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|  | Re: The War On Terror II
« Reply #210 on May 16, 2012, 4:24pm » | |
NATO brings Pakistan closer to fuel detente
Ben Doherty
May 17, 2012
THE country most critical to the future of Afghanistan has finally been welcomed inside the tent, with NATO belatedly extending a formal invitation to Pakistan to attend its summit in Chicago starting on Sunday.
The NATO Secretary-General, Anders Fogh Rasmussen, phoned the President of Pakistan, Asif Ali Zardari, asking him to attend. A Pakistan embassy spokeswoman in Washington has confirmed he would be there.
''This meeting will underline the strong commitment of the international community to the people of Afghanistan and to its future. Pakistan has an important role to play in that future,'' NATO spokeswoman Oana Lungescu said in a statement.
The two-day conference is expected to focus on Afghanistan's transition to self-sufficiency, and the withdrawal of 130,000 NATO troops.
The invitation, ostensibly, comes without condition, but in reality is likely to be contingent on Pakistan reopening, or promising to reopen, NATO's supply routes over its border with Afghanistan.
The supply routes, which NATO regards as critical to supplying its mission in Afghanistan, have been closed since November when US jets and helicopters mistakenly bombed two border posts at Mohmand, killing 24 Pakistani soldiers.
The Pakistani Parliament has demanded an apology but will have to settle for the Pentagon's half-concession that the deaths were accidental and regrettable, though both sides shared blame.
In lieu for Pakistan, however, is $US1.3 billion in withheld coalition support funds for its contribution to the fight against militant extremists, money Islamabad sorely needs, as well as higher tariffs for border crossings by NATO trucks.
About 40 per cent of NATO's non-weapons supplies for its war in Afghanistan are moved by truck from the port of Karachi across the border. Since November it has been forced to use other, more costly, routes through central Asia.
Beyond the issue of border posts, however, getting Mr Zardari to the table in Chicago is being seen as something of a coup. Pakistan boycotted the last international conference on Afghanistan in Bonn in December in protest against the NATO air strikes.
But Islamabad's participation in any international strategy for Afghanistan is crucial. Pakistan has long been regarded as the problem behind the problem with Afghanistan. Many of the terrorist attacks in Afghanistan are proposed, financed and plotted in Pakistan, and carried out by extremists who come across the porous border.
Terrorist groups, such as the Haqqani Network, allied to the Taliban and believed to be behind US embassy attacks in Kabul, are based in Pakistan's frontier provinces such as Waziristan.
Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/world/nato-brings-....l#ixzz1v4PYD7Xp
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"All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed, second it is violently opposed, and third, it is accepted as self-evident."
Arthur Schopenhauer, Philosopher, 1788-1860
"In the final analysis, our most basic common link is that we all inhabit this small planet, breathe the same air, and we all cherish our children’s future."
John F. Kennedy |
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Big Bunny
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| | Re: The War On Terror II
« Reply #211 on May 16, 2012, 4:26pm » | |
With a clap and a cut-throat gesture, the 'Butcher of Bosnia' faces justice
Bruno Waterfield in The Hague
May 17, 2012 - 6:10AM
The gesture was slow, deliberate and aimed at the bereaved mother in the public gallery - two fingers pressed together and drawn in a cutting motion across his throat.
It was in this way that Ratko Mladic - the man known as the Butcher of Bosnia and who many believe responsible for the first genocide on Europe's soil since the Holocaust - addressed one of those who had come to see him face justice.
The former Bosnian Serb army commander had set the scene from the outset yesterday (Wednesday) for a defiant first appearance at his full trial at the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia at The Hague.
Wearing a dark grey suit and looking trimmer but more frail than the bulky, bulldog-like figure famous in many photographs, he walked in and gave the thumbs-up to the gallery, clapping at his accusers.
He then sat down to hear exactly why he had been brought before the court.
Mladic is accused of ordering the slaughter of 8000 unarmed Bosnian Muslim men and boys from Srebrenica in July 1995 as well as executing the 1992-95 siege of Sarajevo in which 10,000 civilians were killed by his snipers, artillery and mortars.
In all there were 11 counts - two of genocide, and others of murder, extermination, inhumane acts, terrorism and taking hostages. They are war crimes allegedly carried out in Bosnia's civil war in which 100,000 people were killed and 2.2 million others left homeless.
But it was just before the first rest break - 72 minutes into proceedings - that for his victims, two decades later, memories of Mladic came back when he caught the eye of members of the Mothers of Srebrenica. Using the cut-throat sign he looked into the eyes of Munira Subasic, 65, whose son and 21 other relatives were killed by Bosnian Serb soldiers under Mladic's command.
"It brought me immediately back to 1995 and Srebrenica and I saw that this war criminal had not changed at all. He showed, by looking at us and making that gesture, that he wants to kill us again," she told The Daily Telegraph.
Mrs Subasic recalled the day when she had first looked into the eyes of Mladic while begging and clutching at him in a desperate attempt to stop his soldiers taking her teenage son away with them. "I saw the same murderer, who is proud of the things he has done there. He does not seem sorry for what happened," she said. "I was begging him and fighting him to leave me my child, to let him stay with me."
Branko Lukic, Mladic's lawyer, defended the conduct of his client who had to be told by the judge that he would be screened off from the public if there was any further "interaction".
"He told me that the lady gave him the finger," said Mr Lukic. "It is easy to provoke a man who has suffered three brain strokes."
Mladic, 70, is appearing at the ICT where Radovan Karadzic, the former Bosnian Serb leader and his commander in chief, is also on trial.
Both are held to be responsible for a campaign of ethnic cleansing to rid multi-ethnic Bosnia of Croats and Muslims to create a "Greater Serbia".
Dermot Groome, the UN prosecutor, revealed that personal notebooks belonging to Mladic would be presented as evidence to prove that he and Karadzic drew up detailed plans of military conquest and violent ethnic cleansing.
"His notebooks were recovered from his family home in Belgrade by police that were searching for him. His contemporaneous notes of events will be an important source of evidence in this case," said Mr Groome.
Excerpts from the opening days of the Bosnia's war in 1992, scrawled in Mladic's own handwriting, were shown noting "war objectives, relationship to non-Serbian inhabitants" and the Bosnian Serb campaign "to separate from the Muslims and Croats forever".
Mr Groome opened the prosecution's statement with the chilling story of Elvedin Pasic, a 14-year-old boy, early in the Bosnian conflict in November 1992.
Elvedin was captured with his father and mother in the woods around the village of Vecici, trying to flee advancing Bosnian Serb troops who had clashed with Muslim fighters nearby.
After being stripped of their ID papers and valuables, the family was held with others in a local school when, as at Srebrenica, Mladic's soldiers separated women and children from men and teenage boys.
"His father said, get out and go with the women and children you might survive if you do. Elvedin left and never saw his father again," said Mr Groome.
"His father and uncle, with their hands bound behind their backs with wire, were murdered."
The 150 Muslim men and boys were killed.
"By the time Mladic and his troops murdered thousands in Srebrenica three years later, they were well-rehearsed in the craft of murder."
Mladic fled into hiding after the war and spent 15 years as a fugitive before international pressure on Serbia led to his arrest last year. Now his home for what is expected to be a two-year trial is a one-man cell in a Dutch jail with food and medical care that would likely be the envy of many in Bosnia.
Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/world/with-a-clap-....l#ixzz1v4PtewFf
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"All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed, second it is violently opposed, and third, it is accepted as self-evident."
Arthur Schopenhauer, Philosopher, 1788-1860
"In the final analysis, our most basic common link is that we all inhabit this small planet, breathe the same air, and we all cherish our children’s future."
John F. Kennedy |
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Big Bunny
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| | Re: The War On Terror II
« Reply #212 on May 26, 2012, 4:00am » | |
26 May 2012 Last updated at 01:39 GMT
Afghanistan's fabulous ruby mines plundered by thieves
![[image]](http://imageshack.us/a/img848/3764/60246148ruby25.jpg "[image]")
Rubies recovered from mines in the hills of Jegdalek
Only a few hours' drive from the Afghan capital Kabul is an area renowned for some of the world's brightest and most valuable rubies. But this wealth is being plundered by thieves, corrupt officials and the Taliban, as the BBC's Bilal Sarwary discovers.
The sun was about to rise over the Hindu Kush peaks surrounding Kabul when we hit the road to Jegdalek.
It is a mountainous area noted for its rugged beauty in Kabul's Surobi district, some 96km (60 miles) south-east of the capital.
There are opium crops here, but it is ruby mines that have earned Jegdalek such renown.
It is seen as a part of the country which could hold the key to many of Afghanistan's pressing economic woes.
"Jegdalek mines have been worked for more than 500 years," one tribal elder told me.
"They are known for their high-grade blood-red rubies, which were popular with royalty across the world."
Mineral curse?
But the great and the good willing to pay magnificent prices no longer purchase Jegdalek rubies. Tribal elders say that instead the mines are being plundered by thieves, corrupt officials and the Taliban.
The situation has become so worrying, officials say, that President Hamid Karzai has become seriously concerned.
"He is aware that we can easily become [like certain] African countries, where mineral worth is a curse, not a blessing, and could be used to further destabilise the country," a presidential official told the BBC.
There is supposed to be a ban on ruby mining because the government views the mines as national wealth. Despite government denials, local traders in Jegdalek bazaar openly display newly-mined gems.
Jegdalek is not a wealthy area, sandwiched between the snowy passes of Afghanistan's Tora Bora mountains on one side and Pakistan's Parachinar valley on another.
There are mostly mud houses and ruins - its few roads are in a poor condition and locals say that there is no electricity or drinking water.
Like much of rural Afghanistan, the government's diktats are of little consequence here, which is why the ruby mining ban is so flagrantly flouted.
Officials admitted to the BBC that the government was not in control of dozens of mines for precious and semi-precious stones around the country.
"The Taliban are greedy and they lure locals to mine the area unprofessionally," says Wasil Khan, a disgruntled resident of a village near the mines.
"Unskilled miners dig huge, deep holes, fill them up with gunpowder and then set them on fire. Such blasts have damaged the mines as well as the wealth that lies underneath."
To the mines
The hills of the area are covered with hundreds of white trenches, leading the way to the mines themselves.
Afghanistan's mineral resources
In 2010, US geologists estimated about $1 trillion in untapped deposits
This includes at least four ruby mines worth millions of dollars
Aquamarine, emerald, fluorite, garnet, kunzite and sapphire deposits
Gold, iron ore, lithium and marble resources across the country
Petoleum and natural gas deposits
Mr Khan says that the mines rarely produce the red rubies they were once famous for - more often than not semi-transparent pink sapphires are the only gems found, even at depths of 150m (492ft).
But those who are illegally mining think otherwise, and the government clearly contends that much of value still lies deep within the soil here.
Once a major base of mujahideen fighters during the Soviet invasion of the country, local officials say that two-thirds of Jegdalek is now controlled by the insurgents.
"The Taliban tell the locals to work here," police officer Mohammed Talib - who accompanied us on our tour of the region - told us.
"They tell them: 'We will give you 25% of the profit on the rubies you bring. The best rubies are on Taliban's side of the mountain'."
Dr Talib said that every Friday the Taliban organises a ruby bazaar near Jegdalek in the small village of Soar Naw - a remote and mountainous area covered with deeply forested valleys.
Here they sell rubies which are then smuggled to Dubai, Pakistan and Thailand.
Just two months ago, the Taliban reportedly smuggled a ruby out of the area which sold for $600,000 (£383,000) in Dubai. While there is no way of substantiating this claim, similar stories abound.
