Vicious Vortexes: a Line of Dancing Winds, from Xinchiang Province of China through Western Asia into Africa as far a Mauritania on the Atlantic.

Let us list the cyclonic 'winds' now whipping up dust in the settlements of Africa, the Middle East, Central and South Asia. Uyghur resistance in Kashgar, Yarkand, Akcha, Urumchi. Terrorist attacks as far distant as Kunming in Yunnan Province. A devilish set of conditions afflicting both Afghanistan and Pakistan. Iran's involvement in Iraq and in the Syrian war, in support of Bashar Al Asad. Daghestan, where a gangster-style low-intensity war sputters daily with shootings, etc. In Yemen, Eritrea and Ethiopia, into Somalia. Inside Africa, a new Saharan front opens with insurgency in Mali, Niger, Nigeria, Central Africa Republic, with cross-Saharan links to Morocco, Algeria, Libya, Tunisia and Egypt. Then there is Syria, in its fpourth year of civil war. Like other Arab revolutions, the militant Jihadists gain control over the movement, using extreme violence to eliminate opposition. Iraq is a gaping wound that will not heal. On June 11th, 2014, ISIS captured Iraq's second city, Mosul and is now marching on Baghdad.

Syria –

The moderate secular leadership of the Syrian resistance met with European leaders today, on the 12th of January 2014. The growing prominence of Al Qaida-linked Jihadi militants is largely because of direct assistance in sending arms and ammunition. Again, the same actors are involved.

Next week features a more comprehensive engagement putting rebels face-to-face with regime diplomats. The international community will try to persuade all three sides to put down their weapons. We examined the conditions necessary for a ceasefire, in several issues in 2012.

There are no fixed lines in this war. The regime must control at least 85 of some 123 districts. Syria looks like a checker board with three colors instead of two. The regime is still dropping barrel bombs on civilians. The secular rebels, whose revolution this is, are under pressure to perform. Casualties have been very high these past few weeks.

In the east, pro-Al Qaida militias have won control over Raqqah on the Euphrates River. That means there is a direct corridor for Sunni Jihadists

According to the UN, in the past three years, some 9 million Syrians have lost their homes. 160,000 Syrians are trapped without water or food in outlying districts of Damascus. Meanwhile, the Syrian Army is active in Aleppo, killing civilians as they emerged into daylight.

The world has not seen such a massive displacement of people, at least in this century. Syria is melting down. Outside powers do not want to discuss peace as long as their favorites are in disadvantageous positions.

In next week’s Syrian Peace Conference in Geneva, the original Sunni militants, led by Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, may not attend. Any peace deal must replace Bashir Al Asad and his henchmen.

Iraq –

War breaks out as Iraqi soldiers shell Fallujah and Ramadi. The Sunni minority is hanging on. All the pressure on, and exclusion of, the Sunnis by the Shia-led government, has left them with little choice except terror and bombings. Anbar province in Iraq’s southwest is Sunni controlled. The Sunni Jihadists in Raqqah, Iraq, have opened a corridor for Jihadis further west, to make it to Syria and Iraq.

Over the past two years, bombs have been going off weekly. They are usually planted in markets or churches or mosques or police and army outposts. Iraq has asked the USA for help and Mr. Obama will be providing Predator drones.

Egypt –

With presidential elections looming, players are jockeying for position. The local buzz in Cairo and Alexandria is that Maj. General Abdel Fattah al Sisi will join the race. Meanwhile, the Muslim Brotherhood has been forced underground. An urban terror is now part of life in and around Cairo.

In just a week or so, Egyptians will be going to the polls in a referendum on replacing the MB constitution (approved 2012). Adly Mansur remains interim president.

Yemen – 

To understand Yemen, one need remember the showdown between the Yemeni government and the Al Qaida of the Arabian Peninsula. AQAP was established in January 2009. The Yemeni government lost no time making war on AQAP. By late 2009, tens of thousands had been displaced. In February 2012 AQAP bombed the presidential palace, forcing Ali Saleh to flee the country.

