterk terughoudende houding ten opzichte van ISIS, gecombineerd met de gebeurtenissen in Syri doet mij het ergste vermoeden over de ISIS - Amerika relatie. Vandaar ook mijn scepsis richting Amerikaanse bemoeienis in Irak, in welke vorm dan ook.
Mocht er concreet bewijs komen voor Amerika-ISIS-as zou dat alle misdaden tegen de menselijkheid tot nu toe overschaduwen.
Waarom die "quote:
Vanavond
Hoe de propagandamachine van ISIS Nederland verovert
Sinds de inval in Irak is het internet overstelpt met propaganda van terreurbeweging ISIS. Internationaal draait de PR-campagne van ISIS op volle toeren en ook Nederland wordt niet vergeten.
Steeds meer filmpjes, foto-reportages en artikelen zijn direct gericht op de Nederlandse achterban en de AIVD waarschuwde maandag dat de ISIS-propaganda in Nederland duizenden jongeren bereikt.
Sinds kort betuigen zelfs 14-jarige meisjes op Twitter met zelfgemaakte tekeningen hun steun aan ISIS, tegenwoordig bekend als Islamitische Staat (IS). Wie zitten er in Nederland achter deze campagne? Door wie worden ze aangestuurd? En wat zijn de gevolgen? We spreken hierover met IS-aanhanger Maiwand Al Afghani en islamoloog Halim El Madkouri.
http://www.eenvandaag.nl/(...)s_nederland_verovert
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lol @ buitenlanders rekruteren en ze dan laten opblazen.quote:ISIS Chief Confirms Indians Could Be Part of Insurgent Group
In a revelation that is sure to raise worries in India's security establishment, the first-ever audio message of Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the leader of the ISIS, has confirmed suspicions that Indians could well be part of his organisation's ranks.
While enumerating the nationalities of fighters who constitute ISIS, Al-Baghdadi's 20-second-long audio titled 'A message to the Mujahideen and the Muslim Ummah in the month of Ramadan' that was released on Tuesday mentions that Indians, among a host of other nationalities including Chinese, American, French, German, Australian, etc. figure in the ISIS squad.
According to intelligence sources, on January 22, a Tamil Nadu-born person had left for Syria to fight alongside the Islamic fundamentalists. In 2013, the same person had trained with the Chechen jihadis and had recruited two Chennai college students for Jihad in Syria as well.
Reports speak of about 10,000 foreign fighters in the ISIS ranks.
Affirming the possibility of Indian fighters in ISIS, Ajai Sahni, a counter terrorism expert told HT: "Already there are confirmed cases of Indians fighting in Syria. One faction of the Indian Mujaheedin is also fighting alongside the Taliban in Afghanistan."
Foreign fighters are mainly used for suicide attacks according to the Institute for the Study of War, a Washington-based think tank that has analysed an ISIS annual report published on March 31, 2014. "The majority of suicide bombers in Iraq have historically been foreign fighters...This division therefore suggests ISIS leadership intended to highlight the effective use of foreign fighters," it says in a report.
The ISIS chief's speech also signalled strong possibilities that India is a prime target of the organisation that has established military control in large parts of Syria and Iraq.
India figures quite a few times in his speech where he names India as one of the countries including Pakistan and Myanmar, where "Muslims' rights are forcibly seized". Al-Baghdadi then goes on to give a clarion call to believers for emigration (hijrah) to the Islamic state. He also terms terror acts as the "killing and burning the homes of Muslims in Burma, the dismembering and disemboweling of the Muslims in the Philippines, Indonesia, and Kashmir."
Is dit nou een verstandige zet? Die Hellfireraketjes hebben een vast brandstofreservoir waardoor die dingen jaren houdbaar en ieder moment inzetbaar kunnen zijn. Ik zou niet opkijken als uiteindelijk blijkt dat een deel van deze raketten in handen van ISIS komt die ze dan weer kunnen inzetten tegen wie dan ook.quote:Obama sells Hellfire: White House hopes to send 4K missiles to Iraq for ISIL fight
The Obama administration is hoping that 4,000 Hellfire missiles might turn the tide in Iraq as the Middle Eastern nation takes on the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL). Officials were told by the State Department last week that the Obama administration is trying to complete the sale with Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki’s Shiite-led government.
Members of the Senate and House foreign relations committees will conduct a review of the planned sale. The process can take up to 40 days, Bloomberg News reported Wednesday.
“As a matter of policy, we decline to comment on cases that have not been formally notified to Congress,” Josh Paul, a spokesman for the State Department bureau in charge of security assistance told the news outlet.
If the sale of the 4,000 laser-guided missiles is completed, it would add to a previous Iraqi purchase of 500 missiles.
On Friday, Iraq’s ambassador to the U.S., Lukman Faily, criticized the Obama administration for failing to deliver weapons more quickly to the region. He added that “further delay only benefits the terrorists,” Bloomberg reported.
http://www.washingtontime(...)e-hopes-send-4k-mis/
twitter:msquinn twitterde op donderdag 03-07-2014 om 14:14:55 Another excellent interactive piece by @nytimes chronicling the campaign by ISIS along the Tigris & Euphrates rivers http://t.co/usy6Xnb4uB reageer retweet
Another excellent interactive piece by @
5 maart 2007
http://www.newyorker.com/(...)ersh?currentPage=allquote:In the past few months, as the situation in Iraq has deteriorated, the Bush Administration, in both its public diplomacy and its covert operations, has significantly shifted its Middle East strategy. The “redirection,” as some inside the White House have called the new strategy, has brought the United States closer to an open confrontation with Iran and, in parts of the region, propelled it into a widening sectarian conflict between Shiite and Sunni Muslims.
To undermine Iran, which is predominantly Shiite, the Bush Administration has decided, in effect, to reconfigure its priorities in the Middle East. In Lebanon, the Administration has coperated with Saudi Arabia’s government, which is Sunni, in clandestine operations that are intended to weaken Hezbollah, the Shiite organization that is backed by Iran. The U.S. has also taken part in clandestine operations aimed at Iran and its ally Syria. A by-product of these activities has been the bolstering of Sunni extremist groups that espouse a militant vision of Islam and are hostile to America and sympathetic to Al Qaeda.
