al-qaida chief ayman al-zawahiri the coordinator 2015 part 19-138-caliphate- the state of...

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Al-Qaida chief Ayman al-Zawahiri The Coordinator 2015 Part 19-138-Caliphate- The State of al-Qaida-45-Our Performance-4

Dec. 17, 2010.fruit vendor Mohamed Bouazizi set himself alight. As the world marks the anniversary, Syria and Iraq are in flames, Libya has broken down, and the twin evils of militant terror and repression stalk the region. Next Hosni Mubarak of Egypt went, after 18 days of telegenic demonstrations in Cairo’s Tahrir Square. Then Col Muammar Gaddafi was forced out, after protests turned into civil war and then international war, with the West’s air forces joining in. By the time he was bayoneted and shot in October 2011, Syria was in flames, and the West was starting to vacillate about its role, with effects that can still be seen today. Libya, Syria and much of Iraq remain failed states. Egypt is on the brink. In Egypt, the Muslim Brotherhood, which won the presidency by 52 per cent to 48 per cent, tried to force through an Islamist constitution by decree. It was toppled by a coup seven months later. Syria and Libya, meanwhile, appear not to know the meaning of the word consensus.

Within a month, the country's autocratic ruler, Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, had fled to Saudi Arabia after nearly a quarter-century as president — and soon protests erupted in Egypt, Libya, Syria, Bahrain and Morocco.

"It's a big security and economic challenge — we are building a civilian, democratic republic that is threatened by terrorists,"

Originally published in March 2007 i: “We’re going to take out seven countries in 5 years, starting with Iraq, and then Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and, finishing off, Iran” –

General Wesley Clark. Retired 4-star U.S. Army general, Supreme Allied Commander of NATO during the 1999 War on Yugoslavia

SIDI BOUZID, Tunisia (AP 17 Dec 2015) — Tunisians who won the Nobel Peace Prize joined townspeople in the country's beleaguered heartland Thursday to mark five years since a desperate street vendor set himself on fire, unwittingly setting in motion upheaval across the Arab world. Unemployment remains rife, and Tunisia is grappling with the threat of violent Islamic extremism, now ravaging the region from neighboring Libya to Syria, after uprisings inspired by Tunisia's revolt that led to lawlessness or civil war.

"We are bringing a message of hope to the population of Sidi Bouzid and other regions pushed aside," Abdessattar Ben Moussa, head of the Tunisian League for the Defense of Human Rights told The Associated Press. "Because five years after the revolution there has been no solution to the economic and social problems they suffer."

Unlike in neighboring Libya or Egypt, where long-time leaders fell, Tunisia has worked to put in place the structural requirements for democracy, and tried to seed the mindset crucial to ensure it flourishes. But, as in those countries, it has contended throughout with rising Islamic extremism.

The farther back you can look, the farther forward you are likely to see.–Winston Churchill

CdW Intelligence to Rent of 9 03/05/2023

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One hundred years after the inception of Sykes-Picot, world powers are back fighting over the same spit of land.

"I should like to draw a line from the 'e' in Acre to the last 'k' in Kirkuk," Sykes told the assembled, detailing his plan to hand Syria, Mount Lebanon and the northern tip of Iraq to the French, and Palestine, Transjordan, and the rest of Iraq to the British. Sykes met to discuss details of the plan with the French negotiator Francois Georges-Picot five days later, but his initial vision was roughly how Sykes-Picot was ultimately drawn up the next month.

The deal was secretly finalised in May 1916, which is when the United States got wind of it. The current situation, with ISIL at the fore, highlights a reality Western leaders may be starting to appreciate: These lines are becoming increasingly imaginary. In implementing Sykes-Picot, Entente powers reneged on promises of freedom and independence for Arabs and instead snatched control of local populations and their resources. They also left enough border ambiguity as to allow for the future denial of Arab control of Palestine - a nexus of Muslim resentment to this day. Sykes-Picot is ideal shorthand for ISIL's grievances against the West - its interventionism, its condescension, its grab for power and resources, its creation of make-believe states with hollow democratic institutions, its dismissal of Arab and Muslim will, leading to the fragmentation of the region. It provides enemies of the West with the perfect example of "kuffar" (a derogatory word meaning non-believer) efforts to conquer and control.

