COP21 Terrorism Update #17

Today sees the start of the 6th Assembly of the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA) in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates (UAE).

Although just a two day meeting focused entirely on renewable energy this is the first time that delegates from nations party to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) have gathered together in the same place at the same time since the end of the 21st Conference of Parties (COP21) in Paris, France on December 12th (12/12/15).

Since COP21 nations have had a chance to reflect on the draft global change agreement it produced and found it to be riddled with errors. As a result it is seeming increasingly less likely that the draft will be ratified by the minimum of 55 nations required for it to come into force.

As the COP21 draft (aka; "The 12/12 Atrocity") will block any effective action being taken to combat climate change either now or at any point in the future the Gulf States led by Saudi Arabia are desperate for it to be ratified. After all these nations that were only created to control the flow of fossil fuels such as oil and natural gas view any attempts to move away from fossil fuels as a threat to their very existence.

As a result these Gulf States have long mounted a campaign of Islamic inspired terrorism to intimidate nations into obeying them on the issue of climate change. Initially the objective was to prevent nations from participating in the UNFCCC process. However now that process has produced a draft agreement that will permanently prevent action being taken to combat climate change the objective is now to bully nations into ratifying that draft.

So on Thursday (14/1/16) we had the Islamic inspired terror attack in the Indonesian capital Jakarta which I covered in my 16th post in this series.

There I explained how a cinema and shopping mall were specifically targeted in an effort to invoke memories of an attack against a cinema and shopping mall in the Somali capital Mogadishu on December 19th (19/12/15). The intention being to remind east/central African nations that although Indonesia was being attacked on this occasion Saudi Arabia remains poised just across the Gulf of Aden from east Africa.

On Friday (15/1/16) the threat to east/central Africa became a lot more explicit when the Islamic inspired terror group Al-Shabaab (literally: "The Youth") attacked a Kenyan army base close to the town of el-Ade in southern Somalia. Although details are still a little hazy it appears that 65 Kenyan troops were killed in this attack which is similar to an attack that killed 70 Burundian and Ugandan troops near the village of Leego in June 2015.

Later on Friday (15/1/16) there was yet another Islamic inspired terror attack in Africa. This time on a luxury hotel in Ouagadougou - the capital of Burkina Faso.

Here four terrorists - 2 men and 2 women -stormed into the hotel killing 26 people in the communal areas before rigging the building with explosives in an effort to use the other 126 guests as hostages. The siege was professionally ended by Burkinabe troops backed by French special forces.

Although the siege has only ended in the past 8 hours it appears that the majority of those killed and injured were not only foreigners but also represent a wide variety of nationalities.

As with the November 20th (20/11/15) attack on similar hotel in Bamako, the capital of Burkina Faso's neighbour Mali the intention seems to be to show that Saudi Arabia is not only able threaten nations in east/central Africa but also west Africa.

Not only do yesterday's attacks cut across Africa from east to west they've occurred in a very specific part of Africa known as the Sahel Belt. This area is particularly important within climate change negotiations because it represents a zone of transition between the Sahara to the north and the rich Savannah farmlands to the south.

The problem is that climate change is causing the Sahara to expand and encroach into the Sahel Belt reducing the amount of viable farmland and therefore reducing the food supply. As a result what is known as "Food Security" in UNFCCC jargon is a major concern for governments in the Sahel.

In 2010 the Sahel region experienced an extreme famine that left at least 20 million people starving in scenes far more harrowing then those currently coming out of the Syrian town of Madaya. In 2012 the Sahel experienced another extreme famine which saw 2.8 million people driven into starvation in Burkina Faso alone.

In December 2015 United Nations (UN) staffers forced the UN Security Council (UNSC) to sit through a briefing on the threat of climate change on the Sahel Belt in the hope of connecting the US - that month's UNSC chair - with the reality of the threat that climate change poses to African nations.

As a result you would think that nations in the Sahel Belt would have the most to lose from seeing the 12/12 Atrocity ratified and the most to gain from seeing it fail to be replaced with something that actually works. This makes them prime targets for Saudi Arabia's terrorism.

In terms of why the Hotel Splendid was chosen as the specific target I'm hesitant to assign too much meaning.

One the big problems faced by many African nations in responding to climate change is that they have extremely low levels of socio-economic development.

For example in the US or the UK roughly 100% of people can read and write. However in Burkina Faso that drops to around 36% while in Somalia it is so low that it's not possible to put an exact figure on it. The fact that the COP21 draft requires nations such as these to keep full greenhouse gas (ghg) inventories and submit new actions plans every 5 years is just one of its many flaws.

These low level of development effect every aspect of life in these nations including their terrorists.

