Libya: Weakness and Crisis

Libya is one of the epicenters of the world crisis because of the massive influx to Europe of African migrants. Since 2015 385.000 of them have arrived from Libya to the Italian coasts and in four years, 12.064 have died in the sea. It is unknown the number dead in the desert.

Located between Egypt and Tunisia, Libya is weak and divided. There are two main reasons for this. Libya shares with a large part of the Arab world the lack of consolidation of a national state (as happens in Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Yemen, etc.) and the main social fracture is composed by the tribal one. But there is also a peculiarity of the former regime of the Gaddafi dictatorship, who kept a security apparatus not especially strong and kept the military fragmented and not too much equipped because of fear of sedition.

Weak border controls have transformed the country into a primary departure area to migrate across the central Mediterranean to Europe in growing numbers. In addition, almost 350,000 people were displaced internally as mid-2016 by fighting between armed groups in eastern and western Libya and, to a lesser extent, by inter-tribal clashes in the country’s south. Coming from countries like Nigeria, Senegal or Gambia, they try to reach the coast but sometimes they are captured and sold averaging a cost of some 200 to 500 US dollars. They are used sometimes to achieve a rescue payment, sometimes exploited as forced labor or sexual abuse.

The strife-torn inner situation has handicapped the productive infrastructure including the oil terminals, in a country almost entirely dependent on oil and gas exports.

Bottom line, a bad situation, were apparently only an international strong help could deliver results, albeit we do not see this happening. A decisive European action could only be promoted not that much by the interest in the Libyan energy resources, but by the possibilities that the country’s domestic development could absorb the African migrants and stop their flow to Europe.

Middle East and North Africa Natural Gas Production

Natural gas is a fossil fuel used as a source of energy for electricity generation, heating, cooking, fuel for vehicles, and as a chemical feedstock in the manufacture of plastics and other commercially important organic chemicals. Due to environmental reasons, natural gas is considered as the stepping stone between fossil fuels such as coal and oil, and renewable energy such as water, wind, and solar power. Natural gas reserves are estimated at 187 trillion cubic meters in 2015.

Natural Gas Production in Qatar

 The Middle East holds 40% of worldwide proven natural gas reserves, followed by the CIS at 34%. OPEC countries control 47% of worldwide reserves and three countries (Russia, Iran and Qatar) account for 55% of global reserves.

The Economic Boycott Against Israel

The strategy of the anti-Jewish boycott in modern times can be traced to the anti-Semitism of the Nazi Germany and in the Middle East to the postwar Arab anti-Zionist activity. In the same year that Hitler rose to power in Germany, the Arab Higher Committee (لجنة العربية العليا), headed by the future Nazi collaborationist Haj Amin al-Husseini, Mufti of Jerusalem, called for a boycott against the Jews in the British Mandate of Palestine. A couple of years before the 1948 establishment of the State of Israel, the Arab League organized an official boycott against the Jews of Palestine in December 1945.

Three Jewish businessmen are forced to march down a crowded Leipzig street while carrying signs reading: "Don't buy from Jews. Shop in German businesses!" Leipzig, Germany, 1935. 

— US Holocaust Memorial Museum

In 1994, partially because of the Oslo accords, partially because the inefficiency of the Arab boycott, GCC states (Cooperation Council for the Arab States of the Gulf), officially ceased their participation in the boycott. They also states that the boycott hindered the regional economic development.

Since then the boycott was not much applied, but in the mid-2005 the Palestinians initiated a global movement pressuring for boycott, divestment and sanctions, in different fields like trade, academics, cultural activities, etc. The main aim of this movement is the destruction of the State of Israel as was admitted by one of its founders, Omar Barghouti, who said “ending the Israeli control of the territories is only the first stage in the way to implement the vision of dismantling Israel”. Barghouti was born in Qatar, grew up in Egypt and later moved to Israel as an adult. He opposes the two-state solution. He has been widely criticized for on one side lobbying for a global economic, cultural and academic boycott of Israel, and on the other, having studied in the Tel Aviv University.

In the end of the day, the BDS movement is basically an anti-Semitic force, and, in the same fashion that the Nazis attacked in the last century the Jewish main demographical centre, today they attack the current largest Jewish community of the world and the main resource of the Jewish people, the State of Israel.

In a direct challenge to legal rulings, BDS activists staged a protest calling for the boycott of Israeli goods at a LIDL supermarket in the south of France on 23 January 2016. 

The BDS is a malign force, but also very inefficient. They can disrupt the selling of Israeli oranges in a Parisian supermarket, but it doesn’t work the same way with the complex Israel export of knowhow and high-tech products. Israel is economically strong and it is strengthening even more. In the last days, the Indian government has cleared a $2.5 billion deal purchasing from Israel for its army a medium-range surface-to-air missile defense system. The partners of the Leviathan gas reservoir, some 130 km west of Haifa, have announced that they will invest $3.75 billion. Crushing the BDS efforts, this is Israel’s biggest energy project and financial investment in all its history.

