Author: Jonah Shepp

Worst Ebola Outbreak Ever

by Dish Staff

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Julia Belluz puts the West African epidemic in stark perspective:

The current Ebola outbreak in West Africa has now killed more people than all previous Ebola outbreaks combined. The latest World Health Organization data on this year’s Ebola outbreak in West Africa shows 3,069 probable and confirmed cases and 1,552 deaths. The number of cases continues to accelerate, with 40 percent of the total cases occurring in the last 21 days.

The WHO is warning that the epidemic could rage for another six to nine months, infect as many as 20,000 people, and cost half a billion dollars to contain. And yet, Chris Blattman cautions, “we must make sure the cure is not worse than the disease”:

All the negative hype will hinder, and might even destroy, Liberia’s economy for the next 5 or 10 years. Maybe the optimal response to a disease outbreak is overhype, to get the most resources possible. I’m worried about the aftershock. The cost to everyone who survives the disease looks to be very, very high in terms of lost growth, jobs, social programs, and the like. What might be the consequences of hype? Here’s a US survey that suggests 40% of Americans are concerned about an outbreak at home and that a quarter think their family might get it. And that was two weeks ago. Frankly that smells like it might be a poorly worded question or interpretation, but either way, I think “large scale irrational fears” adequately sums up the situation.

Leah Breen looks in on Liberia, where ebola has just made a bad situation worse:

According to the World Food Program, 64 percent of Liberians live in poverty. Infrastructure is poor—buildings in Monrovia that were looted during the war remain abandoned. Only 14 percent of Liberians attend secondary school. Liberians have good reason to believe that their government is not doing enough to increase quality of life in the country. Hospitals are often long distances from towns and villages, and the ones that do exist aren’t properly equipped. Citizens know that government officials often leave Liberia for the United States or Europe to seek medical attention. Since there are few clinics or hospitals outside of the capital, most Liberians have had little experience with the formal health system. When health workers appeared in communities to combat Ebola, citizens were skeptical of why the government was suddenly paying attention to them.

Sarah Kliff reports that a vaccine is starting human trials next month:

The NIH will start a Phase I trial in September with three volunteers who have already enrolled in the experiment. The NIH hopes to expand the trial group to 20 people, and report initial results about the vaccine’s efficacy by the end of the year. The new vaccine was developed in partnership between the federal government and GlaxoSmithKline, one of the world’s largest pharmaceutical companies. It comes as the Ebola outbreak shows no sign of abating, with the World Health Organization projecting Thursday morning the virus could infect as many as 20,000 people. “This public health emergency demands an all-hands-on-deck response,” said Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease. “We have accelerated the timeline for testing vaccines we have been working on for many years.”

But Kent Sepkowitz notes that a vaccine won’t do much to curb the current crisis:

Fauci was very careful to state that for the current outbreak in West Africa, the best approach will not be the vaccine or any new treatments, but rather the approach being used today and last week and last month and last year: early diagnosis, prompt isolation, and use of “personal protective equipment” including gowns, gloves, and masks. In other words, the vaccine being studied almost certainly will have no impact on the current West Africa crisis. Given the pace of useable science, even with the compressed, hurry-up-already system the candidate vaccine is being ushered through, preliminary results on safety and the vaccine’s ability to provoke a meaningful immune response will not be available until the end of the calendar year—at a point when the now 6-month long epidemic likely will have finally fizzled out.

Frank L. Smith III highlights the role military research played in the vaccine’s development:

Currently, most funding for biodefense comes from civilian sponsors in the United States, not the military. Aside from Zmapp, most of their therapies for other dangerous pathogens—like Marburg virus and Staphylococcal enterotoxin B—get funding from the U.S. National Institutes of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. Again, Zmapp may fail. Most experimental drugs do. But other medical countermeasures for Ebola relate directly to investments in biodefense, as well. For example, research into one Ebola vaccine began when the U.S. National Institutes of Health asked a Canadian company to reapply technology it had developed for anthrax to also fight Ebola. Several other potential therapies for Ebola—such as TKM-Ebola and AVI-7537—also resulted from private collaboration with USAMRIID. So did the GSK/NIAID Ebola vaccine that authorities have just approved for human trials. Therefore, what little hope there is for vaccines and therapies against naturally occurring Ebola depends in part on research and development for biodefense.

