Courcy's Intelligence Brief - 19 & 26 December 2012

Jordan squeezed in Egypt-Turkey push for hegemony

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Last Friday we sent out a Special Alert highlighting King Abdallah II of Jordan’s concerns about the rise of the Muslim Brotherhood. The King warned about the machinations of “two Arab states and a regional country” seeking to establish “a new extremist alliance”. The king didn’t identify the members of this “extremist alliance”, but he did attack Egypt’s President Muhammad Mursi for seeking to marginalize Jordan and to harm it by interrupting its gas supply.

King Abdallah’s primary concern seems to be the way in which Egypt and Turkey, strongly backed by Qatar, are seeking to consolidate a Muslim Brotherhood ascendancy in the Sunni Arab world, and that Egypt and Turkey are coordinating closely on such a vision cannot be doubted.

Turkey, under the Islamist-oriented Justice and Development Party (AKP) of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, is trying to consolidate Turkish influence in all the Arab Spring states that have seen gains by the Sunni Islamist tendency, particularly Egypt and Tunisia. It is also working assiduously for the overthrow of the Alawite regime in Syria led by President Bashar al-Assad and its replacement by Sunni Islamists.

Turkey’s main enemy in all this is Iran, and the collapse in relations between the two was exemplified this week by the last-minute cancellation of the planned visit to Turkey on 17 December by Iran’s President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. The latest cause for tension has been the stationing of Patriot missiles along the Turkey-Syria border – which prompted Iran’s Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Salehi to warn that this was a provocation that could lead to large-scale war.

That this warning came from Salehi is important. In the past, following threatening remarks to Turkey made by Iranian military commanders and others, Salehi has told Turkey that it should only take seriously remarks emanating from Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamanei, President Ahmedinejad or from Salehi himself. According to Salehi, belligerent remarks by other officials could be dismissed as "personal opinions" and not reflective of official Iranian policy.

Iran’s deteriorating relations with Turkey are compounded by the dashing of its hopes for benefitting from the Arab Spring. Its initial hope was that it could benefit from the Arab Spring by getting closer to Egypt and through the increasing influence of Hamas. But the combination of US pressure and concern about the violence perpetrated in Syria by the Iranian-backed Assad regime, has pushed both Egypt and Hamas away from Iran, not closer. This move by Egypt has also helped to allay US fears about any possible Egypt-Iran rapprochement.

But opposition from Iran and civil-war in Syria are not the only problems for Turkey’s vision for an MB-dominated Middle East. First of all, as Jordan has shown, not all Sunni Arab regimes see this as a positive. Secondly, there is a danger that Iraq is once again going to be turned into a major battleground.

Turkey’s plan is to forge a coalition with the Iraqi Sunni Arabs and the Iraqi Kurds to undermine the Iranian-backed Shia government in Baghdad. The Shia government in Baghdad, however, is not taking this lying down and is trying to rekindle Sunni Arab animosity towards the Iraqi Kurds in order to re-establish Arab unity in Iraq (albeit under majority Shia leadership). So while the Turks are playing the Sunni card (the Kurds are Sunni as well), Baghdad is appealing to Arab nationalism.

How successful this will be remains to be seen, but there is no doubt that relations between Iraqi Kurdistan and Baghdad are continuing to deteriorate. This week, Kurdish leader declared that if the federal government implements threatened funding cuts to the region, this would be viewed as a “declaration of war”.

In his first interview for months, Barzani said this week: “Cutting the budget of the region from Baghdad we would consider it as war, a declaration of war and Baghdad will be held responsible for the consequences.”

Then, turning to the question of Iraqi purchases of F-16 fighter jets from the US, Barzani said: “If Baghdad or the federal government thinks about the usage of such things, then we will be obliged to go back to the times when we had to think about how to target the F-16s...We hope this will not be the case, but we have to get ready.”

Meanwhile, Israel is watching all this with alarm. It is more than happy to see Iranian influence curbed, but not at the price of establishing a Muslim Brotherhood ascendancy throughout the Sunni Middle East, of which one of the main beneficiaries will be Hamas. One of the factors that is causing particular alarm for Israel, we are told, is a concerted move by Hamas to rebuild its influence in the West Bank and to re-establish its military presence, particularly in the Hebron and Nablus areas.

One well-connected source told us this week that the relative quiet that has broken out in the Gaza Strip has been matched by increased street-level violence in the West Bank. The quiet period of 2008-12 seems to have come to an end. And a new poll by the Palestinian Centre for Policy and Survey Research shows that, if an election were to be held today in the territories, Hamas’s Ismail Haniyeh would defeat Mahmoud Abbas by three percentage points. The poll indicates that most Palestinians prefer Hamas’s openly declared aim to destroy Israel.

