British intelligence and the "war agaisnt ISIS"

“If only we could round up the Quilliam and al-Muhajiroun fanatics together, shove them onto a boat, and send them all off cruising to the middle of nowhere, they could have all the fun they want “radicalising” and “deradicalising” each other to their hearts content. And we might get a little peace. And perhaps we could send their handlers with them, too.”

The circus: How British intelligence primed both sides of the ‘terror war’

'Jihadi John’ was able to join IS for one simple reason: from Quilliam to al-Muhajiroun, Britain’s loudest extremists have been groomed by the security service

Nafeez Ahmed

Photo: Abu Hamza al-Masri speaks at a rally in Trafalgar Square in London 25 August, 2002 (AFP)

Middle East Eye,

27 February, 2015

Every time there’s a terrorist attack that makes national headlines, the same talking heads seem to pop up like an obscene game of “whack-a-mole”. Often they appear one after the other across the media circuit, bobbing from celebrity television pundit to erudite newspaper outlet.

A few years ago, BBC Newsnight proudly hosted a “debate” between Maajid Nawaz, director of counter-extremism think-tank, the Quilliam Foundation, and Anjem Choudary, head of the banned Islamist group formerly known as al-Muhajiroun, which has, since its proscription, repeatedly reincarnated itself. One of its more well-known recent incarnations was "Islam4UK".

Both Nawaz and Choudary have received huge mainstream media attention, generating press headlines, and contributing to major TV news and current affairs shows. But unbeknown to most, they have one thing in common: Britain’s security services. And believe it or not, that bizarre fact explains why the Islamic State’s (IS) celebrity beheader, former west Londoner Mohammed Emwazi – aka “Jihadi John” - got to where he is now.

A tale of two extremists

After renouncing his affiliation with the Islamist group Hizb ut-Tahrir (HT), Maajid Nawaz co-founded the Quilliam Foundation with his fellow ex-Hizb member, Ed Husain.

The Quilliam Foundation was set-up by Husain and Nawaz in 2008 with significant British government financial support. Its establishment received a massive PR boost from the release of Ed Husain’s memoirs, The Islamist, which rapidly became an international bestseller, generating hundreds of reviews, interviews and articles.

In Ed Husain’s book - much like Maajid Nawaz’s tome Radical released more recently to similar fanfare - Husain recounts his journey from aggrieved young Muslim into Islamist activist, and eventually his total rejection of Islamist ideology.

Both accounts of their journeys of transformation offer provocative and genuine insights. But the British government has played a much more direct role in crafting those accounts than either they, or the government, officially admit.

Government ghostwriters

In late 2013, I interviewed a former senior researcher at the Home Office who revealed that Husain’s The Islamist was “effectively ghostwritten in Whitehall”.

The official told me that in 2006, he was informed by a government colleague “with close ties” to Jack Straw and Gordon Brown that “the draft was written by Ed but then ‘peppered’ by government input”. The civil servant told him “he had seen ‘at least five drafts of the book, and the last one was dramatically different from the first.’”

The draft had, the source said, been manipulated in an explicitly political, pro-government manner. The committee that had input into Ed Husain’s manuscript prior to its official publication included senior government officials from No. 10 Downing Street, the Joint Terrorism Analysis Centre, the intelligence services, Foreign & Commonwealth Office and the Home Office.

When I put the question, repeatedly, to Ed Husain as to the veracity of these allegations, he did not respond. I also asked Nawaz whether he was aware of the government’s role in “ghostwriting” Husain’s prose, and whether he underwent a similar experience in the production of Radical. He did not respond either.

While Husain was liaising with British government and intelligence officials over The Islamist from 2006 until the book’s publication in May 2007, his friend Nawaz was at first in prison in Egypt. Nawaz was eventually released in March 2006, declaring his departure from HT just a month before the publication of Husain’s book. Husain took credit for being the prime influence on Nawaz’s decision, and by November 2007, had joined with him becoming Quilliam’s director with Husain as his deputy.

Yet according to Husain, Nawaz played a role in determining parts of the text of The Islamist in the same year it was being edited by government officials. “Before publication, I discussed with my friend and brother-in-faith Maajid the passages in the book,” wrote Husain about the need to verify details of their time in HT.

This is where the chronology of Husain’s and Nawaz’s accounts begin to break down. In Radical, and repeatedly in interviews about his own deradicalisation process, Nawaz says that he firmly and decisively rejected HT’s Islamist ideology while in prison in Egypt. Yet upon his release and return to Britain, Nawaz showed no sign of having reached that decision. Instead, he did the opposite. In April 2006, Nawaz told Sarah Montague on BBC Hardtalk that his detention in Egypt had “convinced [him] even more… that there is a need to establish this Caliphate as soon as possible.” From then on, Nawaz, who was now on HT’s executive committee, participated in dozens of talks and interviews in which he vehemently promoted the Hizb.

I first met Nawaz at a conference on 2 December 2006 organised by the Campaign Against Criminalising Communities (CAMPACC) on the theme of “reclaiming our rights”. I had spoken on a panel about the findings of my book, The London Bombings: An Independent Inquiry, on how British state collusion with Islamist extremists had facilitated the 7/7 attacks. Nawaz had attended the event as an audience member with two other senior HT activists, and in our brief conversation, he spoke of his ongoing work with HT in glowing terms.