In a 2014 video called "The End of the Sykes-Picot Agreement", an ISIL jihadi from Chile crosses the former Iraq-Syria border, now rendered meaningless in this barren stretch of desert controlled by the so-called Islamic State.

This is not the first time Arab groups have rejected Sykes-Picot. Several times in the post-war period Arab nationalist groups such as the Federation of Arab Republics, have attempted to offer a pan-Arabist alternative. But the current situation, with ISIL at the fore, highlights a reality Western leaders may be starting to appreciate: These lines are becoming increasingly imaginary. The Arab Spring was not merely a throwing off of dictatorships. It was also a bucking of these barely there states and institutions foisted on Arabs by the West a century ago. In addition to the collapse in Syria and Iraq, we've seen the creation of spheres of influence in Libya and Yemen. Israel has long been vague about its eastern border. And the great wave of migrants and refugees from the region attests to the failure of Sykes-Picot - and Western interventionists more broadly - to create legitimate, lasting states.

With 250,000 U.S. troops amassed in Iraq in 2003, George W. Bush's White House had contemplated rolling American tanks into the Syrian capital. The Middle East was to be reshaped in the image of American democracy. But events in Iraq, Afghanistan, and North Korea distracted the Pentagon, and the "democratic domino theory" did not come to pass.Ten years after Iraq, did the war give birth to the Arab Spring? Yes, the Iraq War had indirect connections to the Arab uprisings that swept the Middle East and northern Africa in 2011. For one, the fall of Saddam must have psychologically empowered Arab opposition activists who saw that a Ba'thist dictator and his sons could be removed from power.

So, five years on from its beginning, what can we say about Arab Spring?In some ways, five years is far too short a time to make a judgment. We can only get a proper perspective on such world shaping events from a much greater distance. But it is possible to draw some conclusions.





First, any idea that the Arab Spring would be a universally positive thing has been unceremoniously dumped. Breathless editorials proclaimed that social media was going to change the world. "If you want to liberate a country, give them the internet," proclaimed one Egyptian activist. Well, Egypt may have thrown off the shackles of Mubarak's repressive regime, but it was replaced by the democratically elected Muslim Brotherhood (who were decried by the country's Christians). Soon enough, another uprising led to a military coup and a new dictator. General Abdel Fattah el-Sisi has been accused of various human rights abuses carried out by his government.

The second lesson we can learn is that Christians have become the victims of some of the worst consequences of the Arab Spring. Indigenous believers in Egypt, Syria, Iraq and elsewhere have reaped the whirlwind of violence that has followed in the wake of the Arab Spring. From violence at the hands of ISIS, to attacks on churches, the last five years has been full of bad news for Christians in the Middle East.Even conservative estimates say hundreds of thousands of Christians have fled the region or been killed. Open Doors says the Christian faith is near to facing extiction in the Middle East. This is a crisis of epic proportions.The Archbishop of Canterbury said, "This is a new thing. There has not been treatment of Christians in this region, in this manner, since the invasion of Genghis Khan. This a new phenomenon and I think we find it hard to believe such horrors can happen." Meanwhile Pope Francis and Patriarch Bartholomew, the leaders of the two biggest Christian denominations have spoken out against the, "profoundly grave sin against God" which has unfolded in the Middle East.

The third lesson we can draw is that Western policy has been far too short-termist and self-interested. The disastrous invasion of Iraq in 2003 contributed to the conditions in which ISIS has thrived. Our intervention and then abandoning of Libya has led to a power vacuum there, which means the country is in chaos and at risk of being overrun by extremists. Our craven support for the Islamists in Saudi Arabia may have been expedient for a time, but in the long term, it hasn't led to stability in the region or safety for the US and UK.

