English LCCC Newsbulletin For
Lebanese, Lebanese Related, Global News & Editorials
For September 30/2020
Compiled & Prepared by: Elias Bejjani
#elias_bejjani_news
The Bulletin's Link on the
lccc Site
http://data.eliasbejjaninews.com/eliasnews21/english.september30.21.htm
News
Bulletin Achieves Since 2006
Click Here to enter the LCCC Arabic/English news bulletins Achieves since 2006
Bible Quotations For today
You brood of
vipers! How can you speak good things, when you are evil? For out of the
abundance of the heart the mouth speaks
Saint Matthew 12/33-37/“‘Either
make the tree good, and its fruit good; or make the tree bad, and its fruit bad;
for the tree is known by its fruit. You brood of vipers! How can you speak good
things, when you are evil? For out of the abundance of the heart the mouth
speaks. The good person brings good things out of a good treasure, and the evil
person brings evil things out of an evil treasure. I tell you, on the day of
judgement you will have to give an account for every careless word you utter;
for by your words you will be justified, and by your words you will be
condemned.’”
Titles For The Latest English LCCC Lebanese & Lebanese Related News & Editorials
published on
September 29-30/2021
Ministry of Health: 626 new infections, 10 deaths
President Aoun chairs Supreme Defense Council meeting: Extending public
mobilization until end of 2021
President Aoun: Investigation is not the judiciary, conviction is determined by
final court ruling
Berri meets UN’s Wronecka and Bou Habib, receives condolences cables on Sheikh
Qabalan’s passing
Families Protest Suspension of Port Blast Probe
Cabinet In Lebanon Forms Ministerial Panel that Will Negotiate with IMF
Paris Urges No 'Political Interference' in Beirut Port Blast Probe
Miqati, Salameh Work on Securing $200-300 Million Loan for EDL
Syria-Lebanon Gas Pipeline to be Fixed in a Week
Jordanian Prime Minister arrives in Beirut
Mikati: Meeting with Macron was very good as he showed remarkable interest in
supporting Lebanon
Kordahi after Cabinet session: Government referred Tleil explosion dossier to
Judicial Council
Jumblatt reviews political developments with United Nations coordinator
Ambassador Tarraf tweets: We stand ready to work together with Lebanese
government based on its ministerial statement commitments
Army chief meets Turkish ambassador
Lebanon partakes in 15th edition of OMC – Med Energy Conference
Key Dates in the Carlos Ghosn Saga
Real change will only come when a clear majority stands up against Iranian
occupation of Lebanon
EU Ambassador Discusses Govt. Plans with Lebanese FM
Syrian Refugees in Lebanon Struggle to Survive amid Worst Socio-Economic Crisis
in Decades
We will remove you’, Hezbollah official told Beirut port blast judge
Mikati’s uphill task of saving Lebanon from Hezbollah/Dr. Mohammed Al-Sulami/Arab
News/September 29, 2021
Pour pouvoir comprendre l'inutilité des élections si elles auront jamais lieu ,
il faut avoir vu le film " the matrix". /Jean-Marie Kassab/September 29/2021
Japan Prosecutors Close Case Against American in Ghosn Pay
A river ran through it/Nicholas Frakes/Now Lebanon/September 29/2021
Titles For The Latest English LCCC
Miscellaneous Reports And News published on
September 29-30/2021
UN: New Meeting in October to Draft Syria Constitution
Israeli Settlers Attack Palestinian Village, Wound Toddler
Tunisia President Names Najla Bouden as Country's First Female PM
Biden Adviser Headed to Egypt as Israel-Hamas Tensions Rise
Erdogan seeks to work around Russian-Turkish differences as he meets Putin in
Sochi
Azerbaijan frets over Iranian military exercises near border
Sullivan agrees with Saudi crown prince to ‘intensify engagement’ in Yemen
Yemeni NGO Wins U.N. Refugee Award
Japan Ex-Diplomat Kishida Wins Party Vote, to Become New PM
5 Intel Officers Killed in Shootout with Militants in Sudan
U.S. Joint Chiefs Chairman Calls Afghan War a 'Strategic Failure'
Titles For The Latest The Latest LCCC
English analysis & editorials from miscellaneous sources published on
September 29-30/2021
AUKUS Security Alliance Exposes EU's Fecklessness/Soeren
Kern/Gatestone Institute/September 29/2021
A New Word for the Administration/For Those Who Have Chosen Power and Profits
over Patriotism/Lawrence Kadish/Gatestone Institute/September 29/2021
France finds being a world power takes more than words/Faisal Al Yafai/The Arab
Weekly/September 29/2021
Iraq’s collapse reverberates across the region/Khairallah Khairallah/The Arab
Weekly/September 29/2021
The shifting sands of Middle East alliances follows diminishing US power/Makram
Rabah/Al Arabiya/September 29/2021
The Latest English LCCC Lebanese &
Lebanese Related News & Editorials published
on September 29-30/2021
Ministry of Health: 626 new infections, 10 deaths
NNA/September 29/2021
The Ministry of Public Health announced 626 new cases of coronavirus infection,
bringing the cumulative number of confirmed cases to 623,609.
10 deaths have been recorded.
President Aoun chairs Supreme Defense Council
meeting: Extending public mobilization until end of 2021
NNA/September 29/2021
President of the Republic, General Michel Aoun, headed a Supreme Defense Council
meeting, this afternoon at the Presidential Palace. The Council decided to
extend public mobilization until December 31, 2021, while maintaining previous
measures and procedures.
The meeting was attended by Prime Minister, Najib Mikati, and ministers of:
National Defense, Maurice Slim, Foreign Affairs, Abdullah Bou Habib, Finance,
Youssef Khalil, Interior, Bassam Mawlawi, Economy, Amin Salam, Justice, Henry
Khoury, Public Health, Firas Abyad, and Public Works, Ali Hamiyeh.
Also attending were: Army Commander, General Joseph Aoun, General Security
Director General, Major General Abbas Ibrahim, Internal Security Forces Director
General, Major General Imad Othman, State Security Director General, Major
General Tony Saliba, Secretary General of the Supreme Defense Council, Major
General Mahmoud Al-Asmar, Cassation Public Prosecutor, Judge Ghassan Ouweidat,
Acting Government Commissioner to the Military Court, Judge Fadi Akiki,
Assistant Director General of State Security, Brigadier General Samir Sannan,
Head of ISF Information Branch, Brigadier Khaled Hammoud, Director of
Information Branch in the General Security, Brigadier Youssef Medawar,
Presidency Director General, Dr. Antoine Choucair, the President’s Security and
Military Adviser, ret. Brigadier Paul Matar, and the President’s Health Adviser,
Dr. Walid Khoury.
Statement: After the meeting, Major General Al-Asmar, read the following
statement: “At the call of the President of the Republic, General Michel Aoun,
the Supreme Defense Council convened in a meeting, attended by the Prime
Minister, ministers, heads of security apparatuses, and the Governmental
Commissioner to the Military Court. The Supreme Defense Council decided to
extend public mobilization from 1/10/2021 until 31/12/2021, while maintaining
previously established measures and procedures”. -- Presidency Press Office
President Aoun: Investigation is not the judiciary,
conviction is determined by final court ruling
NNA/September 29/2021
President of the Republic, General Michel Aoun, stressed that “Investigation is
not the judiciary. If the investigation erred, there are three phases for
correction: beginning, appeal and cassation. Hence, investigations must continue
so that the guilty be convicted, and the innocent be acquitted”.
“If a normal trial takes place on two phases and one exceptional phase, then the
judicial investigator’s decision to refer to the Judicial Council, and its
judgement, do not accept any method of appeal. However, any conviction or
acquittal is determined by the final court ruling, not by the investigation”
President Aoun added. President Aoun’s positions came through a Tweet on his
Twitter accounts, today. Information Minister: The President received
Information Minister, George Kordahi, today at the Presidential Palace, and
addressed with him political and governmental affairs. Ministerial affairs, in
addition to affiliated institutions and Tele Liban issues, were also
deliberated. After the meeting, the Information Minister said that “Now is the
time for work and production, not for talking”. “Shura” State Council Chairman:
President Aoun met Shura Consultative Council Chairman, Judge Fadi Elias, and
discussed with him the progress of the council’s work, at the beginning of the
judicial year. Supreme Defense Council: The President will chair, today at
3:30pm, a session for the Supreme Defense Council, devoted to discuss the health
situation and the possibility of extending public mobilization, which ends
tomorrow.
The session will be attended by Premier, Najib Mikati, Ministers and heads of
security apparatuses, and will be followed by a Cabinet session.—Presidency
Press Office
Naharnet/President Michel Aoun on Wednesday said that the investigation
into the catastrophic 2020 explosion at the Port of Beirut must continue, three
days after it was suspended due to a challenge filed by ex-minister Nouhad al-Mashnouq.
“Any judicial investigation is not the (entire) judiciary. If it errs, there are
three degrees for correction: the Court of First Instance, the Court of Appeals
and the Court of Cassation,” Aoun tweeted. He accordingly called for the probe
to “continue so that the guilty can be convicted and the innocent can be
acquitted.”“Any conviction or acquittal can only be announced by the court’s
final verdict and not by the investigation,” the President added.
Berri meets UN’s Wronecka and Bou Habib, receives
condolences cables on Sheikh Qabalan’s passing
NNA/September 29/2021
House Speaker, Nabih Berri, on Wednesday welcomed at the Second Presidency in
Ain el-Tineh the United Nations Special Coordinator for Lebanon, Joanna Wronecka,
with whom he discussed the current general situation and the latest developments
in Lebanon and the region. Speaker Berri also welcomed Minister of Foreign
Affairs and Emigrants, Abdallah Bou Habib, on a protocol visit, during which
they discussed most recent political developments. On emerging, Minister Bou
Habib indicated that talks touched on an array of matters, including the
forthcoming legislative elections and the maritime border issue. On the other
hand, Berri received further condolences cables over the passing of Head of the
Islamic Supreme Shiite Council, Sheikh Abdel Amir Qabalan, notably from Iraqi
Prime Minister, Mustafa al-Kadhimi, Iraqi Parliament Speaker Mohammed al-Halbousi,
and Grand Mufti of the Syrian Arab Republic, Dr. Ahmad Badr al-Din Hassoun.
Families Protest Suspension of Port Blast Probe
Agence France Presse/September 29/2021
Hundreds of outraged Lebanese, mostly relatives of people killed in last year's
deadly Beirut port explosion, protested Wednesday against the suspension of the
investigation. Tarek Bitar, the judge leading the probe into Lebanon's deadliest
peacetime disaster, had to suspend his work on Monday after what the victims'
families and human rights groups said was another blatant case of political
obstruction. The protesters gathered at the palace of justice in Beirut under
close surveillance from a heavy police deployment and unfurled a large banner
that read: "You won't kill us twice." Carrying portraits of their lost relatives
and placards calling for justice, the protesters voiced their support for Bitar,
whose summonses targeting senior officials have earned him a series of thinly
veiled threats. Bitar's predecessor Fadi Sawan was also removed from the
investigation earlier this year after issuing summonses to former ministers and
top brass over the explosion. "We have been suffering for 13 months from the
interference of politicians and sectarian leaders in the investigation," said
Rima al-Zahid, whose brother was a port employee and died in the blast. "When I
heard that the investigation was halted, I felt that we were being betrayed
again, and that they were killing us a second time," she said, breaking down in
tears as she spoke. The August 4, 2020 explosion of hundreds of tons of ammonium
nitrate fertilizer at a port warehouse caused one of the largest non-nuclear
explosions in history. The shockwave was felt as far away as Cyprus, entire
swathes of Beirut were devastated, 215 people were killed and thousands wounded,
some of them several kilometers (miles) from the blast site.
Cabinet In Lebanon Forms Ministerial Panel that Will
Negotiate with IMF
Associated Press/September 29/2021
The new government held its first meeting Wednesday since it won a vote of
confidence last week. The president and prime minister authorized a committee to
resume bailout talks with the International Monetary Fund over Lebanon's worst
economic and financial crisis in its modern history. Talks with the IMF were
suspended last year. Information Minister George Kordahi told reporters after
the meeting that the committee will be headed by the deputy prime minister and
includes the ministers of finance and economy as well as the central bank
governor and two experts representing the presidency. No date has been set for
the resumption of the talks. During the Cabinet session, the conferees also
reaffirmed hundreds of emergency decrees issued by the caretaker government.
Media reports had said that the session might witness a dispute between
President Michel Aoun and PM Najib Miqati over the composition of the committee
that will negotiate with the IMF.
Paris Urges No 'Political Interference' in Beirut Port
Blast Probe
Agence France Presse/Associated Press/September 29/2021
A French foreign ministry spokesperson on Wednesday said Paris "regrets the
suspension" of the probe into the Beirut port blast, urging the Lebanese
judiciary to work "in total transparency, and without any political
interference" so that investigations could proceed. "It is up to the Lebanese
authorities to allow the probe to continue with all the necessary financial and
human resources so it can shed light on what happened on Aug. 4 and meet the
legitimate expectations of the Lebanese people," French Foreign Ministry
spokesperson Anne-Claire Legendre told reporters in Paris. Tarek Bitar, the
judge leading the probe into Lebanon's deadliest peacetime disaster, had to
suspend his work on Monday after what the families of the victims and human
rights groups said was another blatant case of political obstruction. The
suspension was prompted ex-interior minister Nouhad al-Mashnouq filing a legal
challenge against Bitar's work.
Miqati, Salameh Work on Securing $200-300 Million Loan for
EDL
Naharnet/September 29/2021
Contacts have begun between Prime Minister Najib Miqati and Central Bank
Governor Riad Salameh to secure a new loan for Elecricite du Liban, al-Akhbar
newspaper said. Informed sources told the newspaper, in remarks published
Wednesday, that Salameh is “showing readiness to finance a $200-300 million loan
-- to be secured from the funds that were being used to import diesel and not
from the obligatory reserves.”The sources pointed out that Salameh is dealing
differently with the new government than he was with the previous government.
“Salameh is showing a tendency to cooperate with Miqati,” the sources said,
“which makes it more likely that the loan will go ahead.” EDL has been recently
warning of a total blackout by the end of September, as fuel reserves are close
to running out.
Syria-Lebanon Gas Pipeline to be Fixed in a Week
Naharnet/September 29/2021
A Syrian technical team has finished examining the 36-kilometer gas pipeline
extending from the al-Dabbousiyeh border crossing to Lebanon’s Deir Amar power
plant and the inspection showed that there is no major damage that might delay
gas supply, media reports said on Wednesday.
“The maintenance process requires a few days and will be carried out by Syrian
technical teams free of charge,” al-Akhbar newspaper reported. “According to the
recent agreements between the energy ministers of Lebanon, Syria, Jordan and
Egypt, the pipeline’s repair had been tasked to an Egyptian company, but the
U.S. Treasury’s delay in issuing resolutions to exempt this company from the
Caesar Act sanctions necessitated resorting to Syria’s help,” the daily added.
Syrian Oil and Mineral Fortune Minister Bassam Tohme meanwhile informed his
Lebanese counterpart that “Damascus will help repair the technical problems free
of charge,” al-Akhbar said.Lebanese Energy Ministry sources told the daily that
the pipeline’s repair “will need one week at the latest,” adding that “the rest
depends on (Energy Minister Walid) Fayyad’s travel to Egypt to put a timeframe
for the coming period and a practical plan to pump Egyptian gas, which
would allow operating the Deir Amar plant in a swift manner.” Separately,
Lebanon is expected to sign a cooperation treaty with Egypt to buy a quantity of
fuel for generating power according to the same mechanism that was followed in
the agreement with Iraq, which would allow Lebanon to exchange the Egyptian fuel
with fuel that suits the power plants in Lebanon. “Fayyad is preparing a file
ahead of his travel to Cairo to finalize the issue, especially the financial
part,” the sources added.
Jordanian Prime Minister arrives in Beirut
NNA/September 29/2021
Jordanian Prime Minister and Minister of Defense, Bishr Al-Khasawneh, heading a
Jordanian ministerial delegation, arrived at the Beirut airport where he was
welcomed by Prime Minister Najib Mikati and Jordanian Ambassador Walid Al-Hadid.
