On Saturday (28/3/15) Nigeria attempted to hold it's General Election. Given that Nigeria is effectively in a state of war due to the Boko Haram insurgency in the north of the country I thought this would be the worst possible time to hold an election and the fighting had already caused it to be delayed by 6 weeks. However with the backing of the US amongst others the opposition All Progressives Congress (APC) demanded that it be held.
The APC also demanded that an extremely complex voter registration system was introduced for this election. Here in the UK in order to vote you register your name and address with the local council and that is checked off a paper list when you go to cast your vote.
However in order to vote in Nigeria people had to register their biometric data such as fingerprints and iris scans in order to be issued with biometric ID card. At the polling station that ID card is scanned by computer and the biometric data is checked against the prospective voter who have to have their fingerprints etc re-scanned. This biometric system is more complex then the passport/immigration controls at many European nations. If a Republican controlled state in America tried introducing such a system Obama's Democratic party would howl in complaint that it was a racist measure intended to exclude voters and therefore a violation of the cherished Voting Rights of 1965.
To the surprise of absolutely no-one this voter registration has been a disaster with many voters simply not being issued with ID cards ahead of polling day. On polling day itself the incumbent President Goodluck Jonathan went to cast his vote in front of all the TV cameras and was embarrassed when the computer failed to recognise him as a registered voter. The President was just the first of many to suffer problems with the computer failing to recognise so many registered voters that voting had to be extended into Sunday (29/3/15).
Since then an alarming picture has begun to emerge of a pro-APC bias amongst the voting problems. The most significant example has been the Abia state which is widely considered to be a stronghold of Jonathan's People's Democratic Party (PDP). At the last election the PDP secured around 3.5 million votes. This time around the APC came a distant second with just 13,000 votes but the PDP only managed to secure fewer then 400,000 votes. In that time the population of Abia has not changed dramatically so the only reasonable conclusion is that some 3.1 million - predominately PDP - voters have been excluded from the election.
So far 33 of Nigeria's 36 states have declared a result and they put Muhammadu Buhari's APC in the lead by roughly 2.7 million which is fewer then the number of voters who appear to have gone missing in Abia. Also under Nigeria's election laws in order to be declared the winner a candidate must secured more the 25% of the vote in two-thirds of all states. It seems extremely unlikely that Buhari has been unable to do this but he has still arbitrarily declared himself the winner.
It seems to me then that Nigeria is on the brink of being dragged back into the dark days of the 1980's when coups and military dictatorships were common. This is of course a time that Buhari is very familiar with. Presumably the US are viewing this as just punishment for Nigeria's refusal to participate in the Rihanna operation.
As such the only way forward seems to be for Nigeria to re-run the vote once the voter registration problems have been resolved. The only other alternative is to wait to see if Buhari will use tanks to back up his APC.
17:00 on 31/3/15 (UK date).
Tuesday, 31 March 2015
Sunday, 29 March 2015
Operation Gold Beard: Day 4.
Back in 2011 Saudi Arabia launched an armed insurgency in its neighbour Yemen in order to overthrow the government of Mohamed Saleh - a member of the Shia Houthi tribe. Once Saleh's government had been overthrown in 2012 Saudi Arabia supplanted a Sunni government led by Abdrabbuh Mansour Hadi which was utterly obedient to Saudi Arabia.
In part Saudi Arabia did this out of fear. An absolute Monarchy Saudi Arabia's ruling al-Saud family aim to keep their population of around 30 million in line by imposing a 19th century perversion of Islam known as Whabbism. Their problem has always been that Shia Muslims are far less likely then Sunni Muslims to fall into the Whabbist trap.
So amid the revolutions that swirled around the middle-east region during 2011 - particularly the Bahraini uprising that was brutally crushed by Saudi troops - the al-Sauds became increasingly concerned that this demand for democracy and freedom would catch on in Saudi Arabia and they would be overthrown.
Beyond the fear Saudi Arabia also saw an opportunity to massively increase both their regional and global power. Although it doesn't have much going for it Yemen's location is of massive strategic importance sitting at the southern entrance to the Red Sea. At the other end of the Red Sea you have the Suez Canal through which most sea traffic between the eastern and western hemispheres travels. So effectively whomever controls the Yemeni port of Aden controls global trade.
At the other side of what is known as the Gulf of Aden sits Somalia. The piracy routes across the Gulf of Aden have long been a vital supply route for what I term the new al-Shabaab that has been terrorising the nation since the start of 2011. Essentially charcoal is smuggled by al-Shabaab into Yemen and in return money and weapons are smuggled back to al-Shabaab in Somalia.
Once these weapons and cash arrive in Somalia they can then be smuggled north through Sudan into Egypt and Libya. From Somalia al-Shabaab can also move weapons and fighters south-west into Kenya and Uganda to destabilise those nations.
Once Kenya and Uganda have been forced to move their limited security forces towards Somalia to defend against al-Shabaab attacks it opens up fresh smuggling routes from the Indian Ocean to resource rich but conflict ravaged central African nations such as the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and the Central African Republic (CAR). If you have any gadget with a battery such as a smartphone or a tablet there is a good chance it has come - in part - from either the DRC or the CAR.
Much like a square peg being forced into a round hole the Hadi regime has never really fitted in in Yemen. Things really began to deteriorate towards the end of August 2014 when Hadi announced that he would be withdrawing from the UN backed transitional roadmap that had brought him to power and instead announced that he was going to rule as a dictator. This prompted the Houthis who have long been considered the traditional rulers of Yemen to start a largely peaceful uprising that by the start of January 2015 had swept across the north of the country to Yemen's capital city Sana'a.
On January 7th 2015 Saudi sponsored Sunni jihadists who had helped overthrown Saleh carried out a series of terror attacks in Paris, France that began with the attack on the Charlie Hebdo magazine. This was the final straw for many Yemenis and the anti-Hadi uprising swept into to the capital and within a week Hadi had been deposed and arrested.
Unfortunately the part of the United Nation's charter that guarantees nations the right to self-determination doesn't appear to apply to nations that disagree with Saudi Arabia so under intense international pressure Yemen's transitional government were forced to release Hadi from prison and he fled to the Sunni Jihadists stronghold in the south of Yemen.
To the surprise of absolutely no-one from there Hadi teamed up with the Sunni jihadists and launched an attempt to re-take control of the country. This offensive began on March 20th (20/3/15) with twin suicide attacks against predominately Shia Mosques in Sana'a that killed 143 but fortunately it quickly collapsed with even the southern Sunni tribes siding with the transitional government in Sana'a over Hadi. Displaying an impressive grasp of English one Sunni tribal leader even went so far as to describe Hadi as "Trying to F*ck Yemen."
By last Wednesday (25/3/15) Hadi's insurgency had entirely collapsed with the Yemeni military siding with the government to oust Hadi supporters from their positions in the South. Hadi himself was forced to flee Yemen by boat and following an evacuation from the boat by the Oman navy was flown by medical evacuation jet - the only aircraft available at such short notice - to Saudi Arabia where he has been granted asylum.
As we've come to expect Saudi Arabia's response to not getting their own way was swift and violent. That night they launched a large-scale air assault on Yemen and because obviously nations which share a land border with Saudi Arabia are hesitant to tell them "No" they were quickly able to form a coalition of Gulf Co-Operation Council (GCC) nations.
On that first night of intense air-strikes the Saudis claimed that they were targeting the command and control structures of the Houthis. However with the Houthis being an ethnic group rather then a militia or even a political party the Saudis appear to have levelled entire blocks of civilian neighbourhoods in both capital Sana'a and the northern city of Hajjah.
Although no-one in the international community spoke out against this racially charged aggression that silence seems to have spoken volumes to the Saudis. They now seem to be very closely following the strategy used by Israel during the 2014 Gaza war by shifting their focus onto destroying Yemeni weapons stores.
It must be said though that it is extremely difficult getting accurate information out of Yemen at the moment. A significant part of the problem is that the Saudis have launched this war on a lie and therefore are continuing to lie throughout. For example they will not admit that on Friday night/Saturday morning (27/3/15-28/3/15) that they lost an aircraft to Yemeni fire over Sana'a despite the entire incident being caught on camera. Yesterday they claimed that a column of Yemeni troops were moving north to attack Saudi Arabia. No such attack took place and the Saudis have not produced any evidence to support their claim.
Another major problem is that many nations - particularly ones who are allied with France - cannot justify why they are supporting this war. For example both the US and the UK are providing both military support and diplomatic cover to this war. However there has been no Presidental address to the nation nor Parliamentary debate. Therefore governments in these nations would prefer it if there was a complete information black out.
The main problem getting information out though is that the Yemeni people are terrified having been subjected to four successive nights of aerial bombardment. What they are most afraid of though is that Saudi Arabia will launch a ground invasion of Yemen. The Saudis have already made it clear that they see the ultimate objective of this war to be the destruction of an ethnic group and when Saudi troops went into Bahrain to crush the uprising in 2011 they did so through the widespread use of murder, torture and the wanton destruction of private property.
Therefore there is an extremely high level of fear amongst Yemenis - particularly CNN's main source - of talking about the impact of the bombing incase they will singled out for retribution by the invading army.
29/3/15 (UK date).
In part Saudi Arabia did this out of fear. An absolute Monarchy Saudi Arabia's ruling al-Saud family aim to keep their population of around 30 million in line by imposing a 19th century perversion of Islam known as Whabbism. Their problem has always been that Shia Muslims are far less likely then Sunni Muslims to fall into the Whabbist trap.
So amid the revolutions that swirled around the middle-east region during 2011 - particularly the Bahraini uprising that was brutally crushed by Saudi troops - the al-Sauds became increasingly concerned that this demand for democracy and freedom would catch on in Saudi Arabia and they would be overthrown.
Beyond the fear Saudi Arabia also saw an opportunity to massively increase both their regional and global power. Although it doesn't have much going for it Yemen's location is of massive strategic importance sitting at the southern entrance to the Red Sea. At the other end of the Red Sea you have the Suez Canal through which most sea traffic between the eastern and western hemispheres travels. So effectively whomever controls the Yemeni port of Aden controls global trade.
At the other side of what is known as the Gulf of Aden sits Somalia. The piracy routes across the Gulf of Aden have long been a vital supply route for what I term the new al-Shabaab that has been terrorising the nation since the start of 2011. Essentially charcoal is smuggled by al-Shabaab into Yemen and in return money and weapons are smuggled back to al-Shabaab in Somalia.
Once these weapons and cash arrive in Somalia they can then be smuggled north through Sudan into Egypt and Libya. From Somalia al-Shabaab can also move weapons and fighters south-west into Kenya and Uganda to destabilise those nations.
Once Kenya and Uganda have been forced to move their limited security forces towards Somalia to defend against al-Shabaab attacks it opens up fresh smuggling routes from the Indian Ocean to resource rich but conflict ravaged central African nations such as the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and the Central African Republic (CAR). If you have any gadget with a battery such as a smartphone or a tablet there is a good chance it has come - in part - from either the DRC or the CAR.
Much like a square peg being forced into a round hole the Hadi regime has never really fitted in in Yemen. Things really began to deteriorate towards the end of August 2014 when Hadi announced that he would be withdrawing from the UN backed transitional roadmap that had brought him to power and instead announced that he was going to rule as a dictator. This prompted the Houthis who have long been considered the traditional rulers of Yemen to start a largely peaceful uprising that by the start of January 2015 had swept across the north of the country to Yemen's capital city Sana'a.
On January 7th 2015 Saudi sponsored Sunni jihadists who had helped overthrown Saleh carried out a series of terror attacks in Paris, France that began with the attack on the Charlie Hebdo magazine. This was the final straw for many Yemenis and the anti-Hadi uprising swept into to the capital and within a week Hadi had been deposed and arrested.
Unfortunately the part of the United Nation's charter that guarantees nations the right to self-determination doesn't appear to apply to nations that disagree with Saudi Arabia so under intense international pressure Yemen's transitional government were forced to release Hadi from prison and he fled to the Sunni Jihadists stronghold in the south of Yemen.
To the surprise of absolutely no-one from there Hadi teamed up with the Sunni jihadists and launched an attempt to re-take control of the country. This offensive began on March 20th (20/3/15) with twin suicide attacks against predominately Shia Mosques in Sana'a that killed 143 but fortunately it quickly collapsed with even the southern Sunni tribes siding with the transitional government in Sana'a over Hadi. Displaying an impressive grasp of English one Sunni tribal leader even went so far as to describe Hadi as "Trying to F*ck Yemen."
By last Wednesday (25/3/15) Hadi's insurgency had entirely collapsed with the Yemeni military siding with the government to oust Hadi supporters from their positions in the South. Hadi himself was forced to flee Yemen by boat and following an evacuation from the boat by the Oman navy was flown by medical evacuation jet - the only aircraft available at such short notice - to Saudi Arabia where he has been granted asylum.
As we've come to expect Saudi Arabia's response to not getting their own way was swift and violent. That night they launched a large-scale air assault on Yemen and because obviously nations which share a land border with Saudi Arabia are hesitant to tell them "No" they were quickly able to form a coalition of Gulf Co-Operation Council (GCC) nations.
On that first night of intense air-strikes the Saudis claimed that they were targeting the command and control structures of the Houthis. However with the Houthis being an ethnic group rather then a militia or even a political party the Saudis appear to have levelled entire blocks of civilian neighbourhoods in both capital Sana'a and the northern city of Hajjah.
Although no-one in the international community spoke out against this racially charged aggression that silence seems to have spoken volumes to the Saudis. They now seem to be very closely following the strategy used by Israel during the 2014 Gaza war by shifting their focus onto destroying Yemeni weapons stores.
It must be said though that it is extremely difficult getting accurate information out of Yemen at the moment. A significant part of the problem is that the Saudis have launched this war on a lie and therefore are continuing to lie throughout. For example they will not admit that on Friday night/Saturday morning (27/3/15-28/3/15) that they lost an aircraft to Yemeni fire over Sana'a despite the entire incident being caught on camera. Yesterday they claimed that a column of Yemeni troops were moving north to attack Saudi Arabia. No such attack took place and the Saudis have not produced any evidence to support their claim.
Another major problem is that many nations - particularly ones who are allied with France - cannot justify why they are supporting this war. For example both the US and the UK are providing both military support and diplomatic cover to this war. However there has been no Presidental address to the nation nor Parliamentary debate. Therefore governments in these nations would prefer it if there was a complete information black out.
The main problem getting information out though is that the Yemeni people are terrified having been subjected to four successive nights of aerial bombardment. What they are most afraid of though is that Saudi Arabia will launch a ground invasion of Yemen. The Saudis have already made it clear that they see the ultimate objective of this war to be the destruction of an ethnic group and when Saudi troops went into Bahrain to crush the uprising in 2011 they did so through the widespread use of murder, torture and the wanton destruction of private property.
Therefore there is an extremely high level of fear amongst Yemenis - particularly CNN's main source - of talking about the impact of the bombing incase they will singled out for retribution by the invading army.
29/3/15 (UK date).
The World's a Rough Old Place.
On Tuesday (24/3/15) a GermanWings Airbus A320 en route from Barcelona, Spain to Dusseldorf, Germany crashed in the French Alps killing all 150 people on board. Initially I ruled out pilot suicide because I assumed that European airlines operated the 2 crew members of the flight deck at all times rule that is used in the US. Also that wasn't the sort of rumour I wanted to start without at least some evidence to back it up.
On Thursday (26/3/15) though French investigators confirmed that the aircraft's co-pilot had indeed locked the pilot out of the flight deck and deliberately crashed the aircraft. It has since been suggested that the co-pilot was suffering from some form of undisclosed mental illness at the time. As someone with extensive experience of mental illness (mainly other people's) this is the moment you would expect me to pop up and offer a more detailed explanation.
That more detailed explanation is something that the UK has been waiting the best part of 10 years for having subjected me to a medical research project on the subject without my consent. Over the years the UK has frequently expressed their displeasure at this research project's failure to produce results by talking in terms of delays to long suffering passengers - often airline passengers.
The first step of this research project was to effectively kidnap someone I refer to as my "lesbian wife" although I think bisexual is probably the more accurate term. Immediately prior to this I visited that lesbian wife in Spain where she was living at the time. Although she was living in Madrid my return journey involved me spending far too much of my life at Barcelona airport due to a diamond heist at Schiphol airport in the Netherlands. Due to what they observed during this visit the Spanish have always been strong supporters of mine and opponents of the UK's research project.
Therefore it looks as though the Germans engineered this crash as a way to take Spain to task over its opposition to the UK's research project.
A key trigger is likely to have been recent medical tests that the co-pilot underwent which may have led to him believing that he was going blind and therefore would lose his pilots license. Although it was an extreme example carefully constructed by the UK people who saw "The Dress" as white and gold rather then it's actual colours of blue and black are less likely to be able to qualify medically as a pilot. Also my own eyesight is notoriously terrible.
In order to fully stick to the metaphor the Germans are likely to have faked the results of those sight tests in the way the UK has faked the results of numerous medical tests most noticeably my grandmother's diagnosis of dementia. However strictly speaking in that instance the UK simply refused to carry out the legally mandated medical tests before making that diagnosis.
After all it will hardly trouble the Nobel committee for medicine if I point out that the type of depressive psychosis that often leads to suicide tends to be a reaction to despair at being dis-empowered in some area of the patients life. The loss of a relationship such as a marriage or the loss of a job/career being the most common examples. A tiny minority of those affected will lash out by trying to exert control and therefore power over the people around them.
I should point out though that there is rarely much to be gained by trying to understand the thought process of a crazy person. After all the fact their thought process doesn't function properly is the main reason we consider them as a crazy person.
13:05 on 29/3/15 (UK date).
On Thursday (26/3/15) though French investigators confirmed that the aircraft's co-pilot had indeed locked the pilot out of the flight deck and deliberately crashed the aircraft. It has since been suggested that the co-pilot was suffering from some form of undisclosed mental illness at the time. As someone with extensive experience of mental illness (mainly other people's) this is the moment you would expect me to pop up and offer a more detailed explanation.
