LCCC ENGLISH DAILY NEWS BULLETIN
November 28/17
Compiled & Prepared by: Elias Bejjani

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Bible Quotations
Those who consider themselves religious and yet do not keep a tight rein on their tongues deceive themselves
James 01/26-27/"Those who consider themselves religious and yet do not keep a tight rein on their tongues deceive themselves, and their religion is worthless. Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world."   

Titles For Latest LCCC Bulletin analysis & editorials from miscellaneous sources published on November 27-28/17
Lebanon: Encountering Hezbollah’s might can only come from regional powers/KanelkaTagba/Middle East Confidential/November 27/17
Hezbollah drug trafficking should spur Trump to appoint DEA head/Emanuele Ottolenghi/The Hill/November 26/178
Saudi Arabia’s Rivalry With Iran Is Further Destabilizing the Middle East/Juan Cole/The Nation/November 27/17
Hitler of the Middle East and Jumblatt’s advice/Mashari Althaydi/Al AQrabiya/November 27/17
On returning ISIS fighters, Trudeau has a script. But he doesn’t have a clue/By Charles Adler/Global News/November 23/17
The Battle of the Islamic World/Ghassan Charbel/Asharq Al Awsat/November 27/17
Muslims Are Often the First Victims of Terrorists/Eli Lake/Bloomberg/November 27/17
Russia, US Struggle Over Nuclear Deal/Hal Brands/Bloomberg/November 27/17
The Jihad on Sufism/Raymond Ibrahim/FrontPage Magazine/November 27/17
Is Saudi crown prince winning or losing in the Middle East/Al Monitor/Week in Review/November 27/17
E-Government Sounds Great Until the First Hack/Leonid Bershidsky/Bloomberg/November 27/17
Russia's Dangerous Nuclear "Diplomacy"/Debalina Ghoshal/Gatestone Institute/November 27/17
Hijab Barbie: Useful Idiots of Cultural Jihad/Judith Bergman/Gatestone Institute/November 27/17
Africa: The Way Forward/Ahmed Charai/Gatestone Institute/November 27/17

Titles For Latest LCCC Lebanese Related News published on November 27-28/17
Aoun Launches Baabda Consultations Days after Hariri Suspends Resignation
Aoun and Bassil to Visit Italy on Wednesday
Aoun Meets Berri, Hariri after 'Positive, Constructive' Consultations with Political Parties
Aoun lauds positive consultations
Hariri: Hezbollah must remain neutral to ensure Lebanon moves forward
Jumblat Urges Talks on Dissociation Policy and Not on Hizbullah Arms
Geagea Says LF Won't Quit Govt., Urges Hizbullah Withdrawal from Regional Crises
Gemayel in UAE for Talks with Top Officials
Shorter, Othman Tour Raouche and Ramlet el-Bayda Police Stations
Lebanon Awaits Outcome of Aoun’s Consultations with Political Blocs
Why Iran’s spies are hacking Hariri’s account
Lebanon: Encountering Hezbollah’s might can only come from regional powers
Hezbollah drug trafficking should spur Trump to appoint DEA head
Saudi Arabia’s Rivalry With Iran Is Further Destabilizing the Middle East
Hitler of the Middle East and Jumblatt’s advice

Titles For Latest LCCC Bulletin For Miscellaneous Reports And News published on November 27-28/17
Suicide attack targets Nahrawan area south east of Baghdad
Russian strikes kill 53 civilians in Syria’s Deir Ezzor
Thousands return from Jordan to south Syria as ceasefire holds
U.N. Says Damascus Won't Join Monday's Geneva Peace Talks
UN: Syria government has not confirmed will attend Geneva talks
Syrian Democratic Forces to Join Army after Settlement
New scandal embroils Qatar 2022 with $22 million ‘suspicious transfer’
Gulen ‘money man’ back in Turkey from Sudan
Myanmar Has 'No Religious Discrimination', Army Chief Tells Visiting Pope
Kurds Accuse Baghdad of Refusing Dialogue

Latest Lebanese Related News published on November 27-28/17
Aoun Launches Baabda Consultations Days after Hariri Suspends Resignation
Naharnet/November 27/17/President Michel Aoun on Monday kicked off bilateral consultations with the country's political parties at the Baabda Palace, a few days after Prime Minister Saad Hariri announced that he was suspending his resignation pending negotiations. “The consultations will tackle the security situation, the dissociation policy, ties with Arab states, the Taef Accord and the government's situation, and President Aoun will request clear answers on this issues. This also includes the stance on the Israeli threats, including the defense strategy,” Baabda sources told LBCI television. Aoun has so far met with Finance Minister Ali Hassan Khalil of the AMAL Movement, Public Works and Transport Minister Youssef Fenianos of the Marada Movement, the head of Hizbullah's Loyalty to Resistance bloc MP Mohammed Raad, Kataeb Party chief MP Sami Gemayel, Lebanese Forces leader Samir Geagea, Lebanese Democratic Party chief MP Talal Arslan, Progressive Socialist Party leader MP Walid Jumblat, Syrian Social National Party chief Hanna al-Nashef and Tashnag Party representative MP Hagop Pakradounian. “There is consensus between us and the president on the points in question, which were mentioned in the ministerial Policy Statement, and we're optimistic that an agreement will be reached and that government's work will be reactivated,” Khalil said after meeting Aoun. Fenianos for his part hoped the government will resume its work, stressing that Marada is “committed to its Policy Statement.” “As for the dissociation policy and our principles, we have not and will not change our stance,” Fenianos added. Raad meanwhile announced that he and the president discussed “the protection of Lebanon and the resumption of the government's work.”“The viewpoints of the Loyalty to Resistance bloc and President Aoun are identical,” Raad added, hoping the stances will be translated into action. Gemayel for his part said Kataeb is in favor of “full neutrality towards the regional conflicts.”“Neutrality hinges on sovereignty and the state's monopolization of arms,” he explained. “Lebanon's problem is not only Hizbullah's interference in the affairs of the neighboring countries, and the main problem is its weapons in the domestic arena, which needs discussions and dialogue,” Gemayel added. Presidency sources had said over the weekend that “bilateral dialogue meetings will be held instead of a national dialogue conference, and at the end of the meetings the president will meet with Speaker Nabih Berri and PM Saad Hariri to discuss the outcomes of these talks.”
In light of his discussions with Berri and Hariri, Aoun would “announce the next step on the track of addressing the crisis ahead of his Wednesday trip to Rome,” the sources said. “Until now, it is still unclear whether these dialogues will produce a memorandum of understanding, a new settlement or a renewal of the previous settlement,” the sources added, in remarks to Asharq al-Awsat daily. The newspaper said undeclared consultations have taken place over the past few days at the Baabda Palace, the Ain el-Tineh Palace and the Center House.Hariri had announced Saturday that “there is seriousness in the ongoing contacts and dialogues” and that the other parties seem to be inclined to accept his proposals. The premier has called for dissociating Lebanon from the regional conflicts through ending Hizbullah’s involvement in them. Hizbullah international relations officer Ammar al-Moussawi has meanwhile announced that his party is “ready to reach an understanding” with Hariri and his camp. “We are open to real dialogue and cooperation with everyone,” he said. Hariri had caused widespread perplexity on November 4 when he resigned during a TV broadcast from Saudi Arabia, citing assassination threats and blasting the policies of Iran and Hizbullah in Lebanon and the region. After a puzzling mini-odyssey that took him to France, Egypt and Cyprus, Hariri arrived back in Lebanon on Tuesday and then announced that he was putting his decision to quit on hold ahead of negotiations. Many questions remain unanswered following the unprecedented scenario that saw Lebanon's prime minister resign in a foreign country suspected of keeping him under house arrest and return only after the apparent intervention of France. But while Hariri and his backers seemed on a collision course with Hizbullah only a few days ago, an apparent behind-the-scenes deal now appears to be restoring the status quo.

Aoun and Bassil to Visit Italy on Wednesday
Naharnet/November 27/17/President Michel Aoun will kick off Wednesday a three-day official visit to Italy at the invitation of his Italian counterpart Sergio Mattarella. Aoun will be accompanied by Foreign Minister Jebran Bassil and his talks in Rome will involve meetings with Italy's president, prime minister and foreign minister, al-Joumhouria newspaper said. The president will also take part in a Euro-Mediterranean conference that will be held in Rome alongside heads of state and premiers from European and Mediterranean countries.
He will also have a speech at the conference.

Aoun Meets Berri, Hariri after 'Positive, Constructive' Consultations with Political Parties
Naharnet/November 27/17/President Michel Aoun met with Speaker Nabih Berri and Prime Minister Saad Hariri Monday in Baabda to brief them on bilateral consultations he held earlier in the day with the country's political parties. Berri and Hariri left the Baabda Palace without making a statement after the two-hour meeting. The speaker however told reporters to be optimistic as a smiling Hariri took a selfie with the journalists. “Can't you see my smile?” said Hariri when asked about his stance after the consultations. The premier's Future TV meanwhile reported that Hariri “expressed satisfaction over today's consultations at the Baabda Palace.” A statement issued by the Presidency said Monday's consultations were aimed at “reaching common denominators that preserve Lebanon's interest.”“President Aoun lauded the responsiveness he met from the heads and representatives of the parliamentary blocs, who stressed the need to safeguard national unity, security and political stability, and to resolve any obstacles impeding the rise of the state,” the statement said. The consultations were "positive and constructive and the participants agreed on the main points that were discussed," the statement added. "The outcome of the consultations will be discussed in state institutions after President Aoun returns from Italy," the statement said. Baabda sources had said that Aoun's consultations with the political parties tackled “the security situation, the dissociation policy, ties with Arab states, the Taef Accord and the government's situation.”
“President Aoun will request clear answers on this issues. This also includes the stance on the Israeli threats, including the defense strategy,” the sources added. Hariri had announced Saturday that “there is seriousness in the ongoing contacts and dialogues” and that the other parties seem to be inclined to accept his proposals. The premier has called for dissociating Lebanon from the regional conflicts through ending Hizbullah’s involvement in them. Hariri had caused widespread perplexity on November 4 when he resigned during a TV broadcast from Saudi Arabia, citing assassination threats and blasting the policies of Iran and Hizbullah in Lebanon and the region. After a puzzling mini-odyssey that took him to France, Egypt and Cyprus, Hariri arrived back in Lebanon on Tuesday and then announced that he was putting his decision to quit on hold ahead of negotiations. Many questions remain unanswered following the unprecedented scenario that saw Lebanon's prime minister resign in a foreign country suspected of keeping him under house arrest and return only after the apparent intervention of France. But while Hariri and his backers seemed on a collision course with Hizbullah only a few days ago, an apparent behind-the-scenes deal now appears to be restoring the status quo.

Aoun lauds positive consultations
The Daily Star/November 27/17/BEIRUT: President Michel Aoun said Monday that he would present the results of the meetings he held throughout the day once he is back from a scheduled trip to Rome later this week. Aoun praised all sides for their cooperation during meetings, which he held with the heads of parliamentary blocs at the Baabda Palace, a statement from his office reported. "[They] reiterated the need to maintain national unity and security and political stability," the statement added. "During the meetings, President Aoun discussed the subjects that are at the center of Lebanese discourse, in order to reach common beliefs to serve Lebanon's interests," the statement said. Aoun also met with Prime Minister Saad Hariri and Speaker Nabih Berri separately before the three held a tripartite meeting.

Hariri: Hezbollah must remain neutral to ensure Lebanon moves forward
Reuters, Paris Monday, 27 November 2017/Prime Minister Saad al-Hariri said on Monday that Iran-backed Hezbollah must stop interfering overseas and accept a “neutral” policy to bring an end to Lebanon’s political crisis.
“I don’t want a political party in my government that interferes in Arab countries against other Arab countries,” he said in an interview recorded on Monday evening with French broadcaster CNews.“I am waiting for the neutrality which we agreed on in the government,” he said. “We can’t say one thing and do something else.”

