PrairiePundit

Ofir Haivry: The Great Arab Implosion and Its Consequences Who or what will replace a century of failed Sunni Arab dominance? What, if anything, can the West do to help shape the future? This is a long and important piece on the collapse of Arab governments from North Africa to Southern Asia.  It also includes non-Arab Muslim states that are also in turmoil.  While not mentioned, this implosion of states explains the refugee crisis that is also effecting Western Europe and the US. I see it as a collapse of the Muslim culture.  Islam has been described by some as a form of government masquerading as a religion.  The refugee crisis is compounded by those who still cling to aspects of this failed culture as they move out of the region.

Bill Gertz: The Islamic State terror group in Libya continues to grow inside the oil-rich North African state and is threatening attacks against Europe and elsewhere, the general nominated to lead the U.S. Africa Command told a Senate hearing Tuesday. “An unchecked IS-Libya could become an external operations hub threatening Algeria, Egypt, Tunisia, shipping in the Mediterranean, and our European allies,” Marine Corps Lt. Gen. Thomas D. Waldhauser said in prepared testimony, using an acronym for the Islamic State branch in Libya. The general warned that Libya’s instability combined with growing ISIS activities could “push the country toward civil war, threatening U.S. interests in Africa, Europe, and the Middle East,” the three-star general told a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing on his nomination for the AFRICOM post. Waldhauser said during the hearing that he favors increased airstrikes and a greater U.S. troop presence in Libya to counter the terror threat. Under qu...

NY Times: Desperation Rising at Home, Africans Increasingly Turn to Risky Seas More than 1,300 migrants have died trying to cross the Mediterranean in boats from North Africa in the last few weeks alone. Perhaps they see the sea as a better chance for survival than living in the chaos of radical Islam.  This collapse of culture is also strange in that those fleeing do not seem to understand what has caused and they cling to a failed culture if they make it across the sea.

Independent: Their army’s equipment and strategy was “outmoded”; their air force’s bombs and missiles were “more dumb than smart”; their navy was “more rust than ready”. For decades, this was Western military leaders’ view, steeped in condescension, of their Russian counterparts. What they have seen in Syria and Ukraine has come as a shock. Russian military jets have, at times, been carrying out more sorties in a day in Syria than the US-led coalition has done in a month. The Russian navy has launched ballistic missiles from the Caspian Sea 900 miles way, and kept supply lines going to Syria. The air defences installed by the Russians in Syria and eastern Ukraine would make it extremely hazardous for the West to carry out strikes against the Assad regime or Ukrainian separatists. Lieutenant General Ben Hodges, the commander of the US army in Europe, has described Russian advances in electronic warfare in Syria and Ukraine – a field in which they were typically supposed to be back...

Daily Mail: EXCLUSIVE -The city destroyed by migration: Inside the Swedish town where armed gangs patrol the streets, crime has exploded and a beautiful social worker's murder has shocked Europe Social worker Alexandra Mezher, 22, was murdered in Mölndal on Monday Gothenburg suburb last year took in more unaccompanied refugee children than anywhere else in the country – 4,041 added to a population of 63,000  Received £22.6million to provide housing for unaccompanied minors – the most state funding per capita than any town or city in Sweden  Crime figures reveal there were 222 criminal complaints linked to migrant centres – between 20 October 2015 and 8 January this year  MailOnline went inside lawless town where eyes of Europe have been watching since the senseless stabbing The migrants appear to be bringing their failed culture with them and the Swedes seem unprepared to deal with the situation.  It would not be too surprising to see people begin to find ...

Washington Post: Europe plans military response to migrant crisis The E.U. will need authorization from the U.N. Security Council to destroy ships in the Mediterranean before they take on human cargo, a business that has left 1,800 migrants dead so far this year. They may need to eventually put troops ashore to stop this ghoulish trade.  Trying to stop them once they are aboard a ship is much more difficult.   All forms of piracy need to be attacked at their source.

Observer/Guardian: Arab spring prompts biggest migrant wave since second world war Migrants fleeing the Middle East and north Africa are already risking everything as they try to escape war at home The numbers are staggering.  There are 16.7 million million fleeing worldwide and there are anotehr 33.3 million internally displaced.  Radical Islam has manage to create a hell on earth instead of the Paradise they seek.  What makes this even worse is that many of these refugees are trying to recreate their failed culture in Europe.