Highlighting their alarm, in recent weeks the Israeli defence establishment has let it be known that it considers the eruption of a third intifada to be only “one incident away”, and the army is making practical preparations for such an outbreak.

The US, for its part, believes it can control Egypt and Turkey, through its aid to Egypt and Turkey’s membership of Nato. It also believes that the Western powers have no option but to support the outcome of the democratic process in the Middle East. Israel is not so sure, and nor is the Hashemite regime in Jordan. The only certainty is continued instability, with further regime change and the possible break-up of established entities such as Syria and Iraq seemingly inevitable. JdeC.

NOTE: Kuwait’s new parliament, which held its first session since the general election on Sunday (16 December), now has 17 Shia MPs out of a total of 50 seats. This is a higher proportion than their share of the population.

The Saudi-owned pan-Arab daily Al-Sharq al-Awsat summed up the concerns that this is causing when it wrote on 18 December: “Shiite MPs could well turn their backs on their traditional backing of the government and join the opponents of the PM Sheikh Jaber al-Mubarak. Should this be the case, Shiite MPs should make sure not to misuse their power of oversight just for the sake of it, and also ensure that their loyalty is to the State of Kuwait and not to their Shiite sect, or to any outside power [such as Iran]. All eyes in Kuwait – and the Gulf in general – are on those 17 Shiite MPs.”

Afghan rivals meet in Paris

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There is some enthusiastic chatter about a three-day meeting on Afghanistan which opened in Paris on 19 October as part of attempts to get rival factions talking to each other ahead of the 2014 Western pull-out. One of the purposes of the Paris meeting, organized by the Strategic Research Foundation (FRS) is to get the Taleban talking to the Northern Alliance, or the National Front of Afghanistan (NFA) as it has now become. In that respect, the talks do represent an advance, but the level of vitriol between the Taleban and the Kabul administration suggests that there will be no progress towards substantive negotiations.

In statement ahead of the gathering, the Taleban said: “Our representatives will only address the conference; as the conference is a research and scientific meeting, no agreements will be made with anybody and no talks will be held with the occupying powers of the Kabul administration.”

Separately, on 18 December the Taleban also issued a statement denying reports that it was ready to talk to the Afghan government. It said: “Recently, international media outlets have been publishing a number of exaggerated and unfounded reports about the political activities of the Islamic Emirate [the Taleban]. In this regard, they are attributing their personal views and clearly wrong information to the spokesmen of the Islamic Emirate and then comment about them...

“One such false report that has been published in some media outlets today alleges that the spokesman of the Islamic Emirate has accepted they will take part in a meeting to be convened by the UNAMA [UN Assistance Mission in Afghanistan] in Kabul if they are invited by the Kabul administration.

“Such reports are far from truth, and the Islamic Emirate strongly condemns them. The Islamic Emirate will never wait for an invitation from the Kabul administration nor take part in a meeting that is held in Kabul...”

On the other hand, NFA leader Ahmad Zia Masud has said: “We seek an understanding between us and the Taleban to know their views and finally to pave the way to reaching peace.”

The NFA is being represented in Paris by Masud, while the Taleban is being represented by Shahaboddin Delawar, a senior figure in the Taleban’s political office in Qatar. The government has sent a presidential adviser, Haji Din Mohammad, and Masum Stanakzai from the High Peace Council. The rebel group Hezb-e Eslami is being represented by leader Golboddin Hekmatyar’s son-in-law Ghairat Bahir.

The significance of the meeting, despite the downbeat comments from the Taleban quoted above, is that it will be the first such meeting between representatives of Taleban leader Mullah Omar and top figures in the Northern Alliance. It is also interesting that this meeting comes at a time when Pakistan has also unfrozen slightly towards the Northern Alliance. In July, Masud and other Northern Alliance leaders met with Pakistan’s Prime Minister Raja Pervaiz Ashraf in Kabul.

But whatever small progress there might be in getting the Taleban to talk to the NFA, the gulf between the Taleban and the Kabul administration appears to remain unbridgable. The Afghan government responded to the Taleban’s negative statements, quoted above, by saying: “It is not negotiations. The meeting cannot represent all Afghan political sides. The Taleban have clearly said that they would not hold peace talks. All these issues give us the impression that the Paris meeting does not enjoy support.”