Saudi Arabia: The troubles of PetroRabigh

Saudi petrochemicals group PetroRabigh — a joint venture between state-owned Saudi Aramco and Japan’s Sumitomo Chemical — has further delayed the completion of its Rabigh 2 expansion project (near Jeddah), leading to a cost increase. The rest of the project, including the majority of electrical and non-electrical utilities, support services buildings, as well as the cumene and phenol units, will be completed in the second quarter of 2017, instead of second half of 2016 as previously announced. The main reason for the delays was the failure of the key contractors of the project to meet the planned implementation schedule. Feasibility study on the project was carried out in 2009, while construction work began three years later. Work on the ethane-fed cracker, a main component of the project, was completed in April. It raised the capacity of the cracker to 1.6mn t/yr of ethylene from 1.3mn t/yr. The cracker’s ethane processing capacity increased by 30mn ft³/d (30.9bn m³/yr) to 125mn ft³/d. The project also involves a new naphtha reformer and aromatics complex that will be able to process more than 2.7mn t/yr of naphtha and produce 1.3mn t/yr of paraxylene. It is designed to produce a broad range of petrochemical products, including ethylene propylene diene monomer rubber, thermoplastic olefins, methyl methacrylate and polymethyl methacrylate. Once the Rabigh 2 expansion project is completed, the entire complex will be capable of producing 5mn t/yr of petrochemical products and 15mn t/yr of refined petroleum products. Along with around 107,000 t/yr, of sulphur an increase from around 44,000 t/yr.
PetroRabigh's earnings have been hit hard by falling product prices, like many petrochemical firms in the kingdom, as they are closely tied to slumping oil prices.

Egypt in a dangerous crossroads

Egypt is undergoing a serious economic, social, political, military, and diplomatic crisis. Egypt has a larger population than Iran, but its economy is smaller, and it is a country with a not negligible geostrategic importance because of its location between Africa and Asia.

Currently Egypt is not able to feed properly its population, neither to provide it with enough employment. It is estimated that some 35 – 40% of Egypt's population is earning less than the equivalent of two dollars a day. Egypt has a population of over 90 million, and whilst the official figures for unemployment are of 27%, estimates put the number at a minimum of 40%. Recently the government devaluated the Egyptian pound by nearly half of its value. A veteran writer on Egyptian affairs has described last month the situation of the sugar deliverances as follows: “Sugar supplies have dwindled. Supermarkets and shops have run out, long queues are forming outside government cooperatives, and prices have doubled over the last few weeks. The state-owned Food Industries Holding Company has been reduced to rationing meagre sugar supplies to the food processing industry, especially soft drink makers, to keep factories running.” (cfr. http://www.thenational.ae/business/economy/patrick-werr-sugar-shortage-in-egypt-leaves-a-bitter-taste#full)  Tourism, another key factor in the Egyptian economy, is also under a severe crisis due that because of security concerns England canceled its flights to Sharm el-Sheikh and Russia canceled altogether its flights to Egypt.

Politically, Egypt’s power elite is divided between on one side President al-Sissi, backed by the Central Intelligence, and on the other the Armed Forces and the Military Intelligence. There seems to be no danger currently of another coup, because the fear of total political and economic collapse enhance the preference for a smooth leadership transition in the next few years. It is within this framework that we must see the call of some army officials to al-Sissi not to run for reelection in 2018.

The national security is challenged by the extremist armed actions in the Sinai Peninsula, in especial the Islamic State group. The army is having difficulty to cleanse the area due to its mountainous character and the presence of some highly trained terrorist insiders among Bedouin tribes who are difficult to track down.

If all this wasn’t enough, things got worse with the Cairo rejection of participating in the Saudi-led coalition battering the Shiite Houthis and their vote for a Russian resolution on Syria. As a result, last month Saudi Aramco decided to stop the transfer of discounted oil to Egypt.

In spite of everything, Egypt is still considered a leading power in the Arab world. The eyes are put now in the new incoming administration in Washington, to see if and how it will help Egypt, or if it will keep the retreatment path of the Obama policy. Trump will have to understand that the price of isolationism is the enhancement of the danger of pushing Egypt into Russian or Iranian arms.

Ethnic cleansing in the current war

The Middle East war is causing gigantic demographic changes, in a proportion than can be compared to the massive expulsion of ethnically Germans from East Europe at the aftermath of World War Two or the formidable population exchange between Indians and Pakistanis. Interestingly the latter was not done on historic or linguistic lines, but were implemented on religious lines, in the same vein that the main source of tension in the Middle East today runs in the lanes of the Sunni-Shia confrontation. The religious variable has shown much wider influence than what we thought during the Cold War years. The large-scale population movements originated in the region have not been a simple byproduct of war. Rather, they represent conscious strategies of ethnic cleansing by each faction. Already last year, Fabrice Balanche, of The Washington Institute for Near East Policy, wrote that “the Syrian conflict is a sectarian war, and ethnic cleansing is an integral part of the strategy used by various actors, even if they claim otherwise.” (http://www.businessinsider.com/these-maps-show-how-ethnic-cleansing-has-become-a-weapon-in-syrias-civil-war-2015-12).