By January 2007, Nawaz was at the front of a HT protest at the US embassy in London, condemning US military operations in Iraq and Somalia. He delivered a rousing speech at the protest, demanding an end to “colonial intervention in the Muslim world,” and calling for the establishment of an Islamic caliphate to stand up to such imperialism and end Western support for dictators.

Yet by his own account, throughout this very public agitation on behalf of HT from mid-2006 onwards, Nawaz had in fact rejected the very ideology he was preaching so adamantly. Indeed, in the same period, he was liaising with his friend, Ed Husain – who at that time was still in Jeddah – and helping him with the text of his anti-HT manifesto, The Islamist, which was also being vetted at the highest levels of government.

The British government’s intimate, and secret, relationship with Husain in the year before the publication of his book in 2007 shows that, contrary to his official biography, the Quilliam Foundation founder was embedded in Whitehall long before he was on the public radar. How did he establish connections at this level?

MI5’s Islamist

According to Dr Noman Hanif, a lecturer in international terrorism and political Islam at Birkbeck College, University of London, and an expert on Hizb ut-Tahrir, the group’s presence in Britain likely provided many opportunities for Western intelligence to “penetrate or influence” the movement.

Dr Hanif, whose doctoral thesis was about the group, points out that Husain’s tenure inside HT by his own account occurred “under the leadership of Omar Bakri Mohammed,” the controversial cleric who left the group in 1996 to found al-Muhajiroun, a militant network which to this day has been linked to every major terrorist plot in Britain.

Bakri’s leadership of HT, said Dr Hanif, formed “the most conceptually deviant period of HT’s existence in the UK, diverting quite sharply away from its core ideas,” due to Bakri’s advocacy of violence and his focus on establishing an Islamic state in the UK, goals contrary to HT doctrines.

When Bakri left HT and set-up al-Muhajiroun in 1996, according to John Loftus, a former US Army intelligence officer and Justice Department prosecutor, Bakri was immediately recruited by MI6 to facilitate Islamist activities in the Balkans. And not just Bakri, but also Abu Hamza al-Masri, who was recently convicted in the US on terrorism charges.

When Bakri founded al-Muhajiroun in 1996 with the blessings of Britain’s security services, his co-founder was Anjem Choudary. Choudary was intimately involved in the programme to train and send Britons to fight abroad, and three years later, would boast to the Sunday Telegraph that “some of the training does involve guns and live ammunition”.

Historian Mark Curtis, in his seminal work, Secret Affairs: Britain’s Collusion with Radical Islam, documents how under this arrangement, Bakri trained hundreds of Britons at camps in the UK and the US, and dispatched them to join al-Qaeda affiliated fighters in Bosnia, Kosovo and Chechnya.

Shortly before the 2005 London bombings, Ron Suskind, a Wall Street Journal Pulitizer Prize winning investigative reporter, was told by a senior MI5 official that Bakri was a longtime informant for the secret service who “had helped MI5 on several of its investigations”. Bakri, Suskind adds in his book, The Way of the World, reluctantly conceded the relationship in an interview in Beirut - but Suskind gives no indication that the relationship ever ended.

A senior terrorism lawyer in London who has represented clients in several high-profile terrorism cases told me that both Bakri and Choudary had regular meetings with MI5 officers in the 1990s. The lawyer, who works for a leading firm of solicitors and has regularly liaised with MI5 in the administration of closed court hearings involving secret evidence, said: “Omar Bakri had well over 20 meetings with MI5 from around 1993 to the late 1990s. Anjem Choudary apparently participated in such meetings toward the latter part of the decade. This was actually well-known amongst several senior Islamist leaders in Britain at the time.”

According to Dr Hanif of Birkbeck College, Bakri’s relationship with the intelligence services likely began during his “six-year reign as HT leader in Britain,” which would have “provided British intelligence ample opportunity” to “widely infiltrate the group”. HT had already been a subject of MI6 surveillance abroad “because of its core level of support in Jordan and the consistent level of activity in other areas of the Middle East for over five decades."

At least some HT members appear to have been aware of Bakri’s intelligence connections, including, it seems, Ed Husain himself. In one passage in The Islamist (p. 116), Husain recounts: “We were also concerned about Omar’s application for political asylum… I raised this with Bernie [another HT member] too. ‘Oh no’, he said, ‘On the contrary. The British are like snakes; they manoeuvre carefully. They need Omar in Britain. More likely, Omar will be the ambassador for the khilafah here or leave to reside in the Islamic state. The kuffar know that - allowing Omar to stay in Britain will give them a good start, a diplomatic advantage, when they have to deal with the Islamic state. Having Omar serves them well for the future. MI5 knows exactly what we’re doing, what we’re about, and yet they have in effect, given us the green light to operate in Britain.”

Husain left HT after Bakri in August 2007. According to Faisal Haque, a British government civil servant and former HT member who knew Ed Husain during his time in the group, Husain had a strong “personal relationship” with Bakri. He did not leave HT for “ideological reasons,” said Haque. “It was more to do with his close personal relationship with Omar Bakri (he left when Bakri was kicked out), pressure from his father and other personal reasons which I don’t want to mention.”