Fox News: State Department warns US businesses in North Africa of ISIS retaliation The specific concern is in Morocco but the reality is that ISIL will kill any American that it can get in its sights.  It is what they do.

Reuters: A new armed group calling itself the Caliphate Soldiers in Algeria has split from al Qaeda's North African branch and sworn loyalty to the radical breakaway group Islamic State fighting in Syria and Iraq. A breakaway of key Algerian commanders from Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, known as AQIM, would show deepening rivalry between al Qaeda's core command and the Islamic State over leadership of the transnational Islamist militancy. In a communique, AQIM central region commander Khaled Abu Suleimane, whose real name is Gouri Abdelmalek, claimed leadership of the new group, joined by an AQIM commander of an eastern region in Algeria, where the al Qaeda wing has its base. "You have in the Islamic Maghreb men if you order them they will obey you," Suleimane said in reference to Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the leader of the Islamic State. "The Maghreb has deviated from the true path." ... Radical Islamist are gravitating toward ever more radical leadership...

Reuters: Inquiries into the bloody assault on an Algerian gas plant are uncovering increasing evidence of contacts between the assailants and the jihadis involved in killing the U.S. ambassador to Libya nearly a year ago. The extent of the contacts between the militants is still unclear and nobody is sure there was a direct link between the attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi and the carnage at In Amenas, where 39 foreign hostages were killed in January. But the findings, according to three sources with separate knowledge of U.S. investigations, shed some light on the connections between Al Qaeda affiliates stretching ever further across North and West Africa. The lack of detail, meanwhile, highlights the paucity of intelligence on jihadis whose rise has been fuelled by the 2011 Arab uprisings and who have shown ready to strike scattered Western targets including mines and energy installations. That makes the region an even greater worry for Western countries at a time of height...

Daily Mail: Interpol has linked a worldwide Al Qaeda terror warning to a series of jailbreaks that have freed more than 1,500 suspected terrorists in the last fortnight. Detectives fear that inmates who escaped from Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, the al-Kwyfah facility in Libya and a number of other jails intend to hit British and other Western targets around the festival of Eid – which takes place this week. The Foreign Office has announced the temporary closure of the embassy in Yemen after receiving a tip-off that Al Qaeda was planning to attack a Western embassy there.France, Germany and the United States are also closing their embassies in the country, and the US is also shutting 21 others, most of them in the Middle East. The intelligence indicating a threat to Western embassies in the Arabian peninsula is believed to have come from intercepted communications, though this has not been publicly disclosed. The British embassies in Saudi Arabia, Oman, Qatar, Bahrain, Kuwait, the Unite...

Daniel Pipes: ... Comments : (1) Don't know about you, but I find this pre-emptive cringing unworthy of a great country, even humiliating. Why do we allow a bunch of extremist thugs to close us down, rather than the reverse? For what purpose do we pay for the world's best military and largest intelligence services if not to protect ourselves from this sort of threat? (2) This timidity fits into a larger pattern that I have long found reprehensible. Here's a comment of mine from 1998  I should like to resurrect, that responded to the double bombings of American embassies in Kenya and Tanzania almost exactly fifteen years ago, on Aug. 7, 1998: It'll be a happy day when American embassies are again built in busy downtown intersections out of normal materials - and not, as they are now, bunkers located in distant lots surrounded by high fences. Such a change will only be possible when the safety of Americans depends not on walls, metal detectors and Marine ...

Military Times: The Marine Corps and Army have developed quick-reaction forces to respond to attacks such as the one in Benghazi, Libya, that killed four Americans, including the U.S. ambassador. The Marines will base 500 troops at Moron Air Force Base in Spain, about 35 miles southeast of Seville, said Capt. Eric Flanagan, a Marine Corps spokesman. They can be flown on short notice to African crises aboard six Osprey tilt-rotor aircraft. Those aircraft can take off and land like a helicopter and cruise at more than 300 mph. Two KC-130 tanker aircraft have been dedicated to refuel them in flight, which will expand their reach. The unit is known as the Special Purpose Marine Air-Ground Task Force for Crisis Response. It will act as a first responder to U.S. embassies in the region on behalf of U.S. Africa Command, Flanagan said. It will be on standby to help evacuate Americans from hot spots and to provide disaster relief and humanitarian missions. The Army has developed the East Afri...

Observer/Guardian: China and US push for dialogue with North Korea It usually helps to have a rational party on the other side.  I tend to think that much of this is about trying to build support among a fragile army in North Korea.  There has been open fighting among factions and desertions are high.   Why help the despots stay in power?

