Israel and Palestine, pain and battle

[Posted on our WordPress blog, where we intend to focus on international security and Adverse Private Forces]

Israel and Palestine, amidst all the pain and the relentless battle

POSTED BY MILITARYECOLOGY ⋅ JULY 29, 2014

(...) If geopolitics was a playground, we could see the parties to this conflict behaving like selfish and stubborn children who do not care to listen to what fellow pupils, teachers, or parents say.  Carrots or sticks do not work either. (...)

http://militaryecology.wordpress.com/2014/07/29/israel-and-palestine-amidst-all-the-pain-and-the-relentless-battle/

Russian Sanctions, the British style: raw evidence

We will write a proper post about this issue. Meanwhile, we believe it is important for you to have access to key documents regarding arms transfers to Russia form the United Kingdom in light of 1) the conflict in Ukraine, and 2) the downing of Flight MH17 of Malaysian Airlines by Russian-backed rebels.

Please bear in mind our previous post ‘This is how the economic sanctions on Russia imposed by the Westcurrently work.‘ (or @WordPress) In particular, let’s draw attention to the colloquial distinctions we made about who the good and the bad Russians are.

After the recent wise words by British PM David Cameron that some European countries are not doing enough to restrict arms and defense transfers to Russia (he likely had France in mind), it seems that he was oblivion to the fact that the U.K. was as active as the France transferring military components to Russia in spite of the alleged strengthening of sanction on Russia after the shooting down of Flight MH17. We will offer key quotes on a subsequent post.

The House of Commons Committees on Arms Export Controls recently released a key report:

Volume I: Scrutiny of arms Exports and Arms Control (2014): Scrutiny of the Government's UK Strategic Export Controls Annual Report 2012 published in July 2013, the Government's Quarterly Reports from October 2012 to September 2013, and the Government's policies on arms exports and international arms control issues.      First Joint Report of the Business, Innovation and  Skills, Defence, Foreign Affairs and International  Development Committees of Session 2014–15:

• Volume I: Report, together with formal minutes: PDF
• Volume II: Memorandum from the Chair of the Committees: PDF

If you examine Volume II,  per pages 498-510 of ‘Annex 9: Extant arms export licences to Countries of concern’, you will find plenty about Russia. Whoops the daisies! Off course it is about how you integrate some of those items together. In the end, you do not want the wrong mix finishing in the wrong hands, e.g. Russian-backed rebels shooting down civilian planes. However, 10 Downing Street spin doctors were selling the idea that the U.K was a sanctions example as opposed to other European Countries – not exactly then!

Regarding Annex 9, ‘The Chairman of the Committees on Arms Export Controls wrote to the BIS Secretary of State, Vince Cable, on 10 April 2014 requesting details of extant UK strategic export licences to each of the 27 countries listed as the FCO’s Countries of human rights concern.’ (page 498).

Hence, in light of PM Cameron answered questions on the Commons this week, please read the letter of July 23, 2014, written by The Chairman of the Committees on Arms Export Controls, Sir John Stanley, to the PM: PDF

The Chairman of the Committees on Arms Export Controls basically asks for 'clarification on what is now the Government's policy of arms to Russia'!

Indeed, this is food for thought, which  brings back to the forefront our previous post on Russian sanctions.

How the economic sanctions on Russia imposed by the West currently work

Good Russian oligarchs: they invest their billions on real estate in Europe and North America and/or keep their billions in Western banks, which helps keeping those financial institutions afloat (in other words, generating the spiraling profits needed to continue paying mega bonuses to their executives until the next crash and taxpayer bailout). Spending a great deal of time on their European villas or North American mansions also helps.  Hence, Stephen Moss from The Guardian ponders ‘Why are rich Russians so obsessed with buying up London property?’ (read the story) while Andrey Goncharenko snaps up Britain's most expensive house for £120m (read the story)

Bad Russian oligarchs: they keep their billions at home and/or financial heavens not controlled by Western financial institutions. They do not tend to own American or European-made mega yachts and do not sky in Aspen or Gstaad –Vladimir Putin and Western leaders are outraged by this uncool behavior!

Western economic sanctions apply to bad Russian oligarchs. To good Russian oligarchs, it is and will continue to be business as usual.

If a bad Russian oligarch cannot become a good Russian oligarch overnight, he should be sent to Siberia and his billions spread among the good Russian crowd.  But it is advisable that a tiny fraction of that money goes to Putin enterprises. This should help, for example, with the arming of the Ukranian separatist rebels who just shot down today July 17, 2014, Flight MH17 of Malaysian Airlines from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur, killing the 280 passengers onboard. 

Why not destabilize oil-rich Kazakhstan next?  Surely, some rebellion of some sort can be engineered there too.