The Kremlin's remorseless pressure works on Lebedev

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Just as Russian prosecutors have announced new fraud charges against anti-corruption campaigner and opposition leader Aleksey Navalnyy, it appears that another target of Kremlin bile, Alexander Lebedev, is succumbing to the pressure.

The new fraud charges against Navalnyy and his brother Oleg were announced on 14 December, on the eve of an opposition protest raly in central Moscow. Navalnyy is also the subject of an earlier charge filed in July. Informed sources say both charges are a fairly transparent attempt to cow a troublesome opponent. The two cases both involve charges that could entail maximum jail terms of 10 years.

The charges of fraud are related to a contract to provide postal delivery services on behalf of a foreign-owned company. Prosecutors allege that the Navalnyy brothers defrauded their foreign counterparts by subcontracting the delivery work and overcharging for it. They allege that there was a fraud because Navalnyy's firm did not provide the services itself. And they accuse the brothers of laundering part of the proceeds through a factory owned by their parents.

Navalnyy’s response has been to say that the Russian Investigations Committee had become “an instrument of political policing” which fabricates cases “in such a way that even people who are not particularly fond of me throw up their hands in despair and say: this is taking things to their limit”.

Navalnyy remains confident that continuing protests will lead to early elections, saying: “I am working with the aim of this to happen sooner rather than later.” He also said that he had no intention of immigrating under the pressure from the Kremlin.

Media tycoon Alexander Lebedev, does seem to be bending to the pressure, judging by his 14 December announcement that he is to end his funding of Novaya Gazeta, one of Russia’s most vociferous opposition newspapers. The announcement comes as he faces trial for “aggravated hooliganism” for attacking a businessman on a TV show in 2011.

Lebedev has said that he is ending his funding because the paper can now be self-financing, but Russian media watchers say this is impossible. In 2010, Lebedev subsidised the paper with over $3m and he did so again in 2011. The level of his funding in 2012 is not known, but the commercial facts haven’t changed – and advertising revenue is very hard to come by for anti-Kremlin papers.

In another sign that Lebedev is bending to Kremlin pressure, he has said that his National Reserve Bank will not now be issuing an anti-corruption credit card in partnership with Navalnyy’s Foundation for Fighting Corruption. He made a statement saying that Navalynyy’s anti-corruption efforts were no longer as effective as they had been, and he has said that the widely derided anti-corruption campaign inspired by the Kremlin is working. Lebedev’s trial, on charges that could entail up to seven years in jail, is due to begin in the new year.

Risk pointers

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*** Muslim extremists in Russia. According to Aleksey Grishin, president of the Religion and Society centre, Islamist extremism is on the rise on Russia, partly as a consequence of influences from Central Asia. Speaking on 17 December, he said: “Russian Islam is in a catastrophic situation today. It has been attacked by extremists. Over the last three years, 32 key figures have been killed, many of them Tatars...Immigration flows are bringing in a huge number of elements, movements, sects not traditional for the Russian Federation, for Russian Muslims.”

Grishin added: “Those pushed out of Central Asia by strict laws of Central Asian republics, these people are escaping to us. Local officials in Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan tell me that ‘in fact they are hiding in Russia’. But what are they doing in Russia? They go to mosques and start seizing mosques of traditional Russian Muslims.”

*** Netanyahu still on target for re-election. The latest opinion polls suggest that the right-religious bloc is on target to win 64 of the Knesset’s 129 seats in the 22 January election, giving a majority of eight seats over the centre-left bloc. Likud-Beiteinu’s share would be 37 seats, with Labour on 17, Yesh Atid on 11, and Hatnuah on 10. Meretz is expected to win four seats and Kadima just two.

*** Warning on Iran from former Israeli air force chief. The Iranian nuclear question has faded a bit from the public discourse in recent weeks, but last Wednesday (12 December), former Israel Air Force commander Maj-Gen Ido Nehushtan warned the Jerusalem Post Diplomatic Conference in Herzliya that Iran is continuing to make progress on its nuclear programme.

He warned that “time is working only for one side...the Iranian side. As time goes by it becomes less and less possible to stop this programme. The Iranians are masters of negotiations. They invented the game of chess. They know how to do the business. Time is working on their side.”

The former air force commander also dismissed any idea that a nuclear Iran could be contained. He recalled the Cuban missile crisis of 1962 and said: “Can you manage a crisis like this vis-a-vis a radical Islamic regime? This is a hot area, not built for cold wars.”

Turning to the Arab Spring, Nehushtan argued that “what started as an earthquake coming from youngsters became a big winner of political Islam”. Overall, he said, the region is “less stable, more inflammable, and more religious”. Solutions, he said, “are very difficult to come by”.

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