Mikati: Meeting with Macron was very good as he showed
remarkable interest in supporting Lebanon
NNA/September 29/2021
Prime Minister Najib Mikati announced during the cabinet session held in Baabda
this Wednesday that "the meeting with President Emmanuel Macron was very good.
He showed a remarkable interest in supporting Lebanon, and stressed France's
readiness to assist in more than one sector, within complete transparency,
affirming that the real door to salvation is the beginning of negotiations with
the International Monetary Fund."
Kordahi after Cabinet session: Government referred Tleil
explosion dossier to Judicial Council
NNA/September 29/2021
Minister of Information, George Kordahi, announced, during his reading of the
Cabinet's decisions, that "the government referred the file of the Tleil fuel
explosion to the Judicial Council.""The Cabinet also agreed to extend the
general mobilization till December 31, in addition to approving the formation of
ministerial committees dealing with various ministerial affairs," he added. "The
Cabinet tackled the agenda that was previously scheduled, and we did not touch
on matters from outside it, except for certain details regarding the electricity
file," he explained.
Jumblatt reviews political developments with United Nations
coordinator
NNA/September 29/2021
Head of the Progressive Socialist Party, Walid Jumblatt, received in Clemenceau,
the United Nations Special Coordinator in Lebanon, Joanna Wronecka, with whom he
tackled the general situation and the latest political developments.
Ambassador Tarraf tweets: We stand ready to work together with Lebanese
government based on its ministerial statement commitments
NNA/September 29/2021
European Union Ambassador to Lebanon, Ralph Tarraf, on Wednesday tweeted:
“Tour d’horizon with Foreign Minister Bou Habib on areas of joint concern:
addressing the economic crisis, delivering basic services to LB citizens,
governance reforms, elections, refugees. We stand ready to work together with LB
Gov based on its ministerial statement commitments.”
Army chief meets Turkish ambassador
NNA/September 29/2021
Army Commander, General Joseph Aoun, on Wednesday welcomed at his Yarzeh office
the Turkish Ambassador to Lebanon, Ali Baris Ulusoy, with talks touching on
ooperation relations between the armies of both countries.
Lebanon partakes in 15th edition of OMC – Med Energy Conference
NNA/September 29/2021
The 15th edition of OMC – Med Energy Conference kicked off yesterday morning in
the presence of Tarek El Molla, Minister of Petroleum and Mineral Resources,
Egypt, Mohamed Oun, Minister of Petroleum and Gas, Libya, Natasa Pilides,
Minister of Energy, Commerce and Industry, Cyprus, Kadri Simson, European
Commissioner for Energy and the Mayor of Ravenna, Mr. Michele De Pascale along
with a number of government and industry professionals. Lebanon has also proven
strong presence at OMC through several companies, including "Batifort",
represented by its owner George Farhat, and "Rockland" represented by its
Commercial Development Director, Naji Hatem. Both companies work in the field of
energy, construction, facility protection, earthquake resistance, and
firefighting. In an interview with the National News Agency, Hatem said that OMC
was a great opportunity to meet with Italian companies active in the
aforementioned fields and to discuss future projects with new partners. “I was
so pleased to meet with delegations from Jordan, Algeria, Tunisia, Morocco and
Egypt; this is a promising opportunity to build direct partnerships with them,”
he added. For his part, Farhat said that Lebanon’s participation in this
exhibition was a great opportunity to explore new horizons and technologies to
reduce carbon dioxide emissions, control the increasing air pollution, build
sound environmental systems, construct smarter energy systems and buildings, and
rely on transformative lighting systems. “What is mostly required today is to
invest in the young Lebanese generation and rely on it to swap old concepts with
new ideas for the benefit of Lebanon’s environment first and foremost,” Farhat
added. The 15th edition of OMC confirms the status of the largest and the most
important conference and exhibition in the Mediterranean area, south Europe and
North Africa. The exhibition halls are busier than ever and the major energy
players are exploring new technologies while networking with new and existing
clients. The support of the Egyptian Petroleum Sector, the presence of
representatives from more that 25 nations at the exhibition, amongst which
France, United Kingdom, Germany, The Netherlands, Spain, Greece, Cyprus, are a
clear sign of the importance of OMC in the Mediterranean energy sector.
Key Dates in the Carlos Ghosn Saga
Agence France Presse/September 29/2021
From his shock detention to an audacious escape from Japan, the rollercoaster
saga of former Nissan boss Carlos Ghosn has grabbed headlines around the world.
As Japanese prosecutors seek a two-year jail sentence for Ghosn's aide Greg
Kelly, here are the key dates to know:
- November 2018: Ghosn arrested -
Ghosn and his aide Greg Kelly are arrested on suspicion of financial misconduct
on November 19, after arriving in Tokyo on separate private planes.
They are accused of devising a scheme to under-report the salary of Ghosn, then
Nissan chief and head of an alliance between Renault, Nissan and Mitsubishi
Motors.
The pair deny wrongdoing. Ghosn is swiftly removed from his role at all three
firms in a stunning fall from grace for one of the world's best-known
businessmen.
- December 2018: More allegations -
Ghosn and Kelly are charged with under-reporting Ghosn's salary between 2010 and
2015, then rearrested on allegations of under-reporting up to 2018.
In December, Ghosn is arrested again on fresh allegations that he transferred
losses from personal financial investments to Nissan. His detention -- in
conditions far removed from his flashy lifestyle -- is extended.
- March 2019: Bail for Ghosn -
Ghosn attends his first court hearing in January, insisting the accusations are
"meritless and unsubstantiated." His first bail request is denied, and two new
charges of financial misconduct are filed against him. The tycoon tells AFP from
prison that his detention would "not be normal in any other democracy."In March,
the court approves Ghosn's third request for bail, set at one billion yen ($9
million).
- April 2019: Rearrest, bailed again -
Ghosn is rearrested in a dawn raid of his Tokyo apartment in April.
Authorities hit him with a charge of aggravated breach of trust, alleging he
siphoned money for personal ends from cash transferred from Nissan to a
dealership in Oman.
The court grants Ghosn a second bail, but he is banned from leaving Japan and
requires court permission to see his wife.
- September 2019: U.S. charges -
Nissan CEO Hiroto Saikawa resigns amid allegations that he also padded his
salary. He denies wrongdoing but apologizes.
Meanwhile, Ghosn and Nissan are accused by U.S. securities regulators of hiding
more than $140 million in his expected retirement income from investors.
- December 2019: Ghosn jumps bail -
Ghosn gives authorities the slip -- hiding in an audio equipment case to flee on
a private plane to Lebanon, which has no extradition treaty with Japan.
A week later, Ghosn says Nissan colluded with prosecutors to have him arrested
because he wanted to deepen the Japanese firm's alliance with Renault.
He says he fled because he did not believe he would get a fair trial.
- July 2021: Escape accomplices jailed -
Two men accused of helping Ghosn flee Japan, former U.S. special forces member
Michael Taylor and his son Peter, are extradited from the United States and go
on trial in Tokyo. They apologize for their role in the escape and are sentenced
to 20 months' jail time for Peter and two years for Michael.
- September 2021: Kelly trial -
Japanese prosecutors seek a two-year jail sentence for Kelly on charges of
under-reporting Ghosn's compensation, a year after the trial began in September
2020. "Kelly was behind the efforts to hide Ghosn's income," they said in their
statement. "It was a role only Kelly, who had deep trust from Ghosn, could
fulfil." The American lawyer denies wrongdoing. Prosecutors also demand that
Nissan, on trial alongside Kelly, be fined 200 million yen ($1.8 million).
Real change will only come when a clear majority stands up
against Iranian occupation of Lebanon
SAYDET EL JABA/29 SEPTEMBER 2021
(A phone conversation between French president and Iran’s « unelected »
president provided the green light for the formation of a new government headed
by Mr. Najib Mikati!)
In a new communiqué after its Monday, September 27 meeting, the « Likaa Saydet
al-Jabal », an offshoot of the historical March 14 forces and an active national
and multi-confessional front, noted with dismay that some traditional political
parties were preparing for the coming parliamentary elections as if Lebanon was
still a free and independent state, governed by constitutional and legal texts
and in accordance with international resolutions- an illusion belied by the fact
that the country is, now, governed by an illegal armed proxy party, called
Hezbollah, and is subject to a hardly disguised Iranian occupation.
The same “Hezbollah”, which abolished Lebanon’s borders with Syria in favor of
illegal « contraband » operations and which, recently, made open threats against
the judiciary, is now attempting to complete its putsch against the foundations
of the republic, by targeting the parliamentary elections process. Anticipating
unfavorable results, the head of Hezbollah’s parliamentary bloc threatened
voters that they will not be able to change the so-called « equation » imposed
by Iran’s proxy and armed party . All this while while some political forces are
alluding to the possibility of torpedoing the participation of expatriates in
the parliamentary elections – if they take place! And, while some parties
support the election of six MPs by the expatriates, others reject this
expatriate voting process altogether.
Accordingly, “Likaa » affirms anew that real change will only come by when the
Lebanese majority actively endorses the necessity of lifting the Iranian
occupation of Lebanon. Striking at the foundations of this occupation is a
prerequisite for the rise of Lebanon.
This can only be achieved through the resignation of the President of the
Republic, who violated his oath and provided the occupier with a constitutional
cover, as well as the resignation of the Prime Minister and the Speaker of
Parliament who are colluding with Hezbollah to implement the agenda of the
Iranian occupation.
EU Ambassador Discusses Govt. Plans with Lebanese FM
Naharnet/September 29/2021
European Union Ambassador to Lebanon Ralph Tarraf on Wednesday held a
meeting with Lebanon's Foreign Minister Abdallah Bou Habib. "Tour d'horizon with
Foreign Minister Bou Habib on areas of joint concern: addressing the economic
crisis, delivering basic services to LB citizens, governance reforms, elections,
refugees," Tarraf tweeted after the talks. "We stand ready to work together with
LB Gov based on its ministerial statement commitments," he added.
Syrian Refugees in Lebanon Struggle to Survive amid
Worst Socio-Economic Crisis in Decades
Naharne/September 29, 2021t
UNHCR, the U.N. Refugee Agency, the United Nations World Food Program (WFP), and
the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) said Wednesday in a press release
that they are "deeply concerned about the rapid deterioration in the living
conditions of Syrian refugees in Lebanon."
"Almost the entire Syrian refugee population cannot afford the survival minimal
expenditure basket," the statement said. The U.N. added that Lebanon’s
compounded socio-economic and health crisis "has hit the most vulnerable
Lebanese and refugee families the hardest."
"The preliminary findings of the 2021 Vulnerability Assessment of Syrian
Refugees in Lebanon (VASyR), released today, reveal a dire situation, with nine
out of ten Syrian refugees still living in extreme poverty," the U.N. went on to
say. According to the statement, "in 2021, the vast majority of refugees
continued to resort to negative coping strategies to survive, such as begging,
borrowing money, not sending their children to school, reducing health expenses
or not paying rent." The survey -- conducted jointly by UNHCR, WFP, and UNICEF
-- indicates that, in 2021, "more family members took poorly paid jobs,
high-risk jobs or extra shifts to make the same income the household made in
2020."
"These coping strategies negatively affect resilience and the capacity to
generate income in the future, making refugee families more vulnerable to food
insecurity and more dependent on humanitarian assistance," the U.N. stated.
“Over the last 18 months, the Lebanese currency lost more than 85 per cent of
its value. Prices have skyrocketed, and mere survival has become out of reach
for Syrian refugee families. The crisis will have a long-term impact on
refugees’ well-being and the future of their children and is threatening past
gains such as access to essential services,” stressed Ayaki Ito, UNHCR
Representative in the country. “Lebanese families are struggling too. Stronger
support for Lebanese, refugees, and other vulnerable communities is urgently
needed at this most critical juncture. We cannot fail them now,” he added.
The U.N. underlined that "finding a dignified and safe shelter continues to be a
struggle, with almost 60 per cent of Syrian refugee families living in a
dangerous, substandard, or overcrowded shelters."
They added that "the study shows an increase in the average rent in all shelter
types and in all governorates, and an increase in the risk of eviction."
"Inflation impacted food prices significantly. Between October 2019 and June
2021, the cost of food increased by 404 per cent, resulting in worrisome food
insecurity levels among Syrian refugee families. In June 2021, 49 percent of
Syrian refugee families were food insecure. About two-thirds of the families had
to limit food portion sizes or reduce the number of meals consumed per day," the
statement also said.
“This has been a tough year for everyone in Lebanon. We have seen food prices
slip out of reach for many families,” said Abdallah AlWardat, WFP Representative
and Country Director in Lebanon.
"Thanks to generous support from our donors, WFP is helping more than 1.1
million Syrian refugees and 600,000 Lebanese nationals every month. We’re
providing cash assistance and food parcels and also organizing activities to
support and protect people’s livelihoods.”
"When it comes to basic hygiene, two out of ten refugee families did not have
access to basic baby care items, and one out of ten did not have access to
female hygiene items," the U.N. said.
"Syrian refugee children are bearing the brunt of the crisis. Thirty percent of
children in school age (ages 6-17) have never been to school. Primary school
attendance for children between 6 and 14 years old dropped by 25% in 2021. In
addition, the upward trend in child labor among Syrian children continued in
2021, with at least 27,825 Syrian refugee children currently engaged in child
labor."The survey also highlights that "one out of five girls between the ages
of 15 and 19 years were married. More than half (56%) of children aged between 1
and 14 have experienced at least one form of violent discipline."
“The escalating crisis in Lebanon is putting the most vulnerable children at
risk, including refugees, as more and more families are being forced to resort
to negative coping measures, including sending their children to work in often
dangerous and hazardous conditions, marrying off their young daughters or using
violent discipline,” said UNICEF Representative in Lebanon Yukie Mokuo.
“UNICEF is expanding its program to support more children and families as
children’s well-being and safeguard must be a top priority to ensure their
rights are met under any circumstance.”
"While VASyR looks at vulnerabilities and poverty levels among Syrian refugees
in particular, Lebanese host communities are also struggling to cope," the
statement said.
The U.N. concluded by saying that "all three UN agencies continue to work
together with government and partners to provide much needed lifesaving support
to all vulnerable communities, including Lebanese and refugees."
We will remove you’, Hezbollah official told Beirut port
blast judge
Reuters/September 29/2021
A senior official in the Lebanese group Hezbollah told the judge investigating
the disastrous Beirut port blast that it would remove him from the probe,
according to a journalist who says she conveyed the message and a judicial
source. Judge Tarek Bitar described the message in a letter to the public
prosecutor, said the judicial source. The justice minister and judiciary were
following up on the matter but a formal investigation has yet to be opened, the
source said. The source spoke on condition of anonymity because it was a
judicial matter and judge Bitar’s letter was marked private. Reuters could not
reach Bitar, who is not permitted to speak to the media in his capacity as an
investigating judge. He has not issued any statement about the matter since
reports of the warning began circulating in Lebanese media last week. Neither
the Hezbollah official in question, Wafik Safa, nor other Hezbollah officials
could be reached for comment. More than 200 people died when a huge stockpile of
chemicals stored unsafely at Beirut port for years exploded on Aug. 4, 2020.
Bitar is the second judge whose investigation has been stymied by powerful
factions in Lebanon, where a lack of high-level accountability are blamed for
systemic corruption, governing gridlock and economic meltdown.
LBCI journalist Lara al-Hashem told Reuters she was entering Beirut’s Palace of
Justice on Sept. 20 to follow up on news of a scheduled session of the inquiry
with lawyers and fellow journalists when she ran into Hezbollah official Safa.
“He asked me will you see Judge Bitar? If you meet him, give him this message,”
she said. Hashem declined to give details of the verbal message but described as
accurate an account posted on Twitter on Sept. 21 by Edmond Sassine, a fellow
journalist at the privately-owned broadcaster. He said Safa had asked Hashem to
tell Bitar “we have had it up to here with you.”