The 2011 revolution in Yemen was to prevent Ali Saleh from handing over rule of Yemen to his son. That will not happen. The presidential platform of Abd Rabbu Mansur Hadi is multi-faceted. He has managed to extend government services, particularly in the south. 

One should bear in mind that Yemen’s government is not in full control. The tribes step in, setting up roadblock ‘checkpoints’  Will those tribes fall into line behind President Hadi? Some already have joined the government. Many are sitting on the fence.

Mansur Hadi comes from the south, from Abyan province. Maybe this helps him knit the fabric of Yemen back together. He is reforming the army, disbanding the Revolutionary Guards, and setting up military units whose prime mission will be the preservation of a strategic reserve.

Libya –

After Qadafi was killed, the militia did not put down their weapons. Today, there some 1,700 militia units in Libya. Most are well-armed. They control stretches of road, neighborhoods, sections of the grasslands. Rebels in Misrata and Tripoli have little incentive to cooperate with Benghazi. Huge stockpiles of weapons and ammunition were transferred to Jihadis. The problems in Niger and Mali following the overthrow of Qadafi, were made possible by these weapons.

Our investigation of newly-appointed national Libyan officials came out positive.

Turkey - 

The ruling party Justice and Development Party is fighting to suppress the Gulen Foundation. We believe the Turkish poresident is trying to grab all power. He already dominates the executive and legislative wings of government. 

One cannot mock God...

Egypt: Police and Interior Ministry troops open fire on a mass illegal rally by the Muslim Brotherhood (MB), killing some 50, wounding some 160. Their manifestation was seen as a provocation by many. Mr. Morsi was elected because Qatar gave some $8 billion to in fluence the election. Once in power, Mr. Morsi failed to bring in secular officials, thus ending any recovery. The self-described 'good Muslims' are using their faith, their din, to bolster their own identities, personal and collective.

Ask any one of them: Do you serve God and Islam? They will say, of course we do.That is not Islam.  I cannot help God. God helps me. Why is that reversed with many religious activists? Whenever Islam or any religion is used to bolster and enact egos, group egos, then crimes and divisive talk are not far behind. As soon as a group becomes exclusive, it runs off the rails.

Syria: the UN arms control teams are destroying the Syrian regime's chemical weapons. We were right in our assessment that Syria did not possess large quantities of Sarin and Chlorine., Will this willingness to compromise by the regime lead perhaps to a ceasefire? If Russia wants...

Yemen festers. The army is unable to control Shabwa and Anbar provinces in the south, and the Hadramaut. An attack occurred in Mukalla in late September. Saudi Arabia is constructing a wall to block the transit of Yemen-based extremists, terrorists.

Iraq: Violence in Iraq has been increasing since 2011. Al Qaida is responsible for most bombs. Iranian intelligence is assisting the Shi'a. But under the current imam not much hope for intelligence. Will the Shi'a start bombing Sunnis? They already are.

Both sides blame the Americans for unleashing their mutual hatred. While the US Army was in Iraq, it was a buffer between the various groups, so the violence dropped. Knocking out Saddam blew out the firewall between Iran and Syria.

American media commissioned a group of Iraqi social scientists to figure out how many people, on average, succumbed to Saddam's regime. They said before 30-50,000 per year were killed, not to mention many incidents of torture and imprisonment. US forces killed some 120,000 in the first three months.

Of course competent American analysts, those specialists in the Middle East, bewail the Bush War in Iraq. Very few Americans want the US government to do such things...but that's selfish, cruel, also.

The Arab Spring occurred because progress was not being made. The housing situation in Cairo and Alexandria, and up the Nile, has long been ridiculous. No apartments for singles. Each extended family lives together in two rooms. So much spent on the army, so little on farming communities.

Iran: Every nation in Asia and Africa has a secular government, excepting Iran, perhaps. For 30 years the US and Iranian officials avoided each other. Last week President Obama announced he had a 15 min. talk with President Rohani. Let us hope both are Neo-Mutazalites - adept at using reason to solve problems.

