Dr. Obama & Mr. Hyde

Normally during their second term U.S. presidents reveal their true ambitions. Without the pressure of having to win a re-election at the end of the term, they have their hands free to implement all those unpopular policies that in their first term would have been suicidal but that are the ones that forge a presidential legacy.

For Obama, it was going to be hard to accomplish more than in the first four years. Obamacare and the closing chapter of Osama Bin Laden were a hard act to follow. All this, however, has gone out of the window. His legacy might be rather murky in the end.

Picture: Obama's twitter

The revelation of secrets involving the US government spying its own citizens has dented the image of the country both abroad -and this is the novelty- and within the US. Foreigners were already suspicious; Americans are now on board that train too. All this has made Obama into a sort of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.

It is remarkable to see the different opinions that held candidate Obama and President Obama. Several online videos illustrate how both Obamas could have perfectly had a debate with completely opposing views. As an example, take this video. There is another one that puts Obama to debate with Biden.

The truth is that the US President has promoted laws to protect those who leak information to the press. But at the same time, he has ensured that no one can do it without being considered a traitor. To get an idea, it would be like legalizing the use of hands to play soccer while banning at the same time touching the ball at all. And while Obama is defending the whistleblowers that are working towards building up the freedoms of citizens, his team also removed from the memory of his electoral program the mentions to all promises working on that line.

Obama's speech isn’t contradictory only when talking about whistleblowers. Take the global war on terrorism, for example. Obama has put a deadline on the military intervention in Afghanistan and he has decided that the conflict is over, just to have the Pentagon saying straight after that it actually will be around for 10 or 20 years more -which is like saying that it will never end.

That’s without mentioning other flops like Guantanamo, still there. Or the policy of use for drones, whose operations have grown exponentially since Obama is in the White House. There even have been ad-hoc laws created to legalize the targeted killing of Americans who belong to "associated forces" of Al-Qaeda, which in practice is a blank check to blast out anyone anywhere.

But undoubtedly the cases of Manning and Snowden are the ones that seem to have started the ball rolling at home. Manning has been held incommunicado for weeks, months, years, without knowing his future. Today he finally knew it: he will be considered a snitch, not a traitor. The saga is not over yet. There are 20 more charges that could lead to a more than 120 years sentence.

For Snowden it is more poignant. The journalist who he leaked the information to is facing already voices calling for his prosecution and a smear campaign. It’s a declaration of intentions and a warning to the press in general. It effectively coerces journalists who might land in the future on leaked information. They know what they must adhere to. Snowden, meanwhile, lives in an airport at the moment and probably he will never again have a normal life.

But neither will American citizens -or the rest of the world. Giants like Microsoft, Apple, Google and Facebook have been involved in a case that threatens something Americans defend to death: privacy.

Snowden’s support among American citizens is far greater than the one for Manning, basically because this time Americans rights are the ones that got violated; not some foreign people’s. PRISM has done far more damage to the Obama administration that the supposed dangers it was trying to protect them from.

Obama might be remembered as the president who killed bin Laden. Or the one who won a Nobel Peace Prize. Perhaps as the one who created the basics of an egalitarian health system or the one who rescued the car industry. But he also might be remembered as the tyrant who spied, tortured and killed other Americans. And there isn’t any Nobel Peace Prize capable of cleaning that.

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A (pacified?) Iraq

Who said that Iraq was pacified? This week, a massive jailbreak in the infamous Abu Ghraib prison has freed more than 500 prisoners, many of them from Al Qaeda in Iraq. The word massive falls short to describe an operation that dwarfs others attempted by Al Qaeda in Afghanistan or Iraq.

The confusion in the Iraqi government has been massive too. They knew that something was coming to get them. Every year during the Ramadan month, terrorist attacks increase. That reminds me of the modus operandi of ETA, which used to carry out attacks on weekends and holidays.

Returning to the subject, I was saying that the Iraqi government suspected something was brewing. They weren’t sure what exactly but just in case, they had prepared a special police operation to deal with the unexpected.

Well, it didn’t work. According to the latest information available, some of the guards of the prison itself helped the prisoners to escape. In fact, Iraqi officials are talking of an inside job that has released many of the leaders of Al Qaeda in Iraq, including some who were arrested by U.S. troops.

But if it had been just a matter of a mass jailbreak –just a huge escape after all- it would not be so worrying. Worrying, but not as worrying as the other stuff going on in Iraq. The really serious problem is that the death toll continues to rise. So much for a country that is supposed to be stable.

 

Photo: Channelstv.com

It was too much to ask for that for once Iraq enjoyed a peaceful Ramadan. So far in July, 450 people have died in a country that is accustomed to high numbers of deaths on a daily basis. Last Saturday, in one day alone, 80 people were killed in various attacks around the country.