Jumblat Urges Talks on Dissociation Policy and Not on Hizbullah Arms
Naharnet/November 27/17/Progressive Socialist Party leader MP Walid Jumblat noted Monday that talks over Hizbullah's arms would be “futile” during this period, calling instead for consultations over the implementation of Lebanon's so-called dissociation policy. “It would be better and wiser that we don't call for consultations over the issue of arms, seeing as a debate over arms would take us back to the previous dialogues that were held in 2006 under the sponsorship of Speaker Nabih Berri and later under the sponsorship of president Michel Suleiman, and this would be a futile move,” said Jumblat after talks with President Michel Aoun in Baabda. “Let us discuss the dissociation policy and how to implement it,” Jumblat added. He also stressed the need to address the economy, saying it needs major solutions. Aoun kicked off Monday morning a series of bilateral consultations in Baabda with the country's political parties, a few days after Prime Minister Saad Hariri announced that he was suspending his resignation pending negotiations over the dissociation policy. “The consultations will tackle the security situation, the dissociation policy, ties with Arab states, the Taef Accord and the government's situation, and President Aoun will request clear answers on this issues. This also includes the stance on the Israeli threats, including the defense strategy,” Baabda sources told LBCI television. Hariri had announced Saturday that “there is seriousness in the ongoing contacts and dialogues” and that the other parties seem to be inclined to accept his proposals. The premier has called for dissociating Lebanon from the regional conflicts through ending Hizbullah’s involvement in them. Hariri had caused widespread perplexity on November 4 when he resigned during a TV broadcast from Saudi Arabia, citing assassination threats and blasting the policies of Iran and Hizbullah in Lebanon and the region. After a puzzling mini-odyssey that took him to France, Egypt and Cyprus, Hariri arrived back in Lebanon on Tuesday and then announced that he was putting his decision to quit on hold ahead of negotiations. Many questions remain unanswered following the unprecedented scenario that saw Lebanon's prime minister resign in a foreign country suspected of keeping him under house arrest and return only after the apparent intervention of France. But while Hariri and his backers seemed on a collision course with Hizbullah only a few days ago, an apparent behind-the-scenes deal now appears to be restoring the status quo.

Geagea Says LF Won't Quit Govt., Urges Hizbullah Withdrawal from Regional Crises
Naharnet/November 27/17/Lebanese Forces leader Samir Geagea announced Monday that the LF's three ministers will not resign from Prime Minister Saad Hariri's government, as he reiterated his call for Hizbullah's “withdrawal from the regional crises.”“Some parties are trying to address the crisis in a shallow manner and this is wrong, seeing as we all support the settlement,” Geagea said after talks in Baabda with President Michel Aoun, referring to the 2016 settlement that led to Aoun's election and Hariri's designation as premier.“There is a major crisis at the level of the Middle East and Lebanon's dissociation from conflicts should happen through actions and not words,” Geagea added, calling for Hizbullah's “withdrawal from the regional crises.”“There should a real state and the issue of Hizbullah's arms should be addressed in terms of the military and security decisions, which should be limited to the state, and this is what I discussed with the president,” the LF leader went on to say. Responding to a reporter's questions, Geagea underlined that the LF will not withdraw from the government in the current period and that all political parties are currently “reevaluating the settlement.” “We will continue what we were doing inside the government,” the LF leader added. He also said that “the Foreign Ministry should coordinate with the international community” regarding the issue of repatriating Syrian refugees to safe zones inside Syria. Aoun kicked off Monday morning a series of bilateral consultations in Baabda with the country's political parties, a few days after Hariri announced that he was suspending his resignation pending negotiations over the dissociation policy. “The consultations will tackle the security situation, the dissociation policy, ties with Arab states, the Taef Accord and the government's situation, and President Aoun will request clear answers on this issues. This also includes the stance on the Israeli threats, including the defense strategy,” Baabda sources told LBCI television. Hariri had announced Saturday that “there is seriousness in the ongoing contacts and dialogues” and that the other parties seem to be inclined to accept his proposals. The premier has called for dissociating Lebanon from the regional conflicts through ending Hizbullah’s involvement in them. Hariri had caused widespread perplexity on November 4 when he resigned during a TV broadcast from Saudi Arabia, citing assassination threats and blasting the policies of Iran and Hizbullah in Lebanon and the region.After a puzzling mini-odyssey that took him to France, Egypt and Cyprus, Hariri arrived back in Lebanon on Tuesday and then announced that he was putting his decision to quit on hold ahead of negotiations. Many questions remain unanswered following the unprecedented scenario that saw Lebanon's prime minister resign in a foreign country suspected of keeping him under house arrest and return only after the apparent intervention of France. But while Hariri and his backers seemed on a collision course with Hizbullah only a few days ago, an apparent behind-the-scenes deal now appears to be restoring the status quo.

Gemayel in UAE for Talks with Top Officials
Naharnet/November 27/17/Kataeb Party chief MP Sami Gemayel arrived Monday in the UAE for talks with top Emirati officials, his office said. Gemayel had received an official invitation to visit the Emirates, the office added. The Kataeb leader had met last Monday in Amman with Jordanian King Abdullah II. His talks with the monarch tackled the developments in the region and the king “put MP Gemayel in the picture of the critical developments that the region is going through, underscoring the depth of the historic and brotherly ties between the two countries,” according to Gemayel's office. Lebanon has been gripped in a political crisis since Prime Minister Saad Hariri announced a surprise resignation earlier this month from Saudi Arabia, lambasting Iran and Hizbullah for their policies in Lebanon and the region. Hariri put his resignation on hold last week after returning to Lebanon, where he announced that he would hold talks with the political parties on means to dissociate Lebanon from the regional crises.

Shorter, Othman Tour Raouche and Ramlet el-Bayda Police Stations
Naharnet/November 27/17/On their first joint tour, British Ambassador to Lebanon Hugo Shorter and Internal Security Forces chief Maj. Gen. Imad Othman saw the progress made on the roll out of the Community Policing project to the Raouche and Ramlet el-Bayda Police Stations and First territorial Company headquarters, the British embassy said on Monday. Within the framework of the £13million MOU agreed between the ISF and the British embassy in June 2016, the visit was an opportunity to check on work at two police stations that will extend the new policing concept pioneered at the Ras Beirut police station. The ISF Community Policing Model delivered at Ras Beirut Police Station has delivered a drop of 50% in crime and higher levels of engagement between the community and the local ISF. Delivered through design, procedural and cultural improvements to the stations, the Community Policing Model brings “transformative improvements in overall professionalism, integrity and respect of Human Rights,” the embassy said. Refurbishment works are ongoing at the Raouche and Ramlet el-Bayda buildings. Once finished, these new police stations “will enhance the level of confidence, consent and legitimacy for the ISF in Beirut,” the embassy added. By mid 2018, the ISF Community Policing Model will have been rolled out to one third of Beirut, including the Ashrafieh Police Station that is being refurbished by the United States. After the visit, Ambassador Shorter said: “Our investment in the Internal Security Forces is well placed. Around the world, citizens look to their police forces for professionalism, compassion, and trust that reflects people’s needs.”“Today’s visit with DG (Director General) Othman is another affirmation of our commitment to Lebanon’s stability and security and to our trust in the leadership of the ISF to transform its police force to reflect the true image of Lebanon,” he added.

Lebanese-Origin Candidate Leading Honduras Presidential Poll
Naharnet/November 27/17/Initial election results released early Monday in Honduras showed opposition candidate Salvador Nasralla, who is of Lebanese origin, leading President Juan Orlando Hernandez, after a tense evening that saw both men declare themselves the winner before official numbers were announced. With 57 percent of the ballots counted, the leftist Nasralla had claimed 45.17 percent of votes compared to Hernandez's 40.21 percent, according to the country's Supreme Electoral Tribunal (TSE). The opposition has denounced the Constitutional Court's decision to allow Hernandez to run again for president despite a one-term limit, a move that has sparked fears of a crisis in the crime-racked country. Minutes before the initial figures were released, Hernandez, 49, reassured his supporters in the capital Tegucigalpa that he was ahead, after having already declared himself the winner.
Backers of the 64-year-old Nasralla -- who represents the Alliance Against the Dictatorship coalition -- meanwhile chanted victory slogans and carried red flags."We defeated the dictatorship and defeated the fraud, I knew we could win," said Julio Lainez, a 22-year-old student.
But upon hearing the preliminary official results Hernandez said they were "not conclusive," claiming they included only urban areas. "We have to be careful, patient, and take the process until the end," he said. An estimated six million people were eligible to cast ballots, electing not just a president but also members of Congress, mayors and members of the Central American Parliament.Though both candidates proclaiming themselves president had stoked fears of unrest, election observers said the voting process had been smooth. "What we have seen so far has been positive," said Marisa Matias, a European parliament observer from Portugal, one of 16,000 monitors.
Four more years?
Hernandez's conservative National Party -- which controls the executive, legislative and judicial branches of government -- contends that a 2015 Supreme Court ruling allows his re-election. The opposition has denounced his bid, saying the court does not have the power to overrule the 1982 constitution.
Hernandez's main rivals -- former TV anchor Nasralla and Luis Zelaya, 50, of the right-leaning Liberal Party -- had both said before the vote that they would not recognize a Hernandez victory. "It's an atypical electoral process with an illegal re-election," said Zelaya after voting. Nasralla, while visiting voting stations around the capital to rally his supporters, urged them to be vigilant for signs of fraud. "They are out here offering poor people food, roof tiles or cement in exchange for their vote," he complained."I tell them that that's how they are going to stay poor. I am going to create jobs for them."Hernandez cast his vote early in his home town of Gracias, in the country's mountainous west, accompanied by his daughter and several National Party deputies. "Four more years," supporters chanted as he arrived. Hernandez told reporters he had been up early, messaging organizers to try and ensure the elections ran well.
Simmering tensions
Honduras, in the heart of the "Northern Triangle" of Central America where gangs and poverty are rife, has one of the highest murder rates in the world, though it has fallen during Hernandez's tenure. What credit he claims from that progress is counterbalanced by tensions from a 2009 coup. That year, then-president Manuel Zelaya was deposed by the armed forces, with backing from the right and from powerful businessmen, for nudging closer to Venezuela's Hugo Chavez. Zelaya -- no relation to the Liberal Party candidate -- was accused of wanting to change the constitution to seek a second term. Some analysts warned tensions could boil over because of the president's desire to hold on to power."For the first time, it's not a race between conservatives and liberals, but between a dictatorship and democracy," said Victor Meza, a political analyst at the Honduras Documentation Center.
Hernandez's top rivals accused the electoral board of preparing poll fraud to declare the incumbent president the victor. The TSE denies that. Apart from the presidential election, Sunday's balloting will also decide the country's three vice presidential posts, the 128-seat congress, 20 representatives in the Central American Parliament and the mayors of 298 municipalities.

Lebanon Awaits Outcome of Aoun’s Consultations with Political Blocs
Beirut - Nazir Rida/Asharq Al Awsat/November 27/17
Lebanese President Michel Aoun is expected to submit the outcome of his consultations with the different political parties to Prime Minister Saad Hariri on Monday evening, amid reports on a “positive atmosphere” surrounding the talks, which could pave the way for reactivating government’s work and resolving “unfinished matters”, including parliamentary elections. Aoun will hold talks on Monday with political blocs and parties represented in the Cabinet, along with other political figures, to find a solution to the crisis that resulted from Hariri’s decision to resign earlier this month. Later in the evening, the president will meet separately with Speaker Nabih Berri and Hariri to update them on the results of his discussions. In this regard, sources told Asharq al-Awsat newspaper that a “positive atmosphere” was prevailing over the ongoing negotiations, underlining the possibility to “reach an agreement between the different political parties to resolve the current crisis” and settle pending issues. Before Hariri’s resignation announcement on Nov. 4, the ministerial committee in charge with implementing the new electoral law held a series of meetings to discuss the proposed amendments and send them to the Cabinet and then to Parliament for approval. The government was also putting the final touches on the implementation decrees of the oil and gas extraction law and was about to launch talks over the 2018 General Budget Law, in order to adopt it by the beginning of the new year. However, those files remain subject to the results of the consultations conducted by Aoun this Monday. Future Bloc MP Nabil De Freij said that Hariri would decide on the fate of his resignation following his meeting with Aoun, warning against the deterioration of the situation should the consultations failed to achieve concrete results. In a radio interview, De Freij stressed that Lebanon was a small country and “must not interfere in the crises surrounding it”, calling for “reaching consensus over mechanisms to apply the principle of dissociation.”For his part, Loyalty to the Resistance Bloc MP Mohammed Raad expressed his hope that Aoun’s consultations would yield positively on the internal situation, adding that the president “has acted rationally and with exceptional wisdom to address this crisis.”

