The US-Russia-Israel Summit: Can Russia Push Iran Out of Syria?

Boris Johnson Edges Closer to Residing at Number 10

How Iran Exploited Wars in the Middle East to Spread its Influence

A Weekly Political News Magazine

Issue 1752- June - 14/06/2019

A Weekly Political News Magazine

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Issue 1751- June- 14/06/2019

From the Ancient Middle East, Art That Links Past and Present www.majalla.com

The US-Russia-Israel Summit: Can Russia Push Iran Out of Syria? www.majalla.com

Editorial Ever since its establishment, the Islamic Republic of Iran has attempted to spread its revolutionary ideology across the region and inspire other countries in the region to create theological republics similar to their own one. While this idea of spreading revolution has waned down over the years, Iran has still sought to establish its own sphere of influence across the region, often at the expense of other states’ civilian and national security. For the past 40 years, Iran has played a role in many of the region’s conflicts such as the Lebanese Civil War, the 2006 Hezbollah-Israel War, and the current Yemen conflict, to gain new allies in the Middle East. This week’s issue of Majalla focuses on Iran’s overreaching influence in the region and how it has had a negative impact on Middle Eastern security.

Hanin Ghaddar writes this week’s cover story about an upcoming summit set to take place in Jerusalem this month in which the respective US, Israeli and Russian national security advisors will meet to discuss Middle Eastern security issues. It is expected that the US and Israel will ask Russia to pressure Iran to pull out its forces and allies out of Syria. Nevertheless, the writer argues that such requests might be futile, even if Russia does promise to curtail Iranian forces out of the conflict. The writer notes that Russia has made similar promises in the past but has failed to carry them out, for instance back in 2017 Russia was meant to guarantee that Iran backed militias in Syria would push back 40 km away from Israel’s and Jordan’s borders, something that has yet to happen.

Yasmine El Geressi writes on how the Islamic Republic has exploited many wars in the region to gain new allies and proxies that would carry out attacks on its behalf.

The writer gives a brief overview of how Iran managed to spread its influence in Lebanon, Iraq, Syria and Yemen and the various groups Iran supports in these countries, such as Hezbollah in Lebanon and the Houthi militias in Yemen.

In other news, Joseph Braude writes on Trump’s recent decision to impose tariffs on Mexican products in retaliation a lack of action on the Mexican government’s part to prevent mass migrants coming through the US’s southern border. Naturally, Democrats opposed the president’s decision, but in an unusual twist, many Republican senators voiced their concerns over the tariffs. This prompted Trump to backtrack on his decision, but the crisis might very well erupt again if the Mexican government fails to step up and take more action to stop migrants from crossing its shared border with the US. Ali El Shamy writes on the first round of votes among Tory MPs, which narrowed down the leadership competition to seven candidates. Boris Johnson won the vast majority of votes having gained the approval of 114 Conservative MPs. The writer further notes how Brexit has overshadowed other domestic policies as the candidates have yet to speak extensively (or at all) on other non-Brexit related issues.

We invite you to read these articles and more on our website eng.majalla.com. As always, we welcome and value our reader’s feedback and we invite you to take the opportunity to leave your comments on our website.

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A Weekly Political News Magazine

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Ghassan Charbel Editorial secretary Mostafa El-Dessouki HH Saudi Research and Marketing (UK) Ltd 10th Floor Building 7 Chiswick Business Park 566 Chiswick High Road London W4 5YG Tel : +44 207 831 8181 Fax: +44 207 831 2310

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A Weekly Political News Magazine

24 US-Mexico Trade Dispute Stokes Volatility Concerns

Issue 1752- June - 14/06/2019

20 What a War With Iran Would Look Like

26 Homeward-bound Jihadists

32 42 Diego Maradona’ is the Newest Documentary by Oscar-Winning Director Asif Kapadia

46 The Price of Peace in Northern Ireland

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Joseph Aoun: From Army Volunteer to Commander of Lebanon’s Military Forces 3

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52 Regain Your Confidence

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Pilgrims crowd around the Virgin of El Rocio during a procession around the shrine of El Rocio on June ,10 2019 in Almonte, Spain. Every spring thousands of devotees converge at a shrine to pay homage to the Virgin del Rocio during an annual religious pilgrimage. (Getty)

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A protester (C) sits at the middle of Harcourt Road in Hong Kong after a protest against a controversial extradition law proposal in Hong Kong on June 2019 ,12. Violent clashes broke out in Hong Kong on June 12 as police tried to stop protesters storming the city's parliament, while tens of thousands of people blocked key arteries in a show of strength against government plans to allow extraditions to China. (Getty)

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The Houthis said on their media channels that they fired a cruise missile at Abha airport, which is about 200 km (125 miles) north of the Yemen border and serves domestic and regional routes.

Iran Has Accelerated Enrichment of Uranium

Iran has followed through on a threat to Two Oil Tankers Attacked in Gulf of Yemen's Houthis Strike Saudi accelerate its production of enriched uranium, the head of the U.N. atomic watchdog said Oman Airport, Coalition Vows to Retaliate on Monday, departing from his usual guarded language to say he was worried about increasing Twooil tankers were attacked on Thursday and The Saudi-led military coalition vowed to tension. The assessment comes at a time of left adrift in the Gulf of Oman, driving up oil respond firmly to a missile attack by Yemeni sharply increased U.S.-Iranian confrontation prices and stoking fears of a new confrontation Houthi forces on a civilian airport in southern in recent weeks, a year after Washington between Iran and the United States, which Saudi Arabia on Wednesday that wounded 26 abandoned an agreement between Iran and blamed Tehran for the incident. Crude oil prices people. The Western-backed, Sunni Muslim world powers to curb Tehran’s nuclear program spiked more than %4 after the attacks near alliance that has been battling the Iran-aligned in exchange for the lifting of international the entrance to the Strait of Hormuz, a crucial Houthi movement in Yemen said the early financial sanctions.IAEA chief Yukiya Amano, shipping artery for Saudi Arabia and other Gulf morning strike was proof of Iranian support whose agency is responsible for monitoring energy producers, stoked fears such disruptions for what it called cross-border terrorism. The Iranian compliance with the nuclear deal, said could impact oil flows from the Middle coalition said a projectile hit the arrivals hall Iran was now producing more enriched uranium East. Prices later settled about %2 higher. at Abha airport, causing material damage. than before, but it was not clear when it might Washington accused Tehran of being behind a Three women and two children were among reach stockpile limits set in the pact. similar attack on May 12 on four tankers in the the wounded, who were of Saudi, Yemeni and same area.

Indian nationalities, it said in a statement.

Sudan’s State Prosecutors Charge Former President Omar Al-Bashir with Corruption

Sudan’s state prosecutor’s office said on Thursday jailed former President Omar AlBashir had been charged with corruption after the completion of an investigation. Bashir was overthrown and arrested in a coup by the military on April 11 after months of mass protests against his -30year rule. The charges were related to laws on “suspected illicit wealth

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The violence marked a major escalation of the biggest political crisis in years for the semiautonomous Chinese territory and forced the delay of legislative debate on the contentious bill.

and emergency orders,” the public prosecutor’s office said. Bashir had already been charged in May with incitement and involvement in the killing of protesters. Prosecutors had also ordered his interrogation on suspicion of money laundering and financing terrorism.

It has not been possible to get a comment from Bashir since his ousting.

Boris Johnson Wins First Round of Race for Prime Minister Boris Johnson, who has pledged to deliver Brexit on October 31, edged closer to power on Thursday when he won by far the most support from Conservative Party lawmakers in the first round of the contest to replace Prime Minister Theresa May. Johnson got 114 votes, with Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt in second place on 43 votes and environment minister Michael Gove third with 37 votes. Three candidates

— Andrea Leadsom, Esther McVey and Mark Harper — were eliminated after they failed to receive the required minimum of 17 votes.

Johnson said he was delighted to win the first ballot but that there was a long way to go.

Trump Brags About 'Secret' Mexico

Extradition Protesters in Hong Kong Face Tear Gas and Rubber Bullets Police in Hong Kong fired tear gas, pepper spray and high-pressure water hoses against protesters who had massed outside government headquarters Wednesday to oppose a government plan to allow extraditions to China.

The bill has become a lightning rod for concerns over greater Chinese control and erosion of civil liberties in the semiautonomous territory and former British colony. The Reuters news service and AFP reported the demonstrators numbered in the tens of thousands. AFP said they paralyzed the center of the city state.

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Document but Photos Reveal Contents Donald Trump brandished a document on Tuesday confirming details of a regional asylum project agreed with Mexico to stave off threatened tariffs, saying the plan was “secret” even though Mexican officials had revealed much of it. Trump, who has made containing illegal immigration a priority issue and has blamed Mexico for the problem since running for office in 2016, did not show the text of any document or give any details.

However, a Reuters photograph of the sheet of paper allowed reporters to read parts of it.

The document that Trump waved at reporters laid out “a regional approach to burden-sharing in relation to the processing of refugee status claims to migrants”; talked of “45 days”; and said Mexico had committed to immediately examine its laws and rules to enable it to implement such an agreement.

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The US-Russia-Israel Summit: Can Russia Push Iran Out of Syria?

Despite All its Promises, Moscow Has Done Very Little to Keep Tehran Out 10

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Two main issues will determine if this meeting will be successful. One, if Russia is willing to help get Iran out of Syria, and two, even if Russia is willing, is it capable of doing so. the U.S. and Israel are expecting Russia to have specific proposals for the meeting. Israel and the United States will insist that Russia, with its dominant position in Syria and massive influence over the Assad regime, lay down the law with Iran and force the withdrawal of Iranian forces.

Two main issues will determine if this meeting will be successful. One, if Russia is willing to help get Iran out of Syria, and two, even if Russia is willing, is it capable of doing so.

BROKEN PROMISES

Russian President Vladimir Putin delivers a speech as he inspects a parade during his visit to the Russian air base in Hmeimim in the northwestern Syrian province of Latakia on December 2017 ,11.

(Getty)

by Hanin Ghaddar Earlier this month, The White House announced that U.S., Israeli and Russian national security advisers would meet in Jerusalem in June to discuss regional security issues. According to the White House press release, United States National Security Adviser Ambassador John Bolton, Israeli National Security Adviser Meir Ben-Shabbat, and Russian Secretary of the Security Council Nikolai Patrushev will be in attendance.

During a conference call with reporters, a senior White House official said that the U.S. plans to stress to Russia during its trilateral national security advisers summit that Iranian forces and their proxies have to leave Syria. As the focus of the summit will be Iran's activities in Syria, Lebanon and the rest of the region,

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Despite all the promises and initiatives, Russia has done very little to limit the Iranian presence and power in Syria. Russia has allowed Israel to bomb Iran and Hezbollah’s facilities in Syria, but that is because Russia cannot upset Israel. Otherwise, there haven’t been any major incident that proves Russia’s leverage over Iran in Syria.

That’s until last month, when Russia rejected Iran’s request to purchase S400- air defenses, as it apparently worried that Iran’s acquisition of the advanced system would upset the geopolitical balance in the Middle East and prompt greater conflict. That incident probably prompted the US and Israel to try to seek Russia again.

However, refusing to sell weapons to Iran is very different from being capable of pushing Iran out of Syria.

On the second part, Russia’s record hasn’t been very impressive: First, a de-escalation agreement was reached between Russia, the US, and Jordan in June 2017. According to this agreement, Russia was supposed to guarantee that militias backed by the Syrian government’s ally Iran must be pushed 40 km (25 miles) from the border. During the two years since then, Russia failed miserably. Iran is still in south Syria, and close to both Israeli and Jordanian border, and both Russian and Assad troops could not remove Iranian militias away from these borders.

Russia’s general inability or unwillingness to keep

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its promises in Syria warrants skepticism about its security guarantees. For example, when Assad used chemical weapons against civilians in 2013 and the United States was poised to launch military strikes in retaliation, Putin helped convince Washington to hold off by guaranteeing that the regime would surrender its chemical arsenal. Yet Assad kept some of that arsenal and has since used it repeatedly against civilians.

Even more tellingly, Russian forces were rebuffed in June 2018 when they accompanied the Syrian army’s 11th Division to push Hezbollah forces out of their positions in the border town of al-Qusayr. The plan— which was not coordinated with Iran or Hezbollah— was to take over the Jusiyah crossing with Lebanon, then move closer to Syria’s Qalamoun region. Yet Hezbollah forces refused to leave their positions; instead, Russian and Syrian troops turned around and left less than twenty-four hours after they arrived, and Hezbollah soon reinforced its presence around al-Qusayr. This small incident—which was probably a Russian attempt to test Iran’s reaction—shows that Moscow would probably be unable to budge Iranian proxies once they become entrenched.