Finally, we can ask some general questions about the desirability and long-term benefits of sudden upheavals. This is a long-debated subject. Back in the 18th Century, the radical Thomas Paine and the conservative Edmund Burke debated the merits of the French and American revolutions. Broadly speaking, Paine was in favour of a sudden political shift, believing that citizens must throw off the oppression they were under. Burke was more sceptical, suggesting that revolutions came with unintended consequences and that gradual reform was preferable. In the case of France, the Reign of Terror and its aftermath seemed to prove Burke right. But the outcome of the American Revolution seemed to favour Paine (although Burke had actually given qualified support in that case).But what can we say of the merits of the Arab Spring? Time will reveal more, but now the experience of the overwhelming majority of countries which underwent the upheaval seem to suggest Burke's more cautious approach would have been preferable to the sudden uprisings, which were often accompanied by violence and have sometimes led to terrible suffering and repression. It is a sign of the volatility of the whole region that we have no way at all of predicting what the consequences of the Arab Spring will look like in another five years time, let alone 50 or 500. But we can be sure that historians will see this as a pivotal period. Democracy, freedom, pluralism and other western aspirations remain a long way off for many countries touched by the Arab Spring. Whether the events of the last five years have brought them any closer is impossible to tell. We watch, wait and pray as the next phase of the Spring unfolds.





The rise of ISIS, Christian persecution and an uncertain future: the Arab Spring, five years on...Dec 17, It was a moment gravid with significance. One of the defining moments of the 21st century so far. As significant as that dreadful moment the first plane hit the World Trade Centre. As far-reaching as any election result, natural disaster or economic collapse. It happened in an unexpected place.The Arab Spring looked for a time like it may be a chance for democratic reform and the extension of freedom, but five years later the situation looks bleak. The rise of ISIS has been swift and devastating. Historic Christian communities have been decimated. Middle Eastern Church leaders have warned that Christianity is at risk of extinction. Any initial hope has been severely damaged, if not extinguished entirely.

How did the Arab Spring degenerate so quickly? And what lessons can we learn as the whole region faces an uncertain future?It wasn't widely reported on the day, but five years ago today, the Arab Spring began. In Tunisia, with resentment against the autocratic regime bubbling under, a small town market trader had his stall confiscated by an official. It was the final straw for Mohamed Bouazizi, who set himself on fire in protest. Soon, the discontent in much of the country began to boil over. Protests erupted. As Bouazizi lay dying, the demonstrations spread and a tide of change swept the nation. Before long, the extended reign of president Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali was over. Tunisia had been changed. This was important in itself. But the domino effect of the uprising was felt across the rest of North Africa and the Middle East, and by extension, the whole world.

Middle East Online Hosni MubarakSoon, demonstrations began in the iconic Tahrir Square in Cairo. Egypt's dictator Hosni Mubarak had seemed unassailable. He'd been in control for 27 years and had been feted by Tony Blair as, "immensely courageous and a force for good." But soon, the Arab world's most populous country was also in turmoil.Mubarak was losing his grip. While his forces cracked down on demonstrations, hundreds were killed and thousands injured, but that couldn't halt the spread of the revolution and soon he was gone. This was a major milestone. Other countries in the Middle East began to experience protests of their own. Tunisia and Egypt had shown the blueprint. Now it was the turn of Libya.Another long-reigning tyrant (and confidant of Blair) Colonel Muammar Gaddafi had ruled (and repressed) Libya since 1969. But the momentous events of the Arab Spring were soon to sweep him away too. Unlike the Tunisian and Egyptian uprisings, the Libyan resistance to Gaddafi was assisted by the US and the UK and other NATO forces.In a relatively brief civil war, Gaddafi was routed. He was killed by opposition forces along with the remnant of his supporters and bodyguards, with whom he'd been on the run.It was clear at this point that any romantic notions of the Arab Spring as being a purely bloodless, democratic movement were wide of the mark. Gaddafi, horrific dictator and sponsor of terrorism though he was, had been summarily executed. While the Tunisian President had escaped and the Egyptian President imprisoned, Gaddafi's fate showed the world that the Arab Spring had the potential for violence in the same way as many revolutions before it.





This was to be confirmed over the coming months and years. Protests in Yemen began to dissolve into armed conflict and uprising. Soon, the country was in the grip of a bitter conflict. This has continued intermittently ever since. In 2015 this has been more intense than ever, with Iranian backed rebels and a Saudi supported coalition causing devastation to the country.In nearby Bahrain, the Sunni Kingdom has a majority Shia population. This led to tension and demonstrations in the wake of the Arab Spring. With Saudi military assistance, these demonstrations were put down violently. Incredibly, international sporting events such as the Formula One Grand Prix carried on regardless – despite widespread accusations of human rights abuses by the government. Protests continue to bubble up in Bahrain. The Arab Spring had more minor effects in several other countries in Africa and the Middle East, but the one area in which it has had arguably the biggest impact is Syria (and Iraq).

