The United States will relocate one thousand US soldiers to Poland. Warsaw hopes the decision will create closer ties to Washington and protection against threats from the East.

The Polish-US Agreement

Last week US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo traveled to Europe and visited four nations. During his stint in Poland he sealed the new military agreement between both countries.

Pompeo chose a symbolic day, August 15, for two reasons: While Catholics – Poland’s majority confession –  celebrate an important holiday, the Assumption of Mary, politicians also celebrated the 100th anniversary of the Battle of Warsaw with military bands and parades. From August 12-25, in 1920, Poland defeated the Soviet army in the so-called “Miracle of the Vistula.” It was a decisive battle that would later secure the country’s independence.

Pompeo and his counterpart Mariusz Błaszczak sealed an agreement that could have significant implications for Poland. The Enhanced Defense Cooperation Agreement will provide for the transfer of 1,000 additional US soldiers to Poland, in addition to the 4,500 already stationed in Poland.

Strategically Key Decision

A statement by President Trump published by the White House said that the agreement would intensify military cooperation between the two countries and further strengthen NATO’s deterrent force. During his visit to Warsaw, Pompeo said that the treaty opened the way to a larger rotating US troop presence. The latter was strategically crucial for the US and its allies alike.

Poland will provide the US soldiers with free board and lodging, fuel, storage space, and infrastructure, similar to other host countries of the US troops.

However, since there is no permanent US military base in Poland, the soldiers will not be relocated permanently but will be replaced by others on a rotating basis. The troops for this also come from the contingent of 12,000 soldiers that President Trump wants to withdraw from Germany. More than half of them will return to the USA. In total, 5,600 are going to other European countries, including Poland.

Poland’s Perspective

Above all, Poland hopes that the US troops will provide additional protection against possible threats and better defense. Poland’s ruling Law and Justice (PiS) party had long expressed its wish to strengthen NATO’s eastern flank. The latter should act as a deterrent, especially towards Russia.

If it were up to Poland, the agreement would go even further than the additional 1,000 soldiers. The idea of ​​a permanent military facility called “Fort Trump” has been suggested. However, the latter is very likely not currently feasible. Not because President Trump is not impressed by the idea, but because this plan could violate a treaty between NATO and Russia.

The strategic weights will, therefore, not be changed significantly with the relocation. Instead, a trend of recent years has been confirmed, according to which US troops are withdrawing more to their continent or are being relocated, primarily in Asia and thus in the vicinity of China.

Poland’s President Andrzej Duda doesn’t just see the relocation as a guarantee for more protection against possible aggressors. He also hopes that more security in the country and the region can also encourage businesses to invest more.

It also makes sense that the Polish President can envisage even stronger economic cooperation with the USA, including on energy policy. The traditionally already close ties between Washington and Warsaw could thus be tied even closer in the future. In any case, both sides left no doubt about the immense importance they attach to the Washington-Warsaw axis.

While “Old Europe” — France and Germany — in particular, are at odds with the Americans on several issues, Poland seeks to prove that it can become not only a viable alternative to the latter but also a more reliable friend than Paris and Berlin.

L'articolo America’s Defense Agreement with Poland proviene da InsideOver.

Relations between Washington and Berlin have been mediocre as of late. Sadly, so has the public’s opinion about the US in Germany. Accordingly, the public’s reaction to the American troop withdrawal announcement was naïvely positive and marked the latest example of a change for the worse in German perception of the United States.

Details of the Troop Withdrawal Still Unclear

Albeit the extent of the withdrawal remains uncertain and, in fact, may be scrapped after all if Joe Biden wins on November 3. Still, the ongoing discussion appears to have had an impact on the German image of America nonetheless. Specific ideas German used to have about the US have, indeed, shifted significantly as of late.

Gone seem to be the days in which Germans were grateful for America, which has been liberator and protector of the whole continent in the past. While the older generations in Germany have remained cognizant of the latter — at least outside of the former East German GDR states — the current generations of Germans, millennials, in particular, appear to have gotten lost in between a  leftist ideology and a shocking degree of ignorance and lack of geopolitical understanding when it comes to America’s role in the world.

The Lessons of History are Being Forgotten in Germany

The ever-increasing distance to the end of World War II and the subsequent period of rivalry between West and the Soviet Union has increasingly weakened the image of the American soldier as a representative of freedom. It coincides with an already drastic withdrawal of US soldiers in Germany in the past 30 years. In 1985 the strength of the American contingent in West Germany was just under 250,000. The current figure is at a seventh of it: only 35,000. The plan now is to withdraw another 11,000 troops.

The latter is apparently no issue for many Germans. In a recent survey, a relative majority of 47 percent of respondents in Germany supported the partial withdrawal.

