Al-Qa'ida Controlling Eastern Libya

Πηγή: Townhall Finance
By Night Watch
Jan 31 2013

Egypt: Protests continued for a sixth day in Port Said. Sporadic clashes were reported in Cairo.

Egypt's army chief General Abdul Fattah al-Sisi, speaking to an assembly of cadets, warned that the current political crisis "could lead to a collapse of the state". He also warned that failure to address the country's political and economic challenges could threaten future generations. Unknown persons posted General Sisi's remarks on Facebook.

Comment: General Sisi did not state that Egypt is on the brink of collapse, as many mainstream media reported. In context and after a fuller reading, it is clear his comments were part of cadet indoctrination. They also appear to be non-partisan, applying equally to the government and protestors.

However, in stating the warning, General Sisi distanced himself and the Army from the political turmoil, which was limited today to Port Said and Cairo. He positioned the Army so it cannot be blamed if the government falls and so that it can intervene as a neutral party whose only interest is preventing state collapse, should that become necessary.

What is noteworthy is that he did not give strong support to the Mursi government. The Army is behaving very much as it did during the overthrow of Mubarak. It is protecting buildings and infrastructure, but avoiding the protestors.

Libya: Comment: On the 26th, Milan's Corriere della Sera published an article by an Italian journalist describing conditions in Libya, with special focus on eastern Libya, the region around Benghazi. Excerpts follow.

He wrote that Westerners are leaving eastern Libya. Businessmen, diplomats, and representatives of humanitarian organizations are leaving, along with the technicians who work in the oil industry.

"Rome considers that the Libyan authorities are currently 'incapable of ensuring effective control over the territory' against the Islamic fundamentalist threat. Thus 'travel in eastern, central, and southern Libya is absolutely discouraged unless motivated by stringent professional requirements which cannot opportunely be postponed.'"

Benghazi "is riven by feuding. The security forces are nowhere to be seen. The central government does not exist. The secessionist movement is growing. Garbage is rotting in the streets, and crime and the kidnapping industry are spreading...."

"Darnah, the coastal city nestling at the foot of the 'green mountains' …is now seen as an independent al-Qa'ida republic...."

" 'Al-Qa'ida's road blocks now control the roads in Darnah. They may comprise over 1,000 armed men. Their militia groups are spreading to the villages and they are occupying other cities such as Bayda in an attempt to reach Benghazi,' Libyan intelligence sources told us. The next deadline is the celebrations planned to the mark the second anniversary of the revolution. Violence is expected and terrorist attacks are feared also in Tripoli."

Comment: Darnah and Bayda are east of Benghazi on the coast road to Egypt. In Benghazi 17 February is the anniversary of the first anti-Qadhafi demonstration in 2011. The Italians have closed their consulate.

The Italian journalist suggests that al Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb is position to take over eastern Libya, including secession from the rest of Libya. That raises a hypothesis that the Mali adventure might partly have been intended to divert attention from developments in Cyrenaica - eastern Libya.

Eastern Libya is lost, if the Italian journalist's report is close to accurate. Expect increased violence.

Mali: Update. Residents of Gao, in eastern Mali, hunted down and beat suspected Islamist extremists who had not fled the town. Malian troops bundled the men into an army truck Tuesday, their hands bound behind their backs.

Comment: As yet Malian and French authorities have provided almost no details about casualties on either side. The French refuse to embed journalists with their forces.

End of NightWatch ###

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Al-Qaeda: Regional Menace Or Global Threat?

Members of the hardline al Shabaab Islamist rebel group hold their weapons in Somalia's capital Mogadishu, January 1, 2010.

Πηγή: International Business Times
By Jacey Fortin
Jan 31 2013

With a video camera rolling straight ahead and the black flag of al-Qaeda behind him, a one-eyed jihadist and cigarette smuggler named Mokhtar Belmokhtar spelled out his vision for the future of Islamist militancy on a global scale.

It was Jan. 17, during the four-day hostage crisis at a gas plant in the deserts of eastern Algeria, where workers of various nationalities were held hostage until national forces retook the facility. Up to 85 people died in the bloody showdown.

The video, released by the Mauritanian news outlet Sahara Media, marked a new phase in the conflict that's still raging in the northern reaches of the West African country of Mali. There, Islamist insurgents had established a haven for militants -- an unprecedented feat after years of sporadic clashes. At the request of the Malian central government, French forces swooped in with airstrikes and combat troops on Jan. 11.

Only days later, Belmokhtar and his newly formed cell seized the gas plant in Algeria in a clear indication that the insurgents’ ambitions reached far beyond Mali. Belmokhtar called the Western intervention a “crusade” and commended his own forces for their success.

“We did it for al-Qaeda,” he said in the video.

For many militants in North and West Africa, the language of jihad has global undertones. And Western powers are taking notice; the United Kingdom has sent hundreds of non-combat troops to Mali, and the United States has stepped up its logistical support for the intervention.

The resurgence of al-Qaeda in Africa has raised concerns about the international threat these militants pose. In the past decade, the global al-Qaeda organization has been weakened significantly. But new conflicts involving Western forces could influence the movement in more subtle ways, strengthening its power to influence lone operatives in far-flung corners of the world.

Deep Roots

Organizationally, al-Qaeda has undergone a sea change over the past several years. Western offensives -- including hundreds of U.S. drone strikes in Pakistan and Yemen -- have decimated the cadre of leaders who were behind the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on U.S. soil. When Osama bin-Laden was killed by American forces in May of 2011, his deputy, Ayman al-Zawahiri, took over. But Zawahiri has been less effective than bin Laden in terms of galvanizing the global movement; he has little of bin-Laden’s magnetism and scant experience on the battlefield.

Although the al-Qaeda's core leadership has been weakened, its affiliates are increasingly picking up the slack. The emergence of locally rooted groups has much to do with the Arab Spring revolutions; in countries like Egypt, Libya and Yemen, regime changes have left dangerous power vacuums, upended national security apparatuses and weakened border controls.

This was particularly important in Libya. In the build-up to the overthrow of Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi, the regime hired mercenaries to fight on its behalf. Those warriors-for-pay -- which included hundreds of nomadic peoples from the Sahara and the Sahel -- acquired weapons and training that would have been hard to come by without Libya's funding.

Andrew MacGregor, senior editor of the Jamestown Foundation Global Terrorism Analysis Program in Washington, D.C., says the rise in militancy in 2012 was partly a result of the overflow of arms from the Libyan revolution.

“Simultaneous with the spread of arms throughout the region, you had a spread of radical Salafism [an ultraconservative branch of Sunni Islam],” he said. “Those two fed off each other, creating jihadist movements and threatening regional security. What we’ve seen lately is these movements trying to seize territory for themselves, now that they have the weaponry to do so.”

This empowered a branch of al-Qaeda that had hitherto been little more than a regional menace.

Weaving a Web

Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, or AQIM, officially coalesced in 2007; its roots are Algerian, though it now includes militants from countries across North and West Africa.

It is not the only affiliate that has made gains in recent years. Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, or AQAP, a combination of jihadist cells from Yemen and Saudi Arabia, came together in 2009. Al-Qaeda in Iraq, or AQI, coalesced shortly after the American-led invasion of that country in 2003 and now focuses its attacks on government officials and civilians.

Other jihadist organizations with links to al-Qaeda include al-Shabaab in Somalia, Lashkar-e-Taiba in Pakistan and Jabhat al-Nusra in Syria. Still others may lack formal links, but they share al-Qaeda’s ultraconservative ideology and are sympathetic to its goals and methods.

These groups have had a major impact locally. In Mali, the enforcement of a harsh version of Shariah, or Islamic law, has led to executions, amputations and the displacement of hundreds of thousands of people. In Iraq, communities of Shi’a Muslims and moderate Sunnis have been targeted by extremist militants for years. In Yemen, national troops backed by the United States are engaged in a battle with militants who are launching retaliatory attacks against civilians.

But when we zoom out to assess the global threat of al-Qaeda and related groups, the picture blurs. The very fragmentation that has weakened al-Qaeda's core leadership has also made it much harder to pin down, and the regularly shifting alliances between various groups have confounded Western efforts to isolate the problem.

According to McGregor, that may be part of the plan. “When we talk about AQIM, for instance, we’re not really talking about any kind of united movement,” he says.

“There are many groups technically operating on their own, or else splitting off and congealing again. This is partly strategic; it tends to throw off intelligence agencies and analysts who wind up making too much of these splits. Sometimes there’s something behind it, but sometimes it’s just an effective way of keeping the opposition off guard.”

