ISR Weekly

Friday, April 5, 2013

Syria warns Jordan over aiding rebels

Friday, April 05, 2013 No comments

Syria's regime sternly warned neighboring Jordan on Thursday that it was "playing with fire" by allowing the U.S. and other countries to train and arm rebels on its territory.

Jordan, America's closest ally in the Arab world, has long been nervous that President Bashar Assad's hard-line regime could retaliate for supporting the rebels. The warning carried on state media may add to those jitters, though Jordanian government officials publicly downplayed it as "mere speculation by the Syrian media."

Syrian state television said leaks in U.S. media show Jordan "has a hand in training terrorists and then facilitating their entry into Syria." State radio accused Jordan of "playing with fire."

A front-page editorial in the government daily al-Thawra accused Amman of adopting a policy of "ambiguity" by training the rebels while at the same time publicly insisting on a "political solution" to the Syrian crisis.

"Jordan's attempt to put out the flame from the leaked information will not help as it continues with its mysterious policy, which brings it closer to the volcanic crater," the paper said.

Two Jordanian officials downplayed the diplomatic tiff with Syria. One said Jordan will not discuss the state of relations through the media.

"Such discussions are usually carried out through the appropriate diplomatic channels,' he said. Both officials insisted on anonymity out of concern that their comments may further irritate relations, which have been historically bumpy.

Why Do We Laugh at North Korea But Fear Iran?

Friday, April 05, 2013 No comments

In the United States, we make fun of Kim Jong Un and the North Korean regime's over-the-top propaganda machine. The regime may have launched a massive cyberattack on South Korean banks and TV stations last month, but we were circumspect that they were capable of such a thing. When former basketball player Dennis Rodman visited the country in February we giggled. How silly, we thought. Kim Jong Un is a Dennis Rodman fan - how out of touch! Soon after, a video emerged from North Korean state television showing Kim welcomed by jubilant masses of soldiers sprinting to welcome him as he visited a posting from whence rockets were launched in a brief 2010 skirmish with South Korea.

Again we chuckled at how staged it seemed. Just a week or so previous, a propaganda video came out showing images of Barack Obama and American troops on fire, and just before that, a sleeping Korean dreaming about a rocket destroying an American city. At these, we guffawed. We mocked the use of "We Are the World" and music from the video game Call of Duty as a soundtrack; we called one video " bizarre from start to finish"; " hilarious and disturbing "; "hilariously low-rent"; " cartoonish ." When the United States beefed up its missile defense network in California and Alaska to protect from a possible North Korean attack, we noted they wouldn't have the brains to actually hit us, and asserted that " no one's taking them that seriously." The propaganda, the rhetoric, it's all seen as a grand joke. Desperate, harmless hyperbole from a scorned and neutered country.

A man starves his own people and threatens to start a nuclear war, and Americans laugh. What a bizarre thing to do.

Meanwhile, we shirk in fear at the unhinged other leg of former President George W. Bush's "axis of evil" tripod: Iran...

Thursday, April 4, 2013

Sri Lanka's Muslims bear brunt of Buddhist extremism

Thursday, April 04, 2013 No comments

Sri Lanka has been rocked in recent weeks by a growing wave of anti-Muslim sentiment led by ultra-nationalist Buddhist monks. According to one expert, the small island nation is suffering a profound and worrying identity crisis.

On the evening of March 28, a Muslim clothes trader watched as his warehouse was ransacked by an angry crowd of some 500 Sri Lankans. Buddhist monks among the attackers were filmed throwing stones at the Fashion Bug outlet in capital Colombo.

According to BBC reporter Charles Haviland, several people including a number of journalists recording the scenes were injured.

It was not an isolated incident. In the past few months, the number of attacks on the minority Muslim population (9 percent) in the Buddhist-dominated country has been growing.

As well as targeting shops, Muslims have reported vandalism against mosques as well as calls for a boycott on their products and services.

The Sri Lanka Muslim Congress, a junior coalition partner in the government of Prime Minister Mahinda Rajapaksa, has denounced the “hate campaign” being waged against Muslims which the authorities are blaming on a hard core of extremist Buddhist monks.