However, such a shrug of shoulders or even negative attitude towards the presence of American allies in Germany is not new. In an autumn 2019 survey only around half of those questioned answered that they considered an American troop presence in Germany to be an essential contribution to national security — which can be considered the perhaps best IQ test to date.

Anti-Americanism on the Rise

The anti-American sentiments that speak in these numbers also find political resonance in Berlin. The opposition parties Left and Greens, but also Merkel’s coalition partner, the SPD, responded in different ways to the withdrawal announcement with comments and suggestions intended to be confrontational and delimiting instead of cooperative or characterized by efforts to limit the damage.

While the Left Party, the successor party of the GDR’s SED, demands withdrawal of all troops, the Greens favor removal of all US nuclear weapons stationed in Germany. The SPD’s parliamentary group leader, Rolf Mützenich, meanwhile, who had previously also suggested that nuclear weapons needed to disappear from German soil – and thus set himself in opposition to his party colleague and Germany’s Foreign Minister Heiko Maas – now proposed that Germany should cease purchasing armaments from the United States in return for the withdrawal of troops.

Domestic Implications of the US Troop Withdrawal

The troop withdrawal is thus likely to have domestic implications also. With his intention to withdraw, Trump may have strengthened the formation of a political will, which in Germany could at least turn against some elements of the American presence that are strategically important in terms of military strategy — and may be used as a foreign policy wedge issue against the CDU during the elections in 2021.

Maas, meanwhile, still holds the argument against the demand for the withdrawal of nuclear weapons. He is cognizant that there are states in Europe that feel that they are far more threatened from a security policy perspective – from Russia. If Germany now foregoes the ability to target tactical nuclear weapons together with the United States, that would also weaken the European security architecture.

However, these geopolitical implications are far off the horizon for Germany’s (young) general public, who seem inclined to say tschüss to realism and guten Tag to naïveté.

L'articolo America’s Troop Withdrawal and Germany’s Naïveté proviene da InsideOver.

After Iran hit Iraqi-military bases that housed US troops in retaliation of the death of their top general, the US President Donald Trump announced new sanctions against the crumbling Iran’s economy and officials. For now, it was an end to a possible military confrontation between the two countries, but it seems that both go to a shadow war across the region, as they did for 40 years.

The Middle Eastern region has been largely the main shadow battleground between the United States and Iran and Iranian proxy forces. The sandwiched country between the Middle East and South Asia, Afghanistan may turn into another shadow battleground between the United States and Iran, amid peace efforts to end 18-year long insurgency in the country.

The United States has been the strategic partner of Afghanistan for 18 years and helped the country to build national institutions from the ashes of civil war in the 1990s, from the military to judicial. On the other hand, Afghanistan shares borders and long complicated and extensive political, social, and economic ties with Iran.

“The government of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan assures the people and its neighbors that, according to the security agreement with the United States, the territory of Afghanistan in no circumstances will be used against another country,” said President Ashraf Ghani of Afghanistan in a statement days between the death of top Iranian general and missile strikes into Iraqi military bases.

As the tension between the United States and Iran drags on, the US peace envoy Zalmay Khalilzad met in silence with the Taliban representatives, discussing reduction of violence and ceasefire to reach an agreement for peace in Afghanistan and withdrawal of US troops. Afghans fear that US-Iran tension hurt the chance of peace for Afghanistan.

“Iran has refused to join the regional and international consensus for peace, and is, in fact, actively working to under the peace process by continuing its long global effort to support militant groups there [in Afghanistan],” said US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo at a State Department news conference. “Taliban’s entanglement in Iran’s dirty work will only harm the Afghanistan peace process.”

Over 18 years that the United States poured in millions of dollars and deployed nearly a million US troops in Afghanistan, while Iran cultivates connection with elements within the Taliban group. US and Afghan officials accused Iran of arming the Taliban group, a charge Iran denied. In addition, Iran recruited, trained, and paid thousands of Afghan Shiites to fight for Iran in the Syrian war under the division of Fatimyoun.

The influence of Iran in Afghanistan came to light when US killed Qaseem Suleimani, head of Iran’s Quds force. Ex-President Hamid Karzai, who was saved by US Special Forces for years and was backed in power for 13 years, condemned the strike against Suleimani and named him as a “man of dignity.” Former National Security Advisor Hanif Atmar, the official who signed the strategic security agreement with the United States, called Suleimani as a “martyr.”

Photos of Afghan ambassador to Iran circulated on social media showing him in the funeral of Suleimani in Tehran. At least two Afghan politicians were seen at the funeral of Suleimani in Tehran. Abdullah Abdullah, the chief executive of the United States backed and brokered government, went to the Iranian embassy in Kabul to pay his tribute and to sign a memorial book on Suleimani.

“We expect an escalation of tech-Mil support [for the Taliban] by the Iranian regime plus the potential deployment of Fatimyun bridge on the Afghan battlefields this coming fight season [spring is usually the start of insurgency season],” said Tamim Asey, former deputy for Afghan defense minister. “Time and this coming fighting season will tell.”