Husain later went on to work for the British Council in the Middle East. From 2003 to 2005, he was in Damascus. During that period, by his own admission, he informed on other British members of HT for agitating against Bashar al-Assad’s regime, resulting in them being deported by Syrian authorities back to Britain. At this time, the CIA and MI6 routinely cooperated with Assad on extraordinary rendition programmes.

Husain then worked for the British Council in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, from late 2005 to the end of 2006.

Throughout that year, according to the former Home Office official I spoke to, Husain was in direct contact with senior Whitehall officials who were vetting his manuscript for The Islamist. By November, Husain posted on DeenPort, an online discussion forum, a now deleted comment referring off-hand to the work of “the secret services” inside HT: “Even within HT in Britain today, there is a huge division between modernisers and more radical elements. The secret services are hopeful that the modernisers can tame the radicals… I foresee another split. And God knows best. I have said more than I should on this subject! Henceforth, my lips are sealed!”

Shortly after, Maajid Nawaz would declare his departure from HT, and would eventually be joined at Quilliam by several others from the group, many of whom according to Nawaz had worked with him and Husain as “a team” behind the scenes at this time.

The ‘ex-jihadists’ who weren’t

Perhaps the biggest problem with Husain’s and Nawaz’s claim to expertise on terrorism was that they were never jihadists. Hizb ut-Tahrir is a non-violent movement for the establishment of a global “caliphate” through social struggle, focusing on the need for political activism in the Muslim world. Whatever the demerits of this rigid political ideology, it had no relationship to the phenomenon of al-Qaeda terrorism.

Nevertheless, Husain and Nawaz, along with their government benefactors, were convinced that those personal experiences of “radicalisation” and “deradicalisation” could by transplanted into the ongoing “war on terror” - even though, in reality neither of them had any idea about the dynamics of an actual terrorist network, and the radicalisation process leading to violent extremism. The result was an utterly misguided and evidence-devoid obsession with rejecting non-violent extremist ideologies as the primary means to prevent terrorism.

Through the Quilliam Foundation, Husain’s and Nawaz’s fundamentalist ideas about non-violent extremism went on to heavily influence official counter-terrorism discourses across the Western world. This was thanks to its million pounds worth of government seed-funding, intensive media coverage, as well as the government pushing Quilliam’s directors and staff to provide “deradicalisation training” to government and security officials in the US and Europe.

In the UK, Quilliam’s approach was taken up by various centre-right and right-wing think-tanks, such as the Centre for Social Cohesion (CCS) and Policy Exchange, all of which played a big role in influencing the government’s Preventing Violent Extremism programme (Prevent).

Exactly how bankrupt this approach is, however, can be determined from Prime Minister David Cameron’s efforts to express his understanding of the risk from non-violent extremism, a major feature of the coalition government’s Orwellian new Counter-Terrorism and Security Act. The latter establishes unprecedented powers of electronic surveillance and the basis for the “Prevent duty,” which calls for all public sector institutions to develop “risk-assessment” profiles of individuals deemed to be “at-risk” of being drawn into non-violent extremism.

In his speech at the UN last year, Cameron explained that counter-terrorism measures must target people who may not “encourage violence, but whose worldview can be used as a justification for it.” As examples of dangerous ideas at the “root cause” of terrorism, Cameron pinpointed “conspiracy theories,” and most outrageously, “The idea that Muslims are persecuted all over the world as a deliberate act of Western policy.”

In other words, if you believe, for instance, that US and British forces have deliberately conducted brutal military operations across the Muslim world resulting in the foreseeable deaths of countless innocent civilians, you are a non-violent extremist.

In an eye-opening academic paper published last year, French terrorism expert and Interior Ministry policy officer Dr Claire Arenes, noted that: “By definition, one may know if radicalisation has been violent only once the point of violence has been reached, at the end of the process. Therefore, since the end-term of radicalisation cannot be determined in advance, a policy intended to fight violent radicalisation entails a structural tendency to fight any form of radicalisation.”

It is precisely this moronic obsession with trying to detect and stop “any form of radicalisation,” however non-violent, that is hampering police and security investigations and overloading them with nonsense “risks”.

Double game

At this point, the memorable vision of Nawaz and Choudary facing off on BBC Newsnight appears not just farcical, but emblematic of how today’s national security crisis has been fuelled and exploited by the bowels of the British secret state.

Over the last decade or so - the very same period that the British state was grooming the “former jihadists who weren’t” so they could be paraded around the media-security-industrial complex bigging up the non-threat of “non-violent extremism” - the CIA and MI6 were coordinating Saudi-led funding to al-Qaeda affiliated extremists across the Middle East and Central Asia to counter Iranian Shiite influence.

From 2005 onwards, US and British intelligence services encouraged a range of covert operations to support Islamist opposition groups, including militants linked to al-Qaeda, to undermine regional Iranian and Syrian influence. By 2009, the focus of these operations shifted to Syria.

