Syria´s Question: Like Father, Like Son?

While the world watches events unfolding in the February 17th Revolution in Gaddafi´s Libya, protest errupts and turns violent in Syria. People were killed, wounded and imprisoned, the government stepped down and state of emergency is lifted – yet, the Syrian events are not getting Western media attention in a way it should, Foreign Policy´s Patrick Seale claims.

Tomorrow Syria´s President Bashar al-Assad is expected to give a speech to the nation, probably announcing the formation of a new government, maybe even constitutional change and the end of 1963 state of emergency.

Foreign Policy Magazine article “The Syrian Time Bomb” explains why we should care more about the events in Syria than in Libya.

Read the very interesting piece here.

Osama Bin Laden & France

In his most recent audio tape, al-Qaeda leader Osama Bin Laden adressed  France, urging the government to cancel the Burqa-ban and stop intervening in Muslim affairs in North Africa. Most media outlets interpreted Bin Laden´s message as a declaration of war against France and saw a clear security risk in the direct and harsh adress to “The People of France”.

Jonathan Laurence and Justin Vaisse of Foreign Policy Magazine came to the conclusion, Bin Laden´s warning to France actually creates a chance for France to fix the mistake in its policy towards Muslims.

“Muslim leaders have reaffirmed their loyalty to the French Republic and demonstrated their solidarity with overall public opinion by issuing denunciations of bin Laden’s statement” – Laurence´s and Vaisse´s article says. It is worth reading the piece called “Bin Laden´s Backfire”, read it here.

Yemen´s al-Qaeda problem solvable

Aaron Y.Azelin, a research assistant in the politics department at Brandeis University and blogger collegue, wrote an interesting article for Foreign Policy´s Middle East Channel.

In it, Azelin asks the question: “What if Obama´s Yemen policy works?” The United States have supported the Yemeni regime with more than US $ 1 Billion over recent years to fight terrorism. Yet, al-Qaeda grows stronger and even expands its terror campaign outside of the country, trying to kill a Saudi-Arabian Prince and blowing up a U.S. airliner on its way from Amsterdam to Detroit.

Is it still legitimate to finance Yemen´s Anti-Terror-Operations when military and security forces are obviously not doing a well enough job in fighting al-Qaeda? Aaron Azelin says it is worth to continue support for Yemen – but on different levels.

Al-Qaeda has to be defeated not only in a military way – question remains if that is even possible – but also economically and on a social level. If al-Qaeda in Yemen is able to strike the U.S. it becomes likely for America to take over the “Yemeni  AQ problem” themselves, meaning not only start a CIA drone campaign similar to that already going on in Pakistan, but also sending in U.S. special forces to hunt down al-Qaeda operatives such as Anwar al-Awlaki.

To read Azelin´s article click here.