One contradictory aspect of the new strategy is that, in Iraq, most of the insurgent violence directed at the American military has come from Sunni forces, and not from Shiites. But, from the Administration’s perspective, the most profound—and unintended—strategic consequence of the Iraq war is the empowerment of Iran. Its President, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, has made defiant pronouncements about the destruction of Israel and his country’s right to pursue its nuclear program, and last week its supreme religious leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, said on state television that “realities in the region show that the arrogant front, headed by the U.S. and its allies, will be the principal loser in the region.”
After the revolution of 1979 brought a religious government to power, the United States broke with Iran and cultivated closer relations with the leaders of Sunni Arab states such as Jordan, Egypt, and Saudi Arabia. That calculation became more complex after the September 11th attacks, especially with regard to the Saudis. Al Qaeda is Sunni, and many of its operatives came from extremist religious circles inside Saudi Arabia. Before the invasion of Iraq, in 2003, Administration officials, influenced by neoconservative ideologues, assumed that a Shiite government there could provide a pro-American balance to Sunni extremists, since Iraq’s Shiite majority had been oppressed under Saddam Hussein. They ignored warnings from the intelligence community about the ties between Iraqi Shiite leaders and Iran, where some had lived in exile for years. Now, to the distress of the White House, Iran has forged a close relationship with the Shiite-dominated government of Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki.
The new American policy, in its broad outlines, has been discussed publicly. In testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in January, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said that there is “a new strategic alignment in the Middle East,” separating “reformers” and “extremists”; she pointed to the Sunni states as centers of moderation, and said that Iran, Syria, and Hezbollah were “on the other side of that divide.” (Syria’s Sunni majority is dominated by the Alawi sect.) Iran and Syria, she said, “have made their choice and their choice is to destabilize.”
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Some of the core tactics of the redirection are not public, however. The clandestine operations have been kept secret, in some cases, by leaving the execution or the funding to the Saudis, or by finding other ways to work around the normal congressional appropriations process, current and former officials close to the Administration said.
A senior member of the House Appropriations Committee told me that he had heard about the new strategy, but felt that he and his colleagues had not been adequately briefed. “We haven’t got any of this,” he said. “We ask for anything going on, and they say there’s nothing. And when we ask specific questions they say, ‘We’re going to get back to you.’ It’s so frustrating.”
The key players behind the redirection are Vice-President Dick Cheney, the deputy national-security adviser Elliott Abrams, the departing Ambassador to Iraq (and nominee for United Nations Ambassador), Zalmay Khalilzad, and Prince Bandar bin Sultan, the Saudi national-security adviser. While Rice has been deeply involved in shaping the public policy, former and current officials said that the clandestine side has been guided by Cheney. (Cheney’s office and the White House declined to comment for this story; the Pentagon did not respond to specific queries but said, “The United States is not planning to go to war with Iran.”)
The policy shift has brought Saudi Arabia and Israel into a new strategic embrace, largely because both countries see Iran as an existential threat. They have been involved in direct talks, and the Saudis, who believe that greater stability in Israel and Palestine will give Iran less leverage in the region, have become more involved in Arab-Israeli negotiations.
The new strategy “is a major shift in American policy—it’s a sea change,” a U.S. government consultant with close ties to Israel said. The Sunni states “were petrified of a Shiite resurgence, and there was growing resentment with our gambling on the moderate Shiites in Iraq,” he said. “We cannot reverse the Shiite gain in Iraq, but we can contain it.”
“It seems there has been a debate inside the government over what’s the biggest danger—Iran or Sunni radicals,” Vali Nasr, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, who has written widely on Shiites, Iran, and Iraq, told me. “The Saudis and some in the Administration have been arguing that the biggest threat is Iran and the Sunni radicals are the lesser enemies. This is a victory for the Saudi line.”
Martin Indyk, a senior State Department official in the Clinton Administration who also served as Ambassador to Israel, said that “the Middle East is heading into a serious Sunni-Shiite Cold War.” Indyk, who is the director of the Saban Center for Middle East Policy at the Brookings Institution, added that, in his opinion, it was not clear whether the White House was fully aware of the strategic implications of its new policy. “The White House is not just doubling the bet in Iraq,” he said. “It’s doubling the bet across the region. This could get very complicated. Everything is upside down.”
The Administration’s new policy for containing Iran seems to complicate its strategy for winning the war in Iraq. Patrick Clawson, an expert on Iran and the deputy director for research at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, argued, however, that closer ties between the United States and moderate or even radical Sunnis could put “fear” into the government of Prime Minister Maliki and “make him worry that the Sunnis could actually win” the civil war there. Clawson said that this might give Maliki an incentive to coperate with the United States in suppressing radical Shiite militias, such as Moqtada al-Sadr’s Mahdi Army.
Even so, for the moment, the U.S. remains dependent on the coperation of Iraqi Shiite leaders. The Mahdi Army may be openly hostile to American interests, but other Shiite militias are counted as U.S. allies. Both Moqtada al-Sadr and the White House back Maliki. A memorandum written late last year by Stephen Hadley, the national-security adviser, suggested that the Administration try to separate Maliki from his more radical Shiite allies by building his base among moderate Sunnis and Kurds, but so far the trends have been in the opposite direction. As the Iraqi Army continues to founder in its confrontations with insurgents, the power of the Shiite militias has steadily increased.
Flynt Leverett, a former Bush Administration National Security Council official, told me that “there is nothing coincidental or ironic” about the new strategy with regard to Iraq. “The Administration is trying to make a case that Iran is more dangerous and more provocative than the Sunni insurgents to American interests in Iraq, when—if you look at the actual casualty numbers—the punishment inflicted on America by the Sunnis is greater by an order of magnitude,” Leverett said. “This is all part of the campaign of provocative steps to increase the pressure on Iran. The idea is that at some point the Iranians will respond and then the Administration will have an open door to strike at them.”
President George W. Bush, in a speech on January 10th, partially spelled out this approach. “These two regimes”—Iran and Syria—“are allowing terrorists and insurgents to use their territory to move in and out of Iraq,” Bush said. “Iran is providing material support for attacks on American troops. We will disrupt the attacks on our forces. We’ll interrupt the flow of support from Iran and Syria. And we will seek out and destroy the networks providing advanced weaponry and training to our enemies in Iraq.”