As I documented in written evidence to a UK Parliamentary inquiry into Prevent in 2010, one of the recipients of such funding was none other than Omar Bakri, who at the time told one journalist: “Today, angry Lebanese Sunnis ask me to organise their jihad against the Shiites… Al-Qaeda in Lebanon… are the only ones who can defeat Hezbollah.” Simultaneously, Bakri was regularly in touch with his deputy, Anjem Choudary, over the internet and even delivered online speeches to his followers in Britain instructing them to join IS and murder civilians. He has now been detained and charged by Lebanese authorities for establishing terror cells in the country.

Bakri was also deeply involved “with training the mujahideen [fighters] in camps on the Syrian borders and also on the Palestine side." The trainees included four British Islamists “with professional backgrounds” who would go on to join the war in Syria. Bakri also claimed to have trained “many fighters,” including people from Germany and France, since arriving in Lebanon. Was Mohammed Emwazi among them? Last year, Bakri disciple Mizanur Rahman confirmed that at least five European Muslims who had died fighting under IS in Syria had been Bakri acolytes.

Nevertheless in 2013, it was David Cameron who lifted the arms embargo to support Syria's rebels. We now know that most of our military aid went to al-Qaeda affiliated Islamists, many with links to extremists at home. The British government itself acknowledged that a “substantial number” of Britons were fighting in Syria, who “will seek to carry out attacks against Western interests... or in Western states”.

Yet according to former British counterterrorism intelligence officer Charles Shoebridge, despite this risk, authorities “turned a blind eye to the travelling of its own jihadists to Syria, notwithstanding ample video etc. evidence of their crimes there,” because it “suited the US and UK’s anti-Assad foreign policy”.

This terror-funnel is what enabled people like Emwazi to travel to Syria and join up with IS - despite being on an MI5 terror watch-list. He had been blocked by the security services from traveling to Kuwait in 2010: why not Syria? Shoebridge, who was a British Army officer before joining the Metropolitan Police, told me that although such overseas terrorism has been illegal in the UK since 2006, “it’s notable that only towards the end of 2013 when IS turned against the West’s preferred rebels, and perhaps also when the tipping point between foreign policy usefulness and MI5 fears of domestic terrorist blowback was reached, did the UK authorities begin to take serious steps to tackle the flow of UK jihadists.”

The US-UK direct and tacit support for jihadists, Shoebridge said, had made Syria the safest place for regional terrorists fearing drone strikes “for more than two years”. Syria was “the only place British jihadists could fight without fear of US drones or arrest back home… likely because, unlike if similar numbers of UK jihadists had been travelling to for example Yemen or Afghanistan, this suited the anti-Assad policy.”

Having watched its own self-fulfilling prophecy unfold with horrifying precision in a string of IS-linked terrorist atrocities against Western hostages and targets, the government now exploits the resulting mayhem to vindicate its bankrupt “counter-extremism” narrative, promoted by hand-picked state-groomed “experts” like Husain and Nawaz.

Their prescription, predictably, is to expand the powers of the police state to identify and “deradicalise” anyone who thinks British foreign policy in the Muslim world is callous, self-serving and indifferent to civilian deaths. Government sources confirm that Nawaz’s input played a key role in David Cameron’s thinking on non-violent extremism, and the latest incarnation of the Prevent strategy; while last year, Husain was, ironically, appointed to the Foreign Office advisory group on freedom of religion or belief.

Meanwhile, Bakri’s deputy Choudary continues to inexplicably run around as Britain’s resident “terror cleric” media darling. His passport belatedly confiscated after a recent pointless police arrest that avoided charging him, he remains free to radicalise thick-headed British Muslims into joining IS, in the comfort that his hate speech will be broadcast widely, no doubt fueling widespread generic suspicion of British Muslims.

If only we could round up the Quilliam and al-Muhajiroun fanatics together, shove them onto a boat, and send them all off cruising to the middle of nowhere, they could have all the fun they want “radicalising” and “deradicalising” each other to their hearts content. And we might get a little peace. And perhaps we could send their handlers with them, too.

- Nafeez Ahmed PhD, is an investigative journalist, international security scholar and bestselling author who tracks what he calls the 'crisis of civilization.' He is a winner of the Project Censored Award for Outstanding Investigative Journalism for his Guardian reporting on the intersection of global ecological, energy and economic crises with regional geopolitics and conflicts. He has also written for The Independent, Sydney Morning Herald, The Age, The Scotsman, Foreign Policy, The Atlantic, Quartz, Prospect, New Statesman, Le Monde diplomatique, New Internationalist. His work on the root causes and covert operations linked to international terrorism officially contributed to the 9/11 Commission and the 7/7 Coroner’s Inquest.

The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Eye.

America has Cuban oil in its sights

When asked by Thom Hartmann about the connection between events in Cuba and attempts to collapse the Russian economy by manipulating oil prices Prof. Stephen Cohen said, as a professor, “I don’t know”, but proceeded to talk about how Ronald Reagan had done the exact same to bring down the Soviet economy.

No doubt whatsoever about what is going on now. 

The American corporations have Cuban resourses in their sights and aim to cut Russia out of the equation while taking revenge on Venezuela.