"The income from rubies is used to buy weapons and pay fighters. If we can somehow plug this source, it will be a big blow to Taliban finances," an intelligence officer accompanying the police party said.
'Losing millions'
Police say that other criminal groups - working under the name of the Taliban - are exploiting the area's wealth and denuding the landscape solely for cash returns.
The police officer took me inside one of the mines. It is a vertical, narrow trench surrounded by thick marble walls about 4m (13ft) long with a hole in the surface. Yet despite this compelling evidence of recent mining, police insist the ban is being enforced.
As I was trying to look deeper into the mines, a policeman came running up to the commander and said something in his ear.
"We will have to wind up," the officer said. "My men have spotted some suspicious people on one of the hills. They could be locals, but I wouldn't like to take a chance."
As we prepared to make a hasty exit, nearly a dozen Taliban fighters armed with rocket-propelled grenades and heavy machine guns took positions in the nearby hills, less than a kilometre away from our position.
Back in Kabul, mining official Tamim Asey admits that the government is losing millions of dollars every year as powerful warlords, tribal chieftains and corrupt officials collude to rob the nation of its natural resources.
He says that the priority is to ensure that revenue from the mines - which for years has been the source of wealth for different power brokers - goes to the government and people of Afghanistan.
"It is unfortunate indeed that the country's assets are not benefiting people who need it most," Mr Asey lamented.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-18070571
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"All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed, second it is violently opposed, and third, it is accepted as self-evident."
Arthur Schopenhauer, Philosopher, 1788-1860
"In the final analysis, our most basic common link is that we all inhabit this small planet, breathe the same air, and we all cherish our children’s future."
John F. Kennedy |
|
Big Bunny
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| | Re: The War On Terror II
« Reply #213 on May 26, 2012, 7:01am » | |
26 May 2012 Last updated at 07:07 GMT
Regional rise of the Muslim Brotherhood
By Yolande Knell BBC News, Cairo
Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood is the grandfather of Islamist groups in the Middle East. Since the organisation was set up in Ismailia in 1928, its influence has spread across the region and the Arab uprisings of 2011 have provided it with unprecedented political opportunities.
A Brotherhood candidate, Mohammed Mursi, will fight the run-off for the Egyptian presidential elections after taking the biggest share of votes in the first round of voting.
When I recently attended a rally for him in a poor neighbourhood on the edge of Cairo, there was a large, enthusiastic crowd chanting and waving posters. The electoral machine was in full operation.
Men and women sat separately in front of a large stage that had been erected on a plot of wasteland between high-rise apartment buildings. For one night, volunteers had transformed the area, placing carpets on the ground and stringing up lanterns to add a kind of festive feel.
"Dr Mohammed Mursi is the most powerful man in these elections," a Brotherhood member, Mustafa, told me, confident of a win. "At last we'll have a very good president who will bring freedom and justice for all Egyptians."
"We want to try the Islamic ideas," said Hana Hassan. "We think that Dr Mohammed is the man for this time."
Another woman, Widad, pointed to the organisational strength of the Brotherhood as a reason to support its campaign.
"What will make me elect Dr Mursi is not Dr Mursi as a person, but it's their project as a group," she said.
Islamists already dominate the new parliament in Egypt. The Brotherhood's political arm, the Freedom and Justice Party [FJP], controls the largest bloc.
'Renaissance'
The organisation, which was banned for six decades, is currently undergoing a renaissance - the very word it has chosen as the title for its wide-ranging political plan for Egypt.
In other Arab countries where there have been uprisings, related groups are also on the rise.
In Libya, where a national assembly election is expected on 19 June, the Muslim Brotherhood has become a main political player. In Syria, it remains an important opposition force.
The movement has also inspired Tunisia's main Islamist party, Ennahda (Renaissance), which leads a governing coalition.
"I believe this is a very important historical moment. For the first time, the Islamic movements have the right to participate in politics," says Fatima Abuzeid, who works in the FJP's Foreign Relations Unit.
Crossing borders
Recently, Egypt's Brotherhood, long held back by travel bans, has sent delegations of its leading members across the world.
However it has put a special focus on its neighbours where political change is also under way.
"Egypt is becoming a very important actor, other countries with revolutions are becoming very important," says Mrs Abuzeid.
"We are trying to come close to each other, to work as partners. We are trying also to have a kind of coordination on our foreign relations, to build a kind of effective foreign relations for the Arab countries."
It is this new development that is producing a dramatic shift in the region.
As a strong Sunni Muslim bloc emerges in North Africa, it is already starting to undermine the regional influence of Iran, a big Shia Muslim power.
Until recently, Tehran's support for Syria and other proxies - the militant group, Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in Gaza - gave it regional leverage.
Now Shadi Hamid, research director at the Brookings Doha Centre, believes it is much weaker.
"What we used to call the resistance axis made up of Syria - Hamas and Hezbollah - that's been destroyed. Iran is not on the right side of these regional changes," he says.
"There's a kind of tendency in the West to make Iran into some kind of regional superpower. But I think now at least when you measure it by soft power, that's not the case at all."
Hamas office
In Egypt, there is more evidence of how the Arab spring's upheaval is having an effect on the Palestinian Islamist group, Hamas.
I travelled to a well-off New Cairo neighbourhood to meet Musa Abu Marzouk, who recently moved here when his group's political bureau was forced out of Syria, where it was living in exile.
Hamas, which governs Gaza, is an ideological offshoot of the Muslim Brotherhood. Mr Abu Marzouk told me it hopes to benefit from regional changes.
"When you see the same ideology, the same Islamists in all North Africa, I guess it's going to be good for Hamas," he said.
"We have a very deep relationship with all of those people who came to the governments and that means we expect them to support Hamas and the Palestinian cause more than the previous governments."
In future, Mr Abu Marzouk says that Hamas might seek to open a new office in Cairo.
The rising Islamist trend could have far-reaching implications for transforming regional relationships.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-18205786
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"All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed, second it is violently opposed, and third, it is accepted as self-evident."
Arthur Schopenhauer, Philosopher, 1788-1860
"In the final analysis, our most basic common link is that we all inhabit this small planet, breathe the same air, and we all cherish our children’s future."
John F. Kennedy |
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Big Bunny
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| | Re: The War On Terror II
« Reply #214 on May 29, 2012, 6:00am » | |
Houla massacre: 108 dead, says UN
May 28, 2012 - 8:39AM
![[image]](http://imageshack.us/a/img31/2742/arthoula2420x0.jpg "[image]")
Counting the dead ... more than 100 people, including at least 32 children, were massacred in the town of Houla. Photo: Reuters
The UN Security Council has condemned "in the strongest possible terms" the Syrian government for the Houla massacre, in which at least 108 people were killed.
A statement agreed by the 15-nation council, including Syrian ally Russia, said the attacks "involved a series of government artillery and tank shellings on a residential neighbourhood" and again demanded that President Bashar al-Assad withdraw heavy weapons from Syrian towns.
"The members of the Security Council reiterated that all violence in all its forms by all parties must cease. Those responsible for acts of violence must be held accountable," said the statement.
UN observers in Syria saw at least 108 bodies in Houla, including 49 children and at least seven women, UN officials said.
Britain's UN ambassador Mark Lyall-Grant said that the council statement, while important, was not enough.
"Over the next two days, the Security Council will be meeting again to discuss in more detail what steps need to be taken," Lyall Grant told reporters.
Earlier, Russia’s deputy ambassador to the UN cast doubt on the guilt of Syria’s government over the massacre.
"We need to establish whether it was the Syrian authorities," Igor Pankin told reporters at the United Nations, closing ranks with a key Middle Eastern ally as Damascus continued to deny its forces were responsible.
"There are substantial grounds to believe that the majority of those who were killed were either slashed, cut by knives, or executed at point-blank distance."
The head of the UN monitoring team in Syria, Major General Robert Mood, a Norwegian, briefed the Security Council as UN and Arab League peace envoy Kofi Annan was expected to fly to Damascus on Monday to try to rescue his six-point peace plan amid a crumbling ineffective truce.
Major General Mood said the deaths were from "shrapnel" and gunfire at "point-blank" range, diplomats at the closed-door meeting at the United Nations in New York said.
"The investigation indicates that first there was the artillery barrage and then militia fighters moved into Houla," a UN source said.
The incident was one of the bloodiest episodes since Assad’s regime launched a brutal crackdown on opponents in March last year that has left thousands dead.
But Syrian foreign ministry spokesman Jihad al-Makdissi insisted the regime was "not at all" to blame for the massacre in Houla in central Homs province.
Blaming "terrorists" for the killings, Makdissi said Damascus had opened an investigation, with results expected within three days.
"Not one Syrian tank went in," he said.
Exiled opposition head Burhan Ghalioun called for a "battle of liberation" against the regime until the United Nations takes action under Chapter VII allowing military intervention.
And the rebel Free Syrian Army (FSA) warned that unless the international community took concrete action it would no longer be bound by Annan’s UN-backed peace plan and his April 12 ceasefire, which has been violated daily.
Despite the outcry, violence raged on, according to the London-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which reported at least 28 people killed across the country on Sunday, among them women and children.
Read more: http://www.theage.com.au/world/houla-mas....l#ixzz1wFlZIGKo
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Regime issued soldiers with kill quotas, claim defectors
May 29, 2012
NEW evidence has emerged that members of Bashar al-Assad's family and inner circle are directly ordering crimes against humanity in Syria. Experts in international law consider it ''preposterous and completely implausible'' that the President would be unaware of systematic killing and torture.
Defectors from Syrian intelligence and security agencies claim Mr Assad's cousin issued shoot-to-kill orders against civilian protesters in Deraa, the cradle of the insurrection. Kill quotas were reportedly issued to snipers ordered to assassinate democracy activists.
They allege that Mr Assad's brother Maher, an army commander, was among senior figures operating out of a secret command centre in Deraa when orders were issued to contain a protest march by all means necessary. More than 100 civilians were shot dead.
The defectors' testimony, broadcast yesterday by Channel 4 in Britain, has added resonance after the atrocity at Houla over the weekend.
In the documentary, The Real Mr & Mrs Assad, footage shows the President saying: ''Every mistake [that] happens in this government, you are responsible, not somebody else. Not the minister. Not the prime minister. At the end you should be responsible.'' In more recent months, Mr Assad has repeatedly denied any role in the killings.
''No one is authorised to give orders to the security forces except for him,'' said the exiled former vice-president Abdul Halim Khaddam, who fell out with Mr Assad in 2005. ''Will anyone believe that 300,000 soldiers can come out of their barracks to slaughter citizens due to an initiative by their officers? These orders are issued by the President of the state.''
The defectors also detail allegations against Brigadier-General Atef Najib, Mr Assad's cousin, who headed the political security directorate in Deraa at the start of the uprising. Two defectors said they received direct orders from General Najib to fire live ammunition at demonstrators.
Another defector, Afaq Ahmed, a former member of the special operations directorate of air force intelligence, claims an attack in which 100 protesters were shot dead was approved by the head of air force intelligence. He was allegedly based in a secret command centre in the Kuwait hotel on the city's eastern outskirts.
Mr Ahmed said: ''Our task was restricted to assassinating activists and protesters based on orders and the permitted killing quota authorised by the authorities. The quota varied. Some days it was 10; others, 15 or 20.''
Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/world/regime-issue....#ixzz1wFmpDdi L
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The shabbiha - the 'ghost militia' accused of doing Assad's dirty work
Glenda Kwek
May 28, 2012 - 2:09PM
They are the "ghost militia", accused of slaughtering more than 100 people, including at least 49 children, in an attack on a Syrian town on Saturday.
The shabbiha, named after the Arabic word shabah, meaning ghost, are a black-clad civilian militia who, villagers said, hacked men, women and children to death in the town of Houla after a military artillery barrage.
UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and special envoy Kofi Annan condemned the killings as an "appalling and brutal crime" and a "flagrant violation of international law".
The 'ghosts'
But how much is known about the shabbiha, and what is their connection to Syria's Assad regime?
The shabbiha are believed to have taken their name from organised crime groups in the port city of Latakia reportedly responsible for smuggling weapons and drugs. They were called ghosts as the police and intelligence services could not touch them, German news magazine Der Spiegel reported.
Their membership draws mainly from the Alawis - the minority sect of President Bashar al-Assad - and their connection to his regime is believed to have started during his father Hafez al-Assad's reign in the 1970s, when they "operated with few constraints and were generally seen as being above the law and ruling by force", the BBC reported.
Bashar al-Assad's cousins, Fawwaz and Munzir, accused of heading the militia, fell out of favour with Hafez and his son by the late 1990s.
But as the Assad regime became the target of anti-government protesters in early 2011, critics said the government was "outsourcing oppression" through the shabbiha, London's Daily Telegraph reported.
"They're not afraid to use force, violence, weapons, racketeering and blackmail," Ammar Qurabi, the head of Syria's National Organisation for Human Rights, told Bloomberg last year.
"That way, the regime will remain clean and will say: 'Look, these are gangs doing this, not us.'"
Members of the shabbiha are paid about $US40 daily, and armed, Der Spiegel reported.
"It's been a common theme for a lot of authoritarian regimes in the region to use, for want of a better word, local thugs," said Benjamin MacQueen, an expert in Middle Eastern politics at Monash University in Melbourne.
"This a well-worn tactic. They are drawn from a variety of segments of society. Syria is an incredibly diverse country and a lot of the communities in the smaller groups like the Christians, like the Alawi, like the Druze, do feel like the regime is the protector of their interests. So you get a larger percentage of those groups participating in groups like the shabbiha. But there are young Sunni men involved. I would hesitate to say this is a purely sectarian thing."
'Do the dirty work'
Burhan Ghalioun, a Syrian professor at the Universite de Paris III, told Abu Dhabi-based The National newspaper that the Assad regime was using the shabbiha to "do the dirty work".
"In other words, they are death squads and the striking arm against protesters," he said.
In May last year, Syrian refugees who had fled to Lebanon told journalists they had seen people's throats being cut by the shabbiha.
The refugees, from the western city of Tel Kalakh, said the militia came from Qardaha, an Alawite town that is the ancestral home of the Assad family. They said the shabbiha stopped people on the street to check their identity cards, the BBC and The Christian Science Monitor reported.
"If they see he's a Sunni from his family name, they take him away and kill him," one woman told The Christian Science Monitor.
"They destroyed the Omar bin Khattab mosque because it is named after a companion of the Prophet Muhammad and dear to Sunnis. What we have here is a sectarian war between the Alawites and Sunnis."
'Ambiguity'
Dr MacQueen said there was a level of ambiguity surrounding the violence within Syria, allowing the government to deflect criticism from its tactics.
"I would hesitate to say that these groups are the main ones on the front line conducting these attacks. This is just where the ambiguity sits. [There are] claims and counter-claims of violence, and the opposition has been involved in violence against civilians. How do you tell the difference?" he said.
"I think the government are exploiting that at the moment. It doesn't hurt them when the opposition does some less than palatable things, and without being too conspiratorial, I would not be surprised if the government had some involvement in facilitating some of these things happening."
Increasing extremism
What is significant about the Houla massacre is the extremity of the violence - whereby images of dead children with severe injuries have been captured on amateur video and posted online, experts said.
"It's the extremism of the violence that is scary. We didn't see anything like this, even in Iraq," one analyst, who was not named, told the Financial Times.
Dr Anthony Billingsley, an international relations lecturer at the University of New South Wales, said the threshold for violence was being lowered.
"It's possible for example that the [Houla] attacks were not necessarily government policy, but it's almost like 'who will rid me of this meddlesome priest' - the Becket sort of story of the government saying, 'Look, these people are bad' and encouraging communities to go out and take their own action," he said.
The Houla villages are Sunni Muslim and the forces came from an arc of nearby villages populated by Alawites, activists told the Associated Press.
"So it's possible that there had been an attack on an Alawite community not so long ago and that this group was coming out and seeking revenge for their community. You've got a hopeless situation of cycles [of violence] where basically what's going to happen now is that there will be a Sunni group that goes out and seeks revenge against the Alawi. And so you've got this process running on and on."
Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/world/the-shabbiha....#i xzz1wFo2CnTY
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Global outrage over Syrian child massacre
Paul McGeough
May 28, 2012
ANALYSIS
AS A WAVE of revulsion sweeps the world after a regime massacre in Syria - 32 children, some with what appear to be bullet holes in their temples, are among more than 90 dead - Washington is manoeuvring to win Moscow's support for a plan to dislodge the embattled Syrian leader, Bashar al-Assad.
As many as 300 others were wounded in the bloodletting when regime forces backed by local volunteers attacked Houla, a rebel-held Sunni village near the troubled city of Homs.
United Nations monitors were in the village on Saturday, counting the dead and wounded and collecting spent tank shells that were taken as confirmation of a regime assault. The US plan is a version of the machination by which Yemen's President, Ali Abdullah Saleh, went into exile in February while his regime survived.
But this is not the first time it has been trotted out to win Russian co-operation in easing the dictator Assad from his blood-splattered palace at the same time as offering to preserve enough of the regime in which his family is core for Moscow to believe it is not losing an ally.
But there's a problem. It didn't work the last time and even if Moscow could be cajoled into going along, this plan is too little and it is too late. As recently as January, the dictators of the Arab League took the same idea to the UN Security Council - where Moscow and Beijing knocked it firmly on the head.
Two realities go some way to explaining why Syria is not Yemen. One, the ferocity of the regime's onslaughts on its people points to an unbreakable bond between the Assad family and the wider regime and the fact that this is their last stand - they are fighting for their lives.
Assad's Alawites are a Shiite-aligned minority lording it over a Sunni majority, and they know that such a concession would mean the party's over for all of them. The family has held power so tightly and for so long that there is no B team - pull the man and his family out of Damascus and the rest face an end as ignominious as that of the former Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi or, if they are lucky, the former Egyptian leader Hosni Mubarak.
Two, this is the Iraq playbook writ large. Even if elements of the regime were allowed to hang on in the event, say, that Assad was to go overseas for medical treatment and not to return, as was the case with the deposed Yemeni leader, fighters affiliated with al-Qaeda already have arrived in the country with a brief to see that nothing of the regime survives - and in that they have the backing of an increasing number of ordinary Syrians.
They are the fighters who are regularly detonating the suicide
bombs against regime targets in Syria, some killing dozens at a time. And the suicide attacks are a deliberate provocation, geared to throwing all of Syria into the civil and sectarian conflict the Islamists were denied when they sought validation in the Egyptian and Tunisian chapters of the Arab Spring.
Perhaps, too, we need to be reminded why Russia would accept the Yemeni solution.
What civility there was between Moscow and Washington has evaporated since Vladimir Putin was reinstalled as president. His recent behaviour seems to be informed by a coarse thuggishness that finds pleasure in trying to embarrass the US President, Barack Obama.
For now at least, there is no consensus among analysts on how the Yemeni proposal might be received in Moscow. Damascus represents a great deal of Cold War history for the Russians - they have a naval base there, oil and gas interests, and Syria is high on their list of arms purchasers.
To go along with Obama now would be seen as Moscow following Washington. For a while at least, especially in the months before the US presidential election when the slightest foreign-generated discomfort for Obama can be used against him domestically, do not be surprised if Putin plays Obama - without agreeing to anything.
If there was a time when the international community might have taken control of events in Syria, it passed a long time ago. For too long and despite all the diplomatic hand wringing, the West has been studiously avoiding intervening in Syria.
For some months the Assad regime has been doing to its people what Gaddafi merely threatened to do when the UN and NATO decided they had to act by providing game-changing air cover for the Libyan rebels.
But when the NATO heavies gathered in Chicago last week, only a crass reporter was rude enough to raise the Syria question. And when he did, it was batted straight back to him - NATO was not going in.
One other point to consider: what an incredible insult to the people of Syria to say the West understands their pain so clearly that it would pull Assad out and leave them at the mercy of the rest of the regime - were it capable of surviving.
Read more: http://www.theage.com.au/world/global-ou....l#ixzz1wFnVGUpl
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Assad gambles on the world ignoring his brutality
Richard Spencer , London
May 28, 2012
ALL wars unleash their demons. Srebrenica, Halabja, My Lai and, now, Houla: they seem unbelievable at the time, but when the truth is extracted from the fog, it is often worse than imagined.
At some point, witnesses - which in the digital age means all of us - have to force into our heads the idea of a recognisable human deciding to unpin the grenade, or swing the machine gun turret, or wield the knife.
How did it get there, the mentality that could apply the blade to the throats of children seized at random, as they apparently were in Houla on Friday?
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To understand this is to understand the trajectory of civil war, and in this case the tactics of the Assad regime.
Barring some alternative explanation, and none has been forthcoming even from the convoluted justifications of Syrian state media, what appears to be happening in the towns and villages around Homs is this: regime forces fight the Free Syrian Army, and then the Shabiha or ''Ghost'' militias impose terrible consequences on the civilian population.
The militias are Alawite, the minority Muslim sect that holds power in Syria; the opposition in this mixed-sect area is Sunni; and there is a frenzy with a reason to these attacks, of which there have been half a dozen on varying scales in recent weeks.
The gangs involved in them believe it is victory, or nothing. The regime's consistent message is that the revolutionaries wish to impose a Sunni dominance that will leave no place for the Alawites. From outside, this is easy to deconstruct; inside Syria, the discourse runs wide and deep. Earlier this month in Damascus I listened to cosmopolitan people I liked and trusted tell me that agents of Gulf countries had laced the food of demonstrators with drugs, driving them out of their minds. It had not occurred to them that the television reports which told them this were lies, drawn from the Arab Spring boilerplate, and they seemed shocked when I mentioned that Colonel Gaddafi's henchmen had told me exactly the same of his Libyan opponents a year ago.
If well-educated professionals can be so naive, how much easier must it be to manipulate the mindset of those drawn into the lower reaches of the paramilitary groups, which are used specifically to allow the trained brigades to remain ignorant of what is done in their name.
There is a disconnect between Damascus and the provinces, but in fact the disconnect in Syria is the same as that in many Arab Spring countries. This is the rift between an increasingly sophisticated centre of society and a remnant who have been left behind, many in the more thuggish branches of the security forces, who perhaps rightly feel that in any new order there will be even less of a place for them.
The Alawites, the sect to which the Assads belong, were historically the underdogs of Syrian society, which is why the French used them to fill their colonial army. They have been told before to fight for their future by any means necessary, and are now being told to again. It is a cunning tactic, because it is self-fulfilling - by doing so, they excite a rabid response, and the violence becomes cyclical.
The regime works on the assumption that the messier this becomes, the lower the chances of intervention to stop it. It believes it can work around the United Nations observers and that the Western powers don't want to get involved.
But other regimes have taken that gamble. Their leaders are now in the Hague. Internal pressures on the regime grow, its neighbours are either terrified, outraged or discredited, and the Americans are said to be helping the Qataris deliver arms to the rebels. Is it possible that Houla will prove a throw of the dice too far for the Assads?
Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/world/assad-gamble....l#ixzz1wFouHi5Z
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US bid to remove Assad ignores brutal reality
Paul McGeough
May 28, 2012
AS A wave of revulsion sweeps the world in the wake of a regime massacre in Syria - at least 32 children, some with what appear to be bullet holes in their temples, are among 108 dead - Washington is manoeuvring to win Moscow's support for a plan to dislodge embattled Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.