Why Iran’s spies are hacking Hariri’s account
Al Arabiya English/November 27/2017/Iran has embarked on a large-scale cyber piracy operations in an attempt to expand its influence over the Middle East, especially in Lebanon, according to a new report. A group of Iranian hackers backed by Iran, attacked the servers of the offices of the Lebanese president Michel Aoun and Prime Minister Saad Hariri after his resignation, according to French newspaper Le Figaro. The attacks also targeted the Lebanese ministries of justice, foreign affairs, the army and several banks, according to Western intelligence. “In fact, it has been six months since the Iranian hackers of the operation "Oilrig" have been hacking Lebanese servers,” reported the newspaper. The hackers had access to the email accounts of Saad Hariri and the Lebanese President, Michel Aoun; as per intelligence reports. With the upcoming elections scheduled for May 2018 in Lebanon, the intention is to try to influence the polls in favor of Hezbollah by seeking to gather embarrassing information about its rivals, the newspaper quoted sources. The cyber-hackers of operation “Oilrig” are probably civilians, which would allow the Iranian government to refute any involvement with the operation. However, Western intelligence services have established that they are funded by Iran's Ministry of Defense and Homeland Security. The report added that Oilrig group has been active for a year and a half. They have been involved in many cyber-attacks in the region, especially against Saudi Arabia. (Why does the GCC need its own electronic army?). ALSO: A phish called Mia: How Iran used a fake profile to lure Mideast victims

Lebanon: Encountering Hezbollah’s might can only come from regional powers
KanelkaTagba/Middle East Confidential/November 27/17
Lebanese Prime Minister Saad Hariri Sunday confessed to a Saudi media that his country cannot do anything to numb Hezbollah’s might adding that a solution can only come from regional powers, Middle East Monitor reports. “The solution for Hezbollah’s arms is a regional solution, not a domestic one. For that, we [Lebanon] cannot do anything about the issue,” Hariri told a Saudi Magazine few days following his two-week stay in the kingdom. “Hezbollah does not have the ability to manage a country. Its strength comes from the arms provided by Iran,” he added. Hariri returned to Lebanon late Tuesday after announcing his resignation from his role of Prime Minister in a broadcast on a Saudi television, on November 4. The Lebanese Sunni leader had blamed in his resignation address the Lebanese Shia movement and its patron for spreading strife in the region. He also hinted at alleged assassination plot against him.
Upon his return to Beirut and after meeting with President Michel Aoun who refused to accept his resignation, Hariri put his decision on hold indicating that he wanted to give a chance to negotiations and demands for Lebanon’s neutrality in the region. President Michel Aoun, Hezbollah and several Lebanese political figures believed Hariri was forced to resign by Riyadh which aimed to ignite Lebanon. Hariri has been leading a year-old cabinet encompassing Hezbollah whose armed wing has been fighting in Syria on the side of Iran to shore up the Bashar Assad regime. The Shia movement has been supporting militia groups in Iraq fighting the Islamic State group (IS) and lending support to Hamas in Gaza. Saudi Arabia and its allies believe that Hezbollah helped the Yemen Houthi rebels launch a ballistic missile which was intercepted near Riyadh international airport early November, and which paired with Hariri’s resignation.
Written by: KanelkaTagba on November 27, 2017.Last revised by: Jaber Ali

Hezbollah drug trafficking should spur Trump to appoint DEA head/تقرير عن حزب الله وتجارة المخدرات العالمية
Emanuele Ottolenghi/The Hill/November 26/178
http://eliasbejjaninews.com/?p=60639
President Trump declared the opioid crisis a national health emergency, but has yet to appoint a new Drug Enforcement Administration administrator to confront .
The new DEA administrator should have a clear vision for addressing the international dimension of the drug crisis, as well as the wreckage at home. In particular, the president should choose a DEA chief who not only understands the complex and global nature of drug cartels but is also cognizant of the growing convergence between transnational organized crime and terrorist groups like Hezbollah.
On that front, the first item on the new chief’s agenda should be to remove the handcuffs the Obama administration put on the DEA’s efforts to fight Hezbollah, for fear of scuttling the nascent Iran nuclear deal.
In the past decade, Hezbollah’s growing involvement in transnational organized crime has evolved into a multi-billion dollar global enterprise endorsed and coordinated by the group’s top leaders.
Hezbollah’s involvement in producing and selling counterfeit medicines such as Captagon — a powerful amphetamine — is well documented and so is its growing involvement in cocaine trafficking.
Cocaine consumption has not reached the pandemic levels of the opioid crisis but is nonetheless an acute and growing threat. The use and availability of cocaine is on the rise; overdose deaths in 2015 were the highest since 2007.
Less well understood are the close ties between cocaine trafficking and terrorism.
One clear illustration is the recent extradition, from Paraguay to Miami, of suspected Hezbollah drug trafficker Ali Chamas. Court documents show that he was part of a larger network, likely based in Colombia. At the time of his arrest, he was conspiring to export as many as 100 kilos of cocaine a month to the U.S by air cargo.
For years, the DEA led the battle against Hezbollah’s drug trafficking through Project Cassandra, a decade-long operation run by the DEA through the Special Operations Division, a multi-agency coordination center that enables stakeholders from the law enforcement and intelligence communities to share information and cooperate more effectively.Project Cassandra had some remarkable achievements, including the Lebanese-Canadian Bank investigation, which shut down the bank and led to the 2011 indictment of Hezbollah kingpin Ayman Joumaa, a Lebanese-Colombian dual national who laundered money for Mexican and Colombian cartels to the tune of $200 million a month.
A DEA official discussing the case said that Hezbollah operated like “the Gambinos on steroids.” He was right — in early 2016, Project Cassandra took another network down.
In a joint operation with European agencies, the DEA disrupted a Hezbollah operation that was using revenues from cocaine sales in Europe to fund arms purchases for its fighters in Syria. Project Cassandra’s success proved its undoing — as the Obama administration was busy negotiating a nuclear deal with Iran, going after Hezbollah, Iran’s proxy in Lebanon, became increasingly impolitic. Project Cassandra was shut down, its team scattered to unrelated assignments. The agency’s strategy against Hezbollah was left in disarray. It is time for the Trump administration to reverse that. Project Cassandra should be revived and resourced, because the narco-terrorist threat did not go away — if anything it became more sinister.
Last June, two Lebanese-Americans were arrested for surveilling potential targets for terrorist attacks against the U.S. and Israel. The targets included JFK airport and the Panama Canal. Drugs, meanwhile, continue to flow into the United States, while a leadership void and the neglect of the Obama years continue to weaken the DEA. That’s why the Trump administration should urgently appoint a new DEA administrator. It should be a strong candidate who has the vision and experience necessary to go after criminal terrorist organizations such as Hezbollah and also has the skills to coordinate government agencies, navigate bureaucracy, and build friendships and alliances abroad in order to pursue international investigations.
Likewise, a new administrator should be given the necessary authorities and resources to revive structures such as Project Cassandra or create other specialized units that could work with sanctioning entities and allied governments abroad to build a comprehensive U.S.-led approach to dismantling Hezbollah’s global network.Hezbollah poses a formidable threat both to U.S. national security and to the countless Americans who consume its drugs or have seen their loved ones succumb to addiction. Without further delay, America needs to put equally formidable people in charge of combating this enemy.
**Emanuele Ottolenghi is a Senior Fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, a nonpartisan research institute focusing on national security and foreign policy.
http://thehill.com/opinion/national-security/361453-hezbollah-drug-trafficking-should-spur-trump-to-appoint-dea-head

Saudi Arabia’s Rivalry With Iran Is Further Destabilizing the Middle East
Juan Cole/The Nation/November 27/17
Riyadh’s divide-and-rule strategy has yielded few successes, and it hasn’t made a dent in Iran’s regional influence.
Saudi Arabia’s increasingly erratic behavior has raised question marks around the world. After decades in which Riyadh kept a low profile and mainly intervened in world affairs by using its oil wealth, the Saudi military and intelligence machine is now pursuing a brutal war in Yemen, has put little Qatar under boycott, has attempted to destabilize Lebanon, is licking its wounds from defeat in Syria, and is cultivating potential clients in Iraq. At the same time, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman is concentrating power in his own hands. The common denominator here is the Saudi elite’s competition with Iran for the position of regional hegemon.
Iran’s influence has gone from almost zero in the 1990s to predominant in the eastern reaches of the Middle East today. The mildly Shiite Houthi rebels staged a coup in Yemen in 2014, and deepened their control over the country the following year. That was mainly a local development, but Riyadh projected its Iranophobia on it. The pro-Iranian party-militia Hezbollah in Lebanon has dominated that country’s national unity government since 2016. Another Iranian client, the Baath regime of Bashar al-Assad, appears to have won the civil war in Syria, and the Saudi cat’s paw there, the extremist Army of Islam, has been defeated. Saudi influence in Iraq evaporated after most Sunni Arab–majority provinces seceded to join the ISIL “caliphate” in 2014, and then were conquered by the central government’s army and its Shiite militia auxiliaries. While Tehran’s relationship with the Palestinian Hamas has been roiled since 2011, the two appear to be on the mend.
Saudi Arabia’s struggle against Iran has everything to do with nationalism and security and almost nothing to do with economics. Both are oil states, both are in the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) and so are members of the same cartel. They are not competing for export markets. Iran’s return to exporting petroleum freely after the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, or nuclear deal, of 2015 has helped depress the price of petroleum, but so too has US production of shale oil, and the latter has not caused tensions between Riyadh and Washington. Rather, this is a 19th-century-style contest over territorial spheres of influence.
While it is not irrelevant that Iran is an avowedly Shiite state and Saudi Arabia has a hard-line Sunni Wahhabi government, the conflict is not primarily over religion.
While it is not irrelevant that Iran is an avowedly Shiite state and Saudi Arabia has a hard-line Sunni Wahhabi government, the conflict is not primarily over religion. Iran supports the secular, socialist, atheist government of Assad’s Baath in Syria. Saudi Arabia supports the secular nationalist military in Egypt. Two Wahhabi states, Saudi Arabia and Qatar, are at daggers drawn, in part over the issue of whether to have correct relations with Shiite Iran, as Doha insists, or to treat Tehran as a deadly enemy.
Saudi Arabia, a fourth as populous as Iran and lacking substantial infantry capabilities, cannot take Iran on frontally in a conventional conflict. As Saudi strategists looked out on what they viewed as a menacing tableau, they appear to have concluded that the only way they could hope to blunt Iranian influence in the region was to divide and rule.
Lebanon, for instance, is a little over a fourth each Sunni and Shiite and a third Christian, with 6 percent of the population belonging to the esoteric Shiite offshoot, the Druze. When right-of-center Christians ally with the Sunnis, as in the 2009 parliamentary elections, the Sunnis can have a strong prime minister. (In Lebanon the president is always Christian, the prime minister is Sunni, and the speaker of parliament Shiite). In 2016, Michel Aoun was elected president by 83 members of the 128-seat parliament. Aoun, a popular former general and a Christian ally of Hezbollah, oversaw the formation of a national-unity government and convinced Sunni leader Saad Hariri to serve in it as prime minister, though his anti-Hezbollah position had clearly become a minority one. Hezbollah dominated the cabinet and had an ally in the presidency, putting Lebanon firmly in Iran’s orbit.
Hariri’s father had made billions in Saudi Arabia as a contractor decades ago, and Hariri has Saudi citizenship. Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman appears to have forced him to tender his resignation, throwing Lebanon into turmoil. Perhaps a more stridently anti-Hezbollah prime minister would have to be brought in or perhaps the post would stay vacant. Beirut would go from being a unified Iranian asset to a set of petty fiefdoms at cross purposes with one another. Troubles could have burgeoned to the point where Aoun would be forced out as president (something Aoun himself clearly feared). With parliamentary elections set for May of 2018, to be conducted under new, proportional voting rules, it was not impossible that a Sunni coalition with right-wing, anti-Aoun Christians could do well and sideline Hezbollah and its allies.
According to a leaked diplomatic cable, this scheme quickly gained the behind-the-scenes support of the Israeli government, with Israeli officials suddenly becoming very frank about their alliance with Gulf states like Saudi Arabia against Iran and its regional allies. Putting pressure on Hezbollah to depart Syria, now that the Al Qaeda affiliate and ISIL have been defeated there, may have been part of Mohammed bin Salman’s game plan, as well. This goal is also one shared by the Israelis, who have threatened to bomb any Hezbollah base established in Syria closer than 40 miles from the Israeli border.
The ploy of keeping Hariri under house arrest and forcing him to resign, however, produced so much international backlash that French President Emmanuel Macron proved able to convince the crown prince to let his prime-ministerial hostage go to Paris. Last week Hariri returned to a hero’s welcome in Beirut, where he rescinded his resignation. He does rail, as do his Saudi backers, against Iran’s influence in Lebanon and the outsized role played by the Hezbollah militia regionally, but clearly Hariri disagreed with Riyadh on strategy.
Hariri is unwilling to relinquish what little power he has, and he may calculate that his Future Party has a better chance in next May’s polls if he has the advantage of incumbency. In 2009, the last time Lebanon held a general election, the Future Party garnered 26 seats, and with its coalition partners in the March 14 Alliance gained a solid majority (71 of 128 seats) in Parliament. Hezbollah’s March 8 Alliance, including Aoun’s Free Patriotic Movement, won 57 seats. (March 8 and March 14 refer to the dates of massive pro- and anti-Syria demonstrations in 2005.)
The Saudi attempt to divide and rule Lebanon has failed for the moment, though ironically Riyadh greatly burnished—at its own expense—Hariri’s reputation with the Lebanese public, who saw him as the nationalist victim of an external Saudi plot rather than an Iranian one. The Saudi elite is unlikely, however, to relinquish its strategy, and may attempt behind the scenes to fill the coffers of far-right-wing Christian parties opposed to Aoun.
Elsewhere, too, divide and rule has yielded few successes. The Saudi attempt to use air power to unseat the Helpers of God, or Houthi movement, in Yemen has only succeeded in turning that country into the world’s worst humanitarian crisis, with more than 50,000 children expected to die this year of starvation or disease. Pro-Iranian Shiite politicians are firmly ensconced in Iraq, and Syria’s Bashar al-Assad, a fierce foe of Riyadh, does not appear to be going anywhere. Mohammed bin Salman’s attempt to force Qatar to break ties with Iran has backfired big time, causing Doha and Tehran to move substantially closer and probably destroying the Gulf Cooperation Council, which had been a vehicle of Saudi power in the Gulf region, grouping it with Kuwait, Bahrain, Oman, and the United Arab Emirates as well as Qatar. So far, Saudi divide and rule has simply become a destabilizing factor in an already roiled region, and has not made a dent in Iran’s influence.
https://www.thenation.com/article/saudi-arabias-rivalry-with-iran-is-further-destabilizing-the-middle-east/

