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[MENA] The Middle East and North Africa
Kaputa
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
Wherein we discuss various events in the countries above, current and sometimes historical. Generally discussion tends to be is politics-related but other subjects are fine too. I'm not going to attempt a country-by-country summary like I did last time; there are several that I have not read enough about (either recently or in general) to do so adequately. Instead, I will note a pretty amazing thing that I noticed while skimming the last OP:
Afghanistan has been at war for over 40 years now, and peace seems nowhere on the horizon.
That was last May. Whoops! Four months later and the country is at peace! Didn't see that one coming. All is far from well in Afghanistan; the economic collapse after the government's overthrow has resulted in famine conditions for parts of the country. Despite this, the US continues to freeze the Afghan government's access to billions of dollars of its central bank's money, while enforcing economic sanctions that make international aid more difficult and worsen the economic crisis. But nonetheless, the country is at peace for the first time in 40 years. After 20 years of failure and pointless bloodshed, the US leaves and the fighting ends almost immediately! It's also a striking contrast to the situation post-Soviet withdrawal (chaotic many-sided warlord civil war).
In other news, the war in Yemen continues to rage on, and has even escalated with Yemeni missile attacks on the UAE (who are backing the most powerful anti-Houthi faction). The Saudi bombing has been especially unhinged in recent weeks, with countless people killed in indiscriminate destruction of residential areas. The US continues to arm the Saudis to the teeth, help them logistically, and has recently declared further support to the UAE in response to Yemen's missile attack. It's funny how these things are discussed in the US; missiles shot from Yemen toward one of the countries warring on it are discussed as dangerous escalations justifying swift and harsh response, while the constant destruction of Yemen as a whole by Saudi planes is just how things go.
After the most devastating war seen in the 21st century (edit - arguably second most devastating, I forgot that the Second Congo War lasted until 2003), Syria is a mess, but is not really at war now, or at least not a hot war. The rebel-held province of Idlib and the government occasionally skirmish, but it doesn't usually escalate beyond that. ISIS attempted a prison break in Kurdish territory recently, which was by far their largest attack since their territorial defeat a few years ago, but it mostly failed. The US still has a small number of troops there ("To safeguard the oil fields!" Really as a barrier against Iran, I'd say). Turkish troops occupy a strip territory in the north and are present in Idlib as well. The country's economy is an absolute disaster, though, and is worsened by - you guessed it! - crippling sanctions from the US. Blinken has stated that the US is "opposed to the reconstruction of Syria" (a really extreme and horrifying position if you take a second to think on it), so that's that, I guess. The Syrian economy's collapse is also worsening the situation in Lebanon, which has suffered an increasingly severe economic and political crisis for years now, which has finally escalated to the point where the state appears to be in a state of gradual but increasingly rapid collapse.
Iran had an election last year, and the faction we in the Anglosphere often refer to as "hardliners" won it. During the final months of the previous, more moderate administration, Rouhani repeatedly urged Biden to reenter the nuclear agreement with Iran, which previous president Trump had violated by reimposing sanctions without cause. Biden basically said "no u" and then was entirely unwilling to budge from the US's unreasonable position or make meaningful overtures. Now, the US's negotiating partners appear somewhat less eager to reenter the deal, and the Biden administration is complaining of their stubbornness. I don't know whether I believe that the Biden administration is actually this stupid or whether they're just pretending to be so, while in reality implementing the foreign policy establishment's usual anti-Iran policy and just acting like they're interested in reestablishing the JCPOA.
I'll probably add a few more summaries to this later, but I haven't been reading the news a lot lately, so I want to catch up on events in Libya, Sudan, Iraq, and perhaps elsewhere before writing paragraphs for them.
Elki on
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CW: CNN itself has a caution that there are disturbing images and audio present in the report. There's some heavy stuff present, view with discretion.
As a reminder, three days after the airport bombing, the US conducted a drone strike that killed 10 civilians, most of them children, and steadfastly denied that they had killed any civilians, until the NYT and other outlets definitively demonstrated that the vehicle they had targeted was driven by a humanitarian activist, not a terrorist.
Rock Band DLC | GW:OttW - arrcd | WLD - Thortar
Looks like we're committing to just stealing that money we froze
Rock Band DLC | GW:OttW - arrcd | WLD - Thortar
Its not our money to use for anything
NYT
Americans generously "solving" the issue of the crisis that Americans created by converting some of the reserves into temporary aid and stealing the rest is fucked. There is no good way to "use" another country's entire central bank assets; you either give it back or you utterly destroy their economy and financial system, rudimentary as they might have been, for a generation. There's no nice middle ground to be had here.
Not sure what that has to do with anything I said.
The move seems to be a response to complaints of the humanitarian crisis in Afghanistan by putting money towards humanitarian relief in Afghanistan but in a way that lets you say you are addressing the issue without having to give money to the Taliban. And then you throw a bunch of it at whatever counts as "9/11 victims" too to head off domestic complaints about spending money on people in Afghanistan.
Its doing something with the money we stole while stupidly attempting to avoid any possible negative press. This whole thing is policy by media consultant. Absolutely abhorrent
Do you endorse this move, or are you just explaining what you see as the political calculus behind the move?
Rock Band DLC | GW:OttW - arrcd | WLD - Thortar
Like, if your dilemma is "try to stop a famine" vs "try to avoid bad headlines" and your reaction is "let's try and split the difference," that is indefensible.