As many as 300 other people were wounded in the bloodletting when regime forces backed by local volunteers attacked Houla, a rebel-held Sunni village near the city of Homs. United Nations monitors were in the village on Saturday, counting the dead and wounded and collecting spent tank shells that were taken as confirmation of a regime assault.
The US plan is a version of the machination by which Yemen's president Ali Abdullah Saleh went into exile in February while his regime survived.
But this is not the first time it has been trotted out to win Russian co-operation in easing Dr Assad from his blood-splattered palace - at the same time as offering to preserve enough of the regime in which his family is core for Moscow to believe it is not losing an ally.
As recently as January, the dictators of the Arab League took the same idea to the UN Security Council, where Moscow and Beijing knocked it firmly on the head.
Two realities go some way to explaining why Syria is not Yemen. The first is that the ferocity of the regime's onslaughts on its people point to an unbreakable bond between the Assad family and the wider regime and the fact that they are fighting for their lives.
Dr Assad's Alawites are a Shiite-aligned minority lording it over a Sunni majority, and they know that a Yemen-style concession would mean the party's over for all of them. Pull the leader and his family out of Damascus and the rest face an end as ignominious as that of Muammar Gaddafi or, if they are lucky, Egyptian dictator Hosni Mubarak.
The second reality is the precedent of Iraq. Even if elements of the regime were allowed to hang on in the event that Dr Assad was to go overseas and not return, al-Qaeda-affiliated fighters have already arrived in the country with a brief to see that nothing of the regime survives. They are the fighters who are detonating the suicide bombs that hit regime targets in Syria, killing dozens. And the suicide attacks are a deliberate provocation, geared to throwing all of Syria into the civil and sectarian conflict that the Islamists were denied in the Egyptian and Tunisian chapters of the Arab Spring.
We also need to be reminded why Russia would accept the Yemeni solution.
What civility there was between Moscow and Washington has evaporated since Vladimir Putin was reinstalled as president. His recent behaviour seems to be informed by a coarse thuggishness that finds pleasure in attempting to embarrass Barack Obama.
There is no consensus among analysts on how the Yemeni proposal might be received in Moscow. Damascus represents a great deal of Cold War history for the Russians - they have a naval base there, oil and gas interests and Syria is high on their list of arms purchasers. For some months now the Assad regime has been actually doing to its people what Gaddafi of Libya merely threatened to do when the UN and NATO decided that they had to act by providing game-changing air cover for the Libyan rebels.
But when NATO gathered in Chicago last week, only one reporter was rude enough to raise the Syria question. It was batted straight back to him - NATO was not going in.
If there was a time when the international community might have taken control of events in Syria, it passed a long time ago.
Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/world/us-bid-to-re....l#ixzz1wFpP0xif
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[b]Massacre could mark turning point in war[/b]
Patrick Mcdonnell, Rima Marrouch
May 28, 2012
BEIRUT: The blood-spattered children lay on a patterned rug, their wounds graphic proof that youth offers no protection from the dark forces unleashed in Syria.
An unidentified man picks up the limp corpse of one boy, displaying the battered remains for the camera. He puts the child down and hoists another lifeless young body aloft. ''Massacre in Houla - all children!'' someone is heard shouting amid groans of agony and disbelief.
The grisly scenes posted online from Houla, a township in Homs province, drew international condemnation. In the view of some they have the potential to become a turning point in the 14-month rebellion against the government of President Bashar al-Assad.
The United Nations said 92 people, more than one-third of them children aged under 10, had been killed in what appeared to be the worst violence against civilians in Syria since a UN-backed cease-fire was put into effect last month.
The UN Secretary-General, Ban Ki-moon, and the UN-Arab League envoy, Kofi Annan, condemned the massacre as a ''brutal'' breach of international law by the government.
''This appalling and brutal crime, involving indiscriminate and disproportionate use of force, is a flagrant violation of international law and of the commitments of the Syrian government to cease the use of heavy weapons in population centres and violence in all its forms,'' they said.
''Those responsible for perpetrating this crime must be held to account.''
Britain said it was in urgent talks with allied countries on ''a strong international response''. France said it was making plans to host a Friends of Syria meeting.
In Washington, the US Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, focused on what she described as the ''vicious assault that involved a regime artillery and tank barrage on a residential neighbourhood''.
''Those who perpetrated this atrocity must be identified and held to account,'' she said. ''And the United States will work with the international community to intensify our pressure on Assad and his cronies, whose rule by murder and fear must come to an end.''
The Foreign Affairs Minister, Bob Carr, said Australia's UN ambassador had been ordered to begin canvassing increased sanctions against the Syrian regime. He would also discuss with member states the possibility of referring the massacre to the International Criminal Court.
''The Assad regime must cease all military operations immediately, as required under special envoy Kofi Annan's peace plan,'' Senator Carr said in a statement.
''UN observers must also be allowed immediate access to Houla to start work on determining responsibility for this attack, as well as to all other conflict zones in Syria.
''This matter should also be immediately brought before the UN Security Council, for a unified international response.''
The killings occurred during a government offensive on Friday and early Saturday, opposition activists said.
The official government news agency blamed ''armed terrorists'' linked to al-Qaeda for the killings in an area that has long been at the epicentre of the revolt against Mr Assad.
The killings in Houla were ''indiscriminate'', Major-General Robert Mood, the chief of the UN team in Syria, said in Damascus. ''The deaths of 32 young children, the future of Syria, is something that is absolutely … unforgivable.''
Outrage over the deaths of so many children may drive demands for new international action. The opposition called for an emergency UN meeting, even as Mr Annan was scheduled to visit Damascus this week.
Juan Cole, a University of Michigan historian and commentator on Middle Eastern affairs, suggested in a blog post that Houla could become a decisive event in Syria comparable to the My Lai massacre in Vietnam. ''Just as the US public began turning against the Vietnam War because of events like the My Lai massacre, so Houla could be a turning point,'' he wrote.
However, Mr Assad is widely thought to maintain considerable support in Syria, especially among Christians and other minorities, notably members of his own Alawite sect who hold important posts in the security services and the military.
He also enjoys the backing of Russia and China, permanent members of the UN Security Council. Both support the peace initiative headed by Mr Annan, but have vetoed Security Council resolutions critical of Mr Assad.
The state-controlled Syrian media also broadcast graphic images of the children's corpses, but blamed the killings on ''al-Qaeda-linked terrorist groups''. The official Syrian Arab News Agency said ''terrorist'' groups had burned houses and crops in a bid to put the blame on the army. Each side regularly accuses the other of committing massacres.
Read more: http://www.theage.com.au/world/massacre-....l#ixzz1wFpzn74F
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Brutality of Assad not enough to bring action
May 29, 2012
Opinion
Who could put a loaded gun to the head of a baby and pull the trigger? The coverage of the barbaric violence against women and children in the Syrian town of Houla at the weekend sent a wave of revulsion around the world.
But we know the answer. The obvious villain is Syria's president, Bashar al-Assad. While his wife shops for $40,000 chandeliers from Paris, Bashar has been sending his forces to butcher and torture adults and children alike for a year and a quarter now.
The massacre in Houla left 108 people dead, among them 49 children and 34 women. Hillary Clinton calls the Bashar regime "government by murder". Those 108 dead are only the latest in a campaign that has killed an estimated minimum of 10,000. The dead pile upon the dead, atrocity upon atrocity, and the calls for something to be done grow louder.
But nothing so far has worked to restrain the dictator. And nothing short of brute force will. The weekend massacre occurred six weeks into a supposed ceasefire brokered by a special envoy, the former UN secretary-general, Kofi Annan. But the fire never ceased. Bashar will talk endlessly, meet, negotiate and promise. But he will not stop killing.
Because Bashar is fighting for his life. He's a part of the Alawite sect, a tiny offshoot of Shiite Islam that makes up just 7 per cent of Syria's population. Bashar and the Alawites fear they will be wiped out by the Sunnis who make up three-quarters of the country if they cede power.
The small size of the Alawite population is its key vulnerability; it is also the source of the regime's ferocity and cohesiveness. Most key military and security posts are filled by Alawites. Bashar's wife is shopping for chandeliers for the palace instead of real estate abroad because the family is not going anywhere. Leaked emails also show that she was helpfully researching bulletproof clothing for her husband.
The US and its allies have been working in the UN Security Council to win support for an escalating series of resolutions against Bashar, imposing sanctions, issuing denunciations and demanding that he call off his killers.
But one of the permanent five members of the UNSC, Russia, has brought down its veto on any serious effort to punish Syria. Syria is a long-standing ally of Russia's. It hosts a Russian naval base, buys Russian arms, and acts as a proxy for Russian interests in the Middle East.
The Russians go through the motions of caring. Russia's foreign minster, Sergei Lavrov, flew to Damascus last year and Bashar solemnly promised him that he would end the violence. But his tanks resumed their attacks on civilians even as Lavrov was in the air on the way back to Moscow. The Syrian president knew Russia didn't care, and everything since shows he was right.
Russia's increasingly repressive government under a recrudescent Putin treats some of its own civilians brutally. Why should it care about a few Syrians?
Much of the international media is spotlighting Russia as the obstacle. But the sad truth is that even if Russia were to magically lift its veto, nothing much would change because none of the leading powers, the countries that led the way into Libya to stop Gaddafi, the US, France, Britain, NATO, want to get involved. There are three main reasons why.
First is will. The US has no appetite for entering another war. Barack Obama is going to an election in November as the president who ends wars, not starts them. It's nine months since he first called on Bashar to go and he's showing no sign of any armed intervention. Without US leadership, NATO will not act.
Second is the degree of difficulty involved. While Libya was friendless, Syria has powerful allies like Iran and Russia and Hezbollah. While Gaddafi had only a ragtag army, Syria's is serious and formidable. While Libya allowed NATO a clear and easy target by using its air force against civilians, Bashar is too shrewd. He uses ground forces; any intervention would need to fight on the ground too, raising the risks exponentially.
And the wily Bashar is determined not to allow any easy foothold for a foreign force. "The regime's strategy is to prevent - at all costs - its armed opponents from seizing and holding territory inside the country, as this might give foreign powers a base from which to operate" writes Patrick Seale, author of Asad of Syria: The Struggle for the Middle East.
"As soon as it identifies pockets of armed opponents, it sends in its troops to crush them."
Third is the danger that by slaying the Bashar dragon, a foreign intervention would allow the rise of dangerous new dragons. As the Lowy Institute's Anthony Bubalo puts it: "When people take a close look at the opposition, that tempers their appetite for intervention. The opposition is the Muslim Brotherhood, but of the most unreconstructed kind, and some al-Qaeda guys as well."
Without Western efforts to halt Bashar by force, some of the Sunni Gulf states are stepping in to arm their Sunni brothers against Bashar's Shiite Alawites with pledges of $100 million. "Saudi Arabia and Qatar are now supporting the rebels with more than empty words," writes Alan George, an expert at Oxford. "The new equipment reaching the Free Syrian Army is likely to include weaponry effective against armoured vehicles. If the regime is no longer able to use its armour at will, it may have to rely increasingly on long-range artillery and air attack - with horrendous implications for casualties."
If so, the struggle will change, but not for the better. Today's repression by the government against a far weaker group of rebels will increasingly resemble a civil war. On any analysis, the scale of the killing in Syria will continue and, if anything, grow worse.
Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/politics/b....#ixzz1wFqcb1 iO
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Russia feels heat over Syrian massacre
Peter Foster
May 29, 2012
DIPLOMATIC pressure has been brought to bear on Moscow and Damascus after the United Nations Security Council condemned the use of artillery in a massacre in which at least 108 people, including 49 children, were killed and 300 injured.
The UN special envoy to Syria, Kofi Annan, arrived in Damascus overnight and met Syrian officials. However, the UN peace plan for which Mr Annan has responsibility was in disarray even before he arrived.
As violence continued in Syria yesterday, with a further 30 reported killed in Hama, the Houla massacre has already stretched the credibility of the UN observer mission. The Free Syrian Army issued a statement saying that the ceasefire deal was ''going to hell'' and that concerted international intervention was required.
Mr Annan's mission was also complicated by the Syrian government. The Foreign Ministry spokesman, Jihad Makdissi, said the government ''categorically denies the government forces' responsibility for the massacre''.
He denounced the ''tsunami of lies'' that he said wrongly put the blame on Syrian forces.
The Security Council said the ''outrageous use of force against [the] civilian population'' is a violation of a UN peace plan. It called on the government and its opponents to end violence, the UN said.
The statement was approved after a lengthy discussion with Syria's ally Russia, which originally blocked a joint statement.
Russia, a staunch supporter and supplier of arms to the regime of the President, Bashar al-Assad, insisted explicit references to Syrian armed forces being responsible for the latest bloodshed be dropped.
The Russian Foreign Minister, Sergey Lavrov, said both sides in the Syrian conflict ''had a hand'' in the deaths.
''Both sides have obviously had a hand in the deaths of innocent people, including several dozen women and children. This area is controlled by the rebels, but it is also surrounded by the governmental troops,'' Mr Lavrov said after talks with the visiting British Foreign Secretary, William Hague, in Moscow.
He said there was no doubt that government forces had used artillery and tanks to shell Houla, or that many of the bodies were found with wounds indicating they had been hit at close range or tortured.
''The guilt has to be determined objectively,'' Mr Lavrov said. ''No one is saying that the government is not guilty, and no one is saying that the armed militants are not guilty.''
Mr Lavrov and Mr Hague both called for greater efforts to implement a peace plan put forward by Mr Annan, which calls on both sides to respect a ceasefire.
Before the talks, Mr Hague had issued an ultimatum to Russia to intervene in the Syrian crisis before it was too late, warning the massacre in Houla had taken the country to the brink of civil war.
''It's right, as Sergey Lavrov has just done, to call on all parties to cease violence, and we are not arguing that all violence in Syria is the responsibility of the Assad regime, although it has the primary responsibility for such violence,'' Mr Hague said.
Mr Lavrov added that ''we don't support the Syrian government, we support Kofi Annan's plan''.
Speaking from Damascus, Mr Annan said those responsible for ''brutal crimes'' in Houla must be ''held accountable.''
In Australia, the Foreign Affairs Minister, Bob Carr, called in the Syrian envoy to express the government's anger over the massacre.
As the groundswell of Western condemnation grew Syria blamed ''terrorists'' for the incident.
''Women, children and old men were shot dead. This is not the hallmark of the heroic Syrian army,'' a Syrian Foreign Ministry spokesman said.
The US Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, focused on what she described as the ''vicious assault that involved a regime artillery and tank barrage on a residential neighbourhood''.
''Those who perpetrated this atrocity must be identified and held to account. And the United States will work with the international community to intensify our pressure on Assad and his cronies, whose rule by murder and fear must come to an end.''
At the G8 summit in Chicago, the US President, Barack Obama, suggested that Yemen, where the former president Ali Abdullah Saleh was eased out of power through talks, could provide a model for Syria if the Annan plan fails. The French Foreign Minister, Laurent Fabius, accused Syria of committing ''new massacres''.
with Daniel Flitton
Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/world/russia-feels....l#ixzz1wFr4WUS3
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Australia expels Syria's Charge D'Affairs Jawdat Ali
By Phillip Hudson
Herald Sun
May 29, 2012 6:50PM
SYRIA'S top diplomat in Australia, Jawdat Ali, was today expelled by the Gillard Government in protest about the massacre of an estimated 100 people in his country, many of them children.
Foreign Affairs Minister Bob Carr said the Syrian Charge D'Affairs has 72 hours to leave the country.
Senator Carr said Australia condemned the atrocities perpetrated against civilians in the village of Haoula.
Mr Ali was summoned to the Department of Foreign Affairs in Canberra today and told he was being expelled.
Yesterday, Mr Ali was told Australia expected the Syrian Government to cease military operations and abide by the ceasefire brokered by special Envoy Kofi Annan.
"This massacre of civilians in Haoula is a hideous and brutal crime," Senator Carr said.
The United Nations has condemned Syria for the slaughter.
Australia, the European Union and the United States have imposed sanctions on Syria. Australia has put travel and financial restrictions on 106 individuals and 28 entities and imposed an arms embargo.
Read more: http://www.news.com.au/national/australi....#ixzz 1wFrifHqb
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Hopeless Diplomacy
Syrian Regime Resembles Mafia Cartel
![[image]](http://imageshack.us/a/img845/9317/image329586galleryv9eai.jpg "[image]")
Syrian rebels in Idlib, northern Syria. AP
Hopes that diplomacy will force Syrian President Bashar Assad to back down seem misguided, given that his regime resembles a mafia cartel bent on defending its turf by any means. There is no turning back for Assad's clan or the rebels -- both sides know that would spell their doom.
One of the most bizarre verbal exchanges in Syrian President Bashar Assad's war against his own people recently took place in the Damascus suburb of Douma.
An opponent of the regime struck up a conversation with an extremely young soldier from the eastern part of the country: "After hesitating for a long time, the soldier accepted a sandwich and was amazed that someone was speaking Arabic with him," recalls the activist. "He asked where he was and was totally amazed when he found out that he was in Damascus. His commanding officer had told him that they were going to Israel to fight against the Zionists. But then he wondered why the Israelis were speaking Arabic with a Syrian accent."
Assad is keeping his troops in the dark. To prevent them from defecting, the soldiers are deployed to new locations every few days, primarily in the sprawling, poor northern suburbs of the capital city -- with no mobile phones and no knowledge of where they are. Living on scant rations, often going unpaid for months and totally exhausted, many take donations of bread from local residents and, time and again, accept a discreet offer to join the rebels.
After engulfing the cities of Homs, Idlib and Aleppo, the brutality and chaos of war has now also spread to the capital Damascus. The rebellion has reached the outskirts of the inner city -- Mezze in the west, Kafr Souseh in the north. Shots and explosions can be heard at night. Everyone knows, says a businessman who fled to the Jordanian capital Amman, that the fighting has entered its final stage: "But how long will it last? A month? A year?"
Rebellion Growing Despite Army Advances
The war in Syria is a war with opposing trends.
On the one hand, the regime's military machine is taking city after city. After capturing Baba Amr and now Idlib in the north, it is now attacking Daraa in the south. Residential neighborhoods are shelled by tanks and artillery. There are reports of people executed with shots to the head, corpses found with their eyes poked out and children beaten to death.
The borders with Lebanon and Turkey are being transformed into minefields where fleeing civilians are maimed or killed. A recent report by Amnesty International lists 31 methods of torture used by the regime, including electric shocks, rape and the so-called "German chair," which can result in permanent damage to backs and limbs.
Even with a death toll of 8,000 people, at least according to a conservative estimate by the United Nations, the US, Europe, Turkey and the Arab states are still shying away from doing more than issue sanctions and stern warnings as long as Russia and China, which both hold permanent seats on the UN Security Council, continue to block every resolution against Syria. There are no plans for military intervention or supplying arms to the rebels.
On the other hand, instead of dying down, the rebellion is growing. Contrary to assumptions that the pitifully armed Free Syrian Army (FSA) is weakened with each defeat, Assad's troops can barely keep large areas of the country in check. Government forces were able to shell Baba Amr, a suburb of Homs, on three sides, yet the big Sunni quarter in the heart of the city remains largely in the hands of the rebels. There are now daily protests even in Aleppo, the once calm financial and commercial center in the north.
The Syrian government's announcement that it intends to hold elections on May 7 is nothing but a bluff. The ruling clique, consisting of the Assad family and a number of generals, is repeating the policies of the dynasty's founder. Following his putsch in 1970, Hafez Assad also pledged more democracy and introduced a new constitution. When resistance mounted in the late 1970s, he had cities besieged and shelled, entire villages razed to the ground and hundreds of prisoners executed in a campaign that lasted three years. At the time, virtually none of this was leaked to the outside world until the brutal destruction of the old city of Hama in 1982. Afterwards, there was utter calm in the country -- until a year ago.
Regime Like a Mafia Cartel
In its apparent helplessness, the Western world is acting as if diplomacy still has a chance. But last Friday UN special envoy Kofi Annan was still waiting for a response from Damascus. It is "a basic misunderstanding" to view the Syrian dictatorship according to the standards of a normal government, says one of the few remaining European ambassadors in Damascus, choosing his words with caution. Indeed, the regime more closely resembles a mafia cartel, which is doing everything it can to defend its turf.
Until recently, a sign at Damascus International Airport greeted new arrivals with "Welcome to Assad's Syria," and that's exactly what it is: a country whose leading family acts as if it belongs to them. All branches of government, as well as legal and illegal business transactions, are directly or indirectly controlled by family members. If the Assad family were to lose its grip on power, it would spell disaster for the ruling Alawis, who make up less than 10 percent of the population, but control all key positions.
The rebellion is to be put down "using all means," a phrase that defected soldiers and officers say continuously crops up in military commands, and has even recently surfaced in Assad's hacked e-mail correspondence.
This shedding of all restraint is also illustrated by the return to influence of two of the president's cousins, whose criminal activities once even went too far for former dictator Hafez Assad. Fawwaz and Munzir Assad, the sons of Hafez's inconspicuous brother Jamil, used their influential names to forge a mafia empire in the northern port city of Latakia during the 1990s. They controlled the arms and drugs trade, along with the smuggling of predominantly Russian prostitutes to Syria.
Even back then, their smuggling gangs and groups of thugs went by the name of Shabiha: ghosts that the police and intelligence services cannot touch. Eyewitnesses from Latakia recall violent incidents involving the two men: how Munzir used a weapon to threaten a traffic cop who was trying to stop him, and then forced the officer to clean his car with a Kleenex tissue -- and how Fawwaz was dining in the city's finest fish restaurant when he saw a smudge on a glass and started shooting in all directions.
President's Cousins Head Brutal Militias
In 1998, Munzar was arrested on the orders of Hafez Assad and kept in jail for a while. In the early years of Bashar's rule, these two godfathers, with their short haircuts and penchant for wearing sunglasses, were seen as the black sheep of the family. Now, it's a different story. Their Shabiha have become pro-government militias that are allowed to beat, murder, rape and pillage at will. In addition to their daily pay, equivalent to some $40 (€30), this carte blanche for violence and personal gain has caused their ranks to swell by tens of thousands. The Shabiha are primarily Alawis, but also include a number of Sunnis and Druz, and in the Kurdish areas, it is high-ranking officials in the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) who assault protesters at demonstrations.
Assad's regime has created a monster that is slipping out of its control. The Syrian pound is rapidly losing value, and this is impelling the country's rulers to continue their violence. As soon as the Shabiha can no longer be paid, the only alternative is to have additional cities attacked to create opportunities for looting.
Even inside the intelligence services, which are completely commanded by Alawi officers, greed is taking the upper hand and overshadowing all political objectives. At first, arrested demonstrators and activists were occasionally released in exchange for ransom money.