Hitler of the Middle East and Jumblatt’s advice
Mashari Althaydi/Al AQrabiya/November 27/17
It will be good for some Lebanese and non-Lebanese politicians and observers to focus on the fact that they are before a new Saudi Arabia with a different policy and approach that are complemented with King Salman’s direction and guidance and his son Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s determination.
The crown prince is a young and smart leader who consults others and takes different opinions, but when he is determined to do something, he goes ahead. During his recent interview with American journalist Thomas Friedman in the New York Times – we do not think anyone accuses this daily of favoring Saudi Arabia – the prince spoke about a number of issues, including the problem of Iran. He addressed a western audience and summed up the situation with Iran saying that the Supreme Leader of Iran is “the new Hitler of the Middle East. We learned from Europe that appeasement doesn’t work. We don’t want the new Hitler in Iran to repeat what happened in Europe in the Middle East,” he added. This draws an interesting comparison of the political doctrines and historical myths, which are common between the Khomeini guide and the Nazi fuhrer. In addition, during Hitler’s days in Europe, there were no leaders who estimated the serious threats which Nazism posed. The time to talk is over. It’s confrontation time no matter what the price is instead of sleeping sound on Iran’s political drugs
Short-sighted and undetermined
Britain’s Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain was weak, short-sighted and undetermined as he convinced himself of the usefulness of an ingratiating approach towards Hitler and of having dialogue with him. Chamberlain only woke up from these illusions when the Nazis invaded Prague and he was replaced by Britain’s historical leader Winston Church. Those who think they can “convince” the murderers of the Khomeini Revolutionary Guards and their guide to become a “normal” state and not a group of ideologically obsessed gangs resemble Chamberlain of Britain on the morning of World War II.
We are not delusional. Few days ago, Mohammad Ali Jafari, the commander of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards – whom Hassan Nasrallah refers to – said during a press conference broadcast by the Iranian channel Khabar: “If ISIS had been destroyed from the start, Iran would not have had any chance to establish and organize big and small armed groups across the region.” Lebanese politician Walid Jumblatt then “donated” his advice to Saudi Arabia few days ago and wrote on Twitter: “There is no shame and nothing wrong with direct talks with the Islamic Republic,” adding that it was “time to build Yemen away from Ali Abdullah Saleh and Abdrabbuh Mansur Hadi.”As if Saudi Arabia did not try dialogue with Iran three decades ago! The time to talk is over. It’s confrontation time no matter what the price is instead of sleeping sound on Iran’s political drugs. Walid Beik did not talk about the Houthis while he criticized Yemen’s former and current president, Saleh and Hadi. Perhaps what prevented him from doing so is a good thing. Maybe some people need some time before they understand the new Riyadh.

Latest LCCC Bulletin For Miscellaneous Reports And News published on November 27-28/17
Suicide attack targets Nahrawan area south east of Baghdad
Reuters Monday, 27 November 2017/Two suicide attackers shot several civilians before one of them blew himself up in the Nahrawan area, south east of Baghdad, on Monday Iraq's Interior Ministry said, without providing casualty figures.
Local media reported that at least nine people were killed.

Russian strikes kill 53 civilians in Syria’s Deir Ezzor
AFP, Beirut Monday, 27 November 2017/Russian air strikes on Sunday morning killed at least 53 civilians, including 21 children, in a village held by ISIS in Syria’s eastern Deir Ezzor province, a monitor said in a new toll. “The toll increased after removing the debris in a long day of rescue operation,” Rami Abdel Rahman, head of the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights told AFP, adding the strikes hit “residential buildings” in the village of Al-Shafah on the Eastern bank of the Euphrates River. The monitor previously gave a toll of 34.

Thousands return from Jordan to south Syria as ceasefire holds
AFP, Amman Monday, 27 November 2017/Around 1,000 Syrians who sought refuge in Jordan have been returning home each month since July when a ceasefire for southern Syria took force, the UN said Monday. The ceasefire brokered by Jordan, Russia and the United States for the southern Syrian provinces of Daraa, Quneitra and Suweida has largely held since it came into force on July 9. Since then “the number of Syrians returning to the country voluntarily has increased”, Mohammed al-Hiwari, spokesman for the UN refugee agency (UNHCR) in Amman, told AFP. “Today that number has risen to around 1,000 (returnee) per month on average,” Hiwari added. Jordan shares a border of more than 370 kilometres (230 miles) with Syria, where upwards of 340,000 people have been killed and millions displaced since its conflict broke out in 2011. The United Nations says Jordan is hosting more than 650,000 Syrian refugees, but authorities in the kingdom put their actual number at 1.3 million. Hosting the refugees has placed a heavy burden on Jordan, a country lacking natural resources. According to Hiwari, the number of refugees who returned voluntarily to Syria rose to 1,203 in August and 1,078 in September. In the six months before the ceasefire, a total of only 1,700 Syrian refugees returned to their home country, he said. Hiwari stressed that the UNHCR “does not encourage the return to zones in Syria that are deemed unsafe”. The ceasefire brokered in the three southern Syrian provinces is part of a broader Russian-backed plan to create four “de-escalation zones” in rebel-held parts of the country. Russia and Iran, main allies of the Syrian government, and rebel-backer Turkey agreed in May to create the four zones in a deal aimed at bringing about a lasting truce.

U.N. Says Damascus Won't Join Monday's Geneva Peace Talks
Agence France Presse/NaharnetéNovember 27/17/The Syrian government has not yet confirmed that it will attend talks with the opposition aimed at ending the war and will not head to Geneva on Monday, the U.N. envoy said. "Last night, we received a message that the government would not travel to Geneva today," Staffan de Mistura told the Security Council. The U.N. envoy is due to open an eighth round of talks on a political settlement after previous negotiations achieved little progress. Syria's disparate opposition groups agreed last week following a meeting in Riyadh to send a united opposition to Geneva, a move seen as a boost to prospects for a breakthrough. "The government did not yet confirm its participation in Geneva but indicated that we would be hearing from them soon," De Mistura said via videoconference from the Swiss city. "Naturally we know and indeed expect that the government will be on its way shortly, particularly in light of President Assad's commitment to President Putin when they met in Sochi," he added. During a summit meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin in the Black Sea resort of Sochi last Monday, Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad said he was "ready for dialogue with all those who want to come up with a political settlement." Russia has proposed holding a "congress" to bring together the government and opposition in Sochi, but has not yet set a date for that gathering. Moscow is seeking U.N. support for that meeting, but De Mistura told the council that it was "premature for me to say anything regarding this initiative." Western powers are concerned that Russia is seeking to take a leading role in the peace process and will carve out a settlement that will largely favor its ally, Assad. De Mistura said he would be meeting with the ambassadors from Security Council permanent representatives -- Britain, France, China, Russia and the United States -- in Geneva on Tuesday to discuss the upcoming talks. "This crisis -- one of the worst in the history of the U.N. -- now has the potential, the real potential to move toward a genuine political process," said the envoy.More than 330,000 people have died in the six-year war, half of the population has been displaced and the country lies in ruin. The U.N. envoy said he expected reconstruction to cost $250 billion.

UN: Syria government has not confirmed will attend Geneva talks
Reuters Monday, 27 November 2017/United Nations Syria mediator Staffan de Mistura said on Monday that the Syrian government had not yet confirmed that it would attend an eighth round of peace talks in Geneva this week, but "indicated that we would be hearing from them soon.""Last night we received a message that the government would not travel to Geneva today. Naturally we hope, and indeed expect the government will be on its way shortly," de Mistura told the UN Security Council on Monday. Syrian congress in Russia postponed. A Russian-backed Congress of Syrian peoples in the Russian city of Sochi has been postponed until February, Russia's RIA news agency reported on Monday, citing a diplomatic source. The event, called the Syrian Congress on National Dialogue, was initially to be held in November but some opposition groups rejected the idea of the meeting, initially proposed by President Vladimir Putin.

Syrian Democratic Forces to Join Army after Settlement
Asharq Al Awsat/November 27/17/Joint chief of the Syrian Democratic Council announced that his forces will become part of the Syrian army after a settlement is reached in the war-torn country. Riyad Darrar announced that the army will then be tasked with arming the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF).
He said of the US-backed SDF: “The US remained true to its word and its is working on eliminating ISIS until a political settlement is achieved in Syria.”“Until stability is reached, we can say that the Americans have the right to translate their words into actions and they should withdraw from the country as they did in Iraq where they set a deadline for their departure,” he added. He said that the SDF is part of a joint alliance with the Americans, stressing: “We have remained true to our mission and we only used their weapons in the confrontation against extremism and terror.” “When the Syrian settlement is achieved, the SDF will become part of the Syrian army,” Darrar stressed. “We are working towards peace in Syria, not a confrontation with any Syrian side. We are building ourselves and our regions. We are preserving them in times of peace and stability until the time of real negotiations arrives,” he explained. “If we are headed towards a united federal Syria, then I believe there is no need for our weapons and forces because they will become part of the army,” he stated. Addressing Turkish criticism of the SDF, he said that Ankara is being delusional if it thinks that the US will withdraw if arms from the forces. He dismissed its wishes, saying that the SDF will not relent to Turkish demands. The SDF was formed in October 2015 with a Kurdish majority and with the aim of fighting ISIS that had at the time held large swathes of northern and northeastern Syria. In Ankara meanwhile, Turkish Prime Minister Binali Yildirim hoped during a press conference that the US would sever as soon as possible its partnership with the Kurdish People’s Protection Units. He made his remarks ahead of traveling to London on an official visit where he is scheduled to meet with his British counterpart Theresa May. He hoped that Washington would cut ties with the “terrorist organization and return to its real partners and allies,” reported the Anadolu news agency. In addition, he said that Ankara had repeatedly warned the US against sending reinforcements to the “terrorist Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK)”. The US had replied that its use of those terrorist groups in the war against terror was not an option, but a necessity, noted Yildirim. He said that the current phase in the region is witnessing the demise of ISIS, which means that the US no longer needs to send reinforcements to the PKK.

New scandal embroils Qatar 2022 with $22 million ‘suspicious transfer’
Al Arabiya English/November 27/2017/The Brazilian justice ministry and the FBI are investigating a transfer of $22 million made by Qatar and allegedly linked to the 2022 World Cup, French news website Mediapart reported on Sunday. Brazilian and US prosecutors have investigated bank statements of the Brazilian Football Federation’s former boss, Ricardo Teixeira, who had opened an account at Pasche Monaco - a Swiss-based facility controlled by Credit Mutuel until in 2013. They then noticed that a $22 million payment from the Qatari group Ghanim Bin Saad Al-Saad & Sons Group (CSSG) was made to this bank account in January 2011, shortly after Qatar was awarded the 2022 tournament. Mediapart reported that the CSSG, "led by businessman Ghanim Bin Saad Al-Saad, is at the heart of suspicions of corruption." Targeted by a money laundering investigation and fraud between 2009 and 2012, Teixeira, boss of the powerful Brazilian Federation since 1989, resigned in 2012. He was a member of the Executive Committee of FIFA. which took part in the vote in December 2010 which awarded the 2022 World Cup to Qatar. Ricardo Teixeira is then "suspected of having participated in the alleged system to buy votes for Qatar among the 22 voters of FIFA." But the issue is not just limited to allegedly buying votes. The news site reported: "In early 2013, several transfers were in effect, issued the same day from his account, to Jack Warner who was then president of the Confederation of football North America, Central America and the Caribbean], as well as Mohamed Bin Hammam, President of the Confederation of Asian Football and Nicolas Leoz, President of the Confederation of South America.”