To get an idea of the bigger picture, in 2011 there were 4,147 deaths related to terrorist violence in Iraq. In 2012 the figure rose to 4,573. So far in 2013 (excluding July), the death toll stands at 3,175. If the progression continues, it could reach 5,000 dead in this year. Moreover, since 2003, there has not been a single month that had less than 200 violent deaths. Since 2011, the average is 450 deaths a month. Too many for a (supposedly) pacified country.

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Smugglers of the Middle East

The borders of the Middle East and the Sahara have always been an excellent breeding ground for smuggling. Dozens of times, crossing from one country to another, I have seen myself how cigarettes, alcohol or even toilet paper was carried mixed among the luggage of tourists and backpackers.

Conflicts in the region have made these borders even more porous. Many people are benefiting from the lack of control on either side of the border to increase smuggling of all kinds of goods, objects or even people.

In the Sahara, the growing influence of al-Qaeda (notable for using the drug trade to finance itself) has increased smuggling in places like Algeria and Mali. People who smuggled cigarettes before have been attracted by the easy money in drugs and now carry cocaine. It comes from South America to Africa through the parallel 10 (Highway 10) and across the desert into Europe.

Further east, the story is somehow similar, but the trade changes. According to an AP report for Al Jazeera, weapons, humanitarian aid, including fuel, and medicine enter Syria via Turkey on a daily basis. In the other direction go vegetables, flour, tea, iron and wood from houses destroyed by missile and rocket attacks and even live animals such as cows or sheeps.

The long-time porous border between Lebanon and Syria is more of the same. For the Lebanese, the traditional tobacco smuggling has given way to a far more deadly trade: weapons. The UN, through its Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, has expressed concern that this smuggling will end destabilizing Lebanon itself.

One of the reasons for the American doubts to support the rebels is that their weapons could end up in the hands of Islamists. There are also questions raised about what might happen to the chemical weapons arsenal if the Assad regime is toppled.

The matter concerns enough to Israel, which fears that orphaned Assad’s weapons will end up as part of a service arsenal for the highest bidder. A few weeks ago Israeli warplanes bombed an alleged Syrian arms shipment to Hezbollah, in Syrian soil but from Lebanese airspace.

Tunnel in Gaza

The counterpart to the benefit of a few for smuggling is that commodities’ prices have skyrocketed for the rest, even for basic items. While Syrian fuel and flour cross the border to make a profit in Turkey, Aleppo bakeries can not make bread.

The same goes for other food like tomatoes, which have seen their price more than doubled since the war began. Also sheperds try to get rid of their herds before a bomb wills kill the animals. This explains the smuggling of live animals, but also the exorbitant price of meat inside Syria.

But if there is a Middle Eastern place that has taken years perfecting smuggling that is the Gaza Strip. The famous tunnels under the border with Egypt have provided the population a way of life and survival during the hardest years. Now, with the change of government in Egypt, are still used but less and less.

However, The Telegraph recently speculated with the possibility of reviving a smuggling route from Iran to Gaza via Sudan, intended primarily to provide weapons to Hamas.

It would not be the first time that the Iranians try, and it would not be the first time that Israel invades foreign airspace to avoid it. Israel attacked in the Sudanese capital several convoys that, according to Tel Aviv, were carrying weapons destined for Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in Gaza.

However, perhaps the most striking act of smuggling in recent months has been a completely different one. It has to do not with weapons, food nor medicine. It is all about a much more primary element of human nature: obtain offspring.

For Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails, having children is out of reach. No right to conjugal private meetings means it is impossible to start a family. So they are increasingly resorting to an ingenious method, sperm smuggling.

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Arab Spring, Islamist Summer

With the perspective that gives time, many Westerners who at first supported the Arab revolutions look now in fear the apparent result of this spring: an Islamist summer. It worries them so much that many celebrated the coup against Morsi in Egypt -despite being, all in all, a coup.

All the countries involved in the Arab Spring, from Morocco to Syria, have seen raise their Islamic base. In Egypt the Muslim Brotherhood ruled the country until a coup ousted Mursi two weeks ago. Islamist militias in Syria such as al-Nusra are gaining influence. In Morocco and Tunisia two Islamic parties took power in the last elections. Hamas, in turn, governs in the Gaza Strip for some time now.

Since none of the previously mentioned factions have reached their sphere of influence after using violence (except al-Nusra) it is difficult to think that all those Islamists were not there before. Probably they couldn’t be heard. However, the new landscape gives them greater freedom of action.

But most of those who took to the streets of Rabat, Damascus or Cairo weren't religious, they were liberals. They wanted more democracy, more participation and a more equitable distribution of wealth. And they were asking for solutions to problems like unemployment and to break with the old regime.

However, following a familiar pattern, in every case what began as a liberal revolt has become an Islamist one. Just as the Palestinians first embraced Fatah and then jumped into the arms of Hamas, the other citizens of the Arab uprisings have traveled the same path, only that in an accelerated way.

