English LCCC Newsbulletin For Lebanese, Lebanese Related, Global News & Editorials
For April 13/2020
Compiled & Prepared by: Elias Bejjani

The Bulletin's Link on the lccc Site
http://data.eliasbejjaninews.com/eliasnews19/english.april13.20.htm

News Bulletin Achieves Since 2006
Click Here to enter the LCCC Arabic/English news bulletins Achieves since 2006

Bible Quotations For today
When Jesus rose early on the first day of the week, he appeared first to Mary Magdalene, out of whom he had driven seven demons
Mark 16/09-20/When Jesus rose early on the first day of the week, he appeared first to Mary Magdalene, out of whom he had driven seven demons. She went and told those who had been with him and who were mourning and weeping. When they heard that Jesus was alive and that she had seen him, they did not believe it. Afterward Jesus appeared in a different form to two of them while they were walking in the country. These returned and reported it to the rest; but they did not believe them either. Later Jesus appeared to the Eleven as they were eating; he rebuked them for their lack of faith and their stubborn refusal to believe those who had seen him after he had risen. He said to them, “Go into all the world and preach the gospel to all creation. Whoever believes and is baptized will be saved, but whoever does not believe will be condemned. And these signs will accompany those who believe: In my name they will drive out demons; they will speak in new tongues; they will pick up snakes with their hands; and when they drink deadly poison, it will not hurt them at all; they will place their hands on sick people, and they will get well.”After the Lord Jesus had spoken to them, he was taken up into heaven and he sat at the right hand of God. Then the disciples went out and preached everywhere, and the Lord worked with them and confirmed his word by the signs that accompanied it.

Titles For The Latest English LCCC Lebanese & Lebanese Related News & Editorials published on April 12-13/2020
Halleluiah! Jesus Has Risen! Indeed He Has Risen/Elias Bejjani/April 12/2020
11 new coronavirus cases in Lebanon
Ministry of Health confirms new Coronavirus cases in Lebanon
Hariri Hospital: Three recovered cases, two patients released from hospital to be home quarantined
Lebanon's Coronavirus Cases Rise to 630
No Virus Cases on Kuwait, Dubai, Luanda and Rome Planes
Politicians Scramble to Reject Any Deposits 'Haircut'
International Warning Against Changing Lebanon’s Banking, Economic Scene
Mobilization Restricts Movement of Syrian Refugees in Lebanon
Israel installs surveillance cameras on the southern side of Abbad site
Al-Rahi Urges Respect for Lockdown Measures in Easter Sermon
Rahi officiates over Easter Mass in Bkirki
Tourism Ministry launches its campaign, “To bring back the breath of life...Stay home!”
No resurrection for Lebanon without justice, says Najm
Hassan confers with Aswad, Khoury on Corona measures in Jezzine
Assassination of Hezbollah commander in South Lebanon sparks speculation
Subdued celebration of Easter as Lebanon’s Christians cope with COVID-19 lockdown/Samar Kadi/The Arab Weekly/April 12/2020

Titles For The Latest English LCCC Miscellaneous Reports And News published on April 12-13/2020
Banish ‘self-centeredness,’ Pope Francis tells the world as it faces coronavirus
Mourning 100,000 covid-19 deaths
Coronavirus Death Toll Passes 75,000 in Europe
Guterres Urges Warring Parties in Mideast to Cease Fighting
UN Calls for Unconditional Ceasefire in Middle East
Israeli President Considers Other Scenarios If Gantz, Netenyahu Fail to Form Gov
Gantz Denied Extension to Form Israel Govt.
Displaced Syrians Return Cautiously to Their Destroyed Homes in Aleppo, Idlib
Palestinians Warn From Consequences of Annexing Occupied Lands to Israel
Iraq’s Kadhimi Takes First Step to Form New Government
Turkey Fears Incapability of Fulfilling Commitments Regarding Aleppo-Latakia Highway
Al-Fashqa Returns to Sudanese Sovereignty After Agreement With Ethiopia
UNSC Calls on Houthis to Commit to Ceasefire Without Delay
Johnson Says UK 'Will Defeat' Coronavirus after Leaving Hospital
Spain's Daily Virus Toll Rises Again with 619 Dead
Report: China Chasing Coronavirus Praise from Germany

Titles For The Latest LCCC English analysis & editorials from miscellaneous sources published on April 12-13/2020
“Jihadists Martyred Him for Refusing to Renounce Jesus Christ”: The Persecution of Christians, February 2020/Raymond Ibrahim/Gatestone Institute/April 12/2020
Growing Turkish interference in Yemen stirs concern in Cairo/Amr Emam/The Arab Weekly/April 12/2020
OPEC, Russia reach tentative deal to reduce global crude supplies/Russia, Saudis bury differences but new deal remains at risk./Jareer Elass/The Arab Weekly/April 12/2020
The face of the world is bound to change after COVID-19/Khairallah Khairallah/The Arab Weekly/April 12/2020
Turns Out $2 Trillion in Stimulus Isn’t Nearly Enough Stimulus/Mark Gongloff/Bloomberg/April 12/2020
Coronavirus: Developing nations face choice between infection and starvation/Sultan Althari/Al Arabiya/April 2020
Coronavirus: US lawmakers should look closer to home for a solution to the oil crisis/Tom Ashby and Matthew Amlôt/Al Arabiya/April 2020
Iraq being dragged down by drowning Iranian regime/Baria Alamuddin/Arab News/April 12/2020
Iran’s US-sanctioned banks operating freely in Germany/Dr. Majid Rafizadeh/Arab News/April 12/2020

The Latest English LCCC Lebanese & Lebanese Related News & Editorials published on April 12-13/2020
Halleluiah! Jesus Has Risen! Indeed He Has Risen
Elias Bejjani/April 12/2020
http://eliasbejjaninews.com/archives/85061/elias-bejjani-halleluiah-jesus-has-risen-indeed-he-has-risen-2/
Don’t be amazed. You seek Jesus, the Nazarene, who has been crucified. He has risen. He is not here (Mark 16/05)
Do not be afraid, “Don’t be amazed”, with these reassuring and soothing words The Angel spoke to Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James, and Salome.
They had came to the tomb on Sunday morning to mummify and anoint Jesus’ Body as the Jewish tradition required. They thought death had defeated Jesus and ended His life as it does to every human being.
On their way, they were sadly thinking and wondering who will roll for them the stone away from the tomb’s entrance so they can get in and perform the mummifying and anointing process.
While halfway from the tomb, they saw that the enormous stone had been rolled away. When they entered the tomb they found that Jesus’ body was not there. They found only the shrouds that His body was wrapped with on His burial after the crucifixion.
Christ is the Way, Christ is the Truth, and Christ is the actual eternal life that we long for. We strongly believe with full conviction that Christ dwells in His Holy Church, and exists in its Mysteries (Sacraments).
He is always present in the Holy Eucharist that we receive during every mass. Christ at all times is ready, willing and delighted to help us in our burdens when we call on Him and ask for His mercy.
“Come to me, all you who labour and are heavily burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart; and you will find rest for your souls. 11:30 For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.” (Matthew11:28-29)
The miracle of resurrection is the cornerstone of our Christian faith. This pivotal liturgical fact was strongly stressed by Saint Paul in his First Letter to the Corinthians, (15/12-26):
Through Crucifixion and resurrection, Christ has overcome death, broke its thorn, and granted us His eternal forgiveness from the original sin.
With His death and resurrection, death in its traditional earthly human concept has been abolished forever and Sin since then has become the actual death that leads the sinners to Gahanna into the unquenchable fire. When our bodies die, we sleep in the hope of resurrection.
On Jesus’ return on the Day of Judgment, the dead will be the first to rise and escort Him. “Behold, I tell you a mystery. We will not all sleep, but we will all be changed, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised incorruptible, and we will be changed”, (Paul’s First Letter to the Corinthians 15 / 51-52).
Easter Sunday is a holy feast of love, humility, forgiveness, brotherhood, tolerance and repentance.
Religiously we are not to participate in any of these feast prayers or make any offerings or receive the Holy Communion unless we replace hatred with love, grudges with forgiveness, rejection of others with tolerance, arrogance with humility, greed with contentment, deception with transparency, and evil with righteousness.
If we do not learn how to tame our selfishness, anger, hatred and forgive others for whatever evil deeds they commit against us and reconcile with them, than we do not qualify to be called Jesus’ followers.
Our prayers will not be heard or responded to, if we do not practice the grace of forgiveness as did He who was crucified for our salvation.
“If therefore you are offering your gift at the altar, and there remember that your brother has anything against you, leave your gift there before the altar, and go your way. First be reconciled to your brother, and then come and offer your gift”. (Matthew 5/23-24).
Meanwhile our true faith in Jesus and in His Sacrifices won’t be complete unless we adopt in our thinking, deeds and language the pure components of sacrifice, honesty, truth, self respect, meekness and decency.
“Let no corrupt speech proceed out of your mouth, but such as is good for building up as the need may be, that it may give grace to those who hear. Don’t grieve the Holy Spirit of God, in whom you were sealed for the day of redemption. Let all bitterness, wrath, anger, outcry, and slander, be put away from you, with all malice. And be kind to one another, tender-hearted, forgiving each other, just as God also in Christ forgave you. (Ephesians 4/29-32)
For our prayers to be looked upon and heard by Almighty God, we are required to reconcile with ourselves and with all others on whom we have inflicted pain and injustice, and treated with an evil manner.
To please the Lord we are required to genuinely, heartily and overtly perform all required acts of repentance for all our mischievous conducts and wrongdoings.
Mark 11/24-26: “Therefore I tell you, all things whatever you pray and ask for, believe that you have received them, and you shall have them. Whenever you stand praying, forgive, if you have anything against anyone; so that your Father, who is in heaven, may also forgive you your transgressions. But if you do not forgive, neither will your Father in heaven forgive your transgressions”
Almighty God has endowed us with His love talent, (minas) and expects us to faithfully invest it in helping others who are in need. He expect us to observe all the teaching of His Bible so that He will reward us on the Day of Judgment and put us on His Right Side.
On this Holy Day of Resurrection, we are ought with faith and hope to be aware that Jesus’ Holy blood was shed on the Cross for our sake. Meanwhile remembrance of His death and resurrection is a Godly consignment that we are entrusted with. It’s up to us either to honour this trust or betray it. Halleluiah! Jesus has risen! Indeed He has risen.

11 new coronavirus cases in Lebanon
Annahar Staff /Annahar/April 12/2020
The rate of deaths remains a constant at 20 casualties, and one recovered patient raising the number of recoveries to 77. BEIRUT: The Ministry of Public Health reported 11 new cases of coronavirus in Lebanon, increasing the total number of cases to 630 as of April 12. The rate of deaths remains a constant at 20 casualties, and one recovered patient raising the number of recoveries to 77. No cases were recorded among Lebanese expats repatriated from Kuwait, U.A.E, Italy, and Angola.

Ministry of Health confirms new Coronavirus cases in Lebanon
NNA/Sunday 12/2020
Eleven new cases of the novel coronavirus have been confirmed in Lebanon by the Ministry of Public Health in a statement on Sunday, raising the number of infected people in the country to 630.

Hariri Hospital: Three recovered cases, two patients released from hospital to be home quarantined
NNA/Sunday 12/2020
Rafik Hariri University Hospital indicated on Sunday in its daily report on the latest developments about the Corona Covid-19 virus, that the total number of laboratory-confirmed cases of infected patients currently present in the hospital's health isolation area has reached 28 cases, adding that 22 suspected cases were transferred from other hospitals. The Hospital added in its report that 3 patients have recovered from the virus after the result of their PCR examinations came out negative in both times, thus bringing the total number of complete recoveries to-date to 80 cases. "According to the directions of the World Health Organization and the Ministry of Public Health, two cases infected with Corona virus were released from the hospital to be home quarantined, after their attending physician confirmed their clinical recovery, and informed them of all measures and instructions related to domestic isolation,” the Hospital statement added. It also indicated that “the health condition of one of the critical cases has improved, whereby the patient has been transferred from intensive care to the isolation unit," while stressing that all those infected with the virus "are receiving the necessary care in the isolation unit, and their condition is stable except for 3 cases who are in critical condition." In conclusion, the Hospital noted that more information about the number of infected cases on all Lebanese territories can be found in the daily report issued by the Ministry of Public Health.

Lebanon's Coronavirus Cases Rise to 630
Naharnet/April 12/2020
Lebanon has confirmed 11 new infections of the COVID-19 coronavirus, which raises the country's total to 630, the Health Ministry said on Sunday. It added that no deaths were recorded over the past 24 hours, which means that the death toll still stands at 20. Lebanon declared a state of “general mobilization” on March 15 in a bid to contain the pandemic, shuttering non-essential private and public institutions and closing the air, land and sea ports of entry. It later decided to evacuate Lebanese expats from a number of countries and several flights have so far landed at the airport, carrying several coronavirus-infected expats. According to the Heath Ministry, all the expats who arrived over the past 24 hours tested negative for the virus.

No Virus Cases on Kuwait, Dubai, Luanda and Rome Planes
Naharnet/April 12/2020
All the Lebanese expats who returned Saturday from Kuwait, Dubai, Angola's Luanda and Rome have tested negative for the novel coronavirus, the Health Ministry said Sunday. “The results of tests conducted for the 123 passengers who arrived yesterday aboard the flight coming from Kuwait have come out negative,” the Ministry said in a statement. “The test will be repeated for one of the passengers over the next two days to confirm whether his result is actually negative,” it noted. It also confirmed that the 126 passengers who arrived from Dubai, the 148 who came from Luanda and the 122 who returned from Dubai have all tested negative. The Ministry, however, reiterated that those who tested negative must still abide by home quarantine, reassuring that they will be followed up by the Ministry on daily basis. “Those who show any symptoms will be sent to hospital to repeat the lab test,” it said. Lebanon confirmed 11 new infections of the COVID-19 coronavirus on Sunday, which raises the country's total to 630.