BUILDING ROOTS While all eyes have been – and will continue to be – on Iran’s military capabilities in Syria, Iran is already working behind the scenes. Iran understands that real power is in sustaining presence beyond military presence and that securing long-term influence in Syria requires more than military means. Accordingly, they are applying best practices from their experience with Hezbollah in Lebanon, where the powerful Iranian proxy has entrenched itself not only militarily, but also politically, religiously, and culturally.

To extend this model to Syria, Iran is purchasing real estate, changing demographics, and developing networks of support between Damascus and the

Guarantees on Assad will be one of Putin’s asks. However, Russia wants more, such as a better and more powerful presence in international diplomatic scenes.

Lebanese border, with the ultimate goal of establishing a geographical area of control similar to Hezbollah’s stronghold in Beirut’s southern suburbs. It is also pushing social, religious, and economic programs designed to entice poor communities who lack viable alternatives.

These roots will allow Iran to remain in Syria even if the Russians, or any other force, tries to remove their military forces from Syria. If all the IRGC and their proxies were forced at one point to leave Syria, Iran’s presence will be deeply rooted and its influence will have long roots.

WHAT WOULD RUSSIA TRY TO WIN? Israel and the US will probably try to offer incentives to Russia in a bid to limit Iran’s influence in Syria, which could include – according to regional reports legitimizing the leadership of Bashar Assad.

Russia will try to take as much as it can from this meeting. Guarantees on Assad will be one of Putin’s asks. However, Russia wants more, such as a better and more powerful presence in international diplomatic scenes. Russia wants Crimea, a resolution to sanctions and more lucrative investments deals in Syria and the region.

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Russian President Vladimir Putin (R) meets with Iranian President Hassan Rouhani on the sidelines of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation Summit, Qingdao, China, June 2018 ,9. (Reuters)

If Putin gets one or more of these requests, he can only give promises. However, based on his past records, Russian troops in Syria are still incapable of removing a single Iranian or pro-Iranian soldier.

Moreover, even if they try, Iran is still stronger on the grounds. The only place where Russia has more power is the Alawite coast, but only because Iran accepted this compromise.

There have indeed been reports of recent growing friction between Iran and Russia in Syria, such as the standoff between Russian soldiers and Iran-backed militias in the northern Syrian city of Aleppo. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said fighting may have been triggered over competition for control of city checkpoints, which brings in a lot of money for forces on the ground.

Additionally, Voice of America reported on May 27 that Russian military police carried out a raid against Iranian-backed militiamen stationed at Aleppo international airport and that “in the aftermath, several Iranian militia leaders were arrested.”

Despite these reports, the recent – and old - friction between Russia and Iran in Syria are nothing but negotiations over space and resources, and are by no means signs of serious confrontation. Russia and Iran

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If all the IRGC and their proxies were forced at one point to leave Syria, Iran’s presence will be deeply rooted and its influence will have long roots. are strong in Syria because of their alliance. Without one, the other will be drastically weakened. And this alliance is not going to be weakened when both think they have been victorious in Syria. They still need each other and the international community needs to be more invested and present in Syria if they want Iran out.

If the trilateral meeting in later this month is to be successful, the US and Israel should not accept any promises from Russia, but actions, before they guarantee anything to Putin.

Hanin Ghaddar is the inaugural Friedmann Visiting Fellow at The Washington Institute.

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How Iran Exploited Wars in the Middle East to Spread its Influence

Tehran is Building a Contiguous Arc of Influence Using Non-state Actors

by Yasmine El-Geressi Iran is ascendant in the Middle East, having exploited opportunities arising from the wars in Lebanon, Iraq, Syria and Yemen by actively supporting proxies to spread its influence in a contiguous geographic arc from Tehran to Baghdad, Damascus and Beirut.

Some of Tehran’s neighbours and Washington see the country as an expansionist power with

hegemonic aspirations. Despite the US withdrawal from the nuclear deal US sanctions and against Iran, Tehran wields influence through its non-state actors and its leaders appear just as committed to destabilising engagement across the region.

LEBANON An arm of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps,

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Hezbollah fighters hold party flags during a parade in a southern suburb of Beirut, Lebanon. (AP)

the Quds Forces, runs the training efforts for various proxies, and Hezbollah in Lebanon, Iran’s nearly four-decade investment and biggest poxy achievement, has grown into the country’s most powerful political and military force.

Hezbollah emerged during the chaos of Lebanon’s civil war which created the conditions for Iran’s post1979- revolutionary leaders to demonstrate that their example could be replicated in the Arab world by exploiting long-standing grievances of Lebanon’s Shia Muslim underclass. Initially hardly noticed in the noise of the Lebanese civil war, Iranian Revolutionary Guards (as many as 1000) established training camps in the Biqa’ Valley in the early 1980s. Iran committed to the Shia community tens of millions of dollars annually to cover salaries and financial subsidies. They also created hundreds of service institutions and started catering its services to all the Shia community – and sometimes beyond – cultivating an image of provider and protector.

But by 1985, when Hezbollah’s initial manifesto (calling, among other things, for the establishment of an Iran-style Islamic republic in Lebanon) was issued, the group already had a reputation internationally for its methods of simultaneous suicide attacks, later copied by other terrorist groups, and for its hostage-taking. At this point, Iran was already viewing Hezbollah as a big success.

The 1983 bombings of the U.S. embassy and U.S. Marine and French paratrooper barracks in Beirut, as well as assassinations of regime opponents, have been attributed to Iranian operatives. They are also suspected in the 1994 bombing of a Buenos Aires Jewish center, an accusation Iran denies. The group claimed credit for the departure of U.S and French military personnel in 1984 and declared victory for “the resistance” in forcing the Israeli withdrawal from southern Lebanon in 2000 and for having survived the Israeli ground and air attacks in the devastating summer 2006 war that Hezbollah provoked. Especially since the 2006 war, Iran has facilitated an exponential increase in the size, sophistication, and lethality of Hezbollah’s arsenal.

Hezbollah also provides assassination services.

Operatives of the group are indicted by the Special Tribunal for Lebanon for the 2005 murder of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri and under suspicion for the elimination of many other antiSyrian and anti-Hezbollah Lebanese politicians in the 2005 and 2008 period.

Today, Hezbollah uses the combination of its popularity among the majority of Lebanon’s Shias its positions in Lebanon’s parliament and cabinet, and its militia power to exercise effective veto over any Lebanese government policy it opposes—while

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Hezbollah in Lebanon, Iran’s nearly four-decade investment and biggest poxy achievement, has grown into the country’s most powerful political and military force. at the same time constructing an impenetrable wall against any public or parliamentary accountability over Hezbollah’s decisions.

President Michel Aoun, a Maronite Christian whose followers once idolised him as the symbol of courageous resistance against Damascus, has embraced his role as Hezbollah’s enabler in this regard. His son-in-law, current Foreign Minister Gebrane Bassil, made a 2006 memorandum of understanding between Aoun’s Free Patriotic Movement (FPM) and Hezbollah, and the two groups have maintained a close Shiite-Christian alliance ever since.

In May 2018, Hezbollah and its political allies made significant gains in Lebanon’s parliamentary election, with candidates supported by the group or allied to it winning just over half the seats in parliament. Hezbollah’s leader Hassan Nasrallah then spent months blocking Lebanon’s cabinet formation by insisting that individual Sunni proxies of Hezbollah be awarded cabinet representation at the expense of caretaker Prime Minister Saad Hariri’s larger and more representative Sunni bloc.

The group now controls three of the 30 ministries in Hariri’s cabinet including the health ministry which has the fourth-biggest budget in the state apparatus.

SYRIA In the wake of the Arab uprisings in 2011, Iran began its military involvement in Syria with its immediate objective to defeat the Syrian opposition militarily to save Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and consolidate Iran’s long term influence in the country.

Syria has been Iran’s main scene of activism over the past several years and Iran has invested heavily by providing political, financial, cyber and military support to the Syrian government forces, and as a result, the Assad regime has reclaimed most of the Syrian territory as the eight-year war enters its final stages. As the dominant actor in Damascus, Tehran dictates the fighting on the ground by the

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pro-Assad coalition, controls the Syria-Iraq and Syria-Lebanon border crossings. It has deployed thousands of soldiers on the ground—from Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and regular Iranian forces to Hezbollah and other Pakistani and Afghan Shia groups in Syria. The IRGC has been involved in major battles across the country and the external operations department of the IRGC-Quds Force has been critical in organizing the militias.

Hezbollah’s intervention in Syria has been the group’s greatest military undertaking. The U.S. State Department said in 2017 that the group has about 7,000 fighters in Syria, By one estimate, it’s lost 1.675 in the war. Other domestic consequences include attacks on Hezbollah and mainly Shiapopulated areas in Lebanon by jihadists sympathetic to the anti-Assad opposition in 14-2013.

On the other hand, Hezbollah fighters have benefitted significantly from combat experience in Syria, notably operating tanks provided by Syria and coordinating with air power provided by Russia. It has also learned to fight in challenging and diverse geographical environments, helping the group to morph from an insurgency group to a much larger hybrid paramilitary. Plus, Hezbollah has grown even closer to its benefactor, Iran, which massively increased the group’s stockpiles. The group reportedly possess more than 130,000 rockets and missiles - compared with 15,000 on the eve of the 2006 war - including ballistic guided missiles fitted with large warheads, anti-tank missiles and unmanned drones. In terms of personnel, Hezbollah massively increased its recruitment by expanding its ideological and age requirements.

While Iran and Hezbollah are exploiting Syria’s instability the Israelis fear the country will become a new launching pad for Iranian influence and attack.

Syria has been Iran’s main scene of activism over the past several years and Iran has invested heavily by providing political, financial, cyber and military support to the Syrian government.

Throughout the conflict, Israel has used military strikes to stop the flow of advanced weapons from Syrian and Iranian arsenals to the Lebanese Hezbollah and to keep Iranian and Hezbollah forces far from its border along the Golan Heights. These include over 100 airstrikes on weapons going to Hezbollah, attacks on Iranian arms-production facilities, strikes on IRGC and Hezbollah officers in Syria, and an attack on an Iranian drone facility.

With a presence in Syria, Iran can increase its threat to Israel and Israelis worry about an Iraniancontrolled land bridge that goes from Iran through Iraq and Syria into Lebanon. Israel is adamant on avoiding what it feels are the mistakes of Lebanon, by preventing any lasting Iranian militarization in Syria—a goal shared by Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and other rivals to Tehran.

Iran has bases in Syria and is constructing weapons factories there. Both its officers and its proxies are well-integrated into the Assad regime’s military effort, with both often playing a leading role. Earlier this year, a report by the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a war monitor that has researchers across Syria, said that Iran has recruited at least 1,200 militiamen from different parts of Syria to form a new military force in the country under their supervision with the aim of boosting Iran’s agenda

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Iran-backed Houthi soldiers in Yemen.

(AP)

Iran’s support of the Houthis grew increasingly open and transparent after the successful military drive

by Houthis and Saleh loyalists in the summer of 2014.

in the region. Iranian and Syrian officials have been considering the building of such a force for a long time.

IRAQ Iran is pursuing a strategy in Iraq similar to that which it employed in Lebanon with a goal of achieving unparalleled influence in Baghdad. Ever since the 2003 US invasion of Iraq and the rapid disintegration of Iraq along ethnic and secretariat lines that quickly followed Saddam Hussein’s toppling, many among Iraq’s Shia militias looked to their neighbour for ideological sustenance, and more importantly arms and funding to confront local rivals, and Iran was happy to oblige. The Trump administration has attributed the deaths of 608 U.S. troops in Iraq between 2003 and 2011 to the IRGC. U.S. President George W. Bush, who had previously identified Iran as a member of the “axis of evil,” accused the Quds Force in 2007 of providing roadside bombs to Shia militants to kill American forces, though experts inside and outside the government questioned whether such orders came from the government.

United under the umbrella of the Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF) and an official part of

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the Iraqi security forces, a constellation of Shiite militia groups emerged in 2014 in response to the Iraqi military’s capitulation to ISIS, recruiting thousands of new fighters. Some militia groups are seen as Iranian proxies and have been trained by Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, while others oppose Iranian influence and bill themselves as Iraqi nationalists. Kata’ib Hezbollah, Asa’ib Ahl al-Haq, and Kata’ib Sayyid al-Shuhada are among those in the former category that U.S. officials may be watching closely.