Susannah Locke relays the findings of research into the epidemiological origins of the current outbreak:

Using genetic sequences from current and previous outbreaks, the researchers mapped out a family tree that puts a common ancestor of the recent West African outbreak some place in Central Africa roughly around 2004. This contradicts an earlier hypothesis that the virus had been hanging around West Africa for much longer than that.

The data, on the whole, supports what epidemiologists have already deduced about how the virus spread into Sierra Leone. More than a dozen women became infected after attending the funeral of a traditional healer who had been treating Guinean Ebola patients and contracted the disease. One surprise from the paper is that two different strains of Ebola came out of that funeral. This suggests that either the healer was infected with two different strains or that another person at the funeral was already infected. As Ebola then traveled across Sierra Leone, a third strain of the virus appeared.

Let Someone Else Defeat ISIS

by Jonah Shepp

Doug Bandow wants us to stand back and let regional actors take care of the Islamic State, which threatens them much more directly than it threatens us:

Rather than turn ISIL into a military priority and take America into war against the group, Washington should organize an Islamic coalition against the Islamic State.  Even Gen. Dempsey called for a regional effort to “squeeze ISIS from multiple directions,” but that actually requires Washington to do less militarily.  ISIL’s rise has set in motion the very forces necessary for its defeat. Rather than hinder creation of a coalition by taking charge militarily, Washington should encourage it by stepping back.  The U.S. already has gone to war twice in Iraq. There’s no reason to believe that the third time will be the charm.

And indeed, that seems to be (NYT) what the administration is trying to do, although Syria is not on its list of potential coalition members:

As Mr. Obama considered new strikes, the White House began its diplomatic campaign to enlist allies and neighbors in the region to increase their support for Syria’s moderate opposition and, in some cases, to provide support for possible American military operations. The countries likely to be enlisted include Australia, Britain, Jordan, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Turkey and the United Arab Emirates, officials said.

The officials, who asked not to be named discussing sensitive internal deliberations, said they expected that Britain and Australia would be willing to join the United States in an air campaign. The officials said they also wanted help from Turkey, which has military bases that could be used to support an effort in Syria.

Bobby Ghosh argues that the recent airstrikes in Libya by Egypt and the UAE open the door to such a regional alliance, and were perhaps intended to do so:

If the UAE and Egypt can collaborate to can bomb Islamists in Tripoli, then the Sunni nations can do likewise in IS strongholds in Raqqa and Mosul. Of course, they might hesitate, especially before doing anything that helps Syria’s dictator, Bashar al-Assad. But the taboo on intervention has been lifted. Political space is beginning to open up for just such a coalition. IS’s barbaric treatment of fellow Muslims has been greeted with alarm and revulsion in Sunni Arab nations. Saudi Arabia’s Grand Mufti declared IS Islam’s greatest enemy. The highest spiritual authority in Egypt has issued a similar denunciation.

Meanwhile, the UK continues to play hard to get:

Britain, like Australia, has taken part in humanitarian operations on Mount Sinjar as well as deploying Tornado fast jets and a spy plane to gather operational and tactical-level intelligence. But David Cameron, who has said that Britain and its European allies will provide equipment to Kurdish forces fighting Isis, has played down the possibility of air strikes and has categorically ruled out any use of ground troops. “Britain is not going to get involved in another war in Iraq,” he told BBC1′s Breakfast programme last week. “We are not going to be putting boots on the ground. We are not going to be sending in the British army.”

Here’s a little thought experiment: what about Israel? If Netanyahu claims that Hamas and ISIS are indistinguishable, why is he only at war with the lesser of the two? Everyone talks about how Maliki and Assad don’t have the military strength to effectively combat the Islamic State, but Bibi does. And Israel is already technically at war with both Syria and Iraq, so there’s nothing stopping the Israelis from dropping bombs on either country (they have attacked both in the past when they believed their existential security demanded it). Israeli strikes on the “caliphate” would also confound the emerging conspiracy theory that ISIS is an American-funded project to advance the global Zionist agenda, and wreak havoc on the talking points of Israel’s greatest enemies. Just imagine how Iran would react to the news that an Israeli operation had saved thousands of Shiites from persecution.

