Foreign Policy: Pentagon Says UAE Possibly Funding Russia’s Shadowy Mercenaries in Libya

 Experts have long suspected that the UAE may be using Russian private military contractors to help obfuscate its role in the conflict—a charge that Abu Dhabi denies—but the report is the first public, official assessment of the arrangement. [...]

But the revelation that those Russian mercenaries may have been bankrolled by one of America’s closest military allies in the Middle East further complicates the calculus for Washington, and comes as Democrats in Congress have been mounting a campaign to oppose the Trump administration’s proposed $23 billion sale of F-35 fighter jets to Abu Dhabi. The Senate Foreign Relations Committee is set to hold a closed hearing on the arms sale early Monday evening. [...]

While private military contractors are outlawed within Russia, a network of companies collectively known as the Wagner group has been at the forefront of Russian interference efforts abroad from Ukraine to Libya and Sudan. The Kremlin’s increasing reliance on the group has lent its overseas operations a veneer of plausible deniability, but Wagner is deeply entwined with Russian military and intelligence structures and the Department of State has characterized it as a “surrogate for the Russian ministry of defense.”

read the article

The Red Line: Nagorno-Karabakh II (A Frozen Conflict Goes Hot)

 Like many of the ex-soviet republics, Azerbaijan and Armenia have been part of the frozen conflict now since the early '90s, but Azerbaijan has spent the last few years building up a massive modern army. Baku has now used that army to engage in a full-scale war with Armenia in an attempt to recapture the land lost in 91. With the Armenians in full retreat and the Azeris moving into their old positions what will this mean for the region? Will Ankara or Moscow have the final say on the battlefield? We ask our expert panel. ALEX RAUFOGLU (Eurasia Journalist) NICK MUTCH (Byline Times) CAREY CAVANAUGH (Fmr US Ambassador) LAURENCE BROERS (Chatham House) More info on - www.theredlinepodcast.com Follow the show on @TheRedLinePod Follow Michael on @MikeHilliardAus Support the show at - www.patreon.com/theredlinepodcast

listen to the podcast

The Red Line: Who Controls the Caspian Sea?

 What was once considered a Soviet lake is now quickly becoming one of the most important strategic locations in the region, with Russia working hard to maintain its grip over the sea. The important part though may be what lies beneath its surface, that being enough gas to power Europe and blunt Russia's gas monopoly. So whoever controls the Caspian, will have major leverage over the European powers, but to discuss this further we turn to our expert panel. Eugene Chausovsky (Centre for Global Policy) Stanislav Printchin (ECED) Robert M Cutler (NATO Canada) For more info visit - www.theredlinepodcast.com Follow the show on @TheRedLinePod or Michael on @MikeHilliardAus

listen to the podcast

TLDR News: Why Missiles Are Being Fired: Armenia & Azerbaijan Conflict Explained (Nagorno-Karabakh)

 Over the last few weeks, tensions have been rising between Armenia and Azerbaijan with both sides firing missiles at one another. This is all over the disputed territory of Nagorno-Karabakh and it's an issue which goes back decades. In this video we explain the history of the dispute, the current situation and if a ceasefire can really work.

New Statesman: Libya’s storms of history

 The impact of this unprovoked attack on three integral provinces of the Ottoman empire in Africa was profound. The Italian pursuit of Ottoman naval forces led to repeated closures of the Turkish Straits, blocking the passage of transport ships carrying Russian grain for export and seriously disrupting the Russian economy. A series of knock-on crises broke out in south-eastern Europe, triggering two major wars in 1912 and 1913 and sweeping away security arrangements that had previously prevented Balkan conflicts from escalating into continental wars. In short, the war for Libya proved a milestone on the road to the conflict that broke out in 1914. [...]

There was no third world war in 2014, of course. But the airstrikes of 2011 did exacerbate tensions among the major powers, partly because Nato’s humanitarian intervention quickly morphed into an assault on the Gaddafi regime. Vladimir Putin, then prime minister of Russia, compared the action to a “medieval call to crusade”. It was an unsettling feature of the world order, he remarked, that armed interventions could so easily be unleashed against sovereign states. Russia, Putin declared, would respond by strengthening its own defensive capacity. Commentators who know Putin well have suggested that the Libyan crisis of 2011, and especially the lynching of Gaddafi, were decisive in placing the Russian leader on the path to a more aggressively anti-Western foreign policy. [...]

