| | | | | President Trump's decision to recognize Jerusalem as Israel's capital prompted protests from Arab leaders. But shifting priorities in the region could mean that Palestinians this time receive little more than lip service for their cause, suggest Anne Barnard, Ben Hubbard and Declan Walsh in the New York Times. The Palestinian issue "has slipped in importance, displaced by the Arab Spring uprisings, the wars in Iraq, Syria and Yemen, the threat of the Islamic State, and the contest between Saudi Arabia and Iran for regional dominance. Persian Gulf states like Saudi Arabia, more concerned about their rivalry with Iran, have found their interests increasingly overlapping with those of Israel," they write. "Arab leaders have often counted on declarations of support for the Palestinian cause as a reliable way to appeal to their people, and sometimes as a distraction from domestic problems, including lack of political freedoms and economic opportunities." Indeed, "Palestinian leaders have learned that declarations of concrete support from their Arab brothers only sometimes materialized. And many note that the Arab world has done little more than issue notes of protest as the Israeli government has extended its de facto control over the eastern part of Jerusalem since seizing it from Jordan in the 1967 Mideast war and annexing it in a move still not recognized by most of the world." | | How Putin's Power Is Slipping Away | | | Vladimir Putin has used his third term as president to cast Russia as the great "geopolitical disruptor," a hacking superpower, writes Leonid Bershidsky in Bloomberg View. But with no coherent domestic policy, Putin might find that even if he is reelected in March that his power is much diminished. "The Soviet-style campaign announcement on Wednesday -- during a visit to a truck factory in Nizhny Novgorod, where a worker asked him a 'spontaneous' question about the election -- is evidence of the Kremlin's lack of ideas, characteristic of its domestic policy during Putin's third term. Putin's legitimacy after his inevitable win will be the lowest of his reign, spurring an ever more active battle for succession, in which new players are likely to start emerging as soon as Putin is re-enthroned," Bershidsky argues. "Putin has presided over, indeed enabled, a corrupt, inefficiently run country where people -- including those in the top echelons of business and power -- just fend for themselves as best they can. The question of what kind of future Russia might have will arise after Putin's re-election, and Putin won't necessarily have much say in it." | | A Big Setback for al Qaeda? | | | Largely unnoticed amid the "political chaos in Washington and upheavals in the Middle East" has been a rare bit of good news about US policy in Syria, writes Daniel Byman for Lawfare. An acrimonious split between al Qaeda's core and its Syrian affiliate "suggests that al-Qaeda wields less influence than previously feared and that US efforts to isolate al Qaeda in Syria are bearing some fruit." "As is so often the case, observers seemed to paint al Qaeda stronger than its reality. We now know that [al Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri] opposed the divorce, but its affiliate split anyway. One reason for the split was that HTS (Hay'at Tahrir al-Sham) sought to work with local groups that sought the support of the United States and its allies, which oppose any group with an al Qaeda taint. But, another reason was that the core appeared to offer its affiliate little. Zawahiri could fulminate in private but had little ability to stop the split," Byman says. "[T]he acrimonious split raises questions about al Qaeda's ability to regain leadership over the global jihadist movement as the Islamic State's caliphate collapses. If al Qaeda cannot maintain the loyalty of its own affiliates, it will be hard to win over groups without prior affiliation." | | The Trouble with Iraq's "Mass Vengeance" | | | Iraq's determination to bring to justice to those who served ISIS is understandable. After all, ISIS criminals "mercilessly, even proudly, caused unimaginable suffering, death, and destruction in Iraq (and Syria) for three years," writes Sarah Leah Whitson for Reuters. But the "mass vengeance" being undertaken by some Iraqi soldiers will only undermine efforts at uniting a fractured country. "Iraq can, and should, find alternatives to prosecution for the thousands of IS suspects who carried out no serious crimes or acts of violence. Let's face it: The reasons someone may have joined IS are complex and touch upon a long history of Sunni isolation, for which many in Iraq are to blame," Whitson writes. "A better (though no doubt imperfect) way to address the community betrayal such membership most deeply represents is to allow these IS members to participate in a national truth-telling mechanism that can also create a meaningful record of IS crimes, and to make amends through service to the Iraqi communities to which they and their families ultimately belong. There is ample precedent for this. In many other post-conflict situations, governments have decided to choose such alternatives to prosecution as the best way forward." | | Why Kim Might Be Happy for More North Koreans to be Online | | | The number of North Koreans with mobile devices has soared over the past five years, relatively at least. But with that increased access has come increased opportunities for the Kim regime to keep tabs on its citizens, write Timothy Martin and Warangkana Chomchuen for the Wall Street Journal. "Nearly all North Korean phones, tablets, laptops and computers run on locally developed operating systems that are stocked with censorship and surveillance tools and cut users off from the outside world's internet, according to researchers and groups that work with defectors," they write. Locally developed operating systems "direct users to a curated intranet loaded with Kim Jong Un speeches and recipes of North Korean dishes. An online business-to-business shopping website offers products from about 150 local retailers. A travel site allows North Koreans to plan domestic vacations." "Phone usage is monitored, and mostly limited to calls, texts, photos and gaming, defectors and researchers said. Smartphone users face random stops by police who check their phones' contents, defectors said." | | South Africa's Big Decision | | | Next week marks a crucial moment for one of Africa's most influential nations. South Africa's ruling party faces a choice – vote for change, or choose a leader who embodies the failed policies of current President Jacob Zuma, The Economist editorializes. "Under President Jacob Zuma, the state is failing. Contracts are awarded through bribes and connections; ruling-party members murder each other over lucrative government jobs; crooks operate with impunity," The Economist says. "South Africa is no longer in the forefront of the world's consciousness, as it was in the 1990s when it made its miraculously peaceful transition from a racist regime to a modern democracy. But it still matters, and not just to its 57 million people. With its superior financial and physical infrastructure, it is Africa's economic hub. Its diplomatic and moral authority shapes southern Africa, for worse as well as better: without its support, Robert Mugabe would have lost power in Zimbabwe long ago. And, at the moment, it is the site of the most visible battle in the world between good and bad government." | | | | | | |
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