Tunisia: The ruling Ennada Party is stepping down, leaving rule of Tunisia in the hands of the National Salvation Front. The reason is that the Ennada government did not act on the murder of two liberal secular journalists. Support for the Islamists has dropped drastically. Tunisia did not 'bounce back' from the revolution almost 3 years ago. Ennada officials are trained in Qur'an not in the sciences or in technology, so how can they help? We salute their decision to just vacate the offices. 

An Attack on Syrian chemical rocket forces?

We argue against a symbolic strike as too risky. Hitting any chemical detail is fraught with risk. Most chemical agents have to be mixed in the warhead. Hitting these missile sites and/or chem depots can cause a catastrophic chemical 'event.' Hitting electrical grid will also impact on civilians.

But maybe the Turks or the Saudis or the Americans have some detail intelligence re Syrian chem plants, in which case it may be possible to target discrete components: pipes, pumps, minimizing civilian casualties.

 Has the Syrian regime been degraded in its air capabilities? The mere threat of US/allied intervention has roiled the Ba'athist bureaucracies and units in the cities. Matar Al Asad has an armed force on each of his eight fingers, but they are not free to go where they want. Many links between Syrian army bases are broken and when repaired, these inner-agency communications are read by the Americans. Giving the Free Syrian army an accurate maps with good intelligence might prove a better gift than weapons and munitions.

President Obama spoke today about the looming attack. He has yet to commit himself. The refusal of the British parliament to sanction a strike on Syrian regime, derives from knee-jerk opponents of everything American. We have talked to a few of these self-righteous types, and all bend history to their ideological protrusion, a kind of extremism.

Sometimes intervention works, sometimes it does not. There are no good outcomes. If the strike goes unpunished, it may be repeated. What then? The regime can box rebels into a small area, then hit it with chemicals. Of colurse women and children perish in ghastly fashion.

After WWI the world resolved not to produce or deploy chem weapons, but of course the powers and their proxies produced and stocked hundreds of tons of terrible gases like Sabin, Sarin, chlorine-based horrors in various flavors. The powers also kept themselves in landmines, anti-armor, anti-personnel, strewn about in some 18 countries. Afghanistan leads them, but the Eastern Congo is not far behind.  Somalia, Yemen, Sudan, Iraq, Iran, Pakistan, India, Myanmar, Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, and also the mines buried along the borders of various nations, like the Libyan-Egyptian border sections.

Reader, treat yourself to different views of the Arab Spring by sampling this site's archive. You will find weekly reportage (up to 2012) and learned commentary. I have friends in Syria, and have visited Syria, just months before the city of Hama was destroyed by the Al Asad army under Mater Bashad.

Bashar means humanity in Arabic, which is a weird joke, a mocking of the dead. He is right in not claiming control over the regime, because his brother Mater and a big gang of thugs run the war.

Fear and loathing in Hama, Homs, Haleb, ash Sham, Dara'a. Millions of Syrians have left their homes. We receive a report that Jordanian divisions (3) are moving up to the Syrian border. Are they gunning for Asad Ba'athi troops? Or are they there to prevent more people from surging across the border.

Iran will have a field day if the strike on Syrian chem troops does go through. They will figure they can use gas also. Of course they suffered from it, from Iraq.  There is the risk that Iran's proxies Hizbullah in southern Lebanon and the Syrian army will launch 'retaliatory' strikes of Israel, touching off a larger war. The Israelis have their own well-paid contacts in Syria, but the Americans also have an extensive net of CIA-paid agents, and perhaps, units, inside Syria.

High Noon in Cairo

The Egyptian army overthrew President Morsi July 3 2013. He had been in office for year. The army acted after an unprecedented two-week long demonstration, a big protest against Morsi and his Muslim Brothers. Now the leaders of that organ, the Muslim Brotherhood, are in jail. Huge counter-demonstrations by pro-Morsi protesters turned violent on July 7, when some Brothers tried to climb the fence where Morsi was detained. Fifty one were killed,  with almost 200 wounded.

Some say that Morsi was freely elected. They forget that Morsi issued sweeping laws giving him absolute power. That the Egyptian economy has not revived, is largely because Morsi's prayer leaders have no practical skills.