Cuban Oil May Prove A Boon For U.S. Companies

Ari Philips

CREDIT: SHUTTERSTOCK

Think Progress,

21 December, 2014

With diplomatic relations warming between the U.S. and Cuba, oil and gas companies may train their sights on what’s off Cuba’s coast — large oil reserves. Right now Cuba produces just over 50,000 barrels per day of oil and relies on Venezuela for around another 100,000 bpd. However with Venezuela’s economy reeling from the staggering drop in oil prices this year, Cuban officials want to avoid the impacts of a sudden drop in Venezuelan support. The commitment by Cuba and the U.S. to normalize relations may allow Cuba to buy more oil on the open market, and for U.S. companies to bring expertise and experience to tap into the country’s offshore reserves.

This outcome is far from certain. With Saudi Arabia refusing to cut oil output, which would stabilize prices, and previous offshore efforts yielding unsuccessful results, many experts believe that most of Cuba’s 124 million barrels will remain inaccessible. Brazilian, Malaysian and Spanish companies have failed to produce any major wells during exploration efforts in the last few years. Pavel Molchanov, an energy company analyst with Raymond James, told Politico that there is “not going to be a Cuban oil rush.”

Even if there is no rush, the arrival of U.S. oil and gas firms could help boost production through better drilling services. Jorge Piñon, director of the Latin America and Caribbean Energy Program at the University of Texas, told FuelFix that if companies like Halliburton and Schlumberger gave technological assistance to Cuba, the country could significantly increase the amount of oil it recovers from its current wells. He also said that Cuba wants to avoid the type of economic pain it experienced after foreign aid dried up along with the fall of the Soviet Union — something that could foreseeably happen with Venezuela if oil prices don’t rebound.

With a major leap into Cuban oil looking doubtful for economic and geologic reasons, one actual benefit that may be more likely is an increase in safety measures and precautions for the drilling and refining that does take place — including responses to any spills. Cuba borders the Gulf of Mexico to the southeast, and is susceptible to offshore disasters like the 2010 Deepwater Horizon explosion near the U.S. coast. Spill containment equipment developed to deal with Deepwater Horizon-type events will likely be held up by the current embargo because the products are produced by U.S. firms. The U.S. embargo of Cuba remains in place as Obama needs the Republican-controlled Congress to help him in normalizing these economic relations. As it stands, anything made from more than 10 percent U.S. parts cannot be sold to Cuba or a Cuban contractor.

As these economic barriers and incentives play out, the U.S., Cuba, and Mexico will have to determine how to divide up the Gulf of Mexico.

“Previous agreements between the United States and Cuba delimit the maritime space between the two countries within 200 nautical miles from shore,” the White House said in a release. “The United States, Cuba and Mexico have extended continental shelf in an area within the Gulf of Mexico where the three countries have not yet delimited any boundaries.”

The Cuban government is also looking to diversify its energy sources, and increase renewable energy capacity in an effort to improve energy security. Based primarily on solar, wind, and small hydropower, Cuba aims to get 24 percent of its electricity from renewable sources by 2030. Cuba opened its first solar farm in 2013 and has plans for at least six more.

Quite a number of people now are saying that the United States (and its proxy) manipulated oil prices to attack its enemies - Russia and Venezuela

It may also, of course, be that the Saudis,as well as attacking other producers (notably, Russia) also had sale oil producers in their sights as well.

US provoked Oil Prices fall to attack Venezuela, Russia: Evo Morales

Sputnik News,

19 December, 2014

Nowadays it is impossible to remove presidents with military coups, so economic means and sanctions are considered, Bolivian President Evo Morales said, adding that the US has provoked the reduction in oil prices to 'attack' Russia's and Venezuela's economies.

The US has provoked the decrease in oil prices, to attack Venezuela and Russia, the President of Bolivia Evo Morales said to RT in an interview.

"The reduction in oil prices was provoked by the US as an attack on the economies of Venezuela, and Russia… In the face of such an economic and political attack, the countries have to be united," Morales said.

Nowadays it is impossible to remove presidents with military coups, so economic means and sanctions are considered, the president explained. Such aggressive US policies, he said, are aimed at dividing countries, dominate them politically and rob them economically.

"Whatever economic aggression with oil prices that comes from the US is not going to last. I am convinced of it," the president reassured. He explained that the US was not interested in oil prices, but in conducting economic attacks to topple certain presidents. However, "this escapade would not work. Our people are conscious. We are anti-imperialists," he said.

Venezuela's President Nicolas Maduro speaks during a rally to reject the sanctions that the U.S. government seeks to impose on officials accused of human rights violations, in Caracas December 15, 2014.

The US and the EU introduced several round of sanctions against Russia over its alleged role in the Ukrainian crisis. The sanctions targeted the banking, energy and defense sectors, as well as certain individuals. However, Russia repeatedly denied its involvement in Ukraine's internal affairs.

US President Barack Obama signed a sanctions bill against Venezuela Thursday. The sanctions target individuals who are allegedly responsible for human rights violations during February protests against President Nicolas Maduro's government.

I think, from the Cuban side, that there had to be something to bring it to the negotiating table with the United States.

Plummeting Oil Prices 

Possible Causes of US-Cuba 

Deal: Experts

Sputnik News,

21 December, 2014

Experts say that the impact on the Venezuelan and Russian economies due to a drop in oil prices could have forced Cuba to re-establish its diplomatic relations with the United States, as both will not be able to help economically as before.