That more detailed explanation is something that the UK has been waiting the best part of 10 years for having subjected me to a medical research project on the subject without my consent. Over the years the UK has frequently expressed their displeasure at this research project's failure to produce results by talking in terms of delays to long suffering passengers - often airline passengers.
The first step of this research project was to effectively kidnap someone I refer to as my "lesbian wife" although I think bisexual is probably the more accurate term. Immediately prior to this I visited that lesbian wife in Spain where she was living at the time. Although she was living in Madrid my return journey involved me spending far too much of my life at Barcelona airport due to a diamond heist at Schiphol airport in the Netherlands. Due to what they observed during this visit the Spanish have always been strong supporters of mine and opponents of the UK's research project.
Therefore it looks as though the Germans engineered this crash as a way to take Spain to task over its opposition to the UK's research project.
A key trigger is likely to have been recent medical tests that the co-pilot underwent which may have led to him believing that he was going blind and therefore would lose his pilots license. Although it was an extreme example carefully constructed by the UK people who saw "The Dress" as white and gold rather then it's actual colours of blue and black are less likely to be able to qualify medically as a pilot. Also my own eyesight is notoriously terrible.
In order to fully stick to the metaphor the Germans are likely to have faked the results of those sight tests in the way the UK has faked the results of numerous medical tests most noticeably my grandmother's diagnosis of dementia. However strictly speaking in that instance the UK simply refused to carry out the legally mandated medical tests before making that diagnosis.
After all it will hardly trouble the Nobel committee for medicine if I point out that the type of depressive psychosis that often leads to suicide tends to be a reaction to despair at being dis-empowered in some area of the patients life. The loss of a relationship such as a marriage or the loss of a job/career being the most common examples. A tiny minority of those affected will lash out by trying to exert control and therefore power over the people around them.
I should point out though that there is rarely much to be gained by trying to understand the thought process of a crazy person. After all the fact their thought process doesn't function properly is the main reason we consider them as a crazy person.
13:05 on 29/3/15 (UK date).
Friday, 27 March 2015
Nigeria's Election.
On Saturday (28/3/15) Nigerians will go to the polls in a General Election that has been delayed for six weeks due to the conflict with Boko Haram in the north of the country.
Initially the All Progressives Congress (APC) claimed that incumbent People's Democratic Party (PDP) were using Boko Haram to steal the election because the conflict would prevent ADP voters in the north from participating. Then when the election was delayed the ADP again claimed that this was another ploy to keep the PDP in power. Personally I don't think the election should have been held at all until the threat from Boko Haram has been properly dealt with. However there has been immense international pressure - particularly from the US - for the election to go ahead.
Despite my concerns that it is probably not the best time for an election to be held I have absolutely no problem endorsing the PDP incumbent Goodluck Jonathan for a second term as President.
Since it's independence in 1960 Nigeria has always been a complex country. Being the 10th largest oil producer in the World and with extensive reserves of other natural resources such coal, gold and bauxite which is used to make aluminium Nigeria should be one of the World's largest economies. However it has always struggled to benefit from its wealth against a long history of military coups and civil wars including the big 1967-1970 civil war between the predominately Muslim north and the predominately Christian south. Then following the end of a long period of military rule there was the so-called oil wars in the Niger Delta region. Nowadays there is the Islamist threat of Boko Haram.
During his first term in office President Jonathan has struck me as a man who very much understands the challenges that face Nigeria and as leader who is more then capable of meeting those challenges. For example in early 2013 Jonathan resisted intense international pressure to join an multi-African coalition to the defeat the Islamists in Mali while the US were putting together their big Rihanna operation. Due to Nigeria's refusal to participate what would have been a very complicated operation in Mali instead turned into a swift and decisive defeat for the Islamists at the hands of France and Chad.
I will agree that Jonathan's handling of the threat from Boko Haram who seem to have emerged from the conflict has not been excellent. However you have to remember that over the last 15 years the Nigerian military has been run-down by successive governments in order to prevent it from staging further coups. That is not the sort of problem that can be solved overnight. Also it's worth pointing out that the international community led by the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) hasn't been in any particular rush to see Boko Haram defeated either.
Jonathan's main success though has come in the area of economics and development. In my work on the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) I frequently find myself pointing to Nigeria as an example of a nation that could benefit hugely from improving the way it uses fossil fuels and generates electricity.
Goodluck Jonathan has already been far ahead of me on this point. For example in 2013 he unveiled a USD4million plan to clean up areas that have been damaged by lead pollution from the oil industry. His main success though has been his 2011 efforts to remove subsidies on the fuel many Nigerians use to power generators to produce electricity. Not only is this a hugely polluting way of producing electricity it is also massively expensive.
Therefore it would be much better for Nigeria to use the money it spends on the fuel subsidy to invest in coal or even renewable power plants. Not only would this reduce pollution it would help provide Nigeria with the reliable source of electricity it needs to develop other industries and bring down the cost of electricity for all Nigerians from around USD0.4 per hour to around USD0.05 per hour.
Nigeria's leadership in this area has been so effective that most developing nations in the UNFCCC process are now simply copying the idea. Many of the Caribbean states for example are pressuring the US to pass laws to stop their oil companies giving out generators for free.
Nigeria itself has been rewarded for Jonathan's economic reforms by surpassing South Africa as Africa's largest economy.
I think the best endorsement for Goodluck Jonathan though is the amount of time, money and effort that foreign nations have spent trying to get rid of him by supporting groups such as Boko Haram, the Bring Back Our Girls campaign and the Occupy Nigeria protests against the scrapping of the fuel subsidy.
16:05 on 27/3/15 (UK date).
Initially the All Progressives Congress (APC) claimed that incumbent People's Democratic Party (PDP) were using Boko Haram to steal the election because the conflict would prevent ADP voters in the north from participating. Then when the election was delayed the ADP again claimed that this was another ploy to keep the PDP in power. Personally I don't think the election should have been held at all until the threat from Boko Haram has been properly dealt with. However there has been immense international pressure - particularly from the US - for the election to go ahead.
Despite my concerns that it is probably not the best time for an election to be held I have absolutely no problem endorsing the PDP incumbent Goodluck Jonathan for a second term as President.
Since it's independence in 1960 Nigeria has always been a complex country. Being the 10th largest oil producer in the World and with extensive reserves of other natural resources such coal, gold and bauxite which is used to make aluminium Nigeria should be one of the World's largest economies. However it has always struggled to benefit from its wealth against a long history of military coups and civil wars including the big 1967-1970 civil war between the predominately Muslim north and the predominately Christian south. Then following the end of a long period of military rule there was the so-called oil wars in the Niger Delta region. Nowadays there is the Islamist threat of Boko Haram.
During his first term in office President Jonathan has struck me as a man who very much understands the challenges that face Nigeria and as leader who is more then capable of meeting those challenges. For example in early 2013 Jonathan resisted intense international pressure to join an multi-African coalition to the defeat the Islamists in Mali while the US were putting together their big Rihanna operation. Due to Nigeria's refusal to participate what would have been a very complicated operation in Mali instead turned into a swift and decisive defeat for the Islamists at the hands of France and Chad.
I will agree that Jonathan's handling of the threat from Boko Haram who seem to have emerged from the conflict has not been excellent. However you have to remember that over the last 15 years the Nigerian military has been run-down by successive governments in order to prevent it from staging further coups. That is not the sort of problem that can be solved overnight. Also it's worth pointing out that the international community led by the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) hasn't been in any particular rush to see Boko Haram defeated either.
Jonathan's main success though has come in the area of economics and development. In my work on the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) I frequently find myself pointing to Nigeria as an example of a nation that could benefit hugely from improving the way it uses fossil fuels and generates electricity.
Goodluck Jonathan has already been far ahead of me on this point. For example in 2013 he unveiled a USD4million plan to clean up areas that have been damaged by lead pollution from the oil industry. His main success though has been his 2011 efforts to remove subsidies on the fuel many Nigerians use to power generators to produce electricity. Not only is this a hugely polluting way of producing electricity it is also massively expensive.
Therefore it would be much better for Nigeria to use the money it spends on the fuel subsidy to invest in coal or even renewable power plants. Not only would this reduce pollution it would help provide Nigeria with the reliable source of electricity it needs to develop other industries and bring down the cost of electricity for all Nigerians from around USD0.4 per hour to around USD0.05 per hour.
Nigeria's leadership in this area has been so effective that most developing nations in the UNFCCC process are now simply copying the idea. Many of the Caribbean states for example are pressuring the US to pass laws to stop their oil companies giving out generators for free.
Nigeria itself has been rewarded for Jonathan's economic reforms by surpassing South Africa as Africa's largest economy.
I think the best endorsement for Goodluck Jonathan though is the amount of time, money and effort that foreign nations have spent trying to get rid of him by supporting groups such as Boko Haram, the Bring Back Our Girls campaign and the Occupy Nigeria protests against the scrapping of the fuel subsidy.
16:05 on 27/3/15 (UK date).
Thursday, 26 March 2015
Operation Featherweight: Month 8, Week 4, Day 6.
On February 17th (17/2/15) three British schoolgirls aged 15 and 16 left the UK for Turkey where they crossed into Syria to join the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL). The resulting media frenzy and the UK Parliament's Home Affairs Select Committee's love affair with the TV cameras, any TV camera set in motion an unfortunate series of events between the UK and Turkey.
For example on March 12th (12/3/15) - two days after the Select Committee hearing - Turkey arrested a Syrian man who had been providing information to an unnamed nation about the ISIL smuggling routes that exist in Turkey. Also I really wish I was joking when I say that this saga probably played a role in Zayn Malik's decision to quit the British boyband "One Direction." Perhaps more importantly though it was today announced that the saga seems to have forced the UK to send up to 75 military personnel to Turkey to train Syrian Jihadists as part of US President Obama's harebrained scheme which is apparently still going ahead.
Obviously the UK can't be seen to train Jihadists in Turkey whilst at the same time highlighting Turkey's role in supplying Jihadist fighters to ISIL. So today also saw the sudden and surprising not guilty verdict in the case of Erol Incedal - a Turkish national being tried on unspecified Islamic terrorism charges. Held in unprecedented secrecy which prevent even the charges being known the Incedal trial has been a coded way for the UK to discuss Turkey's role in exporting quasi-Islamic terrorism to Egypt, Libya and Syria.
For their part the Turks prepared for the UK announcement by last night bombing the Ankara offices of the ISIL supporting magazine "Adimlar." Although one person was killed in this bombing for an operation carried out by military intelligence it was little more then a glancing blow. The purpose was to send the message internationally that Turkey is prepared to take action against ISIL supporters within Turkey. Domestically though it was intended to energise Turkish President Erdogan's increasingly Salafi base by allow him to highlight the way the evil west is prepared to get so outraged by the Charlie Hebdo attacks in Paris, France but seems to celebrate a similar attack against Muslims.
As a bit of random information that doesn't seem to fit anywhere else I should point out that on Tuesday (24/3/15) Canada announced its intention to expand its role in the anti-ISIL coalition to include targets in Syria. Due to the ruling majority in the Canadian Parliament this measure is extremely likely to pass although they've have not stated whether it will cover all of Syria or just certain areas of Syria where ISIL are know to be operating.
The big development in the last couple of days though is that on Saturday (21/3/15) the US-led coalition - and specifically the US - started carrying out surveillance flights in aid of the Iraqi Security Force (ISF) operation to liberate Tikrit. This was done at the request of the Iraqi government and last night the US began conducting air-strikes on ISIL positions in and around the city which is located around 150km (90 miles) north of the Iraqi capital Baghdad.
Since the ISF operation began on March 2nd (2/3/15) it has been notoriously difficult to get accurate information about how it has been progressing. In part this is because in the absence of an ISF spokesman controlling the flow of information various leaders of all the different groups involved such as the Iraqi Army, Iraqi Special Forces, the Iraqi police and the Popular Mobilisation Front (PMF) have been giving different, off-the-record, accounts of how their particular part of the operation is going. Also with the operation taking place without the permission of the US-led coalition many western news agencies have at best been boycotting it completely and some have even gone so far as to brief against it.
The best assessment of how the operation has been going I heard is that it was completed two weeks ago and the city had been totally liberated. Obviously this is not the case and the second best assessment it that a small group of ISIL fighters are pinned down in the presidential palace compound. The BBC however indicate that some 1000+ ISIL fighters not only hold the palace compound and the city centre but also the western al-Zuhur neighbourhood and the northern Qadisiya neighbourhood although that strikes me more as a map off anywhere fighting has taken place in the city in the last month.
At around 18:00 on 26/3/15 (UK date) I seem to have completely forgotten the point I was trying to make. Hopefully I'll recover it and return after dinner.
Edited at around 19:35 on 26/3/15 (UK date) to add;
Regardless of what the real situation on the ground in Tikrit the involvement of the coalition will bring with it precision air-strikes including from helicopter gunships capable of destroying ISIL defensive positions and deny them the right to movement.
The US' belated decision to join the liberation of Tikrit is particularly embarrassing for them because they have played a leading role in trying to brief against the operation labelling it as Iranian invasion of Iraq. For example at a recent press conference a journalist asked how the operation was progressing only for the Pentagon spokesman to tersely reply; "Ask Tehran."
It is though entirely a problem of the US' own making.
For reasons that are too numerous to list here US President Obama seems utterly terrified of the notion that ISIL may be defeated. As a result the US' main role in the coalition has been to delay and sabotage any ISF effort to liberate any part of Iraq from ISIL. For example in September 2014 the ISF launched an operation to liberate Fallujah and Ramadi on the expectation they would receive coalition air-support. Obama however decided to completely abandon them and start randomly bombing Syria instead.
Then of course there was the recent scandal of the US attempting to tip off ISIL by publicly announcing their plans to liberate Mosul. This is something the US have since been forced to apologise for.
Obviously the Iraqis have not been prepared to wait for Obama's term to end before liberating their country so have been forced to rely on people who are prepared to take action. With the US dominating the coalition this has meant Iraq's neighbour Iran who are not part of the coalition.
The main problem that this has produced is that with the coalition taking responsibility for Iraq's formal security forces (army, police etc) Iran has only been able to provide support to Iraq's Shia militias (PMF is the umbrella term). Although I've yet to achieve Obama levels of anti-Iranian psychosis I have never been a fan of militias because they lack the discipline of professional soldiers that is needed to carry out an effective battle plan. So while I think the criticism of the Tikrit operation have been overstated it could have been better organsied and carried out a lot faster and more decisively.
The other big problem I have with militias is that this lack of discipline often translates into human rights abuses against the civilian population. Although it's hardly comparable to ISIL or even the other rebel groups in Syria there have been very concerning stories emerging about the PMF's behaviour in villages such as Amerli. If events hadn't overtaken me I would have liked to have spent today focusing on that in detail because it is simply not acceptable for a host of tactical reasons if nothing else.
I have also been very concerned that the PMF are all Shias. In itself I don't see this is as a problem but ISIL's entire ideology is that they are fulfilling a prophecy that by capturing the Levant they will bring about God's arrival on earth to lead them in an apocalyptic battle against an army of Shia unbelievers. That Shia army will be raised in what is now approximately modern day Iran. Therefore I think that anything which will allow ISIL to claim that their prophecy is coming true should be avoided at all costs.
In response to the US' joining of the Tikrit operation the PMF have withdrawn in protest. Hopefully then this will mark the moment that Obama accepts that ISIL need to be defeated and the operation can continue in the professional manner that we all know the US military are capable of.
20:25 on 26/3/15 (UK date).
For example on March 12th (12/3/15) - two days after the Select Committee hearing - Turkey arrested a Syrian man who had been providing information to an unnamed nation about the ISIL smuggling routes that exist in Turkey. Also I really wish I was joking when I say that this saga probably played a role in Zayn Malik's decision to quit the British boyband "One Direction." Perhaps more importantly though it was today announced that the saga seems to have forced the UK to send up to 75 military personnel to Turkey to train Syrian Jihadists as part of US President Obama's harebrained scheme which is apparently still going ahead.
Obviously the UK can't be seen to train Jihadists in Turkey whilst at the same time highlighting Turkey's role in supplying Jihadist fighters to ISIL. So today also saw the sudden and surprising not guilty verdict in the case of Erol Incedal - a Turkish national being tried on unspecified Islamic terrorism charges. Held in unprecedented secrecy which prevent even the charges being known the Incedal trial has been a coded way for the UK to discuss Turkey's role in exporting quasi-Islamic terrorism to Egypt, Libya and Syria.
For their part the Turks prepared for the UK announcement by last night bombing the Ankara offices of the ISIL supporting magazine "Adimlar." Although one person was killed in this bombing for an operation carried out by military intelligence it was little more then a glancing blow. The purpose was to send the message internationally that Turkey is prepared to take action against ISIL supporters within Turkey. Domestically though it was intended to energise Turkish President Erdogan's increasingly Salafi base by allow him to highlight the way the evil west is prepared to get so outraged by the Charlie Hebdo attacks in Paris, France but seems to celebrate a similar attack against Muslims.
As a bit of random information that doesn't seem to fit anywhere else I should point out that on Tuesday (24/3/15) Canada announced its intention to expand its role in the anti-ISIL coalition to include targets in Syria. Due to the ruling majority in the Canadian Parliament this measure is extremely likely to pass although they've have not stated whether it will cover all of Syria or just certain areas of Syria where ISIL are know to be operating.
The big development in the last couple of days though is that on Saturday (21/3/15) the US-led coalition - and specifically the US - started carrying out surveillance flights in aid of the Iraqi Security Force (ISF) operation to liberate Tikrit. This was done at the request of the Iraqi government and last night the US began conducting air-strikes on ISIL positions in and around the city which is located around 150km (90 miles) north of the Iraqi capital Baghdad.
