Tahrir Square and the Arab Spring Five Years Later: Unending War, the End of the EU and the U.S. Deep State Exposed

As Egypt marks the fifth anniversary of the Tahrir Square revolution under the watchful eye of another autocrat, it is important to remember that the Syrian war was initially part of the same Arab Spring uprising. 

If not from the outset, the uprising in Syria was gradually subverted by foreign intelligence services playing the decades-old destructive game of using Islamist proxies to sow chaos. Now, five years later, the result is beyond the wildest of expectations. Not only is the Sykes-Picot Middle East coming unraveled, so too is the European Union. The unsinkable Angela Merkel (see Alison Smale's "Stance on Migrants Leaves Merkel Isolated at Home and in Europe") is confronted within her own party by opponents demanding that she restrict the influx of immigrants from Syria, Afghanistan, Iraq and elsewhere. Many countries in Europe have already scrapped the Schengen Agreement that allows for free travel within Europe without border restrictions. Dan Bilefsky and Alison Smale have a helpful if limited summary of some of the European nations that have unilaterally done away with Schengen in "Dozens of Migrants Drown as European Refugee Crisis Continues":

Over the summer, Hungary erected a razor-wire fence on its border with Croatia. This month, Sweden, once one of the most welcoming of nations for refugees, introduced identity checks for travelers arriving from Denmark in an effort to curb their numbers. Austria announced this week that it would limit the number of refugees it takes in this year to 37,500, down from 90,000 in 2015.

France, still operating under an emergency from last November's terror attack, has border restrictions, as, in some form, does Slovenia and Macedonia. Poland has refused to accept any refugees.

Merkel and the EU are banking on Turkey solving the refugee problem. According to Bilefsky and Smale,

Ms. Merkel met on Friday with Turkey’s prime minister, Ahmet Davutoglu, the latest in a series of discussions between the countries about what more Turkey could do to keep the refugees pouring over its border with Syria from traveling on to Western Europe. Ms. Merkel again promised that the European Union would find 3 billion euros, about $3.2 billion, to assist Turkey in offering work and schooling to more than two million Syrians who have fled there. 

Mr. Davutoglu made no concrete promises in return, making clear that Ankara believes it has leverage in negotiations on the issue with Europeans — like Ms. Merkel — who dragged out European Union membership talks with Turkey in the past, in part because of concern over human rights abuses in Turkey. 

“We are not begging for the E.U. money,” Mr. Davutoglu told the German news agency DPA. “The 3 billion euros are only there to show the political will to share the burden.”

European leaders are fretful because the refugee influx continues this winter. "Almost 37,000 migrants are reported to have arrived in Greece and Italy by sea and land this month, according to the International Organization for Migration, 10 times the number in the same period last year." The concern is that the EU grandees have two months to set up some form of refugee warehousing system in Turkey. By then an overwhelming spring influx will commence.

Peace talks on the war in Syria set to begin today in Geneva have been postponed as expected. Russia  and the Syrian Arab Army have been making gains on the ground, retaking territory from the U.S.-Saudi-backed jihadists. Even though the U.S. has softened its position that Assad has to agree to step down as a precondition of the peace talks, the Saudis have not. So war will rage on. And Angela Merkel is praying that Recep Tayyip Erdoğan can get those refugee warehouses built quickly.

A primer on the deep, longstanding ties between the permanent government of the United States and the House of Saud is explored in a story by Mark Mazzetti and Matt Apuzzo, "U.S. Relies Heavily on Saudi Money to Support Syrian Rebels." It states what we already know, that al-Saud is the ideological twin of the Sunni jihadists against whom we are in a global war. But it is always nice to read it in "the newspaper of record":

And yet the alliance persists, kept afloat on a sea of Saudi money and a recognition of mutual self-interest. In addition to Saudi Arabia’s vast oil reserves and role as the spiritual anchor of the Sunni Muslim world, the long intelligence relationship helps explain why the United States has been reluctant to openly criticize Saudi Arabia for its human rights abuses, its treatment of women and its support for the extreme strain of Islam, Wahhabism, that has inspired many of the very terrorist groups the United States is fighting. The Obama administration did not publicly condemn Saudi Arabia’s beheading this month of a dissident Shiite cleric, Sheikh Nimr al-Nimr, who had challenged the royal family.

Although the Saudis have been public about their help arming rebel groups in Syria, the extent of their partnership with the C.I.A.’s covert action campaign and their direct financial support had not been disclosed. Details were pieced together in interviews with a half-dozen current and former American officials and sources from several Persian Gulf countries. Most spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the program.

