Latest English LCCC Lebanese & Lebanese Related News & Editorials published on July 28-29/2023
David Miliband warns of dangers of normalising plight of Syrian refugees
Jamie Prentis/The National/July 28/2023
International Rescue Committee chief says traditional aid funding pots are overstretched by a succession of global emergencies. There are too many humanitarian emergencies happening globally for the “traditional funding pot” to support parts of the world in desperate need of aid, David Miliband, president and chief executive of the International Rescue Committee tells The National. The top aid figure and former British foreign minister also warned that it was “dangerous” that the plight of millions of displaced Syrians had effectively become normalised. He was speaking to The National from Lebanon, a country embroiled in an economic crisis and host to about a 1.5 million Syrian refugees who have suffered from aid cuts and increased clampdowns by Lebanese authorities. Mr Milliband acknowledged the need for an international appeal for aid to be sustained but called on wealthy regional countries to raise their support and “for the region to heal its own injured”. The civil war in neighbouring Syria has rumbled on for more than 12 years, with hundreds of thousands killed and millions displaced. “The notion that there is ongoing trauma for six million refugees, never mind seven million internally displaced – that has become normalised. And I think that's dangerous,” he said in the Lebanese capital, Beirut. “It's a real problem that people have almost come to believe that the Syrian crisis will always be with us. That's dangerous for the region, dangerous for the people concerned.”
Mr Miliband said it was important to “recognise quite what an extraordinary effort Lebanon and Jordan have made” in accommodating millions of Syrian refugees, adding that they “have not been properly compensated for it … they've borne the burden.”“Many of the refugees themselves would like to go home but don't think they can. They fear that they are going to be conscripted. They are in touch with their families in Syria and they don't see a path back; they feel that they are in limbo.”Mr Miliband says that there is 'a real problem that people have almost come to believe that the Syrian crisis will always be with us'. Matt Kynaston/ The National. Mr Miliband says that there is 'a real problem that people have almost come to believe that the Syrian crisis will always be with us'. Matt Kynaston/ The National
He said three things had critically changed in Lebanon especially, but also in Jordan in the last four years with regards to the status of Syrian refugees. Firstly, it is ever more clear that this is a deeply protracted conflict and displacement crisis.“There are children being born to Syrian parents who are born in Lebanon. That's a whole kind of challenge,” he said.Secondly, there is the deep economic crisis that Beirut is battling and also the effects of the war in Ukraine and impact of Covid-19 that have hit Lebanon and Jordan. The third is that traditional North American and European aid donors have their focus dragged elsewhere. He pointed to the crisis in Sudan, near famine in East Africa, the fallout from Afghanistan and, of course, the “sucking sound that comes from Ukraine”. “It seems to me that in the real world, there are going to be Syrian refugees in Lebanon and Jordan for a long time to come.”
In the UN Security Council, there is deadlock over the status of a crucial border crossing from Turkey to north-west, rebel-held Syria. The crossing is crucial for the provision of vital aid deliveries to the more than four million people there. Residents of the area already lived in punishing, grim conditions before a deadly earthquake struck earlier this year. Russia, a key ally of the Syrian government, vetoed a proposal earlier this month to keep the Bab Al Hawa crossing open for nine months. Moscow's own proposal, which seeks to expand the Syrian government's control over aid delivery into the rebel held areas, did not garner enough support. “We argued very strongly for it to be renewed. We think it is the most direct and efficient way of reaching people in north-west Syria,” Mr Milliband said. “Any interference in aid flows is a harm that should be avoided. The gridlock in the Security Council with the Russian veto is to be deplored, I think. It is a very telling symptom of political dysfunction that the most basic humanitarian needs can't be met with Security Council support.”

UNIFIL’s statement on tragic car accident on July 28, 2023
NNA
UNIFIL on Friday issued the following statement:
"Today, Friday, July 28, in the early afternoon, a tragic car accident took place in the vicinity of Al Duhayra in southern Lebanon involving a UNIFIL peacekeeping vehicle and a civilian car, resulting in a collision between the two vehicles.
Regrettably, we mourn the loss of one of our UNIFIL peacekeepers from Ghana, who tragically lost his life in the accident. Our thoughts and deepest condolences go out to his family in Ghana during this difficult time. We are deeply saddened to learn that a Lebanese civilian and two other Ghanaian peacekeepers sustained serious injuries in the collision. They were promptly transported to hospitals to receive necessary medical attention. Our best wishes for speedy recovery of the injured one. UNIFIL has initiated a thorough investigation to determine the cause of the accident" -- UNIFIL

Report: Contrary to France, KSA thinks election should precede dialogue
Naharnet/July 28/2023
A day after French special envoy Jean-Yves Le Drian left Lebanon, Nidaa al-Watan newspaper reported that Saudi Arabia prioritizes the election of a president to holding a dialogue. Le Drian, on his second mission to Lebanon, proposed to all those taking part in the process of electing a president to invite them to a meeting in Lebanon in September to achieve a consensus on the challenges and on the priority projects the future president will have to carry out, and consequently the qualities necessary for tackling them. "The goal of the meeting is to create a climate of trust and enable Parliament to meet subsequently amid conditions favourable to the holding of an open ballot, in order to solve the crisis quickly," the French Foreign Ministry said. On Friday, Nidaa al-Watan reported that "Saudi Arabia considers the election of a president a priority and that dialogue should follow."
The daily also mentioned an undeclared Qatari drive to resolve the Lebanese presidential crisis, in parallel to the French efforts. It said the Qatari efforts had started since the Doha meeting earlier this month. On July 17, representatives of Saudi Arabia, Egypt, the United States, France and Qatar had gathered in Doha to discuss Lebanon, urging parliament to choose a president and politicians to "take immediate steps to break the impasse".

Most parties reportedly agree to Le Drian's September dialogue
Naharnet/July 28/2023
Most parties have in principle agreed to take part in the September dialogue that French envoy Jean-Yves Le Drian has called for, highly informed sources said. “The heads of the opposition parliamentary blocs and parties held an evaluation meeting via the Zoom application, in order to unify the stance on the French proposal,” al-Joumhouria newspaper reported. They agreed that “what Le Drian carried turns the page on the previous phase, especially on the bargain that he had proposed under which Marada Movement chief Suleiman Franjieh would have been elected as president and ex-ambassador Nawaf Salam would have been named as premier,” opposition sources told the daily.

Hezbollah-FPM dialogue makes major progress as Bassil submits paper
Naharnet/July 28/2023
The talks between Hezbollah and the Free Patriotic Movement witnessed “major progress” over the past hours, a media report said. “The two sides exchanged proposals for agreeing on the program and identity of the upcoming president,” al-Akhbar newspaper reported. FPM chief Jebran Bassil has submitted a “detailed work paper that involves an agenda for the coming period and addresses two main issues,” the daily said. “The first point is aimed at agreeing on consolidating and activating partnership in governance among all Lebanese components, with the next president enjoying the approval and support of the FPM seeing as it is the main Christian representative,” al-Akhbar added. “The second point is agreeing on key headlines for the program of the upcoming president in connection with the priorities paper that the FPM had previously proposed, while agreeing on the topics that represent main concerns for Hezbollah,” the newspaper said. Accordingly, Bassil asked Hezbollah for its approval and for “working with the rest of the allies to make practical steps aimed at paving the way for declaring a major agreement that involves the presidency,” al-Akhbar added. Informed sources meanwhile told the newspaper that Bassil’s new paper focuses on two main elements: passing the broad administrative decentralization law in parliament and the law related to the trust fund. “Bassil requested that the comprehensive agreement be linked to the approval of the two laws and other matters prior to declaring support for a specific candidate,” the daily said. Hezbollah’s leadership for its part has started studying the papers presented by Bassil ahead of discussing it with its allies, especially Speaker Nabih Berri and Marada Movement chief Suleiman Franjieh, the newspaper added. “Hezbollah is dealing very positively with the initiative submitted by Bassil and it has informed him of its intention to preserve full partnership. The issue was reflected by Hezbollah’s decision not to allow Najib Mikati’s government to name a new Central Bank governor prior to the election of a president. Hezbollah has also told Bassil that it does not accept the continuation of the same policies that (Central Bank chief Riad) Salameh has been using in managing the Central Bank and the monetary policy,” the daily said.

Raad: There are efforts to finalize presidential file
Naharnet/July 28/2023
The head of Hezbollah’s parliamentary bloc, MP Mohammed Raad, has said that “efforts are being exerted for an agreement among the Lebanese over a certain solution for finalizing the presidential juncture.”“We hope these efforts will lead some to back down from their obstructive convictions that do not serve the country’s interest,” Raad added. “We have not changed our stance (on nominating Suleiman Franjieh for the presidency) and we are ready to convince others of our stance for the sake of our country,” Raad went on to say.

Shiite spiritual leader doesn't want Mansouri to assume Salameh's duties
Naharnet/July 28/2023
Higher Islamic Shiite Council deputy head Sheikh Ali al-Khatib on Friday said he rejects that the “Shiite vice governor” of the Central Bank assume Riad Salameh’s duties after the latter’s departure on July 31. “They want to hold us responsible for the economic and financial collapse and they forget their responsibilities and role in the collapse,” Khatib said. “They want to blame the Shiite sect and the arms (of Hezbollah) for the collapse, that’s why I reject that the Shiite vice governor assume responsibility, because they would hold the Shiites responsible for the continuation of the collapse,” Khatib added. First Vice Governor Wassim Mansouri is one of four vice governors of the Central Bank. He is scheduled to hold a press conference on Monday amid media reports that he intends to resign.

Lebanon void expands as Central Bank, security, presidential posts go vacant
Beatrice Farhat/Al Monitor/July 28/2023
BEIRUT — Lebanon faces yet another vacancy in the country’s top posts after the cabinet failed to meet to elect a successor to the central bank governor, whose term ends on Monday. The small Mediterranean country is in the throes of a debilitating economic crisis compounded by a political deadlock that has left the country without a president for nine months now. The heavily divided parliament has failed more than 10 times to elect a new head of state since former President Michel Aoun’s term ended in October 2022. Since then, the country has been run by a caretaker government with limited powers, headed by Prime Minister Najib Mikati. Major political parties have argued that the current government is taking on presidential powers in tasks like naming a new central bank governor. Mikati’s government was formally dismissed by Aoun before his term ended last October. Under Lebanon’s power-sharing system, the central bank governor is appointed by an acting prime minister and sworn in before a president. The local news outlet L’Orient Today reported that ministers from the Christian Marada Movement and the Free Patriotic Movement as well as from the Shiite Hezbollah movement boycotted a Thursday cabinet session that had been scheduled by Mikati and parliament speaker Nabih Berri to appoint a successor to Riad Salameh as head of the central bank. The session was thus canceled for lack of quorum. Salameh, who has held his post since 1993, has repeatedly said he does not intend to extend his tenure. In a Wednesday interview with local broadcaster LBCI, the 72-year-old official reiterated his intention to leave office when his term expires next week.  Salameh is the subject of several probes at home and abroad over his alleged involvement in a series of financial crimes. Many Lebanese blame him and his financial policies for Lebanon’s economic collapse in October 2019.
“I believe that during these 30 years, there were 27 of them when the Central Bank contributed with its monetary policies to establishing economic stability and development,” he said, adding that he was being made a “scapegoat” for Lebanon’s economic woes. In case of vacancy, the central bank’s first Vice Governor Wassim Mansouri is named to replace the former governor. However, all four of the bank’s vice governors have threatened to collectively resign if no governor is appointed before the end of Salameh’s term, as they fear being held responsible for the crisis. Such a move would have dangerous repercussions, according to analysts, as the country is already facing one of its worst economic crises in decades. The political paralysis is also threatening the country’s military establishment. There are concerns about an army leadership vacuum after commander Joseph Aoun retires in January 2024 amid the ongoing dispute over the prerogatives of the caretaker government in the absence of a president. Earlier this year, the security establishment was also in limbo in the days leading up to the retirement of General Security head Maj. Gen. Abbas Ibrahim. Several political parties had opposed the extension of Ibrahim’s term, also arguing that the caretaker government does not wield that power. After Ibrahim left office in early March, the cabinet approved the appointment of Maj. Gen. Elias Baissari to serve as interim director of General Security until a new president is elected and a functional government is formed.
French envoy assigned to Saudi Arabia
Meanwhile, international and regional efforts are continuing for a breakthrough in Lebanon’s presidential file. French President Emmanuel Macron's special envoy for Lebanon Jean-Yves Le Drian was in Beirut this week meeting with officials and rival parties in a bid to break the deadlock. Le Drian has informed the country’s political parties that he will return to Beirut in September for consultations on the next president’s program. After that, discussions will be held to choose a candidate that has the qualifications to implement this program. Le Drian’s visit, the second in a month, comes after he met with Saudi Foreign Ministry Prince Faisal bin Farhan in Jeddah last week. The meeting came one day after a five-way meeting between representatives from Egypt, France, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United States in Doha to discuss the crisis in Lebanon. As the French official wrapped up his visit to Beirut on Thursday, the French government announced the appointment of Le Drian as president of the French Agency for the Development of al-Ula. In his new position, he will work with Saudi authorities to promote and develop the city, Saudi Arabia's first UNESCO world heritage site.

Countdown to the end: BDL Governor's deputies' critical decision as Governor's term expires in three days
LBCI/July 28/2023
Lebanon's First Deputy Governor of the Banque du Liban (BDL), Wassim Mansouri, faces a critical decision about assuming the mantle of responsibility alongside the three other Governor's deputies after July 31. Mansouri is set to hold a press conference at the BDL on Monday to clarify his position. The question arises whether he will announce his resignation, leading to the request for him to continue handling the caretaker affairs temporarily. In the meantime, the third meeting between Caretaker Prime Minister Najib Mikati and the four Governor's deputies reassured them on Thursday. Sources close to the officials revealed to LBCI that they remain committed to the government's implementation of their reform plan within the stipulated six months. The plan encompasses vital laws, including adopting the 2023 budget, capital control, restructuring the banking sector, and addressing the fiscal deficit. However, these laws are contingent upon another crucial step, requiring the enactment of legislation in Parliament that allows the BDL to lend the government a sum equivalent to $200 million monthly from the mandatory reserve for three months. This loan aims to cover the state's needs, including employee salaries, wheat subsidy, cancer medications, paying interest on foreign loans, and intervening in the market when needed. The government is expected to reimburse this amount through revenues by the end of the year. Nonetheless, several questions arise in this regard. What if the Parliament fails to convene and vote on the proposed law? Will the Strong Lebanon Bloc secure the quorum amid rumors that Hezbollah has taken on this responsibility? What if the presidential elections are postponed beyond the end of October, the expiry date of this proposal? Will its effect be extended, and who guarantees that? What if speculators heavily intervene to capitalize on the situation and increase the dollar's exchange rate against the Lebanese lira? Governmental sources indicated a clear roadmap discussed in the recent meeting between Prime Minister Mikati and the deputies and that the entire matter will be addressed in the Cabinet meeting dedicated to the budget on Monday. Nonetheless, the deputies' sources indicate a positive direction enabling sound monetary policies. The outcome remains uncertain, and the nation waits to see how events unfold.