In the following weeks, there was a wave of allegations from the Administration about Iranian involvement in the Iraq war. On February 11th, reporters were shown sophisticated explosive devices, captured in Iraq, that the Administration claimed had come from Iran. The Administration’s message was, in essence, that the bleak situation in Iraq was the result not of its own failures of planning and execution but of Iran’s interference.
The U.S. military also has arrested and interrogated hundreds of Iranians in Iraq. “The word went out last August for the military to snatch as many Iranians in Iraq as they can,” a former senior intelligence official said. “They had five hundred locked up at one time. We’re working these guys and getting information from them. The White House goal is to build a case that the Iranians have been fomenting the insurgency and they’ve been doing it all along—that Iran is, in fact, supporting the killing of Americans.” The Pentagon consultant confirmed that hundreds of Iranians have been captured by American forces in recent months. But he told me that that total includes many Iranian humanitarian and aid workers who “get scooped up and released in a short time,” after they have been interrogated.
“We are not planning for a war with Iran,” Robert Gates, the new Defense Secretary, announced on February 2nd, and yet the atmosphere of confrontation has deepened. According to current and former American intelligence and military officials, secret operations in Lebanon have been accompanied by clandestine operations targeting Iran. American military and special-operations teams have escalated their activities in Iran to gather intelligence and, according to a Pentagon consultant on terrorism and the former senior intelligence official, have also crossed the border in pursuit of Iranian operatives from Iraq.
At Rice’s Senate appearance in January, Democratic Senator Joseph Biden, of Delaware, pointedly asked her whether the U.S. planned to cross the Iranian or the Syrian border in the course of a pursuit. “Obviously, the President isn’t going to rule anything out to protect our troops, but the plan is to take down these networks in Iraq,” Rice said, adding, “I do think that everyone will understand that—the American people and I assume the Congress expect the President to do what is necessary to protect our forces.”
The ambiguity of Rice’s reply prompted a response from Nebraska Senator Chuck Hagel, a Republican, who has been critical of the Administration:
Some of us remember 1970, Madam Secretary. And that was Cambodia. And when our government lied to the American people and said, “We didn’t cross the border going into Cambodia,” in fact we did.
I happen to know something about that, as do some on this committee. So, Madam Secretary, when you set in motion the kind of policy that the President is talking about here, it’s very, very dangerous.
The Administration’s concern about Iran’s role in Iraq is coupled with its long-standing alarm over Iran’s nuclear program. On Fox News on January 14th, Cheney warned of the possibility, in a few years, “of a nuclear-armed Iran, astride the world’s supply of oil, able to affect adversely the global economy, prepared to use terrorist organizations and/or their nuclear weapons to threaten their neighbors and others around the world.” He also said, “If you go and talk with the Gulf states or if you talk with the Saudis or if you talk with the Israelis or the Jordanians, the entire region is worried. . . . The threat Iran represents is growing.”
The Administration is now examining a wave of new intelligence on Iran’s weapons programs. Current and former American officials told me that the intelligence, which came from Israeli agents operating in Iran, includes a claim that Iran has developed a three-stage solid-fuelled intercontinental missile capable of delivering several small warheads—each with limited accuracy—inside Europe. The validity of this human intelligence is still being debated.
A similar argument about an imminent threat posed by weapons of mass destruction—and questions about the intelligence used to make that case—formed the prelude to the invasion of Iraq. Many in Congress have greeted the claims about Iran with wariness; in the Senate on February 14th, Hillary Clinton said, “We have all learned lessons from the conflict in Iraq, and we have to apply those lessons to any allegations that are being raised about Iran. Because, Mr. President, what we are hearing has too familiar a ring and we must be on guard that we never again make decisions on the basis of intelligence that turns out to be faulty.”
Still, the Pentagon is continuing intensive planning for a possible bombing attack on Iran, a process that began last year, at the direction of the President. In recent months, the former intelligence official told me, a special planning group has been established in the offices of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, charged with creating a contingency bombing plan for Iran that can be implemented, upon orders from the President, within twenty-four hours.
In the past month, I was told by an Air Force adviser on targeting and the Pentagon consultant on terrorism, the Iran planning group has been handed a new assignment: to identify targets in Iran that may be involved in supplying or aiding militants in Iraq. Previously, the focus had been on the destruction of Iran’s nuclear facilities and possible regime change.
Two carrier strike groups—the Eisenhower and the Stennis—are now in the Arabian Sea. One plan is for them to be relieved early in the spring, but there is worry within the military that they may be ordered to stay in the area after the new carriers arrive, according to several sources. (Among other concerns, war games have shown that the carriers could be vulnerable to swarming tactics involving large numbers of small boats, a technique that the Iranians have practiced in the past; carriers have limited maneuverability in the narrow Strait of Hormuz, off Iran’s southern coast.) The former senior intelligence official said that the current contingency plans allow for an attack order this spring. He added, however, that senior officers on the Joint Chiefs were counting on the White House’s not being “foolish enough to do this in the face of Iraq, and the problems it would give the Republicans in 2008.”
PRINCE BANDAR’S GAME
The Administration’s effort to diminish Iranian authority in the Middle East has relied heavily on Saudi Arabia and on Prince Bandar, the Saudi national-security adviser. Bandar served as the Ambassador to the United States for twenty-two years, until 2005, and has maintained a friendship with President Bush and Vice-President Cheney. In his new post, he continues to meet privately with them. Senior White House officials have made several visits to Saudi Arabia recently, some of them not disclosed.
Last November, Cheney flew to Saudi Arabia for a surprise meeting with King Abdullah and Bandar. The Times reported that the King warned Cheney that Saudi Arabia would back its fellow-Sunnis in Iraq if the United States were to withdraw. A European intelligence official told me that the meeting also focussed on more general Saudi fears about “the rise of the Shiites.” In response, “The Saudis are starting to use their leverage—money.”
In a royal family rife with competition, Bandar has, over the years, built a power base that relies largely on his close relationship with the U.S., which is crucial to the Saudis. Bandar was succeeded as Ambassador by Prince Turki al-Faisal; Turki resigned after eighteen months and was replaced by Adel A. al-Jubeir, a bureaucrat who has worked with Bandar. A former Saudi diplomat told me that during Turki’s tenure he became aware of private meetings involving Bandar and senior White House officials, including Cheney and Abrams. “I assume Turki was not happy with that,” the Saudi said. But, he added, “I don’t think that Bandar is going off on his own.” Although Turki dislikes Bandar, the Saudi said, he shared his goal of challenging the spread of Shiite power in the Middle East.