The New York Times reported that the United States “air assets in Afghanistan have repeatedly come up in discussions over a potential response to Iran, though the top United States commander in Afghanistan has urged caution about such plans.”

Turning Afghanistan into a battlefield might be too costly for both the United States and Iran. The United States have already been fighting an endemic insurgency in the country with the Afghan government is entangled with widespread combat with the Taliban group across the country. Iran, meanwhile, fights and supports proxy forces across the Middle East, from Lebanon to Yemen.

“If Iran escalates its proxy war through Taliban and Fatimyun, they will be the biggest losers themselves,” said Tamim Asey. “It essentially amounts to shooting themselves in the front i.e. opening two fronts in both western [Iraq] and eastern borders [Afghanistan].”

L'articolo Afghanistan Swept Between United States and Iran proviene da InsideOver.

Iraq has become a pawn on the chessboard of global politics and as such, the parliament’s vote on the withdrawal of US troops has put the country in a severe dilemma and opens the door for more chaos ahead.

After the killing of Iran’s Soleimani, many Iraqis were furious. Not necessarily due to the killing per se, but what they consider a violation of Iraq’s sovereignty and thus international law. The image of the liberating uber-power USA, a friend in keeping the country safe and stable, transformed into one of the old cliché imperialistic power, present solely for its own agenda.

As a result, the Iraqi parliament conducted a vote on Prime Minister Mahdi’s plan to expel the US. While the parliament agreed and voted in the motion’s favor, it was far from a united effort. While some members of parliament utilized the vote to express their resentment against the US, others see the risk a withdrawal produces, both militarily and economically.

Militarily because, so far, the 5,200 troops currently stationed in Iraq have protected the country against IS. A withdrawal would result in another security vacuum, similar to the one that had created IS in the first place. To this day, the terror group is conducting attacks in Iraq. It is a virtual certainty that these would significantly increase. Particularly as the US’ withdrawal could trigger a domino effect, as with their withdrawal, European and other coalition forces may have to follow since they are dependent on US logistical and technical support.

Economically, the options for the US to punish Iran exist in abundance, and most importantly, any punishment would also affect Iran, as its economy has strong ties with Iraq’s, which makes it thus even more worthwhile for Washington to be rather adamant.

President Trump has already threatened that a forced withdrawal could require Iraq to be held accountable to make debt payments to the US, while also potentially being sanctioned severely. Moreover, Iraq could risk the freeze of its accounts at the Federal Reserve Bank in New York, into which it deposits oil sales proceeds.

As preposterous as it may sound, President Trump had already eluded to this option when he announced, “right now we have their money.” Another option would be to cease Iraq’s exemptions that allow it to purchase Iranian gas to power its southern electricity producers. These are responsible for at least 35 percent of the electricity supplied to Iraq.

Despite the dilemma Iraq finds itself in, Prime Minister Mahdi currently appears to proceed with the plan of a troop withdrawal. Meanwhile, Secretary of State Pompeo promptly refused and accused Mahdi of being under Iranian pressure, while the Iraqis wanted the US to continue its mission, Pompeo said.

Pompeo is accurate when he refers to the pressure applied to Mahdi, however. The country still appears to have mixed feelings about US troops, despite the overthrow of dictator and mass murderer Saddam Hussein and the subsequent fight against IS. Moreover, with the withdrawal of the US, the Shiite majority in the country is supposed to be appeased. However, this majority also cultivates relations to Tehran, which has also sought a US removal.

Realpolitik in the country is meanwhile left to the Sunnis, of whom many boycotted parliaments vote. In fact, only 170 out of 328 members participated in the process. The Sunnis are cognizant that a US withdrawal does not only play into the hands of Iran but begs the opportunity for Iraq to become Tehran’s satellite state. Furthermore, despite PM Mahdi’s pledge that a withdrawal would improve the relations with the neighbor, reality suggests that Iraq could become just as isolated from the international community as Iran, once Tehran begins to control Baghdad’s politics and agendas.

Despite all, Prime Minister Mahdi appears to be ready to face these possible consequences for now. All that gives hope for Mahdi’s inclination to compromise is his request to the National Security Council to provide options on how to proceed.

These options consisted of a as soon as possible withdrawal and a successive withdrawal that would negate an immediate vacuum for IS. However, the Security Council also proposed a third option, which it explicitly recommended: a road map for renegotiation of the current agreement under which the US is present and the ultimately go-ahead for the US to remain.

Regardless of how the Iraqi government will ultimately decide, there will be consequences from one side or the other. Both Iran and the US have geopolitical interests in Iraq, which is not inclined to become dependent on Washington nor Tehran. However, the current situation has left Iraq with little to no choice but to make the utmost best of its position as a pawn on a chessboard, with its next move being crucial.