The Shiite militias played a key role in the fight against ISIS, such as when they helped recapture the city of Tikrit in 2015, and suffered heavy losses. But they also claimed credit for victories largely won by government troops and were accused of massacres, torture, and other abuses against Sunni civilians at a rate that far outpaced similar accusations against other forces. IRGC advisers were often on the front lines with the militia groups they supported, and Qassem Soleimani, the commander of the IRGC’s elite Quds Force, was occasionally photographed on the battlefield.

There are an estimated 100,000 Iraqi Shi’a militiamen, collectively known as Popular Mobilization Units (PMUs), most of which belong to Iran-backed groups. Even though ISIS was declared ‘defeated’ in Iraq at the end of 2017, and despite a 2016 law requiring the militias to fold into the national military command structure, the Iran-backed Iraqi Shi’a militias have retained their independent capabilities and command structure.

In August 2018, Iran reportedly transferred shortrange ballistic missiles to some of these Iraqi Shi’a militia allies, enabling Tehran to project force deeper into the region. The IRGC-QF provides an estimated 150$ million per year to Tehran’s proxies in Iraq, with figures running to perhaps 1$ billion per year immediately after the 2014 ISIS offensive in Iraq.

The militia commanders are emerging as political titans, enabling them to exercise formal influence that will undoubtedly constrain the authority of the

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relatively pro-U.S. leadership in Baghdad. Iran also wants its allies among the Shi’ite paramilitaries to pressure the United States.

On March 5, the U.S. Treasury Department sanctioned Harakat Hezbollah al-Nujaba, a militia that is part of the PMF. Unsurprisingly, Nujaba’s spokesman responded in Iranian media with claims it is resisting the United States and Israel throughout the Middle East. And, Had al-Amiri, head of the Iran-founded Badr organisation and its paramilitary wing, said recently that he opposes the U.S. presence in Iraq. U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has warned Baghdad against excessive Iranian influence, even as Iraqi officials have come to rely on Iran not just for security, but also for energy and trade.

YEMEN The conflict in Yemen began in late 2014 when the Iran-backed Houthis overran the capital and forced the government to flee to Aden. The SaudiUAE-led coalition intervened in Yemen in March 2015 in support of Yemeni President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi. Iran has long denied accusations that it provides financial and military support to the Houthis. According to the United Nations, however, Tehran has been supplying the rebels with weapons for more than a decade. In January 2013, the USS Farragut intercepted the ship Jihan 1 off Yemen›s coast carrying -122millimeter Katyusha rockets, radar systems, Chinese QW1-M antiaircraft missiles, and 2.6 tons of RDX high explosive. This action violated UN Security Council Resolution 1747 of 2007, which mandated that «Iran shall not supply, sell, or transfer directly or indirectly from its territory or by its nationals or using its flag vessels or aircraft any arms or related materiel. The United States also tracked Iranian Revolutionary Guards providing training and assistance to the Houthis in

Iran is pursuing a strategy in Iraq similar to that which it employed in Lebanon with a goal of achieving unparalleled influence in Baghdad.

the Saadah governorate.

Iran’s support of the Houthis grew increasingly open and transparent after the successful military drive by Houthis and Saleh loyalists in the summer of 2014. The Houthis seized control of Sanaa, the capital, and Yemeni government operations. Houthi leaders travelled to Tehran and signed agreements to establish regular air service between the two capitals; they also agreed to increase YemeniIranian cooperation. Iranian Lawmaker Ali Reza Zakani, a trusted adviser to Iran›s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, boasted that Sanaa had become the fourth Arab capital under Iranian control. Sanaa, he said, now joins «three Arab capitals [Beirut, Baghdad and Damascus] which have ended up in the hands of Iran and belong to the Iranian Islamic revolution» and «the greater jihad. In November 2016, the chief of staff of the Iranian armed forces, General Mohammad Hossein Baqeri, speaking at a gathering of naval commanders, said that Iran would like to set up naval bases in Yemen.

In addition to direct support from Iran, Houthi

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Shi›ite Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF) carrying their weapons, advance towards the city of Al-Qaim, Iraq, in this November 2017 ,3 file photo. (Reuters)

rebels are also receiving help from the Iranian proxy, Hezbollah. In 2014, for instance, several Hezbollah operatives were arrested in Yemen and held on charges of training Houthi rebels.

The men were members of Hezbollah›s Unit 3800, an expeditionary militia modelled on the Iranian Quds Force and aimed at spreading Iran›s revolution to other countries. In March 2016, an unnamed Hezbollah commander interviewed by the magazine Foreign Affairs about his group›s support for the Houthis remarked: «After we are done with Syria, we will start with Yemen, Hezbollah is already there.... Who do you think fires Tochka missiles into Saudi Arabia? It›s not the Houthis in their sandals, it›s us.»

Since 2014, the Houthis have been launching ballistic missiles into Saudi Arabia and have stepped up drone and missile attacks to the Kingdom recently amid tensions between Iran and the US. Last month, the Saudi air force shot down a bomb-laden drone deployed by Houthi rebels that targeted Jizan airport, close to the southern border with Yemen, the coalition said.

Two oil pumping stations in Saudi Arabia were targeted by Houthi drones in May causing minor supply disruptions highlighting an apparent significant leap in the drone capabilities of the Houthis. This week, least 26 civilians were injured in a missile attack on an airport in south-west Saudi Arabia.

Syria›s President Bashar alAssad meets with Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei in Tehran, Iran in this handout released by SANA on February ,25 2019. (Reuters)

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T What a War With Iran Would Look Like Neither Side Wants a Fight, but That Doesn’t Eliminate the Danger

By Ilan Goldenberg Tensions between Iran and the United States are at their highest point in years. The 2015 Iran nuclear agreement is teetering. The Trump administration is using sanctions to strangle the Iranian economy and in May deployed an aircraft carrier, a missile defense battery, and four bombers to the Middle East. Washington has evacuated nonessential personnel from its embassy in Baghdad, citing intelligence suggesting that Iran is increasingly willing to

hit U.S. targets through its military proxies abroad.

The United States also stated that Iran almost certainly perpetrated the recent damage to oil tankers flagged by Saudi Arabia, Norway, and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and claimed that Iran had temporarily loaded missiles onto small boats in the Arabian Gulf. In early May, U.S.National Security Adviser John Bolton publicly threatened a response to any Iranian attacks, “whether by proxy, the Islamic Revolutionary Guards [sic] Corps or regular Iranian forces.”

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Members of Iran›s Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) march during the annual military parade marking the anniversary of the outbreak of the devastating 1988-1980 war with Saddam Hussein›s Iraq, in the capital Tehran on September 2018 ,22.

(Getty)

The good news is that the situation is not as bad as it appears.

None of the players—with the possible exception of Bolton— seem to really want a war. Iran’s military strategy is to keep tensions at a low boil and avoid a direct confrontation with the United States. Washington struck a tough public posture with its recent troop deployment, but the move was neither consequential nor terribly unusual. If the United States were truly preparing for a war, the flow of military assets into the region would be much more dramatic.

The bad news is that a war could still happen. Even if neither side wants to fight, miscalculation, missed signals, and the logic of escalation could conspire to turn even a minor clash into a regional conflagration—with devastating effects for Iran, the United States, and the Middle East.

A conflict would most likely start with a small, deniable attack

by Iran on a U.S.-related target. Iran’s leaders, in this scenario, decide that it is time to stand up to U.S. President Donald Trump.

Shiite militias in Iraq with ties to Iran hit a U.S. military convoy in Iraq, killing a number of soldiers, or Iranian operatives attack another oil tanker in the Arabian Gulf, this time causing an oil spill. Tehran knows from past experience that such attacks do not result in direct retaliation from Washington, provided they are somewhat deniable. Iranian proxies in Iraq, for example, killed roughly 600 American soldiers from 2003 to 2011, with few consequences for Iran.

But this time is different. Following the Iranian attack, the Trump administration decides to strike at several military sites in Iran, just as it hit Syrian targets in 2017 and 2018 after the regime of President Bashar al-Assad used chemical weapons. Using air and naval assets already stationed in the Middle East, the United States strikes an Iranian port or hits a training camp for Iraqi Shiite fighters in Iran. Through public and private channels, the U.S. government communicates that it conducted a one-time strike to “reestablish deterrence” and that if Iran backs off, it will face no further consequences. Ideally, the Iranian leadership pulls back, and things end there.

But what if Iran does not respond the way Assad did? After all, Assad was fighting for his very survival in a years-long civil war and knew better than to pull the United States any further into that fight. Iran’s leader has many more options than the beleaguered Syrian president did. The Islamic Republic can use proxy forces in Afghanistan, Iraq, Lebanon, Syria, and Yemen to attack the United States and its partners. It has an arsenal of ballistic missiles that can target U.S. bases in Bahrain, Kuwait, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE. Its mines and land-based antiship missiles can wreak havoc in the Strait of Hormuz and drive up global oil prices. Iran has the capacity to shut down a significant portion of Saudi oil production with aggressive sabotage or cyberattacks, and with its paramilitary unit known as the Quds Force, Iran can attack U.S. targets around the globe.

Between the United States and Iran there is a distinct potential for misunderstanding, not least when both actors are making decisions under time pressure, on the basis of uncertain information, and in a climate of deep mutual distrust. Iran may mistake a one-

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Even short of a worst-case scenario, any war with Iran would tie down the United States in yet another Middle Eastern conflict for years to come. off strike by the United States as the beginning of a significant military campaign that requires an immediate and harsh response.

The danger that the United States will send confusing signals to the Iranians is especially high given Trump’s tendency to go off on Twitter and the fact that his national security adviser has articulated a more hawkish agenda than his own.

The two sides will also face an intense security dilemma, with each side’s defensive measures appearing aggressive to the other side. Suppose that during the crisis the United States decides to send aircraft carriers, battleships, bombers, and fighters to the region to defend itself and its allies. Iran’s military leaders might infer that Washington is gearing up for a bigger attack. Similarly, imagine that Iran decides to protect its missiles and mines from a preemptive U.S. strike by moving them out of storage and dispersing them. The United States might interpret such defensive measures as preparation for a dramatic escalation— and respond by carrying out the very preemptive strike that Iran sought to avoid.

In one scenario, all these escalatory pressures set off a larger conflict. The United States sinks several Iranian ships and attacks a port and military training facilities. Iran drops mines and attacks U.S. ships in the Arabian Gulf. Iranian proxies kill dozens of U.S. troops, aid workers, and diplomats in the region, and Iranian missiles strike U.S. bases in Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE, causing limited damage. At every turn, Iran tries to save face by showing resolve but stopping short of all-out war; Washington, intent on “reestablishing deterrence,” retaliates a little more aggressively each time. Before long, the two have tumbled into full-scale hostilities.

At this point, the United States faces a choice: continue the titfor-tat escalation or overwhelm the enemy and destroy as much of its military capabilities as possible, as the United States did during Operation Desert Storm against Iraq in 1991. The Pentagon recommends “going big” so as not to leave U.S. forces vulnerable to further Iranian attacks. Bolton and U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo support the plan. Trump agrees, seeing a large-scale assault as the only way to prevent humiliation.

The United States sends some 120,000 troops to its bases in the Middle East, a figure approaching the 150,000 to 180,000 troops deployed to Iraq at any given point from 2003 to 2008. American aircraft attack conventional Iranian targets and much of Iran’s nuclear infrastructure in Natanz, Fordow, Arak, and Esfahan.

For now, the military does not start a ground invasion or seek

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to topple the regime in Tehran, but ground forces are sent to the region, ready to invade if necessary.

Iran’s military is soon overwhelmed, but not before mounting a powerful, all-out counterattack. It steps up mining and swarming small-boat attacks on U.S. forces in the Arabian Gulf. Missile attacks, cyberattacks, and other acts of sabotage against Gulf oil facilities send global oil prices skyrocketing for weeks or months, perhaps to 150$ or more per barrel. Iran launches as many missiles as it can at U.S. military bases.

Many of the missiles miss, but some do not. Iran’s proxies target U.S. troops in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Syria, and Iranianbacked Houthi rebels in Yemen increase their rocket attacks against Saudi Arabia. Iran may even attempt terrorist attacks on U.S.embassies or military facilities around the globe— but will likely fail, as such attacks are difficult to execute successfully.