Politicians Scramble to Reject Any Deposits 'Haircut'
Naharnet/April 12/2020
A proposed “haircut” draft law will not pass in parliament because it is a “blatant theft,” informed parliamentary sources have said. “The state cannot begin its plan by robbing the bank deposits, especially those of the expats who have placed their confidence in the Lebanese banking system,” the sources told An-Nahar newspaper in remarks published Sunday. “The state must privatize some sectors and sell others or else Lebanon will be doomed. They are changing Lebanon's economic, financial and social face,” the sources urged and warned. Finance Minister Ghazi Wazni meanwhile announced that “everything being said about a haircut is inaccurate.” “It requires a law and therefore the government has not tackled it in any way whatsoever,” he said.

International Warning Against Changing Lebanon’s Banking, Economic Scene
Beirut- Mohammed Shokair/Asharq Al-Awsat/Sunday, 12 April, 2020
Lebanon’s draft economic rescue plan, currently being discussed by the cabinet, was met with international concerns. Approving the plan without introducing fundamental changes will harm the economic and banking scene in Lebanon, which is based on a free economic system.
The rescue plan may also hinder foreign support for the small Levantine country. Asharq Al-Awsat learned from Western diplomatic sources in Beirut that a number of European ambassadors in Lebanon had informed concerned authorities and public figures that the rescue plan is not suitable as a general framework to stop the economic and financial collapse. Sources, who requested anonymity, considered that it is not acceptable for a rescue government to present the international community and global monetary institutions with such a plan, given that it will further undermine confidence in Lebanon.
Former Lebanese prime minister Saad al-Hariri on Friday criticized the government over a draft program for tackling a major financial crisis, saying it appeared on course for an “economic suicide plan”. The draft that surfaced this week included a proposal for “a transitory exceptional contribution from large depositors” as part of measures to address huge losses in the financial system, among other politically difficult measures. Finance Minister Ghazi Wazni, in comments to an-Nahar newspaper on Friday, said the government plan “did not yet get to restructuring the banking sector and it is still studying the available options”. The government blueprint projected $83.2 billion of losses in the banking sector stemming from the impairment of assets held by the central bank, the impairment of banks’ loans portfolio and government debt restructuring. The draft plan said a phased restructuring of commercial bank balance sheets would include a full bail-in of existing shareholders estimated at $20.8 billion in capital write-offs, with the remaining $62.4 billion covered by the “transitory exceptional contribution from large depositors”.
A special fund would compensate depositors’ losses, with the proceeds coming from a program that will track and recover ill-gotten assets.

Mobilization Restricts Movement of Syrian Refugees in Lebanon
Beqaa (Eastern Lebanon)- Hussein Darwish/Asharq Al-Awsat/Sunday, 12 April, 2020
Six weeks have passed since the last visit by UN delegations and international and humanitarian agencies to the Syrian refugees in Lebanon’s camps, due to the coronavirus outbreak. This has led to scarcity of aid provided to these refugees, including water, home services, and hygiene kits, threatening their health and increasing the possibility of an outbreak in camps. It has also negatively affected the social services and health benefits provided to the displaced Syrians. The displaced complained about the delay in financial and food aid and fuel allowances that were allocated for each family every month. They said the LBP40,500 ($27) allocated to each family have lost their value due to the economic crisis in the country, and refugees can no longer buy what they deem necessary. According to Hamid, one of the refugees in a camp in the Beqaa Valley, the value of the share per person was $30 in 2014, and in 2015 it was reduced to $27. “The drop in the value of the Lebanese pound has worsened the living situation in light of the quarantine and curfew imposed by the government,” Hamid stressed.  Another Syrian refugee, Ali Diab, expressed appreciation for Taybeh village’s municipality for spraying disinfectants in the camp, yet he said this was not enough. “We have been in isolation for more than two months now. Our work has been suspended, the United Nations has not visited us since then, and the security forces prevent us from leaving the camp.” Hassan Khalaf, for his part, said the LBP260,000- worth ration card used to be enough before the currency collapse, noting that it is barely sufficient for one week now. He pointed out that there is a lack of supplies such as masks, gloves, disinfectants, and soaps in camps, which threatens refugees in light of the coronavirus outbreak. The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) is working on a response plan for the coronavirus outbreak, its spokesperson, Lisa Abou Khaled, told Asharq Al-Awsat. Abou Khaled pointed out that the cash aid remains the same, adding that the UNHCR is working to increase aid to families of displaced Syrians and increase the number of beneficiaries in line with the new situation.

Israel installs surveillance cameras on the southern side of Abbad site
Agencies/April 12/2020
Local Lebanese websites reported today that the Israeli forces have set up a military observation post on the southern side of the military site that supervises the town of Houla.

Al-Rahi Urges Respect for Lockdown Measures in Easter Sermon
Associated Press/Naharnet/April 12/2020
Maronite Patriarch Beshara al-Rahi on Sunday urged the faithful to abide by coronavirus lockdown measures even as Lebanon endures its worst economic crisis in decades. "We are praying so that Lebanese officials work together in the spirit of collaboration to revive Lebanon economically, financially and socially," a-Rahi said in an almost empty church in Bkirki, as Christians celebrated a solitary Easter Sunday. The church would normally be packed with people marking Easter, including the president, prime minister and parliament speaker. Lebanon is home to the largest percentage of Christians in the Arab world.

Rahi officiates over Easter Mass in Bkirki
NNA/Sunday 12/2020
Maronite Patriarch, Cardinal Beshara Boutros Rahi, presided Sunday over Easter Mass service in Bkirki, in presence of President of the Republic, Michel Aoun, and First Lady, Nadia Aoun, and a number of political, security and diplomatic figures. Rahi prayed for the medical corps and wished a speedy recovery for the sick, urging citizens to "comply with the general mobilization measures."He also expressed his hope that the country's leaders would help each other to get the state out from its economic, financial and social crisis. The Patriarch concluded by saying: "With unity we can overcome obstacles."

Tourism Ministry launches its campaign, “To bring back the breath of life...Stay home!”
NNA/Sunday 12/2020
The Ministry of Tourism has released a video tape that will be broadcasted on local television screens, websites and social networking sites, entitled "To restore the breath of life...Stay home!” This video shows Lebanese touristic scenes going back through the “Rewind” mode, with a breathing sound in the background, which according to the Ministry aims to “deliver a message about our responsibility as Lebanese citizens, that if we want the breath of life and tourism in Lebanon to return, we must remain committed to domestic quarantine and strict protection."

No resurrection for Lebanon without justice, says Najm
NNA/Sunday 12/2020
Justice Minister, Marie Claude Najm, expressed her Easter greetings to the Lebanese in a tweet on Sunday, saying: "The life, crucifixion, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ motivates us to adhere to our set of values in our national life, based on justice, without which there can be no resurrection for the state...Our sincerest wishes go out to all the Lebanese, and a greeting from the heart to everyone who is deprived of spending the blessed occasion with his loved ones.”

Hassan confers with Aswad, Khoury on Corona measures in Jezzine
NNA/Sunday 12/2020
Public Health Minister, Hamad Hassan, met on Sunday with Deputies Ziad Aswad and Salim Khoury, with whom he reviewed the measures undertaken in the South region, particularly in Jezzine, to confront the risks of the outbreak of the Corona virus. Talks touched on the need to raise the necessary readiness to combat the epidemic, by mobilizing governmental and civil efforts and equipping the Jezzine Governmental Hospital to enable it to keep up with this critical stage.

Assassination of Hezbollah commander in South Lebanon sparks speculation
The Arab Weekly/April 12/2020
Killing of Ali Mohammed Younes linked to assassination of Anton al-Hayek in Sidon.
BEIRUT - The assassination of Hezbollah commander Ali Mohammed Younes on April 4 in southern Lebanon could be related to internal feuds with the militant pro-Iran party especially in dealing with certain thorny issues such as ​​financial corruption, Lebanese political sources said.
According to the sources, Younes was a known second-rank figure in the party in charge of counter intelligence. He worked on the ground in south Lebanon and his main task was to hunt spies and infiltrators.
Younes was assassinated somewhere between the villages of Qaqaiyat al-Jisr and Zutar al-Gharbiyeh in southern Lebanon, an area entirely under Hezbollah’s control. Hezbollah was quick to circulate information saying that Younes was ambushed by assassins who came aboard three cars but observers in southern Lebanon ruled out the possibility that anybody from outside the area, including Israel, would ambush a leading figure of Hezbollah in that Lebanese location simply because Hezbollah knows exactly who is travelling in and out of the region.
While Hezbollah sought to steer suspicion for the killing of Younes towards Israeli intelligence (the Mossad), a resident of the area said that Hezbollah’s account of the assassination did not seem accurate. He noted that a person was accompanying Younes when he was shot and that this person was injured and is now being treated in a hospital in the region out of the sight of the official Lebanese authorities.
Lebanese political sources suggested that Younes could have been the victim of internal personal or financial feuds within the party that led to his liquidation in that manner. The fact that the Hezbollah commander was shot and stabbed with a knife made the attack look more like an act of revenge.
Hezbollah mourned Younes by calling him a “martyr,” suggesting that his assassination was related to the nature of his work in the party. A Lebanese politician summed up the issues by saying that the assassination in fact revealed the existence of disputes of a financial nature within Hezbollah. At the core of these disputes were lucrative deals involving certain party members and their families, who have been showing ostentatious signs of sudden wealth.
This politician did not rule out that Hezbollah, like other Lebanese parties, notably the Amal Movement, was suffering from internal strife and disputes over benefits from certain deals.
Well-informed Lebanese sources have also linked Younes’ assassination to the killing of Anton al-Hayek a few days ago in southern Lebanon. Hayek was considered a close aide of Amer al-Fakhoury, a dual national with Lebanese and American citizenships who was referred to in southern Lebanon as the ‘Butcher of al-Khiam Prison Camp’ during the Israeli occupation of southern Lebanon and in which Israel had used South Lebanon Army militia to subdue the local population.
In a spectacular recovery operation, Washington had managed to airlift al-Fakhoury out of Lebanon only hours after the Military Court issued a decision to stop all prosecution procedures for treason against him. Al-Fakhoury’s escape soon after the issuance of a second arrest order against him had made headlines and caused embarrassment to Hezbollah.
Hayek was assassinated in Sidon, just days after al-Fakhoury’s return to the United States. The scandal resulting from the whole affair led to the resignation of the President of the Military Court, a rare occurrence in Lebanon.
Informed sources have threaded the sequence of events together and favoured two hypotheses: Younes’s assassination was the result of party-internal disputes and came to close his file as the security official in charge of counter-intelligence; or it was revenge for Hayek’s assassination. The Military Court had decided to stop prosecuting al-Fakhoury and al-Hayek for their crimes at al-Khiam Prison Camp on the basis that the statutes of limitation have run out in both cases.
While the Iranian Fars News Agency reported Younes’s assassination labelling him a Hezbollah commander, Lebanese sources were quick to point out that he was not a first-rank officer. These sources also noted that Younes was killed in an area not far from the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) deployment sites in southern Lebanon. Hezbollah has always used the assassination of some of its cadres to paint itself as being constantly targeted by Israeli intelligence agencies. Such reputation reinforces the stock of sympathy it enjoys in its strongholds in the southern suburbs of Beirut, the Bekaa Valley and the south. Younes’s assassination came after the loyalty of party supporters was tested and shaken by the al-Fakhoury scandal, for they had a hard time believing that the latter’s release had taken place without Hezbollah’s approval, even if implicitly, knowing very well that the party controls all details of the state’s decisions and its political organs especially in security-related issues.

Subdued celebration of Easter as Lebanon’s Christians cope with COVID-19 lockdown
Samar Kadi/The Arab Weekly/April 12/2020
Despite the gloomy conditions under which Easter is celebrated this year, people are hopeful about a better tomorrow.
BEIRUT--Lebanese Christians’ celebration of Easter this year was different from any previous Easter celebration. The COVID-19 lockdown meant there was no one going to church, no family reunions and no Easter egg hunts for children.
All churches have been closed since March 15 and Christian shrines that are normally visited by the faithful are shuttered, as authorities seek to forestall the spread of the deadly respiratory disease.
The restrictions deprived Maronite Christians from carrying out the usual rituals preceding Christ’s resurrection on Easter Sunday. These include walking the passion trail of Jesus on his way to crucifixion and the afternoon service commemorating his death on Good Friday.
According to the tradition, a man posing as Jesus carries a cross and walks the street in villages and towns escorted by worshippers enacting Christ’s journey on Good Friday.
Also, worshippers were told not to congregate for the Easter service on Sunday April 12, or a week later on April 19, for the Greek Orthodox Easter. Mass was scheduled instead for broadcast on television and social media platforms including Facebook and YouTube.
“We have strict instructions. Each priest should celebrate mass in his church alone without audience but with live transmission to worshippers,” says Maronite priest Father Gaby Khairallah. “In my case, I will film the service and mix it with chants of the chorus then upload it on YouTube.”
“This year we are celebrating Christ’s resurrection on a background of corona deaths. Humanity is in a phase of awaiting rebirth. Nonetheless, it is a beautiful Easter of solidarity. I am sure that something positive will come out, especially the growing solidarity among all the Lebanese,” Father Khairallah said.
His parish has been distributing daily food portions and meals to the most needy across Lebanon, be they Christians or Muslims.
For Myrna Helou, a mother of two in her fifties, Easter under COVID-19 lockdown is a time for reflection and contemplation.
“Christ’s crucifixion and resurrection is somehow like the death of our world that is no longer viable, but something else will be reborn, hopefully a new world order where there will be more equality, less selfishness and less greedy politicians ruling the world,” Helou said.
“Confinement has, in a way, stopped the fast wheel of life that we have been leading and now we have time to meditate and look deeper inside our souls,” she said.
While her children live abroad, Helou and her husband will have the lunch feast alone in confinement.
“I did not prepare any of the pastries that we usually have for Easter. It will be just the two of us without family and friends, but we are happy to have time together as a couple like we never did before,” Helou said.
Attending church on Good Friday and visiting churches as part of the religious rituals during the Holy Week is a duty that faithful churchgoer Joumana Komati never missed before.
“My husband and I insisted on touring churches but could not go inside. We just prayed outside the front door and attended the Good Friday mass online,” Komati said.
“We will be assisting in the Easter service on YouTube. My son and daughter used to come home especially to celebrate Easter with us. But this year’s celebration will be limited to a video call during which we will say a prayer altogether.”
However, for Paula Naaman, a housewife and mother of two, maintaining Easter traditions and keeping up a good spirit is vital to overcoming the difficulties of living in confinement, a way, she says, “to have fun and diffuse a positive vibe in this very difficult period.”
“The feast this year is about hope although we will not be able to share the celebration with the people we love. We are living with lots of humility. All over the world we are experiencing the same anguish. But it is Easter and spring is here which means revival is coming,” Naaman said.
Despite the gloomy conditions under which Easter is celebrated this year, people are hopeful about a better tomorrow.
“It is a very particular Easter because, despite everything, the Easter spirit is even stronger,” says Komati. “I believe that after every calamity there is resurrection. The fact that Ramadan is starting shortly after Easter is a sign that things will change for the better.”
“The pandemic should be a lesson learned,” Helou said. “The virus does not discriminate between people and I believe that there is a universal message that should be learned from this crisis.”
Lebanon has 609 cases of coronavirus infections which have killed 20 people so far.
*Samar Kadi is the Arab Weekly society and travel section editor.

