Attention to the Unseen

The New York Times reports: President Trump on Friday abruptly reversed American policy toward Libya, issuing a statement publicly endorsing an aspiring strongman in his battle to depose the United Nations-backed government. The would-be strongman, Khalifa Hifter, launched a surprise attack on the Libyan capital, Tripoli, more than two weeks ago. Relief agencies said Thursday that more than 200 people had been killed in the battle, and in recent days Mr. Hifter’s forces have started shelling civilian neighborhoods. Secretary of…

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Simon Tisdall writes: Expected or not, Donald Trump’s veto of a bipartisan Congressional resolution to end US military involvement in Saudi Arabia’s murderous war in Yemen is an outrage. It will prolong the unspeakable suffering of millions of Yemeni civilians, the blameless victims of Riyadh’s vicious proxy war with Iran and its Houthi allies. Yet Trump’s uncaring arrogance also threatens the US itself. It is further proof that the constitution’s famous checks and balances are just not working, and that,…

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Robert Malley and Stephen Pomper write: For an American who had a hand in shaping U.S. Mideast policy during the Barack Obama years, coming to Yemen has the unpleasant feel of visiting the scene of a tragedy one helped co-write. It is a scene whose most heartrending aspects are not easily accessible to a visitor. It is still possible to travel north, to the war-battered capital, Sanaa, now controlled by the Houthi insurgent group, or up the Red Sea coast,…

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Politico reports: The House on Thursday approved a measure to cut off U.S. support for the Saudi-led coalition in Yemen’s bloody civil war, in yet another harsh, bipartisan rebuke of President Donald Trump’s foreign policy. Trump is expected to veto the measure, which passed with support from Republicans and Democrats in both chambers. Thursday’s 247-175 vote in the House marks the first time in history that a War Powers resolution will reach the president’s desk. The effort was a top…

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Michael Schwirtz writes: For months, I had been traveling in Russia and Europe, reporting on the poisoning last year in England of the former Russian spy, Sergei V. Skripal. It had touched off a geopolitical confrontation and brought talk of a new Cold War. Britain and its allies enacted sanctions and expelled more than 150 Russian diplomats after blaming the nerve agent attack on two officers from Russia’s military intelligence service, the G.R.U. For Ukraine, Russian interference was an old…

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In an editorial, the New York Times says: The Pentagon says American airstrikes in Somalia have killed no civilians since President Trump accelerated attacks against Shabab militants there two years ago. Amnesty International investigated five of the more than 100 strikes carried out in Somalia since 2017 by drones and manned aircraft, and in just that small sampling found that at least 14 civilians were killed. The Pentagon says airstrikes by the American-led coalition fighting the Islamic State killed at…

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The Washington Post reports: Syrians who remained loyal to President Bashar al-Assad throughout the past eight years of war are increasingly expressing discontent with his government as living standards in the country continue to deteriorate even as the conflict winds down. Conditions are dire for most of the 19 million Syrians living across the ravaged country, including in the roughly one-third that remains outside government control. Whole towns and villages have been depopulated and destroyed, and an estimated 89 percent…

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A Syrian refugee child sits on the window of his family’s trailer home painted by refugee artists in a camp near Mafraq, Jordan. AP/Raad Adayleh By Wendy Pearlman, Northwestern University Bashar al-Assad has “won” the war in Syria – or so many analysts tell us. His regime has reconquered swaths of territory from rebel forces with starvation-and-surrender sieges, barrel bombs, chemical weapons and what one human rights investigator called “industrial scale” torture and killing of detainees. Still, the regime might…

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Alex Simon writes: Until recently, some [Syrians] found solace in the notion that conflict would end and life would improve. Today that prospect feels increasingly remote. The war has purportedly been won, yet many of the country’s most acute problems endure: Conscription, disappearances, and executions persist; state-led theft of property is on the rise; and a longstanding crisis of public services is, if anything, deepening. The result is that many are still finding ways to flee, and those who choose…

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The Guardian reports: A former head of the British army has said Donald Trump is right to say British Islamic State fighters held in Syria should be brought back to the UK because they are the UK’s responsibility. Gen Lord Dannatt said it was important they are seen to be treated fairly to help prevent others being radicalised and to set an example to the rest of the world. He told Sky’s Sophy Ridge on Sunday: “Usually I disagree with…

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Aziz Ahmad writes: Inside a prison in the Kurdistan region of Iraq, vanquished Islamic State fighters who once swept through much of the country now mill about sullenly on a bare, tiled floor, reflecting on a cause they insist will endure. Many spend hours in fierce debate, apparently undeterred by their movement’s apparent military defeat. Their cause, they say, remains divinely ordained. Their capture incidental. “Hathi iradet Allah,” they say. This is God’s will. A Kurdish guard called for a…

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