Going It Alone

Though al-Qaeda is far less centralized than it once was, regional branches cannot be discounted.

“While the leadership of the al-Qaeda core is on the ropes, local events from Syria to North Africa to Yemen can still help it regain traction,” says Matthew Levitt, director of the Stein Program on Counterterrorism and Intelligence at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy.

“Moreover, these events have clearly empowered local al-Qaeda affiliates, making it likely that we’re already seeing the next iteration of the al-Qaeda threat, which is still transnational and targeting the West even as its roots tie in to more local conflicts.”

Those local conflicts are complicated. In Mali, for example, many aspects of the rebellion are rooted in ethnic rivalries, and disagreements abound as to the ultimate goal of the insurgency. But as long as the violent clashes retain their power to stir passions in militant communities around the world, al-Qaeda’s reach extends far beyond the blurry borders of its home bases.

For Western countries, lone wolf operatives -- individual actors who attempt to perpetrate attacks despite their distance from al-Qaeda’s core communities -- present the clearest danger. Networks of would-be militants around the world are linked by a vast online network of forums and chat rooms, and it is through these channels that al-Qaeda leaders often distribute videos to encourage their particular brand of jihad.

So while al-Qaeda may be fractured, militant aspects of its ideology can still thrive thousands of miles away.

The West got its most traumatic recent reminder of this phenomenon in last March, when Mohamed Merah, a 23-year-old Islamist of Algerian descent, killed seven people in a shooting spree in the southern French city of Toulouse.

But lone wolves do not have a reputation for professionalism and have been repeatedly foiled by Western security forces, many of which have fine-tuned their counter-terrorism tactics over the past decade and now use questionable methods of surveillance and infiltration to target suspected terrorists.

“We have to remember that the bigger attacks, like the one we saw in Algeria, have to be planned weeks or months in advance. Lone wolf attacks are another phenomenon entirely; they are by nature unpredictable,” says McGregor, adding that it makes more sense to focus on larger organizations to observe trends and tendencies.

To prevent tragedies like the Algerian gas plant crisis from striking even closer to home, it is necessary for Western powers to walk a fine line: responding to threats quickly and intelligently without resorting to the divisive fear tactics that paint a heavily skewed picture of Islam and may further al-Qaeda’s own aims.

For now, the threat al-Qaeda poses is largely regional -- but with hundreds of thousands of people displaced, persecuted or cut off from resources in these various pockets of militant activity, that doesn’t make the problem any less serious.

Israeli Airstrike in Syria Targets Arms Convoy, U.S. Says

In East Jerusalem, Israelis distributed gas masks on Wednesday as worries about security spread.

Πηγή: New York Times
By ISABEL KERSHNER and MICHAEL R. GORDON
Jan 30 2013

JERUSALEM — Israeli warplanes carried out a strike deep inside Syrian territory on Wednesday, American officials reported, saying they believed the target was a convoy carrying sophisticated antiaircraft weaponry on the outskirts of Damascus that was intended for the Hezbollah Shiite militia in Lebanon.

The American officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, saidIsrael had notified the United States about the attack, which the Syrian government condemned as an act of “arrogance and aggression.” Israel’s move demonstrated its determination to ensure that Hezbollah — its arch foe in the north — is unable to take advantage of the chaos in Syria to bolster its arsenal significantly.

The predawn strike was the first time in more than five years that Israel’s air force had attacked a target in Syria. While there was no expectation that the beleaguered Assad government had an interest in retaliating, the strike raised concerns that the Syrian civil war had continued to spread beyond its border.

In a statement, the Syrian military denied that a convoy had been struck. It said the attack had hit a scientific research facility in the Damascus suburbs that was used to improve Syria’s defenses, and called the attack “a flagrant breach of Syrian sovereignty and airspace.”

Israeli officials would not confirm the airstrike, a common tactic here. But it came after days of intense security consultations with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu regarding the possible movement of chemical and other weapons around Syria, and warnings that Jerusalem would take action to thwart any possible transfers to Hezbollah.

Thousands of Israelis have crowded gas-mask distribution centers over the last two days. On Sunday, Israel deployed its Iron Dome missile defense system in the north, near Haifa, which was heavily bombed during the 2006 war with Lebanon.

Syria and Israel are technically in a state of war but have long maintained an uneasy peace along their decades-old armistice line. Israel has mostly watched warily and tried to stay out of Syria’s raging civil war, fearful of provoking a wider confrontation with Iran and Hezbollah. In November, however, after several mortars fell on Israel’s side of the border, its tanks struck a Syrian artillery unit.

Several analysts said that despite the increased tensions, they thought the likelihood of retaliation for the airstrike was relatively low.

“It is necessary and correct to prepare for deterioration — that scenario exists,” Danny Yatom, a former chief of the Mossad, Israel’s intelligence agency, told Ynet, a news Web site. “But in my assessment, there will not be a reaction, because neither Hezbollah nor the Syrians have an interest in retaliating.”

Syria’s president, Bashar al-Assad, “is deep in his own troubles,” Mr. Yatom said, “and Hezbollah is making a great effort to assist him, in parallel with its efforts to obtain weapons, so they won’t want to broaden the circle of fighting.”

In the United States, the State Department and Defense Department would not comment on reports of the strike.

The episode illustrated how the escalating violence in Syria, which has already killed more than 60,000, is drawing in neighboring states and threatening to destabilize the region further.

Iran has firmly allied itself with Mr. Assad, sending personnel from its Islamic Revolutionary Guards Quds Force to Syria and ferrying military equipment to Syria through Iraqi airspace.

Hezbollah, which plays a decisive role in Lebanese politics and has supported Mr. Assad during the uprising by providing training and logistical support to his forces, has long relied on Syria as both a source of weapons and a conduit for weapons flowing from Iran. Some analysts think Hezbollah may be trying to stock up on weapons in case Mr. Assad falls and is replaced by a leadership that is hostile to the militia.

One American official said the trucks targeted on Wednesday were believed to have been carrying sophisticated SA-17 antiaircraft weapons. Hezbollah’s possession of such weapons would be a serious worry for the Israeli government, said Matthew Levitt, a former intelligence official who is at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy.

“Israel is able to fly reconnaissance flights over Lebanon with impunity right now,” Mr. Levitt said. “This could cut into its ability to conduct aerial intelligence. The passing along of weapons to Hezbollah by the regime is a real concern.”

While some analysts said the Assad government might be providing the weapons to Hezbollah as a reward for its support, others were skeptical that Syria would relinquish such a sophisticated system.

Hezbollah has boasted that it has replenished and increased its weapons stocks since the 2006 war with Israel. During that war, Israeli bombardments destroyed some of its arms, and other missiles were used in a barrage that killed Israelis as far south as Haifa and that drove residents of northern Israel into shelters.

The Syrian statement, carried by state television, said an unidentified number of Israeli jets flying below radar had hit the research facility in the Jimraya district, killing two people and causing “huge material damage.” It cast the attack as “another addition to the history of Israeli occupation, aggression and criminality against Arabs and Muslims.”

“The Syrian government points out to the international community that this Israeli arrogance and aggression is dangerous for Syrian sovereignty,” the statement said, “and stresses that such criminal acts will not weaken Syria’s role nor will discourage Syrians from continuing to support resistance movements and just Arab causes, particularly the Palestinian issue.”

The Lebanese Army said in a statement on Wednesday that Israeli warplanes had carried out two sorties, circling over Lebanon for hours on Tuesday and before dawn on Wednesday, but made no mention of any attacks.

Israel has long maintained a policy of silence on pre-emptive military strikes. In October, officials refused to discuss an accusation by Sudan that Israeli airstrikes had destroyed a weapons factory in Khartoum, its capital. Israel also never admitted to the bombing of a Syrian nuclear reactor in 2007; Syria kept mum about that attack, too, and the ambiguity allowed the event to pass without Damascus feeling pressure to retaliate.

Amnon Sofrin, a retired brigadier general and former Israeli intelligence officer, told reporters here on Wednesday that Hezbollah, which is known to have been storing some of its more advanced weapons in Syria, was now eager to move everything it could to Lebanon. He said Israel was carefully watching for convoys transferring weapons systems from Syria to Lebanon.

Israel has made it clear that if the Syrian government loses control over its chemical weapons or transfers them to Hezbollah, Israel will feel compelled to act. Avi Dichter, the minister for the home front, told Israel Radio on Tuesday that options to prevent Syria from using or transferring the weapons included deterrence and “attempts to hit the stockpiles.”