Gulen ‘money man’ back in Turkey from Sudan
AFP, Ankara Monday, 27 November 2017/Turkish spies working in Sudan have repatriated a businessman accused of links to wanted Turkish cleric Fethullah Gulen after he was caught in a joint operation, state media reported Monday. Memduh Cikmaz is accused of giving millions to the movement run by US-based Gulen, who Ankara claims ordered the July 15, 2016 attempt to end President Recep Tayyip Erdogan's rule. Cikmaz was captured in a joint operation involving Sudanese intelligence after the Turkish National Intelligence Organisation (MIT) located him two months earlier, security sources told Anadolu news agency. Cikmaz, with business interests in petrol stations and brick factories, was returned to Turkey early on Monday, the agency said. He had gone to Sudan in January 2016 but sources told Anadolu he continued to send millions of dollars to the movement. Cikmaz was accused of "managing an armed terror organization" in a previous arrest warrant. Anadolu described him as the Gulen group's "money vault".The agency said MIT had created a special team to locate suspected Gulenists abroad. Turkey refers to Gulen's group as the "Fethullah Terrorist Organisation" (FETO) but the movement insists it is peaceful and promotes education, denying any terror links. Its network stretches from Turkey to Africa and Central Asia to the United States. Gulen denies Turkey's accusations of involvement in last year's failed coup. Ankara launched a widespread crackdown on the group, arresting more than 50,000 people over alleged links since July last year. During high-level diplomatic visits, Ankara has also urged Pakistan and Tanzania to crackdown on the Gulen network, especially its schools.

Myanmar Has 'No Religious Discrimination', Army Chief Tells Visiting Pope
Agence France Presse/Naharnet/November 27/17/Myanmar's army chief Min Aung Hlaing said he told Pope Francis his country had "no religious discrimination" after the pair met late Monday, in a papal visit framed by the exodus of the Rohingya Muslim minority. "Myanmar has no religious discrimination at all," he said in a Facebook post by his office. "Likewise our military too... (it) performs for the peace and stability of the country."The Tatmadaw, as his army is known, has been accused by the U.N. and U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson of conducting a campaign of "ethnic cleansing" by driving 620,000 Rohingya from western Myanmar into Bangladesh since August. Myanmar denies any wrongdoing despite testimony by refugees pointing to a widespread campaign of rape, murder and arson. The Rohingya, who are effectively stateless, are subject to a suffocating web of state-enforced restrictions.
Most are denied citizenship by Myanmar, which says they are illegal "Bengali" immigrants. Last week Amnesty International called western Rakhine state a "crime scene," describing the restrictions on the Rohingya as tantamount to "apartheid."The pope, who is visiting Myanmar to spread a message of peace, has spoken up several times for the Rohingya as the crisis has unfolded calling the benighted group "brothers and sisters."His comments have enraged hardline Buddhist nationalists in Myanmar, who are now waiting to see if he uses the term "Rohingya" during his four-day trip. Min Aung Hlaing's office said the senior general had welcomed the pope during a brief 15 minute meeting in Yangon and told the pontiff there was also "no discrimination between ethnic groups in Myanmar." The Rohingya are not recognized as an official ethnic group.

Kurds Accuse Baghdad of Refusing Dialogue
Agence France Presse/Naharnet/November 27/17/Iraqi Kurdish premier Nechirvan Barzani on Monday accused Iraq's central government of refusing to open a dialogue even though the Kurds had bowed its opposition to their September independence vote. "We think the problems between Baghdad and Arbil should be resolved through serious dialogue and not via the media, but so far Baghdad is not ready for dialogue," he said at a news conference in the Kurdish regional capital, Arbil. Barzani questioned the federal government's demands for the handover of border posts and airports in the autonomous Kurdish region of northern Iraq. "Does this mean the Kurds working at the border posts and airports are not Iraqis, or that Baghdad only wants to employ Arabic speakers?" he asked. After a September 25 independence referendum held in defiance of Baghdad, federal security forces seized control of disputed zones that had been held by the Kurds. They also blocked international flights from landing in Iraqi Kurdish airports.Barzani said the Kurds had respected a supreme court ruling that the independence vote was unconstitutional.  But for its part, Baghdad should reciprocate by annulling the sanctions it has imposed on Iraqi Kurdistan, he said. Barzani has been running Iraqi Kurdistan since his uncle, Massud Barzani, stepped down in the wake of Baghdad's territorial advances. The premier also called Monday for an investigation into the mass displacement of Kurds from the mixed town of Tuz Khurmatu in northern Iraq, the scene of deadly violence in mid-October when Iraqi forces seized it from Kurdish control. "We hold the Iraqi government responsible for what has happened and demand the return and protection of those displaced," the Kurdish leader said. The United Nations has said 35,000 people were evicted from Tuz Khormatu, mostly Kurds, and expressed concern over reports of homes, companies and political party offices being looted and destroyed.

Latest LCCC Bulletin analysis & editorials from miscellaneous sources published on November 27-28/17
COMMENTARY: On returning ISIS fighters, Trudeau has a script. But he doesn’t have a clue
By Charles Adler/Global News/November 23/17
https://globalnews.ca/news/3875047/commentary-on-returning-isis-fighters-trudeau-has-a-script-but-he-doesnt-have-a-clue/
The tweet was not subtle. And it wasn’t meant to be.
Charles Adler
@charlesadler
Please watch this, especially #Trudeau's response. He says he has confidence in some gov't program that he believes can keep the country safe from young men who joined #ISIS returning to Canada. After watching, please re-tweet. Every Cdn you know needs to know about this. https://twitter.com/AndrewScheer/status/932775985463820288 …
I was reacting to the unbelievable exchange between Justin Trudeau and Andrew Scheer in parliament on Monday. Everyone who has seen this clip (which you can watch above) of a Canadian prime minister reading from a script to answer a simple question from the opposition leader is blown away.
It has nothing to do with whether the viewer is a Liberal supporter or not.
I have, with my own ears, heard several people who voted for Trudeau saying for the first time since the election they regret their vote.
This clip has peeled the bark right off the Trudeau tree.
It makes supporters forget how responsive they were to the ‘cover model’ Prime Minister.
When they watch this, they stop caring about what he looks like on the cover of Rolling Stone or Vogue.
In the words of Buddy Holly, “It doesn’t matter anymore.”
Now if the reader doesn’t mind, I’d like to reset by asking you this question: Have you ever heard of the Canada Centre for Community Engagement and Prevention of Violence?
Neither had I, until this week.
It’s a federal government program, which, according to the Prime Minister, “helps to ensure that resources are in place to facilitate disengagement from violent ideologies.”
That’s part of the PM’s scripted response to a very fair question being asked by Opposition Leader Andrew Scheer, who was wondering why Canada is allowing people who chose to leave our country to join ISIS in the Middle East to now return to Canada to live a life outside prison.
Trudeau wants to reintegrate them into Canadian society. Common sense forces us to ask why.
Who the hell wants this kind of crud to be among us?
Apparently the Prime Minister doesn’t see anyone as crud, not even those who used their Canadian passports to travel to the Middle East to hook up with people who, if they had the chance, would happily murder as many of us as possible, and by any means possible.
The crud wanted to hang out with and get trained by those who would want to shoot us, bomb us, or mow us down in rented trucks.
Canadians are not without a clue as to what we’re talking about here. This isn’t theoretical.
This is ISIS, a gang of savages we have spent years fighting along with our allies, and for good reason.
Conservative Party Leader Andrew Scheer was just doing his job by putting this question to the Prime Minister.
Referring to those who left the country to join ISIS, the opposition leader said:
“These are people who got on a plane to fight for ISIS and watched as our allied soldiers were burned to death in a cage. These are people who got on a plane to go to fight for an organization that sells women and girls into slavery. These are people who left Canada to fight for a group of people who push homosexuals off buildings just for being gay. Can the Prime Minister explain to the House exactly what a program or reintegration service would look like for the people who commit these kinds of atrocities?”
Could we all agree that was a pertinent question, especially since we have no idea how many Canadians and/or Canadian residents have hooked up with ISIS and then returned?
But the number is widely believed to be somewhere in the hundreds.
Can we agree it’s a good idea for the opposition leader to know why we’re allowing them to return and what is it that we plan to do to keep people safe from these people who clearly are turned on by terror?
So here comes the Prime Minister’s scripted response.
Warning: If you are a Trudeau supporter, be prepared to have regrets.
“We recognize that the return of even one individual may have serious national security implications,” said the prime minister.
He then offered this business about a government program known as the Canada Centre for Community Engagement and Prevention of Violence, which I introduced you to a couple of paragraphs ago.
The PM also said his government “will also continue to carefully monitor trends in extremist travel, and our national security agencies work together to ensure that our response reflects the current threat environment.”
The assumption here is that the government knows who all these people are, and knows where they live and play and work, and that they are being tracked.
How safe an assumption is that?
It’s about as safe at it would be for you to go to sleep in the passing lane of the Trans Canada Highway and assume that no car, bus or 18-wheeler will end your innocent Canadian life.
© 2017 Global News, a division of Corus Entertainment Inc.

The Battle of the Islamic World
Ghassan Charbel/Asharq Al Awsat/November 27/17
The issue is simple and clear. You make your own destiny; otherwise, others will make it for you. You build your destiny according to your interests, aspirations and responsibilities, or others will build it for you according to their interests and calculations. You live in a world to which you have contributed, or you live in a world crafted by others. What is created in your absence is often made on your account.
Your destiny means your security, stability, economy, your place in the territory you belong to, and your relationship with the world of which you are part. You can no longer close your borders or windows. Your fate is inseparable from the fate of your neighbors and those beyond them. We are in an interconnected world where ideas flow without permission or authorization. Your map will not be calm if the nearby map is ailing or violated.
Armies of darkness sneak through the Internet, social media, screens and platforms. You will not be able to plan a solution within your borders and wash your hands of what is going on in the world.
That is why we want to believe that the meeting of the defense ministers of the Islamic Alliance against Terrorism in Riyadh on Sunday is an expression that the Islamic world has decided to hold on to its fate. It has decided to develop a comprehensive and collective plan to address the cancer of terrorism, which, as soon as treated in one hand, quickly spreads to another. The latest message of terrorism was horrific and very costly.
Stories of survivors of the “worshipers’ massacre” in the village of Al-Rawdah in Arish, the capital of North Sinai, break the heart. My grief was mixed with anger when I read what Eid Shreifat told our newspaper.
“Most of my friends and colleagues in the village were killed in the mosque,” he said. “The secretary of the local village council was also killed. Three-quarters of the village’s men, young people and children have died.” He explained that his family alone lost twenty men in the massacre, which claimed the lives of more than 300 people, including 27 children.
The stories break the heart. It is a terrible massacre, which took place inside a mosque. The brutality of its execution exceeded that of the most imaginative fantasies of horror films.
The facts provoke both grief and anger. It is the determination to target Egypt through its security, stability and economy… To keep the country from catching its breath. Fortunately, Egypt, with its people, army and institutions, is not in a position to bow to this wave of insanity; a wave that reminds us that terrorism is a weapon of mass destruction, and that the fountains of extremism are the wellsprings of mass destruction. One does not exaggerate when saying that the “massacre of worshipers” can be repeated in more than one place, because terrorists have violated all kinds of borders and sanctities.
It happened that Al-Rawdah massacre occurred two days before the first meeting of the Islamic Coalition Against Terrorism. Participants do not need to be reminded of the horrors of terrorism. There is no longer any ambiguity. The Islamic world is the first target of terrorism and the great loser of terrorists’ wars. It is true that the same terrorism targeted Western cities and distant capitals, but it is also true that its first and last goal is the oppression of the Muslim world itself, after cutting all ties that connect it to the world.
The Islamic world has no choice but to decide to eradicate terrorism and turn off the fountains of extremism. This battle must be the first item in the program of all governments, by dedicating the necessary capabilities and expertise, as well as actually cooperating with other countries, which are aware of the importance of winning this battle. Victory here is more than essential. Without defeating terrorism and extremism, a normal state cannot be built, a natural economy cannot be established and stability and investment cannot be discussed.
The Muslim world does not lack resources. The problem is lack of will and submission to the logic of hurdles, sensitivities and disputes over positions. The Muslim world has no longer the luxury of waiting under these kinds of pretexts. It is impossible to head towards the future without building countries and institutions, without comprehensive development and modern education, and without catching up with the accelerating technological revolutions.
Terrorism and extremism are the first enemies of a natural state, which can only be based on the rule of law and the recognition of the different other inside and outside the map. It is unthinkable that the Muslim world rushes to resort to the great powers whenever darkness prevails over its territory. We are not entitled to rely on others and then complain about their interventions and different approaches.
We want to believe that the Riyadh meeting paves the way for a comprehensive battle against terrorism and even “its total eradication from earth,” as stated by Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman in his opening speech. We want to believe that the participating countries will establish bases of cooperation at the “military, financial, intelligence and political” levels. Countering terrorism can only be comprehensive, so that it becomes possible to erase its repercussions on the minds, books, mosques, screens and all platforms.
We do not intend to say that terrorism is the only problem facing the Muslim world. There are many old and new problems at the political, economic and social levels. What we mean is that fighting terrorism and extremism is a prerequisite for dealing with other problems.
Extremism and terrorism poisoned relations between the components of the same maps. They also poisoned relations among Islamic states and relations between Islamic countries and the world. We cannot talk about the future of our peoples and our children unless we become a natural part of the world. We cannot live in a closed island that is healing its current diseases by using herbal medicine from the past.
It is true that the modern part of the world wants our markets, but it is also true that we need the fruits of its laboratories and research, and we also need its incredible technological progress and investment. Fear of terrorists and extremists has consumed the energies of Islamic countries and deprived them of stability, investment and prosperity. That is why the current battle looks like the battle of the future of the Islamic world.

