Latest English LCCC Lebanese & Lebanese Related News & Editorials published on July 13-14/2023
European Parliament blames Hezbollah, allies for presidential void
Naharnet./July 13, 2023
The European Parliament has called on the European Council to apply targeted sanctions against all of those who are infringing the democratic and electoral process in the Lebanese institutions, those involved in serious financial misconduct and those obstructing corruption investigations or the domestic investigation into the Beirut port explosion. "The current situation in Lebanon is extremely alarming and deeply concerning," the European Parliament said, adding that Lebanon’s present situation is caused by politicians across the ruling class and by "illegally armed parties obstructing the democratic and constitutional process." It called on Lebanon’s political elite to take their share of the responsibility and accused Hezbollah, Amal and their allies of resorting to "unconstitutional tactics to prevent the conclusion of the parliamentary vote, such as walking out after the first round or breaking quorums to block the election of the opposition candidate." "The Speaker of the Parliament of Lebanon Nabih Berri refuses to hold open voting rounds to elect a President contrary to the provisions of the Lebanese Constitution; which resulted in 10 months of blocking presidential elections in a time of dire need for a president to implement the necessary reforms," the European Parliament went on to say, as it urged the Lebanese Parliament to swiftly elect a president. It also called on the Lebanese government to swiftly implement "key governance, economic and financial reforms, including the credible regulation of key economic sectors such as the electricity sector" and urged the Lebanese authorities to respect the independence of the judiciary and "assist every effort that would allow those responsible for the decisions that led to the blast in the port of Beirut to be properly investigated and held to account." The statement called for an independent international fact-finding mission to Lebanon to investigate the Beirut explosion within the framework of the U.N.

EU parliament votes against refugee repatriatriation amid Lebanese objections
Naharnet./July 13, 2023
The European Parliament has voted overwhelmingly in favor of a resolution supporting the continued presence of Syrian refugees in Lebanon. "Conditions are not met for the voluntary, dignified return of refugees in conflict-prone areas in Syria," the European Parliament's resolution text said.
The resolution recalled the vulnerability of the refugee population in Lebanon and stressed the need to provide adequate, predictable and multi-layered funding to agencies working with refugees. Minister of the displaced Issam Sahrafeddine said Thursday that the European Parliament decision is "arbitrary and unacceptable." "It is a blatant interference in our national affairs," he added. MP Faisal Karameh also criticized the decision of the European Parliament. "It has no legal value and violates international law as it intervenes in sovereign affairs," the lawmaker said. Many politicians, including Amal MP Qassem Hashem, Democratic Gathering bloc MP Bilal Abdallah, Free Patriotic Movement MP Simon Abi Ramia and former MP Amal Abou Zeid, condemned the decision. "Lebanon can no longer bear the refugee burden," the Lebanese Forces also said Thursday in a statement, as it called on the international community to help Lebanon to repatriate refugees or transfer them to other European or Arab countries that would accept to grant them permanent residence and a decent life.

Report: Paris convinced of its initiative failure after Le Drian-Aloula talks
Naharnet./July 13, 2023
French presidential envoy for Lebanon Jean-Yves Le Drian has met in Riyadh with Saudi premiership official Nizar al-Aloula, Saudi news agency SPA said. Al-Jadeed television meanwhile reported that the meeting’s outcome was that “Paris has become convinced of the collapse of its first initiative for Lebanon.”
It will now seek “a third choice and a settlement among the Lebanese forces,” al-Jadeed added. An official Saudi statement said the Le Drian-Aloula “demonstrated the bilateral ties between the kingdom and France as well as the developments of the Lebanese file.” France had proposed a presidential crisis solution calling for the election of Suleiman Franjieh as president and the designation of Nawaf Salam as premier. Le Drian will visit Beirut after his participation next Monday in a Doha meeting for the five-nation committee on Lebanon's presidential crisis. The committee comprises representatives of Saudi Arabia, the U.S., France, Qatar and Egypt.

Border peace prevails: Tranquility along the Lebanese-Israeli border
LBCI./July 13, 2023
According to security sources, the recent security incident in Al Boustane between Naqoura and the city of Tyre has ended, and the situation has returned to normal. The measures taken by the Lebanese army, whether by the engineering regiment or the precautions in the surrounding areas, are considered routine procedures. Peaceful conditions are evident along the borders. In locations like the Wazzani River opposite the town of Ghajar, locals are going about their lives as usual. The same holds for the town of Mari and extends to the Chebaa Farms. However, on the Israeli side, there is a state of alert and anticipation for any movement. Army patrols comb the dirt roads adjacent to the Blue Line to ensure no security breaches. While UNIFIL and the Lebanese army assert that the situation is under control, the stance of the US State Department has raised concerns. A spokesperson expressed worry to LBCI about any violations of the Blue Line and their impact on the stability and security of both Israel and Lebanon. The spokesperson called on all parties to refrain from provocative acts undermining safety and security while urging Lebanon to work through UNIFIL to address such violations.
This was the field situation on Thursday.According to LBCI’s sources, as for the issue of disputed border points with Israel, the Lebanese side previously identified the occupied points in a letter sent to the United Nations in January 2023. The letter demanded the immediate withdrawal of the Israeli enemy from the following areas within Lebanese territory:
- Chebaa Farms and Kfarchouba.
- The outskirts of Mari, including part of the urban expansion of Ghajar (north of Ghajar).
- Areas where Lebanon has preserved on the Blue Line (currently 13 regions).
-Areas with continuous violations of the Blue Line (currently 17 regions).
Moreover, the Lebanese side reiterated that the Blue Line represents a withdrawal line, not a borderline. Lebanon maintains its reservations on this line in areas not aligned with international borders.
Regardless, even if security incidents recur in the disputed border areas, there is no cause for concern, as the situation remains under control.

Qaouq: Resumption of Hezbollah-FPM dialogue step in right direction
Naharnet/July 13, 2023
Hezbollah central council member Sheikh Nabil Qaouq on Thursday welcomed the resumption of dialogue between Hezbollah and the Free Patriotic Movement following months of tensions over the presidential file and the government’s work.
“This is an example of the unconditional dialogue we have always called for,” Qaouq said. “It is also a step in the right direction that would help Lebanon overcome its crises,” Qaouq added.

Bassil discusses presidential file with al-Rahi
Naharnet./July 13, 2023
Free Patriotic Movement chief Jebran Bassil on Thursday held talks in Diman with Maronite Patriarch Beshara al-Rahi. The National News Agency said the meeting tackled the current situations and the ongoing contacts regarding the presidential vacuum crisis. Bassil was accompanied by MP Georges Atallah and the adviser Antoine Kostantine.

Geagea says won't 'waste time' on vain dialogue with Hezbollah
Naharnet./July 13, 2023
Lebanese Forces leader Samir Geagea has said in a televised interview that he "will not waste additional time on a dialogue that will not lead anywhere.""Hezbollah will never be an advocate of dialogue," Geagea said, stressing that the group has a pragmatic image and a specific plan that it would never deviate from. Geagea called on Hezbollah to stop obstructing quorum in presidential election sessions before calling for dialogue. He also advised French special envoy Jean-Yves Le Drian not to suggest dialogue again, adding that the LF and other opposition parties have already held consultations and intersected on Azour. "Le Drian has proposed a third-man solution and we are ready to hold more consultations in order to reach a new sovereign presidential candidate," he said.

Soha Bechara to take legal action after detention in Greece
Naharnet./July 13, 2023
Former prisoner at the Khiam detention center, Soha Bechara, has contacted lawmakers in her country of residence, Switzerland, after being briefly detained on Tuesday night at Athens airport. The former prisoner had made a stop in Greece, while she was traveling from Beirut through Athens to Switzerland. She was detained and interrogated before being deported back to Lebanon, as Greek authorities said she was denied entry into the country for security reasons. Bechara plans to file a lawsuit regarding her detention, al-Akhbar newspaper said Thursday. Bechara’s brother had earlier told L’Orient that they will take action. "We have many friends within the European Union’s parliament, and we know many European politicians. We will not be silent," her brother said. In 1988, Bechara unsuccessfully attempted to assassinate Antoine Lahad, the then-leader of the Israel-backed South Lebanon Army. She was detained by the security guards in Lahad's house, before being taken to Israel, where she was interrogated and beaten, then to the notorious Khiam prison, without being charged or tried. She was given electric shocks and was solitary confined in a tiny cell for six years. Bechara was released after ten years, in a French-brokered deal. After her release, she moved to France and then to Geneva, where she married a Swiss national, with whom she had two children. The Lebanese Communist Party condemned Wednesday the "flagrant attack against a Lebanese national heroine." It called on the Lebanese Foreign Affairs Ministry to "summon the Greek ambassador immediately and take strict measures." Hezbollah also expressed support for Bechara, condemning her detention in a statement Wednesday. "We call on the Lebanese government to fulfill its national and moral duties towards Bechara and to take appropriate measures regarding the unacceptable behavior of the Greek authorities," the statement said.

Telecommunications Ministry announces sole bidder as provisional winner for postal sector
LBCI./July 13, 2023
The Telecommunications Ministry issued a statement stating, "after the bidding process for the postal sector was completed and the offers were opened on July 12, 2023, only one bidder, the coalition between Merit Invest and Colis Privé France, subsidiaries of the CMA CGM group, submitted their proposal.
Upon reviewing the submitted documents, it was found that they complied with the terms and conditions and the related documents, making the sole bidder the provisional winner. It is worth noting that Telecommunications Minister, Johnny Corm, issued Decree No. 405/A on July 13, 2023, which is necessary and referred to as the freezing decree in accordance with the Public Procurement Law."

Financial crisis roadmap: First Deputy Central Bank Governor engages in crucial consultations
LBCI./July 13, 2023
On Monday, the First Deputy Governor of Lebanon’s Central Bank, Wassim Mansouri, is set to launch consultations with political forces in the government and parliament. The objective is to present a roadmap for overcoming the financial and monetary crisis, seeking their approval for a positive transition from one phase to another. It is also not ruled out that Mansouri will continue communicating with Maronite Patriarch Cardinal Mar Bechara Boutros al-Rahi. The Banque du Liban (BDL) sources stated that Mansouri believes in the potential success of this step, as all parties have repeatedly expressed their determination to take measures and reforms to emerge from this situation since the beginning of the collapse. In addition, these sources pointed out that Mansouri will strive to create a unified work team comprising the BDL, the government, and the parliament to address the decisions and laws that should be adopted. However, the BDL sources noted a positive development regarding the understanding of the stance announced by the four deputies of the Governor. With the impossibility of appointing a new governor, many responses have reached the deputies, acknowledging the validity of their demands for reforms if they want to remain in their positions after July 31st.

Border peace prevails: Tranquility along the Lebanese-Israeli border
LBCI./July 13, 2023
According to security sources, the recent security incident in Al Boustane between Naqoura and the city of Tyre has ended, and the situation has returned to normal. The measures taken by the Lebanese army, whether by the engineering regiment or the precautions in the surrounding areas, are considered routine procedures. Peaceful conditions are evident along the borders. In locations like the Wazzani River opposite the town of Ghajar, locals are going about their lives as usual. The same holds for the town of Mari and extends to the Chebaa Farms. However, on the Israeli side, there is a state of alert and anticipation for any movement. Army patrols comb the dirt roads adjacent to the Blue Line to ensure no security breaches. While UNIFIL and the Lebanese army assert that the situation is under control, the stance of the US State Department has raised concerns. A spokesperson expressed worry to LBCI about any violations of the Blue Line and their impact on the stability and security of both Israel and Lebanon. The spokesperson called on all parties to refrain from provocative acts undermining safety and security while urging Lebanon to work through UNIFIL to address such violations.
This was the field situation on Thursday. According to LBCI’s sources, as for the issue of disputed border points with Israel, the Lebanese side previously identified the occupied points in a letter sent to the United Nations in January 2023. The letter demanded the immediate withdrawal of the Israeli enemy from the following areas within Lebanese territory:
- Chebaa Farms and Kfarchouba.
- The outskirts of Mari, including part of the urban expansion of Ghajar (north of Ghajar).
- Areas where Lebanon has preserved on the Blue Line (currently 13 regions).
- Areas with continuous violations of the Blue Line (currently 17 regions).
Moreover, the Lebanese side reiterated that the Blue Line represents a withdrawal line, not a borderline. Lebanon maintains its reservations on this line in areas not aligned with international borders.
Regardless, even if security incidents recur in the disputed border areas, there is no cause for concern, as the situation remains under control.

Israeli fire wounds Hezbollah members near Lebanon-Israel border
AFP/July 13, 2023
BEIRUT: Israeli fire wounded three members of Lebanon’s Iran-backed Hezbollah movement on Wednesday near the border with Israel, a security source in southern Lebanon said. The incident comes amid tensions along the Israel-Lebanon border area, a stronghold of the Shiite movement and the site of sporadic skirmishes. “Three Hezbollah members were wounded by Israeli fire near the border,” the source told AFP, requesting anonymity as they were not authorized to speak to the media. Three other sources with knowledge of the incident also said Hezbollah members had been wounded. One said a sound grenade was fired and that three members were “lightly” hurt. The Israeli army said in a statement that “a number of suspects approached the northern security fence with Lebanon and attempted to sabotage the security fence in the area.”
“Soldiers immediately spotted the suspects and used means to distance them,” the army said, adding that “the identity of the suspects is unknown.”An AFP correspondent said the incident took place near the village of Al-Bustan, where Lebanese army and peacekeepers were deployed.
The Israeli military released footage it said was of the incident showing several people approaching the fence before an apparent blast caused them to run away. The United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL), which acts as a buffer between Lebanon and Israel, said it was “aware of disturbing reports about an incident along the Blue Line.”“The situation is extremely sensitive. We urge everyone to cease any action that may lead to escalation of any kind,” it said in a statement. Israel and Hezbollah fought a devastating war in 2006 after the group captured two Israeli soldiers.
The conflict killed 1,200 people in Lebanon, mostly civilians, and 160 Israelis, mostly soldiers.Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah said in a televised speech to mark the anniversary of the 2006 war that Wednesday’s incident was “under investigation.” UNIFIL was set up in 1978 to monitor the withdrawal of Israeli forces after they invaded Lebanon in reprisal for a Palestinian attack. The UN mission was beefed up in response to the 2006 conflict, and operates in the south near the border.
Lebanon and Israel are technically at war.
Wednesday’s incident comes less than a week after the Israeli army struck southern Lebanon following an anti-tank missile launch from its northern neighbor. The missile exploded in the border area between the two foes. That same day, Hezbollah had denounced Israel for building a concrete wall around the town of GHajjar. The Blue Line cuts through GHajjar, formally placing its northern part in Lebanon and its southern part in the Israeli-occupied and annexed Golan Heights. “This land will not be left to Israelis,” Nasrallah said Wednesday. “Through cooperation” between Hezbollah, the state and the Lebanese people, “we can get back our occupied land in GHajjar,” he added. The foreign ministry on Tuesday said Lebanon would file a complaint with the United Nations Security Council over Israel’s “annexation” of the north of GHajjar. Considered a “terrorist” organization by many Western governments, Hezbollah is the only side not to have disarmed following Lebanon’s 1975-1990 civil war, and it is also a powerful player in Lebanese politics. Nasrallah also said Hezbollah had set up two tents recently in the Shebaa Farms — one erected in a disputed area — but that the Israelis had “not dared to take any steps on the ground” in response. In June, Hezbollah said it shot down an Israeli drone that had flown into Lebanon’s southern airspace. In April, Israel’s military said soldiers had shot down a drone that entered its airspace from Lebanon, a day after a barrage of rockets was fired into Israel.