It is still unlikely that a direct clash between Egyptian and Turkish troops will result from these steps. Egypt has for the moment promised only training, equipment and logistical support for its eastern Libyan proxies. But whereas the events of 2011 recalled the history of Western colonial and imperial violence, the prospect of an Egyptian-Turkish stand-off in northern Africa has switched on memories that extend far beyond the war of 1911 to the 1830s, when an ambitious Egyptian leader challenged Ottoman power in the eastern Mediterranean. [...]

There is a religious dimension to the crisis. The al-Sisi government claims that the fighters loyal to the Turkish-supported GNA include partisans of Islamic State. More specifically, Turkey is accused of sending Isis fighters from Syria to support the GNA. But it should be noted that a US Pentagon investigation found this accusation to be false. As many as 3,000 Syrians had been transferred by Turkey to Libya and paid to fight there, but these were mercenaries and not Islamist militiamen, according to the Pentagon’s report. On the other hand, Erdogan’s sympathy for the Muslim Brotherhood, ruthlessly suppressed by al-Sisi in Egypt and still active in Libya, is well known. Erdogan is often seen making the rabaa sign to his supporters. This gesture, in which the four fingers are raised and the thumb tucked into the palm of the hand, recalls the massacre in Cairo’s Rabaa Square on 14 August 2013, when Egyptian security forces fired on a sit-in of Muslim Brotherhood supporters, killing more than 800 civilians (the Arabic word rabaa means “four”, hence the raised fingers).

read the article

UnHerd: The irresistible rise of the civilisation-state

America’s decline is impossible to disentangle from China’s rise, so it is natural that the rapid climb of the Middle Kingdom back to its historic global primacy dominates discussion of the civilisation-state. Though the phrase was popularised by the British writer Martin Jacques, the political theorist Christopher Coker observed in his excellent recent book on civilisation-states that “the turn to Confucianism began in 2005, when President Hu Jintao applauded the Confucian concept of social harmony and instructed party cadres to build a ‘harmonious society.’” In any case, it is only under his successor Xi’s rule that China as a rival civilisation-state has really penetrated the Western consciousness. “The advent of Xi Jinping as the Chinese president in 2012 propelled the idea of ‘civilization-state’ to the forefront of the political discourse,” the Indian international relations scholar Ravi Dutt Bajpai remarks, “as Xi believes that ‘a civilization carries on its back the soul of a country or nation.’” [...]

Yet the appeal of the civilisation-state model is not limited to China. Under Putin, the other great Eurasian empire, Russia, has publicly abandoned the Europe-focused liberalising projects of the 1990s — a period of dramatic economic and societal collapse driven by adherence to the policies of Western liberal theorists — for its own cultural sonderweg or special path of a uniquely Russian civilisation centred on an all-powerful state. In a 2013 address to the Valdai Club, Putin remarked that Russia “has always evolved as a state‑civilisation, reinforced by the Russian people, Russian language, Russian culture, Russian Orthodox Church and the country’s other traditional religions. It is precisely the state‑civilisation model that has shaped our state polity.” In a 2012 speech to the Russian Federal Assembly, Putin likewise asserted that “we must value the unique experience passed on to us by our forefathers. For centuries, Russia developed as a multi‑ethnic nation (from the very beginning), a state‑civilisation bonded by the Russian people, Russian language and Russian culture native for all of us, uniting us and preventing us from dissolving in this diverse world.” [...]

In a revealing 2018 essay, Putin’s adviser Vladislav Surkov — who was fired from his role this February — foregrounded this hybridity, part-European and part-Asian, as the central characteristic of the Russian soul. “Our cultural and geopolitical identity is reminiscent of a volatile identity of the one born into a mixed-race family,” Surkov wrote. “A half-blood, a cross-breed, a weird-looking guy. Russia is a Western-Eastern half-breed nation. With its double-headed statehood, hybrid mentality, intercontinental territory and bipolar history, it is charismatic, talented, beautiful and lonely. Just as a half-breed should be.” For Surkov, Russia’s destiny as a civilisation-state, like that of the Byzantium it succeeded, is one as “a civilisation that has absorbed the East and the West. European and Asian at the same time, and for this reason neither quite Asian and nor quite European.” [...]