Muslims Are Often the First Victims of Terrorists
Eli Lake/Bloomberg/November 27/17
The terror in Egypt on Friday is only the latest grim reminder that Muslims are often the first victims of fanatics.
The massacre of at least 235 people attending a Sufi mosque in Bir al-Abd on the Sinai coast is being attributed to a local affiliate of ISIS, known as Ansar Beit al-Maqdis. This slaughter was particularly venal. Gunmen waited for ambulances and first responders to come to the mosque after an initial detonation and sprayed bullets into the survivors and those dispatched to save them. An anonymous Muslim cleric told the New York Times that he was shocked the killers would attack a mosque. Prior targets for the terrorists in the Sinai included Coptic Christian churches and a Russian airliner in 2013.
But the killing of Muslims should surprise no one. Just look at the trail of blood in Iraq. Sunni terrorists attacked the al-Aksari mosque in both 2006 and 2007 in Samarra. The site is one of the holiest in Shiite Islam and was known for its golden dome. While it was rebuilt in 2009, the attack sparked pledges of sectarian reprisals. Al Qaeda and ISIS perfected car bomb attacks that detonated inside crowded markets in Baghdad, killing Muslims. Shiite militias responded to these attacks by meting out random terror on the Sunni minorities in Iraq with death squads, at times abetted by the state's interior ministry. The killing is not limited to Iraq. Civil wars in Lebanon, Syria and Yemen have increasingly pitted extremists against one another.
This is important for a few reasons. To start it puts the lie to the mantra of ISIS, al Qaeda and other terrorists that they are protecting the faith from the West. These groups are responsible for turning their battlefields into abattoirs. They slaughter the group they claim to protect.
But it's also a reminder of the short sightedness of President Donald Trump, who has at times tried to frame the war on terror as a contest between Islam and the West. It's true that fiends like ISIS have targeted religious minorities in the Middle East like Christians and Yazidis, but this has not stopped them from killing so many of their own religion too. The West's quarrel is with the extremists of political Islam, or the sect of the faith that seeks to impose Islamic law on others -- not the entire religion. Indeed, our military relies on local Muslims fighting alongside it in the war on terror. It's a strategy Trump himself has pursued in Syria and Iraq. Many of the regimes in the Islamic world have internalized this lesson. Today Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Jordan and the United Arab Emirates are no longer trying to buy off jihadis or remain neutral. They seek to confront both the Sunni and the Shiite extremists.
And while this is a good sign, it's also not a cure-all. This gets us back to Egypt. The current leader, Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, has tried to crush the radicals in his own country with an iron fist since assuming power. His crackdown, however, has not stopped the terror. And as long as the terror continues, Muslim civilians will suffer.

Russia, US Struggle Over Nuclear Deal
Hal Brands/Bloomberg/November 27/17
President Donald Trump’s continuing courtship of Russian leader Vladimir Putin is casting darkness over US foreign policy. But there is a ray of light where Russia is concerned. The Pentagon is now reportedly beginning preliminary research on a ground-launched cruise missile that would be prohibited under the terms of the Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces Treaty. This is an overdue step toward making Russia pay for its violations of that accord, and perhaps even positioning America for strategic advantage in a post-INF world.
The INF Treaty, signed by President Ronald Reagan and Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev in 1987, was a landmark arms control agreement between the two Cold War superpowers. Rather than simply capping the number of weapons and delivery vehicles Washington and Moscow could possess, the treaty committed them to totally and verifiably eliminate ground-launched ballistic and cruise missiles with ranges between 300 and 3,400 miles. The deal marked a dramatic de-escalation and even reversal of the arms race, and stands as a key milestone in the end of the Cold War.
But arms control treaties only work if both sides adhere to their terms, and recently the Kremlin has been playing the scofflaw. For years, the US has known that Russia was developing and testing a ground-launched cruise missile (the SSC-8) with a range sufficient to violate the terms of the treaty, even as Moscow has repeatedly denied that the missile is noncompliant. In 2014, the US State Department went public with this accusation, and the Obama administration sought to bring Russia back into compliance with the accord through diplomatic engagement. In early 2017, however, the New York Times reported that the Russian military had secretly deployed two battalions of the SSC-8, one in southern Russia and one at an unknown site elsewhere. As a result, what was once a groundbreaking bilateral agreement has now become a one-way street: Only the U.S. still honors the terms of the 1987 deal.
Nor is the INF the only arms control deal that Russia is breaking. Moscow “suspended compliance” with the Treaty on Conventional Armed Forces in Europe in 2007; it now regularly conducts large-scale military exercises, such as the recent Zapad 2017, that flout its provisions. Suspicions abound that Russia is also violating the New Start arms control agreement signed with the Barack Obama administration in 2010, by improperly (in other words, not permanently) disabling its SS-25 mobile missiles. The list goes on and on.
So far, Washington has struggled to respond these violations, because Russia has simply ignored or denied US accusations of noncompliance (or sought to muddy the waters with spurious counter-charges), and because the Obama administration hesitated to move toward ending its own compliance with the INF Treaty so long as there seemed some faint hope of resurrecting it. Now that the Russians have actually deployed their prohibited missile, however, there seems to be a meeting of the minds between Congress, the Pentagon, and the NATO allies that the time has come to start imposing more serious costs on the Kremlin. In the National Defense Authorization Act, Congress recently authorized $58 million for research and development of an intermediate-range, ground-launched cruise missile, and Pentagon officials have made clear that they are eager to proceed. To be clear, research and development -- as opposed to testing, production and deployment -- does not itself constitute a violation of the INF, but the groundwork is now being laid to develop an INF-prohibited capability should Russia not return to the fold.
This makes eminently good strategic sense in two respects. First, even those who wish to save the INF must acknowledge that there is no prospect of bringing Moscow back into compliance unless the Putin government understands that noncompliance will come at a high price. So long as the Russians can violate the treaty with impunity, they get all of its benefits without any of the costs. If, however, the US shows it is willing to develop its own intermediate range missiles -- which could reach Russian targets from Europe -- the equation might start to change for Putin.
After all, the original INF Treaty only became possible when the US deployed highly accurate Pershing-II intermediate-range ballistic missiles and Tomahawk cruise missiles to Europe in the early 1980s, in response to the original Soviet intermediate-range deployments in the late 1970s. At the time, critics in the US and Europe warned that the deployments would only accelerate the arms race, just as critics of the present decision will surely argue that it will only provoke Putin. But then as now, building up was the vital precursor to building down. The mobile Pershing-IIs, Gorbachev later acknowledged, were “like a pistol held to our head.” Similar leverage is needed if there is to be any prospect of successful diplomacy today. The second argument in favor of planning for a new missile is that it would help position the US for a new strategic paradigm should the treaty be totally abandoned. Arms control agreements are not sacred: They only make sense if they advance both international stability and US interests. The INF Treaty is clearly not serving those purposes today.
In fact, it now imposes a double cost on the US, because it also prohibits the Pentagon from developing intermediate-range weapons that might be quite useful in countering the Chinese missile threat in the Western Pacific. China, which is not a signatory to the INF and is therefore not bound by its provisions, has been developing a lethal force of ballistic and cruise missiles to target US ships and bases. Reasonable people can debate whether the US would be better off having an INF Treaty that Russia actually respects, or simply freeing itself from the constraints of that accord. But either way, starting to look more seriously at developing capabilities banned under it is essential. Trump continues to get a great deal wrong about Russia today -- but on this issue, his administration is headed in the right direction.
*Hal Brands is the Henry A. Kissinger Distinguished Professor at the Henry A. Kissinger Center for Global Affairs at Johns Hopkins University's School of Advanced International Studies and a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments. His latest book is "American Grand Strategy in the Age of Trump."

The Jihad on Sufism
Raymond Ibrahim/FrontPage Magazine/November 27/17
On Friday, November 24, some 30 gunmen carrying the Islamic State flag bombed and stormed a Sufi mosque in Egypt’s North Sinai, about 125 miles northeast of Cairo. They managed to massacre at least 305 people, 27 of whom were children. “The scene was horrific,” said Ibrahim Sheteewi, an eyewitness. “The bodies were scattered on the ground outside the mosque. I hope God punishes them for this.”Not only is this considered the deadliest terrorist attack in Egypt, but one of the strangest as well. As the NYT’s explains, “The scale and ruthlessness of the assault, in an area racked by an Islamist insurgency, sent shock waves across the nation — not just for the number of deaths but also for the choice of target. Attacks on mosques are rare in Egypt, where the Islamic State has targeted Coptic Christian churches and pilgrims but avoided Muslim places of worship.”
Indeed, whereas the bombing and burning of churches and the slaughter of Christians in Egypt at the hands of, not just ISIS, but Muslim mobs and murderers, is hardly an uncommon occurrence in Egypt, attacks on mosques in the name of jihad naturally are.
One Muslim cleric from the region who requested anonymity best voiced the general view: “I can’t believe they attacked a mosque.” In the West, this selfsame shock of Muslim on Muslim terrorism is used to support the politically correct mantra that terror groups such as the Islamic State truly have nothing to do with Islam—otherwise they would not bomb mosques and kill fellow worshippers of Allah.
Because the attack occurred late Friday—and, as of this writing, it is only Sunday, meaning still the weekend—capitalizing on this tragedy as a way to distance Islam from terrorism has not yet begun in the West; but, if precedent is any indicator, it soon will.
For example, last year during the closing days of Ramadan, a spate of terror attacks occurred in Bangladesh, Iraq, and Saudi Arabia—all Muslim nations; these were followed by a media outpouring of “told you Islam wasn’t responsible for terrorism,” or, to quote Bangladesh’s Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, “Anyone who believes in religion cannot do such act. They [Islamic State] do not have any religion, their only religion is terrorism.” Speaking after the San Bernardino terror attack that left 14 dead, Barrack Obama agreed: “ISIL does not speak for Islam. They are thugs and killers, part of a cult of death… Moreover, the vast majority of terrorist victims around the world are Muslim.” After the November 2015 Paris terrorist attacks, which left 130 people dead, the UK’s Independent published an article titled, “Paris attacks: Isis responsible for more Muslim deaths than western victims.” And the Daily Beast argued that, “Before the Paris horror, ISIS was killing Muslims on a daily basis. We Muslims despise these crazy people more than anyone else does…. But the number one victim of this barbaric terror group is Muslims. That’s undisputed.”
Along with distancing Islam from violence—real Muslims are not supposed to kill other Muslims in the name of jihad—this argument further clouds the issue of who is the true victim of Islamic terrorism: Why talk about the Muslim slaughter of non-Muslims—whether Western people, Israelis, or Christian minorities under Islam—when it is Muslims who are the primary victims most deserving of sympathy?
The problem with this argument, however, is that the Islamic State does not view its victims as Muslims. Indeed, mainstream Sunni Islam—the world’s dominant strand of Islam which 90 percent of the world’s Muslims, including ISIS, adhere to—views all non-Sunnis as false Muslims; at best, they are heretics who need to submit to the “true Islam.” This is largely how Sunnis view Shias and vice versa—hence their perennial war. While Western talking heads tend to lump them all together as “Muslims”—thus reaching the erroneous conclusion that ISIS is un-Islamic because it kills “fellow Muslims”—each group views the other as enemies. A saying attributed to the Muslim prophet Muhammad even validates this: “This umma [nation] of mine will split into seventy-three sects; one will be in paradise and seventy-two will be in hell.” When asked which sect was the true one, the prophet replied, “al–jama‘a,” that is, the group which most literally follows the example or “sunna” of Muhammad.
Overall, then, when Sunni jihadis slaughter Shias—or Sufis, Druze, and Baha’i—they do so under the exact same logic as when they slaughter Christian minorities, or European, American, and Israeli citizens: all are infidels who must either embrace the true faith, be subjugated, or die.
Concerning Sufis in particular, last January an ISIS commander situated in Sinai “outlined the group’s hatred for Sufis and their practices, including the veneration of tombs, the sacrificial slaughter of animals and what he termed ‘sorcery and soothsaying.’” The Islamic State has further referred to Sufism as a “disease” that needs to be “eradicated.” Accordingly, a year ago, ISIS beheaded Sulayman Abu Hiraz, a Sufi cleric reportedly over 100 years old, on the charge of sorcery.
The argument that ISIS and other jihadi organizations kill fellow Muslims proves nothing. Muslims have been slaughtering Muslims on the accusation that they are “not Islamic enough” or the wrong “kinds” of Muslims from the start: So what can the open non-Muslim—such as the Western infidel—expect? Indeed, if anything, that ISIS kills other “Muslims” only further validates the supremacist and intolerant aspects of Sunnism, which is hardly limited to ISIS. Just look to our good “friend and ally,” Saudi Arabia, the official religion of which is Sunni Islam, and witness the subhuman treatment Shia minorities experience.
In the end, it’s just jihad and more jihad, for all and sundry.