Lebanese Musician Ghassan Rahbani: I Oppose Democracy, Prefer A Benevolent Dictator Like Saddam Hussein, Muhammad Bin Salman; If You Behave Like A Human Being, You Need Not Fear An Autocratic Regime
MEMRI/Source: OTV (Lebanon)/July 13/2023
Lebanese musician Ghassan Rahbani said in a June 18, 2023 show on OTV (Lebanon) that he opposes democracy and that he would rather live in a benevolent dictatorship. He said that the Lebanese people and Arabs in general want a "criminal president" like Saddam Hussein or Saudi Crown Prince Muhammad Bin Salman, elaborating that if people behave the "human beings", they do not need to fear strict autocratic regimes, which actually serve their interests. Rahbani also said that some dictatorships, like Nicolae Ceaușescu's Romania, are bad.
Ghassan Rahbani: "I oppose democracy. I don't like democracy. I am a person who likes the regime of benevolent dictatorship. Let me ask you a question: All those good intellectual Lebanese with jobs – Where do they like to live more than anywhere else? In Dubai. Is Dubai a democracy? There. You have your answer.
"The Lebanese want a criminal president."
Interviewer: "Wow..."
Rahbani: "All Arabs want a criminal president. In the Third World, people want a criminal president. A person can be a criminal and, at the same time, be... Saddam Hussein is a case in point. He was intelligent but not very diplomatic.
"I think there should be one single opinion among the Arabs. We do not need democracy.
"Saudi Crown Prince MBS does not allow dissenting views, but see how he has opened up Saudi Arabia. Saudi Arabia is a giant. True, some dictatorships, like Ceausescu's, were bad, but there are dictators who are benevolent.
"If you behave like a human being, you have no reason to fear a military rule or an autocratic regime. If you behave like a human being, you have nothing to hide. I didn't smuggle anything, didn't steal anything, didn't lie to anyone, didn't evade paying my taxes... I have nothing to worry about. On the contrary, if the rule is strict, it serves my interests."

Lebanese Journalist Khairallah KhairallahL No Hope For Lebanon As Long As Hizbullah Holds On To Its Weapons
MEMRI/Lebanon | Special Dispatch No. 10708/July 13, 2023
In two columns in the London-based daily Al-Arab, Lebanese journalist Khairallah Khairallah, known for his opposition to Hizbullah, came out strongly against this organization's armed presence in Lebanon, and stressed that the country will have no future as long as Hizbullah refuses to surrender its weapons.
In the first column, from May 28, 2023, written on the occasion of the 23rd anniversary of Israel's withdrawal from South Lebanon in 2000 , Khairallah stated that this withdrawal had kicked off the final phase of Lebanon's collapse, because it set the stage for Iran's takeover of the country by means of Hizbullah. He criticized the Lebanese, saying that they could have used Israel's withdrawal to start developing their country, but instead they allowed Hizbullah to hold on to its weapons and Iran to take control of the homeland. The Lebanese are deluding themselves, he added, when they refuse to realize that their state is doomed as long as Hizbullah maintains its status as an armed organization in the service of Iran's expansion plan.
The second column was published on June 16, two days after the Lebanese parliament made another attempt to elect a new Lebanese president, but failed because the candidate who got the most votes – the opposition's candidate, Jihad 'Azour – did not obtain the two-thirds majority required to win the presidency.
Khairallah noted that Hizbullah and its patron, Iran, have essentially been controlling the Lebanese presidency since 2016, when they arranged for the election of Michel 'Aoun, and that now they will not relinquish this control by allowing the election of a candidate they do not support. He stated that, unfortunately, in the present situation Hizbullah cannot be forced to relinquish its weapons or its grip over the state institutions. But this, he stressed, does not mean that the Lebanese must give up and surrender to Hizbullah and Iran, for this would be suicide. Instead, they must maintain the kernel of opposition to Hizbullah and its weapons, which will hopefully grow in the future, he said.
Military exercise held by Hizbullah in South Lebanon (Image: alahednews.com.lb, May 21, 2023)
The following are translated excerpts from these two columns by Khairallah Khairallah.
No Country Can Tolerate The Existence Of An Armed Militia Alongside Its Regular Army
In his May 28, 2023 column Khairallah wrote: "Twenty-three years after Israel's withdrawal from South Lebanon, almost nothing remains of this country. [The fact that Hizbullah] used Israel's withdrawal from South Lebanon [in 2000] as trump card in the systematic destruction of the country… is now more evident than ever. It is no secret that Lebanon as we once knew it is gone for good, and that the character of its society, which stemmed primarily from its culture and lifestyle, has changed.
"This happened in three stages. The first stage had to do with the armed Palestinian activity [in Lebanon], and those responsible for it were the [Lebanese] politicians who supported the Cairo agreement of 1969.[1] This agreement later led to the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in the summer of 1982, which caused disaster on every level. The Syrian regime… was an integral part of the armed Palestinian activity, and it exploited this activity – both before 1976 [when the Syrian forces invaded Lebanon] and after – to justify its military control of most of Lebanon's territory with the joint consent of America and Israel.
"The second stage was manifest in the full and direct Syrian patronage [over Lebanon], after [then Lebanese prime minister] Michel 'Aoun surrendered the Baabda [presidential] palace to the Syrian forces on October 13, 1990[2]…
The third stage in the process of Lebanon's destruction is still ongoing. It started with Israel's withdrawal from South Lebanon on May 25, 2000, as part of implementing UN Security Council Resolution [425] from March 1978. Israel withdrew from the border zone after reaching indirect understandings with Hizbullah, which is nothing more than a division of Iran's Revolutionary Guards Corps. The understandings were brokered by Germany…"
The Israeli Withdrawal Paved The Way To Iran's Takeover Of Lebanon
"Twenty-three years after Israel's withdrawal from South Lebanon, it turns out that the Lebanese people are still fooling themselves. They do not want to recognize that the Israeli withdrawal was the first step towards the establishment of the Iranian presence in the country. This was implemented in practice after the assassination of [Lebanese prime minister] Rafik Al-Hariri on February 14, 2005. Following this assassination – whose perpetrators are known, given the conclusions of the international tribunal [that investigated the murder][3] – the Syrian army withdrew from Lebanon. Hizbullah [then] took advantage of the security vacuum and filled it in its own way, [by] imposing its weapons on Lebanon and the Lebanese.
"The Lebanese could have refused to buy [Hizbullah's] slogans, [in which it took credit for] expelling the [Israeli] army in 2000. They could have used this withdrawal to turn things around for their country and its interests – but they did the opposite. They did everything they could to avoid recognizing the bitter truth, namely that there will be no salvation for their country as long as Hizbullah's weapons remain on its soil. It is impossible to negotiate with a party that refuses to give up its weapons and admits that it is serving Iran's expansionist plan, which openly [regards] Lebanon as one of its components and targets. [This is the truth], even though the Iranian officials outwardly claim that they wish to help Lebanon and form a consensus within it. Can any country in the world live in the shadow of an armed militia that calls for coexistence [between its weapons] and the weapons of the regular army?
It is the daily duty of every Lebanese to refrain from wasting time asking questions about the reasons for the collapse of the [Lebanese] state, which is [currently] seeking a new president. There is one question that encapsulates all the others, namely, why does Iran insist on dictating the identity of Lebanon's [future] Christian president? This insistence stems from a clear and explicit desire to turn Lebanon into a satellite of the Islamic Republic [of Iran]. All the other questions are redundant. On October 31, 2016, the Islamic Republic selected Michel 'Aoun as Lebanon's president and ensured his election in parliament. Iran's selection of 'Aoun was not incidental. This former Lebanese president, along with his son-in-law Gebran Bassil and MPs from Bassil's Free Lebanon Movement, managed to perform their duty, until [they brought about] the collapse of the Lebanese banking system, which will not recover any time soon.
"Israel's withdrawal from South Lebanon could have been used to benefit the country, but [instead] it was used to systematically destroy it. This began with inventing the issue of the Shab'a Farms [claimed to be Lebanese territory occupied by Israel] as an excuse for Hizbullah to hold on to its weapons. [In practice], the Shab'a Farms are covered by [UN] Resolution 242, [calling for Israel's withdrawal from Jordanian, Egyptian and Syrian territory it occupied in 1967][5]… Israel complied with [Security Council] Resolution 425 [calling for its withdrawal from Lebanon]. It withdrew from South Lebanon, and the UN confirmed this. Yet the Lebanese insist on continuing to delude themselves to the bitter end. There is no indication that Lebanon's collapse, which began after Israel's withdrawal from the occupied [border] zone, will stop soon. The collapse will only stop when not a single Lebanese will be afraid to [bring up] the issue of Hizbullah's weapons, which represent the Iranian occupation of the country. Presently on the Iranian agenda is the issue of selecting a Lebanese president who will finish what Michel 'Aoun and his son-in-law started, and nothing more. Just one more step is needed to reach a complete [Lebanese] surrender to the Iranian plan." [6]
Hizbullah And Iran Will Not Give Up Their Grip On The Lebanese Presidency
In his June 16, 2023 column, Khairallah wrote: "Given that the [Lebanese] parliament has once again failed to elect a [new] president for the country, it has become clear that Lebanon must try a new path [in its dealings with Hizbullah], different from what it has experienced since Hizbullah took over it after the assassination of [prime minister] Rafik Al-Hariri in February 2005 and after the withdrawal of the Syrian army from the country. [But] as long as Hizbullah remains armed, it will not be possible to actually [embark on] this path by [electing the opposition's presidential candidate,] Jihad 'Azour, or any other capable figure…
"With Hizbullah controlling the power centers in Lebanon, there is [actually] no more need for presidential elections. What can a Lebanese president accomplish in a country that is controlled by Hizbullah's mini-state? He cannot accomplish a thing given the internal, international and regional power balances… Lebanon has no future in the shadow of the weapons of Hizbullah, which was party to the war against the Syrian people, and which, moreover, carries out missions in Iraq and Yemen in the service of Iran's interests. The choice [facing the Lebanese people] is perfectly clear. It is a choice between the [Lebanese] state and the mini-state that controls it…
"Ever since Hizbullah managed to put Michel 'Aoun and his son-in-law [Bassil] in the Ba'abda palace in 2016, there has been no option of an Iranian withdrawal [from Lebanon]. Hizbullah has added the presidency to [the list of] institutions it controls, so it is only natural that it should put up every possible obstacle to prevent Jihad 'Azour from reaching the Ba'abda [presidential palace]. Iran has set up a certain equation in Lebanon, and there is nothing compelling it to give up this equation, which means control of the presidency, among other [institutions].
"The Lebanese can play at electing a president as much as they want, but, before joining this game that Hizbullah has forced upon them, they must realize that they must face the truth and the reality on the ground, which is that their country will have no hope as long as Hizbullah's weapons remain in place. Is it possible to eliminate these weapons? The answer in the present circumstances is no. [But] does this mean that the Lebanese must surrender to Hizbullah and to Iran's will? The answer is absolutely not, and the evidence for this is the number of votes Jihad 'Azour received (59). [This figure shows] that it is possible to create a genuine Lebanese resistance that will say no to the party of arms [Hizbullah] and to any other sectarian militia in this country.
"The important point is to maintain a hard kernel of opposition to Hizbullah's weapons. This kernel will grow in time, because [ultimately] there will be no choice but to do the right thing, and because a Lebanese surrender to the Islamic Republic [of Iran] is not an option, for it means suicide!"[6]
[1] A secret agreement signed by the Lebanese government and the PLO in Cairo on November 2, 1969, which granted the PLO permission to operate from Lebanese territory.
[2] On that date Syrian fighter jets attacked the Lebanese presidential palace in Baabda, where 'Aoun was staying. 'Aoun, who opposed the presence of the Syrian forces in Lebanon, surrendered the palace and the Lebanese Defense Ministry headquarters in Al-Yarza to the Syrians, and left the country for France, where he stayed until 2005.
[3] The tribunal concluded that Hizbullah was behind the assassination.
[4] The Shab'a Farms area, occupied by Israel in 1967, had previously been under Syrian, rather than Lebanese, sovereignty. However, since Israel's withdrawal from South Lebanon in May 2000, Lebanon has been claiming sovereignty over this area. Many, including Hizbullah's opponents in Lebanon, regard this as a ruse aimed at justifying the organization's refusal to hand over its weapons.
[5] Al-Arab (London), May 28, 2023.
[6] Al-Arab (London), June 16, 2023.

Latest English LCCC Miscellaneous Reports And News published on July 13-14/2023
Iran’s Raisi gets ‘brotherly’ welcome in Zimbabwe
AFP/July 13, 2023
HARARE: President Ebrahim Raisi has received a red carpet welcome in Zimbabwe on the last leg of the first Africa tour by an Iranian leader in 11 years. Zimbabwe’s President Emmerson Mnangagwa greeted Raisi as “my brother” on the tarmac after the Iranian leader’s plane landed at Robert Mugabe International Airport in Harare. “When you see him you see me. When you see me you see him,” Mnangagwa told a crowd waving Zimbabwean and Iranian flags that gathered around the two heads of state. The visit comes as Iran tries to shore up diplomatic support to ease its international isolation — something it partially shares with Zimbabwe. Hundreds of people, many from the southern African country’s Muslim community, including women and school children holding welcome banners turned out at the airport. “When we went to war Iran was our friend,” said Mnangagwa, who is seeking reelection in August, referring to Zimbabwe’s fight for independence from Britain — which it attained in 1980. “I am happy you have come to show solidarity,” he added ahead of talks between the two leaders. Raisi has already been to Kenya and Uganda this week holding talks with his counterparts William Ruto and Yoweri Museveni. Africa has emerged as a diplomatic battleground, with Russia and the West trying to court support over Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine, which has had a devastating economic impact on the continent, sending food prices soaring. Western powers have also sought to deepen trade ties with Africa, along with India and China. Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Nasser Kanani has described Raisi’s continental tour as “a new turning point” which could bolster economic and trade ties with African nations. He also said on Monday that Tehran and the three African countries share “common political views.” Zimbabwe’s Foreign Ministry said several agreements were expected to be signed during Raisi’s one-day trip “as the two nations deepen their ties.” Iran has stepped up its diplomacy in recent months to reduce its isolation and offset the impact of crippling sanctions reimposed since the 2018 withdrawal of the US from a painstakingly negotiated nuclear deal. Zimbabwe is also largely isolated on the international stage, the target of US and EU sanctions over graft and human rights abuses. Melody Muzenda, a spokeswoman for Zimbabwe’s ruling Zanu-PF party said the visit “shows we have good relations with other countries.”

