Thursday, March 28, 2024
04:29 PM (GMT +5)

Go Back   CSS Forums > General > News & Articles

News & Articles Here you can share News and Articles that you consider important for the exam

Reply Share Thread: Submit Thread to Facebook Facebook     Submit Thread to Twitter Twitter     Submit Thread to Google+ Google+    
 
LinkBack Thread Tools Search this Thread
  #1  
Old Tuesday, November 17, 2015
Member
 
Join Date: Dec 2011
Location: Karachi and Hyderabad
Posts: 95
Thanks: 48
Thanked 13 Times in 12 Posts
aleeamjad is on a distinguished road
Default Putin's Syria Gambit Could Be His Waterloo By Melik Kaylan (FORBES)

We shouldn’t be surprised by Russia’s irruption into Syria. If anything, we should be surprised it took so long. (Alexei Nikolsky/RIA Novosti, Kremlin Pool Photo via AP)
So the Russians have initiated airstrikes in Syria against anti-Assad rebels. Putin in New York has lectured the US and its allies about their incompetence in the Mideast and Libya to justify Moscow’s intervention. In panic-stricken response, Western media has sounded off in all directions deducing the failure of Obama’s policies, the threat to Israel, the danger of renewed refugee flows and much else. How to make sense of it all?
Over the last decade I have been to Iraq five times and crossed into Syria twice and sojourned in Turkey’s borderlands numerous times. During those years, I have also visited the warfronts of Ukraine and Georgia. I have even ventured into the Hezbollah region of Lebanon. Various articles for various publications ensued–from the Wall Street Journal to Forbes to Newsweek. I write from some years of experience and observation.
Let us start with the simple fact of Russia’s irruption into Syria. Astonishment, shock, horror in news organizations. And yet, if anything, we should be surprised it took so long. I have repeatedly commented in this space that the Russia-Syria strategy closely tracks Putin’s approach to the second Chechen War of the late 1990s. Here’s a post from June of last year (not the first such) arguing and providing citations that Assad deliberately abetted the rise of ISIS. In the post, I say that “this ruse de guerre by Assad suspiciously echoes what happened in Chechnya during the 1990’s when jihadists infiltrated the ranks of Chechen rebels and took over their independence struggle, committed sundry atrocities and alienated world opinion which allowed Putin to carpet bomb them to oblivion along with many innocents. This after the rebels duly fragmented into warring groups.” Assad has scarcely ever bombed ISIS, preferring to target the more moderate groups, and now the Russians have started by doing the same.
In essence, Putin has decided that the moment has arrived for springing the patiently laid trap: Polarize the rebels, let extremists prevail who alienate world opinion, marginalize moderates then obliterate the opposition altogether. Why now? His Ukraine offensive has stalled. His economy is teetering and needs distraction. Assad is losing badly. But above all, the US-Iran détente threatens to overturn Moscow’s calculations in its entire Eastern near-abroad. Look at the map. If Iran goes West, the whole chessboard changes. The Caucasus from Azerbaijan to Georgia and northwards opens up to the world. Armenia will follow. Farther east, the oil and gas of Central Asia will unplug geographically and start to flow through Iran to the West, wrecking the Shanghai Co-operation Organization calculus with China in which the two superpowers control the region’s development. Instead, the ‘Stans will shuffle off the yoke of centuries and evolve with greater autonomy–a disaster for Ruski imperial ambitions. From the 19th century to now, Moscow has refused to loosen its grip on its backyard, despite revolutions, world wars and a Cold War. This is how monolithic states can afford to think and plan over time–they don’t get hounded off course from day to day by unshackled media or humanitarian crises or proper elections. They focus on power.
An interesting tactical sideline within the overall scenario comes from the indefatigable Michael Weiss at The Daily Beast. Weiss, too, has for some years pointed out Assad’s complicity with ISIS. In his latest post, he details out how the KGB funnels extremist Chechens out of Russia to Syria where they join ISIS or comparable outfits, that way they stop making trouble in the Russian Caucasus and help factionalize the Syrian opposition. The maneuver is hardly a new one. I recall that during the post-Soviet, pre-US, era of civil war in Afghanistan the Northern Alliance leader Ahmad Shah Masood (subsequently murdered) used to complain of capturing “Chinese” prisoners fighting on the Taliban side. They were actually Uyghurs from Shinjiang, disaffected Muslims funneled out by Chinese authorities to Pakistan who passed them on to fight alongside the Taliban.
Back to the main scenario: Putin’s Syria gambit is chiefly a message to Iran–stick with Moscow and the Shiite crescent is back in business again: Iran, Iraq, Syria, Hezbollah. Tehran need not parlay with the US anymore. For Moscow, Tehran’s nuclear deal with America should not, must not, lead to a realignment of Iran toward the West. Central Asia must stay contained. Neither Moscow nor Beijing has any doubts about the strategic game in play. Neither does Saudi Arabia. The Saudi element also explains Putin’s timing. As I outlined in a recent column, the Saudis met with Putin throughout August and instead decided to go with President Obama’s Iran nuke deal. No doubt the Saudis offered incentives to Putin to raise the price of oil and stop backing Chechen separatists. No doubt the Saudis asked, in return, for the ouster of Assad and got rebuffed. The Kremlin doubled down by moving into Syria.
Only Washington seems befuddled as to Putin’s real motives. That’s what State Department people are saying publicly, and rather implausibly, if truth be told. President Obama took a lot of heat for the Iran nuke deal. He surely had overarching reasons for persevering. He was advised by some genuinely subtle and estimable foreign service minds, veterans such as William Luers and Thomas Pickering. If the U.S. government retains any longstanding institutional memory at all on geostrategic matters it abides with precisely such professionals who served efficaciously throughout the Cold War decades. In fact, they were the ones who conceived the Iran demarche in the first place with a policy paper and the Iran Project website. They undoubtedly saw the situation in its full context.
If they too are surprised by Putin’s gambit, they must be surprised above all at his foolhardiness. He has watched and exploited the West’s stumbling through a decade of wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. He certainly remembers the Soviet swansong in the latter country. He knows full well that aerial bombing pays few dividends on the ground. He’d be insane to send in troops while trying to hold down Ukraine, Abkhazia, South Ossetia, Chechnya and environs closer to home. Yes, you could argue that Russian intervention will fortify the flagging spirit of Shiite armies in the field, Iranian, Iraqi, Assadist, Hezbollah etc and they will do the fighting. But that would constitute a supreme miscalculation. With Moscow’s entry into the picture, the West’s incentive fades for restraining ISIS or their Gulf backers and the global flood of Sunni recruits. Suddenly Europe and America (and Israel) will cease to be the primary enemy. History will tilt back to the 1980s when the term jihad stood for war against Russia in Afghanistan. History has come full circle in Syria. One can plausibly argue that if anyone has fallen into a trap, it’s the Russians.
Reply With Quote
The Following 2 Users Say Thank You to aleeamjad For This Useful Post:
Aik Admi (Wednesday, November 18, 2015), SamiKhan707 (Wednesday, November 18, 2015)
  #2  
Old Wednesday, November 18, 2015
Junior Member
 