Is Saudi crown prince winning or losing in the Middle East?
Al Monitor/Week in Review/November 27/17
A poster depicting Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman is seen in Tripoli, northern Lebanon, Nov. 7, 2017.
By postponing his resignation, announced under seeming duress in Saudi Arabia on Nov. 4, Lebanese Prime Minister Saad Hariri struck a blow in support of Lebanese sovereignty and against interference in his country’s affairs by Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.
Last week, we wrote that Hariri was “his own witness in a court of conscience” about what took place in Saudi Arabia, and what would happen next. If he had followed through on Prince Mohammed's diktat to resign and rally opposition to Iran and Hezbollah, in Lebanese politics, a popular backlash would have likely been the result, costing Hariri, and those who might have backed him, a catastrophic loss of face. Nobody was buying that you can be a champion of “sovereignty” at the behest of a regional power. And Hezbollah, despite its now frequent characterization as a "proxy" of Iran, is a Lebanese political party with its own popular and formidable constituency.
With Hariri’s decision to stay on, the center holds in Lebanon, at least for now. In addition to Hariri, credit goes to Lebanese President Michel Aoun’s steady statecraft and the resilience of the Lebanese people, who saw through the Saudi-created fiasco. Hariri’s remark Nov. 22 — "We are staying together to be the first line of defense for Lebanon" — should remain the rallying point for Lebanon to address its many challenges.
The final chapter is not yet written. The Wall Street Journal reports that Saudi Oger, the Riyadh-based construction company owned by the Hariri family, is “now relying on the Saudi government — its main client — to pay millions of dollars in wages owed to the company’s former workers, say former employees. Saudi officials are also investigating the company’s finances, said a former senior manager at the company.”
As the crown prince stumbles in the region, Iran continues to roll. The prince’s intervention in Lebanon has revealed, again, the limits of his influence and the costs of his impulsive regional policies, which redound to Iran’s benefit.
Yemen, for example, remains a failure and quagmire for the kingdom — the “worst humanitarian catastrophe in the world,” Bruce Riedel writes, with 7 million people on the verge of starvation.
“Riyadh does not have a strategy to win the war,“ Riedel continues. “The front lines have barely moved in months. The Houthis show no sign of giving up. More airstrikes are not likely to bring a decision. So the Saudi strategy by default is to rely on famine and disease to wear down the Yemeni people. All sides in this war are guilty of perpetuating a catastrophe, but the blockade and airstrikes are the principal cause of the famine and cholera. The Saudi government and leadership should be held accountable for their actions. A strategy of starvation is unacceptable.”
Giorgio Cafiero adds that conflict in Yemen offers the Islamic State “new opportunities and grievances to exploit as the internationally recognized central government remains entirely ineffectual. Should IS-Yemen lure more highly trained and battle-hardened fighters from the Levant, the local offshoot of IS could become an increasingly ascendant force to be reckoned with in southern Yemen, adding new dimensions of complexity and instability to the country’s civil war and growing famine threat.”
The kingdom’s isolation of Qatar has undermined Gulf Cooperation Council unity, another windfall for Iran. Cafiero explains the limitations of the “Anti-Terror Quartet” of Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Egypt and Bahrain in building a new regional alignment, given differing perspectives on how best to deal with Turkey and Iran. Meanwhile, Iran — allied with both the Syrian and Iraqi governments — comes out a winner in both countries, while Saudi Arabia scrambles for a foothold.
Mohammed’s record of frustration may have implications for any perceived gains from the now open secret of an emerging Saudi-Israeli entente to broker an Israeli-Palestinian peace settlement and counter Iran. Ben Caspit writes, “Peace between Israel and Saudi Arabia is not about to break out anytime soon. On the other hand, Israel is an unofficial member of the Sunni alliance led by young Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. For the past two years, he has been setting the Middle East on fire with a series of audacious moves.” Given the regional climate, it is fair to ask whether Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas will succumb to Saudi pressure to agree to a peace settlement or resign, as Adnan Abu Amer reports. Whether Saudi Arabia can “deliver” the Palestinians is an open question.
If the Trump administration is looking to back a winner in the Middle East, then it might think again about the seeming unconditional love offered Riyadh. Saudi Arabia should of course be a pillar of US strategy and posture, but given the scorecard to date, Washington may be overdue in counseling some restraint. As we wrote two weeks ago, “The Trump administration should send a clear signal to the crown prince that the United States does not necessarily have his back in any and all confrontations with Iran, while urging a try at diplomacy between Tehran and Riyadh, which is essential and long overdue.”
The courage and example of the Lebanese people to stand for sovereignty and against interference cannot be undersold. The country cannot escape its geography, at the crossroads of the Saudi-Iranian and Israeli-Iranian regional fault lines, and with over 1.5 million Syrian refugees within its borders. The trend, and pulse, of Lebanon, cannot be denied or ignored. We suggested back in 2014 that an exciting new post-sectarian social contract in Lebanon may be emerging, writing that “the failures and dashed expectations of the uprisings in Egypt and Syria, which quickly fell prey to regional and ideological agendas and violence, and Lebanon’s own tragic past, could make it an incubator for a new approach to governance that would allow Lebanon to realize its potential, rather than fall victim to the rhetoric and false promise of what was once known as the Arab Spring.”
Found in: Intra-Gulf relations, Corruption and nepotism

E-Government Sounds Great Until the First Hack
Leonid Bershidsky/Bloomberg/November 27/17
A group of Czech security researchers earlier this year discovered a way to steal identities from electronic ID cards used in a number of countries, known in the cryptography industry as a ROCA vulnerability. So far, the vulnerability has caused problems in Estonia -- the country with perhaps the most comprehensive e-identification and e-government system in the world -- and in Spain. Former Estonian President Toomas Hendrik Ilves, a tireless promoter of his country's e-democracy, has said that other countries and institutions have the same problem, too; they're just not talking openly about it. He's very likely right. The discovery poses an important question: Could we perhaps be overeager to adopt technological solutions to problems that don't necessarily require them?
Cryptographic smartcards use two mathematically linked keys to encrypt and decrypt information: A public one and a private one. The owner is free to hand out the former but must hold on to the latter. She can, for example, sign a document with the private key, and the public one can then be used to verify the signature. The researchers from Masaryk University discovered that a software library from the German company Infineon, used in many smartcards, made it too easy to compute private keys from public ones. That potentially creates opportunities for identity theft or the dissolution of millions of electronically signed contracts.
Infineon has changed the key generation algorithm to fix the flaw, but millions of cards out there, including 750,000 Estonian ones, ended up needing a certificate update. For tiny Estonia, which has made advanced technology its global differentiation point, a single case of identity theft could be a reputational disaster, so the nation's government decided to be transparent about the update. Predictably, though, when tens of thousands of people attempted to install the update, waiting times and failures mounted. After spending hours trying to update her ID card, Theresa Bubbear, the U.K. ambassador to Estonia, wondered in a tweet on Nov. 2 whether "eEstonia" might be "losing its shine." Only on Nov. 16, she finally tweeted "Hallelujah!" as the update came through.
Spain, though, is a much bigger country with some 60 million electronic identity cards in circulation. Spaniards cannot use them to vote or conduct financial transactions as Estonians do, but now that the government has deactivated the digital certificates on the cards, they can't use functionality such as signing documents at machines installed at police stations. The Spanish authorities haven't been as forthcoming about explaining the problem as the Estonian ones have been, thus creating confusion.
The problem will eventually be fixed; if you're worried that your crypto keys are affected, there's a website associated with two of the Czech researchers where one can check that. But the big question is whether governments should push ahead with putting more critical services online.
When I visited Estonia in 2015 to talk to Ilves, who was still president then, and to the people running the country's digitalization effort, I came away envious of what had been achieved. Transactions with the government hardly ever require a visit to an office. National databases are online and accessible with the digital ID. The electronic signature is ubiquitous. You can see your X-rays online, whichever doctor took them. A parliamentary election had just taken place, and some 170,000 people voted from home using their identity cards. I wondered why more countries weren't adopting Estonia's inexpensive, easily scalable system.
The ROCA flaw provides an answer to that question while doing little to dispel my envy. Estonia, with its manageable size and relatively close-knit, trustful society can deal with the occasional glitch, especially since it has taken up the mantle of an experimenting early adopter. Even if a major hack damages its global reputation, the conscious position of a testing ground, located right on the Russian border to boot, can help Estonia live it down.
It's harder, however, for a country like the U.S., the U.K. or Germany to live with this kind of technological risk. Recent U.S. breaches, including the Office of Personnel Management hack that exposed the personal data of millions of government employees, or the Equifax disaster that affected 143 million Americans, show the danger of putting personal information online. As for e-voting, if the U.S. and U.K. used the Estonian system and the same key generation algorithm, hackers could have changed the results of the Brexit referendum or the 2016 presidential election -- and nobody would have been the wiser today. As much as I'd like never to have to visit a government office again -- as I constantly have to do in Germany, with its time-honored, paper-based bureaucratic procedures -- I have to admit that old-style pencil-pushing has its advantages, especially in countries big enough to make breaking into government databases massively rewarding for criminals and spies. We face an only subtly different dilemma when contemplating self-driving cars. I know I can make a mistake behind the wheel that will kill me. But I'd rather live with this risk than with that of an algorithmic malfunction or hack that will have the same effect.
Pushing ahead with digitalized government, or indeed with any major technological change, shouldn't be a choice we make with our eyes closed. Societies should have the risks thoroughly explained to them before they vote to allow these breakthroughs.