L'articolo A Political Pawn: Iraq’s Military and Monetary Dilemmas proviene da InsideOver.

On 29 December 2019, the heads of the US government gather at Mar-a-Lago, Donald Trump’s California villa. They have interrupted their Christmas holidays to meet with their commander in chief and, together, decide how to confront the revolts which, as from the last few weeks of 2019, have been disrupting Iraq. The tycoon leaves the golf field and locks himself in a room alongside his government high officials to discuss – or at least this is the version which circulated for days,- the raids which, a few hours later, would strike Kataib Hezbollah, the pro-Iranian militia in Syria and Iraq.

As the Washington Post later revealed, however, during the meeting other topics were also discussed. On that occasion, somebody – it is still uncertain who – introduced an option which, until then, had always been considered taboo: the possibility of killing Iranian general Qassem Soleimani, commander of the al Quds forces. It appears that Trump gave the green light to the targeted killing on that very occasion, and immediately, American intelligence launched the search for the general.

Four days later, on 2 January, the American president met with his closest advisors: Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo; Defense Secretary, Mark Esper; US Army Chief of Staff, Mark Milley; Acting Director of National Intelligence, Joe Maguire, and influential Republican Senator Lindsey Graham. But, as Il Corriere reports, “the most highly-anticipated guest was Gina Haspel, CIA director. It was Haspel who put together the dossier on Soleimani’s movements and, above all, on the general’s ‘ominous schemes’”.

They know that the general arrived in Damascus, from where he travelled to Beirut (to meet Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah) and finally made his way back to the Syrian capital where he boarded a flight landing in Baghdad on January 3 at 00.32 where, shortly after, he would meet his death.

The general had been busy during his last days. What with? And, above all, why did he reach the Iraqi capital’s airport travelling on a commercial flight?

As Il Post reveals, “the compound’s security is guaranteed by a private British company, G4S, under Iraqi intelligence supervision, while that of the airport perimeter and the air space is competence of Iraqi counterterrorism in collaboration with the United States.”

Was Soleimani hoping – despite his political standing – to not be seen? Or was he convinced he was protected by some sort of “immunity” as Il Corriere also recently hypothesized?

Maybe, a lead which should be investigated is that indicated by Iraqi premier, Adel Abdel Mahdi. Yesterday, just as his country was voting to expel all US troops from Iraq, Mahdi stated, as we can see in this video, relaunched by Ali Mourad, a reporter of Al Akhbar, a daily newspaper close to Hezbollah: “…I shall say this that it may go down in History: I was supposed to meet Soleimani at 8.30 on the morning he was made a martyr. He was to bring with him the answer to a message we delivered from Saudi Arabia, to reach an agreement in Iraq and the region.”

عادل عبدالمهدي يؤكد أنّه كان بصدد اللقاء بالجنرال #سليماني صباح الجمعة عند الساعة 8:30 للحصول منه على الرد الإيراني على الرسالة #السعودية التي كان عبدالمهدي قد أوصلها لإيران للتوصل لاتفاقات وانفراجات في #العراق والمنطقة pic.twitter.com/wd9uk4DCHh

— Ali Hassan Mourad (@alihmourad) January 5, 2020

If Mahdi’s version were true, it would be reasonable to suppose that Soleimani felt safe as he was the bearer of a diplomatic message. As things stand we cannot refute this account, we can only add pieces to an affair which still presents many obscure points.

L'articolo How Trump Decided to Kill Iranian General Soleimani proviene da InsideOver.

Amid reports on the increase of violence in Iran’s recent protests and Iran’s meddling in Iraq, Syria and other regional countries, the United States is considering sending more troops to the Middle East to deter potential Iranian aggression, US defense officials said last week.

On Thursday, December 5, US Under Secretary of Defense for Policy John Rood told senators that Defense Secretary Mark Esper “intends to make some changes” to the number of troops the United States currently deploys in the Middle East.

That same day, US National Security Adviser Robert O’Brien said President Trump was open to sending more troops to the Middle East.

“If the troops are needed to deter Iran, we have the capacity to move them into the region – although I don’t think that’s happening right now,” O’Brien told Fox News that day.

On Wednesday, a day earlier, the Wall Street Journal reported that the United States may send 14,000 additional troops to the Middle East. The Pentagon’s press secretary, Alyssa Farah, soon refuted the Journal’s reports.

“This reporting by the @WSJ is wrong,” she tweeted. “The US is not sending 14,000 troops to the Middle East to confront Iran.”

But her tweet appeared to discuss the number of troops to be sent to the Middle East, rather than if the United States will do so.

Since last spring, the United States deployed some 14,000 troops to the Middle East, after the series of maritime attacks on oil tankers near Iran and the bombings of Saudi Arabia oil sites, for which Tehran was blamed.