“We will go along with you until the end of the legal road but if it doesn’t
work we will remove you,” Sassine tweeted, citing the message Safa sent to Bitar
via Hashem. Sassine declined to reveal the source of the account when Reuters
reached him by phone. Hashem told Reuters she was not the source for his
information.
Inquiry struggles
The judicial source told Reuters that Bitar had sent a letter to the public
prosecutor “the contents of which were what Lara Hashem said - that Wafik Safa
told her ‘tell Judge Bitar that we will remove you’,” the source said. Bitar
sent the letter at the prosecutor’s request, the source added.
A man rides on a motorbike past a burning tyre, during a demonstration by
“Bitar did not put extra information in the letter. He put verbatim what Lara
Hashem communicated to him: ‘that we will remove you’. Specifically, Bitar wrote
in his letter ‘we will remove you through legal means’.”
The justice minister, who the source said was following up on the matter, could
not be reached for comment.
Popular anger
On Monday Prime Minister Najib Mikati told LBCI, a private broadcaster whose
editorial line is critical of Hezbollah, that security precautions had been
taken as a result of threats said to have been made against Bitar. He did not
elaborate. Reuters could not reach Mikati for comment.
The blast probe was frozen on Monday following a complaint from Nohad Machnouk,
a former interior minister Bitar wanted to question on suspicion of negligence
and maladministration. If the complaint is upheld, Bitar will be removed from
the case. His predecessor, Fadi Sawan, was removed in February following similar
accusations of bias. The prime minister said he hoped Bitar will continue in his
role, saying he did not think Lebanon “could withstand the second judge being
removed.”Angry families of the victims demonstrated outside the judiciary
headquarters on Wednesday after the investigation was frozen on Monday, some
chanting slogans against Safa. Many Lebanese say they are furious that no one
has been held to account for the disaster and they accuse the political elite of
covering up one of the biggest non-nuclear explosions on record. Efforts to
question former and serving state officials, including the prime minister at the
time of the blast, ex-ministers and senior security officials on suspicion of
negligence have been repeatedly blocked. Parliament has refused to lift immunity
against a number of officials. All those targeted by the investigation have
denied any wrongdoing.
Bitar has sought to question several senior politicians allied to Hezbollah
including members of the Shi’ite Amal Movement, but has not tried to query any
members of Hezbollah. Some critics say Bitar, and his predecessor Sawan, have
overstepped their powers and that cases against senior officials should be
referred to a special council for hearing cases against former presidents and
ministers. Bitar’s critics include Hezbollah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, who
last month accused Bitar of bias and “playing politics”. Nasrallah, whose
heavily armed Iranian-backed group is widely seen as more powerful than the
state, said last month he was not calling for Bitar’s immediate removal.
Mikati’s uphill task of saving Lebanon from Hezbollah
Dr. Mohammed Al-Sulami/Arab News/September 29, 2021
The new Lebanese government headed by Najib Mikati was finally approved by
parliament last week. This is Lebanon’s first government since the Cabinet of
former Prime Minister Hassan Diab was dissolved following the explosion that hit
Beirut Port in August last year. The resulting governmental vacuum has led to
tremendous challenges at the political, economic, social, security, and health
levels.
Despite the accomplishment of forming a new government, it seems that Lebanon’s
crises are extremely complicated and cannot be resolved through the current
systematic compromises or satisfactorily addressed through Mikati’s vision.
In short, Lebanon is witnessing a state of total collapse, for which Hezbollah
bears primary responsibility; although this blame is also shared by the
remaining Lebanese political forces because of their silence and passiveness.
The country’s situation is no different — apart from maybe even worse — than
some of the regional countries that are experiencing civil wars and foreign
interventions, such as Syria.
In Lebanon, there has been an unprecedented decline in the value of the national
currency, along with deteriorating living conditions and a severe shortage of
essential utilities, particularly water and electricity — all worsened by
rampant corruption. Due to the deepening crises in the country, which have
resulted from the aforementioned factors, the Lebanese people have embarked on
what has become known as a third wave of emigration. It is reminiscent of the
two previous large emigration waves in the country’s history, which occurred
during the First World War and the Lebanese Civil War of 1975 to 1990.
To end the domestic deterioration and prevent Lebanon from sliding into the
abyss, Mikati’s new government hopes to attract external support, primarily
foreign aid, to implement an urgent economic and social recovery plan. Mikati is
working to convince Arab and Gulf states, in particular, to provide support to
save Lebanon. He claims that his government will distance itself from the
“policy of siding with certain axes.”
Mikati’s government faces immense challenges that will impede its ability to
deliver. The formula imposed by Hezbollah — under which the new government has
been established — is the principal root cause of Lebanon’s crises and its
present impasse.
Even though Mikati’s government consists of technocrats, most of them reflect
the country’s sectarian equation. The make-up of the Lebanese Parliament means
that no radical solutions can be advanced, as the passage of vital executive
decisions remains liable to be blocked at any time by Hezbollah. As a result,
the government’s decisions will ultimately reflect the trade-offs agreed outside
of its official headquarters.
Hezbollah’s outlook and goals impede any Lebanese government from performing its
duties. The group, which presents itself as a state within a state due to its
possession of a weapons arsenal equal to that of Lebanon’s national army,
continues to drag the country into external conflicts in Syria, Iraq and Yemen.
Moreover, Hezbollah’s vast range of transboundary networks, which engage in
various legal and illegal activities, continues to work in its interests.
Meanwhile, the party’s economic role has mushroomed regionally and globally, in
blatant violation of Lebanon’s sovereignty. It has also hijacked the country’s
national decision-making process and the government’s sovereignty for the sake
of Iran. This makes Lebanon more vulnerable to sanctions and isolation.
The party has hijacked the country’s national decision-making process and the
government’s sovereignty for the sake of Iran.
In addition to making Lebanon, its resources and its weapons a pawn in Iran’s
regional expansionist project, Hezbollah has also isolated the country from its
Arab sphere — depriving it of Arab and Gulf support, with the previous economic
and military assistance from the Gulf states and Saudi Arabia, in particular,
suspended. Lebanon has also become isolated internationally, with several world
powers making their help conditional on the country addressing its internal
political imbalance.
In the face of these challenges, it seems highly improbable that Mikati’s
government has the will or ability to change the reality imposed on Lebanon by
Hezbollah and Iran, even though it may want to do so. This was evident in
Mikati’s remarks regarding the entry of Iranian fuel into Lebanon, which he
condemned as a breach of the country’s sovereignty.
It also seems that Mikati, rather than addressing the original and root causes
of the current crises, has chosen to plead with donors — especially the Gulf
states — to help save Lebanon. The Gulf states have solid and compelling
justifications for not responding positively to Mikati’s call for assistance and
may simply refuse to do so. Throughout history, for example, no country has
matched Saudi Arabia in terms of its solidarity and support for Lebanon during
its repeated crises and multiple wars. As well as brokering the Taif Agreement
that ended the civil war, the Kingdom also gave Lebanon nearly $70 billion
between 1990 and 2015. Furthermore, following the disastrous Beirut Port
explosion, the Kingdom immediately launched an airlift to offer emergency relief
to the Lebanese people. In addition to these examples, the Kingdom has always
been the firefighter extinguishing the fires ignited in Lebanon by Iran and
Hezbollah.
Saudi Arabia is still keen on Lebanon’s integrity and upholding its sovereignty.
But how can the Kingdom help those actors who have destroyed Lebanon, violated
its social contract, risked the country’s future, and drawn it into a hostile
alliance against itself and the Gulf states?
How can the Lebanese government be granted assistance while Hezbollah — Iran’s
regional proxy — is engaging in conflicts on multiple fronts and contributing to
the destruction of Syria, Iraq and Yemen?
Are Iran’s militias in Iraq not testament to the fact that providing help is a
rather fruitless act, as governments do not exercise full sovereignty or have
complete control over national decision-making?
In light of the above, any assistance donated to Lebanon is channeled in
numerous negative directions, rather than the right one. Neither the Lebanese
state nor the Lebanese people benefit. In fact, it is Iran’s militias that
benefit, strengthening Tehran and its influence.
There is no doubt that Arab countries need Lebanon as much as Lebanon needs them
— especially in light of the crises gripping the region and the turmoil and
chaos that Iran is spreading and seeking to normalize under the pretext of an
illusionary project for domination. Yet there is no question that saving Lebanon
from the clutches of Iran’s project requires an internal Lebanese consensus that
will facilitate the process of restoring the country’s sovereignty, rather than
leaving a vacuum for Hezbollah to exploit once again.
It is essential for Mikati’s government to exercise full authority and
sovereignty over Lebanon’s resources and weapons, and to abandon the alliance
imposed on it by Hezbollah, in order for the country to once again assume its
proud stature, guided by its history and geography, rather than by Iran’s
national interests. When this happens, Lebanon and the Lebanese people will find
all the help and support they might wish for from Saudi Arabia and other
brotherly Arab countries, enabling Lebanon to restore its stability and
strength.
• Dr. Mohammed Al-Sulami is President of the International Institute for Iranian
Studies (Rasanah).
Twitter: @mohalsulami
Pour pouvoir comprendre l'inutilité des élections si elles auront jamais lieu ,
il faut avoir vu le film " the matrix".
Jean-Marie Kassab/September 29/2021
http://eliasbejjaninews.com/archives/102797/%d8%ac%d8%a7%d9%86-%d9%85%d8%a7%d8%b1%d9%8a-%d9%83%d8%b3%d8%a7%d8%a8-%d9%84%d9%83%d9%8a-%d9%86%d8%aa%d9%85%d9%83%d9%86-%d9%85%d9%86-%d9%81%d9%87%d9%85-%d8%b9%d8%af%d9%85-%d8%ac%d8%af%d9%88%d9%89/
Ce film parle de la réalité virtuelle que vivent les gens : Ils pensent vivre ,
aller , venir , manger , dormir etc mais en réalité ils vivent dans une sorte de
couveuses et leurs vies sont inventées par un super ordinateur qui débite dans
leur cerveau une vie virtuelle et même une liberté d'action en fait inexistante.
Certains d'entre eux se sont deconnectés et on affronté la réalité quoique amère
et lutté contre la machine. Un nombre d'entre eux en ont payé de leur vie.
Un dernier mot, ce film est inspiré par le concept de la Caverne proposé par
Platon. Sur çe je me tais pour ne pas vous trop vous emmerder.
Le Liban est entièrement sous occupation Iranienne. Exemple: Un café pris par
Safa au Palais de justice a suffi pour stopper net l'enquête sur l'explosion du
port.
Perdre les éléctions pour l'Iran est hors de question. Même si le camp
souverainiste gagnerait 127 des sièges, le seul siège restant suffira pour
dominer le parlement.
L'Iran nous fait vivre dans un semblant de démocratie , qui s'amoindrit à vue
d'oeil d'ailleurs.
Il nous laisse manifester à gogo, jurer , gesticuler , dessiner des
caricatures,et même eventuellement voter mais maintiendra son contrôle du pays.
Faites un seul geste en dehors du cercle dessiné et vous vous ferez taper sur la
main et violement aussi.
Nous vivons une vie citoyenne virtuelle et téléguidée par Teheran.
Si rien de déterminant n'est entrepris nous continuerons nos vies comme des
zombies rattachés à la machine. Comme dans the matrix.
Ma crainte demeure qu'il ne soit trop tard et irréversible.
Les patrie ne sont ni un jeu ni un jouet chers Libanais et cheres Libanaises.
Les patries se paient cher et souvent en sang.Or nous avons tous joué.
Japan Prosecutors Close Case Against American in Ghosn Pay
Associated Press/September 29/2021
Japanese prosecutors accused former Nissan executive Greg Kelly of joining a
"conspiracy" to pay his former boss Carlos Ghosn illicitly, as they wrapped up
their closing arguments Wednesday in a yearlong trial.
"That unpaid compensation existed is clear," prosecutor Yukio Kawasaki told the
Tokyo District Court, reading briskly from a thick document.
Kelly, a 30-year veteran at the Japanese automaker, had been living in the U.S.
when he was arrested in November 2018 when he returned to Japan to attend a
meeting. The first American to be appointed to Nissan's board, Kelly says he is
innocent. He sat calmly in the courtroom, wearing his usual red tie and dark
suit, alongside defense lawyers. Everyone in the courthouse was wearing a mask
because of the pandemic. Kelly told The Associated Press in an interview last
month he did not know all the details of Ghosn's pay, but was determined to
retain Ghosn, Nissan's former chairman, because of his extraordinary management
skills. Ghosn was arrested at the same time as Kelly and also maintains he is
innocent. He skipped bail in late 2019 and fled to Lebanon, the country of his
ancestry. It has no extradition treaty with Japan.
The charges center around a pay cut of about 1 billion yen ($10 million) a year
that Ghosn voluntarily started taking from 2010, halving his pay after
disclosure of high executive pay became mandatory in Japan.
Neither side is contesting that cut. The contention is over whether that money
should have been reported as compensation as a de facto promised sum under a
binding contract, or didn't need to be disclosed until it was finalized.
Nissan Motor Co. officials considered various ways to make up for the money
Ghosn gave up, such as paying him consulting fees after retirement. They also
mulled other methods such as payments through subsidiaries and stock options.
Nothing had been paid at the time of the arrests.
Ghosn has said a group at Nissan engineer his arrest because they feared that
French automaker Renault, which owns 43% of Nissan, would gain more control over
the company. Other Nissan officials made similar comments during Kelly's trial.
Renault sent Ghosn to Nissan in 1999 to lead its rescue from the brink of
bankruptcy. He successfully steered the maker of the Leaf electric car and
Infiniti luxury models for nearly two decades.
Ghosn has also been charged with breach of trust allegations centered around
using Nissan money for personal gain, ranging from housing, tuition payments for
his children, use of a corporate jet and purchases such as a chandelier. Ghosn
has said they were needed for work.
Yokohama-based Nissan, as a company and legal entity, has also been charged, and
has pleaded guilty.
Nissan is struggling to revert to profitability after racking up two straight
years of red ink, with the damage from the coronavirus pandemic coming on top of
the Ghosn scandal. Egor Matveyev, who teaches at the MIT Sloan School of
Management, calls the Ghosn case "a clear example of corporate governance
failure.""Nissan did overhaul their board in 2018-2019, including instituting
separate nomination, compensation, and audit committees, but questions still
remain whether Nissan got fully rid of all its governance problems and whether
the current board is poised to let Nissan compete on the global scale," he said.
Nissan has declined comment on a class-action lawsuit filed by investors in
Tennessee over how the automaker's share price has dropped.
A small group of Kelly's supporters, including Jamie Wareham, Kelly's attorney
in the U.S., held a protest late last week at the White House and the Japanese
Embassy, demanding Kelly be releasd. The protest was timed to coincide with a
visit to Washington by Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga.
"The entire case against Greg Kelly and Carlos Ghosn is a sham," Wareham said.
If convicted of violating the Financial Instrument and Exchange Act, Kelly could
face up to 15 years in prison. The verdict from a panel of three judges is not
expected until March next year.
A river ran through it
Nicholas Frakes/Now Lebanon/September 29/2021
The Abu Ali River, once at the heart of Tripoli, was a major contributor to the
economic and social life in Lebanon until it was blocked in 1958, to control the
city. But historians and residents say that bringing it back would breathe new
life into the neglected city.
The Abu Ali River was once at the heart of Tripoli and the city’s economic and
social life. Now it is a shadow of its former self, after it was blocked in
1958. Photo: Nicholas Frakes, NOW.
The intensity of the sun bore down on the shop owners in the souk al-baleh, the
thrift shop market on the border of the Zahrieh and Tabbaneh neighborhoods in
Tripoli, as they did their best to shade themselves from the brutal heat even at
the end of September. In the shade, they could not escape the dozens of bugs
flying around and the foul stench that came from the river bed below them.
Piles of garbage covered the sides of the river, while waste remained caught on
branches, rocking as the current nudged them.
Abu Ali River in Tripoli has looked like this for decades, a place left to rot.