Israel might get drawn into the conflict through clashes with Hezbollah, the Shiite militant group and political party in Lebanon. Iran has tremendous influence over Hezbollah and could potentially push the group to attack Israel using its arsenal of 130,000 rockets in an attempt to raise the costs of the conflict for the United States and one of its closest allies. Such an attack will likely overwhelm Israel’s Iron Dome missile defense system, leaving the Israelis with no choice but to invade Hezbollah’s strongholds in southern Lebanon and possibly southern Syria.

What began as a U.S.-Iranian skirmish now engulfs the entire region, imposing not only devastating losses on Iran’s leadership and people but serious costs in blood and treasure for the United States, Israel, Lebanon, the Gulf states, and other regional players.

Even once major military operations cease, the conflict will not be over. Iranian proxies are hard to eradicate through conventional battlefield tactics and will target U.S. forces and partners in the

Between the US and Iran there is a distinct potential for misunderstanding, not least when both actors are making decisions under time pressure, on the basis of uncertain information, and in a climate of deep mutual distrust.

Middle East for years to come. U.S. air strikes would set back the Iranian nuclear program anywhere from 18 months to three years. But air strikes cannot destroy scientific know-how, and the conflict may push Iran to take the program further underground and build an actual nuclear weapon—a goal it has refrained from achieving thus far.

Moreover, even if the United States goes into the conflict hoping only to weaken Iran militarily, it will soon face calls at home and abroad to overthrow the Islamic Republic. As a result, the United States may stumble into the kind of regime change operation it carried out in Iraq in 2003 and Libya in 2011—but this time on a much larger scale. Iran today has a population of 80 million, more than three times that of Iraq at the beginning of the Iraq war.

The country’s topography is much more challenging than Iraq’s.

The cost of an invasion would over time reach into the trillions of dollars. And consider for a moment the destabilizing effects of a refugee crisis stemming from a country with a population the size of Afghanistan, Iraq, and Syria combined.

The United States might instead try to engineer the collapse of the Islamic Republic without invading, as it tried in Iraq in the 1990s. But unlike many Middle Eastern countries that have

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US aircraft carrier strike group deployed to the Gulf. (AFP)

grown unstable in recent years, Iran is not an artificial creation of European colonialism but a millennia-old civilization whose nationalism runs deep. Iranians are not likely to respond to a major war with the United States by blaming their own leadership and trying to overthrow it. Even if they did, the most likely result would be a transition from clerical rule to a military dictatorship headed by the powerful Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. In the worst case, internal collapse would lead to civil war, just as it has with several of Iran’s neighbors, potentially creating terrorist safe havens and enormous refugee flows.

Even short of such worst-case scenarios, any war with Iran would tie down the United States in yet another Middle Eastern conflict for years to come. The war and its aftermath would likely cost hundreds of billions of dollars and hobble not just Trump but future U.S. presidents. Such a commitment would mean the end of the United States’ purported shift to great-power competition with Russia and China.

Most likely, all parties understand these dangers—not least the Iranian government, for which a war with the United States would be particularly catastrophic. And for this reason, both sides will continue to try to avoid an all-out war. But sometimes even

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The Trump administration and the Islamic Republic should tread much more carefully, lest they send their countries down a dangerous and costly spiral that will quickly spin out of control. wars that nobody wants still happen. The Trump administration and the Islamic Republic should tread much more carefully, lest they send their countries down a dangerous and costly spiral that will quickly spin out of control.

This article was originally published on ForeignAffairs.com.

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US-Mexico Trade Dispute Stokes Volatility Concerns Agreement to Avoid Tariffs Raises New Political Issues for 2020 Elections 24

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by Joseph Braude American attention over the past two weeks has turned to President Trump’s dramatic move to impose tariffs on Mexican imports if the tide of migrants crossing the U.S.’s southern border continues. After nine days of anxious negotiations, an accommodation appears to have been reached, but one that raises new political issues for the 2020 elections.

US President Donald Trump holds piece of paper saying its his deal with Mexico as he speaks with reporters at the White House, in Washington, DC, on June 2019 ,11. (Getty)

The abruptness of the announcement incurred an unusual degree of opposition from many in the GOP Senate caucus.

appeared to conclude. On June 7, Trump announced over Twitter, “I am pleased to SUDDEN CRISIS CAUSES UNUSUAL RIFTS inform you that The United States of America has reached a signed agreement with Mexico.

On May 30, U.S. President Trump threatened The Tariffs scheduled to be implemented by over twitter to impose a rolling series of tariffs the U.S. on Monday, against Mexico, are on goods imported from Mexico: “On June hereby indefinitely suspended.” The White 10th, the United States will impose a %5 Tariff House vigorously contested initial reports on all goods coming into our Country from that the deal would consist of actions to Mexico, until such time as illegal migrants which Mexico had already consented in prior coming through Mexico, and into our Country, negotiations.

STOP. The Tariff will gradually increase until At a press conference on June 11, President the Illegal Immigration problem is remedied.” Trump waived a one page document in front The abruptness of the announcement incurred of the White House press corps, claiming it an unusual degree of opposition from many contained the text of new concessions from in the GOP Senate caucus. In a private the Mexican government. Although initially lunch with administration officials, half a mocked by his opponents, subsequent dozen Republican Senators voiced strenuous examination of an image of the document objection to imposing tariffs on Mexican appeared to confirm the President’s claim. imports. Senator Ted Cruz of Texas reportedly told the President’s representatives that “I IMPLICATIONS FOR 2020 want you to take a message back” to the White House that “you didn’t hear a single yes” Both American and Mexican officials have from the Republican conference. For his part, indicated that the crisis is likely to erupt Republican Senator Roy Blunt of Missouri anew. Mexican Foreign Secretary Marcelo said, "we've been pretty clear on that topic. The Ebrard said his government would consider president thinks that we've been very clear and a regional asylum agreement if the tide of that we don't know what we are talking about." migrants continued unabated. “We trust On the Democratic side, opposition to the that the measures we have proposed will be President’s policy was strong. Democratic successful,” he said. “But if they’re not, we’re Senator of New York Chuck Schumer criticized going to have to participate in this kind of the President’s gambit as “a bogus threat to discussion.” impose tariffs, which the business community and Republicans in Congress rejected. And now the GOP Senators effectively concurred. Joni president claims a bogus agreement with Mexico Ernst of Iowa noted that “if Mexico does not which contains policies that Mexico volunteered step up, I think the president will come back to it,” while Kevin Cramer of North Dakota said to do months ago. Bogus, bogus, bogus.” he was “certain” that President Trump would threaten to impose tariffs again: “It’s always A MUDDLED RESOLTION on the table with him as a strategy and when it As suddenly as the dispute emerged, it works, it’s great.”

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Homeward-bound Jihadists Thousands of Westerners Joined ISIS. Should They Be Allowed to Return?

By Jytte Klausen When Westerners arrived in the caliphate, they would burn their passports, ceremonially rejecting their national identity, and brag of the act on Twitter. Now that the

Islamic State, or ISIS, has lost its last stretches of land in Iraq and Syria, hundreds of these Westerners and their children are stuck in camps and prisons in northern Syria and Iraq, often hoping to return to their home countries.

Their governments, however, don’t want to take the

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Jihadists flee from Syria. (AFP)

jihadists back—and are resorting to dubious measures to keep them out.

Take the case of Shamima Begum. In 2015, at the age of 15, Begum and two school friends, both also teenagers, ran away from home in east London and flew to Istanbul. From there, they took a bus to the Syrian border, eventually reaching Raqqa, where they joined ISIS. At the time, the girls epitomized the phenomenon of “jihadi brides:” vulnerable young women groomed by online recruiters to marry Islamist fighters in Syria.

A different picture emerged of Begum and her motives in an interview she gave to The Timesthis February, after a journalist tracked her down at a sprawling UN camp for internally displaced persons (IDPs) in eastern Syria. Begum explained that she had run away in search of a “perfect family” in ISIS and that she regretted nothing. She also volunteered that having seen a decapitated head in a trash can “didn’t faze” her and, in a later interview with the BBC, suggested that the 2017 Manchester bombing was a “kind of retaliation” for the West’s attacks on ISIS. Ten days after arriving in Raqqa in 2015, Begum married a Dutch man who had converted to Islam and become an ISIS fighter. The young couple had three children, all of whom soon died, the third shortly after birth in the camp where Begum landed after fleeing the last remaining ISISenclave. Begum’s partner, Yago Riedijk, now 27, is being held in a Kurdish detention camp in northern Syria. In an interview with the BBC, Riedijk sent his love to Begum and said that he hoped they would be allowed to return to the Netherlands together.

But that prospect is unlikely. The Dutch government has convicted Riedijk in absentia of joining a terrorist organization, and he is a suspect in a foiled Paris-style terrorist attack on his home city in 2018. His pseudo-marriage to Begum, like all such unions administered by ISIS, isn’t legally valid, so Riedijk and Begum are almost certainly not entitled to family reunification in the Netherlands or anywhere else.

A number of the women known as jihadist brides have witnessed horrific violence and lost children and husbands. Some suffer from posttraumatic stress disorder and other ailments. Many are pregnant or have multiple children born in ISIS-held territory.

But among these women are also many who have looted the property of people fleeing ISIS or joined the female hesba— ISIS’ religious police—and tyrannized other Muslim women.

Some have bragged about taking women into slavery. In April, a German ISIS returnee, Jennifer Wenisch, who allegedly was a member of the morality police in Fallujah and Mosul, went on trial in Germany for war crimes and the murder of a five-yearold Yazidi girl, whom she and her husband held as a slave in Syria. Begum and others like her now claim that they were mere housewives in Syria, but their social media accounts suggest that some of them may have committed crimes even beyond the act of joining a murderous terrorist organization.

By some estimates, U.S.-backed Kurdish forces across eastern Syria now hold more than a thousand Western men and women like Begum and her partner, along with many children, in prisons and camps. The United States has pressured its European allies

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Western governments have taken steps to avoid the repatriation of ISIS fighters now stuck in northern Iraq and Syria, from revoking citizenship to outsourcing prosecutions. to put these detainees on trial in their home countries. Earlier this year, U.S. President Donald Trump tweeted that France, Germany, the United Kingdom, and others should repatriate and prosecute the 800 men from Europe who are among the detained fighters. Otherwise, Trump warned, the men would be freed and likely make their way back to Europe to commit new atrocities there. (Trump, for his part, opposes the repatriation of -24yearold Hoda Muthana, who traveled to Syria from Alabama in 2014 and whose passport was revoked by the Obama administration in 2016.)

European governments were unmoved, not least because the process of bringing ISIS returnees to trial at home is far from straightforward. In some countries, traveling abroad to join insurgencies in Syria and North Africa was not always a criminal act. Sweden, for example, criminalized such travel only in 2016, which means that any Swedish resident who traveled before then could be charged only for specific crimes committed in the conflict zone. But proof of offenses committed in the conflict zone is difficult to collect, despite the increasing use of refugee testimony and evidence gathered from social media accounts.

Most European countries do not allow pretrial detention for more than two to 14 days, and monitoring large numbers of free suspects for extended periods of time has proven difficult. And even when ISIS volunteers are convicted, they pose a problem for European prisons, which must then manage a population of proselytizing fanatics.

For all these reasons, European governments prefer to outsource the prosecutions whenever possible. “Foreign fighters should be brought to justice in accordance with due legal process in the most appropriate jurisdiction,” said a spokesperson for British Prime Minister Theresa May—inother words, not in the United Kingdom. Germany’s Foreign Ministry has acknowledged that German citizens stranded in Syria should, in principle, be brought home, but Heiko Maas, the country’s foreign minister, said that given the unstable security situation, repatriating the detainees would be “extremely difficult” to organize. Austrian authorities have declared it too risky to send consular employees to collect Austrian citizens from detention centers and IDP camps in Syria.

In February, France announced that 14 French ISIS combatants taken into custody in eastern Syriawould be sent to Iraq for trial.

But outsourcing justice in this manner is problematic.

European law prohibits the extradition of suspects to stand trial in countries where they may face the death penalty or be subjected to inhumane prison conditions. No clear statistics

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exist for how many Western citizens have been tried in Iraq or what sentences they received, but journalists who have attended court proceedings in Baghdad report rushed trials lasting just ten minutes. Men and women sentenced to death are executed on the spot. Three Belgians and at least 11 French citizens have been sentenced to death by hanging. The French government in January promised to intervene to avoid capital punishment for its citizens but continues to insist they must stand trial where their crimes were committed. The German government, meanwhile, managed to get one woman’s death sentence commuted to life in prison. Authorities in Kurdish-administered northeastern Syria, where there is no death penalty, have also prosecuted thousands of captured ISIS fighters but warn that they lack the capacity to deal with so many prisoners.

