Courcy's Intelligence Brief - 29 June & 6 July 2011

Items

• A positive signal from Turkey

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  As the second Freedom Flotilla prepares to set sail for the Gaza Strip (and a confrontation with the Israeli navy), the withdrawal of the Mavi Marmara by its Turkish owners (IHH – Insan Hak ve Hürriyetleri ve Insani Yardim Vakfi) is a welcome sign of moderation given the recent hardening of Turkey’s anti-Israel stance.  Mavi Marmara was the ship that was involved, as part of the first ‘freedom flotilla,’ in a violent clash with the Israeli navy on 31 May 2010 in which nine Turkish activists were killed.

  This second flotilla is being co-ordinated by a senior Hamas activist, Muhammad Sawalha, and many of the participating organizations are linked to the Muslim Brotherhood.  The origin of the Gaza flotilla movement was the conference held in Istanbul in February 2009 following Israel’s three-week military campaign against Gaza beginning in December 2008.

  The Istanbul Declaration issued on 13 February 2009 included the following statement: “The obligation of the Islamic Nation [is] to open the crossings – all the crossings – in and out of Palestine permanently, in order to allow access to all the needs of the Palestinians – money, clothing, food, medicine, weapons and other essentials - so that they are able to live and perform the jihad in the way of Allah Almighty.”

  The inclusion of “weapons” in the list of essentials that needed to be delivered to the Palestinians was seen by Israel as all the justification it needed to prevent any actions flowing from the Istanbul Declaration.

  There was, naturally, an enormous rift last year between Israel and Turkey following the boarding of the Mavi Marmara and the killing of the nine Turkish activists.  In a speech on 2 June 2010, Turkey’s Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan – of the Islam-based Justice and Development Party (AKP) – raged about “the absolutely illegal way” in which Israel had attacked the boat “spilling the blood of innocent humans”.

  Less well known is the degree to which the Turkish government had been involved in the planning of the first flotilla.  Its support for the flotilla appears to have been channelled through the Turkish Muslim Brotherhood network, and it included the attendance of officials from the AKP at meetings in support of the flotilla.  There was also a meeting between Erdogan himself and a delegation of flotilla movement leaders from Britain and France shortly before it set sail.  Turkish government administrators facilitated the purchase of the Mavi Marmara from the Istanbul municipality, which was controlled by the AKP.  Erdogan’s own ties to the Global Muslim Brotherhood network date back to his affiliation in the 1970s with the World Assembly of Muslim Youth (WAMY), a Saudi Wahhabi charity with alleged connections to extremist and terrorist groups.

  Leaked American diplomatic cables attribute the Erdogan government’s actions as much to neo-Ottoman dreams as to Islamist solidarity, and that assessment was reinforced by Erdogan’s victory speech following the 12 June general election that we quoted in our 15 June issue.  He proclaimed: “Sarajevo won today as much as Istanbul; Beirut won as much as Izmir; Damascus won as much as Ankara; Ramallah, Nablus, Jenin, the West Bank, Jerusalem won as much as Diyarbakir.”

  The leaked State Department cables attribute these “neo-Ottoman fantasies” of regaining lost Muslim lands and avenging Muslim defeats in part to the influence of Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu.  But now the IHH has withdrawn the Mavi Marmara from the flotilla, and the first hint that this might happen came when Davutoglu said on 7 June, just ahead of the election: “The aid flotilla should wait to see what happens with the Rafah border crossing being opened, and to see how Israel perceives the new [Palestinian unity] government.”  On 17 June, IHH’s leader duly announced that the ship wouldn’t join the flotilla because of technical difficulties.

  Although the IHH has denied that the decision to withdraw the Mavi Marmara was anything to do with the Turkish government, the Israelis appear to be taking an optimistic view of the development.  There is a feeling that those within Turkey who have been warning about damaging relations with Israel are now being listened to, partly because of the government’s wish to play a mature leadership role to the Arab Spring.  There is even talk of secret negotiations between Israel and Turkey.  It may be wiser not to read too much too early into this development, but it is nevertheless a positive signal from Turkey, especially after Erdogan’s neo-Ottoman election victory speech.  JdeC.

• Pakistan and Saudi looking for alternatives

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  President Obama’s 22 June announcement of a phased US withdrawal from Afghanistan was both inevitable and broadly popular with the American public.  His plan to bring home 10,000 troops this year, a further 20,000 by the end of the summer of 2012, and the remainder by end-2014 is supported by 72% of the US adult population, including by 50% of Republican voters.  It is difficult to argue against the policy, but the consequences will be far-reaching and they already seem to include a rethink in Pakistan’s policymaking circles about future relations with the United States.  Meanwhile, the tensions caused by the Arab Spring are prompting an equally robust rethink in policymaking circles in Riyadh.