After flowing in full force for centuries, the Abu Ali River is now full of
garbage and waste, filling the air with a foul stench and insects. Photo:
Nicholas Frakes, NOW.
The river, once the heart of the city, was blocked off in the late 50s during a
push to redesign and modernize Tripoli on the one hand, and, on the other hand,
better control the neighborhoods in terms of security.
But thus, the river – which is in fact the Qadisha River that runs 45 kilometres
east to west from the Qadisha grotto, halfway between Bsharreh and the Cedars of
God, to the Mediterranean Sea through Tripoli – turned from a place of community
to a place of separation and pestilence.
“Before 1958 [the river] wasn’t an element of separation in Tripoli. It was
actually part of the city,” Charles al-Hayek, a historian and founder of
Heritage and Roots, a social media page that explores the history and culture of
Lebanon and the wider region, told NOW.
“Before 1958, this was a built area. There was an entire neighborhood over the
river, under the river with houses on bridges like in Medieval London.”
What little water that still flows in the river has become polluted with the
local and central governments doing little in terms of maintenance for it.
Photo: Photo: Nicholas Frakes, NOW.
The beating heart of Tripoli
The Abu Ali River was a staple of Tripoli’s history dating back to the ninth and
tenth centuries, during the short period of time when the Fatimid Caliphate
ruled the city. According to al-Hayek, the legend says the river got its name
when one of the city’s rulers, Abu Ali, was drowned in its waters after the
Crusaders took Tripoli in 1110 following a 10-year siege.
After the Crusaders were forced out to Cyprus in 1289, the city was
reconstructed by the Mamluk Sultanate more inland in an effort to counteract
potential attacks from the sea. As the centuries went by and the city gradually
expanded, the river remained an integral part of Tripoli.
Even though the Abu Ali River is no longer at the heart of Tripoli's social
life, many people still use the area as a public space to spend time with
friends and family. Children in the areas surrounding the Abu Ali River use it
as a place to spend their free time as it is one of the few public spaces in the
city. Photo: Nicholas Frakes, NOW.
“This city was built in the small valley of the Abu Ali River,” al-Hayek
explained. “So it started where Bab el-Tabbaneh is now with bridges with houses
on them. You even had jamaa al-naher, the society of the river. The
neighborhood, hay al-naher, with its own traditions that are linked to the
river, eating fish, using the river for water mills, for your domestic usages.”
Despite flooding in the 1940s, the community along the river stood strong.
But all that changed in 1958, during Lebanon’s “mini civil war”, when Tripoli
was one of the major areas of conflict.
It was the final year of Camille Chamoun’s presidency when political and
religious tensions reached a boiling point and war broke out throughout the
country. Chamoun’s refusal to join the newly-formed United Arab Republic had
angered Sunni Muslims and Druze factions and violent protests ignited across
Lebanese cities, including Tripoli.
During the war, Tripoli, a city with a majority of Sunni population that
supported pan-Arabism and the UAR, was bombed by the Lebanese military.
The empty spaces above the Abu Ali River have been turned into a small market
for people to find cheap second hand clothes. Photo: Photo: Nicholas Frakes,
NOW. “The Lebanese state back then was seeking to adopt approaches to control
Tripoli and it considered that the cohesive old nucleus of the city with the
narrow streets and the old buildings were actually a challenge for any army
seeking to control the city because you couldn’t get tanks into the city,” the
historian stated. “You couldn’t easily send your troops to control the city
because of the nature of the streets. So, the idea was to make it easier for
troop circulation in the city and to dislocate and segment the city into
separate quarters to make the issue of controlling it easier.”
In order to establish better control over the city, al-Hayek explained that the
government during Chamoun’s mandate used “urbanism to control Tripoli” by
constructing a new highway running through the city, constructing new roads that
drastically reshaped Tripoli and made an artificial riverbed that effectively
killed the river and the communities surrounding it.
“The plan that was decided was to construct a new highway that cuts through the
old city, this is the highway that is next to Hammam al-Nouri, and then to
construct a 60-meter-wide artificial bed for the river,” al-Hayek said.
People will often throw their trash into the water, adding to the growing piles
of garbage that exist throughout the trickling river. Photo: Nicholas Frakes,
NOW.
“To do so they destroyed the river neighborhood. They killed the river because
it didn’t have a riverbed anymore. It’s all concrete. And they created an
element of separation where, before that, it was an element of a smooth
transition from one part of the city to another.”
This new separation made the areas by the river poorer and potential hotbeds for
extremism since they were now on the periphery of the city rather than at the
center like they used to be.
While state’s control over Tripoli was reinstated, the river has remained in a
state of neglect and decay since then.
“Up until now, the river has no proper plan,” al-Hayek stated. “The Lebanese
government has no proper plan of how to manage the river. It is heavily
polluted. Pollution not only from Tripoli but also from the villages around the
Kadisha because the sewage system doesn’t exist there.”
Despite the lack of plans for the river, the same vendors that now use the areas
around the river say that they would like to see the river flow like it once
did, arguing that it would not only be better for their work but for the city as
a whole.
Let the river flow
Ahmad Chemmas opened his small shoe store six years ago on a public walkway
directly above the river. Throughout his time there, the 54-year-old has grown
sadder and sadder seeing the once beautiful river grow increasingly neglected
and polluted. “Upriver, generally, you could swim up there in the river,”
Chemmas told NOW. “The water was clean then. You could drink from [the river].
But now, it’s dirty. It’s full of sewage.”
Chemmas explained that the Tripoli municipality occasionally cleans the river,
but this has done little to help it as the waste quickly builds up again.
“[The municipality] cleaned it. But the people continue to pollute it,” he said
solemnly. “It returns to chaos. It costs, from what I’ve heard, $27 million to
clean the river. But where is it?”
Ali Qalas sits behind his cart on a bridge that crosses over the Abu Ali River.
Photo: Nicholas Frakes, NOW. Ahmad Chemmas has sold shoes in his shop above the
river for five years but would gladly move his shop if it meant that the river
could flow once again. Photo: Nicholas Frakes, NOW.
This lack of action by the municipality is not necessarily due to a lack of
interest in actually doing something with the river, but a lack of authority to
act, as any projects involving it falls under the Ministry of Public Works.
“Add to that corruption,” al-Hayek stated. “Add to that, for the regime, Tripoli
serves a purpose. It is a city that is supposed to produce extremism. Everything
that counters that narrative is unwelcome. Add to that official neglect. This is
why there was only one plan.”
Dealing with the foul smells that come from the trash that builds up daily is
not the only issue that those working alongside the river face.
Ali Qalas, 28, works at a fruit and vegetable cart on a bridge passing over the
Abu Ali River from 8 AM until 10 PM. While the smells bother him, the flies and
mosquitos that ravage his product and Qalas himself are the bigger challenges.
“There are so many mosquitos here,” Qalas told NOW. “In the evenings it is the
worst. The mosquitoes come out even more then.”
For both Chemmas and Qalas, the idea of the river being cleaned and flowing like
it did before 1958 would be an incredible change. Qalas criticized the lack of
effort by either the municipality or central government.
“Of course, it would make me more comfortable if the Abu Ali River became better
if it was cleaned of all the trash in it,” he exclaimed! “There are a lot of
mosquitos and a lot of people would feel more comfortable if it was cleaned.
It’s wrong how the municipality and the national government left [Tripoli].”
Despite the dozens of secondhand shops above the river, the owners say they
don’t mind moving if the municipality decides to clean it and give it a new
life.. Photo: Rayanne Tawil, NOW.
“The problem is that, here, Tripoli is very neglected and it hits the city
hard,” Chemmas agreed. “Places like Jbeil get twice the attention but Tripoli is
neglected and no one cares. It’s all because of the zuama, political leaders, of
Tripoli.”There have been plans drawn up in the past to reconstruct the area and
bring it back to its glory days, such as the Council of Development and
Reconstruction in 2006, but nothing has come from these plans.
That has not stopped people like al-Hayek from dreaming about the potential for
the area despite the long-term damage that has already been done.
“I think that first, the river should once again retrieve its status as an
actual river,” al-Hayek said. “They should at least remove the cement that is in
the base of the riverbed. Allow the riverbed to reconstruct itself. Two, we’ll
transform this empty space into a green corridor at the heart of the city. And
this green corridor could be a very good connector between the different parts
of the city. This could be a beautiful green corridor. I think that this is how
it could be managed because the damage that has been done to the river and the
natural environment there is irreversible.” Even if the rehabilitation of the
area forced the vendors to move, Chemmas says that that is something he and his
colleagues would be more than happy to do if life was brought back to the river.
“It would be amazing [if the river flowed like normal again],” he stated. “I
would move my shop if I had to if it meant that the river would flow again.
There are five shops here so that would be five shops that would have to move.
We would move if it meant that things would be better.”Rayanne Tawil contributed
to this report.
*Nicholas Frakes is a multimedia journalist with @NOW_leb. He tweets @nicfrakesjourno.
The Latest English LCCC Miscellaneous Reports And News
published on September 29-30/2021
UN: New Meeting in October to Draft Syria Constitution
Associated Press/September 29/2021
The U.N. special envoy for Syria announced Tuesday that invitations have been
issued for a sixth meeting of the committee charged with producing a new
constitution for war-torn Syria in October. After the failure of the five
previous meetings of Syrian government, opposition and civil society
representatives, Geir Pedersen told the U.N. Security Council: "We should all
now expect the constitutional committee to begin to work seriously on a process
of drafting — not just preparing — a constitutional reform.""If it does that,
then we will have a different and credible constitutional process," he said.
Pedersen said the 45-member drafting committee will meet in Geneva starting Oct.
18, and the co-chairs from the government and opposition will for the first time
meet with him the day before to prepare the session. The last round of talks
ended in January without progress. Pedersen said that after eight months of
talks he was pleased to announce an agreement on "methodology" for a sixth
round. It's based on three pillars: respect for rules of procedure, the
submission of texts of "basic constitutional principles" ahead of the meeting,
and regular meetings of the co-chairs with him before and during the meeting.
"The co-chairs are also committed to setting provisional dates for future
meetings and discussing a workplan," he said. Syria's nearly 10-year conflict
has killed more than half a million people and displaced half the country's
pre-war 23 million population, including more than 5 million refugees mostly in
neighboring countries.
At a Russia-hosted Syrian peace conference in January 2018, an agreement was
reached to form a 150-member committee to draft a new constitution. It took
until September 2019 before a committee was formed. The United Nations continues
to emphasize the importance of a negotiated political solution to the Syria
conflict as called for in a December 2015 Security Council resolution. It
unanimously endorsed a road map to peace approved in Geneva on June 30, 2012 by
representatives of the U.N., Arab League, European Union, Turkey and all five
permanent Security Council members.
It calls for the drafting of a new constitution and ends with U.N.-supervised
elections with all Syrians, including members of the diaspora, eligible to
participate. After the fifth round of negotiations failed in late January,
Pedersen hinted the Syrian government delegation was to blame for the lack of
progress.
The United States and several Western allies accused Syrian President Bashar
Assad of deliberately stalling and delaying the drafting of a new constitution
until after presidential elections to avoid a U.N.-supervised vote, as called
for by the Security Council. In late May, Assad was re-elected in what the
government called a landslide for a fourth seven-year term, but the West and his
opposition described the election as illegitimate and a sham. Pedersen said the
need for "a genuine intra-Syrian dialogue" was reportedly discussed by Assad and
Russian President Vladimir Putin recently in Moscow, "and through this, a
genuine process of Syrian political reform." "I am convinced that Geneva can be
the place where Syrians committed to durable peace can begin to work with each
other in a constructive manner," he said. Pedersen has said key global players
are interested in stepped-up international diplomacy to "unlock progress" toward
ending the country's 10-year war. He told the Security Council on Tuesday that
he is continuing to ask key countries to work with him "on concrete, mutual and
reciprocal steps" to move the peace process forward. In his briefing, the U.N.
envoy painted a grim picture of Syria today saying poverty levels are
approaching 90% and the country is facing mismanagement, corruption and the
economic impact of neighboring Lebanon's economic collapse. In addition, tens of
thousands of Syrians remain detained, abducted or missing. While military front
lines have been largely frozen for 18 months, Pedersen said many Syrians who
returned to their homes in the south of rebel-held northwest Idlib have been
displaced again as a result of "sustained mutual shelling, rocket fire and
increased airstrikes."
Israeli Settlers Attack Palestinian Village, Wound Toddler
Associated Press/September 29/2021
Dozens of Israeli settlers attacked a Palestinian village in the occupied West
Bank, hurling stones at cars and homes and leaving several people wounded,
including a Palestinian toddler, activists said Wednesday. Video of Tuesday's
attack released by an Israeli rights group showed several shirtless settlers
with scarves wrapped around their faces hurling stones at a cluster of homes and
vehicles. Israeli troops stood among the settlers but did not appear to be
taking any action to stop them. The Israeli military declined to comment, saying
it was still gathering information. Sami Hureini, a local Palestinian activist,
said a group of Israeli settlers attacked a Palestinian shepherd near the
village of Mufaqara and slaughtered four of his sheep. He said they then stormed
the village itself, attacking residents with clubs and stones. He said a
four-year-old boy, Mohammed Bakr, was hospitalized with a head injury. The
Israeli human rights group B'Tselem released video of the attack and provided a
similar account. It said Israeli troops fired tear gas at Palestinian residents
and arrested at least one Palestinian. An Israeli soldier can be seen throwing a
tear gas grenade at the Palestinian who filmed the attack and then shoving
him.Nearly 500,000 Jewish settlers live in the occupied West Bank, which Israel
seized in the 1967 war. The territory is home to more than 2.5 million
Palestinians, and the Palestinians want it to form the main part of their future
state. In addition to more than 120 authorized settlements, more radical
settlers have established dozens of outposts in rural parts of the West Bank.
Israeli authorities are reluctant to dismantle them because doing so usually
ignites clashes between the settlers and security forces. The Palestinians and
the international community consider all settlements to be illegal and an
obstacle to peace.
B'Tselem said the settlers who took part in the attack came from two nearby
outposts, Avigayil and Havat Maon. The area has seen a series of recent settler
attacks. B'Tselem and other rights groups say Israeli forces often turn a blind
eye to settler violence or side with the settlers in clashes with Palestinians.
Mohammed Amr, a local Palestinian official, said the "unprecedented" attack was
aimed at driving Palestinians off the land to make way for more settlement. "The
goal is to force these citizens to leave their homes and lands," he said.
Tunisia President Names Najla Bouden as Country's First
Female PM
Agence France Presse/September 29/2021
Tunisia's president on Wednesday named geologist Najla Bouden as the country's
first ever female prime minister-designate, two months after he seized
wide-ranging powers. "The President of the Republic Kais Saied charged Najla
Bouden with forming a government as quickly as possible," said a statement from
his office published on Facebook. Saied on July 25 sacked the government of
Hichem Mechichi, suspended parliament, lifted MPs' immunity and took over the
judiciary, after months of political deadlock in the face of a pressing economic
crisis and mounting coronavirus deaths. He followed up last week with moves
allowing him to rule by decree. He has faced repeated calls to name a
government. Saied's office published a video of him meeting Bouden in his office
and charging her with presenting a cabinet "in the coming hours or days". He
repeatedly emphasised the "historic" nature of the nomination of a woman,
calling it "an honour for Tunisia and a hommage to Tunisian women". Saied said
the new government's main mission would be to "put an end to the corruption and
chaos that have spread throughout many state institutions". Bouden will be the
Tunisia's tenth prime minister since a 2011 uprising overthrew longtime dictator
Zine El Abedine Ben Ali, sparking the Arab Spring revolts. The country has won
international plaudits for its democratic transition but many Tunisians have
seen little improvement in their lives and have become disillusioned with a
dysfunctional and corrupt political process. Saied's moves placed vast executive
powers in the hands of the president, who will himself head the cabinet. His
rulings on September 22 also extended the suspension of parliament. Najla Bouden,
the same age as Saied at 63, is a former director at PromESsE, a higher
education reform project, and has held senior positions at Tunisia's higher
education ministry. Originally from Kairouan, she is a a French-educated
geologist with a doctorate in geological engineering, and is a lecturer at
Tunisia's national engineering school.
