Posts by FedericoSchiavio:

Russian-Syrian times are changing

October 14th, 2015

By Federico Schiavio.

 

Assad, after four years of blood and tears, won the day. Who lost and why, but first, let’s start with the military forces in the field:

Syrian Army – 280,000 men strong before the war, now about 140,000 and threatening to implode due to the majority (70%)Sunni component. Has set its strategy on population control (now at 56 %) rather than territory (now 40%), as it sits perched in the big cities, leaving the areas least densely populated of the country and the border area with Turkey inhabited by Kurds to whom it has favored access to military arsenals, in exchange for the compatriots of the PKK battling Turkey rather than claiming improbable democratic freedoms that no one in the Orient feels the need for.

In the villages, it has created a self-defense militia minus most Sunnis (90,000 men) placed in defense of their homes.

It suffered two defeats on the ground, the first – at the beginning – with the occupation of the suburbs of Aleppo and the second, recently, with the occupation of IDLIB province as a result of the fall of Jisr al-Shughour.

Precisely because of this surprise defeat has Russia decided to intervene with an operation that is ravaging the area of the Sanjak of Alexandretta on the Turkish border where the rebels are receiving money, support and supplies. With some strikes occurring across the border into Turkey meant to eliminate any and all hope of reinforcements to the troops trained by the CIA. Hence the feeble protests, destined to go unheeded but easing the USA’s conscience.

The Russian intervention, preceded by numerous warnings of “not wanting to bomb accidentally” and urging “meetings at the technical level” aimed at preventing accidents, has yielded the first important political results.

Netanyahu – rushed to Moscow and concluded a clear agreement about the limits of Israeli intervention in Syria: the Golan Heights and the area of Kuneitra. No attacks will be forthcoming by the Israeli army against Syria for fear of a direct confrontation with the Russians and subsequent internal problems given Israel’s populous former Soviet immigration – 600,000 people – many of them not Jewish.

The second “democratic” country that crash landed in the neutral zone was Jordan which initially allowed the selection and training on its territory of anti Assad volunteers recruited by the CIA. The cessation of Jordanian support has resulted in the failure of the rebel offensive in the border area of Deraa where the “southern front” had begun a “major offensive” – in concert with the attack on Idlib in the North that fizzled into nothing.

From now on the Syrian army (and its allies) will have air support, and this has resulted in the withdrawal of Israel and Jordan and has reduced the relentless bullying by the US and Turkey to listless statements. Skepticism about the ability of the Russians to win and a whiny NATO that recently withdrew Patriot missiles batteries from Turkey and is struggling to find any credibility as an effective force drops the curtain on the charade..

Hezbollah – Lebanese armed group supplied by Iran and born after the Israeli operation in Lebanon in 1982. Transforms into a political movement and gets about 50 % of the votes in the elections. Having sent an expeditionary force of 6 to 8,000 troops in support of the Syrian government, it currently occupies and oversees the Mountains of Qalamoun vital communication link between Damascus and Lebanon. They recently received armored vehicles (T72 and T55) from Russia and now have armored vehicles capable of countering the Israelis whom they consider their main opponent.

Pasdaran – Iranian Revolutionary Guards numbering 6 to 7,000. They are not part of the Iranian army, but are more of a militia. They operate in support of the Syrian regular forces alongside instructors and “experts” of the Iranian Armed Forces.

al Nusra Front – Unknown number, however, it’s considered having the largest number of “volunteers” and foreign nationals. It’s led by Abu Mohammed al Jolani and is financed by Turkey, which aims to take possession of Aleppo and Mosul.

Many Salafist elements militated in this group until Daesch started a fierce extermination competition designed to attract the greatest number of elements drawn to the aggressive dispatching of enemies. Currently oversees Idlib and the areas of Aleppo in rebel hands.

Ahrar ash-Sham (loosely translates to Free Syrians) – armed group supported by the tandem Turkey-Qatar, Turkey wanting to retain total control of the al Nusra Front, the first group who inaugurated the be-headings and supports the territorial ambitions of Erdoghan.

Jaish al-Islam (Army of Islam) – Led by Zahran Alloush, not numerically significant but important because it is the only one operating in the suburbs of Damascus and is funded by the Saudis (Bandar bin Sultan).

Ansar al Islam (knights of Islam) – additional acronym supported by the Saudis. The consistency of these groups varies according to the availability of financial resources, weapons and objectives. Just as described in “Seven Pillars of Wisdom” by TE Lawrence.

Southern Front – the only non-denominational group, operates in the area of Deraa and the Jordanian border. Consists of numerous Druze militants from the Jabal al-Druze at the intersection of Lebanon, Israel and Syria.

