The Mideast is stumbling into one of its most dangerous crisis in decades.  I’m just back from the region – and as an old Mideast hand,  I am very worried.

This region is always tense, but right now a series of separate conflicts are rapidly beginning to intersect.   We see the Mideast, North Africa and the Sahara buffeted by revolutions and counter-revolutions.  Old colonial powers France and Britain, and the US,  are trying to reassert their domination in the region. The jihadist are back.

In a brazen act of war, Israel launched airstrikes on Syria last Wednesday in a clear attempt to worsen the crisis in that war-torn nation and challenge Syria’s ally, Iran.  Israel’s forces are on high alert and may invade Syria, whose strategic Golan Heights were seized and annexed by Israel.   Will more Syrian land follow?

Goaded by Israel, Iran thundered “any attack on Syria is an attack on Iran.”   An Iranian general warned Tel Aviv might come under attack.  Hot air, as they say in Farsi.   Separated from ally Syria by Iraq,  Iran’s not very mobile ground forces would be unable to intervene in Syria in any substantial way.  Israel’s air force would devastate any Iranian columns advancing in open terrain.

Iran’s feeble air force is barely operational after decades of crushing embargos by the United States and its allies.    Tehran’s dilapidated warplanes are far more menacing to their pilots than their enemies. Iran’s passenger airliners are flying coffins thanks to the US embargo of new aircraft and spare parts.

The only way Iran could strike at Israel is by firing medium-ranged Shahab-III missiles and a small number of Sajjil-2 solid propellant missiles.   Both are inaccurate.  Their 750-1,000 kg conventional warheads  would only do limited damage – unless they made a lucky hit on  Israel’s heavily defended Dimona nuclear reactor.

Israel estimates that a major Iranian non-nuclear strike would only cause a few hundred casualties. Israel is fast deploying a multi-layer anti-missile system: the Arrow-III, which has shown high hit probability in tests against missile warheads.  The low level Iron Dome system, which had an 80% hit probability against rockets fired from Gaza, and the new, highly accurate David’s Sling high altitude system, and more systems in the pipeline, give Israel’s the world’s most advanced and accurate anti-missile system that could be relied on to knock down a majority of incoming missiles from far-away Iran.

More important,  Israel would quickly counter-attack once its powerful radars (and a US-manned X-band radar based in Israel that can scan Iran) spot missile being launched by Tehran.  Israel has its own arsenal of accurate medium-ranged missiles, armed drones,  its powerful air force, and satellites watching Iran.

How would Israel know that an incoming Iranian missile was conventionally armed and not carrying a nuclear warhead?  Rather than gamble, Israel would probably hit Iran with its own nuclear arsenal, including nuclear-tipped cruise missiles fired by Israeli submarines lurking in the Red Sea and Indian Ocean.

Iran is not believed to have nuclear warheads – but how can Israel really be sure since it successfully concealed its own nuclear program from the United States.

Meanwhile, Egypt threatens to turn into another Syria.  The chief of staff of Egypt’s armed forces just warned his strife-torn nation is on the “brink of collapse.”  Conservative Arab nations, the US and Britain are fuelling a counter-revolution by Mubarakist forces and Christians.  Egypt’s economy has all but collapsed, igniting violent social unrest. A coup may be  imminent.

Syria is teetering on the brink of national collapse.  The Assad government has no popularity beyond its Alawi base, but half of Syrians don’t want to live in an Islamic state and fear what will happen to them if insurgent forces seize power.  Syria’s economy has almost ceased to function.  This bloody civil war threatens to turn Syria into a larger version of the ghastly 1975-1990 Lebanese civil war that I covered.

Russia is growling in the background.  Syria, recall, is as close to Russia’s southern border as northern Mexico is to Texas.   Washington is underestimating Russia’ growing anger.   Israel is still determined to push the US into war against Iran.  The Turks can’t decide whether to be neutrals or reborn Ottomans.  Caution: danger ahead.