The Latest English LCCC Miscellaneous Reports And News published on April 12-13/2020
Banish ‘self-centeredness,’ Pope Francis tells the world as it faces coronavirus
Reuters/Sunday 12 April 2020
Pope Francis called on Sunday for global solidarity in fighting the coronavirus pandemic and its economic fallout, urging the relaxation of international sanctions, debt relief for poor nations and ceasefires in all conflicts. He also warned the European Union that it risked collapse if it did not agree on how to help the region recover. The pope’s Easter “Urbi et Orbi” (to the city and the world) message, delivered from an empty St. Peter’s Basilica instead of to the usual crowd of tens of thousands in the square outside, was by far his most pressing and political since his election in 2013. Saying the message of this year’s “Easter of solitude” should be a “contagion of hope,” he heaped praise on doctors, nurses and others risking their lives to save others and hailed those working to keep essential services running. “This is not a time for indifference, because the whole world is suffering and needs to be united in facing the pandemic,” he said in the message, almost entirely dedicated to the pandemic’s effects on personal and international relations. “Indifference, self-centeredness, division and forgetfulness are not words we want to hear at this time. We want to ban these words forever!” he said. Francis expressed sympathy for those not able to bid farewell to their loved ones because of restrictions, for Catholics who have not been able to receive the sacraments and for all those worried about an uncertain future. “In these weeks, the lives of millions of people have suddenly changed,” he said. The pope said now was the time for politicians and governments to avoid “self-centeredness’” and take decisive, concerted action to help each others’ populations live through the crisis and eventually resume normal life. “May international sanctions be relaxed, since these make it difficult for countries on which they have been imposed to provide adequate support to their citizens,” Francis said. He also called for debt reductions or forgiveness for the poorest nations, without naming any countries.
Europe’s divisions
Francis expressed particular concern for the future of Europe, saying it was vital that rivalries that existed before World War Two “do not regain force” as a result of the pandemic.
European Union nations are divided over how to help the continent’s economy recover - with Italy and other eurozone members seeking the issuance of euro bonds backed by all, but Germany, the Netherlands and other countries opposed to this. “The European Union is presently facing an epochal challenge, on which will depend not only its future but that of the whole world,” Francis said. That echoed a position by Italian Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte, whose country has suffered one of the highest death tolls from COVID-19. “This is not a time for division,” Francis said. The pope repeated a call for a ceasefire “in all corners of the world”, condemned arms manufacturing and said the pandemic should spur leaders to finally end long-running wars such as that in Syria. He also appealed for help for migrants and others suffering from existing humanitarian conflicts.

Mourning 100,000 covid-19 deaths
The National Editorial/April 12/2020
Nearly every inch of the globe has been affected by the pandemic in one way or another.
As of yesterday, Covid-19, the respiratory disease caused by the novel coronavirus, killed more than 100,000 people around the world. This grim record is expected to rise in the coming weeks, with 200,000 deaths projected in the US alone, according to the Trump administration. Ever-climbing death tolls and infection rates seem to have become facts of life since the new strain of the virus was discovered last December. But behind each number, there is a story – that of a person's life taken away too soon, leaving a family to grieve, often unable to attend their loved one’s funeral.
We arrive at this tragic milestone at a time of great religious significance. Today, Christians in most parts of the world will not be able to go to church for Easter and spend time with their loved ones. Pope Francis at an empty St Peter’s Basilica on Good Friday marked a solemn moment.
With Ramadan set to start in less than two weeks’ time, the month of April is set to be particularly challenging for worshippers. Anti-coronavirus measures in the UAE, Saudi Arabia and elsewhere require places of worship to close their doors to the public. These containment measures are crucial to contain the pandemic and decrease the risk of infection, but, as a consequence, many worshippers have now found themselves separated from their respective communities during a difficult time. Some countries have been affected disproportionately by this ongoing tragedy. Nearly two-thirds of all those who have succumbed to the disease hail from Europe. The mortality rate in Italy exceeds 12 per cent, while the number of deaths in Italy, France and Spain alone constitute nearly half of all fatalities in the world. Meanwhile, the US, which is already the hardest-hit nation, reached the grim milestone of half a million cases nationwide yesterday. It has now surpassed Italy with the highest number of recorded coronavirus-related fatalities for any country.
Nearly every inch of the globe has been affected by the pandemic in one way or another.
War-torn Yemen, which had not reported any cases of the virus, announced its first official Covid-19 patient last weekend. Half of all the country's hospitals have been destroyed by years of war, and medical staff lack the personal protection equipment necessary to treat patients without risking infection.
Nearly every inch of the globe has been affected by the pandemic in one way or another. If the disease is allowed to propagate in war zones and poor areas with little access to appropriate healthcare or aid, the result can only be catastrophic. The international community must help Yemen, along with other nations ridden by poverty and conflict, to combat an impending coronavirus outbreak. In times of great hardship, authorities have intensified testing and quarantine measures to protect their people. Medical staff are also working around the clock, sometimes in dire circumstances. They are risking their lives at the frontlines of the pandemic to save others, and deserve our respect and support. The least we can do to help those affected by the virus, and the families of the deceased, is to stay in and stay safe, so as not to jeopardise other people's lives and our own.

Coronavirus Death Toll Passes 75,000 in Europe
Agence France Presse/Naharnet/April 12/2020
More than 75,000 people have died from the coronavirus in Europe, with 80 percent of the fatalities occurring in Italy, Spain, France and Britain, according to an AFP tally at 0945 GMT Sunday compiled from official sources. With a total of 75,011 deaths from 909,673 infections, Europe is the hardest-hit continent in the COVID-19 pandemic, which has killed at least 109,133 people worldwide. Europe's most affected country is Italy with 19,468 deaths, followed by Spain with 16,972, France with 13,832 and Britain with 9,875.

Guterres Urges Warring Parties in Mideast to Cease Fighting
Asharq Al-Awsat/Sunday, 12 April, 2020
The United Nations envoys in Middle East hot spots urged all warring parties on Saturday to translate Secretary-General Antonio Guterres´ appeal for immediate ceasefires to tackle the coronavirus pandemic into concrete actions aimed at ending hostilities. The envoys for Syria, Yemen, Lebanon, Iraq, and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict stressed that solidarity is required to face the challenge of COVID-19 and this cannot happen "if the guns of war and conflict are not silenced." They said "many parties have responded positively" to the secretary-general´s March 23 appeal but stressed the need for stepped-up action, stressing that COVID-19 has compounded the suffering of people caught up in Mideast conflicts. "At a time like this, partisanship and narrow interests must yield to the greater cause and the good of the people," their appeal said. "That is why we echo the secretary-general in calling on all parties in the Middle East to work with the UN so we can "focus on the true fight of our lives" which is COVID-19. The UN envoys called on all parties to conflicts to engage without preconditions in negotiations to immediately halt hostilities, to sustain existing ceasefires, and to achieve "longer-term resolutions to the persistent conflicts across the region." They also urged all feuding parties "to reach out across conflict lines and cooperate locally, regionally and globally to stop the rapid spread of the virus," and to allow access for humanitarian aid and "humanitarian releases."
The appeal was signed by UN special envoy for Syria Geir Pedersen, UN special envoy for Yemen Martin Griffiths, UN Special Coordinator for the Middle East Peace Process Nickolay Mladenov, UN Special Coordinator for Lebanon Jan Kubis, and UN Special Representative for Iraq Jeanine Hennis-Plasschaert. Secretary-General Guterres said on April 3 that warring parties in 11 countries had responded positively to his ceasefire appeal: Cameroon, the Central African Republic, Colombia, Libya, Myanmar, the Philippines, South Sudan, Sudan, Syria, Ukraine, and Yemen. He told the UN Security Council Thursday in its first meeting on the coronavirus pandemic that he has been encouraged by support for his call for a global ceasefire to all conflicts from world leaders, regional partners, civil society activists, and religious leaders. "From South America to Africa and from the Middle East to Asia we have seen conflict parties take some initial steps to end violence and fight the pandemic," he said. "Still, we must remain cautious, as any gains are fragile and easily reversible, as conflicts have festered for years, distrust is deep, and there are many spoilers." He also stressed that concerted international efforts, including by UN envoys, will be required to move from "good intentions to implementation," noting that "in many of the most critical situations, we have seen no let-up in fighting, and some conflicts have even intensified."In Yemen, the Arab world´s poorest country which is suffering the world´s worst humanitarian crisis, a two-week ceasefire proposed by the Saudi-led coalition backing the UN-recognized government went into effect on Thursday.

UN Calls for Unconditional Ceasefire in Middle East
New York - Ali Barada/Asharq Al-Awsat/Sunday, 12 April, 2020
UN Envoys to the Middle East called on regional parties to engage in good faith and without preconditions in negotiations to immediately halt ongoing hostilities, sustaining existing ceasefires, putting in place more durable and comprehensive ceasefires, and achieving longer-term resolutions to the persistent conflicts across the region. The joint appeal was issued in New York on Saturday by Special Envoy for Syria Geir Pedersen, Special Coordinator for Lebanon Jan Kubis, Special Representative of the Secretary-General for Iraq Jeanine Hennis-Plasschaert, Special Envoy for Yemen Martin Griffiths, and Special Coordinator for the Middle East Peace Process Nickolay Mladenov. The five envoys cited the Secretary-General’s recent call for a global ceasefire during the COVID-19 pandemic, stressing that more needs to be done to translate it into action. "Too many in the Middle East have endured conflict and deprivation for far too long. Their suffering is now compounded by the COVID-19 crisis and its likely long-lasting social, economic, and political impacts.”The envoys encouraged rival parties to exercise maximum restraint, de-escalate tensions, and work to resolve their differences through dialogue, negotiation, mediation or other peaceful means. "We urge parties to reach out across conflict lines and cooperate locally, regionally and globally to stop the rapid spread of the virus and, where possible, to share resources, and allow access to medical facilities where needed", they added. The officials reiterated the need to facilitate humanitarian access and assistance to internally displaced persons, refugees, communities under siege, and all those who have been ravaged by war and deprivation. They indicated that this requires fast-tracking the passage of health and aid workers at borders and in-country and ensuring they are protected. They also called for the safe and voluntary return of refugees and internally displaced persons. "None of these efforts will succeed if the guns of war and conflict are not silenced", they emphasized. "At a time like this, partisanship and narrow interests must yield to the greater cause and the good of the people. That is why we echo the Secretary-General in calling on all parties in the Middle East to work with the UN so we can 'focus on the true fight of our lives',” they concluded.

Israeli President Considers Other Scenarios If Gantz, Netenyahu Fail to Form Gov
Ramallah- Asharq Al-Awsat/Sunday, 12 April, 2020
General Benny Gantz’ 28-day mandate to form a governing coalition with Benjamin Netanyahu ends Monday without any progress achieved, according to Israeli media reports. A Channel 12 report said that the possible scenarios for forming a new Israeli government seem difficult as Gantz will most likely be unable to meet the deadline and announce a cabinet. The Channel indicated that this complicates the situation for the Israeli President, Reuven Rivlin, who began considering other scenarios following the failure to form a government. For a second time in a year, Gantz has failed to form a government, just as Netanyahu failed before him during the same period. Rivlin faces an unprecedented situation and can grant Gantz a 14 days extension if he requests that along with Netanyahu to proceed with the negotiations period between them to form a joint government. The report suggests that if there was no extension and Gantz and Netanyahu couldn’t agree, the President might move to delegating the Knesset. The majority of the Knesset members will then choose another person to form the next government within 21 days. However, this may cause greater disputes and lead to a fourth election, which will be complicated in light of the spread of the Coronavirus. The coalition negotiations between the Likud, led by Netanyahu, and Blue White, headed by Gantz, were resumed on Friday, and it was decided that the official teams will return to the negotiations table to discuss details, with the aim of ending the political crisis and forming a unity government. Political sources said that Netanyahu believes that polls give him a clear advantage over Gantz and all other opponents, in the event of a fourth election. Surveys also indicate that Netanyahu will be able to form a right-wing government with a majority of 64 of the 120 members of the Knesset, and he may not need Gantz or others. The number prompted Netanyahu to withdraw from his agreement with Gantz over the weekend, and call for new demands. But, sources close to Netanyahu said he is very serious in forming a unity government with Gantz, and they infer that he argued with defense minister Naftali Bennett over some issues. Last year, both Gantz and Netanyahu won almost equal numbers of seats in the Knesset during the three rounds of elections and neither was able to form a government, which led to a deep political crisis. Gantz refused to join the power-sharing government last September, insisting he wouldn't be part of a government headed by corrupt Netanyahu, but he later retreated and began negotiations.