Russia's Dangerous Nuclear "Diplomacy"
Debalina Ghoshal/Gatestone Institute/November 27/17
https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/11351/russia-nuclear-diplomacy
Russia's state owned nuclear energy organization, Rosatom, of Uranium One celebrity, has been trying to develop nuclear cooperation with most of the Middle East countries.
Russia would undertake building and operating the nuclear power plants – then start influencing the foreign policy decisions of the country supposedly to "protect" the nuclear power plants from terrorists, and from there to project military influence in the region as it has done in Syria. Russia has already strengthened its defense and military cooperation with Iran and Turkey.
Middle Eastern countries seem as eager to partner with a great power such as Russia as Russia does to partner with them. That way, "everyone" in the region could enjoy greater influence, militarily and otherwise.
Russia has been trying to relieve itself of the economic slowdown it has faced ever since the West imposed sanctions on it for invading the Ukraine. To that end, Russia's state owned nuclear energy organization, Rosatom, of Uranium One stardom, has been attempting to develop nuclear cooperation with most of the countries in the Middle East. Russia apparently considers the Middle East and North Africa two of the most lucrative markets; countries in the Middle East have already expressed interest in building 90 nuclear power plants at twenty-six sites across the region by 2030.
The Russian government has strongly supported the success of a company globally. Rosatom, for instance, already opened a regional office in Dubai, even though the United Arab Emirates does not have nuclear cooperation with Russia and cooperates with South Korea instead.
Russia, active during the "Iran deal" negotiations as a mediator between the E3 (Britain, Germany, France) with the United States on one side and Iran on the other, was one of the countries to gain from the Iranian nuclear deal – as was Rosatom. Russia, in 2015, signed nuclear cooperation agreements with both Iran and Jordan.
One the strategies Rosatom developed was the Build Own Operate (BOO) plan. Under it, Russia would undertake building and operating the nuclear power plants – then start influencing the foreign policy decisions of the country supposedly to "protect" the nuclear power plants from supposed terrorists, and from there to project military influence in the region as it has done in Syria, with its naval base at Tartus and its air base at Latakia.
Russia has already strengthened its defense and military cooperation with Iran and Turkey.
Rosatom has also signed nuclear cooperation agreements with Turkey and Saudi Arabia, and could also potentially play a significant role in the Gulf Cooperating Countries (GCC) Countries. Bahrain has already expressed desire for nuclear energy; Rosatom is certainly an option. Middle East countries all require inexpensive electricity; Russia would undoubtedly be happy to supply -- among other ventures -- nuclear power plants.
Rosatom will most likely face competition from other big players in the region such as China and South Korea, which are also trying to gain a foothold in the Middle East's nuclear energy market. South Korea has been working on enhancing nuclear cooperation with Jordan; the UAE has four South Korean nuclear power plants under construction. South Korea's conglomerate, Korean Electric Power Corporation (KEPCO), however, is apparently facing debt problems , a possible advantage for Rosatom. In addition, South Korea's new President Moon Jae-in evidently opposes nuclear energy and has ordered nuclear energy phased out. If South Korea walks out of the nuclear energy market in Middle East, that would give Rosatom one less competitor to deal with.
Meanwhile, more openings have appeared for Russia as Westinghouse Electric Co., once a subsidiary of Toshiba, has gone bankrupt, while the SA Areva of France is coping to recover from stagnation. At the moment, the only serious major threat to Rosatom would be China.
Russia, however, seems to be finding it easy to maneuver itself in the Middle East to establish a nuclear -- and diplomatic -- monopoly in the region. It has been providing lucrative offers to the Middle Eastern countries including financial packages for the nuclear deal. This means that Russia pre-financed the nuclear cooperation by providing loans that will later be paid off by the countries to which the loan has been provided. Russia has also been ensuring nuclear safety and waste management for the countries with which it is involved and sometimes even reprocesses spent fuel, as with Iran.
Middle Eastern countries seem as eager to partner with a great power such as Russia as Russia does to partner with them. That way, "everyone" in the region could enjoy greater influence, militarily and otherwise.
**Debalina Ghoshal, an independent consultant specializing in nuclear and missile issues, is based in India.
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Hijab Barbie: Useful Idiots of Cultural Jihad
Judith Bergman/Gatestone Institute/November 27/17
https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/11451/hijab-barbie
Far from being a symbol of empowerment, the new Hijab Barbie is an example of a cultural and civilizational jihad -- and the submission of a Western company, Mattel, to that jihad. Cultural jihad is the attempt to change and subvert Western culture from within, or more simply put: to Islamize it.
Rather than reminding girls of a world of opportunities, the hijab reminds them of all the things they cannot do in many Muslim countries. These include decisions about their own lives and bodies, such as not having their genitals mutilated, and generally not leading the free lives that women in the West -- including the ones working at Mattel -- probably take for granted
A new Barbie doll has been launched as part of Mattel's "sheroes" line. It is a doll in full hijab modeled after American-Muslim Olympic fencer, Ibtihaj Muhammad, the first American athlete to compete in the Olympics wearing a headscarf, which -- apparently -- Mattel felt was something for little girls worldwide to emulate. That and the possibility of selling millions of toys in the burgeoning Muslim market, of course.
According to a statement from Mattel:
"Barbie is celebrating Ibtihaj not only for her accolades as an Olympian, but for embracing what makes her stand out," said Sejal Shah Miller, Vice President of Global Marketing for Barbie. "Ibtihaj is an inspiration to countless girls who never saw themselves represented, and by honoring her story, we hope this doll reminds them that they can be and do anything."
The attempt to paint the new Hijab Barbie as a symbol of empowerment for girls is, however, quite disturbing. Girls "being and doing anything they want" is considerably different from what this hijab-clad doll represents. Hijab Barbie represents, on the contrary, the often violent oppression that Muslim girls and women experience throughout the Muslim world. It also represents the gender-apartheid the Quran mandates, which limits the freedoms of Muslim girls and women in the extreme.
Far from reminding girls of a world of opportunities, the hijab reminds them of all the things they cannot do in many Muslim countries. These include decisions about their own lives and bodies, such as not having their genitals mutilated; not being married off to older men at a young age; not being able to leave the house without male permission or accompaniment; not wearing the clothes they might like and generally not leading the free lives that women in the West -- including the ones working at Mattel -- probably take for granted.
The new Hijab Barbie was presented at the fashion magazine Glamour's Women of the Year awards. Unfortunately, this would appear fitting, given that terrorist sympathizer and pro-sharia activist Linda Sarsour -- who has threatened jihad against US President Donald Trump and said she wishes she could take away the vagina of prominent author Ayaan Hirsi Ali, who herself underwent female genital mutilation (FGM) -- was named one of its "women of the year," along with the other organizers of last January's Women's March.
"I hope that little girls of color across the heartland will be inspired to embrace what makes them unique," said Ibtihaj Muhammad at the launch of the new Barbie doll. But Muslims are not "girls of color". Islam is a religion and an ideology, not an ethnicity.
Far from being a symbol of empowerment, the new Hijab Barbie is an example of a cultural and civilizational jihad -- and the submission of a Western company, Mattel, to that jihad.
Cultural jihad is the attempt to change and subvert Western culture from within, or more simply put: to Islamize it. The Muslim Brotherhood's strategy for the United States, as spelled out in a foundational Muslim Brotherhood document from 1991, openly states:
"The process of settlement is a 'Civilization-Jihadist Process' with all the word means. The Ikhwan [Muslim Brotherhood] must understand that their work in America is a kind of grand jihad in eliminating and destroying the Western civilization from within and 'sabotaging' its miserable house by their hands and the hands of the believers..."
The document then goes on to list the Muslim Brotherhood organizations and the organizations of its friends: Organizations such as CAIR, ISNA, ICNA among others.
Another example of recent cultural jihad are the attempts, in the wake of the terrorist car ramming attack in downtown Manhattan on October 31, to claim the war cry "Allahu Akbar", a supremacist term for "Allah is greater" -- meaning, greater than all other deities -- as something innocent and benign. A spokeswoman for the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) wrote in a piece for the New York Daily News:
"The next time you hear Allahu Akbar, whether... on an airplane, or in a shopping mall -- remember that the phrase used by millions of Muslims and Christians daily to praise God regardless of their circumstances, can never be justified for use when harming His creation."
The real purpose is more probably an attempt to condition people to the lie that "Allahu Akbar" is an innocent term -- so that the next time people hear it, they will not question its meaning, or fight or flee from a terrorist scene either from ignorance, or for fear of being labelled an "Islamophobe".
Another example of cultural jihad is the attempt to portray "jihad" as something other than what it really is -- war in the name of Islam against all non-Muslims. Instead, it is being portrayed as an "inner struggle" to "better oneself". All of this has as its purpose to condition people into believing that Islamist designs for Western society are benign and to distract from the fact that Islam is a supremacist ideology wishing to impose its rules of sharia upon the West, through peaceful or, if necessary, violent means [Sayyid Qutub, Social Justice in Islam].
Most successful of all the attempts at cultural jihad thus far has been the contention that Islam is a "religion of peace." In Islam, the phrase means that peace that will reign over the world after everyone has been converted to Islam. Nevertheless, many in the Western political, cultural and media establishment have accepted the inaccurate rendering to such an extent that years of evidence to the contrary and thousands of dead and wounded bodies from Islamic terrorist attacks have not been able to change this pretense. Furthermore, the constant repetition of this deception, just as the Muslim Brotherhood planned, has created a deep division between the establishment of the West and its citizenry.
Western civilization is indeed "destroying itself from within" by, among other things, giving in and submitting to Islam.
Mattel's new Hijab Barbie is an example of Western regression -- a development that women, especially those who define themselves as feminists, should be ashamed to promote, let alone celebrate. If, despite this, they decide to celebrate it anyway, they should at least do so in the knowledge that, far from creating more equality for women, they have quite simply been made the useful idiots of cultural jihad.
*Judith Bergman is a columnist, lawyer and political analyst.
© 2017 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.

Africa: The Way Forward
Ahmed Charai/Gatestone Institute/November 27/17
https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/11424/africa-forward
The United Nations keeps spending huge amounts of money in many countries for missions supposedly established for aimed for peacekeeping in many countries. However, the cost-effectiveness of these missions remains to be seen. They have so utterly failed to solve any crisis.
The US is called upon to provide equipment, expertise and training for the local governments. Terrorist activities over almost all of the continent threaten US citizens, personnel and investments.
The fact remains that those who decide to join terrorist groups often do it out of despair and lack of alternatives, rather than based on ideological grounds. US investments present the real prospect for creating job opportunities for young people to prevent them from succumbing to the temptations of the merchants of death. The way forward is to piece together a new platform of African consumers of US products and services, and by the same token fend off terrorist groups.
What has just happened in Zimbabwe is merely symptomatic of the state of affairs in the African continent. Robert Mugabe, the "last of the Mohicans" of the wars of independence in Africa, has been shown the door at the age of 93. It was the higher echelons of the military and his own political party that decided they had enough of the "Old Lion", rather than a popular upheaval. The exit scenario was executed masterfully, without any bloodshed or violence of any kind.
To be sure, the people of Zimbabwe, a country that boasts an 83.6% literacy rate among its adult population, have to be commended for showing a strong sense of civility, to say the least, in the face of this major turning point. They are indeed an exception in Africa.
Press reports highlighted that Zimbabwe's First Lady Grace Mugabe and the country's Vice President Emmerson Mnangagwa have been arch-rivals in the succession wars over President Robert Mugabe's position. There was no love lost between them: both have been angling to succeed the President, who has ruled the country for 37 years. It is, however, important to caution anyone who rushes into analyzing what is going on in Zimbabwe solely through this prism.
Zimbabwe's economy is in tatters. Unemployment stands at a staggering 95%, which must be some kind of world record. High inflation has completely destroyed the country's monetary system. The state has expropriated private savings and converted them into obligations, against the background of a steep deterioration in the standard of living during the last two years.
The Chinese are the only ones who continue to invest in Zimbabwe; they have pumped in as much as $450 million over the last five years. Some people point to the Chinese as having had a hand in the recent events that rocked the country -- a scenario that is highly plausible.
The total failure of Mugabe's governance could have led the country on the dangerous path of strife and civil war. Nonetheless, the way things have favorably turned out to be begs the question: What should be done in Africa?
The African continent is blessed with an extraordinary potential for development that would benefit the populations as well as the world economy. But for some reason, this dream does not seem to materialize because of strife, a lack of stability, a lack of industrialization and often, in many African countries, corrupt and dismissive governance.
Nikki Haley, the US permanent representative to the UN echoes these problems that keep plaguing Africa:
"What you have to look is these African countries and all countries, if they take care of their people, if they respect the voices of their people then you get true democracy. If they don't listen to the voices of their people, conflict will erupt. Extremism will happen, and the United States will have to deal with it. This is all about making sure we don't get to that place."
The United Nations keeps spending huge amounts of money in many countries for missions supposedly established for peacekeeping. However, the cost-effectiveness of these missions remains to be seen. They have utterly failed to solve any crisis. The UN, which has in some cases managed to assuage the impact of famine, has nevertheless failed to initiate stability and democratic processes in the countries where it has expended human and financial resources.
"The UN's track record of long-term success is not good. Neither South Sudan nor the DRC has shown any real progress toward political solutions that would stop the violence," wrote Haley.
Haley's diagnosis is spot on. But how shall we go about solving these problems?
One of Ambassador Haley's predecessors at the UN, Ambassador John R. Bolton, has long argued that his country, which automatically funds roughly a quarter of the UN's annual budget, should instead support it on a voluntary basis: "We would pay only for what we want, and we would insist that we get what we pay for — that is, real performance."
A military intervention with the aim of circumventing civil wars may be necessary, but without a plan for a political outcome, any intervention is reduced to maintaining rogue leaders and dictators in place.
The Democratic Republic of Congo and the Central African Republic, two countries blessed with natural riches, and South Sudan, a young state reeling under strife and civil war, need not only a peacekeeping force but rather a firm engagement on a path leading to democratic institutions, good governance and development.
For Nikki Haley, "The United States very much sees Africa as a very important part of the world. We see great opportunities in Africa, we see challenges in Africa, but we want to support and help in those situations."
But for now, there remains the critical issue of the gargantuan budgets of the UN's peacekeeping missions. We also expect so much more from the United States. Africa, which will have as many as 2.5 billion people by 2050, is fertile ground for terrorism and Chinese soft power.
The stakes in Africa, in terms of security, cannot be higher for the United States. The US is called upon to provide equipment, expertise and training for the local governments. Terrorist activities over almost all of the continent threaten US citizens, personnel and investments. The fact remains that those who decide to join terrorist groups often do it out of despair and lack of alternatives, rather than based on ideological grounds. US investments present the real prospect for creating job opportunities for young people to prevent them from succumbing to the temptations of the merchants of death. The way forward is to piece together a new platform of African consumers of US products and services, and by the same token fend off terrorist groups.
President Trump, during the G-7 summit that took place in Taormina, Italy, rightfully described Africa as a land of opportunity. More than words, Africans are waiting for action from President Trump.
**Ahmed Charai, a Moroccan publisher, is on the board of directors of the Atlantic Council, the Center for Strategic and International Studies, the Center for the National Interest and the Gatestone Institute.
© 2017 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.