It is thus good to know that Western economic sanctions on Russia are working and that good Russian oligarchs vastly outnumber the bad and uncool type. However, a few good oligarchs will need to become bad ones in order to fund the Kazakhstan campaign.  That’s a shame.

Stop the press. The US president and the UK Prime Minister just tweeted in unison their outrage about the terrorist attack on Flight MH17 and promised more economic sanctions on bad Russian oligarchs.  Igor Strelkov, a leader of the pro-Russian rebels Donetsky People’s Army who claimed responsibility for this terrorist attack, just read the tweets and surely will be losing his sleep tonight!

30,000 boat refugees reach Europe in a day

What would European governments do if in a single day 20,000 or 30,000 migrants cross the Mediterranean Sea and reach European shores? As things stand, this is likely to happen sooner than later and European governments will be able to do little about it.

The following day, there will be emergency meetings everywhere. Navies and coastguards will start taking a more active role tackling the seemingly unexpected development. Yet, soon they will realise that due to budget cuts there are not enough vessels and seamen to patrol the Mediterranean Sea.  And if a Navy vessel reaches any of the dinghies or ‘fishing’ boats peppering the Mediterranean Sea, what can be done about it?  Repatriate the migrants? But to which country, as the people crowding the boats come from a multitude of nationalities and most likely they disposed of their identity documents upon jumping on-board. There is also the issue that EU countries are signatories of the UN refugee conventions and protocols and UNHCR data shows that over 80% of the people attempting to reach Europe 'are fleeing violence or persecusion in their homelands.' 

An emergency EU committee will be established -its recommendations to follow a few months later. The recommendations will be heavily debated and an agreement on an action plan will not be immediately forthcoming.  The debate could also degenerate into a far-right versus far-left circus igniting passions, but little else. Meanwhile, the multi-million business of the illegal transport of migrants to Europe will continue flourishing.  Inevitably, some fundamentalist terrorists will take advantage of the trend and perhaps indoctrinate a few people whilst waiting for processing at a refugee camp –a random jihadi blog post we recently examined curiously discussed a conflict between Europe and Islam at the same time as migration to Europe by boat!

Some might say that 20,000 or 30,000 migrants reaching European shores in a single day is an alarmist thought, but not really. Like flash mobs, this can be orchestrated via cellular phones and social media, particularly when there are profits to be made by any of the adverse private forces involved in human trafficking and smuggling. There is already the precedent of the over 800 migrants storming the Morocco-Spanish border back in March 2014 and attempting to climb the fence separating Africa from the Spanish enclave of Melilla (see video).

This is approximately the same number of people currently camping in Calais, France, and hoping to reach the United Kingdom one day. Indeed, once inside continental Europe the migrants arriving by boat from North Africa can easily move across the countries signatories of Schengen Agreement. The UK is not a signatory of the Agreement.

Over three years ago, we published the post ‘The fear of mass migration from Libya (and North Africa) into Europe.’ It is a this point in 2011 when we thought that this was a problem getting out of hand and something needed to be done by the EU promptly. Fast forward to 2013, during the first six months UNHCR estimated that some 8,400 migrants and asylum seekers landed on the coasts of Italy and Malta alone; the figure is substantially higher for 2014. Accelerating the trend, the exodus of thousands of Syrians continues unabated; a refugee crisis compounded by the rise of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIS). There is also the new wave of people escaping Ukraine and ‘democratic’ Egypt, Iraq, and Libya, and so on. 

The coverage of the issue by the news media has been uneven, as stories have largely focused on the humanitarian dimension of the problem. Hundreds of people drowning yearly while attempting to reach Europe is indeed a humanitarian catastrophe. UNHCR estimates that, as of May 13,at least 170 have died in 2014. Besides the humanitarian debate, however, we need to pay greater attention to the real problem:  a migration crisis that needs to be carefully managed and monitored and for which we need novel resources and solutions.

In the absence of any breakthrough since we first highlighted the problem in 2011, we adventure to propose that one solution involves the EU outsourcing the patrolling of the Mediterranean Sea in the search for migrants to the maritime security industry. We first proposed this idea in 2012, when we pondered ‘how much will change in the near future now that Syria is next on the list and Egypt’s Spring is heading to an ambiguous Autumn’ (read the post please), Yes, the same type of private military and security personnel providing maritime security in piracy hotspots. However, an operation of this size can only be done by a consortium of Private Military and/or Security Companies and via an umbrella contract of LOGCAP’s magnitude.  But then again, we need to wait for the crisis to explode on our face before we can move to brainstorm properly real-world solutions. So we will wait for the time when 30,000 or so migrants reach European shores in a single day and the death roll escalates commensurably before continuing this discussion.