The U.S. and Kiev Have Lost

Though it might not look it, the American project in Kiev is in serious trouble. The victories in Slovyansk and Kamatorsk ended up costing far more than they were worth because they exposed the brutality of the junta -- so much so that reliable coup scribe David Herszenhorn poetically assessed that "Control came at the expense of untold destruction" -- and the spottiness of the rationale of the Anti-Terrorist Operation -- purported Russian supply and control of the rebels.

That is why NATO general secretary Anders Fogh Rasmussen was in D.C. yesterday, to blow life back into the corpse that Russia is to blame for everything going wrong in Ukraine. No proof is supplied. In fact, U.S. reporters on the ground regularly write about the anger of Donetsk People's Republic fighters because Russia is not doing anything to help them. The only proof Rasmussen provided was the imploring question, "Who else could supply anti-aircraft batteries?" Well, for one, I would think Ukraine herself. Why is it so hard to think that the freedom fighters of Novorossiya could liberate some heavy weapons from the feckless junta military?

Sabrina Tavernise and David Herszenhorn are reporting from Donetsk, "With Talks Uncertain, Ukrainian Rebels Cling to Hope in Strongholds," that

In Donetsk, at least for now, the rebels were confident enough to saunter around the city as if they owned it. With a population of one million, the city is outwardly affluent, with an Infiniti car dealership, a fancy sports stadium and several luxury hotels. Any bombing would seem likely to inflict severe civilian casualties as well as property damage, and the rebels may be counting on the government trying to avoid that.

Poroshenko made another phony overture for negotiations, insisting that the rebels must first lay their weapons down and turn themselves in. The chocolate king said he would talk " 'with the authentic owners' of this part of Ukraine, such as steelmakers and miners."

At this point the Obama administration must know that the game is up. Any assault from the air on a metropolis with all the trappings of Western prosperity will be impossible to justify. The optics will be irrefutable. State Department spokesperson Jen Psaki will have to be furloughed due to nervous exhaustion brought on by her "spectacular feats" of propaganda.

The city seemed as if it was waiting for something. Streets were empty. Many stores were closed. And rebels were building barricades on some of the smaller outer roads. A giant pile of gravel had been dumped across one access road in the Petrovsky neighborhood in the southwest of the city, and workers were moving large concrete barricades into place nearby. 

The quiet was broken around 1 p.m., when a fighter jet fired at an abandoned coal mine that had served as a makeshift base for some of the rebels. Local news agencies quoted Ukrainian forces as saying that fighter jets had not been flying Tuesday. But the sound was clear, prompting dozens of pedestrians to look skyward. No one was hurt, but residents were shaken. 

“I never thought I’d see such a thing in Donetsk,” said Alexander, 17, who was standing with his mother at a bus stop near the explosion. He said that his bus, No. 42, arrived with several broken windows just minutes later, and that people at the bus stop were panicking, with “tears and hysterics.” 

He had been trying to persuade his parents to let him join the rebels, he said, and now he would redouble his efforts. 

“If everyone here sits around with their hands crossed, who will protect our land?” he said.

Proof that Obama has bungled again is Germany. Germany has always been the linchpin in Ukraine. And Germany has now been lost by the administration. Merkel is gone. When Obama called the German chancellor last Thursday to jawbone her on ratcheting up another round of sanctions on Russia apparently he was clueless that a CIA spy who worked at the BND, the German federal intelligence service, had been arrested. Mark Mazzetti and Mark Landler have the story, "Spying Case Left Obama in Dark, U.S. Officials Say":

When President Obama placed a call to Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany last Thursday, he had a busy agenda: to consult with a close ally and to mobilize wavering Europeans to put more pressure on Russia to end its covert incursions in Ukraine.

What Mr. Obama did not know was that a day earlier, a young German intelligence operative had been arrested and had admitted that he had been passing secrets to the Central Intelligence Agency.