From the moment the C.I.A. operation was started, Saudi money supported it.

***

While the intelligence alliance is central to the Syria fight and has been important in the war against Al Qaeda, a constant irritant in American-Saudi relations is just how much Saudi citizens continue to support terrorist groups, analysts said. 

“The more that the argument becomes, ‘We need them as a counterterrorism partner,’ the less persuasive it is,” said William McCants, a former State Department counterterrorism adviser and the author of a book on the Islamic State. “If this is purely a conversation about counterterrorism cooperation, and if the Saudis are a big part of the problem in creating terrorism in the first place, then how persuasive of an argument is it?”

An interesting passage in the Mazzetti-Apuzzo piece is the linkage of the special Saudi-U.S. relationship to the circumvention of the post-Watergate, post-"family jewels" crackdown on the intelligence agencies:

The roots of the relationship run deep. In the late 1970s, the Saudis organized what was known as the “Safari Club” — a coalition of nations including Morocco, Egypt and France — that ran covert operations around Africa at a time when Congress had clipped the C.I.A.’s wings over years of abuses.

“And so the kingdom, with these countries, helped in some way, I believe, to keep the world safe at a time when the United States was not able to do that,” Prince Turki al-Faisal, a former head of Saudi intelligence, recalled in a speech at Georgetown University in 2002.

The U.S. deep state, the permanent government that remains regardless of whether the administration is Republican or Democrat, is intimately linked with a despotic, religiously fundamentalist monarchy. That is why there is no hope for peace. Because the only way that the aspirations of the Arab Spring can be rolled back is with force.

Don't Expect Much U.S. Military Action in Iraq

The United States is not an egalitarian country. It plays one on TV. But the reality it is corporate-dominated kleptarchy that is only nominally democratic.

Our nominal democracy and vestiges of constitutional protections give us a leg up on the subjects of Saudi Arabia. But in terms of an ally who has a strong voice in the conduct of American affairs, you would be hard pressed to find one greater than the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.

Yesterday, when Iranian President Hassan Rouhani proclaimed his country's readiness to intervene in Iraq to protect the Shiite holy sites there, the Saudis responded by issuing a warning against any foreign intervention. Rick Gladstone and Dan Bilefsky report in "Insurgency in Iraq Widens Rivals’ Rift" that

In a televised speech in Iran on Wednesday, Mr. Rouhani expressed full support for the Iraqis who have joined volunteer militias to fight the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, the Sunni extremist group that straddles both countries. It has seized large sections of northern and western Iraq over the past few weeks, threatened to march on Baghdad and vowed to obliterate cities and shrines dear to Shiites.

“Regarding the holy Shiite shrines in Karbala, Najaf, Kadhimiya and Samarra, we announce to the killers and terrorists that the big Iranian nation will not hesitate to protect holy shrines,” the president vowed in the speech to a crowd in Lorestan Province in western Iran. “These terrorist groups, and those that fund them, both in the region and in the international arena, are nothing, and hopefully they will be put in their own place.”

Mr. Rouhani also said many Iranian volunteers were prepared to travel to Iraq to defend religious sites. He sought to cast them as the allies of patriotic Iraqis from all backgrounds who see the Sunni insurgents as a scourge — a theme he also emphasized in a posting on his Twitter account.

“Iranian nation will protect Iraq’s holy shrines & they aren’t alone. Iraq’s Sunnis, Shias & Kurds all ready to defeat terrorism solidarity,” he wrote.

Mr. Rouhani signaled over the weekend that Iran did not intend to send troops to Iraq. But Gen. Qassim Suleimani, the head of Iran’s paramilitary Quds Force of the Revolutionary Guards, recently traveled to Iraq to meet with Iraqi leaders, who have mobilized thousands of militia fighters, almost exclusively Shiites. The high-level contact suggested that General Suleimani was helping oversee their training and strategy.

In Saudi Arabia, Foreign Minister Prince Saud al-Faisal warned that no outside power should be meddling in Iraq. Coming on the same day that Mr. Rouhani spoke, the clear implication was that the Saudi minister was referring to the Iranians. He said the Iraqis needed to achieve national reconciliation without “foreign interference or outside agendas.”