Other government officials said the Pentagon’s options under consideration could send between 5,000 and 7,000 new troops to the Middle East to face potential attacks by Iran.

US officials provided no details to back up why an increase in the number of troops was necessary, but many said the United States was concerned about recent intelligence indications suggesting a possible aggression from Iran.

“We also continue to see indications, and for obvious reasons I won’t go into the details, that potential Iranian aggression could occur,” John Rood also said.

The Pentagon’s deliberations also came after the United States accused Iran of killing more than 1,000 civilians during the country’s recent protests.

Iran caught in economic difficulty due to US sanctions in part, accused foreign interference in its recent anti-government protests and threatened regional countries involved in them.

Brian Hook, the United States’ special representative for Iran, said at the State Department that the United States had received and reviewed exclusive footage Iran’s fatal crackdown on the protests there.

One video, he said, showed the Revolutionary Guards mowing down more than 100 civilians with machine-gun fire in the Iranian city of Mahshahr.

“In this incident alone the regime murdered as many as 100 Iranians and possibly more,” he told reporters at the State Department.

Hook also said that the United States received more than 32,000 submissions, after Secretary of State Mike Pompeo called on Iranians last month to submit evidence of Iran’s atrocities.

There was no known public video that supported Hook’s allegation of the Mahshahr massacre. Nor was there acceptable claim that the protests’ death toll reached more than 1,000 civilians. Tehran disputed those figures but has refused to give nationwide statistics of the casualties.

Amnesty International said at least 208 people have been killed during the demonstrations and that the number could be higher.

Yet Hook’s numbers were matched with a figure put out on Wednesday by the Iranian exile group Mujahedeen-e-Khalq —a group which paid Trump’s lawyer Rudy Giuliani to deliver speeches at its events in the past.

Alireza Miryousefi, a spokesman for Iran’s mission at the United Nations, also disputed any foreign casualty figures as “purely speculative and highly inaccurate.”

The troops’ increase in number would be a reversal of Trump’s promise to withdraw US military from conflicts he had often called “endless wars”.

When asked about the increase in the number of troops, President Trump told reporters on Thursday, “We’ll announce whether we will or no. Certainly, there might be a threat. And if there is a threat, it will be met very strongly.”

Trump often insists on pulling back troops from the Middle East (the most recent case being the withdrawal from northeast Syria). In October, he said that the Middle East was now less stable and safe than it had been before the United States carried out military interventions there.

“The single greatest mistake our country made in its history was going into the quicksand of the Middle East,” he said.

Nearly all officials who have spoken about an increase in the number of troops deployed in the Middle East have said that no definite decision has been made yet.

L'articolo The US May Send More Troops to the Middle East proviene da InsideOver.

US troops guarding al Omar oilfield near Deir Ezzour, Syria’s largest oil installation in the northeastern province came under attack for the first time since President Donald J Trump announced that the United States was “keeping Syria’s oil” following his administration’s controversial decision to pull out most US troops from Syria in October; a decision that was viewed by many as a green light for the Turkish military offensive against Syrian Kurds in the northeastern parts of the country despite wide international outrage and condemnation.

No faction or force has claimed responsibility for Thursday’s four-pronged attack which targeted and destroyed some oil-plundering tanker trucks and at least one US military vehicle at the oilfield, and no official announcement of casualties among American soldiers or their proxy oil transporters has been confirmed. The significance of the attack lies in the fact that it took place soon after Syrian President Bashar al Assad had made it clear that there will be a popular resistance to the presence of US or any uninvited foreign troops in Syria, and his reiteration that “every single inch of Syrian territories shall be liberated”. Trump’s October 6 withdrawal move from Syria has shocked US Kurdish allies who felt abandoned and left in the open to face the advancing Turkish army and its overwhelming military power and drew wide international outcry as well as severe bipartisan criticisms within the USA itself.

Soon, Trump – already under mounting pressure stemming from impeachment procedures and corruption charges and suspicious communications with Russia and the Ukraine – attempted to make amends with his critics by declaring the Syrian oil feat and pressurizing Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan to curtail his military offensive against Syrian Kurds, with a “carrot and stick” approach. The latest attack on US oil-guardians in Syria is bound to put Trump under more pressure, given the unabated political campaign both against his characteristics as well as his problematic foreign policies. Trump’s image was severely tarnished last week after leaked footage showed leaders of Britain, France and Canada mocking him at a dinner hosted by the Queen on the margin of NATO summit in London. Trump was so outraged as the video went viral on social media that he cancelled a planned press conference and left London unceremoniously, it was reported.

How secure for Trump is Syria’s “secured’ oil”?

