Chaos in the Middle East: 2014-2016

Neville Teller

Description

The Chaos in the Middle East: 2014-2016 provides an up-to-date overview of the problems currently affecting the Middle East, and sets them in context. By providing not only an account of the bewilderingly complicated events of the past two years, but also explaining their background, Neville Teller gives readers the tools to understand issues of concern to the whole world. Written in attractive and easily understood terms, the book is ideal for readers interested in comprehending the complex problems emanating from the Middle East.The grim reality in today's Middle East began attracting the world's attention from the beginning of 2014. The growth in size and influence of the bloodthirsty and inhumane Islamic State, or "Daesh", and the hordes of terrified refugees fleeing from the conflict, to name but two examples, forced themselves on public opinion. From this time, major themes dominated the politics of the Middle East, such as the failure to defeat Islamic State in Iraq or Syria, the rise in the power and influence of Iran, the continuing devastation of Syria and the surprising incursion of Russia into the Middle East.These, as well as assessments of particular areas of conflict or special interest such as Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Turkey and the Kurds, Yemen, Tunisia, Libya, Lebanon and South Sudan, form the framework of this book.

Informations

• Publié par: Troubador Publishing Ltd
• Date de parution: 19 juin 2018
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781785896569
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 3 Mo

Extrait

Neville Teller was born in London, read Modern History at Oxford University, and then had a varied career in marketing, general management, publishing, the Civil Service and a national cancer charity. At the same time he was consistently writing for BBC radio as dramatist and abridger. In the Queen’s Birthday Honours in 2006 he was awarded an MBE “for services to broadcasting and to drama.”
He began writing about the Middle East in the 1980s, sometimes using the pen-name Edmund Owen. He has published three books on the subject, is the Middle East correspondent for the Eurasia Review, and his articles appear regularly in various publications and on-line. He writes the blog A Mid-East Journal (www.a-mid-east-journal.blogspot.com). He is married and has three sons all with families of their own.
Also by Neville Teller


One Man’s Israel

One Year in the History of Israel and Palestine

The Search for Détente: Israel and Palestine 2012-2014
Copyright © 2018 Neville Teller

The moral right of the author has been asserted.

Apart from any fair dealing for the purposes of research or private study, or criticism or review, as permitted under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, this publication may only be reproduced, stored or transmitted, in any form or by any means, with the prior permission in writing of the publishers, or in the case of reprographic reproduction in accordance with the terms of licences issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside those terms should be sent to the publishers.

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Matador is an imprint of Troubador Publishing Ltd
For Sheila and the family
Contents
Foreword