Now, according to statements by former fellow prisoners, businessmen are being thrown into prison, above all at the detention facilities run by the Syrian Air Force's intelligence service -- not because they oppose the regime, but because their families are able to raise massive amounts of money to purchase their freedom.
Syria is in the process of sinking into a nightmare, which, despite all of today's horrors, has only just begun. There can be no going back, for either side: Assad's regime has to fear that revenge will be exacted by its victims if it now shows signs of weakness. For their part, the rebels fear that they will be wiped out if the regime regains control of the situation.
"It's a question of numbers," says Abd al-Bari, a wounded religious fighter from Homs, who is now being treated at a hospital in the northern Lebanese city of Tripoli: "There are 18 million Sunnis against him. Assad must kill them all. Otherwise, we'll win and kill him and his henchmen."
Translated from the German by Paul Cohen
http://www.spiegel.de/international/worl....-a-822189. html
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"All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed, second it is violently opposed, and third, it is accepted as self-evident."
Arthur Schopenhauer, Philosopher, 1788-1860
"In the final analysis, our most basic common link is that we all inhabit this small planet, breathe the same air, and we all cherish our children’s future."
John F. Kennedy |
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« Reply #215 on May 29, 2012, 12:33pm » | |
Child's chilling tale of loyalist slaughter
May 30, 2012
A Syrian boy aged 11 claims he played dead to escape pro-Assad gunmen who killed five members of his family in Houla, writes Martin Chulov in Beirut.
AN 11-year old boy has described how he smeared himself in the blood of his slain brother and played dead as loyalist gunmen burst into his home and killed six members of his family during a massacre in Houla, central Syria.
The young survivor's chilling account emerged as Russia continued to blame Syrian troops and opposition militias for the weekend rampage in the town that left at least 116 people dead and prompted fresh outrage against the regime's crackdown.
It comes as UN special envoy Kofi Annan was scheduled to have talks overnight in Damascus with President Bashar al-Assad, which is seen as the last hope of salvaging Syria's failed peace plan.
Speaking to The Guardian, the young survivor said government troops arrived in his district about 3pm on Friday, several hours after shells started falling on Houla.
''They came in armoured vehicles and there were some tanks,'' the boy said. ''They shot five bullets through the door of our house. They said they wanted Aref and Shawki, my father and my brother. They then asked about my uncle, Abu Haidar. They also knew his name.''
Shivering with fear, the boy stood towards the back of the entrance to his family home as gunmen then shot dead every family member in front of him.
''My mum yelled at them,'' said the boy. ''She asked: 'What do you want from my husband and son?' A bald man with a beard shot her with a machine gun from the neck down. Then they killed my sister, Rasha, with the same gun. She was five years old.
''Then they shot my brother Nader in the head and in the back. I saw his soul leave his body in front of me.
''They shot at me, but the bullet passed me and I wasn't hit. I was shaking so much I thought they would notice me. I put blood on my face to make them think I'm dead.''
Apparently convinced their work was done, the gunmen moved to other areas of the house and looted the family's possessions, the boy said.
''They stole three televisions and a computer,'' he said. ''And then they got ready to leave.''
On the way out of the house, the boy said the gunmen found the three men they had been looking for. They killed them all.
''They shot my father and uncle. And then they found Aref, my oldest brother, near the door. They shot him dead too.''
The Guardian was unable to verify the account and has chosen not to name the boy.
The boy said he waited until the armoured personnel carriers had moved from his street, then ran to his uncle's house nearby where he hid. He said the same militiamen knocked on the door minutes later, asking his uncle if he knew who lived in the house that they just rampaged through.
''They didn't know he was my relative and when they were talking to him they were describing six people dead in my house. They included me. They thought I was dead.''
Throughout a 15-minute conversation, the boy stayed calm and detached until he was pressed on how he knew the gunmen were pro-regime militia men, known as al-Shabiha. The irregular forces have been widely accused by residents of Houla of entering homes and slaughtering families. At least 32 of the dead are children and many appear to have been killed at close range.
''They got out of tanks and they had guns and knives,'' he repeated. ''Some of them were wearing civilian clothes, some army clothes.
''Why are you asking me who they were? I know who they were. We all know it. They were the regime army and people who fight with them. That is true.''
Damascus has denied its forces were responsible for the massacre, and again blamed terrorist groups.
Houla is a stronghold of the Free Syria Army in Homs province. Many military defectors have returned there to live with their families.
The regime in Damascus suggested a UN inquiry should be established to verify what took place in Houla.
Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/world/childs-chill....l#ixzz1wHU2oO8c
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"All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed, second it is violently opposed, and third, it is accepted as self-evident."
Arthur Schopenhauer, Philosopher, 1788-1860
"In the final analysis, our most basic common link is that we all inhabit this small planet, breathe the same air, and we all cherish our children’s future."
John F. Kennedy |
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« Reply #216 on May 31, 2012, 12:19pm » | |
Mexican Cartel Declares War on Cheetos
By Robert Beckhusen
May 29, 2012
![[image]](http://www.wired.com/images_blogs/dangerroom/2012/05/sabritas.jpg "[image]")
The logo for Sabritas, a Mexican snack chip subsidiary of PepsiCo, which saw dozens of vehicles and five warehouses burned by a drug cartel this month. Photo: chrizar/Flickr
Mexican drug cartels are not strictly drug cartels. One of their fastest-growing markets is extortion of private citizens and businesses. Don’t pay, and you can be threatened — or worse. But largely, the cartels target small businesses and individuals, and stay away from the larger industries. Now several arson attacks over the weekend against a Mexican snack chip subsidiary might be the first time the cartels have targeted a multinational corporation.
That corporation would be PepsiCo. According to press reports, masked men attacked five warehouses and vehicle lots on Friday and Saturday nights belonging to the U.S. snack and soft drink giant. More specifically, PepsiCo’s Mexican subsidiary: Sabritas. Dozens of yellow delivery trucks — which transport Sabritas chips and Fritos, Cheetos and Ruffles (among other brands) for the Mexican market — were burned. The good news: No one was injured or killed. At least one member of the Knights Templar cartel was reportedly arrested. Video has also emerged of firefighters battling the blazing trucks and the European Pressphoto Agency released images of Sabritas’ smiley-face mascot illuminated by the flames.
“What we cannot allow is for this kind of isolated case to become generalized,” Gerardo Gutierrez, president of Mexico’s Business Coordinating Council, told the Associated Press. “The authorities have to take forceful action.”
What’s already generalized is kidnapping, carjacking and extortion of private citizens. Corporations are simply too large, too complex, and it’s not easy — from a cartel’s perspective — to determine who within a corporation should be threatened in an extortion attempt. (Sabritas dominates the Mexican snack food market with about 75 percent market share.) If you’re looking to coerce the manager who is writing the checks, you might as well try to threaten a computer database. Mexico’s state-owned oil company, Pemex, has been subject to attacks on its oil pipelines. But this is due to theft, not extortion. Maquiladora factories — the duty-free workshops that sprawl along the U.S.-Mexico border — have largely been spared. So why did the cartel attack PepsiCo?
Again, it’s probably an extortion attempt. But another explanation involves rumors originating in the western states of Michoacán and Guanajuato — where the arson attacks occurred – that allege some of the company’s 14,500 delivery trucks are used by the federal security services for undercover intelligence operations. PepsiCo even issued a denial: “We repeat that in accordance with our code of conduct, all of our operations are carried out in the current regulatory framework and our vehicles and facilities are used exclusively to carry our products to our customer and clients,” read a company statement.
Perhaps the most bizarre part of the story: the perpetrators. A smaller splinter group of the western La Familia cartel, the Knights Templar have emerged only recently as a self-styled Christian military order. Before the March visit to Mexico by Pope Benedict XVI, the cartel pledged to cease fighting for the duration of the pontiff’s visit. The cartel has also sought to boost its appeal to the public through populist rhetoric, and has claimed it convinced Michoacan meat and tortilla vendors to lower their prices under “no pressure, no blackmail, much less charging fees.”
Alejandro Hope, a security analyst and former official for CISEN (Mexico’s equivalent to the CIA), suggested to the AP that the Knights Templar “have to be more aggressive in their use of extortion and alternative sources [of income] than practically any other cartel, except the Zetas,” he said.
Knights Templar propaganda likewise paints them as a muscle-bound medieval knights. Who are now at war with Cheetos — and Pepsi. Read that again. Thankfully, no one was hurt.
http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2012/05/cartels-cheetos/
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"All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed, second it is violently opposed, and third, it is accepted as self-evident."
Arthur Schopenhauer, Philosopher, 1788-1860
"In the final analysis, our most basic common link is that we all inhabit this small planet, breathe the same air, and we all cherish our children’s future."
John F. Kennedy |
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| | Re: The War On Terror II
« Reply #217 on Jun 15, 2012, 6:44am » | |
US drone program unpopular overseas: survey
June 14, 2012
![[image]](http://imageshack.us/a/img72/6747/gkdrones729201206141045.jpg "[image]")
An unmanned US Predator drone flies over Kandahar Air Field, southern Afghanistan, on a moon-lit night. Photo: AP
The Obama administration's increasing use of unmanned drone strikes to kill terror suspects is widely opposed around the world, according to a Pew Research Centre survey on the US image abroad.
In 17 out of 21 countries surveyed, more than half of the people disapproved of US drone attacks targeting extremist leaders and groups in nations such as Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia, Pew said Wednesday.
But in the United States, a majority, or 62 per cent, approved the drone campaign, making American public opinion the clear exception.
"There remains a widespread perception that the US acts unilaterally and does not consider the interests of other countries," the study authors said, especially in predominantly Muslim nations, where American anti-terrorism efforts are "still widely unpopular".
The White House declined to comment on the report. The Obama administration considers drone strikes one of its most effective tools to combat al-Qaeda — preferable to conventional war because the strikes produce fewer American casualties and are intended to be more palatable abroad because the use of drones keeps US troops on the ground to a minimum.
"In order to prevent terrorist attacks on the United States and to save American lives, the United States government conducts targeted strikes against specific al-Qaeda terrorists, sometimes using remotely piloted aircraft, often referred to publicly as drones," White House counterterrorism chief John Brennan said in April in a detailed and wide-ranging defence of the policy. He said targets are chosen by weighing whether there is a way to capture the person against how much of a threat the person presents to Americans.
The global drone campaign under President Barack Obama has killed a number of high-value leaders, arguably more than any other method including more than a decade of special operations raids inside Afghanistan. A strike in Pakistan this month killed al-Qaeda's most recent second in command, Abu Yahya al-Libi.
As conventional US forces draw down from their missions overseas and drone strikes ramp up, the ire directed at invading armies is being transferred to the unmanned aerial devices.
"We continue to see the public thinking Obama has not fulfilled his promise that he would seek international approval for military force, and that's related to displeasure with the drone strikes," Pew Research Centre President Andrew Kohut said Tuesday in advance of the release of the survey, titled "Global Opinion of Obama Slips, International Policies Faulted".
This is the first year Pew has included a question about the use of drones in its survey on the Obama administration, Kohut said. "It's now a global issue," he said.
The polls were nationally representative surveys conducted by telephone or in-person interviews in 21 countries in March and April.
In Pakistan, CIA drone strikes targeted terrorist suspects for years, with the Pakistani government publicly condemning them but privately continuing to work with U.S. intelligence on joint counterterrorist operations. That changed after the US Navy SEAL raid that killed Osama bin Laden inside Pakistan last year — carried out without Pakistani permission or knowledge. Pakistan considered that a violation of sovereignty and has demanded the U.S. either end the drone program or give Pakistan control of the aircraft, something U.S. officials say they will not do.