Since the ISF operation began on March 2nd (2/3/15) it has been notoriously difficult to get accurate information about how it has been progressing. In part this is because in the absence of an ISF spokesman controlling the flow of information various leaders of all the different groups involved such as the Iraqi Army, Iraqi Special Forces, the Iraqi police and the Popular Mobilisation Front (PMF) have been giving different, off-the-record, accounts of how their particular part of the operation is going. Also with the operation taking place without the permission of the US-led coalition many western news agencies have at best been boycotting it completely and some have even gone so far as to brief against it.
The best assessment of how the operation has been going I heard is that it was completed two weeks ago and the city had been totally liberated. Obviously this is not the case and the second best assessment it that a small group of ISIL fighters are pinned down in the presidential palace compound. The BBC however indicate that some 1000+ ISIL fighters not only hold the palace compound and the city centre but also the western al-Zuhur neighbourhood and the northern Qadisiya neighbourhood although that strikes me more as a map off anywhere fighting has taken place in the city in the last month.
At around 18:00 on 26/3/15 (UK date) I seem to have completely forgotten the point I was trying to make. Hopefully I'll recover it and return after dinner.
Edited at around 19:35 on 26/3/15 (UK date) to add;
Regardless of what the real situation on the ground in Tikrit the involvement of the coalition will bring with it precision air-strikes including from helicopter gunships capable of destroying ISIL defensive positions and deny them the right to movement.
The US' belated decision to join the liberation of Tikrit is particularly embarrassing for them because they have played a leading role in trying to brief against the operation labelling it as Iranian invasion of Iraq. For example at a recent press conference a journalist asked how the operation was progressing only for the Pentagon spokesman to tersely reply; "Ask Tehran."
It is though entirely a problem of the US' own making.
For reasons that are too numerous to list here US President Obama seems utterly terrified of the notion that ISIL may be defeated. As a result the US' main role in the coalition has been to delay and sabotage any ISF effort to liberate any part of Iraq from ISIL. For example in September 2014 the ISF launched an operation to liberate Fallujah and Ramadi on the expectation they would receive coalition air-support. Obama however decided to completely abandon them and start randomly bombing Syria instead.
Then of course there was the recent scandal of the US attempting to tip off ISIL by publicly announcing their plans to liberate Mosul. This is something the US have since been forced to apologise for.
Obviously the Iraqis have not been prepared to wait for Obama's term to end before liberating their country so have been forced to rely on people who are prepared to take action. With the US dominating the coalition this has meant Iraq's neighbour Iran who are not part of the coalition.
The main problem that this has produced is that with the coalition taking responsibility for Iraq's formal security forces (army, police etc) Iran has only been able to provide support to Iraq's Shia militias (PMF is the umbrella term). Although I've yet to achieve Obama levels of anti-Iranian psychosis I have never been a fan of militias because they lack the discipline of professional soldiers that is needed to carry out an effective battle plan. So while I think the criticism of the Tikrit operation have been overstated it could have been better organsied and carried out a lot faster and more decisively.
The other big problem I have with militias is that this lack of discipline often translates into human rights abuses against the civilian population. Although it's hardly comparable to ISIL or even the other rebel groups in Syria there have been very concerning stories emerging about the PMF's behaviour in villages such as Amerli. If events hadn't overtaken me I would have liked to have spent today focusing on that in detail because it is simply not acceptable for a host of tactical reasons if nothing else.
I have also been very concerned that the PMF are all Shias. In itself I don't see this is as a problem but ISIL's entire ideology is that they are fulfilling a prophecy that by capturing the Levant they will bring about God's arrival on earth to lead them in an apocalyptic battle against an army of Shia unbelievers. That Shia army will be raised in what is now approximately modern day Iran. Therefore I think that anything which will allow ISIL to claim that their prophecy is coming true should be avoided at all costs.
In response to the US' joining of the Tikrit operation the PMF have withdrawn in protest. Hopefully then this will mark the moment that Obama accepts that ISIL need to be defeated and the operation can continue in the professional manner that we all know the US military are capable of.
20:25 on 26/3/15 (UK date).
Saudi Arabia's Gone Rogue.
I know; "Gone?!"
With it's vast oil reserves Saudi Arabia should be one of the wealthiest nations on earth. However it is actually considered amongst the poorest with a per capita income of around USD17,000. The main reason for this is the nation's venal monarchy which strangles the population with a command economy designed to keep the nations wealth firmly in the hands of the ruling al-Saud family.
In order to stop it's population questioning this system the al-Saud family imposes warped version of Islam known Whabbism. Influenced by Salafism this was invented in the 19th century and demands followers live as people did during the time of the Prophet Mohamed in 9th century. Therefore it would be un-Islamic for the Saudi people to seek the type of material wealth that their royal family enjoy.
The al-Saud's main problem in this deceit is that Shia Muslim's believe that Mohamed was just the most recent in a series of Prophets. Therefore this modern age could well be the time of the next Prophet who has simply failed to reveal himself.
Yemen which sits on Saudi Arabia's southern border has been ruled by Shias known as "Houthis" certainly since the time of the division between Sunni and Shia Islam and for around 900 years before the al-Sauds formed Saudi Arabia as a nation.
When a series of revolutions struck Arab nations such as Tunisia, Egypt and Saudi Arabia's neighbour Bahrain the al-Sauds became extremely fearful that the Houthis in Yemen refusal to submit to Whabbism would trigger a revolution in Saudi Arabia that would see the al-Sauds overthrown and the nation's wealth shared more equally amongst its population. Along with almost psychotic levels of aggression paranoia and delusion have long been the hallmarks of the al-Saud family.
Early 2011 Saudi Arabia started equipping, training and directing Sunni Jihadist terrorists to launch an insurgency against the Yemeni government. This employed the same toolkit seen in Libya and Syria of armed groups using street protests to attack the security forces in the hope of declaring the security forces response an "atrocity."
When this hadn't worked by mid-2011 the Jihadists simply started trying to kill the Yemeni government outright. On June 3rd 2011 (3/6/11) a bomb attack was carried out against a Mosque in which Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh was praying alongside senior members of the government including the Prime Minister, his deputies and the head of Parliament. Four bodyguards were killed in this attack and Saleh was seriously wounded forcing him to seek medical care in Saudi Arabia.
The Saudis then refused to allow Saleh to return to Yemen until he agreed to step down in October 2011. The Saudis then replaced Saleh with Abdrabbuh Mansour Hadi. To their shame this Saudi aggression against their southern neighbour was fully endorsed by the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) despite it being a clear violation of the organisations own charter.
Despite the UNSC's offerings the Hadi regime never really found it's feet in Yemen leaving the nation without a functioning government. The situation really deteriorated in the autumn of 2014 when Hadi announced that he would be pulling out of the power-sharing deal that brought him to power and instead rule as a dictator. This prompted an uprising that quickly swept across the north of the country and by the end of December 2014 had reached the capital Sana'a.
On January 7th 2015 the Sunni Jihadist who had brought Hadi to power launched a series of terror attacks across France's capital Paris that began with the attacks against the Charlie Hebdo magazine. This provoked such a wave of outrage across Yemen that within a week the uprising swept into Sana'a leading to Hadi being arrested, his government deposed and a transitional government being set up.
Unfortunately in response to international pressure the Yemeni government were forced to release Hadi and he fled to the Jihadist heartland in the south of the country where he and his supporters planned an insurgency against the government. That insurgency began last week with the suicide bombing of two Mosques in Sana'a that killed 143 people.
Fortunately the insurgency then failed horrifically with the Yemeni population and more importantly the army siding with the Yemeni government to sweep aside the Hadi insurgency. Yesterday the insurgents had lost control of their southern holdout of Aden, many of their leaders were arrested and Hadi himself was forced to flee the country.
Knowing that their last chance had already passed last night Saudi Arabia launched a fullscale military invasion to overthrow the Yemeni government and re-install Hadi into power. Saudi Arabia's stated aim is to protect Yemen from what it terms "Houthi aggression." The Houthis are of course the indigenous population of Yemen so it should come as little surprise that the Saudi operation has began with an aeriel bombardment of Yemen's main population centres.
Although they are two different countries the nearest comparison to the situation in Yemen I can think of is the situation in Ukraine. There a violent uprising overthrew the nation's government and two separate groups then declared themselves the legitimate government. The US then accused Russia of mounting an invasion in support of what it considered the legitimate government and imposed severe sanctions as punishment.
The only main difference I'm seeing at the moment is that there is no doubt that Saudi Arabia has invaded Yemen. In fact they're quite proud of the fact even going so far as to hold a press conference in Washington D.C, US to announce it.
11:45 on 26/3/15 (UK date).
With it's vast oil reserves Saudi Arabia should be one of the wealthiest nations on earth. However it is actually considered amongst the poorest with a per capita income of around USD17,000. The main reason for this is the nation's venal monarchy which strangles the population with a command economy designed to keep the nations wealth firmly in the hands of the ruling al-Saud family.
In order to stop it's population questioning this system the al-Saud family imposes warped version of Islam known Whabbism. Influenced by Salafism this was invented in the 19th century and demands followers live as people did during the time of the Prophet Mohamed in 9th century. Therefore it would be un-Islamic for the Saudi people to seek the type of material wealth that their royal family enjoy.
The al-Saud's main problem in this deceit is that Shia Muslim's believe that Mohamed was just the most recent in a series of Prophets. Therefore this modern age could well be the time of the next Prophet who has simply failed to reveal himself.
Yemen which sits on Saudi Arabia's southern border has been ruled by Shias known as "Houthis" certainly since the time of the division between Sunni and Shia Islam and for around 900 years before the al-Sauds formed Saudi Arabia as a nation.
When a series of revolutions struck Arab nations such as Tunisia, Egypt and Saudi Arabia's neighbour Bahrain the al-Sauds became extremely fearful that the Houthis in Yemen refusal to submit to Whabbism would trigger a revolution in Saudi Arabia that would see the al-Sauds overthrown and the nation's wealth shared more equally amongst its population. Along with almost psychotic levels of aggression paranoia and delusion have long been the hallmarks of the al-Saud family.
Early 2011 Saudi Arabia started equipping, training and directing Sunni Jihadist terrorists to launch an insurgency against the Yemeni government. This employed the same toolkit seen in Libya and Syria of armed groups using street protests to attack the security forces in the hope of declaring the security forces response an "atrocity."
When this hadn't worked by mid-2011 the Jihadists simply started trying to kill the Yemeni government outright. On June 3rd 2011 (3/6/11) a bomb attack was carried out against a Mosque in which Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh was praying alongside senior members of the government including the Prime Minister, his deputies and the head of Parliament. Four bodyguards were killed in this attack and Saleh was seriously wounded forcing him to seek medical care in Saudi Arabia.
The Saudis then refused to allow Saleh to return to Yemen until he agreed to step down in October 2011. The Saudis then replaced Saleh with Abdrabbuh Mansour Hadi. To their shame this Saudi aggression against their southern neighbour was fully endorsed by the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) despite it being a clear violation of the organisations own charter.
Despite the UNSC's offerings the Hadi regime never really found it's feet in Yemen leaving the nation without a functioning government. The situation really deteriorated in the autumn of 2014 when Hadi announced that he would be pulling out of the power-sharing deal that brought him to power and instead rule as a dictator. This prompted an uprising that quickly swept across the north of the country and by the end of December 2014 had reached the capital Sana'a.
On January 7th 2015 the Sunni Jihadist who had brought Hadi to power launched a series of terror attacks across France's capital Paris that began with the attacks against the Charlie Hebdo magazine. This provoked such a wave of outrage across Yemen that within a week the uprising swept into Sana'a leading to Hadi being arrested, his government deposed and a transitional government being set up.
Unfortunately in response to international pressure the Yemeni government were forced to release Hadi and he fled to the Jihadist heartland in the south of the country where he and his supporters planned an insurgency against the government. That insurgency began last week with the suicide bombing of two Mosques in Sana'a that killed 143 people.
Fortunately the insurgency then failed horrifically with the Yemeni population and more importantly the army siding with the Yemeni government to sweep aside the Hadi insurgency. Yesterday the insurgents had lost control of their southern holdout of Aden, many of their leaders were arrested and Hadi himself was forced to flee the country.
Knowing that their last chance had already passed last night Saudi Arabia launched a fullscale military invasion to overthrow the Yemeni government and re-install Hadi into power. Saudi Arabia's stated aim is to protect Yemen from what it terms "Houthi aggression." The Houthis are of course the indigenous population of Yemen so it should come as little surprise that the Saudi operation has began with an aeriel bombardment of Yemen's main population centres.
Although they are two different countries the nearest comparison to the situation in Yemen I can think of is the situation in Ukraine. There a violent uprising overthrew the nation's government and two separate groups then declared themselves the legitimate government. The US then accused Russia of mounting an invasion in support of what it considered the legitimate government and imposed severe sanctions as punishment.
The only main difference I'm seeing at the moment is that there is no doubt that Saudi Arabia has invaded Yemen. In fact they're quite proud of the fact even going so far as to hold a press conference in Washington D.C, US to announce it.
11:45 on 26/3/15 (UK date).
Wednesday, 25 March 2015
The Crash of GermanWings Flight 4U9525.
Yesterday an Airbus A320 operated by German airline GermanWings crashed into mountains in the French Alps en route from Barcelona, Spain to Dusseldorf, Germany. Due to the force of the crash all 150 passengers and crew on board were killed. There appears to have been no communication with Air Traffic Control (ATC).
According to third party flight tracking data that may not be 100% accurate the aircraft took off as normal for Barcelona and turned out across the Mediterranean Sea where it gradually climbed to it's approved cruising altitude of 38,000ft (10,850 metres). A minute later the aircraft began a sharp but controlled descent as if making an approach for landing. After 10 minutes of this descent the aircraft had dropped to an altitude of 6,800ft (1,940 metres) at which point it collided with a mountain side likely resulting in a fiery explosion.
In the absence of any other information it is hard to offer any explanation of why the crash occurred particularly because I am not a pilot nor an aviation expert. However I suspect there are a series of scenarios that will be looked at.
The first of these is that the pilot did it on purpose as part of a suicide bid. This is something that investigators always have to rule out but it is extremely unlikely because all commercial airliners have at least two pilots on board. Therefore they would both have had to made a suicide pact and then kept it secret from all the other flight crew and their colleagues on the ground which is as unlikely as it sounds. So this is something that the investigators will look at as a matter of routine but it's something that only really happens in movies.
There has also been some speculation about the computer systems on the A320 which operate something known as envelope control. Essentially this means that the computer monitors the parameters of flight such as speed, altitude aptitude etc. If it finds something to be outside of the normal parameters (the envelope) it automatically takes action to correct the problem.
Back in November 2014 an airworthiness notice was issued for the A320's envelope control system after an aircraft belonging to GermanWings parent company Lufthansa went into a rapid descent after the computer system wrongly decided that is was climbing. I should point out though that the pilots can over-ride the computer and that is exactly what happened in November which is why all similar aircraft were not grounded.
I also find it impossible to believe that an experienced crew would have failed to notice that the plane was descending for a full 10 minutes not least because ATC would have noticed any unapproved descent and got on the radio demanding to know what the crew were doing.
Another possible explanation is that there was an engine failure but the consistent airspeed throughout the descent would seem to rule that out. Plus it is almost impossible for both the engines on an A320 to fail at the same except if there was something extremely random like birds striking both engines but that would normally trigger a sharper descent.
It is possible that one of the aircraft's engines failed or experienced a flame out and the crew descended to slow the aircraft to a speed where they could attempt to restart the engine. However that would have left them with a good five minutes to communicate with ATC to explain the problem if for no other reason then to make sure they didn't collide with any other aircraft in the area. Plus flying that low over a mountain range is considered more dangerous then trying to continue on one engine.
The only other explanation I can think of is that the aircraft suffered some sort of catastrophic control panel failure that left the crew both unable to correctly measure their altitude, speed etc and to communicate with ATC. I wouldn't like to speculate on what could cause such a failure but it could be a computer problem or something as simple as a fire that destroyed the electronic circuits.
17:40 on 25/3/15 (UK date).
According to third party flight tracking data that may not be 100% accurate the aircraft took off as normal for Barcelona and turned out across the Mediterranean Sea where it gradually climbed to it's approved cruising altitude of 38,000ft (10,850 metres). A minute later the aircraft began a sharp but controlled descent as if making an approach for landing. After 10 minutes of this descent the aircraft had dropped to an altitude of 6,800ft (1,940 metres) at which point it collided with a mountain side likely resulting in a fiery explosion.
In the absence of any other information it is hard to offer any explanation of why the crash occurred particularly because I am not a pilot nor an aviation expert. However I suspect there are a series of scenarios that will be looked at.
The first of these is that the pilot did it on purpose as part of a suicide bid. This is something that investigators always have to rule out but it is extremely unlikely because all commercial airliners have at least two pilots on board. Therefore they would both have had to made a suicide pact and then kept it secret from all the other flight crew and their colleagues on the ground which is as unlikely as it sounds. So this is something that the investigators will look at as a matter of routine but it's something that only really happens in movies.
There has also been some speculation about the computer systems on the A320 which operate something known as envelope control. Essentially this means that the computer monitors the parameters of flight such as speed, altitude aptitude etc. If it finds something to be outside of the normal parameters (the envelope) it automatically takes action to correct the problem.
Back in November 2014 an airworthiness notice was issued for the A320's envelope control system after an aircraft belonging to GermanWings parent company Lufthansa went into a rapid descent after the computer system wrongly decided that is was climbing. I should point out though that the pilots can over-ride the computer and that is exactly what happened in November which is why all similar aircraft were not grounded.
I also find it impossible to believe that an experienced crew would have failed to notice that the plane was descending for a full 10 minutes not least because ATC would have noticed any unapproved descent and got on the radio demanding to know what the crew were doing.