Alternative proposals raise their own problems. The Swedish government has suggested establishing an international tribunal specifically for ISIS fighters. But it is not clear where such a tribunal would be located, how suspects would be transferred to stand trial, or whether the court could deal with a caseload of several thousand suspects accused of crimes against humanity. The experience of similar tribunals for crimes against humanity in Rwanda and the former Yugoslavia indicates that the trial process would be timeconsuming and expensive.

For good measure, European governments have begun to strip ISIS travelers of their citizenship to prevent them from coming home. A week after Shamima Begum was found in a Syrian IDP camp, British Home Secretary Sajid Javid revoked her passport. Javid claimed that Begum was eligible for Bangladeshi citizenship, since her mother had a Bangladeshi passport, and would therefore not become stateless. Bangladeshi officials, however, denied that Begum was entitled to citizenship. Even if Begum were able to move to Bangladesh, she would likely face the death penalty for having joined ISIS. Two more British jihadist brides who left to marry ISIS fighters, sisters Reema and

Blocking the return of ISIS travelers by revoking their citizenship does nothing to bring to justice the estimated 1,200 European Union citizens who fought in Syria and Iraq and have already returned home

Zara Iqbal, have also had their passports revoked. The sisters may be eligible for Pakistani citizenship, but their five children, born under ISIS rule, are likely stateless.

According to The Independent, at least 150 British people have been stripped of their citizenship since 2010, although it is unclear how many cases were directly connected to the Syrian conflict. Australia, Belgium, Denmark, and the United States are also known to have revoked the citizenship of ISIS members and recruiters; several other countries, including Austria, Germany, and Switzerland, have either considered applying the measure or passed laws allowing them to do so.

Stripping ISIS travelers of their passports serves two purposes.

The first is revenge. “These people have gone to fight against democracy, freedom and everything Denmark stands for, and they do not belong in Denmark,” Inger Stojberg, the Danish minister for immigration, said in March. That sentiment is shared across much of Europe. The second advantage is caseload control, as the cost of monitoring the returnees already strains the resources of European probation and counterterrorism agencies.

To be sure, courts in Europe have often revoked the citizenship of people convicted of grave crimes such as terrorism, provided the convicted were dual nationals. In cases such as Begum’s,

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Leaving children behind in what remains a war zone is not an acceptable option. At least in this case, Trump was right: European governments should bring their citizens back home and prosecute those who committed crimes and atrocities.

however, states are applying the measure preemptively to avoid having to put the suspects on trial at all.

Revoking the citizenship of ISIS travelers raises legal questions and is bad policy. International human rights law provides that everyone has the right to a nationality and that no person may be deprived of citizenship if that would render him or her stateless. Most national laws, moreover, don’t allow stripping people of their nationality by simple administrative order. In some cases, authorities have been less than diligent about making sure the individual in question has a valid claim to citizenship elsewhere. In late 2018, for instance, a British judge blocked the government’s decision to strip two jihadists of their passports, finding that they had no valid alternative citizenship. As a result, European and U.S. courts may well block or overturn the measure in other cases.

Moreover, blocking the return of ISIS travelers by revoking their citizenship does nothing to bring to justice the estimated 1,200 European Union citizens who fought in Syria and Iraq and have already returned home. Few of these returnees have been prosecuted. Last year, a Yazidi refugee who had been held as a sex slave by ISIS told the BBC that she had run into her former tormentor outside a supermarket in Germany.

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Nor does stripping people of their passports address the plight of the children they bore while in ISIS-controlled territory. ISIS issued no valid passports, and children born in its territory are de facto stateless. None of the births were legally registered, and many orphaned children are in the care of women who are not their mothers. Polygamous and serial marriages make it difficult to establish parentage, without which claims to citizenship cannot be determined.

Still, Sweden recently repatriated the seven orphaned children of a notorious ISIS fighter, Michael Skramo, giving in to pressure from the children’s grandparents. France initially planned to repatriate some 150 children of French jihadists from Syria and Iraq, but the government, possibly fearing a public outcry, has admitted only a handful of them. Other governments have been even less forgiving. ISIS recruits “turned their backs on Denmark,” said Inger Stojberg, the Danish immigration minister, “so there is no reason for their children to be citizens.”

No easy solutions exist for dealing with the countless ISIS fighters—from Europe and elsewhere—now in the custody of U.S.-backed Kurdish forces. But the situation is highly unstable, and leaving ISIS families in camps and prisons or handing them over to Iraq for execution may not be a viable tactic for much longer. In the Syrian province of Idlib, jihadist groups—including some that are aligned with ISIS—are still waging a guerrilla war against the regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and may decide to fill their ranks by freeing ISIS fighters from Kurdish prisons. U.S. troop numbers in Syria have reportedly decreased, and in the event of a U.S. withdrawal, Turkey and the Assad regime may attack the Kurdish forces, which might no longer be able to keep watch over the detainees.

Leaving children behind in what remains a war zone is not an acceptable option. At least in this case, Trump was right: European governments should bring their citizens back home and prosecute those who committed crimes and atrocities.

This article was originally published on ForeignAffairs.com.

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Boris Johnson Edges Closer to Residing at Number 10

Early Tory Leadership Results Give the Brexiter a Comfortable Lead By: Ali El Shamy The first round of votes among Tory MPs has recently taken place on June 13, and candidates with fewer than 17 votes have been eliminated from the race. As such

Andrea Leadsom (11 votes), Mark Harper (10 votes) and Esther McVey (9 votes) have all bowed out. A second round of parliamentary votes will take place next, and candidates with fewer than 33 votes will be eliminated.

These successive ballots will take place until June -18 20 and by then only two candidates will remain. After

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which, the final two candidates will hold a series of debates for the next four weeks and then a postal vote, in which all members of the Conservative party will take part in, will take place and a new Tory leader and Prime Minister is expected to be announced by the week of July 22.

WHO IS LEFT IN THE RACE

Boris Johnson launches his Conservative Party leadership campaign at the Academy of Engineering on June 2019 ,12 in London, England. (Getty)

Unsurprisingly, one of Brexit’s vanguards, Boris Johnson, has taken the lead in the first round, having secured 114 votes.

Unsurprisingly, one of Brexit’s vanguards, Boris Secretary, but resigned in opposition to her deal. Raab Johnson, has taken the lead in the first round, having has said that he intends on getting the UK out by October secured 114 votes. Johnson first entered parliament in 31 and has suggested that he could suspend parliament if 2001, briefly exited the legislative body from 2008 to it considers delaying the withdrawal.

2015 as he served as London mayor during that time, Current Home Secretary Sajid Javid has also made and then made a return in 2016 as MP for Uxbridge it through to the second round with 23 votes, he first and South Ruslip. In 2016, he campaigned in favor entered parliament in 2010 and in the span of nine years of exiting out of the EU and marketed himself as a he managed to climb up the ladder of Tory hierarchy. staunch Brexiter, he served in Theresa May’s cabinet Javid is a champion of free market economics and during as Secretary of State but resigned in opposition to her his time as Home Secretary he has shown himself to be approach to Brexit. From the start of the leadership race, robust towards ships carrying migrants coming in to the Johnson was favored to become the new Prime Minister UK. He did, however, support remaining within the EU and his massive win in the first race conveys just that. during the 2016 referendum, but has allegedly switched Unlike May, Johnson has displayed robustness towards allegiances and now supports exiting the bloc. He the EU, as he has stated that the country must be out of doesn’t believe in getting out without a deal and seeks to the union on October 31 and that any delay would be a negotiate a new deal with the EU. defeat. However, he has ruled out that he is pursuing a One of the lesser-known candidates is Matt Hancock, “no-deal”, but said that the country must be prepared for current Health Secretary who gained 20 votes in the first such a scenario. He has also said that he would not pay round of voting. Thus far, he has been rather vague on the proposed 39 billion pound divorce bill to the EU. how we would approach the Brexit negotiation process Jeremy Hunt, who succeeded Johnson as Secretary of as he said that he would negotiate a time limit on the State, as also made it to the next round having gained 43 Irish backdrop and indicated that Theresa May’s deal votes. He is considered to be a much more levelheaded should not be entirely ripped up. He also criticized alternative to Johnson. As Health Secretary he managed those who would not address parliament’s concerns by to solve a contract dispute among NHS doctors, leading favoring a no deal scenario, it should be noted that unlike some to believe that he would be able to navigate the other candidates he has said that the Tories should look negotiation process with the EU. beyond Brexit and should pursue ways to regain votes Michael Gove, current Environment Secretary, has also from those who went to the Lib-Dems and Labor. tossed his hat into the race and has come in third place in With only 19 votes, current International Development the first round with 37 votes to his name. Gove has been Secretary Rory Stewart managed to edge it to the next an MP since 2005, and has served in many ministerial round. Like Javid, he is a former remain supporter but positions such as Secretary of State for Justice and has is now in favor of honoring the referendum result.

Sectary of State for Education. Some of Gove’s actions He has rejected notions of leaving without a deal and has have made him unfavorable among Brexiters, for called for compromise since he believes Britain cannot instance back during the 2016 Tory leadership race he realistically leave without a deal. initially supported his friend Boris Johnson. However, he quickly withdrew his support to enter the race himself; BREXIT OVERSHADOWS OTHER moreover he supported May’s Brexit deal.

POLICIES Domic Raab is another staunch Brexiter who is among the 7 contenders who made it through the first round What’s significant about this leadership race is the fact with 27 votes. He has served as Theresa May’s Brexit that Brexit has overshadowed all other policies, thus

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far the candidates have only conveyed how they will approach the EU and whether or not they favor a leaving without a deal. It should be noted that Michael Gove has stated that he would get rid of VAT (value added tax) and would replace it with a “flexible, lower tax regime”, which is peculiar since he voted for increasing rate of VAT 13 times between 2010 and 2015. Gove has also said that he would establish a cyber crime task force.

While the candidates have yet to talk much about their non-Brexit policies, some of their voting records might give a clue as to what their policies might be. All seven remaining candidates have generally voted for anti-EU policies, for instance they have all consistently voted against further EU integration and have also voted against the right of EU nationals already living in the UK to remain in Britain. Six out of the seven candidates have generally favored policies that benefit the wealthier parts of society as they have voted for reducing housing benefits for tenants who have houses with “too many” bedrooms and have voted against increasing taxes on those who earn more than 150,000 pounds a year. While their isn’t enough information on Johnson’s voting record on such motions, he has promised a tax cut on those earning 50,000 pounds or more a year.

The leading candidates also seem to be hawkish, as they generally voted for use of UK military forces in combat operations overseas. Hancock, Stewart and Javid have all voted against investigations into the Iraq war, while new weapons system.

Hunt, Johnson (who has voted in favor of the Iraq war in the first place) and Gove have all voted in favor of such DIGGING INTO THEIR PASTS investigations. Raab has never voted on such a motion.

Nevertheless, all the leading candidates have voted for British tabloid press has a habit of circumventing replacing Trident (the UK’s nuclear program) with a important issues and calibrating public attention toward trivial news stories. This leadership race is not any different, as British tabloids recently acquired reports indicating that Micheal Gove had taken cocaine while he was working as a journalist twenty years ago. The news story garnered so much attention and the Environment Secretary was forced to apologize for his past activities and said that he regrets his mistakes. Some have used to this incident to highlight his hypocrisy as back in 1999 he wrote a column in The Times criticizing members of the middle class for advocating for drug legalization back. The controversy encouraged Jeremy Hunt to somewhat come clean about his own past drugs use, as he said that he might have tried cannabis in during his youth: “I think I had a cannabis lassi when I went backpacking through India.” He told The Times. Rory

All seven remaining candidates have generally voted for anti-EU policies, for instance they have all consistently voted against further EU integration and have also voted against the right of EU nationals already living in the UK to remain in Britain.

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Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt speaks to the media following the arrival of US President Donald Trump and First Lady Melania Trump at Stansted Airport on June 2019 ,3 in London, England.