Our analysis of the Muslim Brotherhood is found below. Find it mentioned on the index to the right.

While we have been away, we have been working on a book:
Twelve Capitalisms: What Dead Empires have to Teach Us about Debt, Diplomacy, Immigration and New Job Creation. We have been reviewing the main Neolithic sites in the Old World, then moved to examine capitalism in Ancient Mesopotamia.

Maybe our most significant discovery is this: the first cities (i.e. Eridu) arose without strongmen, metal weapons, writing and the horse. So true capitalism existed before any rigid social stratification.

Middle East Nations Break Up

Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Palestine, Israel, Libya, Egypt, Yemen all come apart...add to this Daghistan, Serbia, Sudan and Pakistan.

Iraq's central Shia-led government in Baghdad has lost control of Kirkuk and Diyala, as the bombing campaign approaches its 2-year anniversary.

Large parts of Syria are depopulated, some of its for 'peaceful reasons,' like failure of collective farms, industries, roads, etc, etc. Homs, Hama, Aleppo, Irbid, and down south, Der'a, and out east, Deir Az Zour all have abandoned ruined  neighborhoods. Children can't play in the rubble lest unexploded ordnance explode. We estimate 6 million internally displaced refugees, but another 6 million have been displaced earlier.

Lebanon is all securitized. Movemment between sectors is difficult and dangerous. Bathers on the beach don't seem to mind. Maybe we should all go to the beach...we believe Sunni and Shi';a factions will be fighting each other by mid June..there's time enough for a tan.War and peace are not opposites....there's the 3rd element...what is it? Care? "Teach us to care and not to care" - T.S. Elliot

Yemen is hanging on, a broad-based government piecing itself together. The Americans are laying low...their help is internal...how to trace weapons, money, drugs, bomb-makers...

Libya has not come together in the two years of peace. So it is not at peace. Benghazi was a Greek colony, while Tripoli was a Phoenician one. Why should they get together? Each has its own access to petroleum, though Benghazi's access is greater, thanks to the Adjabiyyeh port complexes and pumping stations. I doubt the EU can pressure Tripoli and Mizrata and Sabratha, and Zlitan to join a Benghazi-led government.

Egypt's Islamist government is being urged to disassociate itself from Muslim Brotherhood, by Europeans, North Americans and Far East potentates, but that's like a chicken disassociating itself from an egg, which happens, of course. Democracy in Egypt is like a chick in an egg, hammering to get out.

Thanks to the Boston bombing, Americans again ask why Islam is their enemy. That's a stupid response. The terrorists are not Muslims - they are mock-Muslims. Sure, everybody want the Shari'a to be free of unIslamic laws, but interest keep the women down, the orphan dispoiled, the criminal without a hand, the non-Muslim taunted and threatened, the Jihadist.. None of these were part of Muhammads practice at Medina.  Thereis no theory of war in the Qur'an.

The American Republicans now believe that Christian Zionism is the gateway to Armageddon. A few extremists can ignite the world. What fools, to think that Islam is the enemy! We will lose this one...

Iraq violence peaks, with eleven bombs killing over 200 innocent Iraqis. Terror is back, big time. Nur al Maliki talks of a manacing sectarian strife. All those warm feelings for Iran are now pushing him and his staff, to the wall. The Shi'a strike back in the west, in al Anbar province, but some of those bombs may come from Al Qaida.

For the Americans, the rise and spread of Iran is horrifying, not because Iran wants war, but because it was George W. Bush's invasion that blew off the firewall separating Iraq from Iran. Now we see an aggressive expansionfrom Iran through Iraq to Syria and Lebanon, all the way to Gaza.

The Gulf Sunni emirates have indistinguished themselves by providing some $20 billion to Islamist organsizations, to win in Egypt, and now in Syria and Yemen, as well. The US remains 'tight' with the UAE, Qatar, Bahrain, Saudi, but obviously all that money flooding into foreign countries, to build mosques, a Wahhabi clerisy, is not in the West's interest. Such rabid Gulf intrusions is not any kind of local consensus, still less majority decision by those involved, the citizens. They do not support armed rebellion or armed suppression or bad money and stupid people masquerading as teachers.