Syrian President Bashar al-Assad says the matter of his possible resignation has yet to be raised on an international level.Bashar al-Assad was in some ways different to the autocrats who'd already been toppled by the Arab Spring. He was younger, had only been in power for 11 years and from the Alawite sect. But in other ways he was similar. He held tightly to power, which had been handed to him by his family. His Ba'athist politics were of a similar kind to other dictators in the region. They were less religious ideologues, more obsessive nationalists – determined to cling to power whatever the cost – (think of Saddam Hussein's willingness to fight to the death in Iraq against vastly improbable odds).When an uprising began in Syria it seemed that one of the region's traditional powerhouses may be tottering. But very quickly it became clear that this wasn't a peaceful affair; a rapid crackdown from Assad's forces meant the conflict escalated. As the Syrian Civil War developed, the true scale of the horror began to unfold. A porous border with Iraq enabled Sunni extremists to flood into the Syrian conflict. Shia forces such as Lebanon's Hezbollah began to get involved. To varying degrees, the Syrian Army relied on the support of Russia and Iran, while the rebel forces splintered.Soon enough a coherent Sunni rebel force was in place. Its ferocious military power and vicious campaign of slaughter is now all too familiar to us. ISIS has become a byword for the horror of life in parts of Syria and Iraq today. The Arab Spring there has seen the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people (many more killed by Assad's armed forces than by ISIS) along with the dissolution of borders which had been ceated by British and French colonists a century earlier.The Paris attacks earlier this year showed ISIS' capability to unleash murder and mayhem outside of Syria and Iraq. Meanwhile, the forces unleashed in the wake of the Arab Spring show no sign of abating in the Middle East itself.

Libya four years on from Colonel Gaddafi's deathSpecial report: As UN warns of "slide into bloodshed and chaos", The Telegraph visits war-torn Tripoli, which government claims is 'safer than New York' By Colin Freeman, Chief Foreign Correspondent, Tripoli 05 Nov 2015 Four years on





from the death of Colonel Muammar Gaddafi, Omar Saeed Omar still believes in the righteousness of Libya's Arab Spring uprising. But if he wants a reminder how revolution can can be a long, steep, daily struggle, he only has to walk out his front door.Last October, in a battle largely unnoticed by the outside world, Mr Omar's family and hundreds of others fled the western town of Kikla after fighting erupted between the two main factions now vying for power in Libya. They then squatted en masse in Tripoli's Airport Road flats, a vast public housing scheme of 10-storey blocks that was still being built when the revolution ground work to a halt in 2011. Today, his family live for free in an apartment on the fifth floor, but a penthouse suite it is not. Quite apart from the lack of fitted windows and central heating, the lift shaft is still just an empty 200-foot hole, forcing residents to traipse up and down hundreds of unfinished breezeblock steps every day."My son stepped on a landmine during the revolution and lost a leg: whenever we want to take him out anywhere we have to carry him up and down ourselves," said Mr Omar, 56, as he clambered his way up a breezeblock stairwell, past an old woman struggling with the weight of a gas canister. "But what choice do we have? My house in Kikla is damaged, my son's house is half-destroyed, and my other son's house has a Grad missile stuck in the middle." Nicknamed the Scrapyard Flats because of their unenviable proximity to the city dump, what was once a showpiece for the Gaddafi regime has now become a symbol of the instability that has come in its wake.In Mr Omar's block are families fleeing Kikla, while in neighbouring blocks are families fleeing the fighting in Benghazi, the eastern city that is now a stronghold of Ansar al Sharia, the al-Qaeda-linked group that killed the US ambassador Chris Stevens in 2012.Many of the Scrapyard Flats' new residents are young children, the generation in whose name the revolution was fought. Six have fallen to their deaths through the doors of the empty lift shafts, most of which have now been belatedly blocked up."This was a fierce revolution, so yes, we expected some problems afterwards," added Mr Omar. "But now we have an Arab Spring of extremism, just at the time when everybody in Libya should be working together. Things should have been better by now".That is a view shared by the Downing Street, which hoped that a "light touch" approach would work in post-Gaddafi Libya, given the relative success of the Nato-backed campaign to unseat him.Instead, British security officials now openly acknowledge that more should have been done at the time, given the fears that Libya may now become another addition to Middle East's growing list of failed states. That was a message also underlined by president of neighbouring Egypt, Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, in an interview with the Telegraph this week ahead of his meeting in London on Thursday with David Cameron. “Libya is a danger that threatens all of us," he said. “It was a mission that was not completely accomplished."With hindsight, the shortcomings of that mission became clear right after the revolution, when the failure to disarm the myriad militias that rose up against Colonel Gaddafi turned the desert nation into a series of rival city-states, most more loyal to town or tribe than central government.Four years on, the country now has not one set of rulers but two. First, there is the self-declared General National Congress, which controls Tripoli and is backed by Libya Dawn, a range of Islamist and non-Islamist militias. Then there is the rival, Western-backed coalition that operates in effective exile from the small eastern city of Tobruk.Right now, all that the two sides have in common is a mutual tendency to paint each other as Libya's worst nightmare come true. The Islamists say the Western-backed coalition is merely Gaddafi remnants trying to regain power. Their opponents say Libya Dawn wants