Another possible explanation is that there was an engine failure but the consistent airspeed throughout the descent would seem to rule that out. Plus it is almost impossible for both the engines on an A320 to fail at the same except if there was something extremely random like birds striking both engines but that would normally trigger a sharper descent.
It is possible that one of the aircraft's engines failed or experienced a flame out and the crew descended to slow the aircraft to a speed where they could attempt to restart the engine. However that would have left them with a good five minutes to communicate with ATC to explain the problem if for no other reason then to make sure they didn't collide with any other aircraft in the area. Plus flying that low over a mountain range is considered more dangerous then trying to continue on one engine.
The only other explanation I can think of is that the aircraft suffered some sort of catastrophic control panel failure that left the crew both unable to correctly measure their altitude, speed etc and to communicate with ATC. I wouldn't like to speculate on what could cause such a failure but it could be a computer problem or something as simple as a fire that destroyed the electronic circuits.
17:40 on 25/3/15 (UK date).
Tuesday, 24 March 2015
Operation Featherweight: Month 8, Week 4, Day 4 - AUMF.
On February 11th (11/2/15) US President Barack Obama sent his Authorisation for the Use of Military Force (AUMF) against the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) to Congress for approval. I read the three page letter at the time under the assumption that a much more detailed version would emerge later that I would have to go through line-by-line.
It turns out that I was wrong and those slightly more then two double spaced pages are all it takes to send America to war these days. It's almost as if Obama was seeking a blank check.
My main objection to the request is Section 3 which grants authorisation for a minimum of three years. A similar French operation to drive Islamists from an area of northern Mali roughly the same size as Texas took just four weeks. Therefore I would have estimated that operations against ISIL would have taken a maximum of six months. As a result I am struggling to find a legitimate reason why the operation has made little progress in almost eight months.
Therefore I would find it impossible to support an AUMF that last for more then 12 months (1 year) before it has to be renewed. The hope being that if Obama is forced to go through the embarrassment of explaining why the operation has not yet succeeded whilst seeking an extension to the operation he might be encouraged to hurry things up a bit. As such even with a 12 month time limit I still think that Obama should be obligated to provide a progress report to Congress every six months.
Another substantial objection I have to the AUMF in its current form is that it significantly lacks focus. Therefore I would change the 3rd paragraph to read; "Where as ISIL has grown out of the civil war in Syria, has moved to invade the neighbouring state of Iraq and has stated its intention to seize more territory whilst demonstrating its ability to do so." Although it sounds pedantic I think this wording really helps to further illustrate the nature of the enemy being faced.
Similarly I would amend the 9th paragraph to read; "Where as the US is working with [...] to liberate Iraq and then Syria from the territory seized by ISIL whilst working to cut off its flow of funding and [...] local communities as they reject ISIL. To my mind this provides a more clear and specific remit for the operation rather then the wishy-washy "degrade and ultimately destroy" language by briefly indicating how that degradation and destruction will occur.
I am also extremely concerned by the 6th paragraph which alludes to ISIL's genocide and vicious acts of violence against minority ethnic and religious groups. Here I can't help but notice that the Kurdish ethnic group has been excluded entirely. With the Yezidis being ethnic Kurds this omission excludes the one ethnic group that has suffered the most at the hands of ISIL and has done the most to fight them. As such it belies a complete failure to understand the situation on the part of the author and needs to be amended to make specific reference to the Kurds.
Under Section 2(c) Limitations beyond the ban on US combat troops I would also limit the US ability to arm, equip or train the aforementioned "local communities" so it requires the approval of the appropriate Congressional committee. Currently I believe that is the Foreign Affairs Committee but I think it may be worth setting up a specific committee to deal with ISIL.
Primarily I see this as the Iraqis and the Syrians fight with the coalition nations merely being on hand to provide them with assistance. As such it is essential that the AUMF make provision for the US to provide assistance to local forces. However this is a very complicated issue.
For example the usually rather tame Human Rights Watch (HRW) has found itself with no other option then to admit that the so-called moderate opposition in Syria have no greater regard for human rights and Syria's civilian population then ISIL themselves. Despite this AUMF not being granted the Obama administration has seen fit to agree with Turkey to equip, arm and train members of this "local community."
Previous attempts to train Syria's moderate opposition has resulted in groups such as the Syrian Revolutionary Front (SRF) taking their American weapons and training and joining up with Al Qaeda's affiliate in Syria which doesn't strike me as being in the US' long-term interest.
Within Iraq Obama has talked extensively about using this AUMF to train and equip Sunni militias to act as a something of a home guard force. In the absence of productive support to the Iraqi army they have been forced to rely on support from Shia militias. If the US is building up Sunni militias at the same time that Iran is building up Shia militias while no-one is acting to strengthen the Iraqi state/army this is not a recipe for Iraq to become a stable nation capable of defeating ISIL. Instead it is a recipe for Iraq to become a failed state such as Libya or Somalia where Islamist terror groups such as ISIL are allowed to prosper.
Therefore I cannot support this AUMF in it's current form and urge Congress to immediately either reject it in it's entirety or force the administration into negotiations over amendments. After all Obama sadly seems to be struggling to acknowledge that he is a war time President.
21:25 on 24/3/15 (UK date).
It turns out that I was wrong and those slightly more then two double spaced pages are all it takes to send America to war these days. It's almost as if Obama was seeking a blank check.
My main objection to the request is Section 3 which grants authorisation for a minimum of three years. A similar French operation to drive Islamists from an area of northern Mali roughly the same size as Texas took just four weeks. Therefore I would have estimated that operations against ISIL would have taken a maximum of six months. As a result I am struggling to find a legitimate reason why the operation has made little progress in almost eight months.
Therefore I would find it impossible to support an AUMF that last for more then 12 months (1 year) before it has to be renewed. The hope being that if Obama is forced to go through the embarrassment of explaining why the operation has not yet succeeded whilst seeking an extension to the operation he might be encouraged to hurry things up a bit. As such even with a 12 month time limit I still think that Obama should be obligated to provide a progress report to Congress every six months.
Another substantial objection I have to the AUMF in its current form is that it significantly lacks focus. Therefore I would change the 3rd paragraph to read; "Where as ISIL has grown out of the civil war in Syria, has moved to invade the neighbouring state of Iraq and has stated its intention to seize more territory whilst demonstrating its ability to do so." Although it sounds pedantic I think this wording really helps to further illustrate the nature of the enemy being faced.
Similarly I would amend the 9th paragraph to read; "Where as the US is working with [...] to liberate Iraq and then Syria from the territory seized by ISIL whilst working to cut off its flow of funding and [...] local communities as they reject ISIL. To my mind this provides a more clear and specific remit for the operation rather then the wishy-washy "degrade and ultimately destroy" language by briefly indicating how that degradation and destruction will occur.
I am also extremely concerned by the 6th paragraph which alludes to ISIL's genocide and vicious acts of violence against minority ethnic and religious groups. Here I can't help but notice that the Kurdish ethnic group has been excluded entirely. With the Yezidis being ethnic Kurds this omission excludes the one ethnic group that has suffered the most at the hands of ISIL and has done the most to fight them. As such it belies a complete failure to understand the situation on the part of the author and needs to be amended to make specific reference to the Kurds.
Under Section 2(c) Limitations beyond the ban on US combat troops I would also limit the US ability to arm, equip or train the aforementioned "local communities" so it requires the approval of the appropriate Congressional committee. Currently I believe that is the Foreign Affairs Committee but I think it may be worth setting up a specific committee to deal with ISIL.
Primarily I see this as the Iraqis and the Syrians fight with the coalition nations merely being on hand to provide them with assistance. As such it is essential that the AUMF make provision for the US to provide assistance to local forces. However this is a very complicated issue.
For example the usually rather tame Human Rights Watch (HRW) has found itself with no other option then to admit that the so-called moderate opposition in Syria have no greater regard for human rights and Syria's civilian population then ISIL themselves. Despite this AUMF not being granted the Obama administration has seen fit to agree with Turkey to equip, arm and train members of this "local community."
Previous attempts to train Syria's moderate opposition has resulted in groups such as the Syrian Revolutionary Front (SRF) taking their American weapons and training and joining up with Al Qaeda's affiliate in Syria which doesn't strike me as being in the US' long-term interest.
Within Iraq Obama has talked extensively about using this AUMF to train and equip Sunni militias to act as a something of a home guard force. In the absence of productive support to the Iraqi army they have been forced to rely on support from Shia militias. If the US is building up Sunni militias at the same time that Iran is building up Shia militias while no-one is acting to strengthen the Iraqi state/army this is not a recipe for Iraq to become a stable nation capable of defeating ISIL. Instead it is a recipe for Iraq to become a failed state such as Libya or Somalia where Islamist terror groups such as ISIL are allowed to prosper.
Therefore I cannot support this AUMF in it's current form and urge Congress to immediately either reject it in it's entirety or force the administration into negotiations over amendments. After all Obama sadly seems to be struggling to acknowledge that he is a war time President.
21:25 on 24/3/15 (UK date).
Monday, 23 March 2015
Operation Featherweight: Month 8, Week 4, Day 3.
On June 7th Turkey will hold its General Election. For the first time Turkey's Kurdish parties will compete as part of a joint list that requires them to meet a threshold of 10% of all votes cast in order to win any seats in Parliament.
If they fail to reach that threshold there will be no Kurdish representation in the Turkish Parliament whatsoever. However if they do achieve this the Kurdish parties will likely be the main power broker as Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan attempts to alter the nation's constitution to massively increase his power.
In order to justify relying on the Kurds for support in preparation for the election Erdogan is trying to rush through a peace agreement with the militant Kurdish Workers Party (PKK) that would see the PKK disarm. With the PKK playing a strong role supporting the Kurdish People's Protection Units (YPG) fight against the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) in Syria it is really not the time for the Kurds to be handing over their weapons. The entire peace process very nearly collapsed towards the end of 2014 when Turkey seemed to side with ISIL in their attempts to over-run the Kurdish city of Kobane/Ayn al-Arab.
Also this past weekend has seen the spring equinox which is considered the start of the new year (Nowruz) by the Kurds and other ethnic groups such as the Pashtuns and Turkics (including Chinese Uighers) who were part of the ancient Persian Empire.
As a result of everyone being busy celebrating or being too afraid to rock the boat politically information about how the YPG's fight against ISIL is progressing has all but dried up. I am particularly concerned about what is happening in the Cizire Canton which sits in the north-east of Syria because the last I heard the town of Serekanyie/Ras al-Ayn at the north-west of the canton and the village of Tell Tamr at the south of the canton were both being subjected to a sustained and co-ordinated ISIL offensive. I hope though the fact that I am not hearing bad news means that the YPG have been able to withstand this offensive.
Nowruz celebrations in Hasakah City which sits at the very south of the Cizire Canton were spoiled somewhat on Friday (20/3/15) by twin car bombs that targeted revellers killing 35 and wounding 150. Although they inflicted a significant death toll these bombings weren't particularly alarming because control of Hasakah City has long been disputed between the YPG and ISIL.
Therefore the fact that ISIL were able to carry out twin attacks within the YPG controlled area of the city doesn't indicate that they have been able to gain territory. It does though highlight that Hasakah is a combat zone and therefore not really an appropriate place for civilians or civilian celebrations to be held.
On Sunday (22/3/15) the Turkish government went public with the case of 11 medical students which it allowed to travel into Syria to join up with ISIL. Seven of the 11 are British nationals while two are Sundanese, one is American and the other is Canadian. The Turks believe the group are providing medical services in Tel Abayd which is the last ISIL controlled town between the Cizire and Kobane Cantons in northern Syria.
This announcement seems to be the Turks latest play in the unseemly politicisation of the case of three British teenage girls who travelled to join ISIL at the end of February. The nationalities of these individuals that Turkey has decided to highlight puts them in close discussion with the British, US and Canadian governments along with - to a lesser extent - the Sudanese government.
The fact that they appear to be providing medical services to ISIL rather then performing a combat role is intended to allow the Turks to put forward an argument that it should be allowed to facilitate the transit of ISIL recruits under certain circumstances. Legally this is a nonsense because if they are providing support to ISIL in any form they are responsible for ISIL's crimes and should be treated as such. However the US and the UK have been very sloppy on this point continuing to allow ISIL to be supported under the guise of "humanitarian efforts."
The rumour that the group are located in Tel Abayd is very specific because it is very hard for the US-led coalition to explain why ISIL are continued to be allowed to remain in control of the town not least because it is being used as a base to attack Serekanyie which is a major border crossing between Turkey and Syria. That is of course a border that Turkey does not seem capable of securing.
At around 18:00 on 23/3/15 (UK date).
Edited at around 19:35 on 23/3/15 (UK date) to add;
Within Iraq the operation to liberate Tikrit has been suspended. Far from being a failure of the Iraqi Security Forces (ISF) this strikes me as being a sensible tactical decision because it would possible for the ISF to quickly capture the city's presidential compound where the remaining ISIL fighters are holed up by attacking with air-strikes and artillery. However this will likely completely destroy that section of the city and endanger the lives of ISF fighters.
Therefore it makes much sense to wait and map out the area because while the ISIL fighters may have been very highly motivated to fight and die for their cause when the operation that morale is likely to fade as they realise they're cornered with dwindling supplies.
ISIL's original plan for the defence of Tikrit seemed focused on withdrawing the majority of their forces to the al-Hawaija district to the north-east of the city. Fortunately ISIL's plan to counter-attack Tikrit from the al-Hawaija district was thwarted when the Iraqi Kurdish Peshmerga launched an offensive to clear out the area at the same time the Tikrit operation began. Having established a solid front-line some 18km (11 miles) from the town of al-Hawaija the Peshmerga have continued to clear ISIL fighters from the rural villages in the area.
Up in Iraq's Kurdish region in the north of the country it has really settled into a waiting game with the Peshmerga holding their positions until forces can become available to allow ISIL to be driven back further. However ISIL have continued to launch harassment type raids on the Peshmerga front-lines. Although these are frequently and quickly repelled especially when coalition air-strikes are provided they are using up Peshmerga resources and Peshmergas are being killed and injured.
In fact yesterday it was confirmed that since fighting began in August 2014 over 1,150 Peshmerga have been killed and over 5,600 have been wounded. Obviously these fighters will have to be replaced which is a task that becomes more difficult at the number of casualties increases as a result of ISIL harassment raids. Therefore it further highlights that this waiting game cannot go on indefinitely and the coalition needs to start taking decisive action against ISIL.
On Thursday (19/3/15) ISIL released a video showing the beheading three Peshmerga that it had been holding hostage in Mosul. This was followed up by another video today showing another hostage Peshmerga being beheaded. I think ISIL's main motivation behind this latest wave of beheadings is that they are aware that it is Nowruz and are trying to ruin the celebration for the Kurds in an effort to demoralise and intimidate them.
However the four hostage executed were part of a group of 21 that ISIL paraded in cages back in February. At the time I felt this was being done in an effort to force the coalition - the Peshmerga in particular - into agreeing to stop its offensives in the Mosul area in return for the release of the hostages. Although it's not been confirmed rumours have begun to emerge that ISIL have begun to pull back from al-Hawaija to Mosul and from the outskirts of Mosul into the city centre in order to consolidate their grip on the city. Under those circumstances it seems that ISIL would be desperate to re-start negotiations over the fate of their Peshmerga hostages by showing that they are prepared to kill them.
While I don't see it as hugely relevant I should mention that on Tuesday (17/3/15) the Syrian government shot down a US Predator drone over the coastal Latakia province. What I suspect happened is that the drone had been involved in operations above Syria's northern provinces that are held by ISIL and was crossing Latakia province which is firmly under Syrian government control in order to loop out over the Mediterranean sea in order to return to its base in Jordan without flying over the southern area of the country where the majority of Syrian government positions are located.
One thing that may have made the Syrian government extra sensitive about the US flying armed drones over it positions is that the noises coming out of the US recently seem to indicate that the US is still not convinced it's mission is to defeat ISIL rather then ally with it to attack the Syrian government. For example despite the use of chemical weapons by ISIL being widespread in both Iraq and Syria the US only seems to have been interested in a single use of chlorine gas in Syria presumably because that is the only one they can attempt to blame on the Syrian government.
Mainly though I think the drone incident further highlights just how difficult Turkey is making this operation. After all if NATO countries are flying missions over northern Syria the most obvious place for them to be based is the NATO member that sits on Syria's northern border.
20:30 on 23/3/15 (UK date).
If they fail to reach that threshold there will be no Kurdish representation in the Turkish Parliament whatsoever. However if they do achieve this the Kurdish parties will likely be the main power broker as Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan attempts to alter the nation's constitution to massively increase his power.
In order to justify relying on the Kurds for support in preparation for the election Erdogan is trying to rush through a peace agreement with the militant Kurdish Workers Party (PKK) that would see the PKK disarm. With the PKK playing a strong role supporting the Kurdish People's Protection Units (YPG) fight against the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) in Syria it is really not the time for the Kurds to be handing over their weapons. The entire peace process very nearly collapsed towards the end of 2014 when Turkey seemed to side with ISIL in their attempts to over-run the Kurdish city of Kobane/Ayn al-Arab.
Also this past weekend has seen the spring equinox which is considered the start of the new year (Nowruz) by the Kurds and other ethnic groups such as the Pashtuns and Turkics (including Chinese Uighers) who were part of the ancient Persian Empire.
As a result of everyone being busy celebrating or being too afraid to rock the boat politically information about how the YPG's fight against ISIL is progressing has all but dried up. I am particularly concerned about what is happening in the Cizire Canton which sits in the north-east of Syria because the last I heard the town of Serekanyie/Ras al-Ayn at the north-west of the canton and the village of Tell Tamr at the south of the canton were both being subjected to a sustained and co-ordinated ISIL offensive. I hope though the fact that I am not hearing bad news means that the YPG have been able to withstand this offensive.