I know it’s not going to happen, for a number of reasons, but would it really be a bad idea? If someone has to do it, and if we’re clearly committed to paying for it, and if we’ve already paid for Israel’s military supremacy, wouldn’t it make sense to ask them to take on some regional leadership here and participate in getting rid of this threat?

A Bit Of Good News From Syria

by Dish Staff

In contrast to the brutal murder of James Foley, another American journalist held captive in Syria since 2012 was released over the weekend by al-Qaeda’s Syrian affiliate Jabhat al-Nusra:

Peter Theo Curtis was handed over to UN peacekeepers in the village of al-Rafid, Quneitra, on Sunday. He has since been turned over to representatives from the US government after undergoing medical check-up, the UN said. Curtis’ family thanked both the governments of the US and Qatar, as well as others who helped negotiate his release. According to a statement from his family, Curtis was captured in October 2012 and was reportedly held by the al-Nusra Front or by splinter groups allied with the al-Qaeda-affiliated group.

Elias Groll takes a closer look at Qatar’s role in securing Curtis’s release, which he calls part of the Gulf kingdom’s “double game”:

The beheading of Foley marked an ugly turn in the Syrian civil war, one that has already been marked by awful brutality on all sides of the conflict. Qatar has played a role in fueling that violence, by funneling arms and weapons to Islamist groups. Some of those weapons have ended up in the hands of hard-line radicals. Qatar also provides a home for a handful of influential Islamist leaders, including the leader of Hamas, Khaled Meshaal, and Abdul Rahman Omeir al-Naimi, an al Qaeda financier. At the same time, Qatar continues to serve as a vital ally of America in the region, playing host to key U.S. military installations and reveling in its role as a power broker.

Events like Foley’s execution inevitably upset the balance between Qatar’s competing impulses and force its leaders to compensate in one direction or another. Specifically, the gruesome beheading of Foley put intense pressure on the White House to answer for its efforts to secure his release — pressure that Qatar has now slightly relieved. Curtis’s sudden release provides Barack Obama’s administration with a piece of good news — and tangible evidence that Americans can be freed without Washington doling out ransoms.

Keating compares the treatment of Curtis and Foley to illustrate the longstanding, fundamental disagreement over tactics between al-Qaeda central and even more extreme rogue groups like ISIS:

The details of the deal have not been made public. According to the New York Times, Curtis’ family was told by Qatari mediators that no ransom was paid, though it seems likely the group received some concession for his release. Al-Qaida and its affiliates have turned the ransoming of Western hostages into quite a tidy business, taking in more than $125 million in revenue since 2008, mostly from European governments that are more willing than the U.S. or Britain to pay ransoms. Intercepted documents from al-Qaida leaders show how central this revenue has become to the network’s operations. [Jabhat al-]Nusra’s more pragmatic approach, a few days after an ISIS video that seemed deliberately evocative of Zarqawi-era beheadings, shows that the old disagreement over tactics still persists, and has only gotten more public since al-Qaida and ISIS formally severed ties earlier this year.

A Sand Wedge Issue

by Jonah Shepp

Obama has come in for a lot of criticism for remaining on “vacation” in Martha’s Vineyard and proceeding with his regularly scheduled golf outings despite mounting crises in Iraq, Ukraine, and Missouri. Ezra Klein identifies what’s right and wrong about that critique:

This is politics at its dumbest. The country is not well served by a burnt-out president. If there’s a problem with presidential vacations it’s that they’re not restful enough. The way to do this right would be for the vice president to take over for a week or two — and for the president to get a call if something really goes wrong. Instead, the president takes working vacations, and the White House brags about how much work he gets done when he’s supposed to be resting.

But so long as the president is still the president when he’s on vacation, he still carries the symbolic weight of the role. He can’t go directly from leading the nation in grieving to hitting a drive. … Obama, of course, would say that this isn’t his problem. The get-caught-trying thing is Washington’s problem. The idea that politician should go around pretending to get things done even when they’re not getting anything done is exactly why the American people hate Washington, and exactly why they elected to Barack Obama to change it. And he is, in many ways, right about that. But there are days when it’s bad to get caught not trying.