Before the inner war in Syria began in 2011, the Sunni Muslims make up about three quarters of the Syrian population, whilst the Shia Muslims were only some 11-13%. This was a problem for the nepotistic Alawite regime, and their Iranian and Russian allies. The war soon brought up the issue of the destruction of the sheltering populations, and the depopulation and ethnic cleansing of rebel-held areas was incremented. More than a million Sunni Syrians have gone to Europe, and some four million are refugees in Jordan, Turkey and Lebanon. On the other hand, hundreds of thousands of Shiites have come to Syria from Iraq, Iran, and other countries. Another aspect, is the redistribution by the Damascus regime of land and houses that belonged to Arab Sunnis who relocated to other places to remaining Arab Sunnis, and so increasing their dependence on the official authorities and arising conflict with anyone who decides to return.

The ethnic cleansing is a rising phenomenon both in Syria and Iraq. And if the main confrontation trench is the Sunni-Shia one, Christians are disappearing in both countries. But the latter is not something new. It is useful to recall that even after the Arab conquests of the Middle East in the 7th century, the majority of the population in most cases was still Christian. Yet the number of Christians steadily declined over the centuries that followed. A century ago, Christians represented some 20 percent of the population of the Middle East; today, that figure is estimated at less than 4 percent. It has been estimated that between one-half and two-thirds of Middle Eastern Christians have either been killed or left the area over the last century.

Of course nobody knows what is going to happen in the Middle Eastern quicksands, but it seems safe to acknowledge that the region will not return to its previous configurations. The Sykes-Picot designs seem to have failed, but consensus on lines of solution seem scarce. The current battle in Mosul, which is already causing thousands of refugees, is also dangerously arising the mutual suspicions and tensions between the Sunni Turkey and the Shia-dominated Iraq. The Turkish military are deploying heavy armor, including tanks, to the border near Iraq, a step to which Iraq’s Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi menaced with nothing less than stating in a televised news conference that “the invasion of Iraq will lead to Turkey being dismantled”. In the current dangerous Middle East everything is suspicion and tension in the best case, war in the worst.

The use in the Middle East of civilians in armed conflicts as human shields

The present developments in Mosul are putting on the table the unlawful issue of the use of civilians as human shields for Arab armed forces. The United Nations have already expressed their concern about the ISIS taking of 550 families from villages surrounding Mosul to the city, apparently to avoid them fleeing and to use them as human shields. This is done in the framework of what is expected to be the largest attack since the US invasion of Iraq in 2003 and the ousting of the dictator Saddam Hussein. There are currently about five thousand US soldiers in Iraqi soil, from which about a hundred are counselling the Kurdish Peshmerga and the Iraqi troops.

This wouldn´t be the first time in the last decades in the Middle East that captive populations are used in armed conflicts as human shields. During the 1991 operations in the Gulf War, the Iraqi Government moved a large quantity of weapons and military equipment into civilian areas with the deliberate purpose of using them as shields against attacks on legitimate military targets. During the Second Intifada (2000–2005) Palestinian gunmen routinely used civilians and children as human shields, for which there is photographic evidence. In 2006 the Hizballah used Christian villages in Lebanon as human shields whilst they lead a rocket aggression towards Nahariya and the coastal Galilee. In Gaza the Hamas has used civilians to shield their military operations against the Israelis, and footage has been released showing Hamas' Al-Aqsa TV calling upon children to form a human shield at various structures in Gaza to prevent anticipated IDF airstrikes. On the Hamas unashamed exposition of their tactics of using civilians as a shield against the Israeli Army, see the Hamas MP Fathi Hammad speech in al-Aqsa TV: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CWIDZ7Jpdqg

Picture taken during the Gaza war of 2008-2009 showing civilians gathered on a roof to avoid attacks from the IDF (Israel Defense Forces).

In the past, Hamas has shot from the Islamic University of Gaza, used an UNRWA school as a munition arsenal, relocated a police northern command to the Kam’el Adwuan Hospital, hide terrorists in the Shifa Hospital, etc.

It seems that now the ISIS is using this technique in the defense of their positions in Mosul, one that is illegal by nations that are parties to the 1949 Geneva Conventions, the 1977 Additional Protocol I to the Geneva Conventions, and the 1998 Rome Statute. But of course the international law is of no concern for ISIS, for whom only the Sha’aria, the Islamic law, counts.