Kurds – Approximately 15,000, both men and women, the Kurds are operating within their territory on a thin strip straddling the border between Syria and Turkey (more than 800 km long).

They are backed by the US and Israel as are their compatriots in Iraq and Iran. All enjoy the possibility of coordination with the PKK (the former Communist Party “workers” in the days of the USSR). They are, however, fiercely opposed by Turkey (see Kobanî), because Turkey has been fighting them for more than twenty years, while stubbornly referring to them as “Mountain Turks” and because they are geographically obstructing the territorial ambitions of Erdoghan to annex the oil fields of Mosul.

Saudis – No soldiers directly involved, but the funds are almost all from them. They are the real losers, having lost the battle for control of Iraq; they are in check (as in chess) in Yemen by the Houthis and whooped in Syria. After the incident with the pilgrims in Mecca (with over a thousand deaths including 430 Iranians killed and “dispersed” and hundreds of wounded) they have lost face for not being able to protect guests-pilgrims even after employing a US-Israeli security agency. For the Arab and Islamic mentality, this is the real problem. The king is suffering from senile dementia (80 years old) and the struggle for succession is smoldering between the king’s son deputy crown prince bin Salman and crown prince and Interior Minister bin Nayef.

UNITED STATES – According to what leaked in the American media, from 2011 to date, approximately 30,000 foreign fighters have flowed into Syria all recruited and armed and trained and equipped by the US government in its various forms (Pentagon, CIA, DIA, POMED). As is the case since 1962 we have not yet learned that only involving the US military as instructors, counselors and advisors is not enough.

The influx of these “volunteers” (Libyans, Chechens, Tunisians, Moroccans, French, British, Turks and Saudis) sparked a bid to appear the most ferocious and cruel aimed at showing the greatest resolve to attract aspiring martyrs, or as I like to refer to them, “turd blossoms”.

And the winner is… Al Baghdadi recruited by the US in Abu Ghraib prison who promises medieval savagery, sex and money to whoever joins him. (Carly Fiorina has a point, albeit moronic,  when she said she is equipped to fight ISIL because she has a degree in Medieval History) Equipment is made in USA (cars made in Japan…). Notoriety is assured by Israeli army radio and Mrs Rita Katz (Israeli living in the US who posts fake ISIL videos. And for the Syrian rebels we have Mr. Abdel Rahmane of The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a de facto one man bullshit operation broadcasting its flatulence from London.

THE POLITICAL SITUATION

The Russian irruption on the Syrian and Iraqi scene took place in an open and positive international context. No one, whether Arab or Western, has objected.

The Pentagon has taken a blasé attitude, mentioning half-heartedly the absence of Russian experience in the field of foreign wars (Georgia, Chechnya, Afghanistan), but in fact, the Russians have many other arrows to their bow.

For starters, they position themselves as mediators and not as belonging to a faction. In fact, they have been careful to maintain constant relations with all the parties involved, inviting them to Moscow for negotiation rounds parallel to those of Geneva (Moscow I, II, and III) and have used Iran’s 5 + 1 negotiations to constantly inform the Saudis on the progress of the meetings, which resulted in bin Salman meeting with Putin in Sochi..

For seconds, the Iranians are grateful for the intervention that relieves them from the need to increase aid to Syria, and the Saudis cannot wait to get out of the Syrian shithole and concentrate their efforts on their interior issues of , Mecca, succession to the throne, and the all to near Yemen.

Even the Turks, who contest the Iranian intervention, are not contesting the Russian one, preferable since it does not alter the regional balance.

For dessert, the Russian military presence alone has paralyzed the Southern Front (Jordan and Israel); the three battalions used in its defense are now being employed elsewhere (towards Jisr al-Shughour.and then Aleppo?) The sale of armored vehicles to Hezbollah secures communication lines between Damascus and Beirut.

All these moves have surprised only the French and the US, while intuitive in view of the peace negotiations where everyone wants to take the ground advantage and Syria’s objective to retake control the Idlib province from which they would then mop up Latakia and surroundings which contrary to popular belief has a majority of Sunni inhabitants. The eventual goal would be the elimination of the Aleppo bulge where the turd blossoms of the al Nusra Front are squatting, hemorrhoids ablazing without being able to move forward. This is why the principal targets of the Russian air attacks are this Turkish funded group.

Currently the mainstream presstitute media is talking about the partitioning of Syria and circulating brightly colored maps with eerily identical boundaries.

In reality there will be no division save possibly a few arid desert hectares. Bashar al-Assad will not accept any division. Division on a denominational basis is impossible for the simple fact that there is no entirely Christian territory unless one combines Lebanon with Syria and because a “Caliphate territory” may not be recognized even by North Korea and be an incentive for the Libyan ISIL.