Warning his audience that “we know that civilisations are disappearing; countries as well. Europe will disappear,” Macron lauded the civilisational projects of Russia and Hungary, which “have a cultural, civilisational vitality that is inspiring,” and declared that France’s mission, its historic destiny, was to guide Europe into a civilisational renewal, forging a “collective narrative and a collective imagination. That is why I believe very deeply that this is our project and must be undertaken as a project of European civilisation.”

read the article

The Red Line: The Libyan Civil War II (The Tide Turns)

When we covered the Libyan Civil War in February it looked like Haftar was about to be victorious, shelling the very gates of his enemies capital in Tripoli; but 5 months can make all of the difference. The GNA has turned the tide and now Haftar is on the run and held up in the fortress city of Sirte, taking the city though may mean Turkey and Russia escalating to all-out war. This weeks guests are Jalel Harchauoi (Clingendael Institute) Frederich Wehrey (Carnegie Centre) Jonathon Weiner (Fmr Asst Secretary of State for the USA) Find more info at - www.theredlinepodcast.com Follow the show at @TheRedLinePod or Michael the host at @MikeHilliardAus

listen to the podcast

The Red Line: The Geopolitics of Turkmenistan

Often referred to as the North Korea of Central Asia, Turkmenistan is simply a desert of contradictions. A nation where you memorize poems to get your driver's license, where the president raps on TV, and where many Guinness world records are broken; but more importantly a nation of starving people on top of the 4th largest gas reserves in the world. We go deeper into this reclusive society and talk about their abandonment of Moscow and their newfound masters in Beijing, as well as how this country tries its best to stay neutral in a very dangerous geopolitical neighborhood. Guests this week are Peter Leonard (Eurasianet) Naz Nazar (Radio Free Europe) Alexander Cooley (Harriman Institute).

listen to the podcast

The Red Line: Nagorno-Karabakh (Armenia vs Azerbaijan)

In the South Caucasus between Armenia and Azerbaijan lies an island of Armenians in the middle of Azerbaijan, two countries now firmly at war with each other. The Armenians have invaded and now occupy a quarter of the Azeris territory, but they assert are only doing to protect their people from the government who threatens to "cleanse" the pocket of Armenians.

A complicated conflict with Russia selling to both sides and Turkey (and therefore NATO) obligated to defend the other, this war is a classic situation of "the tail wagging the dog". Will we see another 1914 with a small mountain nation dragging the great powers into war, well for that we turn to our experts?

listen to the podcast

The National Interest: Gambling with 80 Million Lives: Why Erdoğan Lied about Coronavirus

When faced with both local and international disbelief about why coronavirus would bypass Turkey, Turkish authorities took a dual approach. As in China, they arrested whistleblowers. They went beyond simple repression as panelists on the state-controlled Turkish press insisted that Turkish genes rendered most Turkic peoples immune. Many Turks, Erdoğan included, may embrace the notion of both Islamic and Turkish supremacy, but his basic ignorance of science may have condemned Turks to once again prove Darwin correct. [...]

Part of the reason might be Erdoğan’s dangerous combination of arrogance and ignorance. The Turkish leader’s arrogance is reflected in the thin skin he has toward criticism. According to the Turkish Justice Ministry, Turkish police charged an average of 4,500 people each year from 2014 through 2017 with insulting the Turkish leader for criticizing Erdoğan or speaking about his corruption. (Full disclosure: I am one of them). In 2018, the Erdoğan regime initiated 26,000 new cases. Aa cracks began to show in the Turkish economy, Erdoğan spared no effort to muzzle growing criticism. Nor is the Turkish leader’s ignorance any secret as the crackdown on the free press has meant the surviving media merely amplifies the conspiracy theories in which Erdoğan and his top aides believe, such as the Jews targeting them with telekinesis, or that bands on migratory birds to be evidence of Israeli espionage. The Turkish accusation that followers of exiled theologian Fethullah Gülen contributed to the spread of the virus likely is only a matter of time. [...]