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copyright  Eric S. Margolis 2013

PARIS – The bloody attack on an Algerian gas installation and France’s invasion of Mali are the result of troubles that have been brewing for years – we simply have not been paying attention.

Jihadist guerilla leader Mokhtar Belmokhtar, headlined as a new Great Islamic Satan by French media, has been making trouble in the Sahara for a long time, kidnapping westerners, robbing caravans, smuggling cigarettes.

Belmokhtar was known as a “man of honor,” one of the western-financed jihadists who went to battle the Soviets and their communist allies in Afghanistan in the 1980’s and 90’s.  He retuned to his native Algeria, minus an eye lost in combat, and, with his fellow “Afghani,” sought to overthrow Algeria’s western-backed military regime, a major oil and gas supplier to France.

In 1991,  Algeria’s junta, bankrupt of ideas, allowed a free election.  Big mistake.  Algeria’s Islamists won the first round parliamentary vote.   The military panicked.  Backed by France and the US, Algeria’s military crushed the Islamic movement and arrested its leaders.

As a result, one of our era’s bloodiest civil wars erupted as Islamists and other insurgents battled the brutal Algerian military and intelligence forces, who called themselves, “the Eradicators.”

During a decade of savagery, over 200,000 Algerians died.  Entire villages were massacred.  Both sides committed frightful atrocities.  The Algiers government used special forces disguised as rebels to stage mass murders. Pickup trucks with guillotines were used to chop off people’s heads.

After the uprising was crushed, one particularly violent Islamist guerilla group, formerly GIC,  reformed itself into AQIM – al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb.  This caused a frenzied reaction in the West.   But AQIM had next to nothing to do with Osama bin Laden’s Afghan-Pakistan group. But the al-Qaida name brought instant media attention – a primary goal of radical groups.

After Mali’s soldiers overthrew its feeble, corrupt government last March,  the vast north went into chaos.  Nomadic Tuareg tribesmen declared the independent state of Azawad.  Assorted jihadists, including some of Belmokhtar’s men, imposed draconian sharia law on the north.   Mali’s southerners called on former colonial master France for help.

Two months ago, President Francois Hollande declared France would not again intervene in Africa.  Since granting nominal independence in 1960 to the states that comprised former French West Africa, France has intervened militarily 50 times. French technicians, bankers and intelligence agents run most of West Africa from behind the scenes.  There are 60,000 French in Algeria and west Africa, seen by Paris as its sphere of influence.

Niger is a major supplier of uranium to France’s nuclear industry which provides 80% of the nation’s power.  French mining interests cover West Africa, which is also a key export market for French goods and arms.

After jihadists proclaimed they would nationalize Mali’s resources, Hollande turned from dove to hawk.  French forces went into action behind a barrage of media propaganda about brutalities committed by the Islamists – just as French forces in Afghanistan were being driven out by Taliban fighters.

Hollande’s popularity ratings, driven down to 32% by France’s dire economic problems, tax hikes, and plant closings, soared to over 80%.  Military adventures and patriotic flag-waving are always surefire remedies for politicians in trouble at home.   Belmokhtar was declared the Osama bin Laden of the Sahara.  Mali became a humanitarian mission lauded in the West.  The US began quietly tiptoeing into the conflict.

Though a tempest in a teapot involving only a few thousand French troops,  the Mali fracas threatens the unsteady French and US-backed regimes of resource-rich West Africa. Most particularly so Ivory Coast, Chad and Central African Republic, where 5,000 French soldiers and aircraft are based. An Islamist uprising in oil-rich Nigeria is growing fast, a major worry for Washington, whose regional energy resources are under threat.

Getting into little wars is always easy. Getting out is not, as Afghanistan has shown.  Even French generals are now saying their troops will be in Mali, which has no real government,  for a long time.

Patriotic euphoria in France is already abating.   France’s belligerent unions are back on the war path over plant closings.  Efforts to cut France’s huge deficit will hardly be helped by the little crusade in Mali.

