In Aleppo bricht der Widerstand gegen die Regierungstruppen zusammen und Beobachter prophezeien das mögliche Ende des Aufstands in ganz Syrien. In Mossul sind die Islamisten des Kalifats umzingelt; sie können zwar noch Monate lang Widerstand leisten, doch irgendwann ist Schluss, so sich die Belagerer nicht verzanken. In Syrien wäre Rakka, die sogenannte Haupstadt des Daesh, vielleicht schon erobert, wenn nicht türkisches Militär die Kurden und ihre arabischen Verbündeten am Vorrücken hindern würde.
In Libyen halten spärliche Reste des Kalifats offenbar noch ein Viertel der Stadt Sirte besetzt, aber die Machtträume sind ausgeträumt. In Nigeria, Kamerun, Tschad und Niger ist Boko Haram auf dem Rückzug. In Somalia existiert Al-Shabaab nach wie vor, doch es reicht nicht zu mehr als einem Partisanenkrieg gegen die vom Westen gestützte Regierung. Nur auf dem Sinai führt Ansar Beit Al-Maqdis, jetzt “Sinai Provinz” des Kalifats genannt, weiterhin Krieg gegen die Regierung in Kairo, ohne jedoch mehr als lokale Erfolge und Attentate zu verbuchen.
Der Traum der militanten Dschihadisten von der Eroberung Roms und der danach folgenden Weltherrschaft scheint ausgeträumt. Die zunächst von Fanatismus und barbarischer Grausamkeit überrumpelten Länder und Völker haben gelernt, den Dschihadis das Handwerk zu legen. Militärische Mittel in den von Milizen heimgesuchten Ländern und juristische und polizeiliche Vorkehrungen in den vom Terror betroffenen Staaten haben den Spielraum der Fanatiker langsam, aber doch wirksam eingegrenzt.
Man zögert zwar, vom Licht am Ende des Tunnels zu sprechen, aber dass der Dschihadismus den Zenith seiner Macht überschritten hat, ist ziemlich sicher. Ist das ein Grund, sich zurück zu lehnen?
Keineswegs, denn das Problem dauert fort, wenn auch in anderen Formen. Deutsche Dienste haben beispielsweise ermittelt, dass die Mehrzahl der aus Syrien und anderen Kampfgebieten Zurückgekehrten dem Islamismus keineswegs abschwört, sondern weiterhin die alte Umgebung der frommen Vereine und Moscheen aufsucht.
Selbst wenn eines Tages Syrien und der Irak befriedet sein sollten, werden die überlebenden alten Kämpfer – so sie nicht in Gefängnissen sitzen – ein internationales Terrorpotential darstellen, ebenso wie es die militanten Tschetschenen noch viele Jahre nach der gewaltsamen Befriedung ihres Landes sind, stets bereit, sich einem islamistischen Aufstand irgendwo in der Welt zur Verfügung zu stellen: In Südasien, in Afrika, im Pazifik – wo auch immer. Eine Art extrem bewegliches, islamistisches Rollkommando.
Ein weiteres Problem sind die enormen Mengen an Waffen, die in den Ländern verbleiben, tödliches Spielzeug für neue Jahrgänge wahrscheinlich frustrierter Jünglinge. Religion hin oder her, Dschihad hin oder her: allein die Existenz der Waffen dürfte dafür sorgen, dass diese Länder für lange Zeit nicht zur Ruhe finden werden.
Auch wenn es gelingen sollte, die schlimmsten Brandherde der Gegenwart zu löschen – Syrien, Irak, Jemen, Nigeria – so verbleibt doch das Problem der heimlichen Drahtzieher hinter den Konflikten. Die Türkei, Saudi Arabien, Katar, die Emirate, Kuweit haben jahrelang die Dschihadisten gesponsert.
Zwar mögen die Dschihadisten die Partie im wesentlichen verlieren: ihre Sponsoren jedoch werden weitermachen. Saudi Arabien und Katar werden weiterhin versuchen, die Welt von ihrer wahhabitischen Religion zu überzeugen. Die Türkei wird ebenso versuchen, überall im Nahen Osten Moslembrüder-Regierungen nach türkischem Muster zu installieren.