Thursday’s attack on US troops at al Omar oilfield and tankers smuggling Syrian oil into Iraq and Turkey followed an air raid earlier last week by Syrian and possibly Russian jets which destroyed a convoy of oil tanker trucks in the northeastern parts of Syria, put into question Trump’s claims that he had “secured” Syria’s oil. “We’ve secured the oil and, therefore, a small number of US troops will remain in the area where they have the oil,” Trump said during an Oct. 23 press conference. “And we’re going to be protecting it, and we’ll be deciding what we’re going to do with it in the future.”

Once again, Trump falters on his promises to the Americans and their allies in the region. US troops at the oilfield that came targeted from four directions are reported to have used all available firepower at their disposal to foil the attack but to no avail. Many Syrian and regional observers believe that Thursday’s daring attack was a clear message to Trump, his allies and proxy oil plunderers, and most likely just “the tip of the iceberg” of what lies ahead for US troops in Syria. The trap of “oil for blood” equation many American have warned against falling into in Syria, seems to have become a painful reality for the snookered Trump administration, with problems creeping in from every nook and cranny; Iran, Iraq, Lebanon, Syria, Kurdish allies, Turkey and NATO to name a few.

A mini oil war looms in the Syrian offing

Syria’s oil production has plummeted by approximately 90% as a result of the nine-year conflict aggravated by a stringent chain of US-led sanctions against the country. Before the conflict that broke out in March 2011, the country used to produce 385.000 barrels of oil per day. The figure went as low as 14.000 BPD at the worst stage in the war. Although the oil and gas sector has made a humble recovery in recent months following the recovery by the Syrian army and its allies of vast sways of land that had been for years out of government control, much is needed for this vital factor to become fully functional.

The Syrian government has resorted to some drastic austerity measures in recent years and has been importing much of its oil and gas from Iran, Iraq and Algeria to make up for its plundered wealth. The war-torn nation and its badly damaged economy badly need oil and gas resources to maintain the minimum required economic as well as social stability and growth, and can’t afford to leave this essential wealth at the mercy of the Americans or any other foreign power forever. By hook or by crook, through diplomatic means and deals, or armed resistance to make good on its promise to protect its land and natural resources against foreign occupiers and plunderers alike. Thursday’s offensive on US troops and tanker trucks in northeastern Syria could trigger and signal a mini oil war or resistance movement to the American presence and looting the country’s oil in the days ahead.

L'articolo US Troops Guarding Syria’s Biggest Oilfield Under Attack proviene da InsideOver.

The Pentagon is denying reporting that the Trump Administration is considering deploying an additional 14,000 troops to the Middle East. The Wall Street Journal had reported on Dec. 4 that the major potential deployment was being mulled in order to push back against Iran. The United States has shipped key missile defense systems and thousands of troops to defend Saudi Arabia in the past few months, with a focus on curtailing Iran’s influence across the region, but the question remains: what is America’s next move in the Middle East and what should the next decision be to avoid a 2020 being even worse for the region than 2019? As it sinks further into $23 trillion in debt, why exactly is the United States’ military extended to every reach of the globe and particularly the Middle East, and what are its precise objectives?

New War On The Horizon?

Nearly half of all US troops polled last October believed a major war involving the United States was on the horizon within the next year. Particularly strong concern existed around potential showdowns between the United States and Russia or China—concerns that have not gone away, to say the least. Should we be relieved that the pessimists appear to have been wrong or worried they may just have been slightly off about the date? While foreign policy “experts” pompously discuss the US-Israel relationship and the “new Great Game” in the Middle East and the fallback of the US dialing down its presence in the region, there is good reason for reasonable people who don’t live at 1 Ivory Tower Think Tank Lane to slow down, reassess and consider all the ways in which the ongoing great power struggles in the Middle East are a nightmare scenario that should not be entered lightly and are very hard to extricate from the further you get in.

Establishment Foreign Policy Experts And Their Repulsive Hubris

It is absurd to hear Richard Haass of the Council on Foreign Relations talk recently about a drawdown in interest in human rights and democracy under the Trump Administration when he himself was a senior official for the George W. Bush Administration which launched the disastrous military invasion of Iraq. Trump’s own foreign policy reactivity and imbecility is only allowed to flourish in a climate in which foreign policy experts like Haass refuse to see that their time is up and continue to talk to an echo chamber in which they have the gall to imply that the post Cold War era of US primacy was a “plateau of stability” which is desirable to reattain in some form. Haass is certainly correct that it would take an optimist to think a US withdrawal from the Middle East will result in peace or lovely harmony, but his hypocrisy comes in not seeing how individuals like himself helped contribute to the much-worsened Middle East of today in which both leaving and staying have their own pile of negatives for the United States.

You cannot both help create a problem and then argue its existence is what justified your initial and ongoing presence unless you are a true blowhard and ideologue such as Haass or, for example, former US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright who famous argued that starving hundreds of thousands of Iraqi children to death under Clinton Administration sanctions in the 1990s was “worth it” and then performed all over social media and her recent book tour about the need for compassion and asylum to refugees (that her and her colleagues’ policies helped create). People like Albright and Haass should be speaking with mental health professionals and possibly being institutionalized as a danger to others, not influencing US military or governmental policy.