Prince Faisal's admonition goes for the United States as well. That is why stories that appear in the press regarding Obama's deliberations on the use of force in Iraq always accentuate the limited strategic options he is dealing with. A few drone strikes are usually mentioned. The stories convey no sense of urgency, certainly none of the shrieking that went along with the press's drumbeat for strikes on Damascus last summer. Then it was the entire global order at stake, dependent as it is, or at least thought to be inside the Beltway, on unilateral U.S. belligerence. Here we are only dealing with the realization -- a caliphate rising in northern Iraq erected by a group Osama bin Laden found too extreme -- of the fantasy that Bush-Cheney used to justify their 2003 invasion.

The U.S. and the Kingdom are reading from the same script when it comes to Iraq: the ISIS blitzkrieg is due to the sectarianism of Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki. This is the talking point that has been reiterated with great discipline since Mosul fell.

Another red flag is that the atrocities and war crimes of ISIS are given short shrift, mentioned only as if in passing. Whereas any Shiite reprisals, such as the 44 Sunni prisoners who ended up shot in an attack on a Baquba prison earlier this week, are labeled "horrific."

Gladstone and Bilefsky mention that

The Saudi kingdom also issued a statement repudiating accusations by Iraq’s Iranian-backed Shiite prime minister, Nuri Kamal al-Maliki, that it was providing moral or financial support to the Sunni insurgents.

“Any suggestion to the contrary is a malicious falsehood,” the Saudi statement said.

But Saudi sponsorship of ISIS was even acknowledged yesterday by the Gray Lady in her lede editorial: "Turkey, for instance, should shut its border to militants and to materiel flowing into Syria and Iraq. And Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and other gulf states need to stop financing (directly or indirectly) ISIS, which began as an Al Qaeda affiliate, and other extremist groups."

Action to Shift East in Ukraine

A lot of rain here since the weekend, which is good. I got home with a wet head and set about preparing dinner. While that was cooking on the stove I watched an excerpt of Putin's statement regarding Ukraine, the situation in Crimea, the putsch in Kiev, etc. I was impressed. The Russian President seemed passionate, alert, focused, sensible, fully engaged. Then I watched Obama's response, which was dismissive, arrogant, evasive, insubstantial, weak. Obama did not engage Putin head on in many of the particulars, for instance the legal status of the putsch parliament in Kiev. Peter Baker summarizes as follows:

“I know President Putin seems to have a different set of lawyers making a different set of interpretations,” he said, “but I don’t think that’s fooling anybody.” 

Mr. Obama added that Ukrainians should have the right to determine their own fate. “Mr. Putin can throw a lot of words out there, but the facts on the ground indicate that right now he’s not abiding by that principle,” he said. “There is still the opportunity for Russia to do so, working with the international community to help stabilize the situation.”

So what will Obama say when Crimea votes for independence? He will say it is not a valid vote. But armed insurrections supported by the United States are legitimate democratic expressions of a people yearning to be free. Who does Obama think he is fooling?

I will give this to John Kerry: He can lie like a motherfucker.

The two big developments being trumpeted by the Gray Lady this morning pertain to 1) the Ukrainian aid package being offered by the EU, and 2) what U.S. sanctions are in store for Russia if they don't retreat from the Crimea.

The EU bailout is advertised to be "worth as much as $15 billion over the next two years." Add to that Kerry's offer of $1 billion, and you are still a long way off from the $35 billion Ukraine is said to need over the next two years to avoid default. The IMF auditors are in Kiev taking a look at the books. Twenty billion dollars adds up to a lot of structural adjustment. The game for the West is going to be to somehow obscure the true impact of these cuts prior to any elections. And the only way this can be done, if it can be done at all, is to keep shrieking about the evil Putin and the savage Russian bear. That is why developments in the eastern city of Donetsk bode ill. This is from the Steven Erlanger and Dan Bilefsky Ukrainian aid story linked to above:

In Donetsk, in the east of the country, where Russian speakers predominate, police officers citing a bomb threat evicted hundreds of pro-Russian protesters from a regional parliament building, returning it to Ukrainian police control for the first time since it was seized on Monday. 

Shortly after the protesters were evicted from the building, the Ukrainian flag was restored to the building’s flagstaff and a Russian flag that had flown there since the building’s seizure was removed. 

A police official denied that officers had removed the flag, saying that the police “stay out of politics,” and adding that officers had found an antipersonnel mine in the building but did not know who had put it there. 

The eviction came as Sergey Taruta, a billionaire businessman from the region who was recently appointed as the new governor, arrived in Donetsk Tuesday evening, and appeared to signal that the police and the local government had begun to actively resist pro-Russian activists calling for Donetsk to secede from Ukraine. 