The split between Shiites and Sunnis goes back to a bitter divide, in the seventh century, over who should succeed the Prophet Muhammad. Sunnis dominated the medieval caliphate and the Ottoman Empire, and Shiites, traditionally, have been regarded more as outsiders. Worldwide, ninety per cent of Muslims are Sunni, but Shiites are a majority in Iran, Iraq, and Bahrain, and are the largest Muslim group in Lebanon. Their concentration in a volatile, oil-rich region has led to concern in the West and among Sunnis about the emergence of a “Shiite crescent”—especially given Iran’s increased geopolitical weight.
“The Saudis still see the world through the days of the Ottoman Empire, when Sunni Muslims ruled the roost and the Shiites were the lowest class,” Frederic Hof, a retired military officer who is an expert on the Middle East, told me. If Bandar was seen as bringing about a shift in U.S. policy in favor of the Sunnis, he added, it would greatly enhance his standing within the royal family.
The Saudis are driven by their fear that Iran could tilt the balance of power not only in the region but within their own country. Saudi Arabia has a significant Shiite minority in its Eastern Province, a region of major oil fields; sectarian tensions are high in the province. The royal family believes that Iranian operatives, working with local Shiites, have been behind many terrorist attacks inside the kingdom, according to Vali Nasr. “Today, the only army capable of containing Iran”—the Iraqi Army—“has been destroyed by the United States. You’re now dealing with an Iran that could be nuclear-capable and has a standing army of four hundred and fifty thousand soldiers.” (Saudi Arabia has seventy-five thousand troops in its standing army.)
Nasr went on, “The Saudis have considerable financial means, and have deep relations with the Muslim Brotherhood and the Salafis”—Sunni extremists who view Shiites as apostates. “The last time Iran was a threat, the Saudis were able to mobilize the worst kinds of Islamic radicals. Once you get them out of the box, you can’t put them back.”
The Saudi royal family has been, by turns, both a sponsor and a target of Sunni extremists, who object to the corruption and decadence among the family’s myriad princes. The princes are gambling that they will not be overthrown as long as they continue to support religious schools and charities linked to the extremists. The Administration’s new strategy is heavily dependent on this bargain.
Nasr compared the current situation to the period in which Al Qaeda first emerged. In the nineteen-eighties and the early nineties, the Saudi government offered to subsidize the covert American C.I.A. proxy war against the Soviet Union in Afghanistan. Hundreds of young Saudis were sent into the border areas of Pakistan, where they set up religious schools, training bases, and recruiting facilities. Then, as now, many of the operatives who were paid with Saudi money were Salafis. Among them, of course, were Osama bin Laden and his associates, who founded Al Qaeda, in 1988.
This time, the U.S. government consultant told me, Bandar and other Saudis have assured the White House that “they will keep a very close eye on the religious fundamentalists. Their message to us was ‘We’ve created this movement, and we can control it.’ It’s not that we don’t want the Salafis to throw bombs; it’s who they throw them at—Hezbollah, Moqtada al-Sadr, Iran, and at the Syrians, if they continue to work with Hezbollah and Iran.”
The Saudi said that, in his country’s view, it was taking a political risk by joining the U.S. in challenging Iran: Bandar is already seen in the Arab world as being too close to the Bush Administration. “We have two nightmares,” the former diplomat told me. “For Iran to acquire the bomb and for the United States to attack Iran. I’d rather the Israelis bomb the Iranians, so we can blame them. If America does it, we will be blamed.”
In the past year, the Saudis, the Israelis, and the Bush Administration have developed a series of informal understandings about their new strategic direction. At least four main elements were involved, the U.S. government consultant told me. First, Israel would be assured that its security was paramount and that Washington and Saudi Arabia and other Sunni states shared its concern about Iran.
Second, the Saudis would urge Hamas, the Islamist Palestinian party that has received support from Iran, to curtail its anti-Israeli aggression and to begin serious talks about sharing leadership with Fatah, the more secular Palestinian group. (In February, the Saudis brokered a deal at Mecca between the two factions. However, Israel and the U.S. have expressed dissatisfaction with the terms.)
The third component was that the Bush Administration would work directly with Sunni nations to counteract Shiite ascendance in the region.
Fourth, the Saudi government, with Washington’s approval, would provide funds and logistical aid to weaken the government of President Bashir Assad, of Syria. The Israelis believe that putting such pressure on the Assad government will make it more conciliatory and open to negotiations. Syria is a major conduit of arms to Hezbollah. The Saudi government is also at odds with the Syrians over the assassination of Rafik Hariri, the former Lebanese Prime Minister, in Beirut in 2005, for which it believes the Assad government was responsible. Hariri, a billionaire Sunni, was closely associated with the Saudi regime and with Prince Bandar. (A U.N. inquiry strongly suggested that the Syrians were involved, but offered no direct evidence; there are plans for another investigation, by an international tribunal.)
Patrick Clawson, of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, depicted the Saudis’ coperation with the White House as a significant breakthrough. “The Saudis understand that if they want the Administration to make a more generous political offer to the Palestinians they have to persuade the Arab states to make a more generous offer to the Israelis,” Clawson told me. The new diplomatic approach, he added, “shows a real degree of effort and sophistication as well as a deftness of touch not always associated with this Administration. Who’s running the greater risk—we or the Saudis? At a time when America’s standing in the Middle East is extremely low, the Saudis are actually embracing us. We should count our blessings.”
The Pentagon consultant had a different view. He said that the Administration had turned to Bandar as a “fallback,” because it had realized that the failing war in Iraq could leave the Middle East “up for grabs.”
JIHADIS IN LEBANON
The focus of the U.S.-Saudi relationship, after Iran, is Lebanon, where the Saudis have been deeply involved in efforts by the Administration to support the Lebanese government. Prime Minister Fouad Siniora is struggling to stay in power against a persistent opposition led by Hezbollah, the Shiite organization, and its leader, Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah. Hezbollah has an extensive infrastructure, an estimated two to three thousand active fighters, and thousands of additional members.