Report: Three of BDL's vice-governors will not resign, Mansouri under pressure
Naharnet/July 28/2023
Three of the Central Bank vice-governors will not resign, while the first vice-governor Wassim Mansouri is being pressured to resign, informed sources told al-Joumhouria newspaper. The sources added, in remarks published Friday, that a legislative session might be held to provide a legal cover for the vice-governors to spend from the obligatory reserves for a three-month period. On Thursday, Caretaker Prime Minister Najib Mikati told reporters that everyone should have the needed "awareness" to find a way to secure the temporary loan to maintain financial stability. Lebanon, which has no president and is ruled by a caretaker government, might also have to go without a central bank chief, if no successor is named for the embattled bank governor, Riad Salameh, 73, who steps down after three decades at the helm at the end of July. A Cabinet session to appoint a new Central Bank governor was canceled Thursday due to a lack of quorum. Lebanon's central bank governor is named by cabinet decree for a six-year mandate that can be renewed multiple times. If the position is vacant, the law stipulates that the first vice-governor take over. The vice-governors had warned that they might resign unless politicians swiftly name an incoming governor. They later presented a financial plan to MPs and to cabinet, asking for the government and parliament's support to continue their work. "If the first vice-governor resigns, the second vice-governor should take over," Mikati said Thursday. In case all four vice-governors decide to resign, they would act in caretaker capacity until the appointment of a new governor.

The Story of Salameh: Tracing the roots of Lebanon’s soaring debt
LBCI/July 28/2023
Riad Salameh and Government Debt: How it all started
Recently, there have been buzzing discussions surrounding the enigmatic figure of Riad Salameh. Some regard him as an exceptional personality who safeguarded the Lebanese lira amid widespread corruption throughout the state. Conversely, others view Salameh as the maestro behind a Ponzi scheme, benefiting from state waste and appeasing a corrupt authority. It all traces back to the year 1994 when Lebanon was grappling with the aftermath of a civil war and a soaring national debt; the government of Rafik Hariri decided to issue dollar-denominated Eurobonds. This move was favored due to the lower interest rates, although Lebanon does not control the US dollar, the currency used for these bonds. Starting with a mere $400 million in Eurobonds in 1994, the debt accumulated to a staggering $30 billion before the crisis of 2019 hit. By 2000, the country faced negative economic indicators, including growth problems, fiscal deficits, and a public debt that surpassed $20 billion, exceeding the country's dollar reserves. Lebanon even experienced a negative balance of payments, meaning more dollars were exiting the country than coming in. Faced with such challenges, then-President Rafik Hariri and his team sought international assistance for rescue. Therefore, the conferences of Paris I in 2001 and Paris II at the end of 2002 saw Lebanon receiving financial facilities and loans in exchange for pledges to implement reforms. The global attention garnered by these conferences painted a positive image of the country, boosting confidence in its economy and banking sector. The influx of deposits into banks witnessed significant growth ($6 billion in 2003 and $7.3 billion in 2004), leading to economic growth and an increased inflow of foreign currency compared to the outflow during that period. However, the economic gloom set in with the assassination of President Hariri in 2005, followed by a series of targeted killings of anti-Syrian figures and the July 2006 war. The economy suffered, and the government's haphazard exchange rate policy persisted, further exacerbating the national debt. In 2007, Lebanon once again sought international aid and convened Paris III. Around $7.5 billion in assistance was secured, but a significant portion was prey to brokerage and waste, while promises of reforms remained largely unfulfilled. Nevertheless, the momentum and positive impression left by Paris III led to an increase in bank deposits that year ($8 billion).
During the Paris III conference, French President Chirac stated, "the monetary stability desired by Rafik Hariri, and of which Governor Riad Salameh is a vigilant and respected guardian, is an essential condition for the confidence of the financial community."Salameh, who maintained relationships with various parties internally and garnered international attention, was seen as a potential candidate for the presidency after the end of President Emile Lahoud's term in November 2007. Regardless, the Doha Agreement eventually led to Michel Suleiman assuming the presidency, leaving Salameh's desire unfulfilled as he remained in his position as the governor of the Central Bank.

Surprise at Tyre Beach: Iron columns spark worries among visitors
LBCI/July 28/2023
Tyre Beach, known for its natural beauty and free access, has long been a favored destination for many Lebanese visitors from various regions. However, recently, beachgoers were taken aback by the sight of cement-fixed iron columns, some planted right in the heart of the sandy shoreline. The last column was placed just meters away from the sea. A closer examination of the map displaying the cement-fixed columns indicates their presence near the borders of the scientific reserve located on Tyre Beach, right next to the popular tourist spot with tents and kiosks. The Mayor of Tyre, who is also the head of the Tyre Reserve, explains that these columns are intended to have nets attached to them, preventing vehicles from entering the scientific reserve area and regulating the movement of beachgoers within the protected part. This measure will not entirely restrict visitors' access to the beach near the scientific reserve; instead, it will reduce the area intended for swimming. The project remains incomplete, and the Coastal Guard of Tyre visited the beach on Friday to verify the legality of the works. Sources from the Public Works Ministry confirmed to LBCI that the ministry was unaware of the activities on the beach, which required prior authorization from the ministry before execution. The Environment Minister, Nasser Yassin, also claimed to be unaware of the project, even though he is directly responsible for natural reserves. While the stated purpose of protecting the wildlife, both on land and at sea, within the reserve is commendable, the means chosen must be legally sound and free from loopholes.

Wheat crisis in Bekaa: Farmers face tough wheat storage decisions
LBCI/July 28/2023
In Bekaa, sixty thousand tons of hard and soft wheat are stacked in warehouses, resulting from an entire season's harvest left unclaimed by most farmers. This surplus comes from many farmers failing to submit wheat delivery requests to the Economy Ministry within the designated timeframe.
Some farmers opted to store their wheat instead of selling it to the government at $270 per ton, based on the Sayrafa exchange rate, deeming it below the global market price of $350 per ton. They attempted to sell their crops to local mills, but their efforts were in vain as the mills preferred to purchase imported wheat at subsidized government rates. "The obligation imposed on mills that import wheat from abroad to purchase 10% of the national wheat directly without routing the payment through Banque du Liban (BDL) was intended to support local farmers," said the head of the farmer union, However, the measures by the Economy and Agriculture Ministries to prohibit farmers from exporting their crops overseas in favor of buying them locally have led to significant financial losses, estimated to reach around $20 million if sold at the global market rate. LBCI's sources confirmed that credits will be made available next week to commence purchasing the local harvest from those willing to sell at prices lower than the global market rate.

Decentralization dilemma: Gebran Bassil's statements stir political waters in Lebanon
LBCI/July 28/2023
The French Presidential Envoy departs Lebanon, leaving the field to internal players until September, who must agree on a roadmap before his return. The leader of the Free Patriotic Movement (FPM), Gebran Bassil, stirred political waters with his statements on Thursday, which has sparked debate and opened doors for interpretations, raising questions about potential trade-offs. Bassil outlined the negotiating scope for achieving the presidential elections in his statements.However, what is the stance of the Amal-Hezbollah duo towards his proposition? Insiders familiar with Hezbollah's stance claim that what Bassil publicly expressed was previously discussed in meetings with Hezbollah. Still, no concrete response was given. It is worth noting that the head of the Loyalty to the Resistance Bloc had emphasized Hezbollah's commitment to its stance on the presidential elections. As for the Amal Movement, its sources affirmed to LBCI that the issue of administrative decentralization is primarily discussed in the Parliament. They argued that the FPM rejects opening the debate on decentralization and its adoption. According to these sources, Bassil's recent remarks indicate a political retreat, hinting he might be open to accepting Sleiman Frangieh as a presidential candidate. If Bassil proposes decentralization as part of a presidential trade-off, the Lebanese Forces firmly reject the idea. LF sources view decentralization as a stipulation within the Taif Agreement and insist that it must be adopted alongside the election of a new president, as it has become an urgent necessity. For them, decentralization should not be subject to any bargaining. However, the Lebanese Forces and the Democratic Gathering's stances are almost alike, whose sources reject any trade-off that could take place in this context. The Kataeb Party also supported implementing decentralization and electing a president. They emphasize their opposition to any trade-offs, blaming such practices for the country's current state. Any potential deal would not concern them. On the other hand, Change MPs believe decentralization is already stipulated in the Taif Agreement and does not require new legislation. Their sources reported to LBCI that they assert that their demand for decentralization remains consistent daily. Nevertheless, they question whether this implies they will endorse Frangieh's candidacy. Given these dynamics, will decentralization become a topic of indirect negotiations between Lebanese factions until Jean-Yves Le Drian's return to Beirut in September, laying the groundwork for its official consideration in the presidential phase?

Why is Hezbollah poking Israel?
HUSSAIN ABDUL-HUSSAIN/Asia Times/July 28/2023
It isn’t clear how Hassan Nasrallah could overpower Israel and force it to concede on any issue
Nearly 20 years after its war with Israel, Hezbollah, with its persistent harassment of the Jewish state across Lebanon’s southern border, seems to be itching for a rematch. Why the militia is dragging a failing country to war is anyone’s guess.
In recent weeks, Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah has renewed discussion of the 2006 war’s unfinished business. That conflict ended with the status of 13 border points unsettled, along with the fate of Shebaa Farms, a small strip of disputed land near the Golan Heights. In the latter’s case, ownership should have been negotiated a month after the war, per UN Security Council Resolution 1701. But that never happened.
Nasrallah has justified his newfound urgency by saying that a year ago, Israel began constructing a fortified border wall to replace the flimsy barbed wire.
He added that Hezbollah isn’t seeking the demarcation of the land border between Israel and Lebanon, a process he rejected last October when the two sides set their maritime borders. Rather, he wants Israel to withdraw from every territory that Lebanon claims, without negotiations. Why is Nasrallah trying to shake up the border now?
One theory is that he’s trying to renegotiate the rules of engagement with Israel, currently set at near-zero tolerance toward any cross-border attacks. Another suggests that Nasrallah wants to deflect Lebanese attention away from domestic misery in a country where the economy has been in free fall for years. To spite Israel, Hezbollah erected tents on Shebaa Farms. Israel then lobbied world capitals to persuade the militia to remove them. If Hezbollah refuses, it’s not clear how far the Israeli government is willing to go to force the issue.
If border clashes escalate, Nasrallah said he’s confident of yet another victory – like the one he imagined in 2006 and the one that Hamas claimed in 2021.
Backing by Iran
Nasrallah insists that not only is his militia better armed and stronger than before, it would also be supported by pro-Iran militias like Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, and Iraqi Popular Mobilization Units that would “unify the fronts” and wage war on Israel simultaneously. But even then, it isn’t clear how Nasrallah can overpower Israel and force it to concede on any issue. In the event of full-scale war, Hezbollah and Hamas would likely fire an unprecedented number of rockets in a bid to overwhelm Israel’s Iron Dome, hoping that some rockets sneak through.
Iran has supplied Hezbollah with explosive drones and precision-guided missiles (PGMs). As Iron Dome gets jammed, Hezbollah would then use its bigger rockets to strike strategic Israeli assets – such as Ben Gurion Airport, oil installations, chemical plants, and densely populated areas.
The Israeli Air Force (IAF) would be busy preempting or retaliating against the militias’ launchpads.
It’s possible that both Hezbollah and Hamas have dug tunnels that can transport their fighters behind Israeli lines. Such tunnels aren’t as dangerous as they sound because they are bottlenecks that force fighters to trickle into Israel, and only with light arms.
Tunnels wouldn’t enable the massing of Hezbollah or Hamas fighters or the shuttling of heavy arms needed to battle effectively with Israel Defense Forces (IDF). Still, militants behind Israeli lines could take hostages or briefly control a town, either of which would be an enormous publicity victory. If Hezbollah or Hamas decided to walk into Israeli territory, Israel’s undisputed control of airspace would decimate the invading fighters. That was the main reason Israel reversed its fortunes against Egypt and Syria in 1973. When Egyptian ground troops exited their surface-to-air missile umbrella, the IAF took them out, clearing the way for a counterattack.
Nasrallah’s continuous bragging of how the days of humiliation are gone gives the impression that Iran and its militias have attained unprecedented power. But Israeli firepower dwarfs that of Iran and its militias combined. Israel enjoys a qualitative military edge over Iran that is bigger today than it was between Israel, on one hand, and Egypt and Syria, on the other, in 1967 and 1973.
Consider that in the 1967 war, when Arab armies suffered their worst defeat, they still managed to kill close to 800 Israeli troops, down 32 fighter jets, and destroy 400 tanks. Today, Iran and its militias don’t have the capacity to inflict a fraction of such losses on Israel.
This means that while Hezbollah and Hamas can disrupt Israeli life and give the Jewish state a bloody nose, they cannot cause enough Israeli alarm to call for general mobilization. As long as that’s the case, wars that Iranian militias launch on the Jewish state will remain border skirmishes, with militias inflicting minor damage on Israel and Israel responding with devastating force. In 2006, Israel razed large swaths of Lebanon and its infrastructure. Had it not been for Arab states’ largesse that funded reconstruction, parts of Lebanon would still be under rubble.
This time, if Nasrallah drags Lebanon into another war with Israel, wealthy Arab countries will be loath to bail it out. Lebanon will just die, and maybe Gaza, too.
*This article was provided by Syndication Bureau, which holds copyright.

Latest English LCCC Miscellaneous Reports And News published on July 28-29/2023
Syria blast near Shiite shrine kills six ahead of Ashura
Associated Press/July 28/2023
A motorcycle planted with explosives has detonated in a Damascus suburb near a Shiite Muslim shrine, killing at least six people and wounding dozens a day before the solemn holy day of Ashoura, state media reported, citing the interior ministry. Syrian Health Minister Hassan al-Ghabash said in a statement that 26 people wounded in the blast in the Sayida Zeinab neighborhood were being treated at several hospitals. Twenty others were treated on site or discharged, he said. Authorities had initially said the bomb was hidden in a taxi, but later reported that the explosives were on a motorcycle that exploded next to the cab. The Britain-based opposition war monitor Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said that a woman was among those who died and that her three children were wounded. The Observatory said the explosion occurred close to positions of Iranian militias, a key ally of Syrian President Bashar Assad alongside Russia in Syria's civil conflict now in its 13th year. Photos shared by Al-Ikhbariya and pro-government media show a charred taxi surrounded by large crowds of people and men in military fatigues. Green, red and black Ashoura flags and banners hung from buildings in the area. In a video shared on social media, people carried two men covered in blood and dust off the ground while calling for help. The glass facades of shops nearby had shattered, while one was on fire. The neighborhood is named after the shrine for Sayida Zeinab, the granddaughter of the Prophet Muhammad. Protecting the shrine became a rallying cry for Shiite fighters backing Assad in the early years of the conflict as it turned from an anti-government uprising into a sectarian civil war. Ashoura is the 10th day of the Islamic month of Muharram, which is one of the holiest months for Shiite Muslims. It marks the martyrdom of the Prophet Muhammad's grandson, Imam Hussein, and his 72 companions in the battle of Karbala in the 7th century in present-day Iraq. Ashoura marks the peak of the mourning procession. The explosion was the second in the Sayida Zeinab neighborhood in the days leading to Ashoura. On Tuesday, Syrian state media citing a police official said that two civilians were wounded when a motorcycle laced with explosives was detonated.

