Pavel Nastin — Jihadism Spreads like Wildfire Across Africa

Don't forget Africa. The most populous cities in the world are projected to be in Africa by the end of the century.

NEO
Jihadism Spreads like Wildfire Across Africa

Pavel Nastin

Some depth reporting on Turkey from Katehon

Some depth reporting on Turkey from Katehon. If this reporting is in the ball park, and I suspect it is based on acquaintance with Korybko's work, it will be interesting to see how Washington spins this.

Background of Turkish Coups in a Nutshell

Andrew Korybko: Post-Coup Turkey Will Be Distinctly Eurasian

Andrew Korybko: Gullen-influenced coup

Pro-American coup in Turkey

After The Coup In Turkey

Alexander Dugin Gave A Press Conference In Ankara

UPDATE:

Erdogan Isn’t Going To Take This Well….

Peter Lavelle


Yunus Soner: Another US bloody mistake

Gordon M. Hahn — Obama’s Muslim Brotherhood Strategy, the ‘War’ Against Jihadism, and Russia’s Syria Intervention, Part 3: Obama’s America and Erdogan’s Turkey

Backgrounder on Erdogan's Turkey. Flirting with the devil.

Obama’s Muslim Brotherhood Strategy, the ‘War’ Against Jihadism, and Russia’s Syria Intervention, Part 3: Obama’s America and Erdogan’s Turkey
Gordon M. Hahn

'Russian operation in Syria is our salvation' – top Syrian Catholic bishop to RT

The majority of Syrian people support Moscow's anti-terror campaign, the top Catholic bishop in Syria said in an interview with RT, adding that it's not only military assistance, but the promotion of peace process by Russia that they pin their hopes on.


"We see Russia's military operation as a real effort to fight terrorism. What is especially important is that this military campaign goes in parallel with promotion of peace process," Most Reverend Georges Abou Khazen, Apostolic Vicar of Aleppo for the Latins who was appointed by Pope Francis in 2013, told RT in a telephone interview. "We really hope that the peace process will soon prevail over fighting all across Syria," the bishop added.

"The majority of Syrian people" of all backgrounds and faith "regard Russian military campaign as salvation, a way out of the state we've been enduring for five years," the Catholic bishop said, adding that "Syrians are very positive about it."

"Russia's actions are not limited to the military operation. Russia makes a very positive impact by stimulating the negotiations process, and promotes dialogue between various Syrian groups," Bisoph Abou Khazen said.

RT
'Russian operation in Syria is our salvation' – top Syrian Catholic bishop to RT

Kamal Alam — Why Assad's Army Has Not Defected

The title should be, Why the liberal West should be supporting the pluralistic and inclusive Assad government rather than an Islamist opposition that is opposed to pluralism, let alone liberalism.

Oh right. It's about the pipeline.

The National Interest
Why Assad's Army Has Not Defected

Kamal Alam | Fellow at the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI) in London and a Syrian Military Analyst advising several Damascus-based family offices

Sputnik International — Orthodox, Catholic Leaders Meeting Vital to Protect Christians

Pope Francis and Russian Patriarch Kirill may transform the focus of the ecumenical movement to concentrate on protecting Christians persecuted around the world and to promote social justice, eminent US Catholic and Orthodox scholars told Sputnik.…

Sputnik International
Orthodox, Catholic Leaders Meeting Vital to Protect Christians

Marko Marjanović — Uncle Sam in Arabia: 'Modernity for Me, but Not for Thee' – Why West Deposes Arab Secularists but Backs Arab Kings

Another paradox of liberalism.

A quick glance at a map of US military bases in the Middle East will immediately tell you that Washington's friends in the region are crowned heads. The Emirs of Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar and UAE. The Saudi king in Riyad and the Hashemite king of Jordan. 

Meanwhile its historic chosen enemies in the Arab world have been secularist Arab nationalist regimes. Nasser in Egypt, Hussein in Iraq, Gaddafi in Libya, Assads in Syria…

Why?

Retrograde Arab monarchies reinforce the Western Orientalist idea of hierarchy of civilizations – Arab modernizers challenge it

The current geopolitical dynamic can be viewed as colonies challenging their former colonizers. While this may not true be of Russia, the goal of the US to turn Russia into a vassal state. Most Atlanticists don't view Russia as part of Western civilization.