“Everything will have ramifications,” Mr. Dichter said. “The stockpiles are not always in places where operative thinking is possible. It could be that hitting the stockpiles will also mean hitting people. Israel has no intention of hitting residents of Syria.”

Turkey: With EU Talks Stalled, Erdogan Suggests Ankara May Join SCO

Πηγή: StratRisks
By EUR
Jan 29 2013

Up until only the last two years, the question of whether Turkey was “drifting east” seemed to dominate any discussion regarding the country and its future trajectory. But an improved Turkish relationship with the United States, a deteriorating one with Iran and a deepening involvement with NATO have all contributed towards pushing that question into the background.

Now, though, it’s none other than Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan who has helped revived the “drifting east” debate. Speaking on Turkish television the other night, the PM was asked about his country’s stalled and troubled European Union membership drive. Erdogan’s blunt bombshell of an answer suggested Turkey is considering dropping its EU bid in favor of joining the China- and Russia-led Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO). “When things go so poorly, you inevitably, as the prime minister of 75 million people, seek other paths. That’s why I recently said to Mr. [Vladimir] Putin: ‘Take us into the Shanghai Five; do it, and we will say farewell to the EU, leave it altogether. Why all this stalling?’” Asked to elaborate, Erdogan said, “The Shanghai Five is better and more powerful and we have common values with them.” (The SCO last year upgraded its relations with Turkey, naming the country a “dialogue partner.”)

Were Erdogan’s words merely a bluff designed to get the bureaucrats in Brussels worried about once again “losing” Turkey and force them to put some grease on the squeaky wheels of Turkey’s membership process? Perhaps partially. But several Turkish analysts saw Erdogan’s words as truthful. Writes political scientist and Today’s Zaman columnist Ihsan Dagi:

These are very sincere words. He considers the Shanghai organization as an alternative, in fact a powerful and better alternative to the EU. Besides this, I think it is also seen as a matter of “civilizational belonging.” The Turkish prime minister increasingly emphasizes “our own civilization,” referring to the Islamic one. Detachment from the West/EU is expected to “revive” the civilization Turkey represents and leads. There is certainly a growing self confidence that Turkey can and should remain independent to lead instead of tied up with the EU. The SCO is such a network that will give Turkey a civilizational distinction, economic capacity and a free hand to conduct its foreign affairs to fulfill leadership aspirations.

The PM is likely also trying to tap into public sentiment. Erdogan’s words come at a time when public support for continuing the EU process is at a historic low. A recent survey by the Istanbul-based Centre for Economics and Foreign Policy Studies, for example, found that only 33 percent of those surveyed believed Turkey should continue working towards joining the bloc over the next five years.

But Erdogan’s suggestion that his country join the SCO also comes at a time when Turkey is becoming more deeply engaged with the west through its long-standing alliance with NATO. While Erdogan was telling his interviewer that Turkey might join the SCO, American, German and Dutch troops were busy setting up Patriot batteries along Turkey southern border to protect the country from Syrian missiles.

Erdogan may sincerely want Turkey to join the SCO, but doing so is not as simple as giving up on the EU and turning east. To join the SCO, Ankara would likely also have to seriously curtail — if not completely give up — its valuable relationship with NATO, something that few Turkish policymakers, Erdogan included, want to do. For now, then, it would seem that Erdogan’s SCO talk is nothing more than wishful thinking.

Canadian bodyguard 'guilty of crimes against humanity in Libya' to be deported

Πηγή: The Independent
By David Usborne
Jan 31 2013

A PROFESSIONAL bodyguard who worked on and off for years providing protection to the "playboy" third son of Muammar Gaddafi faces deportation from Canada within days, after an immigration board found he was complicit in atrocities committed during the final days of the regime.

Repeated trips made to Libya during the 2011 uprising came back to haunt Gary Peters, who is originally from Australia, after the Canadian Immigration and Refugee Board ordered him deported after finding that he was complicit in atrocities committed by the Gaddafi’s in their last day’s in power and additionally had broken international laws in helping the son, al-Saadi, escape to Niger.

As a bodyguard to al-Saadi, Mr Peters effectively became a “member of the government apparatus” in Libya as it tried to quell the rebellion, a member of the Board, Alicia Seifert, said as she delivered the ruling. She said that while Mr Peters received tens of thousands of dollars to ensure the safety of his client, the regime was committing acts of murder and torture as it struggled to hold on to power.

Mr Peters, who has two weeks to appeal before the deportation order, denies he knew of the regime’s actions. And today he expanded on his friendship with al-Saadi, a failed professional football player, to Vice magazine. Agreeing that the ‘playboy’ moniker was well-earned, he said: “Yes. He is a fun guy to be around. Not just for the money. He is very humorous. He can show you a good time – a very good time.”

According to a police affidavit, Mr Peters received an email from al-Saadi in February 2011 asking for his help as the situation in his country was starting to unravel. “Gary, I need you ? I’m in trouble. S,” the message said. Mr Peters reportedly then made repeated trips to Libya to provide his services. As Tripoli was falling, he was eventually to help spirit al-Saadi into Niger, where he remains today. He was shot for his troubles and, according to his own statements, he has still not been paid for that mission.

Meanwhile another former client, Cynthia Vanier who formerly worked for a Quebec-based engineering firm, SNC Lavalin, is facing charges in Mexico that she conspired illegally to smuggle al-Saadi into that country from Niger in the wake of the Libyan revolution. Mr Peters allegedly provided security services to Ms Vanier when she travelled to Libya on fact-finding mission in July 2011.

Mr Peters, 49, runs his own company, Can/Aust Security and Investigations International in Ontario. “Everything I have is here and I still believe I’ve broken no laws at all,” he said after the Board’s ruling yesterday. He said he had been targeted purely because of his association with al-Saadi Gaddafi. “That’s a pretty lame excuse to kick somebody out of the country,” he argued.

He has specifically described as untrue descriptions of al-Saadi giving an order for protestors to be fired on while he delivered a speech on his father’s behalf to a supporters in Benghazi. The order, Peters has insisted, was given by a Libyan military intelligence chief.

Turkey to search oil with new seismic vessel

Πηγή: Anadolu Agency
Jan 30 2013

Energy and Natural Resources Minister announced they have bought a seismic vessel for oil and natural gas search in the seas.

ANKARA (AA) - January 30, 2013 - Turkish Energy and Natural Resources Minister Taner Yildiz on Wednesday announced that they have bought a seismic vessel to conduct two and three dimensional seismic surveys in the seas of Turkey.

Yildiz stated that they have come to an important point in search of oil and natural gas in the seas as they were at the final stage of the project ongoing for nearly seven months. 

Announcing that they have bought a seismic vessel that proved its success in the international arena in 2D and 3D seismic surveying, Yildiz said, "We made a payment of 130 million USD and the vessel is to pass the Canakkale Strait on Wednesday and then head for Istanbul."

He mentioned that the vessel would conduct searches in the Black Sea and then in the Mediterranean Sea, Yildiz said, "Our Prime Minister approved the name of "Barbaros Hayrettin Pasa" upon my offer. The seismic vessel is to strengthen the basis for international agreements in addition to our search from the land."

Editor's note: According to Hurriyet Daily News: "Yıldız said the vessel would conduct searches in the Black Sea and then in the Mediterranean Sea. Energy-hungary Turkey is bidding for finding oil and gas both in the Black Sea and the Mediterranean. 

The vessel constructed in 2011 is able to make automatic predictions of direction and position due to satellite communications. The vessel, named “Barbaros Hayrettin Paşa,” will be introduced to the public in an upcoming ceremony organized in Istanbul’s Beşiktaş Pier. 

It passed through Dardanelles Strait yesterday to arrive Istanbul.

The vessel will be painted red and white, which are the colors of Turkey’s flag, after customs and harbor registration is completed".

Al Qaeda targets Germans, Britons in Libya: Spiegel

Πηγή: Reutrers
By Spiegel
Jan 27 2013

Al Qaeda is plotting to kidnap German and British citizens in Libya, the Spiegel weekly magazine quoted German intelligence sources as saying.

Germany and Britain were among several Western countries to urge their nationals to leave the eastern Libyan city of Benghazi on Thursday, days after a deadly attack by Islamist militants in neighboring Algeria.

Britain cited a "specific and imminent" threat to Westerners in Libya's second largest city, but officials declined to give any details.

Spiegel, citing sources in the German Federal Intelligence Service (BND), said on Sunday al Qaeda and other militant Islamist groups were specifically preparing attacks on British and German citizens in the area.

It gave no further details and the BND declined to comment.

