🌍 Inside The Middle East — October 14
🌍 Inside The Middle East — October 14
Taliban Endorses Trump, Iconic Iranian Singer Dies, JCB West Bank Settlements, Syria Civil War Under-Reported, Egypt Greece Maritime Deal, Israel Ethiopian Immigration Plan
Hello! Happy Wednesday and welcome to another edition of Inside The Middle East. This week we’ll travel to Afghanistan where the Taliban has endorsed Donald Trump for president in next month’s election, to Iran where iconic singer Mohammed Reza Shajarian has sadly passed away, to Palestine where heavy machinery firm JCB is being investigated over its involvement in the West Bank, to Syria whose civil war is being woefully under-reported by news outlets, to Egypt who signed a maritime deal with Greece that has raised tensions even further with Turkey, and to Israel where 2,000 Ethiopian Jews have immigrated.
On Monday I had Michael Hudson on the podcast, a senior editor at the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, who helped to orchestrate the recent FinCEN Files leak, which exposed more than $2 trillion worth of shady financial transactions that were ignored by banks and governments. We talked about the importance of the investigation and how it compared to the Panama Papers leak, the history of financial corruption and why scandals like this continue to happen, as well as how to find whistleblowers and secret sources at a local level. Join us tomorrow for an election dissection in Northern Cyprus, Tajikistan and Lithuania, and on Friday for Picks of the Week! In the meantime, enjoy today’s newsletter. 🤓
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Data Corner
And here are a couple of datasets relevant to today’s news items…
U.S. Troops — Where U.S. troops are deployed per state and country, from the U.S. Department of Defense
Syria Civil War — Number of airstrikes and civilian casualties in Iraq and Syria, from Airwars
🏳️ Taliban Endorses Trump
We start this week in Afghanistan where a senior Taliban officer told CBS News the group hopes Donald Trump will win the U.S. presidential election next month so that he fulfils his promise to remove the remaining 5,000 U.S. troops from Afghanistan. Almost 20 years since the U.S.-led invasion, the hardline Islamic militant group are arguably stronger than ever and have captured more and more territory from the Afghan government in recent years. The Trump campaign's director of communications Tim Murtaugh said on Saturday that they reject the Taliban endorsement, and that “The Taliban should know that the president will always protect American interests by any means necessary.”
If Trump wins and goes ahead with a complete removal of all troops, the fall of Afghanistan to the Taliban is a real possibility. Trump tweeted last week that he’d have his remaining soldiers on home soil by Christmas, slightly earlier than the timeline agreed with the Taliban earlier this year. Once again, however, the president’s Twitter took U.S. officials by surprise, and we don’t know if Trump will keep to his word. Meanwhile, the Washington Post has sued the Pentagon to find out exactly where U.S. troops are deployed.
Who controls what in Afghanistan (from June, 2019)
Credit: Al Jazeera
🇮🇷 Iconic Iranian Singer Dies
Mohammed Reza Shajarian, a legendary singer from Iran has died from cancer at the age of 80. Shajarian rose to prominence in the 1960s and his performances captured a nation with his distinctive voice that blended effortlessly with timeless Persian melodies. He supported the 1979 Iranian revolution that led to the eventual ouster of Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, and his support for the Green Movement, which disputed Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s presidential election win in 2009, led to a ban on Shajarian performing in his country.
“My music has always been entirely connected to what happens in Iran,” Shajarian said in an interview in 2011. “The poems I choose to perform reflect our social history. My songs speak of people’s lives. I get my inspiration from the people. I need to be among them. Or else I wouldn’t be able to sing.” Watch the video below and try not to be totally sucked in by Shajarian’s brilliance.
Mohammad Reza Shajarian: NPR Music Tiny Desk Concert
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🇵🇸 UK Government Examines JCB
We move to Palestine next where British heavy machinery company JCB is being examined by the UK government to determine whether the firm carried out enough due diligence before selling equipment to companies in the region that then used it to destroy Palestinian villages in the Israeli-occupied West Bank. The charity Lawyers for Palestinian Human Rights raised the claim last December saying JCB hadn’t met human rights guidelines set by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development. JCB said it had no responsibility over what happened to its machinery after it had sold it, and could not be sure whether the equipment was used to destroy Palestinian villages or the construction of new illegal settlements.
Israeli settlements in the West Bank, explained
🇸🇾 Syria’s Civil War Under-Reported
Syria’s civil war and all of its atrocities have been under-reported by four major news outlets and coverage is declining, according to a study by Action for Armed Violence. The study found that the news outlets in question — Al Jazeera, the BBC, the Guardian and the Daily Mail — covered less than three percent of more than 4,800 explosive weapon attacks in Syria between March 2011 and May 2019, with interest peaking in 2016 before declining significantly, despite civilian casualties soaring in 2017.
The fall in coverage, albeit from just four outlets, coincides with the fall of ISIS who swept across large parts of Iraq and Syria, and orchestrated numerous deadly attacks in Europe and around the world. The number of UK airstrikes in the two countries has also ground to a virtual halt. Now that ISIS has largely been defeated, it’s natural for global coverage to fade away. But the new study is a grim reminder that Syria’s civil war continues, and just last week, Bashar al-Assad’s government was forced to ration packets of bread as more of its population move closer to complete starvation.
Why is Syria still at war, nine years on?
🇪🇬🇹🇷 Egypt Signs Maritime Deal With Greece
In a new development in the strategic battle over oil and gas drilling rights in the Eastern Mediterranean, Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi has put pen to paper and formally signed a deal with Greece to ratify maritime borders between the two countries. The move is seen as a response to the deal signed in 2019 between Turkey and Libya, which gives the former access to areas in the region where large hydrocarbon deposits have been discovered. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan called the Egypt-Greece agreement “worthless.” The signing comes just days after Israel and Lebanon announced plans for historic talks to ratify their maritime borders, introducing another wrinkle into the saga that’s set to continue for months to come…
Source: TRT World 👇
🇮🇱 Israel Approves Ethiopian Immigration Plan
We finish this week with the news that Israel has approved a plan to allow 2,000 Ethiopian Jews to migrate to the country in what is a major step in ending a contentious decades-long issue. The move has prompted angry reactions from Ethiopian Israeli activists, though, who believe that all 8,000 of the Falash Mura community should be resettled in Israel. Falash Mura is the name given to a group of Jews living in Ethiopia who were converted to Christianity by European missionaries in the late 19th century, but have since converted back to Judaism.
Israel’s Law of Return allows any Jew from around the world to settle in the country, but the Israeli government has disagreed over whether the Falash Mura is fully Jewish because of its background in Christianity, which has meant some Ethiopians have waited to emigrate in refugee camps for 20 years. Around 40,000 Ethiopians have immigrated to Israel in recent decades.
Saving the Forgotten Jews
That’s all for today! See you tomorrow for the next Election Dissection! 👋