The US government paved the way for Putin who maintained good relations with all the actors in the drama, used 28 aircraft for a fortnight, entered in the Arabian Peninsula with the general consensus (including Egypt’s) and is ready to mediate and manage the transition. Now Assad has become a nonexistent problem.

Next, The United States – and Obama personally – will have to explain to the world why Putin will solve the problem that he had predicted to last at least ten years.

In the meantime, Obomber is trying desperately to seek other aircraft for use in Iraq in order to free his and employ them to “threaten” the Russian presence. Italy is apparently willing to prostitute itself and took the bait. History will say that Italian planes arrived in Iraq and they defeated Daesch.

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The White Man’s Burden

August 11th, 2013

 

By Federico Schiavio.



Is there a direct relationship between democracy and growth? No and the proof is in the lost decades that the West has spent providing aid to “allegedly” democratic African nations.

I find myself in total agreement with Meles Zenawi’s statement that “There is no direct relationship between democracy and growth”. The one and only obstacle to successful Western Aid is that the West “over plans” its efforts, resulting into missed targets and opportunities. Please allow me to elaborate.

Over the last 5 decades, the West has spent 2.3 Trillion on foreign aid, what do we have to show for that? Apparently, not that much, poverty is still rampant. So what are we doing wrong?

The West mistakenly believes that poverty is a technical engineering problem whereas the Chinese believe that poverty is a complicated tangle of political, social, historical, institutional, and technological factors that are to be avoided at all costs. Therefore, the Chinese concentrate on the three CSFs (Critical Success Factors) health, education, and infrastructure – with these, people can fix their own problems and eliminate poverty.

The West believes outsiders know enough to impose solutions while the Chinese believe only insiders have enough knowledge to find solutions and that most solutions must be homegrown. This begs the question, “what can foreign aid do for poor people?”

For starters, it could devise a program to give cash subsidies to parents to keep their children in school. Poor people rely on their children to help make ends meet thus denying them the education that is one of the critical success factors to eradicate poverty.

The West keeps on setting goals, which may be good for motivation but is counterproductive for implementation. The Chinese, on the other hand operate off the “free market” playbook favoring general goals like businesspersons making profits and consumers achieving satisfaction.

Nevertheless, the West is not as clueless as it appears, whether by luck or design, it too has some positive accomplishments. The nonprofit organization Population Services International (PSI), headquartered in Washington DC, acted more on par with the Chinese than the West when it found a way to get insecticide treated bed nets to the poor in Malawi.

PSI sells bed nets for fifty cents to mothers through antenatal clinics in the countryside, which means it gets the nets to those who both value them. and need them. (Pregnant women and children under five are the principal risk group for malaria.) The nurse who distributes the nets gets nine cents per net to keep for herself giving her an incentive to ensure the nets are available. PSI also sells nets to richer Malawians through private sector channels for five dollars a net. The profits from the private sector pay for the subsidized nets sold at the clinics, so the program pays for itself. PSI’s bed net program increased the nationwide average of children under five sleeping under nets from 8 percent in 2000 to 55 percent in 2004, with a similar increase for pregnant women.

A follow up survey found nearly universal use of their nets by those who paid for them. By contrast, a study of a program to hand out free nets in Zambia (the favored approach of the West); found that 40 percent of the recipients did not use the nets. The “Malawi model” is now spreading to other African countries.

Once again, the “Chinese Way” leads the way (no pun intended). As I mentioned previously, “the Chinese believe only insiders have enough knowledge to find solutions and that most solutions must be homegrown.” Just like that, neither PSI nor WHO or any other Western entity dictated this particular solution. It was the local PSI office in Malawi, staffed mostly by Malawians, that while looking for a way to make progress on malaria, came up with the plan involving bed nets, antenatal clinics, and the dual channel sales concept.

Now we come to the third critical success factor, infrastructure. Infrastructure is important because it enhances economic activity and thus overall growth. For example, by reducing production and transaction costs, increasing private investment, and raising agricultural and industrial productivity. It removes bottlenecks in the economy, which hurt poor people by impeding asset accumulation, lowering asset values, imposing high transaction costs, and creating market failures. Eliminating these bottlenecks allows the poor to contribute to growth directly through the employment and income opportunities created by the construction, maintenance, and delivery of infrastructure services, and indirectly through better services. Furthermore, it generates positive distributional effects on growth and poverty reduction through poor people’s increased participation in the growth process, by increasing their access to factor and product markets, reducing risk and vulnerability, enhancing asset mobilization and use, and promoting their empowerment.