Islam ‘the invader’

Why the Iran Sanctions Don't Work

Thursday, April 04, 2013 No comments

The United States has used its leverage over the international financial system to create the most comprehensive unilateral sanctions regime in history. The move against Iran has played a key role in convincing the European Union to implement its own set of unilateral sanctions—all with the central objective of changing Tehran’s nuclear calculus and forcing it to agree to a deal that it otherwise would refuse.

Those associated with the regime openly acknowledge that sanctions are having a devastating impact on the Iranian economy, but they have not achieved their stated objective: shifting Iran’s nuclear stance. For this to happen, the regime’s stakeholders must start building narratives that enable such policy shifts, and subsequently lobby the government for those shifts.

In a new report published last week (Never Give in and Never Give Up)—which relies on over thirty in-depth, vetted and anonymous interviews with senior Iranian political officials, analysts and members of the business community—we show that neither phenomenon has emerged within the Iranian elite in a measurable or impactful way.

Wednesday, April 3, 2013

Syria: 'up to 100' British Muslims fighting in war

Wednesday, April 03, 2013 No comments

There are “hundreds” of Europeans now fighting in Syria, some of whom are with groups linked to al Qaeda, the Home Office told MPs.

The British-born jihadis are said to have joined the fight with Jabhat al-Nusra, the country’s most militant al-Qaeda gang.

The fighters have come from range of ethnic backgrounds include young Asians, converts to Islam and men from north African backgrounds.

Some are said to have fought in conflicts elsewhere while others waging war for the first time.

Officials warned of the risk to Britain and other European nations posed by foreign fighters now gaining military experience in Syria.

Monday, April 1, 2013

The Emir of NYU: John Sexton's Abu Dhabi Debacle

Monday, April 01, 2013 No comments

In February 2008, I attended an New York University faculty meeting about the school's plans to open a new campus in the tiny desert emirate of Abu Dhabi. I was there reporting for a New York magazine article about the first major U.S. research institution to open a complete liberal-arts university off American soil. Hoping to be a fly on the wall, I instead found myself seated at the head of the table, bombarded with rapid-fire questions by exasperated professors looking for any kernel of information about the new project:

"Who will do the hiring?" one professor asks.

"Will there be tenure? You can't have academic freedom without tenure, right?"

"Where will the students come from?"

"Why Abu Dhabi?"

"What exactly is the status of Abu Dhabi's relationship with Israel?"

"Will we become the next Guggenheim franchise?"

I quickly learned that the new initiative was being personally driven by NYU's larger-than-life president, John Sexton -- and that many faculty felt completely left out of a decision that had the potential to effect the university dramatically.

...

This mirrors the concerns I heard when I interviewed dozens of NYU's faculty about the Abu Dhabi project. Many expressed substantive concerns about academic freedom, diluting NYU's brand, human rights violations in Abu Dhabi, and discrimination against gay and Israeli students.

... read full article

read also, UAE "Blacklisting" of Dr. Kristian Coates Ulrichsen

Libya's south teeters toward chaos — and militant extremists

Monday, April 01, 2013 No comments

SABHA, Libya — Their fatigues don't match and their pickup has no windshield. Their antiaircraft gun, clogged with grit, is perched between a refugee camp and ripped market tents scattered over an ancient caravan route. But the tribesmen keep their rifles cocked and eyes fixed on a terrain of scouring light where the oasis succumbs to desert.

"If we leave this outpost the Islamist militants will come and use Libya as a base. We can't let that happen," said Zakaria Ali Krayem, the oldest among the Tabu warriors. "But the government hasn't paid us in 14 months. They won't even give us money to buy needles to mend our uniforms."

Krayem is battling smugglers, illegal migrants bound for Europe and armed extremists who stream across a swath of the Sahara near the porous intersection of southern Libya, Chad, Niger and Algeria. Since the 2011 Arab uprisings that swept away Moammar Kadafi and other autocrats, Western countries and Libya's neighbors fear that this nation may emerge as an Islamist militant foothold.

Kadafi was replaced by a weak central government that has struggled with economic turmoil and the lack of judicial reform and a new constitution. The long-neglected south has grown more lawless. The Al Qaeda-linked militants, including Libyans, behind the January assault on a natural gas processing complex in Algeria that killed at least 37 foreigners traveled from Mali through Niger and Libya's poorly patrolled hinterlands.