Aid official warns UN impasse on border crossing puts 4.1 million Syrians at risk
Associated Press/July 28/2023
An impasse at the United Nations over a border crossing with Syria's last rebel-held enclave is putting 4.1 million Syrian there in danger, the president of the International Rescue Committee warned this week. David Miliband's comments came more than two weeks after the U.N. Security Council failed to renew the mandate for the Bab al-Hawa border crossing between Syria and Turkey, which secures aid for Syrians in the enclave. The vast majority of people in northwestern Syria live in poverty and rely on aid to survive — a crisis that was further worsened by a devastating magnitude 7.8 earthquake that hit southern Turkey and northern Syria in February. The earthquake killed more than 50,000 people, including over 6,000 in Syria, according to the United Nations. The quake also displaced hundreds of thousands of others. "The people of northwest Syria can ill afford a new wave of suffering, having lived through the trauma of the earthquake," Miliband told The Associated Press in an interview on Tuesday. He urged the Security Council to "do its job" and resume the humanitarian border crossing. The council earlier in July failed to adopt one of two rival resolutions on the crossing. Russia, a top ally of the Syrian government in Damascus, vetoed a Swiss-Brazilian compromise resolution backed by Western countries that renewed authorization for the crossing of aid through Bab al-Hawa for six months. Moscow's draft resolution with additional requirements — including increasing aid delivery to the opposition enclave through Damascus — only received China's backing. The paralysis also comes as donor fatigue has led to aid cuts in aid to both northwestern Syria and neighboring countries hosting millions of Syrian refugees who fled the ongoing conflict, now in its 13th year. Syrian President Bashar Assad opened two additional crossing points from Turkey at Bab al-Salameh and al-Rai to increase the aid flow to the quake victims. The U.N. says that some 85% of its aid to northwestern Syria goes through Bab al-Hawa, a more efficient route. For the moment, Miliband said the International Rescue Committee is trying to cope by using other crossings and finding other ways of getting aid into the enclave. "Our point of view is that interference with the humanitarian crossing point poses severe danger to the efficiency and the effectiveness of humanitarian aid," he explained. Additionally, the United States said Monday that it has joined major donors in demanding the U.N. be able to deliver aid through Bab al-Hawa independently and to everyone in need — a rejection of conditions set by Syria and backed by its ally Russia that Damascus control all aid and banning U.N. communications with rebels in the region. The Security Council initially authorized aid deliveries in 2014 from Turkey, Iraq and Jordan through four border crossing points into rebel-held areas in Syria. However, Russia, backed by China, over the years successfully applied pressure to reduce the authorized crossings to just Bab al-Hawa, and the mandates from a year to six months. Moscow alleges that militant groups in the northwestern province of Idlib are taking the aid and preventing it from reaching families in need. Russia and China have been calling for all aid to be routed through Damascus instead. But Syrians in the northwestern enclave, as well as Western countries critical of Assad, say they are skeptical of the push. "There's a lot of danger for people in need in northwest Syria," Miliband said. "And it's very important that they're not forgotten."

CENTCOM and Israel Coordinate on Increased Threats from Iran
FDD/July 28/2023
Latest Developments
U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) Commander Gen. Michael “Erik” Kurilla visited Israel from July 25-27, meeting with Israeli Minister of Defense Yoav Gallant and the Israel Defense Forces’ (IDF) Chief of General Staff Lt. Gen. Herzi Halevi. They discussed regional security concerns and progress in bilateral security cooperation. After the visit, Gen. Kurilla noted, “Significant progress has been made in interoperability between the IDF and U.S. Central Command in the short time Israel has been part of the CENTCOM area of responsibility.”
The visit follows a phone call between U.S. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin and Gallant on July 25. Gallant assured Austin of the IDF’s readiness and capability to face various security threats, particularly amidst domestic unrest in Israel. Austin reiterated America’s commitment to Israel’s security and discussed initiatives to deepen military cooperation.
These touch points come amidst heightened tensions in the Middle East. Last week, the Pentagon sent the USS Thomas Hudner guided-missile destroyer, F-16s, F-35s, and the BATAAN Amphibious Readiness Group/Marine Expeditionary Unit (ARG/MEU) to the region as a response to Iranian attempts to seize commercial ships. With large protests in Israel, officials on both sides have feared additional Iranian provocation against the Jewish state.
Expert Analysis
“As political tumult and political leaders come and go in the United States and Israel, the two militaries have continued — and will continue — to deepen their cooperation with one another, understanding that both countries are safer when they work together to secure enduring and common interests in the face of growing dangers.” — Bradley Bowman, Senior Director of FDD’s Center on Military and Political Power
“Despite naive attempts by the Biden White House to throw money at Tehran in the name of ‘deescalation,’ U.S. and Israeli defense leaders remain clear-eyed about the growing threats posed by the Islamic Republic and the need for close coordination as those threats evolve.” — Richard Goldberg, FDD Senior Advisor
A Full Itinerary
In addition to his meetings with Gallant and Halevi, Kurilla met with leaders of the Institute for Intelligence and Special Operations, the IDF Intelligence Directorate, and other specialized units. Kurilla last visited Israel in May to observe Israel’s multi-front conflict exercise known as Firm Hand.
U.S.-Israeli Military Cooperation Grows
As Iran inches toward a nuclear weapon capability and continues its support for terrorist proxies throughout the region, the United States and Israel have deepened their security cooperation even further in recent months. The two militaries concluded a four-day combined training in Israel on July 14 as the third installment of the Juniper Oak series of exercises, focusing on capabilities relevant to a strike against Iran’s nuclear program. In January, the United States and Israel conducted the largest U.S.-Israeli military exercise in history, which included more than 140 aircraft, 6,400 American troops, and 1,500 Israeli troops.
Earlier this year, Israel announced that it would buy 25 additional F-35 Lightning II fighter jets from the United States to add to its fleet of 50. It is also procuring KC-46 Pegasus tankers to enhance Israel’s aerial refueling capabilities. Both technologies would likely play a central role in an Israeli military attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities.

Top White House officials meet MBS to talk Saudi-Israel normalization
Al Monitor/July 28/2023
WASHINGTON — US President Joe Biden’s National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan, his top deputy on Middle East policy Brett McGurk, and senior adviser for energy and infrastructure Amos Hochstein met Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman in Riyadh on Thursday to advance efforts aimed at establishing formal ties between the kingdom and Israel. The visit was first reported by the New York Times and later confirmed by the White House and the Saudi government. Riyadh said the meeting was also attended by Energy Minister Prince Salman bin Abd al-Aziz, Defense Minister Khalid bin Salman, the governor of the Public Investment Fund, Yasir al-Rumayyan, and Saudi National Security Adviser Musaid al-Aiban. Saudi Ambassador to the United States Princess Reema bint Bandar and US Ambassador to Saudi Arabia Michael Ratney also attended.
A National Security Council spokesperson said in a statement that normalization with Israel was discussed — alongside other issues. "We continue to support normalization with Israel, including with Saudi Arabia, and obviously continue to talk to our regional partners about how more progress can be made. It’s one effort we are pursuing toward advancing US foreign policy goals for a more peaceful, secure, prosperous and stable Middle East region," the spokesperson said.
In exchange for what would be a historic decision to normalize relations with Israel, the Saudis are reportedly asking Washington to provide a NATO-style mutual defense agreement with the the kingdom, along with help developing a civilian nuclear program, in addition to advanced weapons systems such as more THAAD (Terminal High Altitude Area Defense) ballistic missile defense batteries. The demands aim to fulfill the crown prince’s goals for energy diversification while bolstering the kingdom’s defenses against regional rival Iran. Biden has not yet decided whether to approve the requests, the president told the New York Times — but it’s not certain he has the power to grant them. Any mutual defense pact akin to what US maintains with its closest Western allies would require approval by Congress, and despite bipartisan support for an Israeli-Saudi normalization deal, intense skepticism remains among powerful senators on both sides of the aisle over any entangling alliances with the Gulf kingdom. The United States is seeking an end to the Yemen war and, reportedly, an unprecedented Saudi bailout of Palestinian institutions in the West Bank, as well as firm limits on the kingdom’s ties with Beijing.
The willingness of Israel’s government to go along with such a trilateral understanding remains unclear. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has signaled preference for normalization with Arab states over his political allies’ interest in annexing the West Bank in the past, but his new right-wing ruling coalition has made major strides towards de jure annexation, which would violate international law and further alienate Middle Eastern leaders. Saudi officials publicly say they insist on steps towards a two-state solution, but privately have signaled the matter is secondary to their up-front asks, according to current and former Western officials close to the discussions. The Biden administration has prioritized promoting integration between states in the Middle East as it seeks to avoid costly military interventions, as China seeks to surpass the United States' economic and strategic influence on the global stage.
Yet the current administration has exerted no major diplomatic effort towards restarting talks between Israel and the Palestinians on a future two-state solution, and Biden’s approach to keeping Netanyahu close has thus far borne little fruit.
Netanyahu’s coalition has continued to announce new settlement authorizations despite urging from the White House not to do so. On Tuesday, the Knesset approved a measure that would weaken Israel’s Supreme Court despite massive domestic protests and opposition from Washington.

Iran on Washington’s mind as concerns over Israel army fissures grow
Ben Caspit/Al Monitor/July 28/2023
TEL AVIV — The flood of warning by security tops over the damage caused by the government’s judicial overhaul plan to the readiness and capabilities of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) could explain recent efforts by US Central Command (CENTCOM) and the American security leadership to deepen ties and cooperation with the Israeli army. The US Fifth Fleet and elite Israeli naval commandos held a joint drill this week — codenamed “Juniper Spartan” —the latest in a series of exercises examining the interoperability of the two allied military forces. The exercise demonstrated a sharp paradox: even as relations between President Joe Biden and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu deteriorate, the security relations between the armies are flourishing and deepening. This week, in conjunction with the latest drill, CENTCOM head, Gen. Michael “Erik” Kurilla, visited Israel as the guest of Israel’s military chief, Lt. Gen. Herzi Halevi. Kurilla also met Wednesday with Defense Minister Yoav Gallant for their fifth meeting since Gallant took office seven months ago, which works out to an average of almost monthly meetings between the two.
Do these frequent meetings indicate a genuine deepening and strengthening of security ties between the sides even as Israel undergoes its greatest constitutional crisis ever, or deep American concern about the impact of the domestic upheavals on Israel’s military? The answer to this intriguing question is becoming increasingly clear. The Juniper Spartan exercise was particularly interesting given the identity of the forces involved — Israel’s naval special operations force known as Shayetet 13, equivalent to the US Navy SEALs, and similar American forces (which were not specified in the official statement by the sides). A few weeks ago, Israel’s 7th Armored Brigade conducted a drill with an American armored unit. This week's exercise was described as intended to bolster "joint security in the maritime space," but tellingly, it was led by the Depth Command of the IDF, a multidisciplinary military unit established to deal with threats from the "third circle," in other words, Iran. These and other joint exercises were planned well in advance as part of the two nations’ annual work plans. The IDF is also accustomed to periodic bouts of increased American interest in its operational plans. The most prominently displayed interest was registered in 2011-12, when Israel was reportedly preparing for an attack on Iran's nuclear infrastructure and some in Washington feared that Netanyahu and then-Defense Minister Ehud Barak might surprise the United States with an attack that would drag the latter into the fray.
These days, the thrust of the heightened US concern is different. For the first time ever, the Americans are expressing interest not only in the IDF's plans and voicing concerns about surprise and unnecessary military action, but also genuine worry about the IDF's condition and its readiness to meet the challenges it faces.The worry stems from growing waves of protest among military reservists, who form the backbone of the IDF operational capability, against the government’s design to weaken the country’s courts. The judicial overhaul was launched Monday with Knesset approval of a bill neutering the Supreme Court’s authority to review government decisions. Hundreds of reserve pilots, on whom the Israel Air Force relies heavily for its combat and reconnaissance missions, have announced or intend to announce that they will stop volunteering for reserve service to protest what they fear is Israel’s slide into a dictatorship.
The protest is also being felt in other units, and for the first time has permeated the career army, as well. In recent weeks, the IDF's Intelligence Directorate has sent four documents to Netanyahu warning of the judicial overhaul’s threat both to the IDF's operational capability and to Israel's eroding deterrence capacity. Netanyahu seems to have ignored the warnings, as did most members of his security Cabinet. On Monday, hours before the decisive Knesset vote, Military Intelligence head Maj. Gen. Aharon Haliva and head of the IDF’s Operations Directorate Maj. Gen. Oded Basiuk were dispatched to brief government ministers on the emerging security risks. They came to the Knesset, were placed in a side room and hoped that the ministers would show up to hear firsthand assessments by the military’s top brass. But only two showed up — former Shin Bet security agency director and current Agriculture Minister Avi Dichter and Intelligence Minister Gila Gamliel, both of Netanyahu’s Likud party.  Such complete disregard by the entire political echelon of serious military concerns is unprecedented in Israel, where security considerations are paramount. Netanyahu himself refused to meet Halevi before Monday’s vote, probably to provide himself with a level of future deniability regarding his awareness of the legislation’s danger. The meeting between them took place only after the unanimous passage of the law. "The Americans are very concerned about what is happening in Israel," a senior Israeli security source told Al-Monitor on condition of anonymity. "Although relations between President Joe Biden and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu are shaky, although no date or location has yet been set for a meeting between them, they look at the overall disintegration of Israeli statehood, and especially at the damage to the IDF and to the principle of the 'people's army' with great concern. We must not forget that Israel and the United States are still very close allies. Israel was called for years 'the longest US aircraft carrier in the Middle East,' and as soon as something in the core of this aircraft carrier's reactor goes wrong, it becomes a US headache.”That is why the joint exercises between Israel and the United States continue and are even intensifying, and US hints about devising a military option against the Iranian nuclear program also pop up from time to time, at Israel's demand.
The Institute for National Security Studies, a leading Israeli think tank, conducted a war game exercise in recent months in front of an American audience of security and military officials simulating a military confrontation between Israel and Iran. One of the options played out was a US-Israeli confrontation with Iran resulting from a series of unexpected events and miscalculations prompting Iran to resume enrichment of military-grade uranium, followed by an expected Israeli response and a rapid deterioration into a military clash. The current American goal is simple. "On the one hand, they want to keep the Iranian genie in the bottle until after the presidential elections," a senior Israeli political source told Al-Monitor on condition of anonymity, “but also to limit and anesthetize it on the other. After the 2024 elections? All bets are off."

Russia 'carefully' examining African proposals to end Ukraine conflict
Agence France Presse/July 28, 2023
Russian President Vladimir Putin on Friday said Moscow is "carefully" examining proposals made by some African leaders to end the conflict in Ukraine. "We respect your initiatives and we are examining them carefully," Putin said on the second day of a Russia-Africa summit in Saint Petersburg.
"Previous mediation initiatives were monopolised by so-called advanced democracies. Now Africa too is ready to help resolve problems that appear to be outside of its area of priorities," he said. The Russia-Africa summit comes after Russia pulled out of a deal to allow Ukrainian grain exports through the Black Sea, raising concern among African nations. In June, an African delegation travelled first to Ukraine and then to Russia to offer mediation in the conflict. The African proposals included military de-escalation, security guarantees for both sides and a mutual recognition of sovereignty.
Ukraine rejected the offer, saying it would freeze the conflict without ensuring that Russian troops leave Ukrainian soil. The Kremlin had also said earlier that the African proposals would be "very difficult to implement".