Israel's defense chief travels to Azerbaijan, reaffirming shared opposition to Iran
JERUSALEM (AP)/Thu, July 13, 2023
Israel's defense minister visited Azerbaijan on Thursday, seeking to strengthen ties between countries with shared opposition to Iran. Defense Minster Yoav Gallant and Azerbaijani officials agreed to work together to deter threats from Iran, the Israeli Defense Ministry said. Israel views Iran as its archenemy, while Azerbaijan, which borders Iran to the north, also has a rocky relationship with Iran. “We have many shared challenges - in particular the fight against terrorism – which not only threatens national security, but also aims to destabilize the region,” Gallant said in Baku, the capital of Azerbaijan. “Together, we may further deepen the ties between our countries and strengthen the cooperation between our defense establishments and our forces.” Israel considers Iran to be its greatest threat, citing Iran's calls for Israel's destruction and its support of hostile militant groups. It also accuses Iran of trying to develop a nuclear bomb — a claim that Iran denies. Israel has repeatedly threatened to take military action against Iran, and Iran has accused Israel of involvement in a series of mysterious attacks on Iranian nuclear scientists and installations. On Thursday, Gallant said that Israel recently allocated billions to prevent Iran from developing a nuclear bomb. Azerbaijan accuses Iran of supporting hard-line Islamists who tried to overthrow the government in Baku, a charge Iran also denies. Relations between Tehran and Baku have soured further this year. In May, Iran expelled four Azeri diplomats, a month after Azerbaijan expelled four Iranian diplomats. In January, a gunman stormed Azerbaijan’s embassy in Iran’s capital, killing its security chief and wounding two guards. In March, Azerbaijan opened an embassy in Israel in another sign of warming ties.

After NATO summit, Turkiye-Russia ties under spotlight
Arab News/July 13/2023
ANKARA: After the conclusion of the NATO summit, the spotlight has shifted to the delicate relationship between Turkiye and Russia, particular in the wake of Ankara’s decision to drop its opposition to Sweden’s accession to the multi-nation defense body, that has drawn sharp criticism from Russian propagandists. This move by Turkiye is a departure from its previous balancing act between the West and Russia, especially in light of Moscow’s unwarranted aggression against Ukraine. However, analysts believe that this development would not significantly impact relations between the two nations because of mutually beneficial economic ties. Since Tuesday, Russian media houses have wasted no time in criticizing Turkiye and President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s leadership, even questioning the reliability of Ankara’s friendship. Viktor Bondarev, the head of the Russian Federation Council Committee on Defense and Security, accused Turkiye of gradually transforming from a neutral country into an unfriendly one, equating its behavior to a betrayal. “The events of the past weeks, unfortunately, clearly demonstrate that Turkiye is gradually and steadily continuing to turn from a neutral country into an unfriendly one,” Bondarev told state media TASS. He added that Turkiye’s actions equate to “a stab in the back."Moscow’s recent anger has been fueled by Turkiye’s decision to repatriate Ukrainian soldiers captured by Russia in the Azov region, despite promising not to do so until the end of the war.
This move followed a meeting between Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky and Erdogan earlier this month. The five Ukrainian soldiers, who were part of the Azovstal defense in Mariupol, surrendered after the fall of the city and were taken to Turkiye as part of a prisoner swap agreement. According to the agreement, they were supposed to remain in Turkiye until the war ended. Pro-Kremlin TV host Olga Skabeeva criticized Erdogan for failing to notify Russia in advance about the Azov prisoner release.
Experts point to Turkiye’s continuous support for Ukraine’s NATO accession and its construction of a drone factory in Ukraine as the main sources of disagreement between Ankara and Moscow. Ukraine has begun construction of the Bayraktar TB2 drone manufacturing plant — a crucial step to boost Kyiv’s fight against Russian aggression. The factory followed a deal between Ankara and Kyiv in February to cooperate in high-tech and aviation industries. Russian propagandist Sergey Mardan dismissed Turkiye’s geopolitical influence and highlighted the country’s weakening economy.
He claimed that Turkiye sees Russia as a powerful ally and expressed regret that Moscow had supported Erdogan’s re-election. On Wednesday, Erdogan held a press conference where he announced that Sweden’s NATO accession ratification could take place in October or even sooner. He also stated that the decision to release the Azov commanders was for a reason. Erdogan expects to have a face-to-face meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin in August to discuss these issues. On Tuesday, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov responded to a question about Turkiye’s decision to lift its opposition to Sweden, and said Ankara should be under no illusion that it might one day be permitted to join the EU.
“No one wants to see Turkiye in Europe, I mean the Europeans. And here our Turkish partners should not wear rose-tinted spectacles either,” he said. Peskov, however, emphasized Russia’s preference for maintaining cordial ties with Ankara despite divergences, including those over NATO enlargement.
According to Sinan Ulgen, a former Turkish diplomat and chairman of the Istanbul-based think tank EDAM, Turkiye’s pro-Western moves have indeed had an impact on Moscow. “This is really an indication that how reliant Moscow became on Turkiye, the only NATO country with which it has high-level dialogue and not imposed sanctions,” he told Arab News. “Turkiye is still a vital outlet for Russia. There is an asymmetric relationship between Turkiye and Russia that has greatly benefited the Turkish side since the start of the war. That calculus explains the lack of reaction from Russia,” said Ulgen. Moscow is also trying to build a new energy hub in Turkiye to facilitate its gas exports in response to European projects to reduce reliance on Russian energy. Ulgen anticipates that Turkiye would make further pro-Western gestures, such as providing protection to ships involved in the Grain Deal that allows Ukraine to export the commodity via the Black Sea.
“If Russia withdraws from the deal, it would send a strong message,” he said. While Ankara and Moscow disagree on various policy areas, experts predict that they will continue to cooperate where their interests align. Soner Cagaptay, a senior fellow at The Washington Institute, suggests that Turkish foreign policy would remain transactional and pragmatic, rather than undergoing a major shift. “Erdogan is likely to leverage this opportunity to establish closer ties with US President Joe Biden and is eyeing a visit to Washington,” Cagaptay told Arab News. “This as a charm offensive aimed at securing benefits such as the deepening and modernization of the Customs Union with the EU and restoring market confidence in the Turkish economy,” he said. “In the end, it is not a foreign policy pivot. It is a recalibration of economic reality to make Turkish economy more independent. The relationship will continue to be influenced by economic realities and strategic considerations,” Cagaptay added. To what extent Turkiye will be able to balance its relationship with Biden and Putin is still unclear. In a surprise tweet on Wednesday evening, Biden thanked Erdogan for his “courage, leadership and diplomacy.” “This summit reaffirms our commitment to the NATO defense, and I hope we can continue to make it even stronger,” he added.

NATO Is Papering Over the Cracks After Zelenskiy Loses His Cool
Bloomberg/Wed, July 12, 2023
Volodymyr Zelenskiy was running hot ahead of his sit-down with NATO leaders on Tuesday evening.
The Ukrainian president had been angered earlier in the day by what he said was an “absurd” reluctance to give his country a clear timeline on membership.
That outburst in turn riled the partners who have funneled billions of dollars of weaponry and aid into Ukraine’s defense against the Russian invasion — the US had been given no warning before Zelenskiy unleashed his attack on social media. Over dinner in Vilnius, with US President Joe Biden back at his hotel, the other leaders delivered a clear message to Zelenskiy, according to one person who was present. You have to cool down and look at the full package, Zelenskiy was told. He had, after all, been given a renewed commitment to eventual membership and new security guarantees from the Group of Seven nations. By the next day, the message appeared to be sinking in.
“Whether we like it or not, people want to see gratitude,” UK Defense Secretary Ben Wallace told reporters the following morning. “You’re persuading countries to give up their stock” of weapons and ammunition, he added.
This account of the behind-the-scenes wrangling is based on interviews with more than a dozen diplomats and officials involved in the summit who asked not to be named discussing private conversations.
NATO leaders were trying to thread a needle on Ukraine’s membership bid when they arrived in Vilnius: They were seeking language that looked like progress and that Ukraine could sell as progress but fundamentally didn’t leave them any closer to getting dragged into a war with nuclear-armed Russia.
‘Political Will’
Added to that, they were dealing with a Ukrainian government operating under the intense pressure of the war and whose expectations weren’t always in line with political reality as seen from the alliance.
“I understand the Ukrainians’ frustration,” Estonian Foreign Minister Margus Tsahkna said in an interview. In the days running up to the summit, diplomats sympathetic to Ukraine had been insisting that Kyiv was making realistic demands on the issue of membership. But the Ukrainian administration’s public comments suggested otherwise. Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba said in an interview with Bloomberg Television on Tuesday that Ukraine has been hoping to receive a formal invitation to join NATO at the summit, even if membership, and the collective defensive commitments that come with it, would only be formalized after the war ends. That was never going to happen, other diplomats said.
“There was a lack of political will,” Kuleba told Bloomberg Television’s Annmarie Hordern. Crucially, it was the US and Germany that insisted on dialing back the commitment to Ukraine joining the alliance. Earlier drafts of the communique offered a clearer pathway to Ukraine eventually joining, but Biden and Chancellor Olaf Scholz were wary of going too far.
Their teams demanded changes in the final days before the summit, upsetting lots of the other European nations, as well as the Ukrainians.
When Biden landed in Vilnius on Monday evening, the language on the membership path was still not nailed down. The next day, the Ukrainian team heard that the text was close to settled and they weren’t going to like it. They decided to send the provocative tweet, in an effort to jolt the debate back in their favor. The post certainly captured the attention of the negotiators, but its effect was counterproductive. The Americans were particularly irritated. The British intervened in an effort to calm the situation while the Germans also tried to come up with alternatives. As the situation threatened to come off the rails, Zelenskiy’s chief of staff, Andriy Yermak, called US National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan, but the text was approved anyway before the Ukrainians arrived.
When Zelenskiy did get to the summit, he was met by frank criticism from several other leaders, who made it clear that he’d overstepped the mark.
The concern among Kyiv’s more ardent supporters was that the allies were going to repeat the mistake of 2008 when a vague commitment to Ukrainian membership proved a provocation to Russia without offering sufficient protection against military aggression.
“By attaching two conditionalities to Ukraine’s membership that didn’t exist before, NATO is giving the impression of a cold shoulder to Ukraine,” said Kristine Berzina, a geopolitical analyst at the German Marshall Fund in Washington. “It undoes the work NATO agreed the night before, reaching an agreement on Sweden’s bid, and it dampens the other very pro-Ukrainian and very rough Russia language in the summit communique.”
Some of those insisting on caution recall the history of European wars and, in particular, the way nations were dragged into long-running conflicts during the early part of the last century.
There’s also the complexity of how the war in Ukraine might end and the possibility that it will leave parts of Ukraine’s territory in dispute and occupied by Russian forces. Some diplomats were concerned that a clear commitment to triggering NATO membership would complicate any eventual negotiations.
But there was also a collective understanding of the need to project unity.
Zelenskiy “was never alone” at the dinner, Latvian Prime Minister Krisjanis Karins said in another Bloomberg Television interview. “There was no animosity, everybody was speaking a similar language.”
The alliance “will not take in any country during a war, because that would put NATO immediately in a war,” he added.
Zelenskiy still seemed frosty as he headed into a meeting with Scholz on Wednesday morning, especially by comparison with the UK’s Rishi Sunak — one of Ukraine’s more enthusiastic cheerleaders — and Mark Rutte of the Netherlands, who’s been spearheading efforts to train Ukrainian pilots on F-16 fighter jets to the Ukrainian air force.
By that stage, diplomats on both sides were framing Zelenskiy’s outburst the previous day as a familiar maneuver designed to raise the stakes in a negotiation, a move that has paid off in the past, but this time did not — the Ukrainian president had repeatedly threatened not to show up in the weeks leading up to the summit. When he spoke to reporters around midday, Zelenskiy’s tone had shifted.
“We understand some are afraid to talk about our membership in NATO now because they are afraid of the global war,” Zelenskiy told reporters. Ukraine accepts that it can only join “when it will be safe on our land,” he added.
Then he said he wanted to include “words of gratitude” for the steps taken by allies, peppering his comments with that word — “gratitude.”
“We’re going to make sure that you get what you need,” Biden said standing alongside Zelenskiy later on Wednesday, wearing a tie in the Ukrainian colors. “And I look forward to the day we’re having the meeting to celebrate your official, official membership in NATO.”
--With assistance from Natalia Ojewska, Kitty Donaldson, Andra Timu, Maria Tadeo, Arne Delfs, Alberto Nardelli and Daryna Krasnolutska.

Ukraine repels large Russian drone attack, civilians injured in Kyiv
Associated Press/ July 12, 2023
Sirens rang out shortly after midnight Thursday as Russia targeted Kyiv with a barrage of Iranian-made Shahed exploding drones that wounded two people and destroyed several homes. Explosions were heard in different parts of the city, and debris from intercepted drones fell on four districts of the Ukrainian capital, according to Ukraine's Ministry of Internal Affairs. Buildings were damaged, and two people hospitalized with shrapnel wounds. Earlier, the Kyiv City Administration wrote on Telegram that debris fell on five districts. The Ukrainian Air Force reported that Russia fired a total of 20 drones, mostly at the Kyiv region, and that all 20 were shot down. The Ukrainian military also intercepted two cruise missiles. The statement also reported that one ballistic missile was not intercepted, although it did not explain what damage the missile caused. The government of the region of Khmelnytskyi in western Ukraine reported that cruise missile was intercepted over the region, and reported no casualties. "We appreciate the meticulous work of Ukraine's air defense forces," the regional administration wrote on Telegram. Rescuers extinguished a fire in a 16-story building, as well as in a non-residential building, according to the Interior Ministry. Debris also "damaged the facade" of a 25-story apartment building, the ministry wrote. Volodymyr Motus, a 22-year-old resident of the 25-story building, carefully picked his way across the floor a destroyed apartment, his footsteps accompanied by the sound of shattered glass. The mangled furniture was coated in a thick layer of dust. "I was in my apartment and suddenly I heard a boom, that's all. Then the alarm went off and I went down to the shelter."He said that some people were injured, but they were all alive. Russian strikes have come to feel almost routine in Ukraine over the almost 17 months of the war. In May, Russia launched dozens of drones and missiles at Kyiv almost every night, forcing its residents to spend their nights in shelters. During the summer, attacks came less frequently, but they still strike unpredictably across the country. Ukraine's human rights chief Dmytro Lubinets wrote on Telegram Thursday, "It should be explained that each 'air alarm' in Ukraine is like playing Russian roulette... It's unknown the number of people who could be affected, and it is uncertain from which part of Ukraine bad news about the strike of an enemy drone or missile will come."
Recently, a Russian cruise missile struck an apartment building in the western city of Lviv, resulting in a death toll that reached 10, and leaving dozens injured. And in the southern and eastern regions of the country, where heavy fighting is taking place on front lines, the intensity of missile attacks has remained high since the beginning of the war.

