Writing for Bloomberg, Marc Champion has an interesting take on the current imbroglio between Moscow and Ankara:
Russian leaders have evidently been shocked by Turkey's deliberate decision to shoot down one of their planes, which they say was motivated by Turkey's alleged support for Islamic State and greed for the proceeds of smuggled terrorist oil. A simpler explanation is that Russia would have done the same.
Here is the hypothetical: What would President Vladimir Putin do if civil war broke out in a neighboring country, which had been part of the Russian empire for centuries before breaking away under circumstances, and with borders, that Russians still found difficult to accept? What would he do if, in that war, some of the rebels were ethnic Russians at risk of being brutally crushed by the armed forces of the neighboring state?
Actually, that's not so hypothetical; it pretty much describes eastern Ukraine. And we know what Russia did -- it became heavily involved in a poorly concealed invasion.
Syria was under Ottoman control from 1516 until the collapse of the Ottoman Empire. The Russian Empire took over the Donbass region in the mid-1700s. The "Turkmen" rebels that Russia's Su-24 aircraft was bombing at the time it was shot down are ethnic Turks. They ended up on the wrong side of the border when it was imposed by a 1921 treaty (shortly before the Donbass region was incorporated into Soviet Ukraine).
Even the strange psychology of how former empires feel they still have a special right, even responsibility, to intervene in long-since amputated parts is similar. When pro-democracy protests began in Syria in 2011, Erdogan said Turkey had to view the turmoil in Syria as a domestic issue. He was affronted when President Bashar al-Assad refused to do as he was told.
Since the shoot-down earlier this week, Turkey's President has all but admitted that his country deliberately targeted the Sukhoi because of what Russia was doing to the Turkmen rebels. "We have no intention to escalate this incident. We are just defending our security and the rights of our brothers," Erdogan said. As aggressive as the Turkish decision to down a Russian jet over a technical, 17-second airspace infringement was, Erdogan has not gone as far as Putin to assert his right to intervene militarily to protect ethnic kin, anytime, anywhere.
Now consider how Putin would react if the U.S. or North Atlantic Treaty Organization decided to get involved militarily in eastern Ukraine, placing an airbase and Patriot missile batteries 50 miles from the Russian border. Picture NATO aircraft providing airpower for an all-out Ukrainian ground assault against the Russian-backed rebels, aided by troops from Poland and Chechnya (in Syria's case, that's Iran and Hezbollah). Imagine Turkish and American jets flying into Russian airspace as they try to optimize their bombing runs.
Read the entire article here
German publication Spiegel has been interviewing former U.S. Special Forces chief Mike Flynn about the threat posed by Islamic State and how the extremist group can be confronted. Here's an excerpt:
SPIEGEL ONLINE: In recent weeks, Islamic State not only conducted the attacks in Paris, but also in Lebanon and against a Russian airplane over the Sinai Peninsula. What has caused the organization to shift its tactics and to now operate internationally?
Flynn: There were all kinds of strategic and tactical warnings and lots of reporting. And even the guys in the Islamic State said that they were going to attack overseas. I just don't think people took them seriously. When I first heard about the recent attacks in Paris, I was like, "Oh, my God, these guys are at it again, and we're not paying attention." The change that I think we need to be more aware of is that, in Europe, there is a leadership structure. And there's likely a leader or a leadership structure in each country in Europe. The same is probably similar for the United States, but just not obvious yet.
SPIEGEL ONLINE: You mean something like an emir or regional leadership?
Flynn: Exactly. In Osama bin Laden's writings, he elaborated about being disperse, becoming more diffuse and operating in small elements, because it's harder to detect and it's easier to act. In Paris, there were eight guys. In Mali, there were 10. Next time, maybe one or two guys will be enough.
SPIEGEL ONLINE: Can an attack of that scope even take place without being coordinated and authorized by the IS leadership in Syria?
Flynn: Absolutely. There's not some line-and-block chart and a guy at the top like we have in our own systems. That's the mirror imaging that we have to, in many ways, eliminate from our thinking. I can imagine a 30-year-old guy with some training and some discussion who receives the task from the top: "Go forth and do good on behalf of our ideology." And then he picks the targets by himself, organizes his attackers and executes his mission.
SPIEGEL ONLINE: Islamic State's leader is the self-proclaimed Caliph Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. What kind of leader is he?
Flynn: It's really important to differentiate between the way Osama bin Laden or Ayman al-Zawahiri represent themselves when they come out in public and how al-Baghdadi represented himself when he declared the caliphate. Bin Laden and Zawahiri sit in their videos, legs crossed, flag behind them, and they've got an AK-47 in their laps. They are presenting themselves as warriors. Baghdadi brought himself to a mosque in Mosul and spoke from the balcony, like the pope, dressed in appropriate black garb. He stood there as a holy cleric and proclaimed the Islamic caliphate. That was a very, very symbolic act. It elevated the fight from this sort of military, tactical and localized conflict to that of a religious and global war.
