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Welp SA just blocked all of Yemen's ports. A great way to start this thread off yup.
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Nov 6, 2017 22:36
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Count Roland posted:So more of what they've been doing for years? Its a step up from before quote:DUBAI (Reuters) - The Saudi-led military coalition fighting against the Houthi movement in Yemen said on Monday it would close all air, land and sea ports to the Arabian Peninsula country to stem the flow of arms to the Houthis from Iran. https://www.reuters.com/article/us-saudi-missiles-yemen/saudi-led-forces-close-air-sea-and-land-access-to-yemen-idUSKBN1D60I8
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Nov 6, 2017 22:43
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Haven't seen any other outlet reporting on it
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Nov 6, 2017 22:45
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Ardennes posted:My point is generally, I don't think the headline execution rates are that different enough to balance the fact that Iran does have a more liberal culture (still not comparable to a Western country) and that the public does have some recourse versus the government even if it obviously isn't a liberal democracy. To be honest, there aren't really many functioning democracies left in the region period. If everything is relative, then Iranian society is more flexible despite its higher rate of executions by the state itself. What you're talking about is the robustness of civil society, defined by the number and efficacy of diverse blocs to effect social change and reform. And by that measure Iran is far ahead of most ME countries, save Lebanon, a couple of countries in North Africa, maaaaybe Egypt though Sisi has done an effective job at tamping that down. The Mukhbarat in Jordan is pretty strong at stifling dissent, no matter how pleasant the demeaner of its autocrat might be. Still don't understand the point of measuring what country is "better", but it does show that Iran is more able to respond to the demands of its own citizens, within reason. e: MiddleOne posted:Can someone educate me on how Saudi Arabia going to war with Lebanon would even work logistically? As I'm looking on the world map I'm gradually realizing I know literally nothing about Jordan but this is still very confusing to me. UAE and Egypt bombed the poo poo out of Libya for a long time, and might still be doing so for all I know. e2: bugman you're not wrong generally, but it is very general. Each thing you listed can and has taken up dozens of pages in this thread, but to take one section, Israel has been shooting rocket fire into Syria for years now, anytime there has been any encroachment in Israeli-held Golan heights: http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/features/2017/10/israel-attacking-syria-171023081211645.html There has been some threats of further incursions by the Israelis, mostly unfulfilled, but there has been a pretty widespread campaign of assassination undertaken against Hezbollah honchos. Interesting twist to this is that the SAA has been pretty unresponsive, unwilling to poke that bear, and that Israeli military attacks occurs at the prodding of rebel groups in the region, purposefully. Shageletic fucked around with this message at 16:56 on Nov 9, 2017 |
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Nov 9, 2017 16:49
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asaf posted:Caption this Looks like you got there some gas blowing dicks and three rockets
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Nov 9, 2017 20:24
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https://twitter.com/Mr_Alhamdo/status/930059806668451840
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Nov 13, 2017 22:12
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Squalid posted:Involvement is much deeper than just the bombing campaign, especially in Somalia. Anyway, asking why doesn't the US just stop bombing Yemen is like asking why doesn't the US pull out of Afghanistan. It's not that the US couldn't, but if it did, the immediate result would make US politicians look really bad. Likewise doing anything that might change the situation favorably for the US would be so expensive it would also be an incredible political liability, as well as the opportunity cost probably vastly exceeding the benefits. Much easier political to contribute the minimum bombs/guns/soldiers necessary to just keep chaos continuing indefinitely. According to my best friend who recently had to leave Afghanistan due to being targetted (as any medium to high level NGO/IGO worker is now) by the Taliban, its a loving lost cause. The Taliban have effective control of the majority of the country and can reach into governmental areas in Kabul at will.