In Ägypten und Syrien ging das zwar gründlich schief, aber in Libyen ist Ankara durch Waffenlieferungen und mehr äusserst bemüht, den Moslembrüdern in Tripolis zum Sieg über die Laizisten in Tobruk zu verhelfen. Wie die Erdogan-Regierung das macht, hat Abdullah Bozkurt soeben eindrucksvoll dokumentiert. Auch in Tunesien, Algerien und Marokko können sich die Brüder und ihre Freunde des türkischen Mitgefühls erfreuen. Die Hamas in Gaza ist ein enger Freund der türkischen Regierung. Dem islamistischen Regime im Sudan widmet die Türkei besondere Aufmerksamkeit, einschliesslich gelegentlicher Flottenbesuche für gemeinsame Manöver.
Fazit: Das sunnititische Expansionsstreben wird anhalten: zwar weniger brutal und grossmäulig als Daesh, al-Kaida & Co, doch ebenso penetrant. Während die Sunniten sich weiterhin bemühen, den Rest der Welt zu verärgern, ernten die Schiiten unter der Führung des Iran grosse Territorial- und Machtgewinne. Ohne jemand ausser den Sunniten zu ärgern. Soeben erreichen die Iraner ein grosses Etappenziel auf ihrem Streben nach der schiitischen Version der Weltherrschaft: das Ufer des Mittelmeers.
Ihsan al-Tawil
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Andrea B ist Zahnarzt. Sein Vermieter hat ihm die Praxisräume gekündigt. Er muss also umziehen. Aber wohin in der übervölkerten Stadt Rom? Zu mieten gibt es nichts Geeignetes. Andrea möchte kaufen. Aber um eine passende Räumlichkeit zu kaufen, braucht er eine Hypothek.
Seit Tagen irrt er von einer Bank zur anderen. “Ci dispiace” ist immer die gleiche Antwort. “Tut uns leid”, keine Hypothek. Die Banken sind von Pleite bedroht. Sie versuchen, sich zu sanieren und geben deshalb keine Kredite mehr. Da steht Andrea, erfolgreicher Zahnarzt, und muss wahrscheinlich seine Praxis dicht machen. Ihm droht Arbeitslosigkeit, denn anderen Dentalpraxen geht es schlecht, sie nehmen keine Kollegen als Hilfskräfte auf, denn zweieinhalb Millionen Italiener können es sich nicht mehr leisten, notwendige Arztbesuche vorzunehmen, selbst solche, die die Kasse zahlt. Wenn das Geld knapp ist, wird stets zuerst am Zahnarzt gespart. Das ist Tradition in Italien.
Seit 2008 steckt Italien in der Krise. Man hat sich so sehr an die Krise gewöhnt, dass sich die Laune der Italiener zuletzt wieder leicht aufhellt, obwohl die Zahlen des Statistikamts ISTAT weiterhin negativ sind. Nun wird am 4. Dezember über die von Premier Matteo Renzi vorgeschlagene Verfassungsreform abgestimmt, und man rechnet mit Ablehnung und, in der Folge, einem Kollabieren der unter faulen Krediten ächzenden Banken. Renzi hat versprochen, im Falle der Ablehnung zurückzutreten.
Schon wartet in den Kulissen ein möglicher Nachfolger: niemand weniger als Silvio Berlusconi. Altmeister Berlusconi, einst schmählich verjagt und vorbestraft, möchte noch einmal antreten.
Er ist als Kandidat für die Nachfolge Renzis keine Witzfigur: seine Partei Forza Italia ist zwar stark geschrumpft und steht keineswegs einmütig hinter ihm, aber Berlusconi ist ein Renzi-Fan und könnte mit ihm zusammen eine Art Grosse Koalition Rechts-Links bilden, die bei Neuwahlen eine solide Mehrheit erwarten könnte.