As Turkey’s economy teeters, the means to avoid catastrophe are narrowing. Looting Cypriot gas was one strategy, but even if Turkish exploration ships struck it rich, it would still be years to bring the gas to market. What Erdoğan really fears is the collapse of Turkey’s tourism industry. In 2018, the Turkish tourism industry accounts for nearly $30 billion dollars. Just a year ago, Erdoğan promised that Turkey would host 50 million tourists, raising that figure by at least 20 percent. Add into the mix Turkey’s investment of approximately $12 billion in a new Istanbul airport, expected to be the world’s largest, and one in which Erdoğan and his family are reportedly heavily invested. It seems Erdoğan sought to downplay reports of coronavirus in order to encourage tourist dollars to continue to flow. In doing so, he sought not only to play Russians, Europeans, and Americans for fools, but also endangered their lives. Unfortunately for Turkey, it will be Turks who will most pay the price as Turkey threatens to become the virus’ next big cluster. One Turkish doctor estimates that as many as 60 percent of Turks may now be infected and that Erdoğan is retarding testing in order to prevent the scale of the catastrophe from becoming known. Deaths were inevitable, but Erdoğan’s dishonest will likely cause many thousand additional deaths in his country added to the dozens Turkey reportedly has already experienced but will not officially report.

read the article

WorldAffairs:The Crisis in Syria: A Geopolitical Reshuffling of Power (Nov 5, 2019)

The withdrawal of US troops from northern Syria has had grave repercussions for the security and stability of the entire region. The Turkish military has invaded northern Syria, killing dozens of Kurdish civilians and forcing over 200,000 Kurds to flee. In the absence of US troops, Russian and Syrian troops have rushed in to fill the power vacuum. Meanwhile, hundreds of ISIS fighters have escaped detention. Brett McGurk, distinguished lecturer at Stanford University and former special presidential envoy for the Global Coalition to Defeat ISIS, and David Phillips, director of peace-building and rights at Columbia University and former senior advisor to the US Department of State, make sense of the cascading impacts with WorldAffairs co-host Ray Suarez.

listen to the podcast

BBC4 In Our Time: Coffee

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the history and social impact of coffee. From its origins in Ethiopia, coffea arabica spread through the Ottoman Empire before reaching Western Europe where, in the 17th century, coffee houses were becoming established. There, caffeinated customers stayed awake for longer and were more animated, and this helped to spread ideas and influence culture. Coffee became a colonial product, grown by slaves or indentured labour, with coffea robusta replacing arabica where disease had struck, and was traded extensively by the Dutch and French empires; by the 19th century, Brazil had developed into a major coffee producer, meeting demand in the USA that had grown on the waggon trails.

listen to the podcast

The New York Times: A New Secularism Is Appearing in Islam

The rise of Islamism, a highly politicized interpretation of Islam, since the 1970s only seemed to confirm the same view: that “Islam is resistant to secularization,” as Shadi Hamid, a prominent thinker on religion and politics, observed in his 2016 book, Islamic Exceptionalism. [...]

Some of those signs are captured by Arab Barometer, a research network based at Princeton and the University of Michigan whose opinion surveys map a drift away from Islamism — and even Islam itself. The network’s pollsters recently found that in the last five years, in six pivotal Arab countries, “trust in Islamist parties” and “trust in religious leaders” have declined, as well as attendance in mosques.

Granted, the trend isn’t huge. Arabs who describe themselves as “not religious” were 8 percent of those polled in 2013, and have risen to only 13 percent in 2018. So some experts on the region, like Hisham A. Hellyer, an Egyptian-British scholar, advises caution.[...]