On Thursday, German Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle described the situation in Benghazi, cradle of the uprising that ousted Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi in 2011, as "serious and delicate" but also declined to provide any details.

The call to leave Benghazi irked Libyans, keen to win foreign investment to rebuild their fractured infrastructure and boost the oil industry after the revolution against Gaddafi.

Few Westerners are believed to be in Benghazi, which has experienced a wave of violence against diplomats as well as military and police officers, including an attack in September that killed the U.S. ambassador and three other Americans.

At least 38 hostages were killed in an attack on Algeria's In Amenas gas complex near the Libyan border earlier this month. The launch of France's military operations in Mali has also cranked up tensions in North Africa.

China, Russia, U.S. raise Mediterranean naval focus

Πηγή: Strastrisks
By Reuters
Jan 25 2013

Egypt has seen no shortage of empires come and go, from its own ancient civilizations to those of Greece, Rome, Britain and France. Now, it is among the outposts of the latest Mediterranean power: China.

Situated at the northern end of the Suez Canal, the Port Said Container Terminal is one of the busiest in the region, vital for shipments not only to Egypt but also much of Europe and the Middle East.

Like several other key ports in the region – including Piraeus in Greece and Naples in Italy – it is now partially owned by China. The state-owned Cosco Pacific holds 20 percent the terminal, helping make it one of the dominant – if not the dominant – Mediterranean port operators.

Cosco stresses that it is a purely commercial venture and many analysts agree. But few doubt that Beijing has made a wider geopolitical decision to become much more involved in the region.

For the last two years, the People’s Liberation Army Navy has sent one or more warships through the Suez Canal to visit southern European ports, the furthest its fleet has ever operated from home.

But China is not the only great power now increasing its involvement in the area. With Russia sending warships to positions off Syria and the United States signaling it too intends to take the region more seriously, the Mediterranean is clearly no longer seen as the strategic backwater many believed it had become.

“The assumption that the Mediterranean would become a purely Western sphere of influence appears to have been premature,” says Nikolas Gvosdev, professor of national security studies at the United States Naval War College in Rhode Island.

“The Chinese are showing their flag in an area far from their traditional area of operations in part to show that they are a global power. The renewed Russian deployments are part intended as a sign that Moscow has not gone away.”

Other strategic shifts are also taking place in the region.

The “Arab Spring” has unleashed a period of unrest and instability across North Africa and beyond while the euro zone crisis has left troubled southern European states struggling with debt and searching for ready investment.

Meanwhile, the gas platforms beginning to dot the disputed waters of the eastern Mediterranean have unleashed a scramble for resources that has further exacerbated pre-existing tensions between Cyprus, Turkey and Israel.

The U.S. had hoped it could pull back from the area, helping transfer military resources to the Pacific and South China Sea as part of a pivot to Asia aimed heavily at containing a rising China. But last year’s Libya conflict provided stark warning that European states had distinctly limited capacity, and as the financial crisis bites defense budgets have been further cut.

“I don’t see a conflict,” says Gvosdev at the Naval War College. “But… (it) does make it more difficult to do an Asia pivot on the cheap.”

U.S. DESTROYERS TO SPAIN

In 2011 Admiral Gary Roughead – at the time Chief of Naval Operations and the professional head of the U.S. Navy – told senior officers the U.S. needed to return to the Mediterranean.

In the years since the end of the Cold War and Balkan conflicts that followed, the U.S. had quietly stopped maintaining a permanent aircraft carrier there as it focused on Iraq and Afghanistan and confrontation with Iran.

Limited resources mean putting a permanent carrier back in the region is all but impossible. But other ships now look set to take up a much more permanent presence.

Last year, the Pentagon announced it was deploying four state-of-the-art missile destroyers to the Spanish port of Rota, in part to counter any missile threat to Europe from Iran or elsewhere in the Middle East.

In November, as Israeli forces pounded Gaza in their brief air campaign against Hamas, several U.S. assault ships and escorts entered the eastern Mediterranean in what was seen as a precursor to any evacuation of U.S. citizens. It was the sort of deployment military officials say will likely become more common in the years to come.

Nor, current and former officials say, does Washington have any intention of letting gas tensions between its various Eastern Mediterranean allies turn into open conflict.

“The Maghreb and Levant are clearly going to be unstable for some time,” Roughead, now retired and a senior visiting fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University, told Reuters. “The eastern Mediterranean is also worrying. There’s no doubt it’s going to require more attention.”

SYRIA WORRIES DRIVE RUSSIAN PRESENCE

It was the positioning of a U.S. carrier off Syria in November 2011 that appeared to prompt one of the largest Russian naval moves in recent years. As Bashar al-Assad’s crackdown on rebels and protesters became ever bloodier, Washington had quietly moved it and its battle group towards Syria.

In what may or may not have been a direct response, Moscow sent its only aircraft carrier – the Soviet era Admiral Kuznetzov – into the same area to visit its naval base at Tartus. In Moscow, Russian officials gave distinctly conflicting signals to local and international media, some denying any link to the Syrian conflict while others saying it was a deliberate warning to the West to back off.

On January 17, Russian news agencies again reported two warships were heading to Syria for exercises and to deliver munitions to Tartus, although it was not immediately clear whether that meant the undisclosed weaponry was headed for Assad’s forces or Russia’s own stockpiles there.

The Russian naval base at Tartus remains Moscow’s only Mediterranean port. Retaining access to it is seen as a major factor in Russia’s refusal to abandon Assad.

When a Chinese destroyer and frigate sailed through Suez into the Mediterranean in August last year, several analysts suggested they were aiming to join joint naval exercises being held between Moscow and Damascus.

But instead, they sailed up through the Bosporus to the Black Sea to visit Ukraine, Bulgaria and Romania.

CHINA’S “STRATEGIC AMBIVALENCE”

“The fact that it did not seize the opportunity to hold drills together with the Russians could confirm that Beijing is not warming to the prospect of a new Cold War and continues to prefer strategic ambivalence about polarization,” Jonathan Holsag, research fellow at the Brussels Institute of Contemporary China Studies, wrote in Chinese state-owned newspaper the Global Times in August.

Some European and U.S. security analysts remain nervous over the Chinese expansion – particularly in Naples, where the Chinese-owned terminal directly overlooks NATO’s main Mediterranean naval base. But in Greece, the Chinese investment remains relatively popular. With the purchase of new cranes and other equipment, Cosco has increased container traffic through its terminal by some 70 percent each of the three years of operation.

The vast majority of containers handled by the port are shipped on elsewhere in the world, turning Piraeus into a much more significant international hub.

“This investment has been very important for Greece,” says Tassos Vamvakidis, deputy manager of the Cosco-run container terminal. “At a time of economic difficulty, it is very important.”

One veteran British naval officer compared China’s approaching the Mediterranean to that of Britain in the 18th and 19th centuries, when its commercial expansion was at least as important as its military.

Chinese officials might object to that comparison. But there seems little doubt they intend to stay – and that includes a high profile if occasional military presence.

“There are many good reasons for Beijing to show its flag,” wrote Hoslag in “Global Times”, a nationalist tabloid published by the Communist Party mouthpiece the “People’s Daily. “It is better to make countries around the Mediterranean used to Chinese naval presence than to alarm them later on.”

Turkey warns against Israel-Cyprus gas deal

Pipework is seen at the Beregovaya compressor station, part of the Blue Stream gas pipeline in Europe. Israel is hoping for a similar pipeline with Turkey.

Πηγή: Haaretz
By Itai Trilnick and Reuters
Jan 27 2013

Israel's energy cooperation with Cyprus would stand in the way of any proposed Israel-Turkey natural gas pipeline, Turkey's deputy minister for energy and natural resources told an Israeli emissary last week. The meeting took place at the Eurasian Economic Summit held in Istanbul, according to the Turkish newspaper Hurriyet Daily News.

The newspaper reports that Michael Lotem, the Foreign Ministry's special envoy for energy affairs who attended the summit's energy forum, was denied an official meeting with Deputy Minister Murat Mercan due to downgraded diplomatic relations between Ankara and Jerusalem. Lotem, however, was granted an "unofficial" audience with the deputy minister during a summit recess.

Mercan reportedly told Lotem that, beyond the dispute between the two countries over the blockade of Gaza and the Marmara flotilla affair in 2010, any cooperative venture between Israel and Turkey would also be hindered by Israel's natural gas development cooperation with Cyprus.