WASHINGTON, December 20 (Sputnik), Anastasia Sheveleva — The weakening of the Venezuelan and Russian economies due to a drop in oil prices could have forced Cuba to re-establish its diplomatic relations with the United States, experts on Cuba have told Sputnik.

"With the decline in the price of oil, Cuba's benefactors, Venezuela and Russia, both are going to be not as able to help economically, so Cuba is seeing a decline in economic assistance from Venezuela and Russia, so that was the incentive on the Cuban part," Jose Azel, Senior Scholar at the Institute for Cuban and Cuban-American Studies at the University of Miami, told Sputnik Friday.

Eduardo Gamarra, Professor at the School of International and Public Affairs at Florida International University (FIU) agrees with the possibility of plummeted oil prices, pushing Cuba to restore its relations with the United States.

"That timing might have been a part of the reason why the Cubans decided, right now we would better look at his situation in a different way, because we have to face the future and certainly the future is not with Venezuela, because their oil in the first place is expensive," Gamarra told Sputnik Friday.

As to the United States' incentive to reach the deal at this particular moment, both experts came to the conclusion that it was US president Barack Obama's political move.

"On the part of the Obama administration, I think it is a political move, there is a new Congress taking over at the beginning of the year, he [Obama] may be thinking of his legacy, he wants this to be part of it," Azel said.

Meanwhile Gamarra stressed that Obama "is already a lame duck" and "has no possibility after January to have any influence over Congress", so "it was fairly good timing [to ease trade and travel restrictions imposed on Cuba] before the end of the year".

Gamarra went on, by saying that "you have the anti-imperialist guru [Castro] is all of the sudden talking to Obama, so I think we should expect some interesting sets of discussions, whether that will lead to a very significant change in Russian presence in the region or Russian relations with Venezuela, or even Russian relations with Cuba".

However, the professor from FIU stressed that nothing in the agreement between Obama and Castro indicates that Russians will begin to dismantle their interests in the region.

Azel from the University of Miami said that the Obama administration did not pay enough attention to the Russian influence in Cuba.

"The Russian influence in Cuba should have been a great concern to the United States, apparently, it was not to this president," Azel said.

Both experts agreed that US Congress will not lift Cuba's embargo in the nearest future partly because Obama did not gain from the most recent negotiations with Cuba.

"He [Obama] cannot eliminate the sanctions of Helms-Burton law…he is not going to get that congressional action. I don't think Congress is going to eliminate sanctions without concessions from Cuba, remember that the president [Obama] really got nothing out of Cuba, this is very bad negotiations," Azel told Sputnik Friday.

Gamarra agreed that the embargo is not going to be lifted, explaining, however, that in might not be as exclusive as it seems.

"Part of the mythology of the embargo is very interesting, because the reality is the United States is the only country that put a quasi-embargo on Cuba. For the better part of the last decade American farmers and others have, in fact, been selling stuff to Cuba," Gamarra said, adding that there are Brazilian and European investments in the region.

Nevertheless, the experts doubted that new American investment is going to flow into Cuba, even in case the US sanctions are eliminated, because Washington would not agree to partner with the Cuban government.

On Wednesday, President Obama announced that the United States was relaxing trade and travel restrictions on Cuba. An embargo has been in place since 1961 due to Cold War antagonism between Washington and the Communist government in Havana. 

Back in summer, Vladimir Putin visited Cuba and an agreement was signed to help Cuba develop its own offshore oil reserves.

There was even talk (denied by Putin) of Russia re-opening its listening post in Cuba.

In his Q & A Putin, accused of cold war aggression by the BBC pointed out that not only does Russia spend ten times less on defence than the United States, but its has only TWO military bases (both in its 'near abroad') and had completely closed bases in both Cuba and Vietnam.

Russia’s Rosneft to help Cuba explore offshore oil reserves

RT

13 July, 2014

Russian oil company Rosneft will help Cuban State oil company Cupet explore the country's offshore oil reserves, according to one of the cooperation documents signed between Russia and Cuba during President Vladimir Putin’s visit to Havana.

Putin concluded his first stop on his six-day tour to Latin America in Havana, Cuba, where he met the nation’s President Raul Castro.

Speaking at a press conference, Putin confirmed that many major cooperation deals have been signed between the two nations.

One of the most significant agreements allows the Russian oil company Rosneft to help explore and drill on an offshore oil platform on Cuba’s northeast coast. The area potentially has up to 20 billion barrels of oil, according to Cupet.

"Developing new blocks on Cuba's offshore shelf is (expected) in the very near future," Putin said.

During the discussions, Putin was joined by Rosneft head Igor Sechin in order to finalize the deal.

Cuba has limited onshore production and relies heavily on imports from Venezuela for its oil consumption needs.

Putin also confirmed that Russia is writing off 90 percent of Cuba’s debt, which amounts to $32 billion. The remaining 10 percent will be reinvested into the Cuban economy, the president added.

"We will provide support to our Cuban friends to overcome the illegal blockade of Cuba," Putin said.

Read more: Russia writes off 90% of Cuba's debt ahead of Putin's 'big tour' to L. America

Meanwhile, Russian company Inter RAO Export and Cuba's Union Electrica signed a contract for the construction of four 200 megawatt units for the Maximo Gomez power plant.