A Russian Human-Rights Champion on Why Putin’s Soviet Propaganda Is So Dangerous
Philip Elliott/Time/July 28, 2023
To appreciate the power of a myth, let’s take a quick visit to post-Soviet Russia.
In the weeks after Vladimir Putin came to power in early 2000, the new Russian president was enjoying a 77% job approval rating, a definite improvement from his 31% outlook just a few months earlier while he was biding time as then-President Boris Yeltsen’s prime minister inside a fast-unspooling regime. Putin had grand designs for his country, and his new constituents seemed to want to help him build his proverbial temple to Soviet nostalgia. Putin had watched in horror through the 1990s as democratic ideals came in fits and twitches after the collapse of the Soviet Union. He professed to be an agent of change, a steadying hand, a steward of the rebooted nation’s deep history. But Russia was coming out of an inflation tailspin of 85%, unemployment was stuck in the double digits, and the promises of reform were not making life much better. He didn’t have much room for error, and he knew it. The answer? Putin basically promised to Make Russia Great Again, and launched a concerted effort to invoke the nostalgia of the Soviet empire.
More From TIME
Putin has made no secret that he sees the end of the Soviet system as “the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the century,” one that has been an animating tragedy that he’s been trying to undo over almost a quarter century leading that petrostate. To accomplish this, however, he needed to inspire—not his strongest suit as a stiff former KGB spook who famously has little time for pleasantries. But Russia’s grand history? That was something Putin could work with. So over the last two-plus decades, Putin has enmeshed Russia’s glory days, including its cruel Soviet era, with the present. As TIME’s then-editor Richard Stengel explained in an essay announcing Putin as our Person of the Year in 2007: “Russia lives in history—and history lives in Russia.”
The result has been a crude re-Stalinization of sorts, or a systematic rehabilitation of the brutal Soviet figure who led his colossus for 30 years until his death in 1953. The last time Russia’s most respected independent pollsters, Levada, asked about Joseph Stalin, a stunning 51% of respondents had positive views of him. That 2019 survey found just 15% of Russians offering negative views of the man who created the Gulag system that operated until 1987. An eye-popping 70% of Russians said Stalin’s contributions to the country’s history were a net positive. By contrast, Mikail Gorbachev, the first and last President of the Soviet Union who set in motion democratic reforms, enjoyed a 15% positive reaction when Russians were last asked about him in 2017.
Much of that is thanks to Putin’s decades-long propaganda project, which has taken on new geopolitical urgency during the war in Ukraine, and now matters more than ever.
“The majority of Russians still see their glory in the forcible restoration of the Russian Empire,” Oleksandra Matviichuk, who runs a major human rights group in Ukraine, the Center for Civil Liberties, tells TIME. “The success of Ukraine will provide a chance for the democratic future of Russia, because it will provide the push for people to reflect that maybe it’s not OK in the 21st Century to invade other countries and kill people to erode their identity. Maybe it’s better to find our glory in something else.”
Matviichuk visited TIME’s Washington Bureau this week, sitting alongside two other representatives of groups co-honored with a Nobel Peace Prize last year. One was Aleksandr Cherkasov, chairman-in-exile of Russian human rights organization Memorial, which researched Stalin’s systems, organized sites of remembrance for his victims, and documented the sins of the Soviet era as a warning against repetition. It was shut down by the state in 2021, right before the country invaded Ukraine. Cherkasov says that the lessons he learned from ferreting out the truth should be applied now to try to dismantle Putin’s powerful propaganda effort to help Ukraine win the war. “Right now, we have a tremendous task ahead of us,” he says. “We understand that we need to work on the Soviet past, and it’s a very complex past. But we also have 35 years—which is half of the 70 years of the Soviet period—in the post-Soviet period, which is no less complicated.” Adds Matviichuk, whose organization has documented 45,000 examples of war crimes Russia has committed in Ukraine—and counting: “Now, we are in the situation where Russia wants to return us to the past. But the future plays against Russia. That is why Russia will lose, sooner or later.”
She is right, at least when it comes to invented legends. Myths are fickle beasts. In a parallel reality of his creation, Putin is a popular and decisive leader determined to restore glory to Russia. In another reality—one closer attuned to the real world—Putin is presiding over a fragile autocracy that survives only because his pact with oligarchs allows them to share the spoils of a kleptocracy. (Oh, and nukes.)
“The propaganda has roots in the imperialistic culture of Russia,” says Matviichuk. “People in Russia still need to provide a reflection of their imperialistic culture.”
Thanks to an unmatched propaganda machine—described in detail by TIME’s Vera Bergengruen here—Putin has mostly prevailed in sparking that invented and often perverted memory, at least at home. (After his invasion of Georgia in 2008 fell flat, Putin learned the lesson of trying to spin on the cheap and he almost tripled the propaganda budget over the three years that followed. RT, a broadcasting effort masquerading as a news station, now spends $300 million annually for Russian-language pro-Kremlin programming.)
But Putin’s war in Ukraine may be testing that perceived glory more than at any time in living memory. New polling from Levada reveals the most pessimistic Russian population in 15 years; 58% believe that “hard times are yet to come,” and another quarter think they’re already there, according to polling released this month. Among the naysayers, almost half point to the invasion of Ukraine and the attenuating death tolls. One independent analysis puts the Russian death toll at almost 50,000.
Still, 76% of Russians in the same poll said they trusted Putin. And when asked if the fighting in Ukraine was heading toward eventually ensnaring NATO, 60% answered in the affirmative last month, up 12 points from a year earlier.
All of which is why the trio of human rights leaders made the trek to Washington to meet with think tanks, administration officials, and journalists to make the case that helping to land a decisive win against Russia could reset not just Ukraine’s future, but could force a rethinking of what Russia looks like after Putin—a question the West is hesitant to reckon with. (TIME’s Brian Bennett has an assessment of the Nobel Laureates’ visit here.)
“Without justice, we have never sustained peace,” Matviichuk told us. Left unsaid, of course was this: without truth, there can be no meaningful justice. And, at the moment, Soviet-style spin has gummed up the gears of that churn of accurate information to the point of evading accountability. We all think Putin is building a scaffolding to build and defend political power; he may actually be designing a system to evade any comeuppance at all. After all, if no one can agree to the facts of an offense, did the crime even take place? That’s a problem with big stakes not just for Russians, but for the whole Western world seeking stability in the region. As Cherkasov said in our conference room here in D.C.: “Houston, we all have a problem.”
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Putin could be out of power within a year, says ex-British spy - here's how
Sky News/July 28, 2023
The ex-British spy who wrote a dossier on Donald Trump and Russian interference in the US election says he believes Vladimir Putin will be out of power "within the next year". Christopher Steele, who ran the Russia desk at MI6 in London between 2006 and 2009, told Sky News the West needs to "prepare for the end of the Putin era". The fractures in the Russian president's control were exposed during the aborted Wagner coup, and here Steele runs through some potential scenarios that could end his reign.
Putin dies from illness or is assassinated
Rumours of Putin's health have been rife, including that he's seriously ill with cancer.
Steele says the exact nature of any health complaint is unclear but "very credible sources are telling us he's been ill for some time"- raising the prospect he could die suddenly. It's also possible he could be assassinated, perhaps by internal elements, or by a plot from outside of Russia. Steele says this would be the worst scenario for the West as "all bets would be off", with "factional bloodshed" likely before a successor is established. FSB director Alexander Bortnikov could be one of the frontrunners to take power in such a scenario, says the ex-spy.
Toppled due to Ukraine war failure
Putin believed a swift victory was possible when he invaded Ukraine: the reality has been very different. Ambitions to take over the entire country were ill-founded and the fighting grinds on despite many deaths and demoralised troops. Steele says the slow progress of Ukraine's counteroffensive may have given Putin some "breathing space" but that disquiet over the invasion - and the tightening effect of sanctions on the Russian economy and the rich and powerful could prove pivotal. He believes this is the most likely scenario, with the following narrative playing out: "A move is made violently, if necessary, to kill or topple Putin in favour of another securocrat or regime oligarch - but one who has distanced themselves from the war and is prepared to negotiate on ending it genuinely with the West." He says "rising star" Aleksey Dyumin, the governor of Tula oblast, is one potential successor. The others being oligarch Igor Sechin - nicknamed 'Darth Vader', and former Russian prime minister Viktor Zubkov. While such a narrative could hasten the end of the war, Steele says another outcome could see control seized by nationalists in the security services who have lost faith in Putin but want to continue the fighting.
Putin stands down and endorses successor
After more than 20 years in power and with pressure mounting, the 70-year-old could decide it's time to go and step down at the next election, scheduled for March 2024. Steele says the elections give him a "potential off-ramp" and that Putin could choose to back a successor such as Dmitry Patrushev, son of the Russian Security Council secretary, or Aleksey Dyumin. The ex-MI6 man says one of these figures as leader would mean "little or no change to the war in Ukraine, but at least the West would be facing a Russian leader who has not proven to be untrustworthy, a liar, and is not indicted for war crimes". As part of a deal to step aside, Putin might also ask for immunity for him and his family - similar to the deal struck when ex-president Boris Yeltsin ceded control in 1999. "That's in the back of his [Putin] mind that a similar deal might be possible for him going forward," says Steele.
Military coup
The attempted coup by Wagner mercenaries - said to be aimed at Russia's military leaders rather than Putin himself - was stopped by its leader before troops could reach Moscow. But Steele says another hypothetical would be a plot orchestrated by senior officers from the country's mainstream armed forces "disillusioned by the failures and losses in Ukraine". He says it would mean "no change to the war or Russian foreign policy" but could result in a transitional regime with a figure such as General Surovikin, commander of Russia's aerospace forces, as president.
However, while possible, he rates this scenario as "very unlikely". Steele adds: "I think there is real disquiet amongst key people in the leadership now. "Not just in the armed forces where the generals have been openly criticising Putin and the Kremlin for its support for the war - which is unheard of - but more generally the idea of the trajectory of Russia now: led by a president who's been indicted for war crimes, who's leading the Russian economy down a certain path."
Popular uprising
Another less likely route Putin might be ousted would be an uprising - either by a nationalist figure such as Wagner chief Yevgeny Prigozhin, or a democratic action by supporters of jailed Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny. The ex-spy says this would be "very unpredictable and possibly bloody in the short term" - with outcomes obviously more favourable for the West and Ukraine if democratic figures were able to seize control.

Sudan conflict brings new atrocities to Darfur as militias kill, rape, burn homes in rampages
CAIRO (AP) /July 28, 2023
Amna al-Nour narrowly escaped death twice. The first was when militias torched her family’s home in Sudan’s Darfur region. The second was two months later when paramilitary fighters stopped her and others trying to escape as they tried to reach the border with neighboring Chad.
“They massacred us like sheep,” the 32-year-old teacher said of the attack in late April on her home city Geneina. “They want to uproot us all.” Al-Nour and her three children now live in a school-turned-refugee housing inside Chad, among more than 260,000 Sudanese, mostly women and children, who have fled what survivors and rights groups say is a new explosion of atrocities in the large western region of Sudan. Two decades ago, Darfur became synonymous with genocide and war crimes, particularly by the notorious Janjaweed Arab militias against populations that identify as Central or East African. Fears are mounting that that legacy is returning with reports of widespread killings, rapes and destruction of villages in Darfur amid a nationwide power struggle between Sudan’s military and a powerful paramilitary group called the Rapid Support Forces.
“This spiraling violence bears terrifying similarity with the war crimes and crimes against humanity perpetrated in Darfur since 2003,” said Tigere Chagutah, a regional director with Amnesty International. “Even those seeking safety are not being spared.”
Fighting erupted in the capital, Khartoum, in mid-April between the military and the RSF after years of growing tensions. It spread to other parts of the country, but in Darfur it took on a different form -– brutal attacks by the RSF and its allied Arab militias on civilians, survivors and rights workers say.
During the second week of fighting in Khartoum, the RSF and militias stormed Geneina, the capital of West Darfur state, located near the Chad border. In that and two other assaults since, the fighters went on a rampage of burning and killing that reduced large parts of the city of more than half a million people to wreckage, according to videos shared by activists.
“What happened in Geneina is indescribable,” said Sultan Saad Abdel-Rahman Bahr, the leader of the Dar Masalit sultanate, which represents Darfur’s Masalit ethnic community. “Everywhere (in the city) there was a massacre. All was planned and systemic.”The sultanate said in a report that more than 5,000 people were killed and 8,000 others were wounded in Geneina alone in attacks by the RSF and Arab militias between April 24 and June 12.
The report detailed three main waves of attacks on Geneina and surrounding areas in April, May, and June, which it said aimed at “ethnically cleansing and committing genocide against African civilians.”
The RSF was born out of the Janjaweed militias that during the conflict in the 2000s were accused of mass killings, rapes and other atrocities against Darfur’s African communities. Former President Omar al-Bashir later formed the RSF out of Janjaweed fighters and put it under the command of Gen. Mohammed Hamdan Dagalo, who hails from Darfur’s Arab Rizeigat tribe.
The RSF didn’t respond to repeated requests by The Associated Press for comment on the allegations concerning the recent violence, including rapes. On its social media, the paramilitary force characterized the fighting in Darfur as renewed tribal clashes between Arabs and non-Arabs.
In interviews with the AP, more than three dozen people and activists gave similar descriptions of waves of attacks by the RSF and Arab militias on Geneina and other towns in West Darfur. Fighters stormed houses, driving out residents, taking men away and burning their homes, they said. In some cases, they would kill the men and rape women and often shot people fleeing in the streets, al-Nour and other survivors said. Almost all interviewees said the military and other rebel groups in the region failed to provide protection to civilians.
“They were looking for men. They want to eliminate us,” said Malek Harun, a 62-year-old farmer who survived an attack in May on his village of Misterei, near Geneina. He said gunmen attacked the village from all directions. They looted homes and detained or killed the men.
His wife was killed when she was shot by fighters firing in the village market, he said. He buried her in his home’s yard. Arab neighbors then helped him escape and he arrived in Chad on June 5.
On July 13, the U.N. Human Rights Office said a mass grave was found outside Geneina with at least 87 bodies, citing credible information. The international group Human Rights Watch said it also documented atrocities including summary executions and mass graves in Misterei.
The Sudanese Unit for Combating Violence against Women, a government organization, said it documented 46 rape cases in Darfur, including 21 in Geneina and 25 in Nyala, the capital of South Darfur, as well as 51 in Khartoum.
The true number of cases of sexual violence are likely in the thousands, said Sulima Ishaq Sharif, head of the unit. “There is an emerging pattern of large-scale targeted attacks against civilians based on their ethnic identities,” said Volker Perthes, the U.N. envoy in Sudan. The International Criminal Court’s prosecutor, Karim Khan, told the U.N. Security Council last week they were investigating alleged new war crimes and crimes against humanity in Darfur.
Al-Nour, whose husband was killed in a bout of tribal clashes in early 2020, said assailants stormed her district of Jamarek in Geneina in late April and burned down dozens of houses, including hers. “They forced people to get out of their homes, then shot at them,” she said, speaking by phone from the Chadian border town of Adre. She and her children — aged 4, 7 and 10 — escaped with the aid of Arab neighbors. They kept moving from town to town amid clashes. In mid-June, she and a group of 40 men, women and children started on foot down the 20-kilometer (12-mile) highway to the border, planning to escape to Chad. They were soon stopped at an RSF checkpoint, she said. Holding the group at gunpoint, the fighters asked about their ethnicity. Two of the 14 men in the group were Arab, with fairer skin. The fighters abused and beat the others, who were darker skinned and had Masalit accents.
“You want to escape? You will die here,” one fighter told the Masalit. They whipped everyone in the group, men and women. They beat the men to the ground with rifle butts and clicked the triggers of their guns to frighten them. One man was shot in the head and died immediately, al-Nour said.
They took away the remaining men along with four women in their 20s, she said. She does not know what happened to them but fears the women were raped. They allowed the rest of the women and children to continue their trip.
Other refugees in Adre reported similar violence on the road to the border. “It was a relief to reach Chad,” said Mohammed Harun, a refugee from Misterei who arrived in Adre in early June, “but the wounds (from the war) will last forever.”

Turkey’s Central Bank raises year-end inflation forecast to 58%
Al Monitor/July 28/2023
ANKARA — Turkey's Central Bank increased its year-end annual inflation projection by more than 50%, the bank’s new governor, Hafize Gaye Erkan, said on Thursday.Speaking at her first press conference after taking office in June, Erkan revised the bank’s year-end annual inflation projection to 58%. The previous forecast stood at 22.3%. Turkey’s first-ever female governor also reiterated the bank’s pledge to continue monetary-tightening policies. After Erkan’s appointment in early June, the Central Bank abandoned its unorthodox monetary policy of keeping interest rates low. Under Erkan’s leadership, the bank hiked the country’s policy rates by 900 basis points in successive rate hikes in June and July. However, the hikes fell below market expectations that were waiting for more drastic raises. Speaking on Thursday, Erkan signaled that the monetary policy shift would continue on a gradual basis. "Until a significant improvement in the inflation outlook is achieved, we will gradually strengthen monetary tightening as and when necessary," she said. Underpinned by Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s unconventional economic belief that higher interest rates cause inflation, Turkey’s Central Bank kept interest rates below 10% despite the rapid devaluation of the Turkish lira and spiraling inflation. The country’s annual inflation reached a 24-year high of 85.5% last October before easing to 38.2% in June, largely due to a favorable base effect from the previous period. Erdogan’s appointment of Finance Minister Mehmet Simsek and Gaye Erkan at the helm of the Turkish economy after his reelection in May signaled a major U-turn from unconventional economic policies.