First of all, let’s dispense with the notion that Obama is “on vacation”. President is a job you can do from pretty much anywhere these days, and in August, I suspect I’d rather be doing it from Martha’s Vineyard than from Washington, DC, where it’s typically a breezy 86° in the shade, not counting the hot air emanating from Capitol Hill. And that’s exactly what the president is doing: his job, from somewhere other than his usual office. It’s not like he’s really unplugging and unwinding out there on the links—and as Klein points out, he’d probably be handling this hellscape of world affairs a bit better if he actually got to do so once in a while. This criticism also strikes me as somewhat hypocritical, when the same people who accuse the president of failing to think out his strategic choices clearly and act on them decisively also insist that he operate under conditions of maximum stress.

Should he have postponed those 18 holes he put in after the Foley speech? Maybe, maybe not. Maybe it’s how he clears his head after delivering a grim address. It might not look especially sensitive, but then, those who are making political hay out of that can always be counted on to find their hay somewhere. And after all these years, Paul Waldman figures the president is past caring about “the optics”:

Obama could try to “win the morning” and be consumed with every up and down of the news cycle. But he plainly no longer cares. Playing golf might not make him look good, but he’s probably decided that it’s an important way for him to stay sane (as the Times article says, he has “perhaps the most stressful job on the planet”), and he’s willing to tolerate some bad press.

Back when he first ran for president, Obama and his team prided themselves on their ability to see beyond the fury of that day’s news cycle, avoid the distraction of whatever was in Politico that morning, and keep their focus on their long-term goals. That was a central part of the “No Drama Obama” ethos. What’s happening now is in some ways an extension of that perspective. It may be that Obama has decided that it’s no longer possible to affect how most Americans think about him — after nearly six years in office, there’s no clever press strategy that will revive his approval ratings. The only thing that will make a difference is results.

Meanwhile, John Cassidy’s defense of what he dubs Obama’s “golf addiction” is so snobbishly golf-happy it reads more like a brief for the prosecution. I came away from it much angrier at Obama—and anyone else who makes $250k+ a year—than I was going in. Read it only if you either love golf and want to feel like you have something in common with the president, or hold deep class-based resentments against the sport and enjoy getting angry about it.

Foley’s Impossible Ransom, Ctd

by Dish Staff

Bucking the pundit consensus, Leonid Bershidsky argues that the US should not dismiss out of hand the option of paying terrorist groups ransoms for civilian captives like James Foley and Steven Sotloff:

Not leaving the ransom option open fits the logic of war. Either the U.S. Marines will drop out of the sky and destroy the hostage takers — in the case of photojournalist James Foley that didn’t work out — or the terrorists will kill their infidel victim and distribute the fortifying video to their supporters. Yet this approach may not be smart for detective work. Keeping the ransom option open may create opportunities to track down kidnappers and free hostages — and a growing number of successful hostage liberations would be as powerful a deterrent to terrorists as declarations that no money will be paid out. So a policy of refusing to pay isn’t so obviously superior, after all. One thing is for sure, though: More deaths like Foley’s will just raise the savages’ morale.

Michael J. Totten wonders if there isn’t a middle way:

Washington can’t pay ransoms, but it could and probably should offer a large cash reward for intelligence that leads to a successful rescue. Kidnappers might try to collect the reward money themselves, which would make it a ransom by other means, but there’s an easy way around that—kill all the kidnappers. Do not arrest them and send them to Guantanamo. Kill them.

I have no doubt Washington is looking for Sotloff and the others right now. They’ll send men if they think they know where he is. They’ve already tried at least once. We can only hope they’ll succeed before it’s too late. In the meantime, to all of my colleagues: for God’s sake, stay the hell out of Syria.