Biden Adviser Headed to Egypt as Israel-Hamas Tensions Rise
Naharnet/September 29/2021
President Joe Biden's national security adviser Jake Sullivan is heading to
Cairo on Wednesday for talks with Egyptian government officials about rising
tensions between Israel and Hamas. The Biden administration is leaning heavily
on Egypt, which has long played a role as mediator between Israel and Hamas, for
help in maintaining stability in the region even as it presses Egyptian
President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi to stop his crackdown on dissent. Sullivan plans
to follow up on the Egypt talks during a meeting with his Israeli counterpart,
Eyal Hulata, next week in Washington, said National Security Council
spokesperson Emily Horne. Egypt brokered a cease-fire after an 11-day war
between Israel and Hamas erupted in May. Sullivan had already planned visits to
Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates for talks focused on finding an end to
war in Yemen. The visit to Egypt comes after the Biden administration announced
earlier this month it would withhold $130 million in military aid to the country
over human rights concerns. The region has seen an increase in fighting in
recent weeks, with tensions fueled by Israeli settlement construction and
heightened militant activity in the northern West Bank. Israeli troops conducted
a series of arrest raids against suspected Hamas militants across the occupied
West Bank early Sunday, sparking a pair of gun battles in which five
Palestinians were killed and two Israeli soldiers were seriously wounded.
Looming over the meeting in Cairo is the administration's recent decision to
withhold some military aid to Egypt.
Congress had passed legislation calling on the administration to withhold $300
million in military aid to Egypt. In the end, $170 million was sent along as the
administration used its authority to waive human rights conditions placed on the
assistance by Congress. The Biden administration said it decided to release most
of the military aid to preserve a U.S.-Egypt security relationship that it says
is critical to Mideast stability. The remaining $130 million will be released if
Egypt "addresses specific human-rights related conditions," according to the
State Department. At the same time, Biden advisers have praised Egypt for
brokering the cease-fire that ended the latest Israel-Hamas war. The
administration was also pleased that el-Sisi hosted Israeli Prime Minister
Naftali Bennett in Cairo earlier this month, the first visit by an Israeli prime
minister to Egypt since 2007.
Egypt is pressing the U.S. to side with it in a dispute with Ethiopia over the
Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam, a hydropower project on the Blue Nile that
Ethiopia says is crucial for its economic development. Egypt says the dam would
choke its economy and has threatened to use "all available means" to stop it.
The Blue Nile, a major tributary of the Nile River, originates in Ethiopia. The
Biden administration sees the dam dispute as potential flashpoint, but has
sought to take a back seat to the African Union in finding a resolution.
Erdogan seeks to work around Russian-Turkish differences
as he meets Putin in Sochi
The Arab Weekly/September 29/2021
ANKARA--As they hold talks, Wednesday, the presidents of Russia and Turkey will
work to de-escalate tensions in northwest Syria but Moscow’s sales of military
defence systems to Ankara are very likely to be on the agenda. Washington has
been increasingly irked by Turkey’s expansionist brand of nationalism that has
led Ankara to boost its military footprint and seek arms purchases from outside
NATO, especially from Russia. The new row over Turkey’s further purchase of
Russia’s S-400 air defence system has only added to the many contentious issues
that have widened the divide between the US administration and Ankara against
the background of the old dislike by Biden for Erdogan’s authoritarian politics.
The US has recently threatened to impose fresh sanctions on Turkey, driving
Erdogan to near exasperation. But de-escalation in Syria’s Idlib is expected to
top the agenda in Sochi where Vladimir Putin is hosting Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
The Turkish leader will press for a return to a ceasefire they agreed last year
to end a Russian and Syrian army assault on Turkey-backed militants in Syria’s
Idlib region. The ceasefire has prevented another major military deflagration,
but rebel fighters say Russia has stepped up air strikes around Idlib over the
last week. “We are abiding by the principles of the agreement reached with
Russia,” Turkey’s Defence Minister Hulusi Akar told reporters, Tuesday. “We
expect the other side to also abide by their responsibilities under the
agreement.”
Russia’s defence ministry said that work to implement an earlier Russo-Turkish
deal on Syria was continuing, including joint patrols involving Russian military
police. It said there had been heavy shelling by Islamist militants in the Idlib
area.
Moscow says Russian forces are in Syria at the official invitation of President
Bashar al-Assad and that the presence of other forces is hindering his efforts
to reunite and rebuild the war-shattered country. Turkey has thousands of troops
in northern Syria and supports Islamist insurgents opposed to Assad, who with
Moscow’s support has driven them back to a small pocket of territory on the
Turkish border. In March last year Turkish land and air forces stemmed a Russian
and Syrian army assault which displaced one million people, brought Ankara and
Moscow close to direct confrontation and threatened another wave of migration
into Turkey, which is already hosting 3.6 million Syrian refugees. Erdogan has
said some of the talks with Putin will be one-on-one, without accompanying
delegations. “It means the most critical issues will be discussed in the most
open way,” said a Turkish official, asking not to be identified. “Especially in
light of the developments in Syria, some critical decisions may need to be
taken.”
Divergent strategies
It remains to be seen if the two countries can reach a deal in Syria despite
their divergent strategies elsewhere. Russia would like to proceed with military
sales to Turkey in a boost to its own defence industry at a time of a US
disengagement from much of the world, including the Middle East. NATO member
Turkey bought Russian S-400 missile defence batteries in 2019, triggering US
sanctions against its defence industries and warnings from Washington of further
action if it bought more Russian equipment. Erdogan last week indicated Turkey
still intended to procure a second batch of S-400s, saying no country could
dictate Ankara’s actions. Turkish officials said the S-400s would be discussed
in Sochi and one of them contrasted what he described as Washington’s inflexible
stance with Moscow’s approach. “With Russia at least solution-oriented steps can
be taken,” the official said. Turkey’s defence purchases from Russia have
alarmed Ankara’s NATO partners but Moscow and Ankara remain rivals in wars from
the Middle East to the Caucasus, highlighting the faultlines running through
their awkward alliance. Areas of Russian-Turkish divergence extend beyond Syria.
In Libya, Turkey’s military intervention turned back an assault on the
internationally-recognised government in Tripoli by the eastern-based forces of
Field Marshal Khalifa Haftar, commander in chief of the Libyan National Army.
Turkey has sent thousands of mercenaries along with army troops to back the
Tripoli government. Under a ceasefire reached last October, foreign fighters
were supposed to have left by January, a deadline Turkey appears determined to
ignore at the risk of scuttling the political settlement in Libya. The
divergence of strategic paths also extends to the Azeri-Armenian conflict.
Moscow has a defence pact with Armenia and views the region on its southern
flank, made up of former Soviet republics, as part of its own backyard. The
Kremlin said the two leaders would discuss Syria and Afghanistan, as well as
economic ties and regional problems. Turkey and Russia have forged close
cooperation in the fields of energy, tourism and defence despite the rivalry in
Syria, as well as conflicts in Libya and Nagorno-Karabakh, where the two
regional powers have also been on opposing sides.
Economic stakes
Economic stakes are also high for Turkey. Russia has so far this year accounted
for around half of gas imports to Turkey, which is heavily import-reliant for
its energy needs. Russian nuclear conglomerate Rosatom is building a nuclear
plant at Akkuyu in southern Turkey, which Putin has said will start working in
2023.Furthermore, Erdogan would like to boost the number of Russian travellers
picking Turkey as their leisure destination. Seven million Russian tourists
visited Turkey in 2019, the largest number from any country, before the pandemic
drastically cut foreign travel and hurt Turkey’s tourism sector.
Azerbaijan frets over Iranian military exercises near
border
The Arab Weekly/September 29/2021
TEHRAN – Tehran on Tuesday invoked its “sovereignty” to dismiss Azerbaijan’s
concerns over Iranian military exercises near their shared border. “The drills
carried out by our country in the northwest border areas … are a question of
sovereignty,” Iranian foreign ministry spokesman Saeed Khatibzadeh said in a
statement on the ministry website. Tehran “will take all measures it judges
necessary for its national security”, he said, adding, “Iran will not tolerate
the presence of the Zionist regime near our borders”, an allusion to
Azerbaijan’s relations with Iran’s enemy, Israel. Azerbaijani President Ilham
Aliyev had criticised Tehran over the drills, calling them “a very surprising
event.”“Every country can carry out any military drill on its own territory.
It’s their sovereign right. But why now and why on our border?” he said in an
interview with Turkish news agency Anadolu published on Monday. He added that
Iran had not held military drills near the border since Azerbaijan became
independent from the former Soviet Union almost 30 years ago. No further details
were available on the military exercises. Fighting broke out between Azerbaijan
and Armenia in September last year over the disputed Nagorno-Karabakh region,
claiming some 6,000 lives over six weeks. A major supplier of arms to
Azerbaijan, Israel, came under diplomatic fire from Armenia over the struggle
between the Caucasus neighbours. Iran and Azerbaijan share a border of around
700 kilometres and have enjoyed good relations. According to some estimates,
there are around ten million members of Iran’s Azeri-speaking community. In
recent weeks, tensions between Azerbaijan and Iran broke out after Azerbaijani
police and customs officials began imposing a “road tax” on Iranian trucks
shipping fuel and other goods to neighbouring Armenia. A section of the main
route to Armenia passes through Azerbaijan on land Armenian forces occupied for
decades until last year’s 44-day war between them over the disputed territory of
Nagorno-Karabakh.
Sullivan agrees with Saudi crown prince to ‘intensify
engagement’ in Yemen
The Arab Weekly/September 29/2021
WASHINGTON--US President Joe Biden’s national security adviser, Jake Sullivan,
had a detailed discussion about the war in Yemen on Tuesday in a meeting with
Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, a senior administration official said.
The war, in which a Saudi-led coalition has been battling the Iran-backed
Houthis, who drove the internationally-recognised Yemeni government from Sana’a
in 2014. The war has caused an humanitarian tragedy and devastated Yemen’s
economy. Sullivan is on a trip this week to Saudi Arabia, the United Arab
Emirates and Egypt along with the US special envoy to Yemen, Tim Lenderking and
Biden Middle East envoy Brett McGurk. Sullivan met in Saudi Arabia the crown
prince as well as Deputy Defence Minister Khalid bin Salman, Interior Minister
Abdulaziz bin Saud bin Nayef, National Guard Minister Abdullah bin Bandar, among
others. “They had a detailed discussion of Yemen conflict and both parties
endorsed the efforts of the new UN Special Envoy to Yemen Hans Grundberg and
agreed to intensify diplomatic engagement with all relevant parties. Special
Envoy Lenderking will remain in the region to follow up on the detailed
discussions,” the US official said. The official also said Sullivan thanked the
crown prince for “Saudi Arabia’s hospitality in permitting thousands of at-risk
Afghans to transit through Saudi territory” during Biden’s chaotic withdrawal
from Afghanistan last month. Sullivan also welcomed initiatives to lower
tensions in the region, like the summit that brought rival regional leaders
together in Baghdad last month, the official added. Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed
Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi and Deputy Supreme Commander of the Armed Forces, also
met Sullivan on Tuesday in Abu Dhabi. Sheikh Mohamed and Sullivan discussed ties
between the US and UAE and ways of strengthening them across a range of sectors,
Emirati news agency WAM reported. Sheikh Tahnoun bin Zayed, National Security
Adviser, was also present.
Leaning on Egypt
Sullivan subsequently headed to Cairo on Wednesday for talks with Egyptian
government officials about rising tensions between Israel and Hamas. The Biden
administration is leaning heavily on Egypt, which has long played a role as
mediator between Israel and Hamas, for help in maintaining stability in the
region even as it raises human rights issues with Egyptian President Abdel
Fattah el-Sisi. Sullivan plans to follow up on the Egypt talks during a meeting
with his Israeli counterpart, Eyal Hulata, next week in Washington, said
National Security Council spokesperson Emily Horne.
Egypt brokered a cease-fire after an 11-day war between Israel and Hamas erupted
in May. The visit to Egypt comes after the Biden administration announced
earlier this month it would withhold $130 million in military aid to the country
over human rights concerns. The region has seen an increase in violence in
recent weeks, with tensions fueled by Israeli settlement construction and
heightened Hamas activity in the northern West Bank. Israeli troops conducted a
series of arrest raids against suspected Hamas militants across the occupied
West Bank early Sunday, sparking a pair of gun battles in which five
Palestinians were killed and two Israeli soldiers were seriously wounded.
Looming over the meeting in Cairo is the administration’s recent decision to
withhold part of the US military aid to Egypt.
Congress had passed legislation calling on the administration to withhold $300
million in military aid to Egypt. In the end, $170 million was sent along as the
administration used its authority to waive human rights conditions placed on the
assistance by Congress.
The Biden administration said it decided to release most of the military aid to
preserve a US-Egypt security relationship that it says is critical to Mideast
stability. The remaining $130 million will be released if Egypt “addresses
specific human-rights related conditions,” according to the State Department.
At the same time, Biden advisers have praised Egypt for brokering the cease-fire
that ended the latest Israel-Hamas war. The administration was also pleased that
el-Sisi hosted Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett in Cairo earlier this
month, the first visit by an Israeli prime minister to Egypt since 2007.
Egypt is pressing the US to side with it in a dispute with Ethiopia over the
Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam, a hydropower project on the Blue Nile that
Ethiopia says is crucial for its economic development. Egypt says the dam would
choke its economy and has threatened to use “all available means” to stop it.
The Blue Nile, a major tributary of the Nile River, originates in Ethiopia. The
Biden administration sees the dam dispute as potential flashpoint, but has
sought to take a back seat to the African Union in finding a resolution.
Yemeni NGO Wins U.N. Refugee Award
Agence France Presse/September 29/2021
The United Nations said Wednesday that a Yemeni humanitarian organization
working to help people displaced by the country's conflict was this year's
recipient of its prestigious Nansen Refugee Award. Praising the "extraordinary
work" carried out by the Jeel Albena Association for Humanitarian Development,
UN High Commissioner for Refugees Filippo Grandi said the NGO was "an example of
humanity, compassion and dedication." The group, founded by Ameen Jubran
in 2017, won the prestigious award "for its unwavering support for displaced
Yemenis, even as shifting frontlines brought gun battles and explosions to its
doorstep," the UNCHR said. The award "draws attention to people displaced by
conflict in Yemen, a country facing one of the world's worst humanitarian
crises," Grandi said. Jubran, 37, had himself been displaced by fighting and
nearly killed, the UN body said. "The areas where we work are considered to be
among the most impoverished, and also the most dangerous," the statement quoted
Jubran as saying. "We felt the danger every day but, despite that, we had
displaced people and others who needed our help. We couldn't just leave them
behind without providing them with assistance." The conflict erupted when Huthi
rebels from the country's Zaidi Shiite minority in northern Yemen entered the
capital Sanaa in September 2014, seizing the government headquarters. The rebels
allied themselves with military units loyal to their former enemy, ex-president
Ali Abdullah Saleh, who had been forced to quit after a 2011 uprising. The
conflict has left tens of thousands dead and, according to the UN, is causing
the world's worst humanitarian crisis. Four million people have fled their homes
and are in dire need of protection and assistance, but the conflict and its
human suffering were often ignored, the UNHCR said.
Jeel Albena employs more than 160 people and is supported by an additional 230
volunteers, many of whom are displaced themselves. Based in the Red Sea port
city of Hudaydah, it has provided jobs and around 18,000 emergency shelters for
people who are internally displaced and living in informal sites in the
provinces of Hudaydah and Hajjah. The organization also supports displaced women
to become self-sufficient and renovates schools, benefiting both the local
community and displaced populations. The UNHCR Nansen Refugee Award honors
individuals, groups or organizations for going above and beyond the call of duty
to protect refugees and other displaced and stateless people. There have been
over 60 global winners from different countries since the award was first
established in 1954. Since 1979, the Nansen laureates are awarded $150,000,
financed by the governments of Norway and Switzerland.