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copyright  Eric S. Margolis 2013

PARIS – Confused over the surging violence in Mali and now Algeria? Trying to find Mali on the map?

War, as the great Roman historian Tacitus wrote, teaches geography. This week’s new lesson is West and North Africa, not so long ago colonial possessions of France.

Big irony: the US claimed its energy sources were threatened by instability in the Arab world. So it began exploiting West Africa as a “secure” alternative.

Western governments and media have done the public a major disservice by trumpeting warnings of an “Islamist threat” in Mali. It’s as if Osama bin Laden has popped up on the Niger River. Our newest crisis in Africa is not driven primarily by religion but by a spreading uprising against profoundly corrupt, western-backed oligarchic governments and endemic poverty.

Mali’s troubles began last year when it shaky government was overthrown. Meanwhile, heavily-armed nomadic Tuareg tribesmen, who had served Libya’s late Col. Gadaffi as mercenaries until he was overthrown by French and US intervention, poured back into their homeland in Mali’s north. A major unexpected consequence, fierce Tuareg warriors, who battled French colonial rule for over a century, were fighting for an independent homeland, known as Azawad.

They, a small, violent jihadist group, Ansar Din, and another handful of obscure Islamists drove central government troops out of the north, which they proclaimed independent, and began marching on the fly-blown capital, Bamako.

France, the colonial ruler of most of West Africa until 1960, has overthrown and imposed client regimes there ever since. French political, financial and military advisors and intelligence services ran West Africa from behind a façade of supposedly independent governments. Disobedient regimes were quickly booted out by elite French troops and Foreign Legionnaires based in West Africa that guarded France’s mining and oil interests in what was known as “FrancAfrique.”

Overthrowing African regimes was OK for France, but not for locals. When Mali’s French-backed regime was challenged, France feared its other West African clients might face similar fate, and began sending troops to back the Bamako regime. President Francois Hollande, who had vowed only weeks ago not to intervene in West Africa, said some 2,500 French troops would intervene in Mali. But only on a “temporary basis” claimed Hollande, forgetting de la Rochfoucauld’s dictum “there is nothing as permanent as the temporary!”

Other shaky western-backed West African governments took fright at events in Mali, fearing they too might face overthrow at the hands of angry Islamists calling for stern justice and an end to corruption. Nigeria, the region’s big power, vowed to send troops to Mali.

Nigeria has been beset by its own revolutionary jihadist movement, Boko Haram, which claims Muslim Nigerians have been denied a fair share of the nation’s vast oil wealth, most of which has been stolen by corrupt officials.

France’s overheated claim that it faces a dire Islamic threat in obscure Mali could attract the attention of numbers of free-lance jihadists, many who are now busy tearing up Syria. Paris was better off when it claimed its troops were to protect ancient Muslim shrines in Timbuktu. Or it could have quietly sent in the Foreign Legion, as in the past.

Instead, Mali has become a crisis with the US, Britain, West African states and the UN involved in this tempest in an African teapot. A nice diversion from budget crisis.

Another Algerian jihadist group just attacked an important state gas installation in revenge for France’s assault on Mali. This bloody action has awoken Algeria’s hitherto quiescent Islamic resistance groups.

They waged a ten year war against Algeria’s US and French backed military regime, one of the continent’s most repressive regimes, after Algeria’s armed forces crushed Islamists after they won a fair election in 1991.

Over 250,000 Algerians died in a long, bloody civil war. The Algiers government often used gangs of its soldiers disguised as rebel fighters to commit gruesome massacres to blacken the name of the opposition.

Algeria may again be headed for a new bloodbath, this time with minority Berber people calling for their independent state.

 US air forces and small numbers of Special Forces from its new Africa Command are now entering action in Mali and Algeria. More are sure to follow as West Africa smolders.

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copyright Eric S. Margolis 2013