Relations between Israel and Turkey have been sour since Turkey's Justice and Development Party, headed by Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, assumed power in 2003. Tensions, however, reached a climax after the Israel Defense Forces forcibly seized the Mavi Marmara aid flotilla headed for Gaza in May 2010 and nine Turkish activists were killed. Turkey has demanded an official apology from Israel and compensation for the activists' deaths, and downgraded diplomatic relations until Israel complies.

Turkey, which holds sovereignty over the northern part of Cyprus, also objects to the development of gas fields surrounding the island. After the Cypriot government controlling the southern part of the island issued tenders for offshore gas exploration, a large reserve was discovered by Noble Energy.

The field, dubbed Aphrodite, lies partly in Israeli economic waters. Israel has maintained close ties with Cypriot government officials over the development of offshore gas fields, which includes the possibility of jointly exporting the gas overseas.

Turkey, however, has objected to exploration tenders issued by Cyprus and has stated that it will boycott participating companies. In the past Turkey also threatened to take military action on this issue, but chances it actually will appear slim. Meanwhile the Turks have also begun drilling for oil on the northern side of the island in what is considered a politically motivated move.

Cyprus granted Italy's ENI and South Korea's Kogas licenses for offshore gas exploration last week, in a boon to an economy in line for an international bailout because of its exposure to debt-crippled Greece.

The island, which discovered natural gas at sea in Dec. 2011, issued licenses covering three offshore areas lying south and southeast of Cyprus to a consortium made up of both firms.

"The discovery of hydrocarbons (around) Cyprus, in conjunction with those found in the wider Mediterranean region, create new realities and prospects for the country," Cypriot energy minister Neoclis Sylikiotis said.

Cyprus sits in the Levant Basin, an area of the eastern Mediterranean thought to be rich in largely untapped reserves.

U.S. Noble Energy reported discovering between 5 trillion and 8 trillion cubic feet (tcf) in Cyprus's first attempt to find natural resources offshore in Dec. 2011. Neighboring Israel has made major natural gas discoveries there in the past few years.

In signing production-sharing contracts with the consortium of the two companies, the state will earn 150 million euros, badly needed as Cyprus has been limping along on short-term high-yield borrowing for the past few months.

Now in line for an international bailout, cash strapped Cyprus hopes the prospect of sitting on sizeable hydrocarbons reserves will give its stuttering economy a boost.

The island sought aid from the EU and the IMF in June 2012 to recapitalize a banking system badly exposed to Greece, and because of fiscal slippage.

It expects to conclude in March a bailout deal anticipated to be as high as 17 billion to 17.5 billion euros, equivalent to its national output.

Sylikiotis said before the signing ceremony last Thursday that separate talks with France's Total, bidding for another two blocks, were progressing well.

"I would say we are close to concluding," he said.

"There are very strong indications of gas, and possibly oil, in the area," Sylikiotis said, referring to the offshore maritime area known as the exclusive economic zone.

He said there would be synergies from the licensing to ENI and Kogas, since two of the blocks run in the path of a pipeline planned to transport gas from the Noble concession to a terminal which will convert gas into its liquefied form onshore.

Gas companies planning to ship gas exports

An idea was floated in the past to lay an undersea pipeline between Israel and Turkey that could be connected with a network of pipelines carrying gas to Europe, thereby opening the European market to Israeli gas. Similar underwater pipelines exist elsewhere, like the pipe carrying gas from Norway to Britain or the pipeline running from Russia to Germany. But the cost for laying the pipe is estimated in the billions of dollars, and such a project could run into opposition from Lebanon and Syria, whose economic waters lie between Israel and Turkey.

The issue of exporting gas from Israel still isn't settled. However, the partners in the Leviathan reserve, which is estimated to contain 470 billion cubic meters of natural gas, are preparing to build gas liquefaction facilities for exporting by ship in hopes of selling the gas on the global market. They are particularly interested in the Far East market where the price has reached $18 per million British thermal units (BTU) – up to double the price in Europe.

The partners, Delek Group – 45%, Noble Energy – 40%, and Ratio Oil Exploration – 15%, have agreed to sell a 30% stake in the Leviathan project to Australia's Woodside Petroleum for $1.5 billion. Woodside's role is to establish the project's export infrastructure.

Fears Grow That Libya Is Incubator of Turmoil

Abdel Hakim Belhaj, the former Al-Qaeda commander whose LIFG terrorist organization had killed U.S. troops in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Πηγή: abcNews
By MAGGIE MICHAEL, AP
Jan 26 2013

Libya's upheaval the past two years helped lead to the ongoing conflict in Mali, and now Mali's war threatens to wash back and further hike Libya's instability. Fears are growing that post-Moammar Gadhafi Libya is becoming an incubator of turmoil, with an overflow of weapons and Islamic jihadi militants operating freely, ready for battlefields at home or abroad.

The possibility of a Mali backlash was underlined the past week when several European governments evacuated their citizens from Libya's second largest city, Benghazi, fearing attacks in retaliation for the French-led military assault against al-Qaida-linked extremists in northern Mali.

More worrisome is the possibility that Islamic militants inspired by — or linked to — al-Qaida can establish a strong enough foothold in Libya to spread instability across a swath of North Africa where long, porous desert borders have little meaning, governments are weak, and tribal and ethnic networks stretch from country to country. The Associated Press examined the dangers in recent interviews with officials, tribal leaders and jihadis in various parts of Libya.

Already, Libya's turmoil echoes around the region and in the Middle East. The large numbers of weapons brought into Libya or seized from government caches during the 2011 civil war against Gadhafi are now smuggled freely to Mali, Egypt and its Sinai Peninsula, the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip and to rebels fighting Syrian President Bashar Assad. Jihadis in Libya are believed to have operational links with fellow militant groups in the same swath, Libyan fighters have joined rebels in Syria and are believed to operate in other countries as well.

Libyan officials, activists and experts are increasingly raising alarm over how Islamic militants have taken advantage of the oil-rich country's weakness to grow in strength. During his more than four-decade rule Gadhafi stripped the country of national institutions, and after his fall the central government has little authority beyond the capital, Tripoli. Militias established to fight Gadhafi remain dominant, and tribes and regions are sharply divided.

In the eastern city of Benghazi, birthplace of the revolt that led to the ouster and killing of Gadhafi, militias espousing an al-Qaida ideology and including veteran fighters are prevalent, even ostensibly serving as security forces on behalf of the government since the police and military are so weak and poorly armed. One such militia, Ansar al-Shariah, is believed to have been behind the Sept. 11 attack on the U.S. Consulate in the city that killed four Americans, including the ambassador. Since then, militants have been blamed for a wave of assassinations of security officers and government officials.

Earlier this month, former Libyan leader Mustafa Abdul-Jalil warned the militant threat extends to efforts to establish a state that can enforce rule of law.

"Libya will not see stability except by facing them," he told a gathering videotaped by activists and aired on Libyan TV. "It is time to either hold dialogue or confront them." He listed 30 officials and police officers assassinated in Benghazi the past year.

The Mali drama illustrates how the threat bounces back and forth across the borders drawn in the Sahel, the region stretching across the Sahara Desert. Libya and Mali are separated by Algeria, but the two countries had deep ties under Gadhafi. Thousands of Tuaregs moved from Mali to Libya beginning in the 1970s, and many joined special divisions of Gadhafi's military where they earned higher salaries than they would have at home.

As Gadhafi was falling in 2011, thousands of heavily armed Tuareg fighters in southern Libya fled to northern Mali. The Tuareg are an indigenous ethnic group living throughout the Sahel, from Mali to Chad and into Libya and Algeria.

The fighters, led by commander Mohammed Ag Najem, broke the Mali government's hold over the north and declared their long-held dream of a Tuareg homeland, Azawad. But they in turn were defeated by Islamic militants, some linked to al-Qaida's branch in North Africa, who took over the territory and imposed rule under an extreme version of Shariah, or Islamic law. This month, as militants moved south, France launched its military intervention to rescue the Mali government, conducting airstrikes against militants.

In retaliation, militants seized an oil complex in eastern Algeria, prompting a siege by Algerian forces that killed dozens of Western hostages and militants.

The militant group that carried out the Algeria hostage taking, in turn, had help from Libyan extremists in the form of smuggled weapons and "organizational ties," the group's leader, Moktar Belmoktar said.

"Their ideological and organizational connection to us is not an accusation against a Muslim but a source of pride and honor to us and to them," Belmoktar, the one-eyed Algerian founder of the Masked Brigade, said of the Libyans in an interview with The Mauritanian newspaper in mid-December. "Jihadists in al-Qaida and in general were the biggest beneficiaries of the Arab world uprisings, because these uprisings have broken the chains of fear ... that the agent regimes of the West imposed."