The fate of thousands of Ukraine civilians held in Russian prisons
Associated Press/July 12, 2023
The Ukrainian civilians woke long before dawn in the bitter cold, lined up for the single toilet and were loaded at gunpoint into the livestock trailer. They spent the next 12 hours or more digging trenches on the front lines for Russian soldiers. Many were forced to wear overlarge Russian military uniforms that could make them a target, and a former city administrator trudged around in boots five sizes too big. By the end of the day, their hands curled into icy claws. Nearby, in the occupied region of Zaporizhzhia, other Ukrainian civilians dug mass graves into the frozen ground for fellow prisoners who had not survived. One man who refused to dig was shot on the spot — yet another body for the grave. Thousands of Ukrainian civilians are being detained across Russia and the Ukrainian territories it occupies, in centers ranging from brand-new wings in Russian prisons to clammy basements. Most have no status under Russian law.
And Russia is planning to hold possibly thousands more. A Russian government document obtained by The Associated Press dating to January outlined plans to create 25 new prison colonies and six other detention centers in occupied Ukraine by 2026. In addition, Russian President Vladimir Putin signed a decree in May allowing Russia to send people from territories with martial law, which includes all of occupied Ukraine, to those without, such as Russia. This makes it easier to deport Ukrainians who resist Russian occupation deep into Russia indefinitely, which has happened in multiple cases documented by the AP.
Many civilians are picked up for alleged transgressions as minor as speaking Ukrainian or simply being a young man in an occupied region, and are often held without charge. Others are charged as terrorists, combatants, or people who "resist the special military operation." Hundreds are used for slave labor by Russia's military, for digging trenches and other fortifications, as well as mass graves. Torture is routine, including repeated electrical shocks, beatings that crack skulls and fracture ribs, and simulated suffocation. Many former prisoners told the AP they witnessed deaths. A United Nations report from late June documented 77 summary executions of civilian captives and the death of one man due to torture. Russia does not acknowledge holding civilians at all, let alone its reasons for doing so. But the prisoners serve as future bargaining chips in exchanges for Russian soldiers, and the U.N. has said there is evidence of civilians being used as human shields near the front lines. The AP spoke with dozens of people, including 20 former detainees, along with ex-prisoners of war, the families of more than a dozen civilians in detention, two Ukrainian intelligence officials and a government negotiator. Their accounts, as well as satellite imagery, social media, government documents and copies of letters delivered by the Red Cross, confirm a widescale Russian system of detention and abuse of civilians that stands in direct violation of the Geneva Conventions. Some civilians were held for days or weeks, while others have vanished for well over a year. Nearly everyone freed said they experienced or witnessed torture, and most described being shifted from one place to another without explanation. "It's a business of human trafficking," said Olena Yahupova, the city administrator who was forced to dig trenches for the Russians in Zaporizhzhia. "If we don't talk about it and keep silent, then tomorrow anyone can be there — my neighbor, acquaintance, child."
INVISIBLE PRISONERS
The new building in the compound of Prison Colony No. 2 is at least two stories tall, separated from the main prison by a thick wall. This facility in Russia's eastern Rostov region has gone up since the war started in February 2022, according to satellite imagery analyzed by the AP. It could easily house the hundreds of Ukrainian civilians who are believed detained there, according to former captives, families of the missing, human rights activists and Russian lawyers. Two exiled Russian human rights advocates said it is heavily guarded by soldiers and armored vehicles. The building in Rostov is one of at least 40 detention facilities in Russia and Belarus, and 63 makeshift and formal in occupied Ukrainian territory where Ukrainian civilians are held, according to an AP map built on data from former captives, the Ukrainian Media Initiative for Human Rights, and the Russian human rights group Gulagu.net. The recent U.N. report counted a total of 37 facilities in Russia and Belarus and 125 in occupied Ukraine. Some also hold Russian prisoners accused or convicted of a variety of crimes. Other, more makeshift locations are near the front lines, and the AP documented two locations where former prisoners say Ukrainians were forced to dig trenches. The shadowy nature of the system makes it difficult to know exactly how many civilians are being detained. Ukraine's government has been able to confirm legal details of a little over 1,000 who are facing charges.
At least 4,000 civilians are held in Russia and at least as many scattered around the occupied territories, according to Vladimir Osechkin, an exiled Russian human rights activist who talks to informants within Russian prisons and founded Gulagu.net to document abuses. Osechkin showed AP a Russian prison document from 2022 saying that 119 people ''opposed to the special military operation'' in Ukraine were moved by plane to the main prison colony in the Russian region of Voronezh. Many Ukrainians later freed by Russia also described unexplained plane transfers.
In all, Ukraine's government believes around 10,000 civilians could be detained, according to Ukrainian negotiator Oleksandr Kononeko, based on reports from loved ones, as well as post-release interviews with some civilians and the hundreds of Ukrainian soldiers returned in prisoner exchanges. Ukraine said in June that about 150 civilians have been freed to Ukrainian-controlled territory, and the Russians deny holding others. "They say, 'We don't have these people, it's you who is lying,'" Kononeko said. The detention of two men from the Kherson region in August 2022 offers a glimpse at how hard it is for families to track down loved ones in Russian custody. Artem Baranov, a security guard, and Yevhen Pryshliak, who worked at a local asphalt plant with his father, had been friends for over a decade. Their relationship was cemented when both bought dogs during the coronavirus pandemic, according to Baranov's common-law wife, Ilona Slyva. Their evening walks continued even after Russia seized their hometown of Nova Kakhovka — shy Baranov with a giant black Italian mastiff and Pryshliak with a toy poodle whose apricot fur matched his beard.
Their walk ran late the night of Aug. 15, and Pryshliak decided to stay at Baranov's apartment rather than risk being caught breaking the Russian curfew. Neighbors later told the family that 15 armed Russian soldiers swooped in, ransacked the apartment and seized the men. For a month, they were in the local jail, with conditions relaxed enough that Slyva was able to talk to Pryshliak through the fence. Baranov, he told her, couldn't come out. She sent in packages of food and clothes but did not know if they were reaching him. Finally, on Baranov's birthday, she bought his favorite dessert of cream eclairs, smashed them up, and slipped in a scrap of paper with her new Russian phone number scrawled on it. She hoped the guards would have little interest in the sticky mess and just pass it along. A month went by, and the families learned the men had been transferred to a new prison in Sevastopol, in Crimea. Then the trail went dark. Four more months passed. Then a call came from the family of a man they had never met but would soon come to know well: Pavlo Zaporozhets.
Zaporozhets, a Ukrainian from the occupied Kherson region charged with international terrorism, was sharing a cell in Rostov with Baranov. Since he faced charges, he had a lawyer.
It was then that Slyva knew her gift of eclairs — and the phone number smuggled within them — had reached its destination. Baranov had memorized her number and passed it through a complex chain that finally got news of him to her on April 7. Baranov wrote that he was accused of espionage — an accusation that Slyva scorned as falling apart even under Russia's internal logic. He was detained in August, and Russia illegally annexed the regions only in October.
"When he was detained, he was on his own national territory," she said. "They thought and thought and invented a criminal case against him for espionage."
Baranov wrote home that he was transported across prisons with his eyes closed in two planes, one of which had about 60 people. He and Pryshliak were separated at their third transfer in late winter. Pryshliak's family has received a form letter from the Rostov prison denying he is an inmate there.
The number of civilian detainees has grown rapidly over the course of the war. In the first wave early on, Russian units moved in with lists of activists, pro-Ukrainian community leaders, and military veterans. Melitopol Mayor Ivan Fedorov was taken when Russian forces seized control of his city but exchanged within a week for nine Russian soldiers, he said. Then they focused on teachers and doctors who refused to work with the occupation authorities. But the reasons for apprehending people today are as mundane as tying a ribbon to a bicycle in the Ukrainian colors of blue and yellow.
"Now there is no logic," Fedorov said.
He estimated that around 500 Ukrainian civilians are detained just in his city at any time — numbers echoed by multiple people interviewed by the AP.
A Ukrainian intelligence official said the Russian fear of dissidents had become "pathological" since last fall, as Russians brace for Ukraine's counteroffensive. The official spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the situation.
The AP saw multiple missing person notices posted on closed Ukrainian social media chats for young men seized off the streets. The messages, written in Ukrainian, describe detentions at gunpoint at home and on the street, with pleas to send information and emojis of hearts and praying hands.
The Geneva Conventions in general forbid the arbitrary detention or forced deportation of civilians, and state that detainees must be allowed to communicate with loved ones, obtain legal counsel and challenge allegations against them. But first they must be found. After months writing letter after letter to locate Pryshliak, his sister-in-law Liubov thinks she knows why the prisoners are moved around: "So that the families cannot find them. Just to hide the traces of crimes."
SLAVES IN THE TRENCHES
Hundreds of civilians end up in a place that is possibly even more dangerous than the prisons: the trenches of occupied Ukraine. There, they are forced to build protection for Russian soldiers, according to multiple people who managed to leave Russian custody. Among them was Yahupova, the 50-year-old civil administrator detained in October 2022 in the Zaporizhzhia region, possibly because she is married to a Ukrainian soldier. Under international humanitarian law, Yahupova is a civilian — defined as anyone who is not an active member of or volunteer for the armed forces. Documented breaches of the law constitute a war crime and, if widespread and systematic, "may also constitute a crime against humanity." But the distinctions between soldiers and civilians can be hard to prove in a war where Ukraine has urged all its citizens to help, for example by sending Russian troop locations via social media. In practice, the Russians are scooping up civilians along with soldiers, including those denounced by neighbors for whatever reason or seized seemingly at random. They picked Yahupova up at her house in October. Then they demanded she reveal information about her husband, taping a plastic bag over her face, beating her on the head with a filled water bottle and tightening a cable around her neck.
They also dragged her out of the cell and drove her around town to identify pro-Ukrainian locals. She didn't. When they hauled her out a second time, she was exhausted. As a soldier placed her in front of a Russian news camera, she could still feel the dried blood on the back of her neck. She was going to give an interview, her captors told her. Behind the camera, a gun was pointed at her head. The soldier holding it told her that if she gave the right answers to the Russian journalist interviewing her, she could go free. But she didn't know what the right answers were. She went back to the cell.
Three months later, without explanation, Yahupova was again pulled outside. This time, she was driven to a deserted checkpoint, where yet another Russian news crew awaited. She was ordered to hold hands with two men and walk about 5 meters (yards) toward Ukraine.The three Ukrainians were ordered to do another take. And another, to show that Russia was freeing the Ukrainian civilians in its custody. Except, at the end of the last take, Russian soldiers loaded them into a truck and drove them to a nearby crossroads. One put shovels into their hands. "Now you will do something for the good of the Russian Federation," he said. And so Yahupova ended up digging trenches until mid-March with more than a dozen Ukrainian civilians, including business owners, a student, a teacher, and utility workers. She could see other crews in the distance, with armed guards standing over them. Most wore Russian military uniforms and boots, and lived in fear that Ukrainian artillery would mistake them for the enemy.
The AP confirmed through satellite imagery the new trenches dug in the area where Yahupova and a man on the Ukrainian crew with her said they were held. He requested anonymity because his relatives still live under occupation.
"Sometimes we even worked there 24 hours a day, when they had an inspection coming," he said. The man also spoke with other Ukrainian civilians digging mass graves nearby for at least 15 people. He said one civilian had been shot for refusing to dig. Satellite imagery shows a mound of freshly-dug earth in the spot the man described. The man escaped during a Russian troop rotation, and Yahupova also made her way out. But both said hundreds of others are still in the occupied front lines, forced to work for Russia or die. When Yahupova returned to her home after more than five months, everything had been stolen. Her beloved dog had been shot. Her head ached, her vision was blurred, and her children — long since out of the occupied territories — urged her to leave. She traveled thousands of miles through Russia, north to the Baltics and back around to the front line in Ukraine, where she reunited with her husband serving with Ukrainian forces. Earlier married in a civil ceremony, the two got wed this time in church. Now safe in Ukrainian territory, Yahupova wants to testify against Russia — for the months it stole from her, the concussion that troubles her, the home she has lost. She still reflexively touches the back of her head, where the bottle struck her over and over. "They stole not only from me, they stole from half the country," she said.
TORTURE AS POLICY
The abuse Yahupova described is common. Torture was a constant, whether or not there was information to extract, according to every former detainee interviewed by the AP. The U.N. report from June said 91% of prisoners "described torture and ill-treatment."In the occupied territories, all the freed civilians interviewed by the AP described crammed rooms and cells, tools of torture prepared in advance, tape placed carefully next to office chairs to bind arms and legs, and repeated questioning by Russian's FSB intelligence agency. Nearly 100 evidence photos obtained by the AP from Ukrainian investigators also showed instruments of torture found in liberated areas of Kherson, Kyiv and Kharkiv, including the same tools repeatedly described by former civilian captives held in Russia and occupied regions. Many former detainees spoke of wires linking prisoners' bodies to electricity in field telephones or radios or batteries, in a procedure one man said the Russians dubbed "call your mother" or "call Biden." U.N. human rights investigators said one victim described the same treatment given to Yahupova, a severe beating on the head with a filled water bottle. Viktoriia Andrusha, an elementary school math teacher, was seized by Russian forces on March 25, 2022, after they ransacked her parents' home in Chernihiv and found photos of Russian military vehicles on her phone. By March 28, she was in a prison in Russia. Her captors told her Ukraine had fallen and no one wanted any civilians back.
For her, like so many others, torture came in the form of fists, batons of metal, wood and rubber, plastic bags. Men in black, with special forces chevrons on their sleeves, pummeled her in the prison corridor and in a ceramic-tiled room seemingly designed for quick cleaning. Russian propaganda played on a television above her. "There was a point when I was already sitting and saying: Honestly, do what you want with me. I just don't care anymore," Andrusha said.
Along with the physical torture came mental anguish. Andrusha was told repeatedly that she would die in prison in Russia, that they would slash her with knives until she was unrecognizable, that her government cared nothing about a captive schoolteacher, that her family had forgotten her, that her language was useless. They forced captives to memorize verse after verse of the Russian national anthem and other patriotic songs. "Their job was to influence us psychologically, to show us that we are not human," she said. "Our task was to make sure that everything they did to us did not affect us."
Then one day, without explanation, it was over for her and another woman kept with her. Guards ordered them to pack up, cuffed them and put them in a bus. The weight Andrusha had lost in prison showed starkly in the cast-off jacket that hung from her shoulders. They were soon joined by Ukrainian soldiers held captive elsewhere. On the other side, Andrusha saw three Russian soldiers. Although international law forbids the exchange of civilians as prisoners of war, the U.N. report on June 27 said this has happened in at least 53 cases, and Melitopol Mayor Fedorov confirmed it happened to him.
A man detained with Andrusha in March 2022 is in captivity still. She doesn't know the fate of the others she met. But many former captives take it upon themselves to contact the loved ones of their former cellmates. Andrusha recalled hours spent memorizing whispered phone numbers in a circle with other Ukrainians, on the chance one of them might get out. When she was freed, she passed them along to Ukrainian government officials. Andrusha has since regained some of her weight. She talks about her six months in prison calmly but with anger. "I was able to survive this," she said, after a day back in the classroom with her students. "There are so many cases when people do not return."In the meantime, for loved ones, the wait is agony.
Anna Vuiko's father was one of the earliest civilians detained, in March last year. A former glass factory worker on disability, Roman Vuiko had resisted when Russian soldiers tried to take over his home in suburban Kyiv, neighbors told his adult daughter. They drove a military truck into the yard, shattered the windows, cuffed the 50-year-old man and drove off. By May 2022, Vuiko was in a prison in Kursk, Russia, hundreds of kilometers away. All his daughter has gotten from him since is a handwritten letter, which arrived six months after he was taken away and four months after he wrote it. The standard phrases told his daughter nothing except that he was alive, and she suspects he has not received any of her letters. "I think about it every day," she said. "It's been a year, more than a year. … How much more time has to pass?"