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Nov 25, 2017 14:20
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Its amazing at how much of a lack of American presence is at this thing. A total void of leadership and acquesiance to Russian leadership. Whatever. mlmp08 posted:The latest assessment by the top US general in Afghanistan is that it’s a stalemate, but they’ll use more troops and advisers and a wider bombing campaign to turn it around. This is a very conservative estimate by the Nytimes that's already outdated. 
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Nov 25, 2017 14:34
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guidoanselmi posted:same. never forget: https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3076512 Yeah the linkage of blackwater which doesn't even exist anymore (I think even Xe might be defunct) and the fact its the daily mail makes that particular claim look super bullshit. But yeah they're obvi being tortured by someone.
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Nov 25, 2017 14:37
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Count Roland posted:How loyal have the shia militias been so far? The ones operating in Syria and Iraq. There's Hezbollah and a slew of smaller ones. Do they mostly do what Iran says? Do they ever switch sides or rebel? They've been remarkably loyal to Iranian interests, due to Iran's deft ability to work with outside groups that differ from themselves (compare that to Saudi Arabia's iron fisted and incompetent handling of its representatives in Syria). Also due to them, from Hezbollah to the many paramilitary Iranian aligned groups, smelling where the wind is going (towards Iran). Hezbollah has lost ALOT of personnel in Syria, but the ties between them and iran, monetarily, personnel-wise, ideologically, are the strongest they've ever been.
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Nov 28, 2017 18:48
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Count Roland posted:If you know any more about this I'd love to hear about it. lol meant to say seeing the way the wind is going or however that saying goes haha I've posted some articles about Iran-Hezbollah-PMU's before you can maybe click through my history, but I might find some more articles later.
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Nov 28, 2017 23:49
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why is this man still around? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZwFaSpca_3Q
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Dec 4, 2017 21:03
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Fizzil posted:UH OH panic time: UAE has a relatively youthful demagraphic (of Emiratis ofc, since that's the only ethnicity that matters in that country) with an abundance of rich, spoiled, and bored young men wanting to make their mark. I'm sure it's the same with the princes of SA. What a shitshow for the rest of the ME. It's Young Turks as all hell.
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Dec 5, 2017 20:47
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the popes toes posted:Just from a process perspective, the embassy move will clarify a couple of minor issues that have dogged US diplomacy in Israel. Uh welcome to the thread, that's a great opening post. You guys read that article about the reveal of who Mosul Eye was? Its real good: https://apnews.com/cdc0567f7bf34958b914b15869392a84
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Dec 8, 2017 21:57
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Squalid posted:I think they would say they want "fair representation." Pashtun guys like Hekmatyar would probably say the same thing. Old post but felt the need to point out that Afghanistan's high corruption is a relatively modern development, it only started rising with the influx of American funding and foreign aid. Like the country's opium output, its a problem that can be traced to American bungling and arrogance.
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Jan 21, 2018 03:09
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Its so loving stupid, and it's gonna cause the worst humanitarian crisis since Ethiopia in the 80s and Somalia in the 90s.quote:In early October, 2016, the father of Hilal’s close friend Jalal al-Ruwayshan died. Ruwayshan, the Minister of the Interior, was working with Hilal in negotiating between Yemen’s various factions to end the war. The Ruwayshan family announced that it would receive condolences at the Al-Sala Al-Kubra Community Hall, in Sana’a. On the night before the funeral, Hilal’s son Hussein called his father and asked him to urge the Ruwayshan family to consider postponing the event. Since the beginning of the war, the Saudi coalition’s air strikes have