The Arab Spring

Protests reported in Taiz. Surprisingly no where else this time, which leads me to believe the southerners agreed to a deal...and that the old regime is now relegated to one province and a handful of outposts.

There is a long interview with Egypt's president Abdel Fattah el-Sisi in the the new Spiegel magazine. I haven't bought it so far, but there is a (very) short summary available online.

http://goo.gl/FpwuVh

I think this might be interesting since (according to the article) he hasn't given many interviews to Western journalists so far.

Some key facts:

-He apparently implies that there might be a general pardon for many people who were arrested after he took power.

-He demands that the West intensifies the war against the IS, because otherwise the whole ME might end up in destabilized for the next 50 years (because the ME was so peaceful before... .) He also refers to the egypt terror organisation Ansar Beit al-Makdis who have joined the IS.

-He defends (unsurprisingly) the overthrow of president Mursi, calling it necessary for restoring order (pretty much what you'd expect him to claim).

He also talks about the massacre at Raba'a in August 2013, where approx. 650 followers of Mursi have been killed. He says that he is "not ashamed to admit that there is a a civilizing gap between his country and Germany". However he also states that unlike Germany, "there are protesters who were collecting arms and used them on the police".

If there is any interest, I'll post a longer version once I've bought the print version.

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Please do.

Zarastro's interview: Spiegel publish in English too.

Sisi: 'Extremists Offend the Image of God'

The guy would have the right message if he weren't doing almost the same thing from a different perspective.

Ultimately we need a message like this, but to come from people whom devout Muslims won't see (understandably so) as an enemy. That's why it would have been nice had the Brotherhood both prevailed and matured into a responsible government who would then have been responsible for battling extremism, they would have had the credibility to speak against them in a kind of "Only Nixon Could Go To China" thing. It's not merely that you need Muslims speaking out against extremism, but people who have credibility with the kind of demographics who form the political base for the extremists.

Especially since Sisi is all too happy to paint the Brotherhood, and its other assorted opponents, as extremists.

Houthis took Al Bayda city without resistance, despite the heavy fighting in the province as a whole or the description of the city as an AQAP stronghold.

Either it's a trap or AQAP's strength is more finite than first thought and they've moved out to some other location. Or AQAP spent all its manpower in the rest of the province.

Likely that AQAP simply is not as strong as feared. These terrorist groups do not make for good conventional armies.

I'll reserve judgement til the final fate of Marib is determined.

It really depends upon what your perception of a "conventional army" is; I see examples of this recent "terrorist army" phenomenon, namely the self-declared military forces of the Islamic State of Iraq & Syria, resembling armies of the earlier 20th century and before during which there was a much more light-handed attitude towards what are now known as "war crimes". While their self-destructive fanaticism and ideological loyalty are extremely heavy burdens on the higher playing field of policy and strategy, one would be lying to themselves in denying that such groups make frighteningly excellent fighting formations on lower tactical levels. In fact, I'd say that there are somewhat rather strong parallels between the armed forces of the Islamic State and of the Imperial Japanese Army of World War II. Like the Japanese, the fanatical resilience of ISIS' militants make them quite a capable fighting force. Like the Japanese, said fanaticism and blind devotion to a perceived glorious cause ultimately has led to their own unraveling as a formidable power.

edited 10th Feb '15 8:44:26 PM by FluffyMcChicken

Anyone watch Assad's latest interview BTW? It's scary how calm and clinical that guy is.

Hard to believe that some considered him the nicer one of the bunch and were relieved when his older brother died in that car accident... now we know he's just as nasty as dear old dad, if not worse.

And yet I wonder if things would get worse if he died and Maher became head honcho. Supposedly HE is the worst of the bunch. Like Uday and Qusay levels of worse.

Maher is definitely crazy but he might be too reckless to do the top job effectively. He's brutal enough to be the right hand of the whole thing but he probably lacks his older brother's cold (re: borderline sociopathic) rationality.

Then again, everyone thought Bashar was a harmless, Western educated doctor who would be prone to reform, so who knows?

edited 11th Feb '15 9:29:53 AM by Rationalinsanity

I wonder also if its possible Bashar WAS and then the regime was what changed him. If true, that says a LOT about the regime he inherited. If not, one wonders if that would have been hidden by the normal life or if that would have come to bear in a different way.

edited 11th Feb '15 10:08:39 AM by FFShinra

Power corrupts; specifically, the fear of losing power can corrupt much more. Assad's locked himself into a scenario wherein he must win or die.

Indeed.

Some news: US, UK, and French embassies have closed in Sana'a.

You guys make is sound like a scene from "The Godfather."

From what I've heard about the Assad family, it wasn't far off.

So the U.S. no longer even has an embassy there, Whee!

I knew i made the right decision :-3

Now that you've mentioned the possibility of such Character Development, I honestly think that someone one day, if done correctly and skillfully, could make an excellent Oscar Bait biopic about Bashar al-Assad. Probably something along the lines of what The Last King Of Scotland did for Ugandan dictator Idi Amin.

I can't believe I hadn't remembered until now, but a major plot point in Call Of Duty 4: Modern Warfare involved a U.S invasion of a Middle Eastern dictatorship run by a general named al-Asad.Rather Harsher in Hindsight if you'd ask me.

Well, so far as we know, this al-Assad doesn't have a nuke. He does have chemical weapons and a marked willingness to use them against civilians, including lots of widespread reports of regular use of chlorine.

Seems to be going on a charm offensive recently, and from the answers I think he genuinely believes that he alone is right and everyone against him must be radical jihadists (or they wouldn't be against him), so he shouldn't have to step down and none of this is his fault. ISIS is probably the best thing to have happened to him since it lets him push this narrative, and meanwhile drawing the attention away from the helicopter bombing.

edited 11th Feb '15 8:58:50 PM by SabresEdge

If thats his version of "charming" I'd hate to see him as anything but...

And yeah, he seems to have drunk his own kool aid at this point.

Wasn't there some kind of TV series featuring a thinly veiled expy of al-Assad?

Well, given the fate of two other nominally Islamic despots who faced NATO opposition^note "opposition" in a general sense, not specifically military attacks it's not like Assad is exactly incentivized to go peacefully. Likewise with the earlier hauling Slobodan Milošević before the ICC (who avoided sentencing by inconveniently dying before the ICC issued its ruling).