He urged Libyan militants not to submit to calls by the Tripoli government to hand over their weapons, saying their arms are "the source of their dignity and their guarantee of security."

With pressure building on Mali's Islamists, Libya provides a possible alternative haven for jihadis, said Scott Stewart of the global intelligence group Stratfor.

"It is a very good place to operate if you are an extremist," he said. "There are fault lines and divisions ... The central government has very little authority outside Tripoli. This is very conducive environment for Jihad to thrive."

They already have a free rein in Benghazi.

"Libya became a heaven for them," Col. Salah Bouhalqa, a leading military commander in Benghazi, said of al-Qaida. "The Westerners are fearful that what happened in Algeria will take place in Libya. And here, just like Mali and Egypt and Iraq, these groups have extensions."

Some extremists say they are determined to shape the new Libya. Youssef Jihani, a member of Ansar Shariah in Benghazi, vowed that he and other jihadis would not accept a return to the days when they were jailed and executed under Gadhafi's rule. He told the AP in Benghazi late last year that the toppling of Gadhafi would not have been possible without the strength of jihadi fighters who he said joined the uprising to ensure an "Islamic state of Libya, where Shariah rule is implemented."

The bearded young man said he lay down his weapons last year. But he said he would take arms up again if Libya's next constitution doesn't make a clear reference to rule by Islamic law or if secular politicians hold power and try to rein in jihadis.

Jihani proudly said he believes in al-Qaida and supports its slain leader Osama bin Laden and Afghan Taliban leader Mullah Omar. He said that during Libya's civil war in 2011, he killed a captured soldier from Gadhafi's army after discovering 11 video clips on his mobile phone showing soldiers raping women and men. Jihani said he ordered the soldier to dig his own grave, then severed his head with a knife.

"I wish I could behead him 11 times," he said. His story could not be independently confirmed.

Stewart, of Stratfor, also pointed to a concern that al-Qaida could make inroads among Libya's impoverished and alienated Tuareg.

Living in mud-brick slums or camps in the deserts of southwestern Libya, most Tuaregs were never given citizenship under Gadhafi's rule, though he used their fighters as mercenaries, and now they suffer not only from poverty but from the disdain of Libyans who see them as Gadhafi loyalists.

For centuries, Tuareg ran caravan routes across the Sahara, carrying gold and other valuables. Now they're known for smuggling weapons and drugs. In slums around the towns of Sabha and Owbari, they sleep next to livestock in shacks with corrugated metal roofs, with webs of electric cables dangling from poles overhead and garbage-filled streets.

Libya's new leadership has largely shunned them. The Tuareg's four members in parliament were removed because of ties to Gadhafi's regime, leaving them without a political voice. The Tuareg contend they were exploited by Gadhafi, along with all other Libyans.

"Gadhafi's rule left behind a breeding ground for terrorism by depriving people of their rights and education .... After all the promises, we thought we will live in heaven, but kids here die from scorpion bites," said Suleiman Naaim, a Tuareg rights activist, told the AP in Owbari.

Prosecutors Call for Investigation on Greek Deficit

Mr. Peponis and Mr. Mouzakitis the two prosecutors that called for investigation on Greek deficit.

Πηγή: New York Times
By NIKI KITSANTONIS
Jan 22 2013

ATHENS — Greek prosecutors called on Tuesday for a criminal inquiry into the actions of the head of Elstat, the country’s statistical authority, and two of his subordinates over claims that they overstated the country’s budget deficit figures, forcing it to swallow unnecessarily harsh austerity measures.

The agency head, Andreas Georgiou, a veteran of nearly two decades at the International Monetary Fund, first came under scrutiny in the fall of 2011, when a former Elstat employee, Zoe Georganta, asserted that Mr. Georgiou had inflated the agency’s official figure for Greece’s 2009 budget deficit, saying it amounted to more than 15 percent of the country’s gross domestic product.

In an interview with The New York Times last year, the statistics chief said that some members of Elstat’s board represented vested interests that did not want the full extent of Greece’s dire finances to come to light. “We were faced with significant pressures through the board not to revise the deficit upwards on account of fully applying European Union rules, but to minimize it,” he said.

Greece’s governing coalition, headed by the conservative New Democracy party, has lately undertaken a campaign to stamp out lawlessness and corruption, in part to impress its European creditors that it is serious about dealing with the country’s deep-seated problems. However, critics contend that it is doing so by attacking a series of straw men while ignoring criminality and tax evasion among the business, professional and political elites that have run the country for decades.

This month, for example, the police raided a squatter house in Athens that had been occupied by leftists and a few anarchists for more than 20 years, even though the violence that had plagued the city for years had subsided in recent months. The opposition said that, far from a crackdown on lawlessness, the raid incited a new wave of violence and was, at base, intended to distract attention from a scandal that threatens to disclose rampant tax evasion by the wealthy and well connected.

The Greek financial crisis erupted in 2009, when an incoming Socialist government announced that the budget deficit was 12.4 percent of gross domestic product, more than twice the previous estimate of the former government, headed by New Democracy. To date, neither the Socialists nor New Democracy has prosecuted any officials responsible for the understatement of the deficit.

It was about a year ago that prosecutors first summoned Mr. Georgiou, following the assertions by Ms. Georganta that Elstat had inflated the deficit beyond the 12.4 percent figure. They further called upon Parliament to consider whether the former Socialist prime minister, George Papandreou, and the former finance minister, George Papaconstantinou, should be investigated for their roles in expanding the deficit beyond 12.4 percent. A parliamentary committee last year found no wrongdoing by the politicians, vaguely highlighting instead “a lack of institutional knowledge of the euro zone.”

Since then Mr. Papaconstantinou, who appointed Mr. Georgiou as chief of the statistics service in June 2010, has been ensnarled in the tax evasion scandal, accused of removing names of family members from a list of more than 2,000 Greeks with Swiss bank accounts that may have been used to avoid taxes.

The Energy Industry is Not Safe in North Africa

Πηγή: Oilprice
jan 25 2013

Energy interests sector-wide should be prepared for the coming security nightmare that is the Sahel. At a time when even the juniors have become unaccountably brave in frontier regions, the hostage crisis in Algeria demonstrates just how vulnerable the industry is.

It is vulnerable both to the whims of Western military intervention and to Salafi jihadist moves to take advantage of a transnational opening that would have been unheard of with Gaddafi, Mubarak and Assad still in control in Libya, Egypt and Syria.

The hostage crisis at the BP-operated Amenas gas field in the Algerian Sahara was most interesting because it was the result of a militant leadership feud. It was a challenge from one leader to another, and that challenge will have to be met with something equally spectacular. It was also a message to the French about their unexpected intervention in Mali. More attacks on energy installations and Western personnel are likely to come elsewhere in the Sahel, and no amount of high-tech security will prevent them.

In total, we are talking about more than one million square kilometers of ungoverned desert in the Sahel and a French military intervention that will shift them away from Mali and toward other borders to refocus. French interests and citizens will be the primary (and already declared) targets, but Europeans in general will become increasingly profitable kidnapping victims.

Conflict in Mali

The Mali military staged a coup in March 2012--one month before presidential elections. They ousted President Amadou Toumani Toure on the pretext that his administration had failed to deal with the Tuareg, who have been pursuing independence for “Azawad” (Northern Mali) since the 1960s.

The coup leader was Pentagon favorite Amadou Haya Sanogo, who was trained in the US and by AFRICOM and was viewed in Washington as a strong ally in the fight against terrorism and particularly against the solidifying interests of AQIM (al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb). The coup left a security vacuum that allowed the Tuareg room to make a power play.

This came at a good time for the Tuareg, who had lost a major support base with the death of Libyan leader Muammer Gaddafi. In March, on the heels of the coup, the National Movement for the Liberation of Azawad (MNLA—a secular Tuareg outfit) took over some key government buildings in Gao (in Northern Mali). In April, they announced the creation of independent Azawad. But their victory was elusive and they were soon sidelined by three Islamist groups: Ansar al-Din (an Islamist Tuareg outfit), MUJAW and AQIM, both foreign terrorist groups.

French Special Forces arrived on the scene in March and the UN sanctioned military action. North African nations failed to move on this, leaving any military effort up to the French, while the US monitored the situation from neighboring borders (Burkina Faso and Mauritania).

In June, the MNLA were forced out by MUJAW (whose fighters are almost all former AQIM), and MUJAW took over Gao and imposed an extremely hardline form of Sharia law.