Hezbollah has been on the State Department’s terrorist list since 1997. The organization has been implicated in the 1983 bombing of a Marine barracks in Beirut that killed two hundred and forty-one military men. It has also been accused of complicity in the kidnapping of Americans, including the C.I.A. station chief in Lebanon, who died in captivity, and a Marine colonel serving on a U.N. peacekeeping mission, who was killed. (Nasrallah has denied that the group was involved in these incidents.) Nasrallah is seen by many as a staunch terrorist, who has said that he regards Israel as a state that has no right to exist. Many in the Arab world, however, especially Shiites, view him as a resistance leader who withstood Israel in last summer’s thirty-three-day war, and Siniora as a weak politician who relies on America’s support but was unable to persuade President Bush to call for an end to the Israeli bombing of Lebanon. (Photographs of Siniora kissing Condoleezza Rice on the cheek when she visited during the war were prominently displayed during street protests in Beirut.)
The Bush Administration has publicly pledged the Siniora government a billion dollars in aid since last summer. A donors’ conference in Paris, in January, which the U.S. helped organize, yielded pledges of almost eight billion more, including a promise of more than a billion from the Saudis. The American pledge includes more than two hundred million dollars in military aid, and forty million dollars for internal security.
The United States has also given clandestine support to the Siniora government, according to the former senior intelligence official and the U.S. government consultant. “We are in a program to enhance the Sunni capability to resist Shiite influence, and we’re spreading the money around as much as we can,” the former senior intelligence official said. The problem was that such money “always gets in more pockets than you think it will,” he said. “In this process, we’re financing a lot of bad guys with some serious potential unintended consequences. We don’t have the ability to determine and get pay vouchers signed by the people we like and avoid the people we don’t like. It’s a very high-risk venture.”
American, European, and Arab officials I spoke to told me that the Siniora government and its allies had allowed some aid to end up in the hands of emerging Sunni radical groups in northern Lebanon, the Bekaa Valley, and around Palestinian refugee camps in the south. These groups, though small, are seen as a buffer to Hezbollah; at the same time, their ideological ties are with Al Qaeda.
During a conversation with me, the former Saudi diplomat accused Nasrallah of attempting “to hijack the state,” but he also objected to the Lebanese and Saudi sponsorship of Sunni jihadists in Lebanon. “Salafis are sick and hateful, and I’m very much against the idea of flirting with them,” he said. “They hate the Shiites, but they hate Americans more. If you try to outsmart them, they will outsmart us. It will be ugly.”
Alastair Crooke, who spent nearly thirty years in MI6, the British intelligence service, and now works for Conflicts Forum, a think tank in Beirut, told me, “The Lebanese government is opening space for these people to come in. It could be very dangerous.” Crooke said that one Sunni extremist group, Fatah al-Islam, had splintered from its pro-Syrian parent group, Fatah al-Intifada, in the Nahr al-Bared refugee camp, in northern Lebanon. Its membership at the time was less than two hundred. “I was told that within twenty-four hours they were being offered weapons and money by people presenting themselves as representatives of the Lebanese government’s interests—presumably to take on Hezbollah,” Crooke said.
The largest of the groups, Asbat al-Ansar, is situated in the Ain al-Hilweh Palestinian refugee camp. Asbat al-Ansar has received arms and supplies from Lebanese internal-security forces and militias associated with the Siniora government.
In 2005, according to a report by the U.S.-based International Crisis Group, Saad Hariri, the Sunni majority leader of the Lebanese parliament and the son of the slain former Prime Minister—Saad inherited more than four billion dollars after his father’s assassination—paid forty-eight thousand dollars in bail for four members of an Islamic militant group from Dinniyeh. The men had been arrested while trying to establish an Islamic mini-state in northern Lebanon. The Crisis Group noted that many of the militants “had trained in al-Qaeda camps in Afghanistan.”
According to the Crisis Group report, Saad Hariri later used his parliamentary majority to obtain amnesty for twenty-two of the Dinniyeh Islamists, as well as for seven militants suspected of plotting to bomb the Italian and Ukrainian embassies in Beirut, the previous year. (He also arranged a pardon for Samir Geagea, a Maronite Christian militia leader, who had been convicted of four political murders, including the assassination, in 1987, of Prime Minister Rashid Karami.) Hariri described his actions to reporters as humanitarian.
In an interview in Beirut, a senior official in the Siniora government acknowledged that there were Sunni jihadists operating inside Lebanon. “We have a liberal attitude that allows Al Qaeda types to have a presence here,” he said. He related this to concerns that Iran or Syria might decide to turn Lebanon into a “theatre of conflict.”
The official said that his government was in a no-win situation. Without a political settlement with Hezbollah, he said, Lebanon could “slide into a conflict,” in which Hezbollah fought openly with Sunni forces, with potentially horrific consequences. But if Hezbollah agreed to a settlement yet still maintained a separate army, allied with Iran and Syria, “Lebanon could become a target. In both cases, we become a target.”
The Bush Administration has portrayed its support of the Siniora government as an example of the President’s belief in democracy, and his desire to prevent other powers from interfering in Lebanon. When Hezbollah led street demonstrations in Beirut in December, John Bolton, who was then the U.S. Ambassador to the U.N., called them “part of the Iran-Syria-inspired coup.”
Leslie H. Gelb, a past president of the Council on Foreign Relations, said that the Administration’s policy was less pro democracy than “pro American national security. The fact is that it would be terribly dangerous if Hezbollah ran Lebanon.” The fall of the Siniora government would be seen, Gelb said, “as a signal in the Middle East of the decline of the United States and the ascendancy of the terrorism threat. And so any change in the distribution of political power in Lebanon has to be opposed by the United States—and we’re justified in helping any non-Shiite parties resist that change. We should say this publicly, instead of talking about democracy.”
Martin Indyk, of the Saban Center, said, however, that the United States “does not have enough pull to stop the moderates in Lebanon from dealing with the extremists.” He added, “The President sees the region as divided between moderates and extremists, but our regional friends see it as divided between Sunnis and Shia. The Sunnis that we view as extremists are regarded by our Sunni allies simply as Sunnis.”
