BlueWarrior
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Middle East leader of the year? You'd be surprised...
World View: In a period of failure for many, one man is on the up and up. And he's no friend of the West
Who was the most successful leader in the Middle East in 2013? It is a hoary tradition of newspapers and magazines to produce end-of-year league tables listing the successful and the unsuccessful. The results are often anodyne or quirky, but in the Middle East over the past 12 months such an approach has the advantage of cutting through the complexities of half a dozen distinct but inter-related crises by focusing on winners and losers.
In this year of turmoil, a shortlist is not so difficult to draw up, because so many leaders were in more trouble at the end of the year than they were at the beginning. The Turkish Prime Minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, for instance, would have been an easy winner in previous years for his undoubted success in ending the era of military coups and for presiding over unprecedented economic prosperity. But in the past few days he has watched the sons of his most powerful ministers being arrested amid accusations of corruption while his maladroit intervention in the Syrian civil war blasted Turkey's hopes of becoming a regional power. Hubris brought on by three election victories probably explains why Mr Erdogan has lost his touch.
Another contender to top the list of successful leaders in the region in previous years would have been Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Always an under-rated politician internationally, he has been highly successful in manipulating the threat of war to get what he wants while being careful not to fire a shot. His threats to bomb Iranian nuclear facilities, always discounted as a well-sustained bluff by this column, led to severe sanctions against Iran and diverted attention from the Palestinians. For all Mr Netanyahu's denunciations of the interim deal between the US and its allies and Iran, he has not lost much, even if his influence on American policy is diminished.
he most astute and experienced politician in the Middle East is probably the Kurdish leader Massoud Barzani, President of Kurdistan Regional Government and head of the Kurdistan Democratic Party, who has pursued Kurdish self-determination, so far within the context of Iraq, through victory and defeat. His has been an extraordinary career, with abrupt reversals, such as total defeat in 1990 being followed by sudden triumph when the Kurds took advantage of Saddam Hussein's debacle in Kuwait to seize back their heartlands in Iraq. The KRG is now one of the few places on earth enjoying a genuine economic boom, thanks to the discovery of oil and gas. Mr Barzani has balanced between the US, Iran, Turkey and the Iraqi central government in Baghdad without becoming the pawn or the victim of any of them.
Unfortunately, the most successful leader in the Middle East this year is surely Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, also known as Abu D'ua, the leader of al-Qa'ida in Iraq, which changed its name this year to the Islamic State of Iraq and Sham (Isis) and claims to be the sole al-Qaida affiliate in Syria as well as Iraq. The US says al-Baghdadi is based in Syria and is offering $10m to anyone who can kill or capture him.
One of the most extraordinary developments in the Middle East is that 12 years after 9/11 and six years after "the surge" in Iraq was supposed to have crushed al-Qa'ida in Iraq, it is back in business. It is taking over its old haunts in northern and central Iraq and is launching attacks on Shia civilians that have killed 9,000 people so far this year. Yesterday it killed a general commanding a division in an ambush in Anbar province. Al-Qa'ida has benefited from the Iraqi government failing to conciliate the Sunni Arab protest movement that began a year ago, with the result that it is mutating into armed resistance. In July, a carefully planned Isis attack on Abu Ghraib prison in Baghdad freed 500 prisoners, many of them al-Qa'ida veterans.
Even more spectacular has been the rise of Isis in Syria, where it is the most effective single military group aside from the Syrian Army. It has taken control of Raqqa, the one Syrian provincial capital held by the rebels, and has started killing off leaders of the Western-backed Free Syrian Army that do not come over to its side. Jessica D Lewis, in a study published by the Institute for the Study of War, writes: "AQI [al-Qa'ida in Iraq] in 2013 is an extremely vigorous, resilient and capable organisation that can operate from Basra to coastal Syria." The resurgence of al-Qa'ida is already a crucial factor in promoting horrific sectarian conflicts in both Iraq and Syria.
Patrick Cockburn: Middle East leader of the year? You'd be surprised... - Comment - Voices - The Independent
Middle East leader of the year? wut?