After Niger coup, France worries over Russia's influence, impact on North Africa
Rina Bassist/Al Monitor/July 28/2023
GABORONE, Botswana — An ongoing military coup in Niger is threatening French and American efforts to combat Sahel and North Africa-originated jihadism. Russian flags waved by local Nigerians shortly after the takeover illustrate whose side the rebels are on in the battle of influence between Moscow and the Europeans. Niger became a key regional country for France following the 2021 military coup in Mali and the ensuing decision by Bamako to sever security ties with Paris. Having championed the battle against Islamist extremists’ groups across Mali for several years, France deployed some 4,500 troops in the north of the country in the framework of Operation Barkhane. The contingent was forced to leave Mali after the severing of security relations. A familiar scene on a smaller scale took shape last February in Burkina Faso when the Burkinabe army announced the end of cooperation with French troops present in the country in the framework of Operation Sabre. The transition government established in Ouagadougou after the September 2022 military coup had decided to abandon the defense accords linking the two countries. Pushed out of Mali and of Burkina Faso, Paris decided to lean on Niger (alongside its long cooperation with Djibouti) in its efforts to fight jihadist groups increasingly present in the Sahel region, in North Africa and even in central and south Africa, including al-Qaeda affiliated groups, African Islamic State branches and Boko Haram. Having learned from its forced exit from Mali, Paris opted for a new model: military support for the Niger army. The shift meant French military training, equipment, intelligence and air resources rather than France waging a war on its own. The Niger military takeover is likely to hinder French efforts to revamp security cooperation in Africa. Paris, Washington and Brussels consider pro-West Niger President Mohammed Bazoum one of their most important strategic allies in the region. The toppling of Bazoum, if it holds, will mean the toppling of Niger-French cooperation, with large regional repercussions. A statement issued Friday by French Foreign Minister Catherine Colonna reiterated the French position against the coup and affirmed that French President Emmanuel Macron "continues his contacts with President Mohamed Bazoum, the democratically elected president of Niger."The ousting of France from Mali and Burkina Faso was instigated in part by a Russian propaganda campaign and considerable efforts by Moscow to gain influence in the region. These efforts included the arrival of Wagner forces to the Central African Republic in 2017 and to Mali in 2019. Much like the Central African Republic government, the Mali junta struck an alliance with Moscow. The deal was for Wagner to offer security services to the country’s leadership in exchange for political clout and contracts to manage mines and other local natural resources.
No illusions about Russia
The military coup in Niger shifts the geopolitical influence map of Africa. While there are no indications at the moment that Moscow played an active role in the coup, diplomats in Paris and Brussels told Al-Monitor they have few illusions about what lies ahead for Niger’s alliances. The coup took place simultaneously with Russian President Putin hosting the Russia-Africa summit in Saint Petersburg and his announcement of free wheat shipments to six African nations including Mali and Burkina Faso. On Friday, Putin told the African leaders at the summit he is considering their proposal for a peace deal with Ukraine from two months ago.  The possible fall of Niger under Russian influence is likely to affect also volatile situation in neighboring Libya as well as the relations of other North Africa countries with France and the rest of Europe. For instance, Bazoum’s government had actively supported EU efforts to halt the flow of African migrants across the Mediterranean Sea, agreeing to take back hundreds of migrants held in detention centers in Libya. Libyan Prime Minister Abdul Hamid Dbeibah warned after the military takeover that the destabilization of Niger will be felt far beyond the region and even the continent. Wagner forces are heavily present in eastern Libya. If Niger falls under Russian influence, the gates will surely open for the group in Niamey as well.

In a first, Saudi Arabia seals deal with Brazil’s largest miner VBM
Al Monitor/July 28/2023
Saudi Arabia has sealed a major mining-industry deal after a joint venture that includes the kingdom’s sovereign wealth fund agreed to buy a stake in the base metals unit of Brazil's largest mining company. Manara Minerals Investment Company, a new joint venture between the kingdom’s Public Investment Fund and the Saudi Arabian Mining Company Ma’aden, will invest in Vale Base Metals Limited (VBM), according to Vale's press release Thursday.  Manara Minerals will acquire 10% of Vale's base metal unit. Per the statement, the total value of the acquisition, which in addition to Manara's 10% also included a 3% stake by US investment firm Engine No. 1, stands at $3.4 billion. The enterprise value of Vale’s energy transition metals business is $26 billion.Robert Wilt, the executive director of Manara Minerals and CEO of Ma’aden, celebrated the agreement with VBM as a historic first.
“Manara Minerals’ investment into Vale Base Metals marks our first major investment into the global mining sector,” he said, according to the Vale press release, which stated that VBM has taken a series of strategic actions to position itself as a “critical mineral supplier of choice” of energy transition metals such as copper and nickel over the past 18 months. Vale, the world's third-largest mining company according to the US International Trade Administration, gives the Saudi joint venture access to assets in Canada, Brazil and Indonesia that were received in the acquisition of Canada’s Inco Ltd announced in 2006 and that predominantly make up VBM’s assets, according to Bloomberg. Vale said that Saudi Arabia’s investment will help achieve its goal of increasing its copper and nickel production. “This strategic partnership will fast-track VBM’s expected $25-30 billion capital program over the next decade and help drive a significant potential increase in VBM’s production from about 350 kt/year (thousands of tons per year) to 900kt/year in copper and from roughly 175kt/year to more than 300kt/year in nickel,” said the company, considered North America’s largest integrated nickel producer, in a statement. Manara Minerals’ goal is aligned and aims to invest in iron ore, copper, nickel and lithium to expand the global supply of critical metals needed for energy transition, read the Vale statement. Copper and nickel in particular are expected to play a major role in the future of clean and renewable energy, especially in the electric vehicle industry, where demand is on the rise. Saudi Arabia seeks to meet this demand and rapidly raise its mining of copper and other minerals, as reported in an Al-Monitor Pro memo by Afshin Molavi. Global demand for refined copper is expected to nearly double to 49 million metric tons by 2035, according to S&P Global. Nearly $23 billion will need to be invested annually in future copper production to meet this immense and growing need, reported global research and consulting firm Wood Mackenzie. A combination of Saudi Arabia’s naturally available deposits and a government push to develop its mining sector positions the country to benefit from the major rise in copper demand, wrote Molavi. The global mining market grew from $2022.6 billion in 2022 to $2145.15 billion in 2023 at a compound annual growth rate of 6.1%, according to the Mining Global Market Report 2023 by the Business Research Company.

Kuwait executes 5 prisoners, including a man convicted in 2015 Islamic State-claimed mosque bombing
DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP)/July 28, 2023
Kuwait said Thursday it executed five prisoners, including an inmate convicted over the bombing of a Shiite mosque in 2015 that killed 27 people and was claimed by the Islamic State group. The inmates were hanged at the Central Prison, Kuwait's Public Prosecution said in a statement. Prosecutors said the five include the mosque attacker, three people convicted of murder and a convicted drug dealer. One of the convicted murderers was Egyptian, another was Kuwaiti, and the convicted drug dealer was from Sri Lanka. The statement didn't provide the nationality of the mosque attacker or the third convicted murderer, saying only that they were in Kuwait unlawfully. The 2015 bombing occurred during midday Friday prayers inside one of Kuwait’s oldest Shiite mosques. The Islamic State group, which at the time controlled large areas in both Syria and Iraq, claimed the attack. The Sunni extremist group views Shiites as apostates deserving of death. It was the first militant attack in Kuwait, a small oil-rich country, in more than two decades. The attack was likely intended to foment unrest between Kuwait's Sunni and Shiite populations, but instead it backfired, reawakening a sense of national solidarity not seen since Saddam Hussein's 1990 invasion. The extremist group no longer controls any territory following a grueling military campaign by an array of forces, but continues to carry out sporadic attacks in Syria and Iraq. It also boasts affiliates in several Asian and African countries. Executions are relatively rare in Kuwait, which put seven inmates to death last November. Before that, the last one was in 2017, when it executed seven prisoners, including a ruling family member.

Outcry as Jordan MPs move to criminalize some online speech
Associated Press)July 28, 2023
The lower house of Jordan's parliament has passed legislation to punish online speech deemed harmful to national unity, drawing accusations from human rights groups of a new crackdown on free expression in a country where censorship and repression are increasingly common. The measure makes certain online posts punishable with months of prison time and fines. These include comments "promoting, instigating, aiding, or inciting immorality," demonstrating "contempt for religion" or "undermining national unity." It also punishes those who publish names or pictures of police officers online and outlaws certain methods of maintaining online anonymity. The legislation now heads to the Senate — where it is expected to pass — before going to King Abdullah II for final approval. Lawmakers have argued that the measure, which amends a 2015 cybercrime law, is necessary to punish blackmailers and online attackers. Prime Minister Bishr al-Khasawneh insisted during Thursday's deliberations that the bill did not run afoul of Jordan's "clear and balanced" constitution, Jordanian media reported. But opposition lawmakers and human rights groups cautioned that the new law will expand state control over social media, hamper free access to information and penalize anti-government speech. "This law is disastrous and will lead to turning Jordan into a large prison," opposition lawmaker Saleh Al-Armoiti said after Thursday's vote. In a joint statement ahead of the vote, 14 human rights groups, including Human Rights Watch, called the law "draconian." They said the law's "vague provisions open the door for Jordan's executive branch to punish individuals for exercising their right to freedom of expression, forcing the judges to convict citizens in most cases."The president of Jordan's press association also warned the language could infringe upon press freedom and freedom of speech. Jordan is a key U.S. ally, seen as an important source of stability in the volatile Middle East. But ahead of the vote, the U.S. State Department criticized what it said were "vague definitions and concepts" in the law, warning it could "further shrink the civic space that journalists, bloggers, and other members of civil society operate in Jordan."The house speaker in parliament said the law was approved by a majority, but a final vote tally was not immediately released. The measure is the latest in a series of crackdowns on freedom of expression in Jordan. A report by Human Rights Watch in 2022 found that authorities increasingly target protesters and journalists in a "systematic campaign to quell peaceful opposition and silence critical voices." All power in Jordan rests with Abdullah II, who appoints and dismisses governments. Parliament is compliant because of a single-vote electoral system that discourages the formation of strong political parties. Abdullah has repeatedly promised to open the political system, but then pulled back due to concerns of losing control to an Islamist surge.

Soldiers declare Niger general as head of state after he led a coup and detained the president
NIAMEY, Niger (AP)/Fri, July 28, 2023
Mutinous soldiers who staged a coup in Niger declared their leader the new head of state on Friday, hours after the general asked for national and international support despite rising concerns that the political crisis could hinder the nation’s fight against jihadists and boost Russia’s influence in West Africa.
Spokesman Col. Maj. Amadou Abdramane said on state television that the constitution was suspended and Gen. Abdourahmane Tchiani was in charge. Various factions of Niger’s military have reportedly wrangled for control since members of the presidential guard detained President Mohamed Bazoum, who was elected two years ago in Niger’s first peaceful, democratic transfer of power since independence from France. Niger is seen as the last reliable partner for the West in efforts to battle jihadists linked to al-Qaida and the Islamic State group in Africa’s Sahel region, where Russia and Western countries have vied for influence in the fight against extremism. France has 1,500 soldiers in the country who conduct joint operations with the Nigeriens, and the United States and other European countries have helped train the nation's troops. The coup sparked international condemnation and the West African regional group ECOWAS, which includes Niger and has taken the lead in trying to restore democratic rule in the country, scheduled an emergency summit in the Nigerian capital, Abuja, on Sunday. The U.N. Security Council, which is charged with ensuring international peace and security, held emergency closed consultations Friday morning. Britain's deputy U.N. ambassador James Kariuki, who chaired the meeting, told reporters afterward that all 15 members condemned the military's action and expressed “the need to restore constitutional democracy." He said an official council statement is expected. Russia is a veto-wielding member.
Extremists in Niger have carried out attacks on civilians and military personnel, but the overall security situation is not as dire as in neighboring Mali and Burkina Faso — both of which have ousted the French military. Mali has turned to the Russian private military group Wagner, and it’s believed that the mercenaries will soon be in Burkina Faso. Now there are concerns that Niger could follow suit. Before the coup, Wagner, which has sent mercenaries around the world in support of Russia’s interests, already had its sights set on Niger, in part because it’s a large producer of uranium. “We can no longer continue with the same approaches proposed so far, at the risk of witnessing the gradual and inevitable demise of our country,” Tchiani, who also goes by Omar Tchiani, said in his address. "That is why we decided to intervene and take responsibility.”“I ask the technical and financial partners who are friends of Niger to understand the specific situation of our country in order to provide it with all the support necessary to enable it to meet the challenges,” he said. If the United States designates the takeover as a coup, Niger stands to lose millions of dollars of military aid and assistance.
The mutinous soldiers, who call themselves the National Council for the Safeguarding of the Country, accused some prominent dignitaries of collaborating with foreign embassies to “extract” the deposed leaders. They said it could lead to violence and warned against foreign military intervention.
Bazoum has not resigned and he defiantly tweeted from detention on Thursday that democracy would prevail. It's not clear who enjoys majority support, but the streets of the capital of Niamey were calm Friday, with a slight celebratory air. Some cars honked in solidarity at security forces as they drove by — but it was not clear if that meant they backed the coup. Elsewhere, people rested after traditional midday prayers and others sold goods at their shops and hoped for calm.
“We should pray to God to help people come together so that peace comes back to the country. We don’t want a lot of protests in the country, because it is not good ... I hope this administration does a good job,” said Gerard Sassou, a Niamey shopkeeper. A day earlier, several hundred people gathered in the city chanting support for Wagner while waving Russian flags. “We’re fed up,” said Omar Issaka, one of the protestors. “We are tired of being targeted by the men in the bush. ... We’re going to collaborate with Russia now.”That's exactly what many in the West likely fear. Tchiani’s criticism of Bazoum’s approach and of how security partnerships have worked in the past will certainly make the U.S., France, and the EU uneasy, said Andrew Lebovich, a research fellow with the Clingendael Institute. “So that could mark potentially some shifts moving forward in Niger security partnerships,” he said. Even as Tchiani sought to project control, the situation appeared to be in flux. A delegation from neighboring Nigeria, which holds the ECOWAS presidency and was hoping to mediate, left shortly after arriving, and the president of Benin, nominated as a mediator by ECOWAS, has not arrived.
Earlier, an analyst who had spoken with participants in the talks said the presidential guard was negotiating with the army about who should be in charge. The analyst spoke on condition they not to be named because of the sensitive situation. A western military official in Niger who was not authorized to speak to the media also said the military factions were believed to be negotiating, but that the situation remained tense and violence could erupt. Speaking in Papua New Guinea, French President Emmanuel Macron condemned the coup as “completely illegitimate and profoundly dangerous for the Nigeriens, Niger and the whole region.”The coup threatens to starkly reshape the international community’s engagement with the Sahel region. On Thursday, U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris said the country's “substantial cooperation with the Government of Niger is contingent on Niger’s continued commitment to democratic standards."The United States in early 2021 said it had provided Niger with more than $500 million in military assistance and training programs since 2012, one of the largest such support programs in sub-Saharan Africa. The European Union earlier this year launched a 27 million-euro ($30 million) military training mission in Niger.
The United States has more than 1,000 service personnel in the country. Some military leaders who appear to be involved in the coup have worked closely with the United States for years. Gen. Moussa Salaou Barmou, the head of Niger’s special forces, has an especially strong relationship with the U.S., the Western military official said. While Russia has also condemned the coup, it remains unclear what the junta’s position would be on Wagner. The acting head of the United Nations in Niger said Friday that humanitarian aid deliveries were continuing, even though the military suspended flights carrying aid. Nicole Kouassi, the acting U.N. resident and humanitarian coordinator, told reporters via video from Niamey that 4.3 million people needed humanitarian aid before this week’s military action and 3.3 million faced “acute food insecurity,” the majority of them women and children. Jean-Noel Gentile, the U.N. World Food Program director in Niger, said “the humanitarian response continues on the ground.” He said the U.N. is providing cash assistance and food to people in accessible areas and that the agency is continuously assessing the situation to ensure security and access. This is Niger’s fifth coup and marks the fall of one of the last democratically elected governments in the Sahel. Its army has always been very powerful and civilian-military relations fraught, though tensions had increased recently, especially with the growing jihadist insurgency, said Karim Manuel, an analyst for the Middle East and Africa with the Economist Intelligence Unit.