Pavel Gubarev, the leader of the People’s Militia of Donbass, a separatist group, called the police action “a provocation” and said, “there was never any bomb.” He has called for the Donbass region to secede from Ukraine and join Russia. A police official said that a criminal case against Mr. Gubarev was being investigated. 

“Pavel Gubarev will answer before the law,” the official said.

The action will likely shift to the east. Covert U.S.-sponsored mayhem will proceed per usual. Overtly, a mild cocktail of sanctions, as outlined by Peter Baker, will be put into play:

Mr. Obama has authority to take several steps without new legislation from Congress. For starters, under a law called the Magnitsky Act, the State Department has already drafted a list of Russians tied to human rights abuses. The administration could promptly bar them from traveling to the United States, freeze any assets here and cut off their access to American banks.

The president also has the power under existing Syria sanctions to go after Russian individuals and institutions involved in sending arms to help President Bashar al-Assad crush the rebellion there. The administration had held back on such actions while trying to work with Russia to resolve Syria’s civil war, but if applied they could cut off certain Russian banks from the international financial system. 

Mr. Obama could also sign an executive order creating another set of sanctions specifically against Russian officials and organizations blamed for creating instability in Ukraine and violating its sovereignty. In theory, that could include everyone up to Mr. Putin, but officials indicated that they would instead work their way up the chain of command. 

Leaders in Europe, a region dependent on Russian natural gas and with far deeper economic ties to Russia, have expressed reluctance to go along with the toughest sanctions.

Not even Uncle Sam's poodle Tommy supports economic sanctions. No, the game going forward will be an information war coupled with covert action. It is what the United States does. It is a vast state ruled by elites who have no connection whatsoever with the regular workaday world that we ordinary people inhabit. The major political parties no longer have a popular basis in individual communities; they are merely fundraising apparatuses for corporate interests. There are no more "grassroots."

The elite who control the United States Government float above us in a cloud of wealth and privilege; they are disconnected. There is more trouble coming.

Agreement Reached on Mitrovica

Kosovo was in the news again. On Friday Prime Minister Hashim Thaci, "The Snake," former head of the Kosovo Liberation Army, reached agreement with his Serbian counterpart, Prime Minister Ivica Dacic, on the administration of Mitrovica. The EU's Catherine Ashton acted as mediator. Serbia can now begin negotiations on entry into the European Union.

The story, "Serbia and Kosovo Reach Agreement on Power-Sharing," written by Dan Bilefsky, can be found in this past Saturday's paper:

The agreement hinged on how much autonomy Kosovo was willing to cede to Serb municipalities in the north, in return for Serbia’s recognition of Kosovo’s authority in the area. Until now, Serbia has had de facto control over the small Serb-majority area in the north, which does not recognize Kosovo’s authority. 

Tensions have lingered since Kosovo declared independence from Serbia in 2008, nearly a decade after NATO bombs helped push out the forces of the Serbian strongman, Slobodan Milosevic. For Kosovo’s ethnic Albanian Muslim majority, independence was the culmination of a struggle for self-determination after a brutal ethnic civil war with Serbia. 

Kosovo is now recognized by more than 90 countries, including the United States and a majority of nations in the European Union. But five member countries, including Spain and Cyprus, have refused to recognize Kosovo. 

Serbia has also refused to recognize Kosovo, arguing that its declaration of independence breached international law. Serbia’s staunch ally, Russia, has blocked Kosovo’s membership in the United Nations, a hurdle to its economic and political progress. 

Under the agreement, municipal bodies in the Serb-majority north will retain autonomy in matters like health care and education. In return, the police and courts will apply the Kosovo central government’s laws. The Serbian municipalities will be able to appoint a regional police chief. 

Petrit Selimi, Kosovo’s deputy minister of foreign affairs, said Kosovo agreed not to deploy its security forces in the Serbian region for an unspecified number of years, except during emergencies like earthquakes. Even in that event, a senior NATO official said, the security forces would need authorization from NATO peacekeepers in Kosovo. 

The accord conspicuously omits any Serbian recognition of Kosovo’s independence. But analysts said the agreement was nevertheless a breakthrough.

For the straight dope on all Balkan matters I strongly suggest reading Nebojsa Malic who appears on Antiwar.com. His writing is clear and his arguments are forceful. There is an inherent bias in mainstream Western media against Serbia.