hit large civilian gatherings. Hilal replied that the Saudi Air Force would not bomb the funeral. “Even war has morals,” he said. You can guess what happened next. quote:The third time that the hall shook, Hilal’s guard heard the sound of air whistling against the tail fins of a bomb as it zigzagged toward them, its guidance system making corrections to its trajectory. “Sir, it’s a missile!” he shouted. Hilal was smiling. The floor erupted in flames. As the guard lost consciousness, he saw a wall collapse and crush Hilal. quote:Some officials in Washington were skeptical of the Saudis’ plans, however. “I think they had a slightly rosier interpretation of how quickly the military effort would be successful,” Nitin Chadda, who was an adviser on national security to the White House, told me. The Saudis had been “choreographing” their desire to take steps against the Houthis, because they were uncomfortable with the idea of an Iranian proxy on their border, he said. But the specific plans to attack Yemen were not communicated to the U.S. Within D.C. circles, Chadda said, “there was certainly frustration” that the Saudis had acted so quickly, without clearly defining their long-term objectives. quote:The Obama Administration found itself entangled in the complexities of a war that involved so many regional players. The confusion extended to humanitarian concerns. Jeremy Konyndyk, at the time the director of USAID’s office of U.S. foreign-disaster assistance, told me that it often seemed as if the Saudis were thwarting efforts to get food to Yemen’s starving populace. Another former senior Administration official told me that the U.S. government spent four million dollars on cranes to unload relief ships at the Houthi-controlled port of Hodeidah, but the coalition, which had blockaded Yemen, did not allow the cranes into the country. and ofc quote:month after the funeral-hall strike, Donald Trump was elected President. In January, when he was inaugurated, he promised a review of Obama’s foreign policy. “Their objective is a strong relationship with the Saudis, a strong relationship with the Emiratis,” Bruce Riedel told me. “Yemen is just not a priority.” The Saudis lobbied Trump’s National Security Council for the cranes purchased by USAID for Hodeidah to be returned. The National Security Council acceded, and the cranes have been sent to storage, at the U.S.’s expense. The former senior Administration official told me, “Since January, you’ve seen the humanitarian situation in Yemen fall off a cliff, and I don’t think it’s a coincidence.” According to Rajat Madhok, of UNICEF, the cholera crisis and the malnutrition are unprecedented. “ ‘Bad’ would be an understatement,” Madhok told me. “You’re looking at a health collapse, a systemic collapse.” quote:Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law, is also associated with the Saudis. He has flown to the kingdom repeatedly for secret talks. In a relationship fostered by the Emiratis and by the Lebanese-American businessman Thomas Barrack, who is a friend of Trump’s, Kushner has grown close to King Salman’s thirty-two-year-old son, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, a chief proponent of the war in Yemen. (Gause, the professor at Texas A. & M. University, told me, “This is his war, it was his idea, he owns it.”) Kushner negotiated the new arms deal. As initially reported by the Times, he called Marillyn Hewson, the chair of Lockheed Martin, and asked her to lower the price of a radar system. According to a number of current and former government officials and weapons experts, Kushner’s action was irregular. It was also bad dealmaking. “Usually, a U.S. official would be lobbying a foreign government on behalf of U.S. industry, not vice versa,” Andrew Exum told me. “That just struck me as odd.” and pretty predictably quote:Senator Murphy told me that the U.S.’s support for the coalition will prove detrimental to the country’s interests. “Our first job is to protect our citizenry, and, to me, these arms sales put U.S. lives in jeopardy,” he said. Dafna H. Rand, a Middle East expert who covered Yemen for the State Department under Obama, said, “The longer this war goes on, the longer there’s a risk of deep resentment against the United States that will be radicalizing and lead to full-strain extremism.” The Yemenis I spoke to expressed frustration with the U.S.’s role in the war. “We used to love and appreciate the U.S., because a large number of Yemenis live there,” Hebari, the chanter, told me. The war has now changed that calculus. “What appears to me is that the U.S. is funding and Saudi Arabia is the implementer.” read the rest here: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/01/22/how-the-us-is-making-the-war-in-yemen-worse It's loving infuriating.