After a lull in strikes as the US and Pakistan tried to mend fences, strikes have picked up again in recent weeks because US officials believe they have nothing to gain diplomatically with the Pakistanis by holding back, according to two US officials who spoke on condition of anonymity to describe highly charged strategic negotiations.
In Yemen, both military and CIA drones have stepped up the campaign against al-Qaeda's branch there, considered the most deadly threat to US interests. Those strikes are carried out in coordination with Yemeni officials, with Yemenis signing off on the targets, Yemeni and US officials say.
In Somalia, drones are used less frequently. With no formal government in the war-torn, failed state, there is no one for the US to ask permission, but officials have been careful to keep both CIA and military strikes focused on suspects considered to be high-value targets, rather than targeting large training camps where dozens of would-be militants are learning their trade.
The idea is to remove the leaders rather than killing large numbers of trainees and pulling their extended families into battle of revenge against the Americans.
Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/world/us-drone-pro....l#ixzz1xrSt0Ftb
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"All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed, second it is violently opposed, and third, it is accepted as self-evident."
Arthur Schopenhauer, Philosopher, 1788-1860
"In the final analysis, our most basic common link is that we all inhabit this small planet, breathe the same air, and we all cherish our children’s future."
John F. Kennedy |
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Big Bunny
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« Reply #218 on Jun 19, 2012, 3:19am » | |
18 June 2012 Last updated at 23:53 GMT
US warns dissident Mujahideen-e Khalq to leave Iraq camp
The United States has warned an Iranian dissident group to leave a camp in Iraq where they have been based in exile, if it hopes to be removed from a US terrorist list.
The Mujahideen-e Khalq (MEK) has been campaigning to have its name removed from a list of terrorist groups.
Leaving Camp Ashraf in Iraq is one of the conditions set by the US in return for it considering delisting the MEK.
So far 2,000 MEK members have moved to a camp set up by the Iraqi government.
But between 1,200 and 1,400 residents remain at Camp Ashraf and the US State Department said all of them must transfer to Camp Hurriya, which is run by Iraqi authorities in order for there to be progress in their petition to be removed from the terrorism blacklist.
The MEK, also known as the People's Mujahideen Organisation of Iran (PMOI) led a guerrilla campaign against the US-backed Shah of Iran during the 1970s and also opposed Iran's clerical leaders who replaced the Shah.
It was given refuge in Iraq by Saddam Hussein but has fallen out of favour with Iraq's Shia-dominated leadership, which is taking steps to expel them.
Court order
The group was listed as a foreign terrorist organisation by the United States in 1997. But the MEK has insisted that it has renounced violence and has lobbied fiercely in Washington to gain congressional support for its delisting.
Last month a US appeals court ordered Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to decide within four months whether the group should be removed from the US terror blacklist, describing Ms Clinton's delay in acting on the MEK's petition as "egregious".
But according to reports, the MEK has halted its transfer from Camp Ashraf and has reduced contact with the Iraqi government and the United Nations, which is helping to process their refugee status.
"Cooperation in the closure of Camp Ashraf ... is a key factor in determining whether the organization remains invested in its violent past or is committed to leaving that past behind," State Department Spokeswoman Victoria Nuland said in a statement.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-18500300
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"All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed, second it is violently opposed, and third, it is accepted as self-evident."
Arthur Schopenhauer, Philosopher, 1788-1860
"In the final analysis, our most basic common link is that we all inhabit this small planet, breathe the same air, and we all cherish our children’s future."
John F. Kennedy |
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Big Bunny
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« Reply #219 on Jun 22, 2012, 11:17am » | |
21 June 2012 Last updated at 23:38 GMT
Jihadists' Twitter presence becomes more sophisticated
By Murad Batal al-Shishani Islamic Groups Analyst, BBC Arabic
Jihadists and their sympathisers' presence on Twitter is limited, rather sophisticated and increasing.
That's what I found after spending more than a month-and-a-half following their tweets.
The micro-blogging website Twitter, which attracts more than 100m users, allows people to create a list of Twitter users they follow.
You can observe a stream of tweets for people in that list.
I created a list for more than 35 accounts which explicitly affiliate themselves with jihadist movements.
Some of these Twitter accounts have thousands of followers.
By the end of May, Shabakat Ansar al-Mujahideen (Partisans of Mujahideens' Network) had announced its presence on Twitter.
The web forum is a famous site that disseminates jihadist propaganda and serves as a means of communication for jihadist sympathisers,
Also the al-Midad Network of Yemen-based Ansar al-Sharia joined Twitter recently.
But these were not the only official incidences of jihadists on Twitter; the Taliban in Afghanistan, and al-Shabab in Somalia also have a strong presence on the site.
The Lion of Jihad
Other al-Qaeda-affiliated media outlets such as The Jihad Media Elite, which specialises in reproducing selected materials of jihadists, also has an account on Twitter.
These official accounts mainly use the site to promote links to jihadist material and update followers as soon as the content is broadcast on the jihadist forums.
Another Twitter account is dedicated to promoting jihadist poetry and hymns.
Some "tweeple" - a jargon term used to describe people who use Twitter - have created accounts for well-known jihadist figures including the leader of al-Qaeda, Ayman al-Zawahiri, the late American-Yemeni cleric, Anwar al-Awlaki, and others.
Despite using them to tweet their writing, speeches and messages, they have stated clearly that these are non-official accounts.
Recently, jihadist sympathisers welcomed Assad al-Jihad 2's arrival on Twitter.
Assad al-Jihad 2 (the Lion of Jihad 2) is a pseudonym of a regular contributor on jihadist web forums.
His articles, which are highly regarded by their users, show that he is an authority who speaks on behalf of al-Qaeda and affiliated groups.
His tweets are attracting followers.
The other type of jihadist presence on Twitter is represented by jihad sympathisers who do not represent official affiliation but they explicitly support the jihadist movements.
They use Twitter, in addition to promoting what officials produce, to encourage jihad, advocate causes and also to defend their ideology.
Saad al-Khathlan, a Saudi cleric and professor of Islamic jurisprudence at Al-Imam Muhammad ibn Saud Islamic University, tweeted on 3 June criticising al-Qaeda.
He wrote that al-Qaeda does not represent "right Islamic jihad", arguing that they have not shot even a bullet at "Zionists in Israel," nor on "the Nusayri regime in Syria", another name for the Alawite sect to which President Bashar al-Assad belongs.
These tweets brought Khathlan a huge amount of criticism from jihadist sympathisers.
Assad al-Jihad 2 asked him for public debate on the internet, while jihad sympathisers on Twitter hashtagged him.
To hashtag is to use the # symbol to mark a keyword or a topic which allow it to appear in a single stream of related tweets, and make it easier to find in a search.
Jihad sympathisers defended al-Qaeda, accusing Khathlan of being a mouthpiece of the Saudi regime, and insisting that al-Qaeda and its affiliates have attacked Israel and have a presence in Syria.
Campaign tool
Syria is one of the topics dominating jihad sympathisers' Twitter activities.
They are encouraging donations for the uprising against the Assad regime, and are using Twitter to promoting their channels for such donations after Saudi Arabia banned fundraising for Syria in June.
Jihadist sympathisers are also campaigning via the site to release clerics - including jihadist supporters - from Saudi prisons.
Their Twitter timelines are full of stories about prisoners' biographies, their families' activities to support them and allegations that they have been tortured by Saudi authorities.
I tried to check what Twitter is doing to monitor such tweets and what its policy is regarding this.
My emails have not yet been answered - email is the only method to reach Twitter, as even if one calls, an automated message asks you to send an email.
The nature of Twitter, which is a wide open public forum, means that the presence of jihadists on the site is expected to increase.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-18532839
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"All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed, second it is violently opposed, and third, it is accepted as self-evident."
Arthur Schopenhauer, Philosopher, 1788-1860
"In the final analysis, our most basic common link is that we all inhabit this small planet, breathe the same air, and we all cherish our children’s future."
John F. Kennedy |
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Big Bunny
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« Reply #220 on Jun 22, 2012, 11:20am » | |
22 June 2012 Last updated at 01:01 GMT
Pakistan officials 'hindering' US diplomats
Rising obstruction of US envoys by officials in Pakistan is "significantly impairing" the work of US personnel there, a state department report says.
The findings said interference by Pakistani officials reached "new levels of intensity" in 2011.
The US raid on Osama Bin Laden's compound and a Nato air strike that killed 24 Pakistani soldiers were identified as turning points.
Recent months have seen a marked deterioration of US-Pakistan relations.
Pakistan withdrew military co-operation in the wake of the deadly November air strike, and correspondents say it marked a change in relations between the two countries.
The report, by the state department's inspector general, acknowledged that the Pakistani government had previously interfered with US officials on its soil.
However, it said the problem had become much worse and recommended that the issue should be taken up by the US with Pakistan at the highest levels of government.
"Official Pakistani obstructionism and harassment, an endemic problem in Pakistan, has increased to the point where it is significantly impairing mission operations and program implementation," the state department review said.
It described the harassment as "deliberate, wilful and systematic" and said examples of the obstruction included delays in getting visas, holding up shipments for construction projects and aid programmes, and surveillance of employees.
The report also claimed US officials were being singled out more than other international diplomats.
"While other diplomatic missions have experienced similar treatment, the United States is clearly the principal target," the report said.
The report was based on visits to the US missions in the Pakistani cities of Islamabad, Karachi, Peshawar, and Lahore.
It describes the raid on Bin Laden's compound as a double embarrassment for the government, saying it was evidence of "both Pakistani government incompetence and its inability to detect or defend against a military intervention".
"Events of the past year have rocked the US-Pakistani relationship and fundamentally altered the assumptions on which US engagement with Pakistan has been based since 2009," it added.
Analysis
Jonathan Blake BBC News, Washington
The report is strikingly blunt. Events of 2011 have had such an impact on relations between Washington and Islamabad that US diplomats in Pakistan are struggling to do their jobs. Meddling officials have long been a frustration, but in asking for the concerns to be raised in continuing dialogue, the state department is hoping that Pakistan will cut them some slack.
The US feels Pakistan should be more pro-active in combating militants, but it must balance its frustration with the need to keep a military ally. This report is yet another sign that in Washington, patience with Pakistan is wearing thin.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-18545708
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"All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed, second it is violently opposed, and third, it is accepted as self-evident."
Arthur Schopenhauer, Philosopher, 1788-1860
"In the final analysis, our most basic common link is that we all inhabit this small planet, breathe the same air, and we all cherish our children’s future."
John F. Kennedy |
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Big Bunny
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« Reply #221 on Jun 26, 2012, 7:03am » | |
Taliban leader bans polio vaccinations in protest at drone strikes
The Taliban have banned an anti-polio campaign in Pakistan, accusing health workers of spying for the US
Jon Boone in Lahore
guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 26 June 2012 08.42 BST
A senior Taliban commander has effectively banned polio eradication in one of the most troubled areas of the Pakistan frontier in an effort to force the US to end drone strikes.
Leaflets distributed in South Waziristan on behalf of Mullah Nazir, the leader of the Federally Administered Tribal Agencies (Fata) accused health workers who administer anti-polio drops of being US spies.
"In the garb of these vaccination campaigns, the US and its allies are running their spying networks in Fata which has brought death and destruction on them in the form of drone strikes," the leaflet said.
It also questioned the sincerity of international efforts to tackle the highly infectious disease.
"On the one hand, they are killing innocent children in drone strikes, while on the other hand they are saving their lives by vaccinating them," the printed note said.
The ban is yet another setback for the polio eradication campaign in Pakistan, which is one of just three countries in the world where children are still struck down by the disease.
It is the third time a Taliban leader has banned polio vaccinations in areas they control.