Das italienische Bürgertum scheint nach Renzi-Jahren bereit, jeden Schlawiner zu wählen, wenn er nur die Herrschaft der Linken beendet und Renzi entschärft. Renzi hat unklugerweise seine Regierung mit dem Ausgang des Referendums verknüpft. Das kann viele Leute, die gegen Renzi sind und die neue Verfassung an sich begrüssen würden, dazu bewegen, mit Nein zu stimmen, nur um Renzi loszuwerden.
Das Lager-Denken ist in Italien immer noch oder wieder enorm stark: eine Grosse Koalition würde eine echte Umwälzung bedeuten, gilt aber als aussichtsreiche Alternative zu einer Machtübernahme der Fundamental-Opposition der Fünf Sterne des Ex.Komikers Beppe Grillo, vor dem sich Links und Rechts gleichermassen (und berechtigterweise) fürchten.
Benedikt Brenner
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The morning after the election, Van Jones offered his thoughts on the outcome:
"This was a whitelash against a changing country. It was whitelash against a black president in part. And that's the part where the pain comes."
Jones spoke honestly, from a place of sincere emotion, and I have a great deal of respect for that. His thesis certainly appealed to a lot of people. Given that Trump began his campaign with racist rhetoric and never really stopped, it also makes quite a bit of sense on the surface. There’s one problem: The numbers say it doesn’t hold water.
Yes, Hillary Clinton won the popular vote by a margin now approaching two million. That’s very important to remember going forward, but not especially helpful in terms of exploring why Trump did as well as he did. Let’s also leave aside the impact of James Comey’s completely inappropriate actions. Even if, as it appears true, Comey (the FBI director, --ed)) was enough to swing the election to Trump because of the tight margins in three key states, it doesn’t change what we can learn from the election in terms of race, income, and education.
From the national exit polls, here are the numbers that disprove the whitelash thesis: Trump did a slim 1 percent better among whites than Mitt Romney did four years ago. Were some whites drawn to Trump’s side by racism? Absolutely. But he appears to have lost pretty much an equal amount among those whites disgusted by it.
Furthermore, Trump improved over Romney by much more among every non-white ethno-racial group large enough to measure. He improved by 7% among blacks, 8% among Latinos, and 11% among Asian voters. Along similar lines, an exit poll conducted by the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) found that Trump received 13% of the Muslim vote. That doesn't sound like much, but it represents almost twice the percentage Romney won. No whitelash there.
Overall, turnout looks like it will come in at just about the same percentage of the eligible voter population as we saw in 2012. However, as Northern Ohio University political science professor Robert Alexander explained, “You saw turnout spike in more rural counties. If you take a look at a lot of the larger cities you did see depressed turnout there. It certainly was more consequential for Hillary Clinton than it was for Trump.”
Despite the more heavily rural voting population compared to 2012, Trump didn’t do significantly better than did Romney among whites overall. Of course, given that whites are about two-thirds of the voting population, gaining 1 percent among whites is important, but the gain of about 8 percent overall in the one-third of the voter population that is not white adds up to more votes.
Yes, these exit polls could be off by a couple of percent, but remember, the national polls weren’t off by that much. For example, Five-Thirty-Eight predicted a popular vote win for Hillary of 3.6 percent, and it looks like she’ll win the popular vote by close to 2 percent. That’s actually a better performance than the average polling miss of 2.0 percent in the twelve presidential elections before this one. In 2012, for example, the national polls were off by 2.7 percent, but no one noticed because all that happened was that Obama won by more than expected. So, if you reject exit polls this time, you have to always reject them, which would mean we’d know very little about demographics and voting. Either way, they’d have to have been off by a ton for this election to represent a whitelash.
On education, Trump gained significantly over Romney among all voters without a college degree, and Clinton gained significantly over Obama among voters with a degree. Looking at race and education combined tells the fuller story. Trump improved over Romney by 14 points among whites without a college degree, while Hillary improved over Obama in 2012 by 10 points among whites with a degree. Overall, Trump did 16-17 points better among whites without a degree than those with one. Among voters of color, however, non-degree holders were actually a bit stronger for Hillary than degree holders. So education mattered, but much more so among whites.