Nowruz celebrations in Hasakah City which sits at the very south of the Cizire Canton were spoiled somewhat on Friday (20/3/15) by twin car bombs that targeted revellers killing 35 and wounding 150. Although they inflicted a significant death toll these bombings weren't particularly alarming because control of Hasakah City has long been disputed between the YPG and ISIL.
Therefore the fact that ISIL were able to carry out twin attacks within the YPG controlled area of the city doesn't indicate that they have been able to gain territory. It does though highlight that Hasakah is a combat zone and therefore not really an appropriate place for civilians or civilian celebrations to be held.
On Sunday (22/3/15) the Turkish government went public with the case of 11 medical students which it allowed to travel into Syria to join up with ISIL. Seven of the 11 are British nationals while two are Sundanese, one is American and the other is Canadian. The Turks believe the group are providing medical services in Tel Abayd which is the last ISIL controlled town between the Cizire and Kobane Cantons in northern Syria.
This announcement seems to be the Turks latest play in the unseemly politicisation of the case of three British teenage girls who travelled to join ISIL at the end of February. The nationalities of these individuals that Turkey has decided to highlight puts them in close discussion with the British, US and Canadian governments along with - to a lesser extent - the Sudanese government.
The fact that they appear to be providing medical services to ISIL rather then performing a combat role is intended to allow the Turks to put forward an argument that it should be allowed to facilitate the transit of ISIL recruits under certain circumstances. Legally this is a nonsense because if they are providing support to ISIL in any form they are responsible for ISIL's crimes and should be treated as such. However the US and the UK have been very sloppy on this point continuing to allow ISIL to be supported under the guise of "humanitarian efforts."
The rumour that the group are located in Tel Abayd is very specific because it is very hard for the US-led coalition to explain why ISIL are continued to be allowed to remain in control of the town not least because it is being used as a base to attack Serekanyie which is a major border crossing between Turkey and Syria. That is of course a border that Turkey does not seem capable of securing.
At around 18:00 on 23/3/15 (UK date).
Edited at around 19:35 on 23/3/15 (UK date) to add;
Within Iraq the operation to liberate Tikrit has been suspended. Far from being a failure of the Iraqi Security Forces (ISF) this strikes me as being a sensible tactical decision because it would possible for the ISF to quickly capture the city's presidential compound where the remaining ISIL fighters are holed up by attacking with air-strikes and artillery. However this will likely completely destroy that section of the city and endanger the lives of ISF fighters.
Therefore it makes much sense to wait and map out the area because while the ISIL fighters may have been very highly motivated to fight and die for their cause when the operation that morale is likely to fade as they realise they're cornered with dwindling supplies.
ISIL's original plan for the defence of Tikrit seemed focused on withdrawing the majority of their forces to the al-Hawaija district to the north-east of the city. Fortunately ISIL's plan to counter-attack Tikrit from the al-Hawaija district was thwarted when the Iraqi Kurdish Peshmerga launched an offensive to clear out the area at the same time the Tikrit operation began. Having established a solid front-line some 18km (11 miles) from the town of al-Hawaija the Peshmerga have continued to clear ISIL fighters from the rural villages in the area.
Up in Iraq's Kurdish region in the north of the country it has really settled into a waiting game with the Peshmerga holding their positions until forces can become available to allow ISIL to be driven back further. However ISIL have continued to launch harassment type raids on the Peshmerga front-lines. Although these are frequently and quickly repelled especially when coalition air-strikes are provided they are using up Peshmerga resources and Peshmergas are being killed and injured.
In fact yesterday it was confirmed that since fighting began in August 2014 over 1,150 Peshmerga have been killed and over 5,600 have been wounded. Obviously these fighters will have to be replaced which is a task that becomes more difficult at the number of casualties increases as a result of ISIL harassment raids. Therefore it further highlights that this waiting game cannot go on indefinitely and the coalition needs to start taking decisive action against ISIL.
On Thursday (19/3/15) ISIL released a video showing the beheading three Peshmerga that it had been holding hostage in Mosul. This was followed up by another video today showing another hostage Peshmerga being beheaded. I think ISIL's main motivation behind this latest wave of beheadings is that they are aware that it is Nowruz and are trying to ruin the celebration for the Kurds in an effort to demoralise and intimidate them.
However the four hostage executed were part of a group of 21 that ISIL paraded in cages back in February. At the time I felt this was being done in an effort to force the coalition - the Peshmerga in particular - into agreeing to stop its offensives in the Mosul area in return for the release of the hostages. Although it's not been confirmed rumours have begun to emerge that ISIL have begun to pull back from al-Hawaija to Mosul and from the outskirts of Mosul into the city centre in order to consolidate their grip on the city. Under those circumstances it seems that ISIL would be desperate to re-start negotiations over the fate of their Peshmerga hostages by showing that they are prepared to kill them.
While I don't see it as hugely relevant I should mention that on Tuesday (17/3/15) the Syrian government shot down a US Predator drone over the coastal Latakia province. What I suspect happened is that the drone had been involved in operations above Syria's northern provinces that are held by ISIL and was crossing Latakia province which is firmly under Syrian government control in order to loop out over the Mediterranean sea in order to return to its base in Jordan without flying over the southern area of the country where the majority of Syrian government positions are located.
One thing that may have made the Syrian government extra sensitive about the US flying armed drones over it positions is that the noises coming out of the US recently seem to indicate that the US is still not convinced it's mission is to defeat ISIL rather then ally with it to attack the Syrian government. For example despite the use of chemical weapons by ISIL being widespread in both Iraq and Syria the US only seems to have been interested in a single use of chlorine gas in Syria presumably because that is the only one they can attempt to blame on the Syrian government.
Mainly though I think the drone incident further highlights just how difficult Turkey is making this operation. After all if NATO countries are flying missions over northern Syria the most obvious place for them to be based is the NATO member that sits on Syria's northern border.
20:30 on 23/3/15 (UK date).
Saturday, 21 March 2015
This War's Gone on for Far too Long.
Yesterday two suicide bombers attacked the Shia Badr Mosque in the south of Yemen's capital Sana'a. A short time later another two suicide bombers attacked the Shia al-Hashoosh Mosque in the north of Sana'a. Both attacks took place due the peak Friday prayers.
Although I gather they've now shut down the cell this type of suicide attack against Shia Mosques has almost been a daily event in Iraq's capital Baghdad since the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) over-ran large swathes of the country back in August 2014. As a result I've come to analyse these attacks amongst numerous acts of violence without them really registering.
It was only as I was going to bed last night that it struck me that 143 people had been killed in the Sana'a attacks making them particularly bloody. The attacks in Iraq only tend to average around a dozens deaths each.
Despite the brutality of yesterday's attack it doesn't really indicate anything new about the political situation in Yemen. For roughly the last 1000 years Yemen has been run by the Houthi tribes. As the Houthis practise the Zaidi form of Shia Islam they are not particularly susceptible to the Salafi/Whabbists form of Islam that the al-Saud family that have ruled neighbouring Saudi Arabia since the 1930's use to repress their population.
As a result the al-Saud's had the government of Yemen overthrown in 2011 with the backing of the United Nations in order to replace it with a Sunni regime that was more responsive to Saudi control. One of the first tasks of the Saudi puppet regime was to use the US to mount a coup within the local Al Qaeda group (AQAP) so Al Qaeda members who are opposed to the al-Saud's and their extreme distortion of Islam could be replaced by ISIL members who are effectively the al-Saud's shock troops.
A key figure in this transition has been Ibrahim al-Asiri a Saudi who is considered a master bomb maker. The way that the bombs used in yesterday's attacks were disguised as plaster casts is very much a signature of al-Asiri. The supposed threat of al-Asiri has frequently been used to trick the US into attacking the supposed "Khorasan Group" rather then ISIL in Syria which is largely seen as a threat to Syria's predominately Shia government.
Yesterday's bombings were claimed by ISIL which seems to indicate that AQAP have given up on the deceit and are now formally admitting that they are part of ISIL rather then Al Qaeda. The US responded to this by withdrawing its forces from Yemen and now appears to be formally backing ISIL to once again overthrow the Yemeni government.
17:05 on 21/3/15 (UK date).
Although I gather they've now shut down the cell this type of suicide attack against Shia Mosques has almost been a daily event in Iraq's capital Baghdad since the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) over-ran large swathes of the country back in August 2014. As a result I've come to analyse these attacks amongst numerous acts of violence without them really registering.
It was only as I was going to bed last night that it struck me that 143 people had been killed in the Sana'a attacks making them particularly bloody. The attacks in Iraq only tend to average around a dozens deaths each.
Despite the brutality of yesterday's attack it doesn't really indicate anything new about the political situation in Yemen. For roughly the last 1000 years Yemen has been run by the Houthi tribes. As the Houthis practise the Zaidi form of Shia Islam they are not particularly susceptible to the Salafi/Whabbists form of Islam that the al-Saud family that have ruled neighbouring Saudi Arabia since the 1930's use to repress their population.
As a result the al-Saud's had the government of Yemen overthrown in 2011 with the backing of the United Nations in order to replace it with a Sunni regime that was more responsive to Saudi control. One of the first tasks of the Saudi puppet regime was to use the US to mount a coup within the local Al Qaeda group (AQAP) so Al Qaeda members who are opposed to the al-Saud's and their extreme distortion of Islam could be replaced by ISIL members who are effectively the al-Saud's shock troops.
A key figure in this transition has been Ibrahim al-Asiri a Saudi who is considered a master bomb maker. The way that the bombs used in yesterday's attacks were disguised as plaster casts is very much a signature of al-Asiri. The supposed threat of al-Asiri has frequently been used to trick the US into attacking the supposed "Khorasan Group" rather then ISIL in Syria which is largely seen as a threat to Syria's predominately Shia government.
Yesterday's bombings were claimed by ISIL which seems to indicate that AQAP have given up on the deceit and are now formally admitting that they are part of ISIL rather then Al Qaeda. The US responded to this by withdrawing its forces from Yemen and now appears to be formally backing ISIL to once again overthrow the Yemeni government.
17:05 on 21/3/15 (UK date).
Thursday, 19 March 2015
Tunis Terror Attack.
Yesterday (18/3/15) gunmen burst into the Bardo museum in the Tunisian capital Tunis and killed 23 people - mainly foreign tourists. This attack took place pretty much as the UK Finance Minister was delivering his budget. So with the incident receiving very little coverage here in the UK I'm not really aware of the specifics. However I can talk about the more general situation in Tunisia.
At the very start of 2011 the Tunisian people overthrew their long-term, secular dictator Ben Ali. As with in near by Egypt their better level of organisation allowed Tunisia's Islamist parties to dominate the subsequent elections. However again as in Egypt the Tunisians quickly grew tired of the Islamists and voted them out in 2014 in favour of a secular government. Since losing power Tunisia's Islamists have become more militant although I should stress that up until yesterday this was limited to the security services intervening to prevent terror attacks rather then any attacks actually taking place.
The much more serious problem has occurred in neighbouring Libya where following the western overthrow of the Libyan government in late 2011 the west of the country has been over-run by Islamists militia - the Libya Dawn militia being the largest. These militias have not been content to operate in Libya alone and have frequently crossed the border into Tunisia. Mainly this has been done to recruit Tunisians to act as fighters in both Libya and in Syria and Iraq while smuggling weapons out of an oil into Tunisia in defiance of the international arms embargo on Libya.
Certainly since the emergence of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) in Libya the Tunisian government has been working to crack down on the flow of Islamists across it's border with Libya. As the attack was taking place at the Bardo museum the Tunisian Parliament which is in the building next door was debating new anti-Terror legislation which would specifically ban Tunisians travelling to "hot-beds of fighting" such as Libya.
I really do need to provide an update on the situation in Libya particularly in light of the recent peace negotiations and the wave tit-for-tat air-strikes and kidnappings they provoked. However while I appreciate there is a need for an inclusive government within Libya I think the international community could be doing more to make it clear to the Islamists in the west that this will entail them agreeing to rejoin the internationally recognised government of Libya that is currently located in Tobruk.
13:20 on 19/3/15 (UK date).
At the very start of 2011 the Tunisian people overthrew their long-term, secular dictator Ben Ali. As with in near by Egypt their better level of organisation allowed Tunisia's Islamist parties to dominate the subsequent elections. However again as in Egypt the Tunisians quickly grew tired of the Islamists and voted them out in 2014 in favour of a secular government. Since losing power Tunisia's Islamists have become more militant although I should stress that up until yesterday this was limited to the security services intervening to prevent terror attacks rather then any attacks actually taking place.
The much more serious problem has occurred in neighbouring Libya where following the western overthrow of the Libyan government in late 2011 the west of the country has been over-run by Islamists militia - the Libya Dawn militia being the largest. These militias have not been content to operate in Libya alone and have frequently crossed the border into Tunisia. Mainly this has been done to recruit Tunisians to act as fighters in both Libya and in Syria and Iraq while smuggling weapons out of an oil into Tunisia in defiance of the international arms embargo on Libya.
Certainly since the emergence of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) in Libya the Tunisian government has been working to crack down on the flow of Islamists across it's border with Libya. As the attack was taking place at the Bardo museum the Tunisian Parliament which is in the building next door was debating new anti-Terror legislation which would specifically ban Tunisians travelling to "hot-beds of fighting" such as Libya.
I really do need to provide an update on the situation in Libya particularly in light of the recent peace negotiations and the wave tit-for-tat air-strikes and kidnappings they provoked. However while I appreciate there is a need for an inclusive government within Libya I think the international community could be doing more to make it clear to the Islamists in the west that this will entail them agreeing to rejoin the internationally recognised government of Libya that is currently located in Tobruk.
13:20 on 19/3/15 (UK date).
Wednesday, 18 March 2015
The UK Budget 2015.
Today the UK Finance Minister George Osborne announced his budget for the coming year. Now that we've moved to fixed term Parliaments I was hoping that this rather silly spectacle could have been done away with. After all with just two weeks left of this government it's a little hard to take its predictions for the next year let alone the next five years at all seriously.
Osborne himself seemed to be mocking it by making some incredible claims the most outrageous of which being that the UK could soon overtake the US and China as the World's leading economy.
The big headline was that the economic plan of Osborne and his Conservative Party has failed entirely. Despite all the austerity they have not succeeded in eliminating the national deficit and have not halved the national debt. Instead what they've been doing over the last three years of so is adopt Labour's economic policy while pursuing an aggressive program of restructuring British society to favour the rich at the expense of the poor. For example the NHS which is undoubtedly the UK's largest public service was not mentioned at all in this budget.
However despite being run according to Labour's economic policy it is a Conservative government that is delivering it so Osborne was keen to convince us how well everything is going in an effort to win votes at the upcoming election. This required rather a lot of spin on Osborne's behalf.
For example he has introduced a new measure of how household wealth allowing him to declare that all households are wealthier then they were under the old measure. Osborne also pointed out that living standards are higher then they were four years ago rather neatly forgetting that he's been in power for five years.
Another questionable claim is that with growth of 2.4% in 2014 the UK was growing faster then any other economy. What Osborne forgot to mention is that this is substantially lower then the 3% he'd predicted. Also comparable economies such as Germany and the US have been growing at 1-2% a year, every year for the past 5 years. The UK on the other hand has been in recession for much of the past four years. So although there has been a sharp rebound in 2014 the UK has actually experienced much less economic growth and is in fact just beginning to make up the lost ground created by Osborne's austerity.
The biggest whopper of the day though was the claim that with unemployment at 1.6 million it is the lowest it has ever been. When Margret Thatcher took up office in 1979 unemployment was around 1.5 million and rapidly increased to around 3.5 million. Therefore if you believe that time began with Thatcher - as Osborne seems to - unemployment is still around 100,000 higher then it was 35 years ago.
Also that 1.6 million figure doesn't apply to the number of unemployed. Instead it applies to the number of people claiming unemployment benefit. A key feature of Osborne's aggressive social restructuring has been to make it much harder for anyone to claim unemployment benefit. I'm rather a useful example of this because although I'm no longer claiming any form of benefit I am not what you would describe as traditionally employed.
Added to people like me there's been an extra 1 million people who have been moved onto so-called "zero-hour contracts." These are contracts where you don't actually do any work or get paid but you are officially under contract with an employer so you're not technically unemployed. Then of course there are all the people who've been encouraged to become self-employed. Again as they're employing themselves these people aren't unemployed but many of them are earning far below the minimum wage and economically would probably be better off if they took up subsistence farming.
Therefore the actual UK unemployment figure is probably closer to 3 million and may even match Thatcher's peak.
In order to demonstrate how amazingly successful his economic miracle has been Osborne then proceeded to hand out a series of pre-election bribes. For example the tax on tobacco was frozen while the taxes on alcohol and fuel were cut. The biggest bribe is probably a government grant that will give prospective house buyers 25% of their deposit.
Osborne of course would like you to think that these giveaways are the fruits of the economic recovery he has produced. In reality he's simply paid for it by hiking up a tax on bank balance sheets. Although it is hard to complain about increased taxes on banks this seems reckless. The financial crash was caused by banks not maintaining large enough balance sheets with money instead being shifted onto bonuses and bad loans. By only taxing the balance sheets rather then say bonuses and loans Osborne is encouraging banks to again shrink their balance sheets in order to avoid this tax.
One thing I did find interesting about the speech was the constant focus on the north of England which Osborne kept referring to as "The Northern Powerhouse." This was purely political because Labour who were traditionally the party of the working class have now become the party of minorities who are tithed to businesses such as housing associations owned by Labour's millionaire members.
As a result white working class voters in the north of England particularly in places such as Rochdale have started to shift allegiance from a Labour party that has abandoned them to the UK Independence Party (UKIP). So by focusing on the north of England the Conservatives are clearly hoping to take advantage of a Labour/UKIP vote split in order to win seats that have traditionally been no-go zones for them.
20:30 on 18/3/15 (UK date).
Osborne himself seemed to be mocking it by making some incredible claims the most outrageous of which being that the UK could soon overtake the US and China as the World's leading economy.