Mexican president says Israel's Netanyahu showed interest in missing students case
MEXICO CITY (Reuters)/Fri, July 28, 2023
Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador said on Friday he received a letter from the Israeli prime minister offering to help with a probe into the 2014 disappearance of 43 students, after requests from Mexico to extradite a former top official. Tomas Zeron, head of Mexico's criminal investigation agency between 2014 and 2016, under the previous government, is wanted on accusations of having helped engineer a cover-up of the abduction of the youths from the Ayotzinapa Rural Teachers' College in the southwestern state of Guerrero in September 2014. Zeron, who Mexican officials say fled to Israel in 2020, has previously denied allegations of wrongdoing over the matter, one of Mexico's most notorious human rights scandals. Lopez Obrador requested help from then-Prime Minister Naftali Bennett in 2021, and last month said he had also written to current Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. "I just received a letter from Israel's prime minister about his interest in helping us. Because one of the people who participated in covering up the crime ... is in Israel," Lopez Obrador told his daily press conference, referring to Zeron. ة"We are asking for him to be extradited," he said.He did not say whether Israel had agreed to Zeron's extradition. Israel's embassy in Mexico said it could not comment on correspondence between heads of state. Lopez Obrador took office in 2018 promising to resolve the case, which his administration has called a "state crime" for both the disappearance and an alleged cover-up that involved multiple levels of government. The remains of only three of the 43 students have so far been formally identified, and Lopez Obrador in recent days has vowed to find out what happened to the youths.

Armenia calls on allies to help get aid to Nagorno-Karabakh during tensions with Azerbaijan
YEREVAN, Armenia (AP)/Fri, July 28, 2023
Armenia's authorities on Friday called on the country’s international allies to put pressure on Azerbaijan after accusing it of carrying out a three-day blockade of humanitarian aid to Nagorno-Karabakh. The accusations mark another flashpoint in the tense relationship between Armenia and Azerbaijan which have fought over the breakaway region for decades. The Armenian Deputy Foreign Minister, Vahan Kostanyan, accused Azerbaijan of blocking the so-called Lachin Corridor and demanded international allies step in to allow 19 trucks with 400 tons of humanitarian aid to pass. According to Armenian authorities, the trucks have been stuck there since the evening of July 26. “The additional pressure of our international partners on Baku is very important. We have heard statements from our various colleagues, but we don’t think this is enough,” he said. Kostanyan previously also accused Azerbaijan of ignoring a ruling by the International Court of Justice ordering Azerbaijan authorities to ensure unimpeded movement in the Lachin Corridor, the only road from Armenia into Nagorno-Karabakh. The ongoing dispute over the road has impeded food supplies to the region and aggravated tensions between Azerbaijan and Armenia, which have fought two wars since the end of Soviet rule. Nagorno-Karabakh had substantial autonomy under the Soviet Union and came under control of ethnic Armenian forces backed by the Armenian military in 1994 at the end of years of separatist fighting. Armenian forces also took sizable territory surrounding Nagorno-Karabakh itself. In 2020, Azerbaijan regained most of that surrounding territory and pieces of Nagorno-Karabakh itself in a war which killed about 6,800 soldiers. Under a Russia-brokered armistice, transit along the Lachin Corridor was to continue under the guarantee of Russian peacekeepers. According to Armenian media, trucks and foreign diplomats are currently in the village of Kornidzor on Armenia’s border with Nagorno-Karabakh, which is at one end of the Lachin Corridor. Azerbaijan’s Foreign Ministry said that it viewed Armenia’s attempt to send a convoy to Nagorno-Karabakh “under the guise of ‘humanitarian aid’” as a violation of Azerbaijan’s “territorial integrity and sovereignty.” Azerbaijan also accuses Armenia of smuggling weapons into Nagorno-Karabakh. The latest flare-up comes weeks following talks in Brussels and Washington aimed at calming tensions between the two countries after Azerbaijan opened a checkpoint on the Lachin Corridor in April. At that point, the road had already been blocked for four months by demonstrators who were protesting what they claimed to be illegal mining and other ecological abuses by Armenians in the area.

Russian, Chinese delegates join North Korean leader at military parade
Associated Press/Fri, July 28, 2023
North Korean leader Kim Jong Un shared center stage with senior delegates from Russia and China as he rolled out his most powerful nuclear-capable missiles in a military parade in the capital, Pyongyang, marking a major war anniversary with a show of defiance against the United States and deepening ties with Moscow as tensions on the peninsula are at their highest point in years. State media said Friday Kim attended Thursday evening's parade with Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu and Chinese ruling party official Li Hongzhong from a balcony looking over a brightly illuminated Kim Il Sung Square, named after Kim's grandfather, the founder of North Korea. The streets and stands were packed with tens of thousands of mobilized spectators, who roared in approval as waves of goose-stepping soldiers, tanks and huge, intercontinental ballistic missiles wheeled out on launcher trucks filled up the main road. In recent days, according to KCNA reports, people have been brought from the around the country to fill the crowd. Photos showed Kim Jong Un smiling and talking with Shoigu and Li, who respectively stood to his right and left at the balcony's center spot, and Kim and Shoigu raising their hands to salute the parading troops. KCNA did not say whether Kim made a speech. The North's official Korean Central News Agency said the parade featured ceremonial flights of newly developed surveillance and attack drones, which were first unveiled by state media this week as they reported on an arms exhibition attended by Kim and Shoigu. For a finale, the parade rolled out new ICBMs that were flight-tested in recent months and demonstrated ranges that could reach deep into the U.S. mainland, the Hwasong-17 and Hwasong-18. Some analysts have argued these missiles are based on Russian designs or know-how.
North Korean Defense Minister Kang Sun Nam spoke, describing the parade as a historic celebration of the country's "great victory" against "U.S. imperialist aggression forces and groups of its satellite states."
He condemned the United States for its expanding military exercises with South Korea, which the North portrays as invasion rehearsals, and also launching new rounds of nuclear contingency planning meetings with Seoul. The allies describe their drills as defensive, and say the upgrades in training and planning are necessary to cope with the North's evolving nuclear threat.
"We solemnly declare that if they attempt military confrontation as now, the exercise of our state's armed forces will go beyond the scope of the right to defense for the United States of America and (South Korea)," Kang said, repeating previous North Korean threats of nuclear conflict.
"The U.S. imperialists have no room of choice of survival in case they use nuclear weapons against the DPRK," he said, using the initials of his country's formal name, the Democratic People's Republic of Korea. Clouds over Pyongyang in recent days made it difficult for satellites to monitor preparations for the parade, which took place at night. Satellite images showed what appeared to be a massing of people at the square at 1316 GMT (10:16 p.m. local) Thursday, said Dave Schmerler, a senior research associate at the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies, which is part of the Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey. North Korea's invitation of Russian and Chinese delegates was a rare diplomatic opening since the start of the pandemic. Experts say Kim is trying to break out of diplomatic isolation and boost the visibility of his partnership with authoritarian allies to counter pressure from the United States. The parade followed meetings between Kim and Shoigu in Pyongyang this week that demonstrated North Korea's support for Russia's invasion of Ukraine and added to suspicions the North was willing to supply arms to Russia, whose war efforts have been compromised by defense procurement and inventory problems.
On Thursday, KCNA published a letter by Russian President Vladimir Putin, who thanked Kim for North Korea's "firm support" of his war efforts in Ukraine. Putin said that interests between Moscow and Pyongyang were aligning as they counter the "policy of the Western group which hinders the establishment of the truly multi-polarized and just world order." Kim also held a luncheon and dinner banquet for Shoigu and his delegation following a second day of talks about expanding the countries' "strategic and tactical collaboration and cooperation" in defense and security, KCNA said.
"Given Russia's need for ammunition for its illegal war in Ukraine and Kim Jong Un's willingness to personally give the Russian defense minister a tour of North Korea's arms exhibition, U.N. member states should increase vigilance for observing and penalizing sanctions violations," said Leif-Eric Easley, a professor at Ewha University in Seoul. He added: "China's representation at North Korea's parading of nuclear-capable missiles raises serious questions about Beijing enabling Pyongyang's threats to global security." The parade capped off the North Korean festivities for the 70th anniversary of the armistice that stopped fighting in the 1950-53 Korean War. North Korea, which triggered the war with a surprise attack on the South in June 1950, was supported by Chinese troops and the then-Soviet air force. South Korea, the United States and troops from other nations under the aegis of the U.N. fought to push back the invasion. The July 1953 truce was never replaced with a peace treaty, leaving the Korean Peninsula in a technical state of war, but the North still sees it as a victory in the "Grand Fatherland Liberation War."The anniversary events were more somber in South Korea, where President Yoon Suk Yeol visited a war cemetery in the city of Busan to honor the foreign troops who died while fighting for the South during the war. In the face of growing North Korean threats, Yoon has pushed to expand South Korea's military exercises with Washington and is seeking stronger U.S. reassurances that it would use its nuclear capabilities to defend the South in the event of a nuclear attack. U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres also marked the anniversary with a statement expressing concern over what he described as a growing "nuclear risk" on the Korean Peninsula. "I urge the parties to resume regular diplomatic contacts and nurture an environment conducive to dialogue," he said.

Millions of Shiite Muslims across the world commemorate Ashoura
Naharnet/July 28, 2023
Millions of Shiite Muslims in Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan and around the world on Friday commemorated Ashoura, a remembrance of the 7th-century martyrdom of the Prophet Muhammad's grandson, Hussein, that gave birth to their faith.In Afghanistan, the Taliban cut mobile phone services in key cities holding commemorations for fear of militants targeting Shiites, whom Sunni extremists consider heretics. Security forces in neighboring Pakistan as well stood on high alert as the commemorations there have seen attacks in the past.

Canada/'Very proud moment': Valdez becomes first Filipino-Canadian woman to serve in cabinet
TORONTO/The Canadian Press/Fri, July 28, 2023
Rechie Valdez, who made history this week when she became the first Filipino-Canadian woman named to the federal cabinet, took an unusual path to high political office, transitioning from banking to baking to Parliament. Born in Zambia into a Filipino family that had immigrated to the southern African nation, Valdez, now 43, said the day her flight landed in Canada in December 1989 was the first time she ever put on a winter jacket. "I grew up in shorts and T-shirt and then I came to this incredible country in the middle of winter," she told The Canadian Press in an interview. Her promotion this week to serve as Prime Minister Justin Trudeau's minister of small business marked a breakthrough for Filipino-Canadians, a community that has raised concerns about what it calls its under-representation in government. Valdez, who was first elected to represent Mississauga—Streetsville in 2021, struggled to hold back tears as she took the oath swearing her into cabinet on Wednesday, part of a broader Trudeau cabinet reshuffle. "It's a very proud moment," she said, noting that her husband and two children were in the audience and that her family in Mississauga, Ont., was watching on television. Valdez said Filipino-Canadians hadn't had a voice in federal politics since Winnipeg MP Rey Pagtakhan -- who in 1988 became the first Filipino-Canadian to become an MP -- was defeated in the 2004 election. "It's all about representation and having a voice at the table," she said. More than 957,000 Canadians identified themselves as having Filipino roots in the 2021 census, including more than 757,000 people who were born in the Philippines and immigrated to Canada, according to Statistics Canada. Valdez said she worked in banking for 15 years but changed course in 2016, when she baked a cake for her daughter's first birthday. "I became a self-taught baker. I started off baking. I told my friends, I'm like, 'Hey, so I make cupcakes now. Would you like to try?'" she said. "Eventually, once I was able to master my recipes, I then registered my business and became an official small business entrepreneur." As her business grew, she started serving customers across the Greater Toronto Area. Then she launched another business supplying a Filipino fusion line of pastries and desserts to Asian grocery store chains in Mississauga. "I went from baking a single birthday cake to being able to stock grocery," she said. "It was an incredible journey."
She has also hosted a show on Filipino TV which shared stories of entrepreneurs and artists. She worked with basketball associations and raised funds for children’s charities across Canada. She said her resume has equipped her to advocate for small businesses. "Being a small business entrepreneur in Canada, you learn what it takes to have a vision, to work hard at that vision and to grow your business from the ground up," she said. Grant Gonzales, co-founder of the Filipino Canadian Political Association, called her appointment "inspiring." "I personally was very proud. Teared up a little bit with Rechie herself was taking the oath because it was so emotional and it means so much to the Filipino-Canadian community."Gonzales said there are systemic barriers in Canadian politics that make it difficult for racialized people, including the Filipino-Canadian community, to reach elected office. "Racialized people often can't rely on intergenerational networks that have benefited others," he said. "We're immigrants, we're first generation, we're second generation Canadians. We don't have those well-established networks that often are so critical to help propel people into elected office."
Gonzales, who ran for a city council seat in Toronto's municipal election last year, said people considering running for office have to consider making financial sacrifices and the personal toll taken by the increasing levels of toxicity in Canadian politics. "That is making people across the board second guess entering (the race for) office," he said. "There are so few elected Filipino leaders in Canada despite our rapidly growing population," he said. Paul Saguil, a Filipino-Canadian lawyer who ran as the Liberal candidate in Willowdale in the Ontario provincial election last year, agreed that his community has faced hurdles in entering politics, including the fact that many Filipinos have begun their life in Canada without permanent residency status. Saguil said Filipino representation in politics has been helped by the fact that parties increasingly see racialized Canadians as strong candidates.
Filipino-Canadians have been elected provincially in British Columbia and Manitoba and as municipal councillors in Alberta, British Columbia and Ontario. But, he stressed, there is still a long way to go. "Filipinos have been in Canada since almost before Confederation and it's tragic that we have never had representation at Queen's Park or at Toronto City Hall," he said. "I think that needs to change." This report by The Canadian Press was first published July 28, 2023.
Maan Alhmidi, The Canadian Press