1. Islamic State and Islamism
2. Iran and the nuclear deal
3. Syria’s civil conflict
4. Israel and Palestine
5. Turkey and the Kurds
6. Egypt’s struggle for stability
7. Russia flexes its muscles
8. No end of trouble
• Saudi Arabia’s new broom
• The sorry state of Yemen
• Libya and the anti-Islamist struggle
• Lebanon in limbo
• Why Tunisia?
• Hope for South Sudan
• The non-Arab Middle East: Iran, Turkey and Israel
• Arab-Israel peace – a new approach
Foreword
Battle and bloodshed in a dozen places across the region, a breakdown of law, order and normal existence in large areas, hordes of terrified refugees fleeing from conflict and from the brutal oppression of Islamist extremists, hundreds of thousands of people subsisting in temporary camps, thousands risking their very lives on board unseaworthy vessels attempting to reach European shores – this represents the grim reality in the Middle East that forced itself on the world’s attention from the beginning of 2014.
The chaos can perhaps be traced back to the Tunisian spark in 2010 that kindled the so-called Arab Spring, which then, as uncontrollable as a forest fire, leaped from state to state. At the start it was a rejection by the Arab masses of the repression, human rights abuses, state censorship and other trammels of the dictatorships or absolute monarchies under which most existed. As the revolutionary fervour raged, one by one some of the autocrats fell – Tunisia’s Zine Ben Ali, followed by Egypt’s Hosni Mubarak, then Libya’s Muammar Gaddafi, and finally Ali Abdullah Saleh of Yemen (though he seemed intent on regaining power, and was a key player in the turmoil that later engulfed Yemen).
Elsewhere, if popular discontent did not result in the overthrow of governments, it certainly produced civil uprisings across the region from Algeria to Saudi Arabia. Syria’s story encapsulates subsequent developments elsewhere in the region. What began in Syria as popular demonstrations against the tightly controlled police state of President Bashar al-Assad, soon assumed broader proportions. Islamist jihadi groups, each with its own agenda, joined the fray – those from the Sunni persuasion opposing Assad, and sometimes each other as well; Shi’ite Iran and its puppet organization Hezbollah supporting the Assad regime.
That conflict was further exacerbated when Western powers, led by the US, began supporting the more moderate anti-Assad forces with air-strikes, to be followed by a massive Russian military incursion into the region in support of Assad and his Iranian ally.
The most disciplined and successful of Assad’s opponents was Islamic State (IS), pursuing its aim of establishing a Sunni caliphate across Syria and Iraq as the base for expanding ever further into the Middle East and from there across the world. Syria and Iraq remain in turmoil, and the hand of IS is now apparent in other areas of open conflict – Yemen, Sinai, Libya, Nigeria.
States seeking to maintain stability in the midst of this maelstrom not surprisingly began re-examining historic relationships. Autres temps, autres moeurs, as the old French proverb runs (different times, different customs). Unhappily, one major destabilising element on the Middle East scene has been the underlying policy of the US – consistent since President Obama’s assumption of office in 2009, but only in the final two years of his second term becoming clearer by the day. Apparently beguiled from the start by the prospect of some sort of working alliance with Iran aimed at overthrowing al-Qaeda, Washington pressed ahead in the international forum negotiating a nuclear deal with Iran, America’s declared enemy and the world’s leading state sponsor of terror. Against the ardent opposition of Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, negotiations reached an apparently successful conclusion in July 2015, and a deal was struck that, while restricting Iran’s nuclear capacity for a few years, will eventually enable it to acquire atomic weapons.
For decades most of the Gulf States, and especially Saudi Arabia, have been at the receiving end of Iranian efforts to destabilize their governments. They are aware that Iran has ambitions to dominate the Middle East and impose its Shi’ite version of Islam. It is scarcely surprising that the Gulf States opposed the very basis of Washington’s policy in the region. When President Obama hosted a summit at Camp David in support of his nuclear deal with Iran, King Salman of Saudi Arabia – a US ally for 70 years – absented himself, while King Hamad of Bahrain, which hosts the US Fifth Fleet, preferred a visit to the Royal Windsor Horse Show in the UK. It is pretty certain that the Gulf States are determined to counter the empowering of Iran by acquiring a nuclear capability of their own. In short, one unhappy outcome of the nuclear deal with Iran is almost certain to be a nuclear arms race in the Middle East.
An unexpected result of US policy in the region has been that the stable Sunni Arab states, much perhaps to their own surprise, have found themselves in an extraordinary meeting of minds with Israel – a country they do not recognise.
Obama persisted in viewing Iran’s Ayatollah Khamenei and President Rouhani as pragmatic leaders, prepared to abandon their military nuclear ambitions in exchange for a lifting of sanctions. Once that was achieved, Obama believed that Iran and America could together openly combat IS. The Sunni powers of the Gulf rejected this complacent assessment, just as Israel did. The Arab leaders, just like Israel, perceived Iran as an implacable foe. They knew that Iran was hell-bent on overthrowing their regimes and establishing political and religious dominance in the Middle East; Israel knows that Iran has as its stated aim the elimination of the Jewish state. Both viewed with genuine alarm the prospect of a nuclear Iran – the Arab states because it would totally destabilize the current balance of power; Israel because it would provide terrorist organizations like Hamas and Hezbollah, whom Iran supports, with a nuclear capability.
Egypt’s President Abdul Fattah al-Sisi found himself of one mind with Israel about Hamas, and indeed about Obama’s persistent support for the Muslim Brotherhood – both organizations that al-Sisi regarded as deadly enemies. Egyptian and Israeli forces were, and indeed still are, collaborating pretty openly in the Sinai peninsula against ruthless jihadi terrorists, supported by Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood, whose aim is to overthrow the Egyptian government.
Hamas, which was once funded by Saudi Arabia and enabled by Egypt, is now viewed by both states as part of a Sunni jihad that threatens not only Israel, but them as well. It is no surprise, therefore, that al-Sisi visited Saudi Arabia in March 2015 to discuss, in the words of Al Arabiya News , “the depth of strategic relations between the Kingdom and Egypt.” In a subsequent interview, al-Sisi emphasised the need for the two countries to work together, considering the “difficult condition” the Arab region is in.
Egypt, Saudi Arabia, the other Gulf states and Israel – they have come to share a community of interest never before recognized. Yet even now it would be politically impossible for the Arab world to cooperate formally with Israel against common foes – unless a clearly understood and openly acknowledged justification was available to placate Arab public opinion. That justification lies in wait, buried in the Arab Peace Initiative, which offers Arab recognition of Israel and the establishment of normal diplomatic relations in exchange for the resolution of the Israel-Palestine dispute.
That outcome, highly desirable t