And Sandy Levinson brings up the uncomfortable truth that a human life isn’t really as “priceless” as we like to think it is:

We know, when we decide to build skyscrapers or major bridges, etc., that people are going to die.  Ditto, incidentally, with regard to raising speed limits on automobiles or continuing to allow the sale of alcohol in bars, etc., etc.  To be sure, we don’t know exactly who is going to die, and that makes all the difference, just as Barack Obama doesn’t know exactly whom he is sentencing to death when deploying troops or allowing the use of drones that will generate “collateral damage.”  For many, that non-specificity makes all the difference. … There is absolutely no excuse for what was done to Mr. Foley, but perhaps we have to treat war journalilsts the way we treat soldiers:  i.e., they voluntarily enlisted in a very dangerous occupation, for a mixture of reasons, including patriotism and devotion to the public weal, but part of the deal is that their lives will be on the line, to be protected only at “acceptable” cost.

Even if it is true that most of us consider our own lives “priceless,” no society has ever operated on that basis, and none ever will.

Unmasking “Jihadi John”

by Jonah Shepp

The UK intelligence agencies claim to have identified the ISIS militant who murdered American journalist James Foley in a video released last week:

According to The Times of London and other sources, “John” is believed to be Abdel-Majed Abdel Bary, a 23-year-old man from London, who went to Syria to join Islamist forces last year. His father, Adel Abdel Bary, is an Egyptian-born man who is accused of taking part in the 1998 U.S. embassy bombings in Tanzania and Kenya. He was extradited from the U.K. to the U.S. in 2012 and is currently awaiting trial. Bary was an aspiring hip-hop artist who performed under the name L Jinny when he still lived in London. His music has even been played on BBC Radio and there are several YouTube videos of his performances online. It’s believed those videos could have been used to match Bary’s voice to the voice of the man in the video of Foley’s beheading.

As Gary Sick put it in an interview the Dish referred to on Friday, “eventually … justice does catch up with these guys”. If Abdel Bary is indeed the man behind the mask, we hope this is the first step toward bringing him to justice.

Now seems like a good time for this small programming note: The Dish has tried to avoid referring to Foley’s murder as an “execution” or to his killer as an “executioner”, because these terms confer some degree of legitimacy on the act. An execution, properly understood, means the killing of an individual by a state within the confines of its laws. This killing clearly violated Iraqi, American, Islamic, and international law, to say nothing of human decency, and construing it as an execution gives the thugs who carried it out too much credit. As for its perpetrator, he is no dispenser of justice, but rather a depraved criminal who killed a man and made a snuff film.

Let’s never lose sight of the fact that these scumbags are criminals, not warriors. And justice can’t catch up with them soon enough.

It’s 2003 Again

by Jonah Shepp

What else can one possibly take away from this Noah Rothman exegesis of Peggy Noonan’s and Charles Krauthammer’s cases for expanding the new Iraq war to Syria? Here’s the crux of the argument:

The mission Krauthammer describes does not appear to require a significant American ground force, though it would be one which would only be effective in Iraq. The Islamic State’s stronghold in Syria will require an entirely different strategy, one far more robust and which may require putting American service personnel in harm’s way. But rolling back the Islamic State in Iraq is an acceptable short-term goal, and the American people should be informed that this is the mission in which their military is presently engaged. Those opposed to going to war to rid the world of ISIS worry that achieving that objective will require more commitment than most are willing to admit. And it is possible that the American national interests at stake in this region, while appreciable, are not threatened to the degree that would merit a return of tens of thousands of American troops to Iraq. At least, not yet.

These are worthwhile debates to have, and Americans need to have an honest discussion about this threat. It is a discussion that must be led by their president. It seems, however, that some conservatives are beginning to observe that those who object to a military solution to the Islamic State threat rest their argument on the claim that it heralds a new occupation of Iraq. This is a straw man argument. The vast majority of Americans of every political stripe do not want to reoccupy that country, and this is not on the table. Destroying ISIS, however, is.

Right, because we all remember what happened the last time right-wing hawks sold the American public on a war that they alleged would have no long-term consequences. After the past decade, I suppose I shouldn’t be all that surprised that the cheerleaders for this new war are demanding that their opponents make a probative case against intervention, while the neo-neocons’ contention that a light-touch war with no “significant” ground force is presented as obviously true. (By the by, how many soldiers constitute “significant”? 1,000? 10,000? 100,000? No one wants to say…) For more of the same, see Elliott Abrams here. Brian Fishman wishes advocates of an all-out, two-front war on ISIS would stop bullshitting the public already about what that would entail:

No one has offered a plausible strategy to defeat ISIL that does not include a major U.S. commitment on the ground and the renewal of functional governance on both sides of the Iraqi-Syrian border. And no one will, because none exists.