Other documents signed on Friday include a bilateral statement on the non-placement of weapons in outer space and an intergovernmental agreement on cooperation in the area of international information security.

During the visit to Cuba, Putin also met with former President Fidel Castro, who stepped down due to health concerns in 2008, after 49 years in power.

Putin and Fidel Castro discussed international affairs, the global economy, and Russia-Cuba relations, the Kremlin stated.

Later on Friday, Putin made a surprise stop in Nicaragua on his way to Argentina. He will then go to Brazil.

Putin denies reopening of US-targeting listening post in Cuba

RT

17 July, 2014

Russian President Vladimir Putin denied media reports that Russia was planning to reopen the Soviet-age SIGINT facility in Lourdes, Cuba, once was largest foreign listening post of its kind, but shut down under US pressure.

Russia can “meet its defense needs without this component” and has no plans to renew its operation, the president assured journalists on Wednesday.

Earlier Kommersant business daily reported that Moscow and Havana had reached a deal on reopening the spy facility during Putin’s visit to Cuba last week. 

When operational, the facility was manned by thousands of military and intelligence personnel, whose task was to intercept signals coming from and to the US territory and to provide communication for Russian vessels in the western hemisphere.

“I can say one thing: at last!” one of the sources commented on the news to the paper, adding that the significance of the move is hard to overestimate.

The facility in Lourdes, a suburb of Havana located just 250km from continental USA, was opened in 1967. At the peak of the cold war it was the largest signal intelligence center Moscow operated in a foreign nation, with 3,000 personnel manning it.

From the base Russia could intercept communications in most part of the US including the classified exchanges between space facilities in Florida and American spacecraft. Raoul Castro, then-Defense Minister of Cuba, bragged in 1993 that Russia received 75 percent of signal intelligence on America through Lourdes, with was probably an overstatement, but not by a large amount.

Following the collapse of the Soviet Union the base was downscaled, but continued operation. After Russia was hit the 1998 economic crisis, it found it difficult to maintain many of its old assets, including the Lourdes facility. In Soviet times Cuba hosted it rent-free, but starting 1992 Moscow had to pay Havana hundreds of millions dollars each year in addition to operational costs to keep the facility open.

Russian President Vladimir Putin, left, and President of the Council of State and Ministers of the Republic of Cuba Raul Castro Ruz during a press statement at the Palace of the Revolution in Havana. (RIA Novosti/Aleksey Nikolsky)

An additional blow came in July 2000, when the US House passed the Russian-American Trust and Cooperation Act, a bill that would ban Washington from rescheduling or forgiving any Russian debt to the US, unless the facility in Lourdes is shut down.

Moscow did so in 2001 and also closed its military base in Vietnam’s Cam Ranh, with both moves reported as major steps to address Americans’ concerns. But, in the words of a military source cited by Kommersant, the US “did not appreciate our gesture of goodwill.”

No detail of schedule for the reopening the facility, which currently hosts a branch of Cuba’s University of Information Science, was immediately available. One of the principle news during Putin’s visit to Havana was Moscow’s writing off of the majority of the old Cuban debt to Russia. The facility is expected to require fewer personnel than it used to, because modern surveillance equipment can do many functions now automatically.

With the Lourdes facility operational again, Russia would have a much better signal intelligence capability in the western hemisphere.

“Returning to Lourdes now is more than justified," military expert Viktor Murakhovsky, a retired colonel, told Kommersant. “The capability of the Russian military signal intelligence satellite constellation has significantly downgraded. 

With an outpost this close to the US will allow the military to do their job with little consideration for the space-based SIGINT echelon.”

Whether by American corporations or by Rosneft it is a tragedy that Cuba's oil reserves should ever be developed.

In any case, it looks that the Americans are trying to push the Russians out of the equation and grab the reяources for themselves.

The achievement of the Cuban revolution are not only in terms of social equity and its historic role in the National Liberation struggle in southern Africa, but also in the area of conservation.

Now all of this is likely to be lost, including Cuba's hitherto pristine environment.

Castro the Conservationist? By Default or Design, Cuba Largely Pristine

Will Cuban President Fidel Castro be remembered primarily as a man of the people, an authoritarian tyrant—or a conservationist?

National Geographic

28 October, 2010

Some experts say his environmental policies may be among his greatest achievement.

Though Cuba is economically destitute, it has the richest biodiversity in the Caribbean. Resorts blanket many of its neighbors, but Cuba remains largely undeveloped, with large tracts of untouched rain forest and unspoiled reefs (map of Cuba).

The country has signed numerous international conservation treaties and set aside vast areas of land for government protection.

But others say Cuba's economic underdevelopment has played just as large a role.

Since the collapse of the Soviet Union—its main financial benefactor—Cuba has had to rely mostly on its own limited resources. It has embraced organic farming and low-energy agriculture because it can't afford to do anything else.

And once Castro is gone, the experts say, a boom in tourism and foreign investment could destroy Cuba's pristine landscapes.

Eco-Legacy

"I think the Cuban government can take a substantial amount of credit for landscape, flora, and fauna preservation," said Jennifer Gebelein, a professor at Florida International University in Miami who studies environmental issues in Cuba.

More than 20 percent of Cuba's land is under some form of government protection. The island's wetlands have been largely shielded from pesticide runoff that has destroyed similar areas in other countries.