Russia Insider
Uncle Sam in Arabia: 'Modernity for Me, but Not for Thee' – Why West Deposes Arab Secularists but Backs Arab Kings

Marko Marjanović

NATO's covert alliance with ISIS and other jihadis

This alliance with the West and the influx of enormous oil revenues since the 1970s have allowed Saudi Arabia to export its brand of Sunni Islam, named Wahhabism after its founder Muhammad Ibn Abd al-Wahhab, encouraging the homogenization of Islamic practices around the world after the model of the Wahhabiya. Known for its rejection of pre-Islamic history, visitation of tombs, the mixing of men and women, its zeal to purify Islam from allegedly deviant practices (such as Sufism and Shiism) and its disdain for other religions, the Wahhabiya was a puritan movement that gave religious legitimacy to the conquests of the Al Saud.…

The key ideological difference between ISIS and the early Saudi-Wahhabi movement is that the Islamic State wants to establish a caliphate, and regards monarchy as an un-Islamic form of government. Frightened by this challenge, which the Gulf states helped to create, Saudi Arabia has reaffirmed its alliance with the conservative Wahhabi religious forces in the country.

But in ISIS, Saudi Arabia now has a foe that is so close to its own religious interpretation of Islam, that Saudi Arabia can not be seen to be fighting ISIS very strongly because it would undermine its authority at home. And so the West’s support for Middle East dictatorships continues to fuel the flames that have given rise to Al Qaeda and ISIS, despite a growing awareness that these alliances are a double-edged sword.

Nothing about actual support for ISIS and other jihadi groups coming from Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and other fundamentalist Sunni states and admission of this by key US officials, however.

Red Pill Times
When the US supports Saudi Arabia, it is also supporting ISIS

Toby Matthiesen | senior research fellow in the international relations of the Middle East at St. Antony’s College, University of Oxford
Originally appeared at The New York Times

NEO
What Stinks in Saudi Ain’t the Camel Dung

F. William Engdahl

Not just KSA.

Czech President Milos Zeman has allegedly slammed the idea of Turkey joining the EU, stressing that Ankara appears to act as if it was an ally of Daesh (the Islamic state) militant group rather than that of western powers.

Czech President strongly opposes Turkey entering the EU, because its a Daesh ally

Alexrpt

The leader of the group "Jabhat al-Nusra", the Emir, Abu Muhammad al-Julani, in an interview aired by Arab TV channel Orient News, has revealed Turkey's plans to create so-called "security zone" in Northern Syria. The leader of the militants, whose face was hidden from cameras, directly accused Erdogan's regime of creating a buffer zone " which will not weaken, but will strengthen ISIS". This was reported by "Russian spring".

"Turkey will allow ISIS to further expand its influence in the areas around the border", - said the leader of the militants.

Ankara, according to Abu Muhammed, "tends to have preference to attack Kurdish forces, and chooses to not fight with ISIS in Northern Syria".

Jabhat al-Nusra is reputedely an Al Qaeda affiliate.

Fort Russ
Leader of the Nusrats: "Erdogan is strengthening ISIS"
Tvzvezda

Translated by Ollie Richardson for Fort Russ

U.S. Remains Tight with Saudis In Spite of Support for Terrorism — Sharmini Peries interviews Toby C. Jones

But the German foreign ministry, much like the U.S. State Department or another, or the British government, David Cameron in the UK, for example, all see Saudi Arabia as an ally, as a partner in a series of, in a series of important or critical strategic interests. The first and most obvious of which is they claim, in spite of the evidence to the contrary, that Saudi Arabia is committed to anti-terrorism. But there are other things at work here, including oil, as well as Saudi Arabia's ability to generate massive amounts of wealth and then to redistribute that wealth into Western economies.

It's important to remember Tim Mitchell and Bob Vitalis and other scholars have written about this, that the easiest way for Western powers to get a hold of some of the oil wealth that gets generated in the Middle East is to sell very expensive weapons systems to those places. There's nothing that returns as much on oil revenue as buying Western weapons. You can't sell enough cars, you can't sell enough milk or eggs, or even nuclear technology or desalination technology. So keeping the pipeline open, an economic pipeline, between Saudi Arabia and the other oil producers and Western arms-producing countries, is critical for those places. They see these as engines of wealth and as sources of revenue for themselves.

So on balance, trying to criticize or taking a step to criticize Saudi Arabia on its human rights record, or even possibly in its role in funding terrorism, pales in comparison to these places who think that getting some money back from the region is more important…

So there you have it. Again, follow the munnie. The rest is "collateral damage."

So you've got a convergence of a lot of things here, some of which you've mentioned. That PR money flows through Congress, so Congressional representatives are unlikely and unwilling to criticize the Saudis, because it's materially beneficial for them not to do so. The White House is stuck in the middle between various forces in the U.S. policymaking establishment. It's really probably a weak partner when it comes to maintaining relationships like the one with Saudi. The Pentagon is entirely insulated. And it both benefits materially from the sale of weapons and strategically from having access to important military networks in the region.