Top general's dismissal reveals new crack in Russian military leadership
Associated Press/ July 12, 2023
A Russian general in charge of forces fighting in southern Ukraine has been relieved of his duties after speaking out about the problems faced by his troops in a move that reflected new fissures in the Russian military command following a brief rebellion by mercenary chief Yevgeny Prigozhin. Maj. Gen. Ivan Popov, the commander of the 58th Army fighting in Ukraine's southern Zaporizhzhia region, which is a focal point in the Ukrainian counteroffensive, said in an audio statement to his troops released late Wednesday that he was dismissed after a meeting with the top military brass in what he described as a "treacherous" stab in the back to the Russian forces fighting in Ukraine. Popov said that the military leadership was angered by his frank talk about the challenges faced by his forces, particularly the shortage of radars tracking enemy artillery, which resulted in massive Russian casualties. "The top officers apparently saw me as a source of threat and rapidly issued an order to get rid of me, which was signed by the defense minister in just one day," he said. "The Ukrainian military has failed to break through our army's defenses, but the top commander hit us in the rear, treacherously and cowardly beheading the army at this most difficult moment."Popov, who uses the call name Spartacus, addressed his troops as "my gladiators" in the audio message released by retired Gen. Andrei Gurulev, who commanded the 58th Army in the past and currently serves as a lawmaker. The 58th Army consists of several divisions and smaller units.
The 48-year-old Popov, who has risen from a platoon commander to lead a large group of forces, has encouraged his soldiers to come directly to him with any problems — an easygoing approach that contrasted sharply with a stiff formal style of command common for the Russian military. Military bloggers say he's widely known for doing his best to avoid unnecessary losses — unlike many other commanders who were eager to sacrifice their soldiers to report successes.
"I faced a difficult situation with the top leadership when I had to either keep silent and act like a coward, saying what they wanted to hear, or call things by their names," Popov said. "I didn't have the right to lie for the sake of you and our fallen comrades."In a sign that many in Russian officialdom share Popov's criticism of the top military brass, Andrei Turchak, the first deputy speaker of the upper house of parliament who heads the main Kremlin party United Russia, strongly backed the general, saying that "the Motherland can be proud of such commanders." Andrei Kartapolov, a retired general who heads the defense affairs committee in the lower house, also said that the Defense Ministry should deal with the issues raised by Popov.
The news about Popov's dismissal added to the blow that Russian troops facing the Ukrainian counteroffensive in the south received on Tuesday when another senior officer, Lt. Gen. Oleg Tsokov, was killed by a Ukrainian missile strike. Russian military bloggers said that Popov's remarks, in which he also spoke about the need to rotate his troops, which have been fighting to repel a Ukrainian counteroffensive since early June, angered General Staff chief Gen. Valery Gerasimov, who promptly ordered his dismissal. Gerasimov was shown meeting with military officers in a video released by the Defense Ministry on Monday, the first time he was seen since last month's abortive rebellion by Prigozhin, who demanded his ouster. Sergei Markov, a pro-Kremlin political analyst, noted that Popov's statement echoed criticism of the top brass by Prigozhin. However, he added that the general's statement wasn't a rebellion, but instead a call for Putin's help. "Such public disputes at the top of the Russian army isn't a show of force," he said. During the revolt that lasted less than 24 hours, mercenaries from Prigozhin's Wagner Group quickly swept through the southern Russian city of Rostov-on-Don and captured the military headquarters there without firing a shot before driving to within about 200 kilometers (125 miles) of Moscow. Prigozhin called his mercenaries back to their camps after striking a deal to end the rebellion in exchange for an amnesty for him and his mercenaries and permission to move to Belarus.
The rebellion represented the biggest threat to Russian President Vladimir Putin in his more than two decades in power and badly dented his authority, even though Prigozhin said that the uprising wasn't aimed against the president but intended to force the ouster of Gerasimov and Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu, whose handling of the action in Ukraine he has criticized. On Monday, the Kremlin confirmed that Prigozhin and 34 of his top officers met with Putin on June 29, five days after the rebellion, a startling announcement that raised new questions about the terms of the deal with Wagner. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Wagner's commanders pledged loyalty to the president and said they were ready "to continue to fight for the Motherland." Putin has said that Wagner troops had to choose whether to sign contracts with the Defense Ministry, move to Belarus or retire from service. While details of the deal with Prigozhin have remained murky, uncertainty also has surrounded the fate of Gen. Sergei Surovikin, the deputy commander of the Russian group of forces fighting in Ukraine who reportedly had been detained for questioning about his ties to Prigozhin. The Defense Ministry said Wednesday that mercenaries of the Wagner Group were completing the handover of their weapons to the Russian military, part of the Kremlin's efforts to defuse the threat it posed.

Top Putin Confidante Secretly Moved to Island Paradise: Report
Dan Ladden-Hall/The Daily Beast./Wed, July 12, 2023
A confidante of Russian President Vladimir Putin sanctioned by Ukraine for supporting the war is living in a “luxurious complex” in Tenerife, according to a report. Yelena Isinbayeva, a two-time Olympic gold medalist pole vaulter, has apparently been leading a secret life in the Spanish territory in the Canary Islands, according to El Digital Sur. The outlet cited a source saying that Isinbayeva—who is also a major in the Russian army—was granted permission by her superiors to take “an indefinite leave for her merits in the bloody aggression against Ukraine.”
Kremlin News Stars Unravel in Post-Mutiny Television Fiasco
The report, published last week, further claimed that the 41-year-old had taken up residence in a “luxurious complex” on the island, a popular vacation hotspot with European tourists. It’s not clear why Isinbayeva would be living in Tenerife even as the Spanish government is continuing to support Ukraine with lethal aid in its struggle against her own military comrades.Last year, Isinbayeva was one of the Russian athletes hit by Ukrainian sanctions as the invasion began. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said the measure was targeting Russians “who are trying to put sport at the service of aggression.”
As well as being considered one of the greatest pole vaulters in history, Isinbayeva supported Putin in the 2012 Russian presidential election and was part of a working group that recommended changing the country’s constitution to allow him to potentially remain in power until 2036, instead of stepping down at the end of his term in 2024 as previously required. She’s also known for making controversial comments in 2013 apparently supporting a law in Russia making it illegal to give under-18s information about homosexuality. She later blamed her poor English for the ensuing international backlash and said she did not support discriminating against gay people, had actually intended to say that “people should respect the laws of other countries particularly when they are guests.”Two years later, Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu awarded her the rank of major after Isinbayeva signed a five-year contract to serve in the army. She also signed up with a social movement called “PutinTeam” of athletes and other public figures to support the president.

Sudan conflict: 87 people found in Darfur mass grave, UN says
Antoinette Radford - BBC News/Thu, July 13, 2023
The bodies of at least 87 people allegedly killed by the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) in Sudan have been found in a mass grave, according to the UN. The organisation said Masalit people were among those buried in a shallow grave just outside El-Geneina. Fierce fighting between the RSF and Sudan's armed forces has been continuing since April. But the RSF and their allied militias have denied any involvement in the recent fighting in West Darfur. Thousands have died and millions have been forced from their homes as a result of fighting between Sudan's regular army, led by Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, and the RSF, led by al-Burhan's former deputy, Mohamed Hamdan Daglo. The UN said at least 37 bodies were buried in the West Darfur region on 20 June, and another 50 at the same site the next day. Among those buried were women and children. Rival leaders push their peace plans while Sudan burns
What is going on in Sudan? A simple guide UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Türk said he was "appalled by the callous and disrespectful way the dead, along with their families and communities, were treated". He called for an investigation into their deaths and said the RSF was obliged to treat the dead "with dignity". Last week, the RSF rejected allegations from Human Rights Watch that they had killed 28 members of the Masalit community and injured dozens of civilians before destroying the town of Misterei in May. An adviser to the RSF leadership, Mustafa Mohamed Ibrahim, told the BBC the clashes there were part of an ongoing civil war between Arab groups and the Masalit "which is old and renewed". There are concerns that attacks by the RSF and Arab militias against the Masalit community could result in a repeat of the 2003 Darfur killings, when 300,000 people were killed by the Janjaweed militias, who later grew into the RSF. The UN has already received reports of Arab militia targeting Masalit men and said the conflict has taken on an "ethnic dimension".

Egypt hosts regional meeting in push to resolve Sudan war
Agence France Presse/July 13, 2023
Egypt has invited war-torn Sudan's neighbours for a summit Thursday to "stop the bloodshed", the presidency said, with Ethiopia's premier Abiy Ahmed in Cairo despite tensions over a massive Nile river project. Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi and Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed "discussed ways to settle the crisis in Sudan", Sisi's spokesman announced late Wednesday ahead of a larger regional meeting. Fighting in Sudan since April 15 pits army chief Abdel Fattah al-Burhan -- a close ally of Egypt's -- against his former deputy, Mohamed Hamdan Daglo, who commands the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF). Around 3,000 people have been killed in the violence, according to the Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project. The Egyptian presidency said in a statement the meeting in Cairo will be attended by representatives of "Sudan's neighbouring countries", but has not announced who else is expected to join Sisi and Abiy. The talks aim to "stop the bloodshed of the Sudanese people" and the "negative repercussions on neighbouring countries", Cairo said. On Wednesday, Sisi and Abiy also discussed "strengthening bilateral relations between Egypt and Ethiopia and the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam," Sisi's spokesman said. The two countries have long been at odds over Ethiopia's mega-dam, which Cairo sees as an existential threat and Addis Ababa recently announced it would delay filling. Thursday's meeting in Cairo follows multiple diplomatic efforts to broker an end to the violence in Sudan, with repeated US- and Saudi-brokered ceasefires that have been systematically violated. More than 2.4 million people have been displaced within Sudan, while nearly 724,000 have escaped across the country's borders, according to the International Organization for Migration. The east African regional bloc IGAD on Monday held renewed talks, calling on the warring parties to "sign an unconditional ceasefire". The Sudanese army boycotted the gathering in Addis Ababa, after Khartoum's foreign ministry objected to Kenyan President William Ruto's leadership of the IGAD quartet tasked with finding a solution to the Sudan conflict. It has accused Nairobi of siding with the RSF, dampening hopes for an end to the nearly three-month-old conflict. Experts believe Burhan and Daglo have opted for a war of attrition and are both hoping to extract more concessions at the negotiating table.

Leaders of Egypt and Ethiopia agree to resume negotiations on Nile dam
Arab News/July 13, 2023
CAIRO: Egyptian President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi and Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed held face-to-face talks to discuss the stalemate in negotiations over the controversial Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam and how it might be overcome. As a result, they agreed to resume negotiations and reach an agreement within four months. The leaders met at Cairo’s Al-Ittihadiya Palace on Wednesday night, shortly after Ahmed arrived in Egypt for a summit of the leaders of Sudan’s seven neighboring countries. El-Sisi hosted the gathering on Thursday in the hope of finding a path to peace in Sudan, where rival military factions have been fighting since mid-April. Egypt and Sudan have long been at odds with Ethiopia over its construction of the massive hydroelectric dam, amid fears that it will restrict the amount of water flowing down the Nile to them, with potentially devastating results. According to a joint statement issued by the Egyptian presidency after the meeting on Wednesday, El-Sisi and Ahmed agreed on two main points. Firstly, “to initiate expedited negotiations to finalize the agreement between Egypt, Ethiopia and Sudan on the filling of the GERD and the rules of its operations, and they will make all the necessary efforts to finalize it in four months.”Secondly, “during the period of these negotiations, Ethiopia has indicated its commitment during the filling of the GERD within the hydrological year 2023-2024 not to cause significant harm to Egypt and Sudan in a manner that provides the water needs of both countries.” The two leaders also reiterated their “mutual political will to enhance the bilateral relations politically, economically and culturally.” This desire to boost ties “is based on the common desire to achieve their mutual interests and the prosperity of the two brotherly people, which will also actively contribute to the stability, peace and security of the region and their mutual ability to deal with common challenges.”The dam is on the Blue Nile, one of two major tributaries that feed the Nile, in western Ethiopia just 10 kilometers from the border with Sudan. Egypt and Sudan have called for a legally binding agreement on how the dam will operate and filled but Ethiopian authorities have so far rejected such a proposal and say the dam is key to economic development and power generation in the country. Egypt obtains more than 90 percent of its scarce fresh water from the Nile and fears the dam could devastate its economy if the flow is reduced. Filling of the dam began in mid-2020 and is continuing in phases, a process that is expected to take several years.

Biden to host Israel’s president at White House on Tuesday
Reuters/July 13, 2023
WASHINGTON: US President Joe Biden will meet Israeli President Isaac Herzog at the White House on Tuesday when they will discuss Israel’s regional integration and Russia’s military ties with Iran, the White House said on Thursday. “Biden will stress the importance of our shared democratic values, and discuss ways to advance equal measures of freedom, prosperity, and security for Palestinians and Israelis,” White House spokesperson Karine Jean-Pierre said in a statement. The visit by Herzog, whose role is largely ceremonial, will mark the 75th anniversary of Israel’s 1948 founding. Herzog has also been invited to address a joint meeting of the US House of Representatives and Senate, a top Washington honor. His trip follows a period of increased violence in the occupied West Bank, where Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s religious-nationalist government has drawn Biden administration criticism over renewed Jewish settlement construction. Netanyahu has yet to be received at the White House despite winning an unprecedented sixth term in November. Biden, during a CNN interview on Sunday, declined to say whether an invitation would be extended to Netanyahu. “I think (Netanyahu) is trying to ... work through his existing problems in terms of his coalition,” Biden said during the interview, describing Netanyahu’s government as “one of the most extremist members of cabinets that I’ve seen.” Following Biden’s remarks on Sunday, Israel’s hard-right security minister, Itamar Ben-Gvir, asked on Twitter: “What exactly about me is extreme?“ Ben-Gvir added: “President Biden needs to realize that we are no longer a star on the American flag.”