World View: In a period of failure for many, one man is on the up and up. And he's no friend of the West
Who was the most successful leader in the Middle East in 2013? It is a hoary tradition of newspapers and magazines to produce end-of-year league tables listing the successful and the unsuccessful. The results are often anodyne or quirky, but in the Middle East over the past 12 months such an approach has the advantage of cutting through the complexities of half a dozen distinct but inter-related crises by focusing on winners and losers.
In this year of turmoil, a shortlist is not so difficult to draw up, because so many leaders were in more trouble at the end of the year than they were at the beginning. The Turkish Prime Minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, for instance, would have been an easy winner in previous years for his undoubted success in ending the era of military coups and for presiding over unprecedented economic prosperity. But in the past few days he has watched the sons of his most powerful ministers being arrested amid accusations of corruption while his maladroit intervention in the Syrian civil war blasted Turkey's hopes of becoming a regional power. Hubris brought on by three election victories probably explains why Mr Erdogan has lost his touch.
Another contender to top the list of successful leaders in the region in previous years would have been Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Always an under-rated politician internationally, he has been highly successful in manipulating the threat of war to get what he wants while being careful not to fire a shot. His threats to bomb Iranian nuclear facilities, always discounted as a well-sustained bluff by this column, led to severe sanctions against Iran and diverted attention from the Palestinians. For all Mr Netanyahu's denunciations of the interim deal between the US and its allies and Iran, he has not lost much, even if his influence on American policy is diminished.
he most astute and experienced politician in the Middle East is probably the Kurdish leader Massoud Barzani, President of Kurdistan Regional Government and head of the Kurdistan Democratic Party, who has pursued Kurdish self-determination, so far within the context of Iraq, through victory and defeat. His has been an extraordinary career, with abrupt reversals, such as total defeat in 1990 being followed by sudden triumph when the Kurds took advantage of Saddam Hussein's debacle in Kuwait to seize back their heartlands in Iraq. The KRG is now one of the few places on earth enjoying a genuine economic boom, thanks to the discovery of oil and gas. Mr Barzani has balanced between the US, Iran, Turkey and the Iraqi central government in Baghdad without becoming the pawn or the victim of any of them.
Unfortunately, the most successful leader in the Middle East this year is surely Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, also known as Abu D'ua, the leader of al-Qa'ida in Iraq, which changed its name this year to the Islamic State of Iraq and Sham (Isis) and claims to be the sole al-Qaida affiliate in Syria as well as Iraq. The US says al-Baghdadi is based in Syria and is offering $10m to anyone who can kill or capture him.
One of the most extraordinary developments in the Middle East is that 12 years after 9/11 and six years after "the surge" in Iraq was supposed to have crushed al-Qa'ida in Iraq, it is back in business. It is taking over its old haunts in northern and central Iraq and is launching attacks on Shia civilians that have killed 9,000 people so far this year. Yesterday it killed a general commanding a division in an ambush in Anbar province. Al-Qa'ida has benefited from the Iraqi government failing to conciliate the Sunni Arab protest movement that began a year ago, with the result that it is mutating into armed resistance. In July, a carefully planned Isis attack on Abu Ghraib prison in Baghdad freed 500 prisoners, many of them al-Qa'ida veterans.
Even more spectacular has been the rise of Isis in Syria, where it is the most effective single military group aside from the Syrian Army. It has taken control of Raqqa, the one Syrian provincial capital held by the rebels, and has started killing off leaders of the Western-backed Free Syrian Army that do not come over to its side. Jessica D Lewis, in a study published by the Institute for the Study of War, writes: "AQI [al-Qa'ida in Iraq] in 2013 is an extremely vigorous, resilient and capable organisation that can operate from Basra to coastal Syria." The resurgence of al-Qa'ida is already a crucial factor in promoting horrific sectarian conflicts in both Iraq and Syria.
Patrick Cockburn: Middle East leader of the year? You'd be surprised... - Comment - Voices - The Independent
Middle East leader of the year? wut?
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