(Getty)

Environment Secretary Michael Gove leaves his home on May ,28 2019 in London, England. (Getty)

Stewart then admitted that he smoked opium 15 years ago when he was at a wedding in Iran, and a source close to Matt Hancock recently told the Telegraph that he occasionally tried cannabis when he was a university student, but has not taken any illegal substances since then. Domic Raab also admitted that he occasionally engaged in cannabis while at university, while Sajid Javid claims that he has never taken any illegal drugs in his life and took this opportunity to use the moral high ground telling Sky News: "Anyone that takes class A drugs needs to think about that supply chain that comes, let's say, from Colombia to Chelsea, and the number of lives that are destroyed along the way." The leading candidate has stated many times during the 2000s that he may have taken cocaine during his youth, however in typical BoJo fashion he would always make jokes about the incident to make it seem more innocent. "To say that I have taken cocaine is simply untrue." The leading candidate has stated, as he recounts that once during his university years he was offered a white powder substance, which he sniffed up and sneezed out instantly.

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He claims that he wasn’t sure what the powder was and might have actually been “icing sugar”. While Johnson isn’t a stranger to controversy, he managed to avoid this debacle all together.

PARLIAMENT REJECTS LABOR LED PLAN TO PREVENT NO DEAL The Labor Party recently led a cross party motion to parliament, which would have given no-deal opponents the chance to stop the UK from leaving the bloc without a deal on October 31. The cross party motion was backed

by SNP Westminster, the Liberal Democrats, Change UK and Plaid Cymru Westminster. Despite this cross party backing, the motion lost by a slim majority as 309 MPs voted against it, while 298 voted for it, with eight Labor MPs voting against their own party’s proposal.

As it stands, it seems like the staunch pro-Brexit wing of British politics will have much greater control of the negotiation process, but as always it is difficult to predict where the country will go from here.

A Weekly Political News Magazine

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From the Ancient Middle East, Art That Links Past and Present www.majalla.com

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Joseph Aoun: From Army Volunteer to Commander of Lebanon’s Military Forces

by Majalla-London

-3 Military Training Timeline Throughout his career, Joseph underwent Illustration by Ali Minadalou a lot of military training and his hard work led him to hold many military posts. In 1983, Joseph volunteered -1 Joseph’s Childhood and Domestic for the Lebanese army participating Life in many military courses. In 1986, he Joseph Aoun was born on January ,10 started he started training to become an 1964 in the Sin el-Fil suburb east of officer and a year later he started to train Beirut in the Matn district. Joseph was in military diving courses. In 1996, he into a Maronite family, his mother lived started a course to become a military to see her son become the Commander commander. He also did many courses of the Lebanese Armed Forces, but his abroad, for instance he did two infantry father passed away before his rise to courses in the US in the year 1988 and glory. Joseph now has a family of his 1995, respectively. He then underwent own, as he is married to Nehmat Nehmeh commando training in Syria in 1996. and together they have two children Between October 2002 ,1 and April ,3 named Khalil and Nour.

2003 he went to Syria to train to become a battalion commander. In 2008, he went -2 Early Ambitions to the US to undergo counterterrorism Since childhood Joseph wanted to work training. Finally, he did intelligence and in the military so he joined the military at counterterrorism training in Lebanon in the young age of 19. However, his skills 2013. go beyond military training since he is fluent in English, French as well as his native language Arabic. Moreover, Joseph -4 Hard Work Rather Than Connections earned a degree in Political Science with Joseph’s hard work and determination a concentration in International Affairs allowed him to rise up Lebanon’s military ladder. and a degree in Military Science.

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In 1985, he became a Second Lieutenant; he was then promoted to First Lieutenant in 1988.

In 1993, he became a Captain and then a major in 1998. In 2003, he was a Lieutenant Colonel and by 2007 he became a Colonel, he was then promoted to Brigadier General in 2013.On March 2017 ,8 Lebanon’s Council of Ministers appointed Joseph as the new military commander.

-5 Jroud Dawn Operation Under the command of Joseph Aoun, the Lebanese military carried out an operation in the Jroud area near the Syrian border to expel IS forces from Eastern Lebanon.

-6 Responsibility for Lebanon’s Security The rising tensions in the region and the spread of extremist groups has been negatively impacted the national security of many Arab states. However, Aoun’s extensive training in military operations and counterterrorism will hopefully enable him to ensure his citizens’ safety and security

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From the Ancient Middle East, Art That Links Past and Present An Exhibition At the Met Challenges How We Look at History

By Peter Frankopan “From the first century BC through the mid-third century AD, the political map of the Middle East was defined by two

superpowers,” write the curators of a spectacular show currently on view at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. One behemoth was the Roman Empire, “with its power base in the Mediterranean.”

The other was the Parthian Empire, “which controlled Iran and

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The exhibition as a whole may testify to the existence of a common identity among the peoples of the ancient Middle East, but the objects also demonstrate the strength and distinctiveness of local cultures within the region. periphery—or worse, a “world between.”

Many of the objects on display are jaw-droppingly beautiful.

One of the first on display is a ten-inch alabaster statuette of a goddess. She wears a gold necklace and pendant earrings, with a lunar crescent above her finely arranged hair. Standing with her palm outstretched, she is naked but for a ruby in her navel and two rubies set in her eyes. It is worth going just to see her: she took my breath away.

The exhibition is surprising, moving, and often dazzling. And it carries a particular significance at a time when the cultural landscapes of Syria and Yemen are devastated by war, and in some cases, deliberate destruction. ISIS, has destroyed the Temple of Bel at Palmyra, along with other buildings, tombs, and objects, and murdered those who once sought to preserve and protect them for future generations. They did so to erase the past; to wipe the historical record clean of reminders that this part of the world has a long history that is not connected to Islam, and that its people once believed and lived in different ways to those “approved” by fundamentalists.

THE WEALTH OF NATIONS Palmyra is an ancient ruined city situated 215 km northeast of the Syrian capital, Damascus. (Getty)

much of Central Asia.”

“The World Between Empires: Art and Identity in the Ancient Middle East,” open from March 18 to June 2019 ,23, brings together a glorious collection of artwork from the area “in between” these two great powers. The region included much of the modern Middle East: southwestern Arabia, Nabataea, Judaea, Syria, and Mesopotamia. According to the curators, this geographic space was a contested one, squeezed by powerful neighbors looking to gain at each other’s expense. But its inhabitants had much in common with one another: they spoke a variety of related languages, worshipped a range of deities in similar settings, and were part of a connected trading network that brought goods and commodities over short—and sometimes long—distances.

The question of shared identity—imperial or otherwise—is a vexing one that the exhibition does not set about definitively answering. Rather, the exhibition succeeds in focusing the eye on places that often get overlooked, relegated to the dreaded

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“The World Between Empires” presents nine linked towns and regions, each geographically and culturally distinct from the others but connected through trade routes. Three major trade networks defined the commercial life of the Middle East: spice and caravan routes through the north, maritime connections accessing the Indian Ocean, and land routes running east to China as part of the early Silk Road.

Trade generated enormous wealth for those who had access to desirable goods. Southwestern Arabia, for example, was famed for its frankincense and myrrh as well as for being a gateway for spices and jewels—such as the rubies sported by the nude goddess—from South Asia. The people living in southwestern Arabia were “the richest nations in the world,” Pliny the Elder wrote, thanks to the insatiable appetites of those in both the Roman and Parthian Empires for aromatics and spices. What made matters worse, he noted sourly, was that “they purchase nothing whatever in return.” Today, the empires would be said to be running a trade deficit.

Pliny the Elder’s comments underscore the fact that the fruits

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of commerce were not always concentrated in imperial hands— something that the exhibition makes abundantly clear. A magnificent bronze statue of a rearing horse, dated to the second century, is revealed by its inscription to have once been part of a pair that guarded the sanctuary of Madrah by Hawti’athat of the Ghayman tribe in southwest Arabia. Although missing its twin, as well as its rider, the statue is a reminder that in the ancient world, you didn’t have to be part of an empire to be able to enjoy the finer things in life. Wealth was generated where there was extensive trade. The workmanship of this quality and standard show the willingness not just to show off the fruits of prosperity but the means to pay for it, too.

The location of some of the places that flourished are obscure to many: the names of such kingdoms as Hadramawt, Qataban, and Himyar are all but unknown outside the rarefied world of classical scholarship. But by bringing together art that was produced or proudly displayed in these locations, the curators ask the viewer to consider the centrality to world history of regions otherwise portrayed as marginal or even irrelevant.

For this reason, the exhibition’s title is a curious one. In describing the cities, peoples, and cultures that form the focus of the exhibition as belonging to a “world between empires,” the curators effectively define these cities, peoples, and cultures in relation to the greater powers that surrounded them. But in point of fact, the exhibition provides a subversive and deeply compelling view of those who are precisely not Roman or Parthian. Situated outside of the apparatus of empires, these cultures possessed sophistication and subtlety that were the result of extensive borrowing from multiple sources and drawing on a variety of artistic as well as linguistic, religious, and cultural models. This sophistication is captured by the objects on display, which encourage the visitor to think about the ancient past as one of vibrant regional and intercontinental connections; of movements of people, ideas, and objects over hundreds or even thousands of miles.

The Nabataeans built the city of Petra into one of the most extraordinary locations in the ancient world, complete with enormous monuments carved into the rock. Petra was a metropolis, an emporium, and a jewel in its own right.

FORGING IDENTITIES The exhibition as a whole may testify to the existence of a common identity among the peoples of the ancient Middle East, but the objects also demonstrate the strength and distinctiveness of local cultures within the region. The rise of Judaism set Judea, for example, on a unique path not only in its religion but in political, economic, and cultural development. Monuments such as the Temple of Jerusalem, one of the largest temples in the ancient world, were built to convey an insistent, singular message of the power of one religion (in this case, Judaism) and to drown out others. A strong local identity coalesced around the religion, along with a desire for autonomy. In Judaea, the Romans met with the most robust and regular rebellions from large parts of the local population, who reacted to the overlordship, and the social, cultural, and political models imposed from afar.

The Nabataeans, whose kingdom controlled vital trade routes on a north-south axis, had their own ways of managing external pressure. The Nabataeans were fiercely independent and “exceptionally fond of freedom,” as the historian Diodorus of Sicily writes; when threatened, they would “take refuge in the desert, using this as a fortress, since it lacks water and cannot be crossed by others.” They were also enormously wealthy: they built the city of Petra into one of the most extraordinary locations in the ancient world, complete with enormous monuments carved into the rock. Petra was a metropolis, an emporium, and a jewel in its own right. Like New York City, Petra thrived because it

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Man standing in front of ancient monument in Petra, Jordan. (Getty)

master craftsmen. One, a striking image of a young woman named Bat’a wearing a collection of expensive jewelry that was commissioned by her grandfather during her lifetime, is particularly fine. The carving is also important from an arthistorical perspective, because unlike most others, it still contains some original pigment.

WHO OWNS HISTORY?

was accessible and mutable—and also like New York, it was not above trumpeting its own glory. One of the most striking exhibits is a giant limestone bust of Zeus-Dushara, the chief deity of the city, discovered by the Temenos Gate at Petra.

In Palmyra, local authorities fostered a distinct identity by issuing bilingual coinage and insisting that civic inscriptions on buildings be written in Greek as well as Palmyrene Aramaic. The exhibition includes a lovely set of reliefs and funerary portraits of Palmyrene elites, beautifully carved by

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Each of the nine zones of the exhibition offers revelations—from a full-sized, perfectly intact, fabulous Roman shield found at Dura-Europos (in Syria), to what is widely considered to be the earliest representation of Jesus Christ in the world, also found at Dura-Europos, inside a building that is thought to be the world’s oldest surviving church. Like the nude goddess, each of these objects alone is worth the visit.

A display of beautifully preserved glassware is captivating for the fineness of the objects and the brilliance of their color. I was transfixed by the relief of what is almost certainly the Arabian god Arsu, protector of caravans and ruler of the evening star, riding a camel and with a scarf around his neck billowing behind him. And I smiled at the cippus—a small funerary monument from Sidon in what is now Lebanon—that records the life of a woman named Bremousa (whose name literally means “angry woman”). Bremousa, it says, “was excellent and did not cause trouble. Farewell!” I can think of worse ways to be remembered.

The exhibition’s lavishly produced catalogue dedicates a final chapter to the wartime destruction of heritage sites in the Middle East. It also includes satellite images of Dura-Europos that document a second threat: illegal excavations are ravaging this site, as trophy hunters seek treasures to sell to unscrupulous buyers. That is heartbreaking.