So the forces against a reasonable American policy are deeply entrenched, and they're difficult to break through.

And democracy is only in the interest of the US when it results in a government that is friendly to the US and compliant with US interests.

I think what's most interesting, and most problematic, particularly now in the wake of not 9/11, but in the wake of the Arab uprisings, is that Saudi Arabia was viewed by American policymakers as a pillar in the region against the forces of rogue states like Iran, and Iraq under Saddam Hussein, and even Syria under Assad in a previous iteration. That is to say that the Saudis were viewed as precisely the kind of stabilizing force that was necessary to strengthen other friendly regimes that just happened to be autocratic in the Middle East. Egypt, Tunisia, Yemen, Bahrain, and others who were hardly democratic but were useful to the United States for precisely those reasons. Historically democratic open systems, from the perspective of American power, is problematic.

Saudi Arabia emerged from the 2011 uprisings as the last-standing strong regional autocratic power. And the United States sees them as important for precisely that reason, not in spite of it. So that means this. That it's Saudi Arabia's stable, autocratic presence, and its willingness to promote a reorientation towards the old autocratic order after the failed revolutions, that I think many American strategic policymakers and thinkers see as desirable. They prefer stability, in spite of Saudi Arabia's dalliances with terrorism, and the threat that ISIS may play in places like Syria. They see Saudi Arabia as more of a stabilizing force than it is a destabilizing one.

Now, we can debate whether that's true or not. But that's widely believed to be the case.

Real News Network
U.S. Remains Tight with Saudis In Spite of Support for Terrorism

Sharmini Peries interviews Toby C. Jones, Associate Professor of History at Rutgers University

Robert Parry — Blocking Democracy as Syria’s Solution

Good article from the political standpoint but it omits that this is foundationally economic — control of oil and pipelines. Hence it is about neocolonialism, since the economics of the region is based on geopolitics. If that means replacing the secular state of Syria under Assad with reactionary Islamism through forced regime change, so be it.

Consortium News
Blocking Democracy as Syria’s Solution

Robert Parry

See also

Alistair Crooke, Cornering Russia, Risking World War III

Meduza, More than 95 percent of Russia’s nukes are launch-ready, day or night, defense minister says

And this:

At the same meeting with Russian defense officials, Vladimir Putin stressed that military expenditures must be tightly controlled. “I have said this more than once, and I want to emphasize it again: we do not have extra money,” said the president.

Wayne Madsen — CIA-Islamic Jihadist Alliance Against Russia is 63 Years’ Old

Backgrounder. The US deep state has been at this for a long time.

Strategic Culture Foundation
CIA-Islamic Jihadist Alliance Against Russia is 63 Years’ Old

Wayne Madsen

Aymenn Jawad Al-Tamimi — The Islamic State 'Masterplan' of Administration- Some Analytical Notes

The Guardian today has a huge story based on a 'masterplan' text I leaked to the paper entitled 'Principles in the Administration of the Islamic State'. The text- likely written at some point between June and October 2014- concerns a variety of aspects of administration, including management of oil resources, composition of military ranks and propaganda. You can read the whole text, which I translated, here.

The sign-off notably says that admin cadres are to receive instruction in administration according to the text. The question then arises of how far the Islamic State is actually following this administrative plan. Here are a few thoughts of my own...

Pundicity
The Islamic State 'Masterplan' of Administration- Some Analytical Notes
Aymenn Jawad Al-Tamimi
ht/ Pepe Escobar

Christopher de Bellaigue — The Sultan of Turkey

Backgrounder on "our guys."

On October 20 the AKP prime minister, Ahmet Davutoğlu, told a crowd in the largely Kurdish town of Van that if his party was not elected it would spell the return of the “white Toros”—the Turkish name for the Renault 12, a car associated with the gendarmerie’s fearsome intelligence agents, who carried out thousands of extrajudicial executions of Kurdish nationalists during the 1990s. This was a remarkably overt threat for a head of government to make to his own people, and a sign of the perversion of democratic norms that has become common in Turkey.…

Erdoğan’s reading of the electorate has been masterful, but he lacks the magnanimity that is essential for effective leadership. His pugnacity and lack of judgment suggest a paranoid character who is all too willing to behave like the wrathful “sultan” depicted by his critics. The president’s version of democracy is a numbers game, in which the majority wins the right to crush the minority.

The New York Review of Books
The Sultan of Turkey
Christopher de Bellaigue

Can Erimtan — All's well that ends well: Rise to the top of the new Turkey’s PM

Winding down of secular Turkey? And the rise of neo-Ottomanism?