  The Pakistanis are in favour of talks with the Taleban, so they are in favour of the main drift of Obama’s policy.  However, that Pakistan-US relations have been tested to the extreme by the discovery of Osama bin Laden in Abbottabad is no secret.  The US is dubious about Pakistan’s protestations of innocence; Pakistan is furious about the infringement of its sovereignty.

  Now Pakistan is worried that as US troops are withdrawn there will be even greater reliance on drone attacks and special forces operations on the Pakistani side of the border.

  Obama in his speech made it clear that the US intends to increase its pressure on Pakistan.  He said: “We will continue to press Pakistan to expand its participation in securing a more peaceful future for this war-torn region.  We will work with the Pakistani government to root out the cancer of violent extremism, and we will insist that it keep its commitments...So long as I am president, the United States will never tolerate a safe haven for those who aim to kill us.”

  Perhaps not surprisingly, the anti-US elements in Pakistan now see the coming US withdrawal as an opportunity to call for a reassessment of Pakistan’s reliance on the US.  Pakistan has, of course, long been close to China, but there is a feeling that the US withdrawal from Afghanistan could provide Pakistan with an opportunity to further enhance this relationship, particularly as China seeks to increase its influence in Central Asia and its access to the Middle East.

  As tensions in the South China Sea continue to rise, Pakistan’s Chinese-built Gwadar port is becoming of increasing strategic importance to China as an alternative transport route for Middle East crude oi,l as well as providing a route to Central Asia through Afghanistan.  Pakistan is now actively advocating to Beijing that new opportunities are arising for the exploitation of Gwadar.

  The Saudi factor

  Pakistan’s options may have been increased by the Arab Spring – or more exactly by Saudi Arabia’s feeling of vulnerability and its growing distrust of the United States.  Riyadh’s current unease is based, inter alia, upon a feeling that the US is not putting enough pressure on Iran over its nuclear programme, horror over the speed with which the US dropped Egypt’s Hosni Mubarak and Tunisia’s Ben Ali, and worry over its lack of understanding about the suppression of the Shia unrest in Bahrain.  Riyadh is further perturbed by Iranian support for the Houthi rebellion in Yemen and the strengthening of Hezbollah’s grip on Lebanon.

  An example of Saudi disquiet with the US was an article published in the Washington Post on 16 May by Saudi government strategic adviser Nawaf Obaid, who complained: “As Riyadh fights a cold war with Tehran, Washington has shown itself in recent months to be an unwilling and unreliable partner against this threat.”

  Saudi Arabia has also become more vocal on the Palestinian question.  The former Saudi ambassador to the United States, Prince Turki bin Faisal al-Saud, warned in a recent article that there would be “disastrous consequences for US-Saudi relations if the United States vetoes UN recognition of a Palestinian state”.  All of this has seen Riyadh making a concerted effort to strengthen ties with China and Pakistan (there are already up to 50,000 Pakistanis employed within the military and security sectors in the Gulf States).

  However, there is nothing uniform or simple about these shifting patterns.  The US, for instance, is also being castigated in some quarters for not supporting the Arab revolutionaries with sufficient enthusiasm because of fear of what might happen in the Gulf monarchies, including Saudi Arabia.

  Equally, Pakistan’s enthusiasm for recalibrating its relations with the US and becoming even closer to China would not necessarily help it with its India problem.  India in recent months has gone out of its way to distance itself from any concerted effort to isolate China, and India-China trade has been booming.  By 2015 it is expected that bilateral China-India trade will reach $100bn from $60bn in 2010.  Pakistan’s trade with China was $7bn in 2009 and is expected to reach $18bn by 2015.

  The only consistent theme seems to be a weakening of the American position.  It is leaving Afghanistan, like Iraq, without achieving stability; it has abandoned long-standing allies in the Middle East without finding favour with their successors; and it has upset other long-standing allies because of its apparent lack of support.

  At the same time, China continues to make inroads while India is distancing itself (for the time being at least) from anything that smacks of ganging up on China.  Europe’s attempt to take responsibility for Libya is proving less than decisive at a time when it is, in any case, struggling with its own internal difficulties.

  And, finally, Israel (for which the US remains the ultimate guarantor) is seeing its own strategic position deteriorate so dramatically as to render any conceivable compromise with the Palestinians impossible for as long as the current uncertainties persist – a timescale that many are calculating in decades rather than years.  The Turkish move on the Gaza flotilla (see main briefing) is a more positive sign, but it is still just one straw blowing in the wind.  It isn’t yet sufficient to alter Israel’s calculations.