Earlier this month, Hafiz Gul Bahadar, the leader of the Taliban in North Waziristan, made similar claims about polio vaccinations being used for spying and banned any further work until drone attacks end. In 2007, Mullah Fazlullah, the leader of the Taliban in Swat, deterred people from having their children vaccinated, saying it was a plot by foreign powers to sterilise Muslims.
Drone strikes have intensified in recent months, particularly following the Nato conference in Chicago in May when the Pakistani government failed to deliver on promises to open its borders to supply convoys carrying goods to Nato troops in Afghanistan.
North and South Waziristan are where the vast bulk of US missile strikes by drone aircraft have taken place.
The leaflet raised the case of Shakil Afridi, the frontier doctor who ran a hepatitis vaccination campaign in Abbottabad as cover for a CIA effort to find intelligence about the whereabouts of Osama bin Laden.
Afridi, who has since been arrested and jailed by Pakistani authorities, provided important help in the hunt for the US's most wanted man, the former director of the CIA has said.
But humanitarian organisations have been outraged by the use of vaccination as a cover for spying, saying it has entrenched suspicions in the tribal areas about their work.
The new prime minister of Pakistan said on Monday he would formally protest to Kabul after militants killed 13 Pakistani troops, beheading seven of them.
Officials said the militants carried out the attack in Pakistan's Upper Dir area from bases inside Afghanistan.
"We have strongly protested and I will, too, God willing, talk about this to [Afghan president Hamid] Karzai," said Raja Pervaiz Ashraf, speaking in Karachi.
Police officials in eastern Afghanistan have denied the claim.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/jun/26/taliban-bans-polio-vaccinations
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"All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed, second it is violently opposed, and third, it is accepted as self-evident."
Arthur Schopenhauer, Philosopher, 1788-1860
"In the final analysis, our most basic common link is that we all inhabit this small planet, breathe the same air, and we all cherish our children’s future."
John F. Kennedy |
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Big Bunny
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| | Re: The War On Terror II
« Reply #222 on Jun 28, 2012, 11:35pm » | |
Tenants launch legal action to stop missiles being put on roof for Olympics
Residents of east London tower block say missile battery would breach their human rights
Owen Bowcott, legal affairs correspondent
guardian.co.uk, Thursday 28 June 2012 17.22 BST
![[image]](http://imageshack.us/a/img849/9496/olympicsmissileairdefe0.jpg "[image]")
Missile defence systems are to be stationed across London during the Olympics to protect against terrorist attacks. Photograph: Peter Macdiarmid/Getty Images
Council tenants in east London have launched a legal action to stop the Ministry of Defence stationing surface-to-air missiles on the roof of their tower block during the Olympics.
Solicitors instructed by the residents' association at the Fred Wigg Tower in Leytonstone have formally lodged objections to plans for the missile battery to be staffed 24 hours a day while the flats are subject to armed police patrols.
The association is seeking an injunction preventing the ground-based air defence system being deployed above the heads of families living in the block's 117 flats.
Lawyers from Howe & Co are also applying for judicial review of the plan – which ministers have not yet authorised – on the grounds that the residents' human rights have been breached because they were not consulted about the proposals.
The MoD has submitted advice on how to deploy anti-aircraft weapons across six sites in the capital if there is a security scare during the Games.
Martin Howe, the firm's senior partner, said the application for a temporary injunction and for permission to seek judicial review could be considered by a judge soon. "The papers are lodged and this needs to get in front of a judge as quickly as possible," he said at the Royal Courts of Justice in London. "There are men and women who are very, very afraid."
The block, home to hundreds of children, suffered damage in a fire last December, said Howe. "Residents had to be evacuated and it was a fearful experience. The last thing they need again is the risk of an explosion or disaster at their block."
The tenants' lawyers are arguing that there has been no "fair and proper consultation process" and that the MoD is breaching article 8 and article 1 of protocol 1 of the European convention on human rights, which protect an individual's right to private life and peaceful enjoyment of their home.
They want the MoD to be prohibited from using the block until there has been a proper consultation process and an equality impact assessment (EIA) carried out which takes into account the needs of disabled residents.
Howe said: "It is incredible that the MoD think it acceptable to present women, children and men living in a block of flats in a densely populated residential area of east London with the fait accompli of having a live, high-explosive missile salvo above their heads whilst they go about their daily chores and whilst they sleep at night.
"Security of the Olympics is, of course, extremely important but could the MoD not find any other way of protecting the Olympic village than by putting the lives of hundreds of innocent council tenants at risk by turning their homes into a military battlefield position? The MoD has had seven years to work out its security plans and it needs to rethink this issue swiftly."
The other potential sites are Lexington Building in Tower Hamlets, east London; Blackheath Common and Oxleas Wood, both in south-east London; William Girling Reservoir in the Lea Valley reservoir chain in Enfield; and Barn Hill at Netherhouse Farm in Epping Forest.
The MoD said: "We are aware of the legal action following arrangements the MoD has taken up with the local landowners.
"The safety of the London Games is paramount and, working alongside the police, the MoD has been involved in a range of community engagements in these areas where ground-based air defence may be sited.
"This has involved meeting local communities, briefings and meetings with local MPs. Events have also been held to show residents the equipment and enable them to speak to [the soldiers who operate the missiles]."
In an interview with the Muslim News, David Anderson QC, the independent reviewer of terrorist legislation, said he had questioned the government about what powers were being used to put the missiles on the rooftops.
"I am watching like a hawk," he said. "We have a lot of people in intelligence agencies manning their desks, again their leave cancelled and no doubt there will be a temptation for people to use that time as the Olympics become closer to arrest people. There is a possibility that people will get worried and they will resort to power of arrest."
http://www.guardian.co.uk/law/2012/jun/28/legal-action-missiles-roof-olympics
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"All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed, second it is violently opposed, and third, it is accepted as self-evident."
Arthur Schopenhauer, Philosopher, 1788-1860
"In the final analysis, our most basic common link is that we all inhabit this small planet, breathe the same air, and we all cherish our children’s future."
John F. Kennedy |
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Big Bunny
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| | Re: The War On Terror II
« Reply #223 on Jun 28, 2012, 11:48pm » | |
Police arrest two on suspicion of Olympics-related terrorism
Offences are understood to be connected with a security operation at the Olympic canoeing venue in Waltham Abbey
Shiv Malik
guardian.co.uk, Thursday 28 June 2012 20.52 BST
Police have detained two men on suspicion of terrorism offences which are understood to be connected with a security operation at the Olympic canoeing venue, the Guardian has learned.
The arrests, which were carried out in dawn raids at separate addresses in east London, took place after a substantial Hertfordshire police operation on Monday involving dozens of officers combing the banks of the Olympic canoeing venue in Waltham Abbey.
Police arrested the men aged 18 and 32 at 7am on Thursday morning on suspicion of the commission, preparation or instigation of acts of terrorism.
The men are being held at a central London police station and two addresses in east London are being searched by police.
A resident of the Hazlemere marina, immediately down river of the Olympic canoeing venue, told the Guardian that there was a large operation after another marina resident reported to police that a number of men were behaving suspiciously in a dinghy on Sunday evening.
The narrowboat resident, who did not want to be named, said: "There were lots and lots of Hertfordshire police officers. Lots of dogs had been brought in and were combing the area, and then police officers were coming around to the boats asking if they had any CCTV."
The marina resident said that there were around 20-30 officers, "combing all the banks … looking for something."
He said: "One policewoman explained that three men had been sighted in an inflatable dinghy going up the river."
He added that the stretch of the river was vulnerable as canal boats had been moved out of central London and had been allowed to dock near the canoeing venue.
"This Olympic venue has been totally left wide open … and that whole stretch of the river is totally vulnerable … there's been no visible police presence," the resident said.
"It's only because one of the boating community actually saw it and reported it, that [the police were called in]..." he added.
In a statement police said: "We can confirm that inquires were carried out by Hertfordshire police who have been liaising with Met police counter-terrorism command."
They added: "At approximately 07:00hrs today, Thursday June 28, officers from the counter-terrorism command arrested two men under the Terrorism Act 2000 on suspicion of the commission, preparation or instigation of acts of terrorism.
"The men were arrested at separate residential addresses in east London. Both addresses are currently being searched under the Terrorism Act 2000."
Associated Press reported that a man who identified himself as a friend of the detainees said the 18-year-old was Jamal ud-Din and said the older man was someone he knew only as "Zakariya".
Mizanur Rahman, 29, told AP that the arrests "might have had something to do with the fact that they recently went canoeing" on the River Lee, a branch of which runs through the Olympic site in east London.
Rahman told AP that he saw nothing amiss with the activities. "It's just people trying to get into the Olympic spirit," he said, adding that he believed authorities would try "painting it as jihad training".
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2012/jun/28....rorism-canoeing
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"All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed, second it is violently opposed, and third, it is accepted as self-evident."
Arthur Schopenhauer, Philosopher, 1788-1860
"In the final analysis, our most basic common link is that we all inhabit this small planet, breathe the same air, and we all cherish our children’s future."
John F. Kennedy |
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Big Bunny
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| | Re: The War On Terror II
« Reply #224 on Jul 2, 2012, 10:10am » | |
'We're going to destroy everything before we apply Sharia in this city'
July 2, 2012 - 10:56AM
![[image]](http://imageshack.us/a/img94/2400/timbuktu729420x0.jpg "[image]")
Part of a mosque in Timbuktu, which militants have threatened to destroy. Photo: AFP
Islamist rebels say they will continue to destroy historic sites in Timbuktu before they implement strict Sharia law, as Mali's government compared the destruction to "war crimes".
Ansar Dine spokesman Sanda Abu Mohamed said that Islamists will continue the destruction they started on Saturday.
"We're going to destroy everything before we apply Sharia in this city," he said.
Resident Moussa Maiga said the Islamists have expressed disapproval of what they think is worship of the tombs of the Muslim saints.
"They say that the population loves the saints like God," he said.
But resident Bouya Ould Sidi Mohamed said the historic city has long had Muslim roots.
"Timbuktu was an Islamic city since the 12th century, and we know what the religion says about the saints' tombs," he said.
"Contrary to what the Islamists or the Wahabis of Ansar Dine say, here in Timbuktu, the people don't love the saints like God, but just seek the saints' blessings because they are our spiritual guides."
Mali's government condemned the destruction, which they say is akin to "war crimes".
"The council of ministers has just approved, in principle, the referral to the International Criminal Court and a working group is working to this end," the government said in a statement.
The UN cultural agency on Saturday called for an immediate halt to the destruction of three sacred Muslim tombs. Irina Bokova, who heads the UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation, cited in a statement Saturday reports the centuries-old mausoleums of Sidi Mahmoud, Sidi, Moctar and Alpha Moya had been destroyed.
On Thursday, UNESCO's World Heritage Committee, meeting in St Petersburg, Russia, placed the mausoleums of Muslim saints on its list of sites in danger at the request of Mali's government.
Islamist fighters from the Ansar Dine group have declared that they now control the northern half of Mali after driving out an ethnic Tuareg separatist group. The rebel groups took advantage of a power vacuum created by a March coup in the capital to seize ground in the north.
The Islamists' growing reach is more worrying news for the landlocked West African nation.
UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon called the attacks on the mausoleums "totally unjustified" and urged all sides to preserve Mali's cultural heritage, according to a statement.
Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/world/were-going-t.... #ixzz1zThgOSTY
|
"All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed, second it is violently opposed, and third, it is accepted as self-evident."
Arthur Schopenhauer, Philosopher, 1788-1860
"In the final analysis, our most basic common link is that we all inhabit this small planet, breathe the same air, and we all cherish our children’s future."
John F. Kennedy |
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