Latest LCCC English analysis & editorials from miscellaneous sources published on July 28-29/2023
Russia's fighter jets have gone from harassing US aircraft to actually breaking them as Moscow flexes its muscles where it still can
Jake Epstein/Business Insider/July 28, 2023
Russian fighter jets have harassed US military drones on numerous occasions throughout July.
In a recent incident, Moscow's pilots dropped flares that damaged an MQ-9 Reaper drone.
Military experts said the provocations were the Kremlin's attempt to boast its military power where it can.
Russian fighter jets have harassed US military drones operating above Syria routinely throughout July, with one engagement this week damaging an American aircraft.
US officials are frustrated with the repeated incidents, blasting Moscow's pilots for dangerous and reckless behavior and accusing Russia of interfering with combat drones on high-profile counterterrorism missions. Military experts said there were several reasons behind the spike in aggressive behavior, including Russia's overcompensation for its military shortcomings in Ukraine and a desire to flex its muscles in an area where it still enjoys a certain degree of strength.
Russia sees its activities in Syria "as one area that really speaks to Russian global power and influence," Nicholas Lokker, an expert on Russian foreign policy at the Center for a New American Security, told Insider, adding that Moscow is able to "really shape international affairs according to its own interests" there.Both the US and Russia maintain a military presence in Syria. Washington has about 900 troops deployed for counterterrorism operations against the Islamic State while Moscow helps support the country's brutal regime in its ongoing civil war. For years, the two countries have largely managed to avoid clashes there even as they pursued their respective interests. But the bilateral relationship between Washington and Moscow hit rock bottom after Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. It hasn't improved in the 17 months since, and the relationship isn't showing any signs of reconciliation in the near future. Recent engagements in the skies above Syria have only elevated tensions between the two sides. On Sunday, a Russian Su-35 fighter jet flew within meters of a US MQ-9 Reaper drone on a counterterrorism mission and deployed flares above the American aircraft. One of the flares hit the drone and damaged its propeller, although the crew remotely piloting the MQ-9 managed to safely bring it back to base. "The Russian fighter's blatant disregard for flight safety detracts from our mission to ensure the enduring defeat of ISIS," Lt. Gen. Alexus Grynkewich, the commander of US Air Forces Central Command said in a statement on Tuesday, adding that "we call upon the Russian forces in Syria to put an immediate end to this reckless, unprovoked, and unprofessional behavior."
That incident is just one of several demonstrations of Russian aggression around US military drones this month. The first week of July featured three straight days of provocations by Moscow's pilots, who harassed multiple American MQ-9 Reaper drones by engaging afterburners, dropping parachute flares, and flying in close proximity to the aircraft.
At least one of these engagements nearly jeopardized a counterterrorism mission. On July 7, Russian fighter jets flew 18 close passes near several Reaper drones during an encounter that lasted nearly two hours and was described by a US military official as an "unsafe" situation. Several hours later, those same drones carried out a strike in eastern Syria that killed an ISIS leader. The Kremlin knows "exactly where we operate, and so there is no excuse for Russian forces' continual harassment of our MQ-9s after years of US operations in the area aimed at ensuring the enduring defeat of ISIS," Deputy Pentagon Press Secretary Sabrina Singh told reporters after it was revealed that the US had carried out the strike. "And it is almost as if the Russians are now on a mission to protect ISIS leaders."
Russian aircraft releasing several flares.
And Moscow's aggression this month has targeted more than drones. The US Air Force said in mid-July that a Russian Su-35 engaged a MC-12 surveillance plane "in an unsafe and unprofessional manner," forcing the American aircraft to fly through wake turbulence and threatening the lives of the crew. In a separate incident, two French jets on a security mission were forced to maneuver to avoid a "non-professional interaction" by a Su-35.
Russia is looking to 'compensate'
There are several potential reasons behind the new spike in Russian provocations above Syria, which experts suggest could be the norm for the foreseeable future. Lokker, a research associate with the transatlantic security program at CNAS, said it's notable that the recent string of incidents in Syria comes on the heels of the Wagner Group's late-June rebellion against Russia's military leadership. In a short-lived but historic mutiny, the mercenary organization pulled out of Ukraine, invaded Russia, and nearly marched on Moscow before Belarus brokered a peace deal between the Kremlin and Wagner's leader, Yevgeny Prigozhin. Russia's military suffered personnel and aircraft losses, and Western officials said the insurrection made Russian President Vladimir Putin look weak and undermined his domestic authority.
A press officer looks at a destroyed Russian military vehicle in a muddy field. A press officer who goes by the call sign "Damian" and a destroyed Russian military vehicle in Novodarivka village, Zaporizhzhia Region, southeastern Ukraine. Situated on the border between Zaporizhzhia and Donetsk Regions, the settlement that had been occupied since March 2022 was liberated by the Ukrainian military in June 2023.
Beyond just the Wagner Group's rebellion, the reputation of Russia's military has generally suffered since its invasion of Ukraine due to overall operational failures, such as surrounding the capital but failing to take it, and Ukraine's battlefield successes, such as stopping Russia's advance and retaking captured territory. Recognizing the reputational hit to his military, Putin has been "looking for opportunities to compensate, including by resorting to these types of risky maneuvers, such as harassing US drones," Lokker said. "These maneuvers, they are to some extent intended to demonstrate Russian military strength," which could appease the country's domestic audience. Though there are still dangers in engaging in this type of behavior, harassing and even damaging drones gives Russia a way to flex its muscles without necessarily risking a major escalation.
In general, Syria is a place where Russia can seriously demonstrate its military might, and the drone incidents are a part of that. In contrast with the situation in Ukraine, Russian forces have actually been able to notch achievements in Syria while supporting the ruthless Assad regime and have had a tangible impact on the trajectory of the 12-year-long conflict there, Lokker said. "Russia really wants to be perceived as a great power, and it sees its military presence in Syria as an important component of this."
Russia may also be conducting its harassment attacks to support Iran — a country with whom Moscow has enjoyed growing military ties — in its overall goal of trying to oust US forces from the Middle East, Lokker said.
The aggressive maneuvers could also be an operational tactic by Moscow to test and explore the lethality of drones and US reactions when they are put at risk. Paul Lushenko, a lieutenant colonel in the US Army and an expert on drone warfare, said Russia could be probing US aircraft to determine what they mean in the context of state-based conflict.
"We know that these drones are effective in terms of high-value targeting, whether it be a terrorist insurgent or indeed a political figurehead like [Qasem] Soleimani," Lushenko told Insider, referring to the former head of Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps' elite Quds Force who was killed in a 2020 US Reaper drone strike. "I think there's a probing taking place to determine just how the United States and Western allies will respond in the event of escalation with another nation state."
'Contested airspace'
Even before the latest string of provocations, which appear to have become more frequent lately, Russia's aggressive behavior in the sky is something that US officials have been calling attention to in recent months.
In March, a Russian fighter jet clipped the propeller of a US Reaper drone operating above the Black Sea, forcing the American operators to bring the aircraft down into international waters. Washington has also complained about armed flyovers of its military positions and Moscow's pilots behaving as though they want to dogfight. To counter these demonstrations — and increasing hostilities by Iran in the Middle East — the US has in recent weeks deployed additional firepower to the region, including F-22 and F-35 stealth fighter jets. Although the F-35s, which arrived this week, were officially dispatched by the Pentagon to deter Iranian naval activity, military leadership hinted that the aircraft may be used to deter other threats as well.
US aircraft lined up on tarmac.
US Air Force F-35A Lightning II aircraft assigned to the 421st Expeditionary Fighter Squadron arrive in the U.S. Central Command area of responsibility in July.US Air Force photo illustration by Staff Sgt. Christopher Sommers
"The F-35's increased capacity and capability will allow the US to fly in contested airspace across the theater if required," AFCENT said in announcing the arrival of the fighter jets on Wednesday. "This deployment demonstrates the US's commitment to ensure peace and security in the region, through maritime support and support to the coalition's enduring mission to defeat ISIS in Syria." Questions still remain, however, over where the US may eventually draw the line. It's unclear if American missions may be scaled back, a reaction seen in the wake of the Black Sea incident, or if they will maintain the status quo by reinforcing, as they have in the Middle East, but experts still warn that Washington needs to exercise caution — and strike a balance — with any response to avoid potentially escalating the situation.
A measured response to Russian aggression, Lushenko argued, would ultimately need to be set against the backdrop of what the US considers to be a national security interest, and a tit-for-tat exchange wouldn't exactly be in Washington's best interest, given that it accuses Russia of dangerous behavior in the air.
"To do those in kind would not look favorably — it puts our soldiers at unnecessary risk," he said. "I just think you have to consider what degree of risk are we willing to assume with a response in kind."

Turkey is becoming a major hub for cocaine trafficking to Europe
Sinan Ciddi/Washington Examiner/July 28/2023
Ankara’s reputation for smuggling is not new, and its portfolio in facilitating the free flow of illicit goods is growing to include drugs. Following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022, Turkey was implicated in questionable practices that included the alleged purchase of stolen Ukrainian grains, illegally shipped across the Black Sea and delivered to Turkish ports in Russian vessels, which originated in internationally sanctioned Crimea. Turkey appears to have profited out of purchasing stolen Ukrainian grain, with Turkish authorities doing little to question and investigate the origin of the grains that entered Turkey. This was exposed by the Financial Times last year; now, the focus of investigating Ankara’s permissive attitude toward smuggling has turned to cocaine.
The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime has identified Turkey as a major transit country for cocaine. While many countries struggle to prevent the shipment of drugs through their territory, Turkey appears to be either welcoming it or turning a blind eye to it. UNDOC stated that Turkey “has been increasingly used as a transit country for cocaine in recent years. Since 2014, the amount of the drug seized in the country has increased sevenfold from 393 kilograms to a record 2.8 tons in 2021. Some of the cocaine reaching Turkey arrives after transiting through West Africa, and some comes directly from Latin America.”
The figures quoted by the U.N. are all backed up by drug seizures in Latin America, which go uninvestigated by Turkish authorities and do not get reported in the Turkish mainstream press. For example, in 2020, Colombian authorities seized 5 tons of cocaine in two containers that were bound for Turkey. This was followed by the seizure of 1.3 tons of cocaine in Brazil on a private Turkish jet that was once owned by the Turkish government and now operated by a Turkish “businessman.” Allegations abound, focusing on former government officials such as Suleyman Soylu, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s former interior minister, and Mehmet Agar, a shady former law enforcement official, as being responsible for the organizing and distributing of narcotics inside of Turkey, as well their onward movement to Western Europe.
None of this is a huge surprise, and it helps us understand why Turkey also grants citizenship to major European drug traffickers. In a previous article, I noted Turkey’s proven track record of granting Turkish citizenship to some of Europe’s most wanted drug traffickers and refusing to extradite them to countries such as Sweden, even when being pursued under Interpol arrest warrants. Elements of the Turkish government are likely involved in providing support to and benefiting from the shipment, distribution, and sale of Latin American drugs in Turkey and Europe.
Such allegations are congruent with the larger picture of Turkey’s permissive attitude toward illicit finance flows. Until the Biden administration turned up the heat in 2022, Turkey’s financial and banking system provided a safe haven for Russian oligarchs’ monies. Countries such as Turkey proved instrumental in allowing sanctioned Russian persons and entities access to world markets. This was largely achieved by large (and undisclosed) sums of money being deposited into Turkish banks due to Ankara’s unwillingness to participate in the international sanctions regime against Russia. In 2022, $28 billion of unaccounted deposits in the Turkish Central Bank was brushed away by the finance minister as a “net error.”
The Biden administration and the European Union are fixated on working with Erdogan’s Turkey on a transactional basis to achieve limited goals such as containing the flow of migrants to Europe and securing Ankara’s approval for Swedish membership of NATO. While such pursuits are worthy, one needs to take stock and come to the realization that the Erdogan government we refer to as an “ally” carries all the hallmarks of being a crime syndicate that evades sanctions, permits illicit financial flows, and is becoming the major conduit of narcotics shipments to Europe. What kind of ally is that?
*Sinan Ciddi (@SinanCiddi) is a nonresident senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, where he contributes to FDD’s Turkey Program and Center on Military and Political Power.