How about income? Trump improved over Romney by the biggest amount among the people helped most by Democratic policies, i.e., the poorest Americans: by 16 percent among those earning less than $30,000, and by 6 percent among those making $30,000-$50,000. Clinton, on the other hand, improved over Obama by 2 percent among those making $50-100K, and by 9 percent among those making $100-200K. This is clear and striking evidence that the election results were determined much more by class than by race for white voters taken as a whole.
Finally, although my focus is whether the whitelash theory was accurate, let’s talk about gender as well. Trump ran five points stronger among men than Romney did, whereas Clinton improved over Obama’s performance among women four years ago by only one point. Such a result, despite women having the opportunity to vote for the first woman president—not to mention against an opponent who bragged that he could get away with committing sexual assault because he’s a “star”—has to count as a colossal disappointment.
Journalist Masha Gessen has spent years reporting on Vladimir Putin’s rule in Russia. She has written that the focus on Russian influence over now President-elect Donald Trump has been overstated and the result of a failure of imagination: the inability to imagine that the president would profoundly break with the norms of our country’s political discourse and practices.
A few days after Trump’s win, Gessen wrote about what citizens should be on the watch for with the incoming administration. ProPublica’s Eric Umansky and Jesse Eisinger sat down with Gessen to talk about how exactly journalists should be covering Trump.
Journalists needed to realize Trump wasn’t playing chess…
I'm going to borrow a metaphor from Garry Kasparov, the chess champion, who when he first quit chess and went into politics, he was explaining to people that going up against Putin was like playing chess against somebody who keeps knocking the figures off the board. It's like he's not playing chess.
I think that what the papers failed to do was write the big story of the fact that Donald Trump wasn't playing chess. It's like the endless fact checking was a little bit like reporting on a chess match by saying, "Okay, well, she opened E2 to E4 and he knocked all the figures off the chess board. He knocked the bishop off the chess board and he knocked the knight off the chess board." Well, just say it! Just say he was not playing chess!
I think that it would have been a story about how Donald Trump was running for autocrat. I think at that point there should have been a big journalistic break with American exceptionalism and that's where we would have gone to other countries to look at what has happened to other countries when politicians have run in democratic elections for autocrat. It's happened many times and it's succeeded many times.
There was a collective failure of imagination…
Many reporters had gone directly from the state of total disbelief that Trump will never be the Republican nominee, even when he had the nomination locked in. Their argument, when I would ask people, they would say, "Well, I just can't imagine it happening." Well, if you can't imagine it happening, that's your problem.
When somebody says, "I can't imagine it happening," that's a problem.
Then what happened was that there was this whole direction of coverage that held, incredibly to me for the entire campaign, this idea that Trump was somehow Putin's agent and that Russia was meddling in the election and that Russia was rigging the election. There's a little tiny bit of evidence for it, but that's a classic conspiracy theory phenomenon where's there is a little bit of evidence but that's not what happened.
What happened was an American phenomenon, a home-grown potential autocrat who was elected by Americans.
It was so difficult to imagine that this was happening here that it was actually easier to do this complete bend over backwards maneuver that would position him as some sort of agent of Putin and Clinton's campaign ran with it.
Journalists should look at how this has played out in other countries...
I would look at the world and I would look for parallels.
When I was reporting on [Israeli Defense Minister Avigdor] Lieberman, a lot of people in Israel, this is 2010, they were saying, "Never mind, he's on his way out because there's this corruption scandal that is going to finally engulf and derail him." Then it didn't happen. There was the corruption scandal, the corruption was proven. It was the sort of thing that would have derailed any traditional Israeli politician and it didn't stick to Lieberman.
It turns out that populist resentment politics can overtake a lot of that, possibly all of that, but also in the specifics, right? We have Lieberman, who turns out to be impervious to the kinds of things that would have damaged a different politician. That's a lesson that would have been very well learned in the summer and fall as more and more details were coming out about Trump.
I was absolutely convinced that he was going to win. The reason why I was convinced he was going to win is because I've been reporting on these people, mostly Putin, but a little bit of Lieberman, a little bit of [Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor] Orban. I've been seeing this happening everywhere.
The job for journalists now is to document changing norms...