US And Gulf State Focus: Iran

Iran, Russia and China are holding their first cooperative military drills in defiance of NATO and Western pressures. Iran is seeking to counter Israel and Saudi Arabia and keep a foothold in the wider Middle East from Iraq to Syria and Yemen. The reapplication of punishing sanctions in late 2018 sent the Iranian currency into a spiraling nosedive, and the leadership structure is seeking to shore up strategic power through deployment, consolidation of alliances and military cooperation with proxy groups and militias from Hezbollah to the Houthis, though granted the Houthis were fighting for years independently before being considered an Iran proxy by Western nations.

Iranian leader Hassan Rouhani has indicated Iran would be amenable to reopening negotiations if the US first ends sanctions, but that is clearly not going to happen. Rouhani walked away from speaking to Trump in early October after failing to receive agreement of waiving sanctions prior to any resumption of talks.

What About America’s Favorite Dictatorship?

Bolstering Saudi Arabia is certainly a key locus point of American military decision-making. Following the rhetoric and the military hardware leads to the inescapable conclusion that supporting and protecting Saudi Arabia is an integral plank of America’s ongoing, bipartisan foreign policy. Commenting last month, the head of US Central Command General Kenneth McKenzie made it clear that Saudi Arabia is a priority for US Middle Eastern military decisions, emphasizing that the United States has not stepped back from the region and has “reinforced Saudi Arabia” by having an aircraft carrier in theater.

While Saudi Arabia and its Gulf allies like to highlight Iran’s considerable proxy aggression, they never mention their own war crimes and slaughter in Yemen, lack of coordinating in preventing 9/11 (at the very least), fomenting civil war in Iraq, occupying Bahrain, fleecing its own people from oil wealth, killing American resident and Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi and much more.

Current US Military Presence In The Middle East

With upwards of 60,000 US military members in the Middle Eastern theater currently and a number of ships, there certainly is still a significant footprint, albeit much less than 2003 and the recent past. Only five of America’s 11 aircraft carriers are currently battle ready, and some are worried about Russia or China encroaching in strategic zones, but that just goes to show the unwinnable task of global empire-building and maintenance. The US has spent more than $8 trillion in the Middle East on military-related expenditures since 2001: that’s a staggering figure.

Troops Remaining To Guard Key Sites In Syria ‘Only For The Oil’

As Trump has previously said, troops remaining in Syria are there “only for the oil.” While Turkish troops ethnically cleanse Kurdish areas, American forces have a mainly economic mission around resource control. While this could be interpreted as hard-nosed realism, it is more clear-eyed to see it as mission creep: a mission and conflict is never truly “over” when the nature of conflict becomes nation-building, long-term stability and propping up nations with poorly trained armies, lack of regional control, faltering infrastructure and systemic corruption. Watching the 2010 The Battle for Marjah about coordinated American efforts to unseat the Taliban in the city of Marjah is a case-in-point. While the combat was successful, troops ended up in civil roles after the battle, trying to maintain the peace in the town and bazaar. With resources stretched thin, US command authorized paying cash to local youth to act as municipal security even while knowing some of them had been trying to kill them the day before. War and nation-building are two different things, and expecting troops to do both is foolhardy.

Prevention Is The Best Cure

Realist foreign policy thinking should be tending towards prevention of an all-out war in the Middle East as it lurches closer to a disastrous, world-shaking 1914 moment. The bluster of Trump and dismantling of the Iran nuclear deal coupled with an aggressive posture between Iran and its regional allies and Saudi Arabia and its allies could ultimately unravel into all-out chaos. The situation in the Middle East is ripe for wide-ranging, regional war and the last thing that is needed is more belligerence and cynical opportunism from the United States, Russia or any other large power. The United States should be pursuing modest goals in the Middle East, rather than trying to run the region or become more involved. America’s military leadership is far from a monolith and there are officials who recognize the foolhardiness of the United States always siding with Saudi Arabia.

The Sanctions Powderkeg

The United States should resist smaller actors trying to utilize American military might for their own goals and maintain a balanced, more detached position as Middle East power shifts continue. This includes on sanctions, where Trump’s policies have the potential to ignite a powderkeg, and already may have done so. Indeed, there are some indications that US sanctions are part of what is driving the uprisings and protests across the Middle East as the economies and governments of Lebanon, Iraq and others shudder under corruption and instability, but it is far from a sure thing that these upheavals will lead to any more positive results than the last Arab Spring considering they have no cohesive alternative or leadership structure in place to present instead of those who are being protested. The American military should resist being dragged further into the Middle East unless it is prepared to go to the lengths of global war to back it up, which would be a disaster. The current Trump Administration position of being reflexively obsessed with supporting Israeli interests and backing Saudi Arabia is not in the national interest of the United States and should be reassessed the next time a major deployment decision must be made. There is no one-size-fits-all solution to the upheaval and suffering wracking the region, but America should focus on at least not adding to the already significant problems.