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Jan 29, 2018 16:11
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Squalid posted:The risks are real. However I think people often forget that aggressive anti-terror campaigns have often have unpredictable liabilities. My favorite example is the US "shadow war" in Somalia circa 2003 which transformed what was maybe at most a few dozen al Qaeda sympathizers into Al Shabaab, one of the most active international terrorist organizations today. Their attacks against Uganda, Burundi, and Kenya came after those nations participated in the occupation of Somalia, and are explicitly conducted to pressure them to remove themselves from Somalia. Similarly IS coordinated attacks are explicitly in revenge for the coalition campaign against them. These groups are not irrational, their terror attacks are usually launched to achieve specific strategic or tactical aims. Stepping in has proved in some cases as dangerous as stepping back. In any case, I think its obvious that the opportunity cost of the war, that is what we could have done otherwise if we weren't stuck in that country, exceeds whatever modest benefits one can argue are accrued. A good post, except for what you mentioned about Shabaab. It was a youth organization aligned with the Islamic Courts Union that got notoriety from defeating more secular warlords in the early aughts. It only really blew up in significance with the scorched earth invasion of Somalia by mostly Ethiopian forces. The turn to a more global emphasis (with predictably disastrous results, like the invasion of Southern Somalia by Kenyan forces) is a propaganda campaign to bolster an organization rapidly losing territory and operational ability. The US is not responsible for everything that happens in a country, even if it does impact negatively somewhat.
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Jan 29, 2018 16:43
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Squalid posted:Yeah but many analysts have written about how the ICU aligned youth organization grew out of self defense groups assembled to protect Afghan war veterans during the mid-aught intensification of warlord violence, brought about in part by and targeted at Afghan veteran due to US efforts to catch Somali al Qaeda sympathizers. Oh didn't know about the Afghan connection, interesting Squalid posted:Ethiopia invaded Somalia because some members of the ICU were trumpeting that they were going to liberate the Ogaden. The US just greased the wheels a little and facilitated what they already wanted to do. Bingo. I lived in the region for 2 years, the enmity between the 2 countries cannot be overstated.
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Jan 29, 2018 21:53
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Squalid posted:
Over the years its been all of the above, but considering the Taliban is increasing their hold on Afghanistan by like 10% every year and is close to or already has achieved dominance in the majority of the country, their philosophy from what I understand (and very similar to the North Vietnamese earlier) is to wait out the efforts by the international coalition.
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Feb 12, 2018 17:09
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Ramrod Hotshot posted:http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-43053617 France has been doing military air strikes in Syria since 2015, with the help of UK and US refueling and re-arming. France has also been way more outspoken against Assad than the States, and pushed hard for the US to uphold the red line Obama threat. They're aching to get interventionist against the SAA.
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Feb 14, 2018 18:20
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I remember reading about Uigher al-Qaeda members way back when all this started.
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Mar 15, 2018 23:19
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Sinteres posted:This article about MBS is loving fascinating, and way too long to clip excerpts from (except for this line which supports the Al-Saqr is MBS conspiracy theory: His favorite diversion is Call of Duty, the video game). If you want to understand the region, it's worth reading. lol at this quote quote:Friedman wrote that the young crown prince had kept him up until one-thirty in the morning, discussing national renewal until he pleaded exhaustion. “It has been a long time,” he wrote, “since any Arab leader wore me out with a fire hose of new ideas for transforming his country.” The column inspired outrage among critics of Saudi Arabia. The Al Jazeera journalist Mehdi Hasan called it “an embarrassment.” At a Brookings Institution event a few days later, Friedman responded brusquely. “I got news for you—the entire Arab world is dysfunctional right now,” he said. “And so when I see someone who is having the balls to take on the religious component of that, to take on the economic component, to take on the political, with all of his flaws . . . I wanna stick my head up and say, ‘God, I hope you succeed.’ And when you do that the holy hell comes down on you. Well, ‘gently caress that’ is my view, O.K.?” _ _ . . O /\
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Apr 11, 2018 01:48
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and lolquote:M.B.S. opened the conversation by threatening to cut off trade with France unless Macron stopped doing business with Iran.
