On 15 Aug 2002 at 14:11, rhinoceros wrote:
>
> [Jane's Intelligence Digest - 12 August 2002]
> Hamas will continue attacks
>
> The latest move by Palestinian Authority (PA) leader Yasser Arafat to
> impose his authority on all the armed groups involved in attacks on
> Israelis, including the Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas) and
> Islamic Jihad, appears to have ended in failure. Was this Arafat's
> last chance to stake his claim to the leadership of the wider
> Palestinian community?
>
> [Joe Dees]
> I suspected as much; his choices are to collude with the terrorists or
> to be ignored. I suspect that he is taking what he considers to be a
> middle path in order to maintain his position: publicly condemn,
> privately collude. This is, of course, not acceptable, and renders
> Arafat unacceptable as well as a negotiator who could guarantee
> Palestinian compliance in any Mideast settlement.
>
> [rhinoceros]
> What I see here is that, as a result of deliberete actions by Sharon,
> USA, Hamas, Islamists etc, Arafat is really losing the support of the
> Palestinian people -- terrorists or not. In a western democratic
> society, such a politician without support might step down or be
> kicked out of office and someone who had the approval of the people --
> terrorists or not -- would take over. Well, Arafat is trying to hold
> on, no matter whether he believes he is doing the right thing or he is
> just in a power play.
>
That's what he's doing all right, by any means at his disposal, both licit
and il-.
>
> My argument: If Sharon really wanted Arafat out of the picture as a
> terrorist, he could have enforced that during the siege of his
> headquarters or at some other opportunity in "self defense" of Israel,
> as he has done in several occasions. He didn't, because he didn't want
> to. What he really was after was to discredit the PA and weaken its
> international support, even if that meant more violence in Israel.
>
Actually, he didn't want Israel to have to endure the Hermetic howls of
outrage that he fully expected would issue from much of the
international community if he had taken such a course.
>
> Sharon has proved that he doesn't object to violent "solutions", and I
> think I can assert that this is a preparatory part of a new effort to
> push the Palestinian people further back, in a contention for
> resources.
>
As long as the Palestinian militants keep pushing suicide bombing, he
will push back.
>
> [Jane's Intelligence Digest - 12 August 2002]
> Back to the Balkans
>
> While the attention of the international community has been focused on
> the continuing crisis in the Middle East, the increasingly tense
> situation in the southern Balkans has received far less attention,
> despite the risk of renewed inter-ethnic conflict on the borders of
> the European Union and the threat to various multi-national
> peace-keeping missions. This JID report highlights the potential
> flashpoints.
>
> [Joe Dees]
> Yep; we have to keep our eyes focused down there. Until Karadzic and
> Mladic are apprehended, the possibilities for further trouble remain.
>
> [rhinoceros]
> I don't see how Karadzic or Mladic can talk anyone into any
> inter-ethinic conflict. Besides, there are enough people in the
> Balkans concerned with the current and future problems, so maybe the
> USA would be justified in focusing their interest somewhere else.
>
There is still a violent ultranationalist core of support for those two
individuals among the Bosnian Serb community that could reignite the
region if we allow that community to recoalesce around them. We must
continue pursue them until we are able to catch them and bring them to
the Hague to face war crimes tribunals; this will, in the meantime, keep
them on the run too much to attempt to rebuild a Bosnian Serb
insurgency.
>
> [Jane's Foreign Report - first posted to www.foreignreport.com - 13
> August 2002] Democracy in Pakistan
>
> HAVING elected himself as president for five years in a referendum on
> April 30, General Pervez Musharraf, Pakistan's military ruler, is now
> busily preparing for a general election on October 10 in which he has
> appointed himself as judge, jury and umpire. Musharraf boasts that
> under his tutelage "Pakistan already has democracy, all we need is a
> label". He presumably believes the election will give him the
> legitimacy he needs if only to deepen the relations between Pakistan
> and the US. Will Musharraf succeed?
>
> [Joe Dees]
> I think that he will. The majority of Pakistanis are not
> fundamentalist, deeply resent the troubles that the radicals have
> brought to their region, and will support Musharraf's continuing
> efforts to rein them in.
>
> [rhinoceros]
> Was that a comment about democracy or about compliance with democratic
> countries.
>
It was a comment on the popularity of Musharraf's course of action with
the nonfundamentalist voting majority in Pakistan.
>
>
> [Washington Post 12 August 2002]
> Peace in Iraq
>
> Kurdish demands for autonomy and Shiite Muslim resistance to the
> central government. One defense official told the Washington Post: "I
> think it is almost a certainty that we'd wind up doing a campaign
> against the Kurds and Shiites." Wouldn't that be pretty?
>
> [Joe Dees]
> Actually, I think that it is more likely that we would be amenable to
> the Kurds forming their own homeland in northern Iraq, and an
> Iran-friendly Shiite nation being born in the south. The center would
> remain Sunni. After all, it's not like the entire thing is a single
> ancient nation; it was formed awkwardly, by western powers, early this
> century.
>
> [rhinoceros]
> Just a bit of additional information. Many thousands of Iraqi Kurd
> refugees passed through Greece in the recent years heading to North
> Europe, and I got to know several. A few of them applied for political
> asylum here. Regardless of the reasons they gave in their
> applications, most of them were really fleeing from the two Kurdish
> warlords ("parties"), Barzani and Talabani, who are in permanent
> strife, recruiting people from the places they occupy, striving to
> control oil pipes and get "security" money from the nearby countries,
> and switching allegiances. I read that USA has come to some kind of
> agreement with both of them against Saddam; I am not sure where this
> is going to lead. I agree that Kurds should have their own homeland,
> but it seems more likely that Turkey will just get a chunk instead.
>
Hopefully it means that these two Kurdish factions are yielding to US
pressure to declare mutual detente preparatory to merging into the
seeds of a responsible future Kurdish administration in northern Iraq.
> ----
> This message was posted by rhinoceros to the Virus 2002 board on
> Church of Virus BBS.
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> id=26107>
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