Join Date: Jul 2015
Location: Hyderabad
Posts: 21
Thanks: 6
Thanked 11 Times in 9 Posts
Prince Irfan Ali is on a distinguished road
Default The new ‘war on terror’

The new ‘war on terror’
ZAHID HUSSAIN —

The wave of atrocities over the last two weeks — from the downing of a Russian passenger aircraft to a bloodbath in Beirut and now the massacre in Paris — reveals a new global terror war. The militant Islamic State group also known as IS has now taken its war outside the battlefronts of Iraq and Syria. The Paris carnage has altered the international security paradigm.

One may not agree with the Pope that the attacks are part of a third world war, but the Paris tragedy has certainly lent a global dimension to what has so far been seen mainly as a Middle Eastern civil war; a legacy of the US invasion of Iraq. As one analyst put it: “The contagion has broken out of its confinement.” Predictably, the French response to what it described as an “act of war” is unrelenting.

That is perhaps what IS had intended when it plotted these terrorist attacks: widen the warfront and sharpen the polarisation. Whether it’s the Paris carnage or the blowing up of the Russian airliner in midair it indicates the growing reach of IS and its organisational capacity to carry out such spectacular and coordinated militant attacks. The aerial bombing by the US-led coalition may have stalled the IS advance, but it has failed to drive out the group from the territories under its control.

The militant Islamic State group has much greater appeal for radical Muslims than other such outfits.
With a huge number of foreign fighters, many of them from European countries, joining IS militants, a terrorist attack in their country was predictable. But no one estimated the extent of the group’s capacity to carry out such large-scale mayhem. The identity of the attackers and the mastermind shows that almost all of them were home-grown radicals under the influence of the IS.

Surely most of the foreign fighters have linkages back home, even though they may never return. The cultural alienation and economic marginalisation of the Muslim population, mostly the second and third generation of immigrants, provides a favourable environment for the radical groups to enlist young recruits.

More than Al Qaeda or any other Islamic militant groups, IS with its sizable territorial control in Iraq and Syria and a highly sophisticated propaganda campaign, has much greater appeal for radical Muslims across the world. Its occupation of oil-rich regions provides the group with huge financial resources to continue its activities.

It has also benefited hugely by the ongoing proxy war in the Middle East between the Saudi-led Arab coalition and Iran.