The West Is Importing China's Cultural Revolution
J.B. Shurk/Gatestone Institute/July 28, 2023
The founder of the World Economic Forum (WEF), Klaus Schwab, routinely applauds China's surveillance State for its capacity to "nudge" citizens toward compliance. While China apologists turn a blind eye to the one-party communist State's continuing genocides against Christians, Tibetans, Uyghurs, Falun Gong practitioners, and other minorities, they champion the machinery of China's technocratic totalitarianism as a model for the rest of the world. It is deeply unsettling to see a destroyer of civilizations held up as the future for global civilization.
Schwab's influential organization seeks to recreate a Chinese system where a small group of elites bark orders and ordinary citizens dutifully obey.
If the WEF were actually interested in projecting Enlightenment ideals, Western liberalism, and democratic norms throughout the globe, that unelected body of aristocrats would be doing everything in its power to convince Chinese leaders of the fundamental importance of freedom of speech, freedom of religion, private property, the rule of law, and respect for privacy. That they do no such thing suggests that the WEF's loyalties are more aligned with the Chinese Communist Party's mandarins than Schwab's ideological followers are willing to advertise.
Given how synchronized the Chinese Communist Party and the World Economic Forum continue to be, it appears that Schwab is more than willing to help China export its totalitarian police State across the globe.
Excusing China's totalitarianism and handing the communist nation the keys to enriching itself from lucrative global markets may well prove to have been the most consequential foreign policy error in centuries. Instead of bringing greater prosperity for Americans, as then President Clinton and Secretary of State Madeleine Albright promised at the time, normalizing trade relations with China has devastated the United States' once robust industrial and manufacturing self-sufficiency, impoverished blue-collar workers across the country, and left ordinary Americans dependent upon an often hostile geopolitical foe for critical raw materials and finished products. Rather than providing a mechanism for "democratizing" a closed communist State, bringing the world's economy to China's doorstep has only hardened its iron-grip authoritarianism, encouraged its regional saber-rattling, expanded its capacity to inflict harm on ordinary Americans, and cemented its geopolitical clout.
It has been more than 80 years since the death of U.K. Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain, and once again appeasement of brutal totalitarian regimes is back on the table — all in service to that oft-elusive promise of global peace.
If then President George W. Bush had known in 2001 that America's blue-collar workforce would be languishing today, that China would be killing tens of thousands of Americans each year with fentanyl while stealing American companies' proprietary technology, and that global institutions such as the World Health Organization and World Economic Forum would be actively promoting the Chinese Communist Party's technocratic surveillance State, perhaps he would not have been quite so eager to empower China through unfettered trade... Perhaps he would have acknowledged that China might well succeed in exporting its authoritarian philosophy around the world even more effectively than the United States exports freedom.
China's "Cultural Revolution" already destroyed one great civilization; perhaps the West should reject importing a cultural revolution of its own before it finally becomes too late.
China's "Cultural Revolution" already destroyed one great civilization; perhaps the West should reject importing a cultural revolution of its own before it finally becomes too late. Pictured: A group of children reading Chairman Mao Zedong's 'Little Red Book', assembled in front of a portrait of Mao during China's Cultural Revolution, circa 1968. (Photo by Hulton Archive/Getty Images)
Traditional Chinese culture, thousands of years old, is filled with beautiful Confucian philosophies, kinship rituals, artistic symbolism, mythologies, and regular devotion to family ancestors. To observe any of these ancient customs in person, however, it is Taiwan — not China — where a visitor must go. When mainland Chinese communists bulldozed over China's rich heritage and Mao Zedong's "Cultural Revolution" purged the "Four Olds" — old customs, culture, habits, and ideas — from Chinese society, Taiwan became the de facto last refuge for one of the world's oldest great civilizations.
China's traditional way of life had survived thousands of years of intermittent civil war, foreign aggression, bouts of famine, and Western sabotage. When the virus of communism took root in its lands, however, China's vibrant history was wiped out within a generation. Two and a half decades ago, several academics made a laudable effort at calculating the costs of communism in the twentieth century in The Black Book of Communism: Crimes, Terror, Repression. While that work capably catalogues how communist governments systematically murdered a hundred million citizens and tortured many more, it only begins to describe the immense destructive force communism has had on the Chinese people.
If Western Civilization had endured a similar "Cultural Revolution," it would be as if all of the great ideas from Greek democracy, Roman republicanism, Judeo-Christian theology, Enlightenment reason, the Scientific Revolution, and the preservation of individual liberty had disappeared overnight. Imagine deleting from history Aristotle, Cicero, Augustine, Aquinas, da Vinci, Michelangelo, Shakespeare, Locke, Jefferson, and every other thinker, writer, artist, inventor, and statesman in between. That is the depth of the cultural genocide communism has perpetrated against the Chinese people in addition to the tens of millions of victims slaughtered and expunged from collective memory.
It is bizarre, then, to see so many international institutions today looking to China for global guidance. The World Health Organization largely aped China's draconian COVID lockdown policies when promulgating containment procedures that affected every aspect of Western life. The founder of the World Economic Forum (WEF), Klaus Schwab, routinely applauds China's surveillance State for its capacity to "nudge" citizens toward compliance. While China apologists turn a blind eye to the one-party communist State's continuing genocides against Christians, Tibetans, Uyghurs, Falun Gong practitioners, and other minorities, they champion the machinery of China's technocratic totalitarianism as a model for the rest of the world. It is deeply unsettling to see a destroyer of civilizations held up as the future for global civilization.
That is, however, exactly what the WEF's "Great Reset" has in mind. For all its emphasis on science and technology, and despite its dazzling visions for the future, the "Great Reset" follows in the footsteps of China's cultural desolation. Schwab's influential organization seeks to recreate a Chinese system where a small group of elites bark orders and ordinary citizens dutifully obey. It chases a bleak existence where freethinking is viewed as "dangerous" and State dogma is embraced on faith. It wishes to construct a civilization devoid of lively culture where forms of artificial intelligence build out the world and human innovation wastes away. The "Great Reset" is a twenty-first century "Cultural Revolution" intended to purge the West of its "old ways."
If the WEF were actually interested in projecting Enlightenment ideals, Western liberalism, and democratic norms throughout the globe, that unelected body of aristocrats would be doing everything in its power to convince Chinese leaders of the fundamental importance of freedom of speech, freedom of religion, private property, the rule of law, and respect for privacy. That they do no such thing suggests that the WEF's loyalties are more aligned with the Chinese Communist Party's mandarins than Schwab's ideological followers are willing to advertise.
"The techno-totalitarian regime that the CCP is perfecting in China will not stay there," U.S. Rep. Michael Gallagher, chairman of the House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party, has warned. "It's a model increasingly they want to export around the world." Given how synchronized the Chinese Communist Party and the World Economic Forum continue to be, it appears that Schwab is more than willing to help China export its totalitarian police State across the globe.
There is a sick irony to this turn of events. Around the time that The Black Book of Communism was laying bare the sheer horror of China's crimes against humanity, politicians in the United States were paving a golden path for the one-party police State to join the World Trade Organization and become a manufacturing powerhouse. One of the chief justifications for overlooking China's long record of human rights abuses when then President Bill Clinton and a bipartisan Congress granted the communist nation Permanent Normal Trade Relations status in 2000 was the dubious assertion that doing so would make China more like America. "The American people support this agreement," U.S. Rep. Bill Archer claimed at the time, "because they know it's good for jobs in America and good for human rights and the development of democracy in China." Two and a half decades of American job losses, continued Chinese persecution of ethnic minorities, and growing global power for the Chinese Communist Party have rendered that statement remarkably naïve.
Excusing China's totalitarianism and handing the communist nation the keys to enriching itself from lucrative global markets may well prove to have been the most consequential foreign policy error in centuries. Instead of bringing greater prosperity for Americans, as then President Clinton and Secretary of State Madeleine Albright promised at the time, normalizing trade relations with China has devastated the United States' once robust industrial and manufacturing self-sufficiency, impoverished blue-collar workers across the country, and left ordinary Americans dependent upon an often hostile geopolitical foe for critical raw materials and finished products.
While American jobs are steadily off-shored to the other side of the world and American paychecks are spent on Chinese imports, wealth is drained from the United States and deposited as capital under the control of the Chinese Communist Party and its roaring military. China continues to skirt any international rules or norms that might hinder its expanding power or economic bottom-line. It has also utilized its trade routes to smuggle fentanyl and other deadly narcotics into the United States. Just as alarming, the CCP has also been smuggling groups of men of military age "in unprecedented numbers" — seemingly under orders to sabotage American infrastructure should the U.S. attempt to stop China from seizing Taiwan. A huge spike in Chinese illegal immigrants with confirmed ties to the People's Liberation Army has led U.S. Rep. Mark Green to conclude, "This is a concerted effort by the Chinese to destabilize the United States, to harm our society and to facilitate the basic execution of their version of the global world order."
Despite China's well-documented behavior as a currency manipulator and intellectual property thief, the International Monetary Fund has all but confirmed that it will soon accept the Chinese yuan for debt repayments. Rather than providing a mechanism for "democratizing" a closed communist State, bringing the world's economy to China's doorstep has only hardened its iron-grip authoritarianism, encouraged its regional saber-rattling, expanded its capacity to inflict harm on ordinary Americans, and cemented its geopolitical clout. The U.S. is essentially underwriting the Chinese Communist Party's barbarity, concludes Tony Perkins, former chair of the bipartisan United States Commission on International Religious Freedom: "China is actually more repressive today than they were two decades ago, and the reason is they can afford to be as American consumers fund their repression."
Politicians and trade representatives in Washington, D.C., may have believed that they could catch the Chinese dragon by its tail, but there is no question a quarter-century later that the fire-breathing beast has grown only more dangerous. Senator Marsha Blackburn bluntly describes the Biden administration's tendency to ignore China's bad behavior as delusional efforts "to appease a dictatorship that commits pervasive human rights abuses and oppresses its own people." It has been more than 80 years since the death of U.K. Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain, and once again appeasement of brutal totalitarian regimes is back on the table — all in service to that oft-elusive promise of global peace.
Besides the destroyers of their own ancient civilization, what kind of people run communist China today? Well, they are exactly the kind of authoritarians that the Davos elite paradoxically decry when they extol the virtues of "democracy." China sends its spies all over the world to harass and intimidate dissidents who speak and write against the communist regime. It has placed million-dollar bounties on the heads of those who have voiced opposition to Beijing's takeover of Hong Kong. If "you pose a threat to the Chinese Communist Party in any way," U.S. Rep. Carlos Gimenez has warned, "you'll be persecuted, you'll be in prison, and sometimes, you may even lose your life."
Many supporters of normalizing trade relations with China assumed only the best results and ignored the possibility of further empowering an untrustworthy actor. A year after Clinton helped to bring China into the "free trade" club, then President George W. Bush also argued, "Open trade is a force for freedom in China, a force for stability in Asia, and a force for prosperity in the United States." Ignoring the repercussions of feeding a dangerous beast, he continued, "When we open trade, we open minds. We trade with China because trade is good policy for our economy, because trade is good policy for democracy, and because trade is good policy for our national security." Those were all commendable goals, but good intentions frequently bring disastrous results. If Bush had known in 2001 that America's blue-collar workforce would be languishing today, that China would be killing tens of thousands of Americans each year with fentanyl while stealing American companies' proprietary technology, and that global institutions such as the World Health Organization and World Economic Forum would be actively promoting the Chinese Communist Party's technocratic surveillance State, perhaps he would not have been quite so eager to empower China through unfettered trade. Perhaps he would have been more willing to consider whether democracy, stability, prosperity, and national security might ultimately degrade. Perhaps he would have acknowledged that China might well succeed in exporting its authoritarian philosophy around the world even more effectively than the United States exports freedom. As many scholars on radical movements have attested, "Much of the activism currently tearing Western civilization asunder is driven by ideas that can be traced back to Maoism." China's "Cultural Revolution" already destroyed one great civilization; perhaps the West should reject importing a cultural revolution of its own before it finally becomes too late.
**JB Shurk writes about politics and society, and is a Gatestone Institute Distinguished Senior Fellow.
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World must back Jeddah process to end Sudan conflict
Dr. Majid Rafizadeh/Arab News/July 28/2023
In spite of several ceasefire attempts, the conflict in Sudan continues to escalate. It is extremely important that the international community immediately acts and strongly supports the mediated talks in Jeddah in an effort to bring an end to the war.
It has been more than 100 days since the conflict between the Sudanese army and the Rapid Support Forces militia broke out and it continues to rage without any resolution in sight.
First of all, it is crucial to immediately take action as a result of the humanitarian catastrophe in the country, which is impacting millions of people. As Concern Worldwide’s A.K.M. Musha warned: “We need urgent action to ease the suffering of millions of Sudanese people and prevent further deaths. It is no exaggeration to say we are facing a humanitarian catastrophe — the entire country is suffering and is affected. Over 3.3 million have fled their homes for safety. People are still on the move and the fighting is continuing. Everyone in Sudan is facing uncertainty, the areas where people can be sure they will be safe are very limited. Nobody knows how this will pan out or where it is heading to.”
More than half of the population is currently in need of humanitarian assistance. This is why it is important to chart a path that allows the international community to open corridors to permit humanitarian aid and medical assistance to enter the areas that are impacted and to allow the evacuation of civilians from the conflict zone.
In addition, the conflict has led to large-scale displacements, sexual violence, families being separated and even shot while attempting to flee the war and homes being looted, while doctors are experiencing significant difficulties in terms of treating patients, lacking medical equipment, supplies, water and electricity.
It is crucial to immediately take action as a result of the humanitarian catastrophe in the country
The conflict has inflicted a considerable amount of damage on the healthcare system, with nearly 70 percent of hospitals currently not operational. Attacks on doctors have been on the rise. The Sudan Doctors’ Union reported this week that a number of attacks have taken place on “hospitals and medical staff recently, including (an) attack on Friday on the staff from the Doctors Without Borders NGO. They were beaten while they were delivering medical aid to the Turkish hospital south of Khartoum, their vehicle was looted, and the organization’s driver was arrested.”
One of the major threats that the continuation of the conflict poses is that the war could lead to the total disintegration and collapse of the state in Sudan. This would not only be a significant threat to the Sudanese people, but also to other countries as well as regional and global security and stability. On the global level, according to the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, when states collapse, they can become “safe havens for terrorist organizations, centers for the trade of drugs and arms, and breeding grounds for dangerous diseases. Regionally, they can spill instability well past their borders and create a conflict dynamic affecting neighboring countries.”
There are already reports of some militia groups gaining power and committing egregious human rights violations. According to Sudan’s General Intelligence Service, several suspected members of Daesh were killed in a raid that was carried out by security forces in the capital Khartoum.
Furthermore, the threat of a refugee crisis should not be underestimated if the war continues. The refugee crisis is already impacting the social, political and economic landscapes of several other countries, particularly those that share a border with Sudan — Libya, Egypt, Chad, the Central African Republic, South Sudan, Ethiopia and Eritrea. The humanitarian situation and the refugee crisis could worsen if the international community does not take the conflict seriously and it is not quickly resolved.
While diplomacy appears to have fallen short, it is still the most effective approach to bring an end to the conflict in Sudan.
One way to expedite the peacemaking process would be for other countries and organizations, including the African Union, to firmly join Saudi Arabia in its attempts to resolve the conflict. The Kingdom has been playing a key role as mediator. Other nations, particularly those impacted by the conflict, ought to seriously consider acting on Saudi Arabia’s initiative.
The Kingdom has introduced the Jeddah Declaration of Commitment to Protect the Civilians of Sudan. Some of the important points in Saudi Arabia’s plan is that it is based on international human rights law and it places an emphasis on making a distinction between civilians and combatants, ensuring the safe passage of civilians, protecting medical personnel, allowing humanitarian relief to reach the population, and preventing the recruitment of children as soldiers in the war. The Sudan Tribune pointed out that the Jeddah declaration was aimed at resolving the Sudanese conflict and “resulted in the negotiation of a declaration of principle and three truce agreements.”
In a nutshell, there needs to be a greater sense of urgency about bringing the dangerous three-month war in Sudan to an end. This requires coordinated, swift actions by the international community. The only existing and viable initiative to resolve the conflict is the Jeddah-mediated talks. The most effective approach would be for other countries to firmly join and support the Jeddah process.
*Dr. Majid Rafizadeh is a Harvard-educated Iranian-American political scientist. Twitter: @Dr_Rafizadeh

Question: “What does the Bible say about overcoming lust?”
GotQuestions.org/July 29/2023
Answer: Most words in the Bible that are translated “lust” mean “a passionate desire.” Strong desire can be either good or bad, depending upon the object of that desire and the motive behind it. God created the human heart with the capacity for passionate desire so that we would long after Him and His righteousness (Psalm 42:1–2; 73:25). However, the concept of “lust” is now usually associated with a passionate desire for something God has forbidden, and the word is seen as synonymous with sexual or materialistic desire.
James 1:14–15 gives us the natural progression of unrestrained lust: “Each person is tempted when they are dragged away by their own evil desire and enticed. Then, after desire has conceived, it gives birth to sin; and sin, when it is full-grown, gives birth to death.”
According to this passage, sinful lust begins with an evil desire. Being tempted by evil is not the sin. Jesus was tempted (Matthew 4:1). The sin begins when the evil desire “drags us away” from where our hearts need to be. When an evil desire introduces itself, we have a choice. We can reject it as Jesus did and refocus on the path God has set before us (Matthew 4:10). Or we can entertain it. As someone once said, “We cannot stop the birds from flying overhead, but we don’t have to let them make a nest in our hair.” When temptation beckons, we need to remember that we are not helpless. We can choose to give in or to resist.
The reason we are “dragged away” by temptation is that we are “enticed.” That word in the Greek refers to bait, as on a fishing line. When a fish sees the wiggling worm, he is enticed by it and grabs hold. Once the hook is set, he can be “dragged away.” When we encounter temptation, we should immediately reject it as Joseph did when he was tempted by Potiphar’s wife (Genesis 39:11–12). Hesitation opens the door to enticement. Romans 13:14 calls such hesitation “making provision for the flesh.” Like the unwary fish, we grab hold of the tempting thought, believing it will delight and fulfill us. We savor the fantasy, imagine new and sinful scenarios, and entertain the idea that God has not provided all we need for happiness (Genesis 3:2–4). This is foolish. Second Timothy 2:22 says, “Flee youthful lusts.” To “flee” means to take off immediately. Joseph did not stick around to consider his options. He recognized sexual temptation, and he ran. When we hesitate, we make provision for the flesh and give it the opportunity to choose evil. Often, we are overwhelmed by its power. Samson was a physically strong man, yet he was no match for his own lust (Judges 16:1).
The next step in the downward progression of temptation, according to James 1, is that “desire conceives.” Lust begins as a seed, a thought packed with wrong desire. If we allow the seeds of lust to germinate, they will sprout into something bigger, more powerful, more difficult to uproot. Temptation becomes sin when it is allowed to germinate. Desire takes on a life of its own and becomes lust. Jesus made it clear that lust is sin, even if we do not physically act on it (Matthew 5:27–28). Our hearts are God’s domain, and when we allow evil to grow there, we defile His temple (1 Corinthians 3:16; 6:19).
Wrong desires plague every human being. The tenth commandment forbids coveting, which means lusting for something that is not ours (Deuteronomy 5:21; Romans 13:9). The human heart is constantly seeking to please itself, and when it discovers something or someone it believes will satisfy, lust begins.
It is only when our hearts are dedicated to the glory of God that we can overcome intrusive desires and conquer lust. When we surrender to the Lord, we find our needs met in a relationship with Him. We must “take every thought captive to the obedience of Christ” (2 Corinthians 10:5). We must allow the Holy Spirit to keep our thoughts where He wants them to be. It helps to pray daily the words of Psalm 19:14: “Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable in your sight, O LORD, my rock and my redeemer.” When our heart’s desire is to please God more than ourselves, we can keep lust at bay.