Washington Times: Haidara Aissata , the lone woman in Mali's parliament , picked up the phone earlier this month to the anguished cries of a young mother who just learned her husband had sold the couple’s 9-year-old son to al Qaeda fighters for $40. The boy was taken to a training camp where he would be indoctrinated into Shariah law and fight against French troops seeking to repel the terrorists’ grip on the West African nation. SEE RELATED: Terror in Timbuktu: A trip through the heart of Mali Ms. Aissata — who stands out in Mali ’s male-dominated politics as much for her beauty-queen looks as her impassioned oratory — tells the story frequently as she travels the globe these days trying to dispel the notion — fanned by some Obama administration officials — that al Qaeda is weakened and on the decline. To the contrary, the terror network has inspired and trained al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb throughout northwest Africa, along with its Mali offshoot, Ansar Dine, and both ...

Washington Post: This was supposed to be the year for Marseille. The gritty Mediterranean port, France’s second-largest city , was appointed the “cultural capital of Europe,” a rotating European Union honor. City fathers launched beautification projects, created new tourism attractions and invited people from around the world to visit. A splendid stone esplanade was laid around the Old Port, peppered with novel sculpture, and a high-tech historical museum went up next to City Hall. But despite the cultural renaissance — not to mention Marseille’s famed fish soup — all people here are talking about these days is murder and drug trafficking. In the past two weeks, five killings have been recorded that police say are linked to gang wars for control of hashish sales in the city’s infamous high-rise slums. The eruption has refocused attention on Marseille’s long-standing reputation as a European drug-smuggling hub, a place where entire neighborhoods have slipped away from police control ...

Ralph Peters: ... We have a president whose self-esteem and regal taste for power is exceeded only by his naivety about the rest of the world. Now the question isn’t whether we’ll face foreign crises — perhaps, disasters — but which crisis will strike first or hit the hardest. ...  Is is not too harsh a judgment.  His Middle East and North African policies have been a disaster and will like lead to more terror attacks.  There are just somethings that cannot be accomplished by drone attacks and frying the had disk between the ears of our enemy.  Peters also sees potential problems in Russia and Venezuela where paranoid leaders hold sway.

NY Times: Chad Said to Have Killed Mastermind of Algerian Attack Mokhtar Belmokhtar’s death was announced on state television in Chad, but the claim has not been confirmed. Hopefully this will be confirmed.  It will be interesting to find how he made his way to Chad.  It is too bad he was not captured and interrogated.  One of the flaws of the Obama strategy is that it would rather kill people with intelligence information than capture them and question them about ongoing operations.

Reuters: French forces in Mali have killed Abdelhamid Abu Zeid, a leading field commander of al Qaeda's north Africa wing AQIM, Algerian Ennahar television reported on Thursday. The station said 40 militants including Abu Zeid were killed in the region of Tigargara in northern Mali three days ago. A French Defence Ministry official declined to comment on the report. Algeria did not confirm the killing. ... Abu Zeid has been regarded as one of AQIM's most ruthless operators. He is believed to have executed British national Edwin Dyer in 2009 and a 78-year-old Frenchman, Michel Germaneau, in 2010. Canadian diplomat Robert Fowler, in an account of his kidnapping by another Islamist cell in the Sahara, recounted how Abou Zeid refused to give medication to two hostages suffering from dysentery, one of whom had been stung by a scorpion. The story does not describe the operation, only the results.  I believe that Tigargara is the mountainous area where al Qaeda retreated afte...

Washington Post: In his first term, President Obama instructed the Pentagon to pivot its forces and reorient its strategy toward fast-growing Asia. Instead, the U.S. military finds itself drawn into a string of messy wars in another, much poorer part of the world: Africa. Over the past two years, the Pentagon has become embroiled in conflicts in Libya, Somalia, Mali and central Africa. Meantime, the Air Force is setting up a fourth African drone base, while Navy warships are increasing their missions along the coastlines of East and West Africa. In scope and expense, the U.S. military involvement in Africa still barely registers when compared with its presence in Asia, let alone the Middle East or Afghanistan. On any given day, there are only about 5,000 U.S. troops scattered across all of Africa, while 28,000 are stationed in South Korea alone. But it is becoming more common for the Pentagon to deploy troops to parts of Africa that many Americans would be hard-pressed to locate on...