In January 2013, the French sent an initial 1,400 troops into Mali to launch an offensive supported by air strikes. The French were warned that the offensive would push militants into Algeria.

The French intervened when Ansar al-Din seized control of the town of Konna in the second week of January 2013. The French justification was to stop the Islamists from taking control of the rest of Mali. Konna in technically in the north of Mali, but it lies in the central buffer zone between north and south.

This was a flawed justification. Ansar al-Din is interested in taking control of the north, not the south, and its move on Konna was most likely intended only to measure the Mali Army’s response. Ansar al-Din does not have the capability or support (even with the help of the foreign terrorist groups) to take over the south of the country. Nor is that a likely agenda.

These militant Islamist Tuareg are natural enemies of the foreign terrorist groups (AQIM and MUJAW) and their temporary alliance is one only of convenience. Once Ansar al-Din secures its northern territory, it will summarily reject AQIM and MUJAW and likely turn on them.

Ansar al-Din views itself as defending its own territory. They are Tuareg. They are Malians. AQIM and MUJAB are foreigners and they have no territory to defend and will find themselves boxed in in Northern Mali, when traditionally they rely on mobility for their cause. The premature French military action will push AQIM and MUJAW militants to areas of the Sahel/Sahara outside of Mali and thus the crisis will spread.

AQIM, MUJAW and Ansar al-Din cooperated with each other to seize control of northern Mali last year, but since then cooperation has only been sporadic. The only other demonstration of cooperation was on 10 January, when the three launched a joint offensive against the Malian Army. It is important that there is the illusion of a united front—but it will not last. Not only are AQIM and MUJAW struggling with an insurgency leadership question, Ansar al-Din is Tuareg and has an entirely different agenda.

AQIM and Ansar al-Din are at odds over AQIM’s smuggling activities, and these three groups—along with a number of other groups—are also suffering from racial infighting among Black Africans and Arabs. Already, Ansar al-Din is showing signs that it may rescind plans for Sharia law in the north, which is HIGHLY unpopular among the Tuareg.

The leader of Ansar al-Din—Iyad ag Ghali--is under a great deal of pressure from his own tribe, the Ifoghas, to cut all ties with AQIM and MUJAW. This pressure has risen exponentially since the imposition of Sharia law in some areas of Northern Mali. Ghali is also be courted heavily by the secular MNLA, of which he is a former member, as well as Algerian intelligence officials and meditators from Burkina Faso.

The Algerian Hostage Crisis

On 15 January, a group of militants (about 40-strong) entered the Algerian Sahara via Libya and attacked a BP-operated gas field (Amenas) some 100 kilometers from the Libyan border, in a very remote stretch of desert. They took some 700 hostages. On 15-16 January, some 600 hostages were freed, but many of those were believed to have been freed by the militants themselves shortly before a raid by the Algerian Special Forces. On 16 January, Algerian Special Forces launched a three-day rescue operation. At least 60 hostages were killed in the helicopter, including at least 7 Western nationals. A total of 6 militants were captured alive.

This spectacular attack was not about Algeria, and only secondarily about the French intervention in Mali. It was first and foremost about making a power play to resolve a simmering leadership dispute among the Salafi jihadists over the Sahel.

No ransoms were sought, no hostages were executed, nor were the BP-operated Amenas gas facilities wantonly destroyed or sabotaged. It was an extremely high-profile publicity stunt designed to send this message: Mokhtar Belmokhtar is the unquestionable leader of the Salafi jihadist movement. He has managed to launch a surprise attack on a high-security Western gas field and take hundreds of hostages on the territory of Algeria—which is, significantly, the stomping ground of his key leadership rival. The secondary message—which was also necessary for the overall, incontrovertibly united goals of the Salafi jihadists in the Sahel—was a warning to the French over their intervention in Mali.

It is this leadership struggle that will best help us to predict where the next attack might take place, and how these parallel objectives will affect security across the Sahel and beyond—to Egypt and Syria.

The media has tended to attribute the hostage incident to AQIM, as this is something the Western public is familiar with and it suits further “war on terror” ambitions. However, the attack was not conducted by AQIM, rather by MUJAW, a relatively new creation comprised of former AQIM fighters and a mix of Black African Islamists. More specifically still, the attack was led by Belmokhtar, the historical leader of AQIM who split from the group only in October 2012 over a leadership dispute.

What concerns us most urgently is that Belmokhtar’s leadership rival, Abdelmakbel Droukdel, must rise to the challenge and respond with an equally spectacular attack that is still in line with the message to the French.

Beware—Libya, Niger and Mauritania

While most attention is presently on the security situation in Algeria, this may be misplaced. Algeria is the most secure of all the Sahel countries and its security forces have significantly greater capabilities. We would be more inclined to expect another terrorist attack outside of Algeria—for instance, in Libya, Niger, or Mauritania.

Libya will be the most affected, and that is fitting as this is where it all began. Unilateral French intervention led to a NATO-level conflict that effectively destabilized the entire Sahel and opened up windows of opportunity for Islamic militant groups—opportunities that have never existed before.

Libya remains a security nightmare, awash with roving militias, some of them understood to be “friendly”, working for, but not controlled by the government, others waiting for another opportunity to regroup, such as the chaos in Mali may provide. Those “friendly” Islamic militias also comprised the security team protecting the US consulate in Benghazi when it came under attack on 11 September 2012.

The violence in Mali has already sparked off a string of threats in Libya, with security forces claiming to have intercepted vehicle-borne explosive devices at the Benghazi airport before they could be detonated. Militant threats in retaliation for the French intervention in Mali have specifically listed hotels catering to foreigners across the country, but to a higher degree in Benghazi. Western diplomats remain a specific target. The Italian consul in Benghazi narrowly survived a drive-by shooting on 12 January.

After Libya, Niger is the most vulnerable to what will now be a spread of Salafi jihadist activity and kidnapping across the Sahel. It is most vulnerable because it is the poorest and its government lacks structure. Corruption among the security forces is extremely high, and there is evidence of individual security force collusion in kidnappings of foreigners.

This is also another likely theater for direct intervention by France because of French uranium interests here. Niger provides a significant amount of the uranium France uses in its nuclear reactors, and these uranium facilities should be on high alert.

Particularly in Niger, the kidnapping networks are dangerous and kidnappings are often conducted by third parties interested only in selling foreigners to AQIM or MUJAW—the two key terrorist groups in the region. This makes the kidnapping network immediately larger, and recruitment irrelevant. There is no ideological requirement. Locals looking to profit from this business will note the renewed momentum of the Salafi jihadist movements due to events in Mali and Algeria, and they will be seeking to take advantage of that momentum.

Cyprus and the euro: 'Aphrodite’s indebted island'

Could a country smaller than Sicily reignite the euro crisis?

Πηγή: The Economist
Jan 26 2013

IN JUNE 2012 the Cypriot government asked for a bail-out after the two largest banks, stacked with Greek bonds, fell victim to the 2011 write-down of Greek debt. Seven months on, time is running out. The finance minister, Vassos Shiarly, says he has to find €1 billion a month to refinance loans and for other spending. Yet the bail-out could be blocked—or approved only with conditions that spark renewed alarm among investors.

This week Jörg Asmussen, a European Central Bank board member, said the problems of Cyprus could be “systemic for the rest of the euro area”. Charles Dallara, head of the Washington-based Institute of International Finance, warned of “underestimating the potential contagion impact” coming from the island.

The government says it needs €7.5 billion ($10 billion). But its banks also need more capital. A committee including Greek-Cypriot officials and the troika of the European Commission, the ECB and the IMF asked Pimco, a big American bond investor, to advise how much, and the provisional answer was €10.3 billion. But in Germany, especially, any idea of using taxpayers’ money to underwrite deposits in Greek-Cypriot banks meets stiff resistance. Last year Germany’s foreign intelligence service declared that the main beneficiaries would be Russian oligarchs, businessmen and mafiosi.

Cyprus has outsized banks with big non-resident deposits (see chart). Taxes are low and the authorities encourage Russians to invest. Central-bank officials do not have an exact figure for Russian deposits, but estimate they are less than 10% of the total. Yet commercial bankers talk of a figure of 35%, as many Russian investments are disguised as local ones.

Not all of the money is dirty. Yet claims of Russian gangsters benefiting from German toil are a gift to the German opposition, whose votes will be needed to get a bail-out through the Bundestag. “In the context of the euro area’s new €500 billion European Stability Mechanism,” notes Jacob Kirkegaard of the Peterson Institute of International Economics in Washington, DC, “[Cyprus’s] financial problems look like a rounding error”. But a €17.8 billion bail-out would be almost the size of the Greek-Cypriot economy. It would also increase the government’s total debts to around 140% of GDP, which might well make them unsustainable.