SPIEGEL ONLINE: What would change if al-Baghdadi were killed?
Flynn: We used to say, "We'll just keep killing the leaders, and the next guy up is not going to be as good." That didn't work out that way because al-Baghdadi is better than Zarqawi, and Zarqawi was actually better than bin Laden.
SPIEGEL ONLINE: So killing Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi wouldn't change much?
Flynn: Not at all. He could be dead today, you haven't seen him lately. I would have much preferred to have captured bin Laden and Zarqawi because as soon as you kill them, you are actually doing them and their movement a favor by making them martyrs. Zarqawi was a vicious animal. I would have preferred to see him live in a cell for the rest of his life. Their logic is still hard to understand for us in the West.
SPIEGEL ONLINE: What differentiates al-Baghdadi from Zarqawi, who led al-Qaida in Iraq between 2003 and 2006?
Flynn: Zarqawi tried to bring in foreign fighters, but not in the way that al-Baghdadi has been able to do. At the peak of Zarqawi's days, they may have been bringing in 150 a month from a dozen countries. Al-Baghdadi is bringing in 1,500 fighters a month, from more than 100 nations. He's using the modern weapons of the information age in fundamentally different ways to strengthen the attraction of their ideology. The other thing is how they target. Zarqawi was absolutely brutal -- he randomly killed guys lining up for jobs in downtown Baghdad. Al-Baghdadi is much smarter and more precise in his target selection, but still very vicious.
SPIEGEL ONLINE: Who is running the military wing of the Islamic State?
Flynn: I think that al-Baghdadi or the current leader of the Islamic State is very hands-on when it comes to parts of the military, but it's a very flat, networked organization. Inside Syria and Iraq in the Levant area, my belief is that he has a couple of subordinates who are responsible for military operations, logistical, financial, etc.; they represent a combination of Egyptians, Saudis, Chechens or a Dagestanis, Americans and Europeans. We know from debriefings that they have actually broken Raqqa down into international zones because of language barriers. They have put interpreters in place in those international zones in order to communicate and get their messages around. For example, the Australians alone have about 200 people. There's even an Australian sector in Raqqa, and they're tied into the other English speakers because not everybody shows up speaking Arabic. This requires a military-like structure with military-like leadership.
SPIEGEL ONLINE: How does IS treat people who volunteer?
Flynn: They document everything. These guys are terrific about it. In their recruiting and in interviews, they ask "What's your background? Are you good with media? With weapons?" It's this kind of well-structured capability they have that then evolves into a very, very unconventional force.
SPIEGEL ONLINE: How should the West fight this enemy?
Flynn: The sad fact is that we have to put troops on the ground. We won't succeed against this enemy with air strikes alone. But a military solution is not the end all, be all. The overall strategy must be to take away Islamic State's territory, then bring security and stability to facilitate the return of the refugees. This won't be possible quickly. First, we need to hunt down and eliminate the complete leadership of IS, break apart their networks, stop their financing operations and stay until a sense of normality has been established. It's certainly not a question of months -- it will take years. Just look back at the mission we created in the Balkans as a model. We started there in the early 1990s to create some stability and we are still there today.
Read the entire interview here
We are now closing the live blog for today. Joanna Paraszczuk will be back tomorrow with more updates on Islamic State and its ongoing impact on the wider world.
U.S. President Barack Obama paid tribute this morning to the victims of the November 13 Paris attacks, visiting the Bataclan concert hall where 90 people were killed. Obama was joined at the site by French President Francois Hollande and Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo. The U.S. president went straight to Bataclan after his arrival in Paris at around midnight local time.
Obama placed a single white rose at a memorial at the venue. He is in Paris to attend a climate-change summit.
Russian President Vladimir Putin has asked his prime minister, Dmitry Medvedev, to consider changes in legislation in order to confer the status of war veterans on Russian military personnel in Syria, TASS is reporting this morning.
The move comes in the aftermath of Turkey's downing of a Russian Su-24 jet last week.
Putin said that the Russian infantry who helped rescue the navigator from the downed Russian Su-24 jet were "real heroes."
AFP has tweeted this photograph showing U.S. President Obama paying tribute to the victims of the Paris attacks at the Bataclan concert hall this morning.
Russia's Life News, a pro-Kremlin news site, is reporting that a plane carrying the body of the pilot of the downed Su-24 jet has taken off from Ankara and is heading to Russia.
Life News is quoting Turkey's NTV television channel.
Turkey downed the Russian Su-24 jet near the Syrian border on November 24. The pilot and the navigator both parachuted out of the plane before it crashed but the pilot was shot dead by rebel gunmen.
The Russian Embassy in Ankara tweeted yesterday, November 29, that the body of the pilot would be flown to Moscow today.