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Apr 11, 2018 01:54
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OMG I'm reading about the city MBS wants to build, Neom, and it's like a child thought about itquote:Neom is to be the grandest manifestation of that vision. A city of the future, the likes of which the world has never seen—except maybe in science fiction books and movies. It is to be built from scratch on 10,231 square miles of untouched land in the northwestern region of Saudi Arabia, including territory from within the Egyptian and Jordanian borders. http://bigthink.com/design-for-good/saudi-arabia-is-building-a-utopian-city-to-herald-the-future-of-human-civillization At least Brasilia was supposed to be the capital of Brazil. It's so dumb quote:Neom will not only become a test case for a zero-energy mega-city (with a size 33 times that of New York), but it will provide abundant opportunities for employment and investments within Saudi Arabia, attracting local and foreign money back to the country. The city’s vision is to be at the forefront of nine key economic sectors, including energy and water, biotech, advanced manufacturing, and food. A child.
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Apr 11, 2018 02:01
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KaptainKrunk posted:At no point was intervention going to lead to a better outcome, period. It's hard to imagine anything worse than this, and now Assad is going to go after another 1.5 million Syrians for detention or worse. By the end of this thing it'll be his family, loyalists, and the dead. e: I, more than anything, just want to see this guy eat a missle.
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Apr 13, 2018 15:27
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Not the first time Suleimani's been in Baghdad getting a coalition together.
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May 16, 2018 23:34
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Saladman posted:Let's say you live in California, and suddenly you had an influx of 50 million Alabamans and Mississippians flood into your state. You probably would stop giving a poo poo about terminology and a lot more of a poo poo about rising prices, lowered wages, difficulty of finding jobs, homes, and the eventual militias that the southerners would set up to harass you. Absurd Alhazred posted:Well, the OP seems to be comparing a flood of 25% of the population in refugees in a war-torn country to a trickle of less than 0.1% of the population. It's big in its own terms, but we're talking hundreds of thousands of people seeking refuge in a country with hundreds of millions of people. fishmech posted:Over the course of the late 1920s into the late 1930s and a bit earlier, nearly 3.5 million people from the area around and including Oklahoma fled to California and another few million to states around California. The population of California was only 3,426,861 at the 1920 census. Catching up with this thread but appreciated this bit of ownage. Nice job.
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Jul 18, 2018 16:57
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Darth Walrus posted:Can I get context on Friedman? I’m more familiar with Milton than Thomas. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ZwFaSpca_3Q [Immigrant] met in a [conveyance] is evidence for a [neoliberal proposition] Also, friedman units.
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Oct 17, 2018 02:48
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Sen. Graham is now calling for MBS's replacement. What are MBS's power base? I mean before him the Kingship in SA depended on some sort of consent/pay off structure towards other royals right? I'm trying to remember the stuff I read about his ascent, but I think it hinged alot on the troops in the Royal Guard while sidelining the Interior Ministry. I mean, Prince Bandar "bush's best friend" is still around qkkl posted:Finding people who can rationalize war crimes is easy because most people would kill in a "kill or be killed" situation. I have my doubts that a doctor who's taken the Hippocratic oath would voluntarily dismember someone who they just saw was murdered. pretty sure this is not true and most people have to be trained to kill other people.
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Oct 18, 2018 18:02
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LeoMarr posted:Step 1 to a very bad ending. This signals that a death spiral is about to occur next we may see some afghanis in wealthy positions exiting the country , and the government purging minority sects turning even more authoritarian rapidly. High tier folks have been targetted for a while, and the constant threat of Taliban murder pretty much scared off most foreigners not on a base years ago. This boat has been sinking for awhile.
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Oct 18, 2018 22:45
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LeoMarr posted:Definitely. But now were really at the end. Everyones got bodyguards now. So throughout the year we went from checkpoint disguise ambushes to government bodyguards are taliban so even the president isnt safe thats a very different world to live in A good friend of me who was out there for years came back a couple of years ago, the most optimistic and hard working person you could ever meet. And he's glad that he made it out alive. And he worked in an NGO.