Infrastructure investment and improvement also affect non-income aspects of poverty, contributing to improvements in health, nutrition, education, and social cohesion. Indeed, infrastructure improvement makes valuable contributions to all the MDGs (Millennium Development Goals). The many benefits of infrastructure have also been confirmed by the UN Millennium Project (2005), which advocates a major increase in basic infrastructure investments to help countries (especially in Africa) escape the poverty trap, and by the Commission for Africa (2005). However, to be effective in reducing poverty, infrastructure development must be coordinated with other important concerns, such as agricultural, environmental and trade policies.

Again, the Chinese are at the forefront of infrastructure projects in Africa. For decades, Africa’s poor infrastructure has been a major obstacle for the continent’s economic development. In less than a decade of activity, Chinese companies have brought the promise of development to the most remote reaches of the continent by constructing a network of roads and railways. In essence, China’s infrastructure contributions are transforming the continent.

Angola’s capital city, Luanda, is bustling with construction activity. Numerous cranes dot the skyline and ships laden with building materials form queues at the harbor. A modern 20-story blue glass building, constructed by a Chinese company for Sonangol, the company responsible for managing the oil and gas reserves in Angola, stands in stark contrast to the company’s previous five-story office block.

Zhou Tianxiang, Deputy General Manager of China Civil Engineering Construction Corporation (CCECC), listed the numerous African projects his company has engaged in during a recent interview.   He mentioned, among others, the construction of light rail and ports in Nigeria; expressways and express railways in Algeria and Libya; housing in Tanzania, Botswana, Uganda, Rwanda and Djibouti; and civil construction in Sudan, Ghana and Angola.

The activities of CCECC are only a sample of China’s ongoing infrastructure developments in Africa. Chinese companies have taken the initiative in some of the furthest reaches of the continent, building transportation networks, schools, hospitals, research facilities, telecommunication networks, and power stations. Xinhua News reports that over the past 50 years, China has constructed over 2,000 kilometers of railways, 3,000 kilometers of expressways (with many more on the way), and has provided aid to around 900 projects in 53 African countries.

Where is the West? The West is claiming that there are a number of problems, namely that the Chinese are importing their own workers and excluding Africans from the jobs on the construction projects. Moreover, they claim that the Chinese, thanks to their ingenuity, will quickly come to dominate the economy and run Africans out of businesses and that the Chinese stay out of sight, maintain tight local social communities among themselves, and exclude the locals. Finally, some in the West claim that they do shoddy work on buildings and roads.

That kind of thinking is not going to do us any good. I spent an entire year in Ethiopia and had the opportunity to witness firsthand the evolution of the Chinese advance. First off, the Chinese importing their workers is a myth. Yes, they bring in their own engineers, supervisors, project leaders and the like, but the main workforce is local. Second, in the case of Ethiopia, Chinese are prohibited from opening small businesses. I suspect that would be the case in other African countries as well. Initially, the Chinese stayed out of sight but I assure you now that is no longer the case. True some of their work is shoddy (like the ring road around Addis Ababa) but I drove on a highway in the north that made me question whether I was suddenly transported to Europe.

The West is apparently caught like a deer in the headlights and is not conscious that Africa is slowly but surely slipping from its grasp along with its natural resources. The West needs to take the drastic step of meeting the Chinese challenge head on and throwing its weight into the three critical success factors referred to previously. Anything less and we lose the race to control the largest repository of natural resources remaining.

In closing, I would like to mention that tomes have been written about Human Rights, Democracy, and Aid. There are so many facets to those three elements that they will be debated to death and not resolve one problem. However, should we decide to stop and think that maybe, just maybe, governments will no longer have to repress people if the people are happy, we may just have reached the fork and taken the road to actually ending poverty. When people have roofs over their heads, a job, and food on the table they are happy and happy people can pose less of a threat to political elites determined to retain power. Therefore, repression can become less necessary and diminish, thereby potentially moving the country incrementally toward democracy. My recommendation is to stop attaching human rights restrictions to Western Aid as we have been doing for the past 50 years with debatable results and follow the Chinese way.

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Desperately Seeking Ataturk

June 25th, 2013

 

 

By Federico Schiavio.

 

Barely accustomed to southern Mediterranean countries entering crises one after another, we are now dumbfounded to see Turkey in the throes of political fever while the Syrian crisis is still ongoing. Who is behind it?

Everyone and no one, will the protesters win? No, but they have triggered a process of marginalization of the most hypocritical Islamic theses comprised of small ritualistic revenges, restrictions on drinking, and female submission passed off as virtue. Now that the Turks have learned to rebel, nothing will be as before.

