We are going through extraordinarily unsettled times. US interference in Libya and Yemen certainly helped create the chaos in those countries. No one in Ukraine appears to be paying much attention to what the US says or tries to do. And the thug kingdom of Saudi Arabia is now becoming encircled by unfriendly insurgencies.
Libya central bank branch in Benghazi has been seized by insurgents. There are multiple warring groups of insurgents and the government is apparently non-functional. Perhaps they would like some freedom fries with their chaos?
The battle for control of Libya threatened to break open its central bank on Thursday as fighters with one of the country’s two warring factions seized control of its Benghazi branch, risking an armed scramble for its gold reserves that could cripple the last functioning institution in the country.
Yemen risks disintegration as south rejects Shi’ite group’s takeover. Meanwhile the US blathers on about how drone strikes will continue, oblivious to the radically changing situation in Yemen.
The emerging fragmentation of the Arabian Peninsula country has sparked fears of the “Somalization” of a state which is home to a revitalized al Qaeda insurgency as well as a neighbor to top oil exporter Saudi Arabia.
Saudi Arabia could soon face ISIS attacks from Iraq in the north and from AQ from Yemen in the south. Saudi Arabia was essentially created via jihads very much like what ISIS favors now and its support of Wahhhabism makes it vulnerable to internal attacks.
A century ago, the House of Saud started a jihad to do exactly what ISIS is doing today. In that earlier case, the Saudi Ikhwan (a fundamentalist militia that is similar to ISIS) expanded until it conquered the territory that is now Saudi Arabia.
The Ikhwan eventually turned on the Sauds when they called an end to the jihad. The Sauds won that fight and spent the next century building a variant of Wahhabism to legitimize their rule. However, the Sauds never did eradicate the part Wahhabism that seeks expansionist jihad, and this will return to haunt them.
War is exploding anew in Ukraine; rebels vow more.
The renewed fighting has dashed any hopes of reinvigorating a cease-fire signed in September and honored more in name than in fact since then. It has also put to rest the notion that Russia’s president, Vladimir V. Putin, would be so staggered by the twin blows of Western sanctions and a collapse in oil prices that he would forsake the separatists in order to foster better relations with the West.
it.
Bad craziness, all of