The disillusionment is often only with Islamism as a political instrument, but it can turn against Islam, the religion, itself. In Turkey, the latter is manifested in a social trend among its youth that has become the talk of the day: the rise of “deism,” or belief in a God, but not religion. Pro-Erdogan Islamists are worried about this “big threat to Islam,” but perceive it, tragicomically, as yet another Western conspiracy, rather than their own accomplishment.

read the article

The Guardian: Turkey denies blackmailing Nato over Baltics defence plan

Erdoğan has blocked a defence plan for Poland and the Baltic states until Nato recognises that the Syrian Kurdish YPG are a terrorist threat that must be addressed. Ahead of his departure from Ankara, Erdoğan reiterated the Turkish position, telling reporters: “If our friends at Nato do not recognise as terrorist organisations those we consider terrorist organisations ... we will stand against any step that will be taken there.” [...]

Macron is angry both at the Turkish decision to invade Syria, and the manner in which the decision was taken in consultation with only one Nato ally, the US. Macron warned it will create a humanitarian disaster, undermine the YPG’s leading role in suppressing Isis and complicate efforts to secure a peace settlement across Syria. [...]

On Monday US Defence Secretary Mark Esper urged Turkey to stop holding up support for the military plan. Esper warned Ankara that “not everybody sees the threats that they see” and added he would not support labelling the YPG as terrorists to break the impasse. “The message to Turkey ... is we need to move forward on these response plans and it can’t be held up by their own particular concerns,” he said as he flew to London.

read the article

The Guardian: Abandoning Kurds could cost Trump support of evangelical Christians

Evangelical Christian voters have been among Donald Trump’s most enthusiastic and reliable supporters. Trump’s recent rejection of asylum seekers and cuts to domestic food assistance programs have not stopped followers of Christ from flocking to the president. [...]

“It is very possible that the American withdrawal from the region will lead to the extinction of Christianity from the region,” Ashty Bahro, former director of the Evangelical Alliance of Kurdistan, told the Christianity Today news outlet. [...]

White evangelicals made up 26% of voters in the last presidential election and they voted 81% for Trump, according to Robert P Jones, chief executive of the Public Religion Research Institute (PRRI) and author of The End of White Christian America. [...]

But evangelical Christians are not ready to cast Trump out entirely. Earlier this week CBN News, America’s top Christian-themed media outlet, reported that Trump would be the keynote speaker this weekend at the Value Voters Summit, a huge political convention for evangelical Christians.

read the article

Science Magazine: Turkish scientist gets 15-month sentence for publishing environmental study

The study was commissioned by Turkey’s Ministry of Health to see whether there was a connection between toxicity in soil, water, and food and the high incidence of cancer in western Turkey. Working for 5 years, Şık and a team of scientists discovered dangerous levels of pesticides, heavy metals, and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons in multiple food and water samples from several provinces in western Turkey. Water in several residential areas was also found to be unsafe for drinking because of lead, aluminum, chrome, and arsenic pollution.

In 2015, after the study was completed, Şık testified that he urged government officials to take action during a meeting to discuss the findings. After 3 years of inaction, Şık testified, he decided to publish his findings in Cumhuriyet, an Istanbul newspaper that has been a high-profile target in the government’s crackdown on media. (Bülent Şık is the brother of Ahmet Şık, an opposition member of Parliament and former investigative journalist at Cumhuriyet who was previously jailed for criticizing the government.) [...]

“[H]iding data obtained from research prevents us from having sound discussions about the solutions,” Şık said in a statement to the court provided to Science by his lawyer. “In my articles, I aimed to inform the public about this public health study, which was kept secret, and prompt the public authorities who should solve the problems to take action.”

read the article

Independent: I recognise Boris Johnson’s coup for what it is because I’ve seen this before – in Turkey

Britain is experiencing a slow-moving coup d’etat in which a right-wing government progressively closes down or marginalises effective opposition to its rule. It concentrates power in its own hands by stifling parliament, denouncing its opponents as traitors to the nation, displacing critics in its own ranks, and purging non-partisan civil servants. [...]

This new method of seizing power has largely replaced the old-fashioned military coup d’etat in which soldiers and tanks captured headquarters and hubs in the capital and took over the TV and radio stations. Likely opponents were rounded up or fled the country. The military leaders sought popular passivity rather than vocal support.

