Sunday
Feb282010
Things fall apart
Issandr El Amrani
Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
Yeats, The Second Coming
I don't have much to add to all the noise around the Mabhuh assassination, except to say that this is the opportunity to pressure European governments to distance themselves from Israel, notably by freezing any further advanced status talks between the EU and Israel. Ideally, a review of visa regulations for Israeli citizens should also be considered. Politicians need to latch on to this seriously, especially in Britain. Considering what've seen so far is mostly indignation without consequences (and that we can't really rule out the possibility of European cooperation — see Fisk's rant on this, although I am pretty agnostic about it).
I am still forming my own take on the impact of the assassination for the region (as opposed to Europe.) One of the most important things I think it reveals is the level of instability of the regional order — it suggests to me that since at least 2006 if not earlier the dynamic is one of chronic instability where open war is generally avoided (except by the Israelis) but all kinds of dirty games and pressures are being played. Think of the Bush administration's role in training Palestinian Authority forces, the Gaza clashes that led to the Hamas takeover, Hamas being pushed into an incredibly difficult position, the Syrians and Saudis playing all sides, Lebanon entering a post-post-Hariri phase, Iraq still to find a role for itself post-Saddam, Egypt's loss of control internally and externally, and so on and so forth. It's hard to describe today's Middle East, except that it is no longer the Middle East of the Oslo / dual containment era, nor is it something altogether new yet. Birth pangs indeed.
The other thing that comes to mind is that Mossad was taken off-guard at crime-fighting capabilities of Dubai (despite its slightly buffoonish police chief). The fact is Dubai has been under considerable pressure to bring its role as a Mecca of arms dealers, money launderers, sanction busters and other shady characters under control for the past decade. Tremendous efforts were made by the US to control terrorism financing, and more still to monitor if not stop Dubai's connection with Iran. The fascinating thing about the Mabhuh tapes is that they were probably made using a British CCTV system that was built to keep track of these things, not Mossad operations. Likewise, as mentioned in the Economist story below on Lebanon, the monitoring equipment Lebanon used to uncover Israel's spy network was the result of French and/or Russian equipment brought in in part to improve the monitoring of Hizbullah. O happy unintended consequences!
(Update: I just saw this WSJ piece that is exactly along these lines. It's by Robert Baer, the former CIA field operative.)
Here's a few links to some of the more interesting coverage I've seen, do send more!
- ISRAEL: Journalist describes strange twists of 'German' suspect in Dubai hit | Babylon & Beyond | Los Angeles Times
- SPIEGEL ONLINE - Druckversion - Targeted Killing in Dubai: A Mossad Operation Gone Awry?
- The Dahlan connection – Updated — War in Context
- Was Mossad on a fantastic adventure in Dubai? - Haaretz - Israel News
- Israel's controversial intelligence service: Does Mossad really make Israel safer? | The Economist
- Israeli spies in Lebanon: Not such a success | The Economist
- More Israeli names match new Dubai suspects list - Yahoo! News
And not really Mabhuh assassination related, but telling of Dubai's role as an international zone of shady deals:
Finally, via The National, this map of the comings and goings of the hit team:
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Reader Comments (2)
Seriously, what is wrong with the National? I have not studied Arabic in a while, but المتهمين is completely wrong. It is المهتم فيهم. This is a common error because you need to get to a high level to understand the reason and spot the error, but these guys are native speakers. I can tell because of the terribly misspelled English title of the flow chart. It scares me to see this out of such a quality outfit, no matter how quickly and hastily slopped together it is.
Perhaps even worse may be that the chart probably comes straight from Dubai police — The National is only in English, why would they write a chart in Arabic?