We really have to figure out how to tell the truth and not just report the facts. Which is a pretty good sentence but not a great prescription.
I think that I would create new beats. The language beat, language watch.
Understand that normal is going to drift and shift and all sorts of things are about to happen and part of our job is to notice and document how it's happening. We may not be able to influence the course of events, but our job is to at least be able to tell the story."
The fight against the Islamic State has united Iraqis. Details of a new Shiite-sponsored plan that will try and make that unity last leaked in Baghdad last week.
If the extremist group that caused Iraq’s current security crisis starting mid-2014, has done just one good thing, it would be to engender a feeling of national unity among Iraqis – something that is extremely unusual outside of a football game featuring the Iraqi team. A common enemy appears to have brought the country together as no other force has been able to for 13 years.
The question that is being posed now by so many, both inside and outside the country, is this: Can it last?
The different demographic sectors of Iraq have been engaged in conflict for years – firstly, exacerbated by the divide-and-conquer tactics used by former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein, then split again as oppressed locals took revenge on those they considered their oppressors after 2003 and finally, over the past few years, the different sectarian and ethnic groups have been fighting over power and money. But now there are moves afoot to try and ensure that, somehow, some way, this unity lasts.
Everyone has lost something and this new treaty is a necessity, not an option.
Over the past week details of an historic plan for reconciliation were leaked to the local media. Iraqi media affiliated with the Shiite Muslim leader heading the project were the first to let details slip, saying that the United Nations would also be involved. The plan is apparently being supported by the United Nations envoy in Iraq, Jan Kubis, and tries to establish a roadmap for Iraq’s future after the IS group have been defeated. Since then the Al Mada newspaper has published the proposal in full.
Work around the plan – which would see Sunni Muslim factions unite with the Shiite Muslim parties who have been running the country for over 10 years now – is apparently being led by Shiite Muslim cleric, Ammar al-Hakim, who is generally considered a moderate among the Shiite political leaders. He is supported in his work by another cleric, Muqtada al-Sadr, who tends to be more outspoken but who has always stressed Iraqi unity and the undesirability of external influencers, whether they are from Iran or the US. Since the plan was leaked there have been reports about a number of meetings between al-Hakim and Kurdish and Sunni politicians.
The planned reconciliation project consists of four major articles, according to the leaked details. These specified that all parties needed to abide by the deal, that all parties would be considered equal in the deal, that any conflicts between political blocs should be annulled and that violence as a means of achieving political goals would be rejected.
The treaty also contained many other marvellous items, such as: rejecting any division of the country along ethnic or sectarian lines, abiding by the Iraqi Constitution, commitment to a free market and equitable distribution of wealth to different provinces depending on population, the abolition of any armed groups that were not controlled by the state and an ongoing commitment to fight against any illegally armed group.
Which all sounds wonderful. And - unfortunately – also a little bit like wishful thinking. None of these commitments are new to Iraqi politicians. Nor is the idea of holding a conference for reconciliation. There have been more than 30 similar conferences held over the past 10 years; each of these cost a lot of money, none achieved the stated goals.
For some years Iraq even had a Ministry for National Reconciliation. This eventually lost its ministerial status before evolving into a government body. This organization would post hundreds of pictures showing Sunni, Shiite and Kurdish politicians holding hands or praying together at various meetings. Despite the pretty pictures, none of these meetings ever produced the declared goals.
The first problem with trying to achieve anything of this kind is the division in each of the three main demographic groups in Iraq. Under current conditions it would be hard to say that the Shiite Muslim forces, both political and military, are united in Iraq. The same problem applies to the Sunni Muslims and Iraq’s Kurds. Probably the most fractured group though, are the Sunnis – the Islamic State, or IS, group has wrought havoc on any alliances that existed, causing the destruction and isolation of areas with a mostly Sunni population.
The different Sunni political groups compete with one another for power and influence and act more like enemies than allies. For example, the party led by Salim al-Jibouri, the Speaker of the Iraqi Parliament, competes with Osama al-Nujaifi’s party for influence in Ninawa and its capital, Mosul. Other Sunni Muslim parties joust for influence in Anbar and Salahaddin.
