The Upcoming Surprise War

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It will be a surprise in the West, at least.  Get ready for a vicious little war in Sudan that will spill over into Uganda and Ethiopia. And it will be about oil.

Come January, the independence referendum in southern Sudan will either have been approved resoundingly or Khartoum will delay the vote.  Both will result in war and if anyone thinks that Darfur is bad - well, you ain't seen nothin' yet.

The proposed border is vague, to say the least. The oil resources straddle the border. Northern Sudan has been at war in the south for three decades. Over 1 million people have died. Both the north and south depend on the oil revenues while China and India depend on the oil. The rest of the planet is distracted - there will be no US or EU intervention.  The African Union is weak and broke.

The factors coming together - oil, religion, geography and no prospect of outside intervention - are deadly.  The importance of avoiding a major conflict cannot be overstated.  If Uganda and Ethiopia become destabilized the prospects of penetration by trans-national Islamic militants is huge and their own internal problems will be made worse.  Loss of oil production will force China and India to look elsewhere - and prices will go up.

Three months and counting.

Good Night Mayor Luzhkov

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President Medvedev dropped the other shoe and summarily dismissed Mayor Luzhkov. The face - either loved or despised - of Moscow for almost two decades is gone. A fake populist, sometimes corrupt, always in-your-face politician who nevertheless always kept his word if you kept yours, is going to be a hard act to follow.  But Moscow and Russia have grown up. Luzhkov did not grow with it.

Yuri Luzhkov was a national figure and transformed the city - some say for the worse.  There is no doubt that he changed its face from a somewhat dreary, grey and graceless city that I remember from 1969 and on my next visit n 1989 to a center of fashion, art, night-clubs and expensive shops and five star hotels it is today.  But it did lose a certain poetry.  Old, quiet neighborhoods such as the one I lived in for three years in 1994 were transformed as high-rises with apartments selling for  $3,000 a meter or more concealed the sky while parks vanished as land became more valued than quality of life.  I tend to cringe now if I need to travel there, dreading the truly astonishing traffic jams that make New York City look vehicle free.

But, he put Moscow on the map.

Iran and US on Common Ground

Isn't it nice to know that those in the US who so despise Muslims in general and Iranians in particular are on the same level as Iranians when it comes to the death penalty?

German Technology to the Rescue

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OK.  This is cool and out of Agence France-Press (sorry, no link available):

Germany's giant Oktoberfest beer party, now celebrating its 200th birthday, is rising to a new challenge, stinky drinking halls, with a new weapon: stench-eating bacteria.
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In past years, olfactory offences in the giant tents emanating from stale beer, sweat and bratwurst could simply be masked with cigarette smoke.
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But now smokers hoping to enjoy a puff with their brew were advised to leave their packets at home after the southern state of Bavaria decided to ban smoking across the state in all pubs, cafes and beer tents.
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This development led one enterprising German, Hubert Hackl, to cook up a cocktail of bacteria that "eat" the putrid smell of partying. Hackl's magic potion is a "brownish liquid with the pleasant scent of humus", or mature compost, he said, rounded off with a hint of seaweed and molasses then left to ferment.
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The beer halls, where up to 7,000 revelers can gather, are usually poorly ventilated. The stale air combined with rotten food scraps, spilled drinks and body odor can form a noxious mix. Spread across the wooden floorboards of the beer tents at a volume of 200 milliliters per square meter per day, Hackl's concoction travels the same route as the spilled beer, seeping between the planks and into the soil.  The process eliminates the undesirable organic materials nestled under the tents, ensuring that what wafts back up has a neutral earthy smell.

What remains is "a natural fertilizer for grass growing back in the spring," said Hackl, who has been supplying detergents and other cleaning products to the beer festival for 28 years.

As I said - pretty cool. 

The Russian Are Coming - Again

Back in August, 25 Islamic militants escaped from a high security prison in Dushanbe, the capital of Tajikistan.  The government immediately initiated a hunt.  It's not going well.  On September 19 in the northeastern valley of Rasht, militants ambushed a Tajik patrol and killed at least 25 soldiers.  Nothing like this has been seen in a decade.

There are a whole variety of different militant groups operating in Tajikistan whose terrain is difficult, to say the least. Similar groups exits in Uzbekistan and the Kyrgyz Republic. The sudden increase in activity coupled with the upcoming withdrawal of US troops from Afghanistan just to the south may spell trouble for the entire region.

Which is why the Russians are coming.  They have never rally left and have bases in Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan, most notably along the Uzbek border who the Russians fear may have designs on becoming the regional power since it has the largest population and a ruthless military. But all the countries have an interest in making sure the conflicts of the 1990s don't return, especially in the form of Islamic militancy. So the Russian just sent around 25,000 troops to Tajikistan.  More will be coming and China will certainly take an interest as some of the militant groups spill over into their territory. 

As the US pulls back and the latest iteration of The Great Game dials down, these Central Asian republics are in for a ride.  It will be left to the Russians.

The US Congress Gets Broken

To honor my commitment by its breach to avoid discussing American politics, I could not avoid watching the tube of Steve Colbert testifying on immigration before Congress.  It's easy to find - go do a search. 

However, it is interesting to note the outrage it generated from, mostly, those intellectually challenged tea baggers the Americans are going to put in power in November (or in the case of one particularly galactically stupid Republican (sorry for the redundancy) Congressman - Representative Steve King.  Anyway, I particularly enjoyed this from Colbert:

I don't want a tomato picked by a Mexican. I want it picked by an American, sliced by a Guatemalan . . . and served by a Venezuelan in a spa where a Chilean gives me a Brazilian.

And the only ones who took his character seriously were - well, you guessed it.

Who Lost India? Courtesy of Robert Kaplan

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Robert Kaplan has been around for some time now and could be characterized as a "reasonable" neo-con. He supported, indeed promoted, the invasion of Iraq before he opposed the war.  He is all for intervention by the US against leaders like Saddam Hussein. Still.  Because he travelled to these oppressed countries and saw for himself the suffering of the population.  Now, in this paper he explains why, if the US deserts Afghanistan it is deserting India and because of the geography of the sub-continent and its history, India will be driven into the arms of China.

Although Kaplan does not explicitly state that the US should remain in Afghanistan, its pretty much there in the background.  He says that the US should not spend enormous amounts of money in Afghanistan specifically to impress India, but it must be part of the considerations regarding the Afghan strategy.

I find this whole line of reasoning to be somewhat STRATFOR-ESQ (one of the leading foreign policy analyst publications with a geo-political bent).  This is not a zero sum game among China the US and India. India is concerned about a Taliban takeover after the US leaves next summer. But so does Russia and China.  Pakistan might benefit as their security apparatus uses the Taliban to its own ends - but that particular relationship is pretty much soured - and provide them with a secure rear when facing India.  But that's not the point. India was not leaning toward China before the Afghan war despite Taliban control. It is unlikely to jump into the arms of the Chinese - a major competitor both economically and politically - after the US withdraws.

Therefore, Kaplan is just throwing up his straw-man of the "who lost India" genre in order to forestall the end day of US involvement with Kabul on a military basis.