While Ms. Merkel chose not to raise the issue during the call, the fact that the president was kept in the dark about the blown spying operation at a particularly delicate moment in American relations with Germany has led frustrated White House officials to question who in the C.I.A.’s chain of command was aware of the case — and why that information did not make it to the Oval Office before the call.

I think it is clear that at this point Germany is moving briskly to reorient itself toward the BRICS. Merkel's trip to China on a day when the Chinese commemorated the 77th anniversary of the start of the Sino-Japanese War is a strong tell. No, I don't think there is any question of the U.S.-German estrangement:

Last week’s disclosure came at a delicate moment: Mr. Obama needs Ms. Merkel’s support to impose additional sanctions against Russia for its role in the Ukraine crisis. Germany, with extensive energy ties to Russia, has many reasons to resist, though Ms. Merkel has signaled she is running out of patience with President Vladimir V. Putin. 

The American authorities are also pursuing heavy financial penalties from German banks, including Commerzbank and Deutsche Bank, for dealing with Iran and other countries that are blacklisted by the United States. The German government owns 17 percent of Commerzbank, raising the prospect of further tensions. 

The prospect of new strains between the United States and Germany drew an expression of concern from the secretary general of NATO, Anders Fogh Rasmussen, who met with Mr. Obama at the White House on Tuesday. 

“I encourage them to sort this out as quickly as possible,” Mr. Rasmussen said in an interview after his meeting, adding, “All NATO allies profit from an intensive exchange of information and intelligence, so that’s also part of the whole equation.”

The U.S. and Kiev have lost. Will Donetsk and Luhansk be made to needlessly suffer? The answer at this point is yes.

Who Sponsors ISIS Has U.S. Playing Defense

This is the last paragraph of "As Sunnis Die in Iraq, a Cycle Is Restarting," by Alissa Rubin and Rod Nordland, which can be found in today's paper:

The Iraqi government issued a statement accusing Saudi Arabia of funding the Sunni extremists, as Mr. Maliki continued to offer explanations for the stunning success of the Sunni extremists that do not focus on his leadership. The statement drew almost immediate criticism from the United States, with Jen Psaki, the State Department spokeswoman, describing it as inaccurate and “offensive.”

Reuters has a little more information about the statement, which was made yesterday by Maliki's cabinet:

Maliki's government accused Saudi Arabia, the main Sunni power, of backing ISIL - something Riyadh denies. 

"We hold them responsible for supporting these groups financially and morally and for its outcome - which includes crimes that may qualify as genocide: the spilling of Iraqi blood, the destruction of Iraqi state institutions and historic and religious sites," a government statement said. 

Maliki has blamed Saudi Arabia for supporting militants in the past, but the language was unprecedented. On Monday, Riyadh blamed sectarianism in Baghdad for fuelling the violence.

NBC's story, by Cassandra Vinograd, "Iraq Cabinet Accuses Saudi Arabia of Spurring 'Genocide'," reads like it was written by USG as a Saudi defense brief.

But for corroboration of the Iraq cabinet statement there is Josh Rogin's Daily Beast article which appeared this past Saturday, "America's Allies Are Funding ISIS":

But in the years they were getting started, a key component of ISIS’s support came from wealthy individuals in the Arab Gulf States of Kuwait, Qatar and Saudi Arabia. Sometimes the support came with the tacit nod of approval from those regimes; often, it took advantage of poor money laundering protections in those states, according to officials, experts, and leaders of the Syrian opposition, which is fighting ISIS as well as the regime.

“Everybody knows the money is going through Kuwait and that it’s coming from the Arab Gulf,” said Andrew Tabler, senior fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. “Kuwait’s banking system and its money changers have long been a huge problem because they are a major conduit for money to extremist groups in Syria and now Iraq.”

Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki has been publicly accusing Saudi Arabia and Qatar of funding ISIS for months. Several reports have detailed how private Gulf funding to various Syrian rebel groups has splintered the Syrian opposition and paved the way for the rise of groups like ISIS and others.