One cannot help noticing how many of the glories on display at the Met come not from museums and collections in the modern countries in which they were found (though there are some important loans from Israel, Jordan, and Lebanon) but from collections in Denmark, France, Germany, the United Kingdom, and the United States. That says a lot about how the material culture of some parts of the world have been acquired by those living in others, as economic and political centers of gravity have shifted over time.

Those shifts have shaped the wider narrative of how we look at the past. Identifying peoples and geographic regions as being “between empires” presupposes that those empires are what matters. It can be tempting to think of the regions that connect empires as being important and interesting only in terms of how they link other, notionally more important and interesting states together. But as anyone who sees this exhibition should realize, not a single piece on show is marginal, produced by or for people on the periphery. Hopefully this magnificent show can help change how we look at ourselves, as well as how we look at those who were central—and not in between.

This article was originally published on ForeignAffairs.com.

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Diego Maradona’ is the Newest Documentary

by Oscar-Winning Director Asif Kapadia Latest Documentary Brings New Light on the Life of the Eccentric Footballer 42

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He was told about, and gained access to, 500 hours of previously unseen personal footage shot by two men hired

by Maradona’s first agent; for years they filmed the star during practices, at home and at key game moments.

Argentine soccer star Diego Maradona, wearing a diamond earring, balances a soccer ball on his head as he walks off the practice field following the national selection's 22 May 1986 practice session in Mexico City.

(Getty)

asks, considering it in a quiet corner of a beachside restaurant, “and not go crazy?”

“Diego Maradona,” which premiered out of competition at this year’s Cannes Film Festival and has been acquired by HBO, is a bracingly candid, completely involving examination of an on-field magician who inevitably stumbled off it.

When Maradona says in voice-over that he loves the game precisely because “on the field, problems go away, everything goes away,” you end up knowing just what he’s referring to.

But Maradona’s singular combination of fame and infamy isn’t what drew Kapadia to his subject. It was that, unlike Senna and Winehouse, Maradona did not die young and, periodic rumors of his death notwithstanding, is still very much alive at age 58.

“What happens to a child star when you grow up, lose your gift, have to face challenges like family,” the director explains. “Family stuff is personal stuff, messy and heavy. Amy and Senna never got to the point in their lives where they had to deal with that.”

Kapadia also was intrigued by the notion that though Maradona’s life is well known in broad outline,

By Kenneth Turan “There is a lot of his story that has never been seen.”

It’s not as if master documentarian Asif Kapadia, Specifically, there’s the seven tumultuous years whose films have profiled Formula One legend Maradona played for SSC Napoli in the Italian Ayrton Senna and revered singer Amy Winehouse, is league, the improbable combination, someone says in unfamiliar with famous folk. But there is fame, and the film, of “the most expensive player in the world and the poorest city in Italy.” there is Diego Maradona.

In his prime the greatest, most celebrated and most “There was a cycle in Maradona’s life that kept controversial player in the world’s most popular repeating, a cycle of success, death, then resurrection, sport, someone whose off-the-field excesses were as and the biggest cycle was in Naples,” Kapadia well known as his soccer wizardry gaining the 1986 explains.

World Cup for Argentina, Maradona has been both “During these years he wins the World Cup for Argentina and leads Naples to their first Italian league worshiped and attacked to an astonishing degree.

“How can you be treated like a god,” Kapadia titles. But also, he publicly denies paternity of a son

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he had with a girlfriend, and that was the moment everything began to change.”

It wasn’t only that these activities weren’t televised widely outside of Italy that attracted Kapadia. He was told about, and gained access to, 500 hours of previously unseen personal footage shot by two men hired by Maradona’s first agent; for years they filmed the star during practices, at home and at key game moments.

“Without that footage I would not have thought to make the film,” the director says. And even though “Diego Maradona” also features newsreel and TV footage of crucial events such as the player’s famous “hand of God” goal in the 1986 World Cup, Kapadia says his favorite clip in the entire film comes from those private moments.

“There’s a shot of him training and just playing with the ball, keeping it on his foot, the simplicity and beauty of him and the ball, his best friend,” the director says. “Even today, if you threw an orange at him he could keep it in the air forever.”

The central concept of “Diego Maradona” comes from the man who was essential to that training, physiotherapist Fernando Signorini, who theorizes, as Kapadia explains, that he was dealing with two people.

“There was Diego, the innocent guy, fun to be around, just great. Then there was Maradona, edgy, violent, deceitful.

“But Diego would say of Maradona, ‘If it wasn’t for that guy I’d still be in the ghetto,’” referring to the favela of Villa Fiorita outside of Buenos Aires, which remains such a dangerous area that fearful local cab drivers flatly refused to take the director there.

The director asked Maradona very difficult questions about his cocaine use, the extent of his connection with Naples crime syndicate the Camorra, and that messy personal life.

Kapadia not only saw that unseen footage, he interviewed people who had not spoken on camera before, including Cristiana Sinagra, the mother of Maradona’s son, and the player’s ex-wife, Claudia Villafañe.

When it came to interviewing the subject himself, that was a different story. “The hardest part of making the film was waiting for Diego,” Kapadia remembers with a sigh.

“Meet[ing with him] was complicated, never straightforward. You are always dealing with the people around him,” says the director, who brought an entire crew from Britain to Maradona’s then-home in Dubai, expecting an interview, only to go home with just a five-minute meet-and-greet.

Helping him gain access was Maradona’s passion for Ayrton Senna (“He once put flowers on Senna’s grave, and if his second child had been a son he would have named him Ayrton”) and his pleasure when

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Fiammetta Lucino, Chris King, Asif Kapadia, Paul Martin and Hussain Manawer attend the "Diego Maradona" Gala Screening at Picturehouse Central on June 2019 ,10 in London, England.

(Getty)

Kapadia’s “Amy” won the best documentary Oscar while negotiations were going on.

Returning to Dubai with just a small team (Kapadia recorded the sound himself) made a difference, but the director still had to ask Maradona very difficult questions about his cocaine use, the extent of his connection with Naples crime syndicate the Camorra, and that messy personal life.

“The first time I asked him about his ex-wife, he said, ‘Never mention her again,’” Kapadia recalls. “They were suing each other at the time. His relationships with everyone close to him have gone sour.”

But Kapadia persisted (“If I don’t ask him directly, how can I put this in the film?”), to the point where Maradona “gave me a pretty tough look and said, ‘I’ll say one thing, you’ve got nerve to ask me about that to my face.’ Then he added, ‘For that I respect you.’”

One of the hallmarks of Kapadia’s documentaries is

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that the interviews he does never appear as talking heads but are used behind footage shot while the events were taking place.

“There’s something I love about seeing people in their prime,” he explains. “I want audiences to forget the present and be invested in the moment. You don’t need to see their faces today, it just weakens it dramatically.”

Having made that trio of documentaries, Kapadia, a graduate of London’s Royal College of Art, says he had “a light bulb moment” about his work when he attended a London exhibit of classic Pop Art. “With Andy Warhol’s Marilyn Monroe silkscreen or Roy Lichtenstein’s comic strip images, those pictures already existed,” the director explains. “Taking footage and reinterpreting it, giving it back, I realized that’s what I do.”

This article was originally published in the LA Times.

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The Price of Peace in Northern Ireland

“Say Nothing� Shows How Slow Reconciliation Can Be

By Jonathan Stevenson* The Northern Irish Troubles, relative to their scale, are the most studied conflict in modern history. They

took place in a province the size of Connecticut with a population of around 1.6 million people, and they claimed fewer than 4,000 dead over the course of 25 years of continuous low-intensity warfare.

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File picture of British Prime Minister Tony Blair (R), US Senator George Mitchell (C) and Irish Prime Minister Bertie Ahern (L) smiling on April ,10 1998, after they signed an historic agreement for peace in Northern Ireland, ending a -30 year conflict. (Getty)

The satirist P. J. O’Rourke called Northern Ireland “heck’s half-acre.” Early in the conflagration, the British government’s cynical policy was to maintain “an acceptable level of violence,” at least until one minister was indiscreet enough to admit it.

Yet the Troubles have enthralled generations of writers and scholars. And no wonder: preceded by centuries of injustices against the Irish perpetrated or supported by the British, a quarter century of simmering conflict and ritual murder engendered intense resentment and distrust between the mainly Protestant unionist majority in Northern Ireland, which wants the province to remain part of the United Kingdom, and the primarily Catholic nationalist minority, which believes it should unite with the Republic of Ireland. Although the 1998 Good Friday Agreement ended the fighting, the question of Northern Ireland’s sovereignty still hovers forebodingly over the island.

The situation remains combustible, all the more so thanks to Brexit, which 56 percent of Northern Irish voters opposed. The United Kingdom’s departure from the EU promises to hurt the Northern Irish economy by restricting trade with the rest of Europe and ending the European Union’s subsidies to Northern Ireland. It might also force the British and Irish governments to re-impose a militarized border with the republic, which could antagonize nationalists and reopen old wounds that the EU’s leavening of sovereign boundaries had helped to heal.

If Northern Ireland’s unresolved sovereignty and the aggravation of Brexit aren’t enough to explain writers’ perpetual fascination with the Troubles, add to those reasons the conflict’s location in a developed and Anglophone great power, the military success of the Provisional Irish Republican Army (the organization reigned supreme among militant groups in Europe, easily out killing Spain’s Basque militants, Italy’s Red Brigades, and West Germany’s Baader-Meinhof Gang), the Troubles’ status as the United Kingdom’s last and most recalcitrant colonial problem, and the romantic urgency that talented and fervent writers and scholars of Irish lineage—inside and outside Ireland—have conferred on it.

The title of Patrick Radden Keefe’s new book, Say Nothing, draws from the work of perhaps Northern Ireland’s most famous writer, Seamus Heaney,

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As Sinn Fein leader, Gerry Adams adopted a “long war” approach, which assumed that it would take years, perhaps decades, to drive the British out and that the nationalists needed to enlist broad swaths of the Catholic population in the fight. whose poem “Whatever You Say, Say Nothing” the IRA adopted as a slogan. Say Nothing illuminates the uneasy proximity of barbarity, self-worth, and a kind of comfort in violently divided societies.

Like Jez Butterworth’s brilliant recent play, The Ferryman, the book concerns the IRA practice known as “disappearing,” whereby the group would execute those deemed inimical to the cause of a united Ireland without acknowledging or attributing the murder, leaving the family to wonder about the victim’s fate. Keefe focuses on one famously cruel disappearance perpetrated by the IRA. The victim was Jean McConville, a -38year-old mother of ten, widowed for less than a year and deeply depressed.

Her primal offense was apparently to console a British soldier who had been shot, presumably by the IRA, and was crying for help on the road outside the McConvilles’ apartment block in West Belfast.

In December 1972, the worst year of the Troubles, 12 IRA volunteers abducted McConville from her home as her terrified children looked on. A week later, a man came by the flat and handed McConville’s -11year-old son, Michael, her purse and the three rings she’d been wearing. Later, Michael understood that despite years of wishful denial, that was the moment he knew, in his heart, that she was dead. Although the IRA disappeared people only sparingly, the practice acquired a high profile when family members of the disappeared began to push for public accountability in the early 1990s, even as the IRA declared a cease-fire ahead of a historic peace initiative. The IRA admitted to McConville’s murder in 1999, and her remains finally washed up on a beach in the Irish Republic in 2003, when her family was able to give her a

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proper burial.

Wisely, Keefe does not tax readers with a set-piece history of the Troubles. But to give McConville’s story its full nuance, he does extend his journalistic tendrils well into the conflict. For instance, he offers a captivating account of the IRA Belfast Brigade’s counterintelligence operation, which was responsible for identifying informants. Brendan Hughes, commander of D Company, who would become an IRA legend for his exploits in prison and on the street, turned two IRA men who were double agents for the British Army into triple agents for the IRA, enabling his unit to target and kill a covert British operative as well as clean house within the organization. The IRA demonstrated its ruthless ethos—the punishment for all informants, known as “touts” or “grasses,” was death—in the McConville case.

McConville died very early in the Troubles. The weight of the evidence that Keefe has collected and sorted indicates that Gerry Adams, as commander of the IRA’s Belfast Brigade, probably authorized her execution. But Keefe sees that the resonance and irony of her death, and the messiness of the terrorism and counterterrorism business more broadly, are best understood in the light of the conflict’s subsequent history.

In 1976, republican inmates in the Northern Irish prison known as the Maze started what would become a long series of protests when they insisted on being categorized as political prisoners, refusing to wear uniforms that would have marked them as common criminals and donning blankets instead.