Biden closing out Europe trip by showcasing new NATO member Finland
Associated Press/July 13, 2023
U.S. President Joe Biden is closing out a five-day trip to Europe on Thursday standing alongside Nordic leaders in an effort to show NATO's expanding power and influence against a burgeoning Russia. The brief stop in the shoreline Finnish capital is the coda to a Biden tour that was carefully sketched to highlight the growth of the military alliance that the president says has fortified itself since the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Finland joined as NATO's newest member earlier this year, an entry that effectively doubled the alliance's border with Russia.
"I've been doing this a long time," Biden said as he opened a meeting with Finnish President Sauli Niinistö at the presidential palace in Helsinki. "I don't think NATO has ever been stronger." Indeed, Biden arrived in Helsinki after what he deemed a successful annual NATO summit in Vilnius, Lithuania, where allies agreed to language that would further pave the way for Ukraine to also become a member. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy called the summit's outcome "a significant security victory" for his country but nonetheless expressed disappointment Kyiv did not get an outright invitation to join NATO.
Biden and other administration officials also held what aides said were pivotal conversations with Ankara shortly before Turkey reversed course and dropped its objections to Sweden joining NATO.
"I'm feeling good about the trip," Biden told reporters Wednesday before the flight to Finland. "You know, we accomplished every goal we set out to accomplish."And despite Zelenskyy's expressed frustrations, Biden — who met with the Ukrainian leader Wednesday afternoon in Vilnius — said Thursday that Zelenskyy "ended up being very happy." The U.S. president's trip this week — a meticulously choreographed endeavor meant to showcase international opposition to Russian leader Vladimir Putin's war in Ukraine — played out nearly five years to the day since then-President Donald Trump infamously stood alongside Putin in Helsinki and cast doubt on his own intelligence apparatus. That was just days after Trump tore through a NATO summit where he disparaged the alliance and from which he threatened to withdraw the United States.
In contrast, Biden has heartily embraced the tenets of multilateralism that Trump shunned, speaking repeatedly of having to rebuild international coalitions after four tumultuous years led by his predecessor. The garrulous former Senate Foreign Relations Committee chairman is in his element at summits abroad, and speaks of how his background in international policy is proof positive that decades of experience on the world stage has mattered for the presidency.
While in Finland, Biden also was meeting with leaders of other Nordic nations including Sweden, Norway, Denmark and Iceland. Sweden is poised to be admitted as NATO's 32nd member country after it pledged more cooperation with Turkey on counterterrorism efforts while backing Ankara's bid to join the European Union. It's the third such U.S.-Nordic leaders' joint meeting between a U.S. president and heads of the five Nordic nations. Previous summits were held in Stockholm in 2013 and in Washington in 2016.
The talks at the seaside Presidential Palace in the heart of Helsinki were to focus on closer cooperation between the Nordic countries and the United States on security, environment and technology issues, Niinistö's office said. Biden also scheduled a news conference with Niinistö before departing for Washington.
Biden is the sixth U.S president to visit Finland, a country of 5.5 million that has hosted several U.S.-Soviet and U.S.-Russia summits. The first involved President Gerald Ford, who would sign the so-called Helsinki Accords with more than 30 other nations in 1975.
But Charly Salonius-Pasternak, senior researcher at the Finnish Institute of International Affairs, noted that Biden's visit marked the first time a sitting U.S. president came to Finland to honor the country itself, rather than as a neutral location for meeting Russian leaders or other similar reasons.
"The fact that Biden has chosen to go specifically to Finland for Finland is symbolic and, in some ways, very concrete," he said. "It's a kind of deterrence messaging that only the United States can do."
In the Cold War era, Finland acted as a neutral buffer between Moscow and Washington, and its leaders played a balancing act between the East and West, maintaining good relations with both superpowers.
Finland and neighboring Sweden gave up their traditional political neutrality by joining the European Union in 1995 but both remained militarily non-aligned, with opinion polls showing a clear majority of their citizens opposed to joining NATO. That changed quickly after Feb. 24, 2022, when Russia invaded Ukraine. Biden's visit follows U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken's trip to Finland in early June, when he said in a speech at the Helsinki City Hall that Finland's membership in NATO was "a sea change that would have been unthinkable a little more than a year earlier."Among other things, Blinken and Finland's then-Foreign Minister Pekka Haavisto signed a U.S.-Finland cooperation deal in advanced wireless communications including research and development of next-generation 6G network technology. The deal is relevant not only to Finland, which is home to wireless technology and network infrastructure provider Nokia Corp. — a global leader in the field — but also to Washington, which is seemingly trying to contain China's ambitions to dominate the mobile network industry through Huawei and other Chinese technology companies.

Syria tells UN it can deliver aid from Turkiye for 6 months
Reuters/July 13, 2023
UNITED NATIONS: The Syrian government has given the United Nations approval to use a border crossing from Turkiye to continue delivering aid to northwest Syria for another six months after the Security Council failed to renew its authorization for the operation. The UN aid deliveries would have to be “in full cooperation and coordination with the Syrian Government,” Syria’s UN Ambassador Bassam Sabbagh wrote in a letter on Thursday to the Security Council, seen by Reuters.

German court convicts Syrian IS member of war crimes for torturing captives
Associated Press/July 13, 2023
A German court convicted a Syrian man Tuesday of torturing captives while he was a member of the Islamic State group in Syria. The Berlin regional court found Raed E. guilty of war crimes, membership of a foreign terrorist organization and other offences. It sentenced the defendant, whose surname wasn't released in line with German privacy rules, to 11 years in prison. Prosecutors said the 32-year-old joined IS in 2014 and participated in targeted attacks on the Shueitat tribe in the Deir el-Zour region of eastern Syria. A man who was detained and tortured by the defendant testified at the trial. The defendant left Syria in 2015 and traveled to Germany, where he was arrested last year. The ruling can be appealed.

Medical and aid groups in northwest Syria fear worse conditions if aid flow from Turkiye stops
AP/July 13, 2023
UN Security Council has failed to renew the Bab Al-Hawa border crossing into opposition-held northwestern Syria from Turkiye
Russia vetoed a compromise resolution presented by Brazil and Switzerland that would renew the crossing’s mandate for nine months
IDLIB, Syria: Youssef Al-Ramadan says he always feels guilty for having to put his wife and three children to work in order to survive — and now they might not be able to get by since international aid could stop flowing from Turkiye.
Standing outside his tent in a displacement camp in northern Idlib, he is worried that their income might not be sufficient to make ends meet if the United Nations Security Council cannot renew a humanitarian border crossing that has been a critical lifeline for him and some 4.1 million people in Syria’s rebel-held northwest. The vast majority live in poverty and rely on aid to survive. On Tuesday, the UN Security Council failed to renew the Bab Al-Hawa border crossing into opposition-held northwestern Syria from Turkiye. Russia, a key political and military ally of President Bashar Assad, vetoed a compromise resolution presented by Brazil and Switzerland that would renew the crossing’s mandate for nine months. With the exception of China’s abstention, it was voted in favor by the majority of member states, and had the backing of humanitarian agencies and the UN Secretary General. Moscow’s rival resolution, which would renew the mandate for six months with additional requirements, failed to get the minimum of nine votes in favor, with only China giving its support. UN spokesman Stephane Dujarric underscored Wednesday that Secretary-General Antonio Guterres “is not giving up” on trying to keep the Bab Al-Hawa crossing open, stressing that it remains “the center of gravity of the UN’s efforts to deliver aid in the northwest part of Syria.”Like many others in Idlib, Al-Ramadan was internally displaced due to the ongoing conflict, now in its 13th year. He says he cannot go back to his hometown south of the province, because he alleges that the Syrian government and Russia confiscated his home and farmland. “They took our land and our homes, and now they want to cut off the border crossing,” he told The Associated Press. “I’m barely able to survive with Bab Al-Hawa open, so what happens if it closes?”Syria is still dealing with the impact of a 7.8 magnitude earthquake in February that rocked Turkiye and northern Syria in both government and opposition held areas, killing over 50,000 people.
The Security Council initially authorized aid deliveries in 2014 from Turkiye, Iraq and Jordan through four crossing points into opposition-held areas in Syria. Over the years, Russia, backed by China, had reduced the authorized crossings to just Bab Al-Hawa from Turkiye, and the mandates from a year to six months. Russia alleges that militant groups in Idlib are taking the aid and preventing it from reaching families in need. Moscow and Beijing have been calling to phase out the UN cross-border mandate and instead route through Damascus, but Syrians in the northwest enclave say they are skeptical of the push. The Syrian Response Coordination Group, a relief group active in northwestern Syria, slammed the Security Council’s five permanent members — France, United States, United Kingdom, Russia, and China — for what they called “strongly irresponsible actions” and “clear disregard for the fate of millions of civilians in Syria.” International humanitarian organizations decried Russia’s veto. “It defies reason and principle, that Security Council members would vote to not maintain all avenues of aid access for vulnerable Syrians at this time,” International Rescue Committee President David Miliband said in a statement.
Dr. Munzer Khalil, Idlib health director, told The Associated Press that he fears severe public health consequences if the Security Council cannot renew the crossing’s mandate, because many health facilities relying on UN aid will face shortages of critical medical supplies and equipment, including vaccines for children. The recent earthquake that hit the region emphasizes “the urgency of addressing the inequitable access to aid in northwest Syria and allocating resources for both long-term and immediate recovery initiatives,” Khalil said.

Iraq's marshes are dying, and a civilization with them
Agence France Presse./July 13, 2023
Mohammed Hamid Nour is only 23, but he is already nostalgic for how Iraq's Mesopotamian marshes once were before drought dried them up, decimating his herd of water buffaloes. Even at their centre in Chibayish, only a few expanses of the ancient waterways -- home to a Marsh Arab culture that goes back millennia -- survive, linked by channels that snake through the reeds. Pull back further and the water gives way to a parched landscape of bald and cracked earth. Mohammed has lost three-quarters of his herd to the drought that is now ravaging the marshes for a fourth-consecutive year. It is the worst in 40 years, the United Nations said this week, describing the situation as "alarming", with "70 percent of the marshes devoid of water.""I beg you Allah, have mercy!" Mohammed implored, keffiyah on his head as he contemplated the disaster under the unforgiving blue of a cloudless sky. The buffaloes of the marshes produce the milk for the thick clotted "geymar" cream Iraqis love to have with honey for breakfast. As the marshes dry out, the water gets salty until it starts killing the buffaloes. Many of Mohammed's herd died like this, others he was forced to sell before they too perished. "If the drought continues and the government doesn't help us, the others will also die," said the young herder, who has no other income. Both the Mesopotamian marshes, and the culture of the Marsh Arabs -- or Ma'adan -- like Mohammed who live in them, have UNESCO world heritage status. The Ma'adan have hunted and fished there for 5,000 years, building houses from woven reeds on floating reed islands where the Tigris and Euphrates rivers come together before pouring into the Gulf. Even their beautifully intricate mosques were made of reeds. But the marshlands have shrunk from 20,000 square kilometers (7,700 square miles) in the early 1990s to 4,000 (1,500 square miles) by latest estimates -- choked by dams on the great rivers upstream in Turkey and Syria and the soaring temperatures of climate change. Only a few thousand of the quarter million Ma'adan who lived in the marshes in the early 1990s remain. Experts say that Iraq's management of the waters has not helped.
50 degrees C
AFP crisscrossed the central Chibayish marshes at the end of June, where at dawn it was already 35 degrees Centigrade (95 degrees Fahrenheit) before temperatures shot towards 50. Iraq is one of the five countries most touched by some effects of climate change, according to the United Nations. Rainfall is rarer and rarer, and in the next 25 years the World Bank said the temperature will go up by an average of 2.5 degrees. Water levels in the central marshlands and the Euphrates which feeds it are "dropping by half a centimeter a day," said engineer Jassim al-Assadi, of Nature Iraq, the country's leading conservation group. That will get worse "over the next two months as the temperatures rise and more and more water evaporates," he added. To draw water for his remaining buffaloes, Mohammed Hamid Nour takes his canoe out into deeper water, where salt levels are lower.He rolled up his sleeves to fill a water tank on the canoe revealing a tattoo of the Zulfikar, the sword of Imam Ali, one of the founding figures of Shi'ite Islam. He got it for "baraka" or blessing, he smiled. He needs all the help he can get.
Saddam's bid to kill them
The marshes already almost died once when former dictator Saddam Hussein dried them out so he could hunt down the Shi'ite rebels who had taken refuge there after the failed uprising in the wake of the First Gulf War in 1991. In a few months, Saddam turned 90 percent of the marshes into a "desert", Assadi recalled. Most of the Ma'adan fled or "moved elsewhere in Iraq or emigrated to Sweden or the United States". But when Saddam was toppled by the American-led invasion in 2003 the ditches he dug to drain the marshes were destroyed, and both the marshes and the Ma'adan returned. Two decades later, the water level is plummeting again. "The level of the Euphrates in Iraq is around half of what it was in the 1970s," said Ali al-Quraishi, of Baghdad's University of Technology. Dams upstream in Turkey, where the Tigris and the Euphrates have their sources, and others on their tributaries in Syria and Iran, are the "principle" cause, he said. "The Turks have built more dams to meet the needs of agriculture there. As the population rises, more water is needed for irrigation and domestic use," the expert added. Water has always sparked tensions between Iraq and Turkey. With Iraq asking Ankara to release more, the Turkish ambassador to Baghdad, Ali Riza Guney, sparked outrage last July by accusing the Iraqis of "wasting water". There is a grain of truth in the Turkish claim, scientists say. Iraq's water management is far from ideal. Since the time of the ancient Sumerians, Iraqi farmers have flooded their land to irrigate it, which is considered hugely wasteful. But now water for agriculture is short, with the authorities drastically reducing arable farming to make sure there is enough drinking water for the country's 42 million people. Iraq's President Abdul Latif Rashid told the BBC last month that the government "has taken significant steps to improve the water management system in talks with neighboring countries", without going into detail.
Pollution and heavy metals
Meanwhile in the central marshes, there is so little water even canoes get stuck. Where there was water "two months ago" is now a desert, said herder Youssef Mutlaq. Not long ago a dozen or so "mudhifs" -- traditional reed houses -- were still occupied."There were lots of buffaloes, but when the water started to disappear, people left," said the 20-year-old as his animals chewed feed from a bag with less and less grass to be found. Pollution is also rising alongside salination. Sewers, pesticides and waste from factories and hospitals are dumped directly into the Euphrates along its course, and much of it ends up in the marshes, said Nadheer Fazaa, of Baghdad University, and a specialist on climate change. "We have analyzed the water and found numerous pollutants like heavy metals" which cause illness, the scientist said. And all the while, the fish are dying. Where once the binni -- the king of the Iraqi table -- swam, there are now only fish unfit for consumption. While the causes of the disaster are not being tackled, some are trying to limit the consequences of the drought.
'Our life is there'
The French NGO Agronomists and Vets Without Borders (AVSF), supported by France, is training their Iraqi colleagues and trying to help herders and fishermen. "We spent last summer distributing drinking water for both the people and the animals of the wetlands," said vet Herve Petit, an expert in rural development. Many herders have been forced to "sell off their animals at derisory prices", he added. But such initiatives are rare. Engineer Jassim al-Assadi is one of the few battling for the marshes and alerting the authorities. Khaled Shemal, of the water resources ministry, said they were "working hard" to restore the wetlands. But drinking water and supplies for homes and agriculture came first. In the meantime, many Marsh Arabs have left for the towns and cities, where they are often treated as pariahs. Last year, the UN's Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) called it an "exodus". Walid Khdeir left the wetlands with his wife and six children "four or five months ago" to live in a house on dry land in the city of Chibayish. "It was difficult, our lives were there like our grandparents' before us. But what can we do?" the 30-year-old said. Today, he is fattening buffaloes to resell but is obliged to buy fodder at exorbitant prices because there is hardly a blade of grass for them to eat. "If the water comes back like before, we will return to the marshes. Our life is there," he said.