Gulf donors support ISIS, the Syrian branch of al Qaeda called the al Nusrah Front, and other Islamic groups fighting on the ground in Syria because they feel an obligation to protect Sunnis suffering under the atrocities of the Assad regime. Many of these backers don’t trust or like the American backed moderate opposition, which the West has refused to provide significant arms to.

***

“ISIS is part of the Sunni forces that are fighting Shia forces in this regional sectarian conflict. They are in an existential battle with both the (Iranian aligned) Maliki government and the Assad regime,” said Tabler. “The U.S. has made the case as strongly as they can to regional countries, including Kuwait. But ultimately when you take a hands off, leading from behind approach to things, people don’t take you seriously and they take matters into their own hands.”

Donors in Kuwait, the Sunni majority Kingdom on Iraq’s border, have taken advantage of Kuwait’s weak financial rules to channel hundreds of millions of dollars to a host of Syrian rebel brigades, according to a December 2013 report by The Brookings Institution, a Washington think tank that receives some funding from the Qatari government.

“Over the last two and a half years, Kuwait has emerged as a financing and organizational hub for charities and individuals supporting Syria’s myriad rebel groups,” the report said. “Today, there is evidence that Kuwaiti donors have backed rebels who have committed atrocities and who are either directly linked to al-Qa’ida or cooperate with its affiliated brigades on the ground.”

Kuwaiti donors collect funds from donors in other Arab Gulf countries and the money often travels through Turkey or Jordan before reaching its Syrian destination, the report said. The governments of Kuwait, Qatar, and Saudi Arabia have passed laws to curb the flow of illicit funds, but many donors still operate out in the open. The Brookings paper argues the U.S. government needs to do more.

“The U.S. Treasury is aware of this activity and has expressed concern about this flow of private financing. But Western diplomats’ and officials’ general response has been a collective shrug,” the report states.

When confronted with the problem, Gulf leaders often justify allowing their Salafi constituents to fund Syrian extremist groups by pointing back to what they see as a failed U.S. policy in Syria and a loss of credibility after President Obama reneged on his pledge to strike Assad after the regime used chemical weapons.

That’s what Prince Bandar bin Sultan, head of Saudi intelligence since 2012 and former Saudi ambassador in Washington, reportedly told Secretary of State John Kerry when Kerry pressed him on Saudi financing of extremist groups earlier this year. Saudi Arabia has retaken a leadership role in past months guiding help to the Syrian armed rebels, displacing Qatar, which was seen as supporting some of the worst of the worst organizations on the ground.

The Saudis say that they only fund moderate Islamists. But the whole moderate vs. extremist distinction is a word game meant to obscure the fact that, as in the heady days of "Charlie Wilson's War," the U.S. is up to its old tricks again backing, along with its good monarchical friends in the gulf, the Mujahideen.

That's why you have the denial by the truly odious Jen Psaki. As a rule of thumb, if Psaki goes out of her way to issue a strong denial, as she did by labeling the Iraq cabinet statement as "offensive," you know there is a rat in the house. Psaki lies. This is what she does for a living.

For seasoned news consumers, the unified response from Western governments and the prestige press that Maliki is to blame for all that is presently going wrong in Iraq (with nary a word about the role of wealthy gulf emirs in Jiffy Popping a Salafi army into being, nor the destabilizing effects of the 2003 U.S. invasion) is a strong indication that the goal of USG is not to fight terrorism but to neuter Shiite state power.

Another fruitful line of inquiry is to look at the rat line of Salafi fighters. Carlotta Gall made a start yesterday with "Spanish Police Target Cells Recruiting War Volunteers." More than half of ISIS's fighters are foreigners. Getting them to the battlefield requires a logistics network that a localized Anbar jihadi group could not have put together in such a short span of time. The jihad network is run out of mosques and madrassas. This network is funded by the gulf emirates, foremost of which is Saudi Arabia.

USG knows all this. But where is the rallying cry for sanctions? Compare it to the U.S. response to the peaceful vote in Crimea to accede to the Russian Federation. The U.S. is now in the midst of relaunching the Cold War with all its inherent risk of nuclear annihilation. And in the case of Crimea becoming part of Russia, there is no risk to U.S. national security. But a caliphate rising in the Middle East? That certainly represents a risk. So far the U.S. seems to be doing everything it can to make sure it becomes a reality.