Lanz asked this exact same question in the exact same way a few days ago in the previous MENA thread
Why have you and Lanz suddenly decided to call out shyrke repeatedly with the same phrasing?
it's extremely common to be in a conversation with multiple people on these forums who are approaching from completely different angles - some saying what they think should happen, some attempting to analyze what they think the rationalization is for those doing things. sometimes it's hard to tell if you're arguing the same thing so it's useful to clarify!
He was stating the reality of the situation. It's disingenuous to the extreme to suggest that he was "endorsing" it
If DarkPrimus doesn't like people doing this to him, maybe he shouldn't do it to other posters
Half the money goes to Afghanistan and half gets dumped into some slush fund for the offspring of a bunch of old white rich senators in America.
I asked whether or not they were endorsing it because I couldn't tell if they were endorsing it or not, for Pete's sake!
Rock Band DLC | GW:OttW - arrcd | WLD - Thortar
If you really couldn't tell, that's some really bad-faith reading of that post.
Asking people their opinions and to clarify their position is the opposite of bad faith lol
Anyway, we're going to stick 3.5 billion we stole in a fund where it may or may not actually even get spent and then point to that every time someone asks why we're not doing anything to help famine victims in Afghanistan.
E: Ronzo are you doing that thing again where you assert that all the leftist posters are in some kind of shadowy cabal to embarrass the centrists? This sort of tribalism is really not helpful, not even getting into how laughably paranoid the supposition is in the first place
Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better
bit.ly/2XQM1ke
Look, when people who share centrist liberal values hit Agree, that just means that they share similar centrist liberal values and, well, agree with each other.
When progressive leftists hit Agree, that means they're operating in tandem as a professional agitprop outfit funded by the Kremlin to make the United States government look bad by plainly stating actual things they are actually doing. How else do you explain like half a dozen people holding similar viewpoints? :razz:
Rock Band DLC | GW:OttW - arrcd | WLD - Thortar
Hi.
Y'all complain about it when folks do this shit to you, so maybe don't do it to others.
I probably should have included a :razz: at the end of it to indicate I wasn't being serious.
Rock Band DLC | GW:OttW - arrcd | WLD - Thortar
For the confused among you, DP is using the same language as I used in a PM to him once when I mistakenly made a good faith effort to explain why we care about trying to maintain a civil atmosphere in the forums.
Like, when zag, sax, incen etc come into a thread and all post along similar lines, my first reaction is not “these guys must be coordinating!”. It’s understanding that they are working from a set of earnestly held principles, that while not ones I share, have an internal consistency
Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better
bit.ly/2XQM1ke
I agree it's disgusting and shameful that we've outright stolen the money of the Afghan people and are basically going to waste it to placate a tiny subsect of people... however, it's also unclear what feasible actions are left to the administration at this point. The judiciary has ruled that the victims of 9/11 are entitled to it, and the compromise that the administration came up with is giving 50% back in the form of humanitarian aid. Still fucking shameful and a disgrace, but I think alot of the fault lies on the Judicial system (as do so many of our problems...) I guess they could just tell the judge to fuck off, but that's not really a thing Democrat's do (they should.)
If this was a valid judgement, then the US should have seized Iranian funds or assets over the past 10 years, but obviously didn't because that would have caused an issue where they figure they can take this money without consequence.
Choose Your Own Chat 1 Choose Your Own Chat 2 Choose Your Own Chat 3
"US and Iranian officials suggest nuclear talks nearing conclusion"
Kani's statement is much more blunt and optimistic than Price's babble, but regardless it's good to hear. I hadn't read anything about the Vienna talks since they started, so this positive assessment caught me off guard. I had until now perceived the Biden administration as not really caring about returning to the JCPOA, and early reports were suggesting that the Raisi administration was taking a harder line than their predecessors. It's too early to say for sure, but I'll happily accept having been completely wrong about all of this if the JCPOA is revived.
I think, possibly, that the Biden administration was looking for a JCPOA+ deal. Get their ballistic missile program or the Houthi stuff in there. Iran was going with 'restore the old deal or fuck off'.
I think the Ukraine situation might have shook some things loose. Iran and Russia are relatively close, but the value of an ally who is even more in the doghouse than you are ain't that much, and getting Iran fully back into the world economy might help lower energy prices.
Fang is with The Intercept.
So we're stealing from Afghanistan on behalf of law firms and lobbyists who see a big pile of easy money
Rock Band DLC | GW:OttW - arrcd | WLD - Thortar
I mean the US should be paying reparations to Afghanistan for forcing a 20 year war on a country which killed hundreds of thousands. Instead we are stealing their money and crushing their economy during a fucking famine. I can't deal with it man. The Biden admin is using starvation as a weapon, not even to accomplish any war aim, but just as vengeance because the US was defeated and humiliated. It doesn't even make sense from a domestic politics standpoint, because it's not like this dumpster fire of an administration is getting another term regardless. Ugh.
This does not seem to be about vengeance to me. It's entirely to avoid "Biden funds the Taliban" stories. Though I'm sure there's plenty of people who also just think "Fuck the Taliban".
And of course, once you announce where a big pile of money is going, the people looking to have a bite come out of the woodwork.
Imagine you are an old Democratic politician and the only thing you know how to do is cower in fear of potential Republican attack ads. Under that set of circumstances and only that set of circumstances do these actions make sense.
To the domestic audience? Absolutely. The media ain't focusing on famine in Afghanistan.