From his safe spot away from the madding crowd and irritating spotlights, the wily Davutoglu secured Turkish support for the toppling of Muammar Gaddafi in Libya; encouraged the Tahrir Square uprising and the subsequent rise of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt; opposed the Shiite-led government in Baghdad by granting asylum to the disgraced Sunni Tariq al-Hashimi; and finally, cooperated with Barack Obama and others to depose Syria's Bashar al-Assad, in the process apparently freely supporting such extreme organizations as the Jabhat al-Nusra and ISIS (now known as the Islamic State led by Caliph Ibrahim, aka Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi). Pseudo-Ottoman Turkey has indeed travelled far in the past five years.

As a result, the peaceful pseudo-Ottoman course advocated by the dynamic duo Erdogan- Davutoglu, a course leading to maximized profits and heightened prestige, has taken a sharp turn over the past months.

Rather than fostering commercial relations and friendly ties inside the wider Islamic world, the erstwhile advisor-turned-FM-turned-PM Davutoglu seems to have guided the Turkish state's ship into the decidedly unfriendly waters of the Sunni-Shia rivalry that I have elsewhere referred to as the intra-Islamic Cold War.

Dr. Behlul Ozkan's, Assistant Professor in IR at Istanbul's Marmara University and a former student of Davutoglu's, believes that Prime Minister Davutoglu would aim to establish an Islamic Union. Ozkan sees the politician as a "Pan-Islamist, as he is not [acting in a] defensive [manner], but [rather] expansionistically; not passive but rather [pro-] active". He goes as far as saying that Davutoglu regards Turkey as the centre of the Middle East, a Muslim realm that would also include such places like Albania and Bosnia (Muslim areas of the Ottoman Balkans), and Davutoglu's "Pan-Islamist world is an order dominated by the Sunni creed".

Davutoglu's foreign policy adventures in Libya, Egypt, Syria, and Iraq all but underline his Ottomanist strand, supporting a Sunni insurgence in the wider Ottoman hinterland, stretching from Tripoli to Baghdad and from Cairo to Damascus.…

RT
All's well that ends well: Rise to the top of the new Turkey’s PM
Can Erimtan

Dr. Can Erimtan is an independent scholar residing in İstanbul, with a wide interest in the politics, history and culture of the Balkans and the Greater Middle East. He attended the VUB in Brussels and did his graduate work at the universities of Essex and Oxford. In Oxford, Erimtan was a member of Lady Margaret Hall and he obtained his doctorate in Modern History in 2002. His publications include the book “Ottomans Looking West?” as well as numerous scholarly articles. In the period 2010-11, he wrote op-eds for Today’s Zaman and in the further course of 2011 he also published a number of pieces in Hürriyet Daily News. In 2013, he was the Turkey Editor of the İstanbul Gazette.  

Ghassan Kadi — The Fallacy Of Erdogan-Style Democracy

Erdogan’s AKP party has scored a monumental victory; not so much in terms of the lead in parliament though. As a matter of fact, it is a fairly narrow victory, but one that was least expected. What is monumental about it is the course that Turkey has set itself upon.

A victory for Erdogan perhaps, but for Turkey itself, the outcome of this election will probably take years and even decades until it becomes clear what the results truly meant for Turkey’s future and wellbeing.…

The Vineyard of the Saker
The Fallacy Of Erdogan-Style Democracy
Ghassan Kadi

Catherine Shakdam — Wahhabism: Religious deviance and fountainhead of radicalism & extremism

Muslims are caught in the eye of a ferocious storm as Islamic State’s legions spread fear across three continents. But anger has been misplaced as the real face of terror lies not with Islam but hidden in Saudi Arabia, where Wahhabism reigns all powerful....

This terror we have labeled as Islamic radicalism could not be further remote from Islam....

This Islam the world has come to loathe is in fact a perversion, which was born in the desert of Nejd in Saudi Arabia back in the 18th century. This ideology Muslims and non-Muslims alike have to come to fear and despise is but an engineered religious deviance rooted in hatred.

Wahhabism is merely the misguided expression of one man’s political ambition - Mohammed Abdel-Wahhab, a bigot who was recruited by the British Empire to erode the fabric of Islam and crack the armor of the then-Ottoman Empire by breeding sectarianism and dissent. It is Abdel-Wahhab's alliance to the House of Saud that ultimately unleashed this now seemingly unstoppable evil we know today under the tag of Islamic radicalism.
If not for the Al Saud Royals' billions and the silence of Western powers, Wahhabism would never have crossed the deserts of Saudi Arabia. If not for the kingdom's lavish sponsoring of the Wahhabi school of thought, extremism would never have come to be in the first place....

RT
Wahhabism: Religious deviance and fountainhead of radicalism & extremism
Catherine Shakdam, a political analyst, writer and commentator for the Middle East with a special focus on radical movements and Yemen