I first witnessed the new type of coup in action three years ago in Turkey when it took place in reaction to an old-fashioned military coup. Part of the Turkish army tried to stage a military putsch on 15 July 2016 and provided the then prime minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan with what appeared to him to be a heaven-sent opportunity to install an elective dictatorship in which subsequent elections and the real distribution of power could be pre-determined by control of the media, judiciary, civil service, security services and, if people still stubbornly voted against the government, by outright electoral fraud. [...]

Could the same thing happen here in Britain? This is one of the strengths of the Johnson coup: many people cannot believe that it has happened. British exceptionalism means that foreign experience is not relevant. Few knew or cared that Turkey had a strong tradition of parliamentary democracy as well as a grim record of military takeovers. But it is these slow-burn civilian coups which are such a feature of the modern world that we should be looking at – and trying to learn from – and nor what happened in Britain in the 1630s when Charles I sought to impose arbitrary government.

read the article

The B1M: Why Europe Doesn't Build Skyscrapers

openDemocracy: Turkish centre-right: soon over-crowded?

Erdoğan’s managerial genius has allowed him to survive several political crises that would uproot most governments. In each crisis, he strengthened and personalized his grip on power. Creating political scenarios reminiscent of Agamben’s state of exception, he targeted the group at the centre of any crisis, turning them public enemies by dehumanizing them in the eyes of his electorate. For the Gezi protests, he blamed secular-leftist groups for organizing a revolt against the elected government, working with – several – foreign governments to this end. For the corruption scandal that followed the Gezi protests, he blamed the Gülenists, his former ally, whom he then subjected to radical recriminations and effectively annihilated. For the resurgence of the decades-old Kurdish issue, he threw the pro-Kurdish and liberal-leftist HDP, a legal political entity in the Turkish Parliament, into the fire. He took on several western governments and portrayed them as global powers with sinister plans on Turkey. In order to exercise political influence he has also instrumentalised some transnational state apparatuses, such as the Diyanet, in many countries.

All in all, Erdoğan survived in power but with the cost of sacrificing major elements of moderate politics and almost all of his former allies. Infusing Islamist and ethno-nationalist elements with his ever-green populism, he skilfully re-positioned himself further on the right and carried – or rather dragged – most of his electorate with him. Yet, Erdoğan has to sustain a huge effort to keep his electoral base in their new position. To consolidate this, he has used illusions of an augmented grandeur and its enemies (including domestic collaborators). [...]

Four potential rivals can be anticipated in forthcoming general elections. Two of them are the established opposition to the AKP, while the other two are from an internal opposition. Let’s start with the latter. As President Erdoğan elevated himself to the status of undisputed leader, he side-lined old comrades but kept them on a leash for quite some time. Yet, not all of them have been terminally silenced. A former president and one of the founding trio of the AKP, Abdullah Gül, together with the former minister of economy, Ali Babacan, having maintained their credibility both in the eyes of the voters and business circles at home and abroad, are on the cusp of forming a political party. Recently Babacan resigned from the party of which he was a founding member, and publicly declared that party policies in recent years were in clear contradiction with the principles to which he had subscribed. Babacan’s resignation is likely to prompt others to follow, yet it is difficult to know how many. The problem for Erdoğan is that Babacan has been at the steering wheel of the Turkish economy during the successful years of the AKP. If the economy is now Erdoğan’s Achilles’ heel, the Babacan-Gül duo will be shooting right at it.

read the article

The Conversation: Erdoğan’s control over Turkey is ending – what comes next?

When Turkey’s currency, the lira, dropped by 20% last year, the slide risked a global crisis. Turkey is also an important NATO ally, allowing its land and air bases to be used for the alliance’s military operations into places such as neighboring Syria and Iraq. [...]

Istanbul, a city of 16 million people, accounts for one-third of Turkey’s gross domestic product and is larger than many national economies. Whoever controls Istanbul’s massive municipal budget also controls its patronage. [...]

Earlier this year, more than 1,000 Turkish academics and their colleagues overseas signed an open letter condemning Erdogan’s bombing of more than 100 targets in Kurdish areas in Syria near its borders. [...]

Whether or how quickly the end for Erdoğan may come will be determined by how united the opposition remains. It is also possible a new political party will emerge, created by former allies of Erdoğan who said their current party under his leadership “caused a serious slide in rhetoric, actions, morals and politics.”

read the article