Gantz Denied Extension to Form Israel Govt.
Agence France Presse/Naharnet/April 12/2020
Israel's president on Sunday rejected parliament speaker Benny Gantz's request for more time to form a government, a task that could now fall to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Ex-military chief Gantz was given the mandate to form a government four weeks ago by President Reuven Rivlin following Israel's March 2 election, the country's third inconclusive vote in a year.  But Gantz's prospects for forming a stable coalition were always remote given the deep divisions within the anti-Netanyahu camp. The pro-Netanyahu bloc, which includes the veteran premier's right-wing Likud and several religious parties, also remained short of a majority after last month's vote. In a surprise move last month, Gantz was elected speaker of Israel's parliament, or Knesset. With the number of confirmed COVID-19 cases in Israel rising, he pledged to use that powerful position to seek an emergency unity alliance with Netanyahu to tackle the pandemic and ease a year of grinding political stalemate. While Gantz's mandate to form a government technically runs until the end of Monday, he was no longer actively engaged in talks to forge a coalition led by him as prime minister. Instead, he was widely believed to be pursuing a deal that would see Netanyahu remain as premier for a defined period, and possibly then handing power to Gantz. Despite reports of progress from the two sides -- and from Israeli media -- no deal has been agreed. Late Saturday, Gantz asked Rivlin for an extension of his mandate. In response, Rivlin told Gantz "that in the current circumstances no extension would be possible", a statement from the president's office said. "The president made his decision after also speaking to ... Netanyahu, who did not confirm in their conversation that the parties are close to signing an agreement that would lead to a unity government," the statement said.
- Unity talks 'ongoing' -
If no unity agreement is reached by the end of Monday, Rivlin said he will ask the Knesset to nominate a candidate to become prime minister. The Netanyahu bloc currently holds 59 of the Knesset's 120 seats.  It is therefore possible, but not certain, that parliament gives the premier a 14-day window to form a government. Blue and White, the centrist alliance led by Gantz, said in a statement that "the attempts by the negotiating teams to arrive at a unity government are still ongoing".Likud said it too remained open to forming a unity government. But it also urged Rivlin to give Netanyahu a full four weeks to form a coalition. Likud stressed that the president gave both Netanyahu and Gantz a chance to build a government following the inconclusive votes in September and should do so again. But with Israel's confirmed COVID-19 caseload nearing 11,000, there remain widespread calls from across the political spectrum for a unity alliance, even for a short term. Netanyahu, in office since 2009, is Israel's longest-serving premier and the first to be indicted while in office. The premier denies the charges of bribery, fraud and breach of trust filed against him in January. Netanyahu critics have charged the premier will stop at nothing to make the indictments disappear, including pushing for a fourth election, hoping we will finally secure the parliamentary majority needed to grant him immunity from prosecution.

Displaced Syrians Return Cautiously to Their Destroyed Homes in Aleppo, Idlib
Idlib – Firas Karam/Asharq Al-Awsat/Sunday, 12 April, 2020
After the announcement of a ceasefire deal, a few Syrian refugee families have been returning to their destroyed homes in Idlib and Aleppo’s western countryside. Although Russian airstrikes have been suspended, Syrian activists logged a number of truce violations carried out by Syrian regime forces in Idlib. Turkish Defense Minister Hulusi Akar had confirmed that the ceasefire, based on Turkish and Russian agreement, is ongoing in Idlib. He pointed out that 70,000-80,000 refugees had returned to their homes in Idlib as a result of the de-escalation, and that more will return through Turkish efforts in the coming days.
Activist Nasr al-Hamwi said that regime forces bombed areas in the de-escalation zone. Ahmad al-Qassem, a leader in the Turkey-backed Free Syrian Army (FSA) opposition militia, reported that Syrian regime forces have violated the ceasefire deal and that those violations have been documented. “In the event that regime forces do not adhere to the agreement, we will respond strongly. If regime forces continue to violate the agreement, armed opposition factions will initiate a military operation that would deter the regime forces and force them to implement the ceasefire agreement,” al-Qassem added. Speaking on the return of refugees, local activist Mohammed Kanjo said: “Western Aleppo areas began to witness the return of locals from IDP camps near borders, but the numbers have been shy.” Ahmed Al-Khalil, a returnee who recently arrived to his home in Al Nerab village in eastern Idlib, reported damage caused by Russian air bombardment. “Al Nerab, like other villages in Idlib’s countryside which the regime forces failed to take over, faced a fierce campaign of aerial and artillery bombardment. This resulted in damage to the homes and property of civilians, as well as to public facilities and infrastructure,” Al-Khallil noted. Ahmad al-Hilweh, another returnee from the city of Jisr al-Shughour, west of Idlib, said that locals are now working to restore whatever was left of their homes with modest means.

Palestinians Warn From Consequences of Annexing Occupied Lands to Israel
Ramallah - Kifah Zaboun/Asharq Al-Awsat/Sunday, 12 April, 2020
A prominent Palestinian official has warned against the consequences of the Israeli government’s decision to annex occupied Palestinian lands. Secretary-General of the Executive Committee of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) Saeb Erekat said the unilateral measures taken by Israeli authorities have destructive effects on regional security and stability. In a phone call with Foreign Minister of Luxembourg Jean Asselborn, Erekat said the occupation authorities continue their settlement expansion, neglecting all UN and international resolutions on the Palestinian cause that call for ending settlements. Both officials spoke after the European Union announced a 71 million euros (about $77.5 million) aid package for the Palestinian Authority (PA) to help contain the coronavirus outbreak in Palestine. The PLO’s National Office for the Defense of Land and Resistance of Settlement has stressed in its weekly report that Washington and Tel Aviv are so close to agreeing on the map of the West Bank areas to be annexed. According to the report, the Israeli government is preparing through dialogue with the US administration and the international community to annex and impose its “sovereignty” over the Jordan Valley and the Northern Dead Sea on July 10. “PM Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud Party and Benny Gantz’s Blue and White party agreed to impose Israeli sovereignty over these territories next summer,” the report noted, adding that this would remove obstacles to the formation of a new Israeli government. “An Israeli human rights association said the Israeli government, supported by US President Donald Trump, is taking advantage of the coronavirus pandemic and is preparing for the annexation, in light of local and international indifference to this political issue due to the virus’s outbreak.”According to Netanyahu’s Office Director General Ronen Peretz, the US-Israeli team, led by US Ambassador to Israel David Friedman and Israeli Tourism Minister Yrev Levin, continue to work on completing the annexation map. Peretz said both sides are currently discussing some observations and amendments that Israel believes should be part of the original map, submitted as part of Trump’s Deal of the Century and includes the areas Israel may annex.

Iraq’s Kadhimi Takes First Step to Form New Government
Baghdad/Asharq Al-Awsat/Sunday, 12 April, 2020
The new Iraqi Prime Minister-designate has taken his first steps in forming the new government by meeting with the Kurdish politician, Finance Minister Fuad Hussein. Mustafa al-Kadhimi was nominated by President Barham Salih shortly after the previous designated prime minister, Adnan al-Zurfi, announced his withdrawal having failed to secure enough support to pass a government. Zurfi discussed with Hussein the formation of the next government, which received support from Kurds and Sunnis one day before Kadhimi was officially designated. “I had a friendly and explicit meeting with PM-designate Mustafa al-Kadhimi, in which we discussed steps of his cabinet formation and challenges Iraq faces,” Hussein wrote on his official Twitter account. “I wished Mr. Kadhimi success in his endeavors and hoped he submits his cabinet list to the parliament at the earliest.” In Fallujah, Salih paid a private visit to Parliament Speaker Mohammed al-Halbousi’s house. Both officials discussed the basic steps for forming the first Iraqi government that receives regional and international consensus. Although Kadhimi’s designation was approved by the United States and Iran, yet conflicting positions seem to appear between the armed factions not participating in the government and the various Shiite political blocs in the country. Positions of the armed factions in Iraq have also varied. Kataib Hezbollah issued a statement expressing its rejection of whom it described as a “suspicious figure” to form the next Iraqi government.
On the other hand, Kataib al-Imam Ali issued a similar statement in which it expressed support and respect for the choices of political forces. Its Secretary-General Shibl al-Zaidi affirmed that his faction’s primary concern is to support the political process and preserve the interests of the majority and the democratic process within its constitutional framework, “for a better Iraq.” Commenting on the position of the armed factions, National security professor at the Nahrain University Dr. Hussein Allawi told Asharq Al-Awsat that the Shiite consensus and the support from the national political forces on Kadhimi’s designation were not fitting for the special armed factions in Iraq. He said the difference in the political positions of the armed factions is normal since they were speculating having a country with only a caretaker government, which is too weak to face them.

Turkey Fears Incapability of Fulfilling Commitments Regarding Aleppo-Latakia Highway
Ankara - Saeed Abdul Razzak/Asharq Al-Awsat/Sunday, 12 April, 2020
The Turkish Army continued their military buildup in Idlib and sent several reinforcements amid concerns that it won't meet its commitments to open Aleppo-Latakia road. This came as the launch of Turkish-Russian patrols, agreed upon in Moscow on March 5, were hindered. Turkey failed to halt protests of Idlib residents and convince Hayat Tahrir al-Sham not to obstruct the patrols. The first Turkish-Russian patrol was disrupted on March 15 and cut short. The same scenario occurred with the second and third patrols. In the past two weeks, the Turkish forces deployed several checkpoints on the road and also removed berms placed by protesters from Idlib. Based on agreement with Russia, Turkey is in charge of separating al-Nusra Front from moderate Syrian opposition factions. Until this moment, Turkey failed to accomplish this because it attempted to do so through causing dissections in Hayat Tahrir al-Sham – by which al-Nusra Front is its basic component. Reports said up to 30 Turkish armored vehicles entered northwestern Syria in addition to several armored vehicles and army personnel. The number of Turkish military units that entered the “de-escalation zone”, since the new ceasefire came into effect, has risen to 2,460, in addition to the entry of thousands of soldiers. Military checkpoints also increased from 12 to 58 since the end of last year. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights have confirmed that regime forces fired several rockets Saturday morning, targeting Al-Haddadah area in Latakia mountains, and Al-Bara town in Jabal Al-Zawiyah in the southern countryside of Idlib. Syrian Observatory activists reported earlier that regime forces fired several rockets in the early hours of Friday, targeting areas in Sfuhen in Jabal Al-Zawiyah in the southern countryside of Idlib.

Al-Fashqa Returns to Sudanese Sovereignty After Agreement With Ethiopia
Khartoum- Ahmed Younes/Asharq Al-Awsat/Sunday, 12 April, 2020
The years-long border conflict between Ethiopia and Sudan is expected to end with the return of the disputed Al-Fashaqa region to Sudanese sovereignty within two weeks. The two countries took practical steps to start the processes of demarcating borders. These steps included setting up border markers and withdrawing forces to behind the separation line. According to sources, who requested anonymity, the Ethiopian Chief of the General Staff General Adem Mohammed has discussed with Sudanese officials an action plan which sees the forces of each of Sudan and Ethiopia retreat to demarcated borders.
Sudan has border disputes with Egypt and Ethiopia over the Halayeb triangle and the fertile agricultural region of Al-Fashqa. Ethiopian forces control Al-Fashaqa, which stretches over about 600 square kilometers of highly fertile agricultural land. Ethiopia recognizes Sudanese sovereignty over the agricultural area but has not taken practical steps to demarcate the border, allowing Ethiopian farmers to cultivate the area and providing them with protection. Sudan’s transitional government had deployed troops on the border strip with Ethiopia, in order to secure agricultural areas in al-Fashaqa.
Ethiopia and Sudan share a common boundary of over 1600 km which was drawn through a series of treaties between Ethiopia and the colonial powers of Britain and Italy. To date, this boundary has not been clearly demarcated.

UNSC Calls on Houthis to Commit to Ceasefire Without Delay
New York – Ali Barada/Asharq Al-Awsat/Sunday, 12 April, 2020
Members of the United Nations Security Council welcomed the announcement by the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, on behalf of the Coalition to Support Legitimacy in Yemen, of a unilateral ceasefire in Yemen in support of the UN’s peace process and the UN Secretary-General’s call.
They welcomed the Government of Yemen’s positive response to the cease-fire call, and called on the Houthis to make similar commitments without delay. In a statement read by José Singer Weisinger, the special envoy for the Dominican Republic, UNSC members unanimously agreed to "support" the call made by UN Secretary-General António Guterres, on March 25, to warring parties in Yemen “to immediately cease hostilities, focus on reaching a political settlement through negotiation, and make every effort possible to face the COVID-19 pandemic.”UNSC members encouraged the parties to continue their cooperation with the Special Envoy of the Secretary-General for Yemen, Martin Griffiths, in order to reach a Yemeni-led and owned, comprehensive and inclusive political settlement, which addresses the legitimate concerns of all Yemenis.
They reaffirmed past Security Council resolutions, including resolution 2216 (2015), and underlined their support for the Gulf Cooperation Council initiative, its implementation mechanism, and the outcome of the National Dialogue Conference. They underlined the need for an inclusive political process to include the full and meaningful participation of women. Noting the humanitarian crisis makes Yemen exceptionally vulnerable to an outbreak of COVID-19, the UNSC members stressed that further military escalation in Yemen would hinder the access of humanitarian and healthcare workers and the availability of healthcare facilities necessary to tackle an outbreak. The Members of the UNSC reiterated their call for an immediate cessation of hostilities, and for an urgent return to de-escalation. They reiterated their full support for the efforts of the UN Special Envoy and emphasized that no military solution can bring sustainable peace to Yemen. They reaffirmed their strong commitment to the unity, sovereignty, independence, and territorial integrity of Yemen.

Johnson Says UK 'Will Defeat' Coronavirus after Leaving Hospital
Agence France Presse/Naharnet/April 12/2020
Prime Minister Boris Johnson said on Sunday Britain "will defeat" coronavirus, in a video message released by Downing Street as he left hospital following intensive care treatment for the disease. "We will defeat this coronavirus and defeat it together," the 55-year-old leader said, seated and dressed in a suit and tie. "Though the struggle is by no means over, we are now making progress in this incredible national battle."

Spain's Daily Virus Toll Rises Again with 619 Dead
Agence France Presse/Naharnet/April 12/2020
Spain's daily death toll from the coronavirus rose to 619 on Sunday, after falling for three straight days, the government said. The country, one of the worst hit by the pandemic, has now recorded 16,972 deaths from COVID-19. The daily toll was up from 510 on Saturday.