The big headline was that the economic plan of Osborne and his Conservative Party has failed entirely. Despite all the austerity they have not succeeded in eliminating the national deficit and have not halved the national debt. Instead what they've been doing over the last three years of so is adopt Labour's economic policy while pursuing an aggressive program of restructuring British society to favour the rich at the expense of the poor. For example the NHS which is undoubtedly the UK's largest public service was not mentioned at all in this budget.
However despite being run according to Labour's economic policy it is a Conservative government that is delivering it so Osborne was keen to convince us how well everything is going in an effort to win votes at the upcoming election. This required rather a lot of spin on Osborne's behalf.
For example he has introduced a new measure of how household wealth allowing him to declare that all households are wealthier then they were under the old measure. Osborne also pointed out that living standards are higher then they were four years ago rather neatly forgetting that he's been in power for five years.
Another questionable claim is that with growth of 2.4% in 2014 the UK was growing faster then any other economy. What Osborne forgot to mention is that this is substantially lower then the 3% he'd predicted. Also comparable economies such as Germany and the US have been growing at 1-2% a year, every year for the past 5 years. The UK on the other hand has been in recession for much of the past four years. So although there has been a sharp rebound in 2014 the UK has actually experienced much less economic growth and is in fact just beginning to make up the lost ground created by Osborne's austerity.
The biggest whopper of the day though was the claim that with unemployment at 1.6 million it is the lowest it has ever been. When Margret Thatcher took up office in 1979 unemployment was around 1.5 million and rapidly increased to around 3.5 million. Therefore if you believe that time began with Thatcher - as Osborne seems to - unemployment is still around 100,000 higher then it was 35 years ago.
Also that 1.6 million figure doesn't apply to the number of unemployed. Instead it applies to the number of people claiming unemployment benefit. A key feature of Osborne's aggressive social restructuring has been to make it much harder for anyone to claim unemployment benefit. I'm rather a useful example of this because although I'm no longer claiming any form of benefit I am not what you would describe as traditionally employed.
Added to people like me there's been an extra 1 million people who have been moved onto so-called "zero-hour contracts." These are contracts where you don't actually do any work or get paid but you are officially under contract with an employer so you're not technically unemployed. Then of course there are all the people who've been encouraged to become self-employed. Again as they're employing themselves these people aren't unemployed but many of them are earning far below the minimum wage and economically would probably be better off if they took up subsistence farming.
Therefore the actual UK unemployment figure is probably closer to 3 million and may even match Thatcher's peak.
In order to demonstrate how amazingly successful his economic miracle has been Osborne then proceeded to hand out a series of pre-election bribes. For example the tax on tobacco was frozen while the taxes on alcohol and fuel were cut. The biggest bribe is probably a government grant that will give prospective house buyers 25% of their deposit.
Osborne of course would like you to think that these giveaways are the fruits of the economic recovery he has produced. In reality he's simply paid for it by hiking up a tax on bank balance sheets. Although it is hard to complain about increased taxes on banks this seems reckless. The financial crash was caused by banks not maintaining large enough balance sheets with money instead being shifted onto bonuses and bad loans. By only taxing the balance sheets rather then say bonuses and loans Osborne is encouraging banks to again shrink their balance sheets in order to avoid this tax.
One thing I did find interesting about the speech was the constant focus on the north of England which Osborne kept referring to as "The Northern Powerhouse." This was purely political because Labour who were traditionally the party of the working class have now become the party of minorities who are tithed to businesses such as housing associations owned by Labour's millionaire members.
As a result white working class voters in the north of England particularly in places such as Rochdale have started to shift allegiance from a Labour party that has abandoned them to the UK Independence Party (UKIP). So by focusing on the north of England the Conservatives are clearly hoping to take advantage of a Labour/UKIP vote split in order to win seats that have traditionally been no-go zones for them.
20:30 on 18/3/15 (UK date).
Israel's Still Deciding.
Yesterday (17/3/15) Israel held an election for its Parliament/Knesset. As a result today is really when Israel's starts choosing its next government as part of its notoriously complex politics.
For example Zionist Union the front-runners before the election are themselves a coalition made up of the traditional centre-left Labor party and Hatnauh which is the latest incarnation of Ariel Sharon's breakaway faction of the centre-right Likud party. They were largely formed to counter the influence of the progressive left Yesh Atid party and they're not particularly Zionist, their name is just a bit of misdirection.
The Arab Joint List who came third are also a coalition made up of four Arab parties in order to make sure they passed the threshold for gaining seats in Parliament.
The big winner of the night was the centre-right Likud party which secured 30 seats. However this still leaves them 31 seats short of a majority. The obvious thing would have been for Likud and Zionist Union to join together which is not that unusual in Israeli politics to form a coalition supported by either Yesh Atid or the far-right, religious parties. However Zionist Union very much ran a "Anyone but Likud" campaign and seem to have indicated this morning that they won't be joining a coalition that includes Likud.
The problem is that Likud can't for a coalition with just the religious parties so will need the support of either Yesh Atid or Kulanu - the two progressive parties. Mathematically though the right-wing coalition could just scrape over the line with support from the very left-wing Meretz party which would be an interesting coalition.
If Likud were to fail to put together a coalition the only way Zionist Union could form a government would be by working with both the progressive parties, Meretz and the Joint List which would put Israeli Arabs in government for the first time which would be very interesting not least because that coalition would be made up of 9 parties.
Basically I'm staying out of it until a coalition has been formed.
16:25 on 18/3/15 (UK date).
Edited at around 11:55 on 19/3/15 (UK date) to add;
It's totally pouring gasoline on the fire but I must say that I'm a bit disappointed by the Zionist Union. If rather then throwing a sulk they'd agreed to work with Likud there is a possibility that the settler parties could have been frozen out of government for the first time in a very long time. Of course now I've said it out loud it's going to be near impossible because there was a noticeable shift from the far right to the centre in order to protect Bibi. No doubt this is something that Netanyahu is going to be reminded of in the future.
For example Zionist Union the front-runners before the election are themselves a coalition made up of the traditional centre-left Labor party and Hatnauh which is the latest incarnation of Ariel Sharon's breakaway faction of the centre-right Likud party. They were largely formed to counter the influence of the progressive left Yesh Atid party and they're not particularly Zionist, their name is just a bit of misdirection.
The Arab Joint List who came third are also a coalition made up of four Arab parties in order to make sure they passed the threshold for gaining seats in Parliament.
The big winner of the night was the centre-right Likud party which secured 30 seats. However this still leaves them 31 seats short of a majority. The obvious thing would have been for Likud and Zionist Union to join together which is not that unusual in Israeli politics to form a coalition supported by either Yesh Atid or the far-right, religious parties. However Zionist Union very much ran a "Anyone but Likud" campaign and seem to have indicated this morning that they won't be joining a coalition that includes Likud.
The problem is that Likud can't for a coalition with just the religious parties so will need the support of either Yesh Atid or Kulanu - the two progressive parties. Mathematically though the right-wing coalition could just scrape over the line with support from the very left-wing Meretz party which would be an interesting coalition.
If Likud were to fail to put together a coalition the only way Zionist Union could form a government would be by working with both the progressive parties, Meretz and the Joint List which would put Israeli Arabs in government for the first time which would be very interesting not least because that coalition would be made up of 9 parties.
Basically I'm staying out of it until a coalition has been formed.
16:25 on 18/3/15 (UK date).
Edited at around 11:55 on 19/3/15 (UK date) to add;
It's totally pouring gasoline on the fire but I must say that I'm a bit disappointed by the Zionist Union. If rather then throwing a sulk they'd agreed to work with Likud there is a possibility that the settler parties could have been frozen out of government for the first time in a very long time. Of course now I've said it out loud it's going to be near impossible because there was a noticeable shift from the far right to the centre in order to protect Bibi. No doubt this is something that Netanyahu is going to be reminded of in the future.
I'm Ill.
I missed the February ADP meeting on climate change because I was taken ill. On Saturday (14/3/15) I said that I really needed to catch up on what I'd missed. I then of course immediately became ill again. This is just a minor cold which leaves me a lot more clear headed then last time but I do have some mild symptoms like a slight cough and a gravelly voice that can be used to elicit sympathy from passers by.
Completely unrelated to that last night I had another routine appointment with my doctor. With one of my medications being moved onto automatic prescription this has been the first such appointment since December 2013. As a result the big question was how I'd managed to make a two month prescription of the other medication last more then a year. Basically I immediately halved it for 20mg per day to 10mg per day before halving it again to 5mg per day before coming off it for several months. We are now back at 10mg per day with another review in 2 months.
So yeah the whole thing was just slightly too long for a Tweet.
16:00 on 18/3/15 (UK date).
Completely unrelated to that last night I had another routine appointment with my doctor. With one of my medications being moved onto automatic prescription this has been the first such appointment since December 2013. As a result the big question was how I'd managed to make a two month prescription of the other medication last more then a year. Basically I immediately halved it for 20mg per day to 10mg per day before halving it again to 5mg per day before coming off it for several months. We are now back at 10mg per day with another review in 2 months.
So yeah the whole thing was just slightly too long for a Tweet.
16:00 on 18/3/15 (UK date).
Sunday, 15 March 2015
Operation Featherweight: Month 8, Week 3, Day 2.
Last Thursday (12/3/15) I announced that the Iraqi Security Forces (ISF) had completely liberated the city of Tikrit from the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL). At the time I felt this was a little optimistic but from the great information black-hole that is Tikrit all the reports I was getting said that it was true and I wasn't getting any reports that it wasn't.
It turns out that my first instinct was correct and a small pocket of ISIL fighters remain holed up on the presidential palace compound close to the city centre. Dating back to the rule of Saddam Hussein the presidential palace is effectively a fortress where Saddam and his guards would stay whilst visiting his home town.
Therefore I'm beginning to wonder whether it might be worth strong-pointing the palace compound with tanks while the ISF concentrate on removing the landmines and chlorine gas laced Improvised Explosive Devices (IED's) that ISIL have left littering the city. After all following a few days of siege conditions the ISIL fighters in the palace are likely to be less able to mount a defence.
One of the main reasons why liberation of Tikrit has been so easy despite this small delay is that a large proportion of ISIL forces in the city fled to the area around the town of al-Hawaija which sits around 85km (50 miles) north of Tikrit. From there ISIL hoped to be able sweep back into Tikrit once the bulk of the liberation force had left.
Fortunately the Iraqi Kurdish Peshmerga were wise to this plan and launched an operation from Kirkuk to secure a large swathe of territory to the south of al-Hawaija. After securing an area of the al-Hawaija district that includes the the villages of Sakhra, Wadi Naft and Sada along with some strategically important open areas and portions of the main Kirkuk-Tikrit road the Peshmerga have continued to advance. They have now established a solid front-line including artillery positions just 18km (11 miles) from the centre of al-Hawaija itself. As a result it seems unlikely that ISIL will be sweeping back into Tikrit or into the local oil-fields any time soon.
The Peshmerga have also been providing artillery support to one of the militias of the ISF that have been trying to liberate the village of Bashir/Besiir Kasabasi that sits around 25-35km (15-20 miles) to the south of Kirkuk. Despite fierce resistance from ISIL the ISF have been making progress and Saturday (14/3/15) they made the grim discovery of a mass grave containing the remains of local Turkmen who had been massacred when ISIL first seized control of the village.
Most of ISIL's frustrations at losing Tikrit and the area between it and Kirkuk seem to be being taken out on the Kurdish Cizire Canton in north-eastern Syria and the Kurdish People's Protection units (YPG). It now seems that ISIL are launching a sustained and co-ordinated offensive against the western and southern boundaries of the canton focusing specifically of the town of Tell Tamr to the south and the town of Serekanyie/Ras al-Ayn to the west.
The town of Tell Tamr is of strategic importance because it sits at a junction of roads that links a series of YPG controlled villages surrounding the city of al-Hasakah control of which is disputed between ISIL and the YPG. Therefore if ISIL are able to seize control of Tell Tamr they will cut the YPG's supply lines into al-Hasakah making it much easier for ISIL to seize control of the city which has become a safe-haven for a significant number of Syria's religious minorities including Assyrian Christians.
Although it was proceeded by a series of commando-style raids the ISIL operation to captured Tell Tamr really began 10 days ago on Thursday March 5th (5/3/15). So far it has claimed the lives of 22 YPG fighters including two foreign nationals and ISIL are currently said to be in the village of Tell Nasri which is just 500metres/yards outside of Tell Tamr. However it was only on this Friday (13/3/15) that the YPG received support from the US-led coalition in the form of air-strikes. Curiously though the coalition is so far refusing to confirm these air-strikes let alone provide details.
The town of Serekanyie is even more strategically important because much like Kobane in the Kobane Canton it sits right on the border with Turkey and shares a border crossing with the Turkish town of Ceylanpinar. Therefore if ISIL were able to capture Serekanyie they would control the main highway between the Turkish border and the city of al-Hasakah and from there the routes to their Syrian stronghold of Raqqa.
Although they have today announced that they've stopped two UK teenagers from crossing into Syria to join ISIL I for one doubt that Turkey would be able to secure the border with Ceylanpinar should ISIL take control of Serekanyie. In fact the Turks have frequently said that their border with Syria is far too long for them to control.
Therefore I would think that it would be a high priority of the coalition to make sure that ISIL are not able to seize control of Serekanyie. The best way to do this would be to carry out air-strikes against the ISIL forces that are attacking the town and air-strikes against ISIL positions in the near-by town of Tell Abayd from were the offensive is being launched.
Sadly the coalition seems to disagree and have only carried out a single air-strike which was last Sunday's (8/3/15) strike in Tell Abayd. This destroyed an ISIL oil refinery which is hardly a high value military target.
More details have also begun to emerge of ISIL's assault on Ramadi in Iraq's Anbar province last Wednesday (11/3/15). Although hardly a serious attempt to seize territory this offensive seems to have been particularly bruising. Not only did ISIL unleash 17 Vehicle Borne IED's (VBIED's) against the ISF they also succeeded in killing 40 ISF soldiers on a single strike against ISF headquarters in the city.
Apparently this attack was prepared by ISIL digging a lengthy tunnel under the building and packing it with explosives that were detonated in a huge explosion. This has actually been a common tactic for ISIL in Syria including an attack on the airforce intelligence HQ in Damascus that produced an explosion so huge it registered as an earthquake.
However alongside ISIL's use of Mustard and Chlorine gas is now considered widespread and systemic in both Syria and Iraq this sort of trench warfare tactic of tunnelling serves to underline just how much like the First World War this conflict has become.
17:45 on 15/3/15 (UK date).
It turns out that my first instinct was correct and a small pocket of ISIL fighters remain holed up on the presidential palace compound close to the city centre. Dating back to the rule of Saddam Hussein the presidential palace is effectively a fortress where Saddam and his guards would stay whilst visiting his home town.
Therefore I'm beginning to wonder whether it might be worth strong-pointing the palace compound with tanks while the ISF concentrate on removing the landmines and chlorine gas laced Improvised Explosive Devices (IED's) that ISIL have left littering the city. After all following a few days of siege conditions the ISIL fighters in the palace are likely to be less able to mount a defence.
One of the main reasons why liberation of Tikrit has been so easy despite this small delay is that a large proportion of ISIL forces in the city fled to the area around the town of al-Hawaija which sits around 85km (50 miles) north of Tikrit. From there ISIL hoped to be able sweep back into Tikrit once the bulk of the liberation force had left.
Fortunately the Iraqi Kurdish Peshmerga were wise to this plan and launched an operation from Kirkuk to secure a large swathe of territory to the south of al-Hawaija. After securing an area of the al-Hawaija district that includes the the villages of Sakhra, Wadi Naft and Sada along with some strategically important open areas and portions of the main Kirkuk-Tikrit road the Peshmerga have continued to advance. They have now established a solid front-line including artillery positions just 18km (11 miles) from the centre of al-Hawaija itself. As a result it seems unlikely that ISIL will be sweeping back into Tikrit or into the local oil-fields any time soon.
The Peshmerga have also been providing artillery support to one of the militias of the ISF that have been trying to liberate the village of Bashir/Besiir Kasabasi that sits around 25-35km (15-20 miles) to the south of Kirkuk. Despite fierce resistance from ISIL the ISF have been making progress and Saturday (14/3/15) they made the grim discovery of a mass grave containing the remains of local Turkmen who had been massacred when ISIL first seized control of the village.
Most of ISIL's frustrations at losing Tikrit and the area between it and Kirkuk seem to be being taken out on the Kurdish Cizire Canton in north-eastern Syria and the Kurdish People's Protection units (YPG). It now seems that ISIL are launching a sustained and co-ordinated offensive against the western and southern boundaries of the canton focusing specifically of the town of Tell Tamr to the south and the town of Serekanyie/Ras al-Ayn to the west.
The town of Tell Tamr is of strategic importance because it sits at a junction of roads that links a series of YPG controlled villages surrounding the city of al-Hasakah control of which is disputed between ISIL and the YPG. Therefore if ISIL are able to seize control of Tell Tamr they will cut the YPG's supply lines into al-Hasakah making it much easier for ISIL to seize control of the city which has become a safe-haven for a significant number of Syria's religious minorities including Assyrian Christians.
Although it was proceeded by a series of commando-style raids the ISIL operation to captured Tell Tamr really began 10 days ago on Thursday March 5th (5/3/15). So far it has claimed the lives of 22 YPG fighters including two foreign nationals and ISIL are currently said to be in the village of Tell Nasri which is just 500metres/yards outside of Tell Tamr. However it was only on this Friday (13/3/15) that the YPG received support from the US-led coalition in the form of air-strikes. Curiously though the coalition is so far refusing to confirm these air-strikes let alone provide details.
The town of Serekanyie is even more strategically important because much like Kobane in the Kobane Canton it sits right on the border with Turkey and shares a border crossing with the Turkish town of Ceylanpinar. Therefore if ISIL were able to capture Serekanyie they would control the main highway between the Turkish border and the city of al-Hasakah and from there the routes to their Syrian stronghold of Raqqa.