Sunak calls for ending strikes after agreeing to increase wages for millions of employees
AFP/July 13, 2023
British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak urged public sector unions on Thursday to end strikes and accept the wage increases agreed upon by his government, on the first day of an unprecedented strike by doctors.
Sunak, whose government has agreed to wage increases ranging from 5% to 7% for millions of employees, stated that this is the "final offer."He said, "There will be no further discussions on wages. We will not negotiate again... No strike will change our decision."
The announced increases include 6.5% for teachers, 7% for police officers, 6% for some hospital doctors who began a five-day strike on Thursday, and 5% for the military. Teacher unions announced in a joint statement the suspension of their upcoming strikes, a move welcomed by Sunak.
The Prime Minister ruled out borrowing or tax increases to fund these raises, and spoke about "reordering priorities" in public spending. He announced an increase in visa costs and an increase in the amount migrants pay to access the public health system, which would enable the government to earn £1 billion ($1.17 billion), according to his statement. The United Kingdom has witnessed increasing strikes in both the private and public sectors in recent months due to demands for wage increases in the face of inflation, which has caused a severe cost-of-living crisis. Despite the slowdown, inflation reached 8.7% in May on an annual basis, the highest among G7 countries. Rishi Sunak called for an end to the doctors' strike. Junior doctors began a new strike on Thursday, starting at 7 a.m. and continuing until the same time on Tuesday. This represents the longest continuous mobilization in the history of the UK's National Health Service (NHS), which recently celebrated its 75th anniversary, according to the British Medical Association (BMA). Junior doctors account for about half of the hospital doctors in the UK, ranging from newly graduated doctors to practitioners with more than eight years of experience.
They have escalated their strikes in recent months, resulting in the postponement of a significant number of non-urgent appointments. Doctor Arjun Singh (27 years old) participated in a protest on Thursday morning in front of University College Hospital in London. He said, "The National Health Service has functioned due to the willpower of its workforce, and this is the last chance to change" the situation. He added that there are thousands of vacant positions, while some of his colleagues are considering traveling to countries that "value their doctors."
The officials of the British Medical Association, Robert Lawrence and Vivek Trivedi, stated that Thursday "marks the beginning of the longest doctors' strike in the history of the National Health Service." When the strike was announced at the end of June, a spokesperson for the Ministry of Health considered this new strike to be "very disappointing." They stated that "these five days of strikes will cause significant disruption to patients and put pressure on other parts of NHS staff." Meanwhile, the union emphasizes that junior doctors have lost 26% of their real wages since 2008 when austerity measures were imposed on healthcare services. The union is demanding a 35% wage increase, which the government opposes. According to the union's figures, around 7.42 million people were waiting for treatment in April in England, with over 3 million waiting for more than 18 months.

Latest LCCC English analysis & editorials from miscellaneous sources published on July 13-14/2023
Pakistan: Kidnapping, Forced Marriages, Forced Conversion
Uzay Bulut/Gatestone Institute./July 13, 2023
facebook sharing buttontwitter sharing buttonemail sharing buttonwhatsapp sharing buttonlinkedin sharing buttontelegram sharing button
Imagine if you are a child from a persecuted religious minority living in one of the world's most oppressive countries. The country's majority culture and institutions are largely shaped by a religious ideology that has no regard for anything outside that system, as well as a record of mistreating women and girls.
Sadly, the government of Pakistan appears complicit in these and other crimes: it fails to provide women and children with required legal protection. A bill to criminalize forced religious conversions has been presented in the Sindh Assembly at least three times (2016, 2019 and 2021). Each time, it was rejected.
Any military or economic cooperation with Pakistan should be conditioned on Pakistan's improvement of human rights and liberties for minorities, and a respect for international law. A government that is complicit in the abduction, forced religious conversion, sexual abuse and coerced "marriages" of minority children should not be considered qualified to benefit from any aid or cooperation from the West.
Every day in Islamic Pakistan, underage Christian Hindu girls run the risk of being kidnapped, forcibly converted to Islam, raped, and coerced into a "marriage" with an older or elderly man. (Image source: iStock)
Imagine if you are a child from a persecuted religious minority living in one of the world's most oppressive countries. The country's majority culture and institutions are largely shaped by a religious ideology that has no regard for anything outside that system, as well as a record of mistreating women and girls.
Every day you run the risk of being kidnapped, forcibly converted to Islam, raped, and coerced into a "marriage" with an older or elderly man. This is what takes place often in Islamic Pakistan. The victims are Christian and Hindu women and children.
On June 2, 2023, a 14-year-old Hindu girl, Sohana Sharma Kumari, was abducted and married to a Muslim man, WioNews reported :
"In yet another abduct-and-convert case from Pakistan, a Hindu girl from the country's Sindh province was forcibly converted to Islam and married off, her father said. The 14-year-old girl, identified as Sohana, was kidnapped by her tutor, Akhtar and his accomplices...
"The teen girl's father, Dileep Kumar... claimed that three armed men, Akhtar Gabol, Faizan Jat, and Sarang Khaskheli, broke into their home, stole gold jewelry, and kidnapped Sohana under threat of violence.
"Dileep later filed a complaint with the police. Later, the girl appeared in a video stating clearly under duress that she had converted to Islam and married a Muslim man...
"Although she appeared to be under strain when making her account, the judge postponed the case until June 12 and remanded her to a shelter home for women...
"According to Shiva Kachhi, president of the minority group called Pakistan Darawar Ittehad (PDI), it is rare for a Hindu girl to be returned to her family because the police are typically unwilling to comply, despite the organization's efforts.
"'There have been dozens of cases since last year and most of these girls are underage....."
After Kumari reportedly stated that she wanted to be reunited with her family, a Pakistani court finally, on June 12, allowed Kumari to reunite with her parents. According to Indian news media, however, the court failed to take any concrete steps to protect her from her abductors.
A report in 2022, entitled "Conversion without Consent: A report on the abductions, forced conversions, and forced marriages of Christian girls and women in Pakistan" issued by the Voice for Justice Organization and the Jubilee Campaign, notes:
"Pakistan is a country with a state religion, Islam, which serves as a source for devising policies, drafting laws, and issuing judgments. The country has a predominantly 200.36 million Muslim population, making up more than 96.47% of the total population (i.e., 207.684 million) while religious minorities comprise around 3.52% (i.e., 7.32 million)."
The report also notes that:
"Many girls between the ages of 12 and 16 years are abducted, 'forcibly converted' to Islam, and then 'forcibly married' to their abductors who typically are twice their victims' ages and are already married with children, though they are presented as bachelors in documents submitted to the courts.
"The child brides from minority communities are at higher risk of facing violence and abuse, which poses a serious threat to their right to education, health, work, and religious freedom...
"Although the majority of the girl victims of forced faith conversions and child marriage are minors, the fabricated age of all victims is deliberately altered to 18 years or above by perpetrators on certificates of marriage to avoid criminal conviction under the 1929 Child Marriage Restraint Act according to which marriage to underage children is illegal and punishable by imprisonment...
"All minor girls are presented as adults and economically independent, and their marriages are executed in the absence of a lawyer or consent of a legal guardian (parents)...
"All girl victims are made to change their identity by changing their names...
"Many cases involving abduction, followed by child/forced marriage and forced conversions of minority girls are not reported to the police due to the stigma attached to the abduction followed by rape...
"The minorities lack access to justice due to financial constraints as exercising the right to fair trial involves a lot of financial resources, time, and efforts.
The minorities face intimidation, harassment and threats from the Muslims that prevent them from following-up the cases in courts of law. Several girls reunited with families after they faced abduction, forced marriage and forced conversion; however, minorities are not likely to file petitions in court to bring perpetrators to justice due to the influence of the actors involved in conversion...
"Whilst all citizens in Pakistan face obstacles in access to justice, minority religious groups face even greater difficulties in the pursuit of justice. The police often turn a blind eye to reports of abduction and forced conversions, thereby creating impunity for perpetrators. The police forces, which are overwhelmingly Muslim, generally sympathize with the goal of converting religious minorities to Islam. In limited instances of police intervention, local leaders exert considerable pressure to prevent any action.
Examples from the report of abductions, forced conversions and forced marriages include:
"Huma Younas, a 14-year-old girl, was abducted on 10 October 2019 from Karachi by three Muslim men who took her to Dera Ghazi Khan district in Punjab province.... Despite the valid evidence of Huma's underage status, on 3rd February 2020, the court dismissed the petition in favor of the abductors, and allowed the perpetrators to maintain custody of Huma."
"Persicla Dilawar, a 15-year-old Christian girl, was abducted from her home in Sumundhari, Faisalabad. Persicla's father Dilawar reported he and his wife were asleep when Muslim man Muhammad Qasim broke into their home and kidnapped their daughter. Qasim reportedly threatened them with death if they reported the incident. Consequently, Qasim forcibly married Persicla."
"Shakaina Johnson, a 13-year-old Christian, disappeared in Lahore on February 19, 2021. She was working as a domestic helper alongside her mother Samina, and both Samina and Shakaina's father Johnson believed their daughter was kidnapped after leaving the home of a family she served as a domestic worker. Samina and Johnson filed an FIR two days later on 21 February 2021; the following month, they received news that Shakaina had allegedly converted to Islam and reportedly married an older Muslim man named Ali Bashir who provided authorities with counterfeit Islamic marriage certificates."
"Shamim Bibi, a mother of five children, was abducted on July 5, 2021 by Muslim man Muhammad Akbar who converted her to Islam and forced her to marry him. Instead of registering the complaint of the victim's family, authorities filed the claim of the abductor that Shamim had willfully embraced Islam and contracted marriage with him. Contrarily, Shamim refused to accept this false claim."
Sadly, the government of Pakistan appears complicit in these and other crimes: it fails to provide women and children with required legal protection. A bill to criminalize forced religious conversions has been presented in the Sindh Assembly at least three times (2016, 2019 and 2021). Each time, it was rejected.
Around 1,000 girls from impoverished Hindu families in Pakistan's Sindh province are forcibly converted to Islam every year, the Associated Press reported in 2020.
"Pakistan," according to a US Congressional Research Service report issued in May of 2023, "is a country of more than 200 million people with nuclear weapons, numerous Islamist terrorist groups, and increasingly close ties to China."
According to the very same report, however:
"From 2001 until the second Obama Administration, Pakistan was among the leading recipients of U.S. foreign assistance, with Congress appropriating $11 billion in economic, development, and humanitarian aid, and nearly $8 billion in security-related aid for FY [Fiscal Year] 2002-FY2016. Pakistan also received about $14.6 billion in Pentagon military reimbursements during this period. From FY2017 on, the Trump Administration requested and Congress appropriated significantly reduced aid amounts (reaching a two-decade nadir of $87 million in FY2021) and, in 2018, the Administration initiated a broad, terrorism-related security aid suspension that has largely continued to date. The Biden Administration requested, and Congress has appropriated, modestly increased economic and development assistance amounts for FY2022 and FY2023—up 25% and 6% year-on-year, respectively."
Similarly, the European Union is Pakistan's second-most important trading partner, accounting for 14.3% of Pakistan's total trade in 2020 and receiving 28% of Pakistan's total exports.
Meanwhile, Hindu and Christian children and women in Pakistan are unsafe. They are abducted for the purpose of sexual abuse and Islamist oppression. One reality demonstrated by the data regarding Western military aid to, or trade with Pakistan, is that neither military nor commercial cooperation with the government of Pakistan has had any positive influence regarding the human rights of religious minorities in the country.
Any military or economic cooperation with Pakistan should be conditioned on Pakistan's improvement of human rights and liberties for minorities, and a respect for international law. A government that is complicit in the abduction, forced religious conversion, sexual abuse and coerced "marriages" of minority children should not be considered qualified to benefit from any aid or cooperation from the West.
*Uzay Bulut, a Turkish journalist, a research fellow for the Philos Project, and a Distinguished Senior Fellow at Gatestone Institute.
© 2023 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.

