By Fabrice Balanche · Wednesday, December 8, 2021 Fabrice Balanche is a geographer at the University of Lyon who focuses on the Middle East. This interview appeared in Le Figaro on August 19, 2021, and is translated with permission by Russell A. Berman, whose comments are here.
Q: What are the geographic specificities of Afghanistan?
Fabrice Balanche: Afghanistan is a country of mountains and deep valleys, with passes connecting one region to another. It is a compartmentalized country. This obviously poses problems to all powers that want to penetrate it. It is a territory very difficult to control.
This physical fragmentation has human and social corollaries. The country includes different ethnicities living in the valleys: Pashtoons, Uzbeks, Tajiks. These ethnicities are further divided into clans and tribes that compete with each other. Even the central authority in Kabul, during the time of the monarchy, never succeeded in achieving direct control of the population.
This physical reality and the ethnic diversity are essential elements for any understanding of the country. They are furthermore linked to each other: the tribes maintain their specific identities thanks to the physical geography of the territory. One can be the master of one’s valley. Let us be precise that the field of geography has two topics: the physical question and the human and cultural specificity of a country. Western leaders did not want to see or understand these points, and this is what has led to the fiasco.
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By Saladdin Ahmed · Tuesday, December 10, 2019 Despite a decade of resistance since the Iranian Green Revolution in 2009, another Middle East and North Africa (MENA) has yet to be born. In its way lie Sunni and Shia Islamist blocs, which have been remarkably successful in preventing entire societies from stepping forward. In countries where they have assumed state power, Islamist forces have been aggressive and totalitarian, while elsewhere they have hijacked popular liberal movements of regime change in recent years. Ultimately, if the anti-Islamist resistance does not soon bring down the main sponsors of the Sunni and Shia blocs—the Turkish and Iranian regimes, respectively—the coming era will be no less bloody than the period from 1919 to 1945.
In my view, the avalanche that will topple the regime in Iran is gaining speed, but as for the Sunni bloc, I am less optimistic. The Kurds are the last obstacle to Erdoğan’s neo-Ottoman caliphate, and it seems they are being left to face their heroic yet tragic fate alone. If the Islamist momentum of militarization and mobilization is allowed to continue building, it will eventually shatter the prospects for international peace. Perhaps only then, looking back on these days, will liberal democracies recognize their own culpability for failing to support anti-Islamist struggles in the region.
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By Saladdin Ahmed · Sunday, June 16, 2019 The ongoing Sudanese revolution has emerged at a time when most of us had already given up any realistic hope for what has become known as the Arab Spring. Yet, if anything, the revolutionaries in Sudan have the best chance yet of simultaneously defeating both nationalist dictatorship and religious fundamentalism. This would be no small feat; it would arguably mark the most significant historical turning point in the struggle for democracy in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) since World War II.
Since the protests began in Tunisia in late 2010, the Arab Spring has repeatedly failed to deliver on its promise of democratic governance. I argue that this is primarily because the protest movements have simply not been revolutionary enough to break free from the dominating orbit of the retroactive forces of nationalist dictatorships and religious fundamentalism. Under these circumstances, the non-violent, mostly liberal movements were quickly neutralized, demonstrating the degree to which the death of the Left has left contemporary societies at the mercy of fascist forces.
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By Fabrice Balanche · Friday, September 14, 2018 With the re-establishment of Bashar al-Assad’s power in Syria, the strengthening of Hezbollah in Lebanon, and finally the political and military victory of pro-Iranian forces in Iraq, it is clear that an Iranian axis now prevails in the Levant. The strength of this geopolitical axis is reinforced by the territorial continuity between Tehran and Beirut via Damascus and Baghdad: “the Iranian land bridge” or “Iranian corridor,” controlled by Iranian troops directly and by proxies. Since the Shia militias joined the Syrian-Iraqi border in May 2017, the Iranian land bridge has continued to expand, despite the U.S. troop presence on both sides, in the al-Tanef pocket and in northeastern Syria. Until spring 2017, the West seemed incredulous about this reality. However, at that time, it was already too late to block the Shiite militias in eastern Syria, and the Iranian land bridge became a reality.
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By Jeffrey Herf · Tuesday, May 29, 2018 Can the same Trump who lies constantly, flouts the norms of the rule of law, fans the flames of racial resentment, and attacks basic notions of fact and evidence offered by journalists and his own law enforcement and intelligence agencies, can this same man be right about leaving the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) Iran nuclear deal of 2015? This instance of cognitive dissonance, of holding two or more contradictory beliefs in our minds at the same time, is staring us in the face. The serial liar, that man who has undermined our alliances and replaces rational explanations with conspiracy theories, has made the right decision to leave the JCPOA and to restore and intensify the economic sanctions on Iran in an effort to bring about a definitive end to both its nuclear program and its regional imperialism in the Middle East. In the polarized climate he has done so much to create, Trump supporters forget Trump the liar while agreeing on policy while those of us who oppose him reject any policy he advocates. The desire for consistency generally overwhelms the discomfort of cognitive dissonance. In the following, I make the case for living with the discomfort of accepting that this awful man who is wrong about most everything is right about this issue.
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By Russell A. Berman · Wednesday, March 28, 2018 The ethnic cleansing in Syria is hardly a secret, but it continues unabated. A Syrian refugee and a Holocaust survivor have collaborated on an appeal that includes the following crucial paragraph:
The starvation, the torture, the siege and the chemical attacks in Syria can be stopped. Assad’s military is far from invincible; the Israeli strikes on Syrian air defenses last month showed that. After years of appeasement-style diplomacy have yielded only more body bags by an emboldened Assad, grounding Assad’s air force is the last option left to stop the slaughter.
Please read the full text here.
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The Massacre in Syria: An Appeal for Support
The ethnic cleansing in Syria is hardly a secret, but it continues unabated. A Syrian refugee and a Holocaust survivor have collaborated on an appeal that includes the following crucial paragraph:
Please read the full text here.
Continue reading →