L'articolo America’s Next Move In The Middle East proviene da InsideOver.

On September 19, US forces conducted 30 strikes, one of the 30 strikes by US drones targeted and killed at least 30 people resting after a long day of labour collecting Pine Nuts shells in the eastern province of Nangarhar. Around 200 people had come from local villages and neighbouring provinces to collect Pine Nuts harvest from Spin Ghar Mountain foothills, located in Wazir Tang, Khogeyani District of Nangarhar, an area contested regularly between the Taliban, the ISIS and the Government. The local traders commissioning the Pine Nuts labourer had “obtained an authorization letter from the government informing them of their activities in the contested area”, said Waheed Mozhdah a political analyst based in Kabul.

Pine Nuts collecting is a seasonal job, where the labourers usually earn from 350 to 1500 Afs (equal to 5-25 USD) per day.

On September 23, US forces conducted 42 strikes, twelve targeted different locations in Helmand Province. On the night of 23 September in an attack in Helmand province, the government forces killed at least 70 people. The government forces raided and bombed a house where a wedding ceremony was ongoing.

The residence of Helmand province protested the killing of civilians. The government confirmed the attack and claimed to have killed the Al-Qaeda operatives.

Abdul Majid Akhundzadah, a member of the provincial council of Helmand province said: “last night Afghan National Security Forces raided a wedding ceremony in Musa Qala district, 40 civilians and 6 militants killed”.

“We are saddened and devasted to hear that civilians have lost their lives in an incident in Helmand despite President Ghani’s repeated call for extra cautions in conducting military operations. Helmand Governor has been instructed to send an investigation team to the area.” tweeted Sediq Sediqqi spokesperson for the President of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan.

In both the attacks the government is claimed to have targeted foreign fighters, in particular in the Wazir Tangi area the target was ISIS.

Violence at its Highest level in Afghanistan

The number of US strikes in Afghanistan rose drastically in August, with official military data showing that US forces carried out more than 800 strikes compared with 537 the month before. The number was even greater in the following month, in September the US Forces in Afghanistan bombed terror and security targets with a total of 1,113 strikes.

According to the Bureau of Investigative Journalism,  “the rising number of strikes is probably linked to US efforts to put pressure on the Taliban as both sides negotiated a possible peace deal.”

As a result of the recent uptake in the violence by both sides, the Afghan forces backed by the US artillery and Airpower, the Taliban and other terror groups’, figures released by the UN Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA) show record-high levels of civilian casualties in the third quarter of 2019. In the first nine months of 2019, UNAMA recorded 8,239 civilian casualties (2,563 killed and 5,676 injured). In the latest quarter, UNAMA documented an unprecedented number of civilian casualties, verified civilian casualties from 1 July to 30 September increased by 42 per cent in comparison to the same period in 2018, 4,313 civilian casualties (1,174 deaths and 3,139 injured.

There is also the increase from 1 January to 30 September of civilian casualties caused by aerial and search operations undertaken by pro-government forces.

Previously, BBC findings show that August was the deadliest as the peace negotiations were ongoing at the time.

In early September the U.S President Donald Trump tweeted a few days after the cancellation of peace talks, “the Taliban has never been hit harder than it is being hit right now. Killing 12 people, including one great American soldier, was not a good idea. There are much better ways to set up a negotiation. The Taliban knows they made a big mistake, and they have no idea how to recover”.

On the other hand, the Taliban said in a statement “our struggle for the past eighteen years will prove to the US that we will not be convinced until we will end our occupation of the country as a whole and that the Afghans will be left to their ends. We continue our Jihad and firmly believe in the ultimate victory”.

“The war is imposed on us and we are ready to fight it for 100 years”, the spokesperson for the Taliban delegation in Doha Stanikzi said.

“We held productive negotiations with the US negotiation team and finalized an agreement, and both sides began making preparations for the announcement and signing of the agreement” The Taliban further added in a statement.

“Now, as President of the United States has announced the suspension of negotiations with the Islamic Emirate, this will harm America more than anyone else. It will damage its reputation, unmask its anti-peace policy to the world, even more, increase its loss of life and treasure and present its political interactions as erratic” the statement further added.

The US-Taliban peace talks ended in September when Donald Trump tweeted to call off the meeting with the Taliban Delegation who were planning to meet at Camp David.

Last week a prisoner’s swap has taken place between the Taliban and the Afghan government aiming at confidence-building measures to ensure reduction in violence and restart of the peace negotiations.

L'articolo US Bombing their way to a Peace Deal in Afghanistan proviene da InsideOver.