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Oct 18, 2018 22:55
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howd they get all the blood out e: checkmate, edrogan-ailures.
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Oct 22, 2018 22:21
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Willie Tomg posted:Metadata is trivial to get, at least by the US federal government. I can't testify to the reach of the Turkish government. Content would likely not be possible, but in a case like this it'd be the metadata that really constituted the proof. This is part of why I'm starting to get skeptical of these supposedly damning recordings and videos that are Too Hot For Public Consumption. We don't need video of Khashoggi getting killed in such-and-so a way with such-and-so person gloating over him to prove something went down, just metadata that shows Party X called Party Y for Duration Z at Time P at Location J. what, you don't believe this guy ported into the office of the Saudi consul's office like motherfucking murderous Zordon to order his men to enact a real life fatality
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Oct 22, 2018 22:46
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Speaking of America the vote against the War in Yemen advanced with an almost veto proof majority.
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Nov 28, 2018 22:56
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Its def gonna put a damper on things. Even when Reagan went behind Congress's back durjng Iran Contra he still had the support of his party.Volkerball posted:You really couldn't ask for a better crown prince than MBS. The damage he has done to KSA's relations with the west has been incredible. Even a lot of the people I suspect would always stand opposed to the idea of a break in US/Saudi relations have sided against him in the internal power struggle, and as a result, their arguments just empower those arguing that Saudi Arabia deserves to be treated as a pariah state. The writing is on the wall and it rules. I think since Trump has made the alliance with KSA such a big part of his political identity, a big part of the political identity of the inevitable reaction against him is going to be dissolving that alliance. I expect to hear a lot more hostility towards the regime moving forward from political figures of all stripes, which is such a breath of fresh air. I figured we would start completely ignoring Iran's human rights abuses before we ever started seeing KSA's, but it's nice for reason to win the day for once. Its pretty extraordinary. SA influence in DC is literally a billion dollar industry. And Trump and MBS managed to knee cap it just by being insanely arrogant and stupid.
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Nov 29, 2018 00:36
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steinrokkan posted:In this case, the war in Yemen has been privatized, as far as the US is concerned. The main issue is that Yemeni civilians are being blown up by American bombs, which are dropped by Arab air forces. I don't think this decision addresses that - or does it? According to the measure, https://www.sanders.senate.gov/download/yemen-fact-sheet?inline=file, US tanker refuels make daily Saudi bombings possible. It would also signal a loss of support that makes it much more precarious for Saudi to continue losing Yemen.
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Nov 29, 2018 17:37
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can I just say how hilairous its been catching up with the thread and pages like 243 - when ppl realized that Trump pulled out b/c of his brain farts. Like deep and dense speculation about the real-politik reasons why the US is doing it versus reality, it's because the guy leading is the modern Mad George.
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Dec 26, 2018 14:42
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I think there's a difference between West Beelin, and a breakaway part of a country thats been traditionally seen as part of it since WWI.
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Oct 14, 2019 13:32
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Sinteres posted:I guess we're about to find out if Iran's a paper tiger that's been bluffing their way through the intensifying skirmishing up until now. We absolutely started this fight when Trump tore up the Iran deal, and now we're escalating, so if Iran has any cards to play, we should be seeing them soon. They're still obviously by far the weaker country though, so taking the L could be the more rational course of action, even if war would also be bad for us. I'm expecting Iranian attacks on US boats, bases, allied oil fields by morning personally
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Jan 3, 2020 04:13
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pro starcraft loser posted:Hearing that on this thread is unusual. What did he do? Helped start the blow the gently caress out of US transport IED industry in Iraq for one He was extraordinarily effective in foiling US interests or allaying them for greater Iran influence its like a combination of Che and Eisenhower just got blown up by the Soviets unusual times
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Jan 3, 2020 04:15
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