Back in - I think 2014 - a group of child recruits were rescued from an al-Shabaab training camp. A large part of their indoctrination was telling them that if they committed suicide attacks they would be rewarded by 72 virgins in Paradise. Their instructors 'proved' this too them by showing them a portion of a Bollywood film which they claimed had been sent back from the afterlife by suicide attackers who'd gone before them.

Having little concept of India the country let alone that they made movies there many of the al-Shabaab recruits actually believed this to be true.

Therefore if there was any significance to the choice of the Hotel Splendid as a target it was that it is used by comparatively rich international visitors. As result this attack has been headline news across much of the World while the attack on Kenyan troops earlier in the day only really received a few lines on Twitter.

If you want to target a luxury hotel in Ouagadougou that's popular with international visitors you don't really have much choice. However Hotel Splendid is owned by a Ukrainian.

On Tuesday (12/1/16) US President Barack Obama gave his final State of the Union (SOTU) address. As is a fitting end for Obama's Presidency this was an utterly empty speech devoid of any substance.

However in talking about US strength overseas Obama declared that he was forcing Russia to prop up Ukraine. This seemed to be an admission by Obama that the US had plunged Ukraine into chaos in order to provide an excuse to sanction Russia for opposing the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL).

The fact that the US would do something so horrific in support of Islamic inspired terrorism shows the World that rather than being prepared to protect it from Islamic inspired terrorism the US views itself merely as Saudi Arabia's servant. That's hardly reassuring.

Of course the main thing that brings international visitors to places like Burkina Faso and hotels like Hotel Splendid is working for the UN. Although we are still waiting for identities to be confirmed it seems that many of those killed, wounded or held hostage were indeed working for either the UN or associated aid agencies.

Therefore the attack is another show of force by Saudi Arabia. After all if the UNSC too afraid to take action to protect its own employees from Saudi Arabia it's certainly not going to take action to protect its smaller and weaker members.

At around 17:55 on 16/1/16 (UK date) I've got a little more to add. After dinner.

Edited at around 19:05 on 16/1/16 (UK date) to add;

Despite the ticking off by the UN the Obama administration's response to this latest round of terrorist attacks has continued to be typically childish.

The December 19th (19/12/15) bombing in Mogadishu was accompanied by a wave of 'popular' protests against the governments of several east/central African nations including Burundi, Uganda and Ethiopia. The intention being to send the message that terrorist attacks was not the only tool at Saudi Arabia's disposal to remove disagreeable governments.

On Thursday (14/1/16) in response to the Jakarta attack the Assistant Secretary of State for the Africa region Linda Thomas-Greenfield issued a statement further condemning the Ethiopian government's response to the Oromo protests that sprung up in the wake of COP21.

Within hours of the start of the attack in Ouagadougou Obama's Ambassador to the UN Samantha Power Tweeted a message calling for the African Union and other regional partners to intervene in Burundi to solve another one of the crises that sprung up in the wake of COP21.

Several hours before the attack in Ouagadougou was brought to an end the US State Department issued a statement condemning the government of Uganda for violently suppressing opposition protesters in the run up to elections next month. This is a tactic the US often uses to de-legitimise governments as a pre-cursor to calling for their overthrow.

This is a clear indication that the Obama administration has not looked at these latest attacks in Indonesia, Somalia and Burkina Faso as terrorist outrages that must be stopped.

Instead the Obama administration has seen them as an opportunity to secure Obama's grand "Legacy" by simply piggy-backing on Saudi Arabia's attempts to intimidate nations into ratifying the 12/12 Atrocity.

This decision to be a follower rather than a leader is what has led the Obama administration into so much trouble particularly in Iraq and Syria. It has also seen the US reduced from a global power to simply Saudi Arabia's servant.

Today US federal authorities have announced that a man from the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge in Oregon has been arrested for driving a government vehicle without permission. That seems to suggest that in its last 11 months the Obama administration is now speaking in its personal capacity rather than on behalf of the US government.

I should also point out that on the first working day of the Oregon protest (4/1/16) the US formally filed charges against Volkswagen (VW) of the emissions scandal. That scandal is of course synonymous with the peer review process that had been touted as a central to a climate change agreement. The timing of the US announcement was intended to highlight how the stripping out of the peer review process was an act of wanton vandalism. Although I didn't cite VW specifically I like to think I conveyed that message at the time.

It seems not everyone was clear on that though because during Thursday's (14/1/16) attack in Jakarta the French car manufacturer Renault announced that it had been raided by the fraud squad over the emissions scandal. It was only as the day wore on Renault confirmed that the fraud squad had found no indication of wrongdoing.

With Renault's share price turning somersaults throughout the day this was a French enquiry as to what the US was getting at with the 4/1/16 charges.