Japan Ex-Diplomat Kishida Wins Party Vote, to Become New PM
Associated Press/September 29/2021
Japan's former Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida won the governing party leadership
election on Wednesday and is set to become the next prime minister, facing the
imminent task of addressing a pandemic-hit economy and ensuring a strong
alliance with Washington to counter growing regional security risks.
Kishida replaces outgoing party leader Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga, who is
stepping down after serving only one year since taking office last September. As
new leader of the Liberal Democratic Party, Kishida is certain to be elected the
next prime minister on Monday in parliament, where his party and coalition
partner control the house. Kishida beat popular vaccinations minister Taro Kono
in a runoff after finishing only one vote ahead of him in the first round where
none of the four candidates, including two women, was able to win a majority.
Results showed Kishida had more support from party heavyweights who apparently
chose stability over change advocated by Kono, who is known as something of a
maverick. The new leader is under pressure to change the party's high-handed
reputation worsened by Suga, who angered the public over his handling of the
coronavirus pandemic and insistence on holding the Summer Olympics in Tokyo. The
long-ruling conservative Liberal Democratic Party desperately needs to quickly
turn around plunging public support ahead of lower house elections coming within
two months. Kishida called for growth and distribution under his "new
capitalism," saying that the economy under Japan's longest-serving Prime
Minister Shinzo Abe had only benefited big companies. Overall, little change is
expected in key diplomatic and security policies under the new leader, said Yu
Uchiyama, a political science professor at the University of Tokyo. All of the
candidates support close Japan-U.S. security ties and partnerships with other
like-minded democracies in Asia and Europe, in part to counter China's growing
influence and a threat from nuclear-armed North Korea. Wednesday's vote was seen
as a test of whether the party can move out of Abe's shadow. His influence in
government and party affairs has largely muzzled diverse views and shifted the
party to the right. Kishida is also seen as a choice who could prolong an era of
unusual political stability amid fears that Japan could return to "revolving
door" leadership. "Concern is not about individuals but stability of Japanese
politics," Michael Green, senior vice president for Asia at the Center for
Strategic and International Studies, told a telephone briefing ahead of the
vote. "It's about whether or not we are entering a period in Japanese politics
of instability and short-term prime ministership," he said. "It makes it very
hard to move forward on agenda."
Suga is leaving only a year after taking office as a pinch hitter for Abe, who
suddenly resigned over health problems, ending his nearly eight-year leadership,
the longest in Japan's constitutional history.
5 Intel Officers Killed in Shootout with Militants in
Sudan
Associated Press/September 29/2021
Five intelligence officers were killed in a shootout Tuesday with suspected
Islamic State group militants in Sudan's capital Khartoum, authorities said. The
General Intelligence Agency said in a statement the suspected militants opened
fire on forces who raided their hideout in the Gabra neighborhood in southern
Khartoum. It said five were killed and an officer was also wounded in the raid.
The GIA said forces arrested 11 suspected militants and were chasing four others
who managed to flee during the shootout. The statement said the suspects were
foreigners but did not reveal their nationalities or further details.
Prime Minister Abdalla Hamdok mourned the deaths of the five officers. Tuesday's
violence came a week after authorities said they foiled a coup attempt that has
since increased tensions between the generals and civilians in the transitional
government. The developments underscore the fragility of Sudan's path to
democracy, more than two years after the military's overthrow of longtime
autocrat Omar al-Bashir amid a public uprising against his three-decade rule.
Militant attacks were rare in Sudan, a country that hosted Osama bin Laden in
the early years of his jihadi movement that led to the creation of al-Qaida. The
East African nation was on the U.S. list of countries backing terrorism until
December. In March last year, Hamdok said he survived a "terror attack" after an
explosion and gunfire targeted his motorcade in Khartoum.
U.S. Joint Chiefs Chairman Calls Afghan War a 'Strategic
Failure'
Associated Press/September 29/2021
The top U.S. military officer called the 20-year war in Afghanistan a "strategic
failure" and acknowledged to Congress that he had favored keeping several
thousand troops in the country to prevent a collapse of the U.S.-supported Kabul
government and a rapid takeover by the Taliban. Republicans on the Senate Armed
Services Committee pointed to the testimony Tuesday by Gen. Mark Milley,
chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, as evidence that President Joe Biden had
been untruthful when, in a television interview last month, he suggested the
military had not urged him to keep troops in Afghanistan.
Milley refused to say what advice he gave Biden last spring when Biden was
considering whether to comply with an agreement the Trump administration had
made with the Taliban to reduce the American troop presence to zero by May 2021,
ending a U.S. war that began in October 2001. Testifying alongside Milley,
Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin also refused to reveal his advice to Biden.
Milley told the committee, when pressed, that it had been his personal opinion
that at least 2,500 U.S. troops were needed to guard against a collapse of the
Kabul government and a return to Taliban rule.
Defying U.S. intelligence assessments, the Afghan government and its
U.S.-trained army collapsed in mid-August, allowing the Taliban, which had ruled
the country from 1996 to 2001, to capture Kabul with what Milley described as a
couple of hundred men on motorcycles, without a shot being fired. That triggered
a frantic U.S. effort to evacuate American civilians, Afghan allies and others
from Kabul airport. Gen. Frank McKenzie, who as head of Central Command was
overseeing U.S. troops in Afghanistan, said he shared Milley's view that keeping
a residual force there could have kept the Kabul government intact. "I
recommended that we maintain 2,500 troops in Afghanistan, and I also recommended
early in the fall of 2020 that we maintain 4,500 at that time, those were my
personal views," McKenzie said. "I also had a view that the withdrawal of those
forces would lead inevitably to the collapse of the Afghan military forces and
eventually the Afghan government."
The six-hour Senate hearing marked the start of what is likely to be an extended
congressional review of the U.S. failures in Afghanistan. The length and depth
of the hearing stood in contrast to years of limited congressional oversight of
the war and the hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars it consumed. "The
Republicans' sudden interest in Afghanistan is plain old politics," said Sen.
Elizabeth Warren, a Massachusetts Democrat, who supported Biden's decision to
end U.S. involvement there. Austin and Milley are scheduled to appear Wednesday
before the House Armed Services Committee to review the war.
The hearing at times was contentious, as Republicans sought to portray Biden as
having ignored advice from military officers and mischaracterized the military
options he was presented last spring and summer. Several Republicans tried
unsuccessfully to draw Milley, McKenzie and Austin into commenting on the
truthfulness of Biden's statement to ABC News on Aug. 18, three days after the
Taliban took control of Kabul, that no senior military commander had recommended
against a full troop withdrawal when it was under discussion in the first months
of Biden's term.
When asked in that interview whether military advisers had recommended keeping
2,500 troops in Afghanistan, Biden replied, "No. No one said that to me that I
can recall." He also said the advice "was split."White House press secretary Jen
Psaki said Tuesday that Biden was referring to having received a range of
advice. "Regardless of the advice, it's his decision, he's the commander in
chief," she said. In a blunt assessment of a war that cost 2,461 American lives,
Milley said the result was years in the making. "Outcomes in a war like this, an
outcome that is a strategic failure — the enemy is in charge in Kabul, there's
no way else to describe that — that is a cumulative effect of 20 years," he
said, adding that lessons need to be learned, including whether the U.S.
military made the Afghans overly dependent on American technology in a mistaken
effort to make the Afghan army look like the American army.
Republican Sen. Tom Cotton of Arkansas asked Milley why he did not choose to
resign after his advice was rejected. Milley, who was appointed to his position
as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff by President Donald Trump and retained
by Biden, said it was his responsibility to provide the commander in chief with
his best advice. "The president doesn't have to agree with that advice," Milley
said. "He doesn't have to make those decisions just because we are generals. And
it would be an incredible act of political defiance for a commissioned officer
to resign just because my advice was not taken."
Austin defended the military's execution of a frantic airlift from Kabul in
August and asserted it will be "difficult but absolutely possible" to contain
future threats from Afghanistan without troops on the ground. Milley cited "a
very real possibility" that al-Qaida or the Islamic State group's Afghanistan
affiliate could reconstitute in Afghanistan under Taliban rule and present a
terrorist threat to the United States in the next 12 to 36 months. It was
al-Qaida's use of Afghanistan as a base from which to plan and execute its
attacks on the United States on Sept. 11, 2001, that triggered the U.S. invasion
of Afghanistan a month later. "And we must remember that the Taliban was and
remains a terrorist organization and they still have not broken ties with
al-Qaida," Milley said. "I have no illusions who we are dealing with. It remains
to be seen whether or not the Taliban can consolidate power or if the country
will further fracture into civil war."Austin questioned decisions made over the
20-year course of the U.S. war in Afghanistan. In retrospect, he said, the
American government may have put too much faith in its ability to build a viable
Afghan government.
"We helped build a state, but we could not forge a nation," he told the Senate
committee. "The fact that the Afghan army we and our partners trained simply
melted away – in many cases without firing a shot – took us all by surprise. It
would be dishonest to claim otherwise."Asked why the United States did not
foresee the rapid collapse of the Afghan army, Milley said that in his judgment
the U.S. military lost its ability to see and understand the true condition of
the Afghan forces when it ended the practice some years ago of having advisers
alongside the Afghans on the battlefield. "You can't measure the human heart
with a machine, you have to be there," Milley said.
The Latest The Latest LCCC
English analysis & editorials from miscellaneous sources published on
September 29-30/2021
AUKUS Security Alliance Exposes EU's Fecklessness
Soeren Kern/Gatestone Institute/September 29/2021
"If an authoritarian nation, such as China, displaces America as the dominant
global power, then democracies all over the world will feel the consequences." —
Gideon Rachman, columnist, Financial Times.
"Too many European elites still do not want to admit that democracies are in a
systemic rivalry with autocracies. Refusing to acknowledge reality is convenient
for them since it justifies their inaction. But we need to do the opposite and
double down in our defense of democracies." — Andreas Fulda, China expert,
University of Nottingham.
"The US thinks about how to contain China. And Australia too is in the position
of thinking about how one contains, as opposed to how one accommodates; that's
the fundamental difference with France. As a consequence, the US looks like the
better partner." — Richard Whitman, professor of politics and international
relations, University of Kent.
"I think it was the only option for Australia because the French were not going
to annoy or unnecessarily irritate Beijing. They wanted trade, economic, and
investment relations. Now, Australia will have the capability to sink the
Chinese navy in 72 hours; that's what this is all about. The Chinese know they
have been outmaneuvered, and they're very angry. In a very short period of time,
Australia has gone from a doormat to something very considerable — it's an
extraordinary development." — Joseph Siracusa, geopolitical analyst, Sky News
Australia.
"The lesson of the past few weeks is that the world does not run on Brussels
time, with its long periods for consultation, courteous attention to the
electoral cycles of 27 countries, and sacrosanct weekends, evenings, and lunch
breaks." — Edward Lucas, Europe analyst, Center for European Policy Analysis.
"France underestimated how China's naked military ambition, chronic disregard
for international order, and barely concealed aspirations to control the deep
Pacific and Antarctica pushed Australia to make tough decisions about the
future." — Craig Hooper, geopolitical analyst, Forbes.
"It is hard to overstate the importance of the so-called Aukus alliance between
the US, the UK and Australia — and the implicit geopolitical disaster for the
EU." — Wolfgang Münchau, commentator, The Spectator.
"The extent of Emmanuel Macron's fury is absurd, and only shows the sublime lack
of self-awareness that has come to characterize Europe's myopic political
elites.... The European establishment has a long history of treating its
geopolitical partners abysmally while wearing a mask of moral superiority." —
Editorial board, The Telegraph.
"The EU continues to decline to take any serious responsibility for global peace
and security, preferring to see the economic and commercial opportunities in the
relationship with China, rather than the threat the Chinese Communist Party
represents." — Gerard Baker, columnist, The Wall Street Journal.
Australia, the United Kingdom and the United States have announced a new
tripartite strategic alliance aimed at countering China's growing assertiveness
in the Indo-Pacific region. The AUKUS defense agreement, under which Australia
will acquire American-designed nuclear-powered submarines, is a welcome paradigm
shift intended to enhance the projection of Western military power in the
region.
Australia, the United Kingdom and the United States have announced a new
tripartite strategic alliance aimed at countering China's growing assertiveness
in the Indo-Pacific region. The AUKUS defense agreement, under which Australia
will acquire American-designed nuclear-powered submarines, is a welcome paradigm
shift intended to enhance the projection of Western military power in the
region.
AUKUS will supplement the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue (also known as "The
Quad"), a military partnership between Australia, India, Japan and the United
States aimed at protecting freedom of navigation in the broader Asia-Pacific
region. It will also strengthen Five Eyes, an intelligence-sharing alliance
comprising Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the United Kingdom and the United
States.
AUKUS, which has been described as the foundation of an Indo-Pacific version of
the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), appears to be the centerpiece of
an emerging security architecture to check China's territorial ambitions.
Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison, in a statement, explained the purpose
of AUKUS:
"The security challenges in the Indo-Pacific region have grown significantly.
Military modernization is occurring at an unprecedented rate and capabilities
are rapidly advancing and their reach expanding. The technological edge enjoyed
by Australia and our partners is narrowing.
"AUKUS will build on the three nations' longstanding and ongoing bilateral ties
and will enable the partners to significantly deepen cooperation on a range of
emerging security and defense capabilities, which will enhance joint capability
and interoperability. Initial efforts under AUKUS will focus on cyber
capabilities, artificial intelligence, quantum technologies, and additional
undersea capabilities.
"This is an historic opportunity for the three nations, with like-minded allies
and partners, to protect shared values and promote security and prosperity in
the Indo-Pacific region.
"AUKUS will complement Australia's network of strategic partnerships, including
with our ASEAN friends, our Pacific family, our Five Eyes partners, the Quad and
other like-minded partners."
Notably, the AUKUS agreement does not include any member state of the European
Union, which was completely left in the dark about the new alliance. AUKUS was
announced on September 15, just hours before the EU unveiled its much-hyped
"Strategy for Cooperation in the Indo-Pacific." The EU had been hoping that its
new plan would highlight its "strategic autonomy" from the United States in the
Pacific region. Instead, the EU was eclipsed by AUKUS and exposed as a paper
tiger. A humiliated EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell admitted:
"We were not informed. We were not aware. We regret not having been informed. We
were not even consulted. I, as [the EU's] High Representative, was not aware of
it, and I assume an agreement of such nature was not brought together
overnight."
The United States is apparently sending a message to its traditional security
partners in Europe that they should stop fence-sitting and pick a side regarding
China, and possibly other adversaries of the West. This is something the EU and
its largest member states have been unwilling to do.
The EU, under the direction of German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French
President Emmanuel Macron, recently negotiated a controversial trade deal with
China. The so-called Comprehensive Agreement on Investment (CAI) was widely
criticized because European leaders, in their rush to reach an agreement with
Beijing before the Biden administration took office, sacrificed their professed
concern for human rights on the altar of financial gain.
Human rights experts say that at least one million Muslims in Xinjiang, China's
biggest region, are being detained in up to 380 internment camps, where they are
subject to torture, mass rapes, forced labor and sterilizations.
Columnist Gideon Rachman, writing for the Financial Times, warned that relying
on an American security guarantee in Europe, while undermining American security
policy in the Pacific, "does not look like a wise or sustainable policy over the
long run." He added:
"The Europeans are also kidding themselves if they think they can be blind to
the increasingly authoritarian and aggressive nature of Xi Jinping's China. For
the past 70 years, Europeans have benefited from the fact that the world's most
powerful nation is a liberal democracy. If an authoritarian nation, such as
China, displaces America as the dominant global power, then democracies all over
the world will feel the consequences."
Professor Andreas Fulda, a well-known China expert at the University of
Nottingham, noted:
"Too many European elites still do not want to admit that democracies are in a
systemic rivalry with autocracies. Refusing to acknowledge reality is convenient
for them since it justifies their inaction. But we need to do the opposite and
double down in our defense of democracies."