That spooks the IMF and may explain why Pimco’s final report has yet to emerge. Behind the scenes, Cypriot officials are pressing for a lower figure and have hired other experts to scrutinise Pimco’s methods. The Germans suggest that more state assets should be privatised. That might be easier after President Demetris Christofias, a Communist, leaves office following the election on February 17th. His successor is likely to be Nicos Anastasiades, leader of the centre-right Democratic Rally (DISY). But DISY’s spokesman, Harris Georgiades, says Cyprus’s publicly owned firms are either “in such a bad state no one would buy them, or they would not generate enough revenue to have a significant impact”.

The IMF is widely thought to favour a Greek-style haircut of government debt. But since much of the government’s borrowing was from banks that need recapitalising, only a small share—barely €2 billion, by some estimates—could be written down. Another objection is that the European institutions have promised that the Greek exercise would never be repeated.

Hence talk of writing down the banks’ debt securities (again, relatively small beer at €1.8 billion) or inflicting a haircut on rich depositors. The Russian government might also be asked to help. Or the troika could lend Cyprus the full amount, but delay repayments until the benefits of a huge gasfield find off its southern coast begin to flow. Yet this is where the island’s intractable inter-communal politics come in.

For political reasons, the Cypriots plan to export the gas via a costly LNG terminal that could take 15 years to generate revenue. But Cyprus’s creditors may press for the faster (and cheaper) option of building a pipeline to Turkey: something that, with settlement talks with the Turkish-Cypriot north stalled, Greek-Cypriots would find hard to swallow.

Oil-for-Food Corruption Trial Opens in Paris

Total, CEO fight charges as oil-for-food trial opens in Paris

Πηγή: Downstream Today
By Geraldine Amiel, Dow Jones Newswires
Jan 21 2013

The trial of Total SA (TOT) and its Chairman and Chief Executive Christophe de Margerie for alleged corruption and bribery--in connection with the U.N.-led Oil-for-Food program in Iraq between the two Gulf wars--opened Monday in a Paris court.

Total and its CEO reject the charges, a spokeswoman for the group said.

Total, de Margerie and 18 other companies and individuals are listed as defendants in the case. Some defendants Monday called into question the constitutionality of the charges, as the alleged wrongdoing would have occurred outside France. All are denying any wrongdoing.

The trial is scheduled to last until Feb. 20, if there are no postponements.

If found guilty, individuals could be jailed for up to 10 years and fined 150,000 euros ($199,770) and companies could be fined as much as EUR1.875 million.

The United Nations' Oil-for-Food program, which ran from 1996 to 2002, allowed the Iraqi authorities to sell around $65 billion worth of crude oil to buy primary goods and mitigate the impact on the Iraqi population of the international embargo and sanctions against the country at that time. Part of the proceeds were also used to pay damages to Kuwait following the Iraqi invasion of the country in 1991 and U.N. operations there.

Under the program, the Iraqi authorities sold oil at a U.N.-fixed price per barrel to companies and individuals through contracts, with the money paid to an escrow account at the United Nations. Companies such as Total bought some of the oil, either directly or from intermediaries who had initially signed a contract with the Iraqi government.

Turkey, Greece wary of territorial waters claims

Greek Foreign Minister Dimitris Avramopoulos (left) speaks with his Turkish counterpart, Ahmet Davutoglu, and members of the delegations at the foreign ministry in Athens on October 10th 2012.

Πηγή: SETimes
By H.K. Tzanis for SES Türkiye in Athens
Jan 23 2013

Recent and highly publicised gas finds in the eastern Mediterranean between Israel and Cyprus, coupled with cash-strapped Greece's eagerness to better exploit natural resources, has thrust the question of exclusive economic zones into the spotlight.

Over the past couple years Athens and Ankara have moved to mend once tense relations despite long-entrenched opposing views on sea rights in the Aegean. But recent reports in Greek media that the country is preparing to unilaterally delimitate the zones carries the potential for friction.

Turkey's chief foreign affairs official insists, however, that the two countries have "channels" to discuss and deal with any dispute.

At the crux of Athens' standing position on maritime jurisdictions is the landmark UN Convention on the Law of the Sea, or UNCLOS, of which Greece and all EU member-states are signatories, but Turkey is not.

The convention, in force since 1994, recognises nations' rights to extend their territorial waters up to 12 nautical miles (22 kilometres) and an exclusive economic zone up to 200 nautical miles (370 kilometres) from a defined coastal baseline. To date, neither Turkey nor Greece have officially claimed an economic zone or extended their territorial waters to the full 12 miles in the Aegean.

Greek foreign ministry spokesman Grigoris Delavekouras reiterated this month, during a regular press briefing, that "Greece's policy is the delimitation of all maritime zones with all its neighbours, and we are pursuing this not just for the obvious economic benefits … but also because it is a decisive step toward strengthening regional stability."

Conversely, Selcuk Unal, the spokesman for Turkish foreign ministry, told SETimes that the latest debate over delimitation has created "unnecessary expectations" in the Greek public opinion towards this issue.

"We aren't objecting as long as Greece carries out its oil and gas drilling activities with no harmful effect on Turkey’s rights and benefits," Unal said, adding, "In other words, there is no obstacle against Greek economic activities over uncontested regions."

The Turkish spokesman was alluding to repeated references to the issue during the recent Greek elections in 2012, with vociferous demands by both the right and left that the next government unilaterally delimitate such zones around island-dotted and peninsular Greece.

Aware of the growing attention to the economic zone question, Turkey Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu told a gathering of Turkish diplomats in Izmir earlier this month that if Greece takes unilateral steps in that direction and disregards Turkey’s national position, then Turkey will not hesitate to respond.

"However, I expect that there would be no need for such an action," Davutoglu said. "We have already a functioning mechanism with Greece through other channels."

Unal also noted that with high-level meetings between the two countries' leaders expected in the next few months, Turkey preferred to settle the issue through negotiations.

"We want to preserve the positive agenda that exists over Greece-Turkey relations just in a period when both parties are in constant dialogue and mutual visits," Unal said.

Adding to the mix of politics, economic interests and often acrimonious recent history is the 320 articles plus annexes and the intricate legal framework entailed in international maritime law, a body of work not easily summarised into brief news reports.

"At present, there are two different concepts, the exclusive economic zone is a new concept; continental shelf is an old concept. EEZ is a superior concept to continental shelf, as the latter involved only minerals in the subsoil and seabed, the EEZ includes fisheries, the environment and energy from the sea and above the waves," Theodore Kariotis, an economics professor who has written on the Aegean dispute, told SETimes.

Ankara insists on bilateral negotiations, while Athens would like the issue settled in the International Court of Justice.

For Kariotis, Ankara's deep aversion to UNCLOS lies directly with the convention's 121st article, specifically paragraph B, which gives complete economic zone rights to the mainland and islands as well.

Turkey's long-standing position on the issue is that implementation of provisions in the convention are "complicated" when it comes to the Aegean because of its specific geographical properties.

The arguments repeatedly used by Ankara over the decades are that the Aegean, with its 2,400 plus islands, is a "semi-enclosed sea" and that "special circumstances" exist, which have not been included in UNCLOS.

Undoubtedly, one major obstacle in any possible future negotiations between Athens and Ankara will revolve around the small island of Kastellorizo located 570 kilometres southeast of Athens but only 2 kilometres across from the small Turkish coastal town of Kas.

"If the area of Kastellorizo is given 'full effect' during a delimitation, then Greece will have a maritime border with Cyprus; if Kastellorizo receives 'partial effect' then Turkey will have a maritime border with Egypt, and Greece will not have one with Cyprus," Kariotis said.

Referring to the Kastellorizo aspect, Haritini Dipla, a Swiss-educated professor of international law and specialist on maritime law and islands' status, said any international court would look at Kastellorizo and its islets' geographical position.

In particular, a court would look at "the effect it has on the baseline … the area of the maritime zone which it has a right to, in relation to the area of the island itself," she said.

"Of course, Kastellorizo is populated, and has the right to maritime zones, possibly however, they [international judges] may give it a reduced influence in the median baseline. No one knows how much, this depends, of course, on the arguments of the two countries and on the judges' opinion," she said, highlighting the complexity of the issue.

Editor's Note: On Mondey 28/1 the 54th round of exploratory contacts between Turkey and Greece will be held in Athens.