Please, do not expect a detailed analysis, the situation is extremely complex and may change dramatically within hours.
The flood of news from across Europe and the Middle East matches the size of the problem, and it does not help that Western reporting has once again turned out to be pretty superficial with regard to deeper aspects of the Middle East power struggle.
Only now are we being told that the Russians offered to make Assad go away in 2012, an offer turned down by the West, specifically the US and the two old Mid-East colonial powers France and Britain. Of course, this offer did not fit into the neat "New Cold War" narrative and the opaque developments in the Ukraine as well as the wider Eurasian region.
The occupants of the K-Landnews basement newsroom, being way suspicious - or independent, if you want to phrase it politely - looked at the six or seven daily papers/websites and the Twitter, and went: we are not being told half of what's going on.
So, we spent some time on This hybrid war and information war babble is deeply offensive and tried to explain the German investigation of a couple of journalists for alleged treason in terms of the mechanics of power in hierarchies.
The mess in Syria was not only predictable, it had been predicted loud and clear but largely drowned out in the sloshing repetitive dumb ISIL came from nowhere and OMG Putin is sooo bad, and it's all Obama's fault anyway pieces that pass for news these days.
Having a lot of time on our hands, we started digging and came up with interesting notes about the various actors in the Middle East, including some allegations about the US passing up on going after ISIL in broad daylight. The protracted wait before the "anti ISIL" coalition began last minute air support for the Kurdish defenders of the border city of Kobani and the reluctance of the Turkish government to let reinforcements into the beleaguered enclave raised alarm bells but until yesterday, such allegations were in our "uncorroborated" folder. Then we read an interview in the German ZEIT Online with Syria expert J. Landis, who said with regard to the siege and invasion of the Syrian city of Palmyra by ISIL: "the Americans stood down because they are in a dilemma: to them, Assad is the enemy, they cannot assist him. That's why the US military left the ISIL fighters alone, neither bombing them nor attacking their supply routes."
The interview with Mr. Landis did not cause a stir in the rest of our daily media bucket. Is everybody too busy with the refugee crisis, gossip about the revolutionary new Facebook "Dislike" button, or hate speech on the platform?
This does not bode well for the near future and the story about Russia's involvement in Syria.
So, what is up next for Germany, the still oft maligned country that expects some 800 000 refugees this year?
The generically pro war Munich security conference chief called for military engagement while - this is Germany after all - also squeezing "negotiations" into the publicity stunt. Border controls have been re-instated at the Austrian border, and there are reports of them being extended to Saxony in the East. Deployment of several thousand federal police went without a hitch and without more public worries by German police union on registering refugees: extremely stressful.
Germany continues to handle its greatest refugee crisis since World War II pretty well under the circumstances and despite administrative and social concerns, some of which we outlined in Refugee crisis in Germany: bursting shelters and empty houses.
Cautious optimists - we count ourselves among them - claim that the crisis can be good for the economy.
Germany will likely face some security challenges related to the crisis, and we are somewhat concerned that arson attacks on refugee shelters may lead to fatalities. Up until now, "only" injuries have been seen. Occasional clashes between groups of refugees might not end well, and the conflict between Kurds and Turks in Germany did get bloody in the past.
We are much less worried about the paranoid specter of Islamist terrorists sneaking into the country among the refugees than we are about some marginalized second generation kid going postal.
The German security establishment has been sounding the alarm about people returning from Syria and the danger those guys pose. While several attacks in France and Belgium have had a connection to "jihad tourists", not enough is really known, in our opinion, to justify fear.
While the media are happy to tell us that over one hundred Germans have returned from Syria and some have ended up in court, we are not being told how many of the returnees have been recruited by German domestic intelligence to keep an eye on the more radical elements in the country. Our bet: a substantial number.
While ISIL in the Middle East has been financed by nations we call "allies" and has been raising big money through selling black market oil and looted antiquities, we have not seen any reports hat indicate that German Islamist radicals have major financial backing that would allow many to be more than part-time extremists.
The major threats to mastering the crisis seem to be internal, be it existing xenophobia or the results of decades of over hyped nasty press about refugees and migrants, be it the fact that convenient non-thruths by successive governments are now exposed as easy cop outs. For example, Germans have been told for many years that there is not enough money for cash strapped schools and for more teachers. Yet, one of the first things politicians announced was: we will hire more teachers to ensure refugee children can go to school.
So, let's hope the German economy continues to to well, and that Germans keep their smartphones fully charged to record anything that looks like a "terrorist attack". Peace in the Middle East won't happen any time soon if the main actors don't work together.
No comments:
Post a Comment