Before the Sunni Muslims of Iraq can enter into any negotiations, to sign onto a treaty of reconciliation, they need to choose a leader. This would entail lengthy haggling and most likely require interference from external powers, such as those in Saudi Arabia or Turkey.
“The Sunnis need to unite and take one stand together,” suggests Abbas al-Bayati, a Turkmen MP, close to the Iraq’s Shiite Muslim Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi. “They should select a leadership group that can sign onto this settlement. It is true,” he adds, “the Kurds and the Shiites don’t have as much of a problem in this area as the Sunnis do.”
The Sunni Muslims of Iraq need to think hard about the future, al-Bayati says. “After the IS group has been expelled, reconstruction won’t be possible if they do not put aside their differences,” he argues.
One of the major problems for Iraq’s Sunnis with any past plans for reconciliation has been the issue of another political party, the Baath party to which former leader Saddam Hussein belonged and with which he ruled the country. Hundreds of thousands of Iraqis joined the Baath party during Hussein’s time in power, often simply because they wanted a job; in Iraq, the government, funded by oil money, provides most of the jobs due to the lack of a robust private sector.
After Hussein’s regime was toppled by a US-led invasion in 2003, his Baath party was outlawed. Shiite Muslims, who had spent years being victimized and marginalized by Hussein, a Sunni, and his Sunni Muslim party, took their revenge. Baathists lost their jobs, whether they were university professors, cleaners or colonels in the army. There were most definitely some criminals among the Baath party members, who deserved harsh punishment, but these most likely numbered in the hundreds rather than the hundreds of thousands.
To this day, the Baath party and how to deal with it remains a problem. However, the new reconciliation initiative attempts to deal with this thorny issue. The outline of the project confirms that the Baath party will never be able to return to power and that there will be no real dialogue with any dedicated Baathists. However, there are also some major concessions, a Shiite Muslim politician who had to remain anonymous as he was not supposed to comment on the leaked details, told NIQASH:
“The new project rules out dialogue with the Baath party as an organization,” he said, “But it does allow for negotiations with senior Baath party members who have promised to abandon the party.”
Additionally, the new project involves plans to close down an ongoing de-Baathification program, meant to purge official organisations of members of the Baath party. This program has been run by Shiite Muslim officials for years and now it is to be handed over to the supposedly more neutral Iraqi judiciary. In the past, accusations of belonging to the Baath party have led to Sunni Muslim candidates being banned from standing for public office, which in turn has seen Sunni Muslims complain they are being marginalized and prevented from taking part in national politics.
This has been one of the major sticking points, and one of the reasons for the level of Sunni dissatisfaction that the IS group was able to exploit at first.
The senior Shiite politician also says that dialogues will be entered into with senior Sunni politicians, some of whom have left Iraq – for example, former Minister of Finance Rafi al-Issawi, who is a prominent Sunni leader from Anbar. Major protests broke out in 2012 when former prime minister, Nouri al-Maliki, issued a warrant for al-Issawi’s arrest.
Other prominent figures who might benefit from this reconciliation project include Iraqi business mogul, Khamis Khanjar, who supports Sunni Muslim parties in Iraq financially, and former MP, Mohammed al-Dayni, who was accused of a terrorist act in 2007 and then fled the country.
And reconciliation won’t just be with individuals. Opportunities for dialogue will also be open to groups of all kinds, even armed groups like Ansar al-Sunna, and the many influential Sunni tribal leaders.
It is hard to know whether this reconciliation attempt will succeed, even given the circumstances that have united Iraqis against the IS group. At least one MP remains confident though.
“This time it is different,” Salim Shawki, an MP for the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq, a Shiite Muslim political party, told NIQASH. “Because all Iraqis are united against the extremists who targeted them all, whether they were Shiite, Sunni or Kurd. Everyone has lost something and this new treaty is a necessity, not an option. It focuses on truly trying to end conflicts in Iraq, rather than just on coming up with more slogans. Everybody agrees that we should be thinking about the future of Iraq after the IS group has been destroyed.”