Castro handed power to his brother last week to undergo emergency intestinal surgery. His health remains uncertain, fueling rampant speculation about his legacy.

And since Castro seized power in 1959, logging has slowed significantly. Forest cover has increased from 14 percent in 1956 to about 21 percent today.

In addition, the more than 4,000 smaller islands surrounding the main island are important refuges for endangered species. The coastline and mangrove archipelagos are breeding grounds for some 750 species of fish and 3,000 other marine organisms

"Because Cuba's tourist industry has not developed quickly in regard to reef exploitation, the reefs have been spared the fate of Florida's reefs, for example," Gebelein said.

At about 1.5 million acres (600,000 hectares), the Ciénaga de Zapata Biosphere Reserve is Cuba's largest protected area and has been designated a "Wetland of International Importance" by the Ramsas Convention on Wetlands in 1971.

"The Zapata Swamp is the Caribbean's largest and most important wetland," said Jim Barborak, who is based in San Pedro, Costa Rica, and heads the protected areas and conservation corridors program for Conservation International.

Jewel of the Caribbean

Originally, Cuba was in the Pacific Ocean, not the Caribbean Sea. Continental drift slowly brought the island into the Caribbean some 100 million years ago, and an astonishing variety of life emerged.

"Cuba has tremendous biological diversity," Barborak said. "The levels of plant endemism—unique species limited to Cuba—is particularly high, especially in highland ecosystems in eastern Cuba."

More than half of Cuba's plants and animals, and more than 80 percent of its reptiles and amphibians, are unique to the island.

Endemic birds include the Cuban trogon, the Cuban tody, and the Cuban pygmy owl. The world's smallest bird, the bee hummingbird—which weighs less than a U.S. penny—is found there.

"Important populations of many North American migratory birds, whose declining populations require international action to conserve both breeding and wintering grounds, spend much of the year in Cuba," Barborak said.

Cuba is only one of two nations with a primitive mammal known as a solenodon, a foot-long (0.3-meter-long) shrewlike creature.

The island also has a great diversity of giant lizards, crocodiles, and tortoises.

Intellectual Infrastructure

A key player in Cuba's green movement has been Guillermo García Frías, one of five original "comandantes" of the 1959 Cuban revolution.

A nature lover with strong ties to Castro, García has pushed for a strong environmental ethic for a generation of scientists and government officials.

"Comandante García's enthusiasm for nature conservation has been critical to the successful development of a conservation infrastructure in Cuba," said Mary Pearl, president of the Wildlife Trust in New York City.

Cubans are leaders in biological research, with thousands of graduates from the country's ten universities and institutes devoted to work in ecology.

"The country has the best intellectual infrastructure for wildlife conservation in the Caribbean," Pearl said.

Students in every department at the University of Havana, for example, have had the opportunity to share a bonding experience by living in an impoverished fishing village while working to protect marine turtles.

"As a result, many of Cuba's leaders in all spheres have had a common experience reconciling poverty alleviation and nature conservation," Pearl said. "It is not surprising that this has left a legacy of concern for nature, despite the country's economic challenges."

Embargo Woes

But Cuba has earned its green credentials partly by default.

Isolated in part because of the U.S. trade embargo against the island, Cuba has been excluded from much of the economic globalization that has taken its toll on the environment in many other parts of the world.

"The healthy status of much of the wetlands and forests of Cuba is due not to political influence as much as the lack of foreign exchange with which to make the investments to convert lands and introduce petrochemical pesticides and fertilizers," Pearl said.

Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, many Cuban factories and agricultural fields have sat dormant. The island has had to become self-sufficient, turning to low-energy organic farming.

It has had to scrap most of its fishing fleet because it can't afford to maintain the ships.

Population pressure has also been a nonissue, with many Cubans fleeing the country for economic and political reasons.

However, Conservation International's Barborak says it would be wrong to think Cuba's environmental success is simply due to its economic underdevelopment.

"If this were true, then Haiti could be expected to be a verdant ecological paradise, instead of being the most environmentally devastated country in the region, with just a tiny fraction of its forest cover intact," he said.

"Cuba's stable population, high literacy rate, clear land-tenure system, large cadre of well-trained conservationists, and relatively strong enforcement of laws and regulations are certainly all associated with its conservation achievement."

So what will happen if Castro's regime falls and a new, democratic government takes root?

Conservationists and others say they are worried that the pressure to develop the island will increase and Cuba's rich biodiversity will suffer.

Barborak said he is concerned that "environmental carpetbaggers and scalawags will come out of the woodwork in Cuba if there is turbulent regime change.

"One could foresee a flood of extractive industries jockeying for access to mineral and oil leases," he said.

"A huge wave of extraction of unique and endemic plants and animals could occur to feed the international wildlife market. And a speculative tourism and real estate boom could turn much of the coastline into a tacky wasteland in short order."

"If foreign investments take a much firmer hold, more hotels will be built and more people will descend on the reefs," added Gebelein, the Florida International University professor.

"If the Cuban government does not have a swift policy framework to deal with the huge influx of tourists, investors, and foreign government interests, a new exploitative paradigm will be the beginning of the end for some of the last pristine territories in the Caribbean."