The Saudi financial support for the Sunni militants fighting in Syria has indirectly helped the group. Most of the Saudi-backed groups have joined IS.

The growing tentacles of IS are not confined to the Middle East, but there are clear signs of the group making inroads in this region too. It already has a significant presence in parts of Afghanistan fighting not only the Afghan government forces, but also challenging the Taliban. The two insurgent groups have been engaged in a fierce turf war in eastern Afghanistan.

Most of the Pakistani Taliban and other militant factions fleeing the military operation in the tribal areas have joined IS.

The beheading of Hazara Shia men, women and children in Zabul province last month is another indication of the growing IS influence in the war-torn country.

Some reports suggest that IS fighters in Afghanistan are better armed and have no shortage of funds. A recently aired Al Jazeera TV documentary has shown an IS camp in eastern Afghanistan providing training to children as young as eight years old. The strong presence of the militant group close to our borders in Afghanistan mostly comprising Pakistani fighters must be serious cause of concern to Islamabad, but there is certainly no realisation of the threat.

Although the government as usual is in a state of denial, the footprint of IS is very much visible inside Pakistan too. It is not surprising that some Pakistani Taliban factions and outlawed Sunni sectarian groups like Lashkar-i-Jhangvi have pledged allegiance to or support for the group. The investigation of the bus carnage of Ismailis in Karachi early this year shows the attackers were young and highly educated militants with reported links to the IS.

What is most shocking is the return of Islamabad’s Red Mosque as the hub of militancy-linked activities. A year ago, the students of Jamia Hafsa, associated with the mosque, distributed a video appeal to the IS chief Abubakar Al Baghdadi asking for his help.

After a brief lull, Maulana Abdul Aziz, the head cleric, is back in action resuming his vitriolic sermons despite an apparent ban against him. He has lately held a rally in support of his demand for the enforcement of Sharia. But no action has been taken against him or his followers for openly supporting IS.

While the interior and foreign ministries keep denying the existence of IS in the country, the Balochistan government has expressed its concern over the reported recruitment by the militant group in the province. Pakistanis reportedly form a sizeable contingent of the foreign fighters in Iraq and Syria.

According to a top police officer, who earlier served in Balochistan, it was the Saudis who first started recruitment in the province to fight along with the Sunni groups in Syria. But most of them later joined IS, which they apparently found ideologically more appealing. One wonders why the federal government overlooked this recruitment. It would not even be surprising if this recruitment had the approval of the government or the intelligence agencies. It is a very dangerous game that threatens our own security.

What happened in Paris and Beirut must come as a wake-up call for our government and security agencies. A weak state in a perpetual state of denial provides ideal conditions for militant groups to operate in. The threat is much more serious with the rising influence of IS across the border in Afghanistan and its footprint appearing in the country’s capital too. We must act now before it is too late.

The writer is an author and journalist.

Published in Dawn, November 18th, 2015
__________________
Hard work leads to success with proper guidance and Smart work.
Reply With Quote
The Following User Says Thank You to Prince Irfan Ali For This Useful Post:
SamiKhan707 (Wednesday, November 18, 2015)
Reply

Thread Tools Search this Thread
Search this Thread:

Advanced Search

Posting Rules
You may not post new threads
You may not post replies
You may not post attachments
You may not edit your posts

BB code is On
Smilies are On
[IMG] code is On
HTML code is Off
Trackbacks are On
Pingbacks are On
Refbacks are On


Similar Threads
Thread Thread Starter Forum Replies Last Post
Topic wise data from JWT, December to September azmatullah Current Affairs 13 Friday, December 14, 2012 11:01 AM
Newyork times article on Syria conflict Roqayyah Current Affairs 1 Sunday, November 04, 2012 10:46 AM
How to Help Syria Without Intervening Militarily mommy News & Articles 0 Wednesday, February 22, 2012 08:19 PM
''The Role of Iran and Syria in the Israel-Lebanon Crisis'' Miss_Naqvi Current Affairs 0 Thursday, August 10, 2006 11:43 PM


CSS Forum on Facebook Follow CSS Forum on Twitter

Disclaimer: All messages made available as part of this discussion group (including any bulletin boards and chat rooms) and any opinions, advice, statements or other information contained in any messages posted or transmitted by any third party are the responsibility of the author of that message and not of CSSForum.com.pk (unless CSSForum.com.pk is specifically identified as the author of the message). The fact that a particular message is posted on or transmitted using this web site does not mean that CSSForum has endorsed that message in any way or verified the accuracy, completeness or usefulness of any message. We encourage visitors to the forum to report any objectionable message in site feedback. This forum is not monitored 24/7.

Sponsors: ArgusVision   vBulletin, Copyright ©2000 - 2024, Jelsoft Enterprises Ltd.