His past constituents have just politically disavowed Erdogan, their former mayor. He harshly punished the Turkish military class (custodians of the secular nature of the Constitution) by trying 400 senior officers accusing them of a coup of whose nonexistence he was himself living proof. He then believed he could remain the undisputed political leader and began to preoccupy himself more with Islamic extremists that might threaten his existence than with a civil society backlash.

He believed that several small captivating pseudo religious modifications such as restricting alcohol service (borrowed from the West), pictures of his wife wrapped up like a mummy, and some bowing and scraping at the mosque, was enough to please his rural Muslim electorate.

With too much complacency and the idea that no one could dethrone him, Erdogan has instead managed to build a coalition against him, for the moment only in the squares, made up of the thousand streams of discontent that stir the Anatolian river.

A hundred young ecologists began to protest the construction of a shopping center in Taksim, the heart of the city, the taxi terminus, the beginning of Cumhurryet Caddesi, which is the main commercial artery of the Golden Horn.

The place was well chosen and the news spread quickly drawing the opposition party, young men looking for the opportunity to prove their manhood, Kemalists without Kemal, and the numerous women yet not coerced by sexist measures, but fearing that possibility and ready to fight. Remember, Turkey before becoming an Islamic country was the land of the Amazons.

As history would have it, Kemal Ataturk was able to modernize Islam. He succeeded thanks to the fact that he was a Turk, a Muslim, a victorious military leader, and Ghazi (title given to those who are wounded in Jihad). He changed the alphabet from Arabic to Latin, abolished religious clothing of every denomination, banned calls to prayer in public, and praying in the street, ordered the summary execution of Mullah’s in charge of areas where suicides occurred in protest, and gave public authorization to the Armed Forces to take power whenever a rise of clericalism reared its ugly head.

The army has abused this constitutional privilege three times:

in 1960

(the hanging of Premier Adnan Menderes along with a couple of his ministers)

in 1971
for an anticommunist cleanup, and in

in 1980

, (defenestration without hanging) and has taken up a position of privilege within the Turkish society.

The arrival of Erdogan has upset this social balance and kick started the clerical resurgence timidly hinted at by Menderes. The Premier has strengthened this position with donations and aid (including free washing machines and refrigerators) to rural areas, which gave him a feeling of invincibility.

With these demonstrations, the societal block of the electoral minority, initially intimidated by the halo of morality that accompanies the monotheistic religious majorities (all patriarchal) abandoned its hesitations, and took advantage of the ecological excuse to take action at a time of lukewarm relations between the U.S. and Turkey because of the latter’s hesitation to clash with Syria. Their weakness is that they do not have a leader and they are divided. They are missing an Ataturk.

The protesters are students whose secular universities have postponed exams, Islamist elements unhappy with the conduct of their personalistic Premier accused of instrumentalizing religion for electoral purposes. Fringe Islamists like the Alevis that the Premier has offended with an insulting historical reference (naming a future bridge over the Bosphorus after Sultan Selim I

who decimated them). Environmentalists supported by communist fringes defeated in the 90s, entrepreneurs tired of the network of sweetheart deals and corruption that favors party members, nationalists eager to avenge the maxi trial of the Armed Forces. The Gulen movement of moderate Islamists, the PKK Kurds dissatisfied with the peace negotiations, the pro Syrian Kurds, the Iranian Kurds, humiliated journalists, proponents of entry into the EU, etc.

Erdogan had a textbook reaction, while a mob infiltrated the ranks of the protesters burning shops and cars and scaring the middle class, he was received with great pomp and fanfare on an official visit to Tunisia. Leaving his deputy to make an appeal for calm, recognize the well-founded initial protest, condemning the violence, and cancelling the Taksim project, thus laying the groundwork for a triumphant return.

Frazzled by the dissent in his homeland, will Erdogan try to gain space by uniting the country on the theme of Democracy in Syria with a humanitarian intervention? I doubt it. He has over a thousand kilometers of land and sea borders with Iran and Russia, two potentates not to be underestimated.

For now, Erdogan is leaning toward nationalism, a dangerous option that could breathe new life into the military.

Three:

arrests

in Izmir (NATO headquarters) accused of plotting to plant a bomb and eleven foreigners

arrested

in Istanbul – including four Americans, two Britons, two French, a German, a Greek, and an Indian, accused of taking part in the riots as troublemakers. As I write, more

arrests

are being made.

Afterwards, six trade unions and employers’ associations issued a joint statement condemning the violence and confirming that the riots are detrimental for business. With the summer, tourists arrive. In September, we will pick up where we left off.

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