It is a known pattern. Fatah, like Mubarak, Gaddafi, Assad or Ben Ali, represented the old regime. For its citizens, the only flag of change is that of the Islamists. And that is what they embrace, at least at first.

This should not surprise or be a cause of concern to the West. This is a natural evolution that does not have to stay like that. In Egypt, the Muslim Brotherhood is not anymore in power after increasingly having more and more problems to solve what people were really interested in; like unemployment. It took a second popular uprising and a military coup, but Morsi is ousted now.

And once awakened, the Egyptian society -like the other societies- is not going to stand idly by. The liberal roots of the revolution are already resurfacing in Tahrir.

But even if the Islamist were to remain in power in other places, a government with a strong religious bias is not so strange. It happens all the time in Western democracies. After all, the United States mint their coins with the phrase "In God We Trust", in England the Government is subject to the head of the Anglican Church and in many other countries the Prime Minister is sworn on the Bible.

Moreover, also in Western countries there is an alternation of power between more liberal and secular parties and others more influenced by religion. As long as this also happens in the Middle East, there is no room for concern.

What really matters is that: the alternance in power. If there is freedom to choose and change the government, there should be no problem. And so far, the Arab countries have demonstrated that it is possible. Even if a coup is needed.

The main problem here is that what the people in the Middle East may want, may not be in sync with what the West wants. That is another thing completely different, the personal preference of each country. After the coup in Egypt, several Arab outlets like Al Jazeera were raising the question of whether if the Middle East had failed democracy or it was democracy the one that failed the Middle East.

Along the way to democracy there will be progress on some issues, such as greater democratic openness and an awakening of society towards more liberal and secular thinking, and others will be steps backward. The cases of Gaza or Iran, where Islamic revolutions triumphed long ago, show the way, with its lights and shadows.

In fact, it's reassuring to those who are concerned about the Islamist future of the Middle East to notice that the people on the street now are again secular and demanding secular solutions.

The current drift of Arab society, after the initial wave of Islamism -the easier and more visible option- is that of secularism. That will be the second Arab Spring, but still it will take some time to arrive. Egypt is showing us the route. In the meantime, we will have an Islamist summer.

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The rising of private wars

The world woke up back on a late April Tuesday morning to the horrific images of a cargo airliner crashing in Afghanistan. The huge fireball left by the plane when crashing was a clear picture of the tragedy.

The aircraft was a Boeing 747-400 carrying only cargo on board. This load was mostly military equipment, vehicles and other supplies. It seems there wasn’t any attack and for now, the most plausible theory is that it was an accident.

The load probably wasn’t well secured and went loose during takeoff towards the tail. This in turn would have altered the center of gravity of the aircraft, making it stall and fall. It is certainly the most likely cause.

However, this accident brings to the front a problem that is currently missing in the headlines: wars are increasingly private and states are increasingly dependent on mercenaries.

We are only a few months from NATO leaving Afghanistan and with Iraq already abandoned. Today there are more non-military than American military personnel in these two countries, as it has been during the past half decade. The United States has gotten used to fight its wars with remote-drones-and outsourcing them to others.

Most of these contractors are non-combatant personnel. They are engineers, doctors, foremen and all kinds of project managers, belonging to Western companies that have won bids for reconstruction projects. There are also many who are local labor.

But then there is the category of mercenaries. These are responsible for the security of the bases or, as in the case of the crashed plane, of transporting personnel and equipment to operational theaters.

This is nothing new. Spain lived in their own flesh what it means to engage third parties with the crash of a plane carrying its soldiers back from Afghanistan. It was the biggest loss of personnel -60 soldiers died- in a single day for the Spanish army since the Civil War, in 1939. But the influence of contractors has increased as increased the conflicts in which the United States was involved.

Today we can find mercenaries in Iraq or Afghanistan, but also fighting piracy in Somalia aboard private freighters, helping the French in Mali, dealing with the war on drugs, assisting the Syrian rebels or handling the biggest air base in Kyrgyzstan.

This has made modern armies, starting with the American, depend largely on mercenaries. Without them, NATO operations in Afghanistan would stall because there is no country in the coalition -not even the US- capable of, for example, maintaining the cargo capacity that handle the various subcontractors.

The troops would be out of fuel and ammunition, but also they would have to stop patrolling to start doing tasks like peeling potatoes or guard bases. Jobs that once were assigned to the soldiers and today are made by mercenaries.

This work is reflected on the bills. Between 2008 and 2011, companies like Blackwater or DynCorp pocketed a total of 132 billion dollars, a budget larger than that of any other American agency in the same period. And we must bear in mind that this is only the invoice for the Americans and it does not include all contractors. Personal like embassy security guards is not included in that number.

The economic issue of employing mercenaries is joined with the moral problems that cause the mercenaries. Several times they have been involved in scandals in Iraq and Afghanistan, some high-profile. But even after Blackwater’s shooting in central Baghdad, the mercenary army has done nothing else but to increase. It is certainly a good deal for some. But at what cost to the states?

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