Although they have today announced that they've stopped two UK teenagers from crossing into Syria to join ISIL I for one doubt that Turkey would be able to secure the border with Ceylanpinar should ISIL take control of Serekanyie. In fact the Turks have frequently said that their border with Syria is far too long for them to control.
Therefore I would think that it would be a high priority of the coalition to make sure that ISIL are not able to seize control of Serekanyie. The best way to do this would be to carry out air-strikes against the ISIL forces that are attacking the town and air-strikes against ISIL positions in the near-by town of Tell Abayd from were the offensive is being launched.
Sadly the coalition seems to disagree and have only carried out a single air-strike which was last Sunday's (8/3/15) strike in Tell Abayd. This destroyed an ISIL oil refinery which is hardly a high value military target.
More details have also begun to emerge of ISIL's assault on Ramadi in Iraq's Anbar province last Wednesday (11/3/15). Although hardly a serious attempt to seize territory this offensive seems to have been particularly bruising. Not only did ISIL unleash 17 Vehicle Borne IED's (VBIED's) against the ISF they also succeeded in killing 40 ISF soldiers on a single strike against ISF headquarters in the city.
Apparently this attack was prepared by ISIL digging a lengthy tunnel under the building and packing it with explosives that were detonated in a huge explosion. This has actually been a common tactic for ISIL in Syria including an attack on the airforce intelligence HQ in Damascus that produced an explosion so huge it registered as an earthquake.
However alongside ISIL's use of Mustard and Chlorine gas is now considered widespread and systemic in both Syria and Iraq this sort of trench warfare tactic of tunnelling serves to underline just how much like the First World War this conflict has become.
17:45 on 15/3/15 (UK date).
Israel Election.
I've said that I won't get involved in Tuesday's (17/3/15) Israeli election. Mainly this is because I know when I know I'm out of my depth. Plus due to my history I'm really not sure how any opinion I have to offer will be recieved.
However it must be said that as he's matured Benjamin Netanyahu has become more impressive. I was particularly impressed by the way he handled last summer's Gaza war. This was most certainly not a war of Israel's choosing and one that actually ran completely against Netanyahu's own policy.
However Netanyahu still conducted the war in such a way as to significantly reduce the threat to Israel and completely eliminate the existing threat from Hamas' attack tunnels while at the same time making substantial efforts to protect Gaza's civilian population. This was done under huge pressure from both the Israeli right to go much further and seemingly hysterical protests from the international community including the US.
Looking around the other candidates I am not seeing anyone with the strength of character to pull off such a feat. Due to their seemingly deep love affair with the values and campaign tactics of US President Barack Obama I am particularly worried how the Zionist Union would have coped in a similar situation. After all Labor and Tzipi Livni were the architects of Operation Cast Lead which was the Gaza war that everybody was really protesting about last summer.
The strongest endorsement for Netanyahu actually comes from the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL). The extremely shoddy special effects in ISIL's recent Muhammad Musallam video seemed to be a direct visual reference to Likud's recent "Which Way to Jerusalem bro?" campaign video. By showing off all their strong links to the West Bank in the Musallam video ISIL were hoping to undermine Likud's claim that Netanyahu is the best candidate to maintain Israel's security in an effort to make sure he lost the election.
Of course what ISIL haven't realised is that they, Hamas, Iran's nuclear program or any other aspects of Israel's security aren't considered major issues in an election that is more about the economy and Obama-esque issues of social and economic equality within Israel's Jewish population. This shift within Israeli politics is of course the product of Netanyahu's policy of "maintaining the quiet."
13:45 on 15/3/15 (UK date).
However it must be said that as he's matured Benjamin Netanyahu has become more impressive. I was particularly impressed by the way he handled last summer's Gaza war. This was most certainly not a war of Israel's choosing and one that actually ran completely against Netanyahu's own policy.
However Netanyahu still conducted the war in such a way as to significantly reduce the threat to Israel and completely eliminate the existing threat from Hamas' attack tunnels while at the same time making substantial efforts to protect Gaza's civilian population. This was done under huge pressure from both the Israeli right to go much further and seemingly hysterical protests from the international community including the US.
Looking around the other candidates I am not seeing anyone with the strength of character to pull off such a feat. Due to their seemingly deep love affair with the values and campaign tactics of US President Barack Obama I am particularly worried how the Zionist Union would have coped in a similar situation. After all Labor and Tzipi Livni were the architects of Operation Cast Lead which was the Gaza war that everybody was really protesting about last summer.
The strongest endorsement for Netanyahu actually comes from the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL). The extremely shoddy special effects in ISIL's recent Muhammad Musallam video seemed to be a direct visual reference to Likud's recent "Which Way to Jerusalem bro?" campaign video. By showing off all their strong links to the West Bank in the Musallam video ISIL were hoping to undermine Likud's claim that Netanyahu is the best candidate to maintain Israel's security in an effort to make sure he lost the election.
Of course what ISIL haven't realised is that they, Hamas, Iran's nuclear program or any other aspects of Israel's security aren't considered major issues in an election that is more about the economy and Obama-esque issues of social and economic equality within Israel's Jewish population. This shift within Israeli politics is of course the product of Netanyahu's policy of "maintaining the quiet."
13:45 on 15/3/15 (UK date).
Saturday, 14 March 2015
Typhoon Pam Strikes Vanuatu.
Roughly 18 hours ago the most serious category five Typhoon Pam struck Vanuatu which is actually a group of 82 small islands approximately 2000km (1200 miles) north-west of Brisbane, Australia. Although smaller then the off-the-scale Typhoon Haiyan which struck the Philippines at the end of 2013 Typhoon Pam has created a similar situation of almost total destruction that has completely cut off many communities that were already isolated.
If there is an up side to this situation it is that Vanuatu's total population is only around 270,000 people. The city I live in - London - has roughly 40 times as many people as the entire nation of Vanuatu. So although this is a serious situation it shouldn't be beyond the capacity of international relief organisations. They will though require money and logistical support in the form of helicopters and engineers to get air-fields and other vital infrastructure up and running as quickly as possible.
Within climate change negotiations Vanuatu is actually considered quite an important nation. In fact I used at 2014's COP20 Summit as an example of how these small nations simply cannot compete with larger nations such as the US in terms of scientific, political, legal and other technological knowhow. It is also a nation that is particularly at risk from the effects of climate change having already been forced to permanently evacuate its coastal areas in response to rising sea levels.
Therefore if there is any meaning to this disaster striking Vanuatu then it is to provide a prime example of why parties involved in climate change negotiations - myself included - really need to pick up the pace in terms to streamlining the ADP negotiating text so that it can be signed up to at COP21 at the end of this year. It particularly highlights the issue of financing for adaptation and loss and damage that has been a laborious sticking point.
Although national governments such as the UK and New Zealand have already pledged aid to Vanuatu as always happens in these situations I think the majority of aid money is going to come through private donations to Non-Governmental Organisations (NGO's). Within climate change negotiations there is a bloc of nations - often Marxist ones - that are demanding that all funding comes on a government-to-government basis with no allowance being provided for private finance.
Typhoon Pam is likely to provide a clear example of all the extra forms of assistance that less capable nations are denying themselves by digging in their heels and refusing to allow for private finance within any ADP agreement.
Also Typhoon Pam coincides with a once a decade United Nations (UN) Summit of disaster relief which is currently taking place in Japan. One suggestion to come out of climate change negotiations is that the UN sets up a relief agency specifically to deal with natural disasters triggered by climate change. Typhoon Pam really highlights the problem with that because although Vanuatu is experiencing problems associated with climate change no-one is really in a position to say for certain that this specific typhoon is a climate change related disaster.
Obviously it is quite hard to argue that as the World rushes to respond to Typhoon Pam the situation would be improved by a lengthy argument over whether the responsibility should fall on the proposed UN climate change relief agency or not.
For example due to its proximity it is likely that a lot of the responsibility to the Typhoon Pam response is going to fall on Australia. The current Australian government has a reputation for being quite prickly on climate change issues so could possibly be less keen to participate in an operation that helps demonstrate the flaws in its environmental policy.
17:00 on 14/3/15 (UK date).
If there is an up side to this situation it is that Vanuatu's total population is only around 270,000 people. The city I live in - London - has roughly 40 times as many people as the entire nation of Vanuatu. So although this is a serious situation it shouldn't be beyond the capacity of international relief organisations. They will though require money and logistical support in the form of helicopters and engineers to get air-fields and other vital infrastructure up and running as quickly as possible.
Within climate change negotiations Vanuatu is actually considered quite an important nation. In fact I used at 2014's COP20 Summit as an example of how these small nations simply cannot compete with larger nations such as the US in terms of scientific, political, legal and other technological knowhow. It is also a nation that is particularly at risk from the effects of climate change having already been forced to permanently evacuate its coastal areas in response to rising sea levels.
Therefore if there is any meaning to this disaster striking Vanuatu then it is to provide a prime example of why parties involved in climate change negotiations - myself included - really need to pick up the pace in terms to streamlining the ADP negotiating text so that it can be signed up to at COP21 at the end of this year. It particularly highlights the issue of financing for adaptation and loss and damage that has been a laborious sticking point.
Although national governments such as the UK and New Zealand have already pledged aid to Vanuatu as always happens in these situations I think the majority of aid money is going to come through private donations to Non-Governmental Organisations (NGO's). Within climate change negotiations there is a bloc of nations - often Marxist ones - that are demanding that all funding comes on a government-to-government basis with no allowance being provided for private finance.
Typhoon Pam is likely to provide a clear example of all the extra forms of assistance that less capable nations are denying themselves by digging in their heels and refusing to allow for private finance within any ADP agreement.
Also Typhoon Pam coincides with a once a decade United Nations (UN) Summit of disaster relief which is currently taking place in Japan. One suggestion to come out of climate change negotiations is that the UN sets up a relief agency specifically to deal with natural disasters triggered by climate change. Typhoon Pam really highlights the problem with that because although Vanuatu is experiencing problems associated with climate change no-one is really in a position to say for certain that this specific typhoon is a climate change related disaster.
Obviously it is quite hard to argue that as the World rushes to respond to Typhoon Pam the situation would be improved by a lengthy argument over whether the responsibility should fall on the proposed UN climate change relief agency or not.
For example due to its proximity it is likely that a lot of the responsibility to the Typhoon Pam response is going to fall on Australia. The current Australian government has a reputation for being quite prickly on climate change issues so could possibly be less keen to participate in an operation that helps demonstrate the flaws in its environmental policy.
17:00 on 14/3/15 (UK date).
Friday, 13 March 2015
The Ferguson Report: Place Holder.
I would have liked to have covered the Department of Justice (DoJ) report into Ferguson, Missouri but carrying Obama's war against ISIL is taking up a lot of my time. However there are a couple of important things I didn't mention yesterday.
I should probably start by pointing out that the report was released on Wednesday March 4th (4/3/15) which was just three days before the 50th anniversary of the Selma march which took place on Saturday March 7th (7/3/15). This was purely intentional and should have acted as a warning sign of the reports clear political bias.
One of the reports main findings was that despite having a population of around 21,000 Ferguson issued but failed to execute 9,000 arrest warrants in 2013 a figure which rose to 16,000 in 2014 following the Micheal Brown shooting and DoJ becoming involved. The report obviously concentrated on emotive case studies rather then hard facts so didn't offer a breakdown of why these warrants had been issued and to whom. Therefore it is theoretically possible that all 25,000 warrants were issued to one really prolific offender.
However it is more likely that the majority of them were issued after a person had been summoned to Court for a misdemeanour offence - such as a traffic violation - but then failed to appear in Court. That failure to appear represents a separate criminal offence of contempt of Court which is considered such a serious offence it can result in indefinite detention - basically life in prison. After all if the accused don't turn up in Court then a legal system that is based entirely around an accused being given the right to defend themselves in Court falls to pieces.
So what the report found was that Ferguson's black residents hold an almost complete contempt for the legal system to the point where they don't seem to think that the law applies to them. This attitude got worse after the DoJ began its investigation and will obviously cloud their interaction with any aspect of the legal system including the police and their interactions with a wider laws based society.
The report also found that largely these felony arrest warrants were not being enforced by the police in Ferguson. Quite how a population where 16,000 people could be quite properly arrested and jailed but haven't been can claim they are being persecuted by the police is completely beyond me.
So the DoJ report actually found that there is a ingrained culture of lawlessness amongst Ferguson's black residents and that the cities police and Courts are far too tolerant of that culture. The fact that US Attorney General has looked at that evidence and concluded that Ferguson's black residents are being racially oppressed by law enforcement is why the report is considered nothing but Holder's personal opinion. That is why it needs to be considered by an independent body such as a Court before it is recognised and acted upon.
One thing that will further reduce Holder's credibility during the process is that fact that he has already tendered his resignation as Attorney General and that resignation has been accepted by all parties. Specifically on August 17th (17/8/14) Holder ordered a federal autopsy of Micheal Brown implying that Ferguson's autopsy had been carried out incorrectly as part of a cover-up.
That federal autopsy was completed in the week beginning September 22nd (22/9/14) and it completely agreed with the findings of the Ferguson autopsy. Three days later on September 25th (25/9/14) Eric Holder tendered his resignation.
Unfortunately Holder has decided that he will remain in post until his replacement was confirmed by Congress. Sadly US President Obama has nominated Loretta Lynch as his replacement. Due to her personal friendship with Holder and her involvement with Al Sharpton during the deeply flawed Eric Garner investigation Lynch has proved herself to unsuitable to hold such a high public office and therefore is extremely unlikely to ever be confirmed by Congress.
Therefore I think it's time for Holder's resignation to come into effect and for the DoJ to be run by acting head while Obama has a little think about his decision to nominate Lynch.
16:20 on 13/3/15 (UK date).
I should probably start by pointing out that the report was released on Wednesday March 4th (4/3/15) which was just three days before the 50th anniversary of the Selma march which took place on Saturday March 7th (7/3/15). This was purely intentional and should have acted as a warning sign of the reports clear political bias.
One of the reports main findings was that despite having a population of around 21,000 Ferguson issued but failed to execute 9,000 arrest warrants in 2013 a figure which rose to 16,000 in 2014 following the Micheal Brown shooting and DoJ becoming involved. The report obviously concentrated on emotive case studies rather then hard facts so didn't offer a breakdown of why these warrants had been issued and to whom. Therefore it is theoretically possible that all 25,000 warrants were issued to one really prolific offender.
However it is more likely that the majority of them were issued after a person had been summoned to Court for a misdemeanour offence - such as a traffic violation - but then failed to appear in Court. That failure to appear represents a separate criminal offence of contempt of Court which is considered such a serious offence it can result in indefinite detention - basically life in prison. After all if the accused don't turn up in Court then a legal system that is based entirely around an accused being given the right to defend themselves in Court falls to pieces.
So what the report found was that Ferguson's black residents hold an almost complete contempt for the legal system to the point where they don't seem to think that the law applies to them. This attitude got worse after the DoJ began its investigation and will obviously cloud their interaction with any aspect of the legal system including the police and their interactions with a wider laws based society.
The report also found that largely these felony arrest warrants were not being enforced by the police in Ferguson. Quite how a population where 16,000 people could be quite properly arrested and jailed but haven't been can claim they are being persecuted by the police is completely beyond me.
So the DoJ report actually found that there is a ingrained culture of lawlessness amongst Ferguson's black residents and that the cities police and Courts are far too tolerant of that culture. The fact that US Attorney General has looked at that evidence and concluded that Ferguson's black residents are being racially oppressed by law enforcement is why the report is considered nothing but Holder's personal opinion. That is why it needs to be considered by an independent body such as a Court before it is recognised and acted upon.
One thing that will further reduce Holder's credibility during the process is that fact that he has already tendered his resignation as Attorney General and that resignation has been accepted by all parties. Specifically on August 17th (17/8/14) Holder ordered a federal autopsy of Micheal Brown implying that Ferguson's autopsy had been carried out incorrectly as part of a cover-up.
That federal autopsy was completed in the week beginning September 22nd (22/9/14) and it completely agreed with the findings of the Ferguson autopsy. Three days later on September 25th (25/9/14) Eric Holder tendered his resignation.
Unfortunately Holder has decided that he will remain in post until his replacement was confirmed by Congress. Sadly US President Obama has nominated Loretta Lynch as his replacement. Due to her personal friendship with Holder and her involvement with Al Sharpton during the deeply flawed Eric Garner investigation Lynch has proved herself to unsuitable to hold such a high public office and therefore is extremely unlikely to ever be confirmed by Congress.
Therefore I think it's time for Holder's resignation to come into effect and for the DoJ to be run by acting head while Obama has a little think about his decision to nominate Lynch.
16:20 on 13/3/15 (UK date).
Operation Featherweight: Month 8, Week 2, Day 7.
Last night the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) released an audio message accepting the recent pledge of allegiance by Nigeria's Boko Haram. The short message by ISIL's leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi announces that the caliphate has expanded to west Africa now that ISIL has allied with Boko Haram. It then urges any supporters who can't travel to Syria or Iraq to travel to Nigeria instead.
Over the past six years Boko Haram have been fighting against solely the Nigerian army. As with in many African nations the Nigerian army has been kept weak to avoid it mounting a coup meaning that Boko Haram have been able to challenge this poorly paid, poorly motivated and poorly equipped fighting force. However towards the end of 2014 Boko Haram started mounting cross border raids into Cameroon and Chad.
This turned Boko Haram into a regional threat and the African Union (AU) recently authorised a multi-national force to fight them. That force includes troops from Chad who have fearsome reputation having more then proved themselves alongside French forces in the 2012 war in Mali. Although that multi-national force has only really started to begin operations in the last couple of weeks or so it has already got Boko Haram frightened and they are clearly looking towards ISIL in desperate need of support.