In January, after an outburst of street violence in Beirut involving supporters of both the Siniora government and Hezbollah, Prince Bandar flew to Tehran to discuss the political impasse in Lebanon and to meet with Ali Larijani, the Iranians’ negotiator on nuclear issues. According to a Middle Eastern ambassador, Bandar’s mission—which the ambassador said was endorsed by the White House—also aimed “to create problems between the Iranians and Syria.” There had been tensions between the two countries about Syrian talks with Israel, and the Saudis’ goal was to encourage a breach. However, the ambassador said, “It did not work. Syria and Iran are not going to betray each other. Bandar’s approach is very unlikely to succeed.”
Walid Jumblatt, who is the leader of the Druze minority in Lebanon and a strong Siniora supporter, has attacked Nasrallah as an agent of Syria, and has repeatedly told foreign journalists that Hezbollah is under the direct control of the religious leadership in Iran. In a conversation with me last December, he depicted Bashir Assad, the Syrian President, as a “serial killer.” Nasrallah, he said, was “morally guilty” of the assassination of Rafik Hariri and the murder, last November, of Pierre Gemayel, a member of the Siniora Cabinet, because of his support for the Syrians.
Jumblatt then told me that he had met with Vice-President Cheney in Washington last fall to discuss, among other issues, the possibility of undermining Assad. He and his colleagues advised Cheney that, if the United States does try to move against Syria, members of the Syrian Muslim Brotherhood would be “the ones to talk to,” Jumblatt said.
The Syrian Muslim Brotherhood, a branch of a radical Sunni movement founded in Egypt in 1928, engaged in more than a decade of violent opposition to the regime of Hafez Assad, Bashir’s father. In 1982, the Brotherhood took control of the city of Hama; Assad bombarded the city for a week, killing between six thousand and twenty thousand people. Membership in the Brotherhood is punishable by death in Syria. The Brotherhood is also an avowed enemy of the U.S. and of Israel. Nevertheless, Jumblatt said, “We told Cheney that the basic link between Iran and Lebanon is Syria—and to weaken Iran you need to open the door to effective Syrian opposition.”
There is evidence that the Administration’s redirection strategy has already benefitted the Brotherhood. The Syrian National Salvation Front is a coalition of opposition groups whose principal members are a faction led by Abdul Halim Khaddam, a former Syrian Vice-President who defected in 2005, and the Brotherhood. A former high-ranking C.I.A. officer told me, “The Americans have provided both political and financial support. The Saudis are taking the lead with financial support, but there is American involvement.” He said that Khaddam, who now lives in Paris, was getting money from Saudi Arabia, with the knowledge of the White House. (In 2005, a delegation of the Front’s members met with officials from the National Security Council, according to press reports.) A former White House official told me that the Saudis had provided members of the Front with travel documents.
Jumblatt said he understood that the issue was a sensitive one for the White House. “I told Cheney that some people in the Arab world, mainly the Egyptians”—whose moderate Sunni leadership has been fighting the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood for decades—“won’t like it if the United States helps the Brotherhood. But if you don’t take on Syria we will be face to face in Lebanon with Hezbollah in a long fight, and one we might not win.”
THE SHEIKH
On a warm, clear night early last December, in a bombed-out suburb a few miles south of downtown Beirut, I got a preview of how the Administration’s new strategy might play out in Lebanon. Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah, the Hezbollah leader, who has been in hiding, had agreed to an interview. Security arrangements for the meeting were secretive and elaborate. I was driven, in the back seat of a darkened car, to a damaged underground garage somewhere in Beirut, searched with a handheld scanner, placed in a second car to be driven to yet another bomb-scarred underground garage, and transferred again. Last summer, it was reported that Israel was trying to kill Nasrallah, but the extraordinary precautions were not due only to that threat. Nasrallah’s aides told me that they believe he is a prime target of fellow-Arabs, primarily Jordanian intelligence operatives, as well as Sunni jihadists who they believe are affiliated with Al Qaeda. (The government consultant and a retired four-star general said that Jordanian intelligence, with support from the U.S. and Israel, had been trying to infiltrate Shiite groups, to work against Hezbollah. Jordan’s King Abdullah II has warned that a Shiite government in Iraq that was close to Iran would lead to the emergence of a Shiite crescent.) This is something of an ironic turn: Nasrallah’s battle with Israel last summer turned him—a Shiite—into the most popular and influential figure among Sunnis and Shiites throughout the region. In recent months, however, he has increasingly been seen by many Sunnis not as a symbol of Arab unity but as a participant in a sectarian war.
Nasrallah, dressed, as usual, in religious garb, was waiting for me in an unremarkable apartment. One of his advisers said that he was not likely to remain there overnight; he has been on the move since his decision, last July, to order the kidnapping of two Israeli soldiers in a cross-border raid set off the thirty-three-day war. Nasrallah has since said publicly—and repeated to me—that he misjudged the Israeli response. “We just wanted to capture prisoners for exchange purposes,” he told me. “We never wanted to drag the region into war.”
Nasrallah accused the Bush Administration of working with Israel to deliberately instigate fitna, an Arabic word that is used to mean “insurrection and fragmentation within Islam.” “In my opinion, there is a huge campaign through the media throughout the world to put each side up against the other,” he said. “I believe that all this is being run by American and Israeli intelligence.” (He did not provide any specific evidence for this.) He said that the U.S. war in Iraq had increased sectarian tensions, but argued that Hezbollah had tried to prevent them from spreading into Lebanon. (Sunni-Shiite confrontations increased, along with violence, in the weeks after we talked.)
Nasrallah said he believed that President Bush’s goal was “the drawing of a new map for the region. They want the partition of Iraq. Iraq is not on the edge of a civil war—there is a civil war. There is ethnic and sectarian cleansing. The daily killing and displacement which is taking place in Iraq aims at achieving three Iraqi parts, which will be sectarian and ethnically pure as a prelude to the partition of Iraq. Within one or two years at the most, there will be total Sunni areas, total Shiite areas, and total Kurdish areas. Even in Baghdad, there is a fear that it might be divided into two areas, one Sunni and one Shiite.”