At issue is differing views of Islam. The Salafis, Wahhabis and Muslim Brotherhood (MB), value outer appearances: the robe, the beard, the headgear, praying in front of others. This is a mockery of the prophet's ways and message.If they were Muslims they would not seek dominance, use terror, fund rebellion and sew confusion. "The letter of the law killeth the spirit of the law." (old proverb).

I've been writing about Islamic fundamentalism since 1972-73, when I lived in Afghanistan, Iran and Eastern Turkey. Back then I saw 'Islamism' as a counter-response to British-American influences. People saw their poverty as a dastardly western conspiracy. It is true that, in the 19th C., the Qajar (Mongol) shah but did not hesitate to trade the rights to tobacco, a new railroad, and, later, petroleum development, for large blocks of cash.

I've traveled many times into the rural Middle East and Central Asia in the course of my work, and I'm struck that the dirt-poor villages, all had lucid cores, usually not the mullah. Each responded to outside influences in its own way.

The problem with colonialism is that its overthrow and withdrawl is also damaging. The indigenuous people tend to blame the colonizer for their problems. Often they are right, but rarely do colonizing forces go out and shoot the local people.  Colonists prefer to rule through a legitimate compliant king or ruling class, and that's Iran political story, from the Qajar kings through the Pahlavis.

Alien Euro-American influences continue to play into Iran's war-like policies. The US never even thought about annexing or even contreolling Iran, but doctrines of 'forward deployment,' 'alliances' and economic corruption proved in some cases even more damaging. But the good things too must be factored in. All that money for oil should have filtered to the people, buit of course, that just doesa not happen in this region.

So: The Islamic Republic has renewed the Shah's claim to all Gulf islands, including Bahrain and those smaller ones, off Iraq's coast and Kuwait's. They have grown a large secret service(s) which operate as far as Argentina (where they killed 82 Jews by bombing a community center). Recently, they tried the kill the Saudi ambassador in the US.

Iran is flexing its muscle, developing a device or two, at great immense expense. A nuclear Iran will lord over its neighbors. It's surprising that Russia and China do not put pressure on Iran or Syria. Their own influence in the Middle East is at stake. A nuclear Iran and a Syria overloaded with poisonous gases, should worry the Kremlin and Beijing.

Is Iran in cahoots with Al Qaida? There may be certain, secret element in the Basij or Pasdaran or another Iranian secret service, that harbors and equip Al Qaida groups, even though these groups are Sunni fundamentalists. Iran remembers the murder in Kabul of 9 of its diplomats in 1991, and it ceretainly does not like the pressure Al Qaida is putting on Shi'a minorities in Afghanistan, Pakista, Iraq, Syria and in the Caucasus as well. One hopes they'll snap to.

Syria, o Syria! Large parts of the country have been depopulated. Most are cowering in their homes and apartments. There are some parts of the country which have seen no fighting, though war is influencing them, nonetheless. Russia has interests in Syria, not so much as a power play against the Americans (that's stupid), but in defense of their own minorities.

Syria is not entirely black and white. One hopes for a new government, but it must be a secular government, not a Sunni fundamentalist one. So the West is fighting Gulf sheikhdoms as well, even as they load up supertankers...

Yemen needs time to work out a genuinely inclusive, representational government and constitution, but there is no excuse for the population's backing of Al Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula. Their hatred of America is a clear case of ignorance: like the Pakistanis, they blame the terror on the Americans. In other words, they're unable to accept their own contradictions and unlawful elements.

Several Arab nations have instituted new employment programs for the young: Saudi, UAE, Qatar, Oman, Yemen, Djibouti, Eritrea, Sudan and Islamic Egypt and Tunisia. Algeria and Afghanistan, Singapore and Malaysia  have these programs. Morocco, Mauritania, Libya, Chechnya, Daghistan, Bosnia, Kosovo, Pakistan, India, Indonesia, do not.

Those curious about these issues, should read the Middle East Speculum. The blog is an excellent archive which you can read either forward or backwards. Over 60 postings.

by M. Abdul Qasim