French Meltdown
As part of the agreement to acquire eight nuclear-powered submarines with help
from the US and the UK, Australia cancelled a contract worth tens of billions of
dollars — once dubbed the "contract of the century" — under which France was to
supply Australia with 12 diesel-powered submarines.
France has reacted angrily to its change of fortunes. French Foreign Minister
Jean-Yves Le Drian called AUKUS a "stab in the back." He added: "This is not
over. We're going to need clarifications. We have contracts."
In a subsequent interview with France 2 television, Le Drian escalated his
attacks on Australia and the United States:
"There was lying, there was duplicity, there has been a major breach of trust,
there has been contempt."
Speaking to France Info television, he added:
"The American behavior worries me. This unilateral, brutal, unpredictable
decision is a lot like what Mr. Trump did. We learned brutally through a
statement by President Biden that the contract that the Australians signed with
France is over and that the U.S. will make a nuclear offer to the Australians."
French Ambassador to Australia Jean-Pierre Thébault said that Australia's
decision to cancel the deal was akin to "treason." France recalled its
ambassadors to Australia and the United States, and the French Embassy in
Washington, D.C. canceled a reception it was hosting to mark the 240th
anniversary of the Battle of the Chesapeake, a decisive naval battle that helped
the Americans secure their independence from Great Britain.
Australia's Prime Minister Scott Morrison pushed back against the French
narrative. He said that he had told French President Emmanuel Macron in June
that Canberra was considering walking away from the submarine contract:
"I made it very clear, we had a lengthy dinner there in Paris, about our very
significant concerns about the capabilities of conventional submarines to deal
with the new strategic environment we are faced with."
In an interview with Agence-France Presse, Morrison added:
"I think they would have had every reason to know that we had deep and grave
concerns that the capability being delivered by the French submarine was not
going to meet our strategic interests. We made very clear that we would be
making a decision based on our strategic national interest. I don't regret the
decision to put Australia's national interest first. Never will."
In fact, the French deal to build submarines for Australia had been dogged by
years of problems, including cost overruns, production delays, culture clashes
and security breaches. The project, announced in 2016, was originally slated to
cost €31 billion (50 billion Australian dollars). That figure has since almost
doubled to €56 billion (90 billion Australian dollars). In addition, the cost of
maintenance was set to cost another €90 billion (145 billion Australian dollars)
over the life of the submarines.
Moreover, France was unable to deliver the first submarine before 2035, with
construction of the rest extending well into the 2050s. Australia feared that
the submarines would be obsolete by the time they were to be supplied. With its
current submarines slated for retirement in 2026, Australia would have been left
vulnerable at a time of increasing tensions with China.
Australia and France were also in conflict over the participation of local
industry. When the deal was announced in 2016, France pledged that 90% of the
construction work would take place within Australia and would create nearly
3,000 domestic jobs. By 2021, however, Naval Group, the French company building
the submarines, had reduced that figure to 60%, and it reportedly said that it
could be reduced even further.
In April 2019, a report by the Australian Broadcasting Corporation highlighted
some of the cultural clashes between French and Australian workers: the French
practice of being late for meetings; the French sanctity of the lunch break; and
the French practice of taking an entire month off from work during the
traditional summer holiday — even though the submarine contract was suffering
from lengthy delays. Naval Group said that it was developing "intercultural
courses" for French staff being posted to Australia. The aim was to prepare
French expatriates and their families for "how to behave, how to understand and
decode."
Adding insult to injury, hackers leaked more than 20,000 pages of secret French
documents on the combat capability of submarines it was building for India. The
data breach raised concerns about the security of the Australian submarines.
David Sanger, national security correspondent for The New York Times, noted that
the decision to create AUKUS was made on the sidelines of the Cornwall G7 summit
in June:
"By the time the Biden administration began engaging Australia and Britain
seriously about its emerging strategy to counter China, a three-year-old
contract worth $60 billion or more for a dozen submarines, to be constructed
largely by the French, was already teetering, American officials said. The
submarines were based on a propulsion technology that was so limited in range,
and so easy for the Chinese to detect, that it would be obsolete by the time the
first submarines were put in the water, perhaps as long as 15 years from now.
"There was an obvious alternative: the kind of nuclear-powered submarines
deployed by the Americans and the British. But American and Australian officials
agreed that if the French caught wind of the fact that the plug was going to be
pulled on one of the biggest defense contracts in their history, they almost
certainly would try to sabotage the alternative plan, according to officials who
were familiar with the discussions between Washington and Canberra.
"So they decided to keep the work to a very small group of officials, and made
no mention of it to the French, even when Mr. Biden and Mr. Blinken met their
French counterparts in June."
Hugh Schofield, Paris correspondent for the BBC wrote:
"The fact is that the Australians calculated they had underestimated the Chinese
threat and so needed to boost their level of deterrence. They acted with steely
disregard for French concerns but, when it comes to the crunch, that is what
nations do. It is almost the definition of a nation: a group of people who have
come together to defend their own interests. Their own, not others'.
"The lesson of the last week is that France by itself is too small to make much
of a dent in strategic affairs. Every four years the Chinese build as many ships
as there are in the entire French fleet. When it came to the crunch, the
Australians preferred to be close to a superpower, not a minipower.
Richard Whitman, professor of politics and international relations at the
University of Kent, added:
"The US thinks about how to contain China. And Australia too is in the position
of thinking about how one contains, as opposed to how one accommodates; that's
the fundamental difference with France. As a consequence, the US looks like the
better partner — when France was always a second-order partner that could
supplement rather than replace anything the US might have to offer."
Geopolitical analyst Joseph Siracusa, in an interview with Sky News Australia,
said that France's anger stems from the fact that it is being forced to choose
between the United States and China:
"The French are very angry, not just about the submarine. They've been trying to
avoid choosing between Washington and Beijing. They want their own 'strategic
autonomy.' Europe thought they could play the honest broker between Washington
and Beijing, and then wake up one morning and find out that the United States,
Britain and Australia have tied up together with this nuclear-enabled deal, and
of course, it's forcing Europe to make decisions it doesn't want to make.
"I think it was the only option for Australia because the French were not going
to annoy or unnecessarily irritate Beijing. They wanted trade, economic, and
investment relations.
"Now, Australia will have the capability to sink the Chinese navy in 72 hours;
that's what this is all about. The Chinese know they have been outmaneuvered,
and they're very angry. In a very short period of time, Australia has gone from
a doormat to something very considerable — it's an extraordinary development."
European affairs analyst Edward Lucas noted:
"France is furious. The ostensible reason is that the new British-American deal
to supply nuclear-powered submarines to Australia has cost it a lucrative
defense contract. The real reason is that the emerging alliance to counter the
Chinese Communist Party's imperialist ambitions underlines France's impotence —
and the irrelevance of its plans for European 'strategic autonomy'.
"The lesson of the past few weeks is that the world does not run on Brussels
time, with its long periods for consultation, courteous attention to the
electoral cycles of 27 countries, and sacrosanct weekends, evenings, and lunch
breaks. It runs on the brutal tempo seen in the Taliban's advance to Kabul, and
in the Chinese leadership's headlong pursuit of regional military superiority.
Running on Brussels time, the EU finds it hard to deal with threats close to
home (fragility in the Western Balkans, a crackdown in Belarus, jihadists in the
Sahel, civil war in Syria), let alone with superpowers like Russia and China.
The result: when serious countries take serious steps to deal with serious
threats, the unserious ones are left on the sidelines....
"The price of credibility is capability: when Europeans show that they can
exercise diplomatic, economic, and military power in a sustained, determined
manner, they will also show that they are worthwhile partners in global
security."
Robert Singh, a professor of American politics at Birkbeck, University of
London, added:
"In Washington, that episode [the hurried signing of the EU trade agreement with
China] contributed to a skepticism towards Paris. France is very much seen as
too soft on China — at a time when the US is clearly concerned that too many
states on every continent are being suckered by China's economic statecraft into
positions where US security alliances are likely to be endangered. So to see
France do what it did with that trade deal was very disappointing to the Biden
administration. My impression is that the US won't care very much that it has
outraged France with this Australian submarine deal."
Chinese Belligerence, European Myopia
The impact of French mismanagement of the submarine project was compounded by
China's increasing bellicosity toward Australia. After Canberra called for an
investigation into the origins of the Coronavirus pandemic, for instance,
Beijing responded with a trade war. Australia apparently has concluded that the
United States is the only country that can contain China. Geopolitical analyst
Craig Hooper stated:
"The events of last week demonstrate that geopolitical change happens fast. In
the space of just five years, China's appetite for regional imperialism forced a
complete revision of Australia's strategic position. In 2016, Australia's
lash-up with France for 12 conventional submarines was seen as an innovative
opportunity for France and Australia to position themselves as a relatively
well-armed, albeit inoffensive and nominally non-aligned set of Pacific
'balancers,' buffering growing friction between China and America....
"China had other ideas about such inoffensive balancing. To the Chinese, the
sophisticated middle path was just an admission of weakness and low resolve.
Almost immediately as the ink dried on the sub agreement, China began putting an
enormous amount of energy into shrinking Australia down to an impotent Chinese
suzerainty. To that end, China directly tinkered with Australian politics,
funding pro-China news outlets, thinkers, and politicians. It interfered in
Australia's regional affairs, opened a vicious trade dispute, and presented
Australia with a humiliating and sovereignty-eroding set of terms to restore
favorable relations.
"In the end, China's existential threat made Australia and France's experiment
in inoffensive deterrence — replicating the collaborative-but-unaligned approach
of Sweden or Finland in Europe — untenable. France underestimated how China's
naked military ambition, chronic disregard for international order, and barely
concealed aspirations to control the deep Pacific and Antarctica pushed
Australia to make tough decisions about the future."
Commentator Wolfgang Münchau, in an essay published by the London-based The
Spectator, wrote that AUKUS is a "disaster" for the European Union:
"It is hard to overstate the importance of the so-called Aukus alliance between
the US, the UK and Australia — and the implicit geopolitical disaster for the
EU. The alliance is the culmination of multiple European failures: naivety at
the highest level of the EU about US foreign policy; Brussels's political
misjudgments of Joe Biden and his China strategy; compulsive obsession with
Donald Trump; and the attempt to corner Theresa May during the Brexit talks. If
you treat the UK as a strategic adversary, don't be surprised when the UK
exploits the areas where it enjoys a competitive advantage.
"The EU has outmaneuvered itself through lazy group-think. While German
political parties are still discussing the pros and cons of Nato, the Biden
administration is moving beyond Nato towards a multipolar defense strategy. Nato
remains a pillar but it is now supplemented by informal Indo-Pacific alliances.
One of them is the Quad: the US, Japan, India and Australia. Five Eyes is an
informal intelligence alliance between the US, Canada, UK, Australia and New
Zealand. Aukus is a nuclear submarine pact between the US, the UK and Australia.
This is the variable geometry of the new international order — whereas the
monolithic EU is stuck with its 27 veto-wielding members in the foreign affairs
council."
The editorial board of the London-based The Telegraph wrote:
"The Aukus defense pact between the UK, US and Australia is game-changing. A
courageous decision to share nuclear technology with a friendly power, it
re-tilts UK foreign policy towards the Pacific, where the threat of China must
be managed, and proves that Global Britain is a concrete idea. Brexit, finally,
is making a real, historic difference.
"To the French, however, it is a betrayal. Some degree of annoyance might be
understandable, given that the country has lost out on a deal to sell 12-diesel
powered submarines to Australia. But the extent of Emmanuel Macron's fury is
absurd, and only shows the sublime lack of self-awareness that has come to
characterize Europe's myopic political elites.
"Paris has recalled its ambassadors from Canberra and Washington; Britain has
been labelled a poodle. The deal was, allegedly, a 'stab in the back.' All this
is petulant and stunningly hypocritical: the European establishment has a long
history of treating its geopolitical partners abysmally while wearing a mask of
moral superiority....
"Paris is hardly a stranger to hard-nosed realpolitik, being among the leading
proponents of the view that international affairs is about defending your
national interests even at the cost of those of your allies....
"Evidently, the Aukus partners sought a nimble alliance that can react fast to
events; the plan was apparently sealed at the G7, only in June. It is also a
deal based on trust. The UK and the US have been partners in nuclear technology
since the 1940s: the last time the US shared nuclear propulsion technology was
with Britain in 1958. Drawing Australia into that relationship, a rising power
with historic links to the UK and a member of the elite Five Eyes intelligence
sharing group, was not a thoughtless betrayal of the French. It was entirely
rational in the circumstances....
"The US was disgusted by Germany's pipeline deal with Russia, and while
Washington is now seeking partners that will stand firm against China, Europe
has too often shown itself willing to compromise with Beijing in order to secure
trade and investment advantages....
"Aukus vindicates the UK's exit from the EU. Brexit set the UK free to
re-evaluate its own interests and serve them better. The deal proves decisively
that the Remainer claim that Britain can have no influence outside of a European
bloc, to which it must necessarily surrender its sovereignty or become
irrelevant, was a lie. The UK is an attractive geopolitical partner, with
significant military and diplomatic advantages, that now has the capacity to act
more flexibly in global affairs. Mr. Macron will just have to get used to that."
Veteran European affairs columnist Gerard Baker, writing for The Wall Street
Journal, added:
"To its credit, the Biden administration has largely signed on to the idea that
the defining issue of the 21st century will be the strategic rivalry between the
U.S. and China....
"But Europe has made clear it doesn't want to join that rivalry. Even France,
which uniquely now since the U.K. left the bloc has the military capabilities to
project power globally, has indicated its reluctance. Condemning the U.S. this
weekend, the French Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian said, 'We see the rise
of an Indo-Pacific strategy launched by the United States that is militarily
confrontational. That is not our position.'
"That's because the EU continues to decline to take any serious responsibility
for global peace and security, preferring to see the economic and commercial
opportunities in the relationship with China, rather than the threat the Chinese
Communist Party represents....
"This is the existential problem for the EU exposed by Mr. Biden's undiplomatic
coup: There has probably never been as large a mismatch between the economic
weight of an institution and its political and military strength. Through its
history the EU has prioritized — to great success — its economic interest, safe
in the knowledge that the U.S. security umbrella was there to protect it. Now
that the U.S. really needs it to share some of the costs of that umbrella, the
EU is missing in action."
Professor of French History, John Keiger, writing for The Spectator, concluded:
"What the three Anglosphere states in the Aukus pact have put together is a
loose, flexible and nimble arrangement for managing Indo-Pacific security
directly. This is something that is second nature to states of a culture that
General de Gaulle always referred to as 'Anglo-Saxon'. It is just the kind of
arrangement that is anathema to the formal, rational and legalistic method of
the French and their cultural offshoot the EU, whose modus operandi was best
demonstrated by the glacial formalism applied to the Brexit negotiations....
"Aukus members probably wanted France in the pact. Diplomatically and militarily
she has much to offer in terms of naval projection, nuclear submarines and
weapons, intelligence and physical presence by dint of her overseas territories
in the south Pacific. But wishing to react rapidly, they were probably anxious
about her cultural proclivity to define every term, role and eventuality. The
crucial problem for France is that by her own admission the Australian deal
wasn't merely about submarines. It was the keystone in a regional security
edifice carefully pieced together that will now have to be remodeled completely,
were that possible. This is the source of their disappointment and public
outrage.
"The second problem for Paris is that Aukus is not just a coalition of three. It
will be the nexus of a much broader web drawing in other informal regional
groupings with varied objectives from security to trade, such as the
Quadrilateral Security Dialogue, or Quad, of US, Japan, India and Australia, or
the 12 nation Trans Pacific Partnership trade agreement which includes the US
(albeit withdrawn under Trump), Australia, Japan, Vietnam, Malaysia, Singapore,
New Zealand and a pending UK membership.
"France could now find herself outside these concentric circles. Her only full
access would be by belated invitation to the sanctum sanctorum of Aukus. But as
a late joiner she might be required to be amenable on other matters....