He went on, “I can say that President Bush is lying when he says he does not want Iraq to be partitioned. All the facts occurring now on the ground make you swear he is dragging Iraq to partition. And a day will come when he will say, ‘I cannot do anything, since the Iraqis want the partition of their country and I honor the wishes of the people of Iraq.’ ”
Nasrallah said he believed that America also wanted to bring about the partition of Lebanon and of Syria. In Syria, he said, the result would be to push the country “into chaos and internal battles like in Iraq.” In Lebanon, “There will be a Sunni state, an Alawi state, a Christian state, and a Druze state.” But, he said, “I do not know if there will be a Shiite state.” Nasrallah told me that he suspected that one aim of the Israeli bombing of Lebanon last summer was “the destruction of Shiite areas and the displacement of Shiites from Lebanon. The idea was to have the Shiites of Lebanon and Syria flee to southern Iraq,” which is dominated by Shiites. “I am not sure, but I smell this,” he told me.
Partition would leave Israel surrounded by “small tranquil states,” he said. “I can assure you that the Saudi kingdom will also be divided, and the issue will reach to North African states. There will be small ethnic and confessional states,” he said. “In other words, Israel will be the most important and the strongest state in a region that has been partitioned into ethnic and confessional states that are in agreement with each other. This is the new Middle East.”
In fact, the Bush Administration has adamantly resisted talk of partitioning Iraq, and its public stances suggest that the White House sees a future Lebanon that is intact, with a weak, disarmed Hezbollah playing, at most, a minor political role. There is also no evidence to support Nasrallah’s belief that the Israelis were seeking to drive the Shiites into southern Iraq. Nevertheless, Nasrallah’s vision of a larger sectarian conflict in which the United States is implicated suggests a possible consequence of the White House’s new strategy.
In the interview, Nasrallah made mollifying gestures and promises that would likely be met with skepticism by his opponents. “If the United States says that discussions with the likes of us can be useful and influential in determining American policy in the region, we have no objection to talks or meetings,” he said. “But, if their aim through this meeting is to impose their policy on us, it will be a waste of time.” He said that the Hezbollah militia, unless attacked, would operate only within the borders of Lebanon, and pledged to disarm it when the Lebanese Army was able to stand up. Nasrallah said that he had no interest in initiating another war with Israel. However, he added that he was anticipating, and preparing for, another Israeli attack, later this year.
Nasrallah further insisted that the street demonstrations in Beirut would continue until the Siniora government fell or met his coalition’s political demands. “Practically speaking, this government cannot rule,” he told me. “It might issue orders, but the majority of the Lebanese people will not abide and will not recognize the legitimacy of this government. Siniora remains in office because of international support, but this does not mean that Siniora can rule Lebanon.”
President Bush’s repeated praise of the Siniora government, Nasrallah said, “is the best service to the Lebanese opposition he can give, because it weakens their position vis--vis the Lebanese people and the Arab and Islamic populations. They are betting on us getting tired. We did not get tired during the war, so how could we get tired in a demonstration?”
There is sharp division inside and outside the Bush Administration about how best to deal with Nasrallah, and whether he could, in fact, be a partner in a political settlement. The outgoing director of National Intelligence, John Negroponte, in a farewell briefing to the Senate Intelligence Committee, in January, said that Hezbollah “lies at the center of Iran’s terrorist strategy. . . . It could decide to conduct attacks against U.S. interests in the event it feels its survival or that of Iran is threatened. . . . Lebanese Hezbollah sees itself as Tehran’s partner.”
In 2002, Richard Armitage, then the Deputy Secretary of State, called Hezbollah “the A-team” of terrorists. In a recent interview, however, Armitage acknowledged that the issue has become somewhat more complicated. Nasrallah, Armitage told me, has emerged as “a political force of some note, with a political role to play inside Lebanon if he chooses to do so.” In terms of public relations and political gamesmanship, Armitage said, Nasrallah “is the smartest man in the Middle East.” But, he added, Nasrallah “has got to make it clear that he wants to play an appropriate role as the loyal opposition. For me, there’s still a blood debt to pay”—a reference to the murdered colonel and the Marine barracks bombing.
Robert Baer, a former longtime C.I.A. agent in Lebanon, has been a severe critic of Hezbollah and has warned of its links to Iranian-sponsored terrorism. But now, he told me, “we’ve got Sunni Arabs preparing for cataclysmic conflict, and we will need somebody to protect the Christians in Lebanon. It used to be the French and the United States who would do it, and now it’s going to be Nasrallah and the Shiites.
“The most important story in the Middle East is the growth of Nasrallah from a street guy to a leader—from a terrorist to a statesman,” Baer added. “The dog that didn’t bark this summer”—during the war with Israel—“is Shiite terrorism.” Baer was referring to fears that Nasrallah, in addition to firing rockets into Israel and kidnapping its soldiers, might set in motion a wave of terror attacks on Israeli and American targets around the world. “He could have pulled the trigger, but he did not,” Baer said.
Most members of the intelligence and diplomatic communities acknowledge Hezbollah’s ongoing ties to Iran. But there is disagreement about the extent to which Nasrallah would put aside Hezbollah’s interests in favor of Iran’s. A former C.I.A. officer who also served in Lebanon called Nasrallah “a Lebanese phenomenon,” adding, “Yes, he’s aided by Iran and Syria, but Hezbollah’s gone beyond that.” He told me that there was a period in the late eighties and early nineties when the C.I.A. station in Beirut was able to clandestinely monitor Nasrallah’s conversations. He described Nasrallah as “a gang leader who was able to make deals with the other gangs. He had contacts with everybody.”
TELLING CONGRESS
The Bush Administration’s reliance on clandestine operations that have not been reported to Congress and its dealings with intermediaries with questionable agendas have recalled, for some in Washington, an earlier chapter in history. Two decades ago, the Reagan Administration attempted to fund the Nicaraguan contras illegally, with the help of secret arms sales to Iran. Saudi money was involved in what became known as the Iran-Contra scandal, and a few of the players back then—notably Prince Bandar and Elliott Abrams—are involved in today’s dealings.
Iran-Contra was the subject of an informal “lessons learned” discussion two years ago among veterans of the scandal. Abrams led the discussion. One conclusion was that even though the program was eventually exposed, it had been possible to execute it without telling Congress. As to what the experience taught them, in terms of future covert operations, the participants found: “One, you can’t trust our friends. Two, the C.I.A. has got to be totally out of it. Three, you can’t trust the uniformed military, and four, it’s got to be run out of the Vice-President’s office”—a reference to Cheney’s role, the former senior intelligence official said.