Two years later, they escalated their campaign with the “dirty protest,” refraining from washing or emptying their chamber pots and smearing their own excrement on their cell walls. In 1980, seven prisoners engaged in a -53day hunger strike. A more effective one was mounted in March 1981, ending seven months later after ten of the strikers had died and Bobby Sands, the first one to perish, had been elected a member of the British Parliament. The 1981 hunger strike affirmed and consolidated Irish republicans’ defiant prison culture. And what was more important, it rejuvenated the IRA’s declining morale and recruitment and inaugurated the “Armalite and ballot box” strategy of Sinn Fein, the

IRA’s political alter ego, whereby the republican movement would advance a nonviolent political campaign to unite Ireland in coordination with the armed struggle.

As Sinn Fein leader, almost ten years after McConville’s death, Adams thus adopted a “long war” approach, which assumed that it would take years, perhaps decades, to drive the British out and that the nationalists needed to enlist broad swaths of the Catholic population in the fight. At the same time, he intensified his denials that he was ever a member of the IRA or participated in paramilitary operations, a position he has maintained. Although nobody with even a minimal knowledge of the Troubles believes Adams, many republicans accept his dissembling as a politically expedient ruse, designed in part to give the British, the

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A group of children playing up to the camera while a fire smoulders in the street behind them, Belfast, Northern Ireland, December 1971. (Getty)

unionists, and other interested parties political cover for dealing with Sinn Fein. Absent Adams’ denials, it’s not clear that U.S. President Bill Clinton would have given Adams a visa to drum up U.S. support for the peace process, that British officials would have countenanced him as an interlocutor during the run-up to the crucial 1994 IRA cease-fire, or that unionists would later have sat across the table from him in negotiating the Good Friday Agreement. It’s likely that a mole run by British Army intelligence served for years as the IRA’s internal security chief, a fact that casts doubt on the accuracy of the IRA’s determinations that anyone, McConville included, was an informant for the British. In this light, none of the major players had a strong incentive to seek the truth about McConville’s vanishing. And the British and Northern Irish security forces’ collusion with loyalist paramilitaries and the various cover-

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ups they engaged in afforded the former little credibility in any case.

More particularly relevant to McConville’s story than this wider history is the saga of the Price sisters, Dolours and Marian—legacy republicans and true believers hardened by Bloody Sunday, in 1972, when British paratroopers opened fire on a republican march protesting the internment of IRA suspects, killing 14 unarmed Catholic protesters.

Keefe tells the story of the Price sisters well, recounting how their unwavering defiance as hunger strikers while imprisoned for their part in the IRA’s 1973 bombing of the Old Bailey embodied both the fierceness of “physical force” republicanism and the pervasiveness of the revolutionary spirit in the Catholic community.

This is well-trod ground, but the passage of time allows Keefe to re-examine it with

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calibrated hindsight. In particular, he conveys the conspiratorial flavor of the time and the way in which the republican community habitually diverted blame away from the IRA for killings that seemed especially atrocious: Almost as soon as Jean McConville had disappeared, rumors began to circulate that she had not been kidnapped at all—that, on the contrary, she had absconded of her own free will, abandoning her children to shack up with a British soldier. The children, who were already seized with worry, became aware of these stories. They would hear people whispering, feel the hot glare of judgment when they saw their neighbors in the shop or on the street. . . . Archie McConville would later conclude that all that whispering amounted to more than just salt in the wound. It was a kind of poison, he decided, “an attempt to wreck our minds.”

In its last hundred pages, the book shifts from topical history to investigative journalism, as Keefe attempts to reconstruct the last days of McConville’s life. He found a trove of relevant material through the Belfast Project, a privately funded initiative at Boston College that collected testimony from paramilitaries involved in the Troubles. The idea behind the project was to ensure an accurate historical record and, less centrally, to allow for the accountability and closure that the Good Friday Agreement had understandably elided in the name of more immediate peace. The two main researchers on the project were Anthony McIntyre, known as Mackers, a former IRA volunteer and a prisoner

As Sinn Fein leader, Gerry Adams adopted a “long war” approach, which assumed that it would take years, perhaps decades, to drive the British out and that the nationalists needed to enlist broad swaths of the Catholic population in the fight.

with a doctorate in Irish history, and Ed Moloney, the author of a revisionist history of the IRA. Both men believed that Sinn Fein had sold out the IRA rank and file by settling for less than a united Ireland in the Good Friday Agreement.

Brendan Hughes, who died in 2008, shared that belief. In a taped interview, he told McIntyre that the IRA had determined that McConville was an informer, having twice discovered a British Army–supplied transmitter in her house. He said that Adams had ordered her disappeared. In a newspaper interview, Dolours Price, who died in 2013, confirmed Adams’ supervisory involvement, adding that she had driven McConville over the border to the Irish Republic for her execution, in line with IRA practice. In a Belfast Project interview with Moloney, Price also indicated that an unnamed source had seen McConville outside a British Army barracks, that she had confessed to informing on the IRA, and that Price had been one of three IRA volunteers present when McConville was shot dead over a pre-dug grave. Although British authorities obtained the Belfast Project tapes in 2014 with the help of a U.S. Department of Justice subpoena, and the Police Service of Northern Ireland detained and questioned Adams about McConville’s murder, the police released him without charges. Only former IRA Chief of Staff Ivor Bell, then 77, was indicted for the crime.

Keefe wonders whether McConville ever even had a transmitter, which would have entailed a heavy investment for the British and a substantial risk for McConville, who would have had precious little high-value intelligence to offer. He also questions Price’s account of McConville’s confession.

Some of its details don’t square with known circumstances, and guilt might have impelled Price to rationalize the killing. But by way of a protracted and sometimes breathless subnarrative, Keefe does reach one hard factual conclusion, on the basis of fairly strong circumstantial evidence: Marian Pricefired the fatal bullet. (She denies it.)

The revelation may slake readers’ presumed thirst for melodrama. But whether or not McConville really was a grass, who ordered her killed and who actually did the deed are ultimately of little consequence today. As Keefe’s assiduous journalism ultimately makes clear, the true significance of her death lies

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The sons of Jean McConville carry her remains to St Pauls church past Divis Flats on the Falls Road October ,1 2003 in West Belfast, Northern Ireland. (Getty)

in what it reveals: that political violence disfigures society as a whole, whether with guilt or with grief, even decades after the fighting has stopped. Near the end of the book, Keefe writes: “The body is a fantastic machine,” Hughes told Mackers in one of his Boston College interviews, recounting the grueling sequence of a hunger strike.

“It’ll eat off all the fat tissue first, then it starts eating away at the muscle, to keep the brain alive.”

Long after Hughes and Price called an end to their strikes and attempted to reintegrate into society, they nursed old grudges and endlessly replayed their worst wartime abominations. In a sense, they never stopped devouring themselves. The official pronouncement in the coroner’s report for Dolours Price was “death by misadventure.”

Although Northern Ireland is technically at peace, traumatic memories, individual and collective, have fueled competitive, ancestral outrage— “whataboutery,” as the Northern Irish call it—

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keeping society divided, cross-community rhetoric vitriolic and sectarian, and a dormant conflict at risk of reigniting. However small the Troubles may have been, Northern Ireland remains a laboratory of protracted communal violence, relevant to conflicts on any scale. If 3,600 killings have so poisoned society there, consider the impact of body counts orders of magnitude larger elsewhere and the work required to ameliorate the damage. Keefe’s fine, searching book shows that a political agreement formally resolving a conflict marks only the beginning of a long, agonizing, and fitful process of reconciliation. *JONATHAN STEVENSON is a Senior Fellow at the International Institute for Strategic Studies and Managing Editor of Survival.

This article was originally published on ForeignAffairs.com.

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Regain Your Confidence 5 Ways to Gain Confidence Boost during Your Senior Years

by Harvard Men's Health Watch Lost your self-confidence? These five strategies can help you find it.

As you become older, it’s common to lose some confidence as your body changes and you face

life-altering events, like retirement, health issues, and loss of loved ones.

“Yet many men don’t recognize the impact that lack of confidence can have on their lives,” says Fred Silverstone, a licensed mental health counselor and founder of the SAGE (Successful

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Aging through Group Engagement) program at Harvard-affiliated McLean Hospital. “It can make men more withdrawn, less active, and more fearful about everyday events like driving and handling technology. They begin to believe they can’t live like they once did.”

THE BELL CURVE OF CONFIDENCE A person’s level of confidence and self-esteem typically follows a bell curve. It gradually rises during the late teen years, peaks during middle age, and tends to decline after age 60, according to a 2010 study of people ages 25 to 104 in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.

The researchers said the main reason for this pattern is that midlife is when people typically occupy the highest positions of power, status, and importance. They’re working, involved in relationships, and more adventurous about trying new things. In contrast, older adults often lose these roles as they enter the later stages of life.

The best way to regain confidence is to remind yourself of your capabilities, address the obstacles that keep you from feeling confident, and work around those obstacles.

“Don’t feel badly if you can’t do everything you once did, or at the same level or intensity,” says Silverstone. “The goal is to focus on what you can do now and build from there. This will help show you that you have much to offer and can still enjoy an active, satisfying life.”

DON’T BELIEVE IN AGEISM Serious concerned senior man posing looking down. (Getty)

Another reason older adults lose confidence is ageism — the socially pervasive idea that you are too old to do certain activities.

In fact, studies have found that age stereotypes can diminish older adults’ ability to perform tasks even if they possess the proper skills.

For instance, research published in 2016 in the Journal of Applied Gerontology looked at the influence of ageism on driving ability among adults ages 65 and older. Participants’ driving confidence was measured by a questionnaire, and then everyone was exposed to either negative or positive age stereotypes.

The participants then completed a driving

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A person’s level of confidence and self-esteem typically follows a bell curve. It gradually rises during the late teen years, peaks during middle age, and tends to decline after age 60. test. When confidence levels were recorded again, those who had been exposed to negative stereotypes had much lower self-reported confidence in their driving ability, even when they performed well on the driving test.

The lesson here is this: don’t let your age dictate whether or not you have the right ability, skills, or desire to succeed at something.

BEST DAYS AHEAD Here are five strategies that can help you gain greater confidence and realize that your best days may still lie ahead.

1. Look Good: When you look good, you feel good, so take pride in your appearance. Make it a point to practice good hygiene, and get dressed each morning like you were going to work. “When you put in the effort to improve your appearance, you find that your opinion of yourself becomes more positive,” says Silverstone.

2. Learn Something: Activities like learning to paint or play an instrument, studying a foreign language, or taking dance lessons or writing classes help tap into the natural desire to learn and master a new skill.

“Being a beginner again is tough, but it shows you can still accomplish new things and find enjoyment in them,” says Silverstone. “This also reminds you that it’s okay to make mistakes, so you can improve and grow, which helps build self-confidence.” Find classes through your local adult education service center, senior center, or

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community college.

3. Challenge Yourself Physically: Find a physical challenge that you can realistically complete, create a plan of execution, and then work to meet that goal. For example, train for a 5K, complete a series of boot camp classes, or even walk a mile a day for a month.

“Any form of exercise, no matter how great or small, is beneficial for both physical and mental health,” says Silverstone. “Regular exercise also helps you build confidence in your ability to be active, while setting a challenge with mini goals along the way lets you experience the wonderful feeling of accomplishment.”

4. Stay Connected: It’s not as easy to venture out and interact with people as you age, and this is even harder when you feel less confident. Yet studies show that personal connections help reduce the risks for depression and anxiety often associated with feelings of low self-esteem.

Lack of confidence can make socializing a challenge, so Silverstone suggests volunteering — for instance, with a hospital or as a tutor for children. “Choose something you enjoy that also provides personal interaction and gives you a chance to use your available skills.”

Another option is to create your own men’s group. For example, organize a weekly or monthly gathering of your friends. “This type of group dynamic is great because many men share the same issues, like health problems or changes in financial status,” says Silverstone.

Studies show that personal connections help reduce the risks for depression and anxiety often associated with feelings of low self-esteem.

Working through these issues helps you feel less alone in your own struggles. “A men’s group also can recreate the social world of the workplace, which many men found a stimulating and confidence-boosting environment,” says Silverstone.

5. Seek Help: Group therapy or one-on-one counseling can help you work through obstacles that affect confidence. “Never be afraid to seek professional help when you need it,” says Silverstone. “Help is always a good thing.”

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Happy smiling mature couple using smartphone outdoor on the street. (Getty)

Smiling senior man standing on a beach, wearing a wetsuit and carrying a surfboard. (Getty)

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