• China and Japan in tit-for-tat warnings

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  The Australia-based Lowy Institute for International Policy has issued a report warning of potential conflict in the Western Pacific.  The report titled Crisis and confidence: major powers and maritime security in Indo-Pacific Asia argues that the sea lanes of Indo-Pacific Asia are becoming “more crowded, contested and vulnerable to armed strife”.  It says naval and air forces are being strengthened “amid shifting balances of economic and strategic weight” and that the changing deterrence and war-fighting strategies of China, the United States, and Japan “involving expanded maritime patrolling and intrusive surveillance” are bringing “an uncertain mix of stabilising and destabilising effects”.  It concludes: “As the number and tempo of incidents increases, so does the likelihood that an episode will escalate to armed confrontation, diplomatic crisis or possibly even conflict.”

  This is, of course, exactly in line with the concerns we have been expressing for months, and two incidents in the past week have once again illustrated how far away key protagonists are from defusing the growing tensions.

  The first development was Japan’s warning to China on 23 June not to conduct marine research within Japan’s 200-nautical-mile exclusive economic zone (EEZ) after a Chinese marine vessel apparently conducted exploration activities off the north-eastern Tohoku region without Japan’s permission.

  The second development was China’s response to the latest US-Japan security talks.  China’s foreign ministry issued a statement on 23 June saying: “Japan-US alliance is a bilateral arrangement created under special historical conditions and should not go beyond its bilateral scope.”

  What China is getting at here is that the US-Japan alliance should not become the core of any wider ‘contain China’ alignment involving other Asian countries.  In effect, however, the US is achieving this through its network of bilateral agreements in the region.  The point was made explicitly last month by South Korean presidential adviser Dr Lee Chung-min who told the South China Morning Post: “China’s basically pushing us all closer...It is too big to contain, yet somehow we at times have to act to constrain China...It’s about understanding , support, and leverage.”

  If China needed any further confirmation that the Japan-US alliance is indeed evolving “beyond its bilateral scope”, then it should refer to the latest US Congressional Research Service backgrounder on The U.S.-Japan Alliance (dated 18 January 2011).

  The report notes that the focus of the US-Japan alliance “appears squarely set on the changing security contours of the region, with an explicit attention to China’s activities”.  And it says that after Japan’s release of new defence guidelines in late 2010, US defence planners “were pleased with some aspects, such as the explicit identification of concern with China’s activities and pledge to develop more elaborate defence cooperation with several other countries such as Australia, South Korea, India, and Southeast Asian and NATO states”.

• Risk pointers

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  *** “Give Gaza to Egypt”.  Moshe Arens, former defence and foreign minister of Israel, argued in an article in Haaretz on 28 June that Israel should give full control of the Gaza Strip to Egypt.  His argument is that now that the Rafah crossing between Gaza and Egypt has been opened the Gaza Strip is closer to Egypt and it has freed Israel of some of its responsibilities.

  Arens argued: “With Gaza under Egyptian control, the generally accepted paradigm of the ‘solution’ to the Palestinian problem being the ‘two-state’ solution may in time be seen in a different light.  The problems of the Palestinians living in Judea and Samaria [the West Bank] and of those living in the Gaza Strip, separated by an expanse of territory under Israeli sovereignty, is likely in time to be viewed differently by the world in general, by the Arab world in particular, by Israel, and by the Palestinian populations themselves.”

  He added that from now on Egypt should be made responsible for preventing the smuggling of arms into the Gaza Strip - and for terrorist attacks originating in Gaza and perpetrated with smuggled weapons.

  *** Iranian missile threat.  Iran’s air force commander-in-chief, Brigadier-General Amir Ali Hajizadeh, told journalists on 28 June that Iran’s missiles are intended to threaten US bases in the region and Israel, not Europe or any other countries.  He said: “Our missile range is 2,000km and our trans-regional enemies are America and Israel.  We do not feel any threat from other countries.  As a result, the range of our missiles is designed so as to target the American facilities in the region and Israel...America has made things easy for us because it has built its bases within 120-700km from Iran and we can attack all American facilities in the region by these missiles.”

  The comments coincided with this week’s Great Prophet 6 missile exercise.  The conservative paper Khorasan noted: “The most important strategic ally of the US in the Middle East, Israel, can no longer think of initiating war.  Iran’s defensive power is a trump card in possible negotiations with countries, which earlier used to believe that if the diplomatic tool would not result in stopping Iran’s nuclear programmes, the military tool would inevitably be effective.”

  *** Taiwan’s concerns.  Taiwan’s President Ma Ying-jeou said on 24 June that Taiwan’s attempts to buy F16C/D jet fighters from the US were “not going well”.  Ma told Paul D Wolfowitz, the chairman of the US-Taiwan Business Council: “We had hoped to send our letter of request to the US, but the US has all along been unwilling to accept it, and has even hinted that we should not make such a request.”