Currently there is an Islamist war going on in Iraq and Syria. There is also a small Islamist war going on in Egypt and another Islamist war going in neighbouring Libya where ISIL are formally operating. Then of course there is Boko Haram's Islamist war going on in Nigeria which has been fuelled by the 2012 Islamist war in Mali. There is also an Islamist war in Yemen and yet another Islamist war in Somalia which occasionally spills over into Kenya and Uganda. Finally there is the conflict in Ukraine which is being driven by a different stripe of fascist.
We are of course supposed to believe that all these wars are happening spontaneously and independently of each other rather then being the work of a small group of nations who seem to be at war with everyone else. By pledging allegiance to ISIL and having that pledge accepted Boko Haram have now formally linked the two largest Islamist conflicts together making it near impossible to deny that the two are connected.
So it seems to me that ISIL's acceptance of Boko Haram as allies has been begrudging at best. Mind you the way the US are fighting ISIL at the moment the move could well provide Boko Haram with an extra degree of protection.
13:00 on 13/3/15 (UK date).
Over the past six years Boko Haram have been fighting against solely the Nigerian army. As with in many African nations the Nigerian army has been kept weak to avoid it mounting a coup meaning that Boko Haram have been able to challenge this poorly paid, poorly motivated and poorly equipped fighting force. However towards the end of 2014 Boko Haram started mounting cross border raids into Cameroon and Chad.
This turned Boko Haram into a regional threat and the African Union (AU) recently authorised a multi-national force to fight them. That force includes troops from Chad who have fearsome reputation having more then proved themselves alongside French forces in the 2012 war in Mali. Although that multi-national force has only really started to begin operations in the last couple of weeks or so it has already got Boko Haram frightened and they are clearly looking towards ISIL in desperate need of support.
Currently there is an Islamist war going on in Iraq and Syria. There is also a small Islamist war going on in Egypt and another Islamist war going in neighbouring Libya where ISIL are formally operating. Then of course there is Boko Haram's Islamist war going on in Nigeria which has been fuelled by the 2012 Islamist war in Mali. There is also an Islamist war in Yemen and yet another Islamist war in Somalia which occasionally spills over into Kenya and Uganda. Finally there is the conflict in Ukraine which is being driven by a different stripe of fascist.
We are of course supposed to believe that all these wars are happening spontaneously and independently of each other rather then being the work of a small group of nations who seem to be at war with everyone else. By pledging allegiance to ISIL and having that pledge accepted Boko Haram have now formally linked the two largest Islamist conflicts together making it near impossible to deny that the two are connected.
So it seems to me that ISIL's acceptance of Boko Haram as allies has been begrudging at best. Mind you the way the US are fighting ISIL at the moment the move could well provide Boko Haram with an extra degree of protection.
13:00 on 13/3/15 (UK date).
Thursday, 12 March 2015
Operation Featherweight: Month 8, Week 2, Day 6.
Yesterday (11/3/15) the Iraqi Security Forces (ISF) began their final assault to liberate the city of Tikrit from the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) in what is seen as a test of the battles to come.
Although I don't think they cleared every street house-by-house the ISF were very rapidly able to dominate the areas of tactical importance within the city. So by yesterday evening they'd secured everything in the north down to the industrial zone and everything from the south up to the teaching hospital. This left little more then 100 ISIL fighters were left clinging onto an area around the presidential complex and the old neighbourhood.
Today the ISF moved into those areas and declared them liberated at around 12:30 GMT (15:30 local). As a result the city of the Tikrit is now considered fully liberated some two days ahead of schedule.
Despite the liberation being complete there is still a lot work to be done conducting house-to-house searches looking any ISIL fighters who may have gone into hiding and dismantling the vast number of landmines and Improvised Explosive Devices (IED's) that ISIL have left littering the city.
The task of clearing these IED's is being made all the more difficult because a significant proportion of them are not conventional IED's. Instead they have been rigged to release a cloud of chlorine gas when they explode making them examples of prohibited chemical weapons.
It will be interesting to see how the US reacts to this developments because their Ambassador to the United Nations Samantha Power in particular has been a very vocal crusader against the use of chlorine gas in Syria. Presumably she will be displaying the same level of outrage at its use by ISIL in Iraq even if it does significantly undermine the claim that the Syrian government has been using chemical weapons in its fight against ISIL.
A possible explanation of why the operation to liberate Tikrit has been so successful is that ISIL fighters are suspected of fleeing to the al-Huwaija district which is to the north-east of the city. Fortunately on Monday (9/3/15) the Iraqi Kurdish Peshmerga launched an offensive pushing south-west from the city of Kirkuk to meet ISIL in al-Huwaija.
That operation was completed on Tuesday (10/3/15) and it has since been confirmed that not only did the Peshmerga liberate the villages of Sakhra, Wadi Naft and Sada they also achieved the main objective which was a tactically important ridge and parts of the main Tikrit-Kirkuk road which should limit ISIL ability to attack either Tikrit or Kirkuk from al-Huwaija district.
Also on Monday the ISF launched an offensive against ISIL positions surrounding the town of Karma which is around 8km (4.8 miles) north-east of Fallujah which itself is around 45km (27 miles) west of the Iraqi capital Baghdad. That operation continued into Wednesday and the estimated ISIL death toll has now risen to over 450.
Perhaps buoyed by their success in Tikrit and Karma the ISF have today started attacking ISIL positions within Fallujah itself which could be a precursor to the liberation of the city. However there is a concern that the ISF may again find themselves overstretched.
In an effort to arrest their decline ISIL yesterday launched a large scale assault on the ISF held areas of Ramadi which sits around 50km (30 miles) north-west of Fallujah along the Euphrates River. This attack did not amount to anything and seems to have been centred around detonating 17 vehicle borne IED's (VBIED's) while blasting the ISF positions with artillery fire. It appears that one of the VBIED's was being driven by Jake Bilardi - an 18 year old Australian who travelled to join ISIL in late 2014 - who is believed to have died in what was always intended to be a suicide attack.
In the last hour or so reports have begun to emerge that 22 ISF soldiers were killed in a suspected friendly fire air-strike on Ramadi. The US-led coalition has denied any involvement. I'm inclined to believe them because one of the defining features of the attack on Ramadi has been the coalition's seemingly complete abandonment of the ISF.
At the same time as the assault began on Ramadi ISIL also launched a assault on the town of Serekanyie/Ras al-Ayn which sits on the western edge of the Kurdish Cizire Canton in northern Syria. Worryingly I have been unable to find any information about how this battle is progressing. However it is clear that the Kurdish People's Protection Units (YPG) who are defending have not received any support from the US-led coalition. In fact the coalition did not conduct a single air-strike anywhere in Syria yesterday.
On Tuesday though the coalition did carry out a single air-strike in the vicinity of Tel Tamir which sits on the southern edge of the Cizire Canton. That strike destroyed a ISIL fuel pumping station. That seems a particularly low priority target to strike because for the best part of a week now the YPG have been trying to resist a sustained attack by ISIL on Tel Tamir. Over the past 24 hours the town and it's surrounding villages have come under continuous heavy fire from ISIL artillery and mortar positions.
Those ISIL heavy weapons positions seem to me to be prime targets for coalition air-strikes.
Away from the fighting itself Turkey announced that it has arrested a foreign national who is the agent of third nation for helping those three British teenage girls cross into Syria to join ISIL. Although the Turks have ruled out that this man was working for a US or EU spy agency they have confirmed that he was working for the spy agency of another nation in the US-led coalition.
With the regional Sulaimani Forum conference taking place this is partial release of information was intended to create speculation that the arrested man was working for either Saudi or Qatari intelligence. Under Erdogan Turkey's allegiance with Qatar to support the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt has led to a degree of tension with Saudi Arabia. Obviously events in Kobane have also created a degree of tension between Erdogan and the Kurdish parties whose support he needs in the upcoming June election.
Primarily though the concern is that this spy has been arrested not for being part of a Turkish group channelling jihadists to ISIL but because he was providing information about that group to the coalition.
18:25 on 12/3/15 (UK date).
Although I don't think they cleared every street house-by-house the ISF were very rapidly able to dominate the areas of tactical importance within the city. So by yesterday evening they'd secured everything in the north down to the industrial zone and everything from the south up to the teaching hospital. This left little more then 100 ISIL fighters were left clinging onto an area around the presidential complex and the old neighbourhood.
Today the ISF moved into those areas and declared them liberated at around 12:30 GMT (15:30 local). As a result the city of the Tikrit is now considered fully liberated some two days ahead of schedule.
Despite the liberation being complete there is still a lot work to be done conducting house-to-house searches looking any ISIL fighters who may have gone into hiding and dismantling the vast number of landmines and Improvised Explosive Devices (IED's) that ISIL have left littering the city.
The task of clearing these IED's is being made all the more difficult because a significant proportion of them are not conventional IED's. Instead they have been rigged to release a cloud of chlorine gas when they explode making them examples of prohibited chemical weapons.
It will be interesting to see how the US reacts to this developments because their Ambassador to the United Nations Samantha Power in particular has been a very vocal crusader against the use of chlorine gas in Syria. Presumably she will be displaying the same level of outrage at its use by ISIL in Iraq even if it does significantly undermine the claim that the Syrian government has been using chemical weapons in its fight against ISIL.
A possible explanation of why the operation to liberate Tikrit has been so successful is that ISIL fighters are suspected of fleeing to the al-Huwaija district which is to the north-east of the city. Fortunately on Monday (9/3/15) the Iraqi Kurdish Peshmerga launched an offensive pushing south-west from the city of Kirkuk to meet ISIL in al-Huwaija.
That operation was completed on Tuesday (10/3/15) and it has since been confirmed that not only did the Peshmerga liberate the villages of Sakhra, Wadi Naft and Sada they also achieved the main objective which was a tactically important ridge and parts of the main Tikrit-Kirkuk road which should limit ISIL ability to attack either Tikrit or Kirkuk from al-Huwaija district.
Also on Monday the ISF launched an offensive against ISIL positions surrounding the town of Karma which is around 8km (4.8 miles) north-east of Fallujah which itself is around 45km (27 miles) west of the Iraqi capital Baghdad. That operation continued into Wednesday and the estimated ISIL death toll has now risen to over 450.
Perhaps buoyed by their success in Tikrit and Karma the ISF have today started attacking ISIL positions within Fallujah itself which could be a precursor to the liberation of the city. However there is a concern that the ISF may again find themselves overstretched.
In an effort to arrest their decline ISIL yesterday launched a large scale assault on the ISF held areas of Ramadi which sits around 50km (30 miles) north-west of Fallujah along the Euphrates River. This attack did not amount to anything and seems to have been centred around detonating 17 vehicle borne IED's (VBIED's) while blasting the ISF positions with artillery fire. It appears that one of the VBIED's was being driven by Jake Bilardi - an 18 year old Australian who travelled to join ISIL in late 2014 - who is believed to have died in what was always intended to be a suicide attack.
In the last hour or so reports have begun to emerge that 22 ISF soldiers were killed in a suspected friendly fire air-strike on Ramadi. The US-led coalition has denied any involvement. I'm inclined to believe them because one of the defining features of the attack on Ramadi has been the coalition's seemingly complete abandonment of the ISF.
At the same time as the assault began on Ramadi ISIL also launched a assault on the town of Serekanyie/Ras al-Ayn which sits on the western edge of the Kurdish Cizire Canton in northern Syria. Worryingly I have been unable to find any information about how this battle is progressing. However it is clear that the Kurdish People's Protection Units (YPG) who are defending have not received any support from the US-led coalition. In fact the coalition did not conduct a single air-strike anywhere in Syria yesterday.
On Tuesday though the coalition did carry out a single air-strike in the vicinity of Tel Tamir which sits on the southern edge of the Cizire Canton. That strike destroyed a ISIL fuel pumping station. That seems a particularly low priority target to strike because for the best part of a week now the YPG have been trying to resist a sustained attack by ISIL on Tel Tamir. Over the past 24 hours the town and it's surrounding villages have come under continuous heavy fire from ISIL artillery and mortar positions.
Those ISIL heavy weapons positions seem to me to be prime targets for coalition air-strikes.
Away from the fighting itself Turkey announced that it has arrested a foreign national who is the agent of third nation for helping those three British teenage girls cross into Syria to join ISIL. Although the Turks have ruled out that this man was working for a US or EU spy agency they have confirmed that he was working for the spy agency of another nation in the US-led coalition.
With the regional Sulaimani Forum conference taking place this is partial release of information was intended to create speculation that the arrested man was working for either Saudi or Qatari intelligence. Under Erdogan Turkey's allegiance with Qatar to support the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt has led to a degree of tension with Saudi Arabia. Obviously events in Kobane have also created a degree of tension between Erdogan and the Kurdish parties whose support he needs in the upcoming June election.
Primarily though the concern is that this spy has been arrested not for being part of a Turkish group channelling jihadists to ISIL but because he was providing information about that group to the coalition.
18:25 on 12/3/15 (UK date).
Holder's Race War: Ferguson.
Following the shooting of Micheal Brown in Ferguson, Missouri in August 2014 US Attorney General Eric Holder launched a civil rights investigation into the incident itself and policing in the city more generally. After seven months the Department of Justice (DoJ) finally released its report last Wednesday (4/3/15).
The main finding of the report was that the claim that Brown had been unarmed and was surrendering to the police when shot and killed was entirely false. Therefore the Grand Jury's decision not to indicate the officer over the shooting was entirely correct and there was absolutely no evidence to indicate that Brown had been murdered or that his civil rights had been violated in any way.
However the part of the report that everybody chose to focus on was the finding that despite accounting for just 67% of the local population Ferguson's black residents are responsible for 80-90% of all recorded crime. The report also found that when accused of crimes Ferguson's black residents were more likely to display contempt for the legal process by failing to pay fines or even attend Court hearings. As with all citizens regardless of race this contempt resulted in Ferguson's black residents incurring further penalties such as new fines and/or jail time.
Holder seems to have then quite clearly projected his own prejudice onto the evidence and concluded that the disproportionate rate of legal penalty imposed on Ferguson's black residents had nothing to do with the fact they were far more likely to engage in criminal behaviour but because of racism.
Fortunately the DoJ's report carries absolutely no legal weight and is best described as Eric Holder's opinion. In order for it to result in action the DoJ would have to apply to a Court that would assess Holder's opinion alongside all other legal opinions and the evidence. The Court would then make recommendations. The most likely of these would probably be a recommendation that Holder's opinion is disregarded because it contains some deeply flawed reasoning. For example it doesn't consider a breach of the criminal code to be a crime - a opinion that runs contrary to roughly a thousand years of legal precedent.
However rather then applying this due process the DoJ appears to have use the media and protesters to bully both the city of Ferguson and the state of Missouri into accepting the report as fact. As a result local authorities have made a series of concessions to appease Holder such as moving all of Ferguson's pending legal cases to a different jurisdiction. There has also been a series of high profile resignations including Ferguson police chief Thomas Jackson who stepped down yesterday.
This has done nothing to quell the hatred of the protesters who last night staged a protest outside Ferguson's police headquarters just the same as they have done over the previous 149 nights. Last night's protest quickly turned violent with punches, bottles and bricks being thrown at police officers in riot gear who curiously only made two arrests. The violence reached its peak when members of the crowd opened fire on the police line hitting two police officers one of whom was shot in the face.
Therefore I think it's time for the authorities in Missouri to do what they should have done back in August and stop appeasing the protesters. After all it's clear the mob don't want justice. Instead they want the right to behave as badly as they like without there being any consequences.
11:45 on 12/3/15 (UK date).
The main finding of the report was that the claim that Brown had been unarmed and was surrendering to the police when shot and killed was entirely false. Therefore the Grand Jury's decision not to indicate the officer over the shooting was entirely correct and there was absolutely no evidence to indicate that Brown had been murdered or that his civil rights had been violated in any way.
However the part of the report that everybody chose to focus on was the finding that despite accounting for just 67% of the local population Ferguson's black residents are responsible for 80-90% of all recorded crime. The report also found that when accused of crimes Ferguson's black residents were more likely to display contempt for the legal process by failing to pay fines or even attend Court hearings. As with all citizens regardless of race this contempt resulted in Ferguson's black residents incurring further penalties such as new fines and/or jail time.
Holder seems to have then quite clearly projected his own prejudice onto the evidence and concluded that the disproportionate rate of legal penalty imposed on Ferguson's black residents had nothing to do with the fact they were far more likely to engage in criminal behaviour but because of racism.
Fortunately the DoJ's report carries absolutely no legal weight and is best described as Eric Holder's opinion. In order for it to result in action the DoJ would have to apply to a Court that would assess Holder's opinion alongside all other legal opinions and the evidence. The Court would then make recommendations. The most likely of these would probably be a recommendation that Holder's opinion is disregarded because it contains some deeply flawed reasoning. For example it doesn't consider a breach of the criminal code to be a crime - a opinion that runs contrary to roughly a thousand years of legal precedent.
However rather then applying this due process the DoJ appears to have use the media and protesters to bully both the city of Ferguson and the state of Missouri into accepting the report as fact. As a result local authorities have made a series of concessions to appease Holder such as moving all of Ferguson's pending legal cases to a different jurisdiction. There has also been a series of high profile resignations including Ferguson police chief Thomas Jackson who stepped down yesterday.
This has done nothing to quell the hatred of the protesters who last night staged a protest outside Ferguson's police headquarters just the same as they have done over the previous 149 nights. Last night's protest quickly turned violent with punches, bottles and bricks being thrown at police officers in riot gear who curiously only made two arrests. The violence reached its peak when members of the crowd opened fire on the police line hitting two police officers one of whom was shot in the face.
Therefore I think it's time for the authorities in Missouri to do what they should have done back in August and stop appeasing the protesters. After all it's clear the mob don't want justice. Instead they want the right to behave as badly as they like without there being any consequences.
11:45 on 12/3/15 (UK date).
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