Report: China Chasing Coronavirus Praise from Germany
Agence France Presse/Naharnet/April 12/2020
Chinese representatives tried to influence German government officials to give positive comments about Beijing's management of the coronavirus outbreak, Germany's Die Welt newspaper reported Sunday. The virus first emerged in the Chinese city of Wuhan in December and Beijing has been criticized by some -- most notably U.S. President Donald Trump -- over its initial handling of the crisis. Senior officials and staff at German government ministries were invited "to speak in positive terms about China's management of the coronavirus," Die Welt said, citing a confidential foreign ministry document. The foreign ministry recommended that all German governmental departments reject such approaches, the newspaper added. The ministry has declined to confirm or deny the report. However a German intelligence source told Die Welt that "Chinese officials are pursuing an intensified information and propaganda policy with regard to the coronavirus." Beijing has sought to counter the narrative that the outbreak began in China and highlighted its assistance to Western countries "in order to present the People's Republic as a trustworthy partner," Germany's Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution said. The pandemic has shaken the world, killing more than 107,000 people and infecting over 1,745,000, wreaking vast economic damage and prompting a rash of finger-pointing. Trump and his administration had made a point of referring to COVID-19 as the "Chinese virus" or the "Wuhan virus", infuriating Beijing. The US president has also cast doubt on the accuracy of official Chinese virus figures and accused the World Health Organization of pro-China bias.

The Latest LCCC English analysis & editorials from miscellaneous sources published on April 12-13/2020
ريموند إبراهيم/معهد كايتستون/ جدول بإرتكابات واعتداءات تعرض له المسيحيون خلال شهر شباط لعام 2020
“Jihadists Martyred Him for Refusing to Renounce Jesus Christ”: The Persecution of Christians, February 2020
Raymond Ibrahim/Gatestone Institute/April 12/2020
http://eliasbejjaninews.com/archives/85077/%d8%b1%d9%8a%d9%85%d9%88%d9%86%d8%af-%d8%a5%d8%a8%d8%b1%d8%a7%d9%87%d9%8a%d9%85-%d9%85%d8%b9%d9%87%d8%af-%d9%83%d8%a7%d9%8a%d8%aa%d8%b3%d8%aa%d9%88%d9%86-%d8%ac%d8%af%d9%88%d9%84-%d8%a8%d8%a5%d8%b1/
Saleem Masih, a 22-year-old Christian farmhand, was tortured and killed for using his Muslim employer’s water well…. The employer later insisted that he had committed no crime; it was the murdered Christian who had “committed a crime by dirtying” their water, his murderer insisted, and therefore his punishment — torture and death — was “justified.” — CLAAS, February 28, Pakistan.
“Are we to deny the evidence before us, of kidnappers separating Muslims from infidels or compelling Christians to convert or die?” — Matthew Hassan Kukah, Bishop of Sokoto Diocese, Zenit.org, February 12, 2020, Nigeria.
“Christians are losing everything they own without an actual legal basis. They are losing everything Christians have worked for over the course of history.” — Fr. Slavomir Dadas, Aid to the Church in Need, February 6, 2020, Turkey.
“Another Christian girl aged 14 was recently abducted and gang-raped by some Muslim youths… The abductors not only raped her but also obtained her signatures and thumb impressions on some papers.” Although police recovered her, the rights activist “fears the suspects will use her signed documents to produce a fake marriage certificate and religion conversion letter in a bid to escape abduction and rape charges,” which, he said, “is common modus operandi of Muslims to confuse the court and avoid justice.” — Napoleon Qayyum, executive director of the Pakistan Center of Law of Justice, Morningstar News, February 12, 2020, Pakistan.
The Slaughter of Christians
Burkina Faso: On Sunday, February 16, Islamic gunmen raided a church during service and slaughtered 24 worshippers, including their pastor; 18 other congregants were injured and several others kidnapped. The terrorists torched the church building before leaving.
In a separate incident on February 10, militant Muslims abducted and slaughtered a church pastor, his son, two nephews, and another Christian clergyman. According to yet another report on February 3:
“Jihadists, claiming to be killing ‘in the name of Allah,’ returned to the scene of a previous atrocity … and murdered at least ten Christian men in a village market place; some estimates have put the death toll as high as 50.”
The attack took place in the same small town “where Boko Haram extremists began their murderous rampage last year on 28 April 2019, shooting the pastor, his son and four members of the congregation.” Then, as in other instances, the Islamic gunmen “threatened to kill anyone who would not convert to Islam.”
“Christians say they are in a fight for survival,” another report declared:
“Dozens of Catholic priests have been killed; Protestant pastors and their families have been killed or kidnapped by violent Islamic militants. Villagers wearing Christian symbols are singled out and killed on the spot. Jihadists replace schools with what locals call ‘Arab’ schools; churches, shops and health centers are burned down.”
Democratic Republic of Congo: During several orchestrated raids, militant Muslims slaughtered a 60-year-old pastor “after he refused their demands to convert to Islam.” According to a February 6 report:
“Ngulongo Year Batsemire, the Archdeacon of Eringeti, was walking to his fields with his wife when they were surrounded by members of the Allied Democratic Forces (ADF), an Islamist militant group that has been active in the north-east region of DRC for more than two decades and repeatedly targets Christians. The militants demanded Pastor Ngulongo tell them where they could find other pastors. They then attempted to force him to convert to Islam. When the father-of-ten refused to renounce Jesus Christ, the jihadists martyred him. His wife’s life was spared. She recalls that the militants had uttered a local phrase known to be used when they are looking to kill Christians but spare Muslims.”
According to another report, around the same day that the pastor was murdered and over the ensuing 48 hours, jihadists slaughtered “at least 74 civilians, many of them women and children, with knives and guns” in ten different villages in the Christian-majority nation in early February.
Kenya: On February 19, Muslims linked with the Islamic terror group Al Shabaab (“the youth”), raided another bus in search of Christians and killed at least three people (one report said four); two others were injured. At least two Christian men, Kevin Onyango and Peter Kilonzo, were executed because they could not or would not proclaim the Islamic statement of faith, the shahada, which instantly converts its reciter into a Muslim. One man of Muslim background was also killed for heroically trying to defend the Christians (and therefore, in the eyes of the terrorists, apostatizing). Discussing this incident, a local evangelist said:
“We are seeing a return of planned violent attacks against Christians… Hostility against Christians has been escalating in Mandera at an alarming rate and is being carried out by al-Shabaab members. They target public service vehicles, where they separate Christians from Muslims and execute them. If not vehicles, they attack residential places and kill non-local Christian people. We are, however, proud of the few courageous Muslims who stand up and defend Christians. In this bus attack, one of them was killed for trying to stop the gunmen from shooting the Christians who were not able to say the Islamic prayer.”
Two months before this attack, 11 Christians were also executed in a similar fashion: jihadists raided their bus and ordered them to recite the shahada.
Mozambique: In the Christian-majority nation (where Muslims amount for less than 20% of the population), “Continuing Islamist attacks,” a February 14 report documented, “have already claimed 500 lives and left thousands displaced,” since October 2017, and “shows no signs of coming to an end.” Between just January 29 and 30, there were six separate attacks “causing a general exodus of the population and leaving behind a broad swath of destruction in villages.” Local Bishop Luiz Fernando Lisboa decried the attacks as “a tragedy” and acknowledged his own vulnerability. He added:
“I am not afraid. I’m simply trying to fulfil my own role, which is to support the missionaries who are there, in the direct line of fire. They are extremely brave. They are the oasis that the people need, [trusted figures] to whom they can cry out and ask for help. They have not abandoned their posts and so I have no right to be afraid.”
Pakistan: Saleem Masih, a 22-year-old Christian farmhand, was tortured and killed for using his Muslim employer’s water well. Once the employer saw what Masih was doing, he accused him of being a “filthy Christian” who “had polluted the water.” A number of equally scandalized Muslims gathered; “vow[ing] to teach him a lesson,” they “dragged him to their cattle farm, where they tied his hands, chained his feet and continued to torture him with sticks and iron rods.”
Before he died from his wounds on February 28, Masih told his family that he had been “tortured just for being a Christian.” The employer later insisted that he had committed no crime; it was the murdered Christian who had “committed a crime by dirtying” their water, his murderer insisted, and therefore his punishment—torture and death—was “justified.”
Masih’s father also confirmed that his son was murdered “for nothing but for being Christian.” Violent and murderous outbursts by Muslims whenever “filthy Christians” drink or use “their” water is not uncommon.
In 2004, Javed Anjum, another young Christian, was trapped and tortured for five full days, before being killed for having the audacity to drink water from a madrassa. Even the most notorious case of Christian persecution in Pakistan, that of Asia Bibi — who was beaten, falsely accused of blasphemy, and imprisoned for nearly a decade — began after she, then a farm laborer, also drank from a well, prompting outrage from her Muslim coworkers.
The Massacre of Nigeria’s Christians
Still more Christians were killed and churches torched at the hands of militant Muslims (Fulani herdsmen, Boko Haram, generic terrorists).
On February 21, well over a hundred heavily armed Boko Haram jihadists raided Garkida in Gombi of Adamawa State, a predominantly Christian village. According to one report, they “opened fire sporadically and indiscriminately and set churches and houses on fire, killing many people…”
“At least five churches were destroyed, including two houses of worship belonging to the Church of the Brethren denomination, an Anglican Communion church, and a church and a separate office of Living Faith Church.”
Possible abductions were reported. The raiders had suddenly emerged out of a neighboring forest after Friday prayers riding atop 60 motorbikes; each vehicle carried two terrorists armed with AK47s and RPGs, followed by about 20 mounted gun trucks. “Garkida is currently on fire,” one local reported; “many people have been killed and their houses covered with smoke.”
According to a February 18 report, the Fulani Muslim herdsmen that slaughtered 32 Christians during late January raids on three Christian villages (reported here), also torched four Christian churches:
“These churches include the Kauna Baptist Church and Church of Christ in Nations (COCIN) in Rubio village, and the COCIN Church and Anglican Church in Marish. Although other structures were also destroyed, the destruction of these churches demonstrates a particular hatred toward Christianity. Despite this, the Nigerian government insists that there is no religious motivation in Fulani militant attacks throughout Nigeria’s Middle Belt region.”
On February 1, Michael Nnadi, an 18-year-old theology student at the Good Shepherd Seminary in Kaduna, was found killed. Along with three other seminarians who had since gained their freedom, he was earlier abducted by unknown but suspected militant Muslims. “Michael was a young and gifted seminarian,” said one of the teachers at the seminary.
“He was an orphan who had been brought up by his grandmother. Just a few weeks ago, after a year of spiritual preparation, he had been clothed in the soutane. It seems that his only crime was his desire to serve God. The security forces and the government have failed him.”
During a homily at Michael’s funeral, Matthew Hassan Kukah, Bishop of Sokoto Diocese, said: “We have no evidence of what transpired between Michael and his killers. However, for us Christians, this death is a metaphor for the fate of all Christians in Nigeria but especially northern Nigeria,” where Muslims make the majority, and where “destroying Christianity is seen as one of their key missions,” he said of Boko Haram and its many sympathizers in the north. “Are we to deny the evidence before us, of kidnappers separating Muslims from infidels or compelling Christians to convert or die?” The bishop continued:
“The persecution of Christians in northern Nigeria is as old as the modern Nigerian state. Their experiences and fears of northern, Islamic domination are documented in the Willinks Commission Report way back in 1956. It was also the reason why they formed a political platform called, the Non-Muslim League. All of us must confess in all honesty that in the years that have passed, the northern Muslim elite has not developed a moral basis for adequate power sharing with their Christian co-regionalists. We deny at our own expense. By denying Christians lands for places of worship across most of the northern states, ignoring the systematic destruction of churches all these years, denying Christians adequate recruitment, representation and promotions in the State civil services, denying their indigenous children scholarships, marrying Christian women or converting Christians while threatening Muslim women and prospective converts with death, they make building a harmonious community impossible…. Are we to deny the evidence before us, of kidnappers separating Muslims from infidels or compelling Christians to convert or die?”
For his part, Femi Fani-Kayode, Nigeria’s former Minister of Culture and Tourism, accused the “evil Barack Obama” and his administration for being behind the persecution of Christians and general chaos plaguing Nigeria. On February 12, the former government official asserted:
“What Obama, John Kerry and Hilary Clinton did to Nigeria by funding and supporting [current president Muhammadu] Buhari in the 2015 presidential election and helping Boko Haram in 2014/2015 was sheer wickedness and the blood of all those killed by the Buhari administration, his Fulani herdsmen and Boko Haram over the last 5 years are on their hands.
“… I just thank God for Donald Trump. Had he been President of America in 2015 things would have been very different, Jonathan [Goodluck Jonathan, a Christian, was Nigeria’s president 2010-2015] would have won, Boko Haram would have been history and the Fulani herdsmen would never have seen the light of day.”
Hate Crimes against Christians and Churches
Pakistan: On February 2, local Muslims, led by Muhammad Akram and Muhammad Liaqat, opened fire on a group of Christians because they were building a small church on their own land in the village, which has nearly 150 Christians in need of a church. The armed Muslims first came and tried forcefully to seize the Christian-owned land, including by demolishing the church’s boundary wall. According to the report:
“When Gulzar Masih [the Christian owner] heard of this he and his sons rushed to the plot to stop the wall from being demolished, the Muslim attackers opened fire and three people (Christians) were severely injured. Azeem, son of Gulzar, was shot in the head, Sajjad was shot in his arm and Razaq was attacked with an axe…. The other suspects fired their guns into the air and escaped the scene.”
Egypt: On February 3, a Christian priest traveling to his church in Alexandria was ambushed and “nearly murdered” by a Muslim parolee. According to the report, the man “blocked the priest’s car and began attacking him with stones. Fortunately, only the car was damaged. The parolee, nicknamed Kareem Madi, has a history of attacking Christians—especially women and girls.”
Two weeks earlier, two other Christians were also randomly targeted in two separate incidents by Muslim men with known hatred for Christians. The woman had her throat slit and the man had his ear sliced off. The report adds that
“These incidents are a reminder that while Egypt may be experiencing less Christian fatalities than previous years, the mindset which encourages the targeting of Christians still exist [sic]. It is a mindset that is encouraged by the government[,] by its policies which view Christians as second-class citizens and Islam as the official religion of the country.”
Turkey: After locals interrupted the burial of a Christian woman— in part by shouting, “Allahu Akbar!” [“Allah is the greatest!”] — at the cemetery of the Santa Maria Catholic Church in Trabzon on January 18, her grave was later found desecrated, its wooden cross broken and burned, when her husband came to visit it on February 14. The priest of the church which the deceased woman was a member of, Father Andrea Santoro, was himself martyred in 2006 when a 16-year-old, also shouting “Allahu Akbar,” shot the priest in the back of the head while he was kneeling in prayer inside the church.
“Christians are losing everything they own without an actual legal basis,” said Fr. Slavomir Dadas in a February 6 report on the deteriorating situation for Christians in Turkey. “They are losing everything Christians have worked for over the course of history.” Although the priest’s discussion was focused on the hilly region of Tur Abdin — an ancient religious and cultural center for Christians where harassment and persecution has become the norm — his discourse had relevance for the entire nation:
“The Christians do not feel welcome in their own homeland and have to endure frequent harassment…. The biggest problem, particularly in Tur Abdin, is that people can no longer envision a future for themselves in the region. It is said that there were almost 50,000 Christians living there about 50 years ago. When I recently visited the area, they were talking about only 2,500 Christians…. [T]hey seem to be regarded as a problem because the area itself is considered a Christian region. This is not acceptable in a Muslim country… The villages were once inhabited by 200 to 300 families, most of them Christians. Today, two or three Christian families live in a village… They are guardians of the cultural heritage and the faith there.”
Pakistan: In order to justify marriage to a 14-year-old Christian girl who was previously abducted, forced to convert to Islam, and wed to a Muslim man, on February 3, during a hearing on the case of Huma Younus, the Sindh high court in Karachi ruled that men may marry underage girls once they have their period, in direct compliance with sharia, or Islamic law. “Our daughters are insecure and abused in this country,” Huma’s mother remarked earlier. “They are not safe anywhere. We leave them at schools or home but they are kidnapped, raped, humiliated, and forced to convert to Islam.”
Marriage to underage girls is illegal due to the Sindh Child Marriage Restraint Act, which the high court ignored to side with Muslims against Christians. Discussing this incident, Napoleon Qayyum, executive director of the Pakistan Center of Law of Justice, said:
“Another Christian girl aged 14 was recently abducted and gang-raped by some Muslim youths… The victim is a student of grade nine and was abducted by four or five boys on her way to a local tuition center on Jan. 16, 2020. The abductors not only raped her but also obtained her signatures and thumb impressions on some papers.”
Although police recovered her, the rights activist “fears the suspects will use her signed documents to produce a fake marriage certificate and religion conversion letter in a bid to escape abduction and rape charges,” which, he said, “is common modus operandi of Muslims to confuse the court and avoid justice. Moreover, the girls are also forced to give false statements in court that they have changed their religion of free will and had married of their own choice,” Qayyum added. “Girls belonging to minority communities often succumb to pressure and consideration for their family’s security, which has further emboldened the men belonging to the majority faith.”
Uganda: “On Feb. 20, I received some threatening messages that my church is going to be destroyed because of converting Muslims to Christians,” a pastor reported.
“Some of my members have stopped attending the church for fear of their lives in a possible attack by the Muslims. Sending away the helpless family is not a good idea, but losing church members is also not good. We as a church are in a dilemma.”
Earlier, the wife and mother of the family had converted to Christianity and began to share the Gospel with a few of her children, who in turn shared it with their older siblings. Within a year, all nine children, aged between 5 and 20, also turned to Christianity. But then, “When I shared Christ’s love to my husband,” the woman explained, “he was so furious at me and responded by slapping and kicking, which injured my rib on the left side.”
“I was taken for medication. But I continued praying and sharing Jesus with him. After two months Jesus appeared to my husband in a vision, which led to his conversion to the Christian faith. He then stopped attending the prayers at mosque.”
However, when one of their youngest children innocently told her paternal grandfather that the family had been attending church, her father’s “angry father summoned him to a meeting where mosque elders and clan leaders would determine his punishment for leaving Islam. Under sharia (Islamic law), apostasy is often punishable by death,” the report adds. Instead, the family fled to and “sought refuge at the church,” his wife explained, “where we have been residing since December 2019.”
Jihad on St. Valentine
As happens every year, several Muslim nations made it a point to issue proclamations and threats of punishment for anyone who celebrates Valentine’s Day, which Islamic leaders widely condemn as a Western holiday with Christian roots. This was the case, for example, in various regions of Indonesia, the world’s most populous Muslim nation: In Aceh, “Those who are [caught] celebrating Valentine’s Day violate Islamic Sharia law applied in Aceh, and they can be caned,” warned the regent of West Aceh. Similarly, the “Indonesian Ulema [Islamic Scholars] Council in West Java and the mayor of Bandung sought to ban Valentine’s Day celebrations in all secondary and senior high schools,” while their counterparts in Tarakan, declared Valentine’s Day “illegal.”
Similarly, in Iran, “On February 11 this year the Center for Reduction and Control of Social Harms of the Prosecutor’s Office in Qom warned businesses that promote ‘anti-cultural symbols such as Valentine’s symbols’ threatening to shut them down from one to six months if they do not comply. The statement issued by Prosecutor’s Office has also provided a number for the public to call to report ‘transgressions.'”
Raymond Ibrahim, author of the recent book, Sword and Scimitar, Fourteen Centuries of War between Islam and the West, is a Distinguished Senior Fellow at the Gatestone Institute, a Shillman Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center, and a Judith Rosen Friedman Fellow at the Middle East Forum.
About this Series
While not all, or even most, Muslims are involved, persecution of Christians by extremists is growing. The report posits that such persecution is not random but rather systematic, and takes place irrespective of language, ethnicity, or location.
© 2020 Gatestone Institute. All rights reserved. The articles printed here do not necessarily reflect the views of the Editors or of Gatestone Institute. No part of the Gatestone website or any of its contents may be reproduced, copied or modified, without the prior written consent of Gatestone Institute.
*Picture enclosed/In Trabzon, Turkey, locals interrupted the burial of a Christian woman — in part by shouting, “Allahu Akbar!” — at the cemetery of the Santa Maria Catholic Church on January 18, 2020. On February 14, her grave was found desecrated, its wooden cross broken and burned. Pictured: The funeral of 60-year-old Italian Catholic priest Andrea Santoro at Santa Maria on February 6, 2006. Santoro was shot and murdered at the church by a 16-year-old.