Collaboration the key to making an impression in global space industry
Khaled Abou Zahr/Arab News/July 13, 2023
After 27 years of operations, the Ariane 5 rocket launched for its 117th and final mission last week. Despite the retirement of the only European heavy-lift rocket, its anticipated successor, Ariane 6, remains in the latter stages of development and testing. Due to delays, it is not expected to fly until the end of this year and some industry insiders believe its first flight might not happen until 2024. This means that Europe faces months without its own independent and sovereign access to space. This situation highlights the importance of being capable of accessing assets in orbit, especially as telecommunications competition and geopolitical tensions heat up.
The reality is that, even before this last launch, Europe has been dependent on others for its launch capacities. As we analyze the orbital launches for 2023 up to July, the numbers reveal a global landscape dominated by a few key players. The US, with SpaceX as global leader, is responsible for about 40 percent of launches, followed by China with 30 percent and Russia with 15 percent. These three nations have taken center stage, showcasing their prowess. With only two launches, Europe finds itself facing challenges in terms of its launch capacity. Its small percentage of the total launches highlights the challenges it faces in this competitive domain. It also outlines the dependency Europe might face to access its assets in orbit. Clearly, this has serious repercussions for its security and defense satellites.
Factors such as budget constraints, coordination difficulties and regulatory complexities have hindered Europe’s ability to strengthen its launch capabilities. The fragmented nature of the European space sector, with multiple national agencies and varying priorities, has added to the challenges, limiting the collective impact Europe could make in the global space industry. But Europe is addressing these challenges, with the European Space Agency fostering stronger collaboration and coordination among its space agencies, research institutions and private companies.
This all requires choosing missions over nationalistic returns, which is not always easy when spending countries’ public funds. Yet, in the face of extreme global competition, there is a need to pool resources, expertise and infrastructure, which will allow Europe to optimize launch operations, streamline processes and eliminate redundancies. Furthermore, investing in the research and development of advanced propulsion technologies, such as reusable rockets and electric propulsion systems, will enhance efficiency, reduce costs and boost Europe’s competitiveness in the global space market.
One thing is clear, many new companies and startups developing launchers and other projects in Europe have been looking at the US as a case study, as startups there benefit from an agile system. They would like to see Europe adopt the same contracting practices employed by NASA and other institutions. NASA utilizes competitive bidding processes and transparent mechanisms for awarding contracts. This is what empowered SpaceX and its competitors. By fostering a competitive environment, Europe can ensure that the best solutions are selected, while stimulating advancements in space technology. Furthermore, promoting public-private partnerships is crucial for Europe to expand its launch capacity.
The GCC can leverage its combined strengths to maximize the benefits of space activities for the entire region.
Europe stands at a critical juncture in its quest for development in the global space domain. By addressing launch capacity challenges through collaboration, investment in advanced propulsion technologies and by following successful contracting practices, Europe will, without any doubt, enhance its position on the international stage. However, this comes at a time when SpaceX has just broken its record of reusability, with 16 launches for the same Falcon rocket. It has the objective of reaching 20. It is also about to launch its long-awaited Starship rocket, which will have a record payload capacity of 150 tons and will set the stage for the next phase of space commercialization, with the empowerment of the Artemis lunar program as well as space factories, in-space logistics and much more.
This situation can also serve as a case study for the Gulf Cooperation Council. In addition to their individual efforts, it is crucial for the GCC countries to collaborate and develop a cohesive regional space strategy. The GCC states should determine what they consider to be strategic and sovereign within their space strategies, while aligning their objectives and pooling resources for collective growth. By identifying common goals and priorities, such as Earth observation, satellite communications or deep space exploration, the GCC can leverage its combined strengths to maximize the benefits of space activities for the entire region. One key aspect of this strategy should involve the development of common infrastructure and companies. By sharing facilities, the GCC countries can reduce costs and optimize resources. This collaborative approach to infrastructure development will foster a strong regional space ecosystem. Furthermore, the GCC should focus on capacity building and knowledge sharing initiatives to nurture a skilled workforce. By investing in education and training programs, the region can develop a generation of scientists, engineers and technicians with the expertise required for a thriving space industry. Collaborative research projects and technology exchange programs can also accelerate innovation and technological advancements within the Gulf.
By working together, the GCC countries can establish themselves as a formidable force in the global space industry. The determination and development of strategic and sovereign priorities, along with the creation of common infrastructure, will not only drive economic growth and technological innovation but also reinforce the region’s autonomy and self-reliance in the space domain. With Saudi Arabia and the UAE leading the way, the GCC should thus develop a cohesive regional space strategy. Embracing a collaborative approach will make the region a significant player in the global space industry.
• Khaled Abou Zahr is the founder of Barbicane, a space-focused investment syndication platform. He is chief executive of EurabiaMedia and editor of Al-Watan Al-Arabi.

Can the region move from fragile rapprochement to sustainable peace?
Dr. Dania Koleilat Khatib/Arab News/July 13/2023
Abdulkhaleq Abdulla, the renowned Emirati scholar, last week wrote an article in which he described the region as moving from the “bad C” of confrontation to the “good C” of cooperation. However, despite his optimism, he recognized that the current rapprochement environment is fragile and cannot yet be called peace. He also said that this fragile peace could easily be decimated by three potential spoilers: Israel, radical forces in Iran, and a potential Donald Trump return to the White House in 2024.
Trump would not want to see a rapprochement between the two sides of the Gulf. He would seek a Gulf-Israel alliance against Iran. He would use all his weight to pressure all the Arab Gulf states into normalizing relations with Israel. He would push Arab countries into an unconditional normalization. This would definitely put Iran on edge and increase the tensions, reversing the few shy steps made toward peace.
As for the radical forces in Iran, namely the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, we need to ask ourselves a question. What would be their value if Iran were to normalize with Saudi Arabia? When Iran no longer sees a value to its militias or sleeper cells, what would be the role of the IRGC, which is implicitly mandated with exporting the revolution? We have to remember that, after then-Foreign Minister Javad Zarif shook the hand of US Secretary of State John Kerry to seal the nuclear deal in 2015, the IRGC captured an American navy vessel that had drifted into Iranian waters. The Iranians filmed the American soldiers humiliated, on their knees and with their hands behind their heads. The purpose of this was not to humiliate the US — it was to humiliate Zarif and embarrass him in front of his American interlocutor. The message to Zarif was clear: We are here and we call the shots.
Similarly, the rapprochement between the two sides of the Gulf is a sign of worry to Israel. Israel has been able to thrive by playing on regional differences. Initially, Tel Aviv was an ally of the secular shah against pan-Arab and pan-Islamic leaders like Gamal Abdel Nasser of Egypt and King Faisal of Saudi Arabia. Both leaders advocated the Palestinian cause and the rights of the Palestinian people. However, when the regime changed in Iran in 1979 and became vehemently anti-Israel, the latter shifted to Turkiye.
The secular Kemalist regime, which looked at Arabs in a condescending manner and sought to disengage from the Islamic East, was a perfect fit for an Israeli ally. This changed again with the rise of the AKP, especially with the rise to power of Recep Tayyip Erdogan. Erdogan sent the Freedom Flotilla in 2010, challenging Israel’s siege on Gaza. More recently, Israel has been able to play on Arab Gulf insecurity toward Iran and Turkiye in order to befriend them. The Abraham Accords were a result of this attitude. Israel was seen as a counterbalance to Turkiye and Iran.
Now that Iran, Saudi Arabia and Turkiye — the three heavy hitters in the region — are coming together, who will be Israel’s friend?
Rightly identified by Abdulla, these three potential spoilers have a great interest in breaking the fragile rapprochement the region is witnessing.
We also have to remember that this rapprochement does not mean that these rivals trust each other. The mistrust is still high. The rapprochement is fragile because it was dictated by the interests of the moment. The different rivals have each reached their limit and realized that they have to accept each other because the proxy wars they are engaged in are futile. However, this does not mean that they trust each other, nor does it mean that if any state senses a security threat that its attitude will not change drastically overnight. The spoilers know this very well and are probably preparing some unpleasant surprises.
We have to remember that this rapprochement does not mean that these rivals trust each other. The mistrust is still high.
The question we should ask ourselves is what should Saudi Arabia, Turkiye and Iran do to protect themselves from any unpleasant surprises?
To start with, building on the current agreements is a difficult task. The region does not have a framework to regulate relations between members, such as in the EU. Also, the region does not have a security guarantor, like the US was in Western Europe after the Second World War. America had military bases scattered across Europe at that time. In this regard, one might think of China, which does have economic interests with Saudi Arabia, Iran and even Turkiye. However, it does not have the military muscle or presence of the US in Europe post-1945.
Hence, the onus is on the regional countries and their leaderships to cement peace. Again, one might point to investments and the power of money. Today, Turkiye is a main recipient of Gulf money. However, we need to remember that security trumps economic benefits. Each state’s first and foremost goal is to exist. This means security comes first. Business deals come as a cherry on top, but they cannot be the foundation of relations. The foundation of relations between states is security.
The agreements need to be institutionalized. The different countries should set up a permanent committee that regularly meets and streamlines any security issues.
This modality does work. Iran and Oman have a good, functioning relationship despite the fact they are geographically “too close,” sharing the Strait of Hormuz. However, the two countries meet regularly to discuss any security problems that arise. This is how trust can be built.
For such a dialogue to be effective, the rules of engagement should be defined at the outset. The different countries should agree to those rules and commit to abide by them. Hence, the relationship and the dialogue governing the relationship will be directed by them. This is not by any means easy, but it is necessary to cement the fragile rapprochement and develop it into a sustainable peace.
Abdulla noted that the region could easily drift from cooperation to the “ugly C” of chaos. So, an awareness is needed at the leadership level, as well at the popular level, of the challenges ahead. What is also needed is a change in mentality. In order to maintain the “good C,” these states should move away from a zero-sum mentality, in which they view any gain by the other as a loss for themselves. There should be an acceptance of each other’s influence. None of these states will totally relinquish their role in the region and adopt an isolationist policy. However, the key is to coordinate the different policies to reach some sort of accommodation that will encourage stability in the region.
The rapprochement faces serious challenges, but the region has a real chance to reach a sustainable peace. Abdulla fears the “C” of cooperation and conversation reverting to the “C” of confrontation and chaos. I hope for the “C” of cementing the rapprochement as opposed to the “C” of chatter. There is always the chance that these agreements will be nothing but chatter that results in nothing tangible in the long run.
• Dr. Dania Koleilat Khatib is a specialist in US-Arab relations with a focus on lobbying. She is president of the Research Center for Cooperation and Peace Building, a Lebanese nongovernmental organization focused on Track II.

For the sake of the planet, stop the attacks on COP28 hosts
Nathalie Goulet/Arab News/July 13, 2023
The UAE, which will host the COP28 climate change conference in November and December, is not the first state in the Middle East to host the Conference of the Parties. Indeed, COP18 was organized in Doha and last year’s COP27 took place in Sharm El-Sheikh, Egypt.
It was in Sharm El-Sheikh, in fact, that an alarming study pointed to the fact that the Middle East was experiencing global warming twice as much as the global average. The study established an average increase of 0.45 degrees Celsius per decade in the Middle East and Eastern Mediterranean, based on data collected from 1981 to 2019, when the global average increase was 0.27 C per decade. This observation is appalling and alarming.
The Middle East is experiencing global warming head-on, at almost twice the global average rate, with potentially devastating effects for its people and economies. Some 400 million people in the region are at risk of extreme heat waves, prolonged droughts and rising sea levels.
According to the aforementioned study, “virtually all” areas of life will be “seriously affected” by hotter and drier climates. This will potentially contribute to an increase in the death rate and exacerbate “inequalities between the wealthy and the poorest populations” in the region.
The Middle East is not only likely to suffer severely from climate change, but also to be a major contributor to it, the study continued. It stated that this oil-rich region could soon become one of the world’s major sources of greenhouse gas emissions.
The choice of Dubai to host COP28, as aberrant as it may appear at first glance, is not meaningless. On the contrary, the organization of the conference includes in the foreground a Middle Eastern state that should be at the heart of the solution to the problem of global warming.
The UAE has been a victim of its own success in terms of its exponential economic growth since the 1980s. Dubai in particular has been and still is the city of excess. However, in recent years, the UAE has changed path and sought to become a pioneering image of ecotourism. About 20 km from Abu Dhabi city center, a sandy expanse is now the construction site for Masdar City (Masdar means “source” in Arabic). This “ecocity,” which is scheduled for completion in 2030, is guided by renewable energy, a low-carbon transport network and a zero-waste strategy.
Critics of the choice of venue for COP28 have probably forgotten that, like a pandemic, global warming has no borders.
COP28 President-designate Sultan Al-Jaber announced last year: “The fundamental challenges of the energy transition are as follows: First, how to make economies grow, while curbing emissions. Two, how to maintain energy security and climate progress at the same time. Three, how to ensure no one is left behind. I believe we can, we must, and indeed we have no choice but to solve these challenges together.”
Note the unfailing determination of the president who will be in charge of directing the debates at COP28. Back in 2006, Al-Jaber founded the renewable energy company Masdar when only 33 years old.
In 2009, then UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon appointed him to his advisory group on energy and climate change. They published a major report the following year. At the same time, Al-Jaber obtained permission to set up the headquarters of the International Renewable Energy Agency in Abu Dhabi.
Critics of the choice of venue for COP28 have probably forgotten that, like a pandemic, global warming has no borders.
Since 2010, Al-Jaber has served two separate terms as the UAE’s special envoy for climate change, making it his mission to fulfill the country’s commitment to net-zero carbon emissions by 2050. This commitment was made following the 2015 Paris Agreement, with the UAE becoming the first country in the Middle East to take a decisive step toward climate action.
Al-Jaber has offered a pragmatic approach to the energy transition, calling for a realistic, practical and economically viable plan to ensure climate progress, energy security and economic growth at the same time.
“Progressive climate action is not only necessary, it can also be a powerful economic driver, and if we do it right, it can actually set the world on a new low-carbon, high-growth development trajectory. So we need to start looking at the climate challenge as an opportunity,” he said in 2021.
“The world needs all the solutions it can get. It is not oil and gas, or solar, not wind or nuclear, or hydrogen. It is oil and gas and solar, and wind and nuclear, and hydrogen. It is all of the above, plus the clean energies yet to be discovered, commercialized and deployed. In short, the world needs maximum energy and minimum emissions.”
Al-Jaber displays a pragmatic and realistic goal that is in line with the Paris Agreement — that of raising climate ambitions.
The approach adopted by the UAE reflects its position as a pioneer in the field of renewable energy and its place as the first country in the region to deploy nuclear energy.
Furthermore, pursuant to Article 4, Paragraph 4 of the Paris Agreement, the targets for progress are fueled by partnering and engaging with other nations to make today’s energy system cleaner, while investing in the clean energy of tomorrow.
The Paris Agreement stipulates: “Developed country parties should continue to lead the way in taking on economy-wide absolute emission reduction targets. Developing country parties should continue to increase their mitigation efforts and are encouraged to move progressively toward economy-wide emission reduction or limitation targets in the light of different national circumstances.”
The appointment of Al-Jaber has frequently been criticized because he is CEO of the Abu Dhabi National Oil Company and an oil tycoon. However, it should be emphasized that the Conferences of the Parties bring together not only the representatives of the states parties, but also of nonstate actors, including local authorities, nongovernmental organizations and scientists. Thus, it is in the DNA of each conference to include the widest possible spectrum of stakeholders to address the climate emergency.
This variety targets a single and unique goal: accelerating and strengthening collective climate action.
Al-Jaber’s professional capacity should not be seen as a conflict of interest, but rather he should be viewed as an energy specialist who can act in the interest of the ecological transition.
And the UAE — a member of the UN Security Council, an important member of the international community, an actor in the fight against religious extremism and the Muslim Brotherhood, a victim of global warming and a major consumer of energy — is fully justified in hosting and chairing COP28.
“Our house is burning and we are looking elsewhere.” These words uttered by then-French President Jacques Chirac in 2002 remain relevant today. We must stop the sterile polemics because the fate of our planet depends on it.
• Nathalie Goulet is a member of the Senate of France, representing the Orne department (Normandy).