hardline Islamic rule. In fact, both factions contain many biddable moderates, but that has not stopped them spending the last two years in a low-level civil war, save for a rare moment of unity last month when, after months of exhaustive talks, both sides rejected the terms of a UN-brokered peace deal.

Regards Cees***

Figure one adumbrates the alternative trajectories the uprising has so far taken. Where the state fails, the outcome is an authority vacuum, with extreme levels of elite contestation propelling mass mobilization along identity lines, with rivals competing violently to reconstruct state authority, often pitting the most coercive remnants of state establishments with charismatic Islamist insurgencies (Syria, Libya, Yemen). The rival regimes are likely to be hybrids constructed around patrimonial or charismatic leadership and remnants of bureaucratic state institutions, with very limited elite contestation within such regimes-in-formation and with identity groups mobilized around included victors, with the losers coercively excluded. Where the state does not collapse, two outcomes are possible: the establishment persists and restores its authority or it is subordinated to new democratic leadership. In the first case, the new post-Uprising regimes are likely to be hybrids, mixing elements of co-optation, coercion, and pluralism—electoral authoritarianism--with middle levels of inclusion. Equally, the state establishment may take advantages of widening identity cleavages within society, such as that between secularists and Islamists, to divide and rule, including one segment in order to exclude the other, as in Egypt. Only Tunisia approximates the second case of democratic transition.

[Figure One: Pathways of Post-Uprisings States][…] From "Conclusion: Agency, Context, and Emergent Post-Uprising Regimes," by

Raymond Hinnebusch

Arab views on governance after the uprisings, By Michael Robbins and Mark Tessler ii October 29, 2014 The protesters who took to the streets during the Arab uprisings beginning in 2010 demanded change to the existing political order. And, if nothing else, the last few years have brought dramatic changes to a number of countries in the region. In multiple countries, Islamist parties came to power, and in different instances, have since lost power by resignation, coup and the ballot box. Elsewhere, civil wars rage, calling the experiment with political reform into question. Nearly four years from the first protests, only Tunisia seems to offer the hope of a successful transition to democracy.





These ongoing changes across the Arab world have led citizens to reassess their preferences. For example, the Arab Barometer – a project that has conducted public opinion surveys in 14 countries in the region – shows that few Arabs now favor dramatic reforms. In nearly all countries, at least 7-in-10 respondents say reforms should proceed gradually. In Algeria, in the months just after the Arab uprisings, roughly half of respondents said political reforms should proceed gradually compared to 78 percent just two years later. Arab publics continue overwhelmingly to support democracy. In all but one country surveyed, three-quarters or more of respondents in the third wave of surveys (late 2012-2014) agree or strongly agree with the statement “A democratic system may have problems, yet it is better than other political systems.” This belief is most widespread in Lebanon (85 percent) and Egypt (84 percent), followed by Tunisia (83 percent), Algeria (82 percent), Jordan (81 percent), and Palestine (81 percent). Although lowest among the countries surveyed, overwhelming majorities also favor democracy in Iraq (76 percent) and Yemen (73 percent).




i http://www.globalresearch.ca/we-re-going-to-take-out-7-countries-in-5-years-iraq-syria-lebanon-libya-somalia-sudan-iran/5166ii https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/monkey-cage/wp/2014/10/29/arab-views-on-governance-after-the-uprisings/

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