But that has not prevented a slew of hacks and wonks from suggesting grandiose policy goals without paying serious attention to the costs of implementation and the fragility of the U.S. political consensus for achieving those goals. Although ISIL has some characteristics of a state now, it still has the resilience of an ideologically motivated terrorist organization that will survive and perhaps even thrive in the face of setbacks. We must never again make the mistake that we made in 2008, which was to assume that we have destroyed a jihadist organization because we have pushed it out of former safe-havens and inhibited its ability to hold territory. Bombing ISIL will not destroy it. Giving the Kurds sniper rifles or artillery will not destroy it. A new prime minister in Iraq will not destroy it.

Please do not step in here with the fly-paper argument: that the conflict will attract the world’s would-be jihadis to one geographic area where we can target them all and thereby solve the problem. Notice that no authorities on jihadism ever make this argument. That is because they understand that war makes the jihadist movement stronger, even in the face of major tactical and operational defeats.

There is a case to be made for this war. It is not the case that its backers are making. They still seem to inhabit the same alternate universe as Donald Rumsfeld, in which the only limit to what American power can accomplish is the imagination of the Commander-in-Chief. I may not support all of Obama’s foreign policy choices, but I find it reassuring that he is nowhere near as prone as his predecessor was to flights of imperial fancy. As Fishman rightly points out, one cannot make the argument that the withdrawal of US forces from Iraq precipitated the current crisis without also acknowledging that the 2003 invasion set the ball rolling. The honest case for more intervention now, it seems to me, is that Bush’s Iraq adventure obligated the US to accept responsibility for maintaining the new Iraqi order we created and protecting the people of the Middle East from the jihadist menace our war unleashed.

But the usual suspects can’t make that argument, because to do so, they’d have to admit that they were wrong in the first place.

Russia “Invades” Ukraine

by Dish Staff

A Russian aid convoy bound for eastern Ukraine crossed the border today without the permission of the Ukrainian government, which is calling the act an “invasion”:

Russia’s Foreign Ministry said in a statement Friday morning that Moscow had run out of patience with “delays” and other “excuses” from Ukraine. It charged that Ukraine’s leaders were deliberately trying to slow-walk the delivery of aid to the war-torn region of Luhansk until “there is no one at all to provide help to.”

The decision to send in the aid without the consent of the Red Cross or Ukrainian authorities marked a dangerous new step in the four-month conflict. If Ukrainian forces fire on the trucks, they could trigger an all-out invasion by Russian forces that have accumulated by the tens of thousands across the border from eastern Ukraine. If they allow the trucks to disperse across the Luhansk region without any Ukrainian controls, Russia in effect will have imposed a cease-fire in the fight against pro-Russian separatists without Kiev’s permission.

That’s precisely what Ed Morrissey suspects the Kremlin is trying to do:

Russia tried a direct invasion last week in what appeared to be an attempt to start a shooting war. Although Russia later denied it, at first they confirmed the incursion, but didn’t follow up with military action when it came under Ukrainian fire. Prior to that, I warned that the aid convoy could be used to force the Ukrainian military into a unilateral cease-fire to prevent any Russian retaliation for convoy losses in potential firefights, and that seems to be at least one of the motives for running through the border now. Otherwise, why not wait for the inspections? …

Until the rebellion gets settled one way or the other, peace will not be forthcoming. The aid convoy only delays that resolution if Russia plans to use it as a barricade for the rebels, or as a beachhead for an occupation.

The Interpreter live-blog passes along a report that most of the trucks had not been inspected by Ukrainian border guards:

“In total, 34 people and 34 vehicles were processed. The total weight was 268,020 kg. Vehicles were loaded to two thirds of their capacity. The average weight of one vehicle was 8,375 kg. 32 trucks carried food products (buckwheat, rice, sugar and water), 2 trucks carried medical supplies,” report border guards. … Andrei Lysenko, the spokesman for the Ukrainian National Defence and Security Council (SNBO), has told reporters at a briefing today that more than 90 trucks (note that only 34 passed customs clearance) have set off into Ukrainian territory today.