"What Macron does next is therefore key. With the presidential election campaign
unofficially underway and France about to take up the presidency of the EU
council for six months, he is certain to make grandiloquent statements about
France and Europe's only salvation lying in European 'strategic autonomy' from
the US and NATO. But Macron knows in his heart of hearts, like his French
predecessors, that this has been on the cards since the French inspired — and
French scuppered — European Defense Community of 1954 and that it will go
nowhere during his mandate.
"What's more, an EU defense and security role in the Indo-Pacific will go no
further than gesture politics, as only France has the capability to deploy in
the area. Macron will have to swallow his pride and go with Aukus."
*Soeren Kern is a Senior Fellow at the New York-based Gatestone Institute.
© 2021 Gatestone Institute. All rights reserved. The articles printed here do
not necessarily reflect the views of the Editors or of Gatestone Institute. No
part of the Gatestone website or any of its contents may be reproduced, copied
or modified, without the prior written consent of Gatestone Institute.
A New Word for the Administration/For Those Who Have
Chosen Power and Profits over Patriotism
Lawrence Kadish/Gatestone Institute/September 29/2021
"Paskudnyak" will surely become familiar to our ears during the remaining years
of the Biden Presidency as this ill-starred administration becomes the tool of
power players, profiteering lobbyists, and Progressives intent on abducting an
enfeebled White House for their own socialist mission.
[T]he Biden administration has revealed itself to be a weekly calamity that must
be blamed on either incompetence or worse, a captive of special interests whose
agenda has nothing to do with protecting the nation's future.
The President's popularity has declined to its lowest level since he was sworn
in, with half the nation's adults disapproving of his performance, according to
a report by Reuters. Not surprisingly, the dramatic plummet began following his
disastrous retreat from Afghanistan that will see countless Afghans executed for
embracing our democratic principles. From Capitol Hill to the White House, we
are witnessing the hinge of history that will determine whether America will
continue as a respected world power and it will be decided, in very large
measure, by those who may well have chosen power and profits over patriotism.
We might want to make the word "Paskudnyak" a plural.
For the Afghans left behind....
For the French who were double-dealed....
For the Texans confronting an open border that mocks our nation's sovereignty...
And for the members of the Fed who privately know just how destructive our
massive national debt will be to our future...
All of them may want to learn a word not currently in their vocabulary:
"Paskudnyak"
It is an Eastern European insult historically reserved for dictators, despots
and tyrants. In fact, one thesaurus describes it as "THE most potent and
offensive insult known to man." It has so much connotation that cannot be truly
defined -- that the closest you can come to its meaning is "horrible person". It
further instructs the inquiring linguistic student to "use (the word) with
caution."
"Paskudnyak" will surely become familiar to our ears during the remaining years
of the Biden Presidency as this ill-starred administration becomes the tool of
power players, profiteering lobbyists, and Progressives intent on abducting an
enfeebled White House for their own socialist mission.
Admittedly, there have been other administrations that have had historically bad
starts. William Henry Harrison died from a bad cold that turned into pneumonia
just 32 days into his Presidency. JFK approved the disastrous Bay of Pigs
invasion of Cuba just months after getting into the Oval Office. But the Biden
administration has revealed itself to be a weekly calamity that must be blamed
on either incompetence or worse, a captive of special interests whose agenda has
nothing to do with protecting the nation's future.
It is unlikely that the pollsters tested the word "Paskudnyak" in their most
recent survey of the American electorate but their findings might well be
applicable. The President's popularity has declined to its lowest level since he
was sworn in, with half the nation's adults disapproving of his performance,
according to a report by Reuters. Not surprisingly, the dramatic plummet began
following his disastrous retreat from Afghanistan that will see countless
Afghans executed for embracing our democratic principles.
From Capitol Hill to the White House, we are witnessing the hinge of history
that will determine whether America will continue as a respected world power and
it will be decided, in very large measure, by those who may well have chosen
power and profits over patriotism.
We might want to make the word "Paskudnyak" a plural.
*Lawrence Kadish serves on the Board of Governors of Gatestone Institute.
© 2021 Gatestone Institute. All rights reserved. The articles printed here do
not necessarily reflect the views of the Editors or of Gatestone Institute. No
part of the Gatestone website or any of its contents may be reproduced, copied
or modified, without the prior written consent of Gatestone Institute.
France finds being a world power takes more than words
Faisal Al Yafai/The Arab Weekly/September 29/2021
The country’s leader is angry at how his allies have treated him. “We feel
abandoned,” he fulminated in French to the UN General Assembly on September 25,
furious that decisions were taken without consultation. But the French-speaking
leader berating his allies wasn’t Emmanuel Macron angry at a new defence deal
between Australia, Britain and the US. It was Mali’s interim prime minister
berating France for withdrawing from the Sahel. France’s president wasn’t even
in New York to hear the admonishment from Choguel Kokalla Maiga; he had stayed
in Paris, no doubt in a fit of pique and sent his foreign minister to address
the world body.
Six months away from an election and Macron isn’t faring well on the world
stage. Most certainly, Macron talks the talk, but France increasingly appears to
be a global power in name only, unable to offer the real, hard power that many
of its allies want.
AUKUS, a new military alliance that ended a multi-billion dollar deal for
Australia to buy French submarines, was a bitter blow for one of the world’s
leading arms exporters, demonstrating not merely a preference for American
weaponry, but highlighting starkly that even France’s closest allies were
willing to keep its leaders in the dark for many months.
Now Mali, in addition to berating France from the UN’s podium, is turning, again
publicly, to Russian mercenaries, determined to find soldiers to fill its
security gap. Even France’s former colonies want more than warm words.
Perhaps nothing demonstrates the gap between Macron’s ambition and reality than
his attempts to fix Lebanon. When Macron met Lebanon’s new prime minister on
September 24, he struck a markedly less remonstrating tone than he did last year
after his walkabout in the aftermath of the Beirut Port explosion. A year of
haranguing Lebanese leaders didn’t speed up the formation of a new government; a
year of urging “urgent” reforms didn’t make them happen.
It is almost comical to recall his words more than a year ago when he stood in
Beirut and thundered, “What I have asked for … is that the formation of this
government will not take more than a fortnight.” More than a year passed before
a government was finally agreed and Najib Mikati made his way to Paris.
This appears to be the fundamental issue with France’s foreign policy: unwilling
to commit troops, as in the Sahel or to use force against Hezbollah, Macron
chided a reporter last year who asked about the group, saying it would be
“absurd” to “ask France to come wage war against a Lebanese political force”,
Macron’s pedestal as the president of France is reduced to little more than a
bully pulpit, chivvying along change without the means to force it.
Against that backdrop, Iraq can seem a rare success story. Macron was the only
Western leader at the Baghdad Summit last month, a major gathering of Middle
East leaders convened in Iraq and a few days later, the French energy company
Total inked a vast $27 billion deal to develop oil and gas in the country.
But business ties don’t always translate into political influence, particularly
in Iraq, which is still seeking to assert itself against Iranian influence.
There, French influence can only go so far. Despite Macron saying French troops
will stay in Iraq after the US goes, France’s military footprint today is a
fraction of the US’s and will not increase. If the US cannot control the
Iranian-backed militias, what chance does France have? And without such military
power, why would any Baghdad government prioritise Paris’s views?
Even the vehemently denied story that Macron was willing to offer up France’s
permanent seat on the UN Security Council to Brussels in exchange for the
creation of an EU army seemed a reflection of its shrunken status abroad. Here
was the European Union’s sole nuclear-armed power unable to persuade its closest
friends to back its military plans without horse-trading that most precious
asset, a Security Council veto. It is hard to imagine Russia or the United
States bartering away their seat.
The lesson of the submarine debacle shows France that its global-power rhetoric
is little more than symbolic. In a way, Macron admitted as much when, speaking
about change in Lebanon, he said, “I am putting the only thing I have on the
table: my political capital.”
Friends in the Middle East and Africa, as much as friends in the Indo-Pacific,
have hard political priorities and need more and they are quite willing to look
elsewhere, whether to Washington or to Russia’s Wagner Group, in order to find
it.
*Syndication Bureau
*Faisal Al Yafai is currently writing a book on the Middle East and is a
frequent commentator on international TV news networks. He has worked for news
outlets such as The Guardian and the BBC, and reported on the Middle East,
Eastern Europe, Asia and Africa.
Syndication Bureau
www.syndicationbureau.com.
Iraq’s collapse reverberates across the region
Khairallah Khairallah/The Arab Weekly/September 29/2021
Eighteen years since the US invasion of Iraq, the Joe Biden administration is
confused about what to do after the administration of George W Bush unleashed an
earthquake whose aftershocks have jolted the entire region. What will happen in
Iraq after the US military withdrawal within a few months? There is no clear
answer except to say that Iran is increasing the pressures to prove that it is
the number-one player in Iraq and that there is no going back to the old reality
where Iraq is Iraq and Iran is Iran.
What has collapsed in the region is not only Iraq, where the Americans moved in
with the help of Iraqi sectarian militias that fought the Iraqi army. The
leaders of these militias returned from Iran to Baghdad on the back of American
tanks. At the present time, they constitute the most anti-US faction in Iraqi.
The “Popular Mobilisation Forces”, an umbrella group of sectarian militias
affiliated with Iran, are just an Iranian proxy to put pressure on the United
States in Iraq.
What is frightening is that it was not only Iraq that suffered as a result of
the change of landscape brought about by the American invasion. As the Iranian
expansionist project proceeded, Lebanon has been subjected to a blow that could
end up finishing off this country as we know it. At the present time, one can
ask if Lebanon as a country actually came to an end with the civil war that
began on the thirteenth of April 1975.
It can be said that Lebanon ended before that, with the signing of the Cairo
Agreement in November 1969, when the state relinquished part of its sovereignty
to the Palestine Liberation Organisation. However, the current reality indicates
that Lebanon as a country has become a thing of the past. With Michel Aoun’s
accession to the presidency on October 31, 2016 all sectors in the country
collapsed as it fell under the yoke Hezbollah and implicitly that of Iran.
Lebanon would not have fallen under the full guardianship of the “Islamic
Republic” had it not been for Hezbollah’s bullying of the Lebanese. This goes
back, before anything else, to what happened in Iraq in 2003 and nowhere else.
Talking about Lebanon leads one to talk about the collapse of Syria. When did
Syria collapse? If we go back to history, Syria collapsed with the declaration
of unity with Egypt in February 1958.
That collapse was reinforced with the fall of Iraq. After Iraq’s collapse, Iran
was able to move more freely in Syria. It removed the borders between Iraq and
Syria and between Syria and Lebanon.
When did Iraq itself collapse? It practically collapsed on the July, 14 1958
when a military coup took a bloody turn that destroyed the Hashemite dynasty,
headed by King Faisal II, who was still young and who was a promising figure.
Iraq has not seen a happy day since bloodthirsty officers removed a dynasty that
was able to bring together Iraqis of all sects, religions and nationalities and
was a symbol of openness in the world.
The Iraqi Ba’ath came to complete what the military had done in the summer of
1958. The Ba’ath, with its absurd adventurism, paved the way for an American war
that completely destroyed Iraq. The restoration of Iraq seems a difficult task,
but it is not impossible, especially if, by some miracle, Iraq can one day rid
itself of the gang of opportunists who trade on the Palestinian cause on the one
hand, and the Iranian cause on the other.
It is not simply the map of the region that is being redrawn these days. There
is a re-examination of the structure of society in many countries. For example,
can Lebanon continue to stand on its feet if Hezbollah continues to choose its
Christian president, as happened with Michel Aoun? Is there any hope for Syria
to become again a normal united country despite the occupations, by the regime,
the Iranians, the Russians and Israelis , the last of which has been in place
since June-June 1967? This Israeli occupation was and still is, the first
guarantee for the regime that never wanted to regain the Golan.
Nothing will be clear in the region before the situation in Iraq changes. It
will be different when Iraq regains its role as balancing factor in the region
and is no longer just as an Iranian arena.
There is no place for much optimism, despite the tireless efforts of the
government of Mustafa Al-Kadhimi, especially since the Biden administration does
not have, until further notice, any answer to a very simple question: does
Washington really have an Iraqi policy?
The shifting sands of Middle East alliances follows
diminishing US power
Makram Rabah/Al Arabiya/September 29/2021
For anyone who was anxiously awaiting the new American President breaking away
from Obama’s foreign policy, the US’ withdrawal from Afghanistan laid those
aspirations to rest, while confirming the administration’s disregard for their
traditional allies. Biden’s laissez-faire attitude to the relationships between
the nations of the Middle East, and the many who are allies, is a blessing in
disguise.
Several regional players are coming together to talk and attempt to agree on
issues of mutual interest.
A number of Biden’s policies challenge his country’s position in the Middle
East, in one way losing face on the historical role it has played in the region,
but also losing the trust of strategic allies around the world.
His indulgence of Iran in the face of its destructive expansionist strategy that
has left Syria, Yemen, Lebanon and Iraq in ruins is unpalatable to many.
This bleak reality has forced Arab allies to reconsider their relationship with
the United States, not only to avoid potential damage in the short-term, but to
also avoid disappointments or broken promises from future administrations.
Several oil-rich Gulf states no longer account for US pragmatism to diffuse
tension or offer protection against Iran. They are instead embarking on a series
of structural reforms for their own governance. Moreover, they are rethinking
their positions with other global powers, such as Russia and China, which the US
deem unfavorable.
The Biden effect is implicit in relationship changes between Middle East
countries.
We are seeing reengagement between nations in the region, ones that were once
unwilling to share a roundtable. When the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia
meet Turkey and Qatar with the intention of converting their animosity towards
economic and security cooperation, the US is bringing a level of stability to
the region, albeit unintentionally.
The recent picture of Saudi Crown Prince Mohammad Bin Salman, Sheikh Tamim bin
Hamad al-Thani the Emir of Qatar and UAE’s National Security Advisor Sheikh
Tahnoon bin Zayed Al Nahyan in their swimming trunks smiling is not merely a
public relations stunt but a prologue to peace.
When nations in the region are no longer uncomfortable engaging with each other
to discuss and resolve issues, it suddenly becomes clear that Biden and the US
aren’t required to act as a conduit to make this happen.
A nation’s own free will to pursue strategic policies is much better than being
coerced to do things that perhaps aren’t in that country’s best interests.
Peace between Israel and the UAE, was unfathomable at one time. The very idea
was the elephant in the room. Meanwhile, Bahrain and Sudan have reconciled their
differences. The rest of the Arab world are looking on and witnessing progress
on many fronts.
It appears Biden is out of the loop, and governments across the Middle East are
beginning to understand that this is perhaps a good thing.
Israel under Naftali Bennett is no longer obsessed with preventing the Iran
nuclear deal, nor are they under any impression that Iran will change, but
equally Israel will stop at nothing to prevent Tehran from continuing its
takeover of Southern Syria.
By abandoning the populist hawkish attitude of his predecessor Netanyahu,
Bennett is adopting a realpolitik approach which will allow him to expose Iran
for the paper tiger it really is, and will secure Israel a better standing
vis-à-vis the Arab Gulf.
In the past, many of these wandering Gulf states were heavily invested in
keeping countries such as Lebanon, Syria and Iraq afloat, but Iran’s occupation
of these states and Biden’s acquiescence of this has driven Gulf countries to a
large extent to simply leave Iran to address its own mess.
The United States fickleness and tradition of abandoning allies is hammering
home to the Gulf that the idea of having concrete ties with Washington will not
endure. There is no real justification, politically, economically or socially to
push the US to have a leading position in the region. Middle East powerhouses
will soon understand the full extent of the consequences if they do not continue
to talk, mend historical wounds and form new alliances.
For too long many countries in the Middle East allowed the US to act as a parent
dealing with bickering children. Friction will always remain, but regional
players are beginning to acknowledge that the suspicion and sabre rattling based
around what were thought to be a swathe of conflicting interests between them
actually present opportunities for mutual benefit. Let Biden and the US get on
with their own international policies and their changing view of global
politics. Leave them to handle Iran, Hezbollah, Afghanistan and the Taliban and
all the despots in the world. Leave the Gulf and wider region to have a peaceful
prosperous future.