I was subsequently told by the two government consultants and the former senior intelligence official that the echoes of Iran-Contra were a factor in Negroponte’s decision to resign from the National Intelligence directorship and accept a sub-Cabinet position of Deputy Secretary of State. (Negroponte declined to comment.)
The former senior intelligence official also told me that Negroponte did not want a repeat of his experience in the Reagan Administration, when he served as Ambassador to Honduras. “Negroponte said, ‘No way. I’m not going down that road again, with the N.S.C. running operations off the books, with no finding.’ ” (In the case of covert C.I.A. operations, the President must issue a written finding and inform Congress.) Negroponte stayed on as Deputy Secretary of State, he added, because “he believes he can influence the government in a positive way.”
The government consultant said that Negroponte shared the White House’s policy goals but “wanted to do it by the book.” The Pentagon consultant also told me that “there was a sense at the senior-ranks level that he wasn’t fully on board with the more adventurous clandestine initiatives.” It was also true, he said, that Negroponte “had problems with this Rube Goldberg policy contraption for fixing the Middle East.”
The Pentagon consultant added that one difficulty, in terms of oversight, was accounting for covert funds. “There are many, many pots of black money, scattered in many places and used all over the world on a variety of missions,” he said. The budgetary chaos in Iraq, where billions of dollars are unaccounted for, has made it a vehicle for such transactions, according to the former senior intelligence official and the retired four-star general.
“This goes back to Iran-Contra,” a former National Security Council aide told me. “And much of what they’re doing is to keep the agency out of it.” He said that Congress was not being briefed on the full extent of the U.S.-Saudi operations. And, he said, “The C.I.A. is asking, ‘What’s going on?’ They’re concerned, because they think it’s amateur hour.”
The issue of oversight is beginning to get more attention from Congress. Last November, the Congressional Research Service issued a report for Congress on what it depicted as the Administration’s blurring of the line between C.I.A. activities and strictly military ones, which do not have the same reporting requirements. And the Senate Intelligence Committee, headed by Senator Jay Rockefeller, has scheduled a hearing for March 8th on Defense Department intelligence activities.
Senator Ron Wyden, of Oregon, a Democrat who is a member of the Intelligence Committee, told me, “The Bush Administration has frequently failed to meet its legal obligation to keep the Intelligence Committee fully and currently informed. Time and again, the answer has been ‘Trust us.’ ” Wyden said, “It is hard for me to trust the Administration.” ♦
Je denkt dat ze die helikopters gaan gebruiken om ISIS te steunen? Zo niet, dan zie ik het probleem niet, beter iets dan niets.quote:
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Dit dus:
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+ waar blijven die 400 Hellfire raketten die Irak in Januari nog besteld en betaald heeft? Wanneer komen de al aanbetaalde F-16s aan? In Yemen en Pakistan is de VS vrolijk hele wijken plat aan het leggen as we speak terwijl er bij Irak 'goed overwogen' moet worden om wel of niet in te grijpen. In Irak zijn al rocket capable drones aan het patrouilleren maar ze hebben nog geen enkele ISIS terrorist opgeblazen.
Die Apaches en militaire adviseurs zijn puur om zich in te dekken en eventueel de gebeurtenissen on the ground by te sturen in Amerikaans voordeel. Ik neig er toch naar om te zeggen dat ISIS slechts een radertje is in grotere Amerikaanse plannen.
Na miljarden aan Irak te hebben uitgegeven werden Amerikaanse bedrijven sinds Amerikaanse militaire terugtrekking steeds meer verdreven door Chinese en Russische bedrijven + Iraanse politieke invloeden. De grootste oliebron van Irak werd vanaf April dit jaar door Lukoil geexploiteerd, terwijl Exxon de biezen kon pakken om maar iets te noemen.
Het is niet meer dan logisch dat die Centraal-Aziatische invloeden daar domineren, dat is de natuurlijke gang van zaken maar het lijkt erop dat Amerikanen daar niet mee akkoord gaan. Hun sterk terughoudende houding ten opzichte van ISIS, gecombineerd met de gebeurtenissen in Syri doet mij het ergste vermoeden over de ISIS - Amerika relatie. Vandaar ook mijn scepsis richting Amerikaanse bemoeienis in Irak, in welke vorm dan ook.
Mocht er concreet bewijs komen voor Amerika-ISIS-as zou dat alle misdaden tegen de menselijkheid tot nu toe overschaduwen.
Het lijkt me heel erg sterk dat de VS ISIS steunt gezien de VS rebellen in Syri steunt die vechten tegen ISIS omdat ISIS de oorlog tegen elke andere rebellen groep (Nusra, FSA, IF enz) had verklaart. En die terroristen vs terroristen gevechten zorgen ervoor dat ze minder het Syrische leger kunnen bestrijden, terwijl de VS juist Assad wegwilde. Nu zien ze wel in dat dat niet gaat lukken vanwege de steun die hij heeft en is het meer om te voorkomen dat hij snel wint.
Dus, waarom zouden ze dat doen terwijl ISIS tegen rebellengroepen in Syri vecht die de VS steunt?
Anti-Turkije
Waarom steunde Israel de extremistische Hamas en maakte tegelijkertijd korte metten met seculiere, gematigdere Fatah?quote:
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Je denkt dat ze die helikopters gaan gebruiken om ISIS te steunen? Zo niet, dan zie ik het probleem niet, beter iets dan niets.
Het lijkt me heel erg sterk dat de VS ISIS steunt gezien de VS rebellen in Syri steunt die vechten tegen ISIS omdat ISIS de oorlog tegen elke andere rebellen groep (Nusra, FSA, IF enz) had verklaart. En die terroristen vs terroristen gevechten zorgen ervoor dat ze minder het Syrische leger kunnen bestrijden, terwijl de VS juist Assad wegwilde. Nu zien ze wel in dat dat niet gaat lukken vanwege de steun die hij heeft en is het meer om te voorkomen dat hij snel wint.
Dus, waarom zouden ze dat doen terwijl ISIS tegen rebellengroepen in Syri vecht die de VS steunt?
Bewijs heb ik niet, slechts speculaties.