Inconsolable In Islamabad

by Dish Staff

Pakistan may be on the brink of a political crisis after opposition leader Imran Khan suspended talks with the government in response to the appointment of a new police chief in Islamabad:

Khan, a famed cricketer-turned-politician, and fiery cleric Tahir-ul-Qadri have led massive protests from the eastern city of Lahore to the gates of parliament in Islamabad to demand the resignation of Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, accusing him of rigging the vote that brought him to power last year. The protests have raised fears of unrest in the nuclear-armed US ally with a history of political turmoil, and after a request from the country’s powerful military the government convened talks with Khan and Qadri’s representatives early Thursday. Shah Mahmood Qureshi, a senior leader of Khan’s party, told reporters that the opposition presented six demands, including Sharif’s resignation. …

Later on Thursday, Khan told his supporters that the government had removed the Islamabad police chief for not using force against him, and warned that the new police chief, Khalid Khattak, would follow orders to disperse the protests, which have thus far been peaceful.

The army’s growing role in containing this crisis makes Michael Kugelman very nervous:

With Islamabad increasingly on the defensive, the military is gaining an upper hand. Consider Sharif’s decision last week to make the armed forces responsible for security of sensitive facilities in Islamabad during the protests. This can be interpreted either as a sop to the military or as an acknowledgment that the government can’t protect its own people — or itself. Additionally, Sharif’s Independence Day speech on Aug. 14, the first official day of the protests, was rife with praise for Pakistan’s military. That such praise came from a civilian leader as combative as Sharif is quite telling. Most significantly, on Aug. 19, as marchers entered the Red Zone, the government ceded full security of the area to the military. The government gave the military carte blanche to do what it so relishes: serve as the nation’s protector and savior.

Furthermore, with many Pakistanis cheering on a countermilitancy offensive underway in North Waziristan, the military’s star could continue to rise in the coming weeks. Possible retaliatory terrorist attacks in Pakistani cities could prompt more calls for the military to provide security, which would further embolden Pakistan’s most powerful institution.

The Twice-Displaced Palestinians

by Jonah Shepp

Alice Su highlights the peculiar predicament of Palestinian Syrians, who unlike other displaced people looking to flee the civil war don’t have the right to seek refuge in neighboring countries:

Amid the millions of refugees from Syria flooding into neighboring countries like Lebanon and Jordan, a minority group is being quietly denied entry, detained, deported, and pushed out in any way possible: Palestinians. They are refugees who literally have nowhere to go.

In recent months, Jordanian and Lebanese authorities have acknowledged that Palestinians from Syria are not welcome to asylum in the same way that other Syrian refugees are. Jordan and Lebanon have respectively been barring Palestinians from entry since January and August 2013, in contrast with the treatment of some 600,000 Syrian nationals in Jordan and 1.5 million in Lebanon, according to Human Rights Watch. The organization has also documented forcible deportations of Palestinians—women and children included—from both countries.

I touched on this issue last week, and I’m glad to see it’s getting some more press. This is another example of the many ways Palestinians suffer for having no state of their own and no genuine acceptance in the countries where so many of them ended up after being displaced in the 1948 and 1967 wars.

I’m somewhat agnostic on how best to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict (more on that later), but the severe impact of Palestinian statelessness on the lives and welfare of Palestinian refugees and their descendants is—or at least ought to be—beyond dispute. Israel is the primary agent of this problem, but it’s worth remembering that most Arab states have not exactly been kind to the Palestinians either.

It’s also an example of how the Palestinian experience in the Arab Middle East since 1948 replicates with eerie similarity the experience of the Jews in Europe in the bad old days. Imagine living your entire life in a country where the majority of people look pretty much the same as you do but consider you foreign, undeserving of the rights of citizenship, and somehow a threat to them for reasons they can’t really articulate. Imagine being in perpetual danger of expulsion or worse at the whim of an autocrat or a populist mob, and having no place to go where you know you will be safe from that danger. One would think that two peoples having both been through such a harrowing experience would be able to find more common ground than they do, but perhaps the fearful worldview engendered by that trauma overrides whatever perspective it might provide.