Growing Turkish interference in Yemen stirs concern in Cairo
Amr Emam/The Arab Weekly/April 12/2020
Turkey has taken a greater political role in southern Yemen through the country’s local branch of the Muslim Brotherhood.
Sunday 12/04/2020
CAIRO--Turkey’s growing presence in Yemen, especially in the restive southern region, is fuelling concern in Egypt over security in the Red Sea and the Suez Canal.
Turkey has taken a greater political role in southern Yemen through the country’s local branch of the Muslim Brotherhood, which is helping Turkish charities gain influence.
“The Islah (Reform) party is instrumental in giving Turkish institutions and the Turkish government, all masquerading as charity organisations, access to Yemeni cities,” said Yemeni political analyst Mahmud al-Tahir. “Turkey has interests in abetting the Muslim Brotherhood and giving it more power on the Yemeni stage.”Founded in 1990, the Reform Party, the Muslim Brotherhood’s local branch, has long been an important player on the country’s political stage. The party has gained more power in recent years, filling a political vacuum left by the downfall of the Ali Abdullah Saleh regime in February 2012 and then by a coup staged by the Iran-backed Houthi militia against President Abd Rabbo Mansour Hadi in March 2015.
The party is represented in the government of Prime Minister Maeen Abdulmalik Saeed, which is based in the south-eastern port city of Aden.
Brotherhood-affiliated officials and ministers have taken trips to Ankara to lobby officials with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s Justice and Development Party (AKP) to be more active in Yemen, particularly by investing in the country’s transport sectors and ports.
ln mid-January, Turkey’s deputy interior minister, Ismail Catakli, visited Aden and held talks with Saeed. He revealed that Erdogan had asked a team of aides to prepare a report about humanitarian needs in Yemen.
This came two months after former Yemeni Transport Minister Saleh al-Jabwani, a Reform Party affiliate, visited Turkey to discuss cooperation in managing Yemeni ports.
Cairo has not spoken publicly on the development, but political analysts in Cairo say the government is concerned that Turkey’s efforts to increase their presence near the Bab el-Mandeb Strait, through which Gulf oil is transported before reaching the Suez Canal, will threaten the security of Egypt and Gulf Arab states.
“Turkey sets its eyes on Yemen’s Red Sea ports and ports close to the strait only with the aim of putting pressure on Egypt,” said Yemeni political analyst Abdel Karim al-Medi.
Turkey’s efforts to increase its presence near the Bab el-Mandeb Strait are part of a larger campaign to shore up influence in the southern entrance of the Red Sea.
With a military base in Djibouti and repeated efforts to gain a foothold in Somalia and the Sudanese Red Sea island of Suakin, Ankara is working hard to become a force in the Red Sea.
Egypt is at odds with Turkey due to Ankara’s support for political Islam, including the international Muslim Brotherhood movement, and competition for resources in the Eastern Mediterranean.
“Turkey was hoping that the post-Arab spring political rise of this Islamist movement would serve its interests in the region,” said independent Egyptian analyst Abdelmonem Ahmed. “This was why it threw its full weight behind the movement everywhere: in Egypt, in Sudan, in Libya and in Yemen.
On top of Turkey’s involvement in Yemen, Ankara has also lent support to Libya’s Islamist-leaning Government of National Accord (GNA).
Egypt, reacting to the Houthis’ takeover of Yemeni territory in 2015, built up its military presence in the southern entrance of the Red Sea.
It now deploys naval units near the coast of Yemen and the Bab el-Mandeb Strait and has constructed a naval/air base near its border with Sudan on the Red Sea.
The Egyptian military buildup in the Red Sea aims to protect the maritime movement in the sea, secure international oil supplies and safeguard the security of the Suez Canal.
In August 2018, Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi said his country would not allow non-Arab powers to gain a foothold in Yemen.
“We will not accept Yemen to turn into a springboard for threatening the security and stability of Arab countries or the freedom of navigation in the Red Sea or the Bab el-Mandeb Strait,” Sisi said at a press briefing with Hadi in Cairo. It remains unclear how Egypt will react to Turkey’s recent activities in Yemen. “Turkey harbours a lot of animosity to Egypt on economic, ideological and political grounds,” Ahmed said. “Cairo needs to urgently step up coordination with the Yemeni government to trim Turkish influence in Yemen.”
*Amr Emam is a Cairo-based journalist. He has contributed to the New York Times, San Francisco Chronicle and the UN news site IRIN.

OPEC, Russia reach tentative deal to reduce global crude supplies/Russia, Saudis bury differences but new deal remains at risk.
Jareer Elass/The Arab Weekly/April 12/2020
The prospects of stemming an oil price collapse exacerbated by a coronavirus-led drop in global crude demand and the Riyadh-Moscow price war brightened with energy ministers from OPEC and independent producers agreeing, during a teleconference summit April 9 and a virtual G20 summit April 10 on a tentative deal to reduce global crude supplies by a whopping 15 million barrels a day (bpd).
A phone call between US President Donald Trump, Saudi King Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud and Russian President Vladimir Putin during the April 9 deliberations ensured the world’s three biggest oil producers were on the same page about the need for a large-scale agreement.
The groundbreaking agreement reached by the 23-member alliance of OPEC members and independent producers producers stipulates OPEC+ initially cutting its collective output by 10 million bpd – equal to 10% of global supplies with — an expectation of up to 5 million bpd of production cuts from outside OPEC+.
The pact calls for OPEC+ to reduce output by 10 million bpd in May and June, easing that volume cut to 8 million bpd between July and December, with a final adjustment to a 6 million bpd reduction between January 2021 and April 2022. In putting aside their differences and ending their month-long price war, Saudi Arabia and Russia committed to each slashing its current production levels by 42.5 million bpd, with Russia accepting a 2 million bpd cut. OPEC+ member Mexico had balked at being assigned a 400,000 bpd reduction, which threatened to scupper the entire agreement, but Trump announced that the US would absorb 250,000 b/d of Mexico’s allotment with Mexico reimbursing Washington at a later date.
How effective the groundbreaking agreement will be depends on the commitment of the world’s biggest oil producers in the coming weeks and months but the price war has already strained Saudi Arabia’s political and economic relationships with Moscow and added potential wrinkles in its ties with the United States. Proud of its unparalleled role as the swing producer that alone could moderate market instability through sizeable crude output cuts or boosts, Riyadh had demanded that the current burden be shared by other large producers, including Russia, the United States, Canada and Norway.
Moscow had insisted that its participation in a major reduction agreement was contingent on the United States joining in.
The price war erupted after Russia rejected Saudi-led efforts in early March to increase OPEC+ production cuts by 1.5 million bpd to combat an oil-price plunge resulting from the coronavirus-led drop in global energy demand. Moscow wanted to take a “wait and see” approach in response to the rapidly growing impact of the virus on global demand.
Following Moscow’s reaction, Riyadh immediately slashed its official selling prices to its key markets and said it would quickly ramp up its oil production by more than 2 million bpd.
Moscow retaliated by saying it would boost its output by as much as 500,000 bpd. The deterioration in relations between Moscow and Riyadh came after a three-year period of surprisingly strong cooperation between the two countries in co-managing OPEC+ agreements. The Saudi-Russian alignment on global oil production appeared to be a natural outgrowth of the political and economic ties that Riyadh and Moscow had begun developing after King Salman ascended to the Saudi throne in January 2015. The Saudi government made it clear in June of that year that it was shedding decades-long Saudi antipathy towards Russia when then Deputy Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud made a surprise visit to St Petersburg. That visit was followed by the two nations’ sovereign wealth funds developing a partnership for investments in Russia, with the Saudi fund agreeing to contribute $10 billion. Riyadh has reportedly only anted up $2.5 billion of its commitment, irritating Moscow.
Some 15 agreements between the two countries were signed during King Salman’s historic visit to Moscow in October 2017, including the kingdom expressing interest in purchasing Russian S400 missile defence systems valued at $2 billion. That agreement remains in limbo.
Similarly, some 20 Russian-Saudi deals were inked during Putin’s visit to the kingdom last October, but a number of those agreements may well have been for public show. State oil firm Saudi Aramco had already stepped away from negotiations with Russian gas producer Novatek’s Arctic liquefied natural gas project earlier in 2019.
Washington has held a long-standing position that OPEC is a cartel and that market forces should determine oil prices instead of manipulation by a group of producers on coordinating output levels. Yet, US President Donald Trump demanded that Saudi Arabia and Russia end their price war and that OPEC+ agree to 10 to 15 million bpd of output reductions. The US leader even threatened to slap “very substantial tariffs” on Saudi and Russian oil imports if the price war continued and no reduction agreement was reached. The US government and American oil firms are prevented from formally joining any OPEC+ agreements due to antitrust and sovereignty reasons, although US output cuts could be legally made if state regulators or the federal government set lower production levels.
US Energy Secretary Dan Brouillette, in remarks during the G20 virtual meeting, indicated that US oil production will likely fall as much as 2 million bpd by the end of this year due to low oil prices. Brouillette also said that the Trump administration will open up the country’s Strategic Petroleum Reserve to “store as much oil as possible” in an effort to take surplus US crude off the market. According to some estimates, that could remove as much as 850,000 bpd of US crude from the market in the next few months and could be seen as part of the US’ contributions to output cuts.
*Jareer Elass is a Washington-based energy analyst, with 25 years of industry experience and a particular focus on the Arabian Gulf producers and OPEC.