Voting in Donbass a Success, U.S. Cries Foul

Much to the chagrin of the junta in Kiev and their backers in Western capitals, Sunday's referendum in Donetsk and Luhansk on greater autonomy from the coup government, despite a few instances, one fatal, of junta-initiated criminal violence, went well, really better than anticipated. Andrew Kramer and Alan Cowell report this morning in "Kiev Condemns Separatist Vote as Russia Offers Modest Support":

In Donetsk, the chairman of the central election committee of the separatist government, Roman Lyagin, said the preliminary results showed that “about 90 percent” of voters supported regional autonomy, but he added that a final count would take about a week because of difficulties in collecting ballots. The preliminary count, he told journalists, showed 89.07 percent in favor of self-rule and 10.19 percent opposed, while just under one percent of the ballots were filled out incorrectly or damaged.

In Luhansk, a deputy director of the election committee told the Russian news agency Interfax that 95.98 percent of voters wanted self-rule for the region and that turnout was 81 percent.

The first reports filed yesterday by Kramer were overwhelmingly positive. Then the final story posted shifted to accentuate the negative, "Ukraine Vote on Separation Held in Chaos." What that headline does not clarify is that the chaos, what there was of it, was created by the Ukrainian national guard. The last we time we heard from them they were terrorizing with tanks and APCs peaceful parade-goers in Mariupol on Friday.

Kramer goes out of his way to create the impression that significant numbers, possibly a majority, of voters in eastern Ukraine stayed home rather than participate in Sunday's referendum. This is based on the oft-repeated results of a recent Pew poll:

The provinces of Donetsk and Luhansk are predominantly Russian-speaking rather than Ukrainian-speaking, and in past elections they have tended to back pro-Russian politicians. But that does not mean that most people there want to secede from Ukraine. A poll by the Pew Research Center released this month indicated that 70 percent of respondents in eastern Ukraine favored keeping the country united, while only 18 percent favored secession; the remainder were undecided. 

The referendums demonstrated that there was substantial popular support for the pro-Russian separatists in some areas. But it offered no reliable gauge of the breadth of that support. It was not clear whether long voting lines had formed because few polling places were open, or because turnout was running high.

A couple things about this Pew poll. For one, notice that its 70 percent in favor of a united Ukraine does not necessarily exclude a yes vote in favor of the question asked yesterday, "Do you support the act of self-rule for the People's Republic of Donetsk?" Federalization of Ukraine could encompass self-rule by the regions. Secondly, as Moon of Alabama makes clear this morning, "Ukraine: Serious Media Largely Confirm Donetsk Poll Results," the Pew poll was conducted before the Odessa massacre Friday before last where 40 pro-federalization protesters were chased into a trade union building and burned alive and this past Friday's slaughter in Mariupol of innocent bystanders.

The Obama administration response to the Donbass plebiscite? Outright rejection:

A State Department spokeswoman, Jen Psaki, said the United States would not recognize the results of the referendums, whatever they were. She said they were “illegal under Ukrainian law, and are an attempt to create further division and disorder.”

Echoed by the British poodle Hague:

Speaking in Brussels, William Hague, the British foreign secretary, said of the votes in eastern Ukraine: “These attempts at referendums have zero credibility in the eyes of the world. They are illegal by anybody’s standards.”

Those who have zero credibility in the eyes of the world are the NATO powers. More cosmetic sanctions directed at Russia are likely. What the U.S. and its European toadies are attempting to elide here is the obvious fact that people of the Donbass do not want to have anything to do with the coup regime in Kiev. This is not going to change. No amount of U.S.-prompted violence is going to alter the primary "facts on the ground." The United States should be ushering the parties to the negotiating table. But we know from experience that a rogue hyper-power addicted to violence is not going to make such a move. So we are back to the failed state scenario, a U.S. specialty.