The face of the world is bound to change after COVID-19
Khairallah Khairallah/The Arab Weekly/April 12/2020
What did not happen by the end of the Cold War and the dissolution of the Soviet Union will definitely happen after the end of the war on the coronavirus pandemic.
But it is going to be a long war, of many months to come.
After the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and the collapse of the Soviet Union at the beginning of 1992, there was this impression that the world had entered a new era which had nothing to do with the preceding period that had extended from the Yalta Conference in 1945 to the fall of the Berlin Wall.
The United States won the Cold War, but it wasn’t a decisive victory, as it became clear that other powers would emerge and exert influence in parts of the world.
Indeed, East European countries joined the European Union one by one, but the United States could not have full control of the fate of the world for long. In Russia, the star of Vladimir Putin, who still dreams of restoring the former glory of the ex-Soviet Union and its global role, was on the rise.
If truth must be told, the new Russian “Tsar” has succeeded, in part, in demonstrating that Russia is still a military power to be reckoned with. He went ahead and recaptured Crimea, which is of strategic importance to the Russian fleet, from Ukraine. In fact, Crimea was originally Russian land that former Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev had abandoned to Ukraine. At the time, it did not matter if the Crimea was Ukrainian as long as Ukraine was a republic of the Soviet Union.
Next you have China, which has transformed into the second-largest economy in the world and which now has its own international strategy, especially after its regime succeeded in suppressing the popular uprising that accompanied the collapse of the Soviet Union. The whole world still remembers the tragic events of Tiananmen Square in Beijing in 1989.
The repressive machine of the Chinese regime was able to quell the massive revolt when the Chinese wanted to emulate the East Germans who have had enough of the wall of shame that had divided Berlin for a long time. In the post-coronavirus era, there will be a new world order based on the idea that every country in the world, including the United States, is going to be interested in one thing only: taking care of its healthcare system. The coronavirus pandemic took the world by surprise and spread dramatically, especially in Europe and the United States. So, each country will have to adjust to and prepare for the possibility of new epidemics.
Europe has discovered that it cannot be a truly unified entity. Italy found out at its expense that it cannot rely on the European Union in times of crisis. Its healthcare system was simply and suddenly overrun by the consequences of a health catastrophe never envisioned before and so were the public healthcare systems in Spain and France. There is no doubt that the state of political chaos in Italy during the past few years has played a role in bringing down the country’s health system to where it is now. Italy used to enjoy some political stability with well-established political parties competing for power; but now, with the emergence of extreme right-wing and secessionist parties with no clear political or economic agendas to offer, the Italians have become polarised by political amateurs.
Furthermore, the chaos in Italy was happening while the European Union itself was living under the shadow of internal conflicts due to several reasons. Among those reasons is the expansion of the Union to include poor countries with fragile economies, on the one hand, and Britain’s exit, on the other. Britain had played a role in sabotaging the European Union from the inside by first agreeing to expand the Union, thinking that would undermine the growing influence of the German-French duo, and then suddenly deciding to leave it in largely mysterious circumstances. The reasons given for Brexit are still unconvincing.
In any case, relations between members of the Union are bound to change towards more independence for the EU’s members. What is almost certain is that there will be no new steps towards more integration between the countries of the European Union. The dream of a unified, united Europe is now much farther away than expected. The United States will remain the largest and most developed economy in the world but many questions still persist about its ability to face new challenges. It has simply turned out that even this unique global superpower is unable to confront the coronavirus pandemic. Even worse, the virus can quickly paralyse a good portion of its military might.
American scientists have been able to decipher the mysteries of human genes, make great leaps in medical sciences and be at the forefront of artificial intelligence — until the coronavirus outbreak. The whole world has found itself back at square one. Now, it is time to take stock of what has been achieved on a global level so far and start working to beat the pandemic.
So, what kind of world order will we see after defeating the pandemic? What is certain is that there will be no place in this order for regimes such as the one in Iran. The coronavirus has ravaged the country but its leaders are still convinced that they can control the fate of the entire region. Their evidence is a vague theory of providential protection but their tool is sectarian militias in need of continuous funding.
It is also certain that many values ​​are going to change. Each country, small and large alike, will have to take care of its internal security, social discipline and matters related to its healthcare system. But, most important of all, the average person on this globe has learnt the value of life. People are going to rediscover the importance of life and its fragility in the face of a disaster such as the coronavirus pandemic. The United States was able to land a person on the moon and send a probe to Mars, but it finds itself powerless in the face of COVID-19. If he wants to ensure his re-election, US President Donald Trump has no choice but to address his fellow citizens on a daily basis and reassure them of his leadership in the war on the virus.
Yes, the concerns of Americans have changed to the point that the battle for the US presidency has become intimately linked to the battle against the virus and not to the economy or to politics or to relations with other countries. How is that for evidence that the coronavirus pandemic is going to give birth to a new world order?
*Khairallah Khairallah is a Lebanese writer.

Turns Out $2 Trillion in Stimulus Isn’t Nearly Enough Stimulus
Mark Gongloff/Bloomberg/April 12/2020
A decade ago, banks were the hot zones of the financial crisis. Today they’re being asked to help with coronavirus rescues, including funneling government-backed loan money to small businesses. But that’s turning out to be complicated and potentially thankless work, writes Matt Levine. No wonder the program’s off to a rocky start.
Many European banks, meanwhile, also face that old-timey financial-crisis problem of having hard-to-sell assets gunking up their balance sheets, writes Elisa Martinuzzi. We’ll soon find out the hard way if these banks learned any risk-management lessons from that other crisis.
When you look up historical data on monthly changes to America’s nonfarm payrolls at BLS.gov, you get a headache-inducing table.
There is a 701 number down in the lower left-hand corner which represents the 701,000 job losses in March the BLS just reported. The (P) means it’s preliminary data; it will be revised a lot. Whatever the final number is, exactly, it’s a lot of job losses. It’s on par with some of the worst months of 2008 and 2009, which you can see at the top of the table.
Here’s the thing: April’s number could be 30 times as big, Bloomberg economists estimate. That means these neat little boxes, accustomed to holding no more than three figures, will be stretched to accommodate something like 20 million job losses. In one month. There’s never been anything like it; not even close. We will need more, much more, than the stimulus spending we’ve seen so far to get the economy to the post-virus promised land in one piece.
For example, the $350 billion set aside for small-business loans won’t be nearly enough, writes Tim O’Brien. That amount is premised on the idea coronavirus lockdowns will be relatively brief and that everybody will get right back to normal quickly. That seems unlikely. Small businesses are woven into the fabric of American life, employing half of all working-age adults. There will be no getting back to normal if we don’t help them.
Bailing out businesses, however, shouldn’t include rescuing private equity firms that loaded small companies with debt to pay themselves dividends, argues Shuli Ren. They have the capital, and the means of raising more, to bolster their distressed companies.
As we wrote earlier, the unemployment benefits system isn’t designed to handle this catastrophe. Narayana Kocherlakota suggests the government should instead directly pay the full wages and benefits of anybody who has lost a job because of the virus. This could cost $2 trillion if done for three months, but it’s worth it. We must also do more to help the 550,000 homeless Americans, most of whom live in crowded shelters where they’re especially vulnerable to the virus, Tracy Walsh writes. Helping the homeless socially distance isn’t just a moral issue; it’s a public-health imperative, given how many of them work in low-wage jobs we suddenly realize are essential, such as food preparation and delivery.
America’s crumbling infrastructure, like its lack of affordable housing, is another long-term problem whose time may finally have come. President Donald Trump says he wants infrastructure spending as part of some future stimulus plan, and Noah Smith agrees this is a great idea. But Trump may not like Noah’s prescription for spending: It should come in the form of direct grants to the states and include projects that prepare us for a greener future. This could cost another $2 trillion, at least. But this is the age of big numbers.

Coronavirus: Developing nations face choice between infection and starvation
Sultan Althari/Al Arabiya/April 2020
The novel coronavirus (COVID-19) blights societies across the globe, paying no attention to economic disparities or geographical borders. The virus also gives little regard to differences across individuals. Developing countries—like individuals with pre-existing health conditions—are disproportionately impacted. Flattening the COVID-19 curve demands strict mitigation measures such as national lockdowns and social distancing, and stricter measures almost invariably yield flatter curves.
Implementing these measures requires substantial fiscal space to cope with the economic ramifications and offer social protection measures. An economy’s ability to endure a lockdown is inextricably tied to its fiscal space. It is therefore no surprise that nations like the United States and the UK announced large fiscal packages to shore up their financial system, protect payrolls, support large and small businesses through billions of dollars in aid, and expand unemployment insurance.
With limited fiscal space, developing countries simply don’t have the luxury to implement these measures. Beyond economic limitations, most developing countries were thrown into the epidemic with their own vulnerabilities: weak healthcare systems, pervasive misinformation, social unrest, under-resourced institutions, and high urban population densities.
Looking at the data, 40 percent of the world’s poorest countries were at high risk of debt distress even before COVID-19 ravaged the global economy. In recent weeks, over 85 countries with limited fiscal space have approached the IMF for short-term urgent assistance—that’s over double the number of countries that called for IMF support in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis. Analysis by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) relays the magnitude of the economic disruption of lockdowns: for each month that these measures continue, annual GDP growth is projected to fall 2 percentage points.
The pandemic’s economic impact extends far beyond a demand shock offset by expansionary fiscal and monetary policy interventions—it’s also a supply shock given the nature of contagion containment. Without the fiscal space to cope with these shocks, developing countries and their citizens face harder tradeoffs: not between economic disruption and effective mitigation, but between starvation and widespread infection; not between hand-washing frequency and duration, but between access to clean water and basic sanitation.
“We don’t know if we will get this virus…but what I do know is that we get hungry three times a day,” Shakila Asghar, a Pakistani citizen working at a towel-manufacturing factory in Karachi, was reported as saying in the Wall Street Journal. Prime Minister Imran Khan hasn’t imposed a national lockdown yet, but cases have spiked in recent weeks. Pakistan has over 4,600 confirmed cases and 68 deaths—70 percent of those cases are traced back to neighboring Iran, the epicenter of the virus’s outbreak in the Middle East.
Islamabad has taken some steps to prevent rampant infection: 10 million poor households would be provided with $20 a month, while military assistance would be used to enforce mitigation measures—many fear that these steps do little to contain the virus. The difficulty is encapsulated in the fact that Pakistan is a country of 210 million people with a fragile health-care system and ubiquitous urban slums where millions live without access to basic sanitation.
Torn between starvation or infection, working through the pandemic seems like the obvious—yet potentially lethal—answer. The tradeoff Shakila Ashgar faces is one that many citizens across the developing world struggle to navigate during this pandemic.
Beyond internal vulnerabilities, why are emerging and developing countries disproportionately impacted by the pandemic?
Their economies are heavily reliant on informal economic activity, remittances, commodity exports, and tourism—this means that unprecedented capital outflows, plummeting demand, and declining commodity prices are especially devastating conditions.
In the pre-COVID era, Africa called itself home to some of the world’s most promising emerging economies—Egypt is a case in hand. Dubbed an emerging-market darling, the Egyptian economy—despite suffering from structural fiscal imbalances—was considered region’s the fastest growing thanks to bold IMF-led reforms best described as a combination of monetary tightness and fiscal discipline.
Cairo made substantial economic strides driven by revitalized tourism, an increase in foreign exchange reserves, a reduction of the country’s twin deficits, and increased currency stabilization after its flotation in 2016. The World Bank thus expected Egypt’s GDP to grow by 6 percent in 2021. COVID-19 threatens to relegate that growth to mere unmet potential.
The public health crisis has forced policy-makers in Cairo to halt incoming flights—crippling vital tourism—while implementing record-breaking interest rate cuts in an attempt to mitigate the virus’s economic ramifications. COVID-19’s challenge is magnified by the sheer size of the Egyptian population and its fragile public health infrastructure.
More broadly, African equity markets have already been hit harder than they’ve been during the global financial crisis. However, glimmers of hope can be found in the continent’s youth-centric demographic trend, warmer climate, and lower rates of regional travel .
For emerging and developing countries, the pandemic poses an existential threat. Their economies can’t weather the COVID-19 storm alone: global problems need a swift and concerted global response.
First, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank should bolster their lending capacity by borrowing on international markets and making full use of the IMF’s Special Drawing Rights (SDR) issuance. Second, it is imperative that the IMF organizes a wide-ranging debt moratorium to prevent a cascade of sovereign defaults. Third, advanced economies should not engage in unilateral hoarding by restricting exports of protective medical equipment and testing kits.
Economic interventions must be coupled with a free-flow of reliable, science-based information between nations. This pertains to novel methods to contain and mitigate the virus’s impact, drug-testing efficacy and efficiency, as well as means to increase public awareness. Internally, developing countries must ramp-up efforts to protect address the needs of those most vulnerable while ensuring citizens have access to basic practices that prevent the virus’s spread such as hand-washing and basic sanitation.

Coronavirus: US lawmakers should look closer to home for a solution to the oil crisis
Tom Ashby and Matthew Amlôt/Al Arabiya/April 2020
US Republican lawmakers have singled out Saudi Arabia for their anger over the collapse in oil prices in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic, but the solution to the crisis lies much closer to home.
Last week almost 50 Republican members of Congress wrote to Saudi Arabia threatening to withdraw military and economic assistance from the Kingdom unless it agreed to rein in oil supply. Then on Saturday, a group of Republican senators, held a two-hour call with Saudi Arabia’s Energy Minister, Prince Abdulaziz bin Salman, and Deputy Defense Minister Prince Khaled bin Salman in which they lambasted the Kingdom for increasing its oil supply after the collapse of OPEC’s oil deal with Russia last month.
In a statement released after the call, Senator Kevin Cramer of North Dakota is quoted as saying: “The Saudis spent over a month waging war on American oil producers, all while our troops protected theirs. That’s not how friends treat friends. Their actions were inexcusable and won’t be forgotten. Saudi Arabia’s next steps will determine whether our strategic partnership is salvageable.”
Senator Dan Sullivan was quoted as saying: “The Kingdom needs to take sustainable, concrete actions to significantly cut oil production, and it needs to do so soon.”
This was a knee-jerk reaction to the crisis afflicting US oil-producing states, where widespread layoffs and production cuts have destroyed the viability of many state budgets and the livelihoods of millions of Americans.
High cost American oil companies are clearly the first to suffer from the price collapse, and it is predictable that many Republican lawmakers are under pressure from their lobby to find a scapegoat for falling prices. American oil understandably wants to make a profit.
But they would do better to look closer to home for a solution.
Saudi Arabia has been steadfast in its insistence that the crisis in oil markets is a global issue that must be addressed by truly global response. The global oil market has never witnessed a 20 percent fall in demand in the space of a month.
At a meeting last Thursday, Saudi Arabia, OPEC and allied producers including Russia all committed to reducing output by 23 percent. That is an unprecedented response. But OPEC represents only about one third of global oil production. It is patently absurd to think that OPEC, or indeed Saudi Arabia, can possibly balance the global market alone.
The largest oil producing countries that have yet to come close to that level of commitment are all in North America: Mexico, the United States and Canada. Mexico, in particular, has outright refused to sign on to its share of the deal, which has put OPEC’s plan in jeopardy.
US President Donald Trump has reportedly offered to make up the difference on behalf of Mexico, but it is still far from clear how much the United States, the largest oil producer in the world, is ready to contribute to the global cut.
If every significant oil producer in the world were to reduce their production by 20 percent, we would immediately avoid the gigantic oversupply in world oil markets and restore some balance.
The American oil industry has already closed down a significant volume of oil production because it is unprofitable at current prices, but this is not nearly enough. The US oil industry has the means to impose restrictions on oil producers through legal mechanisms at the state level that date back to the end of the 19th century. In Texas, the Railroad Commission which regulates 40 percent of the nation’s output, last used its powers to curb supply in 1973.
Given that the world is facing the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression, it would seem like a good time to dust off the rule book and put these powers to work for the good of the global industry and the millions of lives who depend on it.

Iraq being dragged down by drowning Iranian regime
Baria Alamuddin/Arab News/April 12/2020
بارعة علم الدين/النظام الإيراني يسقط ويغرق العراق
http://eliasbejjaninews.com/archives/85093/%d8%a8%d8%a7%d8%b1%d8%b9%d8%a9-%d8%b9%d9%84%d9%85-%d8%a7%d9%84%d8%af%d9%8a%d9%86-%d8%a7%d9%84%d9%86%d8%b8%d8%a7%d9%85-%d8%a7%d9%84%d8%a5%d9%8a%d8%b1%d8%a7%d9%86%d9%8a-%d9%8a%d8%b3%d9%82%d8%b7-%d9%88/
Iraq is in a state of economic and political freefall, made infinitely worse by Tehran’s determination to exploit its neighbor’s woes for its own benefit. With its own economy in a disastrous state, Iran has buried its fangs into Baghdad, as well as Beirut and Damascus, in a fatal and unrelenting death grip; determined to drag its neighbors down with it.
Having been paralyzed by months of mass protests, followed by the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) shutdown, Iraq has been disproportionately impacted by the recent decline in oil prices. In a nation dependent on oil for 90 percent of its revenues, a huge proportion of these funds are corruptly creamed off at various stages, with only a diminishing fraction benefiting the public.
About 30 percent of the workforce is dependent on the state for income. Unions report tens of thousands of public sector workers already going several months without pay. Yet savage pay cuts and layoffs are touted as inevitable, just a few weeks after authorities pledged to create thousands of new public sector jobs to appease protesters. “Next month, we won’t be able to secure half of the salaries,” warned prominent politician Adnan Al-Zurfi. “This means that you will experience true suffering.” Nevertheless, one segment of the budget nobody expects to suffer is the $2.16 billion earmarked for the Iran-backed paramilitaries of Al-Hashd Al-Shaabi.
According to economist Basim Entiwan, “all productive sectors have been suspended. There is no industry, no tourism, no transportation… We are seeing a nearly complete paralysis of economic life.” With many already reduced to begging on street corners, it is unclear how the high proportion of families who have lost all sources of income will feed themselves in the coming months.
Yet matters could still get worse: The US has again granted Iraq a waiver for purchasing Iranian electricity and gas, but this time for just 30 days. State Department officials warn that such waivers will cease if Baghdad doesn’t act immediately to halt the smuggling of Iranian oil through the port of Umm Qasr, along with extensive money laundering operations via Iraqi front companies.
Given Iraq’s leadership vacuum and the unlikelihood that Tehran will allow the cessation of these crucial sources of revenue, the only surprise is that the Trump administration has put off imposing crippling economic measures against Baghdad for so long. Some parts of the US government may relish the prospect of an excuse to impose sanctions as a means to remove Iraq from the global oil market and halt cratering oil prices.
With its political system plagued by chronic and unrelenting Iranian meddling, Baghdad is suffering from a crisis of leadership. Former Prime Minister Adel Abdul Mahdi was never more than a puppet for the sectarian Shiite elements that put him in power. Abdul Mahdi’s impotent response to the mass protests, during which well over 600 citizens were killed (mostly at the hands of Iran-sponsored militias), blew away any remaining grains of credibility. A succession of three prime ministerial candidates has since been designated in as many months.
Plagued by chronic and unrelenting Iranian meddling, Baghdad is suffering from a crisis of leadership.
The most recent failed candidate, Al-Zurfi, who was seen as antagonistic toward the militias, was thoroughly undermined by a campaign of hostile propaganda by Iran-funded media outlets, which portrayed him as an American stooge. Following a flurry of visits to Baghdad by senior Iranian officials such as Esmail Ghaani and Ali Shamkhani (the key figures overseeing overseas paramilitary operations following Qassem Soleimani’s death), principal Shiite factions united around the candidacy of intelligence chief Mustafa Al-Kadhimi.
Tehran’s ambassador in Baghdad commented that Iran viewed Al-Kadhimi’s candidacy favorably, while Hashd leaders like Hadi Al-Amiri also publicly backed him. Al-Kadhimi is perceived as someone who could use his good connections with the West to convince the US to continue with its sanctions waivers, thus offering a potential lifeline for both Baghdad and Tehran. However, some elements within the Hashd coalition previously accused him of facilitating America’s assassination of Soleimani and his candidacy has been vigorously denounced by radical elements.
While Al-Kadhimi stated last week that weapons should only be in the government’s hands, Iraqi officials cite “backroom deals,” in which the prime minister-designate would not interfere in paramilitary affairs in return for Shiite political support for his candidacy.
As citizens of one of the top five countries in the world in terms of oil reserves, Iraqis should be enjoying the wealth of their counterparts in Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, the UAE or Canada. Instead, Iraq is following the fatal path of Venezuela: Neglected citizens drowning in poverty, a collapsing health service, faltering electricity, and toxic water sources. This is not accidental, but rather a deliberate outcome of 17 years of Iranian efforts to corrupt, sectarianize and hollow out Iraq’s administration, in part thanks to Western ineptitude and a failure to deliver on the promises of 2003.
The paramilitaries and veteran warlords dominating Iraq and Lebanon’s political systems are singularly unfit to govern in the age of pandemic. Prioritizing public safety, expanding health care access and shoring up crumbling economies aren’t challenges befitting these thuggish, Mafioso-style leaderships.
The onset of coronavirus has been both a catastrophe and a blessing for these regimes. Economies already at death’s door have been shattered by the restrictive measures needed to counter the virus, but the pandemic also poured cold water over the mass protests that have blighted these states.
This isn’t just a passing crisis of confidence — public trust in these hollow and discredited governing systems has long since evaporated. Indeed, these ruling classes must hope that the deadly threat of COVID-19 stays for some time to come because, once this is all over, the citizens of Iraq, Iran and Lebanon will need little encouragement to pour back on to the streets and demand the downfall of those who have taken everything from them.
*Baria Alamuddin is an award-winning journalist and broadcaster in the Middle East and the UK. She is editor of the Media Services Syndicate and has interviewed numerous heads of state.

Iran’s US-sanctioned banks operating freely in Germany
Dr. Majid Rafizadeh/Arab News/April 12/2020
مجيد رافيزادا/البنوك الإيرانية المفروض عليها عقوبات تتصرف بحرية مطلقة في ألمانيا
http://eliasbejjaninews.com/archives/85088/85088/
Without the assistance of Iran’s banks, it is difficult to imagine that the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and it elite branch the Quds Force would have been capable of accruing such remarkable power — exporting the regime’s revolutionary principles, carrying out extraterritorial operations, sponsoring and arming terror groups, and attempting to assassinate foreign political figures and dissidents.
This is why one of the first set of sanctions the US reimposed on Iran following its 2018 withdrawal from the nuclear deal was linked to the regime’s banking system. The US Department of Treasury targeted 50 Iranian banks and their foreign and domestic subsidiaries with the sanctions it announced in November 2018. This was its largest single-day action “targeting the Iranian regime’s abuse of Iran’s banking sector to fund its destabilizing activities.” The Treasury added that the Iranian regime had funneled the equivalent of billions of dollars for the Quds Force through the banking sector.
Despite this tough US stance, unfortunately many of the sanctioned Iranian banks are still operating with impunity in Germany.
By allowing these Iranian banks to continue to do business, Berlin appears to be providing some German firms with the ability to do business with Iran. According to a report published last week by United Against Nuclear Iran, “Siemens, Volkswagen and the big multinationals have pulled back due to US sanctions, but many of Germany’s 3.5 million small and medium-sized enterprises are still prepared to do business with Iran. And they still can. From Hamburg in the north to Munich in the south, (these) firms can obtain letters of credit, bank guarantees, insurance and all the other trade finance products they need from their Iranian facilitators.”
One of the most crucial Iranian banks — and the largest bank owned by the Tehran regime — that is still in business in Hamburg is Bank Melli. When it comes to revenue, Melli ranks first in the country.
The Iranian regime has become masterful in its attempts to chart illicit paths and exploit other nations’ financial systems.
Bank Melli has been implicated in several major covert and illicit activities across the globe. For example, when a US court concluded in 2017 that prosecutors could confiscate a skyscraper in Manhattan to compensate the families of victims of Iranian-sponsored terrorist attacks including 9/11, it was revealed that 60 percent of the building was owned by the Alavi Foundation and 40 percent by Assa Corporation, which is controlled by and operates on behalf of Bank Melli, according to the US government. After going through a “massive amount of evidence,” the judge said she was “firmly convinced” that the Alavi Foundation “takes directives from Iranian government officials, and its day-to-day operators have been appointed by Iranian officials to ensure conformity with the interests of the government of Iran.” The foundation has also made donations to various institutions in the US, including Iranian programs and universities such as Columbia in New York.
Another major Iranian bank that is still conducting business in Hamburg is Bank Sepah. It is also owned by the Iranian regime and has been sanctioned by the US Treasury Department due to its provision of “direct and extensive financial services” to Iran’s key ballistic missiles procurement and development agencies.
Another important bank in Germany is the European-Iranian Handelsbank (EIH), which has been linked to more than a billion dollars-worth of transactions for the IRGC, as well as Iran’s Defense Industries Organization and Aerospace Industries Organization.
The Iranian regime has become masterful in its attempts to chart illicit paths and exploit other nations’ financial systems. For example, Bahraini Foreign Minister Khalid bin Ahmed Al-Khalifa in 2018 reported that the government had detected the Iranian-linked Future Bank was operating a covert corruption scheme in Bahrain. It was later revealed that Iran’s Bank Melli instructed Future Bank officials on what to do when routing money through the US in order to conceal its origins. The Iranian regime likely uses such illegal financial activities to skirt sanctions and sponsor terrorism, proxies, lobbyists and spies in other countries. This assists the Iranian leaders in employing sophisticated methods such as “wire-stripping” in order to avoid leaving any tracks behind, as well as concealing where payments and transfers originated from or were deposited.
Germany’s authorities must put an end to the operations of the Iranian banks that are still conducting business in the country. Allowing Iranian-owned banks to freely operate contributes to the regime’s terror activities and destructive behavior across the region.
*Dr. Majid Rafizadeh is an Iranian-American political scientist. He is a leading expert on Iran and US foreign policy, a businessman and president of the International American Council. Twitter: @Dr_Rafizadeh